Reports states that President Donald Trump looked over the United States Army troops during his visit to Fort Bragg on June 10, examining their body weight and some political leanings. As per Military.com, one unit-level message stated, “No fat soldiers.” In another byte, a source said, “Soldiers sitting in the bleachers are to be fit and not look fat.”
The writer and author of Mother Jones, Timothy Noah, has addressed these comments, reflecting on the fact that it is most likely to come directly from the White House and reinforcing the statement the narrative aligns smoothly with the traits of a man inside the White House who fat-shames people on a frequent note.
A Vice President from one of the organisations of Donald Trump told a caterer at his Rancho Palos Verdes golf club in California that “Mr. Trump doesn’t like fat people.” Reports also state that the time when Trump owned the Miss Universe Organization, he even publicly insulted a winner by calling her “an eating machine”. He also addressed actress cum comedian Rosie O’Donnell saying that she has a “fat, ugly face” and calling her a “pig”.
He’s been equally critical, not sparing his former political opponent, Chris Christie, Democratic Montana Senator Jon Tester, and his supporters. Noah has stated this to be a classic narcissistic projection, and for Donald Trump, it is more than just weight.
She wrote – “Trump is a crook (a convicted felon, in fact), so he calls other people crooks. He’s a liar (The Washington Post counted more than 30,000 whoppers during his first term alone), so he calls other people liars (even a Gold Star widow!). He’s an ignoramus, so he calls other people stupid. Trump’s obsession with other people’s weight is another manifestation: He’s an overweight man who calls other people (less politely) overweight.”
But just like political minds, Trump is applying this obsession about the federal workforce, calling it “bloated, fat, and disgusting” and further stating that it is worsening his “misrule.” On the contrary, Noah says, the federal workforce was indeed not, in fact, bloated, fat, and disgusting, and it isn’t like that now either.
“The feds employ about two million civilians. How many civilians did they employ in 1953? About two million. How many in 1963? About two million. How many in 1973? About two million. How many in 1983? About two million,” he said, while adding that since 1953, the United States population has more than doubled, “so the number of civilian federal employees available to serve each of us has shrunk more than one-half.”
“No fat soldiers.” Shocking, but not surprising. Trump had the soldiers that appeared in the audience at his Fort Bragg rally pre-screened for their physical appearance and loyalty to him. pic.twitter.com/aHJToxUb3x
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) June 11, 2025
However, Trump’s administration approved the funding cuts that can significantly harm federal agencies. It might cut 12 per cent of the federal workforce with trillions of deficit on the line, which Noah considers legitimate bloat of the worst kind. The amount is a massive swagger, especially for a president with a claimed weight of 224 pounds and a body mass index (BMI) of 28—which might be a lowball in Noah’s eyes. However, despite this weight, Donald Trump is still the “sixth-most-overweight president in American history.”
