The Daily Beast Podcast - Top Doctor Drops Trump Health Bombshell

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Sarah Ewall-Wice, political reporter for the Daily Beast, speaks with Joanna Coles as Dr. Jonathan Reiner challenges the White House about the growing questions surrounding Donald Trump’s health, from his visible bruising and swollen legs to his repeated episodes of falling asleep in public and the mystery surrounding his medical tests and treatment. They dig into the White House’s increasingly combative response to questions about the president’s condition, the unusual number of specialists involved in his latest physical, and what his erratic sleep schedule could reveal. Then, Sarah breaks down the bizarre decoy-plane operation that secretly whisked Trump away from NATO while leaving senior officials and reporters behind, raising fresh questions about security and who knew what. The conversation also turns to Trump’s increasingly difficult Iran war and the growing problems it creates for his administration, before Sarah reports from a battered National Mall where a botched renovation has become another symbol of government incompetence. #ad Save 20% Off Honeylove by going to https://honeylove.com/DAILYBEAST! #honeylovepod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I get more questions about Donald Trump's appearance and his health from everyday people across America than anything else that ever happens at a Washington, D.C. They want to know what's going on with the fact that he's falling asleep in public. They want to know what's going on with the makeup on his bruise. But in D.C., it's sometimes a taboo topic unless it's like hot moment in the press with something like this doctor's calling it out for what it is. The only time the White House has ever directly said to me that they would have, have answered questions is they referred me to Sean Barbella and he never answered any of my

calls or emails. And then they changed their tune and stopped referring me to him for more questions. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. Today we are getting straight into the president's health. Is he healthy? Is he not healthy? Today there's a new letter from Dick Cheney's former doctor asking all sorts of questions that, to be fair, we have been asking. at the Daily Beast since the president came back into office. What about his mental health? What about his cognitive health? What about his physical health? His cancels. Sometimes he flaunts them. Sometimes he hides them. What's going on? Sarah Ewell Weiss from our Washington Bureau is here to explain all. Before she does,

you know what I'm going to ask for you to press the subscription button if you haven't done already. We're indie media. We appreciate your support. And that's why we can have the kind of conversations we do. We are joined today by Sarah Ewell Weiss, who's in the studio up from our DC Bureau, where she is normally typing away and taking calls from sources, Sarah. I wanted to start with the president's health because he looks as if he's failing in plain sight. But what I was curious about was a letter in this morning's New York Times. We're recording this on Wednesday morning by Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who was Dick Cheney's doctor and who talks about the complications of managing health with a very

senior official. Obviously, Dick Cheney was vice president. But he's got questions for the president's doctor because he feels we're not getting all the answers we need. What is the conversation in D.C. at the moment about Donald Trump's health? I think in Washington, D.C., this is sometimes a topic that is all consuming, and then it kind of goes away. So when you see someone like this doctor write an op-ed, people in DC are like, oh, let's talk about it again. But then it suddenly disappears unless you're someone from The Daily Beast or some others who are continually asking these questions, which we've had since he took office more than a year ago. Because as you watch him, you see that there are different aspects to how he carries himself, to how he looks, that have changed.

over time as he ages. And the White House refuses in most cases to address questions about this. So it has become an ongoing mystery and they have been completely shutting down or in some cases combative about questions about his health. Now, if you step outside of Washington, outside the Beltway, I get more questions about Donald Trump's appearance and his health from everyday people across America than anything else that ever happens at a Washington, D.C. They want to know what's going on with the fact that he's falling asleep in public. They want to know what's going on with the fact that he can't walk in a straight line when you watch him on camera. They want to know what's going on with the makeup on his bruise. So it is definitely a very prominent topic, a very big question,

as it also was in the final years of the Biden administration with President Joe Biden as he aged. But in D.C., it's sometimes a taboo topic unless it's like, hot. moment in the press with something like this doctor's calling it out for what it is, which is the White House being completely shut down and not transparent. And in some cases, lying about what's clearly happening in plain sight. Right. Because I think one thing that's so interesting too is because he loves to be the center of attention, because he longs to be on television 24-7, because he longs to live in all our heads. The disadvantage for him is that we are, watching him closely. We see his decline, and of course he's older. He will be the oldest president

to leave office, assuming he lives out his term. Are people also concerned about his mental health? I want to come on to his physical health in a minute and we'll go through the seven questions that the doctor raises. But are they also concerned that he doesn't have a wife around him? His daughters fled. Anthony Scaramucci, his former communications director, who's also a close monitor of the White House, says he's gotten so much meaner in the last year so people don't want to hang around him. So he seems isolated. That obviously has an impact on your mental health. But is that something that concerns people too? Because physically, I know we can see his decline. But what about the mental decline? So I have spoken to doctors and the mental decline is something that

does raise questions. And I think the president actually brings this on himself in some ways because he's so public. And he will snap at people and mostly attack women reporters when they're asking him questions in a way that's more vicious than it used to be. And doctors have observed that and said that is a bad sign for someone's aging and their mental capacity when they're very sharp and critical and go on the attack in such a nasty way so quickly. Yeah, it's like a sort of disinhibition. People, you know, are used to being social, are used to the normal transactions with other people. I mean, we've had Dr. John Gartner on the podcast several times, a brilliant psychologist who says this is screaming in people's faces. Why aren't we paying attention? It's clear that he's

on the edge of dementia, frontal temporal lobe dementia, he claims. And that is something. that has also been raised because this president likes to brag about his IQ tests. He talks about how he's ace these tests and then he goes on these rants on the campaign trail or at public events where he says he was able to identify a squirrel or able to identify a bear. And so he's the one raising the attention to his own cognitive tests. But the doctors I speak to say, well, if he's taking multiple cognitive tests, which he claims are IQ tests, he is clearly, bragging about his prowess and his smarts, but for doctors, when they have to repeatedly assess him, it's saying something very different from what the president's saying. So the president is saying

that he's taken three tests and he's aced them all. The test he is taking, the assessment test that he is taking, is one that measures cognitive decline. And so the doctors I've spoken to have specifically said, well, we take the first one. Maybe it's just we just want to mark where you are. You take the second one, you're measuring, is there a decline? You want to know if there is or isn't. When you go and take a third one, it means there's probably, without them not knowing his exact results, there probably was a decline. And then they want to see how rapidly the decline is and if it's further continuing to decline. So it is something that he brings it up, but he's talking about it in terms of smarts. The doctors are saying, no, if you're making this, if you're making this man who's 80 years old, take this test,

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Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Experience the new standard in comfort and support with Honey Love. Right. Dr. Gartner says, oh, they're monitoring his decline. And actually, Michael Wolf and I took the Moka test on one of our podcasts, and it was surprisingly easy. I was actually a little nervous. I thought, I'm never going to be able to remember the five words. I feel like I can't remember people's names when they're sitting in front of me. Sarah, you will wise. I've got yours.

But actually, I was, I was, I mean, it's like a test. Test taking makes you nervous. A five-year-old could take. Yeah. Yeah. It made me very nervous. I was convinced we were both Michael and I were going to self-identify and be diagnosed immediately.

with dementia, happily not. But it is odd the president seems to be taking so many. Okay, so we talked about the bruising. One of the questions that Dr. Raina has is this makes no sense when you tell us that he's got bruised hands because he shakes hands so much. And then at the weekend, when he was out in one of his polo shirts, sort of careening around the golf courts in one of his carts, it was very clear he had sort of unsightly bruises on his arms, which can't be from handshaking, unless someone, possibly Natalie Hart, is getting a hold of him and shaking him like this. So how much do people talk about the bruises and what have the White House said that makes you think they're paying attention to it and they're actually on top of what's going on?

Well, they're paying attention to it because they're getting questions about it and have since he took office. for his second term. We started seeing the bruising more than a year ago on one hand. It was obvious. And then he started covering it up with makeup that made it so much worse in some ways. Well, and why does he use the wrong color makeup? It's almost like he's, I mean, it's like, dude, you are on television for 14 years. You can find a makeup that blends. We can find you a makeup that blends to cover those bruises. I know how to do that. So the makeup question is just one that I cannot fathom Melania not being there maybe as a part of this. Or maybe she doesn't.

Why doesn't Natalie Harp take him to Sephora? Take him to Sephora. Go on Amazon. You love Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump. Find a makeup you can blend. It's called blending. You can buy a little brush. Smear it all on.

And also how gross for other people to shake his hand and then come away with like sod and makeup on their hands. So that's its own question. but the actual physical bruise itself, they have always just insisted it's from excessive handshaking. If you asked them last February about it and if you asked them last month about it, they have given the same response because he takes aspirin and he also is shaking hands. The problem is, is I and others have also started to ask, well, why is it on his other hand? You only shake hands with your left or right hand. He has bruises on both.

And the makeup is more prominent on one than the other usually. but that doesn't explain the excessive handshaking. So from the very, the get-go, this was an obvious lie from the White House. And they have doubled down, triple down, quadruple down in months. Machine lips. Have just insisted. Machine-gun lipped down. I think that machine-gun lips is his, is obviously Donald Trump's nickname for Caroline Lovett, the press spokesperson.

So, I mean, that is literally what they've stuck to. They have never deviated. from that. No matter what bruise you talk about on his hands, on his arms, it is the hands shaking is what they have stayed with since the very beginning, even though obviously it is not true. And obviously, there are other issues that play if it's on his forearms now, which is what we saw when he was golfing over the weekend. We don't usually get to see his arms because he usually has long-sleeved shirts on her suit on. But this time, the photographer has captured that as well, which raise additional questions, which have not been answered.

So just remind us about the presidents. I want to say obsession about aspirin. He likes to say he has thin blood. He likes to have thin blood. Thin blood is good. Obviously, he's not a medical professional. Obviously, he's not a medical profession because he's telling people not to take vaccines. But thin blood is his go-to line as he likes to have thin blood,

and he likes to promote that as how he's staying healthy. Doctors have said that that's no longer like the typical regimen that is prescribed to people, even in the president's age as he's gotten older. And so he has stuck with something that is not recommended by doctors. And he has been doing this for years. But obviously he's now going against the normal advice of doctors by just continuing. I mean, I guess he thinks it's working for him in his life. So why change it up?

But he says thin blood is good. And that is where he is stuck with. But many doctors have been like, that's not normal. That is not. Well, so much about this president is not normal. Exactly. It's not the course we would prescribe to a man in his 80s, especially one who's had other symptoms and issues as he's aged.

So the third question, though, Dr. Raina wants to know the answer to. Well, he raises the issue of swelling in the president's legs. Now, we have been observing his cancals. Sometimes he's flaunting his cancels. Sometimes he's hiding his cancels. What are his swollen legs about? So we started observing this last summer. He was traveling and his ankles were just massive tree trunks.

And they were clearly something was wrong there. And they were spilling over the edge of his oxfords, weren't they? I remember just it looked like they were. He was seated and his pants legs were up, hiked up. hiked up because of it, and you could just see his, his ankles were completely swollen, people calm ankles. And it looked uncomfortable. He looked like he was in pain. It couldn't have been comfortable the way it looked. And we started asking questions about that specifically. And we weren't getting answers until the White House just came forward and said he had been diagnosed

with chronic venous insufficiency, which is, can be benign if treated. And you get it on a plane, right? If you take a long flight, it's easy you get off the other end. Your legs are a bit swollen. Exactly. And it's also something that comes with the territory of aging predominantly with older people. And that was something, okay. So what were the treatments for it? And I actually never got direct answers on how it was being treated.

Basically, it's like it's not harmful. It's not dangerous if treated. And I was like, well, he's not even wearing compression socks. Most people would be like, that's one of the first ways you would treat something like this. well, he's not wearing compression socks. He's not doing what is normal to treat such an issue. Would he be able to get compression socks on, I wonder? Like, would he need someone to help him? Because first of all, it's hard to get compression socks on. I hate wearing them. And I know he tried wearing them, didn't he? Because he complained about them. But actually, if you're his size,

and we know he's put on 15 pounds this year, you have to sort of bend over and pull them up. And he might not actually be able to bend over his belly and reach his feet. Well, I would counter that with, I mean, someone in that case would also probably be helping him put his shoes on. And he is wearing shoes that tie. But isn't he? Are they real ties or are they those shoes that actually look tied and are tied, but they're permanently tied? It could be easily slip in shoes. Yeah, slip in shoes that look as if they're tied.

But I do feel that there would be someone to make sure he's put together. I mean, it's not like he doesn't have a staff. It's not like he doesn't have Natalie Hart before he walks into the room. I mean, there just to carry whatever he needs or carrying. I mean, there are solutions to this. He's the president of the United States. And that is kind of where you're like, well, you're not addressing this. But with the Canckel situation is they did not explain.

And one of the things that was brought up in this article in the New York Times, this op-ed, is the fact that chronic means they suddenly came up with this in July. It showed up. They announced it because people started asking about it. I don't know if they would have ever addressed it if it hadn't started being raised as a question among reporters and just people watching the president in public. And so they addressed it and they tried to move on as soon as humanly possible. But clearly, if it's a chronic issue, it's something that has progressed over time. And there was no mention of this issue in his. original physical, which was in April only a couple months before that.

Oh, that's interesting. So if it had come on over the summer, it would be acute. So it was, so yes, it was, it was, it was, that's raised questions about why was this not acknowledged, prognosed, addressed sooner, or at least like mentioned in that physical in April. But, you know, that's the, that's the, that's the, the mystery there. And that is what this doctor is asking. He's like, no, we all know, like, things are not adding up in this administration. The actions and the responses after the actions do not align. And it's coming from an administration that completely obsesses with the fact that it says it's transparent. I was like, yes, it may be he's accessible. He answers questions.

That doesn't mean he's being truthful in any way. And so that is where the ongoing mystery continues. And to this day, we sometimes see him with the swollen ankles and we sometimes don't. But more often than not, his ankles are actually hidden and it may be a strategic, likely strategic, that he's not putting them on full display because of such questions. Well, and I think we noticed at one point, possibly with a visiting guests from Japan, I want to say it was the Japan Prime Minister, that the plane, that that model of Air Force One that they have in the Oval Office was strategically positioned so that when the photographers were taking pictures of the president and the guest, you couldn't see his ankles. That was one observation that has been made that they continually do specifically that's in the oval office. You can't see his ankles because of what's on the table. There's also the idea that a lot of his activities now happen while he's seated behind his desk.

And so he's seated. I mean, that's led to other questions now because now he's falling asleep in public view. But you no longer see his ankles in public view if he's constantly already seated behind the desk before the cameras come into the room. So maybe they need to do something where they bring something down over his head too. So you can just see the torso part of his body because his cancels aren't looking good. And then he's literally doing this. Right. He's just literally doing that.

So obviously very concerning that the president of the United States is falling asleep in cabinet meetings. In meetings when he has guests come in and announce things. This week we saw him with Jabatch Char. the head of the National Institute of Health, who looked bewildered by the fact that the president was sleeping through what was supposed to be an important statement. So what do we know about why he falls asleep in the middle of the day, in the middle of the afternoon, with his cabinet ministers sometimes when they're praising him? It is actually wild the reactions that the White House has, the response the White House has given to the reaction, which a lot of people are like, is he actually

sleeping? And the president himself has acknowledged the questions about him falling asleep in public. But he has gone so far as to claim he's blinking and he's been caught in a blink, which doesn't explain why it's happening on video. It's not a moment where one camera shutter goes off and that's it. That happens to some people. I've had that happen to me. Yeah, it happens all the time. They immediately deleted. But this is happening on video. This is happening while reporters are physically in the room to observe. And he slips, he's like slides over.

And you'll see him jolt too. Yep. So it's a bit, it always reminds me when you fall asleep on a plane and your head goes to one side. And then you suddenly jerk up away. And you see it happening to other people too. But the point is, we can see the president doing this. Exactly. So his own reaction to this is so nonsense per usual.

But he also has said in the cabinet, meetings, which go on and on where they just lavish praise nonstop. I'm sure you've seen some of those. Of course. What is happening here? Yeah. He falls asleep in those too. But he says they're boring. And so he closes his eyes. He's not sleeping. He's closed his eyes because they're boring. The problem is you still see the jolt. So it's, I mean, if he was just resting his eyes, it doesn't explain the waking up motions that he makes. With that said. So yes, go on. With that said, the White House refuses to acknowledge that there's anything but him closing his eyes, resting his eyes. So he will not acknowledge it himself.

And he comes up with all these like silly things and jokes about it even in a blink. And the White House is backing him all the way and going with whatever he says and isn't going to say anything different from what he says. So it feels like they're just taking his lead. But anyone with eyeballs can see that's just not the case. Is this to do with his disordered sleeping? I mean, at the Daily Beast, we have chronicled when he posts his truth socials. He seems to have frenzy posting activity in the middle of the night. I know he has people doing his posts for him, but what we hear is, you know, he's eating sugar

and sweets late into the night. There's sort of slimy wrappers of burgers that are that. at the bottom of his bed. So he may have indigestion, but he seems to have disordered sleeping, which would also lead to him just nodding off in the middle of the day. So that is exactly what is happening. And the president and his team have actually acknowledged in some ways that the president doesn't sleep much.

He's hardworking, not sleeping. And you'll see it in his post at night. He has a team that helps him with the post during the day. When you're seeing the repost at 2 a.m. of AI videos, that's typically. believed to be the president himself, who's up in the middle of the night. But then he is not doing events in the morning the same way. And this was actually written about in Maggie Harriman's book about his sleep patterns and is crashing in the morning a little bit. But I went and tracked how the schedule for the president has been addressed as we've seen him posting all night, rage

posting in most cases all night, and then disappearing in the morning. And his executive time on his schedule in the morning is almost there's almost no instance where he doesn't have a blocked window of what they call executive time. It's usually 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. And it is where he's said, according to the White House, to be just doing things he needs to do, calling people, discussing topics, doing just behind the scenes presidential activity. But it's been reported that he's actually taking much of that time to sleep. And in Maggie Haberman's book, they said there was one point where they had to send people

to look for him because they couldn't find him. And so we've seen that executive time just across the board be like scheduled into his days where it's believed he's sleeping at maybe not always, obviously. So what is executive time referring to, private time that the president has? He's in theory working. Working making calls. Yes. Yes. It's just, I mean, it's, we know one knows what's happening behind the scenes, but it's just blocked off for the president. And he did have this during his first term, too, I should say, but it's expanded during his second term in the matter, like the amount of frequent times that it's on the schedule. With that said, we've also tracked the fact that even though he has this blocked off executive time the morning, in the afternoon, his events are

happening later and later in the day. So there's very rarely he'll have any public appearance, not saying they aren't there. There are, especially when he's heading out to golf, but there are later appearances when it comes to his public events and we don't see them off until the afternoon. still does not explain how the event that happened at 2 o'clock in afternoon, 3 o'clock in the afternoon, 4 o'clock in the afternoon, he's still dozing off on camera in the Oval Office. But it's well known and well documented that he sleeps very little and has always been an infrequent sleeper in general.

A lot of people complain staffers, former staffers, current staffers, will talk about how it's tough to travel with him because he's just tough all the time. Well, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State said that, didn't he? Oh, it's a nightmare being on the plane with him. because you're trying to get some shut eye and the president's like poking you awake to but then you'll see not see him after the while after he gets back from such trips for some times so okay well we should come on to the plane in a second actually and the whole brew ha ha over a decoy plane but what about the drugs that the president takes the medications he takes so

we know he's on aspirin we know that he was also taking something for hair loss which lots of people do. What else do we know about his medical regime? We know very little about his medical regime. And that's because they aren't really disclosing it. They're putting out these statements after his annual physicals that sometimes have things and then sometimes they do not. The hair one was no longer deemed a necessary thing to include by their standards. So we know a little about the medications he's on. We know very little about who's involved in the assessments that he goes through and his physicals and what comes out of those in general. So we are not given anything besides the blanket statements by his Dr. Sean Barbabella, who really is just praising the president's health in most of these cases.

Right. Excellent health, tremendous golfer. And we don't have any detailed explanation. on when medications start, stop, or why they're sometimes on the list and sometimes not on the list besides them saying it's not deemed unnecessary medication for the president at any given time. We haven't had anything specifically for the venous insufficiency, the chronic venous insufficiency, though they brought that up after people pressed about it so much. Well, after it became obvious, right? After people could see it.

Exactly. And then, I mean, the aspirin has been always something he says he's taking, but like we don't have a reason why, like, are his doctors saying this needs to change? You need to be taking something else. And we don't know why some of the tests have been done that have been done on the president. Obviously, there was a whole question about him having an MRI and why he had an MRI. And it wasn't revealed until the president brought it up himself. And he was clearly wrong about his own medical tests. And the White House wouldn't clarify for weeks at a time.

until finally just said the president misspoke and that wasn't actually what he had. And why didn't you just say that immediately? Well, there also seemed to be, there was a report he'd seen 22 specialists. Why did he see them? Why 22? That seems an enormous. I mean, that's like a doctor for every single part of the body, every single organ. So it is more than usual. And the reason we know about that is because it was revealed in his physical, the afterwards when they released their statement that he had dealt with 22 specialists. But that is up from the 14 he had as part of his assessment the previous year. And so the question that I have not had answered and others have not had answered is why did

it jump so much and who were like we don't know who those original 14 were. We know who the main White House physician is. But we don't know who has been a part of the assessment. Though it's not uncommon for there to be multiple doctors getting. involved in president's physicals. But we don't know why there was such a great jump. We don't know who those doctors were, what their specialties were. And the White House has never answered my questions or others to my knowledge on specifically what those are. The only time the White House has ever directly said to me that they would have answered questions is they referred me to

Sean Barbabella and he never answered any of my calls or emails. And then they changed their and stopped referring me to him for more questions. It's very puzzling. But as we know from Joe Biden, sometimes what you see is actually what you see. And we can see a man in decline. He's also had, you know, as we know, he had Butler, Pennsylvania. I mean, he's had serious attempts on his life, which must add an enormous amount of stress to an already stressful job.

And now we know that he's been hiding in, you know, you know, know, what are we calling it food cart one, as he or food truck one, as he gets smuggled between planes, which reminds me of those magician tricks where you have, you know, three cups. There's a ball under one of the cups and they're doing this. You've got to try and guess where the ball is. There's some sort of tromp-loy slight of hand going on here. What do we understand about what actually happened with this whole brouhaha around the planes? So that has been the talk of the week in terms of who was let in on this decoy plane situation and who was not let in.

And so what happened is we did find out that the president, when he was at the NATO summit in Turkey, would not be taking his plane, Air Force One, the new one, the Qatari Gift. Brift Force one as human. as Hugh calls it. Yeah, Hugh Docherty, our executive editor, coined it Griff Force One, which is the best title. It is exactly what it is. And he took that to Turkey, but then there was an announcement that he would be actually taking the former Air Force one, the Jackie O colored planes. Hail blue plane, the regular Air Force one.

The ones that has been in use for decades, he'd be taking that for the first leg of the trip back from Turkey. And their excuse and what the president posted about is they're going to let the troops in the UK see the new Air Force one, the new Qatari jet. Because the troops, of course, have been clamoring to see it, clamoring. I'm sure they were like, what is going on. So that was the first rendition of this whole saga. And it turns out the New York Times reported that actually there were concerns about security and the defense security of this Qatari gifted jet because of the threats to the president. And that's being refitted or retrofitted with a much higher level of security than it had. And that's costing, I think, I read at least up to $600 million. So he gets a free plane, which is valued at, I think, 400 million, but it needs another 600 million to bring it up to the standard of the regular Air Force one.

Yes. So that is its own whole saga that has been playing out and raised questions because he got a gifted jet and they're putting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into retrofitting it. And it wasn't secure enough for him to return from NATO. So weird, because it was secure enough for him to fly there, but not for him to fly back. It's believed that he got more briefings once they were there, and that's the intelligence was led to the changes moving back. But in the end, it wasn't even the case anyway, because now we're learning that he went

through this whole elaborate plan or performance or reality TV show, if you will, of boarding the old Air Force One, the Washington Post had this bombshell report about as soon as he got on the old Air Force One, wait for the cameras, turned and walked away. He actually walked into a catering truck that was parked at the back of Air Force One and driven to a third plane and taken back to the U.K. in that third plane, unbeknownst to the reporters who were covering him and traveling with him for that NATO summit. They thought they were on the same plane as the president. He went onto the plane in front of the cameras and waved and then snuck out the back in the catering truck. And who was he with in the catering truck? Because he had staff on the decoy old Air Force

1-2 alongside the reporters, right? Yes. So some people were left on the plane as basically a bait and switch. So if there was going to be a threat, that that's where the focus was. The reporters who did not know that they were a part of this whole ploy. Then there was the group that went with the president. And It raises questions on who the president loves the most in his inner circle. One of the people who was with the president is Natalie Harp, his executive assistant, who is his constant shadow these days, constantly at the White House, constantly on the golf course. And now we're finding out in the catering truck bait and switch plane with him as well.

So she was on. His other assistant, Walt Nurta, was also with him. We know Dan Skivino, who handles a lot of social media, a longtime aide was with with him. We knew Pete Hegseth previously was with him in that separate military plane going back to the UK because he made up the whole show of actually entering the plane from the separate doorway. He didn't he wasn't on the catering truck move. He publicly went to the other plane as a part of this whole ruse to explain why that plane he was even there. Right. So, but we find out that there's quite a few folks who are part of the administration, top officials, who were left behind.

And it's not clear to me. I asked the White House about who was a part of this decoy plane, who was a part of the military jet with the president and did not receive a response. But it's not clear to me whether the folks who were left on the plane were aware that they were a part of the group that was left behind. Well, they would have known that the president wasn't with them, right? So they must have thought, where is he? Yes. But like, I don't know if they got like the full briefing beforehand the same way. I mean, obviously the press had no idea that.

that they were not a part of it. But people who were not on the plane with the president specifically were Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Ascent, a few others. Oh, Stephen Miller, his White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller. And so folks who were part of this decoy plane, who were a part of the plane that was potentially the target and could have been under great threat were some of his closest allies. And Marco Ruby was actually asked about it when he was appearing for a photography appearance. So he usually doesn't answer questions for these type of events anyway. But yesterday, he was asked if Americans were put at risk by putting them on the old Air Force One back without acknowledging what had been going on.

Did you put Americans at risk by having them flying Air Force One when it was under threat? How persistent in the direct to the president? And he smiled so awkwardly. It was like a freeze grin moment where he looked like he was gritting his teeth and cringing in pain. And then he did what he did. He said, thanks guys. And like ran away with the foreign minister he was meeting with.

So they had this very cringy public appearance where he was confronted about what had taken place and the fact that the president had left staffers and the White House press behind. Well, I'm sure if you're Marco Rubio, you must feel sort of furious that you were left. on the decoy plane, which might be a target, even though arguably that Air Force One is actually the safest plane? The thing about the old Air Force One is it has been to so many places that I don't want to say, I mean, they took the president off of it. They put him on another plane.

It's not like they haven't done that in the past. It's not like other presidents haven't gone on decoy planes. But typically, people are brought in beforehand on this is. what's going down, they're briefed, and then afterward it's revealed publicly. So, yes, is Air Force one probably the most protected plane in existence in general? Yes, but they left them there. And I don't know what it says about the president's moral character and about his staffers and who he cares about, that some of them were left behind because of this threat.

And then the president joked, if I go down, you go down. Right, which seemed like a bad. joke. In retrospect, really bad joke. And just remind us. So the NATO summit was in Turkey. Turkey has a border with Iran. Iran, we are bombing, as Trump says, the shit out of them. And they seem to have the strait of Hormuz in a chokehold. So it seems reasonable to think there was an elevated threat against the president. Undoubtedly, I mean, this president has faced. multiple threats. He's faced multiple assassination attempts. I don't think anyone is disputing that the president is constantly under threat and Donald Trump is always under threat. Although largely

the threats that appear to have been the most successful, thinking of Butler, Pennsylvania, where the would-be assassin did end up actually killing people in the rally, in the audience of the rally who'd come to see Trump, they're all homegrown. Yes. And I mean, I think it's kind of the lone wolf threat might be the biggest challenge for America as a country moving forward, both for the president's safety, but also just for Americans at large going about their everyday life. I'm not sure that's, there's a way to address that separately. But we do know that Iran has definitely put out, put an effort to go after President Donald Trump specifically.

And the escalated war in Iran, with Iran that the president started obviously has not changed it. we've also seen them go through the whole process of trying to have talks and negotiate and offer flattery. And that has all just totally taint. And so when he was going to the NATO summit, we were on this roller coaster already with President Donald Trump's handling of his war. And so that there was an ongoing effort. And there was a lot of Israeli intelligence dealing with this. That was a part of the assessment to move the president as to the Washington. post-reported. And of course, you know, the first weekend of the bombing February 28th in what was

supposed to be a four or a five-week bombing campaign, it was never supposed to be a war, took out 40 people in the Iranian leadership. So I can see why, obviously, American security is concerned about the safety of the American president. And as the war has gone on, we're in its sixth month now. Pete Hegeseth is becoming known as the Secretary of Forever Wars. This is the thing that's hanging around Donald Trump's neck as we roll into the midterms. This has been something that I think has infuriated most members of the Trump administration. Because if you ask any administration official about the war and the length of the war, the immediate response is to fingerpoint and talk about the length of Vietnam.

or the length of the Iraq war or the length of Afghanistan. The president has literally posted about this comparison on his true social account. But it is something that has really frustrated the administration because there seems to be no easy escape hatch for once for this president. Someone who has managed to get himself out of a lot of situations is now stuck with this serious issue. And even if he ended the war tomorrow, we now have the Strait of Hormuz, Iran realizing just how powerful a tool that is going forward for the entire world. And they have that at their disposal. So the other thing that's hanging around the president's neck is the reflecting

pool that, you know, he was supposed to make Washington beautiful for the 250th anniversary. and in fact we're stuck with a concrete eyesore of the reflecting pool, once a beautiful tourist attraction in DC, a sort of remembrance of all the complicated history of America, a beautiful place to go and just walk around a peaceful place. Now it's surrounded by barbed wire, horrible fencing, a total fiasco in terms of what should have been a fairly straightforward renovation. So what does it feel like to be down there with it all closed away, one of Washington's most iconic sites? It's depressing. The state of the National Mall right now on America's 250th birthday is between individual events, which you can argue are just abysmal on

their own as part of the Freedom 250 that the president's put on. The state of the mall itself is depressing because there are fences and access points that are not available now where people could freely roam and enjoy their time with their families and take amazing photos looking from the Lincoln Memorial down to the Washington Monument. And that is now all a part of this ongoing construction zone. And the idea was they would have it all done by the 4th of July. Obviously, it was a botched job. They tried to cover up that it was a botched job. They've now recently had to admit and pull out a case that they were trying to take the Olympian to court for because they had to admit it was a botched job.

Right. That's amazing. Right. Janine Piro, the U.S. attorney for D.C., coming out and saying this was a botched contract job. It was a no-bid contract. This is botched contract to work. But at the end of the day, it becomes the American people who go to visit this beautiful green space, this space that is for families and visitors and taking your friends and enjoying time outside, especially in a place like D.C. where it is so hot and humid in the summer, it is not an enjoyable spot for this landmark year that so many people have shown up for. And so that's its own depressing, frustrating aspect of this.

But just the handling of it alone has also infuriated people in D.C. Because they've then been lied to on top of losing this access to this beautiful space. Now we have just more lies on top of we've added the National Guard to your space. And I'm not saying that some of the renovations, to be clear, in D.C. haven't been welcomed. I think there are some areas where they've just cleaned up statues, maybe not painted them gold, where people are like, oh, this is better. It's long overdue. but this has become just an ongoing fiasco and the administration just thoroughly botching everything about it, both the process and the way to fix it.

Well, and it just seems such a symbol of incompetence if you can't do something, which frankly, given everything and the complications that the government has to deal with, is relatively simple. The fact they can't figure out who is the best person in the country to get this fixed feels dismal. And what's wild about it is, like, they could have, done this, admitted to it, which never happens in this administration, to be clear, and moved on. They brought so much more attention to this. Now, they're like, why do you care so much? I'm like, well, you cared so much. You made this the pinnacle of your focus going into a midterm cycle.

And a lot of people are like, I just wanted to have improved health care. I just wanted someone to tackle inflation. And we're talking about the reflecting pool in Washington C, which millions of people visit But obviously it's not the top priority for most Americans who aren't. And that has been the focus of both the administration. But they have themselves made it the prominent issue that just goes to show the incompetence, which then you're like, well, if they can't handle that, what else can they not handle? And it seems that would be almost everything else if you can't do one smaller construction project. Almost everything else.

Sarah, it's fantastic to have you in the studio. We love hearing from you and your colleagues, of course, David Gardner. and the Swamp newsletter and Farah Thomas in, who took us through the various monuments that were being reorganised and redone and her favourite fountain in the park, which appeared to be actually a good example of renovation, suddenly started gushing filthy brown water.

So even that hasn't worked yet. It's great to have you. Thank you so much for coming in. I can't recommend your reporting highly enough to people. If you haven't subscribed to the Daily Beast, you must. And also you can catch Sarah's work in the swamp, our political newsletter, which reveals, well, it just reveals so much that's disturbing about what's going on in D.C. But it's a lively and it's a very funny read too and full of gossip, full of D.C. gossip, which who knew D.C. gossip was a thing, but it really is. Thank you so much for coming into the studio.

It's great to see you. And we want more updates, Sarah. More updates. It's been awesome to be here. I love talking to Sarah. She's so well-informed and she's constantly talking to the White House and asking questions that they just refuse to answer. And yet it's very clear that the president isn't in great health. You can see it. He's increasingly slumped. He's shorter than he used to be. The words he uses are different. He's increasingly isolated. He has fewer people around him, which also makes people behave differently. And I do think that the observation he's getting meaner is very much a symptom of his not only getting older, but he's getting less well.

He seems less healthy. Anyway, write and tell us what you think. Put in the comments what you observe when you see Donald Trump giving his press conferences, when you see him falling asleep, when he does that kind of weird slump that we've all done on a plane. What does it make you think of? Anyway, if you have been, thank you for joining us. We'll be back tomorrow with Michael Wolfe, where we go inside Trump's head to figure out what does he think about his health? What's going on for him?

How is he feeling being the number one target of the world, as he proudly tells people he's the number one target? Big thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passer, Heather Pissarro and Neil Rosenhaus. So the good news is we have so many BBC. tier members now there are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support