Donald Trump weight loss news: Is he on Ozempic?

It should never be lost on us how weird Donald Trump looks. His physical eccentricities have been thoroughly brutalized by an infinite tide of low-hanging-fruit monologue jokes, but still, the fact remains that this is a man who wakes up every day and chooses—with dogged intention—to mold his hair into that unknowable, irreplicable, brand-exclusive comb-over and to bathe himself in noxious spray tan. More impressively, the man has never really changed. The weathering of age aside, 77-year-old Trump looks more or less identical to the one who was hosting The Apprentice in his 60s, a feat indicative of the impermeable bubble the big man has created for himself.

And yet, for the first time in his public career, a crack in the facade has revealed itself. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ozempic Trump:

Here, we have an Easter family portrait published by Donald Trump Jr. The former president’s grandchildren are admittedly adorable, dressed in their Sunday best—never mind those truly bizarre balloon-animal effigies of their patriarch—but the star of the show is Trump himself, standing between his heirs, looking considerably svelte. The man has dropped some serious pounds! His waistline is comfortably ensconced within his suit, and his customary red tie dangles loosely over a conspicuously absent gut. I’m not alone in noticing this: The top comment reads, “Trump looking lean and mean!”

What’s behind this is another question. Trump’s weight has long been a sensitive subject, particularly for the former president himself. Remember when a doctor’s report suspiciously put his body mass index at exactly 29.9, one-tenth of a point away from clinical obesity? Six years later, the ex-president has not commented directly on his weight loss, although a stray tabloid report from January claims that Trump has been pressured by Melania to skip the “sundaes and cakes” at the Mar-a-Lago buffet, an assertion that is honestly hard to believe. I am left to conclude either that Trump has, for the first time, indeed integrated structural lifestyle changes to his routine—perhaps he is exercising more and leaving the Quarter Pounders where they lie—or that the Republican nominee has embraced the Big O and is shrinking down with pharmaceutical efficiency. Given the man’s infamous lack of discipline in all avenues of life, I know where I’m leaning.

To wit, in the 2018 report, the White House physician clocked Trump’s weight at 239 pounds, and last fall, during Trump’s booking in Fulton County, an aide claimed that the ex-president was hovering around 215. This was widely mocked, but another doctor’s report last year also noted a “weight reduction,” attributing it to “an improved diet and continued daily physical activity.” Maybe this is possible? We do know that Trump is a germophobe—breaking with his base to receive multiple COVID vaccine jabs—due at least partly to the fact that he will be forever haunted by the tortured specter of Stan Chera. Maybe our man received a frightening blood pressure reading or a triglyceride audit that fell outside acceptable margins and has decided to take matters into his own hands. Or perhaps Ozempic has simply become the drug du jour in Trump’s winnowing inner circle of retired golfers, and if there’s one thing we know for certain, the man doesn’t like to feel left out.

Regardless of what’s going on, all of this leads to a grim question: Is a skinnier Trump a more electable Trump? Will his new body be an asset in November? It’s honestly hard to say. The Republicans seem dead set on turning this cycle into a referendum on Biden’s age, and if Trump looks less likely to suffer a pulmonary embolism and tumble off the debate stage—as he did for the entirety of his first term—then that case is easier to make. But personally, I tend to disagree with that assessment. A humongous part of Trump’s brand is how strange he looks: moist, heavy-footed, and dripping with peroxide. Does he really want to invite the idea that he occasionally suffers from self-consciousness? I mean, yes, the Democrats know him to be the most thin-skinned person on the planet, but that might be sobering news for the MAGA contingency. After all, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has similarly dropped 90 pounds since leaving the White House, and look where that got him.

I’ll be curious to see where we go from here. Maybe we ought to organize prizefighter-style weigh-ins before the first debate in order to see exactly where Trump and Biden will be operating from. (To that point, it might not be a bad idea to get Biden on some sort of bulking diet. The incumbent is looking a little gaunt.) Perhaps in that world, Democrats will win four more years of the presidency and a newly thin Trump can spend the twilight of his celebrity pursuing one final grift, a knockoff version of whatever he’s (allegedly) taking. A match made in heaven.

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