Donald Trump reportedly had an expletive-ridden meltdown in the Oval Office over his increasingly unpopular war on Iran—but Jimmy Fallon thinks he knows what really triggered the president.
On The Tonight Show, late-night host Fallon reacted to reports that Trump, 80, “exploded” and started “yelling expletives” during a meeting with his top national security officials last week over the lack of progress in the conflict, which he launched in February. The war has so far claimed the lives of 18 U.S. service members with hundreds of others wounded.
“I read that President Trump has been furious about the Iran war, and he’s been shouting curse words at his top national security officials,” Fallon began.
He then quipped: “Yeah, his staff was like, ‘Is now a bad time to tell you that there’s algae in the pool again?’”
The joke was a swipe at Trump’s Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation project, which reportedly cost more than $14 million and was completed in June, only for the pool to turn green with algae shortly afterward.
Fallon followed up with another jab at the president.
“The last time Trump was this angry was when McDonald’s added salads to the menu,” he joked. “But the White House downplayed the report. They said the president just gets cranky when he misses his all-day naps.”
Trump’s erratic sleeping habits have increasingly attracted attention. A Daily Beast analysis found Trump was so busy posting or reposting angry rants or AI slop on Truth Social that he could have had no more than five full nights of sleep in April, and his sleeping habits have not improved since
He has also been struggling to stay awake in White House meetings and was even seen nodding off last week at the funeral of his close Senate ally Lindsey Graham.
Those incidents have sparked concern about the health and stamina of the oldest person ever elected U.S. president.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
According to a Trump ally cited by NBC News, who has spoken with the president about the conflict in recent weeks, Trump has become increasingly “exasperated” as his war on Iran drags on with no clear end in sight.
“I don’t think he believed it was going to be this difficult to get the Iranians to agree to a deal,” the ally said. “There was not a real strategy for how long or what they should do to get to the endpoint.”
The ally added that Trump “did not intend this to be a long, drawn-out war.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denied the president’s reported tantrum in a statement to NBC. “This is false. The president has a great team whom he trusts, and everyone on the team knows he’s the final decision-maker.”
She added, “He is not going to stand by as they break the MOU, kill our soldiers and fire at our ships in the strait. So until that behavior changes, his behavior will not change… He’s locked and loaded to keep punishing Iran.”
U.S. forces resumed attacks on Iran on Wednesday night, despite Trump previously claiming he had called off further strikes because Tehran “wanted to talk”, a claim Iran denied.
Trump also told Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst in a call that U.S. military forces would “beat the f–--ing s–-t out of them”, after Iran attacked an American base in Jordan.
“We’ll be hitting them hard,” Trump said. “They’re going to get a beating.”
