Donald Trump wants to crush The Swamp. The leaks, the sneaks, and the secrets are all there. Our writers, David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice, are sifting through the ooze so you don’t have to. Don’t miss out.
In this week’s news from the ooze… Ted Cruz, Steven Cheung, JD Vance, Lew Olowski, Dr. Sanjiv Lakhanpal, John Ratcliffe, Nicklas Backstrom, Rupert Murdoch, Kevin Rudd, and Pete Hegseth.
Trump’s Health Problems Help Make Ankles Great Again
Washington hosted a big medical conference this weekend. Not on cancer. Not on heart disease. On veins. And hovering over the whole thing like a swollen specter were Donald Trump’s cankles.
As vein specialists gathered at the Marriott Marquis a few blocks from the White House, one of the field’s top doctors used the moment to issue some unsolicited lifestyle advice to the president.
Speaking exclusively to The Swamp, Dr. Sanjiv Lakhanpal, founder of the Center for Vein Restoration, suggested that Trump, 79, might want to rethink… well, most things.
First, there are the compression socks, which Trump tried wearing briefly after the White House confirmed his chronic venous insufficiency diagnosis—and then ditched them.
“I didn’t like them,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal in an interview this month. Lakhanpal’s response: patients don’t have to love them, but they improve circulation, reduce swelling and lower the risk of blood clots. In other words, Mr. President: wear the socks. (Try the black ones which have a slimming effect.)
Then there’s Trump’s lifestyle. It’s no secret that the president has a tendency to stay up late, rage-posting about everything from revenge plots to “fake news,” to dead birds, to, well…anything.
But as the Maryland-based doctor warned, “it’s all a vicious cycle” for CVI patients: “If they don’t get a good amount of rest at night, they don’t want to exercise in the morning,” he explained.
To that end, weight loss would also help, Lakhanpal added delicately, acknowledging the president’s penchant for McDonald’s and Diet Coke. That advice landed a day after Trump, who has gone from a claimed 239 pounds in 2018 to a claimed 244 pounds in 2020 and then down to a claimed 224 pounds last April, admitted to the New York Times he “probably” should be on “the fat drug.”
“If you look at his body build, if you look at his lifestyle, if you look at the fact he’s never been a fan of exercise, his (CVI) diagnosis wasn’t surprising,” Lakhanpal said.
But vein specialists who gathered in D.C. this weekend nonetheless thanked the president for his rotund ankles. After all, they’ve done something medicine never quite managed on its own: dragged chronic venous insufficiency into the global spotlight.
National Guard Strut Their Stuff
Move over Fashion Week—U Street Metro Station is the latest catwalk for America’s costliest idle squad. Five months after Donald Trump surged National Guard troops into D.C. under the cooked-up guise of a law-and-order crackdown, some are now so devoid of actual crime to combat that they spend their time strutting up and down train platforms like they’re auditioning for Project Runway: The Bored Edition.
In a video posted on social media, four National Guards were filmed showcasing their camouflage threads alongside Washington commuters, a move that would likely raise the ire of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
The public’s response was mixed, with some observers loving the fact that the guards are making the most of a dull situation when they’d probably rather be back at home with loved ones. Others raged. “This is tone deaf given what’s happening with ICE right now,” quipped one critic.
But you can’t help feeling sorry for troops, many of whom have spent the past few months in the nation’s capital picking up trash, cleaning parks, and posing for selfies with content-loving millennials—costing taxpayers more than $1 million a day. Trump’s formal order extending this spectacle runs at least through February 28, 2026, despite a federal judge’s ruling the deployment unlawful. That ruling is on hold pending appeal.
While Metro riders just want a timely train, the National Guard is out here perfecting its “bored soldier chic” runway. Nothing says crime deterrence like coordinated khaki fashion.
Village Idiot Diplomacy
Kevin Rudd’s stint as Australia’s ambassador to Washington was supposed to be a diplomatic victory lap. Instead, it’s ending like a political walk of shame—one year early, bags packed, tail between legs. It turns out the former Labor Party prime minister was never able to live down comments he’d previously made about Trump, including describing him as a “village idiot,” a “traitor to the West”, and “the most destructive president in history.” It wasn’t for lack of sucking up, mind you. Rudd worked the MAGA cocktail circuit hard, cozying up to Republican figures such as JD Vance, Ted Cruz, and John Ratcliffe along the way. He hosted tennis soirées with Trump officials in attendance, and beamed over AUKUS deals at his private residence in northwest D.C. He even scrubbed his social media accounts of incriminating information the moment Trump won the election and put out a gushing post congratulating the president-elect, only for White House aide Dan Scavino to reply with a brutal gif of an hourglass. Still, as a former prime minister with a reputation as one of the hardest-working diplomats in Washington, many insiders believed Rudd would survive. “Vance called Trump ‘America’s Hitler’ and look at him now,” one Australian government official told The Swamp. Rudd did manage to survive another year, but the nail in the coffin came in October during Trump’s first meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Partway through the questions, a Sky News reporter asked about the ambassador’s past comments, which was hardly surprising given Rudd previously called for a “royal commission”—a high-powered inquiry—into Sky’s owner, Rupert Murdoch. Trump was suitably unimpressed. “I don’t like you either,” the president told the red-faced Rudd from across the cabinet table, “and I probably never will.” Diplomacy is brutal. So, too, is the internet’s memory. Rudd wasn’t unemployed for long, or, in fact, at all. Starting immediately, Rudd will serve as CEO and as President of the Asia Society Policy Institute, a job he’s held before. In the press release, Rudd praised his new perch in a press release, describing the Asia Society as “one of the smartest, leading-edge, and distinguished institutions in the global think tank, artistic, and cultural diplomacy communities.” Rudd concluded with what could be read as a subtle dig at some of the government employees he crossed paths with in DC: “I look forward to continuing my work with the truly first-class global staff at Asia Society.”
Heavyweight in Trump’s Corner
Trump won’t have to look for a publicist to deflect any possible jabs about holding an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout in the White House (and moving the date of the G-7 summit in Paris to avoid a date clash in mid-June). Steven Cheung, the administration’s bulldog head of communications, worked in comms for the UFC before joining the combative 47th president’s corner.
Cheung was a heavyweight in the fight game, but lately he’s been slimming down, according to the blurter-in-chief. “Where’s Steve?” Trump asked during a Jan. 8 press conference about the cost of drugs, which touched on GLP 1. “Head of public relations for the White House. He’s taking it.” Does that make Cheung a lightweight?
Post-Trump Property Prices in D.C. Are ICED
Top-end house prices in D.C. are showing some signs of fatigue nearly a year into Donald Trump’s second term. Big hitters moving into the capital insulated prices for multi-million-dollar homes as the general property market was shaken by federal lay-offs. But a ritzy McLean mansion owned by former Washington Capitals star Nicklas Backstrom took a hit as he dropped the April list price from $14.99 million, and accepted an offer this week for $11.99 million. The seven-bed, nine-and-a-half bath house has six fireplaces, a sauna and steam room, a movie theater, and a full gym. The listing agents were Sherif Abdalla and Ali Alasgar Farhadov of Compass. Backstrom, 37, has returned to Sweden after an injury-hit ending to his career in D.C. He hadn’t played since undergoing hip surgery in 2023. Backstrom didn’t take a bath in one of his ten bathrooms. He bought the property in 2021 for $8 million.
The post Trump’s So Vein, This Doctor Knows What to Do appeared first on The Daily Beast.
