A condition the White House disclosed more than a year ago is back in public view. Photographers at the Pentagon caught what appeared to show severe swelling around President Donald Trump’s ankles, during the observance on Friday, September 11, 2026, marking 25 years since the September 11 attacks.
Trump, 80, slouched in his chair during the service in Arlington, Va., and in the pictures his ankles appeared to spill over the edges of his shoes. First Lady Melania Trump sat beside him.
Some social media users said he appeared to struggle to stay awake as the victims’ names were read aloud. The right side of his face also appeared to droop as he sat onstage. The White House’s disclosures have addressed his hand bruising and ankle swelling, but they have not connected either to his facial appearance or his fatigue.
There is only so much the images can settle. No single photograph can establish the cause, severity or progression of swelling, or show whether what appeared at the Pentagon amounted to any change in Trump’s condition. No official said Trump suffered an acute medical problem at the ceremony, and none has confirmed any change in his condition.
What the White House Has Disclosed
Doctors ran a comprehensive examination after swelling appeared in his lower legs, and it identified chronic venous insufficiency. The White House laid that out in a statement on July 17, 2025, when Trump was 79. The diagnosis is now more than a year old.
Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, the White House physician, called it “a benign and common condition,” one seen particularly in people over 70. His July 2025 memorandum recorded no evidence of deep vein thrombosis or arterial disease. Barbabella had also written, after Trump’s annual physical on April 11, 2025, that the president’s extremities showed unimpaired blood flow.
The most recent public account of the president’s health came in a White House memorandum in May, which said he remained in “excellent health,” noted mild swelling in his lower legs and called him fully fit for the duties of his office.
Two days after the Pentagon ceremony, on September 13, Trump turned up at the Amgen Irish Open hosted by Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg, County Clare, with a large patch of beige makeup covering the back of his right hand. Purple and reddish discoloration showed around the edges of the patch, and the hand appeared swollen.
Attention to the president’s health has not let up. White House aide Margo Martin posted an Instagram story outside Air Force One on Wednesday, September 16, during the president’s visit to North Carolina to campaign for Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley, and the footage showed a “mystery bulge” once more under the back of Trump’s suit. That bulge was first spotted during a “60 Minutes” interview in April, and the White House has not said what it is.
Over Labor Day weekend, a photograph posted to Instagram by former Trump aide John McEntee showed dark bruises along Trump’s left arm as he golfed at his Bedminster, New Jersey, club. The White House has attributed his hand bruising to frequent handshaking and aspirin use.
As of September 17, the bulge had also been visible in footage from a Long Island rally that former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shared in August, showing Trump leaving the stage. Speculation online, none of it confirmed, has included a catheter, an exoskeleton, heart failure equipment and an adult diaper.
Trump made an unplanned return to the White House from Camp David on Saturday, September 19. Commenters online seized on his descent from Marine One. “Trump looks very sluggish coming down the stairs and walks with a limp,” one wrote on X, and another posted, “He looks exhausted.”
How the Condition Works
Chronic venous insufficiency takes hold when valves inside the leg veins stop returning blood to the heart efficiently. The blood pools in the lower limbs, and the legs and ankles can swell. Age makes it more common, and clinicians treat it as a lifelong condition to manage rather than cure.
Estimates vary. Roughly one in 20 adults is the figure given by the Cleveland Clinic, while other counts run from 10 percent to 35 percent, most of them 65 or older. Trump is the second oldest president in U.S. history.
Management is unglamorous: patients walk, prop the feet up while seated and wear medical-grade compression stockings. Leg swelling can come from other conditions too, so doctors decline to diagnose it by eye. Instead they order a venous reflux ultrasound, a test of how well the veins move blood back toward the heart.
Compression socks figured in the president’s routine for a while, Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published on January 1, though he gave them up because he did not like them.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle answered a Daily Beast query about the bulge on Thursday, September 17, saying in an emailed statement that “only the glue-sniffing degenerates at the failing Daily Beast would obsessively push baseless conspiracy theories about President Trump.” He added that Trump’s “sharpness, unmatched energy, relentless work ethic, and historic accessibility” marked a contrast with how the last administration handled Joe Biden’s decline. Ingle has previously told the Daily Beast that Trump “is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in modern American history.”
Inside the Pentagon Ceremony
Hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, killing 184 people, and Friday’s service there honored them. Nearly 3,000 died that day across New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Trump had made his choice of the Pentagon over the main commemoration known well in advance.
Vice President JD Vance represented the administration at the Ground Zero ceremony, which drew four former presidents — Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Days earlier, on September 8, the equities trader and volunteer firefighter known as “the man in the red bandana,” Welles Crowther, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously from Trump. Crowther was 24 when he died helping others escape the South Tower.
Ahead of the September 11 ceremony, the last time Trump’s chronic venous insufficiency was visibly evident came in June at the G7 Summit in France. He reportedly attended the Pentagon event because he was allowed to give a speech. That night, Trump left Washington for Ireland.
