After an eventful weekend of doctors lying about his condition, the president “triumphantly” (those are irony quotes) left Walter Reed. His message was clear: He’d beaten coronavirus. He’d won. It was over. It was after all no big deal for his powerful masterful genetics… and for every single coronavirus treatment ever created.
There was a tweet for it (there always is). “I will be leaving the great Walter Reed medical center today at 6:30pm. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed under the trump administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago.”
The president had a message to his supporters—and naturally, it was the worst possible message he could have conceivably cooked up. Coronavirus was no big deal. Don’t be afraid!
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We should have seen this coming because the “Trump of the Tropics,” Jair Bolsonaro, did almost the same exact thing down in Brazil. He also got coronavirus and also learned the wrong lesson from it. He stuck to his strongman image. Instead of suggesting that perhaps it was time to listen to the people who know what they’re talking about, Bolsonaro made a big show of saying his symptoms weren’t serious and made sure to be seen recovering. Brazil, of course, has handed the pandemic almost as disastrously as the United States (the four most infected countries in the world are run by anti-knowledge right-wing authoritarians, which is very much not an accident).
Instead of making the president’s illness a moment to embrace science and to heed scientists’ warnings, a teachable moment to educate others about the dangers of the virus, Trumpworld has been way more interested in making the president look powerful and God-like to his supporters. So we’ve gotten two odd proof-of-life videos and numerous pictures of the president signing blank pieces of paper.
This obsession with presenting the president as the strongest healthiest person ever borders on Stalinesque, the way they used to say that he could harvest more wheat or smelt more steel than any 10 men. It doesn’t feel like it belongs in a democracy, and it runs completely contrary to what is needed to get his supporters to take the virus seriously.
But Trump has always been cartoonishly dishonest about his health. Who can forget Trump’s mysterious Saturday night visit last November to Walter Reed, which we were told was "quick exam and labs." But it took place on a Saturday, and quick exams and labs can be administered in the White House, so someone was almost certainly lying there. And remember the incredible Dr. Bornstein?: “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” Later we learned that the president had actually dictated that note himself.
Trump told his free lawyer Rudy Giuliani, “I am the president of the United States. I can’t lock myself in a room… I had to confront [the virus] so the American people stopped being afraid of it so we could deal with it responsibly.” The idea being that the American people benefited from Trump getting the virus. I’m here to tell you that we very much did not.
By Monday morning it was clear no one was going to come out of the pandemic having learned a lesson. Erin Perrine from Team Trump implied that Trump was better than Biden for getting sick. “He has experience now fighting the coronavirus as an individual... Joe Biden doesn’t have that.” Erin may have the dumbest hot take of the Trump-beats-the-virus-while-still-struggling-with-it news cycle, but then there’s still time. Newsmax’s own Diamond and Silk suggested that something was more nefarious afoot, tweeting the ridiculous, “Was the White House targeted?”
Trump will present himself as having won against the virus, as being the strongest strongman. He will try to shop this story as a story of Trumpism conquering all. Of course, if the 74-year-old survives coronavirus it may actually be because of all the science that was thrown at him: dexamethasone, experimental monoclonal antibodies and other products of the scientists that Trump and his supporters have long disparaged.
So as Trump celebrates his premature victory over the virus by standing in front of the White House and pulling off his mask (and possibly infecting more members of the White House staff) to own the libs, he has a message for you: Don’t let the deadly virus that has killed hundreds of thousands “dominate your life” just because it could kill you or inflict permanent damage on your heart, lungs, and brain. In Trump’s warped mind, he’s won and so can you. But then again, you might not, and then, well, then you’ll die, but Trump doesn’t really care because you’re not him.
