Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign plans to release a report on her medical history and health information, a move to contrast the 59-year-old Democrat with former President Donald J. Trump, her 78-year-old rival, who has shared little recent information about his health.
A senior campaign aide, sharing the information on the condition of anonymity to preview the plans, said the report, expected on Saturday, would show that Ms. Harris had the “physical and mental resiliency” to carry out her duties should she win the election in November.
Because presidential candidates are under no requirement to share health records — their medical information is as private as any other citizen’s — campaign-season medical reports are often used to paint the rosiest picture possible of a person running for office. With only weeks until Election Day, Ms. Harris’s campaign will no doubt try to use whatever information she shares to ignite questions about her opponent’s health.
Mr. Trump, the oldest person to become a presidential nominee, has declined requests to release new information about his health even though he has promised to. When he was grazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet at a rally over the summer, his campaign did not provide a briefing, release hospital records or make the emergency physicians who treated him available for interviews.
As president, Mr. Trump was hospitalized in 2020 when he contracted Covid-19, and his doctors at the time did not share the full extent of his illness with the public. The limited information about his health contrasts with the picture his former physician shared of him as a candidate in 2015, declaring that he would be “the healthiest person ever elected to the presidency.”
Mr. Trump told CBS News in August that he would “very gladly” release his medical records to the public, but did not respond to a request from The New York Times for that information. The Times also requested Ms. Harris’s health records last month, as well as an interview with her physician. The campaign did not respond.
The sharing of medical records has become a campaign-season cudgel over the past several decades. In the 1996 presidential election, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas successfully pushed his opponent, President Bill Clinton, to release more health information by arguing that he had not shared a full account. But there is a longer history of candidates and presidents hiding illnesses, at least initially, or being selective about what information they share.
In September 2016, Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic nominee, fell ill with pneumonia while campaigning, leading to a raft of questions about her health after her aides initially covered up her illness.
Running against Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump repeatedly brought up her health on the campaign trail, often to suggest that she did not have his stamina. He also did so in the 2020 and 2024 campaigns against President Biden, calling him “sleepy” and acting confused by Mr. Biden’s damaging debate performance in June.
Now he is running against someone who is nearly two decades his junior.
Ms. Harris, for her part, has undergone annual physicals with doctors in the White House Medical Unit, but has not released basic vital information about her health, including her height, weight or lab work, as well as any cancer screenings or mammogram history.
The post Daring Trump, Harris’s Campaign Says It Will Release Her Medical Information appeared first on New York Times.
