Dying Words

Is the President really on death's door? If so, why isn't the White House being honest about it? *Should* they be honest about it? And: what happens if he dies?

Silence speaks louder than words, and all we’ve gotten from the loudest-ever White House, for a full week now, is silence.

Since weighing in on the day’s most pressing issue—Taylor Swift’s engagement; he graciously wished the couple luck, so even that is sus—at a Cabinet meeting last Tuesday, the President has made no public appearances. The press office has issued a series of not-reassuring “proof of life” images, the authenticity of each called into question after Zapruder-film-level analysis by internet sleuths. His social media posts are clearly being written by someone else. And last night the White House dropped a strange “life lessons” video, featuring a much younger and more able version of the President, that seems tailor-made for a memorial service.

And it’s not like big stuff isn’t happening. On the other side of the world, at a regional summit meeting in China, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India were making nice-nice with China’s Xi Jinping. Also in attendance: the President’s dictator buddies Ilham Alyev of Azerbaijan, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, and Türkiye’s Recep Erdoğan, the world leader he spoke to on the phone the most frequently during his first term. A potentially major geopolitical shift was happening in Tianjin; in Washington, it was Weekend at Bernie’s.

As the Daily Beans’ Allison Gill put it over at The Breakdown:

Trump hasn’t answered questions or spoken publicly since last Tuesday. There’s clearly something wrong with his gait, his health, his hands, and his heart—and since corporate media refuses to call for his resignation as they called for Biden’s in 2024, I will. Trump must resign the presidency effective immediately.

He is clearly and overtly incapable of meeting the demands of the office of the president, putting the American people and the free world at great risk. If he won’t resign, the cabinet must assemble and discuss the 25th amendment. And if the cabinet won’t adhere to their oaths, then Congress must. Short of that, independent media must call for his resignation and demand he stand up for at least one hour and answer questions from reporters.

Gill wrote that on August 31. It is now September 2. Did the President see his shadow on the way to the golf course, so there’s six more weeks of silence? Or it it just wishful thinking on our part?

This all comes after weeks of speculation on his declining health: the swollen ankles, the slack jaw, the bruises on back of his hand. The cankles, we’re told, are from something called chronic venous insufficiency. And those unsightly bruises spackled over badly with makeup, are, according to his personal physician, Sean Barbabella, actually just “minor soft tissue irritation” caused by daily aspirin use and—I actually chortled when I saw this—“frequent handshaking.”

The whole spectacle is, appropriately enough, very Soviet. Strong Death-of-Stalin vibes are emanating from the White House.

Pace Jake Tapper, hiding the severity of a president’s infirmity can serve our national security interests. The country is never more vulnerable than when a POTUS—whether Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden, or the current office holder—is incapacitated. A president alive and well is alive and well. A dead president is immediately replaced by the sitting vice president. It’s when a president’s somewhere in between living and dead that the country is most susceptible to harm. Every decision takes that much longer. Who issues orders in the event of a nuclear attack or similar life-and-death crisis, if the Commander-in-Chief is off his rocker, or cannot speak? The chain-of-command ambiguity is potentially fatal. Remember on 9/11, when Dick Cheney issued orders because George W. Bush was incommunicado? Are we cool with the current Vice President making those kinds of decisions, when his legal authority to do so is murky? For these reasons, we do not want hostile foreign powers to know if our president is incapacitated—especially when the leaders of said hostile foreign powers are literally all in the same place at the same time.

That the President is an inveterate traitor and longtime Epstein wingman who simps for the Kremlin, and whose removal from office, whether by Mother Nature or the 25th Amendment, would almost immediately Make America Great Again (although I’m sure the sitting VP would do his level best to screw that up if he gets a chance), does not and should not factor into national security decisions. He’s still the President—the single human being we’ve (foolishly, it goes without saying) entrusted with the nuclear launch codes—and thus needs to be safeguarded.

Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919, so his First Lady and second wife, Edith Wilson, pretty much ran the country for the last year and a half of his second term. By the end of his second term, Ronald Reagan was already feeling the encroaching effects of Alzheimer’s disease, the diagnosis of which he announced five years after leaving office. And thanks to the crack reporting by Jake Tapper, we all know about Joe Biden’s decline. But only four times has a sitting president actually died of natural causes: FDR in 1945, Warren G. Harding in 1923, Zachary Taylor in 1850, and, famously, William Henry Harrison, who passed away just one month after taking office in 1841. So it’s been eighty years since the nation has had to face this prospect.

The current President’s death would raise a number of issues: Does a disgusting and obvious traitor deserve the ordinary state funeral, or would that further normalize corruption and despotism? Should the surviving former presidents boycott the services? What about foreign leaders? Is JD Vance capable of doing the job, as he not-unsuspiciously claimed three days ago? Is he really owned by sweaty weirdo Peter Thiel, or would he feel free to show his true colors—whatever they might be—upon taking office? Would he nix the stupid tariffs? Would he retain the motley crew of toxic losers that make up the current Cabinet? Who would Vance nominate to be his VP?

The President plans to make a special announcement today at 2pm. So it may well be that Dr. Barbabella is right, that he “remain[s] in excellent health.” It may well be that this whole thing was a charade, designed to distract us from the Epstein imbroglio; the survivors are coming to Congress when it re-opens tomorrow, after all, and there’s no way POTUS can put a positive spin on what they are about to say. It may well be that he really was just golfing, and this death watch is much ado about nothing.

But we would be wise to carefully consider all of this. Actuarial tables are actuarial tables, and facts are facts. The President is almost 80 years old, he’s morbidly obese, his diet is shit, his ankles are swollen, his hand is bruised, he’s under enormous strain because of the Epstein stuff and the Gavin Newsom trolling and the pressure of the job, he stinks to high heaven because he can’t control his bowels, he almost died of covid, and he’s showing signs of dementia. Even if he shows up at the presser today in tip-top shape, odds are, we’re going to have President Vance at some point before January 20, 2029.

Like they say in sports: Father Time is undefeated.

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ICYMI

Thanks to everyone who watched yesterday’s PREVAIL 850 SPECIAL. Over the course of four and a half hours, I read a few poems, had two book giveaways, and chatted with some of my favorite people: Lisa Graves, Heidi Cuda, Nina Burleigh, Nadine Smith, Gal Suburban, Zarina Zabrisky, Diana Spechler, Elisabeth Grace, and, last but not least, LB.

You can watch the marathon here:

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Photo credit: Granger Collection. An unwell Woodrow Wilson leaving his house in 1921.