President Trump had nothing on his public schedule for three days last week. He is often sporting a large, purple bruise on his right hand, which he sometimes slathers with makeup. His ankles are swollen. He is the oldest person to be elected president.
For a swath of hyper-online Americans over the long Labor Day weekend, all of this was explanation enough: The president was either dead or about to be.
Mr. Trump’s critics have speculated about his health for as long as he has been in national politics. And for his part, he has long declined to explain when and why he has sought out medical care, whether he was suffering from Covid or undergoing routine procedures. But there had never been a conspiracy wave as feverish as this one.
On TikTok, influencers with legions of followers surmised that the White House was publishing old photos, suggesting that the president was being hidden from view. Reddit threads, one after another, were ablaze with commentary. On X, posts shared by anonymous critics disseminating dubious reports picked up thousands of interactions and shares.
There was so much conversation around the president’s absence that Mr. Trump was asked to weigh in on Tuesday, at his first official public appearance in a week. When asked by a reporter how he first learned that he was dead, Mr. Trump said that he was not aware of the rumors that he had died. Then he started speaking about those rumors at length, saying he had done media appearances, gone golfing at his Virginia club and posted prolifically on his social media site.
“I did numerous shows, and also did a number of Truths,” Mr. Trump said during an appearance in the Oval Office, referring to his social media site, where he posted over 90 times between Saturday and Monday. “I think, pretty poignant Truths. I was very active over the weekend.”
Welcome to the modern, conspiracy-fueled world of presidential health, where distrust and speculation run so rampant that even Mr. Trump’s online assurance that he was fine earlier this weekend — “NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE!” he wrote on Sunday — was immediately explained away as part of a cover-up.
The focus on the health of an aging president seems inevitable after the nation’s experience with Mr. Trump’s predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., who physically declined in public, though his aides attacked those who questioned what they were seeing. Mr. Trump made Mr. Biden’s fitness for office a foundation of his 2024 campaign, even after Mr. Biden dropped out of the race.
Adding to the problem is a longtime presidential tendency to not disclose a full picture of health. Although Mr. Trump has obscured the truth about his health before, this is not unique to him. President Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and was hidden from public view. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was wheelchair bound, but few Americans at the time ever saw him in one. President John F. Kennedy suffered from chronic back pain but was held up as the picture of health.
For years, justifiable concerns and questions about Mr. Trump’s health have often been met with obfuscation or minimal explanation from the people around him. Mr. Trump’s physicians have not taken questions from reporters in years, and there were no medical briefings held after an assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pa., last summer.
Distrust and speculation surrounding Mr. Trump’s health goes back to his first term. In 2018, Mr. Trump’s longtime physician, Dr. Harold N. Bornstein, accused two Trump aides of staging what he called “a raid” of his Manhattan office in February 2017 and removing all of Mr. Trump’s medical files.
That month, Dr. Bornstein had given a lengthy interview to The Times and had disclosed the medications Mr. Trump was taking: antibiotics to control rosacea, a statin for elevated blood cholesterol and lipids, and finasteride, a prostate-related drug to promote hair growth. Dr. Bornstein, who died in 2021, also said that Mr. Trump, rumored to be a germaphobe, “changes the paper on the table himself” after examinations.
At the time, Mr. Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said aides had taken the files as part of a standard transition measure.
Questions continued to circulate after Mr. Trump made an unexplained and unannounced visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in November 2019. (In 2021, his former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, wrote in a memoir that Mr. Trump had undergone a routine colonoscopy.)
Questions were raised again in June 2020 when Mr. Trump gingerly navigated a ramp at a West Point graduation and appeared to have trouble raising a drinking glass. When Mr. Trump had Covid in October 2020, he was sicker than anyone around him had publicly revealed at the time.
“There’s always been this wishful-thinking industry around Trump’s health and Trump’s legal woes,” said Mike Rothschild, a journalist and author who studies conspiracy movements. “There’s been this far-left influencer sphere that is constantly pumping up the idea that Trump is about to go to prison or the walls are closing in.”
As with many conspiracy theories, this latest one about Mr. Trump’s health carries a kernel of truth: He is old. At the end of his second term, he would be 82 years old, and months older than Mr. Biden was when he left office.
In interviews and public events, Mr. Trump often asks for questions to be repeated so he can hear. “Say it?” he asks when he needs something to be said again.
Mr. Trump prefers to hold events in the Oval Office rather than in larger venues like the East Room, in part because the acoustics are better and he is not forced to stand for long periods, according to a person familiar with event planning at the White House.
Mr. Trump, 79, also has a history of high cholesterol. According to his most recent health disclosure sent in April by his White House physician, Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, Mr. Trump takes two medications, Crestor and Zetia, to lower his LDL cholesterol levels.
In 2018, Mr. Trump’s White House physician at the time, Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, said Mr. Trump was in “excellent” health, but noted that the president’s LDL levels were listed at 143, well above the desired level of 100 or less, despite taking Crestor. This year, Dr. Barbabella listed them at 51.
David J. Maron, a cardiologist at Stanford University School of Medicine who has not treated Mr. Trump, said that such a drop could be attributed to an “extraordinary” response to Zetia — an outcome he said was unlikely — and to a higher dose of Crestor.
A better diet and lifestyle changes could also help, though Mr. Trump, who is overweight, still maintains a diet heavy in fast food, including McDonald’s. Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said it was “not possible” to drop to such a low LDL level by adding Zetia alone.
Mr. Trump also takes aspirin to reduce the risk of cardiac problems. White House officials, including Dr. Barbabella, have said that the aspirin is the cause of the large bruise on Mr. Trump’s right hand, and that the bruising comes and goes based on how many hands Mr. Trump has been shaking. The president tends to dab makeup on the bruise that is a shade lighter than his skin tone, making the cover-up more conspicuous.
Aspirin is not recommended as a preventative medication for people over 70, and taking it to prevent strokes or heart attacks could do more harm than good, according to the American Heart Association. Exceptions would include patients who have already had a heart attack, according to Peter Libby, a cardiologist at Harvard.
Several physicians who have not treated Mr. Trump say that it is possible for aspirin to cause bruising.
“Bruising on the back of the hand of an older adult is common,” said Dr. Samuel C. Durso, the director of the department of medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. “Especially if that person, a golfer with solar skin damage, takes aspirin.”
Dr. Durso and other physicians said that the White House explanation for Mr. Trump’s swollen ankles — the result of chronic venous insufficiency, a condition that occurs when veins have trouble moving blood back to the heart, Dr. Barbabella said in July — is possible.
Others were skeptical of the White House explanation for the swollen ankles. Dr. Daniel J. Rader, a cardiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said venous insufficiency, or varicose veins, does not cause major swelling and “almost never” causes it in both ankles, as was seen with Mr. Trump.
The White House has not said whether officials would have Dr. Barbabella answer questions from reporters, as Dr. Jackson last did in 2018. In a statement, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Trump was “perfectly fine” and had a “tremendous” amount of energy.
“He has been completely transparent about his health with the public,” Ms. Leavitt said in a statement, “unlike his predecessor.”
Gina Kolata and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting. Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
