January 17, 2018

Slate notes one result from President Trump’s medical exam “was conspicuously abnormal: the president’s body mass index.”

“At 6’3” and 239 pounds, Trump’s BMI is 29.9, exactly 0.1 units shy of one big league distinction: obesity. Remarkably, the president was found to be exactly 1 pound lighter than a weight that would have pushed him over the edge to receive the diagnosis of obesity. Similarly, if he were merely 1/10 of an inch shorter, he would also be considered obese.”

“I guess they all realized they were going to have to leave it to a president that scored the highest on tests.”

— President Trump, in an interview with Reuters, blaming his three immediate predecessors for failing to resolve the North Korea crisis, a day after his doctor gave him a perfect score on a cognitive test.

Jonathan Swan: “Steve Bannon made one conspicuous slip up in his closed-door hearing on Tuesday with the House Intelligence Committee… Bannon admitted that he’d had conversations with Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer and legal spokesman Mark Corallo about Don Junior’s infamous meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower in June 2016.”

“Bannon immediately realized he’d slipped up and disclosed conversations he wasn’t supposed to discuss, because they happened while he was chief strategist in the White House. Throughout the rest of the session, committee members — in particular Republican Trey Gowdy and Democrat Adam Schiff — hammered Bannon over the fact that he’d mentioned those conversations but refused to discuss anything else about his time in the White House.”

“Bannon’s lawyer, Bill Burck, told the committee in his opening remarks that Bannon wouldn’t answer any questions that relate to his time inside the White House or during the presidential transition. The committee caught him in the slip-up inside the first 90 minutes.”

A new Quinnipiac poll finds American voters disapprove of the job President Trump is doing, 57% to 38%.

Key finding: “Wide gender, racial and political gaps leave American voters divided on whether Trump is ‘mentally stable,’ as 45% say he is stable and 47% say he is not stable.”

“An American president who cannot take criticism — who must constantly deflect and distort and distract — who must find someone else to blame — is charting a very dangerous path. And a Congress that fails to act as a check on the President adds to the danger.”

— Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), in a speech on the Senate floor.

CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said that he believes tests reveal that President Trump has heart disease, The Hill reports.

Gupta said dating back to 2009, President Trump started to have “these tests that are actually looking for the presence of calcium in the blood vessels that lead to the heart.”

Said Gupta: “It was interesting when I spoke to Dr. Jackson at first, he said, he passed all the tests with flying colors. When I asked him specifically about that test, did he then concede that, in fact, the president does have heart disease. They’re going to be increasing the medications, including the cholesterol-lowering medications to try and combat that, but there’s no question, by all standards, by all metrics, anyway a doctor or cardiologist will look at it, the president does have heart disease.”