I have a list of beefs with the president a mile long, but I’m praying to see him well and happily striding out of Walter Reed, fully recovered from his coronavirus infection. I can’t get my head around the people who are gleeful about his condition, and openly proclaiming their glee.
This normally confident, ebullient president is probably feeling much more vulnerable than he usually does. I have no idea if Gabriel Sherman’s report, that Trump was asking, “Am I going out like Stan Chera?” is true. It doesn’t seem all that implausible; Trump and Chera were friends and Trump had spoken in the past of Chera’s succumbing to the coronavirus. If Trump has spent a night in a hospital before, it’s been a long time; I can’t find any press accounts of him spending a night in the hospital in years past.
The public and subsequent off-the-record statements about the president’s health have been contradictory and unclear, but whatever the situation was on Friday afternoon, it was serious enough for his doctors to conclude the president would be better treated at Walter Reed, with the full spectrum of equipment and tools on-site.
For a hospital patient, the president appeared to be in good spirits and something akin to his old self in the video released Saturday night. He’s got the best doctors, with every tool, treatment, and medicine available. But he’s still a 74-year-old man who’s fighting off a virus that is particularly dangerous to men his age. Some coronavirus patients make a full and relatively quick recovery; some are still dealing with shortness of breath or other symptoms after the virus leaves their systems.
Get well soon, Mr. President. The country and world have been through enough this year.