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Donald Trump has often boasted of surrounding himself with “the best people” and the medical skills of Dr. Sean Conley, the personal physician now charged with bringing the President of the United States to health through his encounter with Covid-19. , have never been questioned. .
However, in trying to present a true picture of Trump’s health this weekend, Conley has shown a less firm hand. Two bumpy press conferences on consecutive days on the steps of Maryland’s Walter Reed Military Medical Center have raised more questions than answers, with some wondering whether Trump himself is controlling the information he’s allowing his senior physician to release. .
Conley was appointed an interim White House physician in March 2018 when Trump’s first choice, Dr. Ronny Jackson, retired. Trained as an osteopath, Conley, who is also a commander in the United States Navy, was confirmed for the position two months later.
Until Saturday, aside from a signature raising eyebrows that Trump took the untested drug hydroxychloroquine in June, Conley stayed out of the limelight.
But at the first news conference on Saturday, hours after the president was airlifted to the hospital by helicopter, Conley was evasive when asked about the medical details of Trump’s condition, such as his oxygen levels and the effect of the viruses in your internal organs. Instead, he chose to give an optimistic description of Trump’s health, using vague phrases including “very good” and “no cause for concern.”
Sunday’s briefing was nearly repeat, short on precise details or full answers, but painting an optimistic picture that included a claim from a medical team physician that Trump could be discharged on Friday.
The president, Conley said, had “continued to improve” despite admitting that Trump had needed supplemental oxygen in recent days on at least two occasions that he had previously denied, and was now taking a third drug, the steroid dexamethasone, in addition to the doses of the antivirals REGN-COV2 and remdesivir.
Puzzlingly, Conley also said that he gave such an optimistic assessment the day before because “he did not want to give any information that could take the course of the disease in another direction.
The overall effect of the two press conferences was to let medical experts, political analysts, and the general public continue to search for the truth about how sick the president of the United States really is.
Suspicions that Conley was only revealing what the president allowed him were fueled Sunday by reports that Trump was “totally pissed off” with Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, for giving reporters a more serious and contradictory account of his health after Saturday’s briefing.
“It turned out we were trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true,” Conley said Sunday. “The fact is that she is doing very well.”
How soon Trump will emerge from Walter Reed remains to be seen, but Conley’s confusing and contradictory statements over the weekend have done little to quell speculation that the decision, when made, could be as much a political calculation as any phone call. for medical reasons.
Background
Conley was born in Pennsylvania in 1980 and graduated from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2006 before pursuing a medical residency at a naval base in Virginia. He also served in Afghanistan, acting as the head of a trauma unit at a multinational NATO base.
As a military physician, he was deemed perfect for a position in the White House, which traditionally recruits doctors who have worked.
Conley met his wife Kristin in medical school and the couple have two sons and a daughter, who was born during their father’s tour of duty in Afghanistan. Kristin Conley works as a doctor of internal medicine for Frederick Health Medical Group in Maryland.
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