Trump's doctor letter

Clinton questions Trump's doctor letter

By Nick Gass

Hillary Clinton's campaign is going hard after Donald Trump's doctor after the Republican nominee's physician Harold Bornstein said last Friday that it took him only five minutes to compose the candidate's letter declaring that he would be the healthiest president ever elected.

"We have some questions about this letter from Donald Trump's doctor," a tweet from Clinton's official campaign account read Monday, linking to a 13-point takedown of the document, questioning everything from the letterhead to the signature.

A post on Clinton's website written by Oliver Chinyere begins by noting that the "Joseph Bornstein, M.D." on the letterhead died in 2010, five years before the letter was written in December 2015. As far as Harold Bornstein's listed title as "P.C.," Chinyere noted that term is typically reserved for a firm or practice rather than an individual practitioner.

The post followed Bornstein's interview Friday with NBC News in which he laid out Trump's reasoning for releasing the letter, revealing that he has personal knowledge of Clinton's health from her doctor.

"I guess he called and he said the Clinton organization was going to publish a letter on her health. And I know her physician and I know some of her health history, which is really not so good," Bornstein said. "I said, why not?" (Clinton and her team have pushed back against questions about her health, dismissing them as "deranged conspiracy theories.")

The website listed on the document does not exist, Chinyere wrote, although by Monday morning, it had curiously redirected to a website hawking "Annoying Teddy," a teddy bear that never stops singing "Happy Birthday."

Additionally, Chinyere said, "Usually, doctors’ letters released publicly do not include email addresses, in order to avoid HIPAA violations."

Instead of "To Whom It May Concern," the letter instead reads "To Whom My Concern," and the letter refers to Trump's test showing "only positive results," which generally means that the patient has whatever the test is diagnosing. As far as Bornstein's assessment of Trump's health as "astonishingly excellent," the Clinton article notes that is not "a real medical description."

The post goes on to question Bornstein's statement that Trump "has lost at least fifteen pounds," going on to poke at the terminology elsewhere in the document before questioning the doctor's listed credentials in his signature. While Bornstein's title includes "Section of Gastroenterology," his name is missing from Lenox Hill Hospital's website on its "Division of Gastroenterology," as it actually named. The Clinton campaign's article also took issue with Bornstein including the "F.A.C.G." abbreviation in his signature, noting that he has not been an actual fellow with the American College of Gastroenterologists since 1995.

Trump, meanwhile, kept up his attack on Clinton's fitness to be commander in chief on Monday, tweeting that her "brainpower is highly overrated."