This is probably a non-story, old news about the president's health blown up by internet buzz and wishful thinking, but it's also a reminder of how strange and unstable the dynamic of this White House is and of the gaping double standard in recent press coverage.

From The Daily Beast: 

Conservative political consultant Rick Wilson says a “MAGA Hunger Games” is playing out in Washington as President Donald Trump, 79, shows his age.

Wilson said “rumors from the Trumpverse” indicate that Vice President JD Vance is “moving fast” in this shuffling of power behind the scenes, positioning himself to take over the MAGA movement sooner rather than later, according to Wilson’s Substack.

“Slow or fast, he’s headed down,” Wilson said of Trump. “The circle who knows what’s up is very, very small and very, very paranoid. JD Vance knows, and he’s moving fast.”

Wilson pointed to Vance’s interview this week with USA Today—in which he said he is prepared to take over the presidency, having received “on-the-job training” in the first seven months of this term—as further proof of jostling behind the scenes.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Reached by the Daily Beast, Vance’s office did not address the allegations made by Wilson.

Trump said in May that it was “far too early to say” who might succeed him. However, he noted that Vance was “doing a fantastic job” and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was “great.” Of course, the 25th Amendment stipulates that, should anything happen to Trump during this term, Vance would become president.

This Daily Beast piece in still an outlier.  The establishment press has always been bizarrely reluctant to discuss Trump's health issues, going back at least to their deafening lack of interest in the 2018 diagnosis of a type of heart disease associated with dementia, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it story.

This is in sharp contrast to the nonstop speculations that marked Biden's time in office, even after he stepped down from the re-election campaign. The obsession ran so deep that Biden's health continues to be a major story, including a heavily promoted book by Jake Tapper. If anything, the former president's decline continues to get more attention than that of the current president.

 

Donald Trump’s rumored death raises new questions about Joe Biden’s health

— NY Times Pitchbot (@nytpitchbot.bsky.social) August 30, 2025 at 6:46 PM

 

While this far from the most egregious example of the Trump/Biden double standard, it may be the sharpest reminder of the strange POTUS/VPOTUS dynamic of the current administration. 

Here's a question I ran past a student of presidential history shortly after the Trump/Musk feud erupted: 

For months now, maybe even before the inauguration, we've been talking about how fundamentally unstable the dynamic in the White House was—having JD Vance, hand-picked candidate of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, as the vice president. Now that Musk and Trump have had their unexpectedly fast but by no means surprising falling out, the tensions between the president and the vice president have gotten extraordinary.

My question for you is: have we ever seen anything like this before? Obviously there have been tense relationships and ideological differences between the two offices—Reagan and Bush, Kennedy and LBJ, going all the way back to Adams and Jefferson—but have we ever had a situation where the VP was not just a rival, but had the support of this powerful and ruthless a faction?

His reply:

And, while I don't know about pre-Civil War history, there has been nothing like this in my memory or knowledge.

 

 While many tickets are marriages of convenience, few if any have ever taken it to this degree. If you could tap into the private chats of Thiel, Musk, Andressen, et al., I suspect most of the conversations are about the 25th amendment and what they'll do after Vance takes the oath. 

It's too early to say if a Presidential health crisis is imminent, but if one does occur in the next three and a half years, given the players and the situation, it is certain to be... interesting.