On Saturday, November 16, 2019, President Donald Trump made an unexpected visit to Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. That visit is among the many things that author Michael S. Schmidtdiscusses in the new book, “Donald Trump v. the United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President.”
New York Times reporter Gabriel Debenedetti, discussing Schmidt’s book, notes that it “reports the White House wanted Mike Pence ‘on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized.’ The vice president never had to take this step.”
The fact that Trump’s visit to Walter Reed in November 2019 was unannounced raised questions about the president’s health. But Dr. Sean Conley, Trump’s physician, described the visit as “routine” that month and wrote, in a memo, that it was only kept secret because of “scheduling uncertainties.” And Trump described the visit as a “very routine physical.” Continue reading.