A bruise can be seen on the back of President Donald Trump's left hand at the World Economic Forum on January 22, 2026 in Davos, Switzerland. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Donald Trump has been on the world stage for more than a decade now, during which he has given his fair share of rambling speeches — although he claims it’s a “brilliant” way of speaking. But is the rambling getting worse?

Since Trump returned to office a year ago, the internet has gone back and forth on whether the 45th and 47th president is healthy. The rambling paired with a mysterious bruise on his hand and swollen ankles has people wondering: Is Trump okay?

New York magazine’s Ben Terris, who recently wrote about Trump’s health, told Today, Explained co-host Astead Herndon that the answer was quite complicated.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

What was the catalyst for this piece?

We’ve all been watching him for years now, but especially in the last year, there’s been more questions about him: his health, the bruising on his hands, the swollen cankles, the falling asleep in meetings.

Before sitting down with him, I’d been reading some books by members of his family. I talked to his niece, Mary Trump. Mary Trump says sometimes when she looks at Donald Trump speaking in the public square, she sees flashes of her grandfather when he had Alzheimer’s. I don’t know if he has it or not, but I wanted to ask him about it.

He started saying, “My father was so healthy; he had no problems. His heart couldn’t be stopped.” “He did have one problem though,” Trump told me. And he said, “Late in life, he had, what’s the word for it?” And he pointed to his head. And Caroline Levitt, the press secretary sitting next to me, she kind of rescued him in that moment and said, “Alzheimer’s.” And he said, “Yeah, yeah, he had an Alzheimer’s thing. Well, well, I don’t have it.”

What are the concerns with Trump’s health that you uncovered?

The story I set out to write about was to figure out whether he is healthy or not, and it kind of ended up being a story about whether the government is healthy or not. There’s kind of an infection that has spread throughout Trump’s inner circle where........

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