Good genes

Gearing up for his coming physical: putting the infamous Ronny Jackson on his medical advisory team and lying about his fake tan.



1) Who are they kidding?  What genetic condition causes reverse raccoon eyes?
2) Is "good genes" code for Aryan?

Mr. Trump has adhered to one constant: a conspicuously sun-kissed glow, one that has shone like a stoplight against Washington’s graying backdrop.

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The official line from the White House, as with other matters surrounding the president’s physical health and appearance, is that Mr. Trump’s glow is the result of “good genes,” according to a senior administration official who would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

And, O.K., a little powder — a translucent one, not a bronzer — which the president applies himself before television appearances, the official said.

  NYT

He also is reported to do his own hair. Why is he afraid to let anyone near his head? Some sense might be transmitted somehow?

A taxpayer-funded White House makeup artist has volunteered her services, but she has not gotten close enough to try, according to two people who have overheard such discussions. A half-dozen current and former aides and people close to Mr. Trump say he has long been self-sufficient in matters of grooming.

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Mr. Trump has repeatedly documented the act of self-styling his coif, a process he has not strayed from in decades. His system includes a Head & Shoulders shampoo and an hourlong air-drying of the strands while he peruses newspapers or watches television. And tweets.

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Does Mr. Trump use a tanning bed, as a talkative makeup artist said in 2016 and Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former aide, claimed in a tell-all book? (Ms. Manigault Newman wrote that an usher was fired for mishandling transport of the contraption.)

I'm going to have to say, the answer is "yes". If he won't let anyone near his head, it's unlikely that he would let anyone spray his face.

Mr. Trump’s former boarding school classmates have described him as a fan of ultraviolet rays, someone who would pop a tanning bulb into a light socket to go “to the beach.”

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But according to three people who have spent time in the White House residence, no such bed or spray-tan booth exists in a hidden nook of the residence, a cranny of the East Wing or a closet on Air Force One. Two senior White House officials insisted that no such apparatus exists.

Bullshit. And did these visitors search out the entire White House? He absolutely has a device. The only people who have pale pink rings around their eyes like that are people who have been wearing goggles. I'd say look in his personal bedroom or bath. It may be part of the reason he has "executive time" until 11 am.

In the White House residence, where Mr. Trump enjoys giving tours to his supporters, there exists an array of hair sprays on a shelf in his remodeled bathroom.

Remodeled. There's a secret closet.

Dr. Tina Alster, a top Washington dermatologist who said she had treated officials in every White House, including this one, posited that the president, whom she does not treat, was using tanning creams or sprays to achieve his look.

“He looks more orangy than he does tan,” a telltale sign, Dr. Alster said.

That's true, too. Maybe he's gotten very good at applying something evenly. But that's tricky. Plus, the goggles. You can't apply cream that well around goggles, and if you sprayed, they'd get covered and you couldn't see.

Certainly Mr. Trump, who has long taken antibiotics to treat rosacea, a condition that can make the skin appear rosy and ruddy, is attentive to how he looks on television. He has complained that his skin and hair appear too yellow or orange on the screen, according to one person familiar with his views.

Stop tanning, or simply change the skin tone setting on your TV. Rosacea is also a condition that can occur with long term drinking. Just saying.  I know they say Trump doesn't drink.  Maybe.

As a result, events in the White House are now more dimly lit than in previous administrations. The president has also become a fan of natural light, like the setting of the White House Rose Garden, where Mr. Trump chose to announce the end of the government shutdown in 40-degree weather.

That's some serious vanity. But he's heavily insulated.

That comment about going to the beach by using a tanning bulb comes from this Washington Post article:

In elementary school, Donny impressed classmates with his athleticism, shenanigans and refusal to acknowledge mistakes, even one so trivial as misidentifying a popular professional wrestler. No matter his pals’ ridicule, one recalled, he doubled down, insisting wrestler Antonino Rocca’s name was “Rocky Antonino.”

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Even Trump has acknowledged the similarities between himself as an adult and when he was the boy whom friends alternately referred to as “Donny,” “The Trumpet” and “Flat Top” (for his hair).

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Even Trump has acknowledged the similarities between himself as an adult and when he was the boy whom friends alternately referred to as “Donny,” “The Trumpet” and “Flat Top” (for his hair).

“When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same,” the 70-year-old presumptive Republican nominee once told a biographer. “The temperament is not that different.”

  WaPo

No shit.

His face crowned by a striking blond pompadour, young Donald commanded attention with his playground taunts, classroom disruptions and distinctive countenance, even then his lips pursed in a way that would inspire future mimics.

[...]

“Who could forget him?” said Ann Trees, 82, who taught at Kew-Forest School, where Trump was a student through seventh grade. “He was headstrong and determined. He would sit with his arms folded with this look on his face — I use the word surly — almost daring you to say one thing or another that wouldn’t settle with him.”

[...]

A fierce competitor, Trump could erupt in anger, pummeling another boy or smashing a baseball bat if he made an out, two childhood neighbors said. In school, he misbehaved so often that his initials became his friends’ shorthand for detention.

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When Donald was 13, his father abruptly sent him to a military boarding school, where instructors struck him if he misbehaved and the requirements included daily inspections and strict ­curfews.

“He was essentially banished from the family home,” said his biographer, Michael D’Antonio. “He hadn’t known anything but living with his family in a luxurious setting, and all of a sudden he’s sent away. That’s a rough way to start out in life.”

Except that's not how he started out. He started out by being a dick that even his parents couldn't stand. His siblings didn't get sent off to military school.

[His] mother, Mary, a Scottish immigrant, relished attention, thrusting herself to the center of social gatherings. She also loved pageantry, spending hours watching on television the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth.

Mary Trump suffered a hemorrhage after [the birth of her youngest] that forced doctors to perform an emergency hysterectomy. She also developed an abdominal infection that required several more surgeries, during which she nearly died.

At one point, Fred Trump informed his daughter that her mother “wasn’t expected to live, but I should go to school and he’d call me if anything changed,” Maryanne Trump once told Gwenda Blair, who authored a detailed history of the family

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Fred Trump, with his thick mustache and hair combed back, was a stern, formal man who insisted on wearing a tie and jacket at home. A conservative Republican who admired Barry Goldwater, Fred Trump and his wife forbade their children from cursing, calling each other by nicknames and wearing lipstick.

Good genes, indeed. (I had to read that last line twice to understand the Trump parents weren't calling each other by nicknames and wearing lipstick.)

Dennis Burnham was four years younger and lived around the corner from Donald. He inherited his own impression of his neighbor from his mother, who warned that he should “stay away from the Trumps.”

“Donald was known to be a bully, I was a little kid, and my parents didn’t want me beaten up,” said Burnham, 65, a business consultant in Texas.

Once when she left Dennis in a playpen in a back yard adjoining the Trumps’ property, Martha Burnham returned to find Donald throwing rocks at her son.

[...]

For kindergarten, Donald went to the private Kew-Forest School.

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“We threw spitballs and we played racing chairs with our desks, crashing them into other desks,” recalled Paul Onish, a classmate, describing himself and Trump as “probably the two worst.”

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In his neighborhood, Donald and his friends were known to ride their bikes and “shout and curse very loudly,” said Steve Nachtigall, who lived nearby. Nachtigall said he once saw them jump off their bikes and beat up another boy.

“It’s kind of like a little video snippet that remains in my brain because I think it was so unusual and terrifying at that age,” recalled Nachtigall, 66, a doctor in New Jersey. “He was a loudmouth bully.”

[...]

After he yanked her pigtails, Sharon Mazzarella hit Donald over the head with her metal lunch pail as she followed him down the stairs outside the school. “I must’ve been quite annoyed,” Mazzarella said of the incident, which she described as her only memory of Trump.

In his memoir, “The Art of the Deal,” Trump wrote that his main focus as a youngster was “creating mischief.” As a second-grader, he wrote, he “actually” gave his music teacher a black eye because “I didn’t think he knew anything about music, and I almost got expelled.”

None of Trump’s childhood friends recall the incident or Donald talking about it then. Asked about the punch recently, Trump said, “When I say ‘punch,’ when you’re that age, nobody punches very hard.”

At a 2009 reunion, Kass said, the teacher, Charles Walker, told him that Trump had never struck him. But Walker, who died last year, claimed no affection for Trump. In the final stages of his life, according to his son, Charles Walker learned that Trump was considering a presidential bid.

“When that kid was 10,” Peter Walker recalled his father telling family members gathered at his bedside, “even then he was a little s---.”

[...]

By sixth grade, Donald’s power as a right-handed hitter [playing baseball] was enough that fielders shifted to left field when he batted. “If he had hit the ball to right, he could’ve had a home run because no one was there,” said Nicholas Kass, a schoolmate. “But he always wanted to hit the ball through people. He wanted to overpower them.”

[...]

After once making an out, Donald smashed neighbor Jeff Bier’s Adirondack bat on the pavement. The bat cracked, Bier said, but Trump did not apologize.

According to the story, Fred Trump didn't send his son to military boarding school because he was a nasty bully, but because he found out he'd been sneaking into Manhattan by train with a friend.

[At the military academy, i]nstead of his father, Donald’s new taskmaster was Theodore Dobias, a no-nonsense combat veteran who had served in World War II and had seen Mussolini’s dead body hanging from a rope.

Dobias, who died recently, would smack his cadets with an open hand if they ignored him, students recalled. He set up a boxing ring and forced students with poor grades and disciplinary problems to fight each other.

“At the beginning, he didn’t like the idea of being told what to do, like make your bed, shine your shoes, brush your teeth, clean the sink, do your homework,” Dobias said in an interview last fall, referring to Trump. “We really didn’t care whether he came from Rockefeller Center or whatever. He was just another name.

[...]

“He wanted to be number one. He wanted to be noticed. He wanted to be recognized. And he liked ­compliments.”

[...]

By senior year, Trump was known for bringing stylish women to campus and showing them around. “They were beautiful, gorgeous women, dressed out of Saks Fifth Avenue,” recalled classmate George White.

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A month after senior year started, Trump faced a crisis. One of his platoon sergeants shoved a plebe, Lee Ains, against a wall because the freshman was too slow snapping to attention. At the time, the academy was already dealing with a serious hazing incident and was sensitive to new allegations of abuse. The administration reassigned Trump as a battalion training officer.

Ains said the academy concluded that Trump had not monitored his officers “as closely as he should have.”

Trump described his reassignment as a promotion. “I did a good job and that’s why I got elevated,” he said.

The authors are calling this attitude confidence.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

This story is based on reporting for “Trump Revealed,” a broad, comprehensive examination of the life of the presumptive Republican nominee for president. The biography, written by Post reporters Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher [is] a collaboration with more than two dozen Post reporters, researchers and editors.

UPDATE: