Kamala Harris on Saturday released a report on her health and medical history, which found that “she possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency” if voters elect her in November.
A senior aide to Harris, 59, said the vice-president’s advisers viewed the publication of the health report and medical history as an opportunity to call attention to questions about Donald Trump’s physical fitness and mental acuity. The 78-year-old Republican White House nominee would be the oldest president elected if Americans gave him a second term in the Oval Office.
Saturday’s report – in the form of a two-page letter from the vice-president’s physician, Joshua Simmons – described Harris as being in “excellent health” and asserted that her medical history was notable for seasonal allergies and hives. Harris manages those conditions with over-the-counter medications such as Allegra, Atrovent nasal spray and Pataday eye drops, and she has been on allergen immunotherapy for three years, the letter said.
Otherwise, Harris is mildly nearsighted and wears corrective contact lenses as a result, had abdominal surgery when she was three years old and has a maternal history of colon cancer. “She has no personal history of diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cardiac disease, pulmonary disease, neurological disorders, cancer or osteoporosis,” said the letter from Simmons, who added that the vice-president’s most recent physical examination in April was “unremarkable”.
The statement on Harris’s health came on Saturday as Trump has become increasingly incoherent at campaign rallies, something the Guardian US reported on earlier in October. He has been slurring, stumbling over his words, hurling expletives – and showing signs of cognitive decline consistent with someone approaching his 80s, according to medical experts.
Recent speeches have seen him rant about topics ranging from his purportedly “beautiful” body to “a million Rambos” in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Harris campaign aides pointed to Trump’s backing out of an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes that the vice-president granted and his refusal to debate her again after their 10 September face-off. They argue that the former president is “avoiding public scrutiny” and giving voters “the impression … that he has something to hide and may not be up for the job”.
“Contrast her age and vitality with his,” the senior aide to Harris, 59, said early on Saturday.
Trump has repeatedly declined to release detailed information about his health during his public life. For instance, before winning the White House in 2016, he only offered a four-paragraph letter from his personal doctor that bragged that Trump would be “the healthiest person ever elected to the presidency”, as the New York Times recently reported.
Trump’s first physical as president resulted in perhaps the most detailed overview of his health to date. According to the Times, the physical flagged “worryingly high” cholesterol and a body mass index that left him 0.1 points below the threshold for medical obesity.
Nonetheless, in a statement on Saturday, a Trump campaign spokesperson claimed the former president regularly distributed medical updates and that all “have concluded he is in perfect and excellent health to be commander in chief”.
“It is said [Harris] does not have the stamina of … Trump,” the campaign spokesperson’s statement also said.
Questions over whether Joe Biden was too enfeebled forced him to halt his bid for re-election to the presidency during the summer. The 81-year-old Democrat dropped out of a rematch with Trump on 21 July and endorsed Harris to succeed him.
Recent national polling averages show Harris with a two-point edge over Trump in the 5 November race for the presidency. But key swing states remain too close to call, and most experts expect a competitive election.
The Republican party chose Trump as their nominee despite his being convicted in May of criminally falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to an adult film actor who claimed an extramarital sexual encounter with him about a decade before his successful run for the presidency in 2016. Among other legal problems, he is grappling with criminal charges that he tried to illicitly overturn his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election.
Trump, for his part, has maintained that Biden “became mentally impaired”. He also said that Harris “was born that way” while struggling to pronounce the vice-president’s name.
At a town hall in Las Vegas for a group of undecided voters on Thursday, Harris said “using language that’s belittling … [is not] healthy for our nation”.
“I don’t admire that,” Harris said. “And in fact, I’m quite critical of it coming from someone who wants to be president of the United States.”
