Why MAGA buys Trump’s perfect health lie

“When it happens” — the phrase became a meme almost overnight, as Troy Farah recently observed, in no small part because, even in our attention-addled age, people understand what it means. Donald Trump, who turns 80 this month, is not well, which has led to waves of speculation about his health and, at times, even rumors that he has died.

The president regularly nods off on camera during public meetings. He appeared to nap during the May 27 Cabinet meeting, even though his appointees were competing with each other to offer empty flattery, which is usually his favorite activity. His hands are not only covered in bruises, but they have also started to swell alarmingly. While he struggles to stay awake during the day, the president is often up at odd hours of the night, raving incoherently on Truth Social while obsessively reposting artificial intelligence-generated memes that frame him as heroic. He’s had at least two surprise trips to the “dentist” this year — even though the White House has its own fully equipped dental suite. On May 26, Trump had his third “annual” exam in 13 months at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, after which he posted, “Everything checked out PERFECTLY.”

This is almost certainly a lie, though how big of one remains to be seen. People in perfect health don’t have swollen and bruised hands or the water balloon-sized ankles Trump sometimes sports. Even the White House communications staff has tacitly admitted that something is going on, though all they will say is Trump has chronic venous insufficiency, a conveniently benign condition. There is zero reason to trust Trump or his staff; they lie constantly about nearly everything. This includes false explanations about the president’s health, because the White House keeps insisting he’s merely blinking in photos with his eyes closed, when anyone who watches the videos can see his eyes are shut for long stints of time, and not just milliseconds.

Even the medical report released by Trump’s doctor, Sean P. Barbabella, does little to quell suspicions. The physician repeated the implausible claim that Trump’s hand bruising is merely from handshaking — even though it also appears on his left hand — and said the president is in “excellent” health. It also gave the president the exact height and weight ratio to keep him right under an “obese” body mass index, a designation so convenient as to be laughable.

Dr. Jonathan Reiner of The George Washington University, who was former vice president Dick Cheney’s cardiologist, told CNN that Trump is showing symptoms of chronic insomnia, which “is a severe illness that can result in an increase in risk of dementia” and a “decrease in cognitive effects” that “increases your cardiac risk of having a heart attack or developing congestive heart failure.” It appears that the president has undergone multiple cognitive tests, because Trump, who seems to confuse them with IQ tests, keeps bragging about how he was told him he had “aced” them. Such exams are typically given when doctors suspect cognitive decline, as journalist Jim Acosta underscored recently by taking the test himself, which involves drawing a cube or identifying common animals.

Since Trump won in 2024 in large part due to public outrage over what appeared to be a similar cover-up of then-president Joe Biden’s obvious decline, the White House’s decision to gaslight the American people on the subject is especially egregious. It’s also not working. According to a Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll released in early May, 59% of Americans believe Trump is not mentally sharp enough to be president.

But there is one group of Americans who don’t seem able to see that Trump isn’t doing well: his MAGA supporters. Trump’s approval ratings have slipped to record lows, falling below even Biden’s dismal numbers at the height of public anxiety and outrage over his disastrous debate performance in June 2024 against Trump. But while Trump’s numbers are bottoming out with both Democrats and independents in the latest YouGov/Economist poll, he is still doing well with Republicans, 61% of whom express approval of the president. While this is the lowest his approval rating among the GOP has ever been, it still reflects an appalling measure of hypocrisy from voters who spent 2024 cackling about “Sleepy” Joe Biden — and who continue to insist that manly vigor is the most important part of leadership.

The number also stands in stark contrast to the response to perceptions about Biden’s deteriorating health among Democratic voters. Even though some diehards in the party refused to admit he wasn’t doing well, a Pew Research survey found that 62% of Biden’s voters wanted him to drop out by April 2024. After he fell apart in the June debate, that number jumped to 71%, a figure illustrating that Democratic voters are far better than their Republican counterparts at seeing their leaders as fallible human beings.

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A decade in, it’s no secret that many Republican voters view Trump as more of a god than a person, offering him cult-like devotion that makes everyone outside of their bubble feel digust and sometimes pity. In right-wing media and at conservative events, Trump is often literally spoken of as a prophet sent by God to save them. Questioning his decisions, such as starting a war with Iran, is treated as close to sacrilege in some GOP circles. Even the bullet that grazed Trump’s ear during a Butler, Pennsylvania, stop is rolled into this mythology, offered frequently as proof that God is protecting Trump from death.

This is why his voters don’t seem to mind the way that White House officials speak of the president as an infallible person, in possession of unparalleled levels of intelligence, courage and stamina. It’s why the crowd at the Rededicate 250 event cheered when radio host Eric Metaxas declared, “It’s hard to believe that it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom finally to stand where it needs to stand.”

As economist Paul Krugman wrote in his newsletter, this “obsequiousness and deification” of a makeup-caked, half-literate bully is unprecedented in scope due to Trump’s own narcissism. But it’s also been a long time coming. Republicans have been trying to cast their presidents as god-figures for decades now, he noted, pointing out the “canonization of Ronald Reagan” and similar cult of personality around George W. Bush, another lightweight who was regarded by many Republicans as something close to a saint during most of his presidency.

For a long time, the GOP has been a cult just waiting for its leader. Conservatism often carries an authoritarian bent, a predilection that grew much worse in response to the political tumult of the 1970s and then metastasized after the attacks of 9/11. The right is regressive both politically and, crucially, psychologically, longing to have a deified leader they can blindly follow. It’s a childish impulse, a desire to have a Daddy-like figure who is all-knowing and all-powerful, and whom they hope will protect them from threats both real and imagined, while also relieving them of the responsibility to think for themselves.

Trump’s political success is due almost entirely to his understanding of this, along with a willingness to lean more fully into the role of cult leader beyond what even Reagan or Bush were capable of. Although those men had huge egos, it is hard to compete with Trump’s levels of narcissism, or his ignorance of history, which allows him to half-convince himself that he’s a great man. This is certainly why he picked the GOP over the Democratic Party when he decided to run for office. A lifelong con artist, Trump saw that the Republican Party was a sea of marks who would offer themselves up for exploitation forever, as long as he was willing to pretend to be the almighty prophet-leader they craved.

That said, it’s still possible for at least some Republican voters to grow disillusioned about Trump. This happened to George W. Bush in his second term, when the Iraq War was failing so badly that even its biggest cheerleaders started to feel pangs of shame. Current polling shows that Trump’s war of choice in Iran is already giving some member of the party an off-ramp. A 61% approval rating among GOP voters, as the YouGov poll shows, is an unheard-of low for the president.

Trump loses his usefulness as a Daddy-god-prophet figure by the day. He’s a lame duck, and even Republicans mostly admit he can’t run for office again. Granting a leader deity-like status isn’t as psychologically soothing when he is shut out of real-world power. The GOP will soon start casting around for someone more useful they can invest their blind faith in.

If the “when it happens” meme actually comes to pass, sure, there will be some Republicans who say it’s not true — that Trump is in hiding and will soon rise again. But the rest will probably start looking for the next mediocre white man they can tell themselves is the second coming.