Trump says he’s leaving the hospital because he feels better than he has in 20 years:
That’s the steroids talking. And it may be making him manic. Anyone who’s ever taken them knows the crash is going to be epic and if he doesn’t have a relapse requiring him to helicopter back to Walter Reed he will be lucky.
But meanwhile he’s telling all his fans to go out and get the virus because it’s the fountain of youth. And suggesting that the medical care he’s getting is standard when, in fact, it’s highly, highly unusual.
This story in the NY Times reveals just what a terrible patient he has been. I’ll bet that the doctors will be glad to see him go:
With the president determined not to concede weakness and facing an election in just 30 days, officials acknowledged providing rosy assessments to satisfy their prickly patient.
Determined to reassert himself on the political stage on his third day in the hospital, Mr. Trump made an unannounced exit from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the early evening, climbing into his armored Chevrolet Suburban to ride past supporters holding Trump flags gathered outside the building. Wearing a suit jacket and face mask but no tie, Mr. Trump waved at the crowd through a closed window as his motorcade slowly cruised by before returning him to the hospital.
“It’s been a very interesting journey,” Mr. Trump said in a one-minute video posted on Twitter, looking stronger and sounding more energetic than he had the last couple of days. “I learned a lot about Covid. I learned it by really going to school. This is the real school. This isn’t the let’s-read-the-books school. And I get it. And I understand it. And it’s a very interesting thing and I’m going to be letting you know about it.”
Mr. Trump’s camera-friendly, morale-boosting “surprise visit,” however, may have masked the reality of his condition, and his seeming energy may have reflected the fact that he was given the steroid dexamethasone, according to medical experts. Dexamethasone has been shown to help patients who are severely ill with Covid-19, but it is typically not used in mild or moderate cases of the disease.
Moreover, some medical experts said Mr. Trump’s trip out of the hospital was reckless, unnecessarily putting both hospital staff members and Secret Service agents at risk for a stunt. Others questioned the president’s statement in his video that he had met soldiers while at Walter Reed.
“Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” Dr. James P. Phillips, an attending physician at Walter Reed, wrote on Twitter. “They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.
In a telephone interview on Sunday night, Dr. Phillips also said the trip raised the alarming question of whether the president was directing his doctors.
“At what point does the physician-patient relationship end, and does the commander in chief and subordinate relationship begin, and were those doctors ordered to allow this to happen?” he said, noting that it violated standards of care and would not be an option open to any other patient. “When I first saw this, I thought, maybe he was being transported to another hospital.”
Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said precautions were taken in organizing the excursion. “The movement was cleared by the medical team as safe to do,” he said.
But the criticism threatened to reinforce views of Mr. Trump’s handling of the pandemic as a whole, which has been widely criticized and remains his biggest political vulnerability.
He’s high on steroids right now. This may be the scariest moment of his presidency.