President Donald Trump has addressed the increasingly dark bruising on his hands, insisting he is feeling “very good” as speculation grows over his health.
The bruising was on full display as Trump attended the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, with the marks on his left hand especially notable.
Asked about them on his way back to Washington - and whether he was OK - Trump replied: “Very good.”
“I clipped them on a table, so I put a little, what do they call it, the cream on it. But I clipped it,” he said.
The president’s comments double down on the White House’s earlier explanation that the bruising on his left hand stemmed from him hitting it on the signing table during a Board of Peace event in Davos.
“At the Board of Peace event today in Davos, President Trump hit his hand on the corner of the signing table, causing it to bruise,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
But as he headed home on Thursday evening, the president also attributed the bruise to his unusual aspirin regimen, which involves taking a daily 325mg aspirin dose of the drug - much higher than the low-dose (81mg) often recommended for heart health.
Trump has declined to switch because he has been taking the higher dose for 25 years, telling the Wall Street Journal in an interview this month: “I’m a little superstitious.”
Speaking aboard Air Force One on Thursday evening, he told reporters: “I would say, take aspirin if you like your heart, but don’t take aspirin if you don’t want to have a little bruising.”
“I take the big aspirin, and when you take the big aspirin, they tell you you’ll bruise. The doctor said: ‘you don’t have to take that, sir, you’re very healthy’. I said, I’ll take it anyway.”
Trump’s bruising - initially on his right hand - first became apparent in February last year when he welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron to the White House for a bilateral meeting.
The images of the bruises caked in makeup were plastered across the news and social media, forcing the White House to give what would soon become a familiar “explanation”: Trump’s frequent handshaking.
“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,” Leavitt insisted at the time.
A few months later, after photos showed what appeared to be visible swelling around his ankles and lower legs, the White House revealed he had been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency (CVI), a common circulatory condition in older adults that can cause leg swelling.
But since then, other signs have sparked ongoing speculation about his health. On a number of occasions, the president has appeared to doze off during Cabinet meetings and public events.
He also increasingly confuses names or dates - including this week when he repeatedly mixed up “Greenland” with “Iceland” during his speech at the World Economic Forum.
And his trademark long-winded tangents are becoming even longer, with this week’s Davos speech veering into bizarre segues on everything from wind farms to racist rants about Somali “pirates”.
“I think that the president has been acting in increasingly erratic ways,” Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said after Trump’s speech in Davos on Wednesday.
“I think it is really damning when we think about the degree to which mass media outlets reported on Joe Biden, and you know, that resulted in the Democratic Party changing its nominee,” she added.
Trump, however, insists he is in great shape for his age, and often brags about “acing” three cognitive tests, which are widely used as screening tests for dementia.
But this month, in a somewhat rare occurrence, he reflected on his own mortality, telling an audience in Detroit: “I’m probably old.”
“I used to be up to these lecterns and I’d say I’m younger than pretty much everybody in the room,” he said, sounding somewhat melancholy.
“Now I say I’m older than pretty much everybody. I like it the other way better, actually.”
