By Don Terry | Wednesday, December 03, 2025 | 4 min read

There are moments in presidential history when the public’s skepticism feels less like cynicism and more like a reasonable instinct. The latest confusion surrounding Donald Trump’s medical testing is one of those moments. Something just doesn’t add up, and the White House explanation hasn’t helped.

This all began with a simple claim from Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who told reporters that Trump had undergone a “preventative MRI” last month—one that examined both his heart and his abdomen. On paper, this sounds routine enough. But according to those who actually work in medicine, it’s about as routine as checking your blood pressure with a microscope.

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a seasoned cardiologist who spent decades caring for former Vice President Dick Cheney, didn’t mince words on CNN. “There really is no preventative cardiac MRI,” he said. In the medical world, an MRI of the heart is not something you do casually, and certainly not something an 80-year-old man undergoes without a clear clinical reason. Yet the White House maintained silence for weeks, refusing to explain why the president suddenly needed advanced imaging during an unannounced October visit to Walter Reed.

So when Trump himself, aboard Air Force One, called his MRI “perfect” and said he was fine with releasing the results, it didn’t ease the tension—it sharpened it. Perfect, after all, is a campaign word, not a medical one.

Reiner’s broader concern wasn’t just the test itself, but the strange, almost defensive way the administration handled the disclosure. “It has a weird, evasive tone to it,” he said. And he’s right. Historically, presidents get one major physical each year, not surprise add-ons in the middle of October. This was off-cycle and unexplained, and that raises questions any reasonable observer would ask.

Even more puzzling was the vague language from Trump’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, who referred simply to “advanced imaging” without clarifying what kind. Was it an MRI, as Trump claimed? A CT scan? Both? Why the coyness? As Reiner put it, it’s like telling someone a patient had “radiologic imaging” without specifying whether it was an X-ray or a full CT scan. That kind of ambiguity in medicine is almost always intentional.

Then there was the abdominal MRI—a test Reiner described as especially suspicious. You don’t scan someone’s abdomen “preventatively.” That’s done when a physician is looking for something specific: an abnormality, a lesion, a mass, or a complication from another condition. “This was clearly performed in response to a clinical concern,” Reiner said. And he wasn’t suggesting anything scandalous—just realism about aging. Things go wrong as we get older, even for presidents.

Reiner also addressed Trump’s recent diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency, which causes swelling in the legs. It’s usually benign, but it can hint at deeper cardiovascular issues. “If they were imaging the heart because of that, that’s important to know,” he said. And yet, the White House didn’t say that either.

All of this becomes even more confusing when you recall that in April the administration reported no signs of swelling at all. Then, by July, the condition was suddenly chronic. As Reiner dryly noted, “It’s hard to call something chronic when it happens acutely.”

Yet even with all his skepticism, the cardiologist stopped short of suggesting anything sinister. He believes the opacity is more about habit than cover-up. Still, Trump’s past doesn’t exactly build trust. Years ago, one of his former physicians publicly claimed that Trump’s associates came to his office and removed his medical records without warning—an episode that, fair or not, still lingers in the public memory whenever health secrets arise.

In the end, Reiner’s prescription was simple and eminently reasonable: have the president’s doctor step forward, answer the basic questions, and let the country move on. Transparency doesn’t cure medical conditions, but it does cure suspicion. And right now, after weeks of confusing statements, that would be a welcome change.

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