‘Just Kidding:’ Trump’s medical consult in Israel

By Joel H. Cohen

NEW YORK — President Trump made a secret trip to Israel in recent weeks to seek an answer to a medical mystery involving his nose.

The appendage has been getting bigger, family and staff members reluctantly agreed, after he constantly studied himself in the mirror and announced he’d come to that conclusion.

Not wanting to go a U.S. facility, where he was certain the “fake-news” outlets would make a mockery of his condition, he decided on a world-renowned clinic in Tel Aviv.

Accompanied by two Secret Service agents, he visited the Emes Genaussen Rhinoplasty Institute, universally respected for its plastic surgery nose-repair work on world leaders, movie stars, models and ordinary people.  It guarantees its patients optimum results – and anonymity.

As instructed, Trump bought in before-and-after photos of his face.  “I was quite a stud,” he remarked to a nurse, Chava Nagilla. “And to tell you the truth, I still am,” he added with a wink.

“I was always proud of the size of my nose,” Trump said, “but the recent growth is diverting people’s attention from my wonderful persona.”

At the institute, he was given a series of tests to determine what medical condition might be causing the growth of his nose.  But all tests proved negative.

Then, under the supervision of the institute’s director, Dr. Avi Gezunt, he was connected to a special lie detector with an attachment that registers the slightest growth of the nose. and issues a before-and-after nose printout.

Given the choice of lying down or sitting up, while detector wires were attached to his body, Trump said, “I’m always a stand-up kind of guy,” causing the machine to shudder.

Dr. Gezunt began questioning him with known lies – the number of people attending his inauguration, the “vast number” of undesirable aliens attempting to penetrate our southern border, the “humanitarian crisis” there, his pledge that Mexico would pay for a wall on the U.S. southern border. that California’s deadly wildfires would never have happened with proper forest management, that he knows more about military matters than generals, more about climate than scientists, that separating families is not anything previous administrations hadn’t done, that the Russia probe is a “witch hunt.”

With each untruth, the machine would vibrate violently, emit a loud whistle, and issue a paper showing by how much the patient’s nose had lengthened and widened.

Dr. Gezunt and his team decided they had more than enough evidence for their findings – that, basically, their patient was a pathological liar, for whom there was no medical help available.

“You’ve got the rare nasal disease – Pinocchio-itiis. It started with children’s fiction, but it exists in real life. As with the fictional dummy who comes to life, your nose grows with every lie you tell.

“I don’t lie,” Trump lied. “I may give alternative facts, but never lie.” To which the machine wobbled, seemingly uncontrollably.

Dr. Gezunt continued: “It’s as plain as the… oops, sorry. What I mean is that it’s definitely a psychosomatic illness, even when the patient doesn’t realize he’s lying. It’s a case of  the mental affecting the physical, like when fear makes a person’s heart rate increase. With a pathological liar, it manifests itself in growth of features.

“So, I have bad news and good news,” Dr. Gezunt continued. Trump asked for the “bad news first.”

”Well, there’s no magical medical cure for your illness, no surgery, no pill.

“And the good news?”

“That it’s curable – with many months of uninterrupted truth-telling, a very serious  attempt to control the impulse to lie, over time will make the nose recede.

“No recession on my watch,” Trump joked. Then he muttered, “These guys are either stand-up comedians or fake, so-called doctors, who should be locked up.”

Then he argued about the bill, threatened not to pay anything, and stormed out. ‘

When his plane landed, Trump asked the agents accompanying him if they knew of a place where he could get a hamburger without being noticed. One agent suggested Geppetto’s Folly; the other, Jimmy Durante’s Schnozolla.

Neither dared crack a smile.

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Readers who are new to freelance writer Joel Cohen’s “Just Kidding” columns are advised that they are satirical and should not be taken seriously