Nearly half of Americans suspect that Donald Trump is concealing serious health issues, according to a recent poll. At 78 years and seven months, Trump would be the oldest person ever sworn in as president. Yet, despite his age and mounting red flags, he continues to dodge calls for transparency.
A resounding 62 percent of respondents agree that all presidents should release full medical information that could impact their ability to serve. Trump refuses.
The concerns aren’t speculative—they’re clinical. The evidence that Trump has dementia is “overwhelming,” says Dr. Lance Dodes, a top psychiatrist, former Harvard Medical School professor, and supervising analyst emeritus of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.
● “Unlike normal aging, which is characterized by forgetting names or words, Trump repeatedly shows something very different: confusion about reality,” Dodes said, citing Trump’s bizarre tendency to conflate Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
● New York psychologist Suzanne Lachmann concurs. Trump, she observed, would “seemingly forget how the sentence began and invent something in the middle,” resulting in what she describes as “an incomprehensible word salad” — a common symptom of dementia.
● Psychologist and former Johns Hopkins University Medical School professor John Gartner has gone further, circulating a petition asserting that Trump is “showing unmistakable signs strongly suggesting dementia.”
Still, the public hears the refrain: “Trump appears robust.” But that illusion is undercut by the facts.
The GOP’s Transparent Hypocrisy
While Senate Republicans launch performative hearings into Biden’s mental acuity, as detailed in Original Sin, they remain conspicuously silent about the glaring signs of Trump’s decline. Their selective outrage reeks of bad faith and partisan manipulation.
Consider this: Trump fell asleep during his own criminal trial, where he was ultimately convicted of a felony. The silence from the right was deafening.
By the end of his second term, Trump would be well into his 80s — older than any president in U.S. history. Meanwhile, experts in aging and geriatric medicine are raising alarm bells, urging his medical team to provide a full and honest account of his condition.
“Looks Can Be Deceiving”
Dr. Louise Aronson, an acclaimed aging expert writing in The Atlantic, warns against equating Trump’s bluster with vitality. “Trump appears robust,” she wrote, “but looks can be deceiving.” She emphasized that advanced age brings hidden risks — from cardiovascular disease to cognitive impairment — that Trump’s doctors have an ethical duty to disclose.
Her commentary is a scathing indictment of the superficial narratives surrounding Trump’s health. She rightly notes that Trump’s lifestyle, devoid of exercise and long marked by obesity, significantly raises the likelihood of serious age-related conditions. Even his shuffling gait and visible muscle weakness suggest a decline in his functional abilities.
Aronson recommends that his doctors track key metrics, such as grip strength and walking speed — standard measures in geriatric assessments. And crucially, she insists Trump’s team must engage in contingency planning for possible health crises.
“Trump’s doctors should help him reflect on what kinds of health events might impair his ability to lead — and what contingency planning should be in place,” she wrote. “It’s their ethical duty to ask these difficult questions.”
The Presidential History of Concealment
Trump needs two wobbly hands to drink out of a bottle.
Trump isn’t the first president to obscure grave health problems — but that’s no excuse. As Aronson argues, both Trump and Biden have drawn bipartisan criticism for minimizing or hiding significant medical information.
The historical record is sobering:
● Woodrow Wilson suffered a catastrophic stroke in 1919 at age 62 that left him partially paralyzed and unable to govern. This was kept hidden from the public and Congress. He died five years later.
● Franklin D. Roosevelt, stricken by polio at 39, concealed the extent of his paralysis throughout his presidency, instructing photographers not to capture him in a wheelchair. He died at age 63.
● Dwight D. Eisenhower had a heart attack at age 65. Initially dismissed as indigestion, it was later diagnosed — and his staff obscured the true severity to preserve his political standing. He died at age 78 — Trump’s current age.
As Aronson concludes, “The public deserves honesty about the physical and cognitive capacity of its president. And the president deserves care that reflects the gravity of his role, not just his age.”
The danger isn’t that Trump is old. It’s that he is old, unwell, unexamined — and unwilling to be honest about any of it.
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