The irony is almost too rich.
Meghan Hays, a former Biden aide who spent years helping keep the most hidden president in modern history under wraps, appeared on CNN Monday to clutch pearls over President Donald Trump’s six-day absence from the public eye. Six days. Not six months. Not weeks in the basement. Six days.
Hays told host Phil Mattingly that Trump’s weekend of radio silence — punctuated by a flurry of Truth Social posts — was “disconcerting” and proof that the White House was not being “transparent” about the president’s health.
🚨NEW: Ex-*BIDEN* Admin Official Meghan Hayes HAS NERVE to sound alarm about Trump’s health based on few days out of spotlight🚨
“I think that it’s really disconcerting. The president has been very vocal with press all the time. I think in August he spent 26 days doing public… pic.twitter.com/f2aPlcEgJS
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) September 1, 2025
“The president has been very vocal with press all the time … So to go down for 6 days and just have a slew of Truth Social posts that are very chaotic … it’s very concerning,” she argued.
The problem with Hays’ critique is obvious: she worked for Joe Biden, a man whose White House ran on secrecy, stage-managed appearances, and long stretches of silence. Biden spent entire months without facing unscripted questions.
His “lids” were called before noon. His rare press conferences were padded with cheat sheets, pre-selected reporters, and whispered answers. That was normal for the Biden team.
Trump, by contrast, spent much of August in front of cameras. According to Hays herself, he logged 26 days of events and press appearances in a single month. Taking six days off after that marathon hardly qualifies as a scandal — especially when the break ended with Trump back at the White House podium on Tuesday, live and very much alive, announcing the relocation of Space Command to Huntsville, Alabama.
Phil Mattingly himself seemed to recognize the overreach, tempering the segment by saying he wasn’t “totally opposed” to Trump “going dark for a couple of days.” A rare moment of reason amidst a fevered search for conspiracy.
