President Donald Trump has never had trouble getting airtime, despite his many attempts to block others from doing the same.
The cameras are always rolling in the White House’s Oval Office, where the president often makes his big announcements.
Officials and business leaders gathered around Trump this week. The setting was ready for a victory lap, but his speech began pulling attention away from the main point.
Trump sat at his Resolute Desk with a binder in front of him. Anyone hoping the binder would keep things on track was out of luck.
His words sounded slurred, and his speech took several detours unrelated to his announcement.
On Monday, Sept. 28, Trump unveiled a planned $15 billion steel plant in Iowa. Mesabi Metallics intends to supply the facility with iron ore from Minnesota.
According to Reuters, Trump pitched the project as a manufacturing triumph ahead of the midterms. Viewers heard the sales pitch. They also heard a delivery that sent them back to the clips.
Steel soon had to share the spotlight with Democrats, gas prices and Iran.
As the president launched into his usual spiel, knocking the opposing party and touting his version of America, some words sounded off. Before long, they started running together. Some consonants that usually anchor his speech seemed to slip away.
After listening to him ramble over common words, even Reddit users were convinced that “he was slurring” and that “he sounds drunk.”
“Lots of slobber,” one Reddit user joked. Another wrote, “Are you kidding? They wheeled Mitch McConnell in for a vote and he’s literally brain dead!”
A third person said, “I think he meant to say ‘open the borders’ and started slurring.”
He also sounded exhausted while answering reporters’ questions. His responses were quiet and short, and his speech was still somewhat slurred.
“What? He just woke up from his nap,” stated one person. Another observer noticed, “Slurring is nothing new with him. It has gotten worse.”
The 80-year-old’s speech issues don’t sound mumbled every time he speaks. Facebook commenters were no kinder, blaming his alleged literacy skills and comparing the POTUS to a “Walking corpse.”
“He sounded as if his sentences were slurring together, as if he were speaking in cursive, said one observer. Another said, “Trump doesn’t know what a period or a comma means. He can’t read for goodness sakes!!!”
But what people heard that day in the Oval Office wasn’t an isolated incident, and it didn’t begin with an Iowa steel plant.
The slurring episodes have followed him since his first term, so much so that the White House once had to explain.
In 2017, during Trump’s first term in office, he slurred several words during his speech recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. After late-night hosts turned the moment into a punchline, Reporters pressed the White House for answers.
Then-press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump and the administration responded by announcing they would release results from a physical at the time. He underwent his first official presidential physical exam on January 12, 2018, at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Trump’s latest publicized medical and dental evaluation took place May 26, 2026, at Walter Reed. The appointment lasted roughly 3 to 3.5 hours.
White House physician U.S. Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella reported that Trump remained in “excellent health.” Yet it marked his fourth exam since returning to the White House in January 2025.
That scrutiny returned in August when a White House event prompted another close inspection.
Trump looked flushed in a clip from this year’s crypto summit that has been circulating online. People quickly fixated on the redness in his face, slurring and heavy breathing, wondering if reading had become too much for him.
A similar matter happened nearly two weeks ago. Trump hosted a dinner in the White House Rose Garden for about 100 hunters, anglers and outdoor industry officials on Sept. 17.
He was there to tout an executive order easing restrictions on hunting and fishing on federal land. While boasting about his support among “duck hunters,” he started to slur his words — again.
Monday gave Trump another chance to command the room. But he did the complete opposite.
But between the slips, dips, contradictions, detours, and that quick nap, many say he’s as “unfit to be in office” as former president Sleepy Joe Biden — a claim Trump will never admit.
Like some of his words, the criticism keeps dragging on and has only reignited questions about whether something may be wrong.
