Trump’s MRI Is A Press Release And Narrative Control

President Trump Meets With His Cabinet At The White House — Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty

The White House just released an MRI report declaring that Donald Trump’s scans came back “perfectly normal.” And right on cue, the headline followed. Clean scan. Strong heart. Healthy organs. And aside from a few outlets noting that the report offered “little clarity,” much of the press said the case is closed.

Except none of that matches what Americans have been watching with their own eyes. For weeks, videos and photos have been circulating of Trump appearing visibly off: slurred words, drifting answers, frozen pauses, and falling asleep in public.

The MRI was supposed to override that evidence by giving the public a clean bill of health and a clean conscience for believing it.

And predictably, much of the mainstream media handled the release like a weather alert: relaying what was said, repeating the memo’s language, and packaging it as straightforward medical news. The coverage emphasized that the scan showed “normal” cardiovascular and abdominal findings, “stable” labs, and “excellent overall health,” while sidestepping the central question driving public concern: What does any of this have to do with the behavior millions of people have been witnessing in real time?

But here’s where readers have to slow down and practice literacy, not medical literacy, but power literacy. Before we debate the meaning of the report, we need to actually read the report. Not skim it. Not take its claims at face value. Read it the way we would read any political communication produced by a corrupt administration under pressure. Because the document itself tells a very different story if you actually read it as a piece of communication.

What you’re looking at is styled like an internal medical memo and written like a public relations press release. Those are two different genres with different audiences and different purposes, and collapsing them into a single document exposes the memo’s real function: optics management, not medical record-keeping.

A true internal physician’s memo to a political office would be procedural and cautious: what was tested, what was found, what requires monitoring, what comes next. This document doesn’t do any of that. Instead, it leans immediately into branding language: “successfully completed,” “leading academic consultants,” “optimal cardiovascular health,” “exceptional,” “excellent overall health.” Those aren’t clinical findings. They’re reassurance adjectives. They don’t communicate information. They produce an emotional effect.

Then comes the dead giveaway: right under the header, in bold and unmistakable language, it reads, “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.”

That is not memo language. That is newsroom language. A memo is never marked for public release. A press statement is. The document is pretending to be internal while knowing it will circulate publicly. That dual identity is not sloppy work; it is strategic. It creates the illusion of transparency while performing control.

Everything about the formatting supports this sleight of hand. The letterhead “Physician to the President” broadcasts authority, but the structure underneath is pure publicity. There’s no diagnostic detail. No ranges. No imaging descriptions. No test names. No neurological metrics. Instead, the memo offers a string of credibility words: “advanced imaging,” “laboratory evaluation,” “preventive health,” “stable parameters,” “booster vaccinations,” “cardiac age.” It’s vocabulary theater designed to sound technical while withholding the technical.

Even the “SUMMARY” section gives the game away. A real medical summary synthesizes findings and flags risk. This one reads like a campaign pitch: “President Trump remains in exceptional health, exhibiting strong cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurological, and physical performance.”

That is not a medical conclusion. That is a slogan. It’s too sweeping, too polished, too symmetrical. Medicine doesn’t talk this way. Marketing does.

Every claim is framed so broadly that nothing can later contradict it. “Excellent.” “Optimized.” “Exceptional.” These aren’t findings, they’re shields designed to be emotionally calming and intellectually unchallengeable at the same time.

And then comes the emotional choreography. Real memos are dry. This one is warm. Real memos are cautious. This one is congratulatory. Real memos hedge. This one performs certainty. The handwritten signature, the Navy rank, and the bold titles are all visual authority engineering designed to create trust, not convey truthful information.

Now, stack this memo against what the public is actually reacting to: not organ function but the president’s observable behavior. Not lab values, but his visible decline. The memo doesn’t join that conversation because it was never meant to. Instead, it offers a different reality to consume, one filled with letterhead, seals, doctors, adjectives, and the promise that “everything is under control.”

This is not a medical report. It is a stage prop and narrative control. And that is why we need literacy right now. The public needs the ability to see when a document is not what it claims to be, and to understand what purpose it actually serves. Not to reassure us or inform us. But to redirect us.

So what is narrative control here? What is this document really doing?

It’s not trying to convince you that Donald Trump is healthy. It’s trying to convince you that nothing is wrong enough to interrogate. The memo is not a medical intervention; it’s a psychological one. Its job is not diagnosis. Its job is closure. It exists to manufacture a feeling: relief. To tell you, without ever saying it outright, that you are overreacting, that your eyes are lying, that what you’ve seen with your own body and ears should be subordinated to a piece of letterhead.

This document is redirecting the public’s attention away from behavior and toward biology. Away from cognition and toward circulation. Away from public function and toward private anatomy. It quietly reframes the entire debate from “Can this man govern?” to “Is this man alive?” And this is a much lower bar that is easier to clear and harder to challenge. Once the conversation is reduced to vital signs, the deeper question of capacity disappears. You stop evaluating leadership.

And here’s the most dangerous part: the memo trains you to trust paperwork more than your own experience. It tells you that an official tone matters more than lived reality. That documentation overrides observation. That authority lives in fonts and seals and signatures, not in what is happening in plain sight. The White House is not disputing what people see. It is attempting to replace what they see with what they are supposed to feel.

What this memo wants you to believe is not that Trump is well, but that you are not allowed to worry. That your skepticism is inappropriate. That concern itself is suspect. It’s an emotional regulation document and a permission slip for silence.

And it works because it exploits a cultural habit Americans have never kicked, which is treating official language as neutral and institutional voice as truth. We are taught to respect presentation as legitimacy. To confuse formal appearance with factual content. To stop asking questions when the tone sounds confident enough.

But literacy means refusing that shortcut.

Literacy means recognizing when medicine is being used as mood lighting. When a memo is being deployed as a sedative. When the goal is not to answer questions but to end them.

This document exists so that people in power do not have to confront what is being widely observed. It provides a substitute reality that’s cleaner, calmer, easier to swallow. A world where decline is not named, exhaustion is not real, and dysfunction does not require explanation.

And this memo is designed to make sure we don’t talk about the part that matters.

Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and author of “Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America” and the forthcoming “Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children In Jim Crow America.” Read her Substack here.

Trump’s South African Refugee Program Is ‘Whites Only’

Trump’s MRI Is Not A Medical Report. It’s A Press Release And Narrative Control was originally published on newsone.com