Well, CNN really thought they had a bombshell, didn’t they?
Cue the dramatic music: a “concerned physician” stepping forward to warn America that President Donald Trump is secretly sicker than anyone’s letting on. Chronic venous insufficiency! Ulcers! Swelling! A looming health crisis!
And then—oh, wait—turns out their star medical source isn’t actually out there treating patients at all.
Chris Pernell, paraded as a medical authority, is in fact a “Health Equity” advisor for the NAACP who, according to the Free Beacon, never practiced medicine outside her residency. But she was happy to tell CNN all about Trump’s supposed condition, dropping terms like “progressive disease” and “deep venous thrombosis” to make sure viewers clutched their pearls. The network ran with it, full speed, like they’d just unearthed a national scandal.
You’d think someone over there might’ve stopped to ask: has this person even seen a patient in the last decade?
Apparently not.
Let’s just pause there—because the tension here isn’t just about Trump’s health. It’s about a media machine hungry to smear him with whatever sticks, even if the “expert” behind the claims is better known for pushing “equity and inclusion strategies” than actual diagnoses.
Pernell’s résumé is stuffed with titles like “Chief Strategic Integration and Health Equity Officer,” not exactly “Chief of Vascular Surgery.” And tucked neatly in her background is a laundry list of activism—mandatory bias training, railing against Republicans online, and dabbling in state-level councils calling for reparations and noncitizen voting.
DEI: Presumably CNN is having a hard time finding practicing doctors to do health reporting on the network. Instead it is relying on the NAACP’s Health Equity Director who believes Trump is the ‘antichrist’. Dr. Chris Pernell was on CNN sounding the alarm about Trump’s health -… pic.twitter.com/Kh1bVjqgzU
— @amuse (@amuse) July 22, 2025
And CNN wants you to trust her medical analysis?
It gets stranger. Pernell herself admits she left her hospital job after being investigated for social media posts comparing vaccine skeptics to white supremacists. She claimed she was “forced out” and that the backlash was part of a pattern of “abuse” by “white power structures.” The narrative practically writes itself—martyrdom in the name of equity, right?
But here’s where the story twists from curious to jaw-dropping. Her brother, founder of a church she calls herself an “apostle” of, has gone scorched-earth on social media, declaring that Trump is a pedophile, a rapist, an antichrist, and that white evangelicals are actively “doing the work of Satan.” These are not subtle opinions. These are full-throttle attacks dripping with venom—and yet, somehow, CNN thought none of that context mattered when presenting her as a neutral, credible medical voice.
CNN invited this individual — “Apostle Doctor” Chris Pernell — to discuss President Trump’s recent diagnosis of Chronic Venous Insufficiencyhttps://t.co/ZRMaeZmkS8 pic.twitter.com/9ScPjO32jg
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) July 22, 2025
Now you’re left to wonder: was this about Trump’s health… or just another hit job dressed up in a lab coat?
Because when a network leans on someone with no recent clinical practice, a heavy political agenda, and a family member publicly accusing Trump of sex crimes, the smell of desperation is hard to miss.
And here’s the part that should make you dig deeper: if they’re willing to run with this kind of source to question Trump’s fitness, what else are they dressing up as “news”? How many more “experts” are out there spinning partisan narratives under the guise of medical concern?
Stay tuned. Something tells me this little saga of media theatrics and hidden agendas isn’t done unraveling just yet.

