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There are 3 possibilities:
1) Trump got coronavirus from Hicks.
2) Trump is lying and doesn’t have coronavirus.
3) Trump intentionally infected himself with coronavirus.
I think logic and Occam’s Razor make clear 1) is the far likeliest scenario. I& #39;ll walk through them.
1) Trump got coronavirus from Hicks.
2) Trump is lying and doesn’t have coronavirus.
3) Trump intentionally infected himself with coronavirus.
I think logic and Occam’s Razor make clear 1) is the far likeliest scenario. I& #39;ll walk through them.
Scenario 2) sounds good. After all, Trump lies constantly. He also just had a humiliating debate. This gives him an out from future debates, and a sympathy vote (literally!) while letting him say, “look, it was nothing, I’m very strong and the virus is weak!” like Bolsanaro did.
I think this sounds seductive, but doesn’t stand up. Yes, Trump had a terrible debate—but getting rid of debates doesn’t give him more chances to change the story. And not getting to do any events? None of that helps Trump, especially the way that Trump loves to campaign.
Even if you believe Trump doesn& #39;t care about the vote, because he plans to make it a coup, he will still want as much legitimacy as possible, and losing by a wide margin will make his court challenges and coup difficult or impossible.
What about the sympathy vote? Are people really likely to vote for Trump because they feel bad for him being sick? It’s much more likely that people aligned with Trump to see coronavirus, or any “flu”, as a weakness you shouldn’t have caught in the first place.
Either way it is not very compatible with his strongman persona. It’s even less in alignment with his coronavirus tactic, which is basically pretending it isn’t so bad, and it could have been worse, and also it is leaving soon. Having the actual President get it is…not great.
Even if after quarantine he looks great, because he is faking, he will still need to quarantine, so it costs him the same. By the time he can really show off “look it was nothing to me!” persona, we will literally be at election day. Not helpful.
Scenario 3) is even less likely. Trump is an old man who is not in amazing health. It would be insane to intentionally infect yourself, even if someone helped you and pretended they could divine a “weak strain” for you, if that were even a thing.
You have all the issues with 2) *PLUS* the chance that you get seriously ill, have issues, and possibly die.
Please also don’t forget Donald Trump is a germophobe who would never do this.
Please also don’t forget Donald Trump is a germophobe who would never do this.
The most likely scenario, by far, is 1). The Atlantic did a piece in August about how there are no coherent protocols at the White House. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/08/white-house-coronavirus-measures/615841/">https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...
It was waiting to bite them, and in fact there have been repeated outbreaks there, and little has improved in response. The fact that campaign events keep accelerating means more and more travel and exposure, until the math lined up and here we are.
In closing, some might note that Trump is such a germophobe—why wasn’t he very concerned he would get Covid?
At the end of the day, people who do a lot of messaging fall prey to a constant delusion—in the end, they always drink their own kool aid.
At the end of the day, people who do a lot of messaging fall prey to a constant delusion—in the end, they always drink their own kool aid.
I think Trump’s circle, and Trump himself, repeated their assertions that the coronavirus was “fine” or that it was going to be fine, or that it was almost leaving, or that it’s not a big deal, so often that it infected how they guarded against it.
I think when Trump was telling Woodward how scary it was, in was early days. He had just heard how scary it was, and wanted to impress Woodward—“my virus is scarier than Obama’s! No, really! It is!”. I think he did mean it, but hadn’t thought it affected or was real to him.
The same messaging he has bombarded us with he has been drinking as well, a kind of bleach and bright light that have flooded him and his White House, blinding them to a threat many of us wake up every single day and boringly defend against.
They did not do that work, the work that so many of us are all doing, and they paid for it.
