The Dealbreaker Smell Test

The former governor of New Jersey has dropped out of the presidential race, Trump’s lawyer claims that presidential immunity covers having rivals assassinated, and fringe candidate RFK Jr. got smacked around by celebs like Dionne Warwick after claiming they were attending his birthday fundraising gala.

bink, picky, picky, picky. let’s not get granular about the glandular.

one sometimes has to manipulate certain things no matter how painful and take license to fit an objective.

altho I must admit that my excuse is a bit ironic given the juxtaposition to a thread topic about truthiness.

article today for history buffs who are interested in political health privacy issue.

 Before Lloyd Austin, a history of White House health secrets and TMI – The Washington Post

Long before Lloyd Austin’s cancer diagnosis, many top officials hid ailments. Others shared graphic details.

On Sept. 26, 1055, the president of the United States did what many of us do upon waking up. It just happened
to be national news. “He had a good bowel movement,” Dwight D. Eisenhower’s press secretary told reporters.
One of Eisenhower’s physicians added, “The country will be very pleased — the country is so bowel-minded anyway — to know that the president had a good movement this morning, and it is important. It is good for the morale of people.”

This intimate detail, revealed two days after Eisenhower suffered a major heart attack, represents one extreme when it comes to medical transparency from the nation’s top brass. On the opposite end is Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who kept the nation and even President Biden in the dark about his prostate cancer diagnosis, surgery and subsequent hospitalization following complications.
How much information do national leaders owe the public about their personal health? And when do we reach the point of too much information, intestinal or otherwise?
“Some [medical] things are so obviously not the public’s business, and some are,” but figuring out where to draw the line is tough, said journalist Matthew Algeo, author of the 2012 book “The President Is a Sick Man,” about Grover Cleveland’s top-secret surgery for cancer.
U.S. history provides several cautionary tales that support transparency – at least to a point.
Several times, White House physicians failed to disclose major presidential health crises. The public didn’t learn that Franklin D. Roosevelt was on death’s door during his fourth term or that Woodrow Wilson was severely debilitated by a massive stroke, facts that had major consequences on the world stage.
In total, four presidents (including Roosevelt) and seven vice presidents have died in office of natural causes.
More recently, President Donald Trump and his staff were cagey about his health. In 2016, the year he became the oldest person elected president to that point, his physician claimed without providing any real evidence that he would “be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” and skepticism about his reported weight in 2018 spawned a “girther” movement. Later, the White House and the president’s physicians failed to tell the public how seriously ill he was with covid-19 during the 2020 campaign.
[continues with health reporting tidbits about various presidents and presidential candidates]
Meanwhile, members of Congress have floated proposals about the medical evaluation of presidents and presidential candidates, but none has become law. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley says she wants candidates older than 75 to take mental competency tests — a poll suggests Americans like the idea — and Carter, the oldest ex-president, has suggested that there should be an age limit for the presidency.
Whether or not new policies are adopted, it’s not likely that the media will ever get the level of access it had following the 1881 assassination attempt on President James Garfield (even if the White House was giving the press an overly rosy assessment of his condition). Physicians provided daily bulletins to reporters about details ranging from his pulse and temperature to his rectal feeding.
And before Garfield died later that year, an Associated Press reporter was allowed to sit outside the president’s sick room and tell other journalists what he heard. […]

the guardian

Trump leaves courtroom after accusing judge, attorney general of bias – report
Donald Trump walked out of the courtroom after excoriating both New York attorney general Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron for the civil fraud accusations against him, MSNBC reports:

lisa rubin

Trump goes on — without any interruption from Engoron or her team — and attacks James, accusing her of election interference. “You have your own agenda,” Trump angrily says to Engoron. “You can’t listen for more than one minute!”
12:59 PM · Jan 11, 2024

Engoron pleads with Kise, “Mr. Kise, please control your client.” Trump nonetheless accuses James of going after him for her political gain, including an allegedly “failed” run for Governor, at which point Engoron shuts it down.
1:01 PM · Jan 11, 2024

But it’s too late. Everything Trump wanted to say was said. And now, having said it, he has left the courtroom after insisting James should pay him for the havoc she’s wreaked on his company.