Donald Trump had nowhere to hide his chronically swollen ankles while recording a podcast on Thursday.
The 79-year-old president sat down with sports podcaster Josh Pate while stopping at a fast-food chain in Rome, Georgia, before his rally in the congressional district previously represented by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
A photo posted by Pate on X exposed Trump’s enlarged ankles bulging over the tops of his shoes as he recorded an episode with the podcaster while sitting at one of The Varsity’s single-legged tables.
“President Trump will join the show Sunday,” Pate wrote.
The aging president ordered a cheeseburger at the restaurant, according to WSB-TV Atlanta. Pate’s photo also shows two soda cups on the table.
The White House has often appeared to try to hide the president’s cankles, whether by positioning him behind low tables and props or keeping his feet out of frame in official shots.
The oldest person to assume the presidency, Trump suffers from chronic venous insufficiency, a condition common in seniors where leg veins struggle to push blood back up to the heart.
The president, who tries to cover up the chronic bruising on his hands with makeup, previously let his cankles slip as he sat down next to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, 65, at the Oval Office last week.
When reached for comment about Trump’s latest cankle sighting by the Daily Beast, a spokesperson responded with an attack.
“President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in modern American history. The only thing swollen is Erkki Forster’s stupidity that will prevent [him] from working for a legitimate news outlet,” said White House spokesperson Davis Ingle, 31, a graduate of Florida’s Southeastern University, where his father, Kent Ingle, is president.
While the White House may insist that Trump is full of energy, cameras repeatedly caught him dozing at his inaugural meeting of the “Board of Peace” earlier on Thursday, the latest in a series of public gatherings in which the elderly president appeared to nod off.
In a candid interview with The Wall Street Journal about mounting concerns surrounding his health, Trump admitted that he wore compression socks to address his cankles but stopped because “I didn’t like them.”
Trump and his aides told the Journal that the swelling in his legs had improved since he started getting up from his desk more often to walk around. Trump dismissed exercise other than golf as “boring.”
