President Donald Trump has once again been caught resting his sleepy eyes, this time as Cabinet officials schooled him about the importance of whole milk.
But the 79-year-old president also weighed into the benefits of drinking milk, claiming it had helped him “ace” three cognitive tests, which are essentially screening tools for dementia.
“I’ve taken a lot of them,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I’ve aced every one of them because I drink milk.”
As scrutiny of his health continues, the president signed a bipartisan bill on Wednesday allowing American schools to offer whole milk and 2 per cent milk to students.
The move reverses Obama-era restrictions that limited options for students to fat-free or low-fat milk.
“It’s actually a legal definition -- ‘whole milk.’ And it’s whole with a W for those of you that have a problem,” Trump bizarrely explained.
But as Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins talked about the importance of dairy and commended Trump for the new laws, the president was caught resting his eyes for several seconds, almost as though he was about to doze off.
A young girl at the event seems to spot him drifting and looks up her mother, who quickly turns her daughter around again.
It was not the first time that Trump, known to get little sleep, had appeared less than fully awake during televised events in the West Wing.
He also struggled to keep his eyes open last month during a lengthy cabinet meeting—once again while Rollins was talking.
As cabinet secretaries took turns giving “Dear Leader-style” praise to the president at the December 2 meeting, he closed his eyes for five seconds again while Education Secretary Linda McMahon spoke, and then again when it was Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s turn.
However, in an impromptu interview with the Wall Street Journal this month, Trump insisted that he doesn’t fall asleep in public, but simply shuts his eyes now and then.
“It’s very relaxing to me,” he said. “Sometimes they’ll take a picture of me blinking, blinking, and they’ll catch me with the blink.”
Trump regularly made fun of Joe Biden’s cognitive capacity and spent most of the past few years referring to the then-president as “Sleepy Joe.”
But Trump was 78 years and 7 months when he was sworn into office last January, making him the oldest American president to take the oath.
Since then, he has suffered from swollen ankles and frequent hand bruises, regularly confuses names and dates, and his trademark long-winded tangents are becoming even longer, veering into bizarre segues on everything from wind farms and White House decor to First Lady Melania Trump’s underwear.
However, the president and his doctors insists he is in “excellent” health, and often he fumes about media reports suggesting signs of fatigue.
But during a speech in Detroit on Tuesday, he reflected briefly about his age, sounding somewhat melancholy as he pined for the “old days.”
“I used to be up to these lecterns and I’d say I’m younger than pretty much everybody in the room,” he told the audience at the Detroit Economic Club.
“Now I say I’m older than pretty much everybody. I like it the other way better, actually.”
Trump’s health was also the talk of the town in Washington over the weekend, where vein specialists gathered at the Marriott Marquis a few blocks from the White House for a conference.
The conference centered largely on chronic venous insufficiency, a common circulatory condition in older adults that can cause leg swelling, which the president was diagnosed with last year.
Speaking to the Daily Beast ahead of the conference, Dr. Sanjiv Lakhanpal, the founder and chief executive of the Center for Vein Restoration, said that one way to deal with CVI was to get more sleep.
The doctor said this would assist with his overall physical health - and in turn his CVI diagnosis.
“It’s all a vicious cycle,” he said of CVI patients. “If they don’t get a good amount of rest at night, they don’t want to exercise in the morning.”
Wednesday’s focus on milk comes after the administration last week released new U.S. nutritional guidelines encouraging people to embrace more proteins, vegetables and healthy fats, and to cut down on sugar and highly processed foods.
Kennedy and Rollins touted the guidelines on Wednesday, which call on Americans to “eat real food.” However in a podcast interview released earlier this week, the Health Secretary suggested Trump’s steady diet of McDonald’s, candy and Diet Coke was akin to “pumping himself with poison.”
“The hypocrisy of this White House is stunning and all they’re doing is Making Heart Disease Great again,” said Erik Polyak, executive director of health advocacy group 314 Action.
“Let this be a reminder: don’t take advice from these guys.”
