Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and four years in office contained so much daily weirdness, wackiness, and horror that the human brain couldn’t comprehend it all. As Trump gets close to the White House again, “That Happened” brings you the surreal moments you may have forgotten — or blocked from your memory.
Donald Trump did a lot of very dumb things when he was president, from threatening nuclear war in a tweet to trying to alter a hurricane’s path with a Sharpie. But there is one moment I think about more than any other, partially because Taylor Swift wrote a song about it: the time he stared directly at a partial solar eclipse.
I know what you’re probably thinking: I missed the Taylor Swift song about Trump risking permanent retinal damage. I’ll admit this theory is a bit unhinged, and not particularly popular among Swifties. Some days, I’m not even sure I believe it. But every time I listen to the chorus of “Anti-Hero” I can’t help but picture Trump gleefully pointing up at the sun without protective eyewear during the solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. These are the key lyrics:
I’ll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror
It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero
There’s plenty of other evidence that the former president could be an inspiration for the lead single off the 2022 album Midnights, but I’ll spare you. Basically, this is a song about everyone agreeing that the singer — who disguises their “covert narcissism” as “altruism” like a politician — is highly problematic. How many widely reviled narcissists are famous for staring directly at the sun? Just Donald J. Trump.
Even if the moment wasn’t immortalized by one of the foremost musicians of our day, it’s still iconically idiotic. And with Trump attempting a White House comeback and a total solar eclipse set to plunge parts of the United States into daytime darkness on Monday, April 8, it’s important to revisit this cautionary tale.
There’s basically one rule when it come to a solar eclipse: Don’t stare at it with the naked eye unless you’re in the path of totality. Even then, it’s only safe to ditch the eye protection for a few minutes when the moon fully blocks out the sun. Space.com explained what Trump did wrong hours after the 2017 eclipse:
Staring directly at the sun, without the powerful ultraviolet protection afforded by eclipse glasses, can cause solar retinopathy, a condition that can lead to vision problems or even blindness. On normal days, people get eye pain when they look directly at the sun, so they don’t stare very long. However, during an eclipse, you won’t necessarily experience pain, but you can still get serious eye damage. (You can safely look at the sun with the naked eye during the brief period of total eclipse. But Washington, D.C., was outside the path of totality for today’s eclipse; observers there saw only a partial eclipse.)
Trump should have known not to look at the partial eclipse without viewing glasses, for several reasons. First, even kids can grasp this concept. Trump watched the eclipse with his son Barron, who was 11 at the time and wore eye protection anytime he looked up. Trump had just turned 71.
Second, Trump was president of the United States. He didn’t just notice the sky getting dark, amble out to his front lawn, and look up at the sun. He was participating in a planned eclipse-viewing event on the Truman Balcony of the White House. He was handed eclipse glasses and almost certainly given instructions on how to use them, maybe even by a NASA scientist. Trump’s own daughter had issued a warning on Twitter, his favorite website:
Excited for #Eclipse2017? Remember to wear your glasses 👓 #NASA #STEM pic.twitter.com/FzujQai4G3
Third, a White House aide actually shouted “Don’t look!” the first time Trump glanced up at the eclipse without glasses.
While Trump eventually donned the goofy-looking glasses, he didn’t keep them on. By MSNBC’s tally, he took six unprotected peeks at the sun during the event.
Each of Trump’s glances were brief. But as Louis Tomososki and Roger Duvall — two friends who hurt their eyes during a 1963 eclipse — told the Washington Post back in 2017, it doesn’t take much to do lasting damage:
Both estimate they had glanced up for about 20 seconds or so — each using a different eye. Immediately afterward, Tomososki’s right eye and Duvall’s left eye bothered them slightly.
“We had looked down at the ground and you’re still looking at part of the eclipse like it’s imprinted in your eye,” Duvall said.
It was only through separate eye exams later that both men learned they had permanently damaged their retinas. For Tomososki, his “good eye” compensates for his “bad” one when both are open. When his left eye is closed, however, he sees a “scrambled, whitish spot” through his right eye.
Duvall explained, “At that time, we thought we were invincible, as most teenagers do.” Though Trump was far from a teen and definitely should’ve known better, he too may have ditched the glasses because he believed even the sun couldn’t touch him.
And hey, Trump doesn’t appear to be blind. Maybe he is invincible. Perhaps he got lucky. Or … what if he has been secretly seeing a spot in his vision for the past six years? How would we know? Did he burn his retinas, then omit this fact from his comically dubious medical reports? Do we have any hard evidence on the state of Trump’s eyesight?
Forget about “rooting” for the anti-hero; just trying to make sense of Trump’s ridiculous antics is exhausting.
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