Trump’s Lethal Injections

What’s wrong with the White House press corps?

We are a disjointed lot, to be sure, and President Donald Trump divides the press the same way he divides the rest of the United States. As a result, serious issues are glossed over in the daily chaos of a president who is a real-life Mad Hatter—without the humorous appeal.

Lately it’s been worse. Reporters forgo addressing all but the largest issues facing the country because, due to the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing, there are fewer of us covering the presidential daily briefings. At the last one I attended, on Monday, several reporters brought up issues that deserved tough follow-up questions: COVID-19 testing, the number of Americans dead from the virus under Trump’s watch and Trump’s responsibility for people ingesting disinfectant, to name a few.

Just 26 reporters were in attendance in the Rose Garden. That’s a very small number, considering more than 150 have shown up for these events in the past. Still, it’s more than the 14 or so who can now attend briefings in the Brady briefing room. In both cases up to five of those reporters could be “guests”—sympathetic reporters who will give the president a softball question to answer. As a result, some important issues that warrant questions don’t get addressed, much less get a follow-up.

Recently Joe Lockhart, who worked for President Bill Clinton, penned an analysis of the problem for CNN from a government point of view. He suggested reporters engage in a coordinated attack of follow-up questions that would help pin down the facts.

What the press lacks, Lockhart suggests, is cohesion. He isn’t wrong. But without numbers, we can’t do it. Margaret Sullivan in The Washington Post laid us low this week, disparaging the coverage while missing that important point. I haven’t often seen Sullivan with us in the daily briefings, and while she is correct about many things, when she says the press is “still—mostly—covering him on the terms he dictates,” she misses the reason why, particularly when she says our flaws “were on full display over the past few days.”

Wake up. There’s no one there. That’s the biggest flaw. A mere dozen or two reporters in a briefing room or in the Rose Garden can’t adequately cover the issues or the insanity of Donald Trump’s administration. The coronavirus has given him the edge he needs to neuter the press. He certainly hasn’t been able to do it otherwise.

Last week he had a wrangler try to push CNN out of its assigned seat in the briefing room. The administration even tried to use the Secret Service to do so. The Secret Service balked, as did the reporters asked to move, and that was that. All because Trump doesn’t like CNN. His war against the press includes barring us, yanking our passes, yelling, kicking, screaming and bullying. It hasn’t worked. Lack of numbers does.

Fewer reporters at the White House also helps Trump mask a danger to the country I’ve not seen since 1986, when I first walked into the West Wing.

In recent briefings Trump has acted acutely agitated for no apparent reason—unlike the times he’s had a reason, however tenuous it may be. In one of them he acted like a drunk uncle threatening to leave a family barbecue, interrupting me before I could even finish my question.

In another, on Monday, he told me he had no idea why he should be responsible for people ingesting disinfectant and took no responsibility for those who had.

It isn’t the first time I’ve seen the president deny any responsibility for his actions. But as my father once told me, a good con man eventually cons himself, and if you’re smart you’ll know when.

While I’m convinced Trump is not a good con man, I’m sure he has fooled himself for years. Or as Jason Alexander as George Costanza would explain it, “It isn’t a lie if you believe it.”

Still, as I sat in the Rose Garden Monday I saw that glazed look of belief in Trump’s eyes. Two weeks ago I noticed the same thing when he huffed and puffed at me. As I tried to ask my question and he interrupted me, he seemed totally unaware of what I was asking, though he heard me. He seemed befuddled and angry. His combativeness was excessive even for him.

Back in February I noted, “The issue of Trump’s health keeps cropping up not only because of his age, diet and signs of heart disease—plus the stress caused by impeachment and the fact he operates the office of the presidency in a constant state of chaos—but specifically because of things people have noted during some of his public appearances. Slurring words, a strange look to his gait and appearing befuddled in public all have ramped up questions about Trump’s health.”

I remain worried about his mental health specifically because in one of his briefings last week Trump responded to a reporter’s question by recommending the U.S. government investigate sunlight therapy and injecting disinfectants to battle the coronavirus.

Thus the greatest failure of the press in the age of Trump is not our inability to handle his personality. It is that we have failed to adequately frame the argument I first proposed at the end of February: The president must have a thorough mental evaluation.

Disinfectant? Sunlight? To combat the coronavirus? If we cannot give this issue adequate scrutiny, then we’re as screwed as we’d be if we actually ingested Clorox. We need to pursue this issue in depth because Americans are at risk, and not only on account of the coronavirus. We are at risk on account of the president’s lunacy—a byproduct of his stream-of-consciousness rant.

A Trump loyalist put it to me this way: “You guys criticized presidents in the past for not talking. ‘Tell us what you’re thinking.’ Well, this president does, and you skewer him for it. This president is transparent. He tells you what he thinks.”

We would do well to consider just how disturbing and frightening Trump’s thoughts are and how asinine it is to defend them—absent the prism of politics, if possible.

While loyalists tried one tactic to explain this insufferable stupidity, Trump tried another. He said he was just being sarcastic to a reporter—one of his favorite enemies. Journalists who criticize the press at the White House definitely have salient points, but those critiques also play into Trump’s vision as he yells or rage tweets against us.

After the disinfectant debacle, hospitals, disinfectant manufacturers and the federal government issued statements advising people not to try what the president had suggested. Across the country, calls to health care professionals about the internal use of disinfectants spiked following Trump’s press briefing.

Trump’s answer Monday to my question about responsibility regarding the issue leaves us with two possibilities: Either he is lying about his inability to understand the need for taking responsibility or he really doesn’t know that he should.

Either way we’re screwed.

Dr. Ronny Jackson, who performed Trump’s first medical exam as president, declared him “fit for duty,” physically and mentally, in 2018. When I asked about his health, I was told in the White House briefing that Trump had such good genes he could live to be 200. Dr. Jackson also reported the president performed a “difficult” cognitive test (the Montreal Cognitive Assessment) and scored 30 out of 30.

On March 2, as the president left for a rally, he told us he’d been unable to finish his latest physical because he’d been “so busy.” Nearly three months earlier he’d made an unexpected visit to Walter Reed hospital on a weekend. He told us later it was for the first part of his physical. In March, when I asked him on the South Lawn if he’d finished, he said he’d try to have that done within 90 days.

He has a little more than a month left. We need to know.

We face a global pandemic that is exceptionally hard on senior citizens with underlying health conditions. A senior citizen with underlying health conditions is leading our battle—on television, anyway—to stymie the virus causing the pandemic. At no time in our history has it been more imperative to guarantee the soundness of the president’s physical and mental health.

Serious minds in serious times must prevail, and the president of the United States must finish his physical and undergo a mental evaluation prior to the beginning of June, according to the timetable he set for himself.

Trump told us in a briefing in mid-April that he has the ultimate authority. But time after time he sees no reason to accept any responsibility.

Fine. Who wants to step up and act like a leader? Who wants to take some responsibility along with their authority?

“He’s driving me to drink,” said another Trump loyalist who tried to defend Trump’s suggestion that ingesting disinfectant and/or bathing in sunlight could help eradicate COVID-19.

As previously noted on Morning Joe, at the briefings, by dozens of reporters and by anyone who can count, there have been more deaths due to COVID-19 than deaths caused by the Vietnam War. The president’s actions have never been more consequential or lethal.

The country needs and deserves an answer: Mr. President, are you physically and mentally fit for office?

Anyone from any party who holds that office should be able to answer that question honestly, without hesitation and with documentation if the situation demands it. In this case, publicly speculating about injecting disinfectants to combat a pandemic-causing virus is a situation that demands documentation—and thus a mental evaluation.

I live in hope that there are enough reporters left at the White House to adequately report this story. Right now the president’s overall health and how we attack the coronavirus are the only stories that matter.

Anyone, myself included, can do a self-righteous postmortem on press behavior afterward.