How Sick Is He?

The physical and mental health of the president is a state secret

Dan Rather and Team Steady Dec 9

Credit: Getty Images

We need to have a serious conversation about Donald Trump’s health — what we know, and, more importantly, what we don’t know, which is a lot. Just how bad or good is it? We’ve tallied many indications of flagging vitality, just in his second term alone, and by any reasonable analysis he is not a picture of good health, to say the least.

Ronald Reagan was 69 when he took office. In his second term, Trump was almost ten years older than Reagan. Now, for a normal 79½-year-old, he is doing just fine. He holds down a full-time job. Much of his life is lived in front of cameras. He manages to get up and down the long flight of stairs to Air Force One without help.

But he is the President of the United States, arguably the most powerful and pressurized position in the world. A President of the United States has to be better than just fine. Trump’s multiple instances of physical and mental decline over the past 11 months should be raising serious questions. We simply don’t know what is actually going on. The lack of information and transparency is indefensible. Even any small dribble of information about his health quickly gets back-burnered by his latest outrageous behavior.

Historically, Trump has been minimally forthcoming about his health, though he claims otherwise. There are no rules about what he does and does not have to reveal. His doctors have repeatedly refused to take questions, even when he was severely ill from COVID in 2020. They have released summaries of his various exams that contain little to no detail.

The only things they do dole out are platitudes. “President Trump exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the duties of the commander in chief and head of state,” his physician, Dr. Sean Barbabella, wrote in April after his first annual physical. He also mentioned Trump’s frequent golf wins.

Oftentimes, he does not look like a well man. Trump claims to be 224 pounds, suspiciously just under what is considered obese for someone 6 feet 3 inches tall — especially since he rejects physical exercise as a concept and happily eats Big Macs, plural, in one sitting. Reportedly, his go-to McDonald’s order contains more than 2,400 calories. He is said to down a dozen Diet Cokes a day.

The first signs of physical decline during his second term came in February when significant bruising could be seen on the back of Trump’s hand. He has since tried to hide the consistent bruise marks with makeup and Band-Aids. The White House said the bruising was from taking aspirin and shaking so many hands.

A more likely possibility is that he is getting some kind of intravenous infusion. For what, we have no idea. Doctors have speculated he might be getting blood thinners, medications for kidney disease, or ones that slow the effects of dementia. Without facts it’s impossible to determine the extent of any health issue he might have, and easy for speculation to run wild.

In July, photos revealed that Trump had visibly swollen ankles. In a rare moment of transparency, the White House revealed that the president had chronic venous insufficiency, a blood vessel disease that affects circulation.

At the end of August, Trump, who has never met a camera he doesn’t like, was not seen in person for six days, his longest absence from public view in more than ten years. Online theorizing that he was sick or dead was rampant. JD Vance’s August 27 assertion that he had “gotten a lot of good on-the-job training over the last 200 days,” to USA Today helped fan those flames.

When Trump finally did emerge from the White House, it was to go to his golf club in Virginia. The few photos snapped of him getting into the presidential limousine seem to indicate he was not well.

At a September 11th event, heavy drooping can be seen on the right side of his face, causing many to speculate that he had an ischemic stroke over the Labor Day holiday.

Again, speculation because there was no information given.

Six weeks later, he had his second “annual” physical. If someone had even a light stroke, six weeks would be the timeframe for a recheck. During that trip to Walter Reed Medical Center Trump said he had an MRI and a “very hard IQ test” that he “aced.”

When asked later about the MRI Trump couldn’t remember which part of his body was imaged. And the White House claimed it was “preventative.” However, Dr. Jeremy Faust, MedPage Today’s editor-in-chief, told CNN that “there’s really no such thing as having an MRI for routine prevention. If we knew exactly what imaging he received, it would give us a better idea of what conditions they are worried about.”

As for the “IQ test,” it was actually the MoCA test or Montreal Cognitive Assessment. It is designed to identify cognitive decline, including signs of dementia and/or Alzheimer’s. During the 30 question test Trump could have been asked to copy a drawing of a cube, count backward from 100 and/or identify a certain animal.

On a trip to Asia in late October, Trump was seen wandering during an official welcome ceremony in Japan. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi had to physically guide him to the correct location several times. Upon returning from that trip, Trump, who does not drink alcohol, looked tipsy trying to walk from Air Force One to his waiting car.

The most recent evidence of Trump’s decline is his penchant for falling asleep in the middle of the day, in the middle of a meeting. On November 6, he fell asleep during an Oval Office event with cameras clicking. Last week he dozed during one of his sycophantic pep-rallies-cum-cabinet-meetings as Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised his leadership.

It is no wonder he was sleepy since he spent much of the night before on a social media tirade, shooting off 160 posts into the wee hours. Meanwhile, spokesperson Karoline Leavitt tried to spin Trump’s vertical nap as “listening attentively.” To those who question the president’s vigor, she pointed to the “epic moment” during the meeting when he attacked the Somali population of Minnesota, calling them “garbage.” Leavitt called it epic, others would call it unhinged.

Trump has certainly “aced” the test of signs of cognitive decline:

• Inability to remember words and names — Trump mistakenly called his Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, “Cristie Kerr,” who is a professional golfer.

• Getting lost in familiar places — He recently had a sign put up in the outside area near the Oval Office that read “The Oval Office.”

• Memory loss — During a September press conference, he said his first term “started around 2015,” then corrected himself to 2016. It began in January 2017.

• Confabulation — He claims his uncle, a professor at MIT, taught the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. His uncle died 11 years before Kaczynski was identified as the Unabomber, and he did not attend MIT.

• Increased aggression — He has posted thousands of all-caps social media rants aimed at everyone from California Governor Gavin Newsom to The New York Times.

• Confusion — He believes giant, energy-producing windmills “are killing us.”

• Verbal incoherence — The White House has removed from its website some of Trump’s official remarks that are particularly inscrutable. This is just part of one speech that has been scrubbed: “I got rid of – just one I got rid of the other night, you buy a house, they have a faucet in the house, Joe, and the faucet the water doesn’t come out. They have a restrictor. You can’t – in areas where you have so much water they don’t know what to do with it. Uh, you have a shower head the shower doesn’t uh, the shower doesn’t, you think it’s not working. It is working. The water’s dripping out and that’s no good for me. I like this hair lace and [sic] – I like that hair nice and wet.”

Trump’s temper has flared at any mention of his age or physical and mental decline in the media. Arguably, there has not been enough reporting on this topic. A recent Times piece, tamely titled, “Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office,” sent the president into a tailspin, shooting off angry social media posts in response, and calling the female reporter who wrote the piece “ugly, both inside and out.”

What are your medical issues, Mr. President? The American people deserve to know. Since so little has been revealed about the president’s health, all citizens can do is to consider the evidence, then wait and wonder. The question as to whether Trump is still fit to hold office has become front and center.

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Stay Steady,
Dan