Trump's COVID-19 White House balcony scene did not play well in Trump-skeptic conservative media

(Image credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 6 October 2020

Presumably, President Trump imagined his return to the White House from Walter Reed Medical Center would be viewed as a show of strength, a leader hit by COVID-19 just a few days earlier able to climb some stairs, rip off his mask, and salute a helicopter before filming a video proclaiming his good health, dominance over, and possible immunity from the savage virus. That's not how it was seen in much of America, including the branch of conservative media that isn't all that fond of Trump.

Veteran GOP operative Tim Miller called Trump's 90-second balcony scene "one of the most disturbing, absorbing, foreign images I can recall." Instead of the "übermensch" image Trump is evidently trying to convey by taking off his mask, Miller writes in The Bulwark, "we get a madman, his face pancaked under a 2mm coat of orange powder, jacked up on steroids, straining to breathe — and not caring a whit about those around him. And I've got to hand it to him: Trump nails that image."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

He salutes with D-list caudillo energy, channeling an aging Pinochet or Trujillo in their last gasps of power. ... The coup de grâce (for whom, we won't know for a couple weeks), is Trump moving into an extremely congested, spittle-filled soliloquy — straight to camera — about how our Dear Leader may well now be "immune" from the deadly virus that has killed 210,000 and which is currently inhabiting his lungs, and his White House. The show must go on. [Tim Miller, The Bulwark]

Explore More

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox