As someone who has to look up and use recent photos of Donald Trump for this job, I consistently find it interesting that Trump’s second term is not photographed as much as his first. I suspect it’s mostly to do with limiting the press pool, and having fewer photographers around the White House in general. I also suspect that most photo agencies simply are not buying as many Trump photos, which gives the impression that people are just sick of seeing his ugly orange mug. But there’s a third reason why there are fewer photos, in my opinion: Trump looks like haggard ass these days. His physical decline was noticeable throughout last year’s campaign, but his health and appearance fell off a cliff this year. Bloated, sagging, glassy-eyed, slumped, dinosaur-assed, wigs akimbo, makeup smeared, and his ankles have ballooned to twice their old size. Not only that, but something is going on with his hands:
both of these photos of Trump's hand were taken today (Getty) pic.twitter.com/oeBKYsq8TG
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 23, 2025
Once these photos came out, a handful of reporters tried in vain to get answers about Trump’s health:
President Donald Trump’s hand was coated in a thick layer of makeup on Friday as he ventured out from the White House amid ongoing health questions. The president, 79, has used makeup to cover bruising on his right hand on multiple occasions since he retook office. But its appearance and lack of blending during his Friday stop at The People’s House exhibit down the street from the White House were particularly noticeable.
“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,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in a statement Friday.
“His commitment is unwavering and he proves that every single day,” she added. It was a similar line from the White House, which had previously attributed the bruise to the president’s serial handshaking. Just last night, the president was out in Washington, D.C., shaking hands with law enforcement officials as he stopped by for some pizza amid his crime crackdown on the nation’s capital.
But while the White House has touted its transparency, it has been evasive at times about the president’s health when pressed with questions about his swollen ankles and bruised hand. Last month, the White House revealed the president had been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency (CVI). It’s a common condition in people of the president’s age and, according to Trump’s doctor, one explanation for the bruising.
It’s really gotten to a North Korean-propaganda-level with the Trump White House. At some point, he’s going to pass out or stroke out in the middle of a press conference and Karoline Leavitt will be sent out to say “nothing to see here, our Dear Leader is in perfect health and will serve the rest of his term from bed, which is perfectly normal!”
It’s very conspicuous rewatching this that Trump is desperately trying to hide the back of his right hand from the camera https://t.co/gDXwiIalfh
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 23, 2025
Photos courtesy of Getty.
He is a very sick f**k in more ways than one!
My bet is some kind of needle mark due to a perfusion.
If he takes a blood thinner like Coumadin, that would account for dark “bruises” . People take blood thinning medications to lower their risk of stroke, heart attack, or life-threatening clotting events.
My dad was on coumadin and had terrible bruises on his hands and arms. The Orange Sh*t-stain likely has congestive heart failure.
I take Coumadin and have no bruises. Why does it cause bruises? My blood is pretty thin too. The doctors can’t get it where they want it.
Somebody has noticed that this bruising happens between the 20th & 24th of every month and have posited monthly infusions or transfusions of something.
And @TOM: sure, you get these stupid ‘bruises’ on your hands & forearms all the time from taking blood thinners (happens to me, I hate them), but they don’t show up in the same place & the same size over & over again. Leavitt is lying, it’s not from handshaking.
Seriously, the handshaking excuse again? I had no idea it was such a full-contact sport.
Could no one on his staff tell him that the makeup didn’t match his skin tone? Ah, well. I love this for him.
I’m not a doctor, but I’m working in biomedical research affiliated with a large university hospital.
Of course the way the 🟠 buffoon comes across is being speculated on, even here, somewhere in central Europe.
Felon47 looks like he could be suffering from congestive heart failure, and everything that goes with it, including, eventually, cognitive decline.
I highly doubt the truth will ever come out though.
But his chosen successor, the guylined Divan Interventionist, is much worse than anyone in the current maladministration. Because he’s cruel and ruthless on top of everything else.
I agree with the CHF. My dad and my FIL both went through hell with it (thankfully their symptoms are pretty well-controlled now), but the thought of Trump suffering the same absolutely delights me. His every waking moment should be pain and terror.
Someone get the man a Big Mac meal.
My father died of complications from CHF in 2015. The swelling in Trump’s hands and ankles looks very much like the fluid collection my dad dealt with in the last years of his life.
‘…the guylined Divan Interventionist’–perfect description of vance!!!! Also, yeah, sure, he may be better education than trump but nobody is going to follow him over a cliff the way they would for trump.
He’s already got cognitive decline; I’m not sure that would be a noticeable new symptom for him.
Counting the days till he finally shuffles off to his mortal coil.
But Vance is not the cult leader and that matters. In any case, this kind of commentary is immaterial and discourages anti Trump action. The US has to deal with the problem at hand and then take things as they come.
Just as important in media now is the presentation of military invasion of American cities as “crime crackdown.” That’s false, it’s propaganda. Pay attention and please do not repeat that language.
Yes, the Daily Beast framed that just the way the regime wants it framed. It’s a military takeover of a majority minority American city where crime is decreasing. And even if it weren’t, it is against the law to send the military to perform police functions.
I don’t know any in depth info about other cities but I live in Los.Angeles County and I know what happened here. The City of LA is approximately 500 square miles. LA County is 4000+ square miles. The civil unrest here (which Trump described as catastrophic) was limited to a 1 mile area in downtown LA. The vision of the troops at the VA complex in Westwood near UCLA was absurd. It was, in essence, a coffee klatch. There was literally ZERO going on. For miles!!
DC already has many police forces in the city including metropolitan police, Capitol police, park police, secret service and DEA. Any one of them can arrest you. Sending in the military to a city rife with police is ridiculous and the media should be reporting that.
@Megan As a child of Holocaust Survivors, I was taught to always be on the lookout for the next holocaust. I find all of this to be ridiculous as well as frightening
Thank you so much for saying this. It’s what hit me most from the story.
Jesus, it’s time for journalists to tell it like it is.
The troops are in DC as a fascist show of force and intimidation tactic against perceived enemies.
One thing to realize is that Trump has no legal ground to go in and “fight crime” in Chicago. In LA the legal reasoning was that the troops are backing up ICE doing immigration enforcement (federal law). DC has a home rule back door that allows the President to federalize law enforcement. There is no legal way for him to send federal troops into Illinois to enforce state and local laws. States are sovereign in terms of their own laws. Other state’s National Guard troops going into Illinois without the Governor’s permission would be an invasion. And Pritzger, the governor of Illinois (and an actual billionaire, BTW) effin hates Trump and isn’t afraid to let everyone know.
Bad times ahead. But Chicago is différent from DC and LA. Let people know.
Everything they said about Biden was projection. He hasn’t been healthy or mentally competent in years. They just excuse his word salad stupidity which they did not do for others.
The way his medical condition has been a total lie from the start is insane.
Vance is not great either, but he doesn’t have the personality cult behind him. A lot of people hate him and will pushback in a way they won’t for mafia moron.
Pretending like Joe Biden was some pillar of health is pretty silly too. America needs to get its shit together and stop electing old senile men. Seriously.
I don’t disagree that the US needs to start electing younger candidates but, that said, Biden was a career politician and he is not, and never was, senile. Aging? Sure. Senile? No.
Biden was not senile. He could explain foreign policy and not sound like a god damn idiot.
Did he look older over time? Sure. Did he have less energy? Sure. But that’s aging.
This orange monster is spouting incomprehensible nonsense. His stupidity over tariffs is destroying the American economy but his sheep are too dumb to realize it. And he’s a mean old monster looking worse every day.
He wasn’t senile, he was just old. He was a lifelong stutterer, which obviously doesn’t get better with age, but his cognition was sharp as ever. The man went on long bike rides, for heaven’s sake! trump can’t even waddle to his golf cart!!!! 🤨
If you want to bitch about who Americans elect, you can take your bitching to the Republicans who not only elect old white men consistently but they elect old, white, DUMB men who only get dumber and more bigoted as they age.
@Sophia, this just shows you haven’t actually paid real attention to Biden. He exercises regularly, his cognition is actually great. He had a bad debate because and his stutter kicked in (which is NOT an indicator of decline, and would be ableist af if anyone implied it is) and people started screaming that he was senile. He wasn’t. But y’all bought that bs and are still running with it. Meanwhile we have someone who is in actual decline in the Oval Office.
I never hear people speaking like this about Bernie, who’s also old AND had a heart attack while campaigning. They’re not even questioning his associations in Russia and his relationship with Gabbard. Meanwhile he’s not done anything significant in 30 years and is still traveling the country blaming Dems. Total silence, yet folks are still running with the nonsense that Biden is in decline.
PS Trump is cruel and ruthless. They are all cruel and ruthless.
I suspect Vance’s unpopularity and mockable personality is why the regime is hanging onto Trump while they consolidate power. They may have to roll him out on a gurney soon.
The MAGA faithful would pull a Weekend at Bernie’s.
I vaguely remember an interview with Ivanka where she spoke about how Donald insists on doing his own hair and makeup, his idea being that if he does it himself then people will think it’s natural because nobody can claim to be his makeup artist or hair stylist? Also, it’s not very “alpha” to complain about your hands being bruised from mere handshakes. I wonder why they can’t do venipuncture in his arms? If I was a POTUS very concerned about my image, I would have my blood drawn from veins in my feet before I smeared clay or whatever that is all over my hands, that would be much easier to hide.
Really. Though it confirms how hard it is to find the right concealer.
Thanks for the laugh!
The back of the hand is plan B when you don’t have a usable vein in your arm. And that in itself is a telling sign of cardiovascular heath.
It’s probably not a blood draw; it’s probably an IV.
Whether IV for meds or a blood draw, you need a vein.
@Nick, yes, but size matters, depending on what you’re doing. A blood draw uses a much smaller needle and can use a much smaller vein. It would not leave a bruise like that, unless he has a clotting issue (which he very well might have).
With CHF like that, he’s probably getting IV diuretics.
Where tf is Jake Tapper when you need him? And, Kaiser, you should get a medal for being forced to look at so many photos of that awful, butt ugly creature day after day. Thank you for your service. 🥇
Yes exactly. They had to do whole damn book about Biden but this is an actual emergency and they are saying nothing.
On Reddit or facebook every time there’s something like this that’s what I say. Where’s Tapper? Even if you 100% believe everything about Biden there wasn’t the point to warn against ignoring mental and physical decline in a potus? But it’s crickets.
No one in his orbit knows how to color blend? I think that is an even bigger indicator of where we are in this hellscape. That fool (I won’t invoke his name) has been looking more and more unkempt and disheveled every day. You can see it from the little things. His hair has been a mess. They’re not spending the same time laying every strand in place and gluing it down. Now he’s been wearing his stupid cult hats a lot more. The mismatched makeup, the cankles…. he’s in worse shape than we thought. Add to that his ruminations on his chances of getting into heaven….
I don’t know. Is he telling us something? He’s always projecting….Maybe he sees the writng on the wall.
OMG, you’re right! Those stupid trucker hats are for covering up his hair!!! He’s not mr. sophisticated New Yorker, he’s Mr. Cracker Barrel at the truck stop guy!!!!! 🤣. Maybe Prince William can lend him his valet, since he’s not doing much right now.
And what’s all the stuff about how bad he smells? Who’s taking care of him and his diapers?
The man must have pretty bad congestive heart failure. Med management isn’t doing a great job, probably because he’s non-adherent to medical advice (low salt diets, etc.) and there’s only so much diuretics can do. He’s overloading his heart. Also, his IV techs must hate him, if they keep sticking him where the bruise can’t hide.
What are your feelings about a picc line? In ER when no one could access a vein post trauma, a picc line was placed in my upper right arm. It was great. In ICU, lab was drawn from it and it was used to keep my blood pressure up and give me iv fluids . No needle sticks ever. This man has access to the best care available and I was in a small town hospital.
I think @bisynaptic has got it right–those IV techs hate him. If they work at Walter Reed Hospital–which is where I believe presidents are always taken–they’re likely a black person. Or is he demanding white people only? How does that work for a racist POS like trump? Or is that why he’s always going down to MAL for his monthly treatments? But there, well, your average medical person is likely going to have a Latinx last name, speak with an accent, and be of Puerto Rican or Cuban heritage. What to do, what to do. 🙄
@Libra, I don’t know enough about Trump’s condition to comment on the advisability of a PICC line, but I doubt he would accede to one—or any permanent port—readily. It would have to be end-stage management, for him.
@Beanie, 🎯
This is to reply to @Brassy Rebel, when you say, “ suspect Vance’s unpopularity and mockable personality is why the regime is hanging onto Trump while they consolidate power. They may have to roll him out on a gurney soon.” First: 100% agree. Co-sign. But also? Quite chilling. Shiver down spine. Cause that’s exactly what’s happening. “The regime” has had some sad sack moments before but nothing like this. They have had power struggles and the odd murder but by and large we’ve lived in a democracy that is running a global military / corporate establishment (call it empire 2.0) with a minimum of overlap in that Venn Diagram, as Kamala Harris would have called it. Rome managed the same duality and so did the UK. But the network at the top was a lot tighter in both cases. This is —- new. And not in a good way. If Obama was the perfect person for this job — giving the deep state everything it wanted, and doing the same for the majority of registered voters, whilst keeping the two apart, in sealed compartments — this guy is basically doing the opposite. Giving the national security state nothing it really wants, actively frustrating its plans, on all fronts, and pissing off ever so many registered voters. At some point, we’re going to have a third party break through the Overton Window and then all bets are off. I can’t *wait.*
His minders are all outta fucks, eh?
My question is when TACO is dragged back to hell, will the MAGA cult members reprogram spontaneously or combust. I just don’t see them switching their allegiance to any one else. If you look at videos of them talking about him, they have dead eyes.
I saw a post on Twitter about Trump saying he needs to win a peace deal as a way to get into heaven. 😆 Even he suspects he might be going to hell.
A lot of them tolerate Vance because of orange monster. It’s a personality cult tied to him. Not even his kids.
God knows what will happen when Trump finally shuffles off this mortal coil but the one thing that won’t happen is his kids assuming the throne! They think they will, they sure talk as if they expect the Trumps to be a family dynasty but I don’t see that happening. His kids are in for a rude awakening when Trump is gone. The cult dies with him.
Damn he looks rough. Looks like another week of America’s favourite Governor tearing him apart on social media is taking its toll. I love that this man is literally in meme hell right now.
Gov. Newsom has figured out the formula. Tim Waltz had it for a minute but got muzzled by the Democratic Party. Ridicule is this man’s kryptonite. It weakens him and his supporters. We saw that in real time when VP Harris pointed out his declining rally attendances at the debate. He literally lost his shit live it was as if she flipped a switch and sent him chasing her laser pointer for the rest of the debate. He couldn’t focus after that. He looked shook. Just pointing out people were leaving his rallies out of boredom had this effect, imagine how he is feeling being trolled relentlessly.
Gov. Newsom is doing the Lord’s work right now, and the fact that he is handsome, taller than the dude, and insulting him in his own language? Perfection! Do not let up. This is the only way to weaken him. And he looks hellah weak right now.
Obama making fun of him at the correspondents dinner had him mad forever. Crushing that baby’s ego should be goal number one.
Yep. Point & laugh, every time. Dude is decomposing before our eyes.
Yes Nic919 and BeanieBean! Newsom is all out of you know whats to give. And that’s what it is gonna take here. Screw decorum! Democracy is on the line.
Looks like thin tape rather than makeup, with a rectangular bandage underneath covering the site of a port or needle wound.
I wondered that too but if you zoom in you can see the makeup on his shirt cuff.
I just zoomed in and you can definitely see that in the photo on the left, there is makeup covering a rectangular bandage of some sort. It looks like the area of discoloration on his hand is larger than the area of the bandage hence the sloppy attempt to cover the entire area with makeup.
Not that important, but jesus – the hat, no tie, etc etc.
Remember the faux-rage when Obama was photographed tie-less in the Oval Office where he was working on a Sunday?
Simpler times.
That bruise on his hand must be getting larger as the foundation/concealer now covers 75% of the back of his hand. Also, Daily Fail had a close up of the bruised hand. But what was interesting is the two thumbnails appeared bluish? Cyanosis? I have noticed that he does, at times, appear out of breath when he speaks. Unless he’s just affecting a sigh.
Whatever is going on, I hope it’s awful and painful.
Hard agree
Saw a video from a doctor who treats people with CHF…he’s giving Kankles McTacoTits 6-8 months at most. The doctor’s take on his comment about going to heaven & “they say I’m not doing well” is that was referencing what the MDs are saying about his health.
Not sure what anyone else is planning for the day when this actually happens but I’m taking off work for a week and having a block party…
There will be dancing in the streets. My street, anyway.
SOOO much dancing. And I will also be cackling with glee.
Go Newsom, Go. Love that he’s living rent free in cankles mctaco tits head.
I too, will be dancing. Dancing in the streets!