Former President Donald Trump has commented on his hand’s red sores weeks after conspiracy theories hit the internet.
Talking to reporters after his meeting with the Teamsters union in Washington Wednesday, the former president took a question about those sores from Fox News correspondent Mark Meredith.
Mr. Trump seemed confused and said he hadn’t seen photos of his hand sores. But after inspecting both hands, he joked that maybe the images were fake: “Nothing. Maybe it was AI?”
Photos from DailyMail.com of him leaving Trump Tower this month sparked rumors of what the red marks could be.
Some on social media speculated that the marks were from syphilis.
James Carville, a Democratic consultant, said in a video that he spoke to doctors and the marks look like sores.
“I’ve asked a number of M.D.s what medical condition manifests itself through hand sores, and the answer is immediate and unanimous — secondary syphilis,” he said. “I think there’s a good chance this man has the clap.”
Others questioned if the marks were blisters from playing golf or if he got frostbite from campaigning in frigid Iowa.
Some social media users joked that he failed to use ketchup properly and got it all over his hands.
Representatives of the former president told TMZ that the hand sores were just paper cuts, but people weren’t convinced.
“That’s a hell of a paper cut. I don’t buy it,” one user wrote on X.