Trump aces cognitive health test at 78, but transparency remains a question

 US President Donald Trump, who is currently the oldest President to be elected—he turns 79 just two months later—underwent the first physical examination of his second term in office, on Friday.

Following a four-hour-long procedure, he told reporters that he had aced the cognitive component of the examination, and expected the full results to be made public on April 13. Unfortunately, the septuagenarian has a terrible history of concealing his health results, which makes one curious.

"Overall I felt I was in very good shape. A good heart, a good soul, a very good soul and I took — I wanted to be a little different than Biden. I took a cognitive test and I don't know what to tell you other than I got every answer right," Trump said post-examination, as per a Reuters report.

The examination, which took place at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland under the care of Navy Captain Sean Barbabella (DO), took four hours, which was slightly shorter than the White House-allotted time, which was just short of five hours, as per a CBS News report.

According to CBS News’ medical contributor Dr. Céline Gounder, the physical examination involved a lot of commonplace tests, such as heart, lung, and abdominal monitoring, as well as cholesterol, blood sugar, kidney and liver tests for laboratory reports.

In the event of prior medical history of risk factors or other related concerns, other tests like ECGs, X-rays, and ultrasound were also done.

However, she also added that more than an examination, it was a “curated medical PR event, really intended to reassure the public that the president is able to perform his duties”.

This prompts the question: why is there such a veil of secrecy around the results of the physical?

Ironically, although he took a dig at Biden’s refusal to undergo presidential physicals, the 78-year-old himself has a history of keeping the results of his health tests secret.

The last physical he did was in September 2023, the results of which were promised to the public, but never really surfaced. Instead, just a month later, the public only received a vague outline of the report, lacking enough specifics to make a conclusive analysis.

According to CBS News, even after an assassination attempt on Trump in July that led to an ear injury from a gunshot, the White House did not make the presidential doctors available to comment on his health. About a week later, the only health update the public received was a memo posted to X by Ronny Jackson, a Republican Representative, assuring the public that he was "doing extremely well".

A point to remember is that among other reasons, the emerging narrative last year around Joe Biden—who was then in competition with Trump for a second presidential term, was about his poor health, which rendered him incapable of a second term in the White House, a point that Trump (who is only four years younger than Biden) was known to bring up multiple times.

At around this time, the Stanford-Arizona State-Yale Election Panel (SAY24), conducted by YouGov, which interviewed the same group of respondents over a month, had recorded their thoughts about the 2024 election. Between February and October 2024, the share of respondents saying that Trump was too old to be president rose from 35% to 44%, while the share saying he was not too old dropped from 53% to 46%.

According to the New York Times, at 78, former President Trump exhibits more energy and speaks with more volume than President Biden did towards the end of the latter’s presidency, but he, too, has mixed up names, confused facts and stumbled over his points.

Trump’s rambling speeches, occasional incoherent statements and extreme outbursts have raised questions about his own cognitive health and, at a time when he finds himself mired deep in a geopolitical storm caused by his far-reaching tariffs (which stock markets across the world have not fully adjusted to), talks to end the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine conflicts, and nuclear talks with Iran, asking questions about his cognitive and overall fitness is not just valid, it is necessary.  

World