Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., twice appeared to freeze suddenly in 2023, incidents that raised questions about his health and fitness to lead his party.
A recent Threads post compares McConnell with former President Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, and wrongly claims a video shows Trump similarly freezing.
“Looks like Don Old has tied Mitch the Glitch’s record for locking up on camera … ” the Aug. 10 post said.
“BREAKING: Trump freezes for 21 seconds during speech at his rally and Fox News has to cut away!” text over the video in the post says.
It was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)
The video is authentic, from Trump’s Aug. 9 campaign rally in Bozeman, Montana, but it’s being mischaracterized on social media.
C-SPAN footage of the rally shows Trump was criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, when he focused on something in the audience, nodded and then, at the 16:12 minute mark, where our video clip starts, said, “A doctor, please? Doctor in the house? Thank you, thank you very much, thank you. Take your time. Take your time, Doc. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.”
More than a minute after asking whether a doctor was in the house, Trump was still saying thank you and encouraging the doctor to address the audience member. Around the 18-minute mark, Trump appeared as he does in the Threads video, but he didn’t freeze — he was still waiting on whatever’s happening in the audience.
Forbes later reported that Trump was seeking a doctor “to help with someone experiencing a medical emergency.”
We rate claims this video shows Trump freezing False.
This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here.
