Donald Trump Untreated Syphilis Theory

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About

Donald Trump Untreated Syphilis Theory refers to a theory which suggests that the perceived swings in the behavior of the United States President Donald Trump can be explained with him suffering from untreated syphilis. In late January 2020, posts highlighting that Donald Trump's photographs were the top Google result for the search for "untreated syphilis" were circulated on Twitter and Reddit.

Origin

On February 17th, The New Republic^[1] posted an article titled "A Medical Theory for Donald Trump’s Bizarre Behavior" in which infectious disease expert Dr. Steven Beutler suggested that Donald Trump's perceived erratic behavior could be explained by the president being a carrier of neurosyphilis (article screenshot and extract shown below).

Physicians like me have also taken notice of Trump’s bizarre, volatile behavior. Given our experience, we can’t help but wonder if there’s a medical diagnosis to be made. After all, many medical conditions exhibit their first symptoms in the form of psychiatric issues and personality changes. One condition in particular is notable for doing so: Neurosyphilis.

Spread

On April 14th, 2017, comedian Chelsea Handler argued about the theory on her Netflix talk show Chelsea,^[2] with multiple outlets reporting on the segment in the following days, including articles by The Daily Beast^[3] and IndieWire.^[4] Many articles about the theory posted at that time and in later years featured various photographs of Donald Trump.

On January 28th, 2020, Twitter^[5] user @KevlNthe406 tweeted "Google "untreated syphilis." Just do it." with the tweet receiving 40 retweets and 190 likes in two days (shown below, left). At that time, upon search Google produced a knowledge panel about untreated syphilis which featured two photographs of Donald Trump (shown below, right).

Starting on January 28th, more users on Twitter and Reddit made similar posts. For example, a January 28th tweet^[6] by @GaryTomson5 received over 60 retweets and 230 likes. A January 29th tweet^[7] by @h8Wankmaggot45 received over 420 retweets and 1,300 likes. A January 29th Reddit^[8] post by Nintendophile79 received over 2,300 upvotes in the /r/worldpolitics subreddit.

On January 29th, 2020, Redditor^[9] bookskeeter inquired about "untreated syphilis" Google search results showing images of Donald Trump.