Topic: Newsmax
Bill Robinson's Jan. 23 Newsmax column carried the headline "How Donald Trump Saved My Life." It began with an brief account of Robinson's need for a new kidney, then jumped to an interview he did with Donald Trump:
During my recent interview with President Trump. I was elated, of course, to be alive which is an omnipresent emotion for me these days. The president picked up on this immediately and radiated kindness throughout.
As my interview began with President Trump, I blurted out, “I wanted to thank you for saving my life and thousands of others, President Trump.”
He was surprised that the writer he was talking to was a kidney patient himself. “Oh! Is that true? Are you somebody who had the work done?”
“President Trump,” I started emotionally, “I had been on dialysis for more than two years when you signed your order and six months later, I got the call as I was walking out of church on Christmas Day, 2019, that they had a kidney for me. I got that kidney from a new Hepatitis-C clinical trial program that was really kicked into high gear by your order.”
In the most caring way, President Trump inquired, “And how has it been?”
“Oh, it’s a brand-new world for me, Mr. President.”
President Trump is the only president who ever cared (much less did anything) to help the 40 million-plus Americans afflicted with an epidemic-level contagion sweeping America: kidney failure, dialysis, and, most often, death.
[...]
I asked Trump, “Why did you help struggling and dying kidney patients like me? Did you have friends or a family member that were in kidney failure?”
“Well, over the course of years, I’ve known people with this problem, like your problem and over the years, it just sounded like something could be done and it wasn’t being done. So, this was something that could be solved and we thought we could do that.”
Robinson had more gushing to do, so this was followed by a column the next day headlined "How Donald Trump Saved My Life -- Part II":
“Now that you’re off dialysis, I’ll tell you a little story,” President Trump began again, “we had a lot of opposition to doing this … but I said ‘what’s the lifespan of people going through dialysis?’ and they said ‘it’s very low’ … because they ‘have to work so hard’ … they were telling me it’s so hard, dialysis … they die literally of overwork. Does that make sense to you?”
“It’s so true Mr. President,” I agreed wholeheartedly, remembering what it was like for me.
“These people were suffering and dying when there was no reason to die. They said they died of hard work, literally,” the president continued, “you have to be a tremendously hard worker to live. And their lives were devoted to it, to living. And it made an impression on me.”
When President Trump heard about the unbearable difficulty of dialysis, he said to them, “you’ve got to be kidding me. Let’s go!”
[...]
“So let me ask you,” the president pursued me, clearly understanding the gravity, “is it like you have a perfect kidney, or has it been a little bit less than that?”
“I am not complaining Mr. President, not at all. I’m steadfastly grateful for the additional life I’ve been given.”
“So, you’re leading a very normal life then, huh?”
“President Trump you wouldn’t believe all the life I’m enjoying. I got to see my namesake grandson turn 4 and the birth of my granddaughter who’s now 2, it’s meant so much to me.”
[...]
So, as I pursue an incredible gift of continuing life, I am always thanking and praying for my anonymous deceased donor and their family; my transplant surgeon; President Trump and God Almighty.
Without any of that help, I would not be here today.
The thing that supposedly saved Robinson's life is to the Advancing American Kidney Health initiative that Trump signed in 2019, which had little opposition. But in neither article did he explain what, exactly, in the initiative helped him find a new kidney.
But Robinson is all about sucking up to Trump, and he did even more of that in his Feb. 23 column:
President Trump is a real person with very real feelings.
He’s not a politician, not an elected official, not a bureaucrat.
He’s got a big heart; ask anybody who knows him.
Strange as this sounds to say about a billionaire who was president, Trump is a regular guy with great manners, a super sense of humor and a keen ability — and get this, because it’s one of the reasons he became president — to be unconditionally with somebody when they are speaking to him. He makes you feel like you’re the only person in the world even in a room with 1,000 people.
I experienced this twice in the 1980s in New York when I attended his “Art of the Deal” book launch and a Wall Street event and he gifted me with two minutes of his personal attention, really listening to whatever minutiae I had to share with him.
And we have God Almighty to thank for these traits and for Donald Trump himself.
I’m a New Yorker too, just like Trump. And we recognize each other as human beings. In conversations with me, he always starts by asking how I am doing with my medical condition. He cares.
I can tell you with every fiber of my being that President Trump cares deeply about people he doesn’t know very well or at all.
Robinson served up more Trump-fluffing in his Feb. 28 column touting the "right-to-try" bill Trump supported when president:
It strikes me as very unlikely that Obama or Biden would sign such an important law into effect, as they seem much more interested in closing pipelines, a heinous Cap & Trade program, the shockingly botched Obamacare, censoring conservatives and starting endless wars to feed the all-consuming military-industrial complex.
And what sickening dolt would vote against this compassionate, loving bill trying to give dying people hope? Well, 169 House Dems did. Get that? Can you say “Big Pharma puppets?” Parenthetically, ZERO Republicans voted against it.
Actually, Democrats questioned whether the bill would actually help anyone and argued that it would provide false hope to people. But Trump-fluffing comes before facts, and Robinson ended with a flourish: "I’m hard-pressed to find even one other president who saved lives with the stroke of a pen, much less two as President Trump did."
