The New York Times, attacked by President Donald Trump for reporting about his physical condition, said on Wednesday that it wouldn’t be deterred by “false and inflammatory language” that distorts the role of a free press.
The president had posted on his Truth Social platform that he believed it was “seditious, perhaps even treasonous” for the Times and other media outlets to do “FAKE” reports on his health.
“They are true Enemies of the People, and we should do something about it,” Trump wrote.
The 79-year-old president wouldn’t specify, but the newspaper has posted a handful of reports about his health in recent weeks. In a Nov. 25 story headlined “Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office,” reporters examined Trump’s public and travel schedules to conclude Americans were seeing less of him than they were used to.
A story on Dec. 2, accompanied by a video, said that Trump “appeared to be fighting sleep” during a Cabinet meeting that day.
Columnist Frank Bruni discussed these reports in a Dec. 8 opinion piece headlined “Trump’s Approval Ratings Have Declined. So Has His Vigor.” Bruni wrote that Americans “might want to brace ourselves for some presidential deja vu. He’s starting to give President Joe Biden vibes.” Biden, who was in his early 80s, dropped out of the 2024 race for the White House after a disastrous debate with Trump that raised doubts about the then-incumbent’s fitness for office.
Trump, in his post, said he was history’s hardest-working president with a lengthy list of accomplishments. He said he went out of his way to do “long, thorough and very boring” medical examinations, including three cognitive tests that he “ACED.”
“The New York Times, and some others, like to pretend that I am ‘slowing up,’ and maybe not as sharp as I once was, or am in poor physical health, knowing that it is not true,” the Republican president said.
The health of American presidents has long been a delicate and sometimes thorny issue between the White House and the press that covers it – from Grover Cleveland’s secret tumor surgery to Woodrow Wilson’s debilitating stroke to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s polio to Dwight D. Eisenhower’s heart attack. Trump has frequently critiqued the cognitive fitness of his predecessor, Biden.
Trump already has a $15 billion defamation lawsuit pending against the Times. In the suit, filed in September, Trump targeted four Times journalists about three articles that discussed his finances. He has also been involved in legal cases involving The Associated Press and CBS News, among others.
Nicole Taylor, a spokeswoman for The New York Times, said the outlet’s reporting on Trump’s health is heavily sourced, based on interviews with people close to the president and with medical experts.
“Americans deserve in-depth reporting and regular updates about the health of the leaders they elect,” Taylor said. “Mr. Trump welcomed our reporting on the age and fitness of his predecessors; we’re applying the same journalistic scrutiny to his vitality.”
Taylor said that “we won’t be deterred by false and inflammatory language that distorts the role of a free press.”
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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
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