This morning Twitter flagged yet another Trump tweet for spreading misleading information, with him saying that he had gotten a “complete sign off” from “White House Doctors” and that he is now “immune” to COVID-19 and also “can’t give it” either. Twitter put the offending missive behind a disclaimer, but—as it has done before—left it on the site because it “may be in the public’s interest” for it to remain online. That’s all pretty dumb, but it’s not even the dumbest thing we’ve heard from Trump’s camp this weekend. No, that prize goes to a detail in a New York Times story from Saturday about Trump’s rally on the White House lawn this weekend and his miraculously quick recovery from COVID.
Apparently, when Trump left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center last weekend—following his miraculously quick COVID treatment—he floated an idea that is so absurd, so mind-numbingly stupid, and so insulting to the 214,000 people who have died from the coronavirus in the U.S. that it almost would’ve made more sense for it to have actually happened. 2020 has been such an unmitigated disaster that it feels like a small mercy to discover that the dumbest goddamn thing of all time could’ve happened but didn’t. Here’s how the New York Times describes it:
When he left the hospital, he wanted to appear frail at first when people saw him, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. But underneath his button-down dress shirt, he would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal as a symbol of strength when he ripped open the top layer.
In other words, Trump wanted to do a Willy Wonka out of the hospital, stumbling slightly like a frail old man who had contracted a disease that has killed 214,000 people in this country alone, and then rip open his shirt to reveal a Superman logo before, we assume, leaping a tall building in a single bound. We don’t know what convinced Trump not to go through with this plan—because it can’t possibly be common sense, since that’s not a thing that’s been in play with these people ever—but hopefully everyone at DC Comics is thankful that they didn’t have to figure out how to put out this particular fire.
Also, as everyone who knows anything about Superman has been quick to point out: He’s an immigrant, he fought Nazis, and he’s actually a decent person who would never stand out in front of the Hall Of Justice to brag about beating Darkseid while Darkseid was still slaughtering people with his eye-lasers. Maybe Trump should’ve considered wearing a shirt with the logo of a character who is more like him, like... is there a Bizarro Lex Luthor who is bad at everything and has terrible hair? Because that would be perfect.
