The Democratic Party mocked President Donald Trump after he drew attention to his physicality at the White House on Wednesday.
As he hosted NASA’s Artemis II astronauts in the Oval Office, the 79-year-old president couldn’t pass up an opportunity to talk about himself while celebrating others on their momentous accomplishment.
“To get in there, you have to be very smart. You have to do a lot of things physically good,” Trump said about being an astronaut. “So I would have had no trouble making it. I’m physically very, very good.”
“Maybe a little bit of a problem, I don’t know, Jared,” Trump said to his NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman. “We’ll have to try it sometime. Is a president allowed to go up in one of these missions?”
“We can get working on that, Mr. President,” the billionaire investor and private astronaut, 43, replied.
The Democratic Party jumped on a clip on X of the geriatric president’s comments and responded with a photo of a weathered Trump captioned with his quote from the astronaut meeting.
The White House did not immediately return the Daily Beast’s request for comment on the Democrats’ jab at Trump.
Being an astronaut requires intense physical training to effectively handle long-duration spaceflight. Adequate physical fitness is assessed by tests such as swimming 75 meters in a pool without stopping, then swimming another 75 meters while wearing a flight suit.
Other physical fitness standards include the ability to deadlift at least 100 percent of one’s body weight and bench press 70 percent of one’s body weight. If Trump were to qualify, he would have to be able to deadlift 224 pounds and bench press 155 pounds, based on last year’s White House physical.
Last week, the president—while having makeup slathered on his right hand to mask its deep bruising—bragged to a group of collegiate student athletes about how much he loves sports and how he was “so helped in my life” by them.
“I know what it is to win in sports, and win in life,” he told the room of NCAA champions of various sports. “But to win in sports is, uh, I always say it’s a microcosm of life.”
The president, who has played golf for over 20 percent of his second presidency, according to the Donald Trump Golf Tracker, was also a keen tennis player back in the day.
“Winning in tennis, that’s a tough thing to do,” he said while addressing the Georgia Bulldogs, the NCAA Women’s Tennis champions. “I played tennis a little bit. Not quite at that level. Not quite.”
Geriatric Trump, who has said he is terrified of falling down the stairs, also shared last week that his remodeled walkway outside the Oval Office would be paved with non-slip black granite.
The near-octogenarian president’s physical and mental health has become a major concern throughout his second term, as the Daily Beast has covered extensively—whether it’s his frequently bruised hands, his surprise neck rash, his bulging cankles, his slurred speech, his trouble reading, his public sleeping fits, or his bouts of confusion.
