White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow has been admitted to a hospital following a heart attack, according to President Trump.
“Our Great Larry Kudlow, who has been working so hard on trade and the economy, has just suffered a heart attack. He is now in Walter Reed Medical Center,” Trump tweeted Monday night.
Our Great Larry Kudlow, who has been working so hard on trade and the economy, has just suffered a heart attack. He is now in Walter Reed Medical Center.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2018
The tweet came minutes before Trump was set to meet Tuesday morning local time with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore.
While Trump shared no further details, about an hour after his tweet, Kudlow’s wife, Judy, told the Washington Post that her husband is “doing fine. Doctors here are fabulous.”
“Earlier today National Economic Council Director and Assistant to the President Larry Kudlow, experienced what his doctors say, was a very mild heart attack,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement late Monday. “Larry is currently in good condition at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and his doctors expect he will make a full and speedy recovery. The President and his Administration send their thoughts and prayers to Larry and his family.”
Kudlow, a former CNBC contributor and Reagan administration economist, replaced Gary Cohn as chairman of the National Economic Council on March 14.
The seasoned media personality has used his experience in front of a TV camera in recent weeks to advocate for Trump’s contentious positions on trade, particularly the imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from allies such as Canada, Mexico, and the European Union.
Kudlow made headlines on Sunday for saying Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “double-crossed” the U.S. and “stabbed us in the back” after the G-7 summit meeting last week by announcing retaliatory tariffs.
“I personally negotiated with Prime Minister Trudeau who, by the way, I basically like working with, but not until this sophomoric play,” Kudlow said on CNN from Washington, D.C.
Kudlow had a highly publicized battle with drug and alcohol addiction in the 1980s before leaving his career on Wall Street to become an economic commentator.
