Thread: Ben Carson: ‘Elderly’ candidates like Trump & Clinton should release health records

Ben Carson: ‘Elderly’ candidates like Trump and Clinton should release health records

By Jenna Johnson August 24 at 11:00 AM

Ben Carson, left, speaks with Donald Trump after a news conference at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on March 11. (Lynne Sladky/AP)

Ben Carson, the former presidential candidate and current Donald Trump adviser, said Wednesday that "elderly" presidential nominees like Trump and Hillary Clinton should release their medical history.

"I think that somebody who is running for president of the United States, particularly if they're elderly — and that would include both major candidates — should disclose their medical history. And I'm not talking about from a year ago or two years ago. I'm talking about currently," Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe" on Wednesday.

If he wins, 70-year-old Trump would become the oldest president ever elected. In December, Trump released a four-paragraph letter signed by Dr. Harold N. Bornstein of Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan that contained few specifics but declared that Trump would "be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

The letter pales in comparison to the more than 1,000 pages of medical records released in May 2008 by Sen. John McCain, who was then 71 and went on to become the Republican nominee. The records detailed eight years of care McCain received while fighting cancer.

Trump's spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said Wednesday that Trump has "no problem" releasing a full medical history, as long as Clinton does the same.

Trump once demanded Obama's records. Now, he's declining to release his own.

Trump and his supporters have raised questions about the health of Clinton, who is 68. Trump has repeatedly accused Clinton of sleeping too much and lacking the "strength" and "stamina" required for the job. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, a close adviser to Trump who is regularly at his side on the campaign trail, has repeatedly referred to unsubstantiated or debunked theories about Clinton's health.

"What you've got to do is go online," Giuliani said on "Fox News Sunday," accusing the media of hiding information about Clinton's health. "So, go online and put down Hillary Clinton illness, take a look at the videos for yourself."

Don’t believe everything you read about Hillary Clinton’s health on Google

Clinton's campaign has repeatedly insisted that there is no truth to such reports. In July 2015, Clinton released a two-page letter from her doctor listing the results of several lab tests, but the campaign has yet to release her full medical history and other records. If elected, Clinton would be the second-oldest president in history, just behind Ronald Reagan.

Brian Fallon, Clinton's press secretary, tweeted on Sunday: "Google Rudy and health and you can read about how he withdrew from '00 Senate race against Clinton," alluding to Giuliani dropping out of that race for health reasons.

Clinton and Trump are the oldest candidates ever. No one seems to care.

Giuliani doubled down on Fox News on Monday morning, saying that he thinks "Hillary's tired" and "looks sick."

On "Morning Joe" on Monday, political commentator Mike Barnicle asked Carson about Giuliani's comments and asked if he agreed. Carson responded that all major presidential candidates who are "elderly" should disclose their medical history."It's common sense," Carson said. "It makes sense because as people get older things begin to happen to them."

Carson added that "physicians and scientists generally will not make a diagnosis based on something that they see from a long distance," and he declined to provide a medical diagnosis of Clinton.

"My diagnosis would be that anybody who is elderly should expose their records, and we the people should know what they are, because it's a very stressful job," Carson said. "It's not an eight-hour a day job, it's 24/7, and we need to make sure that that is taken care of."

Carson was then asked if Trump should be held to the same standard, as he also has yet to release his full medical history.

"Absolutely," Carson said. "Without question."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ealth-records/

Oh Ben, stay off this. Don't demand anyone release private records to run for office, not tax returns, not health records. All you people who want to wail about the Constitution also seem to want to invade people's legally and Constitutionally protected private records. Health records are private. Tax records are private. You may want to see them, but you aren't legally or Constitutionally entitled to see them, so stop crapping on our laws, rights and Constitution and asking for stuff from political candidates that you are not entitled to see.

Hillary is fit enough physically to be President. Her problem isn't her health, it's her policies, bad judgment, horrible track record especially on immigration and trade.

Trump demanded Obama’s records.
But he’s not releasing his own.

Donald Trump's evolution on candidate tax returns
lay Video1:

By Jenna Johnson August 12

Donald Trump’s unflinching antagonism toward illegal immigration has galvanized activists who have grown to mistrust politicians on the issue, even those who have claimed to be as committed to the cause as they are.

And yet, for some, there is one nagging question that the candidate seems content to let linger — whether Trump’s Slovenian-born wife followed the law when she moved to the United States.

“Let them go wild, let it simmer, and then let’s have a little news conference,” Trump said at a rally this week, describing his strategy for handling those asking about his wife.

Mark Krikorian, a leading activist against illegal immigration, does not want to let it simmer. He wants an answer.

“Immigration is a big issue, and she is going to be first lady,” Krikorian said. “It matters.”

Trump says his wife immigrated legally to the U.S.


Years before he ran for the White House, Trump built his political brand by accusing President Obama of concealing his past. Trump called on Obama to release his college applications, transcripts and other records, asking how such a “terrible student” got into Ivy League schools. The business executive also demanded that Obama release his passport records and, most famously, his birth certificate, declaring in a video released before the 2012 election: “We know very little about our president.”

But Trump has ensured that Americans know relatively little about him.

Eight documents Trump has turned down requests to release

He has refused to release many of the same documents that he demanded from Obama, including college transcripts and passport records. He has shirked the decades-old tradition of major nominees releasing their tax returns and other documentation to prove their readiness and fitness for office.

And he has yet to release records showing why he received a medical deferment during the Vietnam War and whether he has actually donated the millions of dollars he claims to have given to charity.

While Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has hit Trump on his tax returns, saying this week that he “refuses to do what every other presidential candidate in decades has done,” Trump allies feel that Clinton has her own vulnerabilities when it comes to secrecy. Republicans have alleged that Clinton deleted thousands of emails from her private server to conceal favors done by her State Department for donors to her family’s charitable foundation — a charge Clinton has denied. And conservatives have called on Clinton, 68, to release her full medical records, citing a 2012 fainting episode in which she suffered a concussion. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon and former GOP candidate, told Fox News this week that the information is “critical” for voters.

But Trump, in building a wall around his records, is setting a new standard for secrecy for modern-day candidates.

All other major presidential nominees from both parties since 1976 have released their tax returns. Last summer, Clinton released returns from 2007 to 2014, and her campaign on Friday shared her 2015 return, as well as 10 years of returns from her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.


View Photos
The GOP presidential nominee is out on the trail ahead of the general election in November.


Trump’s lack of disclosure has left Americans to take his word for it when he brags about his wealth and charitable donations. In May, Trump filed a lengthy financial disclosure with federal regulators that claimed business had been booming at many of his properties. He issued a news release claiming to be worth $10 billion. But Trump provided no documentation to back up the claims.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for all of the documents mentioned in this story, nor did it respond to questions about why it was not releasing the records.

Trump’s approach reflects a calculation that weathering the criticism for withholding documents is more politically palatable than the scrutiny that would come from giving the information to Trump’s opponents and what his campaign sees as an unfair media.

“You give the New York Times 20,000 pages of tax returns, they will give you 20,000 pages of defamation of character,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who has advised Trump and was on his running mate shortlist.

Trump and his campaign have said there is nothing for voters to learn from these sorts of documents and that calls for their release were manufactured by the media.

“The only people who want the tax returns are the people who want to defeat him,” Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, said in May.

Trump once revealed his income tax returns. They showed he didn’t pay a cent.

Trump’s tax filings would provide details such as how much money Trump makes, how much he gives to charity and the extent to which he has benefited from special exemptions and credits to minimize his tax rate. The tax returns would also show what Trump declares as business expenses and whether he keeps foreign accounts.

Some details have trickled out, revealing that Trump has a history of shrinking his tax burden. According to filings, legal documents and other public records, he paid no federal income taxes for at least five years — 1978, 1979, 1984, 1991 and 1993. Tax analysts say it is possible that Trump has continued to pay little to no income taxes thanks to generous tax deductions, including real estate depreciation. In May, Trump said he fights “very hard to pay as little tax as possible.”

Before he was a candidate, Trump presented himself as a champion of disclosure, particularly when it came to tax returns.

In 2011, he said he would release his filings if Obama released his long-form birth certificate.

Ahead of the 2012 election, Trump criticized Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for delaying the release of his tax returns, saying, “It’s a great thing when you can show that you’ve been successful and that you’ve made a lot of money.” Romney ended up releasing two years of tax returns, leading to criticism of his relatively low tax rate — a result that Trump recently cited in explaining his own reasons for not releasing.

Romney has called Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns “disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee” and has speculated that Trump must be hiding a “bombshell of unusual size.”

In 2014, Trump said he would “absolutely” release the returns “if I decide to run for office.” In 2015, he said his disclosure was contingent on finding “out the true story on Hillary’s emails.”

In January, Trump said he was almost ready to disclose his “very big . . . very beautiful” returns. But a month later, Trump reversed course, citing ongoing Internal Revenue Service audits of several years of his taxes.

An IRS spokesman said that nothing, including an audit, “prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information.” And President Richard Nixon released his tax records while under audit.

Trump’s tax attorneys said in a letter that his tax returns since 2009 are being audited. His attorneys also said that returns from 2002 to 2008 were no longer being audited, yet Trump said he will not release them because “they’re all linked.”

“I would give absolutely nothing until the audit is over,” Trump’s special counsel, Michael Cohen, said on CNN on Thursday. “That’s my advice to Mr. Trump.”

Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has yet to release his tax returns. Trump’s campaign and aides to Pence did not respond to requests for the returns.

Trump has also declined to release his educational records from the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree and took undergraduate classes at the famed Wharton School, which was then called the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce.

Trump has claimed that he was a top student at the Ivy League institution, although his name does not appear on lists of academic honors from the time.

While in college, Trump received four student deferments from the Vietnam War draft, and Trump has said that he received a fifth one for medical reasons because he had bone spurs that he says cleared up on their own. Trump has not produced the letter that he says he received from his doctor at the time documenting the problem.

Trump, 70, has also not released his medical records. Instead, in December, Trump released a four-paragraph letter from his doctor stating that a recent medical examination “showed only positive results” but not providing documentation such as lab results.

The letter ends with the guarantee: “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

In July 2015, Clinton released a two-page letter from her doctor listing the results of several lab tests, including an electrocardiogram, cholesterol levels and cancer screening results.

In the past, a number of nominees have released their medical health records to prove that they are healthy and fit for the job. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who was 72 when he was the GOP’s 2008 nominee and had suffered years of health problems since his time as a Vietnam War prisoner of war, released more than a thousand pages of medical records.

The questions about Melania Trump’s immigration status have emerged in the wake of newly published nude photographs of the former model.

Melania Trump has said she came to the country in 1996 on a visa that allowed her to work, but the photos were taken in New York in 1995. She met Donald Trump in 1998, and they were married in 2005. She has said she got a green card in 2001 and became a citizen in 2006.

Many questions and few answers about how Melania Trump immigrated to the U.S.“I follow a law the way it’s supposed to be,” she told MSNBC earlier this year. “I never thought to stay here without papers. I had visa.”

Paolo Zampolli, an Italian-born business executive based in New York who once owned modeling agencies, told The Washington Post last week that his agency, Metropolitan Models, sponsored Melania Trump, then Melania Knauss, for an H-1B work visa in 1996 after he spotted her while scouting models in Milan and Paris. Working models are eligible for an H-1B if they can show “distinguished merit or ability” in their field. Zampolli said Knauss qualified based on her past work as a model in Europe.

The campaign has not responded to requests for documentation to back up the account, or to explain the process through which Trump received her green card. And it is not clear when, or if, the campaign will schedule the news conference that Donald Trump mentioned this week.

“Let me set the record straight,” Melania Trump tweeted last week. “I have at all times been in full compliance with the immigration laws of this country. Period.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...1a1_story.html

What now? Washington Post dribble against Trump as an argument to what, JohnDoe2? Invading someone's privacy? Asking for things from candidate's you aren't entitled to see? Or just a hit job against Trump and his wife?

Well, rest easy, thanks to Trojan Horse, Kellyanne Conway, you'll be posting about Madame President for 4 years come January.

What a tragedy.

Melania Trump, wife of Donald Trump, delivers a speech on the first day of the Republican National Convention on July 18, at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. | Getty

Melania Trump taking legal action against Daily Mail for defamation

By Hadas Gold 08/22/16 02:52 PM EDT

Melania Trump has started legal action against the Daily Mail and other outlets for what she claims is a defamatory article about her past.

Charles Harder, an attorney for Trump, said in an email that the legal action goes beyond just the Daily Mail and is not limited to the United Kingdom, where the Daily Mail is headquartered.

"Mrs. Trump has placed several news organizations on notice of her legal claims against them, including Daily Mail among others, for making false and defamatory statements about her supposedly having been an “escort” in the 1990s," Harder said in an email. "All such statements are 100% false, highly damaging to her reputation, and personally hurtful. She understands that news media have certain leeway in a presidential campaign, but outright lying about her in this way exceeds all bounds of appropriate news reporting and human decency."

Harder was in the news recently for representing Hulk Hogan in his successful bid to sue Gawker, bankrolled by Silicon Valley investor and Donald Trump supporter Peter Thiel, who spoke at the Republican National Convention in July.

The article in question was published last week by the Daily Mail and questions Trump's biography and history as as model.

Other news organizations in the United Kingdom were warned about publishing the allegations as well. Another British newspaper sent a note to employees which was shared with POLITICO, warning them about publishing similar allegations.

On Monday Trump tweeted out a link to an Inquisitr and BipartisanReport apologizing for publishing an article that repeated the allegations.

The Daily Mail had not responded to a request for comment as of publishing. We will add their response when they do.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-med...amation-227281

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When any candidate releases their own health records, tax records, school records, birth certificate, etc. of their own free will no one's privacy is invaded.
It would only be an invasion of privacy if anyone released someone else's records without their permission.
People asking a candidate to release their records is not unconstitutional.
They can always just say NO.
And then the voters get to decide if that is a good reason to NOT vote for them.

Trump Advisor Dr. Ben Carson:
'Elderly' Candidates 'Absolutely' Should Release Medical Records

by david badash
August 24, 2016 9:57 AM

Dr. Ben Carson Says Recent Medical Records Are 'Absolutely' Called For

Trump campaign advisor Dr. Ben Carson says any presidential candidate who is "elderly" should disclose their recent medical records. The retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon is calling on both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to make public their full and recent medical records, not ones from a year ago, Carson specified.

"I'm not talking about from a year ago or two years ago. I'm talking about currently," Carson said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Wednesday.

Hillary Clinton is 68, Donald Trump is 70.

Trump campaign surrogates and supporters have been pedaling lies about Hillary Clinton's health. Even former prosecutor and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been engaging in false speculation and rumor about the Democratic nominee.

Carson refused to specifically call out Giuliani, even when asked about his false statements.

"As a physician, physicians and scientists generally will not make a diagnosis based on something that they see from a long distance.

They want to have the facts," was as far as Carson was willing to go.

"So you would have no diagnosis yourself on Hillary Clinton, Dr. Carson?," MSNBC's Willie Geist prodded.

"My diagnosis would be that anybody who is elderly should expose their records and we, the people, should know what they are.

Because it's a very stressful job," Carson responded. "It's not an eight-hour-a-day job. It's 24/7 and we need to make sure that that's taken care of."

"And you agree Donald Trump should be held to that same standard, because he hasn't done that either?," Geist continued.

"Absolutely, without question," Carson said.

In July of 2015 Hillary Clinton released a letter from her internist detailing her health, including her hypothyroidism, seasonal allergies, and a blood clot she sustained in 2012 after a fall, which left her with a concussion.

In December, Donald Trump released a letter, purportedly from his gastroenterologist, stating he would be "the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency." It offered little details, and the terminology was so questionable that on Tuesday CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta called it "absurd."

On Monday, The New York Times accused both candidates of being "more secretive and selective than many recent presidential nominees in providing up-to-date details about their personal health — a particularly striking departure, experts say, given the candidates’ age."

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement...edical_records

Or if it's a good reason TO VOTE FOR THEM.