A prominent physician said President Donald Trump may have inadvertently revealed to the public that he suffered a stroke.
Dr. Bruce Davidson told the Daily Beast Podcast that he believes an overlooked detail from President Trump’s January Wall Street Journal interview about his health proves he’s hiding a previous stroke.
“I read the report that he was taking 325mg of aspirin, and that is only recommended for people who’ve had a stroke to prevent a second stroke from a partially blocked artery,” Davidson told host Joanna Coles on The Daily Beast Podcast.
“When I read that, I said, well, he’s had a stroke, and he’s taking the right medication,” he added.
Trump revealed his daily aspirin intake as a way to explain the persistent bruising on his hands, which have baffled viewers for months. The Daily Beast has led the charge in questioning Trump’s medical issues, reporting consistently on his hands, swollen ankles, and apparent cognitive issues.
Trump said he was taking aspirin as a blood thinner for his cardiac health, and the aspirin caused his hands to bruise easily.
“They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?” Trump told the Journal.
“Low-dose” aspirin prescriptions to prevent heart attacks and strokes usually come in 75-100 mg doses, with the Mayo Clinic recommending 81 mg. When it came out that Trump was taking quadruple the recommended dose, doctors said his daily 325 mg intake was far too high if he was taking it as a blood thinner.
But Davidson, a professor at Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, said 325 mg would be the recommended dose if Trump previously had a stroke.
He first made the claim on a Jan. 14 episode of The Court of History podcast, then wrote about his theory for The Daily Beast on Friday.
“The American Heart Association’s 2021 stroke guidelines recommend a full 325 mg aspirin pill to prevent recurrent stroke, after a stroke,“ wrote Davidson. ”It is not recommended for primary stroke prevention, heart disease, peripheral arterial disease, venous insufficiency, or other venous disease—only for large intracranial vessel partial occlusion, after a stroke.”
The president’s high aspirin dosage wasn’t the only thing that convinced Dr. Davidson that Trump is hiding a previous stroke.
“For President Trump, earlier in the year, there was a video of him shuffling, and I thought that was weird,” he told Coles. “Then I saw him cradling his right hand in his left, which is a common, involuntary thing that people with strokes have done when they have weakness.”
Davidson went on, “On one side, he garbled words, much more so a couple months ago than he’s doing now. That implies he broke his speech area, which is in the frontal left portion of the brain.”
“And then recently, there was video of him walking down the stairs from Air Force One, holding the banister with his left hand, yet he’s right-handed. And the speech became much better. And that suggested to me, along with the 325 milligrams of aspirin—which you only take for one thing, right?—He’s had a prior stroke. He’s recovered from the stroke,” Davidson concluded.
The White House dismissed Davidson’s theory that Trump had a stroke.
“Any so-called medical professionals engaging in armchair diagnosis or false speculation for political purposes are clearly breaking the Hippocratic Oath they’ve sworn to,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Daily Beast. “These are false and slanderous allegations from a left-wing nut job. This fake news story should be retracted immediately.”
Leavitt, a 28-year-old failed Republican candidate for a New Hampshire congressional seat, previously stated that Trump’s hands were bruised because he was “shaking hands all day.” It wasn’t until Trump said that the bruising was a result of his high aspirin intake that the White House’s official explanation for the bruising changed.
The White House called the Daily Beast “mentally ill” for asking questions regarding Trump’s health on Thursday. The quote was not attributed to any White House spokesperson.
Davidson insisted that the stroke alone shouldn’t disqualify Trump from being president, but urged that he get proper medical care.
“When I see the president appearing like a patient having trouble, I want his physicians to engage,” said Davidson. “And this illustrates, I regret to say, a terrible, increasing weakness in American medical leadership that we’re suffering from.”
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