Trump, 79, told the Journal that he has declined his doctor's advice to lower the amount of aspirin he takes every day, a 25-year routine, as he's "a little superstitious."
"They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don't want thick blood pouring through my heart," Trump told the outlet. "I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?"
Trump's physician said the president is taking 325 mg of aspirin a day. Typical low dose aspirin therapy calls for taking between 75 and 100 mg daily.
Trump was diagnosed last year with chronic venous insufficiency, a condition in which leg veins struggle to send blood back towards the heart, causing blood to pool in the legs. White House observers had noted what appeared to be swollen lower legs in 2025.
A daily low-dose of aspirin had long been recommended as a way of preventing cardiovascular disease (CVD) due to its antiplatelet effect. This recommendation became widespread in the 1980s, around the time Trump would've turned entered his 40s.
But the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force rolled back this recommendation in 2022, citing recent data and modeling results that found "in persons aged 70 to 79 years, initiation of aspirin use results in a loss of both quality-adjusted life-years and life-years at essentially all CVD risk levels."
Jonathan Reiner, cardiologist to late former Vice President Dick Cheney, chimed in on Trump's self-described regimen on Friday, saying it "makes no sense."
"First of all, when we use any kind of anticoagulant, medications to prevent clotting, those don't thin the blood. It's not like changing something from gumbo to chicken soup. It doesn't make it thinner. It makes you less likely to clot," Reiner said while appearing on CNN's "The Lead."
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