With the stunning news last night that Donald Trump has tested positive for the coronavirus, the president is now the most potent exhibit in the case alleging his incompetence, malice, and cruelty in his mishandling of the coronavirus. A man who downplayed the reality of the virus out of concerns it would damage his re-election prospects, and so assured the deaths of more than 200,000 Americans, is now the victim of his own murderous policies and arrogant disregard of the virus’ danger. No one in the United States made it as likely that Donald Trump would eventually get the coronavirus as Donald Trump himself. He literally has only himself to blame.
Not only has his misrule led to unforgivable mass death, he has now compounded the dangers of our moment by getting sick not only after repeatedly flouting recommendations by his own medical advisors around mask wearing, crowd size, and the like, but after months of failing to advocate basic policies that would have limited the spread of covid-19 around the nation. As abhorrent a president as he is, it endangers the entire country for a president to be ill, for the nation to appear weak to foreign adversaries, and to introduce yet more tension around the onrushing election. But if our sense and reality of crisis has been heightened by his illness, never forget that the common thread of our national crisis is always Donald Trump himself.
More than ever, the president is now exposed as an idiot, a conman, and an incompetent. The disease that supposedly isn’t at all serious, and will go away on its own, has now found an easy home in his obese and physically unfit person. This will clearly come as unbelievable news to many of his supporters, who have been led to doubt the gravity and even existence of the coronavirus. I look forward to many on the right twisting this development into a Democratic conspiracy, and to begin to conceive of Trump even more as a Christ-like figure, suffering for our sins, taking on the pains of the world to redeem us all. And if the president survives this experience, I fully expect him to use his own recovery as further evidence that the coronavirus is no worse than the flu, and so implicate himself further in the mass death sweeping America.
It is hard to see how this diagnosis doesn’t further the implosion of Trump’s re-election prospects. After ensuring that millions of Americans have been sickened by the coronavirus, his incompetence has now sickened even him. His illness will garner little sympathy from those who already oppose him, and will confuse and shock many of his supporters. He has gone from would-be strongman to pathetic straw man in one savage blow.