Don Trump Jr. says dad knew about death rumors, despite his claim

Brian Niemietz, New York Daily News on Sep 3, 2025

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President Trump this week said he hadn’t heard the rumors about his death over Labor Day weekend until a reporter brought it up in the Oval Office on Tuesday.

But his eldest son, who was aware of the claims going viral on social media, said even he called his dad on Saturday to make sure he was OK.

“I called my father over the weekend to be like, ‘Hey, just want to make sure you’re not dead,’” Donald Trump Jr. said during a Wednesday interview with right-wing cable network Newsmax.

Speculation about the 79-year-old president’s demise went viral on Saturday thanks to a few days of unusual radio silence combined with a four-day stretch of no public events on his schedule.

Trump Jr. said he reached out to his father over the weekend while the president was golfing with his granddaughter in Virginia.

“I know my daughter’s playing golf with you as we speak, but you know, I keep reading about it on Twitter, so I just want to make sure,” Trump Jr. recalled saying. “[He] didn’t even know what I was talking about.”

The news that Trump had, in fact, been told about the rumors — and from his own son — comes in stark contrast to the comments he made on Tuesday, when the president was asked by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy when he first learned he was “dead.”

“I didn’t hear that one, that’s pretty serious stuff,” Trump told reporters, admitting he heard concerns about his health, but not about his death.

He then said the “fake news” reflects poorly on the credibility of “the media,” without differentiating between social media and traditional news outlets, which did not report the president had died.

It’s unclear why Trump would not have admitted to hearing the rumors.

The president’s physical well-being recently came into question after he was photographed with swollen ankles and bruised hands. The White House attributed those abnormalities to chronic venous insufficiency, a condition that leads to blood pooling in the lower legs.

Chronic venous insufficiency is fairly common among older adults and isn’t believed to be life-threatening, though speculation to the contrary caught fire on social media platforms like X.

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