A band-aid on a festering hand wound
Something's up with Trump's health and we should really find out what it is.
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The Epstein files and illegal boat strikes aren’t the only coverups taking place right now in the White House. There’s also something clearly wrong with the president’s health that the administration is trying to conceal from the public.
Going back months now, the back of Trump’s right hand has often been visibly discolored and bandaged when he appears in public. He works assiduously to conceal it from cameras by covering it with his other hand. Nonetheless, Getty photographers have gotten in the habit of taking shots of the malady whenever they can, including during his ugly hate rally Tuesday evening in Pennsylvania.
Making the optics worse, the ashy hand sometimes contrasts with his cartoonishly orange complexion, as was the case last weekend at a Kennedy Center dinner.
The hand affliction isn’t the only evidence something’s amiss. Trump was photographed this summer with extremely swollen ankles and mysteriously disappeared from public view for nearly a week around Labor Day. More recently, he’s dozed off during numerous White House events — even high profiles ones like cabinet meetings.
Unsurprisingly, the White House is trying to lie its way through it. While Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attributed Trump’s swollen ankles to chronic venous insufficiency, the only explanation she’s offered for his mangled hand is a laughable one about “frequent handshaking.”
Along similar lines, Trump has acknowledged receiving an MRI during the second of the two “annual” physicals he traveled to Walter Reed for this year, but he’s obviously lying about not knowing what doctors were looking for or why they did the procedure in the first place.
The concerns surrounding Trump’s ailing health have become so undeniable that they recently drew the attention of the New York Times in a piece about how he’s “aging in office” and doing a lot less than his first term. Trump fired back on Tuesday night with an absolutely nuts social media post claiming it’s “seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean ‘THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.’ They are true Enemies of the People, and we should do something about it.”
Seriously, if an elderly relative wrote something this bonkers to you, you’d contact family members to make sure they’re okay. Check it out:
Trump, of course, has political reasons for threatening reporters who might investigate his health. The reality of his decline undercuts his cult of personality, which still maintains he’s a tireless worker who never sleeps and would be damn near immortal if he just cut out the cheeseburgers.
This is about more than just politics though. The country was lucky to survive Trump’s first term even when he was relatively spry, and there are indications his health issues might be playing a role in his increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior.
For instance, even as a longtime Trump watcher, I was shocked by his recent “Quiet, Piggy” outburst at a reporter.
And an increasing lack of public inhibition has been detectable in his gutter racist rants about Somalis and creepy comments about women.
Just yesterday, Trump lashed out belligerently at Colombia President Gustavo Petro, threatening that “he better wise up or he’ll be next.” That bit of gangsterism came shortly after he whined about not winning the Nobel Peace Prize and announced he intended to steal the oil from a Venezuelan tanker the administration seized earlier in the day.
It’s reasonable to wonder whether Trump’s ailing health is factor in why he’s unable to explain why he’s pardoning convicted drug traffickers while he blows up suspected drug boats, or going on nonsensical rants about make-believe things like “tariff shelves” and 25 percent economic growth. He’s admonishing Americans to get used to having fewer toys for their kids while he’s simultaneously coating the part of the White House he hasn’t destroyed for a ballroom with tacky and garish gold.
It’s odd behavior by any remotely normal standard, but perhaps more explicable if he’s experiencing cognitive issues that require regular testing — and it’s worth noting that Trump’s aforementioned Tuesday night Truth Social screed mentions he’s undergone three separate “Cognitive Examinations,” including one recently “in front of large numbers of doctors and experts, most of whom I do not know.”
As is always the case with Trump — who at 78 was the oldest president ever inaugurated earlier this year — it’s dangerous to attribute to other factors what can simply be ascribed to malevolence. He’s gone to desperate lengths to conceal his health records for a decade now, and he has a history of making bad and bizarre decisions stretching back to well before he ran for office. His persistently discolored and bandaged hand is not necessarily evidence that he has a grave health condition.
Still, at a time when Trump is pushing the country toward criminal wars of aggression and global pariah status abroad while simultaneously immiserating Americans at home with senseless and self-destructive economic policies, it’s fair to wonder whether he’s of sound mind and body. There’s undeniable evidence that something is wrong. And if it wasn’t a big deal, you’d think the White House would come forward with an explanation more plausible than what they’ve offered so far.
Getty photogs are on the case, but they can only do so much. It would be nice if reporters who have regular opportunities to ask Leavitt and Trump questions developed the type of dogged curiosity about Trump’s health that they had when Biden was in office. And if the response they get is that Trump is still battered and bruised from too much handshaking, then it’s time to call BS and start digging, because there’s a big story here that’s being covered up — in this case literally.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
Trump isn’t just a man with bandaged hands, he’s the tumor that keeps metastasizing through the body politic. The discoloration isn’t confined to his skin; it’s the rot spreading through institutions, courts, and parties that keep feeding him oxygen.
America doesn’t have a leader, it has a malignancy; a cancer that thrives on spectacle, lies, and cruelty, while the rest of the nation is forced to live with the symptoms.
The real diagnosis is clear: until the cancer is cut out, the country will keep wasting away under its spread.
Excellent review! And an excellent question posed: Where is his family? The man is obviously, visibly, failing - both physically and mentally - is there no one who cares beyond achieving the white supremacist dream?