The Crazy 'Raid' Of Trump's Former Doctor

Agencies
May 2, 2018

May 2: President Donald Trump has never been a model of medical disclosure. Both of his most recent personal doctors have offered unbelievably rosy reviews of his health, omitting or spinning key facts, and both have had their credibility called into question.

We may be finding out why they did what they did.

NBC News just reported on what might be the craziest White House story you'll read this week. It involves Trump's colorful longtime personal doctor, Harold Bornstein, who claims that Trump's bodyguard, a Trump Organization lawyer and a third man conducted a "raid" of his office in February 2017, seizing 35 years of Trump's medical records. And on top of that, Bornstein now says Trump dictated his own initial doctor's letter, according to CNN.

The biggest question on the former is whether any laws were broken with the seizure, which Bornstein said left him feeling "raped, frightened and sad." Bornstein said he wasn't provided a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) release signed by the patient, Trump, which would be a violation. (An individual told NBC that there was a letter from Trump's then-White House doctor, Ronny L. Jackson, but that it wouldn't be sufficient.)

The second-biggest takeaway here, though, is how heavy-handed all this was. That may speak to why we still don't have a completely sober-minded review of Trump's health.

The event that appeared to set in motion the "raid" was Bornstein's disclosure in a New York Times interview that Trump takes a hair-loss drug, Propecia, along with medication for rosacea. Neither drug was disclosed in Trump's doctor's letters, and Trump failed to correct the record on two occasions. When Dr. Mehmet Oz interviewed him about his health and said the only medication Trump was taking was a statin, Trump mentioned neither of the other drugs. Later, Oz mentioned Trump's low PSA (prostate-specific antigen), which is a side effect of Propecia (or finasteride), which is also used as a prostate drug. But Trump didn't connect those dots. Instead, he said: "My PSA has been very good. I don't know what's going on."

It's extremely logical to assume that Trump was feeling self-conscious about the drugs he took for his hair and skin and decided not to disclose them. In Bornstein's telling, this disclosure seemed to set Trump World off. The day the New York Times interview ran, he said, Trump's longtime personal assistant Rhona Graff called him and told him, "So you wanted to be the White House doctor? Forget it; you're out." Two days later came the "raid."

Bornstein said he didn't realize what all the fuss was about when it came to Trump taking Propecia. "I couldn't believe anybody was making a big deal out of a drug to grow his hair that seemed to be so important," he told NBC News. "And it certainly was not a breach of medical trust to tell somebody they take Propecia to grow their hair. What's the matter with that?"

That's a little Pollyannaish. Everyone has a right to medical privacy, even the president. And regardless of Trump's lack of disclosure, perhaps an angry reaction was to be expected.

But that doesn't necessarily justify the "raid" that ensued. Nor do we know why Trump's aides seized the records rather than filing a complaint against Bornstein. It's not too conspiratorial to say Bornstein was disclosing things that Trump didn't want disclosed, and they sought to stop it - using muscle.

This isn't the first time Bornstein has alleged being pressured by those around Trump. He justified his initial, extremely over-the-top review of Trump's health by saying he was given five minutes to draft it while a limo waited outside his office. He later moderated the things he had said, including that Trump would be the healthiest president ever. Now he is telling CNN that Trump dictated the letter. And the fact that Trump's use of the hair-loss and rosacea drugs was obscured in the first place suggests Bornstein wasn't allowed to be particularly forthcoming.

We've long had reason to believe Trump didn't treat his medical records and status with much thought or care - and perhaps that the doctors treating him had been infected with a kind of "Trumpitis," picking up on the president's own penchant for hyperbole.

This suggests, though, that Trump has taken an acute and controlling interest in what his doctors say (and don't say) about him - so much so that he may be willing to launch a little shock-and-awe operation that might have been illegal.

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News Network
May 21,2020

Washington, May 21: US President Donald Trump China is on a "massive disinformation" campaign and is desperately trying to deflect the "pain and carnage" that it spread throughout the world, US President Donald Trump has said, upping the ante on Beijing over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

Trump, who has expressed disappointment over China's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, claimed that it was the "incompetence" of Beijing that led to the mass killing across the globe. 

"China is on a massive disinformation campaign because they are desperate to have Sleepy Joe Biden win the presidential race so they can continue to rip-off the United States, as they have done for decades, until I came along!" Trump said in a tweet on Wednesday.

"Spokesman speaks stupidly on behalf of China, trying desperately to deflect the pain and carnage that their country spread throughout the world. Its disinformation and propaganda attack on the United States and Europe is a disgrace… It all comes from the top. They could have easily stopped the plague, but they didn't," he said in a series of tweets.

Trump blamed China for spreading the coronavirus globally and accused it of being incompetent.
"Some wacko in China just released a statement blaming everybody other than China for the Virus which has now killed hundreds of thousands of people. Please explain to this dope that it was the 'incompetence of China', and nothing else, that did this mass Worldwide killing!" Trump said.

China has denied covering up the extent of its coronavirus outbreak and accused the US of attempting to divert public attention by insinuating that the virus originated from a virology laboratory in Wuhan.

"China was the first country to report the COVID-19 to the World Health Organisation (WHO), (and) that doesn't mean the virus originated from Wuhan... There has never been any concealment, and we'll never allow any concealment," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said last month.

"A discerning person will understand at a glance that the purpose is to create confusion, divert public attention, and shirk their responsibility," he said.

The novel coronavirus which first originated in Wuhan in December last year has claimed 328,120 lives and infected nearly 5 million people globally. The Us is the worst affected country with 93,439 deaths and over 1.5 million infections, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Meanwhile, the US Senate passed a bill boosting oversight of companies based in China and other nations that could lead to their removal from American stock exchanges.

The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, proposes to increase oversight of Chinese and other foreign companies listed on American exchanges and delist and ban over-the-counter trading for firms that are out of compliance with US regulators for a period of three years.

In a related development, a group of top Republican Senators led by Marco Rubio sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin following disturbing reports that China's state-owned and-directed enterprises were looking to exploit the economic crisis by buying US and foreign companies.

As companies backed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) approach banks to identify the purchase of companies in the US and in Europe affected by the pandemic, the senators urged Mnuchin to protect against the China's and the CCP's predatory economic behaviour during the COVID-19 crisis.

"We write to express our concerns related to the People's Republic of China's (PRC) efforts to exploit the economic crisis wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic to gain control of distressed companies or shirking its international responsibilities amidst a worldwide crisis.

"In both Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and PRC policy documents, Beijing has made no secret of its intentions to dominate strategic industrial and emerging technology sectors as well as influence standards at the expense of liberal, rules-based governance," wrote the senators.

As the crisis reverberates across the globe, the PRC's predatory lending practices — including the use of non-disclosure agreements for bilateral loans — not only damage the fiscal situation of recipient countries but also undermine the international community's ability to respond effectively to the crisis, they said.

"Without US and international pressure for accountability and transparency, those countries that are in debt to the PRC will not have the political cover or protection to open their financial books. Such countries will face the risk of default or a currency crisis, leaving the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and Western countries to clean up the PRC's mess," the senators said.

During a campaign round table Katrina Pierson, Senior Advisor to the Trump 2020 Campaign, said that only the US President will defeat the coronavirus, hold China accountable for their negligence, and defend the American people from socialism. 

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News Network
February 17,2020

Feb 17: Chinese authorities on Monday reported a slight upturn in new virus cases and 105 more deaths for a total of 1,770 since the outbreak began two months ago.

The 2,048 new cases followed three days of declines but was up by just 39 cases from the previous day’s figure. Another 10,844 people have recovered from COVID-19, a disease caused by the new coronavirus, and have been discharged from hospitals, according to Monday’s figures.

The update followed the publication late Saturday in China’s official media of a recent speech by President Xi Jinping in which he indicated for the first time that he had led the response to the outbreak from early in the crisis. While the reports were an apparent attempt to demonstrate the Communist Party leadership acted decisively from the start, it also opened Xi up to criticism over why the public was not alerted sooner.

In his speech, Xi said he gave instructions on fighting the virus on Jan. 7 and ordered the shutdown of the most-affected cities that began on Jan. 23.

The disclosure of his speech indicates top leaders knew about the outbreak’s potential severity at least two weeks before such dangers were made known to the public. It was not until late January that officials said the virus can spread between humans and public alarm began to rise.

New cases in other countries are raising growing concerns about containment of the virus.

Taiwan on Sunday reported its first death from COVID-19, the fifth fatality outside of mainland China. Taiwan’s Central News Agency, citing health minister Chen Shih-chung, said the man who died was in his 60s and had not traveled overseas recently and had no known contact with virus patients.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe convened an experts meeting to discuss containment measures in his country, where more than a dozen cases have emerged in the past few days without any obvious link to China.

“The situation surrounding this virus is changing by the minute,” Abe said.

Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said the country is “entering into a phase that is different from before,” requiring new steps to stop the spread of the virus.

Japan now has 413 confirmed cases, including 355 from a quarantined cruise ship, and one death from the virus. Its total is the highest number of cases among about two dozen countries outside of China where the illness has spread.

Hundreds of Americans from the cruise ship took charter flights home, as Japan announced another 70 infections had been confirmed on the Diamond Princess. Canada, Hong Kong and Italy were planning similar flights.

The 300 or so Americans flying on U.S.-government chartered aircraft back to the U.S. will face another 14-day quarantine at Travis Air Force Base in California and Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. The U.S. Embassy said the departure was offered because people on the ship were at a high risk of exposure to the virus. People with symptoms were banned from the flights.

About 255 Canadians and 330 Hong Kong residents are on board the ship or undergoing treatment in Japanese hospitals. There are also 35 Italians, of which 25 are crew members, including the captain.

In China’s Hubei province, where the outbreak began in December, all vehicle traffic will be banned in another containment measure. It expands a vehicle ban in the provincial capital, Wuhan, where public transportation, trains and planes have been halted for weeks.

Exceptions were being made for vehicles involved in epidemic prevention and transporting daily necessities.

Hubei has built new hospitals with thousands of patient beds and China has sent thousands of military medical personnel to staff the new facilities and help the overburdened health care system.

Last Thursday, Hubei changed how it recognized COVID-19 cases, accepting a doctor’s diagnosis rather than waiting for confirmed laboratory test results, in order to treat patients faster. The tally spiked by more than 15,000 cases under the new method.

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News Network
June 29,2020

Karachi, Jun 29: Four heavily-armed militants attacked the busy Pakistan Stock Exchange on Monday morning, killing four security guards and a police sub-inspector before being shot dead in an exchange of fire, media reports said.

The unidentified militants opened indiscriminate fire and lobbed hand grenades at the main gate of the building as they tried to storm it, Geo News reported.

Police said that all the terrorists have been killed while five persons injured in the attack.

Four security guards and a police sub-inspector were also killed in the attack.

"An unfortunate incident took place at the Pakistan Stock Exchange. They made their way from our parking area and opened fire on everyone," said Abid Ali Habib, Director of Pakistan Stock Exchange.

The firing by militants caused panic among the people in the building.

Sindh province Governor Imran Ismail condemned the incident.

"Strongly condemn the attack on PSX aimed at tarnishing our relentless war on terror. Have instructed the IG & security agencies to ensure that the perpetrators are caught alive & their handlers are accorded exemplary punishments. We shall protect Sindh at all costs," he said on Twitter.

Police and rangers have arrived on the spot and surrounded the area.

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