In October, Donald Trump underwent an MRI scan at Walter Reed Medical Center – something the White House has described as part of a routine physical. Trump himself has insisted everything was “perfect,” but he also claimed he didn’t even know which part of his body was examined.
A prominent doctor is now publicly challenging that claim and offering a different explanation for the test.
On October 10, White House physician Sean Barbabella released a memo saying the president had undergone “advanced imaging, laboratory testing, and preventive health assessments” at Walter Reed. A short time later, Trump confirmed to reporters aboard Air Force One, on his way to Japan, that he’d had an MRI.
“We had an MRI, MRI and the machine, you know, the whole thing, and it was perfect,” Trump said, boasting that doctors had given him some of the best results they’d ever seen for someone his age.
Despite that, the White House has shared very few specifics about the purpose of the scan, other than insisting that Trump remains in “extraordinary” health. That lack of detail has led to repeated questions about what doctors were actually looking for.
In mid-November, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt again tried to reassure the public, saying the president “remains in exceptional physical health,” even after recent concerns sparked by photos showing Trump with swollen ankles and bruising on his hands. She reiterated that the scan was part of a routine check-up and that radiologists and other specialists had fully reviewed the results.
However, a former White House physician has already suggested that the administration is “hiding something” about the MRI. Trump, for his part, has claimed he had “no idea” which body part was scanned – a statement that Dr. Vin Gupta, NBC News medical analyst and former Chief Medical Officer at Amazon, flatly rejects.
Speaking on the MeidasTouch Podcast, Dr. Gupta explained that it’s practically impossible not to know what’s being imaged during an MRI.
When you get an MRI, he said, you’re very aware of which part of your body is inside the narrow scanner. The process is loud and lasts anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes, not just a few seconds, making it obvious what’s being checked.
He also pushed back on the idea that an MRI would be ordered as part of a standard physical. According to Gupta, this kind of scan is not typically used as a routine screening tool because it often produces false positives.
“It’s actually a terrible screening tool,” he said, calling the claim that it was simply part of an “executive physical” “utter nonsense.” In his view, that explanation doesn’t line up with how doctors normally practice.
Instead, Dr. Gupta floated another possibility: that the MRI might have been ordered to investigate potential neurological or cognitive issues.
He noted that physicians usually need a specific reason to order such imaging, even for the president. A plausible scenario, he suggested, is that Trump’s medical team saw something that raised concerns about his neurologic status and requested MRI scans to look for signs of cognitive dysfunction. In that context, he said, repeated imaging over time could be medically appropriate – but it would also mean there are aspects of Trump’s health the public hasn’t been told about.
For now, the White House continues to insist that the MRI was routine and that Trump is in excellent condition. Critics, including former and current medical experts, remain unconvinced and are calling for more transparency about exactly why the scan was done and what it showed.
