President Donald Trump dismissed fears of Alzheimer’s in a new interview, in which he forgot the name of the disease, which causes dementia.
Trump and top White House aides talked to New York Magazine for an article focused on the 79-year-old president’s health.
The president talked about his father, real estate developer Fred Trump, who died in 1999 at the age of 93, after suffering from dementia.
‘He had one problem,’ Trump said of his father. ‘At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do they call it?’
Speaking to New York Magazine’s Ben Terris in the Oval Office, Trump looked at White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt for an assist.
‘Alzheimer’s,’ Leavitt responded.
Trump then said his father had ‘like an Alzheimer’s thing.’
‘Well, I don’t have it,’ the president insisted.
President Donald Trump dismissed Alzheimer’s fears in a new interview with New York Magazine focused on his health, in which Cabinet members and aides testified about the 79-year-old leader’s vigor
Terris asked Trump whether he thinks about it at all.
‘No, I don’t think about it at all. You know why?’ Trump asked. ‘Because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever.’
At another point in the interview, the president boasted that he felt ‘the same as I did 40 years ago.’
Like President Joe Biden before him, who, when elected, was the country’s oldest president, there are nagging questions about Trump’s health, who, when reelected, is on track to become the country’s oldest president.
Trump appeared irritated that the topic kept coming up.
‘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 a** off of New York Magazine,’ he told Terris. ‘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.’
Trump will be out of office in three years.
Just in recent days, the White House had to provide an explanation for a bruise that appeared on Trump’s left hand while he was attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
A new bruise appeared on President Donald Trump’s left hand during his trip last week to Davo, Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum. The White House said he hit his hand on a table at the Board of Peace event and it bruises easily due to Aspirin use
Leavitt said the president hit his hand on the table during his Board of Peace event Thursday, and he bruises easily due to his daily regimen of Aspirin.
In July, the White House also said that Trump was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, an explanation for his swollen ankles.
Trump’s mental fitness was also scrutinized when he appeared to be threatening to invade Greenland due to being snubbed by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which gave last year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado instead of the US president.
Machado has since given her Nobel to Trump, but it still didn’t stop Trump from making Greenland threats while at the Alpine conference of world leaders.
Everyone around Trump, including his White House doctors, pushed to New York Magazine that the president is fine.
Only one anonymous senior staff member said that the president was losing his hearing – and suggested the president wasn’t aware of this yet.
And his niece, Mary Trump, a vocal critic of the president, was the only one who would go as far as to say the president might be showing signs of dementia, noting how her grandfather would get a ‘deer-in-headlights’ look and sometimes her uncle ‘does not seem like he’s oriented to time and place.’
‘He can work harder and he has a better memory and he has more stamina and has more energy than a normal mortal,’ White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told the magazine. ‘The headline of your story should be “The Superhuman President.”‘
President Donald Trump points to his bruised left hand on board Air Force One Thursday as he returned to Washington, D.C. from Davos, Switzerland
New York Magazine used Miller’s suggested headline, but put it in quotes.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio recounted how he pretends to be a staffer while on board Air Force One so he can get some shut-eye due to the president’s vigorous schedule.
‘There’s an office with two couches, and I usually want to sleep on those two couches,’ the 54-year-old former Florida senator told the magazine. ‘But what I do is I cocoon myself in a blanket. I cover my. head. I look like a mummy.’
‘And I do that because I know that at some point on the flight, he’s going to emerge from the cabin and start prowling the hallways to see who is awake,’ Rubio continued. ‘I want him to think it’s a staffer who fell asleep. I don’t want him to see his secretary of State sleeping on a couch and think, “Oh, this guy is weak.”‘
Trump is known for getting very little sleep, and so when it appeared that he fell asleep at the December Cabinet meeting, White House aides were quick to push back.
Rubio said that Trump’s eyelids drooped down because ‘it’s a listening mechanism.’
Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, added: ‘It’s not dozing. Sometimes if he’s thinking about something – and I made that mistake at first too – he adopts a pose.’
‘He leans back or leans forward a little bit, and he either closes his eyes or looks down – because he often takes notes in his lap,’ Scharf added.
President Donald Trump is seen with a large bruise on his left hand while attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week
Trump wouldn’t concede that he fell asleep, though he told Terris, ‘It’s boring as hell.’
‘I’m going around a room, and I’ve got 28 guys – the last one was three and a half hours. I have to sit back and listen, and I move my hand so that people will know I’m listening. I’m hearing every word, and I can’t wait to get out.’
Two members of Trump’s White House medical team were made available for the story, with physician’s assistant Colonel Jason Jones telling the magazine that Trump’s EKG reads like he’s ’14 years younger.’
‘So age 65. His stamina demonstrates that. We get a view that nobody else does. Nobody can stay up with him. The rest of the staff is tired; we are too. And he’s not,’ Jones said.
Both Jones and Captain Sean Barbabella, Trump’s lead physician, tried to play damage control over the advanced imaging that was ordered as part of the president’s physical.
The ‘MRI,’ as it was originally described, raised more issues about the status of the 79-year-old’s health.
‘It was the worst f***ing thing I ever did, and I blame them,’ Trump said, pointing to Barbabella and Jones.
Trump said the test was administered to him ‘because the machine was sitting there, I’m sitting right next to it.’
President Donald Trump is photographed departing from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week
‘There was no evidence of narrowing of any blood vessels,’ Barbabella said. ‘And no abnormalities of the heart.’
Jones testified that the imaging was ‘routine.’
‘The story should be about the fact that the results were, uh, perfect. They did not demonstrate any problems,’ Jones added, with Barbabella characterizing the results as ‘excellent.’
Trump signaled his approval.
‘I love these two guys; they’re great,’ the president told Terris. ‘But I don’t know them. They’re White House doctors.’
But Leavitt knew something about Jones’ history – asking him in front of the reporter if he had previously worked for Democratic President Barack Obama.
He had.
Terris then asked Jones which leader was healthier – the 79-year-old Trump or the then 55-year-old Obama.
‘President Trump,’ Jones answered.
‘Write that,’ Trump told the magazine writer.
