Dr Ronny Jackson says President Trump is in ‘excellent’ health, but the media not convinced
The doctor who cared for President Obama and serves as President Trump’s White House physician said Tuesday that the president received a perfect score on a cognitive test designed to screen for neurological impairment, which the military doctor said was evidence that Trump does not suffer from mental issues that prevent him from functioning in office.
“I’ve found no reason whatsoever to think the president has any issues whatsoever with his thought processes,” Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, a rear admiral in the Navy and the White House physician, told reporters on Tuesday.
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A book published this month, “Fire and Fury” by Michael Wolff, asserted that even Trump’s own advisers and associates questioned the president’s fitness for office.
Jackson said President Trump’s health was “excellent,” with mostly normal results on a battery of tests and examinations. He said Trump, 71, has remarkably good cardiac health, probably because he does not smoke or drink alcohol.
Jackson said of Trump that “He would like to lose 10 to 15 pounds. We talked about diet and exercise a lot. He’s more enthusiastic about the diet part than the exercise part, but we’re going to do both.”
Trump “has a unique ability to just get up in the morning and just reset. He gets up and he just starts a new day.”
“This has been the narrative for a while. He saw doing the physical as an opportunity to put some of that to rest,” Dr. Jackson said during a nearly hourlong question-and-answer session in the White House briefing room. “He actively asked me to include that in it, so we did.”
Dr. Jackson said that Trump received a score of 30 out of 30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a well-known test regularly used at Walter Reed and other hospitals.
The media attacked Jackson, asserting that Trump eats McDonalds and doesn’t stay mobile, questioning the validity of the evaluation.
“It’s called genetics,” Dr. Jackson said. “I told the president if he had eaten healthier over the last 25 years, he might live to be 200.”
“Dr. Jackson is a phenomenal doctor and a really great guy,” Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s senior adviser, posted Tuesday on Twitter. “He and his team took great care of all of us for many years.”
MEDIA BIAS:
CNN’s Jim Acosta asked if the cognitive assessment was the same thing as a psychiatric exam. It is not and Dr. Jackson confirmed as such. Acosta was eventually called on for a second time and asked if the doctor was holding anything back for privacy reasons, while another wanted reassurance that Trump isn’t suffering from Alzheimer’s.
“Can you explain to me how a guy that eats McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken and all those Diet Cokes, and who never exercises, is in as good of shape as you say he’s in?” ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked. That led to Jackson’s “genetics” remark and stated that he thought the President’s diet has been different since moving into the White House.
photo/ Gordon Johnson
