The Washington Post’s editorial board wrote a scathing rebuke of President Trump for his behavior since testing positive for COVID-19 last week.
The editorial published Monday evening, titled “Covid-19 is a fearsome killer. Trump’s magical thinking will not change that,” begins by wishing a speedy recovery to the president, first lady, and everyone else in their orbit who has tested positive. But the well wishes stop there as the editorial board criticizes Trump’s “inexplicable joyride” to visit supporters outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the president’s “unconscionable declaration” that people shouldn’t “be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life,” and other issues.
“We had hoped that perhaps once Mr. Trump tested positive, once he was on oxygen and had to be hospitalized, he would be chastened, perhaps gaining a better understanding of the fear and anger across the country at his botched handling of the pandemic. Mr. Trump shows no sign of undergoing any such epiphany,” the editorial board wrote before calling the president’s response a “slight [to] the memory of the more than 1 million who have died.”
“Mr. Trump shows not a shred of awareness that his own abdication of duty, failing to mount an effective pandemic response, played a major role in the United States suffering the highest coronavirus death toll in the world,” the editorial says.
The editorial board accused the president of dealing with “face masks with foolhardy contempt.” Most recently, the president, upon his Monday evening return to the White House, took his mask off to wave to cameras on the balcony outside the Blue Room.
The editorial also criticized the president’s team of physicians who treated him at Walter Reed for their evasive answers and contradictory information regarding Trump’s health, which they call “unconscionable.” The editorial board called the entire White House’s response to the president’s diagnosis the result of “a most callous hubris.”
