Donald Trump in ‘excellent health’ after medical exam, presidential doctor claims

Exam went 'exceptionally well', doctor says

Jeremy B. White
San Francisco
Saturday 13 January 2018 00:56 GMT
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Donald Trump is in “excellent health", his doctor announced after the President underwent a medical examination.

“The President's exam at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center went exceptionally well. The president is in excellent health and I look forward to briefing some of the details on Tuesday,” Dr Ronny Jackson said in a statement.

At 70 years old when he took office, Mr Trump is America’s oldest president.

Questions about his physical fitness have trailed him since the campaign, when his personal physician proclaimed he would be the “healthiest individual ever elected” if he won.

Multiple books have relayed the President's affinity for fast food, and according to The New York Times he consumes a dozen Diet Cokes a day.

An avid golfer, Mr Trump is said to disdain other forms of exercise and prefer only a few hours of sleep a night.

‘‘All my friends who work out all the time, they’re going for knee replacements, hip replacements — they’re a disaster,’’ he told The New York Times Magazine in 2015.

But concerns about Mr Trump’s mental acuity have overshadowed questions about his physical state, with multiple Democrats in Congress openly suggesting he is psychologically unfit to serve as president.

Friday’s examination did not entail a psychiatric assessment, but members of Congress reportedly had a psychiatry professor brief them about Mr Trump in a Capitol Hill meeting last month.

Breaking with longstanding tradition against diagnosing public figures, some psychiatrists have said it is their duty to warn against the President’s erratic behaviour.

The White House and Mr Trump have repeatedly brushed aside those implications. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders blasted suggestions about the President’s mental fitness as “disgraceful and laughable”, and the President reassured the public in a recent tweet that he is a “very stable genius”.

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