On Tuesday’s Katy Tur Reports amid a day of overwhelming coverage on President Trump’s physical at Walter Reed, The Bulwark reporter Lauren Egan was on MS NOW and complained about media coverage of alleged issues with Trump’s health. She connected the situation back to former President Joe Biden and seemed to imply the Biden health saga was partly manufactured by a “right-wing ecosphere” that posted videos of him “seeming old and frail.”
The segment came as media coverage of Trump’s physical was on display throughout the day, kind of the opposite of what Egan implied.
Tur asked Egan if there were Democrats who had a message to voters about Trump’s age. Tur mentioned Biden briefly and said, “Not every single Democrat was behind Joe Biden and argued for him at the end there. There were Democrats who broke off.”
Egan mentioned Congressman Seth Moulton (D-MA) as a voice about Trump’s age before she worried about Democrats' social media depictions of Trump as old were not as viral as the ones of Biden.
Egan said the posts of “these videos of Trump seemingly falling asleep in some Oval Office meetings are getting out into the ether,” but turned to complain about the “right-wing ecosphere” virality of posts of Biden gaffes and declined mental faculties:
The problem is, though, for Democrats is that when we're talking about trying to make stuff go viral online, trying to make sure people see these clips is that they just don't have the same machine that the Republican party does. The Republicans have this entire right-wing media ecosphere that's already standing there to amplify sound bites and all these clips that we saw during the Biden administration.
On Katy Tur Reports, Bulwark reporter Lauren Egan complained that videos of Trump where Democrats try to paint him as asleep or with bruises on his hands are not going viral online compared to videos from the "right wing ecosphere" of former Pres. Biden "seeming old and frail." pic.twitter.com/Uyz33tqi8P
— Nick (@nspin310) May 26, 2026
She then implied Biden’s age and health concerns were just a right-wing media creation, a flashback to the Biden White House term of “cheapfakes.” Egan said, “I mean, those clips of him seeming old and frail, Republicans would put that out there, and they would get millions of views within hours.”
In almost an admission on the reality of the Trump health coverage, Egan ended as she said the attention on Trump health videos does not have more attention than the rapidly-moving White House:
They've had some TikToks have gone viral. But if you compare the two, they just are not the same. It's not the same level of eyeballs and attention that is getting on some of these things that are coming out of the Trump White House.
Tur followed Egan and connected the health conspiracy into the Iran War, as clamored for Democrats to “break glass”:
He's in a war with Iran. He's in an actual war with another country. And when you have questions about his fitness, ones that are real and that the American public shares, it feels like it should be, if Democrats were really concerned, a break glass moment.
As Egan admitted, the alleged coverage and posts of Trump’s health have near as much attention of a stumbling and old Joe Biden, a man who was labeled by Fox News’s Brit Hume as senile all the way back in 2020, something labeled as “false” by Politifact.
Maybe photos of bruises on hands and some pictures of Trump’s eyes are not enough to manufacture a scandal.
The transcript is below. Click "expand":
MS NOW’s Katy Tur Reports
May 26, 2026
3:12:32 PM Eastern
(...)
KATY TUR: Lauren, is there any Democrat right now who is taking this on? Not every single Democrat was behind Joe Biden and argued for him at the end there. There were Democrats who broke off.
LAUREN EGAN: Yeah. You know, when I wrote about this in my newsletter a couple of weeks ago, I talked to Seth Moulton, the congressman from Massachusetts, for this piece, and he's been willing to go there. That's in part because he is running in a Senate primary that is based pretty much on generational change. So, there are some Democrats willing to go there.
The DNC, for example, also has been trying to tweet out all these clips, kind of like Mark was talking about making sure that these, these, these videos of Trump seemingly falling asleep in some Oval Office meetings are getting out into the ether.
The problem is, though, for Democrats is that when we're talking about trying to make stuff go viral online, trying to make sure people see these clips is that they just don't have the same machine that the Republican party does. The Republicans have this entire right-wing media ecosphere that's already standing there to amplify sound bites and all these clips that we saw during the Biden administration.
I mean, those clips of him seeming old and frail, Republicans would put that out there, and they would get millions of views with within hours. And the Democrats have been able - the DNC has been able to do a little bit of that.
They've had some TikToks have gone viral. But if you compare the two, they just are not the same. It's not the same level of eyeballs and attention that is getting on some of these things that are coming out of the Trump White House.
TUR: There's a lot of serious concern right now about what Donald Trump is doing. There's not just the economy and the weaponization fund and all that stuff and the self-dealing, you know, placing trades on businesses that he has the power to make or break, Mark.
He's in a war with Iran. He's in an actual war with another country. And when you have questions about his fitness, ones that are real and that the American public shares, it feels like it should be, if Democrats were really concerned, a break glass moment.
MARK LEIBOVICH: I mean, it should be. And I think, you know, the age is not really I mean, the ages is just part of the overall package. But if you actually look into the substance of the stuff he's writing on Truth Social about pretty much every night, and, you know, I think most people are kind of tuning it out after a certain point.
I mean, there's got to be real concern, I mean, certainly with the job he's doing because obviously we've all seen the polls. He's not a popular president by any stretch. And it doesn't look like it's going to - getting to a better place. I mean, so I do think that, again, this is part of a very, very fundamental, you know, set of concerns that seems to be spiraling at this point, beginning with the substantive matter of the economy, the war, and all the things that he ran on and ran against.
(...)
