Left Hook host Wajahat Ali and podcaster Danielle Moodie say President Donald Trump’s people — and the media — is struggling to hide the president’s obvious decline before cameras as a startled nation looks on.
“We recently witnessed a public official, Marco Rubio, testify before Congress that a prominent political figure ‘never sleeps’ and is a dynamo of nocturnal productivity,” said Ali. “Minutes later, he was confronted with video evidence from a cabinet meeting showing that very same figure slumped over, eyes tightly shut, completely asleep while Rubio himself was speaking.”
“The response? Universal, unabashed gaslighting,” said Ali. “We are told he was ‘blinking.’ We are told he was ‘resting his eyes.
The sheer contrast between the treatment of former president Joe Biden and Trump is staggering, said Ali, highlighting “a massive structural double standard.”
“The Past Standard: A single stumble, a momentary verbal hitch, or an aging pivot from a conventional politician triggers months of relentless, wall-to-wall editorial panic from traditional media outlets like The New York Times or ABC,” said Ali, while the current Trump Standard involves “daily, glaring displays of physical and mental decline from the populist right met with polite obfuscation, normalized as ‘toddler-like’ eccentricities, or entirely ignored.”
Moodie was equally outraged at the gaslighting, as Rubio insisted in a Tuesday House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that he’d never witnessed Trump falling asleep. Minutes later Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calf.) played a video of Trump nodding off into oblivion directly beside Rubio.
“In what world would you ever be in a meeting and the person that's supposed to be running the meeting is slumped over to the side, eyes closed, and everyone is just standing around and saying that what we are witnessing with our own eyes isn't actually happening,” said Moody. “You can't make this kind of f—— up.”
“Joe Biden, for all of his age, was riding bikes, was working out, looked agile. He had one moment 9during a debate) that cost him a second term. Donald Trump has that moment — let's be clear — every single f—— day and there is no New York Times non-stop coverage,” Moody added angrily. “There is no ABC non-stop coverage. There is no pontificating on why we haven't seen Donald Trump's health records.”
Ali said Trump’s aids and his legion of fake news propagandists and influences are having to work overtime to cover for Trump’s deterioration, but he said their fight has the same inevitable — and fast encroaching — end.
“I think it's important for us keep sight that, yes, MAGA is still a cult, but it is shrinking and he is dying and people are defecting,” Ali assured.

