Dr. Harold Bornstein Dies: Physician Who Called Donald Trump Healthiest President Ever Was 73

Dr. Harold Bornstein, Donald Trump’s longtime personal physician who made headlines when he declared his patient “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” died Friday, Jan. 8. He was 73.

His death was announced today in a paid notice in The New York Times. Neither cause nor location of death was specified.

A brief media sensation in December 2015, the long-haired gastroenterologist became the butt of late night monologues after releasing a laughably vague and adulatory four-paragraph report that described Trump’s medical lab results as “astonishingly excellent.”

“If elected,” Bornstein wrote in the statement, “Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

Bornstein was Trump’s personal physician from 1980 to 2017. His time with the president came to a bad end when he told The New York Times that Trump had prescriptions for the hair growth drug Propecia, as well as antibiotics for rosacea and a statin for cholesterol. The doctor’s Upper East Side office was soon visited by a Trump bodyguard, a Trump Organization lawyer and an unidentified third man, with the three men confiscating all of Trump’s medical records.

In an interview with NBC News, Bornstein described the raid as “chaos,” adding that he felt “raped.”

“I feel raped – that’s how I feel,” Bornstein said in the interview. “Raped, frightened, and sad. I couldn’t believe anybody was making a big deal out of a drug to grow his hair that seemed to be so important. And it certainly is not a breach of medical trust to tell somebody they take Propecia to grow their hair. What’s the matter with that?”

A year after the 2017 incident, Bornstein admitted the obvious: The “astonishingly excellent” medical report had been written by Trump himself. “He dictated that whole letter,” Bronstein told CNN.

Bornstein, a resident of Scarsdale, New York, is survived by wife Melissa Brown, daughter Alix and sons Robyn, Joseph, Jeremee and Jackson. A private service for family and friends is planned. “Dr. Bornstein was a force of nature who brought joy to his family, friends and everyone he encountered in life,” the death notice states, “and continues to do so in memory.”