'UTTER NONSENSE'

Top Doctor Calls BS on Trump’s Bizarre Claim About His Secret MRI

The 79-year-old president has stretched credulity by claiming he has “no idea” why he was scanned.

A medical practitioner has shredded 79-year-old Donald Trump’s incredible claim to have had absolutely “no idea” what body part he went in to get scanned.

“You know when you get an MRI what part of your body is going into the very narrow part of that MRI scanner because you hear it. You have to be in there for, you know, anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes,” Dr. Vin Gupta, a medical analyst for NBC News and former Chief Medical Officer at Amazon, told the MeidasTouch Podcast Tuesday.

“The notion that he doesn’t know what got scanned is nonsensical because he’s hearing the magnet beat, and it’s for minutes,” Gupta went on. “It’s not for seconds, so he definitely knows what got scanned.”

Trump visited the Walter Reed Military Medical Center last month for what his team described as a routine “annual” physical exam, despite it being his second this year.

The White House had released only a physician’s note, describing the MAGA leader as being in “excellent overall health,” by way of explanation for the trip, until Trump himself let slip to journalists he’d undergone an MRI scan.

Beyond suggesting it’s unlikely the aging president is truly clueless as to where in his body he was tested, Gupta went on to say Tuesday that medical professionals very seldom order MRIs as part of a routine physical check-up because the scans tend to throw up “a lot of false positives.”

“It’s actually a terrible screening tool,” the doctor explained. “The fact that his team is saying, ‘Hey, he got this MRI. It’s part of an executive physical, part of his routine physical,’ is utter nonsense. That’s not a part of a routine physical exam.”

Trump’s second “annual” physical has only fuelled already widespread speculation and rumors as to the state of the elderly president’s physical and mental health. Many commentators have pointed to his slurred speech, erratic public appearances, and occasional unsteady balance as clear signs of a possible underlying malaise.

Under pressure from the media, the White House has attributed the president’s swollen cankles to chronic venous insufficiency, a common ailment among men of his age, in which a person’s veins have trouble returning blood to the heart.

BRAIN PUZZLE

Trump, 79, Claims He Has ‘No Idea’ Why He Needed an MRI

Catherine Bouris

Later in his interview with MeidasTouch, Gupta zeroed in on some of the more recent signs the president may currently be managing some sort of health crisis, in particular an incident that saw him dozing off during an Oval Office meeting, and another where he appeared lost and confused after a man passed out next to the Resolute Desk.

Noting his age and the stress of holding arguably the highest political office on the planet, the physician suggested just one of the many different reasons someone like Trump might be getting semi-regular MRIs is to monitor for changes in cognitive function.

Play Video

“Is there something happening in the brain? Is the vasculature of the brain not getting enough blood to the brain? Who knows? Did he have stroke burden?” he said. “I’ve seen the same videos as you, just of his functional status looking, at times, pretty unstable.”

“If there’s early detection of something, that would make sense: that he is high-risk for something, or they already know he has a condition, maybe a neurologic issue, and they’re monitoring it,” he went on. “That would make complete sense.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on this story.

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

Will NealReporter

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.