On Friday, 2 October, after Donald Trump had announced his positive coronavirus test, Stephen Colbert broadcast an episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert even though no show had been scheduled. The episode summarizes the information released by Trump and his administration during the first day of his illness and thus, along with Heather Cox Richardson's "Letter from an American" on 2 October, documents how misleading and obfuscatory the first announcements about Trump's condition and the extent of infection in the White House were. Keep Colbert, Richardson, and other early reports in mind as Trump and his cronies multiply their contradictory claims about these events in the month to come. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 7 October)

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Stephen Colbert, Heather Cox Richardson, and the documentation of the Trump administration's obfuscatory communication