Time will tell whether Trump triumphs over COVID

Only Boss Trump could turn even the COVID-19 plague into a farce. His triumphal return to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center — nicely timed for the evening TV news cycle — was like a stunt his pal Kim Jong Un would pull in Pyongyang: pure strongman street theater.

The big man stood glassyeyed but indomitable on a balcony: corset, shoulder pads, elevator shoes and a half-pound of orange stage makeup accentuating his extreme virility. All the scene lacked was a laugh track, although in the kinds of dictatorships Trump most admires, it is forbidden to smile.

Big, strong me, puny little you. That was the message. It was four years almost to the day since Trump mimicked Hillary Clinton stumbling at a campaign appearance after being diagnosed with pneumonia. “She’s supposed to fight all these different things, and she can’t make it 15 feet to her car,” he sneered.

So after they carried him to drug label calls “psychotic manithe hospital in a helicopter, the festations.”

White House sent out a photo of And wouldn’t that be wonderTrump supposedly hard at work.ful?

“Nothing can stop him from hat’s just one of the reasons working for the American peonobody but Trump would have ple,” daughter Ivanka tweeted. been released from the hospi“RELENTLESS!” Alas, a closeup tal before his treatment regimen showed Trump relentlessly signwas finished. If he weren’t going ing a blank sheet of paper. to a fully equipped White House

They do these things better in medical clinic, that phalanx of North Korea. white-jacketed physicians who

Back when I raised cattle, it staged press conferences outside was axiomatic: Never let a sick Walter Reed would have been cow die without trying dexaflirting with malpractice to let methasone, the powerful steroid him check out. that persuaded Trump he was An NPR reporter noticed that 10 feet tall and bulletproof. I’ve all of Dr. Sean Conley’s written seen it bring animals too weak press releases were preceded by to stand back to their feet, ala disclaimer saying, in effect, though not for long, unless the “Donald J. Trump has approved underlying infection had been this message.” suppressed. It’s a stimulant, not People saw right through it, a cure. too. A CNN poll found that “69%

In humans, dexamethasone of Americans said they trusted also has psychiatric side effects. little of what they heard from

(In cows, you can’t tell. Possibly the White House about the presLayla the abandoned twin calf ident’s health, with only 12% sayimagined herself tyrant queen ing they trusted almost all of it.” of the herd before disease carBesides, he wasn’t really going ried her away. It’s impossible to “home,” merely to a smaller hosknow.) The most common probpital where he can be monitored lems in human subjects are irriand treated. tability, aggression and what the What’s more, Trump’s euphoria was not only chemically induced, but it’s also unlikely to last. Repeated doses of dexamethasone can be quite dangerous. It’s administered only in serious circumstances, signifying to physicians who don’t work for the White House that Trump was a whole lot sicker when he went to Walter Reed than anybody wanted to let on.

Then where was the hydroxychloroquine, inquiring minds want to know?

So yes, there’s every chance that even Boss Trump, the political superhero with “the body that men fear and women adore” (in the words of 1950s professional wrestling champ Dr. Jerry Graham, who was bashing rivals with balsa wood chairs at Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, New York, back when Trump was an impressionable lad), will get sicker before he gets better.

The point is that anybody tempted to heed Boss Trump’s advice — “Don’t be afraid of COVID. Don’t let it dominate your life” — would be well-advised to wait a few weeks before venturing maskless to one of his campaign rallies. We don’t know, in

Conley’s words, that he’s out of the woods yet. But we do know that he’s actively contagious.

We also know that Trump cares not at all which Secret Service agents and White House flunkies get infected. Not to mention those anonymous hordes in their MAGA hats and T-shirts.

Meanwhile, Trump acolyte Rudy Giuliani, himself memorably described by Jimmy Breslin as “a small man in search of a balcony,” went on Fox News to mock Joe Biden for wearing a face mask. Not manly, he said between bouts of heavy coughing. Fox Newsblonde Martha MacCallum said she hoped “that cough is not anything bad.”

So have I no humane feelings for Boss Trump, his attendant courtiers and poltroons? I’d answer that I have exactly the same degree of empathy and concern he’d have for me and my loved ones.

I leave it to readers to decide what that might be.