Trump dictated doctor's note saying he was 'astonishingly' healthy, doctor says
Harold Bornstein tells CNN Trump wrote publicized letter saying he would be ‘healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency’
A 2015 doctor’s note describing Donald Trump’s health as “astonishingly excellent” was dictated, it turns out, by Trump himself, according to the doctor who signed the note.
Dr Harold Bornstein, described in the letter as Trump’s physician “since 1980”, told CNN Tuesday that he did not write the letter, which Trump publicized on the eve of the presidential primary contests to allay concerns about his fitness.
“He dictated that whole letter. I didn’t write that letter,” Bornstein told CNN. “I just made it up as I went along.”
The story is a reversal by Bornstein, who claimed in August 2016 that he had dashed off the letter “in five minutes ... while the driver waited for me.”
Earlier Tuesday, Bornstein said the longtime Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller and two other men had conducted a “raid” on his offices for Trump’s medical records in February 2017, two days after Bornstein told a newspaper that he had for years prescribed a hair growth medicine for Trump.
The raid left him “raped, frightened and sad”, Bornstein told NBC News.
The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Trump produced the 2015 letter from Bornstein in response to media pressure for him to produce medical records.
Two days before the letter was released, Trump tweeted: “As a presidential candidate, I have instructed my long-time doctor to issue, within two weeks, a full medical report – it will show perfection.”
Then, Bornstein now claims, Trump dictated the letter to Bornstein, who signed it.
The letter said Trump had shed 15lb in the prior 12 months, said “his cardiovascular status is excellent” and concluded: “If elected, Mr Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
Trump in the past has pretended to be his own spokesman and was said by people who were there to have dictated aboard Air Force One a statement issued by Donald Trump Jr to explain why he met with Russian operatives at Trump Tower in June 2016.
They “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children”, Trump Jr’s statement said.
