‘I had a very routine physical,’ Trump insists as speculation intensifies after he stayed out of the public eye for two days following hospital trip

This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

As speculation over Donald Trump’s unscheduled trip to the hospital last weekend continued, the president denied he had suffered a heart attack.

“I had a very routine physical,” Trump insisted to reporters on Tuesday morning before a cabinet meeting, adding: “I was out of there very quickly and got back home.”

The president said the rest of the examination would take place in January and repeated his claim that while at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on Saturday, he also visited the family of a badly injured soldier and toured the hospital.

When Trump returned to the White House, he said, “My wife Melania said, ‘Darling, are you OK? … They are reporting you may have had a heart attack.’

“I said, ‘Why did I have a heart attack?’ ‘Because you went to Walter Reed Medical Center.’ That’s where we go when we get the physical. I said I was only there for a very short period of time.”

He added: “I was called by our people in public relations: ‘Sir, are you OK?’ I said ‘OK for what?’ ‘The word is you had a heart attack. CNN said you may have had a heart attack. You had massive chest pains. You went to the hospital.’”

Such reports, he claimed, showed that “the press really in this country is dangerous”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump’s motorcade at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Saturday. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Now 73, Trump is the oldest president ever sworn into office for the first time. Speculation over his health intensified as he stayed out of the public eye for two days following his trip to Walter Reed, a short journey for which he used a motorcade including an ambulance rather than the Marine One helicopter as usual.

On Monday night the White House issued a memo in which Trump’s doctor, Sean Conley, said the “interim checkup” was both “routine” and only kept secret because of “scheduling uncertainties”.

“Despite some speculation,” Conley wrote, “the president has not had any chest pain, nor was he evaluated or treated for any urgent or acute issues. Specifically, he did not undergo any specialised cardiac or neurologic evaluations.”

Trump is notoriously fond of junk food and does little exercise beyond rounds of his beloved golf, but Dr Conley’s memo included cholesterol figures below those last released, from February this year.

That report, however, said the president was obese and concerns about Trump’s heart have been raised before.

In January 2018, the then White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, reported that the president was in “excellent” cardiac health despite having a form of heart disease common to men his age and a cholesterol level well above the desired figure.

Dr David Maron, director of preventative cardiology at Stanford University and not involved in Trump’s care, told the New York Times he would “definitely” be worried about the risk of heart attack if the president were one of his patients.

Asked if Trump was in perfect health, Dr Maron said: “God, no.”