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#1

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Zoupa - Today at 03:01:20 AM

I blame Meta and it's ad business. Everything on the web is about creating engagement because that generates revenue.

I use these 3 extensions: privacy badger, ublock origin, adblocker ultimate. I don't think I've seen an ad, on any website, in a decade.

#2

Off the Record / Re: ICE misconduct megathread ...

Last post by celedhring - Today at 02:59:33 AM

Seems to me like two sides talking past each other.

The fact that camera phones are ubiquitous and the internet facilitates near instantaneous sharing of information is clearly a good thing, exposing the absurdity of the lies being pushed by officials in real time.

The fact social media is dominated by a small number of corporatized platforms motivated to privilege the spread of disinformation and slop is a bad thing.

Both things can be and are true at the same time.

Picking up on this, I fear we're just in a short window until AI video doctoring becomes good enough that it manages to completely muddle the picture (thanks also to social media) even when there's footage available of a controversial incident. Or even if there isn't.

One of the positives that came out of the death of poor Mr. Pretti is the fact that we're still capable of creating some sense of consensus around factual truth when it stares you in the face - even this morally bankrupt administration had to eventually walk back their lies - but how long will that last?

#3

Off the Record / Re: ICE misconduct megathread ...

Last post by Tonitrus - Today at 02:18:54 AM

And QI is one of those questionable precedents that should keep being tested in court at every opportunity.

 

['The Superhuman President' A good-faith attempt to ascertain the truth about Donald Trump's health.When I arrived at the Oval Office in December to talk to Donald Trump about his health, the president was standing next to a couple of men clutching pieces of paper labeled TALKING POINTS.]

#4

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Syt - Today at 02:16:09 AM

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-addresses-health-hand-bruise-stroke-mri-greenland.html

'The Superhuman President' A good-faith attempt to ascertain the truth about Donald Trump's health.

When I arrived at the Oval Office in December to talk to Donald Trump about his health, the president was standing next to a couple of men clutching pieces of paper labeled TALKING POINTS.

"These are two doctors," Trump told me before I could ask a question. "And by the way, I don't know them, they're not my best friends. They're respected doctors that practice out of Walter Reed. And they happen to be taking care of me for anything — but I don't need any taking care of because I'm in perfect health. I do purposely every year or less a physical, because I think the American people should know that the president is healthy so you don't get a guy like the last one, who was the worst thing that ever happened to older people. Because I know people in their 90s that are 100 percent. Gary Player is 90 years old. He shot 70 with me the other day."

Trump gestured at everyone present — me, the doctors, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt — to follow him into the room.

"Let's sit for a couple of minutes," he said. "I hate to waste a lot of time on this, but if you're going to write a bad story about my health, I'm going to sue the ass off of New York Magazine. There will be a time when you can write that story, maybe in two years, three years, five years — five years, no one is going to care, I guess. Go ahead and sit down."

Despite the president's protests, the White House realizes that the time to talk about his health is now. Speculation about his fitness for office is rampant; armchair physicians have given him months and sometimes even days to live. "That right there looks like a leg bag for a urinary catheter," a physical therapist claimed in an Instagram with 19 million views, pointing to a bulge in Trump's pants. In recent months, Trump has been caught seeming to fall asleep during public events, making him the butt of recurring jokes on The Onion ("Trump Appears to Doze During Stroke"). His right hand is constantly bruised and often bandaged. In July, his ankles swelled up like the Michelin Man, a symptom, his doctors said, of "chronic venous insufficiency" — a common circulatory condition. In August, when Trump took a break from public appearances for a few days, "Trump Is Dead" began trending on social media. "I got calls from friends that said, 'Thank God you picked up the phone,'" Trump told me. "'Because there's a report that you died.'"
In September, Trump made headlines at a 9/11 memorial event because the right side of his face appeared "droopy"; in October, he went to Walter Reed and received what he said was an MRI, and when asked why, he suspiciously couldn't recall which part of his body had been imaged; on New Year's Eve, he was spotted apparently limping into a black-tie party at Mar-a-Lago; in January, his mental fitness was called into question when he demanded control of Greenland because he hadn't been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, prompting calls for Congress to invoke the 25th Amendment; and later that month, he showed up in Davos with a new bruise on his left hand.

That Trump couldn't stop talking about his "perfect health" at rallies and on Truth Social only convinced people something was wrong. That he started making jokes about how he wasn't on track to get into Heaven only added more fodder for conspiracy theorists. And the fact that his predecessor in the Oval Office began his disastrous decline at around the same age has only made the questions surrounding Trump's health more palpably urgent.

"I feel the same as I did 40 years ago," he said, settling in behind the Resolute desk. Warm afternoon light from the window illuminated his famous hair, once dyed golden and now its natural white — his "only concession to age," one of his senior staffers told me. In person, Trump looks trimmer than he does on television, though he denies he's ever been on a GLP-1 or, as he calls it, "the fat drug." (His last physical, this past April, listed him as weighing 224 pounds, but he told me he's currently "about 235.") He stands a little hunched and his eyes are puffy, but he looks pretty good for a 79-year-old. His hearing, according to a senior staff member, isn't what it used to be (the staffer doesn't think Trump has noticed this about himself, despite regularly leaning in and requesting people speak up). His right hand, warm and soft during our handshake, looked like rhino hide on the back: dry and gray, the notorious bruise spread out like an inkblot test.

The president's discolored hand has become something of a smoking gun for those on Donald Trump Deathwatch, evidence, perhaps, that he's getting surreptitious IVs to treat an undisclosed illness. "They're looking very Queen Elizabeth–esque," The Bulwark's Tim Miller has said, referring to photos of her Royal Highness's bruised hands shortly before she died. It doesn't help that Trump covers the bruise with a large dollop of makeup and can seem testy when people bring up the subject. Late last year, a Republican operative showed Trump his own hand injury to try to relate. "He wasn't amused," the operative told me. When Trump met with the much younger Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office in November, I watched up close as Trump spent the public portion of the meeting shielding the bruise with his left hand. On occasion he would sneak a peek at the mark as if checking the time.

"This is only from shaking hands," he said now, rubbing his left thumb over the back of his right hand, a claim he would repeat to other journalists. Trump turned to the doctors, Captain Sean Barbabella, his lead physician, and Colonel James Jones, a physician's assistant with a Ph.D. in health science.

"Can you just verify that?" he said.

"Absolutely," said Barbabella, a short man with close-cropped hair and a nervous smile. "I've seen the president shaking hands for over an hour." Trump held up his non-shaking hand. "Look, this one's perfect," he said. "People say, 'What beautiful skin you have.'" (The White House said the bruise that appeared on his left hand in Davos was caused by him hitting it against a table corner. Trump also blamed women's fingernails and rings for the cuts on his right hand, including one particularly nasty "slice" that came from a botched high five with Attorney General Pam Bondi.)

It would be easy, Trump said, to stop the bruising and end the rumors of his imminent demise. All he would have to do is stop taking so much aspirin, which he claims is necessary to prevent his blood from becoming too thick. "I want thin blood," he said. "Real thin blood." In 2016, Trump shocked executives from a major pharmaceutical company when he told them he took 325 milligrams of the company's aspirin each day. "You shouldn't be taking that much," one of the executives said, according to a person familiar with his comments. "Do your doctors know?" Trump said they did and didn't approve. "But it works for me," he said. He told me, "I've been doing it for 30 years, and I don't want to change. You know what? You're in the Oval Office now, right? I don't want to change a thing."

Rather than change, Trump tends to force the world to adapt to him. If there was a conspiracy of silence protecting Joe Biden when questions arose about his mental and physical decline, there's a cacophony around Trump. Numerous members of his inner circle have clamored to tell me tales of the president's godlike virility. "He can work harder and he has a better memory and he has more stamina and has more energy than a normal mortal," deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told me. "The headline of your story should be 'The Superhuman President.'"

These strenuous assertions came alongside signs that made Trump seem more mortal than ever, from his dismal approval rating to the growing likelihood that Republicans will lose control of at least one chamber of Congress in this fall's midterms. Already, pundits have started calling him a lame duck, a term typically saved for the third year of a presidency, which might partly explain the vigorous flurry of activity he has undertaken in Nigeria, Venezuela, Minneapolis, Greenland, and beyond. He has gamely entertained discussions about whether Marco Rubio or J. D. Vance will succeed him, which in one sense is an acknowledgment of his mortality. In another sense, the succession represents a way for him to live forever — a conceit, I soon learned, that was perpetuated by the bubble of loyalists and supplicants and advisers that constantly surrounds him and that seemed indicative of the late-empire stage of Trump's decade-plus-long dominance of American life.

"Real fast," Trump said, turning to the doctors in the room. "Is my health perfect?"

"Your health is excellent, sir," Jones said.

For all his raging against those who question his invincibility, Trump has acknowledged that he will in fact cease to exist one day. At Mar-a-Lago last year, with televisions tuned to former president Jimmy Carter's body lying in state at the U.S. Capitol, Trump surprised people in the room when he said, according to a person familiar with his comments, "You know, within ten years that will be me." (Leavitt said she doesn't recall Trump making such a comment.)

In a "not morbid way," he has, according to a senior White House official, been "thinking more about what he will be remembered for." Even the "crazy ballroom" that's being built on the site of the demolished East Wing, this official said, "is about leaving a legacy here." His desire to leave something tangible behind might also explain the "Arc de Trump" he wants to erect in Washington or the decision to slap his name on the Kennedy Center. "He doesn't think of legacy in terms of policies enacted," a Republican operative with ties to the administration told me. "It's buildings he can leave behind and prizes he can win" — the most coveted of which, the Nobel Peace Prize, he managed to finagle from Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado in January.

"He's having more fun building this ballroom than I can possibly tell you," Eric Trump told me in January on the day the building's architect released plans for its $400 million construction. Eric said his father isn't really one to talk much about the time he has left in this world. "He's superstitious," he said. "He likes occupying his mind with what's in the present and not as much with what's in the future. He will say, 'You have the most beautiful assets in the world, and you will be able to enjoy them for a long time to come.' Is it in some way on everybody's mind? Of course. But he believes, and so do I, he has a lot of years left."

The specter of death sometimes "manifests in the 2028 conversation," said the senior White House official. They said they vividly remember the period after Trump lost the 2020 election, back in the "'Nobody loves Trump' phase." Trump would show up to his Mar-a-Lago office every day in his suit and cuff links, "working well into the evening, even though there wasn't really much to do." But then during the 2022 midterms, people started seeking out his endorsement — and those endorsements made a huge difference. "He talks about his average in Republican primaries," they said, referring to what percentage of his endorsements go on to win. He was "very cognizant of that imprint."

He also has started sharing his feelings about his eventual successor. "That's him thinking about when he won't be here in a different way," the official said. Trump has praised both Rubio and Vance in public, saying he "couldn't be happier with either" of them. According to a person familiar with his thinking, he hasn't decided between the two: "He tells J.D., 'You're my guy.' He tells Marco, 'You're my guy.'" Both have recently worked to impress the boss, Rubio by spearheading the operation to take out Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and Vance by leading the campaign to suggest Renee Good, an activist killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, was responsible for her own death.

As Trump approaches 80, he has been "sharing anecdotes about his father," according to another senior White House official, and how it wasn't until his old man retired that he truly started to act like the old man he actually was. In this way, Trump appears to believe that having the job of president of the United States is giving him life. "He had an expression that I always remember," Trump told me in the Oval Office. " 'To retire is to expire.' " (As Eric Trump told me, "You've seen a lot of people who smoke cigarettes until they are 95 years old and the day they give up smoking, all of a sudden it's the end. I don't think my father could give up working.")

Fred Trump died in 1999 at age 93. He had, Trump said, a "heart that couldn't be stopped" with almost no health conditions to speak of throughout his long life. "He had one problem," Trump said. "At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do they call it?" He pointed to his forehead and looked to his press secretary for the word that escaped him.

"Alzheimer's," Leavitt said.

"Like an Alzheimer's thing," Trump said. "Well, I don't have it."

"Is it something you think about at all?" I asked.

"No, I don't think about it at all. You know why?" he said. "Because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever."
Mary Trump, the president's niece and vocal critic, said he shouldn't be so blasé. When I talked to her on the phone in January, she described what it was like to watch her grandfather transform into a shell of his former self. As is often the case, it started slowly, then happened all at once. "One of the first times I noticed it," she told me, "was at some event where he was being honored. And I looked at him and saw this deer-in-the-headlights look, like he had no idea where he was." Now, when she watches her uncle on the public stage, Mary says she often sees flashes of her grandfather. "Sometimes it does not seem like he's oriented to time and place," she said. "And on occasion, I do see that deer-in-the-headlights look."

Trump, of course, disagrees with these sorts of assessments of cognitive decline, which proliferate on social media after every one of his rambling speeches. The opposite is true, he contends, often citing the fact that he "aced" three recent cognitive tests. "I've taken a lot of them," he said at a bill signing in mid-January. "I've aced all of them because I drink milk." (Why Trump feels the need to take so many cognitive tests is a question he didn't want to linger on.) As far as he was concerned, his father's mental state near the end was just a footnote in a long, healthy life. "I know this," he said. "Genetically, I'm in great shape. My mother and her family lived very long, well into their 90s. No heart disease in my family. No this, no that. I have this friend whose mother died at 49 of a heart attack. His father died at 51 of a heart attack. He's now 60. I said, 'You're fucked.' He watches everything he eats. But you can't beat genetics."

Trump's diet is famously terrible. "He eats a ton of candy, and he eats meat," one senior White House official told me. "No vegetables." ("I don't know how he's alive," Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said of Trump's "unhinged" eating habits.) He doesn't believe in exercise. Recently, after he'd been dealing with swelling in his lower legs and ankles owing to his circulatory condition, doctors recommended he walk more. He asked his staff if there was anything else he could do instead. And he barely sleeps. There are members of his team who worry his lifestyle may not be sustainable in the long term. "He will collapse," a senior staffer said, referring to his need for weekend naps.

Trump, however, brushes off any suggestion that he should get more rest. "I think five hours is plenty," he said. "I find that when I'm really enjoying myself, I sleep less."

On December 2, Trump called a Cabinet meeting at the White House. The livestreamed event was over two hours long and featured the kind of outlandish obeisance we have grown accustomed to in his second administration. "Sir, you made it through hurricane season without a hurricane," Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said. "You even kept the hurricanes away, so we appreciate that." As his lackeys gushed over his leadership, Trump's eyelids grew heavier and heavier until finally he appeared to nod off multiple times.

Shortly after the meeting ended, Leavitt beckoned me into her West Wing office for an interview with Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary. He promptly told me I hadn't seen what I thought I'd just seen. "He's always awake, always alert, always knows what's going on," said Scharf, whose job requires him to be in almost constant contact with the president. "His work pace is remarkable. My dad is a few years older than he is; my dad couldn't do the job that the president does. I don't think I could do the job the president does." He added, "It's not dozing. Sometimes if he's thinking about something — and I made that mistake at first too — he adopts a pose. He leans back or leans forward a little bit, and he either closes his eyes or looks down — because he often takes notes in his lap."

When the president rests his eyes, Leavitt chimed in, he's actually "actively listening." His energy levels are so good, she claimed, that even elite members of the military can't keep up with his work schedule. "The Marine sentries who stand outside the Oval Office, they had to request more staff and bring up more Marines because the president is in the Oval Office so much," she said. "They've never had to do that before. They had to request more guys to stand by the door because they are running out of men to fill the shifts."

"He's working harder now than he did in his entire life," Leavitt added. "Even in real estate when he was on top of the world in New York."

All my conversations with members of Trumpworld went like this. "When he signed the Epstein transparency bill, he was here until I think 9:50, 9:45," White House communications director Steven Cheung later told me. "And the next day, he was here till 9:30. As much as I hate to admit it, I'm exhausted going into the workday and I'm exhausted at the end of the workday trying to keep up with the president."

"I mean it — on my children — I've never seen my father take a vacation," Eric Trump said. At different points in our interview, he called his father "miraculous," "remarkable," "incredible," and possessing "a level of energy unlike anything I've ever seen."

"If you look at his EKG, that tells it all," James Jones, the physician's assistant, told me. "The AI analysis shows he's 14 years younger. So age 65. His stamina demonstrates that. We get a view that nobody else does. Nobody can stay up with him. The rest of the staff is tired; we are too. And he's not." A few weeks later, Kennedy told Miller's wife, Katie Miller, on her podcast that Mehmet Oz, the administrator for Medicare and Medicaid, had told him that Trump "has the highest testosterone level he's ever seen for an individual who is over 70 years old."

Texas representative Ronny Jackson, Trump's former physician, recalled for me the time he put the president on a treadmill during his first term to check his heart health and was "shocked" by what he saw. Trump, wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt ("He looked like an athlete, for the record," Jackson said), spent about ten minutes walking at a brisk pace on an incline — supposedly achieving what fewer than 10 percent of people his age could. "His heart health is so phenomenal, so much so that the cardiologist from his last exam pretty much told his medical team that, based on his age, he's pretty much done with cardiac workups," he told me. "Whatever he dies of someday, it won't be his heart."
"The guy is too healthy," Marco Rubio said in an interview at the White House. "He's too active." Rubio — who in addition to running the State Department is the acting national security adviser and acting archivist of the U.S. — may be one of the busiest men in Washington. On the day I met with him, he was running behind schedule to get to a Capitol Hill briefing with top lawmakers. Still, he took time out of his day to regale me with stories about the president's "unparalleled" memory and attention to detail. Once, Trump noticed that Rubio's shoes looked "shitty," so at a later meeting, the president presented him with a gift: a signed shoebox containing a pair of size 12s. "I have them on, and they're perfect," Rubio said, pointing to his shiny black dress shoes. Another time, Trump perceived that the chandeliers in the State Department were missing medallions, the ornamental discs installed on the ceiling. A few days later, Trump called Rubio into his office with dozens of medallion samples. "I don't even know how many I need," Rubio recalled telling Trump. "He said, 'I think you need 12,' and sure enough ..." Rubio shook his head in awe. "I try to match it as much as I can. It's just not natural to me."

There's one place in particular where Rubio is unable to keep up with the president: Air Force One. Rubio said he needs to get some rest on overseas flights, but Trump never naps on the plane. So the secretary of State, a man tasked with instilling fear in the hearts of our enemies and confidence among our allies, spends part of most flights hiding from a nearly 80-year-old man. "There's an office with two couches, and I usually want to sleep on one of those two couches," Rubio said. "But what I do is I cocoon myself in a blanket. I cover my head. I look like a mummy." Here, Rubio mimed pulling a blanket over his body as if he were auditioning for a Snuggie commercial. "And I do that because I know that at some point on the flight, he's going to emerge from the cabin and start prowling the hallways to see who is awake. I want him to think it's a staffer who fell asleep. I don't want him to see his secretary of State sleeping on a couch and think, Oh, this guy is weak."

When I asked about whether Trump was catching z's during those heavy-lidded moments on-camera, Rubio scoffed. "It's a listening mechanism," he said.

In the Oval Office, Trump offered a different defense for closing his eyes during the Cabinet meeting. "It's boring as hell," he said. "I'm going around a room, and I've got 28 guys — the last one was three and a half hours. I have to sit back and listen, and I move my hand so that people will know I'm listening. I'm hearing every word, and I can't wait to get out."

Just then, Trump's phone began ringing and a name flashed on his screen: Ari Emanuel, Hollywood superagent, inspiration for Jeremy Piven's character in HBO's Entourage, and brother of possible 2028 Democratic presidential candidate Rahm.

"The great Ari Emanuel," Trump said, interrupting our interview to gab. "What's up, Ari? What's happening? Hey, Ari, I have a wonderful writer here. He's doing a story for New York Magazine. He says, 'So, are you in good health? Is your mind as sharp?'"

Trump put Emanuel, who had called to talk to the president about tax incentives for Hollywood studios, on speaker. "I have the great Ari Emanuel; let him tell you whether Trump's mind is sharp. You'll be my reference. Go ahead, Ari, his name is Ben."

There was a slight pause as Emanuel seemed to consider what to say.

"Hi, Ben," he said. "I represented him for nine years; it doesn't seem like he's changed at all: his wit, his remembering everything, being on it. He seems normal." There was one caveat, however. "I haven't seen him in about five years," he said.

"But we speak a lot," Trump said. "And he would say, 'Trump's losing it.'"

He put the phone down on the table as Emanuel turned the conversation to a memo he'd written for Trump about getting rebates for movies, television shows, and commercials, which Trump said he'd take a look at. "I couldn't get a better reference than Ari," Trump said to me with Emanuel still on the line. "They made a television show about this fucking guy. He's a legend."

Trump calls himself the "most transparent" president in history, but getting an accurate readout of his health is a difficult task. He has a history of obfuscation on the topic. During his first campaign, Trump's personal doctor, Harold Bornstein, issued a letter saying the soon-to-be president was in "astonishingly excellent" health. Later, Bornstein admitted that the letter had been written by Trump. In late 2020, Trump reportedly suffered a bout of COVID that was much more severe than he or his advisers ever let on. Mark Meadows, then his chief of staff, reportedly thought he might die.

Then there's the fact there's enough evidence in the public record to fit anyone's prior beliefs. He clearly seemed to be sleeping in meetings but can speak on his feet for over an hour during late-night rallies. He goes on grueling international trips, and his voice often sounds shot for days after he returns. He stayed up all night at Mar-a-Lago to track the capture of Maduro (and took a phone call from a New York Times reporter at 4:30 a.m.) but then seemed to be struggling with the stairs of Air Force One. In November, Trump went viral for having a hard time walking in a video with his grandson, but later that day I watched him march in lockstep with Melania through a rainy field to get to his Marine One helicopter without so much as a stumble. Some typically worrisome signs of mental deterioration — erratic behavior, convoluted speaking, threatening to invade Greenland because he did not receive a Nobel Peace Prize — may also be Trump being Trump.

In October, Trump made news with a pair of comments from Air Force One. In the first, he said he wouldn't rule out serving a third presidential term, even though he admitted "it's pretty clear I'm not allowed to run." Some have theorized that the third-term talk is a way for Trump to counteract his lame-duck status. But the idea has titillated some of Trump's most ardent supporters, none more so than his political consigliere Steve Bannon. "It's not his final term," Bannon told me. "He's going to run again in '28; hell, he's running now. It's obvious. He's got another ten years at least." Retiring would mean expiring, after all, and Bannon is convinced that much of Trump's "BDE," as he put it, comes from the job. "It's not human, not at that age." (Bannon has floated a presidential run of his own, supposedly to continue promoting his "America First" agenda.) When I asked Eric Trump, however, if his father would run for president again, he demurred, saying he would "find something to do" in Republican politics, perhaps as a kingmaker for the party.

The second piece of news from Air Force One came when Trump mentioned that he had undergone magnetic-resonance imaging earlier in the month at Walter Reed. "I gave you the full results," he said, despite this being the first anyone had heard about an MRI — a scan often used for disease detection and monitoring. As for why he had the imaging done in the first place? "You'll have to ask the doctors," he said.

Now, in the Oval Office, I had the chance to do just that.

"Can I just ask about the MRI?" I said.

"Yes, please," Trump said, leaning forward in his chair. "It was the worst fucking thing I ever did, and I blame them." Trump pointed at Barbabella and Jones, who sat motionless beside me. "They wanted me to take it. And because I took it, people want to say, 'Oh, there must be something wrong.'"

Trump turned again to the doctors.

"Can you explain why you asked me that?" he said, shaking his head. "Stupidest thing I've ever done."

Jones shuffled the handful of papers in his lap, each one filled with blocks of typed text and hand-scrawled notes. "We asked him to do it because he had a scheduled trip at Walter Reed," he said. "While he was there, I asked him if we could complete some additional physical things that we were planning on doing annually. And he was like, 'Okay. We will work it in for time schedules.'" It wasn't actually an MRI. "We did a computerized tomography exam of his chest and his abdomen," Jones said. "It's MRI-like."

"And not for any reason," Trump said, cutting in. "It's because the machine was sitting there, I'm sitting right next to it."

"There was no evidence of narrowing of any blood vessels," said Barbabella. "And no abnormalities of the heart."

"The reason for the imaging, as routine as we stated, is that any patient his age could have things, and we ruled them out," said Jones. "The story should be about the fact that the results were, uh, perfect. They did not demonstrate any problems."

"Excellent results," Barbabella muttered, almost to himself. "They were excellent results."

"I love these two guys; they're great," Trump said. "But I don't know them. They're White House doctors."

For weeks, I'd been trying to get a handle on Trump's health. I'd come away thinking he might be pretty healthy for an almost octogenarian, if not quite the superhuman the president or his team would have me believe. But I'm not a doctor, nor do I spend a lot of time with Trump. Now I was in a room with actual doctors who actually treat the president and know him. Perhaps more than anyone else in this country, they would be in a position to know — yet their proximity to him could be part of the problem.

"You worked for the Obamas, didn't you?" Leavitt said to Jones.

"Yes, I did," he said. Jones had, in fact, worked from 2009 to 2018 as a senior medical leader in the White House. At the end of his presidency, Barack Obama, a fitness fanatic rumored to allow himself precisely seven almonds a night, was 55 years old.

"Who is healthier, Obama or President Trump?" I asked.

Trump stared across the desk, making eye contact with Jones. Jones didn't hesitate.

"President Trump," he said.

Trump nodded. There was no sign of a smile, as if there could not have been any other answer to that question.

"Write that," he said, turning to me.

Totally normal stuff.

#5

Off the Record / Re: The EU thread

Last post by Syt - Today at 01:59:56 AM

This particular problem seems uniquely British. The Euros, for all their faults, can build shit. To the point I am envious as a Texan and we supposedly have lax regulations. When we try to build something it turns into a total clusterfuck, totally over budget and late and turns into a statewide embarrasment. When France or the Netherlands or whatever builds something it actually gets built. I don't get it.

But I think this is just a reference to the general problem of trying to solve anything. Intertia is really powerful.

I think it's pretty widespread. And it makes it hard to distinguish between genuine concerns (e.g. in Vienna - do we need another highway arterial through a nature preserve instead of expanding public transport infrastructure?) from the frivolous ones (windmills cause cancer), and obviously there will often be a very blurry line and vast gray area between what's reasonable and what isn't and strong divisions over it.

#6

Off the Record / Re: The EU thread

Last post by Crazy_Ivan80 - Today at 01:52:55 AM

Fair enough sheilbh. Victorians look down upon you with disdain, though.


*edit* good point baron.

*edit 2* although, to Baron's point is it that bad across Europe and we just hear about it more from England because of language and poster bias, or is it a uniquely British disease?

Flanders has the disease too. Large projects take forever due to regulation and lawsuits. Lawsuits often created by ngo-groups subsidized by the government (just another reason to retract subsidies from such groups)

#7

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Razgovory - Today at 12:47:01 AM

2nd attack against a Democratic Congressperson this week.  Ilhan Omar was attacked with a syringe tonight.  Maxwell Frost was punched a few days ago.

#8

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Valmy - Today at 12:40:49 AM

Looks like Trump today put conservative 2nd amendment people to the real test as to what's more important to them:  Trump or 2nd amendment.  Early indications seem to go in favor of 2nd amendment.

Oh interesting.

I'm not following the internal US debate that closely - what are some of the indicators you're seeing?

Just visited the biggest pro-gun subreddit I could find to see what their take on today's news was, where Trump said you can't have guns.  I haven't visited any before, so I don't know the specifics of that particular community, but needless to say it didn't seem like a liberal subreddit with a very nuanced take on the issue. 

There was quite a bit of an activity there today, going by the mod announcements.  The most liked posts seemed to remind the readers that Trump actually was an anti-gun Democrat before 2016, and still is.

Considering he was at the center of Birtherism and constantly ripped Obama before 2016 I suspect he stopped being a Democrat well before then.

But notice how even when Trump and the Republicans do something they hate, it is still somehow a reason to hate the Democrats. That is where we are.

#9

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Jacob - Today at 12:25:09 AM

Thanks!

#10

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by DGuller - Today at 12:09:58 AM

Looks like Trump today put conservative 2nd amendment people to the real test as to what's more important to them:  Trump or 2nd amendment.  Early indications seem to go in favor of 2nd amendment.

Oh interesting.

I'm not following the internal US debate that closely - what are some of the indicators you're seeing?

Just visited the biggest pro-gun subreddit I could find to see what their take on today's news was, where Trump said you can't have guns.  I haven't visited any before, so I don't know the specifics of that particular community, but needless to say it didn't seem like a liberal subreddit with a very nuanced take on the issue. 

There was quite a bit of an activity there today, going by the mod announcements.  The most liked posts seemed to remind the readers that Trump actually was an anti-gun Democrat before 2016, and still is.