Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened.
There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the United States of America.
Good night and good luck. Hey everybody, it's Rick Wilson. Welcome back to The Elephant in the Room. The Elephant in the Room, every Friday we try to go through and pull the curtain back on something and explain a couple of the underlying things that are happening. If I may dip back into my old days as a philosophy major, this is the Immanuel Kant kind of expression, the noumenon and the phenomenon. The phenomenon is the unreal thing that you see, and the noumenon is the real thing that's
underneath it. We try to show you that noumenon every week, that real thing. You get a lot of spectacle in this country, a lot of phenomena, a lot of showmanship, especially out of this administration. But this show is about tearing that down, showing you the real thing underneath the surface. I don't want to talk to you right now about why the elephant in the room this week is
illness and death. Chipper, don't you think? Really good start to a happy Friday. But I'll tell you, this idea that a lot of folks have in their head that Donald Trump is ill appears to be correct. I will say this right off the bat.
I am not a doctor. I am not a medical professional of any degree whatsoever. Okay? Just not. Might know a little more than the average dog, but I just, I'm not going to pretend that I'm a doctor and can make a diagnosis of Trump. But I can make a diagnosis about why they're doing this the way they're doing it. The first part of this is you have all seen the obvious signs of Trump's
mental and physical decline. These aren't negotiable. These aren't debatable. These aren't hypothetical. They're real. You have seen the giant cankles that Trump
is rocking from the edema that's in his body. You have seen his inability to stay on task or on target while he's speaking.
You know, like everything else, grass has a life. Do you know that? Grass has a life. You know, we have a life and grass has a life. Look at these people here. Nothing, you know, they were like Rambos. It's like putting a million Rambos. Good old Sylvester Stallone was my friend. I will use Title 42 to end the trial,
and we have to do this.
Oh, there it is. I was looking at me. I started looking at me, and I'm looking. I do not like the way I don't like my hair tonight.
Okay?
The discursiveness is not five-dimensional chess. The discursiveness is he's a very old man now.
The New York Times did a comprehensive analysis of Donald Trump's public appearances and how they have deteriorated and morphed over time. They found this, quote, signs of change since Trump first took the political stage in 2015. Quote, he has always been discursive and has often been untethered to truth, but with the passage of time,
his speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane, and increasingly fixated on the past. Quote, Donald Trump rambles. He repeats himself. He roams from thought to thought, some of
them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own beautiful body.
The lies that they bought into and committing to this bit about his own beautiful body. The lies that they've bought into and committed to this bit about Trump for years now. He's seven feet tall, he weighs 157 pounds, he has the metabolism of a Navy SEAL. This is a guy who has sucked down more Kentucky fried chicken
and more McDonald's Filet-O-Fish and more well done steaks than is arguably healthy for any human being. Trump's an old obese guy and he's lost some weight in the last year. I don't think that's a deliberate vanity.
I think that's something wrong with him physically, but Trump is not well. He is physically unwell. He's dragging that leg behind him. You've seen the bruising on his hands from whatever the treatment that they're giving him. The, the anodyne bullshit
they released from the White House. He has venous insufficiency in his legs. And not one reporter who screamed and jumped up and down about Joe Biden is old and Joe Biden is this and Joe Biden is seen. Not one reporter has gone and dug and dug and dug into this story to go get it.
But Trump is not well, and you know it. He's sick. Something's broken. Something ain't right. Now, why is it that they're hiding this? And this is where the elephant in the room of this week is, is the big reveal. The first is Trump always commits to the bit. He always commits to the, the, the, the, the image making
flim flam of Trump. If it is to be said that Donald Trump has a superpower, this is what it is. He's a, he's a bullshitter about his own bullshit. He's a con artist conning people into believing the con of his life.
So I think most of you have seen, they released my physical. I did a physical on Friday and I understand it was a very good report. The numbers were perfect. And I took a cognitive exam and I would challenge anybody here to meet those marks because I have a perfect mark.
Were you impressed by that?
He's always played this game since he was Roy Cohn's little play thing. I'm the richest. I'm the biggest. I'm the tallest. I get the most women. I get the most power.
I get this, this, this.
Me, me, me.
And an awful lot of Republican including young white men in the last election bought into the Trump's the most zero manly man to ever be in the White House. Yeah. Teddy Roosevelt would like a disc would like to have a talk motherfucker. But Trump's idea of his image of
preserving his image of crafting his image of curating the idea of the Trump that Americans get to see
is a central obsession. It is why the great me more that started in 2016 and Gavin Newsom has now ended for Trump. He seems to have found ground legs with the left by mocking president Trump, like a chat GTP personality. He's just borrowing now from President Trump copying his style with X post. Now he's even going for his own Maga style merch. The shop includes items like Newsome
was right about everything hat. Or he has a Newsome 2026 mug. He even has a Bible priced at $100 that he tweets out already sold out. His personality, just a shadow. Shadows on the wall.
A Xerox copy of others. But that works on the left.
Huzzah. Well done, sir. This hyper-masculinized version of Trump that's never existed in the real world. The rippling muscles, the Rambo, the, the, the, the cut, you know, eight pack the Trump on a tank, Trump riding an Eagle Trump, you know, dressed as a fireman, all this performative horse shit
masculinity. I can tell you something. I have taken a punch and I have delivered a punch. I've worked with hard materials and big tools and hard vehicles. I've been a roofer. I worked on a shrimp boat.
I've done these things. Donald Trump is a man who has never shat on anything that wasn't gold. He's a weak, soft man. He's a terribly interior kind of guy. Yes, he goes out on the golf course, but that is a groomed environment where he is comfortable. Donald Trump has never been a healthy guy. He may have had that, what Tom Wolf wants called the rude animal health of youth, but that
is long ago. And this commitment to the image of Trump that was always built up in the minds of his followers was that he was, and remember 2016 stamina, power, strength over and over again. Look, mortal frailty comes to us all. I worked on a shrimp boat 40 years ago. I was a roofer
40 years ago. I can't do that now. I worked on a shrimp boat 40 years ago. I was a roofer 40 years ago. I can't do that now. I'm 61 years old. Still pretty tough. Still pretty willing to go out and saw down trees and do all the shit in this absurd property of mine. But I can't do what I did then. I don't pretend to. Age is okay. Age is fine. Stay mentally alert. You're halfway there. That's the other part of this, though. Donald Trump has never read a book in his life. He doesn't read. There is no intellectual framework inside of Donald Trump's head. It's always
been about me, me, me, me, me. Donald Trump would read Page Six and maybe Crane's Business in New York. But Donald Trump was not a guy with maybe Crane's business in New York. But Donald Trump was not a guy with an intellectual interior. He's not a guy with a, with a comprehensive mental framework of his life. He's not a guy who reads.
And that is an area where I think as you grow older, and especially if you are, are from a family like Trump, where dementia is a, is a known element, that's why you hear him repeating the stories, the Sur stories, the Jim stories, all the things that are just the things about Trump. The interior space of Trump is just Trump.
Preserving that image that he is somehow this master negotiator, this deal maker, this executive powerhouse. What did you see in Alaska? You saw an old man get rolled.
President Trump called the meeting extremely productive, but it does appear that there really wasn't anything concrete achieved. No ceasefire, no sanctions relief or sanctions imposed. We don't really know where we are other than Putin got himself a summit in Alaska. What do you make of what we just saw?
Yeah, I think you have it right, Jake. Look, the atmospherics of the entire summit was somewhat cringe-worthy. The fact that Putin was being welcomed on American soil, the fact that Trump gave him literally a red carpet treatment, the kind he has rarely given to any, you know, Democratic ally of the United States. You can tell that Trump thinks Putin is,
you know, is an equal, is this big shot on the world stage, and he's been treated by the rest of the West as a kind of pariah. I mean, he can't go to Europe because he'd be arrested.
Donald Trump masterfully demonstrated the art of no deal. And also, I'd be interested in Ambassador McCaul's thinking on this, because Trump wanted to point out a couple of times the business potential that could come out of this. But I don't really understand what can we get from Russia? What do we need from Russia? Like more vodka and caviar at Mar-a-Lago? They're not big trading
partners even during the best time. So it just shows how easily he can be manipulated
by them to believe that he's getting something. Now, Putin's not much younger than Trump, but he's much, much sharper. Trump got rolled. Trump knows these stories about his health and his stories about his mental acuity are hurting him. His own base that, that for years thought, well, Hillary Clinton is on death's door knocking loudly because she had a cold and
Donald Trump is the healthiest man in America. Well, she seems like she's doing pretty well and he does not. The physical nature of Trump is falling apart in front of us because he cannot abandon the bit. If he admits mortal frailty, if he admits physical frailty, if he admits sickness or
illness, that shatters a really core conception about Trump from his people. I will also note that the second element of this is the problem of candor. Now we are now well accustomed to the fact that Donald Trump is a lying liar who lies. That Donald Trump is the most mendacious and consistently dishonest person who's ever held the office at all. There's no argument about it. There's no argument about whether or not he is the most
dishonest president in the history of America. It's not an argument. It's not an issue or an argument. You can't debate it. It does not, it does not lend itself to debate because it cannot be debated. So the White House has lied to the reporters about Trump's health, lied to the
press about Trump's health. Now, I will say this, and this is an irritant. Once again, this is probably another episode of this show, but Donald Trump has a White House team that also believes in committing to the bit, and they don't care about lying
to the press. Why don't they care? They don't care because they think the press is the enemy. They think that anyone who isn't a Trump supporter isn't an American with a different opinion, but an enemy. They think that anyone who could report honestly
about the president's medical conditions is an enemy. So that's why this whole Vanness Insufficiency lie was told.
In the effort of transparency, the president wanted me to share a note from his physician with all of you today. In recent weeks, President Trump noted mild swelling in his lower legs. In keeping with routine medical care
and out of an abundance of caution, this concern was thoroughly evaluated by the White House Medical Unit. The president underwent a comprehensive examination, including diagnostic vascular studies. Bilateral lower extremity venous Doppler ultrasounds
were performed and revealed chronic venous insufficiency, a benign and common condition, particularly in individuals over the age of 70. Importantly, there was no evidence of deep vein thrombosis or arterial disease. Laboratory testing included a complete blood count,
comprehensive metabolic panel, coagulation profile, D-dimer, B-type, natriotic peptide, and cardiac biomarkers. All results were within normal limits. An echocardiogram was also performed and confirmed normal cardiac structure and function. No signs of heart failure, renal impairment, or systemic illness were
identified. Again, I'm not a doctor. I don't know what's wrong with him. But I know who these people are. I know who he is, and I know they are all consistent liars. Not many reporters, including a lot of them who have spent the last year screeching, oh my God, we didn't report enough on Joe Biden being old and losing his edge, are now strangely silent. Haven't been a lot of like barn burner reporting out there. Hasn't been a lot of people trying to track down Trump's doctors, trying to break through
the White House bullshit, trying to break through and find out just what's happening with our president. That lack of candor by the White House will not be punished. I'm just going to tell you right now. Carolyn Leavitt has probably been briefed in on what's happening. She's not going to tell the truth. Suzy Wiles knows what's happening. She's not going to tell
anybody the truth. There's probably a handful of people that know what's really going on. They're not going to tell you the truth. They will lie. And that means there's a non-zero chance that one day we wake up to the news that Trump was standing in the shower and fell over dead, that Trump slumped over in the Oval Office and died, that Trump fell down the stairs
and died, that Trump on the back nine fell over and died. And people will act surprised. They will act shocked. Oh my God, we had no idea. You do. You know. You know he's ill. You know he's sick. You know he's got trouble. Even Trump's own statements are like, I want to go to heaven.
I want to try and get to heaven if possible. I'm hearing I'm not doing well. I didn't really
hit the bottom of the totem pole, which by the way, I have a piece coming on that you will enjoy. This idea that Trump is sick isn't debatable. It's obvious. It is the elephant in the room. Trump's physical collapse is the elephant in the room. Guys, it's not getting better. He's not changing this narrative. You know, he split his base this year with the Epstein cover-up. Really, really has a deep radioactive nature to it for his people.
Disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's case continues to roil the MAGA world. After repeatedly claiming that there were scandalous criminal details about Epstein being hidden from the public. Now, some of those same people, having joined the Trump administration, are saying there's nothing to see. But key figures from the president's base allege that a cover-up continues.
Leading that charge is far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. She told Politico that there should be a special counsel appointed to the Epstein case. Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Deputy Director Dan Mangino have each stoked ominous conspiracy theories about what's referred to as the Epstein files, allegedly a secret list of powerful people who had connections to Epstein.
But Patel, once he became FBI director, tried to temper expectations.
RON PATEL, FBI Director, New York Times NewsHour, July 20, 2016, So, on the Epstein matter or any other matters, we are diligently working on that. And it takes time to go through years of investigations, years of political maneuvering and years of cover-up to get the American people what they deserve. And that's what I'm going to give them, on everything.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM, NPR NewsHour Correspondent, Voice of America NewsHour, New York Times NewsHour, New York Times NewsHour, New York Times NewsHour, New York Times NewsHour, New York Times NewsHour, New York Times NewsHour, New York Times NewsHour, New York Times NewsHour, it. Influential right-wing broadcaster Alex Jones broke down in tears over the news.
ALEX JONES, Right-Wing Broadcaster, New York Times NewsHour, said, and then for them to
do something like this, it terrors my guts out.
At a conservative political conference on Friday, FOX News host Laura Ingraham egged the crowd on about Epstein.
How many of you are satisfied you can clap, satisfied with the results of the Epstein investigation? Clap.
Audience boos.
How many of you are not satisfied with the results of the investigation?
They understood that their long fight against the pedophile underground was a fight against Donald Trump. They understood that the big pedophile coverup was a coverup led by Donald Trump. There's a coverup happening now in the White House that reporters have a moral and professional obligation to pursue, and that is the coverup of Donald Trump's collapsing
health. The ankles, the dragging the leg, the mental rambling and discursiveness in every the ankles, the dragging the leg, the mental rambling and discursiveness in every single thing he does and says. If you were not paying attention to this, you were doing yourself and the country a disservice. When Donald Trump dies,
whether that's tomorrow or 20 years from now, you will look back on this moment and you will know you were lied to. A third reason, by the way, I want to cover why they're also telling this lie. It is because inside Trump's circle, inside the family and the loyalists, they're watching J.D.
Vance walk out further and further and further in front. They're watching him do more interviews. They're watching him do more interviews. They're watching him do more direct engagements with other cabinet members. They're watching him start to place himself in the MAGA space as Trump's successor. Just because he's VP,
by the way, did not mean he is the natural successor to Trump. He is right now posturing very quickly. And if you don't understand why Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are Vance's biggest backers and why Elon Musk abandoned his third party bid so he could back JD Vance, it's because they
know Trump's not going to be there. Trump, if he does survive, if he is, if he is able to make it through this health crisis, whatever it is, he's going to try to stay until he dies. He's going to be a feet first out of the White House guy.
There will not be, as we saw in 2021, he said he learned one lesson from 2021. He should have never left the building. Vance understands he's got a lot of money
behind him.
He's got what I call the hate machine behind him. That awareness has trickled up to Trump. He knows Vance is out there now putting himself out in public spaces. Why did Vance go to Union Station with Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth?
He's right there.
Oh, look. It's Couch Bucker. You going to fuck a couch, buddy?
True white boy's drink. I'm drinking. It's couch fucker. You're going to fuck a couch buddy? Go back here.
Do not touch that.
Go back to the couch. Pussy board. Pussy board, JD. Pussy board. Pussy board. Go fuck a couch.
Go fuck a couch, JD Vance.
Go fuck a couch.
Trump's now looking at his own cabinet members, his own friends, who are starting to kiss Vance's ass, who are starting to be like, hey, JD,
I've always been your guy, buddy.
We're homies, right? We're close, right? That's the other reason why they're trying to cover this thing up. Because, man, if JD Vance becomes the thing Rupert likes, if he becomes MAGA enough for Putin, which he's really working hard on this
week, if he becomes more out front on the cruelty of the immigration shit and the craziness of the anti-vax stuff from RFK, and all these other things. If he does that, even if Trump lives, he starts to lose power. Vance has got more energy, Donald. I know that's tough for you to believe,
but that's the third reason why this is concerning to Trump and why they're trying to cover this up. Because if I may quote a famous piece of poetry the president is very fond of, you know that J.D. was a snake before you took him in. This has been another edition of The Elephant in the Room. We look forward to seeing you every Friday on this show. Thanks so much for watching the Lincoln Square Network and backing the Lincoln Project and the important work that we do on both
those fronts. On the Lincoln Square side, we're trying to produce media that is outside of the traditional bubble. Join us on Substack. Follow us on YouTube. All the things, Believe in Project podcast, the Enemies List podcast, and this, The Elephant in the Room. Catch me streaming on Tuesday nights on the Strategy Session, Thursday nights on the Breakdown, and Fridays behind the numbers with the Wilsons where my son Andrew, who is a brilliant young pollster, and I tear through the week's polling and discuss what
the political landscape looks like. Folks appreciate you all. We'll see you again next time. We'll see you again next time.
And good luck.
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