The non-military physician at Walter Reed National Medical Center slammed President Donald Trump’s motorcard photo op, which could endanger the lives of Secret Service agents who were with him in his SUV.
“During that completely unnecessary presidential ‘drive-by’, everyone in the vehicle will now have to be isolated for 14 days. They could get sick. They could die. For political theater. Trump ordered their lives to be risked for theater.” There’s madness, ”Dr. James Phillips tweeted.
Phillips is a attending physician at Walter Reed Medical Center for nearly three years and is also a Board Certified Emergency Medicine Physician and Assistant Professor at George and Washington Washington University Hospitals in Washington DC.
“That presidential SUV is not only bulletproof, but hermetically sealed against chemical attack. The risk of COVID19 transmission from the inside is as high as it goes outside of medical procedures. Irresponsibility is surprising. My thoughts are with the Secret Service being forced to play, ”Phillips tweeted.
The White House said in a statement this evening that “appropriate precautions” had been taken for Trump’s motorcar and that the movement had been “made safe by a medical team.”
Speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Sunday evening, Phillips, who did not participate in the president’s care, went on to say that the president’s motorcar was unlikely to be approved by medical professionals without outside political influence.
“It’s by no means a standard practice and I find it hard to believe that without improper performance based on the chain of command, those physicians would have made it clear,” he said of the president’s motorcar.
“When we take care of patients in the emergency department, or I’ve spent thousands of hours in inpatient wards, surgery and medicine and ICUs, we don’t leave patients in the hospital when they are sick, unless they sign against medical advice. He added. “… The idea that this will be cleared without a medical indication is absurd.”
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