Harris medical report finds ‘physical and mental resiliency’ to be president – as Trump’s fitness under scrutiny

A medical report on the health of Vice President Kamala Harris has been released with less than a month to go before the presidential election.

According to a letter from her doctor, Harris is in “excellent health” and “possesses the physical and mental resiliency” required to serve as president.

Dr Joshua Simmons, a US Army colonel and physician to the vice president, wrote that Harris, 59, maintains a healthy, active lifestyle and that her most recent physical last April was “unremarkable.”

She “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” he wrote in the two-page letter.

The Harris-Walz campaign hopes the release of the letter will draw a contrast with Donald Trump, 78, who has released only limited information about his health over the years.

Many have questioned the former president’s fitness to serve another four years in office both from a physical health perspective and regarding his mental acuity.

This week, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie became the latest person to sound the alarm over Trump’s “significant” mental decline.

However, in response to Harris’s medical report being made public on Saturday morning, Steven Cheung, Trump campaign communications director, said in a statement: “President Trump has voluntarily released updates from his personal physician, as well as detailed reports from Dr Ronny Jackson who treated him after the first assassination attempt. All have concluded he is in perfect and excellent health to be Commander in Chief.”

He continues: “He has maintained an extremely busy and active campaign schedule unlike any other in political history, whereas Kamala Harris has been unable to keep up with the demands of campaigning and reveals on a daily basis she is wholly unqualified to be President of the United States. Her schedule is much lighter because, it is said, she does not have the stamina of President Trump. Polls are reflective of this.”

Linked underneath the statement were two letters from Rep Jackson, Trump’s former physician, concerning the wound to the former president’s ear after the attempt on his life in July, and a letter from Trump’s current doctor dated November 20, 2023 — almost one year ago on President Joe Biden’s birthday — reporting him as being in “excellent” physical and mental health.

When the 81-year-old commander-in-chief was seeking reelection, Trump eagerly questioned the president’s health.

But now that Biden has been replaced on the ticket with Harris, Trump’s own health has drawn more attention given his advanced age and behaviors on the campaign trail.

The 2023 letter from the former president’s doctor contains no details like weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, or the results of any test to support its claims.

Meanwhile, the Harris report goes into considerable detail about her health and medical history. Dr Simmons, who said he has been Harris’s primary care physician for the past three and a half years, said the vice president has a history of allergies and urticaria, also known as hives, for which she has been on allergen immunotherapy for the past three years.

Simmons said Harris’s latest blood work and other test results were “unremarkable.”

The report also reveals that the vice president wears contact lenses for mild nearsightedness; her family history includes maternal colon cancer; and she is up to date on preventive care recommendations, including having a colonoscopy and annual mammograms.

Speaking to reporters before flying to North Carolina for a weekend of campaign stops, the vice president said that it was clear to her that Trump nor his team want the American people to really see if he is fit to be president by not releasing a full assessment of his health.

Asked about her impression of Trump’s mental acuity, Harris said: “I invite the public to watch Trump’s rallies and be the decision-maker on his acuity. You will see in his rallies how he goes off on tangents, how he is not focused on the needs of the American people with solutions to the issues that concern them the most.”

Meanwhile, across the country, the former president gave doom-laden remarks to a roundtable of Hispanic voters in Clark County, Nevada, in which he claimed that Democrats “wanna do things like no more cows and no windows in buildings”.

Trump rounded off his comments to the group by saying: “We have a problem of survival of our country because we are run by very stupid and probably evil people, and we cannot have it.”

He then added: “I hope that is a positive message. Is that a positive message?”

With reporting from the Associated Press