Dr. Strange Test: Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV

There’s something new at the White House.

At least the president and some in the press say there’s a new “tone” at the White House, where things are, as usual, in a constant state of flux.

Don’t be fooled.

Once the center of the civilized world and a symbol of democracy, the White House now resembles a basement flood of fetid sewage where the brave, the foolish and the incompetent go to slowly drown.

The members of the White House press pool enjoy the perceived privilege of witnessing this crap on a daily basis, but it’s like watching Slim Pickens ride a nuclear bomb to its detonation in Dr. Strangelove. Most of the reporters who didn’t get to ask Trump questions before the pandemic put them center stage certainly seem as enthusiastic as Major T.J. Kong, Pickens’s character—although many of their questions are tepid. But the results for the Republic could be just as dire as Kong’s finish.

In this time of supposedly changing tone, the shock troops sent by Trump to defend federal property have been recorded shooting rubber bullets at protesting mothers, pushing people to the ground and tear-gassing protesters for no discernible reason. The videos and images have been widely shared. As several congressmen said Tuesday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Bill Barr, it is apparent the federal government is putting property ahead of people.

Thus, the violence increases. Trump seems to enjoy the talking points about defending buildings while beating the populace into submission.

The thought is sickening. It shows the president’s tone hasn’t changed; now he’s trying to change the tone of the nation to one of submissive fealty.

This Tuesday, after the White House press staff called a lunch “lid” (a break during which they would announce no news), I took the opportunity to walk up the street to a sub shop that had recently reopened its doors. Still unable to eat inside the restaurant—and not actually pining to do so—I walked to a stone bench outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to enjoy my iced tea and half sandwich.

Luckily the bench was shaded from the sun. The D.C. summers are the stuff of legend. Rumor has it hell sends its hardest cases to suffer through the city’s dog days of August—thus explaining congressmen, senators and every lobbyist in the area.

As soon as I sat down a sparrow landed nearby, strolled leisurely to within a foot of me and cocked its head as if to say, “Where’s my cut?”

This is D.C. after all.

So I tossed the sparrow a few bread crumbs. Seconds later three more landed, and soon I looked like the old lady in Disney’s 1964 Mary Poppins, feeding scores of birds by ridding myself of most of the bread from my sandwich. A couple of needy squirrels tried to hustle me too, but I managed to extricate myself from the situation without being robbed. I can’t always say the same when I deal with the White House or Congress.

An armed Secret Service agent pulling duty at the northwest gate laughed when he saw me. We both agreed that with the absence of people working in downtown D.C. due to the coronavirus, the resident nonhuman vermin were having a tough time finding enough to eat.

That is not too different from people in the United States who are suffering because of the economy, the pandemic and Trump’s activities as president. They’re struggling to survive. The president, when questioned about any of his actions on these fronts, flashes his teeth like a wild animal. He tweeted on Monday: “So disgusting to watch Twitter’s so-called ‘Trending’, where sooo many trends are about me, and never a good one. They look for anything they can find, make it as bad as possible, and blow it up, trying to make it trend. Really ridiculous, illegal, and, of course, very unfair!”

So much for a new tone.

Before he became president, Trump was laughed off as a buffoon—a cartoon figure telling people they were fired on national television. He was unwatchable then. But he’s far more dangerous now that he’s in the Oval Office.

On three different occasions President Trump has released information regarding his physical health. Information on his mental health, however, has been released only once, in January 2018, when Dr. Ronny Jackson’s three-page report on Trump’s first annual physical as president included a single paragraph of neurological assessment. “Examination of cranial nerves, cerebellar function, deep tendon reflexes, motor function and sensory system all normal. Cognitive Screening Exam using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment was normal with a score of 30/30,” he wrote.

Jackson walked confidently into the Brady Briefing Room on January 16, 2018 with this evaluation, and then for more than an hour the White House physician unleashed on the press compliment after compliment to Trump’s physical and mental health.

“I’ve gotten to know him pretty well. And I had absolutely no concerns about his cognitive ability or his, you know, his neurological functions,” Jackson told reporters. He said he hadn’t initially planned to administer a screening for neurological impairments but did so at Trump’s request.

More than a year later, on February 14, 2019, the White House issued a one-page statement in which Dr. Sean P. Conley said Trump’s weight was 243 pounds (it had been 239 pounds a year earlier). His resting heart rate was 70 beats per minute versus 68 per minute in 2018. His blood pressure in 2018 had been 122/74 (slightly elevated) and in 2019 it was 118/80. Conley made no specific mention of Trump’s cognitive function, noticeably leaving out any assessment of that in his broader evaluation: “There were no findings of significance or changes to report on his physical exam.”

On November 16, 2019, then press secretary Stephanie Grisham issued a rare statement about Trump’s health after he took an unplanned trip to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. “Anticipating a very busy 2020, the president is taking advantage of a free weekend here in Washington, D.C., to begin portions of his routine annual physical exam at Walter Reed,” she said.

Speculation was rampant about possible mental or physical problems, including a minor stroke, a heart attack or something else, but the White House press office gave no further comment, and despite repeated questions from myself and other reporters, the door to more insight on the president’s health remained closed.

Finally in early March 2020, during one of those pre-pandemic South Lawn helicopter departures wherein Trump routinely held court, I hit him up and asked when he would finish his physical.

“I’m going probably over the next 90 days,” Trump told me before heading to a campaign rally in North Carolina. He hadn’t made it back to Walter Reed since his November visit because he’d been “so busy.”

Busy? He certainly hadn’t missed many golf dates from November through March 2, when I asked the question, but I was told by his staff that was irrelevant.

Finally on June 3 the White House again released a one-page update on Trump’s health. It was even shorter than the 2019 report. Trump’s weight was at 244. His resting heart rate was a mere 63 beats per minute and his blood pressure was 121/79.

“Upon review of systems and physical exam, there were no findings of significance or changes to report,” Conley wrote.

No other comment was given for the record. On background I was told the president had not undergone additional cognitive testing and that he was “just fine.”

That leads us to Trump’s recent interview with Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel. “Probably a year ago, a little less than a year ago, I asked a doctor, I said, ‘Is there some kind of a cognitive test I could take?’ Because I’ve been hearing about it. Because I want to shut these people up. They’re fake news. They make up stories,” Trump told Siegel.

Trump acknowledged the doctor in question was Ronny Jackson. The test was the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, but Trump didn’t take it a year ago or less than a year ago. He took it two and a half years ago. And Trump’s story about asking to take the test had already been told by Jackson—back in 2018.

“If you’re in the office of the presidency, we have to be sharp,” Trump told Siegel. But Trump couldn’t remember the name of the test, apparently forgot (or lied about) when he took it and claimed the first questions—like identifying various animals—were easy, while some of the later questions were more difficult.

The president didn’t appear sharp this Tuesday when NPR’s Tamara Keith asked him why he had canceled a meeting with pharmaceutical companies. He told her he thought the meeting was set for the following day. Trump appeared slow, lethargic and overwhelmed. He left the briefing in a hurry after answering a question from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins regarding his recent tweet backing a doctor who said that DNA from space aliens is being used in medical treatments.

He ignored me when I asked him when he was going to stop lying to us or do something about Russian bounties on American soldiers.

Evidence points to major concerns about Trump’s cognitive abilities, in addition to ongoing concerns about his ability to tell the truth, leading to the inevitable question: How screwed is this country if Trump is reelected?

He said on Tuesday he thinks people just don’t like his personality, and that’s why he doesn’t get higher ratings for his efforts against the pandemic.

There are more than 4 million coronavirus cases in the U.S. with more than 150,000 dead. And the president thinks it’s about his personality.

That’s his new tone at the White House. Second verse, same as the first.