- Donald Trump's oxygen levels dipped lower than previously known when he contracted COVID-19 in October 2020.
- Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows revealed the detail in his book, "The Chief's Chief."
- Meadows said doctors "decided to put the president on oxygen in the residence and hope for the best."
Former President Donald Trump's blood oxygen level plunged to a dangerous low when he had COVID-19 last year, The New York Times reported.
Mark Meadows, former White House chief of staff, revealed the detail in his new book titled "The Chief's Chief."
The detail comes in stark contradiction to Trump's denial that his bout with COVID-19 in October 2020 was not as bad as it seemed.
"That morning, Dr. Conley pulled me aside and delivered some bad news," Mr. Meadows wrote in the book, referring to Dr. Sean P. Conley, who headed Trump's medical team. "Although the president's condition had improved slightly overnight, his oxygen levels had now dipped down to about 86 percent and could be trending lower, a dangerously low level for someone his age."
The doctors, Meadows said, "had decided to put the president on oxygen in the residence and hope for the best."
In the book, Meadows reportedly described visiting a bedridden Trump prior to the Walter Reed check-in, and the former president was wearing a T-shirt, with dishevelled hair and red streaks in his eyes, "from the hours he'd spent getting Regeneron in bed."
Meadows added that in arriving at Walter Reed, Trump had lost so much strength that he dropped and couldn't carry his briefcase, which Meadows claimed weighed around ten pounds.
For all of it's revelations, Trump initially promoted Meadows' book, and then backtracked.
"The Chief's Chief would make an incredible Christmas present, and with United States supply lines totally dead, and with thousands of ships having no way of unloading because of incompetent leadership, you will have no other thing you can buy anyway," Trump said in a statement on October 13. "Seriously, it's a fantastic book, and Mark Meadows and his wonderful wife Debbie are great people."
Meadows also disclosed that Trump tested positive for COVID-19 on September 26, three days before his first presidential debate against Joe Biden, a detail that Trump lashed out about after his early promotion of the book.
"The story of me having COVID prior to, or during, the first debate is Fake News. In fact, a test revealed that I did not have COVID prior to the debate," Trump said in a statement in response to a story about the book from The Guardian.