President Trump’s casual admission that he underwent an MRI is reigniting questions about how much the public really knows about his health — and whether the White House is being honest about it.
Trump, now 79, is the oldest person ever elected president. His team has long portrayed him as sharp, tireless, and physically strong. But his latest visit to Walter Reed Military Medical Center — his second in six months — is stirring fresh skepticism about what’s really going on behind closed doors.
The White House called it a “routine follow-up visit,” and Trump’s physician issued a short note declaring him in “excellent overall health.” Then, mid-flight on Air Force One, Trump let slip that he’d had an MRI and a cognitive test.
“I got an MRI, it was perfect,” Trump told reporters.
No reason for the scan was given. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to elaborate when pressed later, leaving doctors and historians to question why the detail was left out in the first place.
Jeffrey Kuhlman, who served as a White House physician to three presidents and authored Transforming Presidential Healthcare, said it’s not unusual for someone Trump’s age to get an MRI — but he raised eyebrows over how the timeline was presented.
“Most any procedure scope, I had the capabilities there at the White House. The only thing I couldn’t, that I’d have to [go to] Walter Reed for, is advanced imaging,” Kuhlman said, according to The Hill.
According to Kuhlman, the official account leaves room for doubt. “It’s about an eight-minute helicopter ride from the South Lawn to Walter Reed. So we know that he at least had four hours available to undergo medical care,” he said. “There’s a disconnect there.”
That “disconnect” is what medical and ethics experts have been pointing to: the persistent gap between what the White House says and what’s actually happening with the president’s health.
Jacob Appel, a psychiatry professor and presidential health historian at Mount Sinai, said the problem isn’t privacy — it’s selective disclosure.
“I think if you’re going to release some information, you want to release enough information that the public at least can put it into context,” Appel said. “If you’re going to say that you’re having an MRI, we should know what the MRI is for.”
“We don’t know what the MRI was for, because the President hasn’t even told us what body part was [scanned] … an MRI could be something to check for a cognitive issue. It could be something to check for a heart issue. It could be the president twisted an ankle and they’re afraid that he is a bone fracture. So it could be almost anything.”
S. Jay Olshansky, a longevity researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that ultimately, the public only gets the version of the truth the White House wants them to see.
“It’s up to the general public to decide what they trust and what they don’t trust,” Olshansky said.
That trust has been tested before.
Recent photos of Trump’s swollen legs and a bruised, makeup-covered hand sparked online speculation before officials confirmed he suffers from chronic venous insufficiency, and said the bruise was from “constant hand shaking.”
During his bout with COVID-19 in 2020, the administration initially hid his diagnosis, then downplayed how sick he was, even as he was given access to an unapproved experimental treatment.
And back in 2015, Trump released a now-infamous letter from his physician, Harold Bornstein, claiming he would be “the healthiest president in history.” Bornstein later admitted Trump dictated the letter himself.
To experts, it’s all part of a familiar pattern: a White House carefully controlling the flow of medical information to project strength while withholding key details.
As Kuhlman put it, the inconsistencies may not prove anything nefarious — but they do highlight a problem that keeps resurfacing.
“There’s a disconnect there,” he said.
And for a president whose health has always been shrouded in bravado and bluster, that disconnect might be exactly what the public needs to question most.
