A fellow aging NATO leader had to grab Donald Trump by the arm and physically steer him into position at a welcome ceremony for this week’s alliance summit in Turkey.
Both Trump, 80, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, 72, are under sustained scrutiny over the state of their physical and mental health. Trump has faced questions over rambling speeches, apparent dozing at public events, and the makeup masking bruises on his hands. Erdoğan has drawn similar attention for verbal stumbles, moments of confusion, and a slowed walking pace.
The footage, captured beside Air Force One after it touched down in Ankara on Tuesday, shows the pair shaking hands and talking before Erdoğan clasped Trump’s arm to lead him onto the carpet. Trump then stopped and turned toward a line of soldiers from what appears to have been the wrong mark.
Erdoğan retook Trump’s arm, gestured ahead, and walked him over to the right spot, where the troops barked a salute. The two then headed off down the carpet together. Trump had landed at a newly built airfield that Erdoğan had prepared specifically for him, Bloomberg reports, as part of an effort to shorten motorcades and cut security exposure for arriving leaders.
Trump has repeatedly brushed off questions about his health. He declared after a May physical examination at Walter Reed that “everything checked out PERFECTLY,” a comment echoed by the White House. Weeks earlier, more than 30 neurologists, psychiatrists, and other specialists had wrote a letter to Congress raising the alarm over his “rapidly worsening, reality-untethered, increasingly dangerous decline.” Concerns over Erdoğan’s health have proven more muted, given his authoritarian grip on a country he has ruled since 2003.
Tensions are expected to run high at the gathering. NATO’s 36th summit convenes as Washington has begun drawing down refueling planes, warships, drones, and combat jets as part of a squeeze sharpened by Trump’s anger at allies who he says gave too little backing to his war with Iran.
The Wall Street Journal revealed on Sunday that nearly 30 European leaders had slipped into a secret, phones-banned midnight meeting in Brussels this January to plot a future without reliance on D.C.—a session participants later dubbed “group therapy.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
