Trump sent staffer to buy Superman shirt for planned dramatic reveal while in hospital with Covid

While in hospital with Covid-19 in October 2020, former president Donald Trump was so enamoured of the visual of him emerging from Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre and ripping his dress shirt open to reveal Superman’s iconic logo that he sent a campaign staffer on a shopping trip in search of a Superman t-shirt.

According to a copy of New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s new book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, Mr Trump described the plan to associates while he was recovering from the coronavirus with the aid of not-yet-available monoclonal antibody treatments.

Ms Haberman explains that Mr Trump’s inspiration for the stunt was drawn from his recollection of watching singer James Brown throw his capes while onstage, and from his knowledge of professional wrestling.

“He would be wheeled out of Walter Reed in a chair and, once outdoors, he would dramatically stand up, then open his button-down dress shirt to reveal the Superman logo beneath it, she wrote.

The Times scribe added that Mr Trump was so intent on carrying out the plan that he told his re-election campaign to dispatch staffer Max Miller to a Virginia big box store in hopes of purchasing a shirt depicting the superhero’s S-shaped symbol, which according to DC Comics canon is the crest of Superman’s birth family, the House of El.