Don’t Fret Too Much About Donald Trump — He’s as Tough as They Come
Donald Trump is relentlessly energetic, eternally optimistic, and unfailingly resilient in the face of any challenge, great or small.
By Rob Wasinger
I’m not worried about President Trump, and you shouldn’t be, either. Donald Trump is relentlessly energetic, eternally optimistic, and unfailingly resilient in the face of any challenge, great or small.
At this point, we frankly have no idea whether the president’s coronavirus diagnosis will prove to be a great challenge or a small one. We do know, however, that he will receive around-the-clock attention from a dedicated staff of physicians with access to every tool available to modern medicine.
Sure, he technically qualifies as a “high risk” patient due to his age, but any generalization based on Donald Trump’s age is more or less meaningless. In stark contrast to Democrat nominee Joe Biden, a fellow septuagenarian whose haggard face and confused demeanor betray the strain of his advanced age, Trump displays the vitality and vigor of a man half his age.
Most of us are noticeably subdued if we’re only able to get four or five hours of shuteye in a night; Donald Trump somehow manages to keep the pep in his step day in and day out despite the fact that he rarely sleeps longer than that, and routinely fills his weekends with work and public appearances. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows revealed that after disclosing his positive COVID test at around 1:00 a.m., the president was peppering him with questions about the September jobs report and negotiations over coronavirus relief legislation by 8:00 a.m. — a timeline that leaves room for just seven hours of presidential slumber, at most.
People who spent time with Trump in person in the hours before his diagnosis describe him as being fully alert, engaged, and energetic — true to form in every way — during a fundraiser in New Jersey.
Even after his diagnosis, the president suffered only “mild” symptoms. Despite the hand-wringing about a fever and transient dips in blood-oxygen levels — both of which symptoms quickly dissipated in response to standard treatments — the president’s doctors suggested he might be able to return to the White House as soon as Monday.
In the meantime, Dr. Conley and his team will obviously monitor the commander-in-chief’s condition closely and will undoubtedly be prepared to intervene in any way they deem medically prudent, using any therapeutic that might expedite his recovery.
Through it all, President Trump has made sure to reassure the American people with periodic appearances, releasing video updates on Twitter, and even taking a short drive past supporters gathered outside Walter Reed Medical Center as a display of vitality.
This is a president, we should remember, who has spent more than four years engaged in one of the most physically and mentally exhausting endeavors imaginable: campaigning for and then performing the duties of the most demanding job in the world, all while contending with the unceasing slings and arrows of the most hostile and unfair media and partisan opposition in presidential history. At the start of his administration, he engineered a record-breaking economic recovery while deftly navigating the traps laid for him over the course of the multi-year witch hunt led by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller. More recently, he has guided our economy along a “V-shaped” path of recovery from the artificial coronavirus downturn, becoming the first president in American history to oversee two economic recoveries in a single term.
In light of the challenges he has already overcome over the course of his presidency, it’s difficult to imagine even a deadly virus like COVID-19 keeping President Trump out of action for very long. By all accounts, he’s handling it with the same energy and aplomb that he brings to every other challenge he faces.
It’s natural to feel sympathy and concern when the president falls ill, but we should never underestimate the resilience of Donald J. Trump.
Robert Wasinger served in senior advisory and liaison roles in President Trump’s campaign and transition team, after extensive experience on Capitol Hill.