Washington — With two months to go until Election Day, neither former President Donald Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris has released comprehensive recent medical records, leaving voters in the dark about the current state of their health.
Trump, 78, would be the oldest person to ever assume the Oval Office. And the 59-year-old Harris, who became the Democratic nominee last month and ran for president in 2020, hasn’t publicly released the results of a comprehensive physical in either of her bids for the White House. Election Day may not be until Nov. 5, but Americans are beginning to vote this month, with the first ballots being mailed out in North Carolina starting Friday.
Trump told CBS News in an Aug. 20 interview that he recently underwent an annual physical, and said he would release those results “very gladly.” Trump also told CBS News he’s taken two cognitive tests, which he said he “aced.” The campaign has not released those results.
In November 2023, Trump posted a letter from his doctor of osteopathic medicine, Bruce Aronwald, which said Trump’s most recent comprehensive examination was in September 2023. The letter said Trump’s “overall health is excellent,” and his “physical exams were well within the normal range and his cognitive exams were exceptional.” But the letter did not offer any specifics such as Trump’s vitals or any medications he was taking.
The Trump campaign also did not make his doctors available to the press for questions after the former president was shot in the ear during a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson, who was Trump’s physician when he was in the White House, posted a memo on July 26 saying he reviewed Trump’s hospital records and that he was “doing extremely well” after the assassination attempt. Trump has said he isn’t suffering from any long-term health effects from the shooting, and his ear has since healed.
In June 2020, a summary of Trump’s physical released by the White House said he weighed 244 pounds, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers obese for his height. His blood pressure was 121 over 79. His daily medications included aspirin and Rosuvastatin, a cholesterol drug. In October 2020, a few weeks before Election Day, Trump was hospitalized for several days with COVID-19. Trump’s current doctor, Aronwald, said in the November 2023 letter that Trump has lost weight, but didn’t say how much.
The question of the candidates’ health was a major issue of the presidential race between Trump and President Biden before the president dropped out to make way for Harris in July, with Trump frequently questioning Mr. Biden’s mental fitness. In the wake of his poor showing in June’s presidential debate, Mr. Biden said he had not taken a cognitive exam because “no one said I had to.” The White House released the results of his most recent physical in February, with the White House doctor finding him “fit for duty.”
Very little is known about Harris’ medical history. She did not release the results of a physical when running for vice president in 2020. She had COVID-19 in April 2022, and used the drug Paxlovid in her recovery, testing negative about a week after she first tested positive. In July 2021, she 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 multiple times for the results of any annual physical. The campaign has not responded. CBS News also followed up with the Trump campaign about his promise that he would “gladly” release his results. Asked when that might happen, Steve Cheung, a spokesman for the campaign, pointed to the November 2023 letter.
Presidential candidates’ health records
In recent decades, it’s become customary for presidential candidates to release some information about their health and fitness to serve, a practice prompted in part by a series of presidents with glaring health issues that only became public later.
“In the modern era, certainly since probably the 1980s, the expectation, the norm, has been for presidential nominees and presidents to release at least some information about a recent physical, and to basically attest to the public, to attest to the American people that they are fit to serve,” said Matt Dallek, professor and political historian at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management.
By this point in the 2020 election cycle, both Trump and Mr. Biden had released results of physicals completed within the prior year. Mr. Biden’s most recent annual physical at that time was in December 2019, and Trump released his results in June 2020.
But, Dallek noted, there is no law requiring candidates or presidents to release any sort of health summary.
“And the reason it’s so important is we now know what the country did not know in the present, in the contemporary, in the moment, that many presidents have been much sicker than we had realized and the country had realized,” Dallek continued. “And in some cases, more incapacitated than the American public knew.”
When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a fourth term in 1944, he was very ill, and his physicians did not expect him to be able to serve another four years, Dallek said. John F. Kennedy had a slew of health issues, including debilitating back pain, that required him to take as many as 12 different medications.
“Would the American people have voted for that?” Dallek said of Kennedy. “We don’t know.”
Dallek said it’s “surprising” that Harris hasn’t released a letter from her physician, while noting that she has been in the race for less than two months.
“If anything, I would think that this would work to her campaign’s advantage, because it would remind voters that she’s almost 20 years younger than Trump,” Dallek said. “Now, the caveat is, of course, she was thrust into this position about six weeks ago now and, to be frank, her getting a physical may not be on the campaign’s highest list of to-dos.”
Gene Healy, senior vice president for policy at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute who studies the presidency, is skeptical of how much voters can glean from a candidate’s health summary, which is not the result of an independent review.
“Whenever there’s a question about a president’s health, given the long history of official lies about the subject, only a fool would take anything on faith,” Healy said. “Reagan’s old line about the Soviet Union, ‘trust but verify,’ is too charitable in this context: it should be verify, don’t trust.”
Healy believes the 81-year-old Biden has declined physically, and is surprised at how long the president’s aides “managed to shield the public from the true extent.”
How exactly the country should go about examining a president’s health isn’t clear, Healy said. But he pointed to a bill proposed by Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin that would require presidents to submit to examinations by independent physicians.
Dallek has little confidence in the medical summaries Trump has released in years past.
“Even having limited information can be better than nothing, but it oftentimes can obscure as much as it reveals,” Dallek said.
Weijia Jiang and
contributed to this report.