Donald Trump used his casual White House dinner with tech billionaires to address social media rumors of his death.
Speculation about Trump’s potential demise was fueled by a tweet from journalist Laura Rozen pointing out Trump’s absence from public view over the Labor Day weekend, which fed into talk about the 79-year-old’s bruised hands and bulging ankles.
Social media posts soon suggested the worst. About 158,000 X posts with the hashtag #TRUMPISDEAD and 42,000 with #TRUMPDIED had been posted on X by Saturday. The president’s uncharacteristic silence did not help as videos began to circulate on TikTok suggesting he may have had a medical emergency.
At his tech dinner on Thursday, Trump thanked the media, saying, “They’ve been very nice lately.”
He then joked, referring to his online demise, “Although I’m still here. We had a couple of bad predictions, so that was not good. I’ve never had that feeling before.”
Trump continued to lean into the #TRUMPISDEAD confusion: “I went to an event and people are coming up to me and saying, ‘You’re still here?’ I said ‘What do they mean by that? I didn’t hear about this.’”
The president had previously addressed the issue at his mysterious Tuesday press conference, which turned out to be to announce the relocation of U.S. Space Command to Alabama.
Asked about the viral social media trend that killed him off, Trump at first said he hadn’t seen it, then appeared to change his mind.
“You know I have heard, it’s sort of kind of crazy,” Trump said on Tuesday. “Last week I did numerous news conferences, all successful, then I didn’t do any for two days and they said there must be something wrong with him.”
He then took a potshot at his predecessor, Joe Biden. “Biden wouldn’t do any for months—you wouldn’t see him—and nobody ever said there was anything wrong with him, and we know he wasn’t in the greatest of shape,” he complained.
