Jake Tapper has finally accused the White House of hiding the truth about Donald Trump’s health.
“There is something going on with his health that they’re not telling us,” Tapper judged on CNN’s The Lead Thursday after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt gave a bizarre explanation for the president’s bruised hand.
Leavitt, 28, was cornered by the Daily Beast’s Farrah Tomazin about the bruising and bandages and Trump’s claim he has passed three cognitive tests, at a White House briefing Thursday. The Daily Beast has been reporting on his obvious public frailty for months before other outlets including CNN finally began to follow.
According to Leavitt, the bruising that appears seemingly overnight is due to the occupational hazards of being in charge.
“The President is literally constantly shaking hands. The Oval Office is like Grand Central Terminal. He is meeting with more people than any of you even know about on a daily basis,” she said.
“He’s also on a daily aspirin regimen, which is something his physical examinations has said in the past as well, which can contribute to that bruising that we see.”
While the CNN anchor had not previously commented on 79-year-old Trump’s health, Tapper, who himself wrote a book about Joe Biden’s declining health, finally spoke up to say that he didn’t hear the ring of truth in Leavitt’s explanation.
“First of all, we haven’t seen bruising like this on the hands of other presidents who also presumably shake a lot of hands, or senators,” he pointed out.
The anchor later added that the White House blamed bruising on handshaking back in July, despite Trump himself saying that he doesn’t like shaking hands as a greeting.
Republican Alyssa Farrah Griffin seemed similarly unconvinced by the party line, and suggested that the administration needed to give a clear statement about the president’s medical status.
“These questions are going to continue to dog him. These questions that the public has about this MRI that he got. I think that there’s going to have to be a better answer,” she said.
“What happens with this, we’ve seen it before, is the rumors and the speculation must take on a life of their own if there’s not some sort of a clear medical answer.”
David Axelrod likened the situation to former President Joe Biden’s health struggles, which were not made public. “How about the truth? How about facts? That would be good,” he said, after asserting that questions “should be raised now because clearly something’s going on.”
“Yes. And—and obviously, you know, Biden is—what happened with Biden is instructive. We need to know more," Tapper said.
Tapper was speaking from experience, having published the book Original Sin alongside fellow journalist Alex Thompson earlier this year. In the book, the duo claims that a small group within the White House knew that Biden was not fit for office but did not share that information with American citizens.
One tract from the book reads: “Biden, his family, and his team let their self-interest and fear of another Trump term justify trying to put an at times addled old man in the Oval Office for four more years.”
