The Double Whammy: Trump and Covid-19

When the pandemic and the flawed personality came to fore in 2020. It complicated matters for everyone. Coronavirus altered the lives of everyone around the world in more than one day. Trump on the other hand has gone for many days claiming the election was rigged. He doesn’t care about the process, he just wants to be declared winner of the 2020 election. Just reading the book 'Too Much and Never Enough' by Mary Trump, you realize that Trump has had enablers all his life whether it’s his father, banks and supporters. Trump has exploited people’s faith in him to stay comfortable and corrupt, and project a false image of winning and success.

Whether or not Trump’s father is here to bail him out, he has found suitable bedfellows in his party, who are willing to go so low to massage his ego with a narrative that what’s real is fiction, and vice versa. Trump wants to overturn the election with the help of his 74 million supporters. In any normal election, this could have been unthinkable, but in 2020, we have Trump, the disinformer-in-chief, who was supposed to lead the nation out of COVID-19 pandemic but also concede defeat in an election he lost. This is a double whammy. The symptoms for which will outlast 2020.

While Trump’s treachery may have served him well in business and propelled him to the political landscape. It has become more clear in the recent days that he means more harm than good to America. No one will remember the pre-COVID economy because the post Covid-19 reality is more painful and has to be blamed on Trump because with his lies, he tried to circumvent scientific facts to fit his own reality. But scientific rules don’t bend, and cannot be coarsed like the Georgia or Michigan Republicans. It’s a slap in the face to many who have lost loved ones that he doesn’t acknowledge Covid-19 sent him home, in order for a competent administration can do what he couldn’t do. His apparent denial adds salt to injury that all-over again we have to deal with Trump’s shenanigans and a surge in deaths.

Trump will only make things worse on his way out. At least the late psychiatrist, Dr. Post who diagnosed his ‘dangerous charisma’, also predicted he wouldn’t concede defeat which he has not. But the repetitive lies Trump tells leave many helpless just like the pandemic. It’s the highs and lows of coronavirus that has left many in despair about how the future will look like as far as their health and economic well-being is concerned. Trump is in the same way being viewed as a problem if not a bad situation that need to go away, and January 20 can’t come sooner.

The way Trump wanted this to play out is to have a judge in the Supreme Court who would vote in his favor, however silly the case would be. That’s why he rushed in Amy Coney Barrett just before elections, not because he was indebted to conservatives. Many have longingly wanted the vaccines to come sooner, but at the same time, you wished everyone wore masks. If the much awaited help will alleviates the situation, it will be a dose of reality when Trump realises that you just can’t win in the Supreme Court without sufficient evidence. On the other hand, without taking the vaccine, in no way will coronavirus be wished away into the future.

Very much unwillingly, Trump and Covid-19 have dominated our psyche in part because of their unpredictability. The good news is that we can get rid of both of them, one of them sooner than the other. Then we can have our lives back if only for a while before the next Trump and pandemic appears. It might not happen in 2020 but it will be good riddance to a double whammy.