Trump versus the Pandemic
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
Donald Trump cannot get over the fact that the corona virus took away the best economy and unemployment rate ever, and therefore he is desperately running against the COVID pandemic. If the president had the ability to listen to experts like Dr. Fauci, who warned the Congress that there is a ‘disturbing surge’ going on and strongly advocated wearing masks, social distancing, more testing and tracking, he would realize that he’s only strengthening his viral opponent. Instead, Trump only hears voices in his head telling him that the virus will ‘fade away.’ So he doesn’t wear a mask, setting a terrible example, and dragged 6,200 of his dumbest deplorables into a Tulsa arena after six members of his advance team had already contracted the virus there, while two members of his campaign staff got infected during the event. The ‘highlight’ of Trump’s rambling speech was his mentioning that he had told ‘his people’ to bring down the testing, a blunder his press secretary tried to clean up by suggesting that it had been a tongue-in-cheek remark, until the president threw her under the bus and told the press that he was not kidding.
After a midnight return to the White House, looking like a golfer who had just badly missed the cut in a major and wondering why his other 62,800 expected fans had betrayed him, Trump gave himself a rematch in Phoenix, Arizona, where the pandemic is surging even more than in Tulsa. This time the location was a closed mega-church and his audience consisted of 3,000 students, not likely to die from COVID-19 but perfectly capable of bringing the virus home and killing grandma. Before the rally the president visited ‘The Wall,’ of which by now 216 miles have replaced already existing barriers and a total of 4 new miles have been constructed. Trump claimed that the wall helps keeping the virus out of the US, although based on the number of cases in each country it is more likely that it keeps the virus out of Mexico. With a second large ‘superspreader’ event in four days the president gave the pandemic a serious boost, of which the results will be visible in two or three weeks. And as Dr. Fauci explained that the first wave is still out of control, non-scientists Mike Pence and Larry Kudlow proclaimed that there won’t be a second wave.
Other than horsing around the country attacking the pandemic like Don Quijote once attacked windmills and with similar results, Trump found time to manipulate the legal system by trying to replace the US Attorney in charge of investigating Rudi Giuliani and various Trump ventures in New York City with a completely unqualified stooge. The attempt largely failed after AG Barr made a total ass of himself, and in testimony to Congress it was revealed that undue pressure was put on DoJ prosecutors to give Roger Stone a pass, bringing the US closer to banana republic status.
While the president is tasting the carpet in the Oval Office, losing his battle with the ‘invisible enemy,’ his real opponent, Joe Biden, is slowly making himself more visible, but in such a way that Trump cannot touch him. Biden’s campaign offers a reminder of Mohamed Ali’s ‘rope-a-dope,’ when George Foreman punched himself out of breath until Ali knocked him down, with the difference that Foreman landed some serious body blows while Trump is only swinging in the air.
And after John Bolton was allowed to publish a book picturing Trump as a lazy, self-centered, ignorant buffoon, the next title, ‘Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Produced the World’s Most Dangerous Man,’ is ready to roll off the presses. The author, Mary Trump, is being sued by her uncle, Trump’s brother Robert, because there is an NDA, so it’s unclear if the book will see the light of day.
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