(AP) President Donald Trump arrived for his first medical checkup as president at Walter Reed military hospital on Friday, undergoing a physical examination amid suggestions in a recent book and by his detractors that he’s mentally unfit.
Trump’s motorcade pulled into the medical facility in Bethesda, Maryland, outside Washington, early Friday afternoon. But what has been a fairly routine exam for previous presidents has taken on outsized importance in the age of Trump, given the tone of some of his tweets, comments attributed to some of his close advisers and Trump’s recent slurring of words on national TV.
Some of the comments were published in a new book about Trump’s first year, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” by Michael Wolff, which White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has denounced as “complete fantasy” for portraying her 71-year-old boss as undisciplined and in over his head as president.
Trump himself has pushed back hard against any suggestion that he’s mentally unfit, declaring himself “a very stable genius.”
The examination was expected to last several hours and will measure things like Trump’s blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, heart rate and weight.
The White House said Trump’s physician, Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, was expected to release a brief statement on Friday after the exam and then provide a detailed readout of the exam on Tuesday and answer questions from reporters.
