E-Paper
Trump’s doctor says he wrote candidate’s note out in 5 minutes
WASHINGTON: A doctor who gave Donald Trump a clean bill of health, all wrapped up in bombastic hyperbole, has now said he wrote it out in five minutes as a limo
WASHINGTON: A doctor who gave Donald Trump a clean bill of health, all wrapped up in bombastic hyperbole, has now said he wrote it out in five minutes as a limo sent by the Republican nominee waited outside.
Harold Bornstein told NBC on Friday that he wrote the certificate out in a rush and didn’t even have time to proofread it.
“To whom my concern,” read the subject line of the certificate that was released by the Trump campaign last December, but it had largely escaped scrutiny before now.
It began to attract attention in recent weeks as the nominee, his campaign and his surrogates began raising questions about his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s health.
“Go online and put down ‘Hillary Clinton illness’, take a look at the videos for yourself,” Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor and close adviser to Trump, said last week.
He was referring to rumours about Clinton’s “mental and physical stamina” that her campaign has strenuously countered, calling them “deranged conspiracy theories”.
On another occasion, the Republican candidate told voters in Iowa that Clinton was “not strong enough to be president.”
Trump, at age 70 — 16 months older than Clinton — would be the oldest person to assume the presidency if elected.
Now Bornstein is facing scrutiny along with the health certificate he wrote out for Trump, which said the nominee is in “astonishingly excellent” health.
“If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” the doctor wrote in the short four para note.
When asked about that line, the doctor, who has been examining Trump for 35 years, said, “I like that sentence to be quite honest with you and all the rest of them are either sick or dead”.
Bornstein said he was normally so effusive, but “I think I picked up his kind of language and then just interpreted it to my own”.
He is certified in internal medicine and gastroenterology.
(With agency inputs)
