Harold Bornstein, doctor who hailed President Trump as "the healthiest individual ever electe" presi
Harold N. Bornstein, President Trump’s onetime physician, who declared in a 2015 letter that, “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” only to say later that the letter was dictated by Trump himself, died Jan. 8 at 73.
His death was announced in a paid notice in the New York Times. It provided no information about the location or cause of death. Attempts to reach family members were unsuccessful.
Dr. Bornstein, a gastroenterologist, was Trump’s personal physician from 1980 until early 2017, when Trump took office as president. Trump had earlier been a patient of Dr. Bornstein’s father, Jacob, who brought his son into his practice on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Before his letter extolling Trump’s physical fitness, Dr. Bornstein had a low profile and was known mostly for his shoulder-length hair, his love of Italian literature and his occasional forays into poetry. Several members of the Trump family were his patients.
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As Trump was launching his presidential campaign, he said in a tweet on Dec. 3, 2015, that he had “instructed my long-time doctor” to issue a report on his health and that “it will show perfection.”
Dr. Bornstein’s four-paragraph letter was released about two weeks later but was dated Dec. 4, one day after Trump’s tweet. Trump, who was 70 when he was elected, was the oldest first-time president in U.S. history before Joe Biden, who is 78.
“I love steak and hamburger and pasta and french fries — all the things we shouldn’t be eating,” Trump said in 2015. He also said his chief form of exercise was speaking at campaign events.
In the letter, Dr. Bornstein said Trump had lost at least 15 pounds in the preceding year, without stating his weight. “His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary,” he wrote. He noted that Trump’s blood pressure (110/65) and other tests were “astonishingly excellent” and that his examination “showed only positive results.”
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The letter concluded with the sweeping statement that Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
Skeptics questioned whether a medical doctor could have written such an effusive letter. The phrase “positive results” particularly stood out because physicians almost always describe benign results of medical tests as “negative.”
Some noted that Trump used the term “physical strength and stamina” to demean the fitness of his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, who is one year younger than Trump.
“She’s an old lady,” Dr. Bornstein said of Clinton in a 2016 interview with Statnews.com, a health news website.
In September 2016, when the campaign was in full swing, Dr. Bornstein released a second letter attesting to Trump’s robust health. He expressed interest in staying on as Trump’s personal physician, should he be elected. He attended Trump’s inauguration.
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On Feb. 2, 2017, the Times published an interview with Dr. Bornstein in which he said Trump took several medicines, including Propecia, an oral drug designed to arrest male-pattern baldness. The next day, three men came to Dr. Bornstein’s office in what he called “a raid.” He identified two of the men as Keith Schiller, Trump’s longtime bodyguard, and Alan Garten, a lawyer. He didn’t know the third man.
They took Trump’s medical records from his office, Dr. Bornstein said, including those under various aliases Trump used. As a parting shot, they told the doctor he could no longer display a photograph of himself standing with Trump.
In a later phone call with another of Trump’s assistants, Dr. Bornstein said he was told, “So you wanted to be the White House doctor? Forget it, you’re out.”
Dr. Bornstein waited more than a year before going public about the encounter.
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“I feel raped — that’s how I feel,” he told NBC News. “Raped, frightened, and sad.”
In a separate interview with CNN, he said the original 2015 letter was Trump’s idea.
“He dictated that whole letter,” Dr. Bornstein said. “I didn’t write that letter. I just made it up as I went along.”
Harold Nelson Bornstein was born in March 1947 in New York. (The exact date could not be determined from public records.)
He graduated in 1968 from Tufts University in Massachusetts, then in 1975 from the Tufts medical school. After internships, he joined his father’s practice in 1980.
Reporters interviewing Dr. Bornstein noted that he was often moody and would sometimes demand to be paid for his time or that donations be made to Tufts.
He was married three times and lived in Scarsdale, N.Y. Survivors include his wife, Melissa Brown, and five children. A complete list of survivors could not be confirmed.
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Dr. Bornstein complained that his connection to Trump had become a liability in New York, with people shouting at him on the street or throwing objects at his office windows. He was spoofed in a skit on “Saturday Night Live.”
In 2016, before Dr. Bornstein told the world that Trump used Propecia, he said, “I like Donald Trump because I think he likes me.”
Read more Washington Post obituaries
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