Donald Trump had it all planned out. His return to the White House from the hospital would be heroic. He would be viewed as a hero who had conquered COVID-19, and it would save his faltering re-election campaign.But it didn't turn out that way. Instead, it just looked like a pathetic photo-op by a sick man.
Here's how conservative commentator Charlie Sykes described it at The Bulwark:
You thought the upside down bible photo-op was bad? It turns out that it was just a dress rehearsal for the awfulness to come.
Last night, we got the full cinematic roll-out of “The Orange Evita,” PRODUCED, DIRECTED, AND STARRED IN by DONALD J. TRUMP.
It was a fiasco for the ages.
The video production of his triumphant return to the White House was quintessentially Trumpian. All the power moves: the helicopter, the music, the pageantry, the balcony, the dramatic removal of the mask — all perfectly choreographed by a man famous for his finely honed instincts for entertainment.
But it all went sideways.
Trump had a choice: he could have gone for the sympathy vote; he could have shown a flash of empathy. According to the NYT, some campaign staffers thought that if Trump recovered quickly “and then appeared sympathetic to the public in how he talked about his own experience and that of millions of other Americans, he could have something of a political reset.”
In TrumpWorld, though, empathy is for cucks, so he opted for STRENGTH instead. Or at least the video version.
But as he stood there, maskless, breathing heavily, and about to enter a White house ravaged by the pandemic, Trump didn’t look strong. He looked reckless. He looked sick. He looked like a man whose presidency was in the last stages of decadence.
Everything about his dramatic exit felt wrong. Trump insisted that he “gets it now,” but he quickly demonstrated that he doesn’t. He suggested that he may be immune to the disease, despite having actually contracted it. He urged people not to fear COVID-19, even as the death toll topped 210,000.
