Medical experts reportedly deemed President Donald Trump’s brief trip outside of Walter Reed Medical Center as being “safe” after the proper precautions were taken.
“Appropriate precautions were taken in the execution of this movement to protect the President and all those supporting it, including PPE,” the White House said in a statement. “The movement was cleared by the medical team as safe to do.”
The statement comes after a Washington Post journalist called for Trump to face criminal charges for “reckless endangerment” and “assault” while the White House Correspondents’ Association complained that no journalists were invited on the short trip.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Sunday that the president was in “good spirits” and is “feeling great.”
“I spoke with the chief of staff just before coming to you and he said he’s feeling really good, really strong, wanted to thank his supporters,” McEnany said. “I spoke with the president yesterday and he was his typical self, hard at work, dictating a statement on remarks to me and very meticulous about the precise wording of that statement. So he’s hard at work, continues to be working for the American people.”
McEnany added that Trump was “very eager to get back to the White House and get back to work.”
White House physician Sean Conley, D.O., gave additional details on Sunday about Trump’s overall health condition, saying:
Since we spoke last, the president has continued to improve. As with any illness, there are frequent ups and downs over the course, particularly when a patient is being so closely watched 24 hours a day. We review and debate every finding, compare it to existing science and literature, weighing the risks and benefits of every intervention, its timing, as well as any potential impacts a delay may have.
Over the course of his illness, the president has experienced two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen saturation. We debated the reasons for this and whether we’d even intervene. It was the determination of the team, based predominantly on the timeline from the initial diagnosis, that we initiate Dexamethasone.
I’d like to take this opportunity now, given some speculation over the course of the illness the last couple of days, [to] update you on the course of his own illness.
Thursday night into Friday morning, when I left the bedside, the president was doing well with only mild symptoms, and his oxygen was in the high nineties. Late Friday morning, when I returned to the bedside, [the] president had a high fever and his oxygen saturation was transiently dipping below 94%. Given these two developments, I was concerned for possible rapid progression of the illness. I recommended the president we try some supplemental oxygen, see how he’d respond. He was fairly adamant that he didn’t need it. He was not short of breath. He was tired, had the fever. That was about it.
After about a minute [on] only two liters, his saturation levels were back over 95%. Stayed on that for about an hour, maybe, and it was off and gone.
Later that day, by the time the team here was at the bedside, [the] president had been up out of bed, moving about the residence with only mild symptoms. Despite this, everyone agreed the best course of action was to move to Walter Reed for more thorough evaluation and monitoring.
This report has been updated to include additional information.