After Years Of Fanning Wild Rumours On The Health Of His Foes, Trump Faces His Own

President Donald Trump exits the White House and walks to his motorcade, en route to the Trump National Golf Club on Sept. 1, 2025, in Washington, DC.America’s conspiracy-theorist-in-chief Donald Trump is confronting some about his own health now, after a decade of claiming his political opponents were too mentally and physically ill to handle the presidency.“Well, it’s fake news. You know, it’s just so ― it’s so fake, that’s why the media has so little credibility,” he said, oddly blaming news organizations for rumors of his impending demise that existed only on social media.Trump, who spreads conspiracy theories on a near-daily basis and has eagerly spread unfounded rumours about opponents ranging from Ben Carson to Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden, appeared not to appreciate the irony.HuffPost is committed to fearlessly covering the Trump administration. Click here to support our mission and become a member today.“It’s the apotheosis of karma for the man who pretended Hillary was on death’s door,” said Rick Wilson, a veteran Republican political consultant in Florida who broke with his party after Trump seized control of it in 2016. “Mr. ‘Low Stamina’ is now the butt of his own joke.”Trump’s White House did not respond to HuffPost queries on the matter.Since he began his political career a decade ago, Trump has repeatedly questioned both the physical and mental states of his opponents, starting with those in the 2016 Republican presidential primary field. He began by calling Jeb Bush “low energy,” suggesting that the former Florida governor, who was a collegiate tennis player and was known in Tallahassee for his long work days, lacked the stamina for the presidency.As the primary continued, Trump turned his attention to others. When Carson rose in the polls, Trump claimed the neurosurgeon was a violent sociopath.“He went after his mother with a hammer and he wanted to hit his mother over the head with a hammer, that he stabbed somebody, that he hit somebody in the face with a lock. He wanted to, he smashed somebody’s face with a lock, with a padlock and other things,” Trump said in November 2015. “He’s got a pathological temper or something.”A few months later, Trump decided it was actually Texas Senator Ted Cruz who was “unhinged.”“Ted Cruz is a totally unstable individual. He is the single biggest liar I’ve ever come across, in politics or otherwise, and I have seen some of the best of them,” Trump said, apparently unironically, on February 15, 2016.The next day, Trump added: “He’s got a mental problem.”When the general election arrived, Trump pushed conspiracy theories that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was close to death.“It’s interesting because they say pneumonia, but she was coughing very, very badly a week ago ... It’s very interesting to see what’s going on,” he said in September 2016.Four years later, facing Democratic challenger Joe Biden and long before his physical decline, Trump — who for years has had trouble completing a cogent thought without meandering off into falsehoods and absurd tangents — claimed that the former vice president was already incapacitated.“Joe is shot. He’s mentally shot,” Trump said in September 2020. “Joe is not mentally equipped to be president, that I can tell you right now.”And in 2024, campaigning to regain the White House, Trump continued his attacks on Biden’s mental acuity — “Biden doesn’t know he’s alive” — before seamlessly transferring the attacks onto Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, when she became the nominee.“I have just seen Kamala’s Report, and it is not good. According to her Doctor’s Report, she suffers from ‘urticaria,’ defined as ‘a rash of round, red welts on the skin that itch intensely, sometimes with dangerous swelling,’” he wrote on social media. “She also has ‘allergic rhinitis and allergic conjunctivitis,’ a very messy and dangerous situation. These are deeply serious conditions that clearly impact her functioning.”These constant claims of his opponents’ unfitness were accompanied by an opacity as to his own health.Ending a decades-long custom of presidential nominees releasing actual medical reports describing their condition, Trump instead had his personal physician write a letter for the news media praising Trump as the perfect specimen.“If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” stated a letter under the name of Harold Bornstein, Trump’s New York City doctor.In the weeks after taking office in 2017, Trump’s White House staff went to Bornstein’s office to confiscate all of Trump’s medical records, an action Bornstein described as a “raid.”Trump’s White House continued his refusal to be candid about his health. In January 2018, White House doctor Ronny Jackson, who later won a seat in Congress based on his devotion to Trump, described Trump to reporters in terms rivaling Trump’s own self-praise.“Some people just have great genes. I told the president if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years he might live to be 200,” he said.Jackson’s report also stated that Trump weighed 239 pounds, when those who viewed him up close could see plainly that he weighed considerably more. One top aide at the time estimated, on condition of anonymity, that Trump weighed “north of 300.”(Jackson’s report and subsequent White House medical reports for Trump also give him a height of 6-foot-3, an inch taller than Trump had claimed prior to running for the presidency.)In November 2019, Trump made a secretive trip to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and White House officials refused to explain why. (His press secretary at the time revealed in a 2021 book that it was to undergo a routine colonoscopy.)As he began his run to return to the White House in November 2022, Trump again refused to release medical records. When he was shot in the ear by a would-be assassin in July 2024, he refused to make the doctors who treated him available to the media and his campaign offered only the vaguest statements as to his condition.The obfuscation appears to have continued right into his second term.After Trump underwent a physical at Walter Reed in April, the new White House doctor’s report claimed his weight was down to 224 pounds, which again seemed at odds with his physical appearance.Physician Sean Barbabella’s report also assessed that Trump has an “active lifestyle” that contributes to his “excellent health.”“President Trump’s days include participation in multiple meetings, public appearances, press availability, and frequent victories in golf events,” Barbabella wrote — apparently suggesting that Trump’s “victories” at courses he owns provided him better exercise than if he had lost.The report failed to mention any problem with Trump’s blood circulation, which was disclosed as a “chronic” condition only after photos of Trump’s swollen ankles and calves began circulating on social media.Tests found “chronic venous insufficiency, a benign and common condition, particularly in individuals over the age of 70,” Barbabella wrote in a July 17 letter, adding that bruises on his right hand were caused by “frequent handshaking” and his prescribed use of aspirin.Barbabella did not address why the circulatory problem was not found in the earlier physical and concluded, “President Trump remains in excellent health.”Josh Schwerin, an aide to Clinton during the 2016 campaign, said it was unfortunate that the new fixation on Trump’s health is again helping him distract from his inability to deliver on what many voters wanted when they picked him over Harris.“All Americans know for a fact that the cost of things like groceries, electricity and child care continue to skyrocket. Trump has yet to find a cure for that potent problem,” he said.

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