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It turns out that Donald Trump wrote his own “astonishingly excellent” doctor's note

Consider us shocked

It turns out that Donald Trump wrote his own “astonishingly excellent” doctor's note
02 May 2018

Now, we hope you’re sitting down, because we have some truly shocking news for you: apparently Donald Trump has lied about something.

Yes, yes, we know, we should have given you more time to prepare for this event, such is its highly unusual and unprecedented nature.

This time (what, you mean it’s happened before?) the relevation comes from Trump’s former doctor, who has said that he did not write an infamous 2015 letter, which declared that the then-Republican presidential candidate had “astonishingly excellent” health and that he would be the “healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency”.

Harold Bornstein told CNN on Tuesday that “[Trump] dictated that whole letter,” adding, “I just made it up as I went along.”

The claim comes alongside another that Mr Trump’s bodyguard had carried out a raid on his offices in February 2017, two days after Bornstein told a newspaper that he had prescribed a hair growth medicine, Propecia, for the president for years. The incident saw all of Trump’s medical records removed, including the original and only copy of Mr Trump’s medical charts.

Bornstein told NBC News that he felt “raped, frightened and sad” when Keith Schiller, Trump’s bodyguard, and another “large man” came to his office to take the president’s records.

The medical letter included statements on Trump’s physical strength and stamina, which were described as “extraordinary”, with his blood pressure and lab tests described as “astonishingly excellent”.

That certainly doesn’t sound like the sort of language Trump would use at all if he were writing his own report, does it?

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders - an absolute bastion of truth-telling who would never deviate from an accurate portrayal of events - later insisted that the incident was not a raid, saying: “It would be standard procedure for a newly elected president’s records to be in possession by the White House medical unit. And that was what was taking place, is those records were being transferred over to the White House medical unit as requested.”

Apropos of nothing:

The revelation should hardly be a surprise, in 2016, The Atlantic wrote the following:

“To readers with a keen eye, the hand of Trump might seem evident, particularly the descriptors: “his strength and physical stamina are extraordinary” and his “laboratory test results are astonishingly excellent.” There is even an instance of the Trumpian habit of beginning a sentence with “actually,” for purposes of building on (as opposed to contradicting) the prior sentence: “Mr. Trump has had a complete medical examination that showed only positive results. Actually, his blood pressure and lab results were astonishingly excellent.”

They also noted that, “Donald Trump would be the oldest individual ever elected to the presidency. He sleeps little and holds angry grudges. He purports to eat KFC and girthy slabs of red meat, and his physique doesn’t suggest any inconsistency in this. His health might be fine, but a claim to anything superlative feels off.”

Nonetheless, it is unclear why Bornstein has decided to make these claims now.

(Image: Getty)