THOSE WHO WISH TRUMP DEAD. A few days ago, a corner of the political world became gripped by the idea that President Donald Trump had died. There was no evidence, of course, and the president is alive today. But that didn’t stop the talk.
It started when Trump, who is perhaps the most visible, accessible president in history, was not seen by the press for a couple of days at the White House. That was all it took for social media posters to get to work. They pieced together reports about bruises on the president’s right hand, the result of shaking thousands of hands, and swelling in his ankles, said to be the result of chronic venous insufficiency, a condition the president’s doctor calls “benign and common.”
Take those two facts, add the fact that Trump is 79 years old, and then add the fact that many Democrats and other anti-Trump voices seem desperate to draw some sort of equivalence between Trump’s energetic performance in the presidency and the senescence of former President Joe Biden. Together, they spurred many to believe that the president of the United States had suddenly died without anybody else noticing.
And it wasn’t just crowds of anti-Trump types on social media. Some prominent voices took note of what they seemed to think was the possibility that Trump was dead. Speaking at a Labor Day event, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), the Democratic nominee for vice president last year, did a little comedy routine about Trump’s “death” in which Walz did not come out and say the president had died but nevertheless made it clear that’s what he was talking about.
“Look, I get it, you get up in the morning and you doom-scroll through things,” Walz said, imitating the motion one would take reading stories on a phone. “Although I will say this, the last few days you woke up thinking there might be news.” As people in the audience began to laugh, Walz continued: “Just sayin’, just sayin’.” There was more laughter. “There will be news sometime,” Walz concluded, “just so you know — there will be news.”
The problem with Walz’s schtick was the underlying sense that he wanted there to be “news” and the audience wanted there to be “news,” and the “news” they wanted, of course, was that Trump was dead. They wanted it to be true.
At the hybrid anti-Trump political operation/news site called the Bulwark, a group discussed the satirical movie The Death of Stalin. It’s a black comedy in which the brutal Soviet dictator’s death sets off chaotic maneuvering among his toadying lieutenants. And it led the Bulwark, naturally, to the subject of Trump’s death.
“At some point President Trump will be called home to his eternal reward,” a Bulwark writer said. “The Death of Stalin is a pretty good way to think through what that might look like. And so, for the first time in a long time, let’s dream together.”
One can always dream, can’t one? At the Bulwark, the dreaming consisted of running through a number of scenarios in which Trump dies, in office or out of office, all in the context of The Death of Stalin. Who would be the Khrushchev who ultimately takes over? That kind of thing.
Now, do they really want Trump dead? Or do they just like speculating about it? Whatever the case may be, they certainly liked talking about Trump and MAGA in a Death of Stalin scenario, which, of course, involves the death of Stalin.
The talk quickly worked its way into the big media outlets. In some of those outlets, the coverage was noticeably indulgent toward those hoping that Trump was dead. To give you a contrast, on July 22, 2024, the New York Times ran an article about speculation on Biden’s condition immediately after Biden withdrew from the presidential race. The headline was, “Far Right Spreads Baseless Claims About Biden’s Whereabouts.”
Now, in the case of Trump, the New York Times headline was: “President Trump Is Alive. The Internet Was Convinced Otherwise.” It reported: “Mr. Trump’s critics have speculated about his health for as long as he has been in national politics. And for his part, he has long declined to explain when and why he sought out medical care, whether he was suffering from Covid or undergoing routine procedures. But there had never been a conspiracy wave as feverish as this one.” In the New York Times’s telling, it was all kind of … understandable.
At this point, it’s important to say that, of course, we don’t know what the future holds for Trump, just like we don’t know what the future holds for us. In his first months in office, Trump has been astonishingly vigorous. But he is 79 years old, and the risks for all sorts of maladies increase at his age. Things happen. Still, there was something unseemly about the happiness with which some greeted the rumor of the president’s death. Unseemly, but not surprising.