President Donald Trump has once again been caught resting his sleepy eyes, this time as Cabinet officials schooled him about the importance of whole milk.
But the 79-year-old president also weighed into the benefits of drinking milk, claiming it had helped him “ace” three cognitive tests, which are essentially screening tools for dementia.
“I’ve taken a lot of them,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I’ve aced every one of them because I drink milk.”
As scrutiny of his health continues, the president signed a bipartisan bill on Wednesday allowing American schools to offer whole milk and 2 per cent milk to students.
The move reverses Obama-era restrictions that limited options for students to fat-free or low-fat milk.
But as Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins talked about the importance of dairy and commended Trump for signing the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act into law, the president was caught resting his eyes for several seconds, almost as though he was about to doze off.
It was not the first time that Trump, known to get little sleep, had appeared less than fully awake during televised events in the West Wing.
He also struggled to keep his eyes open last month during a lengthy cabinet meeting—once again while Rollins was talking.
As cabinet secretaries took turns giving “Dear Leader-style” praise to the president, he closed his eyes for five seconds again while Education Secretary Linda McMahon spoke, and then again when it was Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s turn.
However, in an impromptu interview with the Wall Street Journal this month, Trump insisted that he doesn’t fall asleep in public, but simply shuts his eyes now and then.
“It’s very relaxing to me,” he said. “Sometimes they’ll take a picture of me blinking, blinking, and they’ll catch me with the blink.”
Trump regularly made fun of Joe Biden’s cognitive capacity and spent most of the past few years referring to the then-president as “Sleepy Joe.”
But Trump was 78 years and 7 months when he was sworn into office last January, making him the oldest American president to take the oath.
Since then, he has suffered from swollen ankles and frequent hand bruises, regularly confuses names and dates, and his trademark long-winded tangents are becoming even longer, veering into bizarre segues on everything from wind farms and White House decor to First Lady Melania Trump’s underwear.
On Tuesday, the president even reflected on his age during a speech in Detroit, sounding somewhat melancholy as he pined for the “old days.”
“I used to be up to these lecterns and I’d say I’m younger than pretty much everybody in the room,” he told the audience.
“Now I say I’m older than pretty much everybody. I like it the other way better, actually.”
Trump’s health was also the talk of the town in Washington over the weekend, where vein specialists gathered at the Marriott Marquis a few blocks from the White House for a conference.
The conference centered largely on chronic venous insufficiency, a common circulatory condition in older adults that can cause leg swelling, which the president was diagnosed with last year.
Speaking to the Daily Beast ahead of the conference, Dr. Sanjiv Lakhanpal, the founder and chief executive of the Center for Vein Restoration, said that one way to deal with CVI was to get more sleep.
The presidency has a tendency to stay up late, rage-posting about everything from revenge plots to the “fake news.”
But if he got more sleep, the doctor said, this would assist with his overall physical health – and in turn his CVI diagnosis.
“It’s all a vicious cycle,” he said. “If they don’t get a good amount of rest at night, they don’t want to exercise in the morning.
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