Even as his war rages on, Donald Trump dances like nobody’s watching.
The president, 79, spent much of Tuesday welcoming athletes and students to the White House after reviving the Presidential Physical Fitness Award, which had been wound down under former President Barack Obama’s administration.
After signing a proclamation in the Oval Office—where he veered wildly off-script and began raging about wartime in front of children—Trump then accompanied the student-athletes to the South Lawn.
There, as the children took part in exercise drills, the president himself showed off some fancy footwork. Footage from Tuesday afternoon shows Trump, who weighed in at 224 pounds and 6’3” in his last physical, demonstrating his signature “Trump dance,” which consists of pumping his fists while wobbling back and forth.
Trump’s impromptu dance party comes as his administration is fighting to justify its $500 million-a-day war in Iran, which remains at a stalemate. He even felt the need to explain the conflict to the children, telling several student-athletes in the Oval Office: “We can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon. You might be too young for this,” Trump said, looking to the children, before continuing. “They probably know. They probably know better than most people, but you can’t let a bunch of lunatics have a nuclear weapon, or the world would be in trouble. The world would be in trouble.”
He continued for several more minutes, at one point implying to the children that the country might not exist without the war in Iran.
“We would have had a ran Iran with a nuclear weapon, and maybe we wouldn’t all be here right now, I can tell you, the Middle East would have been gone. Israel would have been gone, and they would have trained their sights on Europe first and then us, because they’re sick people,” Trump said.
Try as he might, Trump can’t dance away his troubles. Last week, 61 percent of Americans polled by the Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos said Trump’s decision to strike Iran on February 28 was the wrong one. The president’s approval rating also sank to 37 percent, down from 39 percent in February, while his disapproval ticked up from 60 percent to 62 percent. The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
As for his dancing, the first lady herself has expressed disapproval. “She says it’s so unpresidential,” Trump told a crowd in The Villages, Florida, earlier this week. “And she hates when I dance.”
In January, Trump said that Melania is “a very classy person” who believes his moves do not match the office.
