Washington – With two months until Election Day, neither former President Donald Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris have released comprehensive new medical records, leaving voters in the dark about their current health conditions.
Trump, 78, will be the oldest person to ever hold the Oval Office. And Harris, 59, who won the Democratic nomination last month and is running for president in 2020, has yet to publicly release a full physical in any of his bids for the White House. Election Day may not be until November 5, but Americans are starting to vote this month, with the first ballots being sent out in North Carolina starting Friday.
Trump told CBS News on August 20. An interview that recently underwent an annual physical, and said he will publish the results that are “very happy.” Trump also told CBS News that he had taken two cognitive tests, which he said he “aced.” The campaign has not released the results.
In November 2023, Trump sent a letter from an osteopathic medicine doctor, Bruce Aronwald, who said that Trump’s most recent full check-up was in September 2023. The letter stated that Trump’s “overall health is excellent,” and that his “physical exam is excellent. Normal ranges and exams His cognitive skills are outstanding.” But the letter did not provide specifics such as Trump’s vitals or any medications he was taking.
The Trump campaign also did not make the doctors available to the press for questions after the former president was shot in the ear during a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Rep. Republican Ronny Jackson, who was Trump’s doctor when he was in the White House, sent a memo on July 26 saying he reviewed Trump’s hospital records and that he was “very good” after the assassination attempt. Trump said he suffered no long-term health effects from the shooting, and that his ear has healed.
In June 2020, Trump’s physical summary released by the White House said he weighed 244 pounds, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers obese due to his height. His blood pressure is 121 over 79. His daily medications include aspirin and Rosuvastatin, a cholesterol medication. In October 2020, a few weeks before Election Day, Trump was hospitalized for several days due to COVID-19. Trump’s current doctor, Aronwald, said in a November 2023 letter that Trump had lost weight, but did not say how much.
Questions about the candidates’ health were a major issue in the presidential race between Trump and President Biden before the president stepped down to make way for Harris in July, with Trump often questioning Mr. Biden’s mental fitness. After his poor performance in June’s presidential debate, Mr. Biden said he hasn’t taken a cognitive exam because “nobody said I should.” The White House released the his latest physical results in February, with the White House doctor finding him “fit for duty.”
Little is known about Harris’ medical history. He did not release his physical results while running for vice president in 2020. He contracted COVID-19 in April 2022, and took the drug Paxlovid during his recovery, testing negative about a week after testing positive. In July 2021, he visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for what the White House described as a routine doctor’s appointment.
CBS News has asked the Harris campaign several times for the results of any annual physicals. The campaign has not yet responded. CBS News also followed up on Trump’s campaign promise that he would be “happy” to release the results. Asked when that would happen, Steve Cheung, a spokesman for the campaign, pointed to a November 2023 letter.
Health records of presidential candidates
In recent decades, it has become customary for presidential candidates to release some information about their health and fitness to serve, a practice prompted by some presidents with serious health problems that have become commonplace.
“In modern times, certainly since the 1980s, the expectation, the norm, is for the president and the president to release at least some information about the new physique, and to prove to the public, to prove to the American people that they are suitable for serve,” said Matthew Dallek, a professor and political historian at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management.
At this point in the 2020 election cycle, Trump and Mr. Biden have released physical results that ended the previous year. Mr. Biden’s most recent annual physical at the time was in December 2019, and Trump released the results in June 2020.
However, Dallek noted, there is no law requiring candidates or the president to release any health briefs.
“And the reason it’s so important is that now we know what the country doesn’t know today, in contemporary, today, many presidents are very sick than we realize and the country has known,” said Dallek. “And in some cases, it’s more flawed than the American public realizes.”
When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a fourth term in 1944, he was very ill, and doctors did not expect him to serve another four years, Dallek said. John F. Kennedy has been killed by health problems, including debilitating back pain, which requires him to take as many as 12 different treatments.
“Will the American people vote?” Dallek spoke of Kennedy. “We don’t know.”
Dallek said he was “shocked” that Harris had not yet released a letter from his doctor, stating he had been out of the race for less than two months.
“If anything, I would think that this would be beneficial to his campaign, because it would remind voters that he is almost 20 years younger than Trump,” Dallek said. “Now, the caveat, of course, is that he was pushed into this position about six weeks ago now and, to be honest, the physicality he’s getting is probably not on the top of the list in the campaign.”
Gene Healy, senior vice president for policy at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute which studies the presidency, is skeptical of how many voters can be gleaned from a candidate’s health summary, which is not the result of an independent review.
“When there’s a question about the health of the president, because there’s a history of official authority on the subject, only a fool would do anything on faith,” Healy said. “Reagan’s old line about the Soviet Union, ‘trust but verify,’ is too charitable in this context: verify, don’t trust.”
Healy believes that the 81-year-old Biden has physically declined, and is amazed at how long the president’s aides “have been able to protect the public from the truth.”
How exactly the state should check the president’s health is unclear, Healy said. But he pointed to a bill proposed by Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin that would require the president to submit to an exam by an independent physician.
Dallek doesn’t believe in the medical summaries that Trump has released in recent years.
“Even having limited information can be better than nothing, but it can often disguise what it reveals,” Dallek said.
Weijia Jiang and Caitlin Huey-Burns contributed to this report.
