The lies about Donald Trump’s condition are completely out of control
When, at home, I complained aloud yet again about how news issuing from the White House is mostly lies, my wife, who is English, had an interesting insight, as she so often does. She noted that whenever news of Boris Johnson’s health during his COVID battle issued forth from Whitehall, or occasional news about the Queen’s health or the Duke of Edinburgh’s health came from Buckingham Palace, no one questioned it. Indeed, no one ever so much as thought to question it. The English always knew they could take the news at face value because it was true. Of course the British government lies. But not as a matter of course. Not about things like that. Not the way the White House lies.
Donald Trump’s White House lies about everything. In fact, they lie more than they tell the truth. Like Trump they lie even when they don’t have to. They lie with arrogant disdain, as if we’re lucky they speak to us at all. They lie the way paranoids lie. They lie with sneers on their faces as if they hate most of the American people, and indeed they do. They lie for the sake of lying.
Donald Trump’s ignominious early release from the hospital is a case in point. The official White House word is he’s on the mend. That’s a lie. We know it’s a lie because of the drugs he’s on and the gasping-for-breath symptoms he’s exhibited. The problem is, when he relapses — and he almost certainly will — and his condition becomes more grave, they are setting themselves up for even more lying.
Of course, the reason they lie is because Donald Trump orders them to, and if they don’t do as he says any backslider will be singled out for punishment. He or she will be humiliated, demoted and even fired. That is why of all the so-called “courageous” Republicans who speak out against Trump, all are outsiders, all are either betrayed former members of his inner circle or those still in politics who have much to gain by disassociating themselves with Trump and much to lose if they don’t. The Trump lying factory is as hermetically sealed as the presidential SUV known as the Beast.
The lying message coming from the White House these days is a devastatingly dangerous one. It was enunciated by Trump himself when he wrote in one of his latest tweets, “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.” Trump thinks that he can intimidate a virus with phoney machismo and fake courage. He can’t. The virus will get him, and if he continues to parade around as if all is well it might put him back in the hospital — and may even kill him. No amount of lying from the White House will fix that.
Because in the final analysis, it isn’t about you, it isn’t about me, it isn’t about anyone else, it certainly isn’t about (as I write this) the 215,032 Americans who died from COVID-19, it’s all about Donald Trump. Because it’s always all about Donald Trump all the time. Trump has usurped the American government and transformed it into a giant echo chamber, to magnify his own glory and feed his famished, bottomless ego.
There are a million reasons why Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States, this has been another one. Let’s end this reign of terror and insanity. Let’s vote him out in November. 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.