(AFP) – Democratic White House candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House Saturday, as her campaign challenged rival Donald Trump to publish his own health records.
“Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” A few hours later, Harris spokesman Ian Sams challenged Trump directly to release his medical records, asking, “What’s he hiding?”
But as Harris’s team ramped up pressure for details on the physical health and mental acuity of the 78-year-old Trump, the former president’s campaign pushed back hard. It issued a statement saying he was also “in perfect and excellent health to be Commander in Chief” and charged that Harris lacked his strength to lead the country.
A journalist asked Trump in August whether he would release his medical records, and he replied, “Oh sure, I would do that very gladly, sure.” He has not released any detailed medical records since then. Meantime, Harris’s most recent physical exam, conducted in April, was “unremarkable,” Simmons said.
In a detailed report, Simmons noted that Harris suffers from seasonal allergies and hives, which are managed by non-prescription as well as prescription medications. Harris is also slightly nearsighted and wears contact lenses, the report said. Republican Trump became the oldest presidential nominee in US history after 81-year-old President Joe Biden withdrew from the White House race in July. Harris is 59.
Biden passed the torch to Harris after a disastrous debate against Trump raised concerns in the Democratic Party about his own mental sharpness.
– Knife-edge battle –
But Trump’s apparent vitality means that his age has not so far weighed against his chances in the polls, in a knife-edge battle with Harris in the November 5 presidential election. Harris’s campaign drew attention to a recent series of articles in the New York Times that raised concerns about the fact that Trump had failed to disclose basic information about his health.
The newspaper also published an analysis of Trump’s language showing that his speeches are increasingly long, “confused,” and include vulgarities, a trend seen by experts as a possible sign of cognitive decline. Trump has continued to insist he is fit, and on Saturday, his campaign republished statements from his former White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, that were released following the July assassination attempt on Trump in which a bullet grazed his right ear.
In the statement dated July 26, Jackson, who is now a Republican congressman from Texas, said Trump was doing “extremely well” and “rapidly recovering” from the wound. Trump’s campaign also re-upped a note from another doctor who examined Trump in September 2023. In the note, Bruce Aronwald declared him to be in “excellent” health but provided few details and did not say what tests Trump had undergone as part of the physical.
The campaign said Trump had maintained “an extremely busy and active campaign schedule unlike any other in political history,” and asserted that Harris’s campaign schedule showed her to be “wholly unqualified to be President of the United States.” Trump’s personal and White House doctors have at times made seemingly exaggerated claims about his health while providing few details.
In 2015, as Trump was running for the presidency, his doctor Harold Bernstein declared that Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” And Jackson said in 2018 that with a better diet Trump could live to be 200. If Trump wins the election in November, he would be 82 at the end of his second term.
– Danny KEMP
© 2024 AFP
