President Trump defended his health in an interview, saying he didn’t get an MRI scan, but instead a CT scan, after questions kept being raised over why he got the imaging.
Mr. Trump, 79, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Thursday that “it’s too bad” he shared about his testing.
The president went for a second visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in October. He went for his annual physical in April.
“In retrospect, it’s too bad I took it, because it gave them a little ammunition,” Mr. Trump said. “I would have been a lot better off if they didn’t, because the fact that I took it said, ‘Oh gee, is something wrong?’ Well, nothing’s wrong.”
He and his doctor both said the scan was an MRI, but to The Journal he said it was a CT. Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, White House physician, said in a December memo that the imaging was a preventative measure.
“It was less than that. It was a scan,” Mr. Trump said in the report.
Dr. Barbabella said in a statement Thursday that “President Trump agreed to meet with the staff and soldiers at Walter Reed Medical Hospital in October. In order to make the most of the President’s time at the hospital, we recommended he undergo another routine physical evaluation to ensure continued optimal health.”
The doctor that he asked Mr. Trump to undergo imaging “to definitively rule out any cardiovascular issues,” and the results were “perfectly normal and revealed absolutely no abnormalities.”
Last January, Mr. Trump became the oldest person ever to be inaugurated as president.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Thursday that the president’s doctors and the White House have “always maintained the President received advanced imaging” but said that “additional details on the imaging have been disclosed by the President himself” because he “has nothing to hide.”
Questions around the president’s health have been particularly common because bruising is often seen on the back of his hands.
The White House this summer said that Mr. Trump has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency. It’s a condition in which valves inside certain veins don’t function well, letting blood build up.
Mr. Trump has said he believes presidents should be transparent about their health, especially after then-President Biden’s mental acuity was laid bare in his disastrous presidential debate against Mr. Trump.
In the interview, the president said he also takes more aspirin than his doctors recommend and that he briefly tried to wear compression socks to help his swollen ankles, but stopped because he didn’t like them.
“They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” Mr. Trump said. “I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?”
He also denied that he had fallen asleep during meetings at the White House, despite TV and still cameras catching his drooping eyes.
“I’ll just close. It’s very relaxing to me,” he said. “Sometimes they’ll take a picture of me blinking, blinking, and they’ll catch me with the blink.”
• This article was based in part on wire service reports.
Mallory Wilson
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