Trump's former doctor Harold Bornstein, who called him 'healthiest president ever,' dies

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President Trump’s former personal physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, who attested Trump was the "healthiest president ever," died Thursday at 73. 

Bornstein’s obituary did not say how he died. 

The eccentric doctor, a gastroenterologist, famously declared in a letter that Trump "will be the healthiest individual elected to the presidency." Trump at the time was the oldest president ever to assume office. 

Bornstein had overseen Trump’s medical care for decades – he took over from his father Dr. Jacob Bornstein in 1980 and minded Trump's health until he assumed office in 2017. 

Bornstein had hoped to be named White House physician and had voiced as much to a longtime Trump assistant, according to The New York Times. He was relieved of the president’s care after he revealed to The Times that Trump was taking medication to make his hair grow in February 2017. 

Days later, Bornstein told NBC News that associates of the president "raided" his office for the president’s medical records. "I feel raped," Dr. Bornstein told NBC.

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After questions arose on the campaign trail of then-candidate Trump’s health, he had Bornstein conduct a "full medical report."

Bornstein wrote a letter, in bombastic Trump fashion, noting that the president’s blood pressure and lab results were "astonishingly excellent" and that his strength and stamina were "extraordinary." 

Trump circulated the letter to assure voters of his fitness for the job. 

After Trump cut ties with the doctor and his team seized his medical records, Bornstein said Trump had dictated the entire letter. 

"He dictated that whole letter. I didn’t write that letter," Bornstein told CNN. "I just made it up as I went along."

Born in 1947, Bornstein graduated Tufts University and Tufts Medical School, following his father into the field. He completed his internship and residency at Lenox Hill Hospital in internal medicine, and served on the staff of Lenox Hill for more than 40 years. He joined his father’s practice in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. 

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"With sadness, the office at 101 East 78th Street will be without a 'Dr. Bornstein,' ready and waiting to care for his fellow New Yorkers, for the first time in almost 70 years," his obituary noted. 

Bornstein was proud of the concierge medical practice he and his family ran. "My greatest successes," he told Tufts magazine in 2017, "have been avoiding managed-care medicine and refusing to have the conservative beard and haircut that my parents thought was necessary for success."

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"Dr. Bornstein devoted his life to the practice of medicine, which he regarded as a sacred privilege. His devotion to his patients was unparalleled and he continued a traditional style of personal medicine, making house calls and holding the hands of those in need until the end," the obituary read.

He is survived by his wife and five children.