Earlier this week, it was reported that an official photo released by the White House may have purposely blocked President Donald Trump’s swollen ankles — known as “cankles” — as the president sat next to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. A model of Air Force One, in the photo, was blocking the president’s ankles. Those ankles had been very visible in photographs taken the previous Friday, when Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Not long after that, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell did a segment about the “cankle cover-up.”
“Presidents actually rarely sit at the Oval Office desk like that during meetings in the Oval Office with people from outside the White House staff. The president usually sits in one of those chairs in front of the fireplace. That’s where the president always sat in every Oval Office meeting I was in when I worked in the Senate,” O’Donnell said.
President Donald J. Trump and President @ZelenskyyUa in the Oval Office. 🇺🇸🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/WTrSnKFzFM
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 18, 2025
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“We can only wonder if the White House would have ever admitted that Donald Trump’s blood circulation is insufficient if not for the telephoto lenses of White House photographers zooming in on the ankles,” the host added.
Not long after, The Daily Beast reported, Trump went scorched-earth on MSNBC, in a late-night rant on Truth Social, entirely in all caps.
“MSNBC IS DOING SO POORLY IN THE RATINGS THAT THEY ARE LOOKING TO CHANGE THEIR NAME IN ORDER TO GET AWAY FROM THE STENCH OF THEIR FAKE NEWS PRODUCT. SO MUCH FUN TO WATCH THEIR WEAK AND INEFFECTIVE OWNER, “CONCAST,” HEADED BY DOPEY BRIAN ROBERTS, HOPELESSLY AND AIMLESSLY FLAILING IN THE WIND IN AN ATTEMPT TO DISASSOCIATE ITSELF FROM THE GARBAGE THAT THEY CREATED! MSNBC IS A FAILURE BY ANY NAME!!,” Trump said in the rant, which didn’t reference O’Donnell or the “cankles” report but did arrive not long after O’Donnell delivered it.
MSNBC is not changing its name because of its ratings, or the “stench of their fake news product,” but rather because Comcast is spinning off its cable assets into a new company, and MSNBC will no longer be a corporate sibling of NBC or NBC News.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
