Donald Trump’s eccentric longtime doctor thinks the President-elect should fare just fine health-wise once he takes office, but doesn’t seem too concerned about what happens if he doesn’t.
“If something happens to him, then it happens to him,” Manhattan physician Dr. Harold Bornstein told STAT News in an interview published Wednesday. “It’s like all the rest of us, no? That’s why we have a vice president and a speaker of the House and a whole line of people. They can just keep dying.”
Bornstein said that it “never occurred” to him that Trump was the oldest president ever elected, and claimed he felt no responsibility to share additional information with the public about the patient who he has seen for some 35 years.
“I’m fortunate there’s nothing seriously wrong with him,” Bornstein told STAT. “He’s a few pounds overweight, which everybody can see, and that’s it. I’ve never been able to find anything wrong with him.”
The wild-haired physician came under scrutiny in August after he told NBC News that the Dec. 2015 letter he wrote promising that Trump would “be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency” was dashed off in five minutes as a limo waited outside his Upper East Side office.
That was the only medical information released by Trump until September 2016, when his attacks on the health and “stamina” of Hillary Clinton after her bout of pneumonia drew questions about his own medical history.
Bornstein starred in a few unusual cable news interviews before releasing a letter with more information about Trump’s history of illness, weight, and the drug he is prescribed to lower his cholesterol levels.
He told STAT that he most recently saw the President-elect for a checkup in September, but has not spoken to him since the election. Bornstein, whose business card contains an Italian phrase reading “dottore molto famoso” or “very famous doctor,” told the health news site that he was unsure if he would continue to care for Trump once he took office. He said that a military doctor would likely fill the role, as has been the case for most prior presidents.
