Trump Was Much Sicker With Covid-19 Than White House Acknowledged, Was Nearly Placed on Ventilator: NY Times

Photo credit: Alex Edelman, AFP via Getty Images.

Former President Donald Trump was, in fact, much sicker than the White House publicly let on in the first few days after being diagnosed with Covid-19 during the finals stretch of the 2020 campaign.

According to a long and detailed review in the New York Times, Trump was found to have extremely low blood oxygen levels and “infiltrates” in his lungs in the days before he was moved to Walter Reed Medical Center. The latter condition is commonly associated with pneumonia patients and occurs when lungs are inflamed and contain invasive fluid or bacteria.

As a result of these red flags, White House officials were concerned that the president would need to be placed on a ventilator — a sign of a severe case of coronavirus — once he was admitted into Water Reed. But these shocking details were never made public with Election Day less than five weeks away.

It has been previously reported that Mr. Trump had trouble breathing and a fever on Oct. 2, the day he was taken to the hospital, and the types of treatment he received indicated that his condition was serious. But the new details about his condition and about the effort inside the White House to get him special access to an unapproved drug to fight the virus help to flesh out one of the most dire episodes of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

The new revelations about Mr. Trump’s struggle with the virus also underscore the limited and sometimes misleading nature of the information disclosed at the time about his condition.

Per the Times, Trump stubbornly refused to be moved to Walter Reed and only relented after White House aides warned that if he continued to put off hospital admittance while he could still walk on his own, he might have to be seen being carried out by Secret Service if he got sicker.

Even after Trump was flown to the hospital on Marine One, the White House medical team’s put out evasive and contradictory statements about the president’s condition that often left more questions than answers about when and how sick he had gotten in the first few days after his diagnosis.

A person from Trump’s inner circle offered a blanket denial to the Times, saying the then-president was never seriously ill.