While Donald Trump boasted about his “perfect” MRI scan last month, which his aides brushed off as part of a routine check-up, a former White House doctor has now cast doubt on that assessment.
White House physician Sean Barbabella described Trump’s second medical evaluation this year as a “scheduled follow-up” that included “advanced imaging.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later said she didn’t know what imaging took place. Days later, Trump revealed that he underwent an MRI scan during a visit to Walter Reed, calling it “perfect.”
But Jeffrey Kuhlman, the White House physician to former President Barack Obama, questioned the more than three hours the 79-year-old president spent at Walter Reed, when the evaluation, outside of the MRI, should have taken less than 15 minutes.
“It’s about an eight-minute helicopter ride from the South Lawn to Walter Reed. So we know that he at least had four hours available to undergo medical care,” Kuhlman told The Hill. “There’s a disconnect there.”
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
Kuhlman added that going to Walter Reed for scans wasn’t unusual. “Most any procedure scope, I had the capabilities there at the White House. The only thing I couldn’t, that I’d have to Walter Reed for, is advanced imaging,” he told the outlet.
Trump is the oldest person to be elected president of the United States and Barbabella has described him as being in “excellent overall health.”
Before heading to the military medical center, Trump called the medical visit a “semiannual physical.” It wasn’t until his recent trip to Asia that the president revealed more details about the medical exam.
In addition to the MRI, Trump told reporters about cognitive tests that he “decided to take” at Walter Reed.
The president bashed Democratic Reps. Jasmine Crockett and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as being “low IQ” before challenging them to take the same cognitive tests.
“Those are really hard, they're really aptitude tests, I guess, in a certain way. But they're cognitive tests," Trump said aboard Air Force One.
"The first couple of questions are easy. A tiger, an elephant, a giraffe, you know. When you get up to about five or six, and then when you get up to 10 and 20 and 25, they couldn't come close to answering any of those questions," Trump added.
Ocasio-Cortez replied to a clip of Trump’s remarks, suggesting he took a dementia test. “Out of curiosity, did those doctors ask you to draw a clock by any chance? Was that part hard for you, too? Asking for 340 million people,” she wrote on X.
At his last health screening in April, Trump underwent the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which is “a commonly used test to detect mild cognitive decline and early signs of dementia,” according to VeryWell Health. The president had a perfect score, Barbabella wrote at the time.
The White House physician didn’t mention the test in his October memo.
As lawmakers question Trump’s mental fitness, the Axios/Ipsos American Health Index from June found that 74 percent of Americans think there should be a legal requirement for any current president to share their health records.
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