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How We Will Know When It Happens
🕑 Added 2025-09-07 02:45:37 +0000 UTC I wasn't alone last weekend when I stayed up late in anticipation of one of the funniest events in American history. A lot of hype built up through some serious signs worth looking into that Trump, the star of the hit show 'America', which seems to be in its final season, was dead. But alas, come Saturday morning, they threw him onto the golf course. They proved he was alive with a very convincing blurry photo taken from far away. This pretty much killed the buzz, and now a week out, it feels like we're moving on to other things. 
Donald Trump happily golfing and being alive.
There were more nuanced takes about the massive pile of evidence pointing to the White House not being totally honest about the President health. This article isn't about that, but there is a good short video by Noah Samsen about it that you can watch. I wanted to discuss how the combination of clue hunting, lack of transparency, and wild speculation reveals a very different — and, I'd argue, very important — story.
Last weekend was a taste of what it will be like when 'it' happens. And I think we can learn to catch the warning signs and know what to look for when a dictator's health is failing and the regime is struggling to manage the power vacuum that will follow. Given the evidence, I wouldn't be surprised to one day learn that the President has died from what seems to be the collective will of humanity heart disease. So, that's what I want to do today: review past instances of this and see what we can do to anticipate when we can get the champagne on ice.
Who Cares?
But before we look back, let’s be clear about what we’re seeing now. I don't think it's controversial to say Trump isn't doing great. The sightings of bruising on his hands, the swollen ankles, the increase in behind-the-desk events, and more all signify that even with the official diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency, there is more than what they are saying.
We have also seen, during both Trump terms, but especially this one, further control over information about what's going on. Many of Trump's recent moves have been aimed at controlling information, thereby shielding the dictator from his failures and the consequences of his policy priorities from public view by cutting off information lines. We've seen the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics, who committed the crime of accurately reporting that his tariff regime is causing intense economic damage. We've seen press limited to only sycophantic outlets. Overall, the goal of many reforms has been to erase any damning or inconvenient information, which, for any American regime, but especially this one, is essentially any form of objective information.
Health concealment protects the entire ‘fuck up America in every conceivable way’ project they’ve been on this year. When a personalist leader's capacity comes into question, it threatens the legitimacy of all the policies, appointments, and resource distributions that flow from their authority. The inner circle, wealthy donors, and institutional elites all benefit from regime stability. They have material incentives to participate in concealment because leadership transition threatens their positions, contracts, and access.Furthermore, authoritarian systems require the appearance of strength because strongmen derive authority from projected competence and dominance.
And this is important. Compared to most countries (yes, even those ones), the US concentrates a lot of its power in a single person. Few countries give the President so much unilateral power. We are learning this year that many of the controls on the executive branch have been eroded to the point where they are merely norms meant to be broken. (Hey Democrats, if you become President again, this could be key to remember when you claim you can't implement very popular reforms.) This top-heavy government means that the leader's health, when not appropriately disclosed, can be very dangerous. We'll discuss this further, but if the proper procedures aren't managed, you could see a lot of unelected and unaccountable people act with the power of the President. And yes, I am aware of the 25th Amendment. Still, at this point, we should be well aware that the US Constitution, laws, and systems of accountability are worth precisely as much as the paper they're written on and likely always have been.
This is even more likely as the bodies charged with asserting themselves in the case of the President being incapacitated have been significantly eroded in just the past few months of this new government. There are just fewer people in general, and fewer people with the authority to call out what's going on in the Oval Office and step in in a crisis. And like when other dictators die this way, it lays the foundations for political chaos.
So what has it looked like when it has happened before?
Other Times Leaders Have Hidden Their Health and Death
As long as there have been people wanting to live their lives in peace and freedom, there have been rulers who wanted to get in their business and tell them what to do, usually with a few guys with weapons to back them up. To maintain such a grip on power, leaders need to be seen as powerful and strong, so there are many incentives when they feel the creeping presence of the reaper to cover things up.
When Joseph Stalin had a stroke in 1953, it was in the context of some pretty severe paranoia. Going all the way back to the struggle with Trotskyists in his government in the early years, up through World War II, and US infiltration in the 50s made the already pretty paranoid Stalin crank that shit up to 11. So much so that several aspects of the state of fear created in his inner circle, along with some personal political ambitions, might be what did him in. When Stalin had a stroke, his guards and inner circle hesitated to seek medical aid out of fear. Acting without direct orders, especially in sensitive moments like his incapacitation, was seen as taking a dangerous risk that could be interpreted as betrayal.
Not only that, but the medical staff were terrified because of the purges caused by the Doctor's Plot earlier that year, which meant that warning signs about Stalin's health were kept quiet. He was reportedly vomiting blood, which could be a sign of systemic hemorrhaging. But it could also have been a sign of poisoning.
After he died, information about what happened was tightly controlled. The Ministry of Health crafted public statements that downplayed controversial findings, and all physicians involved signed off on a politically sanitized autopsy report. Knowledge about Stalin's actual condition and events at his dacha was limited to the top Soviet leadership, and rumours were kept at bay by strict censorship. Even Stalin's declining public appearances were explained away or left unaddressed, further shielding the public from the truth.
And here is where things get rather grim as a case study for our current situation. Most of the decisive information about Stalin's death was kept secret until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Whether this was all a conspiracy to poison the leader or just an atmosphere of fear that led to people hesitating instead of getting medical attention during critical moments, the truth didn't come out until much later.
And Stalin wasn’t the only one. American presidents have had their own cover-ups. We see something over 100 years ago that might be closer to what we will experience when the horseman of death shows up to personally drag Trump to hell. Woodrow Wilson, near the end of his presidency, had a massive stroke, completely incapacitating him for 18 months. But the key thing is, it did not kill him. And while Trump's death would create a system of chaos, Trump being incapacitated might be a whole other thing. Dr. Cary Grayson and Wilson's wife, Jill Biden Edith Wilson, led a cover-up of the President condition by his inner circle. A major subversion of the Constitution and a period of proxy governance, often now called a regency.
Wilson's stroke left him paralyzed and bedridden. Yet only vague and misleading statements were issued about his condition. Dr Grayson, his physician, withheld the severity of the stroke from the cabinet, Congress, and the public, downplaying the President incapacitation as "nervous exhaustion" rather than a catastrophic loss of function. Several members of Wilson's cabinet demanded that power be transferred to his Vice President, Thomas Marshall. Still, Dr Grayson refused to declare him unfit. At this time, there was no procedure or law.
Edith Wilson became the gatekeeper to Wilson, screening all communications, deciding what was important enough to bring to his attention, and actively shaping executive action. She later described her role as "stewardship," denying she made formal decisions. Still, in practice, she functioned as both chief of staff and de facto head of government, managing paperwork, Cabinet interactions, and legislative priorities.
And not too long later, a different President health would be covered up during an election. The United States government, along with Franklin D. Roosevelt's inner circle, took extensive measures to conceal his declining health during his final years in office, particularly throughout the 1944 election. This concealment involved misleading the public and press, suppressing medical information, and creating highly controlled public appearances.
Roosevelt was paralyzed from he waist down since he contracted polio in 1921. Still, he kept this out of the public eye, using choreographed appearances to hide his wheelchair and braces. It was a little easier back then, since televisions weren't mainstream, so you saw the President less. As his health worsened due to heart disease, high blood pressure, dramatic weight loss, and possibly cancer, his physicians, especially Dr. Ross McIntire, deliberately misled reporters and the American public, excluding any mention of severe conditions such as hypertension from official statements. The press was kept in the dark, and even White House staff and the President himself may have been unaware of the full extent of his illness at times.
Most Americans were blindsided by FDR's death, and his sudden passing came as a profound shock and emotional blow. His inner circle successfully managed to mask how ill he was, leading the nation and world to react with deep surprise and sorrow when news broke on April 12, 1945.
So what ties Stalin, Wilson, and FDR together? We’ve seen here several medical professionals who play along. They're embedded in hierarchical systems where career survival depends on loyalty, not medical ethics. Dr. Grayson, Dr. McIntire, and Stalin's physicians all faced the same choice: professional integrity or loyalty to the leader they have been caring for.
As for why a lot of media play along. Even back then, a lot of media depended on access for revenue. Challenging leadership health means losing access, advertising, and institutional support. The economic model incentivizes complicity. Something that isd actually much worse today.
And even when there are institutional safeguards, they're designed by and for the same class interests they're supposed to check. Constitutional mechanisms assume good faith actors, but they're operated by people whose material interests align with concealment. Checks and balances tend to lose out to naked power, a lesson we should all have learned this year.
Now, since then, the US has put in the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, formalizing a transfer of power from the President to the vice president in case of disability. It was ratified in 1967 after years of discussion brought up after the death of JFK. The next three successors to Kennedy had health issues or were very old (one was nearly 10 years younger than the current President). Many people would lean back on that as a reason why we wouldn't see something like what happened with FDR or Wilson happen with Trump. The problem is that the 25th Amendment isn't as good as you think.
The first is that Trump will likely never cede power willingly. The bar for involuntary removal from office by the Vice President would require two impossible things: a large majority of votes in both the House and Senate, and anybody wanting to give power to JD Vance. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment sets a higher threshold for involuntary presidential removal than impeachment: it requires the Vice President and a majority of cabinet (principal officers) to declare the President unfit, and if the President disputes, then two-thirds of both the House and Senate must vote to uphold the declaration. This creates a deliberately difficult process that assumes good-faith institutional actors. Trump's cabinet selection prioritizes personal loyalty over institutional integrity, making the initial trigger nearly impossible. JD Vance's "ready to assume presidency" statement last week actually demonstrates this problem. He's positioning himself as Trump's chosen successor, not as an independent constitutional actor who might invoke Section 4.
To secure the votes you need for Section 4, you would need to persuade a significant number of congresspeople. With how detached from reality the current Republican party has become, it wouldn't even shock me that in a case where the President is clearly unfit for office, if they can keep as much evidence as they can from getting to the public, they'd be likely willing to bury their head in the sand until people literally start seeing flies start landing on him. They have the donors, electoral base, and their personal wealth to protect. Invoking the 25th would trigger succession chaos that threatens all of them, and being ther first to break rank with daddy Trump will piss off the chuds who vote for them.
Courts would almost certainly treat Section 4 disputes as "non-justiciable political questions," meaning no judicial review. Lastly, the Amendment has never been successfully invoked for involuntary removal, even in cases where it arguably should have been (Reagan's early Alzheimer's).
What to Expect When Expecting Your Dictator to Croak
In cases of a dictator like Trump's decline, there are common patterns we see. The first step will be to tighten access to the President. The governing circle becomes smaller, often resulting from distrust, paranoia, or succession planning among top officials. Succession maneuvering would then start to intensify, with elites positioning themselves for future power grabs as uncertainty about the leader's health mounts. Communication pattern shifts are visible, such as reduced public appearances, vague official statements (such as odd calls to Fox about getting into heaven), and the prominence of spokespersons or loyalists over the dictator himself. If we start seeing JD Vance more often, it's a sign that things are happening.
You will also see a strong reaction and crackdown on the media that talks about the dictator's health. Increasing censorship, control over news outlets, and state propaganda will be employed, designed to obscure the dictator's actual condition and emphasize competence or stability. Concealing his condition for weeks to months is common; acute health crises are hidden through staged events, doctored images, and the management of information leaks while the inner circle quickly tries to invent the ghola. Still, we may not see real stories of his condition for decades, as we saw with Stalin.
And the thing is, America will be uniquely vulnerable to this. The media is already very deferential to power, and even more so in the current Trump administration. At the moment, the right live in their own pocket reality, so just one word of denial from the white house will give them enough to disregard all evidence. I mean, right now, they are already trying to find a way to explain away Trump being all over the Epstein list.
But Trump is going to be quite a unique test to this when his health does decline or if he dies. He is a high level poster, and one of the first signs we knew something was up was that the posts stopped happening, followed by a very obvious AI-generated post before they finally got him into a place where he could complain about brickwork or something, while Xi Jinping rallies major world powers together in a new coalition. We will struggle to distinguish between what is just 'Trump weird' and what is 'weird weird'. Was his rambling incoherently for over 40 minutes in Saudi Arabia, Trump weird or weird weird? 
Dramatization, may not happen
How Will We Know When it Happens Then?
Honestly, it may look like Labour Day weekend. We weren't wrong to think something was up (I am putting my money on the stroke theory that is built on some severe signs of heart failure). Look for a stronger response against it from the white house. Look for odd movements from cabinet members, which journalists who follow those people will hopefully report on. And when it does happen, I can imagine some funny-looking executive orders shooting out for a few days before it really goes public.
That weekend taught us that information control in this second Trump administration is tight. When it does happen, I don't expect we’ll get much warning. But what we will get is the biggest party possibly in human history, followed by a period of deep mourning for the fate of those couches in the Oval Office.
Not to get too deep into the punditry, but I do think Trump is a big of a load-bearing dingus and if he does the world a favour soon it could end a good chunk of this project to make America and the world miserable prematurely (a thing Republicans really hate).
Beneath the absurdity is the same old story: power clings to power, even when the body that embodies it is crumbling. By knowing what to look for, by understanding the incentives and history behind the cover-ups, we’re harder to manipulate. We can recognize when the emperor is not just naked but coughing up blood. It means when the moment comes, we won’t be caught flat-footed.
Comments
Nigel G
The point about last weekend being a dry run for when it finally happens is solid.
General Contact Unit Problem Child
With regard to thing about any future democratic administrations (assuming there are any) remembering how much unchecked power Trump has demonstrated the president can exercise, I feel like a key difference is Trump is enabled by a level of absolute loyalty from the rest his party that no democratic president could ever hope for. Like in theory Trump could be impeached and removed at any moment for the things he’s doing. We just know that will never happen because the republicans in the house and senate would never go for it. By contrast I have no doubts democrat held house and senate would impeach a president from their own party.
