“Let’s sit for a couple of minutes,” he said. “I hate to waste a lot of time on this, but if you’re going to write a bad story about my health, I’m going to sue the ass off of New York Magazine.
VIA NEWYORK MAGAZINE:
When I arrived at the Oval Office in December to talk to Donald Trump about his health, the president was standing next to a couple of men clutching pieces of paper labeled TALKING POINTS.
“These are two doctors,” Trump told me before I could ask a question. “And by the way, I don’t know them, they’re not my best friends. They’re respected doctors that practice out of Walter Reed. And they happen to be taking care of me for anything — but I don’t need any taking care of because I’m in perfect health. I do purposely every year or less a physical, because I think the American people should know that the president is healthy so you don’t get a guy like the last one, who was the worst thing that ever happened to older people. Because I know people in their 90s that are 100 percent. Gary Player is 90 years old. He shot 70 with me the other day.”
Trump gestured at everyone present — me, the doctors, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt — to follow him into the room.
“Let’s sit for a couple of minutes,” he said. “I hate to waste a lot of time on this, but if you’re going to write a bad story about my health, I’m going to sue the ass off of New York Magazine. There will be a time when you can write that story, maybe in two years, three years, five years — five years, no one is going to care, I guess. Go ahead and sit down.”
Despite the president’s protests, the White House realizes that the time to talk about his health is now. Speculation about his fitness for office is rampant; armchair physicians have given him months and sometimes even days to live. “That right there looks like a leg bag for a urinary catheter,” a physical therapist claimed in an Instagram with 19 million views, pointing to a bulge in Trump’s pants. In recent months, Trump has been caught seeming to fall asleep during public events, making him the butt of recurring jokes on The Onion (“Trump Appears to Doze During Stroke”). His right hand is constantly bruised and often bandaged. In July, his ankles swelled up like the Michelin Man, a symptom, his doctors said, of “chronic venous insufficiency” — a common circulatory condition. In August, when Trump took a break from public appearances for a few days, “Trump Is Dead” began trending on social media. “I got calls from friends that said, ‘Thank God you picked up the phone,’” Trump told me. “‘Because there’s a report that you died.’”