Boomer Opinion: There is no “last straw.” Not any more

For those who think Donald Trump has been a disaster, it has gotten to the point where we no longer say, “That was the last straw.” Because as BoomerCafé’s co-founder and executive editor Greg Dobbs writes after watching the president return from the hospital to the White House, there’s always another last straw just waiting for us.

And by the way, once you’ve read this piece, click here on the name of BoomerCafé’s almost-resident funnyman Jerry Zezima, who has written about the big draw of his granddaughters’ art.

“Don’t be afraid of Covid.”

That’s what our president told us with great assurance in a tweet yesterday. Well, GREAT! You can certainly take THAT to the bank!

Forget the fact that if he truly is already better and not destined to take a new turn for the worse, it is because he is the President of the United States. Forget that once infected, he was taken by helicopter to Walter Reed Medical Center, the U.S. Government’s best hospital for VIPs. Forget that he was installed in a suite the rest of us probably couldn’t rent at the Ritz. Forget that he was cared for by Walter Reed’s top team of doctors, the ones you saw silently huddled behind Trump’s own osteopath when he delivered his sometimes incomplete, sometimes misleading briefings on the president’s condition.

Dr. Sean Conley, the President’s medic, and a font of obfuscation and misinformation.

And, arguably as important as anything, forget the fact that Trump was given drugs— including one not even approved yet for general patient use— that wouldn’t be given to the rest of us unless we were far sicker than this guy.

But oh, yes, Donald Trump knows of what he speaks when he tells us, “Don’t be afraid of Covid.” In other words, you can let your guard down, because he’s living proof that miracles do happen.

It would merely be pathetic if it weren’t so darned dangerous.

It would also merely be thoughtless if all those Americans hadn’t already died from Covid. Many of them isolated, and alone.

But they had. About 215,000 now. Tell them and their loved ones, “Don’t be afraid of Covid.”

Tell it too to the growing number of Trump’s own idiotic acolytes who’ve gotten infected because they drank the Kool-Aid and kept their masks in their pockets.

A potential Covid-19 “super spreader” event – a reception for Judge Amy Coney Barrett at the White House about ten days ago.

Every time we think this guy couldn’t be more incompetent, more arrogant, more selfish, more dangerous, he fools us.

For all the reckless and ultimately lethal behavior of Trump and his team since this pandemic first pervaded our nation, we don’t even have to reprise it here. We only have to look at what has happened since the man tested positive, to see their perilous incompetence on full display.

There was his doctor’s absurd assertion that the reason he didn’t tell us about a couple of “transient drops” in the president’s oxygen saturation level, and about the need to give him supplemental oxygen, was because “I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, that his course of illness has had. I didn’t want to give any, any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction.” This is some doctor, if he believes “information” steers the course of the illness. As we say these days in computer shorthand, OMG!

The President’s doctor, Sean Conley.

So now the White House even has the president’s official doctor dealing in alternative facts? As if we haven’t seen it a thousand times before, this president’s sick ego demands fealty. But doesn’t every honest tax-paying citizen (I’m not looking at you, Mr. Trump) deserve not just fealty but facts— not alternative facts, but honest facts about the medical condition of our commander in chief?

His ego also demands adulation. How else do you explain that stupid Sunday stunt when he took his little joy ride around Walter Reed, to thank his supporters, as Trump put it.

The President’s media stunt while he was infected with Covid-19.

An attending physician from the hospital— also the chief of disaster medicine at the George Washington University Department of Emergency Medicine— put it differently: “This is insanity.” He went on in his tweet to spell it out: “Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days. They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump.”

And then yesterday, in defiance of informed public health standards for anyone infected with this virus, especially someone with as many risk factors as Trump, our contagious commander headed home to the White House. Once again, he put his Secret Service protectors, his Marine One pilots, whatever aides traveled with the president, plus anyone left at the White House to support his pathological lies or simply to wait on him hand and foot, at additional risk.

Once back at the White House, still infectious, Trump removed his mask.

This guy doesn’t convey strength. He conveys stupidity. And as we’ve seen at his public campaign rallies where followers are mostly unmasked and close enough to kiss, his stupidity imperils more than just him.

In a video Trump tweeted from the hospital, he said this: “I learned a lot about COVID… And I get it. And I understand it. And it’s a very interesting thing, and I’m going to be letting you know about it.”

One can only ask, why start now?

Like I said near the beginning, every time we think this guy couldn’t be more incompetent, more arrogant, more selfish, more dangerous, he fools us. Yesterday, he did it again.