I don’t blame a 74-year old man for exercising caution on a ramp. (After all, if he slipped and cracked his skull, his detractors might accuse him of being a provocateur.) What is absurd, however, is the end of his tweet, which I’ve painted red here:
If you watch the video, you see that it wasn’t the last ten feet, but just the final step and a half where Trump walks at a normal speed (definitely not running). And he walks that final step with his arms proudly swinging as if in imitation of a fast-running athlete.
At least you likely wouldn’t deserve it. Whether Trump has a degenerative disease or he’s simply aging or it’s due to his lifts or maybe the ramp really was just slippery, he fully deserves every ounce of criticism he gets for it. Here’s a 2016 tweet from him:
“The way President Obama runs down the stairs of Air Force 1, hopping & bobbing all the way, is so inelegant and unpresidential. Do not fall!” .
What Ford suffered from was Chevy Chase, whose portrayal of Ford (fairly or unfairly) overshadowed Ford himself.
That’s my take on it too, and also why he takes stairs so carefully.
This reminds me for all the world of this scene from Napoleon Dynamitewhere Pedro takes his bike over a little jump and Napoleon declares “You got like three feet of air that time”. It’s just such a pointless and sophomoric exaggeration designed to make something trivial appear exciting.
Ironically, Chase developed severe back pain as a result of his pratfalls on SNL and checked himself into the Betty Ford Clinic in 1986 to be treated for addiction to prescription painkillers
The guy still golfs regularly so its not like he’s a cripple or anything. I think the most likely answer is Snarky_Kong’s, dude is just afraid of looking foolish.
Huh? There are no physical disqualifiers written into the Constitutional criteria to be elected. There is an implied living criteria. The 25th Amendment is pretty vague requiring only the ability to discharge the powers and duties of the office. That is a pretty high bar to attempt to physically disqualify someone.
FDR could not have walked down that ramp by himself. He was in declining health throughout his third term and had a laundry list of issues diagnosed before his final election. (wiki cite)
It was, admittedly, before ratification of the 25th Amendment. Still FDR led us through the preparation for and most of the execution of winning a world war. He did it while both largely confined to a wheelchair and knocking on death’s door. Do we really want to interpret the standard of being able to discharge the duties in a way that would disqualify a future FDR from serving as president?
When someone says (as they do in this link) “you can’t make this up” I always suspect that’s exactly what they are doing.
I think this is all a lot of wishful thinking. He’s about to be 75. You don’t need diseases or conditions other than being 75 to account for all of this stuff. Well, except for wearing lifts, which makes no sense at all to me. The drawbacks would way outweigh any possible benefits.
We were told years ago that Trump tested positive for everything. So he has every disease and ailment under the sun. His own doctor told us that Trump tested positive.
Tuberculosis? Check. He has that. Positive test
Syphilis? Check.
Herpes? Check.
Lupus? IT’S NEVER LUPUS!
Biopsy for Cancer? Check. Came back positive.
High Cholesterol? Positive.
He basically has every condition known to medical science. His doctor said so. Why is anyone surprised?
What issues exactly? Like others have pointed out, there are no health requirements for the office of president (or indeed most offices) other than the implied one of being alive. What ‘serious issues’ do you think should be disqualifying, and how do you test for them? For example, I would be opposed to any psychological testing as a qualifier for public office, as psychiatry doesn’t actually have objective criteria for making a diagnosis. Requiring someone to undergo a psych exam lets that psychiatrist disqualify anyone they wish from office, and if they pick their on psychiatrist they will just pick one who affirms that they’re in good condition.
Bear in mind that a psych test standard likely means that until 1973 gay people would be unable to hold office, as homosexuality was officially a mental illness. And that any black people who escaped slavery in the 1800s would be disqualified because of drapetomania (the mental illness that was literally ‘black people trying to escape slavery’), and those in the 1960s agitating for equal rights would be diagnosed with a flavor of schizophrenia.
