Harold Bornstein: Avatar Of A Debased Presidency
Is there a more perfect encapsulation of the degradation, fraudulence, incompetence, incoherence, thuggery, buffoonery, pettiness, vindictiveness, avarice, shamelessness, hackery, illegality, mendacity, corruption, remorselessness, stupidity, and utter tawdriness of the Trump administration than the Harold Bornstein revelations of yesterday?
Bornstein managed in his interviews to not only accuse then–White House Director of Oval Office operations (former Trump bodyguard) Keith Schiller and Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten of stealing Trump’s medical records without a signed HIPPA form two days after Bornstein revealed that he had prescribed Propecia for Trump to grow his hair, but at the same to insult sexual-assault victims by likening Trump’s henchmen’s seizing of Trump’s medical records to being raped.
Thuggery, incompetence, tone-deafness and misogyny, corruption, illegality, pettiness, shamelessness, tawdriness? Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, and check.
Bornstein also managed in his interviews to possibly admit to and commit multiple HIPPA violations by discussing aspects of Trump’s medical treatment, including that he had prescribed drugs to Trump for rosacea and high cholesterol.
Illegality again? Check. Incompetence and remorselessness and stupidity? Check, check, and check.
Bornstein also admitted to being gleeful at Ronny Jackson’s derailed nomination to be Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs because he himself didn’t get the gig as Trump’s personal White House physician after revealing the Propecia prescription. The Times disclosed that Bornstein tried to fleece them for contributions to his alma mater, Tufts University, in the course of an interview with them.
Pettiness and vindictiveness and corruption and avarice? Check, check, check, and check.
Bornstein also admitted that he lied in 2015 and 2016 when he insisted that he had written that absurd medical letter on behalf of Trump himself, when it was so obviously written in the words of Trump and was patently incredible — especially the claim that Trump, a 70-year-old man, was “astonishingly healthy” and would be the “healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” However, in his interview with CNN, Bornstein claims simultaneously that Trump “dictated that whole letter. I didn’t write that letter” and that “I just made it up as I went along.” Well, which is it? Did Bornstein make it up as he went along? Or did Trump dictate it? Either way, he’s admitted it is not true.
Mendacity, buffoonery, hackery ,incompetence, incoherence, stupidity, shamelessness? Check, check, check, check, check, check, and check.
At the same time, even while admitting he released a false letter to the American public on Trump’s behalf during the election, which Trump touted to deflect concerns about his health (even as he projected onto his rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, false attacks about her health to distract from his failure to come clean about his own health), Bornstein stands by the fraud he perpetrated during the election: “‘That’s black humor, that letter. That’s my sense of humor,’ he said. ‘It’s like the movie Fargo: It takes the truth and moves it in a different direction.’” This man wrote a fraudulent letter, let Trump and his supporters rely on it during the election, lied at the time that the letter had been written by him, and now claims his fraud was all his own (then-undisclosed) black humor.
Mendacity, shamelessness, remorselessness, fraud? Check, check, check, and check.
It also appears that Bornstein didn’t report what he has described as a theft/burglary, and one which exposes him to state law violations for not retaining original medical records, to any authorities. Impossible to know whether that failure was the result of fear or the hope of getting back into Trump’s good graces. I suspect a combination.
Stupidity? Personal degradation? Shamelessness? Oh, check and check and check.
I haven’t been able to discern what’s really motivating Bornstein’s sudden new talkativeness, and I’m not sure I care. I expect and hope that the Special Counsel is watching carefully as he builds his case and puts pressure on Schiller and possibly Garten to flip on Trump. Clearly, Garten’s and Bornstein’s conduct depart widely from professional ethics standards, to put it mildly, and Schiller’s thuggery while employed by the White House carries its own set of issues.
The upshot of course is that this White House is a lawless, sordid, incompetent shitshow, a degraded flophouse of thuggery. The low-budget reality-TV unapologetic crassness of it all is almost sublime, if you think about it. Even those of us who knew what a grotesque buffoon Trump was could not fully envision the depth of the degradation he would engender; we could not have dreamed this up. The problem with elevating to high office a person so debased in character is that the United States is thereby itself degraded, sunken in slime and tarnished. Corruption attracts and breeds corruption, and no one can escape unscathed. No one has, and no one will. I can only pray that adage holds true for Trump himself, as he will continue to debase this nation until and likely even after he is removed from office.
