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Doctor: Trump Would Be 'Healthiest Individual Ever Elected' President

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa, last Friday.
Charlie Neibergall
/
AP
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa, last Friday.

Donald Trump's personal physician released a statement on the GOP presidential candidate's medical history on Monday, declaring that the real estate magnate would "be the healthiest" president ever.

"If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency," said Dr. Harold N. Bornstein, a gastroenterologist from Lenox Hill Hospital in New York.

The full letter is written in true Trumpian fashion, full of hyperbole and boasting of greatness. Bornstein calls Trump's blood pressure "astonishingly excellent" and Trump says in his own statement he was "fortunate to have been blessed with great genes." The physician also says Trump has "no history of ever using alcohol or tobacco products."

Trump, who will be 70 on Election Day, would be the oldest person ever elected president if he wins.

Trump's campaign released a summary of his medical history on Monday.
/ Donald J. Trump for President
/
Donald J. Trump for President
Trump's campaign released a summary of his medical history on Monday.

There's a typo at the very beginning of the letter, though, which already begins with an odd salutation for a doctor. Appearing to mean to type "To Whom It May Concern," Bornstein instead says "To Whom My Concern."

As Bornstein notes, he's been treating Trump for 35 years, and his father, Dr. Jacob Bornstein, was his physician before that. Trump's statement and a tweet say the statement was from the elder Bornstein — who died in 2010.

The whole letter is very odd, and very unlike ones typically released by presidential candidates — though Trump of course hasn't followed a typical campaign model by any means.

For fans of NBC's 30 Rock, the language used by Dr. Bornstein may seem familiar:

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Jessica Taylor is a political reporter with NPR based in Washington, DC, covering elections and breaking news out of the White House and Congress. Her reporting can be heard and seen on a variety of NPR platforms, from on air to online. For more than a decade, she has reported on and analyzed House and Senate elections and is a contributing author to the 2020 edition of The Almanac of American Politics and is a senior contributor to The Cook Political Report.

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