Image by Gerd Altmann, Pixabay

By Danny R. Johnson – Political News Editor

WASHINGTON–President Donald Trump is not well, and the American people need an accurate account of his condition, and at this point, they do not have one.

Within the last four days, the world learned a worth of news about Trump. None of the news was good. The information came as if in a time-lapse: The president has had a high-risk exposure, the president has tested positive for the coronavirus, the president has symptoms, the president has received an experimental antibody treatment, the president has left the White House to spend several days at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The degree of urgency and necessity behind the decision to hospitalize Trump remains unclear, and the order of events is shifting. On Saturday morning, Trump’s physician, Naval Commander Dr. Sean Conley, suggested that Trump was sick earlier than the White House had previously shared. At the same press conference, another doctor, Brian Garibaldi, said that Trump had received the antibody cocktail on Thursday afternoon—a day before the American people were informed that Trump had even been diagnosed. (The White House then insisted that both doctors misspoke, and released a statement from Conley clarifying that the president had received the cocktail Friday.)

Trump is furious with the chief of staff Mark Meadows after the top West Wing official contradicted the White House physician’s assessment Saturday of the president’s health. Two sources with knowledge of the situation told CNN on Sunday.

Meadows is now widely known inside the White House to be the unnamed source who spoke to reporters following the medical briefing Saturday and offered a more dire assessment than Dr. Conley had given shortly before. That reporting was initially assigned to a pool of reporters attributed to an official familiar with the president’s condition. Later, the Associated Press and the New York Times identified that official as Meadows.

“The President’s vitals over the last 24 hours were genuinely concerning, and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care. We are still not on a clear path to a full recovery,” Meadows said to reporters.

The president is not well. His health could quite feasibly take a turn for the worse in the days ahead. The wide variability and the consequences of the disease’s course mean that small details about his condition will be analyzed intensely and must be carefully and transparently communicated. The geopolitical order hangs in the balance, waiting for incremental updates on Trump’s pulmonary function.

But a key variable in Trump’s case is that, because he is president, he will have the best possible medical monitoring and care. Should he need it, Trump will have care at the world’s best hospitals from doctors such as Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, whose advice Trump has spurned and rejected. Trump will have health care of the sort he has dangled as a campaign promise to all Americans since 2016 but never delivered.

During the press conference on Saturday, Dr. Conley said that Trump was “doing very well,” but added that he had been experiencing symptoms as far back as Thursday, including a fever and a cough. They were severe enough that Trump asked whether he should be lying on his stomach in a prone position (which has shown to help some COVID-19 patients breathe more quickly). Dr. Conley declined to comment on when the president had been infected or when he would last test negative in response to questions. And in three separate exchanges with reporters, Dr. Conley dodged the question of whether Trump had ever required supplemental oxygen—which would be a sign of early stages of respiratory failure—emphasizing only that he does not require oxygen at the moment.

By the few available objective measures, Trump was not himself on Friday. He went almost an entire day without tweeting, one of the few such days in his presidency. As he exited the White House and boarded Marine One for the hospital trip, he gave only a meager thumbs-up to the press. He climbed the stairs into the helicopter unassisted but used both handrails. The White House has indicated that he “will be working from the presidential offices at Walter Reed” out of “an abundance of caution.” Doctors confirmed that he was an admitted patient.

The disease is known to take sudden turns for the worse within a matter of hours. So being monitored in a hospital is not an unreasonable move, especially for a person in a high-risk demographic, like Trump. It would be unsurprising to learn later today that Trump requires oxygen, or to learn tomorrow that he has moved to the intensive-care-unit bed in his presidential suite. But it would be equally unsurprising to know, as we have seen from staged pictures of Trump, working from the hospital and will be home on Monday and back on the campaign trail soon. By Sunday, Dr. Conley had reported that the president had received yet another experimental drug, the antiviral remdesivir. The news that Trump has received these two drugs does not give any meaningful clue as to how sick he is. When a person gets experimental therapies, it suggests that their condition is at least more than a mild cold. But Trump is inclined to try out novel medicinal approaches. He said that he was taking hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin in May, despite a lack of evidence that these would have any bearing on whether he would contract the coronavirus. That same mentality could lead him to request antibodies and antivirals like remdesivir at the first sign of illness. Both have shown mixed results in trials so far, but both seem unlikely to make a person worse off.

What would be meaningfully objective news is if Trump starts requiring oxygen regularly, or if imaging studies suggest developing pneumonia. There must be transparency and honesty when reporting such basic facts in a moment like this. The false reassurance that has defined Trump’s response to the pandemic stands to destabilize the world in an entirely new way if people are unclear on the president’s functional status. If his doctor cannot share an honest account of the president’s need for supplemental oxygen, he loses the credibility to offer reassurance in a more dire scenario. People may rightly assume the situation is worse than they are being told.

All of the latest developments regarding Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis begs a nagging question we are forced to ask: “Is the president facing a terminal illness aggravated by COVID-19 that gives him weeks or months to live?” Based on how this White House has been acting lately, the answer to that question will be revealed one way or another in the foreseeable future.