Donald Trump Syphilis Rumors: Doctors Weigh In

Donald Trump faced fresh speculation about the state of his health this week after a photo showed his hands covered in red marks, a sign that some claimed was a symptom of syphilis, a sexually transmitted infection.

Former President Trump was pictured with marks on his right hand, finger and thumb as he left Trump Tower, Manhattan on Wednesday, January 17, heading to court, facing a second accusation of defamation from writer E. Jean Carroll, after he had previously been found liable for sexually abusing her at a New York City department store in the mid-1990s.

In a video blog for Politicon, Democratic political consultant James Carville said a "number of MDs" had confirmed to him the marks were a sign of "secondary syphilis."

"They don't look like cuts to me. They look like sores," Carville said. "And I asked a number of MDs what medical condition manifests itself through hand sores and the answer is immediate and unanimous: secondary syphilis.

"All right, I think I think there's a good chance this man has 'the clap' and I'm not being particularly secretive about it."

The claims led to widespread speculation, with #SyphilisDon trending on X, formerly Twitter. However, doctors who spoke with Newsweek said there was not enough information to make such a diagnosis.

Trump's health has been a topic of rife speculation for years now, although often relying on anonymous sources, former associates, or scrutinizing film footage.

Last year the former president released a medical report praising his "excellent health," although some physicians questioned why the report did not include specific test results or metrics on key health indicators.

Trump has given no explanation for the marks. Newsweek contacted media representatives for Trump via email on Thursday.

What Is Syphilis?

Syphilis will usually develop in several stages, known as the primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary stages, with each stage having different symptoms.

The first to appear are usually chancres, or small, painless sores or ulcers, often in or around the genitals, or in the mouth, that develop between two and six weeks after exposure. In the secondary stage, a blotchy red rash may appear, often on hands or feet, as well as small skin growths, white patches in the mouth, fatigue, headaches, joint pain, fever and swollen glands.

Some patients do not experience symptoms, while in others, they resolve by themselves after a short time and the disease then moves into its latent stage, where there also may be no symptoms at all.

The latent stage can last several years before developing into tertiary syphilis which can cause substantial damage to the heart, eyes, brain, and wider nervous system.

The prominence of syphilis has slowed in the past century. Syphilis can now be easily treated with penicillin and recent research published in the journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases shows that in the U.S. deaths from the disease plummeted from thousands in the late 1960s to a few dozen by 2015.

However CDC research published in 2022 showed congenital cases in the U.S. had increased by 755 percent between 2012 and 2021.

Doctors Address Donald Trump Syphilis Rumor

Newsweek has contacted Politicon via email to ask more about the sources Carville spoke to and for further comment.

Physicians with expertise in sexually transmitted diseases who spoke to Newsweek disputed the claim the photos published this week show syphilis symptoms, adding that there is too little information to make a diagnosis.

Dr. Philip Chan, an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Brown University and medical director of a publicly-funded STD clinic in Rhode Island, told Newsweek that the image was "not consistent with secondary syphilis."

"So I think the truth of what's being speculated upon is that, yes, the rash on the palms of one hand is a strong indicator in people of secondary syphilis. That's very, very true. But if you look at, if you look at like pictures on the Internet, for example, you're going to see it's usually evenly spread out on the palms.

"It's usually flat. It's usually kind of like, you know, dots or you know what we would call a maculopapular rash, kind of these flat round spots.

"If you look at what Trump has on his hand, it's really isolated to one spot on his hand. And that's not, really consistent I would say with secondary syphilis."

Photos of syphilitic sores or lesions, referred to as palmar lesions, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show marks across both palms, not only the small few patches seen in Trump's recent photo.

Chan said that without a conversation and full diagnostic test, there would be no way of knowing what the marks on Trump's hand were, adding it looked like "some sort of trauma."

"You know, looking at it, it looks like maybe he grabbed something," Chan added.

"Maybe it's a burn, a hot pan, but to me, it looks a little more consistent with some sort of specific grabbing pattern and it's, you know, if you actually look at his palms, there's really not much there and it's not really consistent with what I would say is secondary syphilis."

Dr. David Mabey, a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and an infectious diseases physician who has published research on syphilis, told Newsweek that it looked more like a "superficial skin wound," but understood why there had been other calls.

"It can affect the tongue and the lips and so on as well. But the easiest thing to see is the rash," Mabey said.

"And you know, there are not many rashes that affect the palms of the hands, and I think that's why people are saying this must be syphilis."

Other photos published the same day as the image shared online do not show the same red marks.

Mabey, a former director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Sexually Transmitted Infections at LSHTM, said while a rash on the palm of a hand can be a giveaway for secondary syphilis, there would usually be more, different-looking lesions.

"They wouldn't look quite like that. They'd be more sort of little raised papules they're so-called, or sometimes you know with the skin peeling off after a day or two," Mabey said.

Dr. Patricia Kissinger, an infectious disease epidemiologist who has spent decades working on STD research and prevention, told Newsweek that there was no way to make a firm determination without examination.

"This could be so many things including trauma, infection, Whitlow's," Kissinger said.

"Moreover, secondary syphilis tends to be more on the palms. There are so many things it could be. I still think that it would be difficult to determine by just looking at a photo."