Everybody Loves Raymond creator highlights the people who stand behind Trump, literally and awkwardly
As President Trump riffed last Thursday on whether it would work to inject disinfectants into COVID-19 patients, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, was off to the side, "sitting silently and visibly straining to control her facial expressions," The Washington Post noted. Birx, who frequently stands behind Trump at the coronavirus briefings and has stood behind him in subsequent TV interviews, embodies the competing demands many Trump administration officials face between serving the U.S. and serving a president who demands unflinching public support.
Phil Rosenthal, the creator and writer of Everybody Loves Raymond and his own food travel show, Somebody Feed Phil, captured the dual meaning of standing behind someone in a short video for The Atlantic. Birx appears more than once, along with some people standing physically behind Trump without doing so politically, like the queen of England.
"Donald Trump loves attention, and people can't help but give it to him. It's been this way for a generation," Rosenthal explains at The Atlantic. "In the three years since he took office, it can sometimes seem impossible to look away. But I've always found that paying attention to the people around Trump is far more revealing than watching the man himself."
"Sometimes you just need to say the president's wrong," a former Trump administration official told the Post after the bleach episode, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "I understand picking your spots, but sometimes you're doing the president a favor by saving him from himself."
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