With this in mind, Donald Trump recently boasted that he would release some medical information that would “show perfection.” Today, the Republican campaign followed up in the most Trump-like fashion imaginable.
Donald Trump’s campaign released a statement from his personal physician Monday asserting that the real estate mogul’s “physical strength and stamina are extraordinary” and his recent lab tests results were “astonishingly excellent.”“If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” wrote Dr. Harold Bornstein, who said that he has been Trump’s personal physician since 1980.
I have no background whatsoever in medicine, but I’ve known a few doctors over the years, and I can safely say I’ve never met a medical professional who uses phrases like “astonishingly excellent” to describe their patients.
As for the doctor’s “unequivocal” belief that Trump would be the healthiest president in the history of the United States, the brief, one-page letter gave no indication of what kind of historical research Bornstein conducted before drawing this conclusion — a point even White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest chose to emphasize.
As best as I can tell, there have been no health concerns related to Trump’s candidacy — at least not since his Vietnam-era deferments — so this isn’t a situation in which the campaign is under pressure to over-compensate. Trump would be the oldest person ever elected, but there’s very little to suggest anyone cares.
Instead what we have here is a letter — which begins, “To Whom My Concern” — that reads a bit like a bad joke. Andrew Prokop put it this way: “Donald Trump really loves to make bombastic, hyperbolic, and self-aggrandizing claims about Donald Trump. Apparently his doctor does too.”
It’s almost as if Trump wrote his own description of his amazing, Adonis-like physical condition and then asked his doctor to sign the letter.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."