SEPTEMBER 15, 2016
Photo: The Atlantic
Wednesday was “Release Your Health Records Day” in the campaign, always a fun event.
Hillary Clinton’s doctor offered a detailed account of her current bout with pneumonia, while Donald Trump went on a daytime medical show and asked the studio audience whether or not he should produce his medical records. When they cheered him to do it, he reached into his pocket and pulled out two pieces of paper. Two. By comparison, John McCain in 2008 released a full 1,173-page medical report. Transparency appears to mean different things to different people.
The health issue was brought to the foreground by Clinton’s apparent collapse from dehydration at a 9/11 anniversary event on Sunday, but the discussion actually began 14 months ago in July 2015.
At that time, candidate Clinton, who suffered from a dehydration-influenced fall and resulting concussion in 2012, evidently felt that it was important to get out in front of the issue early in the campaign and released a fairly detailed summary last year of her past health problems and current prognosis.
On Wednesday, her long-time physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, chair of internal medicine at the Mount Kisco Medical Group, offered another detailed medical report, this time about Clinton’s initially-secret bout with pneumonia, and after four evaluations of the candidate’s health (including one on Wednesday), Dr. Bardack noted that Clinton was diagnosed with a kind of mild, non-contagious bacterial pneumonia but that she is recovering well with antibiotics and rest. Clinton is expected to return to the campaign trail on Thursday.
Trump and one of his primary surrogates, a particularly wild-eyed Rudy Giuliani, have, for the past month or so, been starting a whispering campaign about Clinton’s health. At first, it was just vague suggestions that Clinton didn’t have the “stamina” to serve as President — anyone who watched her vigorous 11 1/2-hour performance facing down the GOP Benghazi Committee would have to laugh at that.
When that charge gained little traction (except on Fox News), Giuliani upped the ante, suggesting ominous repercussions from her 2012 concussion. He even suggested that maybe it’s even…a brain tumor! However, as the escalating amateur diagnoses began to seem even more ludicrous, the frightening footage of Clinton being helped into her van on Sunday gave the speculation new life.
Trump sensed an opening, but rather than provide a detailed medical history of his own, the showman decided to make an appearance to talk about his health on the syndicated daytime series “The Dr. Oz Show,” which was taped on Wednesday.
In case you are not familiar with his work, Dr Mehmet Oz is a cardiothoracic surgeon who became wildly popular after appearances on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in the mid-2000s, getting his own daily series in the process. His penchant for endorsing questionable alternative medical practices began earning him some unwanted publicity, and in June 2014, he was hauled before a U.S. Senate grilling for his repeated commercials for a worthless weight-loss product.
Trump must have seen a kindred spirit here.
Weeks ago, Trump’s own health was called into question when his physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, produced a letter attesting to the fact that
“If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
Presumably, Dr. Bornstein’s examinations of Martin Van Buren did not compare with the physical specimen of Mr. Trump. No slight on his medical expertise, but in several TV interviews, Dr. Bornstein, whose disheveled long-haired appearance would make even Tommy Chong want to lock him in the attic, confessed that he wrote his rave review of Trump’s health in five minutes while a Trump limo was waiting to take it just outside his office door.
Trump’s “Dr. Oz” appearance finally aired on Thursday, and it turns out that the “medical history” that Trump produced was a copy of his most recent physical (which is better than nothing, but it only captures his health at that moment) and, yes, another letter from Dr. Bornstein. Trump sat there grinning, looking like a man has put one over on the world.
And he’ll probably get away with it.
