A Walter Reed doctor’s anger exposes Trump at his
worst
Opinion by
Columnist
Oct. 5, 2020 at 9:21 a.m. CDT
After
President Trump left his hospital bed to pay a surprise visit to supporters in
his armored car on Sunday evening, an attending physician at Walter Reed
National Military Medical Center vented his anger at what he’d just seen.
“Every single person in the vehicle,” tweeted James Phillips, might “get sick”
or “die.”
“Commanded
by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater,” Phillips continued. “This is insanity.”
There’s
a reason Phillips’s anger has gone viral, as it were. He captured a larger
truth about this moment: Even as Trump himself comes face to face with possible
death at the hands of a disease he downplayed for so long, he’s still
demonstrating the same depraved dereliction of duty that he has all throughout,
helping to kill more than 200,000 Americans.
Trump
himself wants us to think this moment has changed him. “I’ve learned a lot
about covid,” Trump said in a video he tweeted out just before his
surprise visit. “I get it. And I understand it. It’s a very interesting thing. And
I’m gonna be letting you know about it.”
Indeed,
Trump’s own brush with death has provided just the moment he might have seized
upon to show some humility and to demonstrate some kinship on a basic human
level with the millions of people whose lives have been damaged or upended — or
prematurely ended — by this disease.
But
everything he has said and done since testing positive for the novel
coronavirus suggests this moment has not changed him in any way.
Ever
since it first became evident that the coronavirus posed a serious public
health threat nine months ago, Trump has shown several dominant instincts.
He has
spoken only to his base’s willingness to be misled about the depths of the
crisis, while feeling zero obligation to communicate as president in any
serious way with the vast swath of Americans who could not be thusly swayed. He
has relentlessly prioritized his perceived immediate political needs over
leveling with the country about what we faced.
And he
has steadfastly refused to admit to fallibility or responsibility in his
handling of what has arguably been the largest U.S. domestic crisis in modern
times, even as the devastation and death have mounted.
Every
one of these has been on display throughout Trump’s own contracting of the
virus, even though he is facing potential death.
First,
Trump’s visit to supporters is itself an act of speaking only to the base at a
moment of great uncertainty for the country. There is little chance that the
mainstream will approve of Trump’s stunt, particularly since it placed people
in his immediate circle at needless risk.
Indeed, as The Post reports, Secret Service agents are
furious over what just happened, and more broadly, they are increasingly angry
about the risks that Trump’s cavalier approach to social distancing has imposed
on them.
Second,
this again shows Trump prioritizing his perceived political needs over the
health of those around him and even the health of the country. The goal of this
staged action was reportedly to “show strength” after his chief of staff told
the truth about his vulnerable condition, something Trump’s doctors have dissembled throughout the weekend to conceal.
Phillips
laid this point bare with great clarity on Monday morning when he expanded on
his Twitter anger on NBC News. “It’s the message that’s sent to
other people who are sick, that it’s okay to go out,” Phillips said. “This is the wrong message to be
sending.”
Phillips
also noted that this reflected a larger war between the medical community and
the administration in terms of getting “the right message to the citizens of
America.”
Finally,
and incredibly, Trump and his handlers have seen this episode not as an
occasion for a renewed display of basic humanity, but instead as an occasion to
reinforce the message that his handling of the virus has been above reproach all
along.
When
Trump dictated comments over the weekend to
lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, he declared that “I am going to beat this,” which
will allow us to “show people we can deal with this disease responsibility, but
we shouldn’t be afraid of it.”
And
Donald Trump Jr. sent out a fundraising solicitation to supporters,
declaring that they should prepare for his father’s “EPIC RETURN.”
In
short, the story that the president and his propagandists are gearing up to
tell is that Trump’s personal vanquishing of the virus —
should this happen — has overarching importance in explaining a crisis that has
killed hundreds of thousands and has inflicted a horrific toll on millions of
others.
This is
a standard trope in the genre of authoritarian politics that Trump
practices, as scholar Jason Stanley points out. In this
telling, Trump’s personal invincibility — his own physical triumph over the
virus — becomes a stand-in for the infallibility of his overall performance.
Trump’s
desire to “show strength” with his armored car theatrics is the perfect
expression of that impulse. And it captures all the broader pathologies we’ve
seen throughout: It spoke only to the base. It placed others at grave risk. It
sent a dangerous message to the country. And should Trump survive, it will be
used to falsify the broader story of this crisis.
As
Phillips put it in another viral tweet, “the irresponsibility is
astounding.” And, as always, its only real goal was to protect the Cult of
Trump.
