General Discussion

While it’s possible that there was no cause for concern, Trump’s unfortunate record made it difficult to give him and his team the benefit of the doubt. It was against this backdrop that the president spoke to The Wall Street Journal about these questions, and his comments advanced the story in weird and unexpected ways. From the report:

President Trump is taking more aspirin than his doctors recommend. He briefly tried wearing compression socks for his swelling ankles, but stopped because he didn’t like them. And he regrets undergoing advanced imaging because it generated scrutiny of his health.

‘In retrospect, it’s too bad I took it because it gave them a little ammunition,’ Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on his decision to get a cardiovascular and abdominal scan in October.

Broadly speaking, there are a handful of key takeaways from the reporting and interview......

The president, the Journal went on to report, “has at times eschewed the advice of his doctors and scoffed at the medical community’s widely accepted health recommendations.” This is especially true when it comes to aspirin, which he chooses to take daily and which apparently causes him to bruise easily. In fact, the president acknowledged applying makeup to his hands to obscure discoloration.

“His skin is so delicate that Pam Bondi, now his attorney general, caused his hand to bleed when she nicked him with her ring while giving him a high-five at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee,” the article noted......

Stepping back, the president’s comments were hardly out of character. Throughout his decadelong political career, Trump has repeatedly expressed his disdain for science and medical evidence on everything from the climate crisis to vaccines to Covid-19 treatments, so it stands to reason that Mr. Inject Disinfectants is going to prioritize his superstitions and baseless assumptions about “nice, thin blood” over the recommendations of those who know what they’re talking about.

The trouble is, this is the same president who believes he has the credibility and expertise needed to give the public guidance on, among other things, how much Tylenol to take and what child vaccination schedules should look like.

In other words, Trump’s comments to the Journal weren’t just important in their own right, they were also a timely reminder to the public that his judgment on matters related to health are better left ignored.