Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s physician has raised serious concerns about President Donald Trump’s health.
The president, 79, is due to undergo his third medical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in 13 months, the White House said earlier this month.
The trip comes amid swirling questions about his mental and physical fitness, long raised by the Daily Beast and now garnering more national attention.
“This White House just doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge any physical ailment, but older people develop medical issues, and the president is almost 80 years old,” leading cardiologist Jonathan Reiner, told The Washington Post. “There just seems to be a lack of candor from the White House.”
Reiner is a professor of medicine and the director of the cardiac catheterization laboratory at The George Washington University Hospital. He said he was concerned that Trump’s legs were becoming noticeably swollen.
In an uncharacteristically candid admission in July, the White House said that Trump, who turns 80 next month, had chronic venous insufficiency.
It is a mild, age-related condition that causes veins to struggle to return blood to the heart, leading to pooling at the bottom of the legs and a swollen appearance.
The Post reports that Reiner said he found it significant that his April 2025 medical report made no mention of the condition.
It raises questions about whether it was present at the time and, if so, whether Trump’s physicians omitted it from the report or missed it altogether.
He said that if the condition developed after the April report, then it could signify a condition called acute edema, which “usually warrants an in-depth evaluation to make sure that you don’t have conditions like congestive heart failure.”
There was also no mention of the condition during his medical report from October, the Post reported.
Trump’s cankles even made an appearance in China, as Trump sat with the country’s premier Xi Jinping during his three-day state visit this month, in a moment captured in a CNN segment with Jake Tapper and Kaitlan Collins.
The broader conversation about Trump’s health has centered on several key issues.
Among the most visible has been repeated bruising on the back of his hands, which the White House has brushed off as nothing more than the result of a lot of hand-shaking.
Reiner, however, was not convinced, saying, “If you’re taking too much aspirin, one would likely take less aspirin. So that explanation doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
“We’ve seen a similar bruise from time to time on his left hand, and I doubt he’s shaking hands with his left hand.”
Trump’s health—both mental and physical—is now becoming a mainstream public conversation. The Daily Beast has been relentless in raising the alarm about the possible decline of Trump’s health, and now the nation is taking notice.
A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll conducted in April found just 40 percent of Americans thought he had good enough mental health to be an effective president, while just 44 percent thought he had sufficient physical health.
Those numbers were down from 47 percent and 54 percent in September, respectively.
Presidents usually take one trip to Walter Reed a year, but Trump broke with convention by taking two in 2025, one of which he initially said was for an MRI but was later revealed to be for a CT scan.
Still, the White House has claimed he has never made any trips without the public knowing. “He has never made an undisclosed visit to Walter Reed,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt last month.
Trump has also raised eyebrows with his insistence on having passed complex cognitive tests, and has been caught on camera seemingly struggling to walk a straight line or down the stairs from Air Force One.
He also had a surprise medical visit in May. It was revealed he had taken what the White House press team called a “scheduled dental appointment” at his local dentist in Florida.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
