President Donald Trump's health disclosures are facing renewed scrutiny after prominent cardiologist Dr. Jonathan Reiner questioned the White House's explanations for the president's bruised hands, leg swelling and episodes of apparent drowsiness, while highlighting a medical evaluation that reportedly involved 22 specialist consultants.
Reiner, a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University who previously served as cardiologist to former Vice President Dick Cheney, raised the concerns in an opinion article published Wednesday. He argued that the information released by the White House hasn't fully explained several publicly visible symptoms or the scope of Trump's October 2025 evaluation at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
"Despite reassurances from the White House to the contrary, at times over the past year, the president has not looked well," Reiner wrote.
Reiner isn't a member of Trump's medical team and hasn't examined the president. His assessment is based on publicly available medical information and photographs and videos of Trump, meaning his questions don't establish that the president has an undisclosed illness.
"Mr Trump is probably the most photographed president in American history, and a variety of physical ailments are easy to see," Reiner said.
One focus is recurring bruising visible on Trump's hands. The White House has previously attributed the marks to frequent handshaking combined with his use of aspirin, which can increase bruising. Reiner questioned whether that explanation adequately accounts for the appearance of bruises on both hands.
Trump's leg swelling has generated additional questions. The White House said last year that the president was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a condition in which veins have difficulty returning blood from the legs toward the heart.
Reiner didn't dispute that diagnosis but questioned the chronology surrounding it. "If that's true, his swelling would be by definition acute, not chronic," he wrote, arguing that newly observed swelling warranted a clearer explanation of how doctors reached their diagnosis.
Acute leg swelling can have multiple causes, including some that are more serious, but Reiner didn't present evidence that Trump has heart or kidney disease. "What's the reason for this discrepancy?" he asked.
The cardiologist also pointed to public appearances in which Trump appeared to close his eyes or struggle with alertness, describing the episodes as "excessive daytime somnolence." The White House has repeatedly disputed assertions that the president was sleeping during official events and has criticized the use of isolated video clips or photographs to characterize his condition.
More significant to Reiner is Trump's October 2025 Walter Reed visit. According to a medical report cited by the cardiologist, the president underwent advanced cardiac and abdominal imaging and was evaluated with the involvement of 22 medical consultants.
Reiner described that level of specialist involvement as unusual for routine presidential screening and questioned what prompted the imaging. The supplied material doesn't identify an undisclosed diagnosis arising from the examination.
"He's had large bruises on both hands, swelling in his legs, and episodes when it appears that he is struggling to stay awake. He's also had advanced imaging performed for unclear reasons. The public is again left to wonder whether the nation's leader is OK," Reiner wrote.
The White House physician, Dr. Sean Barbabella, has offered a substantially different assessment, describing Trump as physically and cognitively fit to serve. Administration officials have similarly characterized the 80-year-old president as being in "robust" health and rejected claims based on viral images and clips.
The disagreement has also revived a broader debate over how much medical information presidents should be required to disclose. Reiner has backed legislation from Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin that would establish an independent medical commission under the framework of the 25th Amendment to assess a president's physical and cognitive capacity.
Reiner compared the limited disclosure surrounding Trump with the privacy afforded King Charles III during his cancer treatment but argued that an elected American president occupies a fundamentally different position.
"But the United States does not have a king," Reiner wrote. "In a representative democracy, the people must have confidence in their leader's health and in the leader's capacity to guide the nation. We have been kept in the dark too long."
