Donald Trump has had enough of the hospital. As early as Sunday afternoon, the US President briefly interrupted his strictly screened stay at the Walter Reed Military Hospital to visit his supporters on the street in front of the clinic.
To do this, he let his Secret Service people drive him past the fans in his armored car.
An outrageous process, many, including doctors and even at least one Secret Service agent, criticize his infection with the highly contagious and dangerous coronavirus.
The President put his own employees in danger – and not for the first time. According to doctors, everyone involved in the excursion would now have to go into quarantine.
On Sunday, Trump is also said to have made it clear to the US media that he absolutely wanted to go back to the White House. He is bored and worried that the stay in the clinic would make him look “weak”.
On Monday it was expected that he could be released later in the day – after just three days in the hospital. His chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said in the morning that the president’s health had continued to improve overnight.
His team of doctors should meet after the morning round to assess his condition and decide with him whether he is fit enough to return to the White House after three days in hospital, as Meadows told Fox News.
Conflicting information
How exactly Trump is, however, is still unclear. Time and again, different, sometimes contradicting information about the course of his illness is revealed, which does not increase the credibility of the official information. Many important questions remain unanswered, for example, when the president was infected from whom, when he knew about it and whom he infected.
After two press conferences of his doctors, it is now known how he is treated – with a drug cocktail that is intended for severe disease processes – and that he was not feeling well at least at times and he needed additional oxygen. Most of the time, however, the Americans get to hear that the president is doing “very well”.
As if to prove that, early Monday morning he tweeted a total of 18 times within an hour, 16 tweets were sent from his account within half an hour.
He also turns to the Americans in video messages and claims that he works all the time and now knows firsthand what the virus is like.
It is a clear attempt to use the illness of the president, who downplayed the dangers of the virus for months, made fun of his masked challenger Joe Biden and violated the recommendations of his own corona experts, to his advantage.
The day of truth will be in exactly four weeks. On November 3, the Americans will most likely vote on how the Trump administration has dealt with the pandemic so far. There isn’t much time left for the president to turn the race in his favor. Initial surveys indicate that his own illness does not help him in this project and that many Americans accuse him of not taking the virus seriously.
In the previous weeks, the Trump campaign tried to draw Americans’ attention to issues such as “Law and Order”, despite almost 7.5 million people infected and almost 210,000 people who have already died in the USA as a result of the virus. to pull. With manageable success. Now that is unlikely to succeed anymore.
He argues with a sense of duty
So Trump tries the strategy: He now knows what a Covid 19 disease feels like and can report that the drugs are working. He argues that out of a sense of duty he did not hide in the White House, but rather went about his work despite the risk of contagion.
Can this catch on – and not only with its staunch supporters, but also with the polls, according to around ten percent of voters who, despite the enormous polarization in the country, are not yet sure who to vote for?
A report in the “Wall Street Journal” could be uncomfortable for Trump. Accordingly, he had already had a positive rapid test on Thursday evening, but did not inform close employees, anyone who might be affected, or even the public.
Despite the diagnosis, Trump came to dinner with 206 guests
He would have consciously put other people in danger. He officially tweeted after the second test, a nasal swab, early Friday morning that he and his wife Melania had been infected and had been quarantined.
Despite the positive first test, he attended a donation dinner with at least 206 people in his golf club in Bedminster / New Jersey on Thursday evening and gave an interview to Fox News.
The donors paid $ 2,800 for a ticket – but the New Jersey authorities are now having trouble tracing them because the Republican Party allegedly only has email addresses from them.
It is already known that Trump did not have himself tested before the TV duel with Joe Biden on Tuesday – he came too late.
