I thought Trump might gain an smidgen of humility from his day of illness…and change his whole outlook…

I can’t think of anything I like about Donald Trump. He’s selfish. He’s greedy. He’s petty. He’s abusive. He’s what I call a-ethical meaning that he doesn’t actually have a clue what ethics are…so how can he be accused of behaving unethically? It’s the only way he knows how to behave.

I hate how he’s undone almost everything Obama did (no matter how beneficial) — just because he personally doesn’t like Obama. I hate how he treats others — almost everyone — except the sycophants that work for him. He even dislikes the supporters who worship him. Or at least he says ugly things about them. But then he says ugly things about nearly everyone.

For me the total failure of his Covid 19 policy was summed up in the tweet he made when he and Melania tested positive: “We’ll get through this together”. That’s what he should have said five months ago. He should have announced that a very serious, even deadly, disease was coming our way (and we know now that he knew its lethal power) and so we should all band together to lessen its impact, to keep as many people safe as possible, to defeat the illness — because that’s what Americans do in times of peril.

His statement would have been an appeal to our better selves. We should all wear masks; we should all social distance; we should all do everything we can to protect ourselves and others — because we’re all part of a community, a single nation under God, and we all need to contribute to its well-being.

But he didn’t say that. Quite the opposite. He pitted one state (and one governor) against another, so that they were vying with one another for essential medications and equipment. He provoked division — the mask-wearers versus those who refused to wear a mask. Despite the warnings of his own medical team, he encouraged his supporters to come to mass rallies in-doors without masks. In other words, he created disunion at the very time we most needed unity.

So of course I want his presidency to end. I will vote against him. And hope a huge majority of my fellow Americans also vote to dislodge Trump from the White House.

And yet when he was reported sick, I didn’t want him to die. Instead, I wanted him to become ill, very ill, so ill that he might lose his grandiosity — he might realize he’s an ordinary, powerless person dependent on other ordinary people — on nurses and doctors and radiologists and hospital orderlies. In other words I had hoped he experience the vulnerability we all experience when we become extremely ill.

Being president didn’t change Donald Trump, I thought, perhaps Covid 19 could. The number of Republicans who’ve recently become sick has already taken the sheen of invincibility away from the White House. You don’t obey the rules, you don’t listen to what the doctors tell you to do — you pay the consequences. Just like the rest of us. Most of those people who sat together in the Rose Garden and tested positive will have mild symptoms but a few will have a heavy-duty (perhaps even fatal) bout of the disease. All of them should now admit they were wrong in the way they behaved and wrong in the way they encouraged other Americans to behave. Very wrong. God knows, I hope they admit it.

Especially Donald Trump. I thought he might finally ‘get it’.

I thought if he could lie in a hospital room, racked by the pains and fears and insecurity of this illness, for several days or even for one day — maybe he could view himself and the world differently.

Maybe he could see how we’re all linked in a common humanity — and how essential it is for us to see that and behave accordingly. The reason we all need to wear masks and social distance is because we care about ourselves and we care about one another. We care about the whole community, the whole country, and, yes, even the whole world. That’s how we need to think and how we need to behave.

My hope faded very quickly. Trump couldn’t possibly admit any weakness or vulnerability. Quite the opposite. He denied he was like the people who become really ill — pumped up on steroids, he declared, “I feel better than I have in 30 years.” I’m surprised he didn’t say “people who get sick with COVID 19 or die are losers”. Like American soldiers who are wounded for die in one of our wars. Now his supporters calling his recovery “the miracle in Maryland” — his cult followers have returned to using biblical terms to describe their cult leader. It’s scarier and scarier.

What might have been isn’t — we possess only one option: go to polls, vote early, rid ourselves of this monster. I’ve done it already.