A top doctor pointed out a curious detail about President Donald Trump’s assessment of his annual physical.
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at The George Washington University and the cardiologist of former Vice President Dick Cheney, said on CNN News Central on Tuesday afternoon that Trump, 79, implied a strange change to the presidential examination schedule.
“One other interesting thing I noted was that when the president—when he was leaving Walter Reed, posted on social media that he had a perfect physical, called it his ‘6 month physical,’” Reiner, also the director of the cardiac catheterization laboratory at GWU, said. “So, I guess, you know, what we’re changing now from is a routine yearly physical for a president to—I guess, perhaps as a nod to his age—it looks like this president will undergo a six-month cycle for evaluations.”
“What’s also interesting is that in many of these yearly physical exams, much of this evaluation is done in advance of the day where the president actually goes to Walter Reed, so we should have a readout about this pretty soon,” he added. “Often, his labs are pre-tested, so the White House often can generate a readout very quickly.”
Reached for comment, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast in a statement: “If it quacks like a duck, it may actually just be a Democrat hack doctor. President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history and any so-called medical professionals engaging in armchair diagnosis or false speculation for political purposes are clearly breaking the Hippocratic Oath they’ve sworn to.”
The near-octogenarian appeared for his physical examination at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Tuesday, the fourth known medical checkup of his second term, as speculation over the state of his health plagues his administration.
The geriatric president posted on Truth Social on Tuesday that his visit to Walter Reed went “PERFECTLY,” and that he was on his way back to the White House.
As the Daily Beast has covered extensively, Trump, who turns 80 next month, has exhibited a laundry list of physical and mental ailments throughout his presidency, including his swollen cankles resulting from last July’s chronic venous insufficiency diagnosis, his commonly bruised hands that the White House has attributed to his “frequent handshaking” and high-dosage aspirin regimen, his surprise neck rash, his bouts of confusion, and his moments of slurred speech.
During an earlier appearance on CNN on Tuesday morning, Reiner also explained a possible cause for the president’s frequent habit of falling asleep in public.
“The president has severe daytime somnolence. He falls asleep very often,” Reiner said. “He’s fallen asleep in the Oval Office on multiple occasions with people talking to him in the Cabinet room, and I was concerned yesterday that he might have fallen asleep at Arlington National Cemetery during Memorial Day observances.”
“Chronic insomnia is a severe illness,” he added. “It can result in an increase in risk of dementia, decrease in cognitive effects in older people.”
