A doctor who served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s cardiologist said Donald Trump needs a medical evaluation after new footage emerged of the president apparently nodding off in a public meeting.
Trump’s eyes appeared to close for several seconds in a packed Oval Office on Wednesday, as he signed the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, which reverses Obama-era limits on whole milk in schools.
As aides, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, talked up their “Make America Healthy Again” push, the president’s head then dipped slightly.
In response, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who once served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s heart doctor and is now a professor at George Washington University and CNN medical analyst, warned that Trump “seems to be struggling with excessive daytime somnolence.”
Posting on X, Reiner wrote that apparently dozing off regularly “with a dozen people surrounding your desk” is “not normal” and added that the president “needs to be evaluated,” in observations first reported by Raw Story.
The Daily Beast has been at the forefront in chronicling Trump’s apparent health woes, including numerous bouts of public drowsiness, repeated bruising on his hands, and suggestions of his mental decline.
In December, the Beast reported how Trump had repeatedly shut his eyes during a marathon Cabinet meeting while secretaries took turns showering him with praise. He later insisted to The Wall Street Journal that he was only “resting” his eyes.
Reiner has been sounding the alarm about Trump’s health for months. In December, he said he was “seriously concerned” about the president after watching what he called a “manic” 18-minute national address, in which Trump shouted through a teleprompter at double-time speed.
A second specialist this week joined the chorus of concern about the president’s health. Professor Bruce Davidson of Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine said on the Court of History podcast that his “impression is that President Trump has had a stroke” and suggested the damage was likely on the left side of the brain, which controls the right side of the body.
Davidson cited video of Trump shuffling his feet, cradling his right hand in his left, and struggling with words earlier in 2025—before appearing somewhat clearer-spoken later in the year—as well as episodes of what he called “excessive sleepiness” during the day.
He also pointed to footage of Trump gingerly descending the stairs from Air Force One while gripping the handrail with his left hand despite being right-handed, arguing that the pattern of apparent weakness on one side “is consistent with having had a stroke on the left side of his brain.”
Neither Reiner nor Davidson has examined Trump, and both have based their comments entirely on public videos.
Trump and his doctors have repeatedly insisted he remains in excellent health, and his allies have dismissed questions about his gait and October CT scan as politically motivated, even as he has acknowledged being treated for a circulatory condition that can cause swelling in the legs and has repeatedly been filmed moving cautiously on stairs and ramps.
The White House has dismissed questions about his gait and a scan he underwent in October as politically motivated, with officials saying the president is simply sleep-deprived and overworked.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Beast: “As the President’s physician, Dr. Sean Barbabella, has made clear time and again—and as the American people see with their own eyes every single day—President Trump remains in excellent overall health."
During Wednesday’s event, the president again bragged that he had “ace[d]” three cognitive screening tests—on this occasion saying it was “because I drink milk.”
Yet Reiner’s latest call for a formal evaluation, echoed by Davidson’s stroke speculation, is likely to intensify pressure on the White House to offer clearer, independently verified answers.
