The White House revealed Donald Trump's mild lower-leg swelling resulted from chronic venous insufficiency, a condition causing blood to pool in the extremities rather than return to the heart. Pundits mocked his "cankles"; MSNBC's Chris O'Donnell joked that Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk during a meeting to avoid ankle comparisons with European leaders. O'Donnell contrasted Trump's ankles with Vladimir Putin's, quipped that Putin's "72-year-old ankles showed none of the mileage" of Trump's, and linked the diagnosis to a "lifetime of McDonald's junk food." Trump answered with an all-caps Truth Social post criticizing MSNBC's impending rebrand to MS NOW.
In a fresh broadside, MSNBC anchor Chris O'Donnell joked that the White House may be engaged in a cankle coverup after Trump was filmed sitting behind the Oval Office's Resolute Desk during a recent meeting with European leaders instead of sitting on the couches with them, as is customary. He did so, O'Donnell quipped, so that "no one was going to compare his ankles to a French president's ankles or a German chancellor's or a British prime minister's."
Having already been caught with his swollen ankles exposed in photos from last week's Alaskan summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Trump wasn't going to get caught by photographers twice. Unfortunately for him, the O'Donnell had a punchline for that one too, noting that Putin's "72-year-old ankles showed none of the mileage" of Trump's, who is seven years the Russian president's senior.
Like many observers, O'Donnell pointed out that Trump's "lifetime of McDonald's junk food" seems to have caught up with him vis-à-vis his CVI diagnosis. Those jabs may have been a bridge too far for the American president, who finally entered the fray without specifically addressing the cankles in question. In a post on his failing Truth Social platform, Trump raged in old-school all-caps about MSNBC,
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