President Donald Trump covered his waist with a placard on Tuesday and admitted he appeared fat next to China’s Xi Jinping during his visit last week.
Trump, 79, grabbed a placard displaying a mock-up of his increasingly more expensive White House ballroom and used it to cover his torso, joking that the “exercise” was a sight for sore eyes among the White House press corps in front of him.
“I look so thin. They’ll say, ‘Oh, he’s gotten so thin’ because I’m holding this,” Trump said from outside the White House construction site. “You don’t have to look at my waist. You can look at this. You saw enough of my waist along with President Xi in China.”
The president held onto the placard, which had been getting knocked down by the wind, for about two minutes before handing it off to an aide.
Trump is indeed overweight. The White House announced he weighed 224 pounds and was 6′3″ tall—a reported height that many believe is loftier than he actually stands—during a physical at Walter Reed in April 2025, giving him a BMI of 28.0, which falls in the overweight category.
That figure is notably slimmer than Trump’s reported weight in the latter half of his first term. He was clinically obese then, with a BMI of 30.5 and a weight of 244 pounds.
The president does not appear to have lost any weight since his check-up last spring. Rather, his physical health has appeared to deteriorate in the last year—something the Daily Beast has been at the forefront of documenting.
Now, bruises frequently appear on his hands, which the White House has chalked up to frequent hand-shaking despite the contusions appearing on both hands, and his ankles are regularly severely swollen.
The president has also shown noticeable difficulty with stairs, walking in a straight line, and, perhaps most concerning, keeping his eyes open during White House meetings and events.
Trump is scheduled to receive his next physical on May 26.
The president appeared enamored by Xi’s appearance last week, gushing that the 5’11” U.S. adversary appeared just like a Chinese leader should be.
“If you went to Hollywood and looked for a leader of China to play a role in a movie, he’s Central Casting,” Trump told Fox News after his visit. “You couldn’t find a guy like him.”
Trump added of the 72-year-old Xi, “Even his physical features. He’s tall. Very tall. Especially for this country. Because they tend to be a little bit shorter.”
