On New Year's Day, The Wall Street Journal published an exclusive interview with President Trump, focusing on his health. Trump's physician Dr. Sean Barbarella told the Journal that the President's health is "exceptional" and he is "perfectly suited" to perform his duties as Commander in Chief. The bombshells? Trump is taking more aspirin than he is supposed to, and tried wearing compression socks but didn’t like them so he stopped. Basically nothing there, but that didn't stop some in the media from blowing it up.
Trump was right on target when he also said, he regrets undergoing advanced imaging because it generated scrutiny of his health. “In retrospect, it’s too bad I took it because it gave them a little ammunition.” And that scrutiny continued even after this interview. He was talking about his decision to get a cardiovascular and abdominal scan in October, which he originally had called an "MRI", but has now been clarified to have been a CT-scan.
Thursday, on the first episode of CNN's The Arena for 2026, host Jim Sciutto began the segment by playing a clip of what the President had told the media aboard Air Force One, in October and November, when he misidentified the procedure as an MRI. Sciutto then welcomed in Dr. Jeremy Faust, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
SCIUTTO: So I read the Journal piece, and actually, as I read it, I said, well, nothing here seems to be particularly alarming. Some signs of aging, but but generally a fairly healthy picture for a 79-year-old.
DR. FAUST: I would agree with that. I think that most of what we saw was a fleshing out of much of what we already knew. With these corrections about the CAT- scan, as opposed to the MRI. But I agree that the interesting piece of information, especially as an emergency clinician, was that this gentleman is taking 325mg of aspirin per day in an effort to prevent a heart attack... The standard dose of 81mg, does confer all of the benefit..
So where is the story here? There is none, but it didn't deter Sciutto.
SCIUTTO: He's got these other issues with bruising (On his hands) etc. Does that add up to, from your perspective, and I know you're not his doctor, so you're reading from afar, but but does that add up to you a sign that perhaps his heart condition is more serious than he's letting on?
DR. FAUST: That I could not say. What I can say is that the dose of aspirin that he acknowledges that he takes, does credibly explain the bruising. I would say the bleeding risk is real. And the CAT-scan results that we got from July seem to indicate that his heart function was okay.
So, the Dr. explains the hand bruises, says the CAT-scan shows a good heart, and agrees with Sciutto, that Trump is "a fairly healthy picture for a 79 year old!" Quick, Sciutto needs something, so he turns to his panel. But former Wall Street Journal political reporter Molly Ball wasn't any help.
SCIUTTO: Has he (Trump) taken away or inadvertently added to questions about his state of health?
BALL: I think it helps him politically to take this all on head on. I think.. it's impossible not to compare the situation to President Biden, ...and the [Biden] White House response was not only to deny it was an issue, but to basically accuse us of concocting a conspiracy theory and say anyone who even noticed that Biden was slowing down a tiny bit was a rabid partisan actor, and none of this was real. But this White House has taken the opposite tack of saying we're going to have the President be out there as much as possible to show people exactly how robust he is.
Still no story, but Sciutto had one panelist up his sleeve that he could count on, Democrat strategist Meghan Hays, and she didn't disappoint.
SCIUTTO: . ...Do you have questions and do you think the White House is being forthright and forthcoming about the President's health?
HAYS: No, they're rolling around in circles in every day. It's like a different thing. Or every time it comes up, it's a different excuse. So being transparent is great. Telling lies in the course of transparency, that's not actual transparency. So they should take a lesson from the Biden administration and be more transparent.
What on earth is she talking about? The Biden cover-up has been documented, yet when Sciutto interrupted Hays, all he said was "As many folks noted, while handshaking can explain bruising on your right hand, he's got it on both hands, and not a lot of folks shake hands with both hands."
Sciutto couldn't accept that his guest expert Dr. Faust had explained that Trump taking a higher dose of aspirin, credibly explained the bruises. I guess that's all Sciutto had left after the failed attempt at casting doubt on Trump's health.
