A Daily Beast analysis found that President Trump posted or reposted a record 861 times on Truth Social in May 2026, an average of more than one post per hour, or roughly 27 a day, the most in any single month. The White House said the volume simply reflects Trump giving the public “access and transparency.”
The record landed amid an intensifying debate over the fitness of the 79-year-old president. On May 5, a group of 36 physicians and mental-health experts, including Nobel laureates, published a statement asserting that in their “expert opinion” Trump is “mentally unfit” and urging his lawful removal under the 25th Amendment, citing his sole authority over nuclear weapons. Diagnosing a public figure a clinician has not personally examined is itself professionally contested, and the assessment is an attributed opinion, not an established medical finding. Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb, a Republican, separately said Trump's late-night posting and rhetoric show “cognitive decline” that has “accelerated,” and argued the cabinet “will not invoke the 25th amendment for a man who is clearly insane.”
For its part, the White House released results from Trump's late-May Walter Reed exam describing him as in “excellent health” with a perfect cognitive-screening score (see Trump, About to Turn 80, Heads to Walter Reed for His Third Checkup in 13 Months as Prior 'MRI' Was Quietly Corrected to a Cardiac CT, Trump Says His Perfect Cognitive-Test Score Proves 'Extreme Intelligence'; the Test's Creator Says It Screens for Impairment, Not Genius). The verifiable fact here is the record post volume; the competing fitness judgments are contested opinions on both sides.
The debate sharpened on June 4, 2026, when Trump appeared to doze off during an Oval Office briefing on “clean coal,” seated among Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin; video showed him lying back and to the side. Dr. Jonathan Reiner, formerly Dick Cheney's cardiologist, said the episodes reflect “severe daytime somnolence,” which he called a sign of a “severe illness.” A day earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had denied to Rep. Ted Lieu that Trump naps in public, even when shown video. The White House dismissed the latest incident, with spokesman Davis Ingle saying Trump is “the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history.”
On June 10, 2026, at an Oval Office signing ceremony, Trump spoke for nearly an hour, much of it about the redesigned Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool and attacks on “Dumocrats,” and nearly left without signing the immigration and border-funding bill he had convened reporters and GOP leaders to witness. Reminded by an aide that he had not actually signed it, he pivoted to mocking Biden's use of an autopen before inking the page with his Sharpie: “See, Biden wouldn't do this. That's the real deal, right there.”
The debate continued into mid-June. At the G7 summit in France on June 16, video showed Trump walking off in the wrong direction during the leaders' photo, with French President Emmanuel Macron gesturing for him to return; a separate photo showed India's Narendra Modi steadying him on a step. On June 21, a Father's Day post on Trump's Truth Social used a photo of Margo Catsimatidis, 74, the wife of a billionaire supporter, captioned “Great daughter. My Honor!!!” Commentators read it as a sign of confusion; the caption is the documented fact, and any cognitive interpretation is opinion.
On June 22, 2026, during an Oval Office signing of quantum-technology orders, Trump turned from talking about the Strait of Hormuz to ask physicist John Martinis, a 2025 Nobel laureate standing nearby, “Did you know of my uncle at all?” Martinis, who studied at Berkeley, said, “No, no.” Trump often invokes his late uncle John Trump, an MIT professor, around scientists. Separately, the Haberman and Swan book “Regime Change” reported that Trump had begun having trouble hearing and asking people to repeat questions, that joint press conferences were moved to the Oval Office partly so he would not have to stand for an hour, and that he pressed his press secretary to push back on coverage of his “cankles.” Those book details are not independently documented.