Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis attends a press conference with Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico (not pictured), in Bratislava, Slovakia, January 8, 2026. REUTERS/Radovan Stoklasa
A close European ally appeared "traumatized" as he spoke at a European Union summit last week about his recent visit with Donald Trump, describing the president's "psychological state" as "dangerous."
Robert Fico is the current prime minister of Slovakia and, as Politico explained, "one of the few EU leaders to frequently support Trump’s stance on Europe’s weaknesses." According to the outlet, he recently told fellow European leaders of a meeting he took with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Jan. 17, during an "informal huddle" apart from their ongoing discussion of other major transatlantic issues.
Five anonymous EU officials, including one senior leader, relayed to Politico what they heard about the conversation after it took place. Fico expressed grave concerns about Trump's mental state and appeared "traumatized" by what had happened. One source said the prime minister described the president as "out of his mind."
None of the sources were aware of the "details of what Trump had said to Fico that had triggered his reaction" from Fico.
Another source at the meeting said that EU leaders are increasingly alarmed by Trump's "unpredictability," with another EU official stating that concerns about Trump's seeming decline in mental and physical health is "rapidly becoming a more conversed topic at all levels" in Europe.
Trump and his administration have strongly denied that he is suffering any sort of mental decline and have gone to occasionally hyperbolic lengths to depict him as being in ideal health. The administration also forcefully denied that Fico's conversation at the summit ever happened, calling it "absolutely total fake news," while another inside sources said that they did not noticed anything unusual about the prime minister's meeting with Trump.
Fico himself has also denied Politico's report.
"I must emphatically reject the lies of the POLITICO portal about how I assessed my meeting with US President D. Trump at an informal summit in Brussels," Fico wrote on X. "No one heard anything, no one saw anything, there are no witnesses, but nothing prevented the POLITICO portal from coming up with lies."
