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The White House released President Donald Trump‘s MRI results on Monday amid mounting scrutiny over the president’s health and his age of 79 while serving as commander in chief.
Four years ago, however, the media was overwhelmingly silent on the topic of presidential health when the then-oldest sitting president during his term, Joe Biden, led from the Oval Office in a health saga that has continued long after Biden dropped out of the 2024 federal election and exited 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. on Jan. 20.
Media outlets and others heightened scrutiny of Trump’s health earlier in 2025 when he was spotted with swollen legs in July while attending the FIFA Club World Cup final in New Jersey, as well as other photos stretching back to February showing bruising on his hand.
The media has most recently been focused on an MRI scan Trump received during a checkup at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland in October, which was described as routine by the administration, with Trump’s physician reporting that Trump is in “exceptional health.” The checkup was Trump’s second in 2025, following an April visit that Navy Capt. Sean P. Barbabella, the physician to the president, said found Trump “remains in excellent health.”
WHITE HOUSE PROVIDES TRUMP HEALTH UPDATE AFTER MRI SCAN CONCERNS SWIRLED
Trump’s MRI results were released on Dec. 1, 2025, after Trump told the media the day prior that he would release the documents that he said found him in “perfect” health. (Francis Chung/Getty Images)
The White House railed against left-leaning media outlets’ recent focus on Trump’s health as “garbage narratives,” accusing them of having previously downplayed “Joe Biden’s severe mental health decline” while he was in the Oval Office.
“No one believes the failing legacy media’s disingenuous obsession about President Trump’s health because we all just watched them actively cover up Joe Biden’s severe mental health decline for the past four years,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Fox News Digital on Monday.
“The facts are clear: President Trump has shared several comprehensive medical updates, in the effort of total transparency, all of which show he is in excellent health. The fake news media pushing garbage narratives about President Trump’s energy levels while they get to publicly question him nearly every single day is why Americans’ trust in the media just hit a new all-time low.”
Fox News Digital took a look back at the mainstream media’s coverage of Biden’s health before dropping out of the 2024 presidential race at the 11th hour amid mounting concerns over his mental acuity, and the media’s recent focus on Trump’s health and evaluations.
TRUMP’S HEALTH REPORTS
Trump has railed against the media for their focus on his health that he said is cast in a negative light despite the administration releasing details to the public on Trump’s check-ups. Trump, for example, slammed The New York Times in November for publishing a piece focused on him serving in the Oval Office at 79 years old while facing the “realities of aging.” Trump described the article as a “hit piece” that follows years of the media reportedly publishing “purposely negative” articles.
Following reporters questioning White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt about details surrounding the MRI in November, Trump told the media on Sunday evening when pressed about the scan that he would release the MRI results to the public amid media scrutiny.
The White House released Trump’s MRI results on Monday when Leavitt read the report to the media that found Trump was in normal and good health.
“The purpose of this imaging is preventative to identify any issues early, confirm overall health, and ensure the president maintains long-term vitality and function,” Leavitt said. “… Overall, his cardiovascular system shows excellent health.”
TRUMP REVEALS HE HAD ‘PERFECT’ MRI DURING RECENT WALTER REED PHYSICAL
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Dec. 1, 2025 that the White House was imminently releasing President Trump’s October MRI results. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)
Left-leaning and mainstream outlets have pressed the White House about Trump’s health for months, a shift that intensified after photos of his swollen legs and a bruised hand surfaced online. While Trump entered his second term as the oldest person ever inaugurated at 78, the questions did not escalate until this summer. The White House attributed the bruising to frequent handshakes and said the swelling stemmed from chronic venous insufficiency — “a benign and common condition, particularly in individuals over the age of 70,” according to Leavitt.
ACCUSATIONS OF BIDEN HEALTH ‘COVER-UP’
The media has previously come into the White House’s line of fire over its heightened focus on Trump’s health after Biden’s presidency, which reached a crescendo in July 2024 when Biden dropped out of his re-election race at the 11th hour amid mounting concern that his mental acuity had slipped.
“I can tell you there was certainly a lack of transparency from the former president, from the entire former administration,” Leavitt told reporters in April. “And frankly, a lot of people in this room, when it came to the health and the competence of the former president of the United States, Joe Biden.”
The Washington Post editorial board wrote that Congress should undertake a thorough investigation into the nature of former President Biden’s health decline as president. (Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Care Can’t Wait Action)
The Trump administration, as well as conservative critics and liberal journalists, have repeatedly slammed the reported cover-up of Biden’s declining health after a wave of political memoirs recounting the 2024 and Biden presidency, including alleging that Biden staffers were aware of and fretted about the president’s mental decline, but publicly promoted him as physically and mentally fit to serve as president.
Biden’s mental acuity had been under conservatives’ microscope since before the 2020 election. Concerns among the mainstream media, however, did not heighten until February 2024, when special counsel Robert Hur, who was investigating Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents as vice president, announced he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, calling Biden “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Conservatives railed that the report proved Biden’s mental acuity was, in fact, on a steady decline, pointing to the president’s increasingly mumbled public remarks, a high-profile fall while boarding Air Force One in 2021 and another fall while on a bike ride in Delaware in 2022.
Biden has denied that he suffered a cognitive decline while in the White House, including during a May interview on “The View,” when he said new books detailing an alleged mental decline were “wrong.”
The media did grill then-White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in June 2023 over Biden’s repeated public falls, including when he fell during the Air Force Academy’s graduation ceremony in Colorado and stumbling on a flight of steps in Japan that year. But it wasn’t until 2024 that the White House press corps repeatedly pressed the administration on the president’s health.
TRUMP DECLARED IN ‘EXCELLENT OVERALL HEALTH’ BY DOCTOR AFTER WALTER REED VISIT
The final year of Biden’s presidency included a handful of public gaffes and missteps, including former President Barack Obama seen taking Biden’s wrist to seemingly lead him offstage at a fundraiser in Los Angeles in June 2024 and another viral video showing the then-president standing relatively motionless during a Juneteenth concert event at the White House.
The Biden White House brushed off concern surrounding the videos by describing the footage as “cheap fakes,” which the administration described as real videos that are cropped or edited in an allegedly deceptive manner.
2024 DEBATE PERFORMANCE OPENS FLOODGATES TO BIDEN HEALTH COVERAGE
Concern over Biden’s mental acuity hit a fever pitch in June 2024 after he took the debate stage to face off against Trump in the election cycle. Biden’s debate performance was seen as a failure, with traditional allies soon joining conservatives in their concern over the president’s health in the context of encouraging Biden to pass the mantle to a younger generation of U.S. leaders.
“Is anyone in the White House hiding information about the president’s health or his ability to do the job day to day?” a journalist asked Jean-Pierre during the first press briefing after the disastrous debate.
Another said: “You’ve said a couple of times now that the White House has provided thorough medical records for the president. The White House released a six-page summary back in February. I don’t think that was a full accounting, necessarily. And Dr. O’Connor, in that memo, described the president as quote, ‘a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.’
President Joe Biden joins President-elect Donald Trump at the Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 20, 2025, for Trump’s inauguration. (Melina Mara/Getty Images)
“I think that is clearly not what the majority of Americans are seeing,” the reporter added.
While yet another pressed: “Why not release more about his medical — his physical and mental health? Why not?”
The 46th president ultimately dropped out of the race at the end of July 2024, giving his successor for the nomination, former Vice President Kamala Harris, just over 100 days to rally support.
Concern over Biden’s health has carried into the Trump administration, with the Biden team announcing in May that the former president was undergoing treatment for advanced prostate cancer that had not been detected when he was in the Oval Office. In addition, Trump has railed against his predecessor’s use of an autopen to sign official presidential documents, including executive orders and pardons, and announced he would terminate all documents signed by the autopen.
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after speaking to troops via video from his Mar-a-Lago estate on Thanksgiving, Nov. 27, 2025, in Palm Beach, Florida. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The lack of media coverage over Biden’s health was underscored during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, when an Axios reporter who authored a book on Biden’s health decline ripped the Biden administration and his media colleagues for a “cover-up.”
“President Biden’s decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception,” Alex Thompson, Axios reporter and co-author of “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” said during the dinner.
“But being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We, myself included, missed a lot of this story. And some people trust us less because of it. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows,” he added.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Biden’s office for any comment and update on his health and recent media focus on Trump’s health but did not immediately receive a reply.