Tuesday, May 01, 2018

WAS TRUMP ON DRUGS?

Remember Harold Bornstein, the long-haired doctor who told us all during the campaign that Trump's health was "astonishingly excellent"? NBC News reports that Trump thugs raided his office last year:
Trump doc says Trump bodyguard, lawyer 'raided' his office, took medical files

In February 2017, a top White House aide who was Trump's longtime personal bodyguard, along with the top lawyer at the Trump Organization and a third man, showed up at the office of Trump's New York doctor without notice and took all the president's medical records.

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....

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 cholesterol as well.

The story also quotes Bornstein recalling that he had told Rhona Graff, Trump's longtime assistant, "You know, I should be the White House physician."

After the story ran on February 1, 2017, Bornstein said Graff called him and said, "So you wanted to be the White House doctor? Forget it, you're out.' "

Two days after the story ran, the men came to his office.
What else were they afraid Bornstein might reveal? I know you probably think Kurt Eichenwald is a loose cannon, but he spent a lot of years as a working journalist, and in March he tweeted about a story of his that was killed at Newsweek.



The story is here. An excerpt:
According to medical records obtained by Newsweek, Trump was diagnosed with a “metabolic imbalance” in 1982 by Dr. Joseph Greenberg, a Manhattan endocrinologist....

During the campaign, Trump released a letter from Dr. Harold Bornstein stating that he had been the then-candidate’s physician since 1980 and that there had been no significant medical problems throughout that time. The letter did not reveal that Trump had a second doctor during that time who had diagnosed him with a potentially serious condition. The medical records and interviews with former officials with the Trump Organization reveal that Greenberg gave Trump a prescription for amphetamine derivatives in 1982 to treat his metabolic problem; the records show that Trump continued taking the drugs for a number of years and the former officials said that Trump stopped using them in 1990 at the latest.

The derivatives were diethylpropion, known under its brand name as tenuate dospan. These drugs are designed for short-term use; studies have concluded that patients can avoid developing a dependence on the drug if they take it for 25 weeks or less. But Trump continued downing the pills for years. According to two people – someone who said Trump would consider him a friend and a former Trump executive – the then-real estate developer boasted that the diethylpropion gave him enormous energy and helped him concentrate....

According to the Toxicology Data Network at the National Institutes of Health, diethylpropion has a high risk of dependency and chronic abuse – such as taking it for years – can cause delusions, paranoia, and hyperactivity.
A subsequent Eichenwald tweet:



Eichenwald isn't the only person to make this claim about Trump, as Gawker's Sam Biddle reported in 2016.
Two decades ago, Donald Trump wasn’t a fascist lightning rod, hick idol, reality star, or political entity. He was just a high-profile rich schmuck and evergreen victim of Spy magazine, which used him as a peg for a February 1992 feature on Dr. Joseph Greenberg, whom they alleged was prescribing powerful stimulants to anyone with a checkbook. Stimulants, Spy’s John Connolly speculated, that might explain how Donald Trump maintains his infinite, inexhaustible arrogance:
Have you ever wondered why Donald Trump has acted so erratically at times, full of manic energy, paranoid, garrulous? Well, he was a patient of Dr. Greenberg’s from 1982 to 1985 ... Dr. Greenberg diagnosed both of the Trump brothers as suffering from a “metabolic imbalance.”
... In the controversial 1993 Trump biography Lost Tycoon, author Harry Hurt attributed a steady stream diet pill habit to “Donald’s mood swings” and “his fits of distemper.” Per Hurt:
On April 19th, 1982, during the period between his license hearing before the Casino Control Commission and the groundbreaking on the Trump Plaza site in Atlantic City, Donald paid a visit to the midtown Manhattan office of Dr. Joseph Greenberg.... The ostensible purpose of Donald’s visit was to seek assistance in losing weight. He had gone to the right place. Dr. Greenberg was an endocrinologist who specialized in providing patients with drugs to control obesity...

Donald was so delighted with the results that he started recommending Dr. Greenberg’s treatments to his brother Robert, various friends, and celebrity acquaintances such as Diana Ross. The diet drugs, which he took in pill form, not only curbed his appetite but gave him a feeling of euphoria and unlimited energy....
Bornstein was Trump's main doctor while he was seeing Greenberg. Presumably he'd be aware of the medications other doctors were prescribing Trump.

There's a lot more that could have been in Bornstein's notes. This is just one medical matter Trump might not want brought up in public anymore.

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