The leader of the free world is having trouble walking and talking. We need to know why.

In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has struggled to walk a straight line, and not for the first time. He was unable to state which part of his body was medically scanned — or why. He fell asleep in an Oval Office press conference and wandered off at a ceremony in Japan.

He visibly nodded off during a televised Cabinet meeting Tuesday. His head appeared to be drooping on Oct. 8 and 13, and his handshake with Hungary’s prime minister involved repeated arm jerks. The New York Times reported Trump is working fewer hours but showing more signs of fatigue than in his first term.

There’s not enough space here to detail the lengthening list of concerns.

What would you think?

A caring relative seeing even some of these traits in a 79-year-old would insist on a medical evaluation. An employer who saw them in a manager would not allow him to return to work without a clean bill of health.

It doesn’t matter if the president’s sometimes jerky movements and inability to consistently speak coherently are a part of natural aging.

The symptoms are concerning for whatever reason, especially because they are accompanied by increasingly tantrum-like outbursts entwined with public policy.

A few months ago, senators who controversially questioned policies risked losing reelection. Now, Trump endorses execution. Here is how the president described the Venezuelan menace that’s being used to justify prepping for a full-scale invasion: “We call them the water drugs. The drugs that come in through water. They’re not coming.”

The White House began removing written transcripts of Trump’s public statements from its website in May.

Trump wouldn’t be the first president to downplay or conceal health issues. John F. Kennedy denied having Addison’s disease. Woodrow Wilson was in denial about multiple strokes, including one that could have changed behavior. And we all know Joe Biden was not the same man in 2024 that he was in 2020.

America deserves better

Americans deserved better answers then. They deserve better answers now.

Congress should convene a blue-ribbon medical panel to independently evaluate the president’s test results, including an assessment of any other tests that should be ordered and a review of medications and treatments. At a minimum, the panel should include a gerontologist, a neurologist and a cardiac specialist. The resulting report on the president’s fitness for office should be made public.

Trump has given himself no real room to refuse.

It was Trump himself — not the news media, and not his critics — who set the modern bar for strict scrutiny of presidential fitness.

After Hillary Clinton stumbled just once during the 2016 presidential campaign, her pneumonia diagnosis was seized on by Trump as evidence she was could not govern. Joe Biden hasn’t been in the White House for almost a year, but Trump continues to criticize the declining health of the man he still calls “Sleepy Joe,” most recently by arbitrarily nullifying orders and pardons Biden signed with an autopen because of Trump’s suspicions about Biden’s acuity.

At the same time, the White House has shredded its credibility on Trump’s health, making an independent panel necessary.

A lack of health candor

In 2018, the White House released Trump’s lab and exam results, but initially held back evidence of moderate heart disease. In 2019, Trump asked the staff at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to sign nondisclosure agreements.

The White House described October’s visit to Walter Reed as a “routine yearly” appointment; it was actually a six-month checkup during which Trump had the MRI he could not later describe. The MRI was a “preventative” heart and abdomen scan, according to the White House, and predictably perfect: The 79-year-old who had heart disease markers seven years ago now reportedly has the cardiac age of a 65 year old.

There’s another diagnostic marker to watch for, too. It is not an independent medical review; it’s the president’s reaction to one. Just as his furious backpedaling on the Epstein files reflects fear of what could be revealed, opposition by Trump to a close examination of his health would only confirm the need for more scrutiny.

As with Epstein, it’s up to Congress to act on mounting questions about Trump’s health — and if not this Congress, then the next one.

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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

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