A new shot of Donald Trump’s thinning hair from a recent public engagement certainly won’t help put those balding rumors to rest. On August 13, the president visited the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to announce this year’s award recipients, and his massive bald spot was on display for everyone to see, serving as a brutal reminder of his advancing age. (He turned 79 on June 14.) “I’ve been asked to host. I said, ‘I’m the President of the United States. Are you fools asking me to do that?”‘ Trump jested during his opening speech. Due to his frequent bleach jobs, his wispy hair struggles to hide his bald spots no matter how much Trump tries to disguise them with a combover, and the whole thing pretty much feels like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.
Trump accidentally exposing his bald spots is, in fact, nothing new. Not long after he unveiled a bad bleach job during his feud with Elon Musk, he was at the White House to sign a series of bills related to California’s electric vehicle regulations in June 2025. At one point, his gigantic bald spot snuck out as his bleached combover did him dirty while fielding questions from the press. Trump is well-aware of the uphill battle his hair is facing. “I try like hell to hide that bald spot, folks,” he joked during his speech at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland. He also poked fun at himself during a Michigan rally in 2024: “See the screen up there of me? That’s very severe, that combover. That’s a severe sucker,” Trump quipped. “It looks okay from the other side, but that is very severe! I apologize.”
Trump insists his hair is real
Months before his Kennedy Center appearance, Donald Trump also unintentionally exposed his balding hair during a sit down with South African president Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House last May. Footage of Trump leaning on his chair while facing Ramaphosa showed a big patch of bare scalp on the top of his head, which he failed to conceal with his signature combover. The image sparked mockery among social media users, some of whom speculated about the POTUS’ haircare routine, according to The Independent.
Despite his thinning hair, Trump takes pride in the fact that not a single strand on his head is fake (or so he claims). He once joked that all future political candidates shouldn’t be allowed to run if they rely on wigs or toupees. “If it’s not your hair, don’t run for office,” Trump quipped during a South Carolina rally in 2018, per The Hill. He’s repeatedly denied wearing a hair piece to mask his bald spots himself, which he demonstrated by letting an audience member touch his hair in 2015. “It’s my hair, I swear,” Trump insisted.
Michael Wolff, who’s authored several books on Trump, told The Daily Beast podcast in July that the way 47 wears his hair is deliberate. “Trump would point [to Joe Biden and say], ‘Look at him. Nobody even sees him. Everybody notices me.’ Which is absolutely true,” Wolff agreed. “Side by side, you know, who do you notice? You notice this guy, this appalling-looking guy who is Donald Trump, and not just the relatively normal old man-looking guy that Biden was.” He added, “He looks that way because he thinks that’s an effective way to look.”
