Politico: Is the President Fit?

[forgotmylogin]

Donald Trump is the least athletic president in generations. Here’s why it matters.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/18/is-the-president-fit-215385

Few props have been more indispensable to Donald Trump’s presidency than the golf cart. He drives them on his frequent weekend trips to the links (invariably at Trump-owned clubs, where he rolls onto the greens, too—normally a no-no). During his visit to Saudi Arabia in May, rather than walk, the president hopped a ride in a cart as he toured the National Museum in Riyadh. And a few days later, while six other world leaders at a G-7 summit in Sicily walked 700 yards up a slight hill to a photo-op, Trump followed behind for at least part of the way in, yes, another golf cart.

The images of Trump in his carts—at the wheel, wearing a “MAGA” hat on the golf course, or suited and solemn in Saudi Arabia—resonate strongly with Jack O’Donnell, an executive who worked for Trump in Atlantic City. It was 28 years ago—right after a helicopter crash killed three of Trump’s executives—that Trump told O’Donnell, who often trained for triathlons, that exercise was going to ruin his body. “He told me you’ve got to stop that,” O’Donnell told me. “He really believed we only have so much energy, that it was important not to waste it.”

When O’Donnell, who in 1991 published a tell-all book about working with Trump, watches Trump putter along in his vehicle of choice, he doesn’t see a man conserving energy but a man who is unfit for office. As in, literally, physically unfit. “It says to me that he is in horrible shape and he knows it,” O’Donnell said. “He’d walk if he could, but he knows he can’t keep up with the group, so he rides the cart instead.” (Trump, for his part, dismissed O’Donnell in a 1999 Playboy interview as a “disgruntled employee” and “a fucking loser” who “didn’t know that much about what he was doing.”)

In the modern history of American presidents, no occupant of the Oval Office has evinced less interest in his own health. He does not smoke or drink, but his fast-food, red meat-heavy diet, his aversion to exercise and a tendency to gorge on television for hours at a time put him at odds with his predecessors. Some of them had their vices (Barack Obama and his cigarettes), but they spent hours of free time outside or on the basketball court, breaking a sweat—and made sure the public knew it. Teddy Roosevelt went on legendary “rough, cross-country walks” in D.C.’s Rock Creek Park and was once punched in the eye by a sparring partner half his age. John F. Kennedy projected an image of youthful vitality even as he secretly took painkillers for his bad back and other ailments. Gerald Ford was lampooned as a clumsy oaf on Saturday Night Live, but he was a champion football player in college. George W. Bush, an avid mountain biker, ran 7-minute miles on his regular 5k workouts. Even Bill Clinton lumbered along on regular jogs to atone for his Big Mac habit.

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Is this in the future for 45?

I suspect his will be "executive leather"; one step from the Dr. Evil Chair.

(No shade to anyone who actually uses one of these out of necessity.)

[joeybee12]

1. Unfit physically, mentally, emotionally and intellectually nt

[smirkymonkey]

3. Exactly.

Unfit in every possible way.

[Shell_Seas]

2. Is this a rhetorical question?

[Gothmog]

4. Trump is unfit to be POTUS

[Goonch]

5. Presidential

[enough]

6. On the other hand, all he has to do is watch TV and tweet. NT

[Iggo]

7. Low energy. Sad. (n/t)