On September 5, 2025, media critic Margaret Sullivan delivered what should’ve been obvious but somehow wasn’t: the mainstream press is tiptoeing around President Donald J. Trump’s health. Days have gone by without a sighting. When he does appear, the ankles look like someone stuffed dinner rolls into his socks, his hand is bruised like a bar brawler’s, and the occasional verbal confusion lands somewhere between senior moment and malfunctioning teleprompter. Yet the coverage is muted, delicate, wrapped in euphemism—while wild online rumors fill the silence, including a briefly viral frenzy that Trump was already dead and being Weekend-at-Bernie’d through press releases.
The White House explanation is… charming. The swelling? Chronic venous insufficiency. The bruise? Overzealous handshakes plus aspirin. The verbal confusion? Just the normal hiccups of a man who never finishes a sentence because he doesn’t have one. The problem isn’t that these answers exist. The problem is that nobody in the press corps seems willing to interrogate them with the vigor they once reserved for Biden’s every stumble, stutter, or nap schedule.
It’s not scrutiny anymore. It’s choreography.
The Biden Comparison Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud
Remember 2024? The mainstream press turned Joe Biden’s every cough into an existential crisis. A slip on the Air Force One stairs could dominate a news cycle. Debate moderators interrogated his “acuity” like they were running a neurology residency exam. The headlines weren’t just skeptical—they were often gleeful.
Now, swap in Trump. His ankles are visibly swollen. His hand looks like it lost a fight with a door. His speech drifts into unmoored word salad. And suddenly, the press corps decides it’s rude to speculate. Suddenly, “fitness for office” is a delicate subject. Suddenly, “chronic venous insufficiency” is accepted at face value like a line from a doctor’s note scrawled on cocktail napkin.
This isn’t journalism. This is selective etiquette.
The Bruise Heard Round the World
Let’s take the hand. A bruise is not exactly Watergate, but in the age of overexposure, bodies become symbols. Trump’s bruise was brushed off as the result of “vigorous handshakes” combined with aspirin. Which is either the most absurdly specific lie since “the dog ate my homework” or the most pathetic truth imaginable. Imagine being Commander in Chief of the world’s most powerful military and admitting your greatest health adversary is a firm grip from a county sheriff in Iowa.
The fact that reporters didn’t push harder, didn’t demand medical records, didn’t even ask if his doctor was in the room, reveals everything. The White House says “handshakes.” The press scribbles it down. Transparency achieved.
Swollen Ankles and Swollen Silences
Then there are the ankles. Cameras caught the unmistakable puff of swelling above Trump’s loafers, the kind of edema your grandmother’s doctor warned her about when she stopped walking daily. The White House offered a phrase so clinical it sounded invented: “chronic venous insufficiency.” It might as well have been “quantum flux of the plasma membranes.”
Reporters nodded along. Anchors relayed the line as if it were carved into the stone tablets of medical certainty. Not one followed up: How severe? What treatment? Any hospitalization? Is this progressive? Does it limit mobility? The press corps that once tracked Biden’s golf cart routes like forensic scientists now treats Trump’s lower extremities like state secrets.
The Verbal Confusion Nobody Wants to Clip
The most alarming signs, though, are verbal. Trump has always trafficked in word salad, but lately, even his familiar cadences seem frayed. Phrases trail off. Sentences restart without finishing. Entire nouns vanish into ellipses. What once sounded like improvisational grievance theater now borders on neurological static.
And yet, instead of splicing together reels of his gaffes, instead of grilling officials on whether cognitive tests have been conducted, the mainstream press shrugs. Cable news treats it as quirks. Newspapers bury it in paragraph eight. Online outlets pivot to the latest poll.
Silence, in this case, is not neutral. It is complicity.
Conspiracy as a Byproduct of Silence
Into this vacuum rushes the internet. And the internet does what it always does: fills gaps with garbage. “Trump is dead” trended for an afternoon as conspiracy influencers insisted his appearances were AI-generated, his tweets ghostwritten, his rallies deepfaked. Other rumors claimed he was hospitalized for heart failure, undergoing dialysis, or too doped up on steroids to appear in public.
None of it was true. All of it was viral. Because when mainstream journalism won’t touch the story, conspiracy entrepreneurs will. They don’t need evidence. They just need a vacuum.
Sullivan was right: under-coverage doesn’t protect the public. It corrodes trust. The press may think it’s being responsible by avoiding speculation. But speculation doesn’t stop. It just relocates to Telegram channels and TikTok feeds where accountability doesn’t exist.
The Press Corps as Access Managers
Why the restraint? Some of it is fear of backlash. Trump screams “fake news” whenever he’s inconvenienced. Challenge his health, and the press risks getting locked out of the next rally. But deeper than that is a structural flaw: access journalism. Reporters trade scrutiny for proximity. Tough questions risk losing the seat on Air Force One, the leak from an aide, the pre-briefed quote.
So the questions go unasked. The bruises unexamined. The ankles unmeasured. The words unscrutinized. And the White House knows it. Silence is the cheapest PR strategy.
Transparency Theater vs. Real Disclosure
The irony is that real transparency wouldn’t be complicated. Presidents have doctors. Presidents have medical records. The White House could release detailed reports. They could hold regular briefings. They could put the physician at the podium and let reporters grill them.
Instead, we get theater. We get vague diagnoses, shrugged explanations, and a press corps too timid to push back. We get the illusion of disclosure without the substance.
And while journalists tiptoe, the credibility of the entire institution erodes.
The Satirical Core
The satire here cuts in every direction:
- The president of the United States allegedly hobbled by “handshakes.”
- A medical condition named like a cover band: “Chronic Venous Insufficiency” opening for Foreigner at the state fair.
- A press corps that once speculated about Biden’s blinking patterns now refusing to ask whether Trump’s brain still knows where sentences end.
- A conspiracy economy thriving on the silence, selling bunk theories because the mainstream abdicated responsibility.
The irony is cruel: by refusing to speculate responsibly, the press fuels speculation irresponsibly.
Margaret Sullivan’s Intervention
Margaret Sullivan’s call wasn’t radical. She wasn’t demanding tabloid hysteria. She was asking for journalism: evidence-based scrutiny, persistent questioning, real transparency. Treat Trump’s health the way Biden’s was treated. Demand disclosures. Demand briefings. Demand honesty.
Because if the press doesn’t do it, the internet will. And the internet doesn’t care whether what it says is true.
The Haunting Observation
On September 5, 2025, the story wasn’t just Trump’s ankles or Trump’s hand or Trump’s words. It was the silence. A silence loud enough to breed conspiracies. A silence polite enough to corrode trust. A silence convenient enough to shield power.
The haunting truth is this: democracies don’t collapse because the public stops caring. They collapse because the institutions meant to care stop asking. A free press that refuses to press is just stenography with better lighting.
Trump’s body is telling a story. The press doesn’t want to hear it. But the public will. And in the vacuum between silence and rumor, trust is already bleeding out—bruised, swollen, and limping toward collapse.