{"id":9978,"date":"2026-02-09T13:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T13:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/02\/09\/just-how-healthy-is-donald-trump-really-vox-com\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T13:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T13:10:13","slug":"just-how-healthy-is-donald-trump-really-vox-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/02\/09\/just-how-healthy-is-donald-trump-really-vox-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Just how healthy is Donald Trump, really? – vox.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump has been on the world stage for more than a decade now, during which he has given his fair share of rambling speeches \u2014 although he claims it\u2019s a \u201cbrilliant<\/a>\u201d way of speaking. But is the rambling getting worse?<\/p>\n

Since Trump returned to office a year ago, the internet has gone back and forth on whether the 45th and 47th president is healthy. The rambling paired with a mysterious bruise on his hand and swollen ankles has people wondering: Is Trump okay<\/a>?<\/p>\n

New York magazine\u2019s Ben Terris, who recently wrote about Trump\u2019s health<\/a>, told Today, Explained<\/em> co-host Astead Herndon that the answer was quite complicated.<\/p>\n

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There\u2019s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained<\/em> wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Pandora<\/a>, and Spotify<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What was the catalyst for this piece?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve all been watching him for years now, but especially in the last year, there\u2019s been more questions about him: his health, the bruising on his hands, the swollen cankles, the falling asleep in meetings.<\/p>\n

Before sitting down with him, I\u2019d been reading some books by members of his family. I talked to his niece, Mary Trump. Mary Trump says sometimes when she looks at Donald Trump speaking in the public square, she sees flashes of her grandfather when he had Alzheimer\u2019s. I don\u2019t know if he has it or not, but I wanted to ask him about it.<\/p>\n

He started saying, \u201cMy father was so healthy; he had no problems. His heart couldn\u2019t be stopped.\u201d \u201cHe did have one problem though,\u201d Trump told me. And he said, \u201cLate in life, he had, what\u2019s the word for it?\u201d And he pointed to his head. And Caroline Levitt, the press secretary sitting next to me, she kind of rescued him in that moment and said, \u201cAlzheimer\u2019s.\u201d And he said, \u201cYeah, yeah, he had an Alzheimer\u2019s thing. Well, well, I don\u2019t have it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What are the concerns with Trump\u2019s health that you uncovered?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The story I set out to write about was to figure out whether he is healthy or not, and it kind of ended up being a story about whether the government is healthy or not. There\u2019s kind of an infection that has spread throughout Trump\u2019s inner circle where everybody who talks about him talks about him in the craziest, most North Korean-type, dear-leader way.<\/p>\n

Instead of just saying he\u2019s healthy for an almost 80-year-old, that he\u2019s slowing down a little bit, but he\u2019s certainly healthy enough to be president, people talk about him in these terms that are just completely outrageous: superhuman, the healthiest man alive. He told me he was healthier than he was 40 years ago.<\/p>\n

The guy doesn\u2019t exercise; he doesn\u2019t eat well. He drinks enough Diet Coke to fill a football stadium. And you just can\u2019t quite trust the people around him. And I felt like the story I published said a lot about Trump\u2019s America, not just Trump\u2019s health.<\/p>\n

I want to ask about the bruised hand. Did you get any answers on what that is coming from or the level of severity?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I got to the Oval Office for my interview, we shook hands. He had a really soft, warm hand, which was surprising, but on the back it was very dry. [He had] a big kind of rhino hide \u2014 like bruise on the back. I asked him about it, and what he claims is that he\u2019s on an aspirin regimen, on a much higher dose than even his doctors want him to be on. He says he\u2019s on aspirin because he wants thin blood. And because he takes so much aspirin, he bruises very easily.<\/p>\n

The doctors confirmed this is what\u2019s going on. He says, because he bruises easily and because he shakes just a ton of hands, he\u2019s always bruising.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m curious about some of the logistics and how open they were to this discussion of his health.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I went into the White House early in my process and I was transparent about what I wanted to write about. I said, look, there\u2019s a big question about the president\u2019s health. Lots of people think they have the answer. I want to clarify the picture, and there\u2019s not a lot of people who really know the answer. There\u2019s Donald Trump; there\u2019s his inner circle; there\u2019s his doctors \u2014 and they made a lot of people available.<\/p>\n

It was not clear I was going to get to talk to Donald Trump, but before I talked to him, they made time for me to go to the White House and sit down with Marco Rubio. He\u2019s got 40 jobs, and he took time out of his busy day to sit with me in Caroline Levitt\u2019s office and talk to me about how the president was, quote, \u201ctoo healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was telling these stories [that were so embarrassing] that he was debasing himself in a way. \u201cWhen I ride on Air Force One, I need to take a nap, and so I hide in a blanket. I wrap myself like a mummy covering my head and I do that because I know that at some point on the flight, [Trump\u2019s] going to emerge from the cabin and start prowling the hallways to see who is awake. I want him to think it\u2019s a staffer who fell asleep. I don\u2019t want him to see his secretary of state sleeping on a couch and think, Oh, this guy is weak<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

What did his doctors tell you about his health?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I showed up to the Oval Office, they were holding pieces of paper that said \u201cTalking Points\u201d on the top of it. So they had things they wanted to get through. They told me that he was as healthy as he says he is. One of them said that they did an EKG of his heart, and he appears to be a 64-year-old or a 65-year-old, according to the AI data that they found. At the end of my interview, Caroline Levitt turns to one of the doctors and says, \u201coh, you worked for the Obamas, didn\u2019t you?\u201d So I asked the doctor, well, who\u2019s healthier? President Obama? Or President Trump? And Trump is sitting right there staring across the desk at the doctors making direct eye contact. And without any hesitation, the doctor says, \u201cOh, President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did you experience any skittishness when it came to reporting on Trump?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think the fact that we went through the Biden era has made reporting on this topic easier in a way. It\u2019s still difficult because you can\u2019t get to the bottom of it, but it made people more willing to talk, maybe?<\/p>\n

[The Biden era] made journalists more willing to go for these stories [and] for editors to assign them, because we went through this period of time with Biden where he aged in front of all of our eyes and people were too skittish in some ways to write about it.<\/p>\n

Does that comparison feel fair?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s definitely fair to draw some comparisons if for no other reason than they\u2019re both old. Donald Trump is about to be 80 years old. Just by dint of that fact, it\u2019s a worthwhile story to cover.<\/p>\n

One reason I think that Trump is able to \u201cget away\u201d with some things that could be signs of aging is that they could also just be signs of Donald Trump being Donald Trump. He has been a chaotic figure for a long time. He\u2019s got this rambling way of talking. He says unhinged, outrageous stuff. He did that 15 years ago. He does that now. Are there differences in the way that he communicates between now and then? Sure, of course. But it\u2019s not as stark as if and when Biden starts to show signs of deteriorating. Because Biden was such a serious guy who kind of spoke in your traditional politician way, as soon as there was slippage, you could notice it a lot easier.<\/p>\n

I want to ask about something that does seem similar: The president and their aides basically kept telling you not to believe your own eyes. In this instance, you have Trump dozing off in meetings and aides saying, oh, that was just his thinking pose. <\/strong><\/p>\n

One thing that did not make it into the story \u2014 I\u2019ll talk about it with you for the first time. This is a little exclusive.<\/p>\n

I did talk to some people from Biden\u2019s White House for this story. They didn\u2019t want to put their name out there, obviously, but one person was telling me that watching this happen did kind of feel similar to them. I have a quote [about Biden\u2019s health issues] in front of me here I can read, which is: \u201cI think there\u2019s a world where we denied it so much that there was a delta between what people were seeing and hearing, and that led to distrust. I think that denial of the thing people are seeing \u2014 you just can\u2019t get away with that anymore. I think they\u2019re making the same kind of mistake in backing themselves into the same kind of corner that we were in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of Trump\u2019s broader success and appeal is that he can get his followers to believe his own version of reality. Do you think this strategy on this issue of his health is actually working for him? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s like a lot of issues for Trump these days: He\u2019s got a base of support that\u2019s going to believe everything, and then there\u2019s this group between his supporters and his detractors who are going to be less convinced by this.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump does seem to be losing his ability to control his story. His poll numbers are not what he wants them to be. The midterms are trending in the wrong direction. The immigration story is not even going the way he wants to go, and that was kind of a top issue for him.<\/p>\n

The way that he tries to control the narrative, so to speak, of his health is sort of akin to how he\u2019s trying to control everything, and I just feel like he\u2019s sort of losing some of that control. This happens to presidents; this is why they become lame ducks. It\u2019s just happening a little earlier for Trump than is traditional for a president. He\u2019s been referred to as a lame duck by pundits already, and that doesn\u2019t normally happen until the third year of a presidency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump has been on the world stage for more than a decade now, during which he has given his fair share of rambling speeches \u2014 although he claims it\u2019s a \u201cbrilliant\u201d way of speaking. But is the rambling getting worse? Since Trump returned to office a year ago, the internet has gone back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}