Evening update:

This is a tad bit more speculative, but it's the best I can piece together.

1. I was told that if they went by helicopter to the WH, it would give an indication they wanted to make sure the transit took as little time as possible for medical reasons.

2. We've been guessing about how POTUS really is. The medical story doesn't line up with the usual progression of symptoms. It is POSSIBLE that they had him on something highly experimental, and he's really defying the norms.

Or they could be lying.

3. WaPo and others have been saying Trump has been "bored" at WRMC. He hates hospitals, and with the dexamethasone he is on probably does feel energetic enough. However, he's only +5 days from onset, and COVID's worst comes later than that (usually)

4. When he got off Marine One, standing on the steps of the WH, he appeared to be breathing heavily, or perhaps struggling for breath.

5. Thus, presented with three possibilities:

a. Miracle cure

b. Trump's super masculine mega genes allow him to recover fast

c. Normal disease progression, hopped up on steroids, bored at WRMC

option c seems to best fulfill Occam's Razor

But, we're still guessing.

6. The WH is a lot "leakier" than WRMC, and over the next 24 hours a clearer picture will likely emerge as more people inside the WH get a sense of how he's REALLY doing compared with normal Trump energy levels.

7. Speaking of the WH, the fact that CDC is barred from contact tracing people who were at the Rose Garden Party for ACB reminded me of a quote by Michael Lewis, author of "The Fifth Risk" on the power of ignorance:

8. "If your ambition is to maximize short-term gain without regard to long term cost, you are better off not knowing the cost If you want to preserve your personal immunity to hard problems, it's better never to really understand those problems..."

9. "There is an upside to ignorance, and a downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier."

Just like Trump wanted to limit testing in June to look better, same here now. If no one knows how bad the super-spreader event was, blame is speculative.

10. Also hearing WH staff are being pressured not to disclose if they become infected, which, if Trump is wandering around without a mask in a poorly ventilated building, is a distinct possibility. Trump, for his part, is unlikely to be cautious on a good day.

11. The messaging coming out of the Trump camp is very authoritarian / cult of personality: the leader is strong, virile, masculine, has great genes, and embodies the nation. He has defeated the virus because of this. It's nearly identical to Bolsonaro's posturing in Brazil.

12. Trump, for his part, was leaning pretty hard into the Aryan supremacy dog-whistles right before his diagnosis anyway. The latest line is in keeping with that pattern. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-white-supremacy-racehorse-theory-1064928/

13. Everything Trump does right now is meant to boost his re-election chances and keep his base motivated. Hence the attempts at projecting strength.

Everything McConnell, Pence, and the GOP is doing is designed to get ACB confirmed. Given the choice, they'd trade Trump for her

14. Folks like @chasestrangio and @mjs_DC have been pointing out that McConnell and the GOP know damn well that ACB is more crucial to their long term strategy than Trump. The WH is playing a short game. The GOP is trying to save themselves in the long run.

15. Where is gets weird is if Trump is incapacitated. Will the GOP invoke the 25th, and lose the tiebreaker vote in the Senate? Or will they refuse, and leave the US without a CinC? My guess is, they'll go with the latter, and hope they can cover it up / ride it out and get ACB

16. The constitution is unclear what happens if the VP and cabinet refuse to invoke it. No one who wrote it imagined that a political party would do such a thing. (Woodrow Wilson comes close, thought)

17. In a perverse way, though, such a scenario might disincline swing states with gerrymandered red legislatures from pulling shennanigans to throw the election to a man in grave medical condition after November 3rd.

18. If Trump does suffer permanent harm from this disease, it would puncture his crafted narrative of invulnerability with his base. The bad news is, some other Republican will eventually figure out how to recreate his populist nationalism.

19. In the final analysis, this is mostly speculative, but possible. Where all of this goes is very unpredictable, given our knowledge gaps, and the sheer number of permutations we have no control over.

The days after the election will almost certainly be chaotic, though.