Trump

Does Trump have health issues?

The letter

After questions about Donald Trump's mental health emerged from all directions his campaign fought back by questioning Hillary Clinton's physical health in a really ridiculous and pathetic way. Sean Hannity didn't hesitate to bring a panel of bogus doctors — one in the appropriate white coat — to comment on Clinton's health. Bogus? Well, yes, no real doctor would diagnose a patient based on cherry-picked photographs, without an actual examination or interview.

OK, the media weren't really impressed by this, so the campaign had to try something else. How about reporting about Donald Trump's Super Health™? So they sent out Donald Trump's health report from his personal physician.

In an article on Huffington Post  Dr. Jennifer Gunter — a real doctor — analysed the letter and noticed there are a lot of things in it which are fishy.

1. The header has a non-working web address, and doctors don’t include e-mail addresses in letters.
2. Lennox Hill has a Division of Gastroenterology, not a “Section,” and Dr. Bornstein isn’t listed on the website as a member.
3. The letter starts with a typo.
4. No doctor describes tests as “only positive results” or “astonishingly excellent”.
5. Doctors don’t say “test score” — we just give the results.
6. How did Dr. Bornstein test Donald Trump’s strength and stamina?
7. “The healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
8. There isn’t any useful health information.

It is worth noting that the letter mentioning the web address dates from 4 December 2015, while the URL wasn't registered until 7 April 2016. And especially fishy is that the registration  was modified/updated the day after Dr. Gunter's opinion appeared on The Huffington Post. Is it possible that links to the Trump presidential campaign were removed?

Dr. Gunter mentions a couple of things in the letter that she doesn't find concerning, but concludes that it's a terrible letter, and she raises the question whether Trump wrote it himself.

Of course he did. No doctor would write anything like this. The letter drips of the grandiosity which is just one symptom of his Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It's also full of lies, lies and more lies, and those are a symptom of Trump's Antisocial Personality Disorder. Sociopaths like Trump will lie all the time if it helps them to achieve their goals, and feel no remorse about it.

The best proof that the letter wasn't written by a doctor is the use of the term “only positive results”. No doctor would ever say this, as in medicine a “positive result” means that you have the disease. Has Trump been tested for HIV and is his result positive? Is he positive on prostate cancer?

This is not a medical report, it's a hagiography.

When you have to issue a health report on a person who is really in good health, whouldn't it make sense and be more credible to issue a real health report? If you issue a fake one it may raise the question of why it was faked. Does the person have health issues he wants to conceal (other than Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder)?

The doctor

Harold Bornstein appears to be a real doctor. But while he still calls himself “F.A.C.G.” (Fellow of the American College of Gastroenterology), he hasn't been a Fellow for more than 20 years. That's fraud. What's also fraud is saying you're working at the “Section” (sic) of Gastroenterology of Lenox Hill Hospital, New York, when you're not. And a third fraud is lending your name to a medical report you didn't write yourself, but had written by your patient. For these Harold Bornstein should be disbarred as an M.D.

“I am proud to share this health report, written by the highly respected Dr. Jacob Bornstein,” Trump said in a now-deleted tweet in late 2015. A similar post on Facebook also referred to Dr. Jacob Bornstein. Doctor Bornstein died nearly 6 years earlier, in February 2010. I think we can safely assume neither Jacob Bornstein, nor his son Harold bornstein was/is Donald Trump's family doctor.

After dr. Jennifer Gunter drew attention to the letter in a contribution on Huffington Post  the general response was hilarity, which caused the doctor to defend himself by saying he wrote it in 5 minutes, while a limo was waiting for it. Again, I don't believe this. Even when a doctor would write such a letter in 5 minutes he wouldn't say “only positive results”.

The reason dr. Bornstein lent his name to Trump's auto-hagiography is clear: he's a fan. Not only would he agree that Trump is in fact Superman, he also smears Hillary Clinton by claiming she is in bad health without having examined her.

Again, dr. Harold Bornstein is a charlatan and a fraud, and should be disbarred as an M.D.