Dr. Bruce Davidson, a board-certified internal medicine and pulmonary physician, claimed in January 2026 that President Donald Trump may have suffered a stroke, a claim that has resurfaced amid fresh scrutiny of the 80-year-old president’s stamina.
Karoline Leavitt, then White House press secretary, dismissed the allegations as false and “perhaps even slanderous” in a statement to the Daily Beast. Trump and the White House have repeatedly said he is in good health.
A stroke is what the video of the president suggests to Davidson, a professor at Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. He situates the damage most likely on the left side of the brain and dates it probably to sometime in 2025. He has not personally examined Trump, and he built the theory entirely from publicly available video and disclosed medical details.
A shuffling gait, garbled speech that later improved, right-sided weakness and episodes of daytime sleepiness all drew Davidson’s attention. The physician also flagged Trump’s disclosed 325 mg daily aspirin dose, since doctors typically recommend such a regimen to prevent a recurrent stroke rather than as a first-line preventive measure.
Video clips and one publicly disclosed medication are all the evidence behind the assessment, and a diagnosis made at that remove has obvious limits. His claims remain unverified by anyone with direct access to the president, and no member of Trump’s medical team has corroborated it.
Davidson first laid out the argument on the podcasts “The Court of History” and “The Daily Beast Podcast,” and in an opinion piece. The “Court of History” podcast, hosted by former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, surfaced the claims.
Blumenthal told Raw Story: “The simple way to clear all this up is to release all of Trump’s medical records including his MRI.” Trump told reporters in the fall of 2025 that he had an MRI, then said in a Wall Street Journal interview published Jan. 1 that it was actually a CT scan.
Drowsiness Caught on Camera
At an Oval Office event on Monday, Sept. 28, announcing Mesabi Metallics’ plans for a $15 billion steel mill in Iowa, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick spoke while cameras caught Trump with his eyes closed and his head tilted forward.
An Oval Office announcement two days later produced similar clips. That event covered a roughly $54 billion South Korean investment in an Alaska natural gas export project, and Trump closed his eyes for longer stretches as Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy praised him.
Anyone reviewing the full White House livestream, however, would see Trump reopen his eyes again and again, answer questions and stay engaged. At the Sept. 28 event, no single closed-eye moment ran longer than a few seconds.
The moments fit a pattern. A December 2025 Cabinet meeting, the inaugural Board of Peace gathering in February and several Oval Office events this year all produced footage in which Trump appeared to doze. One tally by early September counted at least 22 such occasions. The White House has repeatedly denied that such moments mean he is asleep or unwell, and Trump has suggested he closes his eyes in Cabinet meetings because they are boring.
Questions About His Gait
Aide Margo Martin posted a video after a White House luncheon with tech executives on Tuesday, Sept. 29, and it showed the president standing with his left knee bending inward. Commentator Ben Meiselas has separately pointed to an August 2025 golf outing in which he said Trump appeared to drag his right leg.
Earlier this year, online audiences spread two other clips widely: a limp at Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s Eve, and unexplained outlines beneath his trouser legs. Critics have linked the right-leg footage to the right-sided weakness Davidson described, though video alone cannot establish a diagnosis.
On Tuesday, Sept. 29, at the Washington launch of America.gov, footage showed Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz reaching toward Trump as the president lowered himself into his seat before signing an executive order. The footage does not establish why Oz reached out or whether Trump had any medical problem.
The clip prompted renewed online speculation. Some X users suggested problems involving Trump’s right leg, others claimed without evidence that he wore a brace or had torn an ACL, and one post called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked. There is no evidence in the footage that Trump was injured or unable to carry out his duties.
One confirmed condition affects his legs: chronic venous insufficiency. Visible swelling in his lower legs preceded the diagnosis, which the White House disclosed in July 2025. His physician, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, said after a May 2026 exam that the president remains in excellent health.
Newsom Needles the President
A brief Los Angeles visit gave California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a longtime Democratic antagonist, an opening to needle Trump over his health. Newsom’s press office posted on X on the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 5, attaching a 14-second clip of the president fielding questions from reporters on the tarmac.
The trip was “a total snoozer,” Newsom’s office said, adding that Trump displayed “Very low energy. No speech. He could barely take a question on the tarmac.”
Characteristic ferocity marked the White House reply. Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson, called the governor the worst and possibly the dumbest chief executive in the country, and argued that Trump’s sharpness, energy and accessibility stand in stark contrast to the previous administration. Ingle accused Democrats of having covered up former President Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline while now targeting Trump.
Questions about the president’s condition are not new. Trump has repeatedly faced scrutiny over chronically bruised hands, swollen ankles, public bouts of drowsiness and occasional mental flubs, and his health has become an inescapable subplot of his second term.
Trump is 80 and was the oldest person ever inaugurated as president. Two narratives now compete: one frames a president slowed by age and possible illness, and the other portrays a vigorous leader whose critics, in the administration’s telling, are recycling a playbook they once used to shield a Democratic incumbent.
