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On Friday morning, former White House physician Ronny Jackson confidently told Fox News that Donald Trump was not showing any symptoms of coronavirus.
Shortly after, a White House official came forward to confirm that Trump was, in fact, experiencing symptoms, albeit minor, and reports said Trump had looked tired on Wednesday and “seemed lethargic” on Thursday. On Friday afternoon, he was transferred to Walter Reed Military Hospital.
The sea change after Trump and first lady Melania Trump tested positive for coronavirus fits a pattern of misdirection by Trump and his advisers on the president’s health, making it difficult to trust official statements, even in a moment of intense tension. crisis.
The litany of incidents is long. Eyebrows were raised at Trump’s alleged solidity during his first presidential campaign, after his then-doctor published a hyperbolic letter about his health.
“If elected, Mr. Trump, I can unequivocally affirm, will be the healthiest person ever elected to the presidency,” wrote Harold Bornstein in December 2015.
The letter said that Trump’s “physical strength and stamina are extraordinary,” and his blood test was “astonishingly excellent.”
Almost three years later, Bornstein confessed that Trump had dictated the note himself, but the hoax about Trump’s welfare did not end there.
Bornstein, whose loose hair, gray beard and penchant for chunky silver necklaces made him look unlikely for a medical man, also claimed that Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, had carried out a “raid” on his office. in February 2017, collecting Trump’s Medical Histories and Lab Reports.
The effusive message about Trump’s physical condition was not the last note from the doctor to be questioned.
In 2018, Jackson reported that Donald Trump weighed 239 pounds during his annual medical exam.
That put Trump within a pound of being obese.
But in Jackson’s report, he had recorded Trump as 6 feet 3 inches tall, meaning the president had apparently grown an inch since 2012, when his numbered driver’s license he as 6 feet 2 inches.
Using the height of Trump’s driver’s license, he would have been classified as medically obese.
Many at the time were quick to point to photos of Trump. standing next to Alex Rodríguez, the former star of the New York Yankees, who stands 6 feet 3 inches tall. In the images, Rodríguez is clearly taller than Trump. Similarly, photos of Trump standing next to Barack Obama in 2017 appeared to show that the couple were the same height.
Discussing his 2018 report, Jackson told reporters that Trump’s health was “excellent.”
When asked how the president, who likes fast food and avoids exercise because he believes it depletes the body’s “finite” energy resources, could be in such good shape, Jackson said.
“I told the president that if he had a healthier diet for the past 20 years, he could live to be 200 years old. But I would say that the answer to your question is that he has incredibly good genes and this is how God did it. “
Jackson, a former Navy rear admiral who resigned from the White House in 2018, is running for the House of Representatives in November and has been enthusiastically endorsed by Trump.
In 2019, Trump’s doctor revealed that the president had gained weight and was now considered obese.
More serious and clandestine was the improvised trip to Trump’s hospital, a Saturday in November 2019.
Just as conflicting messages were sent about Trump’s Covid-19 symptoms, the White House offered different descriptions of why the president was taken to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside of Washington.
Then-White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham initially said that Trump had gone to the hospital to begin his annual medical exam, but CNN soon reported that the visit “did not follow the protocol of a routine presidential medical exam” and did not It was on the White House schedule.
Two days after the trip, the language of the Trump administration changed. Trump was no longer in the hospital to begin his medical examination, but was undergoing a “provisional checkup.”
In September this year, a book by New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt alleges that Vice President Mike Pence was put on hold when Trump went to the hospital.
Trump and his aides have also sought to exaggerate his mental acuity as well as his physical compulsion.
The president has repeatedly said he passed a “difficult” cognitive test, as Trump has attacked Joe Biden’s wit.
In an interview with Trump in June, Fox News host Chris Wallace brought up the subject of cognitive testing. Wallace said that he had done the test himself.
“It is not the most difficult test”, Wallace said.
“They have a photo and it says, ‘What is that?’ and it’s an elephant. “
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