US President Donald Trump says medical check-up went ‘perfectly’
Collin Binkley
Washington: US President Donald Trump said his last medical exam was “perfect” as his health comes under renewed public scrutiny due to concerns about his age and stamina.
The 79-year-old president spent more than three hours at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for what the White House described as preventive medical and dental exams.
It was Trump’s fourth public medical examination since returning to office for a second term, and it comes as Trump seeks to assert his power ahead of midterm elections that will test his influence with voters.
In his post on social media after the visit, Trump said that he had just completed his “6-month examination” and “Everything was checked perfectly.”
Sharing the President’s post on X, the White House added: “PERFECT HEALTH DECLARATION!”
For decades, administrations have released selected results from presidential physicals, giving the public a glimpse into the commander in chief’s health. But the results must be filtered through the White House and approved by the president; This raises questions about what the public can and cannot see.
Republican Trump turns 80 next month, making him the oldest person to be elected president of the United States. His immediate predecessor, Democrat President Joe Biden, was 82 when he left office and withdrew from the 2024 presidential race amid widespread concerns that he was too old for the job.
A. Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted in April It found that less than half of US adults think Trump has the mental acuity or physical health to serve effectively as president.
Dr. served as White House physician for more than a decade under Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. “I think concern about the president’s physical health is probably at an all-time high, and I think advanced physical age is the No. 1 concern,” Jeffrey Kuhlman said.
A full physical exam for a president Trump’s age would be expected to include basic information such as height, weight and blood pressure, along with advanced heart testing, common cancer screenings and cognitive evaluation, Kuhlman said.
The White House did not explain what the visit meant but expressed confidence in what it would show.
“President Trump is the smartest and most accessible President in American history, working tirelessly to solve problems and deliver on his promises, and he is in excellent health,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. he said.
In the weeks before his visit, Trump said he felt as good as he did five decades ago, even as he joked about his fondness for fast food and his minimal exercise regimen. But he’s also sensitive to perceptions about his age, noting that he took extra care when descending the stairs from Air Force One to avoid headlines about a trip.
There is no law requiring presidents to publicly release health records, and the degree of transparency varies by administration. Trump’s background reports have been criticized for providing insufficient detail and statistics that some medical experts view with skepticism.
Trump is often seen wearing makeup in public to hide bruises on his hands; The White House attributes this to handshakes and regular aspirin use. He sometimes appeared sleepy during meetings and would close his eyes for long periods of time, although he denied ever falling asleep.
While Trump often boasts about “doing” on cognitive tests, he frequently mocks Biden, who faces questions about his mental acuity. Biden and his aides have aggressively pushed back against doubts about his fitness for office.
Some of Trump’s previous exams included the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which is used to screen for dementia and cognitive disorders. His doctors gave him a score of 30 out of 30 in his 2018 and 2025 checkups.
But critics point to Trump’s convoluted speeches and sometimes offensive rhetoric as evidence of cognitive decline.
Last month, a statement from more than 30 neurologists, psychiatrists and other medical experts, who acknowledged they had never examined him, said Trump was mentally unfit to serve and warned of an “increasingly dangerous decline” in his behavior based on what they called “objectively observable signs of serious medical concern.”
“Any so-called medical expert who makes armchair diagnoses or false speculation for political purposes is clearly violating the Hippocratic Oath to which they swore,” Ingle said.
Sara Rosenthal, a bioethicist at the University of Kentucky who studies presidential health, said presidents, like other patients, can choose what to disclose about their health. Questions about transparency have become even more serious as America elects aging presidents like Trump and Biden, he said.
“I think we can expect very little disclosure about the actual state of health of any president unless they are in excellent health,” said Rosenthal, who suggested that an independent health agency examine and report on the health of the president and his would-be successors.
The first health report of Trump’s second term was published last April. In July, he was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a chronic condition common in older adults that causes blood to pool in their veins. Photos show the President with swollen feet, ankles and calves, described by the White House as a sign of chronic venous insufficiency that causes “mild swelling” in the lower legs.
Following his last publicly reported physical, described as a routine follow-up last October, Trump’s doctor released a one-page summary saying the president was in “exceptional health” without disclosing many specific results.
The frequency of Trump’s medical exams is not unusual for someone his age, according to S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois-Chicago, who has studied the health of past presidents. This is part of a strategy to catch problems while they are still treatable, Olshansky said.
Olshansky says the public deserves to see more than the White House’s medical summaries, which “may be at the editors’ discretion.” Tam said unredacted medical records should be made public: “Nothing should be withheld.”
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