President Trump’s personal physician admitted to reporters Sunday that he had not been truthful Saturday when he said Trump had not received oxygen therapy at Walter Reed Hospital where he is being treated for COVID19. Pressed about the conflicting information he and the White House released the day before, Navy Cmdr. Dr. Sean Conley acknowledged that he had tried to present a rosy description of the president’s condition.
“I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude of the team, that the president, that his course of illness has had. Didn’t want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction,” Conley said. “And in doing so, came off like we’re trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true. The fact of the matter is that he’s doing really well.”
The confusion around Trumps condition prompted the following article from David E. Clementson Assistant Professor in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia who recalls previous UD presidents to tried to conceal health information from the public.
Lie early and often
At a press briefing in 1893, President Grover Cleveland’s secretary of war told inquiring journalists that their speculations about the president having surgery were wrong.
The nation was in a recession, and Cleveland feared that his economic plan would be doomed if the public knew that his doctor thought he could have cancer. Cleveland had surgery secretly on a yacht, the tumor was removed, but the nation continued spiraling into an economic depression.
During President William McKinley’s second term in office, which began in 1901, his health plummeted. He had eye trouble. He was bedridden with the flu. And he was near death from pneumonia. Yet his spokesman tamped down media speculation, telling journalists that reports of the president being ill were “foolish stories.”
When Woodrow Wilson became gravely ill from syphilis, his spokesman issued press statements that the president was recovering from fatigue.
For the entirety of his service to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Press Secretary Stephen Early tried to hide the president’s paralysis caused by polio by having the press snap photos of the president in ways that hid his wheelchair. Even after FDR died, Early released a statement that “the president was given a thorough examination by seven or eight physicians” and “he was pronounced organically sound in every way.”
Dwight Eisenhower was hospitalized with a heart attack, but his press operation initially told reporters he had an upset stomach.
There is even precedent for presidential staffers lying about their own health.
William Howard Taft’s press spokesman, Archie Butt, was sickened from stress and fatigue. He flew to Rome to escape and get rested. Rather than admit that he was exhausted – which would seem reasonable for a person working in such a high-stress position – he told the press corps that his trip was to meet with the pope.
Sometimes presidents lie about medical conditions to distract from other, non-health issues. When John F. Kennedy was holding secret meetings dealing with the Soviet Union and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Press Secretary Pierre Salinger told reporters that the president’s schedule changes and lack of public appearances were due to a cold. He even released the president’s symptoms and temperature.
Perhaps proving that he wasn’t talented at deception, Salinger used the same cold excuse to explain Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s impromptu flight from Hawaii to the White House at the same time. The Washington Post’s editor suspected the colds were awfully coincidental, but Salinger refused to comment.
As the political public relations adage goes: The cover-up is worse than the crime.
Trump, Nixon and candidate debates
In 2016, both U.S. presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were caught deceiving the public about their health. Each candidate accused the other of lying about medical conditions.
Questions may now arise as to whether Trump gave a subpar performance in the debate because of his health, although presumably he and his wife and staff were tested for COVID-19 prior to the debate.
Nonetheless, it is worth noting that in the most famous televised debate in U.S. history, the Sept. 26, 1960, Kennedy vs. Richard Nixon showdown – after which many voters said they decided to vote for Kennedy – Nixon was ill and unrested. Nixon had been in the hospital a couple of weeks earlier and looked a little gaunt from having recently lost five pounds.
Nixon had been campaigning intensely and did not prepare for the debate. He held a campaign event that morning with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, and never met with his staff and didn’t even take their calls. Meanwhile, Kennedy had been fiercely preparing with his advisers at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Chicago.
Similarly, Trump had held several public events prior to the debate and did not spend time preparing in private for it, as Biden did.
After an initial announcement with remarkable transparency, it remains to be seen whether Trump will continue in that vein or adopt the more traditional practices of presidents who were less than open about their health.
This is an updated version of an article originally published on September 13, 2016.
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