Tag: Walter Reed

President Donald Trump underwent his second physical examination in less than a year — an unusual, but not unprecedented, occurrence, presidential historians said.

Trump, 79, was scheduled to travel to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland on Oct. 10 for a “routine yearly check up,” the White House said. It comes six months after his last annual physical, which took place on April 11.

Speaking to reporters ahead of his visit, the Republican president described it as “a sort of semi-annual physical.”

“I think I’m in great shape, but I’ll let you know…Is there wood around here? I’ll knock on it,” he said, while rapping his knuckles on a nearby table.

The president’s health has come under renewed scrutiny since former President Joe Biden exited the 2024 race amid widespread concerns about his physical and cognitive fitness.

Last month, the internet also erupted with speculation that Trump was in ill health, with posts highlighting his lack of public appearances over Labor Day weekend. He later dismissed the chatter as “fake news.”

Timing of presidential physicals

In the modern era, presidents have typically undergone one annual physical examination per year — similar to the practice many Americans follow, according to White House historians.

“Every president from Reagan through Biden stuck to the same pattern: one exam, one memo, one reassurance that all is well,” Alexis Coe, a presidential historian and fellow at New America, wrote in a post on X.

These medical exams differ by president but typically involve routine tests such as blood and urine analysis, while occasionally including more extensive procedures like X-rays.

Exam results are usually made public by the White House. After Trump’s April exam, his physician issued a letter summarizing the president’s heart, brain, and lung health, as well as the medications he is taking. Biden’s doctor released a similar update after his last exam in 2023. Both annual reports said the presidents were in good health and fit to serve.

“It is rare, but not unheard of, for the president to have more than one annual checkup without a specific medical cause,” Jacob Appel, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine and presidential health historian, told McClatchy News.

Appel said the last president to undergo multiple exams in one year that he knows of was Gerald Ford. In 1976, Ford participated in what was described as an “interval six-month physical.”

“There may be other instances since then that have not been publicized,” Appel said. “That being said, more than one medical checkup for a seventy-nine-year-old man serving as president does not strike me as unreasonable.”

Trump himself appeared to agree with this sentiment.

“I like to check,” he told reporters. “Always be early. It’s a lesson for a lot of people.”

His remarks come five months after Biden, 82, revealed he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer — a condition for which he had not undergone blood screening since 2014.

Grain of salt

Experts also cautioned that presidential physical exams — and the results announced afterwards — warrant a degree of skepticism.

“The exams are stagecraft,” Coe said. “They fend off questions about age or stamina.”

Thomas Balcerski, a presidential historian at Eastern Connecticut State University, said there is a long history of presidents concealing serious health ailments, from Grover Cleveland to Franklin Roosevelt.

“We’ve seen multiple administrations now make much of the fitness for office of the incumbent only for accusations by media and insiders to later surface of the president’s unfitness to serve,” Balcerski told McClatchy News.

After Biden left office, journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson published a book titled “Original Sin,” in which numerous officials accused the White House of covering up Biden’s deteriorating health.

Importantly, presidents are under no legal obligation to take physical exams, much less publicize the results, Balcerski previously told the outlet.

Perhaps due to a lack of mandated transparency, many Americans are skeptical of presidential health pronouncements, according to recent polls.

In a September YouGov survey, a majority of respondents, 52%, said they “trust information that the White House releases about President Trump’s health” “only a little.”

And in a May YouGov/Economist poll, 57% of respondents said they believed “Democrats actively tried to conceal information” about Biden’s health from the public.

This story was originally published October 10, 2025 at 4:19 PM.