President Donald Trump made a scheduled visit to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Friday for what the White House said was an annual physical. But conservative attorney and prominent Trump critic George Conway found two specific words in the readout from Trump's physician that told a bigger story.
In the readout from White House physician Cpt. Sean Barbabella, CNN host Kaitlan Collins observed that Trump was given both a flu vaccine and a Covid-19 booster shot. Retired policy and communications professional George Basile tweeted "would you look at that," given Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's outspoken opposition to both the Covid-19 vaccine and other vaccines.
But according to Conway, the vaccine portion wasn't the most significant part of Trump's visit to Walter Reed.
"'Advanced imaging' are the important words here," Conway tweeted in response to Collins' post.
As Conway mentioned, the first paragraph of Barbabella's writeup of Trump's visit reads: "The visit was part of his ongoing health maintenance plan and included advanced imaging, laboratory testing and preventive health assessments conducted by a multidisciplinary team of specialists. These evaluations were performed in coordination with leading academic and mental consultants to ensure optimal cardiovascular health and continued wellness."
The phrase "advanced imaging" would suggest that Trump was either given a computed tomography (CT) scan or a magnetic resonance imaging exam (MRI) — or both — which are used to detect various health conditions and monitor conditions affecting the organs. This would seem to dispute a previous White House statement that Trump's visit to Walter Reed was part of his "routine yearly check up" (his second such check-up in a handful of months).
Trump has already been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency (CVI), in which the legs can have difficulty circulating blood back to the heart. This can lead to swollen ankles, which were visible when the president hosted Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House earlier this week.