The president of the United States officially has COVID-19. The man who was berating Biden for wearing a mask has caught the coronavirus.
My daughter had woken me up in the middle of the night, so while I was taking her back to her room, I did what every addict does: check my phone. To my surprise, Twitter was going absolutely bonkers. There were tweets from people on the left acting like kids on Christmas, people on the right furious seeing those reactions, and then everything in between.
Personally, I completely believe he got what was coming. His handling of the pandemic has been lackluster at best. His insatiable need to please the stock market has led to 205,000+ deaths in the United States. The constant downplaying and misinformation of COVID-19 by the Trump administration has been revolting. It is quite fitting for a man who cares so little about the health of EVERYONE to then have to deal with the disease firsthand.
Make no mistakes, I wish no harm to the president. As hard as it may be sometimes, I am a compassionate person. I truly hope that he and the first lady recover well and then actually put in work to finally put in place policies to adequately fight the virus.
In March, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had a pretty harsh bout of COVID-19. Johnson was hospitalized and had to spend time in an intensive care unit. Upon being released, it seemed that Johnson then took the coronavirus more seriously. He admitted that the government did not fully understand the virus and did not fully comprehend how easily transmitted it was.
I really do hope that Trump has a similar realization. Here in South Carolina, it does seem that most people are taking the threat of the virus seriously now, but there is still a large portion of the population that just does not seem to care. And the people that walk around without masks and not adhering to social distancing guidelines, they appear “proud”. Almost as if they are actively attempting to spread the virus to as many people as possible. The Trump base needs a serious change in mindset, and I pray that this will lead to that.
Now what impact does this have in the political realm? Well, no one is quite sure yet. It just depends on how long it takes Trump to recover. That said, what SHOULD happen is anyone that Trump and Melania have come in contact with within the past few days need to be quarantined and tested constantly.
This could delay the proceedings for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barret, much to the Democrats delight. Also, could this impact the upcoming debates? The first VP debate is scheduled for next week, October 7th and the next presidential debate is scheduled for October 15th. Will either of these be cancelled or moved to virtual debates? We will just have to wait and see.
One thing I know for certain is that this will not do anything to dwell the social and political tensions. The right will likely view this as a time to unify and stand stronger than ever against the ‘libs’. Given the Proud Boys reaction to Trumps “Stand back and stand by” statement, things will not be settling down any time soon.
Stay safe everyone! As Dr. MarkAlain Dery and Doc Griggs from the NoiseFilter podcast always say, “mask up, COVID down!”
