Trump's stumbling Thursday primetime address reignites 25th Amendment talk

President Donald Trump is no stranger to questions about his mental acuity, and those questions are only likely to grow louder after his primetime address Thursday night touted what he called vulnerabilities in the American election system. He appeared to struggle reading the teleprompter on several occasions, at times fumbling with sentence structure or pausing, ostensibly to get a better look at the text.

The first instance came with a nine-second pause before he began the speech: "Good evening. Before we begin, I'm proud to report that our country is safer, stronger, and far wealthier than it has ever been before." At another point, he seemed to ramble: "We had transgender for everybody, men in women's sports, crime ravaging our cities, and the whole world was laughing at us as a nation, but not anymore. Two years ago, our country was dead."

The 80-year-old, who will become the oldest sitting president in U.S. history in 2028, kept stammering through the speech, reading each word individually: "Millions and millions of barrels of oil. We are likewise winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly." He also alleged that the Chinese government focused on undermining domestic confidence in the U.S. president. "They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn't so hot, when actually your president has done a great job," he asserted.

There were similar concerns during his earlier primetime address on Iran in April, when he declared that the U.S. had eliminated Iran's navy, air force, and missile programs. As he stood to deliver the speech, viewers speculated that he was struggling to read from the teleprompter, appearing to have trouble enunciating some of his words. In a separate episode, Trump referred to Iran as the "Islamic Republic of Japan" during a press interaction at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey,

These instances have repeatedly raised concerns among critics, and Thursday's speech brought them to a head. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., posted on X: "How can anyone deny the urgency of the 25th Amendment at this point." California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on X that Trump's address was "a legitimate 25th Amendment moment—the ramblings of a mad king," adding that "the only thing missing tonight ... was tin foil." The measure lays out the process for removing a president who is unable to discharge the powers and duties of office.

The president previously argued that there is no reason to doubt his fitness for office, citing the results of his physical examination at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which he described as "extremely good" in a Truth Social post. "Unlike other U.S. Presidents, none of whom have ever taken an approved, high difficulty, Cognitive Test, I scored a perfect 30 out of 30, considered 'extreme intelligence,'" he wrote.