All the way back in 2021 – ancient history if measured in media cycles – Chris Cillizza, who worked for CNN then, wrote an article entitled, “Republicans keep trying to make Biden’s mental capacity an issue.” As you might expect, the piece went on to perpetuate the “Republicans pounce” narrative the left often uses to shift the focus away from what everyone can see with their own eyes. The strategy is simply to attack Republicans for noticing something everyone can see and then saying something about it.
What we all could see, even as Biden campaigned for office from his basement in 2020, was that Biden did not have the mental capacity to run the country as president. It was painfully obvious that as the campaign tried to compensate for his lack of energy and acuity, his handlers came up with a myriad of excuses, many of them conveniently tied to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cillizza had brought this up when he quoted President Donald Trump from the 2020 campaign: “’Biden is shot,’ Trump said in an interview with Fox News Channel last fall. ‘I’m telling you he’s shot. There’s something going on.’”
Trump was right at the time. He saw something, said something, and got attacked for saying it.
Cillizza said in his 2021 piece, “It never really caught on. Forty-one percent of voters in the exit poll said that only Biden had the mental and physical health to serve as president. The same number – 41% – said that only Trump had the mental and physical stamina to do the job.”
What seemed to trigger Cillizza was an interview that Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) gave to Hugh Hewitt. Cillizza quoted Hagerty sounding the alarm over Biden’s obvious mental challenges: “This has created doubt not only in my mind, in the mind of many, many Americans, but also doubt in the minds of our allies. It has been just shocking to see the President’s lack of attention to this, his unwillingness to address it.”
Cillizza referenced other Republicans, too. Like Florida Sen. Rick Scott (R), bringing up the issue of the 25th Amendment, and a National Review column under the headline, “Something Is Wrong with the President.” In that column, Jim Geraghty raised his concern that Biden had not released any substantive details on his health condition since December 2019, before the campaign.
Cillizza’s take at the time was that all Republicans were basing their observations on a disagreement over policy, which was not true in the least. He pointed out that Biden’s critics “are not doctors. Or medical professionals. Their conclusions are, as far as I can tell, based on disagreements with Biden’s approach to Afghanistan.”
Cillizza maintained that what the Republicans were really trying to do was “raise doubts in voters’ minds about Biden – and his age in particular.”
And then Cillizza provided this money take: “This is the sort of gross, lowest-common-denominator politics that drive people away from public life. If Republicans have some sort of proof that Biden is declining, they should bring it forward. If they don’t, they should stop doing what they’re doing. Immediately.”
If Cillizza still wants to litigate that, he should talk to his longtime CNN colleague and fellow misser-of-Biden’s-mental-failings, Jake Tapper.
Cillizza is now singing a different tune because – Trump
Cillizza clearly got the memo on the day after Memorial Day of this year, after the Trump administration disclosed two weeks earlier that the president had a “routine annual dental and medical assessment” on his calendar. The White House added that this is "part of his regular preventive health care."
Others who got the memo drove the same leftist narrative. Like the Washington Post, which said, “Trump faces health questions ahead of another Walter Reed trip.” Or this from the South China Morning Post: “Trump’s next medical exam renews health scrutiny as 80th birthday nears.” Isn’t it interesting that the Washington Post and the South China Morning Post would be on the same page when it comes to propaganda?
Add Cillizza to that mix.
When you have three visits to Walter Reed in the space of 13 months; when you have a diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency; when you have, not just, excuse me, not just Donald Trump’s swollen ankles, but the bruising on his hands, which the White House has said is the result of him taking large amounts of aspirin every day, and shaking hands, and he puts makeup on his hands to cover it up. When you have him nodding off in public, right, at some of these longer White House events; when you have the fact that he’s about to turn 80, doesn’t eat well, doesn’t sleep a lot, is overweight.
I think it is very fair to ask these questions. Now, I am not all the way over on the ‘He’s dying and they’re covering it up.’ I don’t see evidence of that. But look, there’s a reason he keeps going to the doctor, right? I don’t know if there’s more going on. I don’t know if he’s having symptoms that make him think that maybe I should go get these things checked out, and they’re not telling us. I don’t think we’re…I don’t think he has some massive thing wrong with him that we’re not being told yet. But I will say, look, where there’s smoke in politics, there’s usually fire, Cillizza said.
Donald Trump will be at Walter Reed for the third time in the last 13 months today.
— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) May 26, 2026
What are we doing? What's going on? pic.twitter.com/fSnKcnS9zm
After seeing Cillizza’s most recent comments, I went back to the 2021 version of Chris Cillizza, based on his CNN piece. Here’s the first thing he had to say to his 2026 self: “You’re not a doctor or a medical professional.”
Key point. Most of what Cillizza is pointing out about Trump would be true of any generally healthy person in their 70s. Some swelling, some bruising, doesn’t always eat well, has a little extra weight on him, and doesn’t sleep a lot.
If Cillizza were a doctor who saw this sort of patient as part of his profession, nothing he listed is 25th Amendment material. And make no mistake, that’s exactly the path he wants us to be on, even if he hasn’t said it yet.
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Another thing Cillizza does here is utter the name of a condition he first heard like five minutes ago – “chronic venous insufficiency” – and he makes it sound like Stage 4 brain cancer. Hey, Chris, we know what you’re trying to do here.
By saying, “I am not all the way over on the ‘He’s dying and they’re covering it up,’” Cillizza is engaging in some classic concern trolling. As the Urban Dictionary states, concern trolling is when “someone who is on one side of the discussion… pretends to be a supporter of the other side with ‘concerns’. The idea behind this is that your opponents will take your arguments more seriously if they think you're an ally.”
Now, we know Cillizza isn't even trying to pretend he's an ally. But he is trying to pretend to be reasonable. He's not.
Cillizza tells us all the things he admits he doesn’t know, but he states them in list form. He does this because he knows that makes it easier to remember for his army of followers. He knows many will internalize this and incorporate it into their everyday discussions with others, amplifying his fake hysteria.
Of course, at the end, Cillizza himself destroys the credibility of everything else he says before it when he uses the where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire line. He’s basically saying, “That thing I said you shouldn’t worry about? Well, you should. You should be very worried.”
All because Trump had a scheduled medical checkup. Talk about fake panic, fake concern, and fake news. Do these people forget that the Internet has a memory, and we can instantly compare what they are saying now to what they’ve said before?
Yes, they do. But they know their base will not do any of this, and instead, it will take what Cillizza says here and run with it. That’s the point and the purpose. We conservatives are not the audience. It’s Cillizza’s own base.
Never mind that Trump puts in longer days than most people, and he outpaces people a third of his age. His constant exposure in the media enables anyone to check what people say about him against what they see themselves. Love him or hate him, they see someone who’s always in high gear and ready to engage.
Back in 2021, when conservatives were pointing out the genuine problems Biden was having, Cillizza dismissed it all by accusing Biden’s detractors of trying to “raise doubts in voters’ minds about Biden – and his age in particular.”
Well, Chris, you know that we know what you are doing. You are trying to raise doubts in the public’s mind about Trump, “and his age in particular.” You couldn’t be more obvious. Stop it. It’s sort of gross.
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