As Donald Trump waved to supporters today, he flashed bizarre red spots on his right hand – sparking a slew of hilarious conspiracy theories online.
DailyMail.com caught him leaving Trump Tower early Wednesday morning with the mysterious red cuts on his hand — hours after he braved a snowstorm to speak to supporters alongside former 2024 GOP hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy.
Trump was heading to court, where his accuser E. Jean Carroll was testifying in her second federal civil lawsuit against him. She told the jury that Trump “shattered her reputation” by “lying” about her sexual abuse and calling her a “crazy job.”
But people on the Internet were more concerned with guessing what caused the red marks on Trump’s fingers and hands — and came up with all kinds of theories.
Former President Donald Trump leaves his apartment building in New York on Wednesday, January 17. He is in the middle of a civil lawsuit with a former journalist
Referring to the orange tint to his face, one person guessed that the bizarre spots on his hands must be “the fake tan rubbing off.”
Another person joked: “Too many jelly donuts.”
Others said the red residue on his hands may have come from the red ink on top-secret documents – while people online joked that he burned his hands while trying to curl his hair in court on Wednesday morning.
Some people online thought the physical condition could be a sign of Trump’s anxiety or an actual medical condition, given his packed schedule.
One wrote about Trump’s red spots: “Anxiety can manifest as picking of the skin,” while another asked: “Arthritis?”
Many suspected that the former president had just eaten a meal with ketchup or tomato sauce, so that his fingers were simply covered in food residue.
Others thought the red spots might be blisters caused by him using new golf clubs or engaging in other activities that involved a lot of friction.
Trump was in Iowa on Monday for the caucus – where he emerged as the Republican winner. But temperatures in the Midwest were frigid, leading some people to believe frostbite might be the reason for his redness.
One person wrote, “Didn’t someone say he got frostbite in Iowa this weekend? If so, the lesions appear to be healing.
“I think they open up the blisters so they can dry out and heal faster.”
Another joked: “Blisters from hard work for the American people.”
And when they saw his fingers this morning, others joked that he might be doing housework and became distracted: “Did someone call him while he was ironing?”
But people on
Trump could therefore have contracted the red handprints from “compulsive hand washing in the winter,” one clever person theorized online.
Others joked that he got blisters “from holding the bronzer applicator too hard” – another reference to his orange-hued face.
In court today, Trump’s attorney Alina Habba was also told that Judge Lewis Kaplan should “sit down” after he rejected her bid to delay the trial so the former president could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral.
Because the first jury found that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll in the 1990s and then defamed her in 2022, the new trial focuses on other comments Trump made while president.
Trump, who is combining court appearances with campaign stops as he leads the Republican field in this year’s presidential race, took part in jury selection on Tuesday.
Trump’s lawyer then claimed that Carroll has never been more famous and that she blames him for “some mean tweets from Twitter trolls.”
Meanwhile, Trump took to social media on Tuesday to say the case was nothing more than “fabricated lies and political shenanigans” that had earned his accuser money and fame.
“I am the only one hurt by this extortion attempt,” read a post on his Truth Social platform.
But Carroll, an advice columnist and magazine writer, has said Trump has deeply damaged her. First, she claims, he forced himself on her in a dressing room after a chance encounter at a luxury department store in 1996.
He then publicly questioned her honesty, her motives and even her sanity after she publicly told the story in a 2019 memoir.
“He repeatedly called me a liar, and it really decimated my reputation. I am a journalist. The only thing I need is the trust of the readers,” she testified in April during the first trial. “I am no longer believed.”
Carroll has maintained that she lost millions of readers and her longtime gig at Elle Magazine, where her advice column “Ask E. Jean” ran for more than a quarter-century, because of her accusations and Trump’s response to them.