President Donald Trump sought to dispel any perception of weakness on Sunday with a surprise and seemingly risky outing from his hospital bed to greet supporters.

The President’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, described on Monday Trump’s “unbelievable progress” in his fight against the coronavirus. The rosy description of his condition has been questioned, as the treatments he is undergoing are typically used on people with severe cases of Covid-19.

Trump has been eager to leave Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre and had pushed to be discharged earlier on Sunday, according to people familiar with the events. Driven in part by boredom and feeling trapped, Trump is also motivated to leave out of a desire to show the country and the world that he is functional and not bedridden by a virus, according to the people familiar with the events.

But Trump’s doctors on Sunday did not favour him leaving the hospital to return to the White House. Instead, a decision was made to allow him to be driven slowly by crowds of supporters across the street from the hospital so he could be seen.

Health experts have said the decision was highly unusual for a patient with an infectious illness who is being treated with a therapeutic drug that is administered intravenously.

Still, Trump has been attuned to the news coverage of his illness and angered at the speculation he may be sicker than officials are saying.

Determined to reassert himself on the political stage on his third day in the hospital, Trump made the unannounced exit from Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre in the early evening, climbing into his armoured Chevrolet Suburban to ride past supporters holding Trump flags gathered outside the building. Wearing a suit jacket and face mask, Trump waved at the crowd through a closed window as his motorcade slowly cruised by before returning him to the hospital.

“It’s been a very interesting journey,” Trump said in a one-minute video posted on Twitter, looking stronger and sounding more energetic than he had the last couple of days. “I learned a lot about Covid. I learned it by really going to school. This is the real school. This isn’t the let’s-read-the-books school. And I get it. And I understand it. And it’s a very interesting thing and I’m going to be letting you know about it.”

Some medical experts said Trump’s trip out of the hospital was reckless, unnecessarily putting both hospital staff members and Secret Service agents at risk for a stunt.

“Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” Dr James P. Phillips, an attending physician at Walter Reed, wrote on Twitter. “They might get sick. They may die. For political theatre. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theatre. This is insanity.”

In a telephone interview on Sunday night, Phillips also said the trip raised the alarming question of whether the President was directing his doctors. “At what point does the physician-patient relationship end, and does the commander-in-chief and subordinate relationship begin, and were those doctors ordered to allow this to happen?” he said.

Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said precautions were taken in organising the excursion. “The movement was cleared by the medical team as safe to do,” he said.

Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said on Monday that she had tested positive for the virus.

Alec Baldwin

Actor Alec Baldwin defended his impersonation of Trump on television’s Saturday Night Live sketch show while the President was hospitalised with Covid-19, saying he wouldn’t have done so had Trump been “truly, gravely ill”, Reuters reported.

New York Times News Service