Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Harvard Medical School, argues that two major concerns about Donald Trump’s health are being quietly ignored amid the president’s repeated claims of being in “perfect” health after a fourth visit to Walter Reed.

Trump announced online that his fourth trip to Walter Reed for a checkup showed he remains a paragon of good health. CNN host Brianna Keilar said that it isn't surprising because he says that after all of his "annual" physicals, even if those physicals are happening multiple times each year.

However, Dr. Faust has deeper questions for the doctors that he thinks are too often ignored.

"At some point, the president went from being on low-dose aspirin to this very high-dose aspirin," he began. "We learned about that earlier this year, and that happened sometime between 2018 and last year. And many of us said that was unwise because as an E.R. doctor, treating patients [who] are on medications that thin the blood or that disrupt clotting."

It's a problem for the elderly, who are at higher risk of falls. If blood can't clot, a fall with an injury could result in significant blood loss.

"So, the question is, why is he on that dose? Does his doctor really recommend it? One of the things I think everyone who's watching knows is that you have to have a very strong doctor-patient relationship. And if the president is taking a dose of aspirin that his doctor doesn't recommend, and even the United States Preventive Services Task Force says is not a good idea — well, I question that. And I kind of wonder if that's changed since then."

The bruise on his hand, the White House said, comes from his high-dose aspirin and shaking so many hands. Lately he's been hiding it with makeup and under the table or covered by his other hand.

When he looks at the headlines, Dr. Faust said that much of the concern boils down to "normal aging" and Trump suffering from "chronic venous insufficiency," which the White House says is the reason for his swollen legs.

"And in fact, when we learned about it last year, the really important thing was to rule out other, more dangerous conditions. And I think his team did that well. So, it's very important that the president has frequent interactions with his team, which he does, to make sure nothing else comes up," the doctor said.

As for Trump falling asleep in public, Dr. Faust said the president is 80 years old, implying it was normal for someone of his advanced age to grow more exhausted.

The final question involved the MRI, which Trump said he had last year. Dr. Faust said that he believes Trump misstated the claim, and that, from what he understands, it was actually a CT scan of Trump's heart. The doctor wanted to know why the imaging was done at all or if it was an example of overuse. He cited health influencers who advocate for full-body scans as a preventive medicine measure. However, he said, it can often send people on a wild goose chase to understand something benign that may pop up.

"It's ironic," he said, "because you have a president who hasn't really expanded access to health care. So, that's a cognitive dissonance that goes beyond his patient care. But it's certainly one that I think people will be interested in."

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A striking photograph of President Donald Trump emerged Monday, reigniting debate about the president's physical health after images showed severe bruising across both of his hands.

The image, captured during a White House health care affordability event where Trump appeared alongside Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., revealed deep purple discoloration that the president has previously attempted to conceal with cosmetic products.

When questioned about the visible injuries to his hands, Trump has attributed the bruising to the physical toll of constant handshakes with supporters and world leaders. However, medical professionals and observers have questioned whether such an explanation adequately accounts for the extent and persistence of the injuries now being documented in recent photographs.

The president's apparent efforts to hide the condition — rather than address it directly — have drawn scrutiny from commentators across the political spectrum who wonder what underlying health issues might be responsible.

Social media erupted with commentary following the image's circulation. Political analyst Nicole Sandler described the sight as "downright nauseating," while journalist Gavin Aronsen labeled it a "graphic image."

Others offered critiques that questioned both the president's transparency and what the bruising might indicate about his overall health status. The incident underscores ongoing concerns about Trump's fitness for office and his willingness to be forthright with the American public about his medical condition.A pattern of health questions

Trump's physical appearance has become an increasingly frequent topic of public discussion throughout his presidency. Medical professionals have speculated that such symptoms could indicate circulatory problems, lymphedema, or other underlying conditions that warrant clinical evaluation.

The bruising on his hands represents yet another visible health concern that Trump has chosen to address through concealment rather than transparency. Unlike previous presidents who have made their medical records publicly available, Trump has resisted calls for comprehensive health disclosures, citing privacy concerns.

At nearly 80 years old, Trump is among the oldest individuals to serve as president. Questions about his cognitive and physical fitness have intensified as he approaches his birthday in June. A recent poll showed that 59 percent of Americans believe Trump lacks the mental sharpness needed to lead the country effectively.

The White House has not issued any official statement regarding Trump's hand injuries or what may be causing the persistent bruising. Medical experts note that without a formal diagnosis from Trump's personal physicians, the public can only speculate about the underlying causes based on visible symptoms and the president's own contradictory explanations.

New York Magazine reporter Ben Terris recently sat down with President Donald Trump for nearly an hour to discuss his health. Now, he's saying the unsightly bruise on the back of Trump's hand is apparently getting worse — and that the president is "very self-conscious" about it.

In a Monday interview with The Bulwark's Tim Miller, Terris went into detail about his encounter with Trump in the Oval Office. He told Miller that while he hadn't expected White House physicians to be present during his conversation with the president, he decided to focus the bulk of his questions on Trump's health — which the president and his staffers welcomed.

According to Terris, both White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt both pushed the narrative that the 79 year-old president had never been in better health. Miller suggested that Terris refer to Trump as a "superhuman president," which Terris made into the article's headline in what he called a "tongue-in-cheek" reference. Leavitt urged one of the physicians present in the meeting to repeat their comment to Terris that they thought Trump was in better health than former President Barack Obama — who is 15 years younger than Trump and has a disciplined workout routine.

However, Terris said the key moment that stuck out to him from his sit-down with the president was seeing his bruised hand. Terris conceded that Trump's excessive use of aspirin was the likely culprit for the bruise, as using the drug has been known to cause skin to bruise easily. But the New York Magazine writer went on to tell Miller that Trump's hands looked "gross" up-close and that his hands were unusually "soft" due to a lack of "physical labor over the years."

"But then on the other side, the backside of his hand, it looked kind of like rhino hide," Terris said. "It was very dry. The bruise had kind of taken over the whole back of his hand."

Terris also mentioned that he was president at the Oval Office for the president's meeting with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and that Trump "spent the whole time covering his hand with his other hand so nobody could see it." The president reportedly continued to "look at it like he was checking the time."

"He is very self-conscious about it," Terris said. "In fact, I talked to somebody who had a meeting with Trump and he had a bruise on the back of his hand and he wanted to like, relate with the president about it. He's like, 'look, I got one too.' And Trump shot it down."

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President Donald Trump repeatedly insists that his health, both physical and mental, is first-rate. But his niece, psychologist/author Mary Trump, often points to behavior that, she says, shows poor mental health. And recurring bruising on Trump's hands, CNN's Adam Cancryn reports, continues to raise questions about the president's physical health.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claims that the bruising occurs because Trump is shaking hands with a lot of people. But according to Cancryn, medical experts are questioning that explanation.

"Across a series of events last week," Cancryn explains in an article published on December 31, "the 79-year-old Trump appeared with discoloration or light bruising on the back of his left hand, in addition to the more persistent bruise on his right hand that has been visible for months. The new bruise appears to complicate the White House's explanation that the right-handed Trump developed the bruising through constant handshaking along with a regular regimen of aspirin that can make such discoloration more common."

Cancryn continues, "And while medical experts told CNN there is no fresh cause for concern, calling it a likely benign condition common in older people, they warned that Trump's reluctance to be more transparent about his health only threatens to intensify the scrutiny that he's struggled all year to escape…. The fresh bruising on Trump’s left hand represents the latest development to fuel speculation about his health since he returned to the White House — a sensitive topic for him that he's sought to counter by boasting frequently about his vigor."

Dr. Jeffrey Linder, chief of general internal medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in the Chicago area, told CNN that Trump and his allies are "feeding the curiosity cycle" where the bruises are concerned.

Linder notes, "He's in the public eye; he has a certain image he wants to portray, and even these minor things detract from that image."

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who was a cardiologist for the late Vice President Dick Cheney and is now a professor of medicine at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., points out that bruising on an older person's hands isn't necessarily symptomatic of a severe health problem.

Reiner told CNN, "Bruising can be just simply a one-off thing when you have some trauma, you bump into something. Aspirin will make you more prone to bleeding…. The question now is less medical than it is transparency."

Read Adam Cancryn's full article for CNN at this link.

When reporters noticed a bruise on President Donald Trump's right hand back in February, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attributed to the discoloration to all the hand-shaking he does.

Trump, Leavitt told reporters, "meets more Americans and shakes their hands on a daily basis than any other president in history.”

More recently, the subject came up again when a reporter asked Leavitt about a bandage Trump was wearing on that hand — to which she responded, "We've…. given you an explanation for that in the past. The president is literally constantly shaking hands. The Oval Office is like Grand Central Terminal."

But MS NOW's Steve Benen believes that Leavitt's explanation isn't holding up.

New York Magazine's Margaret Hartmann, on Monday, December 29, reported that Trump also had bruising on his left hand.

According to Hartmann, "(Trump) also had some purple discoloration on the back of his left hand…. The left-hand bruising, as well as the right-hand makeup, was still visible on Sunday when Trump met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago."

Benen, in a December 30 column, argues, "I can imagine a scenario in which White House officials simply said, 'Look, Trump is the oldest elected president in American history. He'll soon turn 80. Like it or not, sometimes octogenarians' hands don't look great.' But they're not saying this, at least not yet. Instead, the official line from Team Trump is that handshaking led to bruising — despite the fact that the issue is now affecting his left hand, and the president is not ambidextrous."

The MS NOW columnist and "Rachel Maddow Show" producer continues, "Complicating matters further is the broader context. This is the same president who's struggled with questions about a recent MRI — Trump has said he has 'no idea' which part of his body was scanned — which came around the same time that he appeared to fall asleep at a couple of White House events…. It's entirely possible there’s nothing to this story, but given Trump's unfortunate record, he hasn't exactly earned the benefit of the doubt on questions of medical transparency."

Steve Benen's full MS NOW column is available at this link.

This Sunday, June 14, 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump will turn 80. Some of Trump's critics find it ironic that he is about to become an octogenarian in light of how badly he mocked former President Joe Biden as "Sleepy Joe," but according to medical experts interviewed by The Independent, Trump's age isn't a problem in itself. Those experts, however, laid out the things about Trump's health that do worry them.

Independent reporter Rhian Lubin notes that Trump is "exhibiting visible symptoms typical for an octogenarian, including bruising on his hands, swollen ankles and legs and appearing to nod off during meetings and high-profile events."

"Medical experts warn, though, that it's not so much these obvious symptoms and his age that Americans should be most concerned about, but the conduct and behavior on display during his second presidency," according to Lubin.

One of the medical experts the UK-based Independent interviewed was Dr. Henry Abraham, a psychiatry professor at Tufts University School of Medicine in Massachusetts.

Abraham told The Independent, "It's not that he's 80, but let's not ignore the red flags on the field. ... If you just look at everything that he's said and done, and has been observed doing over, really, decades, certain signs and symptoms emerge which are warning flags regarding the conduct of his presidency going forward. Poor impulse control, poor control over his rage, sleeplessness at night, unrelenting aggression toward his perceived enemies. Well, put all that together and give him the nuclear football, and you can see why we're worried."

Dr. Rosanne Leipzig of New York City's Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai told The Independent that she is "not overly concerned" about things like bruising on Trump's hands.

Leipzig said of the bruising, "He's taking too much aspirin, and older people's skin gets thinner. You lose the fat underneath the skin, so you're much more likely to bruise."

Leipzig, however, laid out the things about Trump that she is concerned about.

The Icahn School of Medicine told The Independent, "His medical evaluation is a somewhat superficial way of looking at whether he is competent to hold an office. I would guess that the questions people would want answered from something like this are: Is he likely to be able to live out his term? Or is he likely to have some sort of a debilitating medical problem, a major stroke, or something like that."

Leipzig continued, "I think it's pretty clear from the test that they did that physically he appears to be — if you believe everything that's in here — in reasonable shape. The stuff that I most worry about here is the mental status exam."

President Donald Trump is headed to Walter Reed Military Hospital Tuesday for his "annual" physical that he's had four times since he took office in 2025.

CNN co-host Kate Bolduan recalled Trump's personal letter from his physician that claimed Trump would be the healthiest president in history if he's ever elected. It was later discovered that "Trump dictated that line himself."

In the ten years since, Trump and his White House have faced questions about his health as his ankles swell and bruises pop up on the back of his hands. The Trump team continues to deny there's anything wrong with Trump.

Bolduan said that physicals are not required to be released to the public. Anything that is made public comes from a leader's choice to publish it.

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, CNN medical analyst, agreed that it is mostly a tradition to be transparent about the president's health and it began with Richard Nixon after President Dwight D. Eisenhower had a heart attack. He argued that perhaps it should be legally required to release the results.

"There are so many roles in our society that require annual assessments of physical capacity. You know, pilots, secret service agents, school bus drivers, and for the chief executive of this country and the commander in chief of our armed forces, we should have a clear understanding that the president is fit for duty," said Reiner.

He also said that he's curious to see whether the exam gives "credible explanations for his visible health concerns," such as "his bruising."

Reiner recalled that the White House initially claimed it was due to "vigorous handshaking, which is not credible."

"His severe edema in his ankles severe edema in his ankles, which was described as, you know, Chronic Venous Insufficiency, when just three months before, one year ago, his examination disclosed that he had no edema, which would then make it acute venous insufficiency, which is an entirely different thing," the doctor explained.

"And finally, the president has severe daytime somnolence. He falls asleep very often. He's fallen asleep in the Oval Office on multiple occasions with people talking to him in the Cabinet Room, and was concerned yesterday that he might have fallen asleep at Arlington National Cemetery during Memorial Day observances, and chronic insomnia is a severe illness. It can result in an increase in risk of dementia, a decrease in cognitive effects in older people," he continued.

He noted that it's akin to adding three years of age to one's existing age and can even increase the possibilities of a heart attack. It can also damage mental functions and cause depression.

"So it's a real problem. And the president appears to struggle to stay awake during the day. And I'd like to hear what the White House has done to evaluate why the president has this increased daytime somnolence and what they're doing to address it," Dr. Reiner said.

Bolduan said that as the president prepares to turn 80, it isn't unusual to see medical problems.

"First of all, we've never had an adequate explanation of why the president went to Walter Reed in October for off-cycle testing. The president's team hates taking the president to Walter Reed," said Reiner. "And they only take the president there when there is testing that they need to do that cannot be accomplished at the White House."

Those Walter Reed trips, he said, are only for "something like a cat scan or an MRI scan or some other, uh, invasive modality. And we've never, it's never been adequately explained why they took the president there."

"His physician later said that he went there for preventative testing, which really makes no sense because it creates the kind of concern and speculation," Reiner explained.

President Donald Trump, who had not been seen in public for a week, appeared on a podcast with a new malady: an apparently swollen right eye — along with a recurring swollen hand.

“Trump’s right eye clearly showed puffiness and looked oddly misshapen compared to his left eye, while his right hand looked much bigger than his left,” The New Republic reported, noting the president “continues to dodge questions about his health.”

The interview with Pod Force One was taped on Tuesday, a week after Trump’s third medical checkup in 13 months, and the fourth of his second term. He told Miranda Devine, “I do physicals, because I just want, I think I have an obligation to do it, but I just came out with very, very good results, and I took a test, a cognitive test, and I got 100 percent on it. I got, as the expression goes, I aced it.”

He went on to say he has a “great memory.”

Trump, who’s quickly approaching his 80th birthday, is facing heightened scrutiny over the state of his health. The White House took several days to release doctor’s notes from his physical last week, adding to questions about his overall health.

The New Republic noted that “it’s very difficult to dispute what people can see with their own eyes, and the president’s outward physical appearance coupled with his tendency to fall asleep on camera don’t inspire confidence in his health.”

On Sunday, Axios reported that the White House physician’s health readout left “key blanks unfilled.”

The “memo from White House physician Sean Barbabella didn’t put to rest persistent questions about apparent bruising on Trump’s hands, swollen ankles and his alertness during some public events.” It “again attributed the bruising of his hands to frequent handshaking and aspirin therapy and noted ‘slight lower leg swelling’ it characterized as improved from last year.”

Bob Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told Axios, “I think it’s quite unusual for someone … who doesn’t have chronic problems that require more frequent monitoring to come in more often than every year.”

In a striking Oval Office moment Monday, President Donald Trump seemed unusually eager to shield a bruise on his hand from view. He repeatedly obscured his right hand, resting it beneath his left or even hiding both hands beneath the desk.

Earlier on Friday, public speculation had intensified following a visible patch of makeup on the president's hand.

Although the mismatched concealer that sparked speculation earlier in the week had faded, the discolored bruise remained noticeable despite his efforts, the Daily Beast reports. When he wasn’t clasping one hand over the other, Trump discreetly tucked both out of sigh. Still, during moments like signing executive orders or gesturing, the mark remained unmistakable, per the report.

READ MORE: 'Withdrawn': GOP senator jolts MAGA by saying Trump DOJ pick lacks votes for confirmation

Just a few days earlier, a heavy glob of tan concealer had been clearly apparent on his hand, its tone noticeably at odds with his natural skin tone. Trump made a similar attempt to cover it during multiple public appearances in Washington, D.C. The cosmetic choice quickly drew criticism and renewed medical curiosity.

Since February, toward the latter half of most months, photos have repeatedly shown him applying makeup to — or trying to hide — bruising on his hand.

The report further noted that the White House has consistently attributed these marks to what Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt characterized as the president’s tireless handshaking. "He meets more Americans and shakes their hands on a daily basis than any other president in history," the press secretary said in February

Trump, who turned 79 earlier this year, was diagnosed with Chronic Venous Insufficiency (CVI) in July, a condition common among those his age, in which veins struggle to return blood from the legs to the heart. The condition often results in swelling and discoloration.

READ MORE: How the worst memo in history gave us the disaster that is President Donald Trump

Both the physical signs and his cosmetic maneuvers have become emblematic of a broader debate over how illness and aging are presented, or concealed, in the public eye.