The White House has met mounting questions about the true state of President Donald Trump’s health with a familiar response: deflect, attack, and use the f-word.
Trump, 80, has faced growing scrutiny over his mental acuity and physical fitness since he became the oldest person to be inaugurated U.S. president last year. The president’s chronically bruised hands, swollen ankles, mental flubs, and public bouts of drowsiness have all raised speculation about his health—but through it all, the White House has consistently maintained that he is the “sharpest” and most “energetic” president, while attacking anyone who raises their eyebrows.
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a CNN medical analyst and Dick Cheney’s former cardiologist, became the latest expert to express concern about Trump’s health in an op-ed for The New York Times published Wednesday.
“Despite reassurances from the White House to the contrary, at times over the past year, the president has not looked well,” he wrote. “The public is again left to wonder whether the nation’s leader is OK.”
Reiner conceded that he was not Trump’s doctor but cited images taken of “the most photographed president in American history” and “a variety of physical ailments” that are “easy to see” as the basis for his concerns.
The White House responded with an attack.
“If it quacks like a duck, it may actually just be a Democrat hack doctor,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast. Ingle, 32, and not a doctor, got his bachelor’s degree in communications and master’s degree in business administration from Southeastern University, where his father, Kent Ingle, is president and more than two-thirds of its students attend online or through extension courses at 200 “partner sites,” which do not have to be accredited.
“President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history and any so-called medical professionals engaging in armchair diagnosis or false speculation for political purposes are clearly breaking the Hippocratic Oath they’ve sworn to,” he added.
It’s a line the White House has repeatedly trotted out to the Daily Beast. We have doggedly tracked Trump’s health, including his bruising since it first appeared in February 2025—at a time when the elite media simply ignored what they could see with their own eyes.
Since then, our reporters have been regularly abused.
“President Trump is a man of the people and he meets more Americans and shakes their hands on a daily basis than any other President in history. His commitment is unwavering and he proves that every single day,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement at the time.
The White House reused this statement in response to questions about Trump’s health in March, June, August, and December last year. The president’s communications team also fell back on that same statement multiple times this year, including in February, March, May, and June.
But on several other occasions, the White House took a more aggressive approach when addressing Trump’s health.
On July 1, Trump veered wildly as he walked to Marine One.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said, “You must be f---ing blind or stupid, because that was a perfect walk.”
In fact, the statement is a recycled comment from one sent last September after Trump was noticed veering wildly as he boarded Air Force One.
That was hardly his first example of crude and obscene attempts to shoot the messenger. He attacked Democratic strategist James Carville in March last year for making speculations about Trump’s health.
“James Carville is a morally deficient parasite who has outlived his sell-by date and continues to grift off his terrible political analysis,” Cheung said. “He seems to be obsessed with sexually transmitted diseases, but he should really find some urgent care for his debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
After longtime Trump biographer Michael Wolff said the president was suffering from loneliness and paranoia, Cheung said, “Michael Wolff is the biggest moron in media. What an absolute dumba--. He needs to skip the Quaaludes for breakfast.” (The drugs were banned in 1984.)
Dr. Bruce Davison, an internal medicine and pulmonary physician, similarly drew the White House’s ire in January when he suggested that Trump likely suffered a stroke but kept it hidden from the public.
“These allegations are absolute bulls--t and perhaps even slanderous. The individual making this false claim is a left-wing nut job and Democrat activist. This fake news story should be retracted immediately,” Leavitt told the Daily Beast at the time.
In May, the White House also branded pulmonologist Dr. Vin Gupta a quack doctor for questioning the accuracy of the information about Trump’s health.
“If it quacks like a duck, it may actually just be a Democrat hack doctor,” Ingle said in a statement he would later use on Reiner. “President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history and any so-called medical professionals engaging in armchair diagnosis or false speculation for political purposes are clearly breaking the Hippocratic Oath they’ve sworn to.”
When reached for comment on this story, the White House responded with a fresh attack on the Daily Beast through an anonymous email account.
“The Daily Beast is a mentally challenged, lightweight operation that constantly peddles baseless and deranged conspiracy theories about President Trump and his Administration – which is why no one should listen to them,” Ingle said. “Hopefully the idiots who work there will eventually be able to get themselves real jobs.”
Shortly after the attack, Leavitt quit her job, without one to go to.
And it’s not just experts who get needled by the White House. Trump’s aides have also repeatedly insulted Daily Beast reporters for daring to ask questions about the president’s health.
“President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history. While the deranged and failing Daily Beast has their lightweight, glue-sniffing ‘reporters’ push baseless conspiracy theories — President Trump is working around the clock to make our country greater than ever before,” Ingle said in June. In August, he tweaked that statement to refer to Daily Beast reporters as “glue-sniffing degenerates” instead.
The White House has also found a way to point fingers at Joe Biden when discussing Trump’s health.
“President Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility stand in stark contrast to what we saw during the last administration when Democrats and the legacy media intentionally covered up Joe Biden’s serious mental and physical decline from the American people,” Ingle told the Daily Beast in May.
The White House has repeatedly attributed the bruising on Trump’s hand to frequent handshaking and his high-dose aspirin regimen. His swollen ankles have been blamed on chronic venous insufficiency, a common condition where leg veins struggle to push blood back up to the heart. And despite undergoing four medical checkups so far in his second term, Trump has maintained that all is well.
When asked directly how he felt about turning 80, Trump earlier told NBC’s Tom Llamas that he felt decades younger than he actually was.
“I feel great. I mean, physically and mentally, I feel like I did 50 years ago. It’s crazy,” he said. “Now, there’ll be a time when I won’t be able to give you that answer. But that time hasn’t come, you know.”
