Donald Trump has denied falling asleep while attending public meetings and robustly defended his health after the first year of his second term in office raised growing questions.
Trump, who at 79 is the oldest person to assume the US presidency, told the Wall Street Journal “my health is perfect” and expressed frustration with scrutiny of his wellbeing.
In the interview, the president denied he had fallen asleep during White House meetings – when cameras have caught him with his eyes closed – instead insisting he was resting his eyes or blinking.
“I’ll just close. It’s very relaxing to me,” he said. “Sometimes they’ll take a picture of me blinking, blinking, and they’ll catch me with the blink.”
Trump says he takes more aspirin than recommended but his ‘health is perfect’
Trump told the Journal that the large dose of aspirin he take daily causes him to bruise easily and that doctors have encouraged him to take a lower dose – but he declined the advice because he has been taking it for 25 years.
“I’m a little superstitious,” he said in the interview.
“They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” Trump said. “I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?”
Trump rings in 2026 with $2.75m auction of Jesus painting
The president welcomed 2026 with a glitzy bash at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach where he auctioned off a freshly painted portrait of Jesus Christ for $2.75m and said his new year resolution was a wish for “peace on Earth”.
US demands for $2bn aid pot will mean UN bowing down to Washington, say experts
After a year of deep cuts in aid budgets by the US and European countries, the announcement of new aid from the Trump administration is a source of some relief, but experts are deeply concerned about demands that the US has imposed on how the money should be managed and where it can go.
When the US state department announced the pledge on Tuesday, it said the UN must “adapt, shrink or die” by implementing changes and eliminating waste, and demanded that the money be funnelled through a pooled fund under the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) rather than to individual agencies.
Abortion may no longer be a top priority for Democratic voters
Up to seven states will vote on abortion rights this year. But recent polling indicates that Democrats may not be able to count on the issue in their efforts to drive votes in the 2026 midterms, after making abortion rights the centerpiece of their pitch to voters in the elections that followed the fall of Roe v Wade.
South Park writer buys ‘Trump Kennedy Center’ domain name
Toby Morton, a TV writer and producer who has worked on the long-running and joyfully offensive sitcom, said he bought trumpkennedycenter.org in August after predicting the president would change the name from the Kennedy Center to the Trump Kennedy Center after he installed himself as chair and stocked the board with loyalists.
The name change has brought turbulence to the institution, with performers abruptly pulling out of scheduled concerts in protest. The name change itself is being challenged in the courts.
What else happened today:
Catching up? Here’s what happened Wednesday 31 December.
