President Trump on drugs. Wow. I have to admit that I failed to see this one coming. Trump’s political career has been such a wild ride all by itself, it never occurred to me to wonder what would happen if this grandiose narcissist with the bombastic flair were to be filled to the gills with a powerful steroid. Just as I never looked at Usain Bolt, the great Jamaican sprinter, and mused: What would he be like on a rocket sled?
Trump’s treatment for covid-19 has been largely cloaked in secrecy, but among the little we do know is that his doctors basically opened the medicine cabinet and dumped a little of everything into their patient. The treatments have run the gamut from A to Z — literally: antivirals to zinc. They’ve lowered Trump’s temperature and raised his blood-oxygen level, while chemically tweaking him from sinuses to stomach.
Even after the president returned to the White House from the hospital, his docs continued to pump in dexamethasone, a steroid normally given to covid-19 patients struggling for life on a ventilator. Its purpose is to tamp down an overly intense immune reaction known as a cytokine storm but, in this case, it may be ramping up the chaos known as Donald Trump.
Who could have seen this coming? The Mayo Clinic, for one. Among the side effects listed for this powerful drug on the Mayo website are “agitation,” “anxiety,” “irritability,” “mood changes,” “nervousness” and — perhaps most apt — “trouble thinking.” Although we cannot know for sure what role this or other drugs are playing, that list maps the emotional and cognitive roller coaster that America’s leader has been riding since he choppered home from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, his face pale behind a mask of uneven orange makeup. The sight of Trump lumbering up the steps to the South Portico to salute the night sky while swaying slightly was the most operatically ridiculous scene since Looney Tunes rendered Wagner, starring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.
Even by Trumpian standards, the president has been erratic. Shortly after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell warned of an urgent need to re-stimulate the economy, the president abruptly called off further talks on a stimulus package until after the election. When the stock market swooned, he reversed himself, calling for targeted spending, then reversed himself again to endorse a sprawling $2.5 trillion proposal.
As a 74-year-old man convalescing from a life-threatening disease, the president ought to have been resting and recuperating. Instead, he roamed the grounds of the executive mansion, grasping at straws to revive his free-falling campaign. Polls show that the bottom has dropped out of his support among seniors, so Trump stood on the South Lawn and spoke into a camera. “To my favorite people in the world, the seniors,” he intoned. “I’m a senior. I know you don’t know that. Nobody knows that. Maybe you don’t have to tell them. But I’m a senior.”
In another mood, the president revealed by phone to a television host that covid-19 had made him feel “pretty lousy,” but now: “I’m back because I’m a perfect physical specimen and I’m extremely young.”
Young. Old. No stimulus. Huge stimulus. One thing about which the president remained certain was the urgent need for the Justice Department to jail his political opponents — including the Democratic nominee, former vice president Joe Biden, and former president Barack Obama.
