My honor is called loyalty

Today’s cabinet meeting featured, no doubt among other things that I’ve missed:

*Trump literally falling asleep on several occasions. He even appeared to nod off when he himself was talking, let alone when his shameless sycophants were droning on. (Imagine if Joe Biden part googolplex)

*Speaking of which, Kristi Noem thanked him for keeping any hurricanes from striking the US this fall.

*She also thanked him for “giving our lives meaning and purpose.”

*Pete Hegseth’s nameplate featured a rather striking typo, if that’s what it was, as it identified him as the SSECRETARY OF WAR.

At the subsequent press conference, Trump called JD Vance incompetent:

I invite you to read through Rupar’s social media accounts regarding today’s proceedings, at least if you’re the kind of person who thought The Silence of the Lambs was a good date movie.

Per actual medical experts who were consulted by journalists on this subject, the White House’s statement yesterday that Trump was given an MRI as routine matter to monitor his cardiovascular health makes no sense on its face:

Dr. Jeffrey A. Linder, chief of general internal medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, told the New York Times that advanced imaging has never been a typical part of a presidential physical—contrary to what the White House claimed Monday.

“There is nothing standard about an executive physical,” Linder told the newspaper Monday. “There is no medical specialty that recommends that an otherwise asymptomatic individual get imaging.”

“There is a reason we don’t test everybody for everything all the time,” he continued. Unnecessary testing for an individual who doesn’t need it can lead to useless treatments, Linder said. . .

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who served as the late former Vice President Dick Cheney’s cardiologist for over 30 years, called the explanation behind Trump’s advanced imaging “laughable.”

“There really is no preventative cardiac MRI,” Reiner, a medical analyst for CNN, said during an episode of CNN News Central on Monday. “This is not a standard test for an 80-year-old man to undergo advanced imaging.”

The analyst also commented on the frequency of Trump’s medical examinations, noting that the president already had a physical exam in April.

“If you look at his first administration, the president, like most presidents, only underwent one comprehensive physical exam every year, so this comes completely off-cycle,” he said.

Reiner also questioned the nature of the imaging, asking why Barbabella did not include the “specific advanced imaging” the president underwent.

Assuming that anything that comes out of the White House about Trump’s health has the slightest evidentiary value is a serious mistake. There’s a long history of even normal presidential administrations engaging in all sorts of prevarications and coverups regarding the health of presidents. To imagine that the Trump administration, which lies about everything all the time as a pure authoritarian reflex, would reveal what’s actually going on with Trump’s health is beyond absurd.

The 25th amendment exists in part to deal with just this sort of situation: The people who say it’s only meant to deal with a president in a coma or something similar have obviously never read it, since it explicitly contemplates a situation where a president whose mental condition requires that he be removed from office refuses to step down, and creates a mechanism for forcing him to do so. But of course like any other law, that amendment assumes an at least minimally functional and healthy political culture, which at this moment is like assuming the famous can opener on the desert island.