Donald Trump has recently been set a rather unusual challenge in light of a statement made about him by the White House doctor. The challenge is for him to step on a set of scales and it has been issued by James Gunn, the director of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’.
The challenge came about after Dr. Ronny Johnson, the doctor for the White House, made a statement revealing that the president measures six foot three inches in height and weighs 239 pounds. According to health advice, this means that the president of the United States is just one pound short of being categorized as being obese. In light of this statement, James Gunn said he would pay Trump $100,000 to donate to charity if he agreed to step on the scales.
James Gunn is just one of the president’s critics who mocked this claim and said they did not believe it and the claims have even sparked the use of the hashtag #Girther. This is a play on the word ‘birther’ which was used in relation to a conspiracy theory about former US president Barack Obama. Trump was one of the theorists that claimed that Obama was not actually born in the United States. Some witty Twitter users even asked if they could see Trump’s #GirthCertificate.
Bizarrely, Trump himself offered a similar challenge to Obama. In 2012, he said that if Obama released his college transcripts to prove he was American, he would donate $5 million to charity. When Gunn was questioned over what charity he believed president Trump might choose if he won the bet, the director was unconcerned. He stated that if he thought that Trump would win the challenge, he feared he would donate the money to Ku Klux Klan. However, Gunn thinks it is a ridiculous suggestion that Trump weighs the amount stated by the doctor, so he is not worried about this.
Some people have accused James Gunn of body-shaming the president. However, he has argued that he is simply sick of the president and his administration fabricating facts to suit themselves. He supported the point he was making by posting images of men who are a similar height to Donald Trump, such as two men who are both over six feet tall standing with their wives.
It is not just his weight that has come under question, it is also his height. One Twitter user commented that Trump had said he was 74 inches tall in 2012 and that now his doctor says that he is 75 inches tall. Is it just coincidence that the one inch makes the difference between Trump being classed as overweight rather than obese? It is more likely that the extra inch has been added for this reason than that Trump has actually grown an inch in the last six years.
Taking a look at social media suggests that there is a lot of public support for the challenge set by James Gunn to Donald Trump. Many citizens of the United States are keen for Trump to prove that the personal statistics released by his doctor are accurate and not just a way of making sure he fits into a better weight categorization.
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