Trump on drugs. Who could have seen this coming?
Opinion by
Columnist
Oct. 9, 2020 at 4:30 p.m. CDT
President
Trump on drugs. Wow. I have to admit that I failed to see this one coming.
Trump’s political career has been such a wild ride all by itself, it never
occurred to me to wonder what would happen if this grandiose narcissist with
the bombastic flair were to be filled to the gills with a powerful steroid.
Just as I never looked at Usain Bolt, the great Jamaican sprinter, and mused: What would he be like on
a rocket sled?
Trump’s
treatment for covid-19 has
been largely cloaked in secrecy, but among the little we do know is that his
doctors basically opened the medicine cabinet and dumped a little of everything
into their patient. The treatments have run the gamut from A to Z — literally:
antivirals to zinc. They’ve lowered Trump’s temperature and raised his
blood-oxygen level, while chemically tweaking him from sinuses to stomach.
Even
after the president returned to the White House from the hospital, his docs
continued to pump in dexamethasone, a steroid normally given to covid-19
patients struggling for life on a ventilator. Its purpose is to tamp down an
overly intense immune reaction known as a cytokine storm but,
in this case, it may be ramping up the chaos known as Donald Trump.
Who
could have seen this coming? The Mayo Clinic, for one. Among the side effects
listed for this powerful drug on the Mayo website are
“agitation,” “anxiety,” “irritability,” “mood changes,” “nervousness” and —
perhaps most apt — “trouble thinking.” Although we cannot know for sure what
role this or other drugs are playing, that list maps the emotional and
cognitive roller coaster that America’s leader has been riding since he choppered home from Walter Reed National
Military Medical Center, his face pale behind a mask of uneven orange makeup.
The sight of Trump lumbering up the steps to the South Portico to salute the
night sky while swaying slightly was the most operatically ridiculous scene
since Looney Tunes rendered Wagner, starring Bugs Bunny and Elmer
Fudd.
Even by
Trumpian standards, the president has been erratic. Shortly after Federal
Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell warned of an urgent need to re-stimulate the
economy, the president abruptly called off further talks on a
stimulus package until after the election. When the stock market swooned, he
reversed himself, calling for targeted spending, then reversed himself again to
endorse a sprawling $2.5 trillion proposal.
As a
74-year-old man convalescing from a life-threatening disease, the president
ought to have been resting and recuperating. Instead, he roamed the grounds of
the executive mansion, grasping at straws to revive his free-falling campaign.
Polls show that the bottom has dropped out of his support among seniors,
so Trump stood on the South Lawn and spoke into a camera. “To my favorite
people in the world, the seniors,” he intoned. “I’m a senior. I know you don’t
know that. Nobody knows that. Maybe you don’t have to tell them. But I’m a
senior.”
In
another mood, the president revealed by phone to a television host that
covid-19 had made him feel “pretty lousy,” but now: “I’m back because I’m a
perfect physical specimen and I’m extremely young.”
Young.
Old. No stimulus. Huge stimulus. One thing about which the president remained
certain was the urgent need for the Justice Department to jail his political
opponents — including the Democratic nominee, former vice president Joe Biden,
and former president Barack Obama.
Attorney
General William P. Barr probably thought that by sacrificing his reputation to
become a slavering toady, he would remain safely in Trump’s good graces. Once
again dialing in to Fox News, Trump turned on Barr, telling Sean Hannity —
between pauses to cough and gag — that he has lost patience with the attorney
general’s niggling insistence on actual evidence before slapping cuffs on Biden
and Obama. Trump also blasted over his Twitter feed a doctored photo of
the late comedian Chris Farley in vein-popping character, screaming at Barr:
“for the love of God ARREST SOMEBODY.”
On
Friday, the perfect physical specimen announced that he would undergo some sort
of “medical evaluation” on live television — a far cry from the nondisclosure agreements Trump reportedly
demanded of every doctor who saw him during his November 2019 dash to Walter
Reed, the details of which remain nondisclosed. Trump evidently hopes to be
cleared to resume his potential-superspreader rallies. A person would have to
be tripping to think that more of the same would somehow turn this fiasco
around.
But
rest easy, America: This isn’t the first time an addled chief executive has
melted down. Back in 1974, during his final days as president, Richard M.
Nixon, loopy on Scotch, rambled around the White House having
one-way conversations with the portraits. It’s the unfortunate nature of our
high-tech existence that nothing happens in private anymore. Whether this is
’roid rage or simply the wheels coming off, President Trump is live-streaming
it.
