I am tired of journalists speculating on Donald Trump's health

I know there's a lot going on right now, but this long holiday weekend has given us yet another example of irresponsible media outlets irresponsibly speculating about things they know nothing about and it's important to keep calling them out on this when it happens. The press is like a very persistent cat, all about shredding things and dropping new atrocities on our rugs every morning, and it is our job to be the spray bottle that spritzes them when they go too far and need to reflect on what they've done. It is a fraught relationship, and who's to say who's really in charge, but it is all we have.

Journalists love to preen about the supposed values of their profession, all the things they're supposed to do and stand for, and they love bragging about these things much more than they love actually abiding by them. What we've seen for over the last few weeks, however, has been truly appalling. Supposedly neutral journalists just will not stop speculating on the sitting president's health. In story after story, they assume supposed truths based on no evidence at all. They imply; they infer; they take the most ridiculous claims and amplify them rather than verifying them—all among the supposed Great Sins that journalists insist they must never do, except when they feel like it.

This weekend has been too much, and it's time we called them out on it. I am very, very tired of journalists speculating on the president's health when there is no solid evidence he has any.

Any health, I mean. There's no solid evidence this man has any "health" at all. What the hell are any of these reporters even talking about?

If you were hanging around on the internets, this holiday weekend: First off, shame on you. But second off, you probably were well aware of the many, many rumors going around wondering (1) what was going on with Trump's sudden change in routines and avoidance of the press, from Thursday onward, (2) what this signified about the adjudicated rapist and omnifelon's supposed "health," and (3) whether in fact the man had maybe even dropped dead, leaving a panicking cabal of White House seditionists trying to cover it up at least long enough to forge plausible-looking fake pardons.

The press, because they like Donald Trump, backed him in the election, and continue to do their damnedest to downplay his Many Damn Atrocities, has pointedly refused to cover that story. Instead we got only the briefest mentions of the president allegedly still being alive, an assertion that was based mostly on a handful of new photographs that more resembled unearthed Bigfoot footage than the usual work of the White House press and a few social media posts that resembled what Bigfoot would type if Bigfoot went on the internet for the weekend.

And that was it. No reporting on what the change in routine meant. No reporting on why Dear Leader might be blasting the Les Mis soundtrack out of the White House residence at a volume that would cover up any unscheduled "cleaning" that needed to be done inside, no reporting on the reasons why a mysterious someone(s) were caught dumping garbage bags of [unknown] out of the residence's second story, no questioning of why "Trump's" social media account offered up, as proof of life, a photo of Trump "golfing" that appears to have been taken two weekends ago.

Now, we don't know for certain that Donald Trump is dead. But we don't not know it, either, and for journalists that claim to be fair and balanced and committed to telling both sides of any story that even touches on politics, the acknowledgement of only one "side" of this ongoing, science-based debate is very, very conspicuous.

Let's consider the evidence here—something the press is loathe to do. Here are some of the most notable symptoms of being dead:

• Skin discoloration
• Bloating
• Reduced activity
• Significant reduction in cognitive skills, problem solving, and situational awareness

Trump has displayed all of those in recent days—quite visibly! On the other hand, this is what our "press" is pointing to as evidence that Trump is not currently dead:

• The most prolific liars in the history of lying say he's alive.

So right off the bat, you can see that the "is alive" side is starting out behind in points. The press is basing nearly all of their evidence of Trump's "health," aka relative levels of deadness, on rote assertions from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, a woman who lies so often about so many things that aides now have to follow her around with a fire extinguisher to keep her pants from setting fire to the flag propped up behind her.

The only others willing to vouch for Trump's alleged aliveness are figures like Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, and other inveterate liars. Trump has no character witnesses who can vouch for his aliveness who don't have an obvious motive to lie about it.

Let me ask you something. If Robert Kennedy Jr. tells you that somebody or something is alive, do you take his word for it? Why? Kennedy was last seen claiming he could tell the state of children's mitochondria just from a brief look at them, thinks autism is caused by everything from vaccines to radio waves to teeny tiny vampires, and does the least credible impression of an alive person of anyone in politics. Chuck Grassley seems more "alive" than him, and Chuck Grassley gets rolled around the Senate in his own wheeled sarcophagus.

We have plenty of other evidence that Trump might be either in severely declining health or already stone-cold dead.

First, we can look at statistics. Of the 45 past or present American presidents, all but a handful are currently dead. The data isn't ambiguous. if we take a list of presidents and choose one—say, Donald Trump—there's a 90% chance that person is dead.

Ask Robert Kennedy Jr. about that, if you dare. See how the self-appointed greatest medical mind in the country tries to worm out of that statistic.

We've already alluded to Trump's visibly decaying hands. Medical professionals see a lot more to be concerned about as well: See this, from Dan O'Sullivan.

Per my mother, a retired nurse, who never otherwise opines on these things: she says with complete confidence Trump is in congestive heart failure, his circulation sucks, his kidneys are shitting the bed processing the backlog of fluid retention, he's on IV therapy everyday, it is incurable

Update from my mother this week looking at Trump: she gives him six months to live, says his fluid retention is getting worse around his eyes & hands, wonders if he's on dialysis & unable to get around easily, says organ failure is the next danger you'd be facing here as the decline continues...

So according to at least one medical expert—one with actual training, as opposed to Karoline Leavitt or Robert Kennedy Jr.—Donald Trump is dead, with a margin of error on that of plus or minus six months. We have already seen from the press that journalists and their editors don't have any problems at all speculating about what a president's health might be in six months and then covering it as if it were true, so it's only logical that we do the same here.

Is the man 100%, definitively dead? Maybe not at this moment. But doctors have been seen repeatedly visiting the White House, there's a burly man who carries a leather suitcase around behind Trump nearly everywhere he goes—a defibrillator? Why are we so sure it's not a defibrillator?—and in every new photograph of him either the photograph is grainy or he is. The man is going visibly out of focus as we speak.

Perhaps the best evidence that Trump is fiddling with the handle on death's door, however, is that the last time Melania Trump appeared in public, a week or so ago, she looked to be in a better mood than anyone's ever seen her in before. Explain that, skeptics.

I am not asking journalists to speculate. No, far from it. We know they would never do such a thing, not to a Republican president, not even when a Republican president was in fact three quarters of the way to dead and everyone in media hid it from the public until the man had to give testimony about an arms dealing scandal and the resulting footage could reasonably summarized as "sounds of gas escaping."

But it is the claim that Donald Trump is not at death's door that requires more evidence here, because the evidence that he is is written on his hands and face. Last Wednesday the man held a three hour pre-funeral in which he sat there motionless as every cabinet member took turns giving eulogies: Is that the sort of thing that alive people do?

If he's alive, why has the Oval Office turned into what appear to be an Egyptian pharaoh burial chamber?

Perhaps most notably, the man had been making repeated references to wanting to "get into Heaven," after living an entire damn life of never appearing to give even the slightest shit. This is the biggest death flag of all; if the worst person you've ever known suddenly starts posting to Facebook about loving Jesus and being Jesus' best new friend, nine times out of ten that person just found out their lifetime smoking addiction just caught up with them. That is the signal that someone's not only dying, they're dying in a nasty, prolonged, and painful way.

Trump not only has been suddenly singing that dying sinner's lament, he appears to be convinced that the only thing that would do the trick is to land a Nobel Peace Prize as rapidly as possible and on any pretext possible. That, too, is classic Trump. After living a life devoted to every sin Dante knew about and inventing about a hundred new ones, he now looks to bribe God by showing up with a gold coin around his neck. He can't do a full repentance, something that would take time: He wants the casino jackpot version.

Oh, I expect we'll continue to hear from Trump for quite some time now, whether he's dead, is almost dead, or is slightly less dead than that. There is no way his White House aides will put up with actually burying him, not as long as his hand can be rigged to still sign a passable signature. Body doubles and "A.I." can solve much of the rest.

The "press," which is perfectly willing to speculate on the relative corpseness of Democratic presidents even as they ignore the great stench coming from this or that Republican one, will not tell us. They will claim it is beneath them to check. The only way any of us will know the truth will be to check whether Melania seems happy.

If Melania seems happy, though? Yup. Then we'll know for sure.