President Donald Trump, who had not been seen in public for a week, appeared on a podcast with a new malady: an apparently swollen right eye — along with a recurring swollen hand.

“Trump’s right eye clearly showed puffiness and looked oddly misshapen compared to his left eye, while his right hand looked much bigger than his left,” The New Republic reported, noting the president “continues to dodge questions about his health.”

The interview with Pod Force One was taped on Tuesday, a week after Trump’s third medical checkup in 13 months, and the fourth of his second term. He told Miranda Devine, “I do physicals, because I just want, I think I have an obligation to do it, but I just came out with very, very good results, and I took a test, a cognitive test, and I got 100% on it. I got, as the expression goes, I aced it.”

He went on to say he has a “great memory.”

Trump, who’s quickly approaching his 80th birthday, is facing heightened scrutiny over the state of his health. The White House took several days to release doctor’s notes from his physical last week, adding to questions about his overall health.

The New Republic noted that “it’s very difficult to dispute what people can see with their own eyes, and the president’s outward physical appearance coupled with his tendency to fall asleep on camera don’t inspire confidence in his health.”

On Sunday, Axios reported that the White House physician’s health readout left “key blanks unfilled.”

The “memo from White House physician Sean Barbabella didn’t put to rest persistent questions about apparent bruising on Trump’s hands, swollen ankles and his alertness during some public events.” It “again attributed the bruising of his hands to frequent handshaking and aspirin therapy and noted ‘slight lower leg swelling’ it characterized as improved from last year.”

Bob Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told Axios, “I think it’s quite unusual for someone … who doesn’t have chronic problems that require more frequent monitoring to come in more often than every year.”

President Donald Trump is suggesting he wants to make his acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, permanent.

Critics have charged that Trump has repeatedly pressed for a Justice Department loyal to him rather than independent, and warned he has wanted the attorney general to act as his personal attorney. Now, in Todd Blanche, he may have the attorney general he always wanted.

Two months ago Blanche, who once served as Trump’s personal attorney, became the acting United States attorney general, after Trump terminated Pam Bondi.

On Wednesday, Trump was asked if Blanche would become the permanent attorney general.

“I think he will,” Trump told Pod Force One, according to The Guardian.

“Todd’s doing a very good job at DOJ,” Trump also said, according to video of the interview.

Asked if he had anyone else in mind for the role, Trump replied, “No, no.”

“I wanted to see how he’s received, you know, we put him as acting, and he’s done a very good job, but I’ve known him a long time,” Trump said.

When pressed if Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis might be among candidates for attorney general, Trump said no.

“No, Ron’s very good,” the president remarked.

“There are some good names, though. I had never thought, Ron never talked about it. He’s a governor, doing a good job. But Ron’s good. He is a friend of mine. Just named an airport after me, you know?”

“They named Palm Beach International Airport, The President Donald J. Trump International Airport,” he said, calling it “a great honor.”

Asked if he was “happy with the pace of what the Department of Justice is doing?” Trump replied, “Well, much more so now than at the beginning,” suggesting he was dissatisfied with Bondi.

Critics had charged that Bondi would become too loyal to the president.

During her confirmation hearing, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), said that Trump “has made it clear that he values one thing above all else in an Attorney General: loyalty.”

In April, The Guardian reported that “Blanche has aggressively moved to deploy the department’s resources to please Donald Trump, leaving little doubt about how the president’s former personal attorney would further politicize the department if his status atop US law enforcement becomes permanent.”

Blanche recently came under fire for signing an order stating that Trump and his family could never be investigated by the IRS.

“The memo prohibits the IRS from pursuing claims against Trump, his family or his businesses, saying the agency ‘releases, waives, acquits’ its pending action and is ‘forever barred and precluded’ from pursuing claims against the president,” The Hill reported. “The New York Times and ProPublica previously found a years-long audit of his tax bill could cost Trump as much as $100 million.”

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President Donald Trump has earned a new moniker: “commander in thief,” writes New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who chastises the president for his efforts to engage in a “brazen, in-your-face attempted heist of the U.S. Treasury to benefit himself, his family and his political allies.” Those allies could include Trump’s supporters who were present at the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — whom Friedman labels “phony defenders of freedom’s frontier.”

Friedman also accuses Trump of having “conspired with his own Justice Department, headed by his former personal lawyer, to use taxpayer money to create a $1.776 billion political slush fund.”

Having a president who “behaves like a commander in thief — not a commander in chief — is costing us dearly at home and abroad,” he writes. “This perversion of the American presidency is undermining the very alliance structure that won two world wars and the Cold War and generated one of history’s longest ages of peace and prosperity. Every day we tolerate such behavior we endanger our children’s future.”

Friedman argues those are just a few of several reasons why Trump has failed as commander in chief.

Trump has not even tried to get Democrats to support his war against Iran.

“Generally, when our nation has been at war, the commander in chief’s top domestic priority is to keep the country united,” says Friedman. “Because there is nothing more demoralizing for U.S. troops fighting abroad than to look back and see our country ripping itself apart at home.” And he warns that “seeing America at war with itself” just encourages the enemy.

Friedman also expresses alarm at how Trump’s actions toward America’s allies have forced them to engage in deterrence — not just against Russia, but against America.

“Our allies have watched Trump threaten to make Canada the 51st state and to seize Greenland from Denmark,” writes Friedman. “They have watched him start a war with Iran without consulting NATO and then demand that NATO help rescue us from what has turned into a mess. They have watched him slash U.S. financial assistance to Ukraine, put the Russian aggressor on the same moral footing as that country and then top it all off with reckless, ill-conceived tariffs on all our allies.”

Friedman also points to the early days of Trump’s second term, when the president “forced Ukraine to give the United States access to critical minerals in return for U.S. help against a Russian Army trying to overrun it. This is the real ‘Trump Doctrine’: Oppose America, and I will tariff you; depend on America, and I will extort you.”

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