Trump says he’ll release MRI results but has ‘no idea’ which body part was scanned

Donald Trump said he will release the results of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan conducted during his surprise “semiannual physical” in October – but was unable to tell reporters what part of his body was under investigation.

The oldest-ever US president faced questions over the procedure on Air Force One as he traveled back to Washington DC on Sunday night after a Thanksgiving break in Florida. It is the latest episode of recurring concern about the cognitive abilities and mental fitness of the 79-year-old, who insisted he had “aced” earlier tests relating to his brain functioning.

Asked if he would make public the outcome of the scan, Trump said: “If you want to have it released, I’ll release it.” He asserted that the result was “perfect” even though he admitted again he had “no idea” what part of his body was scanned.

“It was just an MRI,” he said. “What part of the body? It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test, and I aced it.”

Trump was similarly vague about the scan after his 10 October visit to the Walter Reed national military medical center, which was portrayed by Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, at the time as a “routine yearly checkup”, even though he had his annual physical in April.

“I have no idea what they analyze, but whatever they analyze, they analyzed it well and they said that I had as good a result as they’ve ever seen,” he said in November. “The doctor said it was the best result he has ever seen as a doctor.”

Tim Walz, the Democratic Minnesota governor and running mate to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election that Trump won, lambasted the president in an appearance earlier Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.

“Has anyone in the history of the world ever had an MRI assigned to them and have no idea what it was for, as he says?” Walz said.

“It’s clear the president’s fading physically. I think the mental capacity, again, ranting, you know, crazily at midnight on Thanksgiving about everything else, there are reasons for us to be concerned.”

Walz was referring to lengthy and wide-ranging late night posts Trump made to his Truth Social platform on Thursday featuring considerable anti-immigrant rhetoric after the shooting of two national guard members in Washington a day earlier.

The suspect, an Afghan national, was admitted to the US during Joe Biden’s administration in September 2021 under a visa program for workers who had assisted the government. He was granted asylum in April, three months into the Trump administration.

Trump’s post also directed at Walz an outdated slur for people with mental disabilities – and extended previous racially charged insults of Ilhan Omar, the Democratic Minnesota congresswoman who was born in Somalia.

The president returned to the theme on Sunday during a gaggle with reporters on board Air Force One, repeating the unproven allegation that Omar, a vocal critic, had married her own brother to gain admission to the US.

“If that’s true, she shouldn’t be a congressman and we should throw her the hell out of our country,” Trump said.

After arriving back at the White House on Sunday night, Trump returned to Truth Social to post another scathing message directed at a political opponent, Mark Kelly, a Democratic Arizona senator, former astronaut and retired navy captain. The president in November said Kelly and other congressional Democrats had engaged in “seditious behavior, punishable by death” for telling military personnel they were allowed to disobey illegal orders from superiors.

According to the Daily Beast, Trump made several attempts at getting the grammar and spelling correct in the post that appeared to reference a law calling for prison terms of up to 10 years for anybody who attempts to “interfere, impair, influence the loyalty, moral or discipline of the military”.

The Beast posted side by side screenshots of the posts in which Trump allegedly corrected “Ther are laws that effect our Nation” to “There are laws that impact our nation”.