Donald Trump claimed that Melania wasn’t able to accompany him to this weekend’s G7 summit because doctors advised her not to take such a long plane ride after undergoing a kidney procedure last month — an excuse that has critics wondering if the White House has been lying about her condition.
As CBS News reported, Trump announced ahead of his trip to the G7 summit that the first lady would be unable to accompany him because doctors said she was still not fully healed from the four-hour procedure and could not make the international flight.
That has raised some concerns among Trump’s critics on Twitter who believe that the president has not been forthright about Melania’s medical procedure, and the real reason for her long absence from the spotlight. The first lady was not seen in public for more than three weeks following the May 14 procedure.
The procedure itself had not been previously announced, and was shrouded in mystery at the time. Though it was initially described as a simple procedure to treat a benign condition, the severity has been in question, especially with Donald Trump’s latest explanation. As CNN noted, his words this weekend were the first time that anyone had referred to the procedure as an “operation.”
As Bustle suggested, the admission from Donald Trump that doctors had advised Melania against flying seemed to show that the procedure was much more serious than the White House had first let on. Many of Trump’s critics saw the doctor’s advice as proof that Donald Trump was not honest about his wife’s procedure when it was first announced.
Now Trump is saying Melania had a 4 hour surgery and she can’t fly for a month? So much for the routine kidney procedure line…
— Roland Scahill (@rolandscahill) June 8, 2018
Trump: Doctors said Melania can’t fly for one month after kidney surgery https://t.co/Xmj6UwWdG3 pic.twitter.com/zJyBvIFRPu
— The Hill (@thehill) June 8, 2018
Some had already raised that concern when Melania Trump spent close to four days in the hospital following the procedure.
“The White House said Saturday morning that the first lady, Melania Trump, had returned home after spending almost five days at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center recovering from a procedure for a kidney condition,” the New York Times noted. “Medical experts have puzzled over why Mrs. Trump would have remained in the hospital for almost a week when the recovery for the kind of procedure she underwent — an embolization that cuts off the blood supply to the kidney — is typically a day.”
Earlier in the week, Donald Trump had gone on the attack against those raising questions about Melania Trump’s absence. He said the rumors that she really underwent cosmetic surgery were “vicious” and called it fake news.
