By It is easy in the time of outlandish conspiracy theories to believe that this whole thing might be completely fabricated.
As the news of Donald Trump testing positive for COVID broke, there was shock, horror, fights about morality, and generally some great memes. There are some who are calling this a “deception” and that this whole thing is “just an excuse for him to not show up for the next debate!”
Well, while Trump’s debate performance was unbelievably bad, there are many other factors that would indicate that this was pretty unplanned, unexpected, and a pretty big blow for the president and his thus far failing re-election campaign.
His supporters LOVED his first debate performance.
If you take a dip into conservative Twitter and message boards, it’s clear his base thought he KILLED at the first debate, especially the crypto nazi proud boys.
They loved his “warrior” bullshit posturing and bravado. Trump loves his bullshit warrior posturing and ego so much he can’t stand not being the center of attention for more than 5 mins.
Even if many rational folks could see that it was a chaotic mess, it doesn’t matter — he has always been at home in the chaos. The constant bombardment of the American people with conspiracies and newsworthy nonsense is the reason why we have him in office in the first place.
He’s bailed on debates before.
This we know as a fact and have seen him do previously with great pride, as he is prone to with the destruction of American institutions.
In the lead up to the 2016 debates, he bailed to make a point about who had sexually assaulted more women, himself, or Bill Clinton. Skipping a debate does not bother him or his base in the slightest.
They encourage it as they see the entire system as “rigged” and “corrupt”. His participation in the first debate at all, in any capacity, was genuinely surprising, to begin with.
This is a massive embarrassment, even by his standards.
After months and months of claiming that it was a “hoax”, that masks “don’t work”, and the non-stop Fox News telethons about how the virus was just going to “go away”, he finally caught the virus for himself.
The consistent and petulant denial of basic scientific facts has a price. This is a huge blow for him, especially with his moderate supporters who have cautiously taken him at his word, until now.
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Internationally it’s hitting Europe and certainly will be making headlines across the globe, and guess what? The whole world is laughing at Trump.
Even if he does somehow recover from the virus, the most we will have to contend with is him saying “it’s not that bad” — quite an ineffective way to disprove COVID if you ask me.
The economy is in for a rough few days.
The rumors of Trump having COVID have been swirling all day on twitter after Hope Hicks, a close Trump advisor, tested positive.
Trump’s biggest talking point for four years and vague last leg to stand on has been “The Economy”. It took a pretty big dip as the rumors became more concrete, even before it was officially coming from Trump’s Twitter.
Cryptocurrencies have noticeably dipped, and surely the effects of this will be ringing out for the next few weeks. This would (if this is a hoax) be the biggest self-inflicted crisis of confidence the world had ever seen.
So after all of this, all of the Covid hoax tweeting, anti-mask rhetoric, and vile commentary, we have come full circle. It’s time to glue ourselves to Trump’s Twitter feed once more, as we watch a twisted version of the Black Mirror play out before our eyes.
The leader of the free world will be forced to wage war on his past self to save the only crumbs of a legacy he has left. For two weeks isolated and unable to comprehend that he has now (by his own doing or not) backed himself into an inescapable corner.
