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The president's national play-it-down approach is now his personal treatme
Oct. 6 - Like any normal person admitted to a hospital who can still talk and walk, President Donald Trump wanted out of there. According to CNN, he demanded his release on Sunday because, in part, he thought hospitalization made him look weak, but he settled for a quick lap outside the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in a Secret Service Suburban to demonstrate his vitality.
But now, he’s won his discharge, even though his doctor concedes he “isn’t out of the woods yet.” None of us—journalists, politicians, infectious disease experts, news consumers—can judge the wisdom of sending him home—because there is so much we don’t know about his health status. Instead of giving us the straight truth, Trump, his doctors, and his aides have buttered and sugared his condition to make it sound like he’s the healthiest man in sickbay. “I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” Trump exclaimed in his tweet.
Buttering and sugar-coating the ugly has been a hallmark of the Trump administration policy approach since day one, so it’s no surprise that he’s applying the same technique to his own infection. He has consistently downplayed the severity of the pandemic, claiming that it will just disappear, that we must go back to work and back to school. He has directly discouraged reporters from wearing masks at press briefings and exaggerated the progress of a vaccine. First, he foisted the management of the pandemic on Vice President Mike Pence, then commandeered it so he could keynote the daily briefing, then abandoned the televised sessions because he’d made such a public relations botch of them only to pick them up again to spin the coming vaccine and therapeutics. In Trump’s mind, the best way to handle the pandemic on both the personal and policy levels has been to pretend it doesn’t exist, and that if it does, it’s not that important.
Oct. 6 - Like any normal person admitted to a hospital who can still talk and walk, President Donald Trump wanted out of there. According to CNN, he demanded his release on Sunday because, in part, he thought hospitalization made him look weak, but he settled for a quick lap outside the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in a Secret Service Suburban to demonstrate his vitality.
But now, he’s won his discharge, even though his doctor concedes he “isn’t out of the woods yet.” None of us—journalists, politicians, infectious disease experts, news consumers—can judge the wisdom of sending him home—because there is so much we don’t know about his health status. Instead of giving us the straight truth, Trump, his doctors, and his aides have buttered and sugared his condition to make it sound like he’s the healthiest man in sickbay. “I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” Trump exclaimed in his tweet.
Buttering and sugar-coating the ugly has been a hallmark of the Trump administration policy approach since day one, so it’s no surprise that he’s applying the same technique to his own infection. He has consistently downplayed the severity of the pandemic, claiming that it will just disappear, that we must go back to work and back to school. He has directly discouraged reporters from wearing masks at press briefings and exaggerated the progress of a vaccine. First, he foisted the management of the pandemic on Vice President Mike Pence, then commandeered it so he could keynote the daily briefing, then abandoned the televised sessions because he’d made such a public relations botch of them only to pick them up again to spin the coming vaccine and therapeutics. In Trump’s mind, the best way to handle the pandemic on both the personal and policy levels has been to pretend it doesn’t exist, and that if it does, it’s not that important.
PBS NewsHour full episode, Oct. 5, 2020
Oct. 6, 2020
Monday on the NewsHour, President Trump prepares to depart Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, as confusion about his health persists. Plus: The expanding White House coronavirus outbreak, a former Pence adviser speaks out, two medical experts weigh in, how the president’s diagnosis is affecting both presidential campaigns and Politics Monday with Amy Walter and Domenico Montanaro.
Oct. 6, 2020
Monday on the NewsHour, President Trump prepares to depart Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, as confusion about his health persists. Plus: The expanding White House coronavirus outbreak, a former Pence adviser speaks out, two medical experts weigh in, how the president’s diagnosis is affecting both presidential campaigns and Politics Monday with Amy Walter and Domenico Montanaro.
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