JD Vance Lobs Strange Attack After Trump Death Rumours

Vice President JD Vance appeared to use the recent rumours about President Donald Trump’s health to discredit the media, but it was a swing and a miss. 

“If the media you consumed told you that Donald Trump was on his death bed because he didn’t do a press conference for 3 days, imagine what else they’re lying to you about,” Vance, who regularly attacks the press, posted on X. 

In reality, no reputable media outlet ever reported such a thing. The rumours about Trump’s health lived on social networks — largely on the one owned by onetime Trump pal Elon Musk — and began circulating when Trump disappeared from the public eye for a few days, appeared with large bruises on his hand and made strange comments about hoping he gets into heaven.

Vance’s remarks fuelled the rumour mill, too. Last week, people seized onto comments he made about being ready to assume the presidency if some “terrible tragedy” rendered Trump unable to serve.

The White House did not immediately respond when asked to clarify which “media” Vance was referring to in his X post.

The only news outlet to publicly ask the president about the health rumours was the Trump-friendly Fox News, whose White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked the president on Tuesday if he’d seen the chatter.

Trump said no, then added: “I knew they were saying, like: ‘Is he OK? How is he feeling? What’s wrong?’” He then called the rumours “fake news” and said they are “why the media has so little credibility.”

Media reports that followed made it abundantly clear that the rumours about Trump’s health were just that.

Brian Stelter at CNN, a network that’s one of Trump’s regular punching bags, did a story on Tuesday that explored how chatter about Trump’s health spiralled to such feverish levels without any real reports. One of the big internet presences to set them off, he noted, was a self-proclaimed psychic on TikTok. 

A New York Times report on Tuesday detailed at length everything Trump, his doctors and the White House have disclosed about his health since he entered politics. 

And prior to Trump taking Doocy’s question on Tuesday, plenty of media outlets reported that he was seengolfing on Saturday ― which was at the height of the death rumours.