Trump Told His Own Rally Crowd They're "Collateral Damage"

COLLATERAL, Arizona (The Daily Whatever Press) — Three weeks before the midterms, the president of the United States flew into Arizona, stood in front of a crowd waving “No Tax on Social Security” signs, and told them that if one of them keels over in front of him, his doctors will step over the body.

He wasn’t threatening them. He was complaining about the state of medical care in the U.S. on your behalf. He was gloating.

Here’s how he put it Wednesday, from behind the presidential seal:

“I travel with more doctors than any human being. If people get sick in the audience, they don’t, they leave them alone. You know what they call ’em? Collateral damage.”

Then he found a volunteer in the crowd. “That person right over there, a friend of mine. He looks like shit, actually. He looks like he’s ready to have a heart attack.” That was his friend, roasted on camera, with 267,000 views on one clip by morning.

Then he performed a one-act play, all roles by Donald J. Trump: “I’d say, ‘Please help him.’ ‘No, sir. We can’t leave your side.’ I said, ‘But he’s dying of a heart attack.’ ‘Sir, he’s collateral damage.’ Can you believe it?” He added that they’ve got “like six ambulances” and won’t use one for anybody else.

Six. Fucking. Ambulances. And not one for the guy in the folding chair.

In that little script, he’s the hero. He begged. He pleaded. His hands were tied. Every woman in America has heard some version of this story from a man holding every card in the deck — “I wanted to help, babe, but what could I do?” — and we all know the translation: he’s completely fine with it, and he’d like partial credit for the frowny face.

Those of us who learned the phrase “collateral damage” in 1991, from Pentagon briefers narrating night-vision-green bomb footage on CNN, know exactly what it means. It’s the civilians you kill on the way to the target. In the president’s own metaphor, he’s the target. You, with your Social Security sign and your water bottle going warm in the Arizona sun, are the village.

Seconds before all this, he’d bragged that every time he gets a physical he takes a mental test, “and I’ve aced it.” Then he asked, “Where’s my doctor?” They’re right there, sir, busy not helping anybody.

And the whole thing is bullshit.

Dr. Jonathan Reiner — Dick Cheney’s cardiologist, a man who knows his way around a powerful patient with a dicey heart — posted that the claim is completely untrue and an insult to the doctors, nurses, and PAs of the White House Medical Unit. They would save that man’s life, he wrote, and there’s no shortage of footage of Presidents Bush, Obama, and Biden calling for help when a spectator went down.

So did Trump, as it happens. In March, a woman collapsed at his rally in Kentucky. He stopped, asked if there was a doctor in the house, and Dr. Oz — his own Medicare and Medicaid chief — jumped in to help while the president requested “Ave Maria.” In November 2025, a man fainted in the Oval Office, and Oz did it again.

So he invented a medical team of cold-blooded monsters, slandered the actual human beings who would do CPR on his own chest without blinking, trashed his friend’s face on a livestream, and cast himself as the tragic hero who just couldn’t get anyone to care — for a laugh, at a campaign rally. In the same speech, per MS NOW’s Jen Psaki, he also called for leakers to be shot, thanked Qatar for his new Air Force One, and announced that high oil prices are good, actually.

The collateral damage bit didn’t even headline. That’s how fucked the set list was.

It’s Weekend at Bernie’s with a presidential seal: the party rolls on, the guy in the corner looks terrible, and everybody keeps dancing because the host says so.

I’m raising two daughters. By kindergarten, both of them had mastered the entire playground emergency protocol: when somebody falls down, you go get a grown-up. That was the whole curriculum. The bar was lying on the floor, and this man showed up with a shovel.

In July 2024, Corey Comperatore went to a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and died there shielding his family from a gunman. He was a volunteer firefighter. He had a name. So does the man in Bullhead City who, according to the most powerful person on Earth, looks like shit.

A friend of mine put it in five words on Facebook this morning: We are the collateral damage.

He told us so himself. Can you believe it?

(Yes. Yes, I absolutely can.)

Hi, I’m Dana — and I Write Out Loud

I Write Out Loud is my primary home for cultural memoir, personal essays, and live conversations about the strange, brave process of becoming yourself in midlife. If you like essays with a point of view and apex pulse, you’ll find plenty to read there.

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