E-Paper
‘These things must be done’: Donald Trump undergoes annual physical after long silence on health
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Trump's routine physical, saying he's in “very good shape” and a report will be shared soon.
US President Donald Trump underwent his annual physical examination on Friday, a routine check-up that could offer the first formal update in years on his physical and cognitive health.
At 78, Trump became the oldest person in US history to be sworn in as president this January. “I have never felt better, but nevertheless, these things must be done!” he wrote on his social media platform ahead of the check-up.
Trump also said he took a cognitive test and “I got every answer right.”
The duration of Donald Trump’s physical exam was not immediately known, as he did not address reporters before or after the check-up. He spent over five hours at the Walter Reed centre before boarding Air Force One to fly to Florida for the weekend.
While Trump has often questioned predecessor Joe Biden’s physical and mental fitness, he has largely avoided the usual transparency expected of presidents regarding health. Based on past practice, the latest physical is expected to result in a positive but vague summary.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that President Trump was undergoing his “routine and long-scheduled physical” while still at the medical centre. She assured that a “readout from the White House physician” would be shared “as soon as we possibly can” and said it was expected to be comprehensive.
“I can confirm the president is in very good shape,” Leavitt said. She added that the physical didn't require Trump being placed under general anesthesia.
First health update since Trump’s assassination attempt
The completed medical report would mark the first public update on Trump’s health since the assassination attempt on him in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July.
Rather than releasing medical records at the time, Texas Representative Ronny Jackson, a strong supporter who served as Trump's White House physician and once joked in the briefing room that Trump could live to be 200 with a better diet, wrote a memo describing a gunshot wound to Trump’s right ear.
In an interview with CBS last August, Trump said he’d “very gladly” release his medical records, but he never did.
Trump is three years younger than Biden. But on the day of his second inauguration in January, he was five months older than Biden was in 2021 — making Trump the oldest president to be sworn into office in US history.
Presidents have the same privacy rights as other citizens when it comes to their medical records, allowing them to decide what details are made public. Still, modern annual physicals have often offered insight into a president’s health, even though there have been past instances of major conditions being kept secret — like President Woodrow Wilson’s debilitating stroke in 1919.
Trump has typically provided only limited information about his health. Before Jackson's memo, the last update came in November 2023, when Dr. Bruce A. Aronwald released a letter on Biden's 81st birthday saying Trump was in “excellent” physical and mental health.
