Trump’s new birthday portrait is torn apart for what it hides

U.S. President Donald Trump attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 2, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

President Donald Trump is showing off a new portrait painted for his upcoming 80th birthday — and users are pointing out an obvious inaccuracy.

“‘Why are his eyes open? It’s not natural,’ one user commented on X, while another posted a photo of the president with his eyes closed in the Oval Office, appearing to be asleep, writing, ‘This is a far more accurate depiction…’” reported The Daily Beast's Wiktoria Gucia. Another person was reported as posting “What’s wrong with this one?” while attaching a picture of Trump with his eyes closed. Still another user was reported as quipping, “Well at least he’s awake.”

While the internet is having fun mocking Trump’s apparent difficulty staying awake during meetings, there is a very real possibility that his seeming struggles at not falling asleep reflect a deeper problem.

“Anybody who has eyes, ears, and a brain... and hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid or been bitten by a MAGA zombie, can see for themselves that this person is transparently mentally ill and cognitively deteriorating,” Dr. John Gartner, a former Johns Hopkins University professor, told The Daily Beast Podcast, adding that “showing signs of frontotemporal dementia since 2019.”

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, an expert on heart diseases, similarly told CNN News Central that Trump seems to have “severe daytime somnolence” and that this suggests deeper pathologies.

“The president has severe daytime somnolence,” Reiner said. “He falls asleep very often. He’s fallen asleep in the Oval Office on multiple occasions with people talking to him in the Cabinet room, and I was concerned yesterday that he might have fallen asleep at Arlington National Cemetery during Memorial Day observances.”

Reiner then warned, “Chronic insomnia is a severe illness. It can result in an increase in risk of dementia, decrease in cognitive effects in older people.”

Dr. Henry Abraham, a psychiatrist formerly associated with Tufts University, recently told AlterNet that he too is concerned that Trump is exhibiting signs of cognitive decline.

“It’s a red flag,” Dr. Abraham explained. “People perseverate because they can’t think of anything else to say, because they’re cognitively impaired, or they perseverate because their emotional motor is stuck in high gear. In the last five to 10 years, he has planted red flags of concern again and again and again, and they’ve clustered.”

Dr. Abraham added that Trump’s behavior suggests an inability to “internalize certain control over his language.” He further explained that “not only did he have these kinds of linguistic failings, but he began to exhibit more and more signs of really rage and poor impulse control, and at night, what appeared to be manic kinds of episodes where he would tweet, you know, 100, 200 times a night.”

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