Why are Trump's health rumors about more than just presidential fitness?

During his unsuccessful 2020 reelection bid, President Donald Trump often made a point of attacking rival Joe Biden's age and fitness, accusing him of hiding in a basement rather than hitting the campaign trail. Five years later, however, it's Trump who is facing health-related scrutiny after a weeklong August stretch without public events prompted mass social media speculation about the 79-year-old's condition.

Although the president has since returned to a more visible schedule of appearances, the incident has renewed a longstanding debate about Trump's health and his transparency on the topic. This is particularly salient in light of Trump's history of weaponized claims about his opponents' health and fitness for his personal and political gain.

What did the commentators say?

After "years" of his being held up as the "model of health, an exemplar of youth and a man always in his prime," there's "well-earned skepticism" about Trump's well-being, said Time. So it's "completely understandable why tin-foil conspiracists of all stripes" would have jumped on rumors of Trump’s "imminent, or possibly recent, demise."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Trump's week without public appearances "could just be taking a few days down in August," which is "normal for presidents to do," said former Biden White House aide Meghan Hays on CNN. "Or there could be actually something wrong. The problem is we don't know, and they are not being transparent about it."

Trump's circle "only has themselves to blame for this," said Chuck Todd on his Chuck Toddcast podcast. While the administration has been "not forthcoming pretty much about anything," they are "times 10" worse when it comes to Trump's personal health.

Given that the health information this White House does release is either "laughably exaggerated, so bare bones as to be equally dubious," or "only released under pressure," we should not "trust anything" being released through official channels, said journalist Garrett Graff at his "Doomsday Scenario Substack. And while Trump's health does not, at the moment, appear to constitute a news "event," it's "even more puzzling" that the "national media doesn't even treat it as a news 'story.'"

Trump's public absence and the resulting conspiracy theorizing have reignited a debate over the "sensitive issue" of the media reporting on "how healthy an aging leader of the free world actually is," said The Associated Press. While Biden "faced significant scrutiny" over his health, he was also "far less accessible to the media" and made fewer public appearances than Trump, CNN said. Trump's relative availability, in turn, may have "fueled stories" across news outlets, "acknowledging the online hubbub and offering facts about Trump's weekend plans."

The furor over Trump's health is akin to the "many times the internet has gone wild with the Putin is dead and Xi is dead rumors," said political scientist Ian Bremmer on X. That the U.S. experienced something similar "says a lot more about the state of mistrust in information and institutions in the United States than it does about the health of the president."

What next?

Questions about Trump's health are "fake news" and proof of "why the media has so little credibility," the president said during a press conference on Tuesday. But a series of YouGov polls published the same day suggest otherwise: 38% of respondents said Trump's health and age "severely limit his ability to do the job," while 52% of respondents said they trusted the White House's health announcements "only a little" or "not at all."

Trump's press conference this week, coupled with a flurry of activity on his Truth Social account, has managed to "somewhat quell rampant speculation" about his health, said Vanity Fair. But, said internet culture reporter Taylor Lorenz to the publication, "these things snowball, and it's like a pressure valve." When someone as media savvy and omnipresent as Trump "drops out of view for days," said Margaret Sullivan at The Guardian, "that's fair game."