Trump Re-shuffles the Drug War Deck of Cards

On Monday, March 19, 2018, Trump will release his plan to combat the opioid epidemic with a call to Stop Opioid Abuse. The plan includes law enforcement measures that allow the Department of Justice to seek the death penalty for some drug dealers “where appropriate under current law.”  Trump will also call on Congress to pass legislation reducing the threshold amount of drugs sold that are required to invoke mandatory minimum sentences for drug traffickers and trigger the application of the death penalty in certain other cases. Those are actually two old ideas that have, to date, jammed our prisons past full capacity. In true Trump fashion, if it didn’t work before, just double down on it.

 This is what happens when you let people who don’t understand the problem come up with a simple (or rather simple-minded) solution, because Trump’s plan to include the death penalty for drug offenses is a “might-makes-right” approach and is no different than the way drug lords handle drug turf disputes, Also of note is that these offenses are ill-defined and likely to be interpreted any way a Trump-appointed judge wishes to interpret them. It will no longer be the rule-of-law in this country but the rule-of-Trump.

The opioid commission, chaired by Jared Kushner, was supposed to introduce its recommendations on ways to curb the epidemic November 1, 2017, but we can see Jared has been as effective at that job as he has been at bringing peace to the Middle East.

In late October, Trump and his administration finally got around to…declaring the opioid epidemic a “national public health emergency,” not a crisis, in order to buy extra time to come up with something…ANYTHING. In the meantime Trump went around bragging at his staged pep rallies that he liked the solutions of thugs and foreign leaders like Duterte of the Philippines, Xi of China, and Loong of Singapore. They claimed to have ended the drug problem in their countries by liberally applying the death penalty. So naturally Trump now thinks the best course of action is killing drug offenders, specifically people pedaling opioids.

But we know opioids are not plants grown in secret indoor gardens or cooked up in mom-and-pop meth labs. They are the result of pharmaceutical companies creating powerful pain killers as medicine, for a profit of course. How many pharmaceutical CEOs or lobbyists will be executed for manufacturing the opioid pills that are at the heart of the crisis? For example, will Trump demand death for Dr. Craig Landau the current CEO of Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, Oxycodone and Hydrocodone? If not, why not? If Trump is looking for the biggest “pusher” of opioids, you can’t get any higher. (Pun intended.)

How about executing Mitch McConnell, Orrin Hatch, and Paul Ryan, three of the biggest recipients of Big Pharma lobbying dollars? These are people who have used their positions to ram through legislation benefiting Big Pharma financially, as well as generously lining their own pockets, and to hell with the people who get hooked on Big Pharma’s products.

Will doctors be subject to the death penalty for simply prescribing an opioid medication to a patient in pain because later on some bureaucrat looking through the doctor’s notes decided the person had been prescribed too many? Will this be a new avenue for the DEA to apply their military approach to the Drug War? Shoot first; ask questions later. (It’s a variation on Trump’s approach to gun violence; take the guns first, apply due process later.)

Has it ever occurred to Trump that maybe people are deliberately overdosing on opioids because they are so embarrassed he is the president?

Applying the death penalty is such a revolutionary idea; let’s apply it to other crimes that indirectly harm people. Like money laundering. If someone…anyone…is even suggested to be engaged in money laundering, give them the death penalty. And apply it the way the Chinese do; 24 hours after conviction, the sentence is carried out.

Another area might be ethics violations. If any member of the White House is charged with an ethics violation, have them executed on the front lawn of the White House. There must be zero tolerance. That would be one way to stop people like Kellyanne Conway from thumbing their nose at the Hatch Act.

Where's a wooden stake when you need it?

          In Trump’s grandiose plan to sentence drug dealers to death, he seems to forget just how much money drug companies, the biggest drug dealers in the world, pour into in American politics. Pharmaceutical companies were among the biggest donors to Trump's inauguration, right up there with Big Tobacco and Big Oil companies. Is Trump really going to cut into Big Pharma’s profits by threatening to kill its users and sales force?

Watch for the sun to rise in the west first.

Donald Trump - America's Newest Medal of Honor Winner

In a move sure to please his fan base, Donald Trump has awarded himself the nation’s highest and most esteemed military decoration, the Medal of Honor.
          What is his justification?

"I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon," Trump had said at his White House meeting with 39 governors about what he would have done at the Florida school that was the scene of the most recent mass shooting. Trump was so proud of himself for his claim and, imagining he would have saved all the students and teachers killed on Valentine’s Day at Stoneman Douglas High School, he immediately signed an Executive Order giving himself the Medal of Honor.

With Pence and Mattis' approval, Trump awards himself the medal

“I actually earned this quite a while ago,” Trump exclaimed as he fumbled with the ribbon to put the medal around his neck. “I always felt like I was a great and brave soldier back in the '80s when I was having so much unprotected sex. This is just the culmination of so many amazing things I’ve done.”

Seeing few people in the room were moved by his reasoning, Trump said “Hey, ISIS is history. I defeated them. Not even Obama could do that…and he created them!” When no one immediately applauded, Trump up the ante. “And another thing, if I hadn’t had those bone spurs in my foot, or feet…you’ll look it up in the records, it’s in the records…I’d have been the greatest soldier in the entire history of that war back in the 60s when they were drafting kids. Not one gook would have escaped my sights,” he said. “The war would have ended within a week of my arriving at wherever it was we were fighting back then. So I deserve this.”

          Generals McMaster, Mattis, Dunford, and Kelly all stood by expressionless as Trump placed the ribbon and medal around his neck. Waving his hand dismissively at them Trump boasted “After talking with all the generals, they agreed that if anyone should get this medal, it’s me. I mean, no one is better at the military than me...believe me!”

          Trump added while pointing to the medal around his neck,“And this deserves a military parade in my honor this July 4^th…or on that November 11^th day, for whatever reason we celebrate then!” 

          This follows on the heels of Trump’s request, via a third party, that he be given the Nobel Peace Prize, too. An unidentified American who nominated the U.S. president reportedly cited Trump's "ideology of peace by force" (such as threatening nuclear war with North Korea) for the submission for the prize. A similar reason accompanied a nomination for Trump to win last year’s 2017 prize. Just one minor problem; Trump's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize was forged, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute said Wednesday February 27^th. “We have good reason to believe that the nomination we received concerning Trump has been falsified,” Institute Director Olav Njolstad told reporters.

          Henrik Urdal, manager of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, told the Associated Press that even though Trump was nominated for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, the nomination “lacks any strong academic justification”.

The Late Billy Graham - Seller of a Slicker Brand of Snake Oil

I waited to post this out of a sense of holding any invective until he was boxed up before leveling a broadside at the late Billy Graham.

Last Wednesday the gush gate was thrown wide open…gushing tears over the death of 99 year old purveyor of religious snake oil Billy Graham…and gushing sparkling accolades and tributes to his being what idolizers call the 20^th century’s greatest evangelist. I prefer huckster, but what the heck, evangelist, huckster...same thing.

Fox News immediately crowed “It’s a great day in Heaven.” Yes, a great day in Heaven….They actually spend part of their broadcast claiming it was A.GREAT.DAY.IN.HEAVEN!!!

How do they know? By what method can they know this? They do not have any faculties that the rest of us do not have, so please Fox, share with us how you know that it’s a great day in heaven. Flipping through a bible cannot and could not tell you that. You have indicated no apparatus that extends into the supernatural world so you could tap into the “great day festivities.” How are they even sure of Graham’s arrival there? Many Pentecostal preachers and church members will assure you in NO uncertain terms that Graham did not reach the Pearly Gates on Wednesday February 21st, or will he at any time in the future. The same sentiment would also be expressed by the Westboro Baptist Church.

Billy Graham was not a man any of us should revere or embrace. He built his career on being a bamboozler, or what in the old west was called a snake-oil salesman. He made countless open-ended promises that he never had to deliver on, promises built on heresies…scriptural heresies as interpreted from the Roman Catholic and Jewish points of view. Can you imagine what Torquemada of the Inquisition would have done with someone who preached scripture as Graham did?

But more to the point; who gets to determine which bible interpretation is correct? Is it the Presbyterian version? Methodist? Freewill Baptist? Shakers? Holy Rollers? Disciples of Christ? Mormon? Roman Catholic? Eastern Orthodox? Coptic Christian?

Billy Graham grew up in a Presbyterian home but eventually joined the more unruly evangelical Southern Baptist denomination, a group of regressives who objected to and refused to ordain women as ministers, although Graham eventually revised his thinking and said he could accept women’s ordination even though that appears to be in direct contradiction to 1 Timothy 2:11-12. He even initially opposed his own daughter Anne Graham Lotz from teaching a bible class…but later said she was the family’s best preacher. If his god existed, how would he view that statement given it is quite clear in the bible women are not to teach, assume authority over men, and to “learn in quietness”. If preaching is not teaching, what is it?

Fawning revisionist history blathers on about what a good man Billy Graham was when he actually was on the wrong side of history repeatedly. From his theological outlook that included racism, xenophobia, and homophobia, his passing will not wipe away the hate he helped foment that damaged so many lives. In 1993, he suggested that AIDS was punishment from God. “Is AIDS a judgment of God” he said while preaching in Columbus, Ohio. “l cannot be sure, but I think so.”

Graham was notorious for his anti-Semitic opinions. When the Nixon tapes were released, Graham is heard to reiterate an old conspiracy theory that claimed Jewish-Americans had a “stranglehold” on the media that “has got to be broken.” He also condemned gay marriage and targeted transgender people on his website.

.         Graham missed the boat on racial injustice, too, refusing to walk in 1963 with Martin Luther King Jr. in the March on Washington. Why? Because Graham did not subscribe to racial equality, stating on several occasions that little white boys and girls would only walk hand in hand with little black boys and girls “when Christ returned.” There was no sense in working for it until Jesus’ second coming… so equality be damned. It underlines the fact that Graham was a Civil Rights coward.

Graham became known for his revivals but those revivals basically amounted to Christian buzzwords, mild threats of hellfire and damnation, promises of a better world after this one, condemnation of communism…and a request for money. Love of God and country went hand in hand for him as he preached against the Soviets and Chinese, advocated an American way of life that never existed, and reminded people god expected them to give 10% of their income. In short, the perfect Republican. No wonder Richard Nixon and George W. Bush liked him.

Would those same people at Fox who find Graham’s death a cause for celebrating in heaven have accepted it as truth if, say, Al-Jazeera claimed it was a great day in paradise when 19 new martyrs arrived there on the morning of September 11, 2001 after killing hundreds aboard four aircraft and thousands in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon? What’s the difference other than the religion?

I just consulted my Magic 8 Ball and asked if there really was a celebration going on in heaven due to Graham’s arrival. Its answer was “Outlook Not So Good.” And you can believe my Magic 8 Ball because it is as reliable as that information about it being a great day in heaven. The difference is my Magic 8 Ball actually exists.

Watch for the Florida School Shooting to be Blamed on the Russian Probe

Get ready for the GOP and the limited-information Trump supporters to condemn the Robert Mueller investigation and the FBI for ignoring their duty to protect Americans. They will claim the FBI and its agents were too blindsided trying to pin a “collusion” badge on Trump - and in doing so they missed a chance to stop a real crime.

A report has been released that shows the FBI was warned about Nikolaus Cruz in January, but they did nothing about it. 

On January 5^th, over a month before Wednesday’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, the bureau received a warning from someone close to the teenager that they were concerned about Cruz and that he might carry out an attack on the school. The tipster, identified only as an adult who knew the gunman, contacted the FBI public tip line and told “about Cruz’s gun ownership, his desire to kill people, his erratic behavior, and even disturbing social media posts.”

Red flags should have gone up and a warning klaxon begun blaring but the call center never passed on any information, according to a federal law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The bureau knew the identity of the tipster and the tip involved a threat to life, meaning it should have been passed on. The tipster did not describe an attack plan by Cruz with a time and place, but it did provide specific information on him and warning signs that any law enforcement official would have acted on.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, hoping to win back Trump’s trust and loyalty, said he is ordering deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to review the bureau’s handling of the matter. “It is now clear that the warning signs were there and tips to the FBI were missed,” Sessions said in a statement. “We see the tragic consequences of those failures.”

There’s the set up for - “if the FBI hadn’t been distracted by the probe into Russian collusion, they would have easily connected the dots.” This will play right in to Trump’s hands that if the FBI had not thrown all their agents and staff at the Russian investigation, which everyone knows is just fake news, made up, a witch hunt, a scheme by Democrats to cover up their loss in the 2016 election, and a waste of taxpayers’ money, they would have been able to nab Cruz before he gunned down 17 students and wounded 14 others on Valentine’s Day.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement “We are still investigating the facts. I am committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes for responding to information that we receive from the public.

But again, the lapse will be blamed on so much of the FBI’s attention diverted to a useless probe into Russian hacking, Russian collusion, those innocent meetings with Russian agents- the Russian ambassador-Russian Bank CEOs-and Russian lawyers by members of Trump’s campaign. When it comes to all the obvious Russian collusion links, Trump and his supporters just say "Move along. Nothing to see here."

It will not be surprising if Trump, his GOP sycophants, or the far-right fringe call for Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray (maybe even Jeff Sessions) to step down in light of this FBI failure. Then there will most likely be a demand to end the Russian investigation because Americans are being slaughtered due to FBI negligence from looking into all those false leads about Russians meddling in our 2016 election. It will be much easier in the future to also point to FBI neglect the next time ANY tragedy happens that might have been stopped if only those law enforcement agents had been available to spot the warning signs.

This is how democracy’s head is held under water until it drowns.

The F-52 Fighter - Trump's Stealth Jet

          Trump Sells Norway a Pig-in-a-Poke

It took some time to research, almost a week, to find Trump’s F-52 fighter jet that he claims the U.S. sold to the Norwegians. I consulted two friends I know who work in defense industries for our nation’s military, and one who is in the air force, and all three of them assured me the aircraft does "exist" (and they used air quotes when they said it)...in the mind of a feeble, poorly-educated, draft-dodging clown who attained the highest office in the land thanks to the aid of Russia. It apparently has replaced almost all F-16 Fighting Falcons and about a quarter of the F-22 Raptors in our arsenal. Training is currently being carried out at Elgin Air Force Base near Fort Walton Beach in the Florida Panhandle.

A three-quarter view of the F-52 on a taxiway

          I was told in a tongue-in-cheek manner that the F-52 is referred to as the “Cheshire Cat.” Needless to say, specs on the machine are classified but it definitely is a stealth aircraft… SO stealth, no one’s seen it, not even the Norwegians who Trump seems to think were gullible enough to buy a fleet of them from the U.S. That same rumor-mill states that the check for the F-52s was made out to a "well-known Amerikan" and issued through Deutsche Bank.

          I was advised where I might be able to take some pictures of the F-52 Cheshire Cat, from an unobtrusive place near Cobb’s Overrun at the southeastern end of the runway at Eglin, so here are some that I snapped last week…Notice how light wraps around them so well that they are almost impossible to see…The first picture is a comparison shot of the F-52 to a standard truck…

…here are four of them being readied for flight… and the first one preparing to take off… 

…a selection of them flying overhead, in a finger-four formation, and doing a low-level pass just offshore…

For the record, Norway did buy F-35 aircraft, but everyone from Prime Minister Solberg down to airman third class Per Arne Værnes at Bodø Main Air Station says that is all they bought. Trump’s announcement about the Norwegians purchasing F-52 Cheshire Cats is met with understandable derision.

When I asked Google Home to show me a picture of Trump’s F-52, this is what it found, after checking with Siri and Alexa first.

Trumpism - A Blight on America

Germany is a nation in which I have been interested since I was old enough to find it on a map. Because the U.S. had been involved in combating them twice in less than a half a century I was curious about the Germans. What drove them? How was the pitch for war made palpable less than 20 years after the Versailles Treaty was signed? Why were they willing to endanger another generation of Germans? My curiosity even made my xenophobic father heap scorn on me as being a “Kraut in my mind.” He ridiculed my research and interest because he felt I was ignoring our British/Scot/Irish roots and claimed I just wanted to “be German” or “be a Nazi.” I wondered what he was so upset about. I wasn’t making excuses or gushing about them; I just wanted to find out how the Germans were drawn into war so quickly and easily in the 20^th century. That meant I needed to study them.

My curiosity was stimulated because both of my grandfathers fought in World War One against German forces, and one of my uncles in World War Two. My interest was known to other family members. I went to a party at a relative’s house in the mid-1970s, and while there he introduced me to a woman named Geezy whose husband had been a Luftwaffe anti-aircraft gunner throughout the war. My uncle wanted me to talk with her partly because she grew up in Germany and lived in Berlin during World War Two, but mainly because of her stance. Geezy stated in no uncertain terms she loved Adolf Hitler and still thought he was a great leader. This was 30 years after the end of the war. I was stunned by her admission and probed hoping to find some rationale. She was unapologetic about his crimes against other countries and even against his own people. She didn’t care. If Hitler said it needed to be done, then it was the right thing to do. She was never a member of the Nazi party but she supported the Nazis 100%...even to that day. She said she would still vote for and support Hitler, despite all the revelations about what he did. She was proud of him.

Remembering her blind adulation stills seems eerie. But more disturbingly, it sounds just like today’s Trump supporters. It doesn’t matter what Trump does…they support him unconditionally. How do you reason with that kind of fanatic? Trump bragged he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose voters. He is saying they will support a cold-blooded murderer with no reservations. Trump also boasted that he loved “poorly educated” voters. He wasn't just talking about people who only had a limited education. He meant people who were deliberately ignorant; people who didn’t want to think things through, people that just took marching orders, people who didn’t read or question anything. These are the people we should be very concerned about because they are Trump’s sycophants, his supporters, his loyal base. They look upon Trump as a messiah. How are they any different than Hitler’s SS?

Like the SS, they throw out Nazi salutes to intimidate others. At Trump’s urging, they beat up protesters. Now they are even emboldened to march in nighttime torch-lit parades as though this is Nuremberg or Munich in 1938. It’s frightening because these Trump supporters are living among us like a fifth column by the millions. They believe it is Trump, or nothing else. This Trumpism is a danger to American democracy and its survival.

Germans have been addressing the Nazi Germany image for over 70 years but they will continue with that struggle for the foreseeable future. We in the United States are about to join Germany in our own long, difficult quest to improve our image and try to make amends for what Trumpism is doing to our country and to the world. Fifty to a hundred years from now, we will still be trying to shake off our own “Nazi-like” period. It will be much shorter than the twelve years Hitler inflicted on Germany, but the damage to the world will be the same. It will be a time in our nation’s history known as Trump’s America from 2016 to 2018. I’m no seer stating the end will be in 2018. It’s just that there are so many things roaring right at Trump at this point (undeniable Russian collusion, money-laundering, obstruction of justice, serial sexual assault, violation of the Emoluments Clause, violation of the oath of office…etc.) that I have no doubt one of them will most likely get him out of the White House shortly. Pence, Kelly, Mattis, McMaster, DeVos, Mnuchin, Tillerson, Conway, Miller, Huckleberry Sanders, Rick Perry, Scott Pruitt, Wilbur Ross, Trump’s kids, his son-in-law, and all the other enablers should be dragged out with him and left with broken bones, deep gashes, grievous injuries, missing teeth and hair and tossed in a bloody pile at the base of the Washington Monument. But we still have a ways to go to get there. I am concerned about what will happen to us before Trump is forced out of office. Trump unabashedly pits Americans against each other, claims white supremacists and Nazi sympathizers are good people, signed a tax bill to transfer the nation’s wealth to himself and his ultra-rich buddies, threatens nuclear war, attacks the free press, and lies even when the truth sounds better. His enablers in the Republican Party and his evangelical base cheer him on and urge him to keep it up.

Comparing the U.S. under Trump to Germany under Hitler seems outlandish but almost daily we are introduced to a new Trump outrage that makes us look more and more like a budding totalitarian regime. The world looked on in concern and then horror when Hitler turned Germany into a fascist state and finally launched a war. The world is now watching the U.S. do the same thing under Trump.

No one knows who originally made this quote, but it’s appropriate; for the citizens of Nazi Germany - to the U.S. in 2018…”We’re all in the same game; just different levels. Dealing with the same hell, just different devils.”

Putin and Trump - World-Class Liars

Trump – “There is no collusion. Absolutely none. I have nothing to do with Russia.”

Putin - "Thank you, President Trump. Information obtained from the CIA was sufficient to search for and arrest of criminals.”

          Today, it is revealed by White House press manipulator Sarah Huckabee Sanders that on Sunday Russian President Putin phoned Trump to thank him for a tip from the CIA that thwarted a terrorist attack being planned at Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. A tip from the CIA? And Trump had a hand in providing it?

Countries share intelligence occasionally, but this call was highly unusual since presidents rarely, if ever, thank one another for something from the other's spy agency. According to the White House press release, which was offered only after the Kremlin had mentioned it in their own TASS dispatch, “The Federal Security Service said Friday that seven members of a terror cell had been detained for their involvement in the plot, and that "a significant amount of explosives," weapons and "extremist literature" were confiscated.

          TASS also reported that when caught, the perpetrators even obliged by confessing to the whole terrorist scheme on camera. It was almost as if it was STAGED!!!

For the fifth time this year, this information was released by the RUSSIANS…not by the White House. Not until the Kremlin made the phone call known did our own president acknowledge he had been colluding with…I mean, in contact with, Putin. So we’re just now finding out OUR intelligence agency is working with the RUSSIAN intelligence agency and American citizens have deliberately been kept in the dark. Yet both governments now want to openly brag about it, so it’s not like they’re trying to keep it a secret so they can thwart future terrorist attacks. Why is Trump telegraphing this information? He said so many times on the campaign trail that he wasn’t going to let our enemies know what the U.S. is doing. (What he seems to mean is he doesn’t want U.S. citizens to know what he’s doing.) As if it has always been done this way, Trump is pointing out how our intelligence service is helping the Russians.

This then begs the question of why didn’t our CIA do the same for the Pakistanis who supposedly are our allies when a terrorist bomber struck at a Christian church in Quetta last Sunday killing 9 people? Why didn’t our intelligence services provide any help to Nigeria in recent weeks when Boko Haram killed hundreds of people in separate attacks across that country since mid-November? Closer to home, why didn’t that vaunted intelligence stop Akayed Ullah the New York City subway bomber on December 12th? On top of all that, as recently as last month, Trump said he didn’t trust our intelligence agencies, and less than a year ago he was comparing them to the Nazis. Why was their untrustworthy intelligence good enough now to pass on to the Russians?

Does anyone believe this nonsense? What evidence do we have that the CIA provided the information? There is nothing to show it sent anything or contacted the FSB at all. Neither Trump nor Putin has provided proof of cooperation between the two agencies. We just have to take their word for it. But things that are asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Putin called to thank Trump for the CIA tip, after Thursday's call congratulating him on how strong our economy is. Why would the Russians congratulate the U.S. on a booming economy? How does that help Russia?

          This is just the latest pack of lies from two world-class liars. It was invented (by Putin or Trump, or both) to gloss over something entirely different. Both leaders agreed that this serves as an example of the positive things that can occur when the two countries work together. Here’s the bizarre part…you notice that “when the two countries work together,” the Trump administration never works with Brazil, Thailand, Iran, Denmark, China, Sri Lanka, or any other country in that manner. It is always…ALWAYS…the Russians - and only the Russians. Why?

          Do you believe Trump when he says there’s no collusion?

Something Caught in your Throat? Trump's Recent Weird Speech

On December 6^th 2017, Trump gave a speech about moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in Israel. If you were watching you most likely heard something odd in the last minute where he slurred through much of the remainder of that speech. It sounded as if, if he had dentures, they had come loose and were bumping around in his mouth, or that his tongue wouldn’t cooperate. The next day, in response, the White House announced that Trump would have a physical “early next year.”

Spoiler Alert: That physical exam will be a smoke screen. It will be to cover up what has happened. The people protecting Trump are not going to allow anyone to know what he really suffered or what is actually going on. Any results that are eventually made public will be false.

It could simply be that Trump is finally choking on his own bullshit.

He has been unfit for office since before the election that was flipped to him by the Russians, but this escalates the danger to our nation by having a man mentally unfit for office compounded by being physically unfit for office.

Trump’s physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, or as he is referred to by late-night comedians “Dr. Feelgood”, may have contrived with Trump to cover up serious health concerns when he admitted last year that he wrote the letter declaring Trump would be the “healthiest president in history” in just five minutes while a limo sent by the candidate waited outside his Manhattan office. That four paragraph letter is the only medical information that’s been released about and by Trump and it really says nothing at all. It is composed of assertions and grandiose expressions about how astonishingly healthy Trump is but it is nothing close to a medical record. Intriguingly, Bornstein may have been giving us an oblique warning when he later said “the Oval Office has been occupied by presidents with dementia or tumors or even men who were "paranoid" or "psychotic." Was he acknowledging something that implicated Trump’s deteriorating health?

Bornstein’s letter was a bungled attempt to make Trump appear to be Superman but Trump’s diet alone speaks volumes about how he takes care of himself. He frequently eats sodium-heavy, high-fat-content, high-cholesterol-laden, low nutrition fast food like McDonald’s hamburgers, fries, and filet-o-fish sandwiches, KFC’s heavily-breaded chicken pieces, cheese and pepperoni pizzas and large chocolate milkshakes for lunch and sometimes even dinner. When he eats steaks they are so well-done they are almost charred – hidden under a thick layer of ketchup, occasionally accompanied by mashed potatoes smothered in gravy or a salad swimming in Roquefort dressing. When everyone else is served one scoop of ice cream at the White House, Trump has demanded and gets two scoops, plus large pieces of chocolate cake whenever he wants. He rarely eats vegetables and throughout the day he snacks on Vienna Fingers, potato chips, Oreos, and slurps down numerous cans of Diet Coke. He doesn’t exercise, and, as anyone who follows his Twitter account can verify, he gets very little sleep.

He maintains that his golf game is his exercise, and he does play A LOT of golf…more than PGA pros play. But he rides in a golf cart everywhere on the course, even right across the greens. He walks only from the cart to the ball and back. Picture after candid picture of him golfing shows a large belly and an expansive waistline. (Only William Howard Taft was a more...rotund...president.) No one knows for certain how overweight he is because he won’t release his medical records. Nutritionists, dieticians, and doctors who have studied the pictures say he is at least 50 lbs overweight. They have no ax to grind. They are simply making an observation about that person’s body mass in the photographs. Trump does not take his health seriously. So something like a stroke is almost expected given Trump’s callous regard for nutrition and an aversion to physical activity.

Notice that it takes two hands to get the small bottle up to his mouth

The White House issued an explanation for Trump’s slurred speech - and the made-up story was further advanced by their consummate liar, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders - that Trump was just having a problem with a dry throat. So why would Trump need a medical exam? My grandfather suffered a stroke when he was in his 70s and Trump’s speech pattern is exactly what my grandfather’s speech sounded like after his stroke. Grandfather also had dentures but he never sounded like that from loose dentures. From the beginning, Grandfather’s stroke noticeably affected his speech and it only got worse until he died. If Trump actually had a dry throat, why didn’t he just take a swig of water as he has done previously (even though he made fun of Marco Rubio for doing the exact same thing on camera?)

Suffering a stroke is nothing to be ashamed of, but since Trump has been lying to us about showing us his tax returns before election day, about how he now doubts that it’s his voice on the Access Hollywood tape (even though there were nine people on the bus with him at the time who all attest that yes that is Trump), and because he has lied over and over about how he has had nothing to do with Russia, even though he signed a letter of intent in October 2015 to build a Trump Tower in Moscow WHILE HE WAS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, there is no reason to believe the White House’s excuse (probably dictated by Trump) that he just had a dry throat.

Trump is either finally starting to choke on his own lies or most likely suffered a mild stroke and has demanded everyone around him lie or keep quiet about it.

I hope his cabinet is brushing up on the 25^th Amendment.

"If we use big words like 'responding to Presidential disabilities' he won't know what we're talking about."