White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed questions about President Trump’s slurred speech at the daily press briefing on Thursday, noting that the president is scheduled for a physical early next year.
The president will undergo an examination at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the “first part of next year,” Sanders said. “Those records will be released following that taking place.”
Sanders’ comments came at the very end of Thursday’s briefing. After first concluding the briefing, the White House spokesperson returned to the podium when a reporter shouted a question about the president’s Wednesday speech where he seemed to briefly struggle with his enunciation.
“The president’s throat was dry, nothing more than that,” Sanders said, dismissing the line of inquiry as “frankly pretty ridiculous.”
The comments echo a similar statement by White House spokesperson Raj Shah to the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday: “His throat was dry. There’s nothing to it.”
Per tradition, presidents typically examined by doctors annually, with the results released to the public. Should Trump follow suit, it would be the first comprehensive look at the president’s health made available aside from a one-page statement of good health from his longtime personal physician, released in 2015.