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(CNN) – A few days before Thanksgiving last year, President Donald Trump made an unannounced and unscheduled trip to Walter Reed Medical Center. The White House said the trip was for a “quick test and labs”. We still don’t know why it really was, or what the result of his visit was.
On Sunday, three days after Thanksgiving this year, President-elect Joe Biden slipped and injured his foot while playing with his dog, the eldest. We were quickly told, via the traveling press group, that Biden would see his orthopedist as a precaution. Within two hours, there was a statement from Dr. Kevin O’Connor noting that Biden’s foot had been x-rayed and appeared to have a sprain. However, a CT scan only needed to be done to confirm the diagnosis.
Then 90 minutes later came this, again from O’Connor: “Initial x-rays showed no obvious fracture, but his clinical examination ensured more detailed images. Follow-up CT scan confirmed (small) fractures of President-elect Biden’s lateral and medial cuneiform bones, which are located in the midfoot. It is expected that you will likely need a walking boot for several weeks. ‘
Notice the difference?
Now I, and probably you, don’t know or care much about Joe Biden’s “lateral and middle wedge bones”. But that’s not quite the point.
The point is this: transparency in health and, well, everything else, is essential for the functioning of a democracy. And we’ve had the opposite of that for the past four years.
Let’s go back to Trump’s unexpected and still unexplained visit to Walter Reed in November 2019.
The initial explanation, offered by White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, for the unannounced visit was as follows: “Anticipating a very busy 2020, the president is taking advantage of a free weekend here in Washington to start parts of your routine. annual physics at Walter Reed.
Which is strange because the president doesn’t make unscheduled visits to almost any location and certainly not a hospital for testing. The White House has never offered any further explanation on Walter Reed’s trip. But in a reporter’s book from The New York TimesMichael Schmidt, who came to light last fall, wrote the following about the incident:
“In the hours leading up to Trump’s trip to the hospital, word got out in the West Wing that the Vice President would be suspended to temporarily assume presidential powers if Trump had to undergo a procedure that required him to be anesthetized “. .
That seems like a strange precaution for a “quick examination and lab analysis”, right? True.
Especially when you consider that we know less about Trump’s medical history than any previous presidential candidate in the modern era.
LEE: Advisors made a last-minute effort to bring a reluctant Trump to Walter Reed
Trump posted zero medical records when he ran for president in 2016. What he posted was a letter from Dr. Harold Bornstein, his longtime personal physician, stating simply, “If Mr. Trump is elected, I can declare. unequivocally, that he is the healthiest person ever to be elected to the presidency. His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary. (Bornstein later distanced himself from the letter, saying that Trump really dictated it.)
Biden, who at 78 is the oldest person ever elected to a first term in the White House (he broke the record set by Trump), released a summary of his medical record in late 2019. At the time, O’Connor wrote that Biden was “a healthy and vigorous man, 77 years old, who is capable of successfully fulfilling the duties of the presidency.”
(It’s worth noting: Biden was occasionally infuriated when asked about his campaign’s health status. “If you want to check if I’m fit, let’s do pushups together, man,” Biden told a man in Iowa in the fall of 2019. “Let’s run, let’s do what you want. Let’s do an IQ test”).
Transparency from Biden’s transition team about small fractures in the president-elect’s foot suggests that the Trump White House’s effort to actively tarnish when fundamental questions about the president’s health were asked.
It’s a good start. But only the beginning. Let’s see if the president-elect and his team can remain committed to full transparency about their health for years to come.
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