This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 2 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
If you happened to peek at social media at any point over the last few days, you may have seen people speculating, without evidence, that something bad happened to Donald Trump.
Now, it’s true that, until Tuesday, the president had not spoken publicly in a week, and this past weekend, his public schedule was very light, with a lot of time on the golf course.
So the rumor mill started turning. People shared images of a small bruise on the president’s hand, which is not uncommon for a man his age. Others shared photos showing what outlets like The Daily Beast have referred to as Trump’s “cankles.” Again, there’s a non-life-threatening medical explanation for that. Trump has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a common condition that can cause intense swelling of the ankles. The hashtags #TrumpIsDead and #WhereIsTrump even started to trend on X.
The rumors managed to get enough traction that Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz seemed to acknowledge them at a Labor Day event on Monday. “You get up in the morning and you doom-scroll through things, and although I will say this, you woke up the last few days thinking there might be news,” Walz said to laughs in the crowd. “Just saying, just saying. There will be news sometime, just so you know. There will be news.”
Even Trump allies like Alex Jones have been speculating about his poor health in recent weeks. Jones said the president appeared to be “declining, faster and faster.”
In the end, all the rumor-mongering and speculation appear, at least for now, to be totally baseless. On Tuesday, Trump made his first public appearance in a week, announcing from the Oval Office that the headquarters of U.S. Space Command will be relocated from Colorado to Alabama.
At that Oval Office event, the president was asked about the rumors. At first, Trump claimed he “didn’t see” the online speculation, but then admitted the rumors were “sort of crazy.” “But last week I did numerous news conferences — all successful,” the president continued. “They went very well, like this is going, very well, and then I didn’t do any for two days, and they said there must be something wrong with him.” There you have it. The president of the United States is alive and well, his typical self. But while the online speculation over the long weekend turned out to be just that, the growing curiosity about Trump’s well-being might be a bit understandable, considering that this White House has not given us any reason to trust what it says on just about anything — especially when it comes to the health of a man who is the oldest ever to take the oath of office.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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