Cool, so the president’s tame doc admits he lied in the briefing yesterday. That’s fine then. No doubt tomorrow he’ll admit he lied in today’s.
In a jarring news conference Sunday, Trump’s doctors said that even though the President has had at least two concerning drops in oxygen levels, they are hoping he could be discharged as early as tomorrow from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Because he’s barely sick at all. Really. You can trust us on this.
Conley again failed to answer basic questions about the President’s condition and admitted Sunday that he had omitted those alarming drops in the President’s oxygen levels during Saturday’s news conference because he wanted to “reflect the upbeat attitude” that the team and the President had about his condition and didn’t want “to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction.”
I guess he means steer everyone’s perception of the course of illness in another direction? He can’t steer the course of the illness itself by saying things to the press. Anyway, that’s quite an admission. “Yes, I lied about it yesterday to make it sound better.” Oh. Ok then.
Conley acknowledged that his evasive answers “came off that we were trying to hide something” but said that “wasn’t necessarily true,” adding that the President is “doing really well” and is responding to treatment.
Was it contingently true? (Yes.)
The President has experienced “two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen saturation,” Conley said Sunday. The first significant episode occurred late Friday morning when, Conley said, the President had “a high fever and his oxygen saturation was transiently dipping below 94%.” The President was given oxygen at that point, Conley said, answering a question he had evaded during his Saturday briefing.
“After about a minute on only two liters, his saturation levels were back over 95%. He stayed on that for about an hour maybe, and it was off and gone,” Conley said Sunday. Later on Friday, Conley said, Trump was out of bed, moving around the White House residence with only mild symptoms.
On Saturday, the President’s oxygen level dropped again “to about 93%,” Conley said. “We watched it and it returned back up.” But the incident led doctors to start treating Trump with the steroid drug dexamethasone, which has been shown to help patients with Covid-19. It is typically given to patients on supplemental oxygen or ventilation.
I.e. patients who have very severe cases.
How about the lungs? Any damage?
He offered no detail about what X-rays or CT scans have shown about whether there has been any damage to the President’s lungs.
“There’s some expected findings, but nothing of any major clinical concern,” Conley said, not explaining whether they were expected findings in the lungs of a normal patient or a Covid-19 patient.
Plus the thing about admitting he lied yesterday.
Meadows made the mistake of trying to get some of the truth out, so now Trump is pissed off at him.
Earlier on Saturday, Meadows had also attempted to signal that the President’s initial condition was more serious when he spoke to pool reporters as an unnamed official after Conley’s briefing that morning. But his identity was later revealed by The New York Times and The Associated Press, and Trump was furious at his chief of staff for contradicting the White House physician’s upbeat assessment, two sources with knowledge of the situation told CNN’s Jim Acosta Sunday.
How dare anyone who works for Trump tell us the truth?
A separate White House official confirmed Trump is unhappy with Meadows, as the chief of staff is now viewed by Trump advisers as having damaged the credibility of the current medical briefings on the President’s bout with the coronavirus.
Ah right. Meadows “damaged the credibility” of the briefings because he told some of the truth, while Trump wants the briefings to be lies.
Dude’s last words are going to be lies.