When it comes to opposing President Donald Trump, many Democrats appear willing to abandon restraint, fairness, and even basic decency.
Just when it seems the attacks cannot get much more reckless, another Democrat finds a way to lower the bar.
On Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California spoke to reporters and floated an extraordinary claim about Trump’s health. In a clip posted to X, Lieu suggested that the president may have canceled a housing-bill signing because he had received a “special new drug” connected to a possible “terminal illness.”
Lieu began by complaining about inflation, a subject Democrats showed far less urgency about during former President Joe Biden’s time in office. He then turned to Trump’s decision to cancel the signing.
“Did he wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Is he unable to stay awake today? What’s causing him to chicken out again? Is it Taco Wednesday, or is it side effects from a drug? We don’t know,” Lieu said.
But Trump had already offered an explanation.
On Truth Social, the president said he would not sign the housing bill until Congress passed the SAVE Act.
“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency,” Trump wrote Wednesday morning.
The House passed the 21st Century Road to Housing Act on Tuesday by a bipartisan vote of 358-32. The Senate had already approved it the day before.
.@RepTedLieu suggests Trump cancelled Housing bill because he got a special new drug for a terminal illness: “The White House needs to come clean…Did Donald Trump get this special drug? pic.twitter.com/ug6tlsSEwr
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 24, 2026
A fair critic could argue that Trump is taking a risky political approach by tying housing legislation to election integrity. But it is not accurate to suggest that he gave no reason for canceling the event.
Lieu did not stop there.
“This erratic behavior of the president is very concerning,” he said. “He has trouble staying awake at multiple White House events and Cabinet meetings. He has clearly some weakness in one of his arms. He’s got swelling in his hands. And the White House needs to come clean.”
Then he went even further.
“What we know,” Lieu continued, “is there’s a report saying that one person in America got this special new drug — it was a 79-year-old person who is very high profile — and this drug can only be given to someone under the compassionate-use provision, meaning you do that if someone, basically, has a terminal illness.”
Lieu was referring to a report from STAT, a health-focused news outlet, about Eli Lilly allowing a “well connected” 79-year-old man to receive retatrutide, an experimental obesity drug, through the Food and Drug Administration’s compassionate-use program. Trump turned 80 on June 14.
“So, we need to know,” Lieu said, “did Donald Trump get this special drug from Eli Lilly? And did he get it under that provision? And if he did, why is that the case?”
The speculation was astonishingly thin. Lieu took a report about an unnamed “well connected” 79-year-old man and used it to raise public questions about whether Trump might be seriously ill. That is not oversight. It is rumor-mongering dressed up as concern.
It is also difficult to take Democrats seriously on presidential health after they spent years dismissing concerns about Biden’s cognitive decline. For Lieu to posture now as someone demanding transparency from the White House is, at best, tone-deaf.
There is also the matter of Trump’s pace. Whatever one thinks of his politics, he has long kept a schedule that would wear out many people in Washington, including plenty of lawmakers in both parties.
Lieu’s comments were not careful, responsible, or persuasive. They were a political attack built on speculation. And they fit a broader pattern: Democrats who claim the moral high ground while showing little of the restraint they demand from others.
Their hostility toward Trump has led them into ugly territory before. This episode was simply another example of how far some of them are willing to go.
