I’m trying to go from memory because I don’t want to sort through years of Donald Trump stories, but I don’t remember even spending much time talking about Trump’s personal physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein. Dr. Bornstein was the doctor (“doctor”) who gave Trump his physical during the 2015-16 campaign, and then released a completely bizarre statement about how Trump’s health was “astonishingly excellent.” The guy gave interviews and he seemed like a character actor from an Adam Sandler movie. Well, surprise, Dr. Bornstein is back and he has quite a story.
The medical files. Bornstein claims Trump’s goons “raided” his office in February 2017 and took all of Trump’s medical records. From NBC: The incident, which Dr. Harold Bornstein described as a “raid,” took place two days after Bornstein told a newspaper that he had prescribed a hair growth medicine for the president for years. In an exclusive interview in his Park Avenue office, Bornstein told NBC News that he felt “raped, frightened and sad” when Keith Schiller and another “large man” came to his office to collect the president’s records on the morning of Feb. 3, 2017. At the time, Schiller, who had long worked as Trump’s bodyguard, was serving as director of Oval Office operations at the White House. “They must have been here for 25 or 30 minutes. It created a lot of chaos,” said Bornstein, who described the incident as frightening.
Trump didn’t even sign a HIPAA release: Bornstein said he was not given a form authorizing the release of the records and signed by the president known as a HIPAA release — which is a violation of patient privacy law….Bornstein said the original and only copy of Trump’s charts, including lab reports under Trump’s name as well as under the pseudonyms his office used for Trump, were taken.
The Curious Case of Propecia. Bornstein said that Trump cut ties with him after he told The New York Times that Trump takes Propecia, a drug for enlarged prostates that is often prescribed to stimulate hair growth in men. Bornstein told the Times that he prescribed Trump drugs for rosacea and high cholesterol as well…Two days after the article ran, the men came to his office.
Trump dictated the letter about his health during the campaign. During Trump’s presidential campaign, Bornstein wrote a letter declaring “unequivocally” that Trump would be the healthiest president in history. He called Trump’s health “astonishingly excellent.” The Trump campaign released the letter in December 2015. In his recent interview, Bornstein told NBC News that the language in the letter actually came from Trump. “He wrote it himself,” he said. The 2015 letter ended with a hyperbolic declaration that Trump would be the healthiest president ever. Bornstein says he interpreted the line as “black humor.”
He felt “raped, frightened and sad” – so a typical Trump transaction then. What’s interesting is that the drunk, pill-popping White House doctor Ronny Jackson claimed that he did not have access to Trump’s medical files pre-White House, so it’s not like Trump’s goons gathered up all of Trump’s medical records and then handed them over to the White House physician. Which leads me to believe that no serious, sober and qualified doctor has actually medically examined Trump thoroughly for decades. But again… the a–holes who voted for him knew that sh-t going into the voting booth.
Meanwhile, if you want to scare the sh-t out of yourself, read this People Magazine story about the recent panel discussion at a large meeting of the nation’s clinical psychiatrists. The panel discussion? “The Increasingly Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” Basically, all of the best and brightest shrinks in the country gathered together to say that Trump is mentally unstable, dangerous to himself, dangerous to the country and dangerous to the world. Doctors from around the country put aside their misgivings about diagnosing someone they’ve never met because they feel so strongly about the clear and present danger Trump poses to everyone in this world.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
He’s a big problem.
How dare you!! I’ll have you know that Donald Trump is a very svelte – and incredibly attractive and virile – 239lbs, with great genes, a naturally full head of hair and the sexual stamina of a dozen Navy Seals.
he also farts rainbows.
Hah, I’ve read dozen NAZI seals instead of navy seals. Well…
Speaking of problems…I just read that his lawyer Ty Cobb is out and he is hiring Bill Clinton’s impeachment lawyer.
I know, right? Somebody getting nervous.
*cue Mr. Burns*…. Excellent
Which also makes me think that he is totally still in contact with Bannon. Steve Bannon was the one who was going to get him that attorney when Don Jr.’s emails and collusion came out.
I loathe This man and everything he is and everything he does. That being said, his doctor shouldn’t have disclosed any medication he was taking. That is a violation of HIPPA, even if we don’t like Trump.
Yup.
Yes it is, but removal of the records without proper legal consent has to be a felony of some sort. Dr. OldSchool LooseLips should press charges against Schiller and goon.
Trump was outraged about how the FBI “broke into ” his lawyers office, but he sees nothing wrong with having his guys do this? If he went to this length to get them, there must be some really juicy health secrets in those files
That is the first thing that I thought.
Well, as a guess, Trump must have endless refills on antibiotics, anti-virals and statins.
Which reminds me of the Airbnb rental of childhood (starter home) in Queens, NY of Trump’s parents before they became super rich. You can sleep in the bedroom where Trump was conceived *gag* and the property is dirty, dirty linen, no hot water etc at 800 USD a night, so bring antibiotics.
while I agree about the “juiciness” of the contents, we ARE talking about 45 here.
he’s so fragile with such a big ego that even the TINIEST thing, like taking hair-growth meds, is far too embarrassing for him. he can’t have people knowing his ACTUAL weight, etc.
That’s what I was thinking too. It could be juicy, or it could be as silly as a hair growth product which is quite common in men his age, and not particularly interesting. But his ego couldn’t take even the slightest thing.
Our president has goons.
And this is apparently just fine with 40% of the American people.
Your comment made me LOL. It’s scary and sad…but it still made me laugh.
I can’t wait for this dude to just go on CNN and give us 30 years of trump’s medical history. I’ll start the GoFundMe for his legal fees for violating HIPAA.
Penny:
Dr Bornstein’s first comment to CNN should be:
I know where the STDs are buried.
This doctor doesn’t keep digital files?
I can’t think of a single practicing medical professional operating from inside an office that doesn’t use both paper and digital filing methods. Record keeping us everything with triplicate.
This “only copy ” is bs. Or… this doctor is incompetent… which is likely.
Lots of old-school solo practice MDs still use handwritten paper charts. And nothing about this particular doc screams “up-to-date” or even “minimally competent”.
My doctor only has handwritten notes. Nothing dodgy/incompetent about him, just old school (and illegible to anyone trying to read them which strangely makes me feel safer 😂)
Not all may have been digitalized depending on how old they were.
This is a ultra-conservative talking point I hear from my Trumper parents. Likely Fox News made a big deal about it at some point. They don’t want medical files computerized. Allegedly because the doctors spend too much time typing and not enough time talking to patients, but I think the reality of doctors having access to previous medical info is upsetting to them. I’m not sure why. My parents just rage about this and want doctors to go back to the “good ol’ days” of paper files.
Ever see that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine gets listed as “difficult” in her medical chart? She tries to get her chart back? But every doctor in the tristate area is aware of her history? It is kind of scary that your medical history is on digital file forever. I’d rather it be be given to me in paper form and I can take it to the doc with me. We are worried what facebook knows? Think about what the insurance companies and your doctors know. And we can see from this whole debacle that doctors are not incorruptible, trustworthy, saints like we are told to believe.
And I’m super far from ultra-conservative. Just a gen x’er with a healthy skepticism of big medicine.
It has its pros and cons. On one hand, digitizing the information makes it more readily available for medical providers to view and allows for better patient care tracking and coordination. It also cuts down on the administrative costs of buying, storing, and properly disposing all of that paper. On the flip side, hacking and information trading is just as much an issue as physical theft, and your information can absolutely make it into the wrong hands if somebody is corrupt (or stupid – see the Aetna HIV fiasco) enough to do it.
(Of course, a lot of these problems with the mishandling of patient information could be resolved if we stopped using a capitalist model. There wouldn’t be as much incentive to steal people’s information with single payer.)
Good points, Veronica. I’ve also read that digital records cut down on misinterpretations due to handwriting, especially with prescriptions.
I think they’d get a medical transcriptionist or a team of them to do all the typing.
When I took a medical transcription course, we learned of a small town bank owner who got elected to the local health board. This gave him access to patient files, which he proceeded to go through. Every bank customer who had received a cancer diagnosis had their mortgage called in by his bank. He got 25 years and a huge fine for that stunt. Or the hospital worker who left a briefcase full of CD’s, approximately 50 thousand patient files, on the train.
I think there are back up files somewhere. You can’t tell me this doctor is treating the most unstable president in history and hasn’t covered is ass. There’s a reason he revealed El Cheeto wrote that letter himself.
Yeah, wait… didn’t Obama mandate conversion to electronic medical records years ago???
Edit: Why yes, yes he did. To be completed by 2015…http://www.e-mds.com/emr-mandate-2014-deadline-penalty
One of my docs is probably about Bornstein’s age, a solo private practitioner but also affiliated with a top university hospital. She only has paper files, and only one copy. The university system has left her alone as far as going digital. My other doc in the same system went digital a number of years ago. So I don’t think it’s totally implausible. Especially with this guy.
Re: the records
The government can’t force anyone to do anything, but they cut your reimbursement by 6% if you aren’t on at least some kind of electronic medical records system. That’s enough to tank your practice if you see medicare/medicaid patients. And private insurers are likely to follow and cut reimbursement rates for services you’ve already provided.
Regarding the electronic records…on the one hand anyone with access to the system can access your records. There are some safeguards in place so if you check the record of someone famous in the hospital you will be found and fired (but you may actually still be able to snoop). On the other hand, I can’t count the number of people I see (I’m a surgeon) who don’t know what their medical history is, or what surgeries they’ve had (at least not the details I need), or what meds have already been tried and failed. It can mean life or death in some cases, to know the real history. And the old way meant we’d have to call around and ask some medical records department to hopefully fax us in the morning if they could even find the records. God forbid your offsite storage gets flooded or catches on fire, then everything is lost forever.
Definitely there are pluses and minuses. On the whole, the electronic medical record contributes to physician burnout, makes everyone’s personal records at risk, and can carry mistakes in perpetuity. But it also makes it easier to take your care to any place you want, to coordinate your care, and to coordinate with multiple doctors in multiple places.
I’m for it. But when you consider that the overarching theme of conservatives and Trump supporters in particular, is that of fear and victimhood, then I understand the desire to avoid the electronic record.
The statements from both physicians about drump’s health were NOT in any way believable or appropriate for a medical professional. Both were bizarre and raised red flags about their unprofessionalism. Jackson said drump had “good genes”? Drump has said this about himself many times.
It was obvious that both doctors are hacks willing to sacrifice their professionalism for something in return. They should have their licenses revoked.
Trump wrote a script for him which is why his description of trump sounds exactly like trump’s description of trump.
Yep. The fact that they agreed to it makes them hacks. No physician with integrity would go along with that. But all sorts of creeps attach themselves to 45.
It’s like when he calls the media pretending to be his own spokesperson and doesn’t even bother disguising his voice or phrasing.
I totally agree, the doctors should be disciplined in someway for their behavior.
If the doctor describes the goon to a police sketch artist, will the drawing resemble the goon who threatened Stormy Daniels?
Ooooo I hope so! Bring it on
That was my first thought as well. Trump probably WOULD use the same goon with the same scare tactics.
Ha, that was word for word what I thought too.
If someone can get his wife away from him long enough to cooperate, we might learn more. Apparently the gastro doctor’s wife was not in favor of him going public now.
She also spoke up for him when a reporter asked him if the letter was legitimate in 2016. He hesitated, and she claimed he wrote it. Now he’s admitting he was given the letter’s content.
A firsthand contact works inside WH. It is much, much worse than has been told. Do the Littlefinger calculation game with normal as the question. Don’t become numb to the abnormal.
So scary. No horror movie character will ever top the real Trump. Also, the list of legal and illegal drugs he has taken throughout his life would probably fill volumes.
Ooooooooo I love the Littlefinger reference. “Chaos is a ladder.” Sounds about right.
It’s not hard to believe you are correct about the reality being worse than the myth. Sigh.
It is indefensible for a doctor to blab about a patient. But he’s the perfect doctor for Trump.
The doc my not have digital records, but the pharmacies who filled prescriptions for Cheeto have to account for their drugs. Even under Cheeto’s various incarnations, controlled substances have to be accounted for, so I’m guessing that the good wacky doctor wrote all sorts of scrips under many names and that’s what Cheeto’s goons were after.
I don’t care about Cheeto’s STDs—I expect that sort of info considering Cheeto never seems to use condoms, but I do want to hear about all the stimulants, benzos, etc that he may have been prescribed. Oh, and any prescriptions for a “morning after” pill . . .
Oh, don’t forget good old Viagra or Cialis.
One report mentioned they took records in alias names, so I think you’re on to something.
Let’s not forget that this guy is a gastro (stomach, colon, etc.) doctor. All this guy should be qualified to do is speak out on his patient’s gut and rear, which we know are full of it.
1.) This man is an insult to the medical profession and should lose his license.
2.) All I want is to wake up one day and be able to not care about the drama in the White House. Just one day, that’s all I’m asking. I could go weeks with Obama not feeling an exhausted cloud hanging over me, and I didn’t even vote for the guy in his second term.
This just sounds like a low-rent version of the Roy Cohen scene from Angels in America.
Spot on reference.
Why did he tell the NYT what Rxs Trump is taking? Isn’t that illegal? Also, men everywhere: please do not say you feel like you’ve been raped unless you have been raped. Thank you, good morning.
Cosign. Only rape feels like rape. Nothing should ever be compared to rape. But especially by men that have never been raped. Apologies to the doctor if he has ever been a victim of rape, but I’m assuming he hasn’t because he wouldn’t use it as a reference point if he had.
It is illegal. As I stated above, he’s an embarrassment to the profession and a shitty doctor to boot.
A bit off topic, but I was wrong that it was Ghouliani that leaked the 49 questions to the NYT. It was Jay Sekulow.
In other exciting news, it seems that Mr Mueller may issue a grand jury subpoena to Emperor Zero to compel him to answer “a few questions” and I hope you didn’t miss the coordinated comments by Rod Rosenstein and James Comey yesterday.
It’s Mueller Time and no one cares much about a sketchy doctor who still listens to Donovan.
Rosenstein was outstanding.
He really was.
“I hope you didn’t miss the coordinated comments by Rod Rosenstein and James Comey yesterday.”
I did, what did they say?
From WaPo: “I think they should understand by now that the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted,” Rosenstein said. “We’re going to do what’s required by the rule of law, and any kind of threats that anybody makes are not going to affect the way we do our job.” Not sure what Comey said.
RR summary:
The DOJ won’t be extorted and he pushed back against the absurd impeachment recommendation of Rep house congressmen by saying he’s been both publicly and privately threatened.
JC summary:
The firing of Mueller won’t stop the investigation as US attorneys and/or the FBI would pick up the pieces of probe. They can try but it won’t end until it’s done.
Politico has a good summary sans RR’s comments and it includes a statement that Eric Schneiderman has been coordinating with Mueller since “last year.”
thanks, swack and Eric!
Since Trump actually wrote the doctors report about his health, I’m surprised he didn’t say things like, “Believe me, this mans health is tremendous and terrific. His health is amazing, like fire and fury like the world has never seen. He is bigly strong, and his tremendous, perfect health makes him like really strong, and like really smart. Believe me ”
Hahahaha that would have given it away!
Dr. Ronny also announced that PPOTUS was on the Propacia. Well, you could land a plane on that 5 inch by 7 inch bare strip which runs up the back of his head. So clearly this course of treatment is ineffective and has cured nothing. He is STILL BALD!!! And furthermore, he looks ridiculous and HE IS as stupid as he looks.
Fun fact: Propecia can cause persistent erectile dysfunction.
🙂
Ugh…wouldn’t you rather no hair
I remember this from the LeEddie drama days. Brandi revealed that little side effect.
Yes. My ex thought that he was going to make it as a rock star. He began taking propecia and shortly after, our sex life nearly ended. Then it totally ended.
I bet Melania prays to Propecia every night!
Looks like none of those are working. Probably because he isn’t taking them.
So in summary we don’t know anything about the medical Health, tax information, business entanglements or pretty much anything about the person who is the president of our country and has an impact on almost every aspect of our lives? Wonderful, just wonderful.
I believe the NYC Dr better report the incident of Dotard’s goons to the cops. He must report what happened because I’m almost sure some of his patients are going to sue him. He says those three people who came into his office went into his files, so, HIPPA LAWS will get him. Also, his office is on 5th Ave, 🤑. I bet they will be calling their lawyers as we speak, just saying.
Sorry, but it’s a ridiculous culture you have over there in America where people are expected to make their medical records public in order to apply for a job. No Trump fan here, but he has as much right to medical privacy as anyone else. Ditto for Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Hillary Clinton and the disgusting way they were treated too. Doctor patient confidentiality exists to save lives. Without it, the lines of communication close and people die. Do Americans understand that?
The dr was wrong to give out his medical info for hair growth. However, the law is the Dr keeps the original of all medical records. When requested a copy can be sent to the patient upon written request. What the Dotard an$ his goons did was against the law and should have been reported to law inforcement. He may get sue by some of his patients because they may claim they were in their files while going through his filing cabinets looking for the Dotard’s info. The dotard is a thug, bet you one of those men was the one threatening stormy.
Because physical and mental health can be affected by one another, Americans think it is important that a sitting president have a clean bill of health. They DON’T have to go into details the way his drunk doctor did. Nor do presidents usually write letters and pretend they are from a doctor.
Normally it’s not that big of a deal. I remember Obama’s first official physical simply noted he was healthy but needed to completely give up smoking (he did). After that, his physical was simply “in good health” and no one cared, because you could tell he was in good physical and mental health.
Since Trump displays many warning signs of both physical and mental lack of health, Americans have a reasonable right to be concerned.
Ok, but have you thought through the repercussions for up-and-coming politicians who might be more careful what they confide in their doctor? And the effect of that on their health? That’s just for potential candidates. Actual presidential candidates and presidents once elected must be even more wary of trusting their doctors at the moment.
Then there’s the deterrence effect on otherwise perfectly good candidates who might decide not to run for that reason alone. They might be in perfectly good health but have one or two minor or embarrassing things they would prefer to keep quiet. Female candidates in particular who might be worried about the privacy of their gynaecological records.
And then there’s the message it sends to people with a disability that they aren’t welcome in the democratic process. That only the ‘perfect’ are allowed a voice. Why should people in ill health or who have a disability have any less right to participate in the democratic process than anyone else?
Again, I’m no Trump supporter, or Palin, or Bachmann, but they have a right to a confidential relationship with their doctors. The requests made to Sarah Palin especially were appalling. She had lived her whole life in the one small town and had likely attended the same clinic her whole life, including for five pregnancies. Do you understand how complete her medical records would likely be and just how intrusive a request it was to ask her to release them? And she was being asked to release her full records too, not just a letter. She had already released a letter and was being hounded for the full file. Sorry, but that was appalling treatment, and it was to the detriment of getting more women into politics.
He’s like that disgusting, greasy stain you can’t get out so every day more week-old fast food grease pans are emptied onto that same spot until it covers everything and squishes with each step. He’s so gross. So vile. So unhinged. So incredibly stupid, insecure, narcissistic and selfish. How many bad, frightful and negative words can one person accumulate? I swear his list is endless.
CNN is reporting that Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer is retiring at the end of the month. And another one bites the dust.
They are dropping like flies, with no competent people scurrying to get him as a client. Yet we are all to believe there is nothing to see here.
The gaslighting is real.