Trump's 'uncontrolled noises' at US midterm rallies alarm critics as Jimmy Fallon turns one into a dance 'banger'

Rather than say Nikki Haley's name at a South Carolina rally on Wednesday, President Donald Trump produced a noise that seemed to cross a gag with a belch. A day later in Sioux City, Iowa, his warning about 'communists' controlling the Senate dissolved into a yelp. Former White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews called it 'cognitive decline in real time'. Trump turned 80 in June.

Fallon said the noise sounded like 'a burp, a hiccup and a dry heave all in one'.

Democratic strategist Keith Edwards went further: 'his brain is actually fried'.