Trump gets his first checkup since being elected president

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump received his first medical checkup as president at Walter Reed military hospital on Friday, undergoing a physical examination amid suggestions in a recent book and by his detractors that he’s mentally unfit.

Trump boarded Marine One at the medical facility in Bethesda, Md., Friday afternoon after about three hours at the hospital. Trump shook hands with his physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson, and then waved before boarding his helicopter. Later in the day, the president traveled to Florida for the weekend.

The fairly routine exam for previous presidents has taken on outsized importance in the age of Trump, given the tone of some of his tweets, comments attributed to some of his close advisers and Trump’s recent slurring of words on national TV.

Some of the comments were published in a new book about Trump’s first year, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” by Michael Wolff, which White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has denounced as “complete fantasy” for portraying her 71-yearold boss as undisciplined and in over his head as president.

Trump himself has pushed back hard against any suggestion he’s mentally unfit, declaring himself “a very stable genius.”

The examination lasted several hours and measured things such as Trump’s blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, heart rate and weight.

But conclusions about Trump’s mental acuity aren’t expected. The White House said Trump will not undergo a psychiatric exam. Officials did not address a different type of screening: assessments of cognitive status that examine neurologic functions including memory. Cognitive assessments aren’t routine in standard physicals, though they recently became covered in Medicare’s annual wellness visits for seniors.

While the exams are not mandatory, modern presidents typically undergo them regularly and release a doctor’s report declaring they are “fit for duty.”