Secretary of State Marco Rubio and top aides insist that when it looks like President Donald Trump is resting his eyes during an event, he's actually taking notes in his lap.
In an extensive conversation with the president about his health, Ben Terris wrote in New York Magazine that Trump was "clutching pieces of paper labeled TALKING POINTS" while chatting with two people he said were doctors.
"And by the way, I don’t know them, they’re not my best friends," Trump promised.
"They’re respected doctors that practice out of Walter Reed," Trump told Terris. "And they happen to be taking care of me for anything — but I don’t need any taking care of because I’m in perfect health. I do purposely every year or less a physical, because I think the American people should know that the president is healthy so you don’t get a guy like the last one, who was the worst thing that ever happened to older people. Because I know people in their 90s that are 100 percent. Gary Player is 90 years old. He shot 70 with me the other day."
Trump then threatened to "sue the ass off of New York Magazine" if Terris wrote a "bad story." Trump then commented, "No one is going to care, I guess."
Terris explained that speculation online is running rampant about the president's health, particularly about the odd bruising that appears on his hand. During a Sept. 11 ceremony, his face suddenly looked "droopy." In Oct. it was announced he got an MRI at Walter Reed and then said he couldn't remember which region they were looking at in his body. He's been spotted limping at Mar-a-Lago, and when he suggested a military action against Greenland over not getting the Nobel Peace Prize, his mental fitness was questioned.
Terris wrote, "He stands a little hunched and his eyes are puffy, but he looks pretty good for a 79-year-old."
One staffer told Terris that Trump's hearing is "isn’t what it used to be." The staffer noted that they don't "think Trump has noticed this about himself, despite regularly leaning in and requesting people speak up."
The hand bruise comes from shaking hands with hundreds of people and the fact that he takes too much aspirin each day, doctors and the White House have claimed. When bruises popped up on his left hand, questions surfaced again. At the World Economic Forum, Trump said he hit his hand on a table, leading to a dark purple, almost black, bruise.
Terris wrote, "If there was a conspiracy of silence protecting Joe Biden when questions arose about his mental and physical decline, there’s a cacophony around Trump."
He said that it's as if every person around Trump is trained to tell tales of Trump's "godlike virility."
Trump's niece, Mary Trump, recalled her grandfather, Fred Trump Sr., as he slipped into Alzheimer’s Disease, or what the president called, "Like an Alzheimer’s thing."
She said that the one time she noticed it, Fred Trump was at an event honoring him when he suddenly had a "deer in headlights" look on his face. Now she sees that look on her uncle.
“Sometimes it does not seem like he’s oriented to time and place,” she said. “And on occasion, I do see that deer-in-the-headlights look."
“Well, I don’t have it," Trump told Terris of Alzheimer's Disease.
He also claimed to Terris that he has amazing mental cognition because "I drink milk." He bragged that he has taken a lot of cognitive tests and "aced" them.
"Why Trump feels the need to take so many cognitive tests is a question he didn’t want to linger on," commented Terris.
Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, told Terris in a conversation in press secretary Karoline Leavitt's office, “It’s not dozing. Sometimes, if he’s thinking about something — and I made that mistake at first too — he adopts a pose. He leans back or leans forward a little bit, and he either closes his eyes or looks down — because he often takes notes in his lap."
Leavitt says when Trump leans back and closes his eyes, he’s actually “actively listening.”
Terris said every conversation was like this, including with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said, “The guy is too healthy … He’s too active.”
Rubio also said that he hides from Trump on Air Force One because he wants to get some sleep.
“There’s an office with two couches, and I usually want to sleep on one of those two couches,” Rubio said. “But what I do is I cocoon myself in a blanket. I cover my head. I look like a mummy. And I do that because I know that at some point on the flight, he’s going to emerge from the cabin and start prowling the hallways to see who is awake. I want him to think it’s a staffer who fell asleep. I don’t want him to see his secretary of State sleeping on a couch and think, Oh, this guy is weak.”
He, too, agreed that Trump leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed is a listening mechanism.
Trump told Terris that those meetings are "boring as hell."
“I’m going around a room, and I’ve got 28 guys — the last one was three and a half hours. I have to sit back and listen, and I move my hand so that people will know I’m listening. I’m hearing every word, and I can’t wait to get out," said Trump.
