Donald Trump isn’t faking his coronavirus. He’s faking his recovery.
Given Donald Trump’s consistent history of lying, his frequent theatrical stunts, and the suspect behavior of his doctors, it’s fair to question what’s really going on with his coronavirus. After all, he went from a high fever and multiple experimental drugs, to suddenly being able to take a joyride around the hospital.
Now that he’s suddenly feeling well, many of you suspect that Trump was faking his coronavirus all along. But given the circumstances, that’s almost impossible. Trump would have to be faking the entire White House outbreak. That would mean Melania is pretending to be sick even though she hates him. It would mean Chris Christie checked himself into the hospital just to keep up the charade. It would mean that people like the President of Notre Dame, and Kellyanne Conway’s Trump-hating daughter, are all pretending to have coronavirus just to help Trump. You see how quickly this theory falls apart under scrutiny.
But Trump is likely faking something – you’ve got it backwards. It’s the “feeling well” part that’s a fake. The dexamethasone steroid he’s been taking would have him up and walking even if he were practically a corpse. It’s (temporarily) covering up his actual state of health.
We don’t know how sick Trump is. But we do know the research says that coronavirus patients who don’t have it in their lungs actually have a four percent greater chance of dying if they’re given dexamethasone. So if the virus weren’t in Trump’s lungs, even his pushover doctor wouldn’t be giving him dexamethasone. So coronavirus must be in his lungs. Like with so many other patients in his position, it’s a waiting game to see if the virus clears out of his lungs or takes root.
This could go either way. But the images we keep seeing of Trump are merely proof that he’s conscious and not on a ventilator. We have no idea if he’d be able to sit, stand, or walk without the assistance of the powerful steroid drug he’s been given. If Trump does check out of Walter Reed in the next day or two, this will tell us nothing; it could just be the dexamethasone propping him up enough to fake his way back to the White House, which is also a de facto hospital.
If Trump goes back to the White House soon, the thing to look for will be whether he actually does anything once he’s there. Will he hold meetings, press briefings, campaign speeches? Or will his people just keep releasing staged photos of him pretending to do things around the White House, to give the appearance that he’s fully functional?
Trump thinks that the hospital makes him look weak, and that checking out of the hospital will help his election odds. But the minute he’s out of the hospital, the narrative will turn harsher against him for recklessly getting himself and so many others infected – and his other scandals will return. So if Trump wants to twist his doctors’ arms into letting him return to the White House too soon while he’s still sick, jacked up on steroids just so he can walk to the helicopter, that’s fine. It’s his choice, his mistake. It’ll just make his ugly election prospects even uglier.
In any case, the larger circumstances of the White House coronavirus outbreak make clear that Donald Trump does have coronavirus. He’s not faking that part. It’s his miracle “recovery” that’s almost certainly fake.
