President Donald Trump and some of his closest advisers insist he is in “perfect health” in a new interview with New York Magazine, despite persistent questions about his age and well-being.
The story, published Monday, is based on an Oval Office interview last month with the president, who began it by threatening to sue the magazine if it published “a bad story about my health.”
The 79-year-old president and some of his closest allies addressed concerns about his fitness, which have stemmed from his appearing to sleep during meetings, visible bruising on his hand and a recent “MRI-like” scan he had.
As for Trump’s habit of closing his eyes and appearing to sleep during meetings, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the magazine, “It’s a listening mechanism.” Press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted it’s evidence of Trump “actively listening.” Will Scharf, White House staff secretary, told reporter Ben Terris just minutes after Terris attended a Cabinet meeting in which the president appeared to nod off: “It’s not dozing. Sometimes if he’s thinking about something — and I made that mistake at first too — he adopts a pose. He leans back or leans forward a little bit, and he either closes his eyes or looks down — because he often takes notes in his lap.”
Trump, for his part, had a different explanation. “It’s boring as hell,” he told the magazine about the Cabinet meeting in December. “I’m going around a room, and I’ve got 28 guys — the last one was three-and-a-half hours. I have to sit back and listen, and I move my hand so that people will know I’m listening. I’m hearing every word, and I can’t wait to get out.”
As for the bruising on his hand, the president insisted, “This is only from shaking hands” — which his lead physician, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, confirmed as “absolutely” accurate after Trump asked him to verify it.
Speaking of his father, Fred Trump, who died in 1999 at 93, Trump told the reporter: “He had one problem. At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do they call it?” he asked, pointing to his forehead and looking to Leavitt for help.
“Alzheimer’s,” Leavitt replied.
“Like an Alzheimer’s thing,” Trump said. “Well, I don’t have it.”
Speaking about his recent health scan, Trump called it “the worst f–––ing thing I ever did, and I blame them,” referring to Barbabella and Army Col. James Jones, a physician’s assistant who leads the White House medical unit and sat in on the interview with Barbabella.
“They wanted me to take it,” Trump continued. “And because I took it, people want to say, ‘Oh, there must be something wrong.’”
Jones said the scan was “MRI-like,” calling it a “computerized tomography exam of his chest and his abdomen.” He said it was done as part of a routine annual checkup while the president had a scheduled exam at Walter Reed Medical Center.
“The reason for the imaging, as routine as we stated, is that any patient his age could have things, and we ruled them out,” Jones continued. “The story should be about the fact that the results were, uh, perfect. They did not demonstrate any problems.”
Jones also worked for the Obamas. When Terris, the reporter, asked who was healthier — Trump or former President Barack Obama, who kept up a strenuous, near-daily workout routine and left office at 55 — Jones said Trump.
The only concession Trump’s allies appeared to make to the magazine regarding the impact of aging on his health was an admission from an unnamed senior staff member that the president’s hearing had declined. That tracks with comments others in the president’s orbit made to The Wall Street Journal recently; Trump denied any hearing issues in that outlet’s interview with him.
Trump’s staff and others told New York magazine that the president remains far more vigorous than aides decades younger.
Still, there are moments when Trump’s mortality seems to be on his own mind.
Citing a person familiar with Trump’s remarks, the magazine reported that when former President Jimmy Carter died shortly before Trump returned to office, the president-elect surprised people watching on TV with him at Mar-a-Lago by saying, “You know, within 10 years that will be me.”
(Leavitt said she did not recall that comment.)
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.