Trump finally reacts to alarming red blotches on his hands

Former president claims to be unaware of red blotches, saying images of his hand could be AI

Donald Trump has claimed to be unaware of the red blotches seen on his hands as he departed Trump Tower in New York earlier this month, which prompted speculation and mockery across social media and late-night talk shows.

Mr Trump appeared on Fox News on Wednesday, with reporter Mark Meredith asking, “How’s your hand? It looks like it’s better now”.

“My hand?” the former president asked.

“Yeah, what happened the other day? You didn’t see the photos? Coming out of Trump Tower?” Mr Meredith said.

Mr Trump claimed not to have seen the photos, saying that “nothing” was wrong with his hands.

“Maybe it’s AI,” he said, referring to the photos of his hand marks.

The marks on Mr Trump’s hand were caught by news photographers and bystanders, with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel calling it a “viral moment that was embarrassing even for him,” adding that the marks are a “common symptom of syphilis,” HuffPost noted.

Mr Trump once said that avoiding STDs was his “personal Vietnam”.

“It’s amazing, I can’t even believe it. I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world, it is a dangerous world out there. It’s like Vietnam, sort of. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave solider,” Mr Trump told radio host Howard Stern in 1997.

“You know, if you’re young, and in this era, and if you have any guilt about not having gone to Vietnam, we have our own Vietnam – it’s called the dating game,” Mr Trump told Mr Stern in 1993, according to People. “Dating is like being in Vietnam. You’re the equivalent of a soldier going over to Vietnam.”

The January 6 House Select Committee unearthed testimony that Mr Trump once grew so irate in the White House that he threw his plate against a wall, leaving ketchup marks.

Mr Kimmel joked that the red marks on Mr Trump’s hand earlier this month were probably ketchup after he “probably got his hands in a container of curly fries or something”.

The late-night host also joked about how Mr Trump would react if similar marks were spotted on a rival.

“He’d talk about it for years. He’d be posting in all-caps about ‘Meatball Ron DeSyphilis’ and ‘Nikki Herpes.’ But they haven’t brought it up,” Mr Kimmel said earlier this month.