President Trump “has never been transparent about his health,” The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman said Tuesday in the wake of recent discussion surrounding the president’s health on social media.
“President Trump has never been transparent about his health. He was much sicker with COVID than the White House said in 2020. You know, they — he took this mysterious Walter Reed visit in 2019 that was later said to be a colonoscopy, but he doesn’t like talking about his health,” Haberman told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source.”
On Tuesday, Trump returned to public view after a weeklong break from appearances resulted in wild online speculation he was sick or even dead. The president was asked directly about reports he had died amid an Oval Office appearance discussing his decision to move Space Command to Alabama.
While responding to Fox News’s Peter Doocy, Trump said he was aware of the speculation that he was ill but had not seen reports he was dead, calling such reports “fake news.”
“I have heard, it’s sort of crazy. But last week I did numerous news conferences. All successful, they went very well, like this is going very well, and then I didn’t do any for two days and they said, ‘There must be something wrong with him,’” Trump said in comments later highlighted by the White House when reached for comment.
“No, I was very active over the weekend. They also knew I went out to visit some people at the club that I own pretty nearby on the Potomac River. No, I’ve been very active, actually, over the weekend. I didn’t hear that one. That’s pretty serious stuff,” he added.
Updated at 11:28 a.m. EDT
