Trump’s Excuse for Getting Random MRI Has Major Issues, Doctor Says

A prominent cardiologist is calling bullshit on President Donald Trump’s MRI story.

Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper Tuesday, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who served as a cardiologist for the late Vice President Dick Cheney, dismissed the White House’s outrageous explanation for the 79-year-old Trump’s repeated visits to the doctor.

A recent memo from Dr. Sean Barbabella, physician to the president, disclosed that Trump had received a chest and abdominal scan as a “preventative” measure for men in his age group.

“There’s no chance that this was just sort of routine preventative care. First of all, it’s not part of routine preventative care,” Reiner explained. “There aren’t patients who come to see me or any of my colleagues who we say, ‘Let’s just scan your whole body!’”

Reiner noted there was a lot of information missing from the doctor’s memo. “The president’s doctor didn’t even disclose what kind of scan. The president said MRI, all that the president’s physician said was advanced imaging. Did he have an MRI? Did he have a CT? Did he have both?” Reiner said.

“And what he didn‘t say is whether the president had a scan of his brain. He didn’t say he didn’t, he just included some data from the chest and abdominal scans. So it’s not plausible or really credible to believe that they just decided to do some preventative screening for a third time this year.”

Trump’s October visit to Walter Reed came six months after his annual physical exam. For days afterward, the White House refused to explain the reason for his second visit. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed it was his “routine yearly checkup,” but clearly that wasn’t true. Meanwhile, anyone with eyes can see signs that the president has diminishing mental faculties. It appeared that he could barely stay awake throughout a lengthy Cabinet meeting Tuesday, and when he spoke, he was incoherent and confused.

Trump has repeatedly claimed he had no idea why he got an MRI scan or what part of the body the doctors were even looking at. Still, he claimed his results were “absolutely perfect.” Barbabella’s memo detailing Trump’s October visit to Walter Reed said that the president “remains in excellent overall health.”

The Trump administration is halting immigration applications for people from 19 countries that were already subject to travel bans or restrictions.

Applications linked to those countries, including for green cards and citizenship, will be paused, according to a memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS. The countries in question are the same ones subject to travel bans and restrictions thanks to an executive order from President Trump in June.

The order banned citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen from traveling to the U.S. It also placed restrictions on travel for citizens of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

At the time, people from all of those countries who were already legally in the U.S. didn’t face any restrictions. The new measure, however, pauses all immigration and citizenship applications, including green cards, and can only be lifted at the discretion of USCIS’s Director Joseph Edlow, according to the memo. A similar plan was already in the works last month, but it seems last week’s alleged shooting of National Guard troops by an Afghan national spurred it into action.

“In light of identified concerns and the threat to the American people, USCIS has determined that a comprehensive re-review, potential interview, and re-interview of all aliens from high-risk countries of concern who entered the United States on or after January 20, 2021 is necessary,” the USCIS memo said, referencing immigration decisions made during the Biden administration.

The new order is discriminatory and punishes those who have successfully gone through the correct legal process. It amounts to not only punishing every new Afghan immigrant for the alleged actions of one, but also targets people from 18 other countries for seemingly arbitrary reasons. It seems very much like a racist attempt to overhaul U.S. immigration policy.

Senator Lindsey Graham is making an enemy out of the pope.

Pope Leo XIV called out Donald Trump on Tuesday for his aggressive attempts to force Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of power. And Graham was having none of it.

The South Carolina lawmaker pushed the pope to stay on the “right side of history” in a lengthy post on social media Tuesday, claiming that a “credible threat” of “military force” is the only way to enact change in Venezuela.

“Without a credible threat of the use of military force, nothing changes in Venezuela. When it comes to Maduro, the time for talking is closing. The time for action to end this reign of terror in Venezuela is upon us,” Graham wrote.

“I would urge the Holy Father to be on the right side of history when it comes to ending Maduro’s reign of terror on the Venezuelan people, the United States and others throughout the region.

“The use of military force to evict Maduro will only be required if Maduro insists on remaining as the illegitimate leader of a narcoterrorist state,” the Baptist continued. “He has stolen elections, collaborates with terrorist groups like Hezbollah, sits atop a notorious drug cartel and has flooded our country with hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens.

“As President Trump said, when it comes to Maduro, we can do it the easy way or the hard way. I would urge the Holy Father to spend his time and energy persuading Maduro to take the easy way out—for all,” Graham wrote.

Since early September, the United States has destroyed at least 20 small boats traversing the Caribbean Sea that Trump administration officials deemed—without an investigation or interdiction—were smuggling drugs. At least 83 people have been killed in the attacks.

The attacks have been condemned by U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and foreign human advocates alike, including the U.N. human rights chief, who said in October that the strikes “violate international human rights law.”

While chalking the seemingly needless violence up to counter-narco-terrorism efforts, Donald Trump has simultaneously leveraged the aggression to try to shove Maduro out of power, something that he tried and failed to do in 2019.

Pope Leo recommended less violent options that the U.S. could take in the boiling feud. The first American leader of the Catholic Church told reporters Tuesday that it would be “better” to “find another way” to apply pressure, such as hosting a dialogue with Maduro or imposing economic sanctions on the South American nation, “if that is what they want to do in the United States.”

Even MAGA media outlet Newsmax is calling Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s September 2 boat bombings a war crime.

“It gives me no pleasure to say what I’m about to say, because I worked with Pete Hegseth for seven or eight years at Fox News,” Judge Andrew Napolitano said on air Tuesday. “This is an act of a war crime. Ordering survivors—who the law requires be rescued—instead to be murdered.”

Napolitano continued.

“There’s absolutely no legal basis for it. Everybody along the line who did it, from the secretary of defense to the admiral to the people who actually pulled the trigger, should be prosecuted for a war crime for killing these two people.”

Newsmax is tailor-made for a far-right audience, is the preferred network of President Trump, and has been virtually unwavering in its support for him. This kind of critique, especially coming from Hegseth’s former co-worker, speaks to just how poorly planned the explanation for this potential war crime was, and how widely panned the decisions have been from both the left and the right.