After President Donald Trump completed a medical exam at Walter Reed on Tuesday, he posted on Truth Social that declare that “Everything checked out PERFECTLY.”
But NBC News medical analyst Dr. Vin Gupta says there are issues with Trump that just aren’t adding up, particularly regarding his inflamed skin and lingering rashes.
“They claim [his hand rash] is because he's on high dose aspirin plus the handshaking, but it's on … the dorsum of [both] hands,” Gupta told Zeteo podcaster John Harwood. “What I would want to understand is, especially as we age, is there something there? To use a medical terminology, is there a bleeding diathesis … impairing his blood's ability to properly form clots and is there a predisposition to bleeding They claim that it is high-dose aspirin that's causing this, which, again, doesn't pass the sniff test.”
High-dose aspirin, said Gupta, tends to cause other forms of bleeding, including from the gut and the stomach lining, rather than the back of the hands.
“That's not as common. And so, it's unusual for them to ascribe it to this when, really, if we see somebody on high-dose aspirin that chronically it causes GI bleeding,” said Gupta, who added that the White House was aggravating voters’ faith in Trump’s health and losing "any shred of credibility" because of the misleading claims.
“This has been an area that has flummoxed me—why the White House medical unit just doesn't tell us the diagnosis and the medication that he's on. They could say he's on a topical cream for preventing a pre-cancerous skin rash from becoming cancerous. Okay, not uncommon. Why not just say that and stymie any speculation.”
While Gupta was unsure if Trump was showing signs of multi-organ dysfunction, he admitted to having “serious concerns about his executive functioning.”
“We are having some real issues here with impulse control because … any reasonable person would say that if you have to threaten genocide you're not in a strong negotiating position, or you have to revise your negotiating tactics, that isn't a normal way to negotiate,” said Gupta, questioning if Trump had the executive functioning “to organize his thoughts to make considered rational decisions under stress.”
“President Trump, is displaying different signs of aging [from Biden]: Impulse control, disinhibition.”
Meanwhile other critics are already suspecting that Trump may believe himself to be dying and is acting without regard to his popularity for that reason.
“Trump is decaying, both in body and popularity,” said Wajahat Ali and Allison Gill. “The nearly 80-year-old vulgarian is a diminished man with historically low favorability ratings. He has dragged the GOP down with him. His actions are more reflective of a paranoid, weak king who knows his end is near and is desperately trying to sandbag against the vengeful wave that is about to topple his kingdom.”