Donald Trump greets those gathered outside Walter Reed Medical Center hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.ALEX EDELMAN / AFP
The entrance to the Walter Reed military hospital looks like the prelude to a Donald Trump rally this Sunday.
The eye of the tiger
plays at full volume
, the Rocky soundtrack, and the fans gathered there refer to the American president as a "hero", a "fighter."
At noon, fifty fans of the Republican had traveled to the Bethesda (Maryland) medical center to show their support for the president, admitted since last Friday due to coronavirus.
About five thirty in the afternoon the president paid a surprise visit to the congregation.
He appeared inside an official vehicle, with a mask, waving.
“I have learned a lot about covid.
I learned it by actually going to school.
This is the real school.
"He said in a video posted on his Twitter account minutes before the appearance.
Some came as pilgrims to leave her bouquets of flowers, others shouted "Four more years!"
and several waving Trump-Pence 2020 badges. Cars passing downtown, an affluent neighborhood on the outskirts of Washington, support the protesters loudly honking their horns.
There are only two African Americans in the Trump group;
one of them is the owner of a United States flag stand.
He thought it could be a good business opportunity.
Larry Hanson, 69, drove two and a half hours from Richmond, Virginia, to accompany Trump, albeit symbolically.
He likes it, he says, because he is someone who works for the common man, who speaks in the language of the people.
For Hanson, the presidential elections on November 3 will define whether the US continues with the capitalist model or becomes socialist.
In Tuesday's debate, Trump told Democratic candidate Joe Biden that his party wants to make him a socialist.
“They are going to dominate you, Joe.
You know it, ”he assured.
That message from the president reached Hanson, who considers that Trump "attacked like a pit bull" and that although the progressive media published that Biden had won the first face-to-face, "Fox News, who tells the truth, said no," he points out. .
Trump has lived through a good part of the pandemic installed in denial: he did not show himself in public with a mask until mid-July, he held massive campaign rallies and, just hours before testing positive, he said at a fundraising event that the end of the pandemic was very close.
When his followers are asked about the president's attitude, they are elusive: "China is responsible for all this," "the media are lying," "they don't wear masks at the protests," "they don't want to scare people." .. Bill Donson, 57, defends that the Republican does not wear a mask because those around him have taken the test before meeting with him.
And why did it test positive then?
"Because we don't know what happened in the debate," he replies, without a mask.
Amid the country music blasting from the speakers and the screams of those who put their bodies out of the car window to support the Trumpists, a voice is heard claiming that the lives of African Americans matter.
It's Madison, 24, holding a sign on the tray across the road in front of the medical center that reads "Why are you worried about the coronavirus now?"
She came with her mother from Gaithersburg (Maryland) to convey the message to the black community that not all whites agree with "white supremacism that supports Trump."
She is shocked that supporters of the US president are now concerned about the pandemic after they have lowered her profile for months.
The death toll in the US is close to 210,000.
It is the first time that Linda, 62, has participated in some kind of Trump event.
Born and raised in the area where the hospital is located, she decided to reach out to support the president who, in her perspective, has been the worst battered in history.
The mother of two soldiers admits that she would like the Republican to have a more presidential attitude.
"If I'm honest, sometimes I wish she didn't say the things she says, but I think she has a good heart."
Next to her is an Asian-American family.
The 40-year-old woman, who prefers not to say the name, defends that Trump only wants law and order for the country.
"We come from China, a communist country, and we want to tell them: it doesn't work," he says, as if establishing such an authoritarian regime were on the table.
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