In a Saturday evening video statement largely ignored by national media through Sunday morning, President Donald Trump gave the only straightforward report of his physical condition, and his thoughts about it, after becoming infected with the COVID-19 virus. It is best to ignore the general dishonesty, schadenfreude, churning and vomiting of undigested bits of distortion which has characterized the coverage by most of those media. After the posting of the President’s Twitter video by CNBC on Saturday evening at about 8:00 p.m. EDT (Trump had posted it on Twitter at about 7:00 p.m.), it made few further appearances other than on C-SPAN. But 30 million had viewed it by Sunday noon. It is transcribed in Documentation.
Speaking at a desk in his suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in front of flags of the nation and its armed forces, dressed in his customary business suit but without a tie, the President appeared free of any respiratory symptoms but fatigued; he spoke in a low-key but serious manner, and was primarily concerned to thank the medical professionals caring for him, and the many Americans and leaders around the world who have sent him good wishes for recovery. He repeated twice the same report of his condition: That he was feeling much better than on the prior two days, but that the next few days would be critical for his clinical course.
Otherwise the President’s brief message conveyed two thoughts: that he could not have followed a policy of isolating himself “upstairs” in the White House waiting out the pandemic, but had had to remain fully involved in the activities of governing while pushing rapid development of treatments and vaccines; and that he was “fighting for the millions of people all over the world suffering” from this disease.
It could not be missed that President Trump referred to the disease only as “this coronavirus — or whatever you want to call it.”
National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning, stressed the same two ideas as had President Trump: that the President has to keep governing, and the American people have to keep working; and “We’re going to beat this virus with therapeutics and with vaccines.”
At 10:39 EDT Sunday morning the team of physicians treating Trump held a press conference to announce that he was “continuing to improve,” had had no fever since Friday morning prior to his hospitalization, and had had two brief episodes of oxygen saturation below 94% Friday and Saturday, treated with oxygen and with dexamethasone, respectively. The team said that pending the further course, they had under consideration a discharge back to the White House on Monday. (Not surprisingly, numerous “experts” of both the medical and the former-official sort immediately hit the media to say that this briefing by the Walter Reed team meant that Trump has pneumonia and that his condition is grave.)
https://www.c-span.org/video/?476599-1/white-house-physician-president-continues-improve
