Did Trump, 80, Wave at and Salute No One on the White House Grounds?

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect new information about whom Trump might have been waving at.

Was President Donald Trump waving at empty space?

A video of the president departing for Kansas Monday afternoon appeared to show him wandering off across the White House’s newly renovated helicopter pad, waving, saluting, and bowing as if he were interacting with a crowd of onlookers. When the camera panned out, however, it seemed that there was no one in the vicinity.

From another angle, Trump can be seen dragging his right leg and patting it as he approaches Marine One. He suddenly stops walking and starts waving seemingly to no one. Meanwhile, his aides approach from an entirely different direction.

Photos indicate that Trump may have been waving at construction workers working on the ballroom. It is unclear if those workers realized the president was saluting him or acknowledged him in return. Trump said nothing at the time to clarify to whom he was waving.

Before the photos surfaced, users on X speculated that the president might’ve been hallucinating or waving at his reflection. Although that does not appear to be the case in this instance, there have been many examples of strange behavior by Trump that suggest cognitive decline. Since returning to office, the president has often appeared to lose track of his thoughts, his whereabouts, and even his grasp on the English language.

Harris County, Texas—Texas’s most populous county, which Kamala Harris won in 2024 with 52 percent of the vote—broke its early voting record on Monday, eclipsing the previous mark by a whopping 41,000 votes.

More than 104,600 people in Harris County voted in person on Monday, the first day of early voting in Texas, according to the county’s elections department. That breaks the previous record set in 2018, when 63,188 votes were cast and Democrats went on to recapture the House.

While Monday’s turnout isn’t necessarily indicative of a Democratic advantage, the broken record indicates that Texans have been strongly compelled to participate electorally by any number of factors, which could include affordability, ICE raids, and President Trump’s war on Iran.

“The coffee that I buy two years ago was $12 for a big can, and now it’s $25 for the same thing, it’s ridiculous,” one voter told KPRC-TV’s Sandy Torres.

“[The] cost of living is way too high, war in Iran, our support to Ukraine,” said another.

“Thirty years of one party dominating the state; it’s time to get the other guy’s chance,” said one more.

This comes ahead of one of the most contested Senate races in the country between Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico—a contest that could turn the state blue for the first time in over three decades.

This positive development also comes less than a week after voting rights groups sued the Texas Department of Public Safety over a “glitch” that caused 600,000 Texans to have their voting registration delayed.

Early voting is open for 11 more days in Harris County.

President Trump is claiming that the U.S. will burn like France if Democrats triumph in November’s midterm elections.

At a rally in Park City, Kansas, Tuesday, Trump referenced the student protests in France, using anti-immigrant bigotry and Islamophobia to try and scare Republicans into turning out over the next two weeks.

“Globalist left-wing have treasonously imported millions and millions of third world migrants who are totally incompatible with the West, and they are incompatible with Western values. They despise everything about France, and they’re destroying that country, and we’re not going to let that happen to this country,” Trump said during his speech. Despite interruptions by protesters, the crowd broke into applause at Trump’s words.

“When you see burning steeples and raging fires in ⁠France, just remember that is what the radical Dumocrats want to do to America,” Trump added.

Trump is only in Kansas because the Republican Party is polling historically low, putting normally safe candidates in jeopardy thanks to his own bad economic policies and an ill-advised war he started. Republican Senator Roger Marshall was expected to coast to victory in the state, but is now polling neck and neck with Democratic pastor Adam Hamilton.

Trump’s fearmongering over the invented specter of riots is a desperate effort that isn’t likely to sway any voters on the fence, who can plainly see skyrocketing fuel prices and inflation with their own eyes. Besides, if Republicans lose big, which side of the American political divide, based on recent history, is more likely to violently protest?

Vice President JD Vance isn’t so sure that the president will have his back in the 2028 election.

The 42-year-old is theoretically supposed to be Donald Trump’s right-hand man and political successor. Yet nearly two years into Trump’s second administration, the two still aren’t on the same page. In a sit-down interview with conservative commentator Mark Halperin on Air Force Two Monday, the vice president didn’t seem so confident that he would definitely obtain Trump’s endorsement.

Halperin posed two questions to Vance: first, if he planned to run for president, and second, if he would “definitely” obtain Trump’s endorsement.

“I’ll tell you Mark that I’m focused on the midterm elections and I want to get as many good Republicans elected in early November as possible,” Vance said.

“Look, I really have not made up my mind about what to do in 2028, I really haven’t focused on it,” he continued. “You and I have talked about that. Look, I think if I run, the president will endorse me.”

“Right away? Right at the beginning?” pressed Halperin. “In other words, the day you announce. He’d endorse you, right?”

“I don’t know, man, I haven’t talked to him about it,” Vance laughed.

“It would be kind of weird though if you said, ‘Mr. President, I’m going to run,’ and he said, ‘Let me think about it,’” Halperin said.

But Vance equivocated.

“No, it wouldn’t be weird,” Vance said. “I think I’d get his endorsement, but I also think there’s something to be said for people actually running their own race. And because the president’s endorsement is so dispositive, you could absolutely see a scenario where the president says, ‘You know what, we need to let this race play out and not preemptively prejudge the results.’”

“Sometimes media scrutiny, pressure, policy goals—” Vance continued before Halperin interjected that he “might be horrible at it.”

“I would be terrible at it,” Vance said. “So I don’t know, having never spoken to the president about this, I can’t speak to his psychology on it. But my attitude is, if I run, I think the president will endorse me. But I also haven’t talked to him about it.”

President Donald Trump went on a late-night posting spree about debris and damage in his latest temper tantrum about East Potomac Park.  

“Here are pictures of Trash Island for the Judge to study. This is just a small area, and better than some!” Trump wrote on Truth Social overnight Monday, referring to a heavily overgrown area at the center of the course where the National Parks Service had already begun to fell dozens of trees. 

The president shared photographs of abandoned wooden pallets, construction equipment, large bins, and trucks for tree removal. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the debris was from the president’s stalled efforts to transform the public park into a high-end, exclusive golf course. 

He also shared images of damaged iron fences along the course and waterfront. “Collapsing Sea Wall—Very dangerous to one’s health!” Trump wrote, including a photograph of a fence that had been nearly swallowed by the Potomac.

Last week, District Judge Ana Reyes blocked the government from felling hundreds of trees at East Potomac Golf Links, and tore into the Trump administration lawyer for claiming that tree removal is not part of the president’s renovation plans. The Department of Justice demanded that she step down, claiming that her outburst proved she was biased against the government. The judge refused, sending Trump spiraling on social media.

Trump’s posting may have already landed him in trouble. At a hearing Monday, the preservation group mounting the legal challenge against Trump’s federal takeover of the course introduced the president’s own Truth Social post as evidence that the government plans to proceed with renovations “IMMEDIATELY!”