It’s like the eye of three different hurricanes I’ve lived through, Carol in 1954, Jeanne, 2004, and Wilma in 2005. A hurricane eye is other-worldly. After hours of destruction, the sun comes out and everything is still, with hardly a breeze. We emerge from our homes to inspect the damage, knowing there is more to come on the backside, yet grateful for the reprieve.
I view President Trump’s departure for Walter Reed Hospital similarly. First, I will make clear that I hope he and the First Lady recover, and it is a recovery with wisdom and humility. So nothing I write here is to wish him ill. We are in the eye of the storm while he and the finest physicians battle his illness. Meanwhile, there is blessed silence, a reprieve from hearing that voice, the tweets, his endless invectives, the brandishing of the Trump brand.
He said it during the 2016 election: He could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and no one would do anything about it. One cannot prove an alternative reality, but what if, rather than his branding the mask as a symbol of weakness; he had promoted it and worn it as a symbol of American unity? How many thousands would not have died in this country, maybe a hundred thousand? That needless, wanton loss of life, Mr. President, will be your legacy, as well as your hurricane like destruction of traditional norms and long held foreign alliances. Your denial of science has set us back years in addressing urgent changes in environmental policy, and has leavened the seriousness of COVID beyond that of any other nation. Your rhetoric has divided the nation and we remain on a tethered lifeline of emergency funding and unimaginable actions by the Federal Reserve to temporarily prop up markets and the economy. It all must come crashing back to the real world.
It was unnerving to watch the theatrics yesterday on the news, broadcasters focused on Marine 1, will he come out that door, or not in our view? This is what you’ve always wanted, Mr. President, a nation of voyeurs and followers; cult worshipers. Finally, the “official” tape was released of you getting on the helicopter and a Marine in tow carrying the secret nuclear codes suitcase, another reminder that this is more than a reality TV show, the one thing in which you excel. Again, chilling that someone who is so uneducated in the matters of diplomacy, government, and the rule of law has that responsibility and is being air lifted to a hospital with a disease he himself promoted as “fake news,” ignoring every scientific advice to wear masks. The last image I recall in the news coverage was White House aides gathered together pecking at their iPhones, all wearing masks, as if suddenly they got religion.
It didn’t have to be this way, but as I said at the onset, may you and your wife have a full recovery and may you return with the religion as well, wearing a mask, requiring everyone else to do so, and discontinuing your disease spreading rallies and self-promoting ceremonial meetings.
