Back in 2015, beginner presidential candidate Donald Trump instructed his doctor to write a letter stating that if he won, he would become the healthiest president ever.
Since then, his opponents have mocked his audacity (the letter also hailed his exceptional physical strength and endurance) while cautioning that a person of his age, consuming fast food and Diet Coke, and with a questionable exercise routine, cannot possibly be in good health.
Critics have persistently suggested that the newly elected US President is dangerously close to a heart attack with his indulgence in fast food, love for Diet Coke, and lack of physical activity, though this idea might just be wishful thinking.
What’s going on under those strategically over-sized suits cannot be good, they chorus – no matter what helpful doctors say.
Even his wife is reportedly worried. Last November, it was claimed Melania and Robert F Kennedy Jr, his nominee for health secretary, were ‘ganging up’ on Trump to eat more healthily – substituting lean protein, salad and vegetables for fast food.
Two former Trump aides have testified that a typical Trump McDonald’s order was a gut-busting two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish and a chocolate milkshake. In all, 2,430 calories.
And yet if there’s one area where Trump continues to defy the naysayers, it’s his health and, perhaps more importantly for the ‘leader of the free world’, his stamina.
 Granted, Trump has benefited from being compared to Joe Biden, now 82, whose declining mental and physical faculties were shockingly covered up for years.
US President Donald Trump works behind the counter during a campaign event at McDonald’s restaurant on October 20 last year
US President Donald Trump and Florida congressman Byron Donalds receiving their order from Downtown House of Pizza in Downtown Fort Myers in April 2023Â
Donald Trump drives a golf cart ahead of the LIV Golf Invitational series tournament at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in August 2023Â
Yet during last year’s election campaign Trump felt sufficiently confident in his own abilities that, writing on X in October, he challenged Kamala Harris – 18 years his junior – to take a test on ‘cognitive stamina and agility’ after his supporters claimed she had been ‘slow and lethargic in answering even the easiest of questions’.
On Monday, aged 78 and 220 days, he became the oldest person ever inaugurated as president, beating Biden, who was five months younger when he took the oath four years ago. One of his first acts was to reinstall a button on his desk in the Oval Office that automatically requests a glass of Diet Coke.
He didn’t exactly perform backflips at his swearing-in but nor did he shuffle on with his wife and aides watching like hawks for any sign he was about to fall over – as became the case with Biden.
And while Uncle Joe couldn’t be trusted even to ask the time if the question wasn’t written out for him on a teleprompter, Trump still prefers to speak off the cuff: of the two speeches he gave at the Capitol – one from a script and one, later, without one – there was little to choose between them in terms of his fluency and articulacy.
And it was a marathon day for him. He attended a morning church service, tea at the White House with Biden, spoke for half an hour at his swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol, gave an even longer post-inaugural address, attended a congressional lunch, reviewed the troops, gave another speech at his indoor presidential parade and signed scores of executive orders in the Oval Office.Â
He then attended three inaugural balls where his duties included giving another ten-minute speech, talking to troops in South Korea on a video feed, cutting a cake with a sabre and dancing (three times) with Melania.
And he still had enough energy to repeatedly show off his signature fist-pump dance to YMCA by the Village People (who had performed live at the second ball he attended).Â
Even his fiercest critic cannot deny that’s not bad for a 78-year-old (and one, remember, who after being shot in the ear by an assassin last July was back on his feet in seconds, punching the air in defiance.)
Donald Trump, his son Donald Jr, Elon Musk and RFK Jr with their McDonald’s meal on their way to a UFC fight
Donald Trump tucking into a McDonaldsÂ
President Donald Trump arrives to deliver pizza to fire fighters at Waukee Fire Department in January 2024Â
Corey Lewandowski, who managed Trump’s 2016 campaign, recalled how he ‘would go and work 14 or 16 or 18 hours a day and not eat because he was so focused like a professional athlete would be’.
What is his secret? Trump himself certainly has a few ideas although they aren’t necessarily shared by the experts. For a start, Trump – whose older brother, Fred, died from alcoholism – says he has never drunk alcohol, smoked cigarettes or used drugs.
Less healthily, he only sleeps about four or five hours a night and considers golf his ‘primary form of exercise’. Even then, he doesn’t walk between holes but uses a golf cart instead.
Trump has justified this physical inactivity by promulgating an odd theory – popular among Victorians but hardly so today – that the body is like a battery with a finite amount of energy. By exercising, you are depleting that battery and actually harming yourself.
What else may be relevant? Scientists say that genes play a part in health and life expectancy.Â
Trump’s property developer father, Fred, lived to 93, while his mother, Mary Anne, the poverty-hardened daughter of a crofter on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, lived to 88.
President Donald Trump addresses the crowd during a campaign rally on Oct, 6th, 2018 in Topeka
And as the son of a rich man, Trump will doubtless have benefited from the best medical treatment his entire life.
Despite his claims to the contrary, critics have recently said there’s evidence that Trump’s mental and physical faculties are declining.Â
The New York Times – one of his most enthusiastic critics – in October analysed his speeches and concluded he had lately appeared ‘confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality’.
But others could point out that nothing much has changed there, Trump has always made gaffes, for instance in 2019Â claiming that during the 1770s American War of Independence, the rebels ‘took over the airports’ from the British.
Opponents have also pointed to Trump’s reluctance to publish his medical records. Presidential candidates in the US are not obliged to release medical information about themselves and, despite polls showing many voters have misgivings about Trump’s advancing age, he has been even more cagey than Biden about releasing his medical records.
In 2018, while president, his White House doctor released a letter on his health that experts said showed he was borderline obese and had heart disease.
Over the next two years, doctors revealed that his weight had risen to just under 17.5 stone, making him officially obese, but no further details have been released since he left office.
Former President Donald Trump chose a McDonald’s in Bucks County, a battleground area of Pennsylvania, for his turn at the fryer last October during the election campaignÂ
Asked about his own first summer job and entry-level positions, Trump told DailyMail.com through the drive-thru window last October: ‘It requires expertise, I’m going through the whole french fry stuff. It’s a whole process’
As for his brain, Trump has said he twice ‘aced’ cognitive tests, but he has not released them and has not said if he has taken one since 2018.
Trump has revealed his father, Fred, was ‘addled with Alzheimer’s’ and some experts have said he could have an elevated genetic risk of dementia.
The speculation will inevitably continue and every new slip – physical or verbal – be brandished as proof.Â
Trump himself admitted in a 2022 interview that his health might stop him running again for president.
‘You always have to talk about health. You look like you’re in good health, but tomorrow, you get a letter from a doctor saying come see me again,’ he told the Washington Post. ‘That’s not good when they use the word ‘again’,’ he said.
And yet here he is back in the White House, and – for good or ill – very much like his old self.
