Four days after announcing he and First Lady Melania Trump had contracted coronavirus, US President Donald Trump returned to the White House after being discharged from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He also tweeted that he was “Feeling really good”. This is a terrible outcome, apparently, and we should all be infuriated.
Likewise, all right-minded people should assume anything positive that White House physician Dr Sean P. Conley says about the President’s health is a lie, given his statement that he agrees with Trump’s decision to leave hospital.
Referring to Conley’s background as a naval doctor, New York Times journalist Jennifer Steinhauer wrote “Disobeying Mr. Trump’s wishes could be seen as tantamount to insubordination, among the military’s highest offences”.
You can expect to hear rumours soon that an oligarch with links to Russian intelligence services funded Conley’s medical degree.
Trump supposedly has manufactured the whole thing and the physicians are in on the conspiracy.
Must admit to being staggered by the number of people here, including journalists, saying Trumps Covid diagnosis is fake. 😳
— Monica Attard (@AttardMon) October 2, 2020
Following Trump’s announcement that he had coronavirus, social commentator and author Jane Caro speculated this was “bullshit”.
When it was pointed out to her that his doctor had confirmed the diagnosis she tweeted “So? JFK’s doctor fed him amphetamines. Hitler’s doctor spouted all kinds of shit. Michael Jackson’s doctor didn’t do him a whole heap of good”.
Honestly, if former Jackson companion Bubbles the chimpanzee could tweet, he would make more sense than this.
So? JFK’s doctor fed him amphetamines. Hitler’s doctor spouted all kinds of shit. Michael Jackson’s doctor didn’t do him a whole heap of good.
— Jane Caro (@JaneCaro) October 2, 2020
And what remarkable insight from actor and former Age columnist Rhys Muldoon, who tweeted on Tuesday in reference to Trump: “It’s almost like he chose Walter Reed because [Ronald] Reagan was there and survived an assassination attempt”.
Yes, you could be on to something, Rhys. Aside from the hospital having a dedicated presidential suite with offices, conference rooms, communication facilities and the massive security requirements to enable the chief executive to exercise his functions, and aside from the centre having treated presidents as far back as Franklin D. Roosevelt, what possible legitimate reason could Trump have for “choosing” to go there?
It’s almost like he chose Walter Reed because Reagan was there and survived an assassination attempt.
— Rhys Muldoon (@rhysam) October 6, 2020
This is the darkest theatre since Lincoln went to watch a show. https://t.co/bzFYtPibSP
Queensland Deputy Premier and Health Minister Steven Miles played the provincial wag, tweeting to Trump “Have you considered intravenous disinfectant?” Absolutely hilarious, I say. Maybe he could tweet a few jokes about how his government initially refused permission for young children to travel to Queensland to visit their dying father, or the Ballina woman who lost one of her twins after she was forced to travel to Sydney instead of Brisbane to give birth.
There is a word for politicians who behave like this, and you will find it in the dictionary of the Australian vernacular immediately preceding the entry for “dinky-di”.
Have you considered intravenous disinfectant? https://t.co/4QutsVmEil
— Steven Miles (@StevenJMiles) October 2, 2020
Even on the day Trump announced he had contracted coronavirus, commentators were saying his full recovery would be to the detriment of the nation. “I mean you do not wish anybody ill with this virus,” said The Project host Lisa Wilkinson, “but if he was to come out of this completely asymptomatic and come out you know all bolshie about ‘I’m fine’ – in many ways that’s another bad message to put out to the people”.
It’s called leadership
It is called leadership and it is good for morale. In any event Wilkinson is not ideally placed to talk about bad messaging and coronavirus.
You might remember in March that she, in one of her insufferably sanctimonious open letters, purported to speak on behalf of Australians to implore Prime Minister Scott Morrison put the entire country in lockdown.
“We are already for it: savage action to give us maximum short-term pain now, to avoid ever more lingering deaths later, with an exhausted medical profession that will have to make devastating choices on whose lives to save, and whose to let slip away,” she wrote.
Not only would this amount to the discredited elimination strategy; it would also be akin to giving the economy a fatal disease.
I wasn’t really enjoying this TV show but holy jeeezus I am loving the finale https://t.co/EUbrWSBThO
— Van Badham (@vanbadham) October 2, 2020
No doubt Trump sees his apparent recovery as a chance to project the image of a strong leader who was not daunted by the prospect of his impending death. He would be mad not to capitalise on this, especially on the eve of an election. Only days ago the left were shrieking delightedly at the thought of the “morbidly obese” Trump dying in agony. Now
they are suffering progressive PTSD at the thought of him closing the gap, albeit unlikely, in the weeks ahead.
Loathing one’s political enemies is one thing but wishing them dead is another.
Is he dead yet? I have shit to do. Thx.
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 5, 2020
Imagine the reaction if it were not Trump in office, but the Democratic nominee of 2016.
Whether it was George Washington, who required surgery to remove a tumour during
his first term, to Ronald Reagan, who barely survived an assassination attempt three months after his inauguration, presidents can always be assured of one thing when they are incapacitated or injured, and that is their fellow citizens, regardless of political allegiance, will unite to support the incumbent. Provided the President is a man, that is.
In a display that was truly sickening, far-right conservative trolls began lampooning President Hillary Rodham Clinton within minutes of her announcing she had contracted coronavirus. “I hope you die gasping for breath,” said one. Incredibly, she was accused of faking the disease. “It may well be that an excitable Hillary Clinton has mistaken a cough for coronavirus,” joked American political commentator Bill Maher. “Let’s face it, this is the same woman who claimed an eight-year-old Bosnian flower girl was really a deadly sniper”. Speaker Nancy Pelosi denounced Republicans for failing to condemn the attacks. “I’m sick of these man babies,” she said. “I thought they could not look any more pathetic than when they tore up a copy the President’s State of the Union speech in her presence, but I was wrong.”
The fact that the nomination party for the new #SCOTUS justice now appears to have been the super spreader event mowing down Republicans is basically a teleological argument for the proposition that RBG is God. Discuss.
— Annabel Crabb (@annabelcrabb) October 3, 2020
Fortunately for Clinton, prominent women across the globe have rushed to defend her. “Kia
ora, Madam President,” tweeted New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. “I am so inspired by your example that I have arranged for my daughter, Neve Te Aroha Ardern
Gayford, to learn to sing Helen Reddy’s ‘I am Woman’ in all eight Native American languages”.
On ABC’s The Drum, host Julia Baird invited an all-women panel to consider whether conservative ideology reinforced the notion that female leaders lacked legitimacy. “As a Walkley Award winner and an AM recipient who has written extensively on women’s issues, I
can assure you this is misogyny,” proclaimed author Jane Caro.
Fellow panellist, author and feminist Dr Anne Summers agreed. “And wasn’t it fantastic to see Hillary surprise her supporters with a drive-by when she left hospital just days after being admitted,” she said. “Not only does it show women have superior resilience, but also greater generosity of spirit”.
2020 has slightly redeemed itself
— Dee Madigan (@deemadigan) October 2, 2020
Calling on the federal government to fund an Australia-wide school curriculum to combat
misogyny, Shadow Minister for Women and Education Tanya Plibersek stressed the attacks on the President were by no means just an American phenomenon. “And I think it raises the question about the role that Tony Abbott's playing,” she said.
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd told CNN the vitriol was evidence of the Republican Party’s “Neanderthal mentality”.
“How can a man claim to be a decent human being yet make despicable comments about
HRC,” he asked rhetorically. “Whatever happened to respecting the office? I mean we are talking about the President of the United States. You cannot subject her to abuse like you can a 23-year-old female flight attendant.”
Sydney Morning Herald columnist and author Peter FitzSimons stressed the President had the mettle to withstand these attacks. “As the author of a best-selling biography about World War II resistance leader Nancy Wake, I know a heroine when I see one,” he said.
Former prime minister Julia Gillard said she was only too aware of what the chief executive was experiencing. “My advice to Ms Clinton is to use her down time to draft an impromptu
speech that takes aim at her critics,” she said. “I know it’s hard – her treatment is nearly as bad as what happened to me.”
Nearly as bad? “I don’t wish to downplay Ms Clinton’s suffering,” said Gillard, “but I must point out she never had to put up with her nemesis looking at his watch while she was speaking”.
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