UPDATED: Trump Airlifted To Walter Reed On Marine One

By Red Painter — October 2, 2020

Just 24 hours after his COVID diagnosis was made public, Donald Trump was rushed to Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, MD via helicopter. This is a 15-minute drive normally, so being airlifted is unusual, to say the least. Clearly, we are not being told the truth about the severity of his condition.

The White House is officially saying that he will be there for a few days as a "precaution" but this sounds more dramatic than that, especially since the White House has a full time medical unit and is capable of treating a significant amount of medical issues on site.

Earlier today we were also informed that Trump was given a highly experimental drug called a polyclonal antibody drug, which Dr. Eric Ding had comments on:

WORRIED—you almost **never ever** give someone a clinically untested drug like @Regeneron’s polyclonal antibody drug—unless it’s for compassionate use for someone severely ill, or you’re crazy. Right @VincentRK? This smacks of utter craziness or desperation. #COVID19 #TrumpCovid https://t.co/Es0SaWA0ac

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) October 2, 2020

Now, just hours later, he is being rushed to Walter Reed?

Regeneron’s polyclonal antibody as of September is in phase 3 trials....you couldn’t pay me to take it for a fever. Things must be worse than we know.

— Steven McDonald (@smcdonaldMD) October 2, 2020

The President’s team either:

A) Can’t read basic medical literature.

B) Can read medical literature but can’t overrule what he’s telling them to do, based on what advice he’s getting elsewhere.

C) Believes he is dying and therefore are willing to try anything. pic.twitter.com/yByJVcUSXV

— Jeremy Faust MD MS (ER physician) (@jeremyfaust) October 2, 2020

In < 24 hrs Trump has gone from no symptoms to mild symptoms to fever/fatigue to experimental drugs to admission to Walter Reed Medical Center for "several days."

— Greg Miller (@gregpmiller) October 2, 2020

The decision to move the President to Walter Reed reflects a level of concern far above a description of a patient with “mild symptoms.”

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) October 2, 2020

You don’t hospitalize the President only out of an “abundance of caution.” He has world class medical care and they can get him to Walter Reed in a moment’s notice.

This is a serious illness.

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) October 2, 2020

We'll update this post as news warrants.

UPDATE: (Karoli) Orchestrated like a fine Broadway play, Donald Trump held media in a stage of breathless anticipation for over an hour before Donald Trump boarded Marine One under his own steam. The video of that is at the top.

Before he left, he recorded a nice video tweet for everyone.

pic.twitter.com/B4H105KVSs

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2020

It was all carefully orchestrated to let him bask in the single-minded media's attention.

Time for Friday cocktails and dinner. Further updates will come from my fellow editors or the author of this post.

Explore more

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.

Latest