Day 113: What if instead of president, Donald Trump was your grandfather?
What do we really know about the president’s health?
Let’s say that instead of being president, Donald Trump was a retired former office manager, living in Anytown, U.S.A. He’s your grandfather, uncle, father-in-law, friend, whatever.
But he hasn’t acted right for a while. You notice some signs.
He’s exhibiting signs of severe paranoia.
He’s making threats.
He’s manic.
He’s making excuses.
He’s blame-shifting.
He’s making up situations.
He’s repeating himself constantly.
In our hypothetical, you might be especially concerned if he’s exhibiting all of these symptoms within an hour of one another. He’s been exhibiting many of these same signs for more than a year, but seem to have gotten worse lately. More pronounced. More frequent.
Don’t you — as a rational, sane human being — demand that he get checked out to see if there are any underlying issues? Don’t you want to make sure that your septuagenarian relative or friend is okay? Don’t you make a doctor’s appointment, consult someone or otherwise do something, anything?
If you would do it for an average citizen, why are members of Congress allowing this behavior to continue in the White House?
At the very least Trump’s behavior is incredibly odd and unbecoming of the leader of the free world. At the worst, the behavior is being used in a desperate attempt to cover-up something extremely damaging and potentially treasonous. Somewhere in the middle, the behavior is a sign of a more serious underlying mental condition.
Media reports for the last two years have indicated plenty of Trump craziness behind the scenes: a lightning fast temper; yelling at the television; wandering the White House aimlessly in a bathrobe; calling his National Security Advisor at 3:00 am to ask questions about economic policy and angrily hanging up when the NSA didn’t know the answers; the increased reliance on his 30-somethings daughter and son-in-law for everything from foreign policy to domestic affairs to meeting dignitaries; and the planning of important military endeavors over casual dinner, just to name a few things.
To be clear, we’re not diagnosing Trump here. And we’re not saying definitively that there is something is wrong with him. But at the very least, don’t the American people have a right to know that their leader is mentally fit to serve?
Remember, Trump refused to release his full medical chart, instead authorizing the publication of a letter from his gastroenterologist that was in decidedly Trump prose. Prior to the election, the doctor wrote that Trump “unequivocally” would be the “healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” He later claimed the letter took him five minutes to write.
Months later, the same physician stood in the street and bizarrely explained Trump’s hair growth treatment, violating numerous ethical tenets in the process.
That’s it. That’s what we know about the president’s health. A one page letter from a gastroenterologist. If more information is needed for your grandfather or your uncle or your friend, we don’t have nearly enough for the man that has the nuclear codes.
The American people deserve more answers.
113 days in, 1349 to go
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