Forget the orange makeup, the newly grey hair hovering like a bruise above his scalp, and the slits for eyes; the real tell on Donald Trump is below the knee.
His ankles, swollen and straining over his Oxfords, aren’t just unsightly “cankles”; they’re flashing neon signs of a body under pressure. In medical terms, that puffiness often means venous or even cardiac insufficiency, the circulation slowing, the blood not moving as it should. These are not the hinges of stamina that can run a presidential marathon, but the hinges of a retiree glued to his La-Z-boy, feet up and watching Fox News all day.
We’ve already seen this movie when it starred President Joe Biden. The stumbles, the shuffling, the vacant stares, all dismissed until his catastrophic debate meltdown, when the country suddenly realized the emperor had no recall. The press tiptoed around the obvious: he was too old. Then, boom. Reality hit on live TV.
A year later, we’re watching the sequel. Now it’s Trump’s turn under the unflattering fluorescent lights of mortality. He’s 79, a number closer to octogenarian shuffleboard than to nuclear brinkmanship. Just this week, he twice announced he was “going to Russia,” clearly confused about where his hastily scrambled Alaskan summit with President Putin was taking place. The confusion persisted. On Air Force One, he told Brett Baier he was a “deal guy,” and if things didn’t work with Putin he’d “come back to the United States” and work on other things, as if peace in Europe could be abandoned llike a casino in Atlantic City.
He’s already forgotten his conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders, who earlier this week were promised a ceasefire. And in the last fortnight, he’s started mixing up names, referring to his head of homeland security Kristi Noem, as Cristie Kerr, the name of an LPGA golfer. During a White House event with Tim “Apple” Cook, Trump thanked his commerce secretary Howard Lutnick “wherever you may be”.
“I’m right behind you,” said a startled Lutnick. Last month at a ceremonial signing of a veteran’s bill, Trump paused to acknowledge the bill’s sponsor, Congressman Derrick Van Orden, asking “Where’s Derrick? Where’s Derrick?”
“I’m here, sir.” Said Van Orden, standing right next to him. Embarassing. The decline is as obvious as the white eye circles protected from his spray tan.
Trump’s camp knows it too. Karoline Leavitt has dusted off Karine Jean-Pierre’s old binder of excuses: the president is “working very hard… “every day is a test…” “the bruises come from shaking hands…” Sound familiar?
Age matters in the Oval Office. The job is a high-stress centrifuge, spinning out younger men in six months with gray hair and crow’s feet. Obama grayed, Clinton ballooned, Reagan drifted. But 79? That’s beyond the actuarial horizon.
For Biden, the tell was the papery whisper, frozen smile, and multiple face-plants. For Trump, it’s the gait, the new halo of fat around his neck, and the laborious climb up the stairs of Air Force One, gripping the railing, puffing like an aging club pro on the back nine.
This isn’t age-shaming; it’s reality-shaming. To ignore what’s obvious is political malpractice. The press flinched with Biden. We cannot do the same with Trump, dismissing senior moments as “gaffes” or just “Trump being Trump.”
We shouldn’t need another public collapse to admit the obvious: Donald Trump is old, and showing it. His cankles may be an unglamorous tell, but they’re telling us a lot. Biden had less than a year to go on his contract when the slippage became undeniable. Trump has three years and change. That is a long time for someone to be stumbling through the most dangerous crises of our time.
When Biden reached this weary, stumbling stage, Democrats led improbably by George Clooney rang the alarm. Will Kid Rock now step up to ask the president to step aside for the sake of the country? Will Vice President JD Vance or Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought reach for the 25th Amendment?
Or perhaps Trump’s handlers see this as an opportunity to seize power and pull the puppet’s strings from behind the curtain. If that’s the plan, it may not go quite as expected. Anyone who has ever tried to take the car keys away from a loved one exhibiting elderly mental impairment knows how difficult it is to get them to let go.
Now imagine those keys are not for starting a car but for launching a nuclear strike. Good luck to them. And good luck to all of us.
The post Karoline Leavitt Can’t Cover Up the Truth. Trump’s Cankles and Hand Makeup Say It All appeared first on The Daily Beast.
