Dr. Jonathan Reiner spent decades keeping Dick Cheney’s heart beating. This week he turned his attention to a patient he has never treated: President Donald Trump. In a New York Times op-ed published August 12, 2026, the 66-year-old cardiologist wrote that Trump “has not looked well” over the past year and that the American public “deserves answers.” Then he went on CNN and repeated it on camera, with specifics. The White House says the 80-year-old is in “excellent” health. Reiner is not buying that anymore, and a lot of people in Washington are listening.
The doctor who treated Dick Cheney for decades
Reiner is a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, and for years he was the cardiologist watching over Vice President Cheney, a man who had five heart attacks and still ran the country’s foreign policy. That history is exactly why his words carry weight. In his op-ed, Reiner pointed out that Cheney’s heart problems were never a national secret during the George W. Bush years, and he praised Cheney for being open about them. He was careful to draw a line, too. “I am not Mr. Trump’s doctor, and have only reviewed his records that have been made public,” he wrote. But he added that Trump is “probably the most photographed president in American history,” which means “a variety of physical ailments are easy to see.” You do not need to be in the exam room, in other words, when the photos are everywhere.
The Oval Office nap that kicked it off
On Monday, August 10, 2026, Trump sat at the Resolute Desk to sign an executive order cutting the recommended childhood vaccine schedule. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya were in the room. As Kennedy talked, Trump’s eyes kept closing for several seconds at a time. He shifted in his chair, leaned to one side, and at one point rested his head against the back of his chair with his eyes shut while deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller spoke. Video spread fast. Independent journalist Aaron Rupar posted a clip captioned “holy shit Trump is OUT.” Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta shared a meme of a kid lying face-down in the sand. It was not a one-off, either. Days earlier, after Trump’s August 4 trip to California, Gov. Gavin Newsom called the visit “a total snoozer” and said the president “could barely take a question on the tarmac.” Reiner cited the Oval Office episode directly as one of his clearest examples.
Bruised hands and swollen legs
On CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront, Reiner listed what he sees. He said Trump appears to be falling asleep in the Oval Office “over and over again.” He pointed to “massive” swelling in the president’s legs and “obvious” bruising on both hands that “will just not go away.” The White House has explained the bruising as the result of frequent, vigorous handshaking. Reiner shot that down in one sentence: “His left hand isn’t bruising from vigorous handshaking.” He noted the swelling has been described as chronic venous insufficiency, a common condition, but said it still deserves a real explanation. The Daily Beast has been tracking the bruising on Trump’s hands since it first showed up in February 2025. That is more than a year of makeup-covered marks that never quite disappear, and no full answer from the people who actually see the president every day.
Seven questions he wants a commission to ask
Reiner did not just complain. He called for a congressional commission to look into Trump’s health and laid out seven lines of inquiry. Among them: the recurring sleepiness, the reason behind a controversial MRI Trump underwent, and the broader question of whether he is fit to govern. He also flagged the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a test Trump has taken multiple times while in office. Reiner noted that the test screens for early signs of dementia and is not an IQ test, despite how the president has described it. He raised the medication list, too. When the Washington Post asked about a missing entry, the White House said the report “reflects all medications deemed clinically relevant to disclose at this time.” Reiner’s response cut to the point: “The more important question is, what medications prescribed for Mr. Trump, if any, has the White House decided to withhold from the public?”
The White House keeps saying ‘excellent’
To be fair, the administration has not gone completely silent. It has released statements over the past year and has repeatedly called Trump’s health “excellent.” In July 2025, officials announced a diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency and stressed there were no signs of heart failure, kidney problems, or systemic illness. That condition is common for adults Trump’s age, and mild cases often get treated with simple measures. Reiner acknowledged the swelling could be benign. His frustration is not that the White House has said nothing. It is that the answers feel partial, that questions get brushed aside, and that the president’s own team, in his words, keeps the country “in the dark too long.” A reassuring statement is not the same as a full accounting, and Reiner clearly does not think the two have been matched up here.
Why Washington is watching this round differently
Talk about Trump’s health tends to flare up and fade. Daily Beast reporter Sarah Ewall-Wice described the pattern on the outlet’s podcast, saying it is “sometimes a topic that is all-consuming, and then it kind of goes away.” This time, she said, the momentum feels different, and more people than ever are privately expressing concern that he is not fit to lead. She also noted the White House has been “completely shutting down, or in some cases combative about,” questions on the subject. The debate is bigger than one man, too. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s hospitalization sparked a parallel fight, with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear saying voters deserve answers about his health as well. Reiner framed it as a matter of democracy itself. “The United States does not have a king,” he wrote, comparing the secrecy to Buckingham Palace’s quiet handling of King Charles’s cancer. There is no law forcing a president to share medical records. That makes disclosure a choice, and at 80, Trump is the oldest sitting president in American history.
What happens now
Reiner already knows the odds. He and others have watched these stories rise and vanish before, especially with a crowded news cycle that includes a monthslong war with Iran pulling attention in every direction. Ewall-Wice made the same point, that the chaos tends to make health discussions “disappear” within days. So the real test is not whether people react to a viral clip of the president dozing off. It is whether a congressional commission ever forms, whether the full medication list ever comes out, and whether the White House gives a straight answer about the bruising instead of blaming handshakes. Reiner treated a vice president with a famously fragile heart and never hid it from the public. His argument is simple: the country got the truth about Dick Cheney, and it can handle the truth about Donald Trump. Whether it gets that truth is now up to the people who see the president every single day.
