ALL INPredictions
Last updated Nov 29, 2025
Prediction
Sacks
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Sacks @ 00:12:04Right
politicshealth
If Trump recovers from COVID-19 within about a week and appears physically strong, he will publicly claim that an effective cure already exists, downplaying the need for a vaccine and using this narrative to attempt to flip criticism and gain political advantage in the weeks before the 2020 election.
I think if I think, politically speaking, I think there's a lot of upside here for Trump. If he does get better in a week. I mean, if these polyclonal antibodies work, then. And he emerges from the white House, you know, fit as a fiddle in a week, he's going to say, the cure is here. You know, I was right. You don't even need a vaccine. The cure is here. It's over. And, um, and all the I told you so's might might flip around.View on YouTube
Explanation

Assessment

Overall, the conditional prediction substantially came true:

  1. Condition (“if he recovers in about a week and looks strong”) was met.

    • Trump was hospitalized Oct 2–5, 2020, then returned to the White House after three days. By Oct 7 he released a video saying he felt “perfect” and describing a rapid turnaround after receiving Regeneron’s antibody cocktail.(factcheck.org) This is roughly one week from onset/diagnosis and matches the “recovers in about a week” scenario.

  2. He publicly claimed that an effective cure already existed.

    • In multiple videos and interviews on Oct 7–8, Trump explicitly called the Regeneron monoclonal-antibody treatment a “cure,” saying it wasn’t just a therapeutic because it “just made me better,” and promised to make it available “free” to Americans.(forbes.com) Fact-checkers and news outlets repeatedly noted that no proven cure for COVID-19 existed at that time.(abcnews.go.com)

  3. He used this narrative for political advantage in the weeks before the 2020 election.

    • Commentary at the time described this as a deliberate “cure” gambit to compensate for the lack of a pre‑election vaccine, emphasizing his personal recovery and the supposed miracle treatment as an October surprise.(washingtonpost.com)
    • At the final presidential debate on Oct 22, Trump again highlighted the antibody treatment as essentially a cure that got him “better very fast,” using it to underscore his handling of COVID-19 shortly before Election Day.(abcnews.go.com)

  4. “Downplaying the need for a vaccine” – partially, but recognizably, yes.

    • In the same period, Trump said getting the antibody treatments to hospitals was “more important to me than the vaccine,” explicitly elevating the supposed cure over vaccination.(israelnationalnews.com) That clearly downplays the centrality of vaccines, in line with the prediction’s logic (even though he continued to tout that vaccines were coming soon and did not literally say “you don’t even need a vaccine”).(debates.org)

Conclusion

The specific wording “you don’t even need a vaccine” was not documented verbatim, and Trump continued to promote forthcoming vaccines. However, the core predicted behavior did occur: after a rapid recovery, he publicly portrayed his treatment as a present‑day cure, framed it as more important than a vaccine, and tried to leverage that story to flip criticism and gain political advantage in the closing weeks of the 2020 campaign. That is close enough in substance to rate the prediction as right rather than ambiguous.