XPost: or.politics   
   From: IronWhite@Systemic_Patriotism.org   
      
   Is he dying of AIDS or is it brain cancer?   
      
      
   Who will tell us the truth about Trump’s health?   
      
   We know it won’t be Trump.   
      
      
   Before he became president, Trump lied about everything from his personal   
   wealth to his TV ratings to the number of floors in his condo towers. Once   
   in the White House, he started out lying about the size of his inauguration   
   crowd, and super-sized his lies from there.   
      
   So now that Trump has tested positive for the coronavirus, who are we going   
   to trust for information about the state of his health?   
      
   For the very near-term, we are triangulating: There are the official   
   pronouncements from Trump and his White House circle, and there are reports   
   from outlets with good access to Trump’s orbits. We can combine the two —   
   and add in what we know about Covid-19 — and get a decent idea of what   
   might actually be happening, for the moment.   
      
   Earlier Friday morning, NBC, the New York Times and other outlets reported   
   that Trump was experiencing “mild symptoms” from the disease; shortly after   
   that, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said the same thing, on the   
   record. After Meadows spoke, Trump’s wife Melania tweeted that she had the   
   same symptoms.   
   President Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk toward Marine One on   
   September 29.   
   President Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk toward Marine One on   
   September 29. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images   
      
   But that status — where we’re able to share a common reality, shaped by a   
   combination of official pronouncements melded with independent reporting —   
   won’t last long, if at all.   
      
   Part of it is because we haven’t had a common reality for some time now.   
   Americans who follow the news get their news from different sources, which   
   shapes their perception of basic facts. Most Americans don’t follow the   
   news at all, and an alarming number of people get their understanding of   
   the world from the internet, where very sharp armchair experts sit side by   
   side with deranged conspiracy theorists.   
      
   And some of it is because Trump himself has conditioned us not to believe a   
   single thing that he, or anyone in his orbit, says.   
      
   This is the scenario — a fast-moving, potential catastrophe where we need   
   real faith in federal leadership — that we’ve been worrying about since the   
   first days of the Trump presidency, when then-White House press secretary   
   Sean Spicer hectored reporters and insisted that they had falsely reported   
   on the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration.   
      
   It was a petty claim, and one that was chilling because it was so easy to   
   debunk. If you start your presidency lying about something so transparently   
   false, what does that mean when you talk about stuff we can’t see with our   
   own eyes?   
   Related:   
      
      
      
   And it has continued through then, at more or less a daily rate. Trump and   
   his circle lie reflexively. They lie about enormously consequential stuff,   
   like Trump’s repeated assurances that the coronavirus wasn’t anything to   
   worry about, though he was privately acknowledging that it was “deadly   
   stuff.” Most recently, the president has repeatedly lied about the threat   
   of election fraud in a transparent attempt to sow doubts about the results   
   of November’s election.   
      
   And they lie about the smallest things. This week, Trump’s press secretary   
   Kayleigh McEnany falsely claimed that Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s nominee   
   for the Supreme Court, was a Rhodes scholar (she didn’t receive the   
   prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, but instead graduated from Rhodes College).   
   President Trump held a press conference addressing news that the New York   
   Times obtained years of his tax returns. Sitting alongside the president   
   were former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former New York City Mayor Rudy   
   Giuliani, and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on September 27.   
   President Trump held a press conference addressing news that the New York   
   Times obtained years of his tax returns. Sitting alongside the president   
   were former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former New York City Mayor Rudy   
   Giuliani, and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on September 27.   
   Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images   
      
   Getting accurate information about the health of the president of the   
   United States has always been a problem, both because presidents and their   
   advisers weren’t eager to tell anyone that America’s leader may be unwell,   
   and because reporters around them often kept quiet.   
      
   Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for instance, asked photographers not to publish   
   images of him struggling to walk because of polio-induced paralysis.   
   Reporters like Lesley Stahl kept concerns about Ronald Reagan’s mental   
   fitness to themselves; years after leaving office, Reagan announced that he   
   had Alzheimers, but he never indicated whether it affected him at the time.   
      
   Those kinds of questions about a president’s health would be nearly   
   impossible to keep quiet today. We’re in a much different media   
   environment, with a much more aggressive press, and much more access to   
   information.   
      
   But even now, we know that we’ve known very little about Trump’s health.   
   Recall, for instance, the letter Trump’s private doctor released in 2015   
   announcing that if Trump was elected he would “be the healthiest individual   
   ever elected to the presidency” — which turned out to be dictated, word for   
   word, by Trump himself. Or more ominously, Trump’s unplanned and still-   
   unexplained visit to Walter Reed hospital nearly a year ago.   
      
   But past presidential health concerns — including Trump’s dissembling about   
   his own status — were also long-term problems that didn’t necessarily have   
   to be grappled with immediately.   
      
   Now, though, we have a real-time crisis: We’re well aware that Trump has a   
   disease that is particularly deadly for older, overweight men, but we have   
   no reason to trust anything the White House says about the state of his   
   health. What happens if Trump is truly incapacitated, or worse? Who will we   
   trust to relay that information?   
   President Trump boards Air Force One on his way to Bedminster, New Jersey,   
   for a fundraising event on October 1.   
   President Trump boards Air Force One on his way to Bedminster, New Jersey,   
   for a fundraising event on October 1. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images   
      
   The one saving grace about the Trump administration’s attempt to conceal   
   the truth from the world, about everything, is that it has been terrible   
   about it. Some of the lies, like Spicer’s crowd-size fiction, can be   
   debunked on the spot; others are quickly surfaced by the many leakers in   
   and around the White House, who relay different versions than the Trump-   
   dictated reality to reporters. And some become clearer over time, like Bob   
   Woodward’s recent book Rage, which meticulously details Trump’s lies about   
      
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