C’mon, he’s not morbidly obese. Future VP and savior of the republic Stacey Abrams is morbidly obese.

Trump is … husky, let’s say. “Big-boned.”

What stands out about this insult is how Trumpy it is. Not in the sense that it’s nasty and gratuitous, although it is, but in the way that Trump sometimes phrases his nastier comments in ways that allow him a bit of barely plausible deniability later about what he meant. I’m thinking of when Mitt Romney was in isolation due to possible exposure to coronavirus in March and Trump replied with obviously sarcastic concern (“Gee, that’s too bad”), then denied that he was being sarcastic when reporters asked him about it. Pelosi’s going to do the same thing when she’s asked about this. “I wasn’t mocking his appearance, I was expressing earnest concern about his health.”

holy shit pic.twitter.com/gLZb8Y5nCi

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) May 19, 2020

I’ll give her this, she knows how to get under his skin. Wounding his vanity is going to bug him like few other things will.

I hope she’s ready for the botox jokes on Twitter.

Trump’s White House doctor issued this curious letter last night after the president admitted to taking hydroxychloroquine confirming … well, confirming not much, really. Anti-Trumpers on social media have cast a skeptical eye on its slippery language.

He never specifically says that Trump is taking the drug. He never specifically says that he prescribed the drug. All he’ll admit is that they discussed it and agreed that there’s more upside to taking it than downside. Hmmmm.

The White House was more specific:

POTUS spoxwoman @Alyssafarah confirms yes POTUS was prescribed and yes POTUS has been taking hydorxychloroquine.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 19, 2020

I still believe what I said yesterday. Considering that the timeline Trump gave for taking it (he’s been on it for a week and a half, he claimed) matches up with when his White House valet tested positive for the virus, he probably is taking it as a hoped-for prophylaxis. Skeptics who think he’d never put his own health at risk by taking an unproved treatment with potential side effects need to explain why he would say that he’s been on it for only 10 days or so instead of since March, when he first started talking it up in briefings. He could have said, “I’ve been on it for two months and look at me, symptom-free while staffers keep getting infected!” Why didn’t he?

Now, whether it’s the White House doctor who prescribed it to him or some quack he enlisted to prescribe it because the White House doctor refused is a separate question. But if the White House doctor is willing to back Trump up on the “more upside than downside” point, why wouldn’t he prescribe it? Why, a presidential physician who does what Trump wants and tells the public what Trump wants it to hear might just end up as a congressman.

In any case, POTUS should probably double up on the recommended dose today. A buffet lunch during a pandemic, huh?

The notice that went out to Senate Republican offices about the lunch with Trump notes that the “buffet will open early at noon.”

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 19, 2020

Via Newsbusters, here’s Joe Scarborough citing Trump’s germaphobia as evidence that he’d never risk his health by taking an unproved treatment with potentially serious side effects. Eh, I don’t know. The germaphobia may explain why he *would* take it. Given his not-quite-morbid obesity, he clearly doesn’t follow optimal health practices in all things. Also, someone should let Joe know that it’s, ahhhh, not true that hydroxychloroquine “will kill you,” as he insists repeatedly here. In some people it can cause scary side effects like arrhythmia but it’s been approved for decades to treat malaria and inflammatory illnesses. That’s the whole reason Trump got obsessed with it, I think — it’s already on the shelf at drug stores and therefore, if it works, it can begin to turn the tide of the epidemic immediately. By insisting that it “will kill you,” Scarborough’s pushing his own brand of medical misinformation.