Photographs taken at the Pentagon’s observance on Friday, September 11, 2026, of 25 years since the September 11 attacks appeared to show swelling around President Donald Trump’s ankles, pulling a condition the White House disclosed more than a year ago back into public view.
First Lady Melania Trump sat beside the president, 80, at the service in Arlington, Virginia. Every other living president, along with their spouses, turned up instead at the Ground Zero ceremony in New York. In the pictures he slouched in his chair, and his ankles looked to spill over the edges of his shoes.
As the names of the victims were read aloud, some social media users said he appeared to nod off or struggle to stay awake.
The limits of the images matter as well. A photograph cannot pin down the cause, the severity or the progression of swelling in anyone, and it cannot establish whether what showed up at the Pentagon amounted to any change in Trump’s condition. Nobody at the White House, and no other official, said the president suffered an acute medical problem during the ceremony; officials have confirmed no change in his condition either.
What the White House Has Disclosed
The diagnosis itself is more than a year old. Swelling in his lower legs prompted a comprehensive examination that identified chronic venous insufficiency, the White House said in a statement on July 17, 2025, when Trump was 79. Doctors included bilateral lower-extremity venous Doppler ultrasound scans in the workup.
Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, the White House physician, called it “a benign and common condition,” one seen particularly in people over 70. His July 2025 memorandum recorded that the testing produced no evidence of deep vein thrombosis or arterial disease. Barbabella had also written, after Trump’s annual physical on April 11, 2025, that the president’s extremities showed unimpaired blood flow, and he pronounced him in excellent health.
A White House memorandum in May 2026 provided the most recent public account of Trump’s health, saying he remained in “excellent health” and noting mild swelling in his lower legs, an improvement on where things stood a year earlier. The memorandum also described him as fully fit for the duties of his office.
Attention to the president’s health has not let up. A “mystery bulge” was visible again beneath the back of Trump’s suit on Wednesday, September 16, during his visit to North Carolina to campaign for Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley. It was captured in an Instagram story posted by White House aide Margo Martin, which showed Trump speaking to reporters outside Air Force One. The White House has not said what it is. The bulge was first spotted during a “60 Minutes” interview in April.
As of September 17, the bulge had also been visible in footage from a Long Island rally shared last month by former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, showing Trump leaving the stage. Online speculation has ranged from a catheter to an exoskeleton to heart failure equipment or an adult diaper, none of it confirmed.
How the Condition Works
Chronic venous insufficiency sets in when the valves inside the leg veins stop returning blood to the heart efficiently. That leaves blood pooling in the lower limbs, where the legs and ankles can swell. Age makes it more common, and clinicians call it a chronic problem that patients manage over a lifetime rather than cure.
Estimates of how many people live with it vary. The Cleveland Clinic puts the figure at roughly one in 20 adults, and other estimates run from 10 percent to 35 percent of adults, most of them 65 or older. Trump is the second oldest president in U.S. history.
Patients manage it through unglamorous measures — walking and other activity, propping the feet up while seated, and medical-grade compression stockings. Clinicians, aware that a range of other medical issues can produce leg swelling, do not judge by appearance; they order a venous reflux ultrasound, which measures how well the veins move blood back toward the heart.
Trump has talked about his own approach. In an interview published on January 1, 2026, he told The Wall Street Journal that compression socks had been part of his routine for a while before he abandoned them, and that avoiding long stretches in a chair is what he does instead. He golfs for exercise but often rides a cart.
Responding to a Daily Beast query about the bulge on Thursday, September 17, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in an emailed statement: “Only the glue-sniffing degenerates at the failing Daily Beast would obsessively push baseless conspiracy theories about President Trump, and that’s because they suffer from a severe, crippling disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome that has completely rotted their peanut-sized brains.” He added: “President Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy, relentless work ethic, and historic accessibility stand in stark contrast to what we saw during the last administration when Democrats and the legacy media intentionally covered up Joe Biden’s serious mental and physical decline from the American people.”
Inside the Pentagon Ceremony
Hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, killing 184 people, and Friday’s service honored them. New York, Washington and Pennsylvania together lost nearly 3,000 people in that day’s coordinated attack. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ranked among the senior officials who attended. According to the Department of War, the event honored those killed and recognized the consequences the country still carries from that day.
Trump’s choice of the Pentagon over the main commemoration was known well in advance; in August he said the anniversary would find him in Washington. At the Ground Zero ceremony, Vice President JD Vance represented the administration, and four former presidents — Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — were on hand as well. Victims, survivors, first responders and military personnel all drew tribute in Trump’s Pentagon remarks, and his administration’s military campaign against Iran was something he tied to the period that followed the attacks.
The anniversary week also brought a White House honor tied to the attacks. Welles Crowther, the equities trader and volunteer firefighter known as “the man in the red bandana,” received the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously from Trump on September 8. Crowther was 24 when he died helping others escape the South Tower, and he is credited with helping as many as 18 people escape.
Trump left Washington, D.C., on the night of September 11 for Ireland, where he was scheduled to spend the weekend. The White House has issued no statement about the photographs from the Pentagon.
