Donald Trump’s questionable track record when it comes to his doctors’ statements about his health doesn’t bode well for transparency about his current state, his biographer says.
Author Michael Wolff told the Daily Beast podcast Inside Trump’s Head in Wednesday’s episode that the public shouldn’t expect the 79-year-old to level with them.
“We know, I mean, as sure as the sun rises, that he’s not going to tell the truth about this, that he’s always dissembled about his personal medical condition,” Wolff told host Joanna Coles.
The two then noted Dr. Harold Bornstein, Trump’s former longtime personal doctor, saying in 2018 that Trump had “dictated” a letter during the 2016 campaign stating that Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
Wolff then alluded to how Ronny Jackson, the disgraced former White House physician to the president, once claimed Trump could have lived to be 200 years old if he had a better diet. In recent weeks, the White House has being issuing statements from the Republican Texas congressman and demoted Navy captain in which he makes the similarly grandiose assertion that Trump “is the healthiest president this nation has ever seen.”
When reached for comment, the White House directed the Daily Beast to Trump’s press conference Tuesday afternoon.
“Last week, I did numerous news conferences–all successful. They went very well, like this is going very well,” Trump said. “And then I didn’t do any for two days, and they said, ‘There must be something wrong with him.’ Biden wouldn’t do them for months. You wouldn’t see him, and nobody ever said there was ever anything wrong with him, and we know he wasn’t in the greatest of shape.”
Additionally, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung doubted the credibility of not only Wolff but Coles as well.
“Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles are lying sacks of s–t and have been proven to be frauds,” Cheung told the Daily Beast in a statement. “They routinely fabricate stories originating from their sick and warped imagination, only possible because they have a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted their peanut-sized brains.”
As for speculation over the holiday weekend about the president’s health—fueled in part by him posting an old golfing photo—Wolff said the White House is “very resentful” about such questions.
“Because what you see is what you get. He’s out there, he’s talking, he’s doing his cabinet meeting three hours,” he explained. “So how can you even question this? That’s the official position.”
“The unofficial position—and I’ve just collected a few comments—it’s not a subject that anybody, anybody talks about,” he continued, repeating lines he claimed have come from people “inside the West Wing.”
“Another comment: ‘He’s 79.’ Yet another comment: ‘He’s lost a step or two, but he’s still Trump. He kind of wobbles,’” Wolff said. “‘He’s very puffy. He looks like he’s wearing a bad Trump mask’…And then another comment: ‘Maybe he’s in the West Wing for four hours a day, tops.’”
In July, amid questions over Trump’s swollen ankles, the White House announced that the president was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency.
Trump’s hand bruising, it also said, was due to shaking hands and aspirin use.
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