As health questions rise, Trump exam set for Friday
President Donald Trump gets his first physical on Friday since taking office, but Americans may not find out much about the health of the 71-year-old chief executive with a taste for McDonald’s and an aversion to exercise beyond golf.
Trump, like all Americans, has the right under federal law to keep health information from public disclosure. The White House has pledged, though, that the physician, Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, will issue a public report on the exam, which will take place at Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
Trump’s liberal detractors and even some Republicans have recently questioned his fitness for office. A new book on Trump’s White House by author Michael Wolff, “Fire and Fury,” asserts that almost all of his top staff and advisers believe he is mentally unwell.
Trump hit back against the claims on Saturday, declaring himself a “very stable genius.” The White House sent out an army of surrogates on Sunday to forcefully denounce the book and other speculation about Trump’s fitness to serve.
Presidential medical reports are typically brief, with an overview of a few basic metrics — cholesterol levels, weight, blood pressure — and sometimes a note about idiosyncrasies. In George W. Bush’s first exam as president, his doctor said he enjoyed the occasional cigar, drank diet soda and ran 12 miles a week. Barack Obama’s reports chronicled his struggle to quit smoking.
“The president’s health isn’t only of importance to the president but to all of us, so we do expect presidents to reveal information that other people don’t have to, just like their financial information,” said David Orentlicher, co-director of the health law program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told reporters on Monday that a psychiatric exam would not be a part of Trump’s physical. Obama’s and Bush’s medical reports said that the exams showed normal neurological function.
Some members of Trump’s own party have raised questions about his psychological fitness for office. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., has expressed concerns about “his leadership, and just his stability, and the lack of desire to be competent on issues and understand, and nothing has changed.”
While presidents aren’t required to have a physical or release the results, it has become standard practice. In a Gallup poll during the 2016 general election, 51 percent of Americans said the president should release all relevant medical information, an increase from 2004 when 38 percent held that view.