Trump, Escaping Wile E. Coyotevirus - VDH

[Geee]

National Review

Media meltdown over Trump’s COVID case is the latest sortie in a four-year effort to destroy his campaign and then presidency.

Once it was announced that President Trump had COVID-19, the media almost immediately talked of all the people in the “Trump orbit” who fell ill from COVID-19 — including many on his staff, U.S. senators, and at least three White House reporters.

The surreal subtext was not that the toxic Trump had been infected by someone else. Apparently reporters, in their Trump-obsessed universe, believed in some mysterious Aristotelian concept of spontaneous generation, by which his self-spawned coronavirus germs had sickened all within his deadly circuit. Or perhaps Trump was guilty of catching the germ from one of his staffers, who in turn would never have been sickened if they had never been close to Trump in the first place. The possibility that the White House “positive” reporters might have been careless at times or might’ve infected others was never entertained.

Within a few hours, the usual camps and suspects weighed in. Former Clinton and Obama staffer Zara Rahim prayed for Trump’s demise and celebrated his infection with a terse “I hope he dies.” The Washington Post hastily took down an official Twitter feed automatically posting an op-ed column expressing a similar hope for a dead president: “Imagine what it will be like to never have to think about Trump again,” on the realization that running such a headline while Trump was sick “rendered it tasteless”— as if it was not tasteless when he was well. Write that after swapping the name “Obama” for “Trump,” and the FBI would have shown up at their doors.

Within hours of news that Trump had COVID-19, the liberal media were off to the funeral games. They gushed about the inevitable cancellation of the upcoming debates, the necessary delay in the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, the likelihood of a soon-to-be acting president Mike Pence, and the possibility/hope of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s stepping up, as third in line for the presidency, to save the ship of state as our new president. No sooner had the president entered the hospital than the ecstatic media enthused that COVID-19 would certainly not disappoint, perhaps the same way they’d hoped that Robert Mueller (doddering as he proved to be) would save them from Trump. Or, as comedian Chris Rock put it: “President Trump’s in the hospital from COVID, and I just want to say my heart goes out to COVID.