THE PRESIDENT’S MOST DANGEROUS COMORBIDITY

HOW ALEC BALDWIN’S SNL PERFORMANCE AFTER THE THE THIRD 2016 PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE CONNECTS TO TRUMP’S NOVEMBER 2019 WALTER REED VISIT AND HIS EXPONENTIALLY HEIGHTENED RISK OF DEATH FROM COVID-19

By: Terence Lenahan[*]

Copyright 2020 — all rights reserved

ABSTRACT:

There is strong circumstantial evidence that blood drawn during his first physical in January 2018 revealed that President Trump had a rare disease. So successful was Admiral Jackson’s subterfuge that his true diagnosis has eluded every media physician, even though it explains many enigmas about his persona. Two unscheduled four-day disappearances in March 2018 and November 2019) point to clandestine surgeries, the facts of which have been concealed from press and public. As it involves a rare, complex disease, the case for President Trump’s diagnosis unfortunately cannot be succinctly summarized and requires attention to apprehend, but it is solid, watertight, and can be proven beyond all reasonable doubt with appropriate photographs.

TEXT:

When President Trump unexpectedly traveled to Walter Reed by motorcade on a Saturday afternoon last November, experts speculated that acute cardiac or neurological issues had arisen. After the recent revelation that the VP Pence was put on alert, media physicians concluded that the President was anesthetized, but no medical expert could identify a procedure able to be completed within the little over one hour that he was behind closed doors. The New York Times has now reported that medical personnel who treated him in 2019 were required to sign confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements. What is the secrecy-obsessed President hiding?

With the puzzling event of last November as a backdrop, the President’s doctor now dances the Trumpian two-step, his avoidance of key questions patent. All media experts believe the President has pneumonia, leaving them baffled by his doctor’s concealment of lung scans, explicable if the scans would reveal previous damage from another source.

The current concern for Trump’s life is understandable if the procedure for which he was anesthetized In November 2019 treated a disease that had impacted his respiratory tract, from nasal passages to bronchioles to the all-important alveoli where gaseous exchange between oxygen and carbon dioxide occurs. But why would the lungs of a lifelong non-smoker to be unusually susceptible to attack?

After his departure from Walter Reed amidst Covid treatment, media analysts focused on the possibility of presidential unfitness due to an unbalanced mental state. His outrageous, erratic, inappropriately boisterous behavior post discharge prompted Speaker Pelosi to observe that the President was in “an altered state” either due to his infection or the steroids. Media analysts noted that his erratic behavior was consistent with steroids, but observed that it was difficult to distinguish from his pre-Covid behavior which was also outrageous and erratic.

That observation points to the true nature of President’s Trump’s medical secret, a disease that produced a naturally occurring toxic level of steroids. A medical degree is not necessary to know that one potential explanation for the 2019 visit to Walter Reed has been ignored by every expert — a disorder of the endocrine system. The connection between the often-overlooked endocrine glands and President Trump’s health raises four obvious questions.

(1) Is there an endocrinal disease that could explain the enigmas about the President, including his health, his psychology, and even his physical morphology?

(2) Is there convincing circumstantial evidence that the President has or had such a disease?

(3) Could corrective surgery for the disease have been completed in one hour during the November 2019 visit to Walter Reed?

(4) Is there convincing evidence that the disease impacted his respiratory system, constituting an additional comorbidity and putting him at significantly increased risk of death from the Covid virus?

Sadly for the President’s current prognosis, the secret known to Dr. Conley is that the answer to all four questions is an unqualified “yes.” That is the likely reason for his rapid deterioration so soon after testing positive, the source of the physicians’ panicked reaction and their refusal to release lung scans, and the reason is still at great risk of death from Covid.

Acromegaly is a fascinating, complex disease that deforms the facial bones and features so incrementally it goes unrecognized for decades. It is protean, having as many as 100 possible symptoms that often manifest in response to unusually stressful situations, accompanied by emotional instability and impulsive speech and behavior, typically appearing as the acromegalac approaches age 50 when hormonal secretions cross the boundary between tolerable and toxic. Many Trumpian mysteries are explainable by Acromegaly; as with all acromegalacs, the Acromegaly Hypothesis functions as a Rosetta Stone — only postulate the disease and everything becomes clear. Occam’s razor prefers Acromegaly to any other diagnosis for President Trump because it provides the simplest explanation for the widest spectrum of facts, and there are no facts that directly disprove it.

Acromegaly is caused by a relatively rare tumor called a pituitary adenoma. Situated at the base of the brain behind the bridge of the nose where the optic nerves cross, the pea-sized pituitary is called the body’s control center because it produces hormones that regulate critical functions, including growth, metabolism, sexuality, emotions, and response to stress. A tumor on the pituitary, though not malignant, is a serious disease insofar as it may produce excesses of one or more hormones and deficiencies of others, ultimately leading to a baffling series of intensely painful cascading casualties as a prelude to an agonizing death. Not coincidentally, a genetic mutation predisposing to Acromegaly has been founded in high concentration in central Germany, the President’s grandfather’s ancestral home.

Hormones are the most powerful substances produced by the human body — they can be used to transform one sex into another, and it is a hormone produced by the adrenal glands that can instantly suffuse a small woman with power sufficient to lift a car off her trapped child. Growth Hormone has been used as a performance-enhancing drug since at least the 1980’s and has been banned by the IOC, the NCAA, FIFA, and all professional sports leagues. A recently arrested domestic terrorist recognized the power of Growth Hormone — his cache of weapons and explosives included more than thirty vials of injectable hormone, obtained on the counsel of Anders Brevik, the Norwegian mass murderer with 77 victims, to be injected with steroids over a 35-day period to enhance his ability to commit mass murder, either by improving his focus and endurance or by destroying his capacity for human empathy, or both. Growth Hormone and steroids impart significant advantages in concentration and endurance early in adulthood, but they become increasingly toxic in later stages of the disease, when stamina is supplanted by fatigue.

There are several types of pituitary adenomas. Prolactinoma, the most common, secretes excess female hormones. An adenoma secreting Adrenocorticotropic Hormone (ACTH) is known as Cushing’s disease, in which the adrenal glands produce toxic levels of cortisol and other steroids, resulting in weight gain restricted to the torso (“central obesity”) with reddening and rounding of the face. President Trump’s face has in fact become rounder, his pigmentation is reddish-orange, he is in a constant state of roid rage; and his weight gain appears to be restricted to his torso while his arms and legs have remained thin, making Cushing’s a real possibility.

The rarest pituitary tumor secretes both Growth Hormone and ACTH. The unfortunates so afflicted know the horror of both Acromegaly and Cushing’s disease, a hormonal cocktail so noxious that its emotional effects can scarcely be imagined, even by an endocrinologist. All indications are that that is President Trump’s history.

Diagnosis is confirmed by blood testing and an MRI of the brain, but approximately half of all acromegalacs are identifiable by characteristic facial changes, including alteration of the shape of the face, broadening of the brow, protrusion of the brow ridges and eyebrows, thickening and enlargement of the mandible, and later in the progression general coarsening of the facial features and skin. The changes occur so slowly that they go unnoticed from day to day, but photographs of the acromegalac in his 20’s and in his 50’s or 60’s typically appear to depict different persons, as is true of President Trump.

Acromegaly degrades vital organs asymptomatically for decades before the severity of the cumulative damage becomes perceptible. Until the advent of endoscopic base brain surgery, the disease was usually fatal, resulting in a slow, excruciatingly painful death, shortening life by roughly ten years or more, most often killing by cardiac or respiratory failure after decades of degradation of the targeted organ.

The first indication of an acromegalic attack against the respiratory tract is usually sleep apnea, affecting 50–80% of acromegalic men. There are two types of apnea, constrictive and obstructive, but in Acromegaly, growth of new tissue and excess fluid synergize in the respiratory tract, so the apnea can be both constrictive and obstructive. Growth of the mandible and maxilla combine with soft tissue swelling of the tongue, palate, uvula, nasal passages, laryngeal and pharyngeal mucosal tissues, sinuses, and lungs to narrow the upper airway. Elongation and spreading of the ribs deforms the inspiratory muscles and alters the geometry of the rib cage, contributing to hypoventilation, or increasingly frequent respirations of shorter duration. Most insidiously, excess Growth Hormone triggers the deposition of spongiform bony tissue within the lungs, gradually burying the alveoli under “lung overgrowth.”

These anatomical changes lead to serious complications including emphysema and bronchiectasis. Bronchiectasis, a shortness of breath due to hardening of lung tissue, leads to death from respiratory failure — when the alveoli can no longer perform gaseous exchange, even a ventilator on maximum pressure is futile. Lung disease is the cause of death for about 25% of all acromegalacs.

Acromegaly inevitably produces characteristic behavioral changes. The pituitary secretes primarily at night, so as the level of performance-enhancing chemical increases, the individual awakes earlier and earlier, often after no more than three or four hours of sleep. The increased hormone level forces the body to create new cells at an accelerated rate, resulting in greatly increased appetite beginning around age 50. As the hormone creates a very bad feeling, binge eating of comfort food to increase endorphins is common.

Even the foregoing very brief description is sufficient to identify President Trump as a possible candidate for pituitary disease, an inference that becomes more persuasive when scrutinized in depth.

1. His present appearance bears little resemblance to the man at age 30. Acromegaly attacks organs, and the body’s largest organ, the skin, is a frequent target. As he neared age 50, orange spots began to erupt on his facial skin and ultimately completely transformed his original Caucasian pigmentation.

The most obvious proof of President Trump’s Acromegaly is the photographs of his May 10, 2017 Oval Office meeting with Russian diplomats released by TASS. The President was furious at the publication as he did not expect to be photographed — never again did he skip his mandatory makeup session. The TASS photographs revealed his acromegalic disfigurement to be quite florid, reflecting the severe hormonal imbalance typical of the later stages of the disease.

2. A comparison of contemporary photos with images taken forty years earlier show that the shape of his face has changed completely and is now box-shaped. His mandible has become less angular, more rounded, and has markedly thickened. Subcutaneous osteophytes have developed on his check and jaw bones. His facial skin has coarsened markedly, a textbook acromegalic symptom. This is not a pattern of normal aging.

3. Candidate Trump derided his opponent for lack of stamina while proudly proclaiming that he slept less than four hours per night, the extra waking time purportedly enabling him to accomplish far more than ordinary humans. Superhuman stamina, in his view, is an innate Trumpian quality, part of his inherent superiority over ordinary humans.

After the first presidential checkup, Admiral Ronny Jackson dutifully followed his commander’s lead, asserting that the President “has a lot of stamina,” a facile, seemingly offhand comment that succeeded in shutting the door on discussion of worrisome symptoms. The benefit of a good night’s sleep is a self-evident truth and the effects of sleep deprivation are well known to those conducting “enhanced interrogations,” yet in Jackson’s Orwellian newspeak chronic insomnia is not disdained as a torture technique but is touted as an asset, the product of superb genes. After three years in office, his hand-picked Surgeon General followed suit, pointing to his minimal sleep time as a sign of superiority, vehemently averring that “the President is healthier than I am,” even though he is not the President’s physician, and that he “needs less sleep than I do,” as if a grumpy old man’s insomnia was cause to boast.

Trump’s attitude toward his insomnia is a fascinating example of Acromegaly’s ability to transform and deceive the mind as well as the body. It is common sense that humans require a full night’s sleep to function at peak efficiency and that chronic lack of sleep is a physical and psychological negative. If everyone slept only four hours per night, at least 95% of the population would feel that they were going insane. But Growth Hormone so warped his mind that Trump sees his insomnia as an asset, a mental deformation that parallels the inability to perceive the physical disfigurements caused by Acromegaly. Disturbingly, he infected the Surgeon General and White House physician with his delusions. Given the importance of sleep to the human body and mind, a person who brags that he doesn’t require sleep is a self-deluded fool who needs to see a good doctor, and a Surgeon General who agrees with him should hang up his shingle.

4. His fast food binges are well known. Jackson’s oft-quoted fawning that Trump might have lived for 200 years, if he could just have “controlled his appetite over the last twenty years!,” has never been fully deconstructed. The weak attempt at jocularity unwittingly revealed something previously unknown — his overeating had progressed for two decades, raising the question of what could be responsible for a slim man with normal appetite developing a craving for junk food around age 50, exactly when the effects of Acromegaly typically begin to manifest. The Acromegaly Hypothesis explains his increased, uncontrollable appetite by the body’s demand for additional protein and minerals to create new tissue, leading to obesity two decades later.

5. Just as his appearance has been completely transformed, the personality of the young Donald Trump was transformed and became enveloped in anger, consistent with unbalanced steroids. His temperament became more volatile than quicksilver. He is perpetually prepared for a fight, adamantly responding to even petty annoyances with cruel remarks that erupt without inhibition or the filter of forethought. The most shocking manifestation of his temperament during the 2016 campaign was his defiant reaction to a reporter’s third-hand paraphrase of a lurid tabloid headline mischaracterizing a statement by Pope Francis — without a moment’s hesitation he threw a counterpunch at the Pope. Rather than appearing reasoned and restrained, like a person temperamentally suited to control the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, the candidate reacted like a hothead primed to go off half-cocked, like a man who might react to an accidental nudge with a punch in the nose, like a man with Acromegaly.

Basic neurological and acuity tests enabled Admiral Jackson to brush aside concerns about his patient’s mentality, yet tens of millions have long known that his speech and behavior are so outlandishly uncouth that something must be amiss with a man who once was at least outwardly genteel. His tweets have been described as “cyber road rage” and “cyber roid rage” in the tradition of Dark Ages fulminations, the medieval ecclesiastical condemnations issued by bishops certain that divine vengeance obeys their command.

There had been early signs of uncontrollable temper after his purchase of The Plaza when his tantrum lasted many hours as he railed about every scratch on every furnishing, but the public was first exposed to it during his senseless vendetta against Alicia Machado, then Miss Universe, who he branded as “Miss Piggy.” The emotional dysfunction and the eruption of orange spots on his Caucasian skin both manifested as he neared age 50, as did his increased appetite, suggesting that all three could originate from a common source, increasingly toxic hormonal imbalances produced by a pituitary tumor.

Jackson may have assuaged the fears of a few of the millions discomforted by erratic eruptions of presidential pique, but history teaches that the public has never learned the total truth from any White House physician. Viewing Jackson’s press conference with knowledge of his secret, one senses that peeking out from the cloak of obsequious apologetics and pathetic sycophantic humor was an unsettling undercurrent of nervousness, leaving viewers with a sense that his performance had been carefully stage managed, and that Jackson knew more than he was telling — that his patient had tested positive for toxic levels of Growth Hormone, Insulin-like Growth Factor‑1 (IGF-1), cortisol, and possibly imbalances of other hormones, including those that regulate the thyroid.

6. High stress often triggers a hormonal spike such that previously repressed symptoms suddenly manifest. That progression was apparent during the final weeks of the 2016 campaign. The release of the “Access Hollywood” videotape thrust Trump into the greatest crisis of his political life. The tension was palpable — he was under greater emotional pressure than ever before. He had always sailed through adversity as if protected by Providence, but even he must have questioned his ability to weather this crisis.

The intensified stress first manifested during his October 7, 2016 statement admitting it was his voice — the impact on his physiognomy was obvious but was ignored by media commentators. His skin suddenly darkened to a shade of bronze, as if a bit of burnt umber had been blended with the usual admixture of orange and red in his makeup, a color seen only twice more, during the third debate and again at his election night victory celebration, another probable hormonal peak. Whereas throughout the campaign his facial skin tone had been an admixture of orange and red, on these occasions it suddenly transformed into a deep bronze coloration which some compared to the effect of cheap artificial tanning cream. Scrutiny of his images during the campaign revealed that his face was also characterized by an unusual amount of puffiness around his cheeks, nose, forehead, and lower eyelids, indicative of soft tissue hypertrophy, another characteristic manifestation of Acromegaly.

7. Most relevant to the President’s current Covid crisis was the impact of the increased stress on his breathing during the third debate. On multiple occasions, a strange sniffing sound emanating from Trump’s nostrils during inhalation, as if suffering from sleep apnea (the most common manifestation of Acromegaly’s impact on the respiratory tract). Every viewer perked up and took note, wondering whether the anomaly indicated some unknown medical condition when the strange phenomenon recurred multiple times as he struggled to inhale.

The strange inhalations could have posed an interesting challenge in differential diagnosis, and perhaps even led to discovery of the root cause, but, incredibly, not a single highly paid journalist or media physician deemed repeated dysfunctional inhalation in a presidential candidate to be worthy of comment. No one questioned the candidate, his surrogates, or his physician about the strange sniffing sound he could not suppress, the spasmodic breathing he could not control, or his suddenly darker skin. The exaggerated sniffing sound of Trump’s strange breathing could not be ignored — the following weekend it was poorly satirized by Alec Baldwin on SNL before vanishing into an Orwellian fog. Acromegaly is the only disease in which a hormonal spike can affect both respiration and skin color.

The dysfunctional inhalations indicated a degraded ability to intake sufficient oxygen through an increasingly constricted airway due to sudden swelling of the mucosa. The puffiness of his face and his remarkably edematous eyelids were external manifestations of soft tissue hypertrophy — the dysfunctional breathing indicated that the same process was occurring internally, constricting and obstructing the airway, his hormonal secretions peaking in response to the most stressful situation of his life.

Ten weeks later, on January 11, 2017, during his pre-inauguration press conference, another stressful situation arose with release of the Steele Dossier, and the strange sniffing inhalations were audible for the first time since the debate. The anomalous inhalations manifested for the third time during an hour-long interview with David Muir of ABC. In a July, 2017 telephone interview President Trump could again be heard sucking for air as he tried to sell the lame explanation that his son met with Russians only as a benefactor of poor orphans.

The Acromegaly Hypothesis perfectly explains the puzzling phenomenon of his dysfunctional breathing. The disease has dual aspects — tissue growth and swelling in targeted areas of the body. After the release of the embarrassing video and in anticipation of the third debate, under the most extreme stress he ever faced, Trump’s pituitary tumor went into overdrive, secreting an unusually high level of Growth Hormone. Acromegaly had already damaged his respiratory system and was in the process of constricting his airway, but the damage was not perceptible until extreme stress provoked a dangerously high hormone level, resulting in increased mucosal swelling. The distinctive sound emerged as his chest muscles strained to pull air past nasal passages and sinuses swollen to the point of closure through the pharynx and larynx down to the bronchioles.

If Acromegaly was responsible for the degradation of his respiratory system evidenced in the third 2016 debate, there would have been subtle early warning signs — probably ignored — of an incipient problem, and in fact Trump had shown indications of hypoventilation before he entered politics. During the years when he disputed President Obama’s citizenship, the act of speaking publicly seemed to make his chest constrict as his enthusiasm for the topic pushed him to the edge of his seat, a breathless quasi-croak emerging from his throat. The phenomenon was puzzling because as an experienced public personality he would not be expected to tense up in such situations. If that subtle shortness of breath was an early sign of Acromegaly attacking his respiratory system, the deterioration would be expected to progress and at some point become more acute. The eyes of America were focused on him when that became apparent in 2016.

The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that President Trump suffered from Acromegaly for more than forty years and that the disease targeted his respiratory system. His entire cranium has expanded. His face has become round, his original angular jaw was replaced by a broad, thicker mandible, osteophytes have appeared below the skin, and his features have coarsened markedly. His pigmentation has undergone a drastic metamorphosis, his airway has become constricted, his personality has changed dramatically, and his sleep time has progressively diminished even as his craving for comfort food became uncontrollable. His voice changed from tenor to baritone to rough, raspy bass as his vocal chords grew thicker. These factors all point to Acromegaly as a unified theory of causation. No other disease can account for that panoply of symptoms.

His progressively rounder face, his orange skin, and his obese torso with spindly extremities could indicate Cushing’s disease. Insomnia is not common with Cushing’s, but it does occur. Cushing’s, however, cannot explain his thickened mandible, his protruding brow, his respiratory dysfunction, or the deepening of his voice due to growth of his vocal chords. But a mixed pituitary tumor potentially explains it all — his pathological skin coloration and his penchant for “roid rage” behavior support the inference that he suffered from the rarest pituitary tumor, a complex adenoma producing both Growth Hormone and ACTH, the most toxic hormonal cocktail.

Skeptics will respond that the average time for endoscopic resection of the pituitary is 3½–4 hours, making it impossible for the surgery to have been performed during the brief November 2019 Walter Reed visit. That estimate is accurate for the initial operation, typically for a tumor that has been growing 30 years or more. But one surgery is often not enough — it is not uncommon for a resected pituitary adenoma to regrow during the first year or two after the initial surgery. The tumor begins with division of a single cell, so a redeveloping tumor would consist of only a thin layer of cells that an experienced surgeon could easily excise in less than hour, even including time for a preoperative MRI if deemed necessary.

Is it possible that the November 2019 Walter Reed visit was not the first time, that the President had an earlier secret surgery? A full endocrinal panel was undoubtedly completed during the presidential physical on January 12, 2018. Acromegaly was not discovered because Ronny Jackson is a brilliant diagnostician who suspected it from Trump’s appearance or his explosions of uncontrollable rage; rather, it was simple military medical procedure that detected dangerously high levels of Growth Hormone, cortisol, and IGF-1, an anabolic helper hormone that can produce ravenous hunger and binge eating.

There was a window on Sunday evening, March 25, 2018, after his return from a Palm Beach weekend, when surgery could have been performed clandestinely at Walter Reed or even in the White House with imported equipment. Thereafter, President Trump remained in seclusion on March 26, 27, and 28, the first three day period of his entire presidency when he was completely shielded from sight.

On Thursday, March 29, he flew to the Midwest for a rally, but as he walked to Marine One, the cameras were kept far back. No explanation was given for holding the press corps at a distance, but he clearly did not want anyone looking at him closely. Only after his return to Washington was normal access restored.

As he stood at the podium to address his rally four days after his presumptive surgery, there was a subtle but distinct difference in his appearance. An unmistakable decrease in the puffiness of his forehead and cheeks, especially around the right eye, reflected a reduction in swelling as fluid was no longer being forced into the targeted tissues. This diminution in the soft tissue hypertrophy suffusing his face is explicable only by surgical removal of a pituitary tumor.

Eighteen months after his secret surgery President Trump’s appearance continued to evolve, and four observations made during that period confirm the Acromegaly Hypothesis. First, one year after his secret surgery, the orange tint to his face began to fade. The loss of his orange pigmentation appears to be progressive, indicating that his unique skin color was primarily due to excess cortisol. Second, after surgery he was able for the first time in years to lose some of the excess weight he formerly could not shed. As he walked away from Marine One on August 21, 2019, he was able to button his jacket for the first time in years, and having accomplished that feat twice tugged proudly on the labels with smiling but short-lived satisfaction — by year end he regained the weight he had lost. Third, he now sleeps about two hours more than before surgery, awakening at 6:00 am, not at 4:00 as he did during his first year in office. Fourth, there have been no further episodes of dysfunctional breathing prior to his contracting the Covid virus.

The diminution in soft tissue hypertrophy suffusing his face, the gradual fading of his orange facial pigmentation, his weight loss, his increased sleep time, and the absence of respiratory symptoms prior to becoming ill with Covid are strong indications that President Trump had clandestine surgery to excise his pituitary tumor. But a surgical cure does not mean that the patient is completely out of the woods. There is always the possibility of recurrence of the tumor, especially in the first two years after surgery, and President Trump’s highly stressful life would make that possibility much more probable than for the average patient.

When on November 16, 2019, not coincidentally amidst the tremendous stress of impeachment hearings, President Trump unexpectedly took a Saturday afternoon drive to Walter Reed and remained for less than two hours, questions about his health finally attracted media attention. After returning from Walter Reed, he remained out of sight all Saturday afternoon, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, only the second time in his presidency that he was not seen for such an extended time period. Senator Schumer wished him well with “whatever he is recovering from.”

In interviewing cardiologists and neurologists, cable news chose the wrong type of specialist — an endocrinologist or a neurosurgeon might have proved more fruitful. The best explanation for the visit to Walter Reed was that the “condition being monitored” was his pituitary disease. When blood tests revealed that his tumor had begun to regrow, a second surgery became necessary. A recurring tumor that had just begun to grow on the pea-sized pituitary could easily be excised by an experienced neurosurgeon in less than an hour, including time for a preoperative MRI if deemed necessary.

A second clandestine surgery also explains why he traveled by limo, allowing him to reenter the White House unseen, rather than by helicopter, which would require him to traverse the White House grounds after surgery, his shaky gait exposed to the eyes of the media. His schedule was completely clear and he did not appear for three days after surgery, recovering out of sight from prying eyes, reprising the strategy used to conceal his recuperation after the presumptive March 25, 2018 surgery.

Acromegaly often accounts for a highly unusual occurrence that no other diagnosis can explain. For President Trump, the highly unusual occurrence that dovetails only with Acromegaly was the episode when he babbled gibberish while announcing his decision to move the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, when his speech suddenly became unintelligible. Aides immediately shut him down and escorted him out of the room. Media medical mavens were vague and provided the viewer with no insight into the phenomenon beyond the possibility of a dry mouth, a loose denture, or a stroke. CNN’s Dr. Gupta could only comment that there were “clearly some abnormalities of his speech.” Unintelligible speech is an infrequent but well known manifestation of Acromegaly caused by hyponatremia, or low sodium, which often accompanies the disease and manifests under stressful conditions. When the White House and the President’s physicians deny the Acromegaly hypothesis, as is expected, they should be asked to explain the highly unusual episode in which he babbled gibberish.

Donald Trump’s lifelong hormonal imbalance permanently altered the shape of his torso and face, his features, his pigmentation, and the timbre of his voice, raising the question of how much his mentality and emotions might have been impacted. Forty years of toxic levels of Growth Hormone and steroids inevitably have had a serious but unquantifiable effect on his personality and emotions, making him prone to impulsive decision-making and explosive eruptions of rage. His mental processes as manifested in his speech have clearly deteriorated, but that is not the effect of Acromegaly. Nor do his need for adulation, egotism, greed, bullying, megalomania, and other undesirable personality traits stem from the disease. Seen through the eyes of his sister as revealed by his niece, these qualities had been evident since childhood when he was dominated by his father’s warped personality and child-rearing practices. Growth Hormone and steroids, with all of their debilitating side effects, did not cause Donald Trump’s less admirable character traits; they simply intensified them and brought them to the fore.

It is clear that those negative personality traits remain in full force even after the President’s near death encounter with Covid. His unwillingness to convalesce demonstrates extremely poor judgment and exemplifies impulsive, high risk behavior common among those under the effect of Growth Hormone, a powerful performance-enhancing driver of behavior. If his Covid infection worsens as it did with Herman Cain, given the damage to his lungs wrought by Growth Hormone and steroids over four decades, all the king’s horses and men might not be able to save him.

[*] Terence Lenahan is the author of the forthcoming book Avatars of Acromegaly: Handel, Henry, Trump and other members of a deadly fraternity.