A former cardiologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney delivered a blunt assessment on President Donald Trump's bizarre aspirin regimen, blasting his explanation as "nonsense" — and suggesting something nefarious must've happened to warrant a team of medical doctors studying the president.

Jonathan Reiner, CNN medical analyst and interventional cardiologist, joined "The Lead" on Thursday with fill-in host Phil Mattingly to discuss a wild Wall Street Journal report in which the president said he takes 325 mg a day of aspirin to prevent a heart attack.

During the interview, Reiner was asked to follow up on his remarks last month that he was seriously concerned about Trump's health. Reiner repeated his top concern that the public has received almost no "meaningful" information about the president's health.

Trump underwent a comprehensive physical exam in April at Walter Reed, where doctors listed "a bunch of studies" which were "essentially all normal" and said the president was in "great" health, Reiner said.

Over the summer, Trump subsequently developed greatly swollen ankles, however, prompting another series of tests. The fact that it wasn't mentioned during the comprehensive exam led Reiner to believe the condition wasn't chronic — it was acute.

"And then something happened in the fall," he said. "Something happened in October that prompted an off-cycle series of tests by the president's medical team." In releasing those results to the public, the White House used what Reiner called euphemisms to describe the tests he underwent, such as "advanced imaging," without elaborating.

Later, Trump said he got an MRI, but didn't elaborate. And on Thursday, that appeared to be incorrect.

"Now we learn the president didn't have an MRI. He actually had a CT scan, which explains why the president's physician didn't describe the test after the president disclosed his MRI, because he didn't have an MRI," said Reiner, specifying it appears Trump underwent a noninvasive cardiac CT scan to determine if he has any coronary artery disease.

The president's doctor told the Wall Street Journal that the tests looked great — but that doesn't align with what Dr. Ronnie Jackson said in 2018, when he said Trump had a marker of coronary artery disease.

Later in the interview, Reiner was asked about Trump's wild aspirin regimen, in which he claimed to take a daily dose doctors use to treat patients currently having a heart attack. Trump's explanation that he takes the heavy dose to to keep his blood "nice and thin" flowing through his heart makes no sense, said Reiner.

"That makes no sense. That actually makes nonsense," he said.

Reiner said doctors use anti-coagulants to prevent clotting, but they don't thin the blood; they make people less likely to clot.

"It's not like changing something from gumbo to chicken soup," he said.

To boot, there's no benefit in terms of preventing a heart attack or stroke in taking aspirin for people over 70. Instead, they're at risk of significant bleeding.

A new report laid out in stark terms President Donald Trump's toxic impact on the U.S. economy as the president boasts of a "golden age" and a country that is "hotter than ever."

Bloomberg on Thursday wrote that the MSCI USA Index's 16.3% surge screams champagne and caviar for investors looking to celebrate the new year — but beer and chips might be more realistic.

"Stacked up against the rest of the world, America’s stock market looks like an also ran: The MSCI USA’s advance pales next to the 29.2% surge in the MSCI All Country World Index excluding America," the report noted. "To understand just how poor this performance was, consider that nothing of this magnitude has happened since 2009, when the global economy began to recover from the financial crisis. Stocks are no anomaly, US bonds and the dollar are relative losers as well."

The report pinned the blame on Trump's policy chaos, chiding that "America’s economic premium has vanished."

OECD forecasts now predict US growth will slow to 2% in 2025, down from the 2.4% projection, before dropping further to 1.7% in 2026. Inflation expectations jumped from 2.1% to 2.7% this year, with 3% projected for 2026.

Meanwhile, CFO surveys show optimism matching pandemic panic territory and small employers are hemorrhaging jobs, with businesses with under 50 workers slashing 120,000 positions in November alone, the worst month since May 2020. Meanwhile, 717 companies filed for bankruptcy through November, the highest count since 2010.

“There is just not much going on right now, and we believe it’s all tied to the chaos and uncertainty coming from Washington,” one respondent wrote in the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’s monthly manufacturing survey.

Consumer confidence, additionally, has cratered to pandemic lows, as desperate households burning through savings faster than their incomes rise. The personal savings rate hit 4%, the lowest since inflation raged in 2022.

"The sad thing is that the Trump administration knows the detrimental effects of its policies, with top officials including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick repeatedly pushing back the timing of when the economy will flourish, from definitely in 2025 to sometime in 2026," the report lamented. "Rather than a new 'Golden Age,' it increasingly looks as though Americans were sold 'Fool’s Gold.'"

MAGA Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) tried to pull a fast one this week by releasing explosive Jack Smith deposition materials on New Year's Eve, a national security reporter wrote Thursday.

Smith’s closed-door House Judiciary testimony mainly underscored that he viewed his criminal cases against President Donald Trump as fact‑driven, apolitical, and that he still believes the evidence would have produced convictions at trial.

Marcy Wheeler wrote on her Empty Wheel blog that Jordan tried to "bury" the deposition and his own "cowardice" in a "cowardly" New Year's Eve document dump.

She pointed to a portion of the transcript in which Jordan asked about why he had obtained subpoenas for the phone records of members of Congress, including Jordan’s toll records. Smith said he felt Jordan's phone records were crucial because the GOP firebrand called the White House on Jan. 6 while scared out of his mind.

"And what I recall was [Mark] Meadows stating that 'I’ve never seen Jim Jordan scared of anything,' and the fact that we were in this different situation now where people were scared really made it clear that what was going on at the Capitol could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was," Smith said.

The phone records proved Jordan actually made the call and documented exactly when it happened, providing what Smith called "extremely probative" evidence for his case.