When a veteran cardiologist who once monitored Dick Cheney's heart condition publicly dismisses a president's medical explanation as 'nonsense', it signals that something more sinister may be unfolding behind closed doors.
That moment came this week when Jonathan Reiner, CNN's medical analyst and interventional cardiologist, scrutinised President Donald Trump's extraordinary aspirin regimen during an appearance on The Lead, suggesting the administration has been far less forthcoming about the president's health than the public realises.
The controversy erupted following a Wall Street Journal report in which Trump revealed he takes 325 milligrams of aspirin daily to prevent heart attacks.
The dosage is extraordinary: it matches the amount doctors typically prescribe to patients actively experiencing a cardiac event, not for preventative purposes in otherwise healthy individuals. Reiner's blunt assessment cut through the corporate speak immediately.
'That makes no sense. That actually makes nonsense,' Reiner said, dismantling Trump's justification that the heavy dose keeps his blood 'nice and thin' flowing through his heart. The cardiologist explained that anticoagulants don't work by thinning blood as one might change the consistency in cooking. Instead, they reduce the likelihood of clots forming, a fundamentally different mechanism.
Trump Health Tests: The Alarming Pattern Doctors Can't Ignore
Reiner's concerns extend far beyond the aspirin revelation. In recent months, Trump has undergone a series of medical examinations that, taken together, paint a picture of escalating health concerns the White House has deliberately obscured through vague language and contradictory statements.
During a comprehensive physical examination at Walter Reed Hospital in April, doctors described Trump's condition as 'great' and reported that 'a bunch of studies' were 'essentially all normal'. Yet by summer, the president had developed noticeably swollen ankles, a condition serious enough to warrant additional testing. The fact that this symptom hadn't emerged during the spring physical suggested to Reiner that the swelling was acute rather than chronic, potentially indicating a new medical development requiring investigation.
Then came the autumn revelation. 'Something happened in October that prompted an off-cycle series of tests by the president's medical team,' Reiner observed.
The White House, in announcing these tests, deployed what the cardiologist characterised as 'euphemisms', describing the procedures as 'advanced imaging' without elaborating on specifics.
Trump subsequently claimed he'd undergone an MRI scan, but this claim unravelled when closer scrutiny revealed he'd actually received a CT scan instead, a noninvasive cardiac imaging procedure designed to detect coronary artery disease.
Trump Health Tests: The Concerning Medical Discrepancies
The misalignment between Trump's account and the actual procedures performed raises troubling questions about the transparency surrounding his medical status. A CT scan for cardiac imaging is not a routine procedure for an apparently healthy individual; it's ordered when clinicians suspect potential arterial blockages or other coronary vulnerabilities.
Equally perplexing is the contradiction between what Trump's physician told the Wall Street Journal and what Dr Ronnie Jackson, Trump's previous personal physician, disclosed in 2018. Jackson had stated that Trump carried a marker of coronary artery disease, yet the current medical team described the October imaging results as excellent. Either the condition has dramatically improved, or the current assessment represents a significant departure from previously documented findings.
For individuals over seventy, the medical consensus is unambiguous: aspirin provides no benefit for heart attack prevention and carries a genuine risk of significant internal bleeding. At Trump's age, the decision to take 325 milligrams daily flies directly in the face of established medical guidance, making Reiner's scepticism not merely warranted but urgent.
What remains unclear is whether the American public will ever receive candid answers about what the president's medical team actually discovered during those autumn tests, or whether further scrutiny will simply be met with continued evasion and carefully calibrated language designed to obscure rather than illuminate the state of the nation's leader's health.
