President Donald Trump, 79, flashed a glimpse of his perpetually bloated ankles during a high-profile Oval Office meeting with King Charles III.
As the near-octogenarian president sat with the King of the United Kingdom, 77, during the second day of his state visit to the U.S. on Tuesday, photographers snapped multiple photos showing his swollen cankles inside the Oval Office.
The president’s puffy ankles are a common symptom of chronic venous insufficiency, which he was diagnosed with last July. Trump told The Wall Street Journal in a January report that he briefly wore compression socks to help treat the ailment, but stopped after a while because he “didn’t like them.”
Reached for comment, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast in a frequently recycled statement: “President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in modern American history. The only thing swollen is Vic Verbalaitis’ stupidity that will prevent him from working for a legitimate news outlet.”
Ingle, 32, is a communications graduate of Florida’s Southeastern University, where his father, Kent Ingle, is president. SEU boasts that more than two-thirds of its students attend online or through extension courses at 200 “partner sites,” which do not have to be accredited.
In March, Trump’s bulging cankles appeared front and center at several Oval Office meetings with major world leaders: the first with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, again with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, and then a third time with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
However, the president has kept his swollen ankles mostly out of the limelight throughout April.
As King Charles III and Queen Camilla first visited the White House on Monday, Trump slathered both his hands in makeup to conceal their dark, purplish discoloration.
The president’s non-dominant left hand—his “good” hand, unperturbed by “frequent handshaking,” as the White House commonly attributes the bruising on his right hand—featured a beige coat of foundation along with his dominant hand.
Trump has said that his hands bruising easily stems from his high-dosage daily aspirin regimen of 325 milligrams, which is four times the dosage generally recommended by physicians.
It’s “good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” he told the Journal in January.
The Daily Beast has vigorously covered the president’s various ailments, which also include his bouts of confusion, his public sleeping fits, his slurred speech, and his surprise neck rash.
