Donald Trump promises to release results of medical check-up this week after Hillary Clinton’s pneumonia diagnosis

Donald Trump has acknowledged that the medical wellness of presidential candidates is a legitimate issue and is promising to release a newly detailed report of his state of health this week.

The Republican nominee was speaking one day after the campaign of Hillary Clinton revealed she had been diagnosed at the end of last week with pneumonia but only after amateur video captured her stumbling as she left a 9/11 commemoration service in New York early on Sunday.

The episode has injected new uncertainty into an already helter-skelter race for the presidency. The Clinton camp is once again facing criticism that they put the privacy of the candidate ahead of the need for transparency with less than 60 days to go before Election Day.

Even before the events of the weekend, Mr Trump had been stirring up speculation about Ms Clinton’s health openly asking if she had the “strength and stamina” to be commander-in-chief. He was, however, attempting a magnanimous tone on Monday. “I just hope she gets well and gets back on the trail and we’ll be seeing her at the debate,” Mr. Trump said on Fox News.

Yet, until this moment, Mr Trump had been even more measly in the information he had put out about his medical record, restricting himself to a brief letter from his primary doctor, Harold Bornstein, saying he was generally in fine fettle. Dr Bornstein later confessed, however, that he had spent no more than five minutes writing the note while waiting on the curb for a limousine.

He said on Monday, however, that he had undergone a full check-up in recent days and he will be putting the results out later this week. He is also expected to discuss his health on television when he joins celebrity TV doctor, Mehmet Oz, for an interview.

“I think it's an issue. In fact ... this last week I took a physical and .... when the numbers come in I'll be releasing very, very specific numbers,” he said on Fox on Monday.

Mr Trump is 70 years old. If he wins the election he would be the oldest first-term president-elect the country has seen. He is known to have a propensity for unhealthy eating, happily posing for pictures with fast-food dinners. He is a teetotaler, however, and has never used tobacco either.

“If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” Dr Bornstein wrote. Last July, when Ms Clinton was launching her campaign, she released a slightly more detailed two-page letter from her doctor asserting he good state of health.

The Clinton campaign acknowledged on Monday that it was tardy in revealing the pneumonia diagnosis and may have fed uncertainty about Ms Clinton’s condition, especially after the video of her swooning at the memorial circulated on social media, and could have handled things better.

“I think it's exceedingly important that Hillary Clinton be transparent about what's going on,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “If she gets a report of pneumonia on Friday, they should try to tell the public in real time. The danger for a candidate is if they seem to be hiding their health history.”

For Democrats, already nervous about a substantial narrowing of the polls, including in some swing states, the episode capped a difficult weekend. It started with reports of Ms Clinton telling a fundraising event in New York that she saw half of Mr Trump’s supporters belonging in what she called a “basket of deplorables” of racist, homophobic people.

The remark triggered an instant firestorm, with some commentators likening it to comments made by Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee in 2012, suggesting that 47 per cent of the country never paid taxes, depended on government assistance and thus would always vote Democrat. It is was characterisation of the election that brought a torrent of criticism.

Mr Trump pounced on Ms Clinton’s remarks calling them “the single biggest mistake of the political season.” He told Fox: “Remember this.... You're going to be president of all the people. You're not president of 50 percent or 75 percent". His campaign released a television commercial on Monday accusing Clinton of “demonising” working people.

Also on Monday, the Republican nominee opened a highly unusual front of attack on the chair of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, suggesting she was keeping interest rates low deliberately in the US to help burnish President Barack Obama’s record and therefore assist Ms Clinton.

“Well, it's (the interest rate) staying at zero because she's obviously political and she's doing what Obama wants her to do,” Mr Trump told CNBC in a phone interview, saying Yellen should be “ashamed”. He made the claim even though the Reserve is meant too stand above politics.