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?
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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
the early months of the pandemic using taped, on-the-record conversations
with Trump himself as the primary source.

But even top medical professionals with state-of-the-art equipment and
unlimited resources � the ones who will be caring for Trump now � run up
against the limits of knowledge when trying to assess someone�s health. And
that�s even more true with a virus that we�re still learning about, less
than a year after it surfaced in China.

And it certainly isn�t something the general public can assess on its own.
Even if Trump appears in public at some point to assure us, we won�t have
any idea what�s actually happened or happening to him.

So we can only hope that Trump tells us the truth, but there�s no reason to
think that will happen. We can also hope that reporters in and around the
White House can provide a more accurate understanding of what people in and
around the White House think is happening. But fundamentally, we�re going
to be in a haze, hoping it all works out. It�s a terrible place to be.