WASHINGTON: For long, US President Donald Trump has criticized the media for publishing “fake news” about him. Now it has emerged that he may have faked his own bill of health in 2015, ahead of the presidential election.
Trump’s former doctor Harold Bornstein has said he did not write a glowing letter in December 2015 declaring the then-Republican presidential candidate’s “astonishingly excellent” health, according to a US media report.
“He dictated that whole letter. I didn’t write that letter,” Bornstein told CNN about 71-year-old Trump, who became the oldest president to be elected in US history.
“I just made it up as I went along,” Bornstein, a gastroenterologist, best known as Trump’s personal physician for more than three decades, told the network.
“His (Trump’s) physical strength and stamina are extraordinary,” he had crowed in the letter, which was released by Trump’s campaign in December 2015.
“If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” Bornstein had said.
The missive did not offer much medical evidence for those claims beyond citing a blood pressure of 110/65, described by Bornstein as “astonishingly excellent.” It claimed that Trump had lost 15 pounds over the preceding year. And it described his cardiovascular health as “excellent.”
“That’s black humor, that letter. That’s my sense of humor,” he said. “It’s like the movie ‘Fargo’: It takes the truth and moves it in a different direction.”
He said Trump read out the language as Bornstein and his wife were driving across Central Park.
“(Trump) dictated the letter and I would tell him what he couldn’t put in there,” he said. “They came to pick up their letter at 4 o’clock or something.”
Bornstein also said that Trump’s ex-bodyguard Keith Schiller had carried out a “raid” on his offices in February 2017, removing all of Trump’s medical records.
The raid left him “raped, frightened and sad”, Bornstein said.
The incident happened two days after Bornstein told a newspaper that he had for years prescribed Propecia, a hair growth medicine, for Trump. PTI
