A backlash ensued after Donald Trump decided to do a drive-by to wave at supporters outside of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where the president is currently hospitalized after testing positive for COVID-19. Dr. James Phillips, an attending physician at Walter Reed, tweeted that the “Presidential SUV is not only bulletproof but hermetically sealed against chemical attack. The risk of COVID19 transmission inside is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures. The irresponsibility is astounding. My thoughts are with the Secret Service forced to play.”
Well, current and former Secret Service agents aren’t too pleased either by Trump’s display of arrogance, according to the Washington Post.
“He’s not even pretending to care now,” an agent who requested anonymity told the news outlet.
“Where are the adults?” a former Secret Service member said.
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“I mean, I wouldn’t want to be around them,” an agent told CNN, expressing a view that multiple people at the Secret Service also voiced following Trump’s drive-by photo-op on Sunday. “The frustration with how we’re treated when it comes to decisions on this illness goes back before this though. We’re not disposable.”
Another veteran Secret Service agent weighed in to say that, “You can’t say no.”
Secret Service agents are authorized to decline requests that would place the president at risk, but not those that would put themselves at risk, so they were forced to go along with the spectacle.
A third agent told CNN, “It was simply reckless.”
And now, the Secret Service agents will likely have to quarantine for fourteen days after being exposed to our super-spreader president, who took the opportunity to fill his massive narcissistic ego.
Yale Institute for Global Health director Saad B. Omer weighed in on Sunday.
This is an individual with an active infection in close proximity with two other individuals, in a vehicle with closed windows, performing an optional task (masks help, but they are not an impenetrable force field). https://t.co/ktatDxwlDF
— Saad B. Omer (@SaadOmer3) October 4, 2020
And even worse, many of the Trump supporters lined up down the street that the president greeted were not wearing protective face masks. Trump refused to wear one for months and has rarely been seen donning a mask in public.
Featured image via screen capture
