Is CNN’s Favorite “Doctor” Actually Practicing Medicine?
When news broke that President Trump had been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency (CVI)—a common and typically benign condition in older adults—it didn’t take long for CNN to turn up the drama.
Enter Chris Pernell. Billed as a medical expert, she painted a grim picture of Trump’s health on national television. But there’s just one problem: she’s not actually a practicing doctor.
According to reporting by the Free Beacon, Pernell hasn’t practiced medicine since her residency. Instead, she’s spent her career advancing medical diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives—most recently as the Director of Health Equity at the NAACP.
Sure, she has an M.D. from Duke and completed a residency at Johns Hopkins. But her professional path? It’s more policy than patient care. Her LinkedIn makes no mention of treating patients, and most of her experience involves crafting DEI strategies, launching “anti-bias” training programs, and pushing structural racism initiatives in healthcare.
And the controversy doesn’t end there. Pernell has a long public record of extreme political views:
- She once called Trump the “antichrist” and white Evangelical Christians “agents of Satan.”
- She’s equated vaccine hesitancy with white supremacy.
- And she’s admitted to facing multiple hospital compliance probes—which she attributes to racism after being “forced out” of her previous hospital leadership role.
Yet despite this background, CNN continues to give her a platform to opine on Trump’s health like she’s his attending physician.
It begs the question: Is CNN misleading its audience by propping up someone with little to no clinical experience as a medical authority on a former president’s health?
And more broadly—how many other “experts” in the mainstream media are simply activists in lab coats?
Here’s the bottom line:
Chris Pernell may hold an M.D., but she’s not your typical doctor. Her resume reads more like a political strategist than a practicing physician. And in today’s hyper-charged media climate, it’s more important than ever to question the credentials of those claiming to speak from authority—especially when their message conveniently aligns with the network’s political agenda.
Chronic venous insufficiency is not life-threatening. But biased media spin? That’s a diagnosis we should all be concerned about.
