A makeup artist from "The Apprentice" was surprised to see how the Trump administration was failing to conceal the president's health condition.
In an article called "On Trump’s hand, it’s not just the bruise. It’s the (apparent) coverup," the Washington Post reported Saturday, "A makeup artist who worked on the 2024 ‘The Apprentice’ film critiques the president’s much-discussed hand discoloration."
"Few people have spent more time studying Donald Trump’s skin than Brandi Boulet. A Canadian makeup artist for film and television, Boulet helped actor Sebastian Stan transform into young Trump for the film 'The Apprentice' — a job that required intensely scrutinizing archival images of the future president to perfect his skin texture, sweat, capillary veins, and signature tan," the Washington Post report states. "Which is why, when a bruise began appearing on the president’s hand intermittently — first noticed in spring 2024, and more regularly this summer — it surprised Boulet that whoever was applying what appeared to be makeup to the hand seemed to be doing a poor job of covering it up."
Trump has been criticized for appearing in public with the hand bruises, as well as for covering them up with mismatched tones. The White House has attributed the hand bruises to frequent handshaking as well as Trump's use of aspirin.
The report quotes Boulet as saying, “How can you be in that position and not to have somebody be able to cover a bruise?... It looks like somebody just mashed on some foundation.”
According to the report, "In politics, there’s a saying: It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up. Having a bruise is not a crime, obviously; but the apparent attempts to conceal it have captured the attention of close watchers of the president. And this particular phenomenon happens to sit at the intersection of three historically chattered-about Trump topics: his skin, his hands and his health."
According to the report, "Covering up a bruise is not that difficult, Boulet says from the set of her current job, doing alien makeup for 'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.'"
It quotes her as saying, "You’re using the color wheel... You’re using an opposite color to cancel it out.”
“Skin is not just one color. There’s undertones, you can see blues in there from veins. You can see red from the capillaries. You also have beauty marks,” she added, according to the Washington Post. “So it’s a matter of layering in a way that matches what you’ve just covered to what the rest of your skin looks like, instead of just doing a circle of one color."