Late last night, President Donald Trump tweeted he and his stripper…er, wife…tested positive for COVID-19, after his senior aid Hope Hicks did so earlier yesterday.
I even hate the headline on this one. It reminds me that I’m carrying my mother’s conspiracy theorist gene. I was raised by a woman who didn’t believe that Neil Armstrong and Company had ever walked on the moon.
Ironically, she’d refer to a coronavirus in making her assertion: “If they can’t cure the common cold,” Mother would posit as often as she had an audience, “why should I believe that they could put a man on the moon?”
So I was raised to question things. I’ve made a career of it, in fact. And I’m especially skeptical when information is coming from a non-reputable news source, like the National Enquirers that my grandmother would bring to the house each week. Or, like an elected official who has a very nebulous relationship with facts.
Enter Donald J. Trump.
Let me start by saying that, unlike so many on social media today, I do not take pleasure in Trump’s pain, if in fact he’s sick. Twelve hours after he tweeted of his diagnosis, he and his stripper…er, wife…are tweeting this morning that they’re experiencing “mild symptoms” but are overall feeling fine. Independent of how ignorant he most often appears to be, how racist he is, or how inept he is at his job, I don’t revel in him or anyone battling a potentially fatal virus, even one at which he’s spent several months thumbing his allegedly virus infected droplet-filled nose.
The man regularly holds rallies devoid of social distancing, routinely eschews face coverings, and even mocked his rival, Joe Biden, for wearing masks and adhering to the CDC’s guidelines as recently as during this week’s presidential debate.
That said, Trump is in at least two risk groups — he’s 74 years old, and he’s obese — so if he has the virus, he has a potential fight ahead of him. I wish him well.
I just am not convinced he’s got it.
Read MPC’s full column. He makes a case that we should take everything Donald Trump says with a grain of salt!
Michael P Coleman is a freelance writer who, as a kid, talked to strangers and got punished. Today, he talks to strangers and gets published. Follow his blog, his IG and his Twitter.
