Days before Thanksgiving last year, President Donald Trump made an unannounced and unscheduled trip to Walter Reed Medical Center. The White House said the trip was for a “quick test and labs.” We still don’t know why it really was, or what the result of his visit was.
On Sunday, three days after Thanksgiving this year, President-elect Joe Biden slipped and injured his foot while playing with his dog, Major. We were quickly told, through the traveling press group, that Biden was going to see his orthopedist as a precaution. Within two hours, there was a statement from Dr. Kevin O’Connor noting that Biden’s foot had been X-rayed and it appeared as if it had a sprain. However, a CT scan was to be done just to confirm the diagnosis.
Then 90 minutes after that came this, again from O’Connor: “Initial X-rays did not show any obvious fractures, but his clinical examination warranted more detailed images. Follow-up CT scan confirmed the president’s (small) fractures – choose Biden’s medial and lateral cuneiform bones, which are found in the midfoot. It is anticipated that you will likely need a walking boot for several weeks. “
Did you notice the difference?
Now I, and probably you, don’t know or care much about Joe Biden’s “lateral and middle cuneiform bones.” But that’s not really the point.
The point is this: transparency in health matters and, well, everything else, is fundamental to the functioning of a democracy. And we’ve had the opposite of that for these last four years.
Return to Trump’s unannounced and still inexplicable visit to Walter Reed in November 2019.
The initial explanation, offered by White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, for the unannounced visit was as follows: “In anticipation of a very busy 2020, the president is taking advantage of a free weekend here in Washington, DC, to begin parts of your routine annual physical exam. Exam at Walter Reed. “
Which, weird, because the president makes no unscheduled visits almost anywhere, and certainly not the hospital for tests. The White House has never offered more explanations about Walter Reed’s trip. But in a book by New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt that came out last fall, he wrote this about the incident:
“In the hours before Trump’s trip to the hospital, word spread in the west wing that the vice president would be on hold to temporarily assume the powers of the presidency if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized. “.
Which seems like an odd precaution for a “quick scan and labs”, right? Right.
Especially when you consider that we know less about Trump’s medical history than any previous presidential candidate in the modern era.
Trump published zero medical records when he ran for president in 2016. What he did publish was a letter from Dr. Harold Bornstein, his longtime personal physician, stating simply, “If you are elected Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally that he will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency. His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary. ” (Bornstein later distanced himself from the letter, saying Trump did indeed dictate it.)
Biden, who at 78 is the oldest person ever elected to a first term in the White House (he broke the record set by Trump), released a summary of his medical records in late 2019. At the time, O’Connor wrote that Biden was “a healthy, vigorous man of 77, fit to carry out the functions of the Presidency successfully.”
(It’s worth noting: Biden was occasionally enraged when asked about his health in the campaign; “If you want to check my form, let’s do push-ups together, man,” Biden told a man in Iowa in the fall of 2019. ” Let’s run, let’s do what you want to do. Let’s do an IQ test “).
The transparency coming from Biden’s transition team on the small fractures in the president-elect’s foot suggests that the Trump White House effort to actively obfuscate when asked basic questions about the president’s health is over.
It’s a good start. But only a beginning. Let’s see if the president-elect and his team can remain committed to full transparency about their health for years to come.
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