President Donald Trump struggled to follow a simple line of questioning about his administration’s efforts to free a 64-year-old Colorado man held hostage by the Taliban since last January.
“American Dennis Coyle has been taken hostage by the Taliban for almost a year now.” NewsNation host Katie Pavlich said in an interview on Tuesday night. “His family has been speaking out—[sister] Molly Long went on NewsNation last week to ask for some more public attention to this case. What is your administration doing to get him home, and—”
“Well, if you give me the name…” Trump, 79, replied, 17 seconds after Pavlich had said Coyle’s name.
“Dennis Coyle,” Pavlich repeated.
“OK, well if you give me some information, I’ll take care of that,” he said. “I could do some things on the internet that are pretty impactful.”
Trump declined to elaborate on what he could do on the internet. The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
For months, the president’s deteriorating health, including evidence of cognitive decline, has been cause for concern, with his symptoms including bruised hands, swollen ankles, and an alarming habit of falling asleep during high-stakes meetings.
Coyle, who is an academic researcher, was taken from his home in Kabul in January 2025 after nearly two decades of living and working in Afghanistan, according to a website created by his family to advocate for his release.
He arrived in the country in the early 2000s with the goal of surveying Afghanistan’s rich linguistic diversity and helping communities develop resources in their own languages, according to the site.
He was legally working as a researcher supporting Afghan language communities when he was detained by the Taliban General Directorate of Intelligence, which has held him without charges in near-solitary conditions. The U.S. State Department has officially declared that he is being wrongfully detained.
During an emotional interview Thursday with NewsNation host Chris Cuomo, Long said that Coyle’s family had lost all contact with him for the first nine months of his detainment and only discovered later that he was still alive.
She also shared a message Coyle had asked her to pass along to Trump.
“He believes in you, he has confidence in your ability to get him out, and he is looking forward to the moment in which he’s free under your watch,” she said, adding that the family also has faith in Trump’s ability to free hostages.
