MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell has discovered Donald Trump’s “perfect place to hide those ankles.”
O’Donnell displayed a photo from Trump’s European “intervention” on his show The Last Word, which he said showed the president intentionally keeping his medically concerning cankles out of sight.
O’Donnell explained, “Presidents actually rarely sit at the Oval Office desk like that during meetings in the Oval Office with people from outside the White House staff. The president usually sits in one of those chairs in front of the fireplace. That’s where the president always sat in every Oval Office meeting I was in when I worked in the Senate,” he said, indicating how Trump’s chosen spot for the meeting hid his lower body from view.
“Donald Trump now has an extra incentive to stay behind the desk because the Resolute Desk will help him hide” the cankles the White House claimed was a symptom of chronic venous insufficiency, the former senior advisor to Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan added.
Trump’s swollen ankles have become a point of interest to observers of the 79-year-old president, as the White House appears to have made several attempts to shield their appearance. An official photo from the president’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Monday was conveniently selected with an Air Force One model directly covering his ankle area.
When it came time for the president to join several more fit world leaders than he, O’Donnell said Tuesday, he “made sure no one was going to be able to compare his ankles to a French president’s ankles or a German chancellor’s or a British prime minister’s.” Trump did, however, let his cankles hang out when he sat down with Putin, the week prior.
Trump’s CVI diagnosis is common in people over 70 and can cause swollen ankles, but the condition can be exacerbated by a poor diet. As O’Donnell pointed on his show, the president is known for his penchant for junk and fast food. “That’s one of the ways a lifetime of McDonald’s junk food catches up with you,” he said. “One of the places those Big Macs are going to show up is in the ankles hanging over the edge of your shoes.”
“We can only wonder if the White House would have ever admitted that Donald Trump’s blood circulation is insufficient if not for the telephoto lenses of White House photographers zooming in on the ankles,” O’Donnell said.
The host concluded by saying that Trump now has an “extra incentive” to stay behind his desk so that he can “hide at least one of his problems.”
“But that is the only problem the desk can help Donald Trump hide.”
