It’s been almost two months since Donald Trump went to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for his second physical of the year. Soon after the visit, an official White House summary released to news organizations noted that the president had undergone “advanced imaging” as part of that visit.
This one detail, mentioned in passing, generated some reasonable follow-up questions: Did Trump get an MRI? If so, why?
Remarkably, the story isn’t just lingering, it’s also getting weirder. The Associated Press’ headline summarized matters nicely: “Trump says he’ll release MRI results but doesn’t know what part of his body was scanned.” From the report:
President Donald Trump said he’ll release the results of his MRI test that he received in October. ‘If you want to have it released, I’ll release it,’ the Republican president said Sunday during an exchange with reporters as he traveled back to Washington from Florida. He said the results of the MRI were ‘perfect.’
Let’s take a moment to review how we arrived at this point.
A week after the medical exam, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt conceded that she didn’t know why this specific test was ordered. A week after that, the president himself acknowledged during a brief Q&A with reporters that he’d undergone magnetic resonance imaging, but he declined to say why his doctors had ordered the scan.
The issue lingered in the background for a while. On Nov. 4, Leavitt boasted about Trump’s “optimal physical health,” although she didn’t know the reason for his MRI. On Nov. 12, the press secretary again insisted that the president is in “exceptional physical health,” adding that the results were reviewed by “radiologists and consultants,” but she offered no additional details.
Two days later, the Republican boasted to reporters, “I had an MRI. The doctor said it was the best result he has ever seen as a doctor.” Asked whether the MRI was on his brain, Trump replied, “I have no idea what they analyzed, but whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well. And they said that I had as good a result as they’ve ever seen.”
Two weeks later, the president thought it would be a good idea to condemn Gov. Tim Walz as “seriously retarded,” which led the Minnesota Democrat to call on Trump to release the results of his MRI. The challenge led to a fresh line of inquiry.
Asked on Sunday night why he had an MRI, the president responded, “It’s like my phone call where I got impeached. It’s absolutely perfect.” (The scandal that led to Trump’s first impeachment was built in part on a phone meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The call was anything but “perfect.”)
As part of the same Q&A, Trump was also asked what part of his body was scanned. “I have no idea,” the Republican replied. “It was just an MRI. What part of the body? It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test, and I aced it. I got a perfect mark.”
The president has long struggled to understand the purpose of cognitive exams, which are used to identify evidence of dementia, mental deterioration and neurodegenerative diseases. It’s entirely possible for a patient to do well on such a test and still need a head MRI.
There may be nothing to this story, but given Trump’s unfortunate record, he hasn’t exactly earned the benefit of the doubt on questions of medical transparency. What’s more, Dr. Vin Gupta, a medical analyst for MS NOW, explained online, “Even if you are leader of the free world, you don’t just get an MRI without a clear reason to do so. There’s no such thing as a ‘screening’ MRI.”
That Trump still has “no idea” what the MRI was for doesn’t exactly resolve the underlying questions about what happened or why. Watch this space.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
