From Tommy Christopher:
Stop Saying ‘We All Wish President Trump Well.’ A Lot Of Us Don’t — Without Wishing Him Harm
“We all wish the president well” — or some variation on that sentiment — has been a constant refrain in the media since President Donald Trump announced he’d tested positive for Covid-19, but a lot of people, myself included, just do not.
There’s a separate issue involved here, the question of whether it is the place of journalists to “wish” anything while they’re reporting the news, but given the fraught tines in which we live, I’m inclined to extend grace to the humane impulses of even the most hard-boiled members of the fifth estate. If you want to wish Trump well, have at it.
In fact, former Vice President Joe Biden has had at it, repeatedly and emphatically. This, just days after Trump mocked him at a debate for wearing a mask to prevent the spread of infection — an infection that Trump may very well have been carrying onto that debate stage.
But I’m not mad at Joe. I’m not even mad that he really, really means it — unlike, I suspect, many of the media figures who regurgitate the rote mantra before every report on Trump’s condition, his lying doctor, his superspreader joyride around the hospital, or his Ill Douché balcony photo op upon returning to the scene of a raging outbreak that he abetted.
I’m tempted to praise Joe Biden for his decency and his grace, as so many have. I hesitate because to do so would be to imply that those who feel differently lack those qualities, and they deserve a voice.