All That Was Missing Was The Gilded Royal Carriage

 

No one needed to have any special powers to know what a Trump presidency was going to do to America. Putin, after all, is too savvy a player to have bet on a pig in a poke. Now me... since inauguration day I've hoped against hope that there were a pair of Secret Service agents like Satwant Singh and Beant Singh waiting to do their duty to protect our country. All day Sunday and when I woke this morning there were dozens of stories about Trump's condition. I only want to read one: that he's dead (well... or dying).

I know it's politically incorrect, but I really don't want Trump to survive COVID. I mean it's up to God, not me, but if it were up me... He's an evil and dangerous cancer and he will keep poisoning the world until he's dead and rotting in the ground. The sooner the better-- and his inner circle along with him. A few hours ago, I asked my Twitter followers what they think. Most disagree; they'd rather see him in prison. I'm fine with that too-- as long as he never gets out.

First hour's results

But I was heartened yesterday to read about the anger Secret Service agents feel about his little stunt to entertain his Proud Boys and MAGA-monkey followers Sunday-- the SUV drive around Walter Reed so he could wave. Reporting for the Washington Post, Josh Dawsey, Carol Leonnig and Hannah Knowles wrote that current and former Secret Service agents and medical professionals were aghast Sunday night at Señor Trumpanzee's trip outside the hospital, saying the disgusting orange lummox endangered those inside his SUV for a publicity stunt. "As the backlash grew, multiple aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations also called Trump’s evening outing an unnecessary risk-- but said it was not surprising. Trump had said he was bored in the hospital, advisers said. He wanted to show strength after his chief of staff offered a grimmer assessment of his health than doctors, according to campaign and White House officials."

A growing number of Secret Service agents have been concerned about the president’s seeming indifference to the health risks they face when traveling with him in public, and a few reacted with outrage to the trip, asking how Trump’s desire to be seen outside his hospital suite justified the jeopardy to agents protecting him. Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis has already brought new scrutiny to his lax approach to social distancing, as public health officials scramble to trace those he may have exposed at large in-person events.

“He’s not even pretending to care now,” one agent said after the president’s jaunt outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to wave at supportive crowds.

“Where are the adults?” said a former Secret Service member.

...Trump wore a mask as he waved from the back of his vehicle, after announcing he would “pay a little surprise to some of the great patriots that we have out on the street.” But the face covering was little comfort to doctors, who took to Twitter to criticize the trip as irresponsible. Masks “help, but they are not an impenetrable force field,” tweeted Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health.

Among critics was a doctor affiliated with Walter Reed.

“Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” tweeted James P. Phillips, who is also a professor at George Washington University. “They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.”

Phillips said the risk of viral transmission inside the car is “as high as it gets outside of medical procedures.” Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, noted people inside a hospital wear extensive protective gear-- gowns, gloves, N95 masks and more-- when they will be in close contact with a coronavirus patient such as Trump.

“By taking a joy ride outside Walter Reed the president is placing his Secret Service detail at grave risk,” he tweeted.

Frank Schaeffer suggested that "It is time to liberate the Secret Service detail. Let Trump hire suicidal Proud Boys to guard him and catch COVID as he indulges in reckless ego-driven stunts." I like that idea too.

Also writing for The Post, Dr. Leana Wen asked "If the president was brought into the hospital for closer monitoring, what sense does it make to discharge him just before the time period that’s potentially the most fraught?" Her tweet Sundat afternoon was more enlightening:

Mary McNamara is a culture columnist for the L.A. Times. She may have reached the same conclusions about Trump's joy ride-- even if she never even considered the Satwant and Beant solution-- but her perspective... well, it comes from a different space: Trump’s dangerous Sunday drive-by recalls the madness of a monarch. But he’s not one. As Trump's mendacious doctors had the press scrambling with timelines, oxygen levels and the significance of certain drugs prescribed during his treatment for COVID-19, all she could think of was the scrutiny of the royal stool and urine in The Madness of King George: "I cannot inquire after His Majesty’s symptoms until he chooses to inform me of them." The Trumpian spectacle Sunday drove McNamara to re-watch the 1994 film, adapted by Alan Bennett from his award-winning 1991 play, The Madness of George III. "And you know what? The parallels are highly disturbing," she wrote.

Much of The Madness of King George deals with the difficulty of attempting to treat a ruler who is incapable of recognizing reality and his own relationship to same, a ruler known to punish ruthlessly those who dare presume even to look at him, much less attempt to advise or to heal him.

Which sounds a tiny bit familiar; Mark Meadows reportedly faced the president’s wrath after he informed reporters that Trump was not sailing along as blithely as Conley had indicated.

But the most disturbing parallel came just as I finished watching the film’s climactic scene. The king-- realizing that his son is about to have himself named regent-- pulls it together enough to get in a carriage and appear before the cheering throngs, and I glanced at social media to find that President Trump was in the process of doing the very same thing.

For reasons known only to themselves and whatever gods they worship, doctors at Walter Reed allowed a man with full-blown COVID-19 to get into an SUV filled with the requisite sacrificial victims-- er, Secret Service agents-- so he could wave to his supporters (many of them maskless, few of them social-distancing) as they clamored to wish him well in fighting this highly infectious and deadly disease.

Honestly, all that was missing was the gilded royal carriage.

This prophetic juxtaposition between art and life left me freaked out in a way I hadn’t been since, well, Friday. Which is when we learned that the Rose Garden ceremony to announce Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, held a mere week after the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, had been a COVID-19 super-spreader event.

I may be a recovering Roman Catholic, but the “And then God said: ‘Nope’” overtones of that situation seem pretty darn clear.

To see a president rewarding supporters, in his own special way, for doing the same sort of things that put him in the hospital in the first place?

Who’s the mad king now?

Actually, the comparison isn’t fair. George III, now perhaps best known for providing the comic relief in Hamilton, had apparently returned to a state of wellness by the time he presented himself to his loyalists. Also-- and this is important-- he was at no point encouraging his subjects to make themselves vulnerable to the highly infectious disease from which he himself was suffering.

(And before you hit me with “But what about the risks involved in the Black Lives Matter protests?” Please. People take to the streets to protest only when other means of achieving justice have failed; that millions did so in the middle of a pandemic is simply a gauge of how complete and devastating those failures have been.)

I understand the desire of Trump supporters to show up for the ailing president, just as I understand the president wanting to thank them, as he said in a video he tweeted to tease his little journey. (Had he been feeling better, he could have just sung the Hamilton King George bit about “for your love, for your praise and I’ll love you ‘til my dying days...” which honestly would have been super fun).


 


But God Almighty, you would think he might have urged the people he claims to love so much to take steps to ensure their own safety. None of those folks are going to get airlifted to Walter Reed if they test positive and turn feverish. None of them are going to get all the COVID-19 drugs and treatments available in a 48-hour (or however long it has actually been) span.

If Trump suddenly felt that Twitter was no longer the best way to engage with his supporters, couldn’t he have just waved from the window like Ronald Reagan did? As far as I know, Vice President Mike Pence was not scheming to have the 25th Amendment invoked (although given the insanity of this particular Sunday drive, maybe he should).

No matter what Trump may think, this is not a monarchy. The president is not anointed by God to rule. He is elected to serve the American people with the understanding that if, for whatever reason, he is incapable of serving, the vice president will step in. That is why we have a vice president!

The demand for an accurate account of the state of Trump’s health is not about the man; it’s about the presidency. If nothing else, he should respect the office enough to put all his effort into getting well, not taking a smile ‘n wave lap.

One hopes that the president is indeed on the mend-- because there are still a hell of a lot of questions he needs to answer. Questions about his taxes and outstanding loans, about continued Russian interference with the election and about accusations against Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Not to mention the timeline of his diagnosis and his lack of basic social precautions.

Like whatever afflicted King George III, who continued to suffer from bouts of “madness,” COVID-19 is a tenacious disease; even on the way to health, there is a pretty good chance that Trump will continue to be affected by symptoms. Suffering from this disease can be debilitating and terrifying, which is why the Biden campaign suspended its negative ads and the press has put aside the many issues facing the Trump campaign in favor of a minute-by-minute focus on the president’s condition.

Still, it’s hard to see his heedless Sunday drive as anything but permission for the many questions and criticisms raised about his financial situation, his handling of the pandemic and the scandals affecting so many of his inner circle to resume.

As my mother used to say, if you’re well enough to go out and play, you’re well enough to go back to school. Though in this case, please do it remotely.