President Donald Trump‘s preferred design aesthetic, all gold everything with steakhouse touches, is straight out of the ’80s. Still, you’d hope that the commander-in-chief had updated his view of the world sometime between the decade of excess and 2025.
In a social media post on Wednesday about his upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the 79-year-old Trump revived nagging concerns about his faculties. While railing against the media’s supposedly unfair characterization of his diplomatic efforts, Trump referred to St. Petersburg by its Soviet-era name, Leningrad.
“Very unfair media is at work on my meeting with Putin. Constantly quoting fired losers and really dumb people like John Bolton, who just said that, even though the meeting is on American soil, ‘Putin has already won.’ What’s that all about?” he wrote on Truth Social. “The Fake News is working overtime … If I got Moscow and Leningrad free, as part of the deal with Russia, the Fake News would say that I made a bad deal!”
The second-most populous city in Russia has not been called Leningrad since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, when the president was 45 years old. The gaffe raised eyebrows on social media. Users shared photos of Trump visiting the former USSR and wondered openly if the president was still stuck in the Cold War.
Trump in Leningrad, circa 1987.
His head is still there, circa 2025 pic.twitter.com/MBVyGljHbP— ITDUDE Fella (@The_Real_ITDUDE) August 13, 2025
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“He’s long gone at this point,” wrote one X user.
Trump has been dogged by concerns about his aging brain since his campaign for a second term began. In recent months, members of Trump’s team have questioned the president’s health anonymously. Trump has denied any suggestion that his mental faculties are declining.
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