The Art of the Presidential Health Cover-Up

WHEN THE St. Petersburg Times first launched PolitiFact in 2007, its purpose was to assess the veracity of statements made by “members of Congress, the president, cabinet secretaries, lobbyists, people who testify before Congress and anyone else who speaks up in Washington.”

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Fast forward to September 2025, and the trailblazing fact-checker has been reduced to informing us that “President Donald Trump is alive.” Yes, and the sky is blue, and the day ends in y, even if some online randos may be memeing to the contrary.

The trivial episode of Trump’s rumored demise illuminates what the future intersection of politics and information might look like. POTUSes and their handlers will go to fantastical lengths to lie about presidential health crises, history demonstrates; what changes over time is how they get away with it.

Grover Cleveland, for example, traded on his considerable reputation as “The Honest President” to not only deny the factual newspaper report that what had been billed as a four-day yachting vacation in 1893 was actually major oral surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on the roof of his mouth, but also to successfully disparage the reporter as a fabulist disgrace to journalism.