An Unscheduled Hospital Visit

President Donald Trump spent a couple of hours in Walter Reed Hospital on Saturday, and there’s much speculation about why. Trump has “tweeted” it was just “phase one” of his annual checkup, but there are reasons to doubt that.

For one thing, Trump’s last annual checkup was only nine months ago, and he doesn’t strike us as the sort who wants to undergo another one any sooner than he has to. For another thing, checkups are rarely done in phases. For yet another thing, the hospital visit was not on the president’s published daily schedule and seems to have arranged hastily. Also, there’s a medical unit at the White House that has previously sufficed for presidential checkups.

The biggest reason for the skepticism, though, is that what Trump says so often turns out to be a big fat lie. Speaking of big and fat, his previous checkup results clearly overstated his height and understated his weight, and Trump was so pleased by he nominated one of the doctors to be director of the Veterans Administration, although the nomination was withdrawn when the Republicans in Congress after allegations of staff harassment and script-writing surfaced and everyone noticed the doctor had no administrative experience.

During the election Trump broke with longstanding tradition by refusing to release his medical records, and instead offered a four-paragraph letter from his weird-looking gastroenterologist testifying that the candidate’s “strength and stamina are extraordinary” and “his laboratory tests results are astonishingly excellent,” and oddly enough that “Mr. Trump has had a medical examination showed only positive results.” The letter concluded that Trump would be “the healthiest person ever elected to the presidency,” and judging by that hyperbolic prose style and the things that no licensed physician would ever say it was clear that Trump dictated it, which the doctor later acknowledged.

Trump feels obliged to always present an image of alpha male invincibility, bragging about his artificially deflated golf scores and even his penis size, as well as constantly denigrating the energy levels and physical attractiveness of his foes, so he’d surely be loathe to admit to even the most minor sort of ailment that might bring a mere human being to a hospital for a couple of hours. Given that at 73-years-of-age Trump is the oldest president ever, with a well known penchant for fast food and an aversion to any exercise that doesn’t involve a golf cart, as well as well-established record of telling big fat lies, the skepticism about Trump’s brief time in the hospital is inevitable.

We’re not prone to conspiracy theories about a politician’s health, such as the ones Trump fans peddled back when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton fainted on a hot New York City sidewalk and then died and was replaced by a body double, but it’s easy to believe that Trump had some minor ailment that more normal people would admit to. We truly hope that’s the most benign explanation for Trump’s impromptus motorcade visit to Walter Reed, and that whatever tests Trump had there yielded only those hoped-for negative results, and that he soldiers on through his likely impeachment.

Even so, we’d be more reassured about the health of our septuagenarian president if he weren’t so big and fat and such a big fat liar.

— Bud Norman

Our Very Reluctant Reflections on a Current Presidential Topic

Once upon a more polite time in American politics we would never have considered writing a word about a president’s penis, but in the age of President Donald Trump it’s yet another one of those many unprecedented topics one can’t quite avoid. Trump’s appendage first made its debut in the political conversation during the ’16 Republican primaries, when he assured his supporters that “I guarantee you there’s no problem, I guarantee,” and now it’s back in the news with a pornographic video performer and director’s far less flattering assessment.

The best-selling non-fiction book in America at the moment is journalism legend Bob Woodward’s “Fear: Trump in the White House,” which depicts an administration full of people worried that the chief executive is dangerously unfit for office, but we expect that next week’s chart-topper will be by a pornographic video performer and director called Stormy Daniels. Recently released by the courts from a $130,000 non-disclosure contract to not talk about an alleged tryst with Trump back when his youngest son by his third wife was 4-months-old, Daniels has a “tell-all” book coming out that will surely be far more lucrative, and the most salacious parts have already leaked out, and what she says will probably offend Trump more than anything in that Woodward book.

Ever since the editor of the once-fashonable and still-well-remembered but long-defunct Spy Magazine in New York City wrote that then local celebrity Trump was a “short-fingered vulgarian” the current president has been famously touchy about the size of his hands, which is why his penis came up in the news in the first place. Late in the death throes of his ill-fated presidential candidacy Florida Sen. Marco Rubio decided to give Trump’s undeniably successful insult comic shtick a try, and poked at that button he knew Trump had about his hand size, and very subtly suggested that Trump had other insecurities as well. Rubio was widely denounced in most corners for getting down to Trump’s gutter level, however, and Trump’s guarantees on a Republican presidential debate stage that there was no problem down there brought roars of approval from his mostly male die-hard supporters.

At the time we thought it more even embarrassing than the era of President Bill Clinton and its unavoidable fellatio jokes about a naive intern, but the latest developments are worse yet. We suppose there’s an chance that Trump didn’t cheat on third wife a few months after the birth of his fifth child with a pornographic video performer and a Playboy centerfold model, and paid them both six-figure amounts not to say so because he’s just that kind of stand-up guy who wants to protect his wife, but other tawdry scenarios seem more likely. Which makes the porn star’s assessment of Trump’s penis more plausible, which Trump will surely find more infuriating than anything that Pulitzer Prize-winning Wood might claim.

Given that this is the age of President Donald Trump, after all, we’ll just go ahead and write out that a porn star called Stormy Daniels is now alleging that the presidential penis is “smaller than average” but “not freakishly small,” and resembles a certain mushroom-shaped character in a popular video game, along with other details which have since gone viral. This is all on the public record where you’re bound to run into it sooner or later, but we apologize if you saw it here first.

To be fair to Trump, we concede that Daniels is a pornographic video performer, and thus probably has an unrealistic idea of what constitutes an average penis size, and that perhaps she’s lying about what she calls the “least impressive sex I’ve ever had,” and that in fact Trump is the most well-endowed and selfless lover he’s ever experienced/.” At this point we’re inclined to believe she’s been in a position to know, however, and with great anxiety we await Trump’s reassurances about the presidential package.

Worst yet, all of this tawdry nonsense seems dangerously tied up with the rest of it. On issues ranging from international trade to longstanding military alliances to the currently swelling national deficit Trump has promised that only his uniquely endowed alpha maleness can rescue the country from his the nefarious plots of critics, but at this point we’re more inclined to believe a pornographic video performer and director that Trump isn’t all he claims to be. If Daniel’s descriptions of the presidential junk are at all accurate they might also exacerbate the current frostiness between the president and his First Lady, which is another one of those unavoidable stories these days.

In the meantime Trump’s Supreme Court nomination is stalled by credible charges of attempted rape, the “Russia thing” racks up ever-closer-to-Trump guilty pleas and cooperating witnesses, the president keeps feuding with his Attorney General, yet the economy seems to keep humming along. We don’t expect that in the end the president’s penis will have much to do with it one way or the other, but in this weird day and age it will likely play some part. For now all those snarky late-night television comics are having great fun with it, however, and we can’t say we  blame them.

— Bud Norman

Do Not Remain Calm, Democrats, All is Not Well

Republican nominee Donald J. Trump took a slight lead over presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in Real Clear Politics’ widely watched average of polls on Monday, and at least three pundits were urging that the Democrats not panic about it. Given what was going on both outside and inside the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, those pundits’ pleas for calm recall that scene in “Animal House” where Kevin Bacon is urging the townsfolk fleeing a fraternity-induced riot to “remain calm, all is well,” just before he is squashed into the sidewalk, Wile E. Coyote style, by the terrified trampling horde.

Outside the Wells Fargo Convention Hall there were large groups of angry supporters of self-described socialist and Democratic runner-up Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wearing the same “Hillary for Prison” t-shirts and shouting the same “Lock her up” chants that were de rigueur at last week’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and even on the credentials-only inside the presumptive nominee hardly fared better. Surly Sanders delegates were booing any mention of Clinton’s name even during the opening prayer that the rigorously secular Democrats still offer for some reason or another, and kept it up even when Sanders himself was speaking on behalf of the presumptive nominee. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman and Rep. Denbie Wasserman-Schultz, who was denied a speaking slot and will resign her post at the end of convention because of the leak of thousands of e-mails showing she had long plotted against Sanders on behalf of Clinton, endured a similar chorus of boos while addressing her home state of Florida’s delegates. Speeches by such liberal icons as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and First Lady Michele Obama and and illegal immigrant girl were better received, but hardly any reason to delay the panic.

Those Kevin Bacon-ish pundits pleading for Democratic calm could rightly point out that Trump’s lead is indeed slight, well within the margin of error, and that other usually reliable forecasting models continue to show Clinton with a lead, although also slight and well within their margins of error, and that of course the election remains a few months away, but a few months ago everybody had Clinton up nearly double digits so the clear trend is not encouraging for Clinton supporters. They rightly note that Clinton has far more money and a larger campaign apparatus, but the dissolution of her once formidable lead has come as she’s vastly out-spent her opponent on attack ads. They also note the Trump’s long forestalled lead came with the usual “convention bump,” but that was no usual convention the Republicans held and it didn’t get the “yuuge” ratings the candidate expects probably would have cost the usual candidate a point or two, and what’s going on in Philadelphia doesn’t seem likely to undo the damage.

Hope springs eternal in the Democratic soul, so there are also reassurances to the faithful that Trump will surely do something to disqualify himself from the race, but all hope has already been extinguished in our formerly Republican souls and we can’t think of any reason our leftists friends should have any. If they’re hoping that Trump will mock somebody’s handicap or disparage American prisoners of war or publicly boast about his penis size or peddle some bizarre and slanderous conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination he’s already done that, and much more, and got a bump in the polls every time. If they’ve got their fingers crossed that he’ll make some more dangerous statements about paying America’s creditors less than promised or not fulfilling our treaty obligations or taking The National Enquirer seriously, that all happened while he was taking his slight lead in the race.

Trump prevailed with such unprecedented tactics against a crowded field of better-funded and better-organized Republican challengers, who varied in quality but in every case were more appealing public figures than Clinton. What those pleading-for-calm pundits won’t tell their readers is that Clinton is such a thoroughly awful candidate in every way that her unfavorable ratings are now even higher than Trump’s, which is saying something that should provoke a widespread and bipartisan panic throughout the land. Her tenure as First Lady was mostly spent enabling her perv husband’s sexual assaults, which Democrats at the time applauded because at least he was pro-abortion, but these days the feminist wing that was supposed to go all sisterly solidarity for the First Woman President are carrying mattresses around campus to protest a mythical “culture of rape” with the Republican nominee praising the good works of Planned Parenthood and quite obviously insincere about his recently acquired anti-abortion principles nobody’s all that anxious about the looming theocracy these days. Her brief and inconsequential time in the Senate was mostly spent plotting her presidential run, which she lost to an even more junior and inconsequential Senator, and her run as Secretary of State was one disaster after another. She’s humorless, apparently in ill health, and every bit as mean and morally compromised as her more entertaining and robust opponent.

The longtime political operative doesn’t seem to understand this strange American moment nearly as well as the longtime reality television show star she’s running against, too, and thus has wound up on the wrong side of big issues. That 11-year-old illegal immigrant girl given a spot on the Democratic convention stage sure was cute, but no so cute as to dissuade the majority of Americans who are so eager for some semblance of immigration law enforcement that they’re even willing to indulge wild fantasies about giant walls that the Mexicans will pay for.

Her frequently stated belief that all Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people who have nothing to do with terrorism is more consequentially wrong than Trump’s wild overstatements about how they’re all out to get us and we have to start getting tough even on the Gallic French and Teutonic Germans who have been willingly living among them. Trump’s protectionist trade policies are so similar to the self-described socialists Sanders’ that he’s making an unlikely plea to Sanders’ supporters, and although Clinton has been dragged into pretty much the same disastrous and suddenly bipartisan position her past support for the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade-friendly policies make her seem the less sincere of the two remaining contenders.

She’s also stuck with the race-baiting “Black Lives Matter” movement that isn’t playing well outside the black community that was going to vote for any old Democrat anyway, while Trump is so law-and-order that he once called for the execution of the young black and hispanic men convicted of raping the “Central Park Jogger” and then continued to do even after they were exonerated by incontestable physical evidence, which won’t endear him to those black voters who were going to vote Democrat anyway and probably won’t much bother many of his own supporters. Trump is against Obamacare, which is good enough for his supporters, and although his vague descriptions of a replacement that would “take care of everybody” and the “government’s going to pay for it” probably won’t win him many new supporters at least it will make it hard for Clinton to pull out the usual heartless capitalist cliches. Trump’s newfound enthusiasm for government-paid child care and “LGBTQ” issues right up to and including that creepy guy hanging around the women’s restrooms and showers obviates much of the old Democratic playbook, too, and somehow in this strange American moment it didn’t keep him from romping to a Republican nomination.

At this point Democrats might as well start facing the dreary fact we were forced to confront last week that either one of these dreadful candidates might win, and that in either case the country is going to lose. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, we advise trample them as you flee in horror and leave them squashed on the sidewalk in Wile E. Coyote fashion.

— Bud Norman