Trump doc boasted of president’s health
Harold Bornstein, President donald Trump’s one-time physician who declared in a 2015 letter that, “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” only to say later that Trump dictated the letter, died Jan. 8 at age 73.
His death was announced in a paid death notice in the New york Times. It provided no information about the cause of death. Attempts to reach family members were unsuccessful.
Bornstein, a gastroenterologist, was Trump’s personal physician from 1980 until 2017, when Trump became president. Before that, Bornstein had a low profile and was known mostly for his shoulder-length hair, his love of Italian literature and forays into poetry.
As Trump was launching his presidential campaign, he said in a tweet on dec. 3, 2015, that he had “instructed my longtime doctor” to issue a report on his health and “it will show perfection.”
Bornstein’s letter was released two weeks later but was dated dec. 4, one day after Trump’s tweet. Trump, who was 70 when elected, was the oldest first-time president in u.s. history. Joe Biden is 78.
The letter said Trump’s “physical strength and stamina are extraordinary,” that Trump’s blood pressure and other tests were “astonishingly excellent” and that his examination “showed only positive results.”
Skeptics questioned whether a medical doctor could have written such an effusive letter. The phrase “positive results” stood out because physicians typically describe benign results as “negative.”
On Feb. 2, 2017, the Times published an interview with Bornstein in which he said Trump took several medicines, including Propecia to arrest male pattern baldness. The next day, three men “raided” Bornstein’s office. He identified Keith Schiller, Trump’s longtime bodyguard, and Alan Garten, a lawyer. He didn’t know the third man.
They took Trump’s medical records, Bornstein said, including those under various aliases. In a later call with a Trump assistant, Bornstein said he was told, “Forget it, you’re out.”
Bornstein waited more than a year before going public about it.
“I feel raped — that’s how I feel,” he told NBC News. “raped, frightened and sad.”
He said on CNN the 2015 letter was Trump’s idea.
“He dictated that whole letter,” Bornstein said.
Bornstein was born in March 1947 in New york. He graduated in 1975 from Tufts medical school.