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Two Coverups. One Press Corps Asleep at the Switch.

From Trump’s health struggles to Pam Bondi scrubbing the Epstein files, the administration is counting on the media to ignore the obvious.

Rick Wilson's avatar
Rick Wilson
Jun 03, 2026
∙ Paid

There are two coverups running in Washington right now, and they have something in common beyond the obvious. Both are being run by people who think you’re stupid. And both are being abetted, day after day, by a press corps that would rather attend the briefing than do the job.

Let’s start with the one you can see with your own eyes, because that’s the part that should make you crazy.

The White House wants you to believe that the 79-year-old man caking two mismatched shades of drugstore concealer onto his swollen hands is “the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history.” That’s a real quote. Somebody got paid to write it. Somebody else stood at a podium and said it without their voice cracking.

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Here is what is actually happening, and it requires no leaked memo, no whistleblower, no Pulitzer-bait FOIA fight. It requires eyes.

The bruising has spread from one hand to two. He’s covering it with makeup that doesn’t match his skin. He showed up to Arlington on Memorial Day with a beige-painted hand and sat with his eyes shut through the Defense Secretary’s remarks. He shuffles. The balance is gone. The man heads to Walter Reed this week for his fourth known checkup of the term, and the official line is still “man of the people, shakes a lot of hands.”

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