The White House tried to keep President Joe Biden’s 81st birthday on Monday quiet amid serious concerns about the 46th president’s declining cognitive functions.
Former President Donald Trump responded with a clever message that blew the (many) candles out on Biden’s birthday cake.
Trump publicity released a doctor’s health assessment that reports the former president is in “excellent” physical and mental health.
The letter, posted on Trump’s social media platform, was from Dr. Bruce A. Aronwald, a New Jersey physician who says he has been Trump’s doctor since 2021 and most recently examined him in September. He reported that Trump’s “physical exams were well within the normal range and his cognitive exams were exceptional.”
He added that Trump’s most recent lab results were “even more favorable than prior testing on some of the most significant parameters” thanks to recent weight loss he credited to “improved diet and continued daily physical exercise, while maintaining a rigorous schedule.”
The doctor concluded the 77-year-old is “currently in excellent health” and “will continue to enjoy a healthy active lifestyle for years to come.”
While Trump isn’t all that much younger than Biden, polls consistently find that Americans view age as more of a liability for the president. An August poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 77% of U.S. adults, including 69% of Democrats, viewed Biden as too old to be effective for four more years, while only 51% of adults — and just 28% of Republicans — said the same about Trump.
Still, Trump’s Republican rivals are talking a page from the Trump campaign’s playbook and are trying to highlight his age by pointing attention to his own recent flubs.
“The presidency is not a job for somebody that’s pushing 80 years old,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, one of Trump’s rivals, said on CNN Sunday, casting himself as a man “in the prime of my life.”
In late December 2015, during his first campaign for the Republican nomination, Trump’s campaign released a glowing letter from the late Dr. Harold N. Bornstein that claimed Trump would “unequivocally” be the “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
While in the White House, Trump’s doctors offered a more complete picture of his health following annual physicals that included numbers and test results.
His physical in 2019, for instance, revealed that he was officially considered obese, while his 2018 exam revealed he had a common form of heart disease.
Still, then-White House Dr. Ronny Jackson offered a glowing report during a lengthy press conference about the exam in which he extolled Trump’s “incredible genes” — “it’s just the way God made him,” he said — and joked that if the then-71-year-old president had eaten a healthier diet over the previous 20 years, “he might live to be 200 years old.”
Jackson also said Trump had performed “exceedingly well” on a surprise cognitive screening test designed to detect early signs of memory loss and other mild cognitive impairment.
Former President Trump releases note on his health from his doctor today pic.twitter.com/OtvxC0LleN
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) November 20, 2023
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article