A former close aide to President Donald Trump has said the 80-year-old’s unhinged Truth Social posts show he is losing touch with reality.
Sarah Matthews, a White House deputy press secretary during Trump’s first term, suggested that it is not only the sheer amount of AI-generated slop the president shares online that is worrying, but also the sort of content he posts.
This includes a particularly frantic posting spree on Sunday, when Trump shared dozens of deranged Truth Social updates, including one showing him with an army of robots launching a nuclear war on Earth from outer space, and another image of him threatening to beat Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney with a hockey stick.
“He floods the zone with so much of it that we’ve become numb to just how bizarre it is,” Matthews told The New York Times. “An 80-year-old president is spending a ridiculous amount of time consuming and reposting endless AI fan fiction portraying him as the biggest, strongest, and most important person alive. It feels like we’re genuinely watching his brain rot in real time.”
As the Times noted, Trump’s posts promote how he portrays himself in his head or how he wants to be seen.
This includes an image of the 80-year-old’s face superimposed on the towering and muscular body of wrestler Hulk Hogan. In another post, Trump, who has a laundry list of ailments and health issues, shared a genuine photo of Hogan letting him beat him in an arm-wrestling contest.
Over the weekend, Trump posted an AI-generated image showing the U.S. military attacking Iran’s oil hub of Kharg Island, as well as one of Trump smashing a chunk of land depicting Iran with a comically large hammer bearing the American flag on its head. This comes despite Trump’s deeply unpopular Middle East conflict dragging on for more than six months with no real end in sight.
It is not just Matthews—who resigned from the White House in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack in 2021 and has since turned into a vocal Trump critic—who has expressed concerns about the president’s social media addiction.
There have been multiple demands to remove Trump from office via the 25th Amendment over suggestions that his Truth Social activity shows he is unfit for office.
Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine made such a call while sharing a video showing a stream of worrying content from Trump’s Truth Social account on Sunday.
“This is truly unhinged behavior from the President of the United States. And I don’t want to hear ‘oh, it’s just Trump being Trump’ or that he’s ‘trolling.’ Enough. None of this is normal or okay,” Pingree posted on X.
“Republicans cannot keep shrugging this off. Congress, the Cabinet, and everyone around him has a responsibility to stop enabling this dangerous behavior and start asking whether he is fit to hold this office.”
Trump also caused a major diplomatic incident by sharing a worrying doctored map showing the American flag covering Canada, Central America and the Caribbean, as well as annexing the European island nation of Iceland.
The post resulted in Iceland’s foreign minister, Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, summoning U.S. Ambassador Billy Long to explain Trump’s “completely inappropriate” post.
“There is nothing funny or normal about making fun of the sovereignty of states,” Icelandic Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir told reporters.
In a statement to the Times, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle rejected the criticism about Trump’s social media habit.
“Truth Social is the most powerful and popular social media platform in the world because it serves as President Trump’s authentic voice, where he communicates directly with the American people and the world without the biased media taking him out of context,” Ingle said.
Ingle is a communications graduate of Florida’s Southeastern University, where his father, Kent Ingle, is president. SEU boasts that more than two-thirds of its students attend online or through extension courses at 200 “partner sites,” which do not have to be accredited.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for further comment.
