I searched for "inflation", "nominal" and "adjusted" and didn't find anything relevant.
I believe that the $37 trillion dollars is the total debt whenever that graphic was made, and the $12.5T is the debt increase from Trump's first term, plus so far in his second term. That means you're comparing Trump's debt (issued in 2016 or later dollars) to, for example, Roosevelt's debt (issued in 1940s dollars).
The article you link seems perfectly factual and correctly identifies that debt to GDP is more important than nominal debt. Which is why you shouldn't be using a comparison of nominal debt increases to criticise Trump.