Trump is poisoning our youth
This morning, with children carefully placed as props by his side, the President of the United States sat in his high-backed leather chair inside the Oval Office while cameras recorded every word that was said. Behind him stood professional athletes, cabinet members, and administration officials, all packed tightly together as a show of support for the return of the Presidential Fitness Award. This carefully staged event was supposed to be all about bringing the program back, but Trump quickly took the moment in a completely different direction. He told one little girl she shouldn’t play volleyball because of her size. He asked another child if they thought they could fight him, then began telling the room about Iranian protesters being shot “right between the eyes” before drifting into more bizarre commentary and awkward jokes. All while children were made to stand right beside him, smiling for the cameras.
The White House had hoped to present a celebration. Trump signing a proclamation declaring May 2026 National Physical Fitness and Sports Month. This is after previously signing a July 2025 executive order that restored the Presidential Fitness Test and directed officials to develop criteria for a revived Presidential Fitness Award. Thus, recreating a competitive school-based program that ran for decades before being phased out under President Obama in 2012. It was supposed to project strength, discipline, patriotism, and the image of a president deeply invested in the health and future of America’s children. But instead, the entire event felt like something much darker: a room full of adults carefully manufacturing another made-for-television moment around a man who increasingly treats the presidency like a stage set, using anyone around him, even children, as props in the performance.
The proclamation language said it all. “Sports and fitness are woven into the fabric of American identity,” it read, “and the greatness that defines our Nation is forged only through hard work, sweat, and an unrelenting demand for success.” As Trump signed it, members of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition stood alongside him: professional golfer Bryson DeChambeau, who serves as the Council’s Chair, retired legend Gary Player, hockey star TJ Oshie, baseball pitcher Noah Syndergaard, and University of Florida basketball coach Todd Golden. Along with Cabinet members Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Scott Turner, and Linda McMahon.
And while this event was framed around fitness and sports, it was what RFK Jr. said while standing there among those children that I have not been able to stop thinking about. When it was his turn to speak, he pointed to the often-cited figure that 77% of young Americans ages 17 to 24 cannot qualify for military service without a waiver, a number tied not only to fitness, but also to weight, drug use, mental and physical health, misconduct, and aptitude. He chose that number. Not childhood obesity as a public health crisis. Not rising depression, screen addiction, loneliness, or food deserts. Not the collapsing mental health of an entire generation of kids growing up online and under constant stress. The metric they care about is military qualification. These children were not there simply to be celebrated. They were there to be measured.
Hegseth made the underlying goal even clearer when he announced the fitness test would first become mandatory at 161 schools located on military installations across the country before adding that “the idea that competition is bad is the beginning of decline of a nation.” And suddenly the entire event started to feel less like a celebration of healthy children and more like the early framing of something darker. They want bodies for an army. They wrapped it in patriotic language, proclamations, smiling children, and rhetoric about the American spirit because that packaging is easier for the public to accept.
I have thought about how to share this because it’s not an exact comparison, but it echoes loudly of the Hitler Youth movement. The Hitler Youth program was never simply about health or athletics. It was a militarization pipeline disguised as youth development. Children were constantly assessed for physical fitness because the regime viewed young bodies primarily through the lens of future service to the state. Athletic competitions, patriotic ceremonies, flags, songs, uniforms, and public celebrations of “strength” became tools for conditioning children into obedience, nationalism, and military readiness. It was about creating a nation of people with the “right look” who were also military-ready.
And that is what made today so deeply unsettling. This was never just about helping children live healthier lives. The central metric was whether enough American children are physically fit enough to serve the military. And once you hear it through that lens, the entire event looks very different.
And then there is the theater of using these children as props. Because that is the only honest word for what they were. They were carefully placed around Trump inside the Oval Office and later arranged again on the South Lawn, positioned in front of cabinet members and professional athletes to give the entire event the appearance of warmth, patriotism, and purpose. And their parents said yes. They chose to bring their children into close proximity with a man who carries an E. Jean Carroll verdict and a Jane Doe allegation involving a 13-year-old girl. I say that not to be inflammatory, but because it is part of the public record. And I genuinely do not know what it says about us as a country that this has become something parents feel comfortable participating in.
A different president, even one you strongly disagreed with politically, one who may have frustrated or angered you, still would have represented an honor for your child to meet inside the Oval Office. There was once an understood dignity attached to the office itself, separate from party or ideology. But this president is different. And I think somewhere, deep down, even the parents who brought their children there today know that.
And aside from the proximity to this man, there was also the way he spoke to the children standing beside him. One little girl told Trump she plays volleyball and wants to try soccer over the summer. He looked her over, questioned her height, and asked if she could jump high. She quietly answered, “Not very.” He then appeared to measure her with his hands and said, while cameras rolled, “I’m just looking at her,” before telling her soccer might be better. A child standing inside the Oval Office, excitedly talking about a sport she loves, only to have the President of the United States assess her body and discourage her from playing it.
A boy told Trump he plays football and wants to try powerlifting next year. Trump’s immediate response was, “And you’ll never compete against women in powerlifting.” A child simply talking about wanting to try a sport, and the President of the United States instantly redirected the moment into a performative attack on people who are already vulnerable to hate and violence. Then, without anyone asking, Trump launched into a story about a transgender powerlifter breaking a women’s record.
A few moments later, Trump turned back to the same boy and asked him directly, “You think you can take me in a fight?” The child didn’t answer. He just laughed nervously, because what exactly is a child supposed to say when the President of the United States asks him something like that? Trump filled the silence himself. “That would be embarrassing.”
And then he did it again. While speaking to former MLB pitcher Noah Syndergaard, Trump joked that he “wouldn’t want to get into a fight” with him because it “would not be a good situation.” Over the course of less than an hour, Trump repeatedly brought the conversation back to fighting, dominance, and aggression, some of the very behaviors most of us spend years trying to teach our children not to glorify. We try to raise kids to be kind, accepting, emotionally grounded, and secure enough not to constantly think in terms of humiliation, intimidation, or violence. Yet even during an event supposedly centered around children, sportsmanship, and physical fitness, the President of the United States kept instinctively steering the room back toward conflict and power. And that’s part of what made the entire event feel so deeply strange.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, Trump turned to the children in the room and said, and I am quoting directly from what he said: “Barack Hussein Obama. Have you heard of him?” Then he blamed Obama for canceling the fitness program.
I think about past presidents, even deeply flawed ones, even ones I strongly disagreed with politically. Whatever else you could say about them, you knew that they understood the weight of what they were carrying. The gravity of the office landed on them. You could see it in the way they spoke, the way they carried themselves, the way they understood that every word and gesture coming from the President of the United States echoes far beyond the room they are standing in. Trump has never carried that weight for a single day. He does not feel it. He does not consider it.
Nixon, whatever his crimes, still had some sense of dignity at the end. Even if it was driven in part by self-preservation, he ultimately chose resignation over forcing the country through something even darker. I have never seen a single piece of dignity in Donald Trump. Not once. And that is what feels so heavy watching moments like this. Because this man, with all of his cruelty, narcissism, instability, and moral emptiness, is the face of our country to these children and to the rest of the world.
And it wasn’t just the fight talk. While children stood beside him, the President of the United States described an active military conflict in graphic operational detail. He told them that Iran’s navy, 159 ships, is “resting at the bottom of the sea.” That their air force is “totally wiped out.” That their leaders are “wiped out.” That they are “lunatics” and “sick people.” He described a ship having its engine shot out from four miles away with a single bullet. He described Apache helicopters eliminating small Iranian boats “in about two seconds.” And then he said this, with children standing beside him: “They had snipers. You’re standing there and all of a sudden the guy on your left goes down. A woman dropped dead with a bullet right there. Then another woman dropped.” He said Iran killed 42,000 unarmed protesters last month. He discussed the destructive power of nuclear weapons.
And then Trump said, still surrounded by those children: “We don’t want to go in and kill people. It’s too tough. Great people. I know the people. I have so many Iranian friends from New York. I don’t want to kill those people.”
And it wasn’t just Trump performing for the cameras. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seized the moment too, while awkwardly managing to upset Trump along the way. He talked about his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, creating the original fitness program. He talked about his father completing a 50-mile hike through freezing temperatures. And then he used that story to flatter a man who falls asleep at his own events, who signs proclamations he clearly does not personally believe in, who used a room full of children to talk about shooting Iranian protesters, and who openly admits that most of his exercise consists of riding in a golf cart.
When RFK Jr. started listing the Trump cabinet officials he believed could complete the same 50-mile hike, people quickly noticed he never mentioned Trump himself. RFK Jr., sensing Trump’s irritation almost immediately, scrambled to recover the moment by insisting that Trump “walks nine miles a day on the golf course every weekend” and could complete the hike “in a breeze.” Trump interrupted to clarify: “When I’m not using the cart.” The entire exchange was embarrassing, watching grown men publicly perform this kind of forced flattery around a president who visibly does not embody any of the values they were supposedly there to celebrate.
And then there were the multiple moments when Trump appeared to drift off or fall asleep while others were speaking around him. We see this now at nearly every public event he attends. The same man who struggles to stay awake through meetings, speeches, and ceremonies is constantly being presented to the public as some symbol of peak strength, vitality, and dominance. Everyone around him is expected to pretend the obvious is not happening right in front of us. Even during an event supposedly celebrating energy, discipline, and physical fitness, the President of the United States looked exhausted, disengaged, and detached from the room around him.”
And we cannot ignore how absurd this entire event really was, because we already know exactly what Trump thinks about exercise. He has been remarkably consistent about it for decades. According to the Washington Post biography Trump Revealed by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, Trump came to believe after college that exercise was essentially a waste of energy. He viewed the human body like a battery, believing each person is born with a finite amount of energy that exercise only drains faster. When one of his top casino executives began training for an Ironman triathlon, Trump reportedly told him directly, “You are going to die young because of this.”
He has said similar things publicly for years. In interviews, including one with The New Yorker, Trump argued that exercise is misguided because the body has only so much energy available over a lifetime. He has also openly admitted that he finds exercise boring. And that is part of what made today feel so hollow. The event was not really about fitness. It was about image-making, nationalism, performance, and propaganda, wrapped in the language of health and patriotism.
When I think about the show that was held in the Oval Office today, my mind and my heart go to the children. I think about the message we are sending to future generations. That your physical appearance matters more than your mind. That your worth is measured in what your body can do, not what it can think or feel or create. Will this discourage our next great scientist from following their passion if they can’t run a mile in under eight minutes? Will it tell the kid who loves to read, or paint, or write code, or build things in their garage, that they are somehow less than the kid who can do the most pull-ups? And what message does it send to our children and grandchildren when the President of the United States falls asleep at a ceremony held in their honor, then wakes up and asks one of them if they think they can beat him in a fight?
This isn’t just Trump poisoning our older generations with MAGA propaganda and lies. He is seeping deeper now. Into our youth. Into their understanding of what leadership looks like and what it is allowed to do. He is normalizing cruelty and carelessness in rooms where children are watching. He is destroying community-minded thinking and replacing it with a hierarchy of physical dominance that serves one purpose, and we have already named that purpose. The rot he is establishing causes me great concern for the future. It really does. I won’t pretend otherwise.
But I also know this. The younger generations are smarter than he is. They have access to information and to each other in ways that many of us didn’t have until we were well into adulthood. They are more inclusive at heart. They are more skeptical of performance and more fluent in spotting it. They have grown up watching powerful people fail in public, and they are not impressed by the theater of it. They are our future. And I believe in them.
We have real work ahead of us to get this country back on track. And all the signs point to us being able to do it. The Washington Post reported yesterday that the White House Counsel’s Office has been quietly briefing political appointees on how to handle congressional investigations, because they are bracing for what is coming in November. They are preparing for Democrats to take back Congress. They are running internal training on how to survive oversight. The people inside that building know what the polling already shows: Democrats now hold a five-point advantage in support for Congress, up from two points just in February. They are not doing this because they feel confident. They are doing this because they are scared. And they should be. Because we are coming. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: I keep thinking about how vast, complicated, and beautiful this country is, and how much it is still worth fighting to save. We have a long way to go. But we will get there.
Sources:
President Trump Signs a Proclamation, May 5, 2026: Video
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/05/04/white-house-briefs-staff-midterm-losses/
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/09/1174975870/trump-carroll-verdict
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/13/politics/donald-trump-health-exercise-battery-theory
I encourage everyone to find Stephen Colbert's interview with Obama tonight. To see what a real leader looks and sounds like. To regain our optimism and belief that this current crap doesn't have to be our future.
Hi Heather,
Hitler’s youth was exactly the phrase that came to mind. Potential future cannon fodder, like the ones he put at in grave danger in the Strait of Hormuz yesterday. Obsession with violence, hatred and destruction. All this in front of young children. He should never be brought into the proximity of children. Discrimination, inappropriate language and things children should never have to hear, let alone from an individual whose office they are compelled to revere.
All this coming from a greatly obese, physically corroded, fast food junkie. A convicted rapist, with the cognitive control!!