A top doctor hit back at the White House after Donald Trump’s aides tried to insult him for asking questions about the 80-year-old president’s health.
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who served as former Vice President Dick Cheney’s cardiologist and is a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, sounded the alarm about President Donald Trump’s health in an op-ed Wednesday, laying out seven questions he believes the White House needs to answer.
In response, White House spokesperson David Ingle, 32, issued a statement calling Trump the “sharpest, most accessible and energetic” president, while attempting to insult Reiner over his questions, calling him “an a-s-hat engaging in armchair diagnosis for political purposes.”
But Reiner wasn’t letting the White House off the hook. In a post on X on Friday, he shared his conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper on The Lead and took a jab at the White House, writing: “I would note for the White House that ‘a--hat’ is usually not hyphenated.”
The top doctor had previously responded to the White House’s insults with a series of quick-witted comebacks. He told Tapper that he viewed himself “more as an asset to the White House Medical Unit than an a--hat.”
On Thursday, he also told CNN host Pamela Brown that the Trump White House had given him a certificate recognizing his service in its medical unit just last year.
“Maybe they should check with that first,” he fired back. “But secondly, I haven’t made any diagnosis, and if you look at the op-ed in The New York Times, I simply ask questions about things that are visible to everyone, so if the White House wants to provide the diagnosis for why the president has bruises on his hands and swelling in his legs and particularly why he struggles to stay awake, you know, I’m all ears, I want to hear it.”
Though Reiner has acknowledged that he is not Trump’s doctor and therefore cannot make an official diagnosis, he said there are a “variety of physical ailments” that are “easy to see,” particularly in a president who is photographed nearly every day.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Daily Beast has been tracking the physical signs of Trump’s declining health, including his swollen ankles, bruised hands that he often covers with makeup, and his habit of appearing to fall asleep during official meetings—all of which have prompted increasingly aggressive responses from White House spokespeople.
In September, when Trump appeared to veer as he walked to board Air Force One, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast, “You must be f---ing blind or stupid, because that was a perfect walk.” Cheung recycled the same comment nearly a year later in July when Trump again appeared to veer as he walked toward Marine One.
Like Ingle, Cheung has a history of aggressively hitting back at anyone who raises questions about Trump’s health.
In March last year, he attacked Democratic strategist James Carville for speculating about Trump’s health, calling him a “morally deficient parasite who has outlived his sell-by date.” When Trump biographer Michael Wolff said the president was suffering from loneliness and paranoia, Cheung called him the “biggest moron in media” and a “dumba--.”
In May, the White House also branded pulmonologist Dr. Vin Gupta a quack doctor for questioning the accuracy of the information about Trump’s health. “If it quacks like a duck, it may actually just be a Democrat hack doctor,” Ingle said in a statement he also used on Reiner.
