President Donald Trump claimed immunity to COVID-19 and promised—threatened?—to “kiss everyone in that audience” during his Monday night rally in Florida, his first since being diagnosed with COVID-19 earlier this month. As with all Trump rallies, its contents were freewheeling, garish, and only loosely tethered to reality.
But Trump’s outlandish claims on Monday paled in comparison to his most horrifying action: dancing to the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.”
“Dancing” is, of course, a relative term for the 74-year-old Trump. He points to the crowd, shifts his weight between legs, and shimmies side-to-side. He kind of looks like he’s pretending to towel-dry himself after a shower. He claps for himself and ambles down the catwalk. And the audience goes wild.
In a post that has been retweeted over 2,300 times, Andrea Junker shared a video of Trump doing his “jig,” or whatever septuagenarians call it, with a striking caption: “America: 8,038,037 infected, 220,018 dead, 1 dancing to YMCA.”
It’s possible that Trump played “Y.M.C.A.” as a nod to “MAGA YMCA,” the Trump-centric parody of the Village People’s classic that emerged last week. It is, nevertheless, an interesting choice for the Trump administration—which has repeatedly neglected to recognize Pride month—to play a song that has been widely reclaimed as a gay anthem at a rally.
It should also come as no surprise that the Trump administration was apparently not humbled by the outbreak of COVID-19 in the White House. Twitter user @MixAndrist shared footage of CNN’s Anderson Cooper reacting to the news of Trump’s rally, with all hope for humanity draining from his face.
“Watch as Anderson Cooper stares off into the middle distance upon realizing that Trump is using gay anthem ‘YMCA’ to amp up his radically homophobic base at a mask free rally after testing positive for COVID-19 less than 2 weeks ago,” @MixAndrist wrote. “Enjoy Macho Man!”