Years of the White House obscuring health information
add instability at a tricky moment
If the Hicks test hadn’t leaked, would we even
know about Trump?
By
Oct. 2, 2020 at 8:07 a.m. CDT
The
White House didn’t confirm that President Trump’s personal valet tested
positive for the novel coronavirus until the media broke the story in May. It didn’t confirm
that Vice President Pence’s press secretary contracted the virus until the
media reported it a few days later. It didn’t
confirm that Trump’s national security adviser had it until the press reported it, and it was only after Bloomberg
News — which first reported several of these cases — revealed that counselor Hope Hicks had
tested positive that the White House acknowledged it.
It
appears that the first time the White House was the first to confirm a positive
coronavirus test in the administration was Trump’s tweet about his own positive test early Friday
morning.
The
diagnosis immediately destabilized a broad range of institutions and efforts.
Stock futures dropped by hundreds of points. Questions
immediately arose about possible succession plans or preparations. Trump's
ongoing reelection campaign lost its candidate for some to-be-determined period
— and lost any hope of redirecting the race away from the ongoing pandemic.
That
instability will only be heightened by the long track record of obscuring or
misrepresenting health information related to the president.
During
the 2016 campaign, there were ongoing questions about Trump's health, given his
advanced age. (He was the oldest person ever to be inaugurated as president.)
Presidential campaigns generally release health records in an effort to assuage
any such concerns, but the document released by the Trump campaign was
bafflingly effusive.
“If
elected,” it read at one point, “Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be
the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
It
later emerged that the doctor who'd signed the letter had simply signed something dictated by Trump or his
team. That doctor, Harold Bornstein, later claimed that people working for
Trump had seized the president's medical records shortly
after the president took office.
Once in
office, this uncertainty continued. Trump's first physical, conducted by
then-White House physician Ronny L. Jackson, determined that Trump was just tall
enough and just light enough not to be categorized as obese.
“He has
incredible genes, I just assume,” Jackson said at a news briefing, echoing
Trump’s own descriptions of his vitality. “Based on his cardiac assessment,
hands down, there is no question he is in the excellent range,” the doctor said
at another point — though he doubled the president’s cholesterol medication.
Most
curious was Trump’s unexpected trip to Walter Reed National
Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., last November. Then-press secretary
Stephanie Grisham waved the unannounced trip off as Trump “taking advantage of
a free weekend” to get the first part of his annual physical out of the way.
He
never completed that physical at Walter Reed. This summer, after questions
about his health arose following a speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West
Point, the White House released a summary of his physical asserting that the procedure had been
completed at the White House. Trump, though, later claimed that the November visit to Walter
Reed was the conclusion of his physical.
The New
York Times’s Michael Schmidt reported that the trip may have been centered on
something more significant.
“In the
hours leading up to Trump’s trip to the hospital,” Schmidt reported, “word went
out in the West Wing for the vice president to be on standby to take over the
powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that
would have required him to be anesthetized.”
Pence
later said that he didn't recall any such order.
All of
this contributes to an unusual amount of uncertainty about the president’s health
in a normal moment. Now, with Trump having contracted covid-19, a dangerous and
mostly untreatable disease — in the middle of his reelection campaign, no less
— it becomes far more problematic.
It will
be difficult to take at face value any assertions about Trump’s condition as
the disease runs its course. It will similarly be difficult for Trump to resist
wanting to return to the campaign trail, regardless of how he’s feeling or how
contagious he might be. If the White House assures the public that Trump has
been cleared to once again hold fundraisers or to resume his regular schedule,
one would be justified in treating that claim with skepticism. Any assertion
about Trump’s health will need to clear a higher bar for confirmation than
normal given how often the administration has both obscured information about
Trump.
And, of
course, because of its willingness to pressure health experts in particular to
offer optimistic assessments about the pandemic. Over and over, the government
agencies running the response to the pandemic have faced pressure from the
White House to make the situation seem less stark. Pressure to limit the number of tests being
completed or to make it easier to open schools has
increased skepticism about any pronouncement from the government.
One has
to wonder what would have happened had Bloomberg News not uncovered Hicks’s
positive test, which was conducted Thursday morning. The president continued
his schedule as normal despite her diagnosis — and despite perhaps not feeling
100 percent himself, according to Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs. That included a closed-door
fundraiser at Trump’s private club in New Jersey on Thursday. Business as
usual, as best he could.
If the
Hicks diagnosis hadn’t become public, when, if ever, would we have learned
about Trump’s?