Watching CNN’s TV doctor Sanjay Gupta on Monday was to watch a master in answering hilariously stupid questions while maintaining a straight face.
Having been asked by anchor Alisyn Camerota about the new “questions” over President Trump walking down a ramp, Gupta was faced with the unenviable task of trying to look serious.
“It’s so hard to say, looking at a video, and I think that’s a bottom-line answer,” he said. “There’s a lot of clues in there but no conclusions. Is it balance problems? Is there some weakness there? Is there numbness in the feet, perhaps some type of neuropathy? Is it just a slippery ramp, as the president said, or slippery shoes? I don’t know, and I think you’ve got to be very cautious in trying to determine anything, certainly not diagnose anything or even speculate on this. … There’s just nothing obvious.”
I almost thought they were pranking Gupta and at any moment would reveal to him that the whole thing was a gag.
But it wasn’t. That was an actual segment produced in earnest on CNN’s New Day. The “questions” were made to appear legitimate because they concerned Trump’s “health.”
As Camerota described it, “It’s because of this video of the president where you see him walking very haltingly, one leg at a time — it starts happening here — down a ramp.”
The New York Times also ran a story about how the “halting walk” had raised “new health questions.”
If the deep analysis about Trump’s 15-feet voyage down a ramp wasn’t embarrassing enough on its own, it also included “questions” about how Trump drinks from a glass.
“He drinks water, or any glass, with two hands,” Camerota continued in her thoughtful conversation with Gupta. “Is that anything that you find strange?”
Gupta rose to the challenge.
“I mean, it’s strange,” he said. “I don’t know that you can make anything of it. Maybe he doesn’t want to spill water on himself in the middle of a speech. I don’t know. But is it a shoulder problem? Is it a hand numbness or something? Again, these are speculations.”
Journalists also tried to boost the news value of this ridiculous item by noting that, well, Trump likes to question the health status of his political opponents.
Right, but in those cases, there’s a clear there there.
Back in 2016, when he was criticizing Hillary Clinton’s “stamina” (which the media hated, of course), it was because we knew that the former secretary of state had previously passed out and had a concussion. We knew that she took medication for an underactive thyroid, one of the main symptoms of which is fatigue!
And what do you know? On one sunny day in New York — Sept. 11, 2016, to be exact — Clinton was caught on video collapsing like a rag doll before being quickly shunted into the back seat of a van and whisked away by handlers.
But let’s talk some more about how the president uses two hands when he takes a sip!
Trump has long been attacking Joe Biden, who he’ll face off against for reelection, by calling him “sleepy,” saying that he’s “lost his fastball,” and that he “doesn’t know he’s alive.”
Again, the reason those insults have weight behind them is that everyone who has watched Biden’s public appearances over the last year can see that he really has slowed down and dulled since the Obama years.
So, does anyone want to raise those “new health questions”?
