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Trump announces Space Command move as rumor mill swirls about health | TribLIVE.com
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Trump announces Space Command move as rumor mill swirls about health

Megan Swift
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AP
President Donald Trump at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va. on Saturday.

After multiple days of online chatter about President Donald Trump’s health, his announcement Tuesday afternoon from the Oval Office about relocating the U.S. Space Command cleared up any questions about the status of America’s leader.

Trump announced that command headquarters will be located in Alabama — reversing the Biden administration’s decision to keep it at its temporary Colorado headquarters.

Conjecture on social media starting last week claimed that Trump had died, but America hadn’t been notified yet.

The last time Trump spoke publicly was Wednesday during a Cabinet meeting at which he took questions from reporters. His schedule had been cleared for the weekend, but posts from his account on his social media platform Truth Social continued to appear.

Without a scheduled public appearance on the horizon, rumors about Trump’s health swirled across the social media platform X, prompting news outlets to report on the wild theories and speculation.

Users were dissecting the spike in pizza orders, as shown on the Pentagon Pizza Report, indicating people are working late — a signal for incoming, and potentially big, news.

“Where is Donald Trump” was trending on X, and search inquiries for “Trump,” “is Trump dead” and “Trump dead” were some of the top searches on Google, Forbes reported.

Is the president completely healthy? The country isn’t quite sure after seeing bruising and discoloration on the president’s hand — potentially makeup covering IV puncture, according to People.

Vice President JD Vance told USA Today on Thursday that he was prepared to step in as president should a “terrible tragedy” occur, though he said he believed Trump was in “good shape” and in “incredibly good health.”

That take didn’t do anything to quell the rumor mill. In fact, it was fodder for even more gossip.

On Saturday, it seemed all was well with the president, as he was photographed leaving his golf course in Virginia.

He even responded to the social media posters on Truth Social, saying “NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE” on Sunday night.

Over Labor Day weekend, Trump made pointed social media posts about violence in Chicago, along with comments about sending the National Guard to the city, the outlet reported.

Trump posted on Truth Social earlier Tuesday, saying he will “solve the crime problem fast, just like I did in DC. Chicago will be safe again, and soon.”

A federal judge in California said Trump previously broke the law by deploying roughly 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June in response to immigration protests, the New York Times reported.

Megan Swift is a TribLive reporter covering trending news in Western Pennsylvania. A Murrysville native, she joined the Trib full time in 2023 after serving as editor-in-chief of The Daily Collegian at Penn State. She previously worked as a Jim Borden Scholarship intern at the Trib for three summers. She can be reached at mswift@triblive.com.

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