Today’s big news is that Donald Trump has COVID-19. “Out of an abundance of caution,” he has been transported to Walter Reed. I take no joy in this news. I may dislike Trump, but I don’t wish him any kind of physical harm, least of all death.
What I want is justice. I want Trump to get his ass handed to him in November. I want him to go to jail, where he belongs. I want America’s systems and collective morality to finally prove themselves by removing Trump from office and punishing him for his crimes.
But, if he should die…
from a disease he initially called a “hoax,” and which he later referred to as the “China virus,” knowing that he was endangering Asian Americans with that rhetoric…
after playing down the severity of the pandemic and deliberately slowing down testing efforts, allowing the virus to spread virtually unchecked…
after saying “it is what it is” when his mismanagement of the pandemic resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths…
after recommending unproven and dangerous cures…
after recklessly refusing to wear a mask and to social-distance, and after encouraging others to behave the same way…
after holding rallies and other large gatherings, knowing that they could become super-spreader events, endangering not only his own life but all the lives around him…
then oh-fucking-well. Poetic justice is a sort of justice, too.