On Monday night, The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah probed one of the more curious news stories of the week: President Trump’s impromptu visit to the hospital.
“You realize right now, the four biggest [2020] contenders have a combined age of 297 years old—and 299 if you include Buttigieg,” Noah joked. “Now, while Bernie was recovering from a heart attack and Biden was fighting the narrative of memory loss, Trump has been impervious to the age discussion because, despite his lifestyle, Trump has been freakishly healthy, never needing to even see a doctor—until now.” (Note: Trump is by no means “freakishly healthy.”)
Yes, Trump had what media outlets have called an “unconventional visit” to Walter Reed Medical Center for what the White House insists was for an “annual physical” but happened less than a year before the last one and did not follow the usual protocols of having the White House announce the plans ahead of time. And Trump, for his part, tried to explain away the surprise visit by tweeting, “began phase one of my yearly physical. Everything very good (great!) Will complete next year.”
Noah didn’t exactly buy it. “Yes, this weekend, President Trump made a surprise visit to the hospital and nobody knows why. Was it a health emergency or did he need to get a marble removed from his nose again? We don’t know,” he cracked. “And this story became super suspicious when Trump tweeted that he just popped in to the hospital to do ‘phase one’ of his annual physical. That’s not a thing! You’re not like, yeah, today we can just cup the balls and in March I’ll come back and cough!”
“Now, because nobody trusts this White House, everyone is wildly speculating about what actually happened,” the comic continued. “Did Trump have a heart problem or a stroke? And if Trump did have a stroke, how could you even be able to tell? No, because the symptoms of a stroke are slurred speech, confusion and erratic behavior. For Trump, that’s a Tuesday!”
“We also know that if something was horribly wrong with Trump, the White House would just pretend like everything was normal,” he added. “Like, Trump could come back with both arms amputated and his press secretary would come out like, this is just a standard checkup. The president’s arms have always been brooms—he uses them to clean up Washington, D.C.”