Donald Trump is once again proving to be a huge messaging headache for members of his party, particularly Senate Republicans facing tougher reelection challenges than they had been expecting. Trump’s triumphalism as he leaves Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is particularly not what some key Republicans were hoping for.
“This is a chance for him, quite frankly, to talk about the human side of this: ‘This is tough, this is hard, we’re gonna get through it,’” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told Politico in an interview published Monday morning. “If he comes out of this thing a little bit humbled and focused on speeding up vaccines and trying to safely reopen the country, then I think he’ll probably be OK.”
“I think he let his guard down, and I think in his desire to try to demonstrate that we are somehow coming out of this and that the danger is not still with us—I think he got out over his skis,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn told the Houston Chronicle, ”and frankly I think it’s a lesson to all of us that we need to exercise self discipline.”
Did Trump hear these timid pleas for him not to be a giant jerk about his own sickness? Ha ha ha, of course he didn’t. What a ridiculous thought.
”Feeling really good,” he tweeted. “Don’t be afraid of Covid.”
How good is he feeling? “I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”
That tweet came roughly an hour before Trump’s doctors strenuously dodged the question of whether he has pneumonia or other lung problems. And it’s really not “a little bit humbled” or having learned the lesson that “we need to exercise self discipline.”
No worries, though. Graham and Cornyn will have fallen in line with Trump’s latest message within a matter of hours, if not sooner.
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