Donald Trump’s failing health
It should have been clear to everyone listening what Donald Trump was up to. His insistence in Monday’s press conference that a mask-wearing reporter remove his mask had nothing to do with Trump’s inability to hear him. “You’re gonna have to take it off,” Trump said, “it’s very muffled.” To which the reporter replied, “I’ll just speak a lot louder. [Speaking louder] Is that better?” To which Trump replied, with exaggerated exasperation, “Yeah, it’s better.”
The truth of the matter was the reporter was easy to understand from the very first. I had no trouble understanding him through an additional filter Trump didn’t have, a recording of the exchange. While the reporter’s voice was unquestionably muffled by the mask, the words were easy to discern without a strain, and Trump knew it.
Trump’s disdain for masks is an extension of his disdain for the health of the American people and his own health, and for the 194,032 Americans who have died from coronavirus, as I write this. The mask as a means to keep human beings safer from contracting COVID-19 is, in Trump’s warped view, minuscule compared to the daily reminder the mask represents that Trump has failed. Every time someone wears a mask Trump is reminded that coronavirus is still a clear and present danger, and one that he not only has failed to properly act against, but cannot easily dismiss.
Trump’s violent temper, made famous by leaked anecdotes, was barely restrained during the press conference. Everyone who has ever lived with an abuser knows the signals, and all malignant narcissists are abusers. Trump was full of fury at the mask-wearing reporter, but he knew it would cost him votes if he gave full vent to that fury, so he restrained himself. This time.
Trump’s appallingly awful diet, lack of daily exercise, contempt for masks, drug abuse, violent temper, notoriety for unprotected sex with multiple partners while married, sets a preposterous personal example and makes him a dangerous role model in dangerous times. Among his uncountable personal failings, Donald Trump is America’s most anti-health president.
Though four years older than Trump, Joe Biden, on the other hand, is clearly in much better shape. He is in phenomenal condition by any standard, let alone the standard of a man approaching his 78th birthday. Biden works out every morning. He is trim and athletic and rides a bike and jogs. He speaks in clear, complete sentences that make sense. He isn’t just Trump’s moral and intellectual superior, Biden is Trump’s physical superior as well.
As America’s most anti-health president, not only is Donald Trump a living anachronism, he is on dangerous ground when he disparages Biden’s mental acuity. I don’t know who is advising him to go down that path, but it’s clearly a blunder — which is fine with me. As Napoleon so aptly put it, never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake. Trump’s absurdly inadequate regard for his own health and the health of the American people makes him an easy target whenever he disparages Joe Biden’s physical vigor.
There are a million reasons why Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States, this has been another one. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.