When the White House announced on Wednesday that President Joe Biden had tested positive for Covid, his team issued a written statement noting his symptoms and self-isolation plans. It was accompanied by a message from the Democrat’s physician describing Biden’s condition in more detail, including information about the president’s respiratory rate, temperature and pulse oximetry.
A day later, the White House issued another letter from Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, with updated information about the president’s symptoms, condition and treatment plan, as well as assurances about additional updates.
This is, of course, precisely what one would expect from an operation that believes transparency, especially about health matters, is important.
It also stands in contrast to Biden’s Republican rival. The Associated Press reported:
Four days after a gunman’s attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, the public is still in the dark over the extent of his injuries, what treatment the Republican presidential nominee received in the hospital, and whether there may be any long-term effects on his health. Trump’s campaign has refused to discuss his condition, release a medical report or records, or make the doctors who treated him available, leaving information to dribble out from Trump, his friends and family.
The AP’s report quoted Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine and surgery at The George Washington University, saying, “It’s an understatement to say that it’s bizarre that a presidential candidate has sustained an injury from an attempted assassination and no medical report is issued to describe his evaluation and the extent of his injury.”
I’m mindful of the fact that there are plenty of conspiracy theories surrounding Saturday’s shooting, none of which have been substantiated with any credible evidence.
One need not take those theories seriously, however, to wonder why Team Trump has been reluctant to share basic medical information about such a serious matter.
Recent history doesn’t help matters. The Republican, for example, has long adopted a rather untraditional approach to sharing information about his medical exams.
Indeed, it started before he took office. As regular readers may recall, in late 2015, during the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Team Trump released an unintentionally hilarious, four-paragraph letter from the late Dr. Harold Bornstein, asserting that Trump’s “physical strength and stamina are extraordinary” and his lab tests results were “astonishingly excellent.” The doctor added at the time, “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” We learned several months later that Bornstein wrote the letter in five minutes while a limo, dispatched by Trump, waited for the document. In the years that followed, disclosures did not improve. Last fall, Trump released the first updated report on his health in more than three years, but it came by way of a statement issued by one of his golf club customers, and it omitted basic details such as his blood pressure and medications. It’s against this backdrop that Team Trump also hasn’t provided the public with information about the Republican nominee’s medical care in the wake of Saturday’s shooting. There might be a benign explanation for this lack of transparency, but for now, I have no idea what it is.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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