Donald Trump wrote his own medical report. Reckless language makes that obvious. In medicine, language is supposed to be cautious and precise, the opposite of the political hyperbole that infects Donald Trump's words.

Dhruv Khullar | Opinion contributor

We should have known.

The news that Donald Trump dictated his own medical report — despite it being signed by his personal physician Dr. Harold Bornstein — hardly comes as a surprise. In all my years studying, teaching and practicing medicine, I have never heard any doctor say “astonishingly excellent,” or call anyone or anything “unequivocally” the healthiest.

“Unremarkable” is about as good as you’re going to get. Maybe “low-risk” if you’re lucky.

Language is important in medicine. It allows doctors to communicate nuance and uncertainty. It’s supposed to be precise, cautious and responsible. (Think the opposite of politics.)

If your abdomen is “taut,” that’s fine. If it’s “rigid,” I’m worried. Is your chest pain gnawing, burning, aching, cramping, dull, sharp or pressure? Each might have a different connotation, diagnosis and treatment.

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The irony of Trump dictating his own medical report is compounded by the fact that he made Hillary Clinton’s health a focal point late in the presidential campaign. In September 2016, Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia, agitating breathless media speculation about her health.

Trump seized on the episode. He ran a campaign ad showing Clinton being helped into a car, and claimed she didn’t “have the fortitude, strength, or stamina to lead.” At his rallies, he questioned whether she could “make it 15 feet to her car” or “stand up here for an hour.”He made a spectacle of his supposed good health on Dr. Oz’s show, who lent his credibility as a doctor to the candidate’s self-dictated letter. (Questionable judgement. Good ratings, though.)

Now comes the revelation that Trump’s aides raided Bornstein’s office in February 2017, after he revealed the president takes Propecia, a drug used to treat enlarged prostates but which also stimulates hair growth. Trump’s aides reportedly seized his medical files and told Bornstein to remove a framed photograph of himself with Trump in the waiting room. Bornstein said the encounter left him feeling “raped, frightened, and sad.”

As with all things in Trump’s orbit, the doctor-patient relationship has been mangled into something unrecognizable, such that even physicians are acting like reality TV stars. Bornstein arguably breached the president’s right to medical privacy. But the ensuing raid seems unjustified — and possibly illegal, since Bornstein claims he wasn’t given the standard HIPAA release form before the records were taken.

All this comes on the heels of Trump’s other doctor debacle: Ronny Jackson’s nomination to run the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Jackson recently withdrew from consideration amid allegations that he drank too much, oversaw a hostile work environment, and prescribed sleeping pills and muscle relaxants so freely he became known as the “Candyman.”

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Prior to his nomination, Jackson gave his own hyperbolic press conference about the president’s health, claiming that Trump has “incredible genes” — an appraisal I presume falls somewhere between “very, very good” and “astonishingly excellent” — and that if Trump had eaten a healthier diet, he might “live to be 200 years old.”

I’ve argued before that politicians’ health should not be a focus of political debate. It’s more distracting than illuminating, and some of our best presidents had the worst health. We’re better off dissecting their integrity and intellect than their coughing fits and prostate pills.

But to the extent we want to know whether presidents are likely to survive through their terms, our language should be measured and scientific. The fact that often it isn’t seems to me a symptom of an increasingly bombastic and duplicitous political environment.

Language in politics — like in medicine — is consequential. Using it carelessly and infusing it with deceit and hyperbole may seem irritating, but it’s also dangerous. If we can’t speak honestly, we can’t think clearly.

Orwell once wrote that language becomes “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

He nailed the diagnosis. We’re still searching for a cure.

Dr. Dhruv Khullar, works at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and is a researcher at the Weill Cornell Department of Healthcare Policy and Research. Follow him on Twitter: @DhruvKhullar.