Trump spent more than three hours at Walter Reed on Tuesday for what the White House described as preventive medical and dental checkups. The visit marked his fourth publicly disclosed medical exam since he began his second term, according to the Associated Press.
In a social media post shortly after the visit, Trump wrote that he had completed his “6 month physical” and that “everything checked out PERFECTLY.”
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement that “President Trump is the sharpest and most accessible President in American history who is working nonstop to solve problems and deliver on his promises, and he remains in excellent health.”
No law requires sitting presidents to make their medical records public. Past administrations have released selected results from presidential physicals, but the information is filtered through the White House and requires presidential approval. The degree of transparency has varied by administration.
Trump’s age has become a recurring political issue. He turns 80 next month and was the oldest person elected president. His immediate predecessor, Joe Biden, was 82 when he left office and dropped his 2024 reelection bid amid widespread concerns about his age.
An April survey by the Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos found that fewer than half of U.S. adults think Trump has the mental sharpness or physical health to serve effectively as president.
Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman, who served as White House physician for more than a decade under Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, said the concern is notable. “I think concern for the president’s physical health is probably at an all-time high, and I think advanced physical age is the No. 1 concern,” Kuhlman said. For a president of Trump’s age, he said, a complete physical would be expected to include advanced heart testing, cancer screening, a cognitive assessment, and basic measurements such as height, weight and blood pressure.
Trump has frequently boasted of high scores on cognitive tests — his physicians reported a perfect 30 out of 30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment at his 2018 and 2025 checkups. At the same time, critics have pointed to his meandering speeches and bellicose rhetoric as signs of cognitive decline.
Last month, more than 30 neurologists, psychiatrists and other medical experts — none of whom had examined Trump — issued a statement saying he was “mentally unfit to serve” and warning of an “increasingly dangerous decline” in his behavior. Ingle dismissed the statement, saying that “any so-called medical professionals engaging in armchair diagnosis or false speculation for political purposes are clearly breaking the Hippocratic Oath they’ve sworn to.”
Trump has been seen wearing makeup in public to conceal bruising on his hands, which the White House attributes to handshaking and regular aspirin use. He was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency in July 2025, a common condition in older adults that can cause swelling in the lower legs. The White House has described the swelling as “mild.”
S. Jay Olshansky, a University of Illinois-Chicago researcher who studies presidential health, said the frequency of Trump’s checkups is not unusual for someone his age and is part of a strategy to catch problems early. But he said the public deserves to see full, unredacted medical records, not White House summaries that “may be subject to editorial discretion.”
Sara Rosenthal, a bioethicist at the University of Kentucky, said presidents, like any patient, get to choose what is disclosed about their health. But she said questions about transparency have become more acute as the U.S. elects aging presidents. “I think we can expect very little disclosure about the true health status of any president unless they’re in perfect health,” she said. Rosenthal has proposed an independent medical organization to review and report on the health of the president and those in the line of succession.