Donald Trump is getting trolled by Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show after he froze in a vacant stare as a White House guest collapsed in the Oval Office.
The president’s announcement on weight loss drug prices was upended Thursday when a man standing just behind Trump stumbled and passed out.
While others like Dr. Mehmet Oz rushed over to help, Trump got up from his seat at the Resolute Desk and looked on without a word, first at the individual lying on the ground, and then straight ahead at the cameras.
Trump and Oz later said the man is doing fine, but the 79-year-old president’s reaction to the medical emergency quickly went viral online.
Stewart’s political satire show wasted no time weighing in with a dig at Trump’s awkward freeze.
“Your cat when you’re choking to death in your apartment,” The Daily Show’s X account quipped alongside a photo of a blank-faced Trump facing away from the man as Oz and others tend to him.
On Thursday night’s episode of The Daily Show, host Jordan Klepper described the image as “one of the greatest images of the Trump presidency.”
“Everyone is attending to this guy. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is zoned out like he’s in a marriage counseling session.”
Circling back to the incident later in his monologue, Klepper said, “So, here’s where we are. Our reality, our reality right now is that the president is spending his time doting on his pet projects and starting new wars, while the country is scrambling to deal with the immediate crises that he is actively ignoring. If only there was a picture that would offer a perfect metaphor for this,” before pulling up the photo of Trump once more.
MeidasNews Editor-in-Chief Ron Filipkowski chimed in with his own take on Trump’s apparent indifference during the hectic scene.
Filipkowski speculated that the famously attention-craving president reacted as he did because he was seething inside at having the spotlight pulled from him.
“When the attention and headline at a Trump press conference becomes about someone other than Trump,” he captioned the moment.
Filipowski also posted, “Honestly, I thought even after that guy fainted he still looked healthier than Trump in that press conference,” joining others who pointed out Trump’s weary appearance at the event.
California Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a Democrat, found a way to use the incident to hit Trump over health care as the longest government shutdown in history stretched into its 36th day.
“Trump can’t even check on someone collapsing in the Oval Office right in front of him,” she wrote. “What makes you think he would give a damn about your health care?”
Anti-Trump influencer and disinformation researcher Pekka Kallioniemi—who posts under Vatnik Soup—spun the scene into a meme about Trump’s hand in the shaky economy.
Harry Sisson, the 23-year-old left-wing influencer who Trump dumped feces on in an AI video he posted to Truth Social last month, argued the photo simply reflects Trump’s character.
“Someone passed out in front of Donald Trump in the Oval Office and this is how he reacted. A photo that perfectly encapsulates who he is,” he commented.
However, Oz, the administrator for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, gushed about how Trump spoke on the phone with the wife of the man who fainted after the incident and was able to calm her down.
“He talked to her and got her much calmer than I could have done,” the Trump appointee told MSNBC reporter Jake Traylor.
“And I just think he’s just a wonderful human being—that he would take time. He could’ve gone and done ten other things, but he actually cared that the wife of a man that he’s never met before felt in a safer place.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
