A 79-Year-Old President, Recurring Bruises, and the Explanation That Keeps Changing
Photos keep surfacing. The White House keeps answering. And the answers keep shifting.
Donald Trump is the oldest person ever sworn in as U.S. president. At 79, he has repeatedly insisted he is in excellent physical shape — and his official physician agrees. But a pattern of bruising on his hands, visible across more than a year of public appearances, has refused to fade quietly from public view.
The Bruise That Won’t Go Away
The mark was first widely noticed in spring 2024, when Trump appeared in a New York courtroom for his hush money trial. A dark bruise on the back of his dominant right hand drew immediate attention online.
It didn’t stop there.
The bruise — or what appears to be recurring bruising — has resurfaced at a string of high-profile moments since: a White House meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in February 2025, a signing ceremony at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026, and a Kennedy Center premiere in mid-June 2025. By the end of 2025, new discoloration appeared on Trump’s left hand as well, according to CNN, which reviewed photos taken across multiple events.
The bruising is real. What’s driving it is where the explanations get complicated.
Three Answers, One Question
The White House has offered several versions of why Trump’s hands look the way they do.
The first and most repeated: handshakes. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told NBC News that Trump “has bruises on his hand because he’s constantly working and shaking hands all day, every day.” Trump himself backed this up in a Time Magazine interview, saying the marks came from “shaking hands with thousands of people.”
But when bruising appeared on Trump’s left hand — he is right-handed — that explanation began to strain. Multiple medical experts who reviewed the photos told CNN they doubted handshaking alone could account for the left-hand marks.
The second explanation came in January 2026. After bruising appeared on Trump’s left hand during the Davos signing ceremony, the White House offered a specific and different account: he had hit his hand on the corner of the signing table. A White House official confirmed to Fox News that photos from the day before showed no bruising.
The third and most medically grounded explanation came from Trump’s own physician. In his July 2025 health memo, White House physician Dr. Sean Barbabella described the right-hand bruising as “benign and consistent with minor soft tissue irritation related to frequent handshaking in the setting of aspirin use for cardiovascular prevention.” That memo also reiterated that Trump “remains in excellent health.”
What the Aspirin Actually Does
The aspirin angle is significant — and Trump has talked about it himself.
“They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal. He acknowledged taking a high daily dose and said he was reluctant to reduce it.
Blood-thinning medications, including aspirin, make bruising more likely and more visible — especially in older adults, whose skin naturally becomes thinner and whose blood vessels grow more fragile with age. Medical experts who spoke to CNN confirmed this, calling the recurring bruising a “likely benign condition common in older people.”
One physician, Dr. Ola Otulana — a general practitioner quoted by Economic Times — noted the marks appear “consistent with a superficial contusion” that could result from “minor trauma, repeated pressure, or medical procedures like a blood draw.” He added that for a person of Trump’s age taking aspirin, bruises “appear more easily and linger longer.”
His conclusion: the bruise “doesn’t raise any immediate red flags.”
What We Know

Trump turned 79 in June 2025 — the oldest sitting U.S. president in history
Dr. Barbabella’s April 2025 medical report found Trump fit for office, with no cardiac, pulmonary, or neurological abnormalities
Trump takes daily high-dose aspirin, disclosed by his physicians and confirmed by Trump himself
Bruising has been visible on Trump’s right hand at public events since at least spring 2024
New bruising appeared on his left hand by late 2025, per CNN
The White House offered at least three distinct explanations across different incidents
In August 2025, makeup was photographed covering the bruise during an Oval Office appearance
Every physician who publicly commented described the bruising as consistent with aging and aspirin use — not a medical emergency

Why This Matters Beyond the Photos
Presidential health is not a tabloid subject. It is a constitutional one.
The 25th Amendment exists precisely because the American people — and the government itself — need to know whether a sitting president is capable of fulfilling his duties. At 79, Trump is navigating that question in real time, in public, with cameras trained on his hands at every handshake.
The recurring bruising, on its own, may be medically unremarkable. But the pattern of incomplete and shifting explanations from the White House has done more to fuel public concern than the bruises themselves.
When Dr. Barbabella formally addressed the hand bruising in his July memo, he did so only after months of online speculation had already spread widely. Transparency — offered earlier and more completely — might have settled the question before it became a recurring story.
As it stands, a question with a straightforward medical answer keeps getting a different answer depending on which week it’s asked.
“President Trump remains in excellent health,” Barbabella’s memo concluded. What it didn’t address is why the same administration felt the need to cover a bruise with makeup before an Oval Office appearance.

Sources: CNN, Fox News, NBC News, The Wall Street Journal, White House physician Dr. Sean Barbabella’s official health memos (April and July 2025), White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s statements, Trump’s Time Magazine Person of the Year interview (2024)