As the superman of divisive politics, Donald Trump is faster than a seething bullet point. He emits more steam than a powerful locomotive, and is able to leap over truth, justice and science in a single bound.
The good news? COVID-19 may well be his kryptonite. The man who wormed his way into the White House on the premise that “I alone” can solve America’s problems, has choked badly and publicly at the pandemic’s every turn.
Up until now, the singular distinction of this misbegotten 45th presidency has been Trump’s Houdini-like escape work in separating himself from the shackles of his many vile, dastardly deeds. He grabbed pussies, caged children, praised neo-Nazis, paid hush money, sought election interference, told endless lies. With each repugnant move, we waited for him to fall, as did mere mortals before him for acts far more benign. Yet, he not only carried on, he became more brazen in his odiousness.
Then came the novel coronavirus, radically and permanently altering the terrain and architecture of our lives. Everything changed. The rhythms of our days. The sleep quality of our nights. Our thoughts, emotions, plans, uncertainties. Sometime between early and late March, life was scrambled, turned on its head and, for far too many people, ended.
The uniqueness of this fragile and perplexing moment is that we are all experiencing the adversity together in, as the cliché goes, real time. To be sure, our pain levels vary depending on circumstance. Yet we share the agonizing sense of loss, of grief, whether over a COVID death, job loss, separation from those we love, decimated retirement accounts or the inability to envision better days ahead.
Against that backdrop, Donald Trump trotted out his old theatrical, make-it-up-as-you-go routine designed to cast himself in the best possible light. The virus, he said, was no big deal and would soon disappear. As infections increased exponentially, he changed character and became our “war-time president,” pledging to eradicate the enemy. As the death rate surpassed 1,000 a day and the economy began to tank, he waved the white flag and said it was time for the country to get back to business.
There have been dozens of role changes since then. One day he was the all-powerful Oz who would tell the governors what to do. The next day, it was all up to the governors, with Trump blasting them on Twitter if he didn’t like what they did. He even managed to encourage and embrace protesters fighting social distancing guidelines issued by his own administration. Then came his death-defying Mr. Science act with Clorox Bleach, and pill-popping an anti-malarial drug the FDA says can result in death.
The fact that The Donald was acting erratically and doing dumb stuff wasn’t new. His schtick hasn’t changed in years. What changed was us, his audience. Most of us had acquired a pre-COVID immunity to his verbal regurgitations. Sure, he told us Mexico would pay for the wall and that his call to the Ukrainian president was perfect. We might roll our eyes and create a meme, but we didn’t lose sleep over it.
We are now in a whole new ballgame, the worst crisis in a century. We’re holed up at home while this plague ravages the country. For the first time in more than three years, many of us looked at this president through the lens of neither the resistance nor MAGA. We simply wanted him to lead us out of this mess. Instead, he failed miserably, day in and day out, on national television, where his ratings were high but his leadership nonexistent.
As the president performed in his daily televised briefings, these were the stats weighing on his audience: COVID deaths, nearly 100,000; infections, 1.6 million; jobs lost, 38.6 million; families with young children that don’t have enough to eat, 40 percent; increase in cases of serious mental illness since start of pandemic, 300 percent.
But hark, comes now President Donald John Trump to address the American people on the crisis that has paralyzed our lives. He looks directly into the Klieg lights and pauses a bit for effect before uttering his momentous declaration: “We have met the moment, and we prevailed.”
PREVAILED! Really? Never in the history of the English language has a word been so tortured, so drained of meaning. Our country is overcome with massive deaths, infections, unemployment and hunger. And this guy takes a victory lap. Sure, Trump and truth have had a difficult relationship. He said Barack Obama’s birth certificate was a fraud, that Meryl Streep is over-rated and that his IQ is one of the highest. We’ve grown accustomed to his lies. But this is different.
We are all feeling the pain of this pandemic. Trump’s claim that he has “prevailed” over it, is a profane rejection of our experience. So is his campaign’s rant about the virus being a political ploy to make him look bad. This president, based on recent polling (here, here and here), has made himself look bad. About 75 percent of us remain vigilant about social distancing and hold tight to our anxiety over falling victim to this disease. Add to that the fact that Trump’s approval ratings have reached new lows and that Joe Biden is out-polling him. There is every reason to believe that most Americans know full well that the only thing this president has prevailed over is his total diminishment and failure as a leader.
It would be foolish, of course, to count Trump out for reelection. We know from 2016 that he is a master of grievance politics, adroit at igniting the passions of those intent on clinging to the unsung glory of white male privilege.
Still, his cataclysm in dealing with this pandemic leaves us with hope. Some of his softer votes four years ago came from folks who were fed up with both political parties and took a chance on Trump because of his aura of a rich business leader; a guy who could get things done. That illusion has now been laid bare. While tens of thousands died, while millions lost their jobs, while families went hungry, Donald Trump worked desperately to protect only himself. The I-alone-can-fix-it guy completely blew it.
In order to turn the corner on our dual disaster, we need two things in 2021: a vaccine and a new president.