Dr. David Scheiner suggested that President Trump could be suffering from “small strokes” following his unannounced visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center this weekend.
On Saturday, Trump, 73, began portions of his annual physical exam ahead of a “very busy 2020,” according to White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham. The White House claimed that Trump was “healthy and energetic without complaints,” but some questioned whether something else might have prompted the unannounced medical visit.
Among them was Scheiner, who was the White House physician under President Barack Obama. During an interview on CNN’s OutFront Monday night, Scheiner called it “absolute nonsense” that Trump would have had a routine health check at Walter Reed.
“You don’t take a part of your physical one time and a month or two later take another part of your physical. I never heard of anything like that,” Scheiner said. “And also, his physical for the kinds of things he needs, the whole thing could have been done at the White House. There was no reason.”
Scheiner insisted “something went wrong” and theorized that Trump could be having mental problems.
“I think he is someone who has some neurological issues, which no one has ever really addressed,” Scheiner said. “I think it’s quite possible that his physician did not feel that he could handle it himself.”
He added, “His inability to say words sometimes worries me tremendously. He is having trouble word-finding — when he said, ‘United shush,’ instead of the United States. These are words; these aren’t slips of the tongue. These are words; he can’t find them.”
[Read: White House physician refutes ‘speculation’ that Trump had medical emergency after hospital visit]
Scheiner also claimed Trump could be having “small strokes.”
Dr. Sean Conley, the current White House physician, denied that Trump underwent any “specialized cardiac or neurologic evaluations” in a memorandum released Monday night.
