Trump sums up his workout routine: 'I walk, I this, I that'
The president responds to his doctor's comment that he has no exercise program.
— -- President Donald Trump is defending his exercise routine after the White House doctor this week said he doesn't really have one.
"I get exercise. I mean I walk, I this, I that," Trump said in an interview with Reuters Wednesday, a day after Dr. Ronny Jackson released his assessment of the president’s physical activities.
“Right now, on a day-to-day basis,” Jackson told reporters Tuesday, “he doesn’t have a dedicated, defined exercise program."
But the president offered a different interpretation.
"I run over to a building next door,” Trump, 71, told Reuters. “I get more exercise than people think.”
Jackson said, "Some people exercise, some people don’t. Some people just haven’t done that as part of their routine. And I would say that’s the category he falls in right now.”
Trump, 71, didn't deny his lack of a formal routine, saying it's actually helped him maintain his health.
"A lot of people go to the gym and they’ll work out for two hours and all. I’ve seen people ... then they get their new knees when they’re 55 years old and they get their new hips and they do all those things,” Trump told Reuters. “I don’t have those problems.”
But there’s one form of physical activity with which Trump is closely associated: golf. There are 18 Trump golf courses around the world, and he has played quite a bit during the first year of his presidency, though the exact number of times is unclear because the White House has declined to confirm it.
That said, he has made roughly 80 trips to golf courses during his first year in office, according to ABC News' count, though he is known to make regular use of a golf cart rather than walk the courses.
He has "always been more of a believer in diet because I'm strong, you know? I hit the [golf] ball far. I mean, I'm strong, physically," Trump told Reuters.
The president also suggested that the White House kitchen staff could be key to improving his diet.
"The people that do the food at the White House are extraordinary, but I think they can maybe make the portions a little bit smaller and maybe we’ll cut out some of the more fattening ingredients," he told Reuters. "And I‘m OK with that."
Dr. Jackson would seem to be open to that part of the plan, given his press briefing remarks this week that he's arranging a nutrition specialist to speak with the White House chefs "to go over the preparation of the president’s food just to make sure that we’re cutting the calories and the fats and the carbohydrates as much as we possibly can and still making good meals for him."