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(CNN) – Heavily medicated President Donald Trump shot out of his VIP hospital bubble Monday, staging a bizarre return to the White House. It included irresponsibly removing the mask and a reckless pronouncement that there is nothing to fear from Covid-19, which has already killed 210,000 Americans.
His actions show him, if anything, more rooted than ever in the denial of the virus. And more committed to destroying the scientific protocols that could stop the pandemic.
We will return. We will go back to work. We will be in front. As their leader, he had to do that. I knew there was danger, but I had to, “Trump says in a strange campaign video prepared by aides an hour after his return to the White House. In it, the president frames himself as a warrior who stood up to the virus and won.
«I stayed in front. I led. No one who is a leader would not do what I did. I know there is a risk, there is a danger, “Trump said, even though his doctors previously said he is not yet completely” out of the woods “in his fight against the virus.
A still contagious Trump ignored advisers who wanted him to stay in the hospital and instead rode Marine One from Walter Reed Military National Military Medical Center to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Deep questions remain about the president’s health after he tested positive for the disease last week and suffered two drops in oxygen levels. A torrent of misinformation surrounds his condition, including when he actually got sick. That health information is crucial in establishing whether the president went ahead with his official duties while potentially infectious with COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the virus continues to ravage the White House, which has become a COVID-19 hot spot amid blatant violations of social distancing.
Trump’s press secretary on the positive
White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said she tested positive – “after negative test” – in a possible attempt to excuse her failure to wear a mask when she briefed reporters Sunday. Two of her employees also tested positive for coronavirus.
LEEWARD: CNN Poll: Majority of Americans Say Trump Acted Irresponsibly and Distrust White House Information About His Health
Trump choreographed his exit from the hospital, which coincided with the evening news bulletins, walking out the front door and clenching his fist. His flight home turned into a personal victory lap against a virus that is still in his system. Which shows how he intends to try to turn the events of the last days into a political triumph.
Returning to the White House with images laden with authoritarian overtones, Trump climbed the stairs in the South Portico, which was decorated with American flags. He removed his mask, adjusted his suit, lifted his chin and waved at the helicopter leaving for a reckless photo shoot. It was one of the strangest moments in modern presidential history.
Then, still bare-faced, Trump, in scenes that would not have been out of place in totalitarian North Korea, entered the presidential residence, polluting the indoor air. He then resurfaced with a film crew to make the campaign video, in which he gave deeply misleading and potentially damaging advice to the American people on how to handle the worsening pandemic.
Now I’m better and maybe I’m immune? I do not know. But don’t let that rule your lives. Come out, be careful, “said the president.
His behavior alarmed public health experts.
“It is inexplicable that the president of the United States, who is actively releasing viruses in millions of particles, entered that building with an enormous number of personnel, without masks,” said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor at the School of Medicine of the United States. George Washington University.
“It’s really hard to understand how no one told him not to do that. There seems to be no one in charge of his care other than the President of the United States, apart from patient, “Reiner told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
‘Some really cool drugs’
Trump earlier announced his pending discharge from the hospital in a tweet in which he said he was feeling better than 20 years ago and showed no signs that his brush with a serious illness would have caused him to reconsider his earlier message about the virus.
None of the seven million Americans who tested positive for COVID benefited from the 24-hour treatment and various experimental therapies given to Trump in a dedicated suite staffed by the best doctors in the military.
Trump’s comments will be a cruel blow to the families of Americans who have died from the disease and the many who have recovered and are now so-called “long-haul carriers” who suffer serious consequences.
It shows the same kind of denial and neglect that the president has displayed all along about a national crisis that he downplayed and mismanaged and relegated behind his own personal political needs.
“He is clearly doubling down on the worst mistake of his presidency,” CNN political analyst David Gergen and adviser to four presidents told Wolf Blitzer.
“I think he’s going to kill a lot of people as a result,” Gergen said. And he added that sometimes he wakes up in the morning and thinks that the United States is in the clutches of a “madman.”
Since the president was diagnosed with coronavirus Thursday night, more than 2,000 Americans have died and there have been 150,000 more infections. There are alarming signs that the dreaded fall and winter peak is beginning to unfold with cases on the rise in 22 states.
LOOK: Mathematical model estimates more than 2,900 daily deaths in the US from covid-19 in December
Trump defies advisers by leaving hospital
The president left the hospital despite being told by his advisers that it would be best for him to stay, given the uncertainties of the illness.
“You don’t want to go back,” is the message that has been relayed to the president, a source told CNN. If Trump worsens after returning to the White House, this source said, “That would be bad.”
But the president, who has been itching to get home for several days, has a compelling political interest in showing that he is better, 28 days before an election in which he is behind Joe Biden. His campaign said Monday that it planned to debate the Democratic nominee in their second head-to-head showdown, a forum event with members of the public in Miami next week.
Trump’s press aides are busily intensifying his cult of the personality of a successful strongman who beat the virus to show Americans that there is nothing to fear.
Biden wished Trump and first lady Melania Trump the best of their convalescence during a campaign trip to Florida. But she also called on the president to take the virus more seriously.
“Now that you are busy tweeting campaign messages, I would ask you to do this: Listen to the scientists, support the wearing of masks,” Biden said.
Vice-presidential debate
Vice President Mike Pence plans to debate Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris of California on Wednesday in Utah, despite the viral wave sweeping through the White House. The Committee on Presidential Debates has decided that the two candidates will be separated by Plexiglas on stage to avoid the possibility of air pollution.
LEEWARD: The Committee on Presidential Debates announces changes to “ensure a more orderly discussion”
Pence’s spokeswoman, Katie Miller, mocked her boss’s adversary for caution, showing disregard for the basic health measures that are typical in the White House.
“If Senator Harris wants to use a fortress around her, let her do it,” Miller said.
Trump’s diagnosis interrupted his efforts to rush to the finish line in a desperate attempt to reverse his deficit with Biden and win a second term.
His campaign on Monday made a new argument that his experience with Covid-19 uniquely qualified him to tackle the crisis. Despite the fact that it is obviously again circumventing all scientific protocols that could delay its spread.
“He has experience as a commander-in-chief, he has experience as an entrepreneur, now he has experience fighting coronavirus as an individual. Those first-hand experiences, Joe Biden, he doesn’t have, ”Erin Perrine, director of press communications for the Trump campaign, said on Fox News.
But a new CNN poll released Monday found that the president’s performance during his grief may have further damaged his political position. Two-thirds of Americans said they handled the risk of a viral infection to those around them irresponsibly, in the survey conducted by SSRS.
And 69% of those surveyed after Trump’s diagnosis said they had little confidence in what they heard from the White House about the president’s health. Only 12% said they trusted almost everything.
In a new record, 60% said they disapprove of Trump’s handling of the pandemic.
‘He’s back’
Trump’s White House physician, Navy Commander Sean Conley, said that although Trump was in uncharted territory following the rare administration of several experimental drugs, his clinical team agreed that he could go home to be monitored by the White House medical unit.
Conley’s briefing made several points to support Trump’s political narrative, such as when he declared that he “is back” and that the president was “getting a lot of attention” and had been a “phenomenal patient.”
However, he justified not sharing information that could be politically harmful to Trump, such as details of his lung function and whether he had pneumonia, for privacy reasons.
Presidents assume a public trust when they take office. And while many have tried to hide their health concerns from Americans, they are supposed to have a duty to show the country that they are medically fit to serve.
Steroids, which are part of the president’s regimen, can, for example, make a patient feel better than they actually are and can affect judgment.
LEEWARD: Trump is taking remdesivir, dexamethasone, and more to treat covid-19
Conley’s briefing, as it has become a habit, left more questions than answers. She said Trump had not taken any fever-reducing medications for 72 hours. But the steroid dexamethasone, which Trump is taking as part of his regimen, may act to reduce fever as a side effect.
Selective revelations about Trump’s health during the briefing mirrored the striking display of his return from the hospital, while another moment that was once considered separate from politics appeared to be caught up in the turmoil surrounding the president.
