House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed back when asked about President Donald Trump’s slurring of words and seemingly mixing up Greenland with Iceland during his speech at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.
The Independent spoke to Johnson ahead of votes ahead of votes Thursday morning, to which Johnson questioned why he was being asked about Trumps mental fitness.
“Is this a serious question? This president sleeps about three hours a night,” Johnson said. “He outwears Everybody in this building by a factor of two or three. He's gotten more done in the first year of his presidency than anybody in history. I cannot even believe you asked me that question.”
The president spoke at the World Economic Forum on Thursday where he railed against U.S. allies and NATO, though he said he would not use military force to take Greenland.
During that speech, he also seemed to confuse Greenland, an autonomous territory which is governed by the kingdom of Denmark, with Iceland, the nordic European nation.
“Our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland, so Iceland has already cost us a lot of money,” he said of Greenland. Later, he tried to say the people of Greenland supported him.
“Until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me ‘Daddy’,” Trump said in during the conference in Davos.
The president has also shown visible signs of physical decline. During a press conference earlier this week in the White House briefing room, his voice sounded increasingly hoarse and his words were slurred.
In addition, multiple photos have shown bruises on Trump’s hands or heavy makeup on his hands.
Trump, who became the oldest man to assume the presidency in 2017 and then again in 2025, will turn 80 in June. A poll from YouGov earlier this month found that 49 percent of Americans thought that Trump was too old to be president.
At the same time, some have questioned Trump’s wellbeing and the questions are like those that surfaced about President Joe Biden before Biden’s disastrous June 2024 debate where his voice was weak and he made rambling incoherent remarks.
That led to Biden stepping aside as the Democratic nominee for president. His vice president Kamala Harris would later lose the election to Trump.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump pushed back on claims about his health, saying he bruises easily because he takes a higher dose of aspirin than normally-recommended amount because “ I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart.”
He later said that he was in “PERFECT HEALTH” and that he had “ACED” his cognitive examination.
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