2016 August 27^th

A day or so ago I wrote about Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s take on the unprofessional medical analysis provided by Trump’s physician. Now we find out why his doctor’s description of Trump’s health sounded like it was written by Trump himself.  Dr. Harold Bornstein has admitted that he wrote that evaluation in five minutes at the end of a busy day while Trump’s limo idled at the curb outside his office. Dr. Bornstein tells us that he decided to “channel” Donald Trump and deliberately wrote the analysis to sound just like Trump had written it. Good job Dr. Bornstein!

Now we wait for an analysis of Trump’s health that is not a bad joke and of course Trumpites claim Clinton must produce more medical records as well, so there the matter stagnates, ah politics!

The recent shift in Trump’s campaign, adding Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Conway while subtracting Paul Mannafort, is beginning to make sense. A very rich, we’re talking 400 million net worth here, money man is behind the shift. Robert Mercer is the rich guy. He made his money in the arcane world of machine translation and developing programs to outwit Wall Street traders. He then became a hedge fund manager and over the last several years has managed an income of about 100 million a year. If he wants to throw thirty mil or so into a political campaign he won’t miss the money and he will get considerable gratitude from the beneficiary.

He has an interesting background; noteworthy is his enormous 200+ foot long yacht, “The Sea Owl” valued at about 90 million dollars. He also has a very elaborate model train set up and one of the largest collections of machine guns in the country.

Politically he devotes his energies and his money to groups so far to the right as to be considered on the fringe. He believes global warming is a myth and supports a group that has as its hero an electrical engineer whose claim to fame was a refusal to accept Einstein’s theory. He has been a generous funder of Breitbart and of the Trump campaign. And it was at his suggestion that Steve Bannon of Breitbart and Kellyanne Conway be hired by the Trump campaign. Bannon was hired in spite of no experience with political campaigns and a history of violence beginning with his divorce from his wife. He was charged with violence in that divorce but his wife was threatened if she testified against him so she never showed up and the case against him was dismissed. He claimed he had a problem with his small children playing with the neighborhood Jews.  

Michelle Field, the Breitbart reporter manhandled by Corey Lewandowski, and then abandoned by Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon, resigned from Breitbart. (Bannon tolerates no negative activity toward Trump’s campaign.) Bannon’s trashing of the original Breitbart mission, and moving far to the right, led to the resignation of Breitbarts’ principal editor Ben Shapiro as well as editors Jarett Stepman and Jordan Schachtel. Finally, moving Bannon to Trump’s campaign might have saved Breitbart News from extinction.

Trump’s Iowa speech today was just more of the same. To his adoring and noisy crowds he promised to make America safe again, wealthy again and all of the other good things you can think of again. He just didn’t say a word about how he would do any of that. None of his audience seemed to care. Their only interest is in the outcome, not in the process.