I was on twitter last night when the news hit. It felt like the other shoe dropped. So Trump has Covid. Yep, didn’t see that coming.
I didn’t see a lot of rude tweets but no one was exactly heartbroken over this news either. Rachel Maddow almost went Trumper on us by doing the God Bless and Thoughts and Prayers and scolding her followers to behave. I’m not sure what exactly she expected from us.
There are probably very, very few of us who want Trump and Melania to experience great pain and suffering or death. Death is a major event in anyone’s life. Even the anxiety from that possibility is awful to deal with. Been there, done that. So I wouldn’t wish any of that on any human being.
But here’s the rub, Trump is like my worst enemy and the one person in the US who has caused the most harm since coronavirus hit our shores. The way he has handled this crisis makes him responsible for many thousands of unnecessary deaths. So, I don’t feel sorry for him. And for all I know, he might be one of those people who have a very mild case.
What I’d wish for him is that he’d have the kind of Covid experience that my healthy 27 year old colleague had when she caught it in July. She was sick for over a month. She had a mild fever, body aches and extreme fatigue. I have to give her credit for never missing a day of work. (We work from home). But her description made it sound really miserable. When she wasn’t working, she was sleeping and sleeping didn’t help.
Eventually, she turned the corner and gradually has gotten better even though she’s still not 100%.
That’s the kind of Covid I Hope Trump experiences. Not bad enough to put him in the hospital but not “just a cold” either. I want him to feel what others have felt.
But Trump has some factors working against him. He’s in his 70’s, he’s obese, he’s male. Ok, he’s also incredibly stupid about hydroxychloroquine. I imagine that given his position in the world, this may be the one time when his demands are not met. No doctor in his right mind is going to give Trump a dangerous drug of no value to Covid patients. Count on Trump to have some quacks waiting for this opportunity. Nevertheless, his diagnosis makes his treatment a national security question.
Getting that out of the way, how else to feel about this? Well, I don’t know about all of you but I’m really angry because the Trump contingent may have complicated the election outcome in a year when it was already unrecognizably complicated and potentially dangerous.
We don’t know when Hope Hicks knew she was sick or started shedding virus. We do know that she was present during debate prep for Trump. Chris Christie was there. Also not a fan of his but everyone deserves the opportunity to protect themselves. For the debate preppers, reports are that none of them wore masks in a closed room. Trump makes Hicks sound like an army wench who gets physically molested by security personnel on a daily and nightly basis. Probably not true but it doesn’t sound like anyone at the White House was following CDC recommendations.
What followed that is inexcusable and unforgivable. Trumps entourage took off their masks at the debate site in Cleveland in spite of the venue’s rules. If Trump was already infected when he took the stage, he spent 90 minutes yelling, respirating and expectorating all over a closed space and in the direction of Biden. 90 minutes. Biden has been scrupulously following the rules to protect himself and others but it only takes one person to ruin it for Biden.
Chris Wallace was also likely exposed. I might hate Fox News but Wallace is not at all a bad journalist. He deserved not to be shouted at and breathed upon.
The Trumpers will whine that everyone was tested and they all thought it was ok so you can’t blame Trump.
Yes you can. The test can catch positive people but not all of them, obviously, since it didn’t catch Trump. That’s why we wear the masks. I protect you with my mask, you protect me with your mask. We are all in this together is not just a slogan. It’s a grim statement of the truth.
Let’s be clear: by the time Trump took that stage, he was infected. And he was infected because he is an adult who chose to ignore all of the CDC recommendations. He doesn’t wear a mask. He doesn’t respect social distancing guidelines and he has shown time and again that he doesn’t care if anyone around him gets sick as long as he thinks a test is going to protect him.
Then there was McEneny yesterday, never mentioning that there were active cases that she had been in contact with, probably that day or the day before. She entertained questions from journalists without telling them that they should observe strict public health guidelines. Most journalists wear masks but the room is still small and they had a right to know whether their precautions were enough or whether they should leave.
The behavior of this White House in this pandemic has been beyond despicable. They have put millions of us at risk for not respecting the science and recommendations and now they have possibly affected the campaigns for both candidates. There’s a not too remote possibility that both candidates will be sick. There’s a possibility that either or both will die from this disease.
If that happens, what happens to the election? Does pence run against Harris? Who become the new VP’s? When will they be selected? Will it be necessary for Nancy Pelosi to step in as prescribed by the constitution? Who will keep the proud boys in line?
The possibility that this will turn into a massive disaster is both incomprehensible and likely.
That’s why I’m more angry than sympathetic about Trump and Melania getting Covid. He knew better, he ignored the safety precautions and put the country in jeopardy of government ending chaos. That right there should disqualify him from holding office.
I’m not being opportunistically political about this. This is not the time to be playing red vs blue. This is the time to put our country, government, democracy first and to “insure domestic Tranquility”, “promote the general welfare” and “secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity”. It can’t be done with Trump. He just doesn’t care. There is too much invested in this country’s financial and military industries to leave someone with Trump’s recklessness in office. Republicans should consider this in the next two weeks. We are a month away from the most consequential election in over 100 years. They need to do something.
I’m not mean enough to say nasty things about his Covid status but I’m sure not sorry for him either.
I’m more sorry for the rest of us.
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