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Donald Trump’s COVID battle was much more intense than we previously thought. The former president tested positive for the deadly virus back in the fall of 2020, and his sickness was quite serious.
At the time, the public was aware that Trump had been hospitalized for a number of days at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, yet he had not shared his personal concerns and feelings about his plight with the public.
Yet now, a new book has shared just how scared Trump was when he was sick with COVID. Called The Reckoning, the new book was written by the president’s niece, Mary Trump. In the book, she reveals that she recognized a pained expression on her uncle’s face, signifying that he was in fact quite scared of the virus.
“Doing his best Mussolini imitation, he took off his mask in a macho display of invulnerability,” Mary Trump wrote. “He clenched his teeth and jutted out his jaw, just as my grandmother did when she was biting back anger or clamping down on her pain. In Donald, I saw the latter.”
She added, “I have asthma, so I am acutely aware of what it looks like when somebody is struggling to breathe. He was in pain, he was afraid, but he would never admit that to anybody – not even himself. Because, as always, the consequences of admitting vulnerability were much more frightening to him than being honest.”
Back in February 2021, The New York Timesreported evidence of the true severity of Donald Trump's COVID case. It mentions that his blood oxygen level dipped low into the 80s - and the virus is considered severe when a patients blood oxygen level falls to the low 90s.
The newspaper also states that the former president's medical team made an effort to downplay just how serious Trump's condition was.
Ultimately, Trump was treated with an "experimental antibody cocktail" and only spent two nights at the hospital.