Members of the press are still questioning President Trump’s physical and mental fitness, even after the official White House doctor who has treated Trump gave him a near-perfect bill of health, including on his cognitive ability.
Dr. Ronny Jackson, the president’s physician and a Navy rear admiral, said in a press briefing Tuesday that the president’s “overall health is excellent,” that there’s “no indication whatsoever that he has any cognitive issues,” and that Trump “continues to enjoy the significant long-term cardiac and overall health benefits that come from a lifetime of abstinence from tobacco and alcohol.”
Still, reporters and commentators weren’t fully ready to accept the findings.
Speaking Wednesday on CNN, the network’s chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta said the test results made public by Jackson actually showed he has a heart malady.
“A few years ago, dating back to 2009, President Trump started having these tests that are actually looking for the presence of calcium in the blood vessels that lead to the heart … and steadily, up until just this past week, when he had them performed again, those numbers have gone up,” Gupta said. “Well, when they get to a certain range, and his number is in the 130s, that means he has heart disease.”
He added there was “no question” that “by all standards, by all metrics, any way a doctor or cardiologist would look at it, the president does have heart disease.”
Jackson was asked twice during the briefing about the president’s heart and he plainly said that there was no heart disease and that his cardiac health is “excellent.”
Jackson also said he typically sees Trump up to three times each day, due to the proximity of their offices in the West Wing, and said, “I’ve gotten to know him pretty well and I had absolutely no concerns about his cognitive ability or his neurological functions.”
He said, however, that Trump requested a cognitive test and that he scored a perfect 30 out of 30.
The New York Times responded by publishing an opinion piece that said Trump would still likely not pass an exam that determines whether a person is mentally fit for handling nuclear weapons.
“I have not had the opportunity to examine the president personally, but warning signs abound,” wrote Steven Buser, the author of the op-ed and co-editor of a book that casts Trump as a narcissist. “What if I had reliable outside information that Airman Trump displayed erratic emotions? That I saw very clearly that he was engaging in cyberbullying on Twitter? That he had repeatedly made untruthful or highly distorted statements? … These are the sorts of things that set off alarms for Air Force psychiatrists.”
On MSNBC, “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, who frequently questions the president’s mental health, said she was wasn’t reassured by Jackson’s report.
“I’m not really sure if it makes me feel better that this doctor says that he has no cognitive issues,” she said. “It makes me feel worse and more worried for the country.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough seemed to doubt even the legitimacy of Jackson’s findings about Trump’s normal cognitive status.
“If that is the case, and medically, perhaps, that is,” he said, “[Jackson] has shocked and surprised a lot of people who have worked around [Trump] for the past several years, who have been saying that he is not.”
At the White House press briefing on Wednesday, a day after Jackson had answered questions from reporters for an hour, the administration’s top spokesperson Sarah Sanders was again asked if the White House stood by all of Jackson’s assessment.
Sanders said yes and that Jackson is “the only doctor that has weighed in on this matter, that has actually examined the president,” and is “not only the most qualified but the only credible source when it comes to diagnosing any health concerns.”
