Trump ‘dictated’ his own glowing health report — doctor
Harold Bornstein, who previously said he’d written the note quickly as Trump’s car waited, now says the then presidential candidate read out what to say as Bornstein was driving
As a presidential candidate Donald Trump quoted a letter from his former personal doctor gushing about his apparently excellent health — a note the physician now says the president “dictated” himself.
Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, Trump’s doctor Harold Bornstein said Trump “dictated that whole letter. I didn’t write that letter.”
“That’s black humor, that letter. That’s my sense of humor,” he said. “It’s like the movie ‘Fargo’: It takes the truth and moves it in a different direction.”
He said Trump read out the language as Bornstein and his wife were driving across Central Park.
“(Trump) dictated the letter and I would tell him what he couldn’t put in there,” he said. “They came to pick up their letter at 4 o’clock or something.”
In December 2015, the Trump campaign released the glowing missive which said that “if elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
The Manhattan doctor months later said he wrote the note hastily as Trump’s car waited.
Bornstein’s new comments come as the long-haired, bespectacled physician finds himself back in the spotlight after he told NBC that a bodyguard visited his Park Avenue office last year and confiscated the president’s medical records.
He told NBC News that Keith Schiller, the president’s longtime bodyguard and former director of Oval Office operations, showed up at his office in February 2017 along with two other men, one of whom — Alan Garten — was the chief legal officer for the Trump Organization. A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
“They must have been here for 25 or 30 minutes. It created a lot of chaos,” Bornstein told NBC, saying the February 3, 2017 incident made him feel “raped, frightened and sad.”
Bornstein said the original and only copy of Trump’s medical charts, including lab reports under the president’s name and various pseudonyms, were taken.
He said he was not given a form authorizing the release of the records and signed by the president. A person familiar with the matter said there was a letter Ronny Jackson, then the White House physician, but didn’t know if there was a release form attached.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said taking possession of medical records was “standard operating procedure for a new president” and that it was not accurate to characterize what happened as a “raid.”
According to Bornstein, the “raid” came two days after The New York Times quoted the doctor as saying he had prescribed Trump Propecia, a drug for enlarged prostates that is often prescribed to stimulate hair growth in men. Bornstein told the Times that he prescribed Trump drugs for rosacea and cholesterol as well.
Bornstein told NBC that Trump’s longtime personal secretary called him after the story ran and said: “So you wanted to be the White House doctor? Forget it, you’re out.'”
Bornstein did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Schiller departed the White House last fall and also could not be reached.
Bornstein’s return to the headlines comes just days after Trump’s White House physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson, withdrew his nomination to the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs after allegations of workplace misconduct. Jackson has denied the claims.
