'His strategy is unmissable': How Trump is weaponizing speculation about his health

(REUTERS)

President Donald Trump has never been shy about promoting far-right conspiracy theories, but during Labor Day Weekend 2025, Trump himself became the subject of a conspiracy theory. Trump, for a few days, had been keeping a relatively low profile — and conspiracy theorists claimed that the 79-year-old president had died. Those false claims were refuted when new photos of Trump were posted online and showed that he was very much alive.

Nonetheless, Trump's health is receiving a lot of discussion. And Salon's Chauncey DeVega, in an article published on September 4, emphasizes that Trump's response to health concerns is clearly aimed at his evangelical Christian fundamentalist supporters.

"I am agnostic about Donald Trump's health," DeVega explains. "When I look at him, I see Roy Cohn's protégé, a man animated by his life's mission of attaining unlimited power. Men with that kind of drive tend to live a long time. So last weekend, amid all the speculation about the president's health, I remained dispassionate. Admittedly, the circumstances were strange. By Saturday, (August 30), Trump hadn't been seen since his epic three-hour Cabinet meeting four days earlier — unusually long for someone who loves public attention as much as he does."

DeVega continues, "This fueled wild and baseless rumors that the White House had been relying on body doubles, that Trump had been felled by a stroke or some other catastrophic health event, and that the whole thing was being covered up — and that it was all being hidden like something out of Stalinist Russia or some other autocratic regime."

Trump, according to DeVega, is responding to concerns about his health by "continuing a weeks-long pattern of emphasizing his salvation anxieties to gain and retain the loyalties of the white Christian Right."

"For those who come from an evangelical background, his strategy is unmissable," DeVega argues. "But for many members of the mainstream media and political establishment, most of whom were not brought up in a culture that functions by using coded verbal cues and emotional pleas for understanding and support, Trump's tactics aren't as obvious…. By any honest assessment of his professed faith, Trump is also a willful sinner. Yet his popularity among white Christians has not suffered; if anything, he fits their 'Cyrus prophecy' about how wicked men can be used to fulfill God's plans for the nation."

DeVega continues, "But even this exhaustive list is incomplete. Trump also functions as a type of preacher. He is using the presidency's bully pulpit to address, manipulate and control his congregation — the MAGA movement — or, in evangelical terms, his 'church family.' As his authoritarian power and aspirations grow, Trump will likely only amplify this aspect of his persona."

Trump is by no means universally loved within Christianity. In politics, it isn't hard to find churchgoing Christians, both Catholics and Mainline Protestants, who are vehement critics of the president — from former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, an Episcopalian, to Catholics who include Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and former President Joe Biden. But Trump continues to have a very strong bond with far-right white evangelical fundamentalists.

"When Trump shares his worries about heaven and his soul, he is activating similar feelings among his MAGA followers," observes DeVega, himself a scathing Trump critic. "This makes him seem like a more authentic and relatable leader."

Chauncey DeVega's full article for Salon is available at this link.