As a presidential candidate Donald Trump quoted a letter from his former personal doctor gushing about his apparently excellent health -- a note the physician now says the president "dictated" himself.

Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, New York doctor Harold Bornstein said Trump "dictated that whole letter. I didn't write that letter."

"I just made it up as I went along."

In December 2015, the Trump campaign released the glowing missive which said that "if elected, Mr Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

The Manhattan doctor months later said he wrote the note hastily as Trump's car waited.

Bornstein's new comments come as the long-haired, bespectacled physician finds himself back in the spotlight after he told NBC that a bodyguard visited his Park Avenue office last year and confiscated the president's medical records.

"They must have been here for 25 or 30 minutes. It created a lot of chaos," Bornstein told NBC, saying the February 3, 2017 incident made him feel "raped, frightened and sad."

Bornstein said the original and only copy of Trump's medical charts, including lab reports under the president's name and various pseudonyms, were taken.

But White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the incident was "standard procedure."

According to Bornstein, the "raid" came two days after The New York Times quoted the doctor as saying he had prescribed Trump a hair growth medicine for years.