The president is saying that he feels “great.” He is saying that the heavy steroid he is on is “not a heavy steroid.” He is saying lucid things on the White House lawn, like: “We’re taking care of our seniors, you’re not vulnerable, but they like to say ‘the vulnerable,’ but you’re the least vulnerable, but for this one thing you are vulnerable.”
On Thursday night, President Trump’s physician agreed with the gist of his recent comments on his own health. In a memo, Dr. Sean Conley stated that “based on the trajectory of advanced diagnostics the team has been conducting, I fully anticipate the President’s safe return to public engagements by Saturday,” which will have been ten days since his positive coronavirus test was announced.
A bounty of questions remain. On Thursday, in the same interview in which he told Fox Business Network that the parents of soldiers killed in action may have given him COVID-19, he said that he would be taking dexamethasone for a “little bit longer.” How will Trump feel once he’s off a steroid that is known for giving patients boosts of energy and bouts of euphoria? Will Americans without the benefit of his taxpayer-subsidized health care gain access to Regeneron, a drug Trump has called a “cure” — and a drug that was developed using tests on fetal tissue derived from abortion, a process that the Trump administration suspended federal funding for in June 2019. Will the White House actually take its pandemic precautions seriously now that around three dozen patients have been infected during its outbreak? Most importantly, will Trump test negative and be noncontagious by the weekend? Dr. Conley’s letter notably does not address whether or not the president is still testing positive. Judging from the administration’s opacity during the crisis so far, most of these questions will remain unanswered.
As Trump waits to break his entirely porous quarantine, he is keeping busy.
On Thursday, he spent an hour on the phone with Fox Business, and on Friday, the president — having cleared his workload, apparently — will guest host Rush Limbaugh’s three-hour radio show.
On Hannity on Thursday night, Trump gave a preview of his weekend plans — in between baselessly claiming that Virginia governor Ralph Northam had “executed a baby” and condemning Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer for not calling to thank him after the FBI foiled a domestic terrorist plot to kidnap her. The president told the Fox News host that he is now planning to hold a rally in Florida on Saturday, his first night back on the town.
