By Ben Meiselas
The scene inside Donald Trump’s cabinet meeting this afternoon was startling even by the chaotic standards of this administration. At multiple points, Trump appeared to be asleep, eyes closed, chin slumped, mouth drooping, while cabinet members delivered routine updates. At other times, he lurched awake only to offer disjointed, rambling monologues about grading his own cognitive tests, mocking cabinet officials’ names, and claiming that laughing staffers were impressed, not alarmed, by his behavior.
But there was nothing funny in the room. And the more this White House tries to spin Trump’s conduct as normal, the more the truth becomes undeniable: the president is exhibiting clear signs of cognitive and physical deterioration. And now, the administration’s attempt to quell concerns by releasing what it claimed were his MRI results has only deepened the crisis.
The document they released is not an MRI report at all. It is a doctor’s note describing something called a “preventative cardiovascular and abdominal MRI,” supposedly performed because “men in his age group benefit from a thorough evaluation” of those regions. Even before bringing in experts, that phrasing raised immediate red flags. Preventative torso MRIs simply do not exist as a standard medical practice, and anyone trying to invent one would never focus on just the cardiovascular and abdominal regions while omitting the brain or spine.
So I asked Meidas Health’s Dr. Vin Gupta, one of the country’s most respected public health physicians, to join me and explain what we were looking at. Gupta had spent the past 24 hours consulting with top radiologists across America’s leading academic institutions.
“No one is aware of getting an MRI of the torso,” he told me. “It doesn’t exist.” He added that the rationale described by Trump’s physician, screening because of age, “doesn’t exist” either. “There is no clinical guideline,” he said. “You just don’t do it.”
Even more troubling, he noted that the White House selectively referenced only cardiovascular and abdominal findings. If Trump had received a full-body MRI, a luxury procedure common among wealthy patients, why weren’t the other findings released? And if he didn’t receive a full-body MRI, then why did he undergo a “torso MRI” that no radiologist anywhere recommends?
“They’re creating more problems for themselves than they’re solving,” Gupta said. “This is all his own creation and his team’s creation, letting things out drip, drip, drip, without any alignment with clinical guidelines.”
Trump’s bizarre performance today matched the medical confusion. Just hours after posting up to 400 deranged social media messages overnight, pushing conspiracies about Michelle Obama secretly running the Biden White House, he arrived late to his own cabinet meeting. As members spoke, he repeatedly drifted into sleep. When he did rouse himself, he launched into meandering stories about cognitive tests he claims to have “aced,” insisting they contain questions so difficult that “99% of the people from the fake news” would fail.
At one moment, he tried to validate his own bragging by pointing at his chief of staff. At another, he tangled himself in mockery of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s name, descending into childish syllable play that devolved into nonsensical commentary about fiber optics and helicopter crashes.
Meanwhile, the room laughed nervously. Staffers nodded along. And the country watched a president, exhausted and erratic, slip deeper into patterns that experts warn cannot be ignored.
Gupta emphasized that he does not speculate. He simply reports what is observable. “Clearly, it looks like he’s not getting enough sleep or he’s just more fatigued,” he said. Extensive reporting has already documented Trump’s daily late starts and long stretches of reduced functionality. “Erratic behavior… looks to be more frequent,” he added, noting that Trump’s indifference during a recent medical emergency in the Oval Office was another troubling data point.
When I asked what transparency should look like, Gupta’s answer was direct: “Just release the actual MRI. The read from the radiologists. Not a filtered, summarized note from a physician who has editorialized in the past.” He stressed that the American people deserve honesty about the president’s health, not partisan spin, not selective disclosures, and not medically incoherent explanations.
He also flatly rejected Trump’s comments that he often takes Montreal Cognitive Assessment tests. “No one takes a MoCA with that type of frequency,” he said. “Doing it as frequently as he’s doing makes no sense. It’s not the flex that he thinks it is.”
Ultimately, this administration is not being backed into a corner by critics, but it is cornering itself. By refusing transparency, by fabricating pseudo-medical justifications, by insisting that obvious deterioration is actually strength, they are fueling the crisis rather than quieting it.
The president is the leader of the free world, or he is supposed to be, at least. His health is a matter of national security, and the public deserves answers grounded in reality, not whatever fantasy this White House believes it can construct from a doctor’s note and a few hours of wishful thinking.
That’s why it’s important that we bring you analysis from real experts, like Dr. Gupta. Watch our report above. Thank you for continuing to spread the word about MeidasTouch and this Substack!
