A makeup artist who once worked on The Apprentice is questioning how poorly the Trump team has handled attempts to hide the president’s health condition.
In a report titled “On Trump’s hand, it’s not just the bruise. It’s the (apparent) cover-up”, the Washington Post revealed that Brandi Boulet, a Canadian artist specializing in film and television, was surprised at the attempts to mask Trump’s hand discoloration.
Boulet had an unusual perspective. She studied Trump’s skin in detail while helping actor Sebastian Stan portray a young Donald Trump in the 2024 film The Apprentice. To achieve accuracy, she had to perfect every detail of his appearance, from hands and skin tone to veins and his trademark tan.
That expertise allowed her to notice a problem. Bruises first appeared on Trump’s hand in spring 2024, and more recently they have been showing up frequently. According to Boulet, the cover-up work looks sloppy, almost as if makeup was rushed on without care.
Criticism has grown not only over the fact that the president appears with visible bruises, but also over the mismatched tones used to cover them. The White House explanation has been that Trump’s bruises are the result of constant handshaking and his use of aspirin.
Boulet was direct in her opinion. “How can you be in that position and not have someone able to cover a bruise? It looks like somebody just pressed on some foundation,” she said.
The Post pointed out that in politics it is often not the problem, but the cover-up, that attracts the most attention. A bruise, they noted, is not a crime. However, the attempt to hide it has drawn scrutiny, especially because it touches on long-standing discussions about Trump: his skin, his hands, and his health.
From the set of her latest project on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Boulet explained that hiding a bruise should be fairly simple. “You use the color wheel,” she said. “An opposite color cancels it out.”
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She further explained why good cover-up requires skill. “Skin has undertones. You can see blues from veins and red from capillaries. There are also moles and natural marks. It’s about layering makeup so the covered area blends with the rest of the skin, not just painting over it with one flat shade.”
