Donald Trump’s appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, less than a week since the president returned from being hospitalized for COVID-19, revealed very little about Trump’s health or infectiousness. Yet unintentionally, the president seems to have dropped some clues about the seriousness of his condition during the rambling, tangent-ridden interview.
The interview on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” was conducted by Dr. Marc Siegel, a Fox News contributor who has defended Trump’s poor handling of the American coronavirus outbreak, compared the pandemic to the flu and in 2016 raised concerns about the neurological health of then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton despite never having examined her in person.
Carlson set a hagiographic tone for the segment at the beginning, describing Trump’s supposed “remarkable turnaround” before allowing Siegel to conduct the interview. The two were not in the same room: Siegel was in a studio and Trump was in the White House, being filmed separately. Trump and Siegel’s conversation wandered, from Trump blaming China for the virus and repeatedly mentioning Regeneron (a company that gave him an experimental drug and with which he has personal ties) to describing himself as “very strong,” offering to donate his plasma and claiming that he has improved faster and better than others who have had COVID-19. Continue reading.