Hot take: I feel bad for Donald Trump getting COVID-19
I might be a little too early into this blogging thing to start off with a potentially hot take that’s likely to be at least a little divisive, but I’m just going to stand by the title of this post and repeat it: I feel bad for Donald Trump getting COVID-19.
Aite, hear me out.
I’ll start by acknowledging my privilege and position in that I have no skin in the US political game. I’m a Singaporean living in Australia with no family in the US or any immediate plans to live there. I don’t personally know any of the thousands of people that have been affected by Trump’s policies or rhetoric. And at the time of writing, neither myself nor anyone close to me has tested positive for the novel coronavirus. So, I recognize that it might be a bit rich of me to not hate on Donald Trump when I haven’t been adversely affected by Donald Trump’s America.
But I do intensely dislike the man. I would identify as center-left, and as far as US presidents go, I disliked Bush, love Obama, and in the age of POTUS 45, I find myself nostalgically watching old Dubya interviews because I’ve come to realize that politics aside, George W. Bush is a cool guy and a hell of a human being. In contrast, I feel Donald Trump has always been unfit to be president, and that the main reason why the US hasn’t (yet) imploded due to his actions is because there are enough checks and balances and rational minds out there to counteract his infantile lying and hatemongering.
That is my opinion of Donald J. Trump, which sets the context of my three-stage reaction when I saw the news that he had contracted COVID-19: an involuntary “Whoa.”, followed by a kneejerk snigger, and then the horrified introspective thought of “Did I seriously just laugh at someone getting COVID?”
Over the weekend, this bit of news was the first thing anyone I ran into wanted to talk about. Given my politically liberal circle, most people had the same few reactions:
“Serves him right.”
“Fuck that guy, I hope it kills him.”
“He doesn’t deserve my sympathy.”
That last one really sticks out to me, because it’s a very specific statement that I’ve heard many unrelated people online and offline say.
The weekend was also my chance to watch the pre-recorded video statements of Trump addressing his diagnosis and condition, and while I usually react to the sight of him on a screen with your standard issue “Urgh”, I couldn’t help but watch this one and think “Wow, the guy looks like shit.” As in, he looks sick and legitimately not having a good time. His voice was weaker and lacked that bullish confidence it usually has, and he looked hunched and absolutely sallow. Granted, his paleness is probably due to the lack of a spray tan, but still.
When The Donald doesn’t look too hot on his own Twitter, something’s definitely up. Source: @realDonaldTrump on Twitter.
I remember thinking in that moment that I did not want to be him, and I felt the same when I saw that video of him standing outside the White House after getting discharged on Monday. You can see him physically and laboriously breathing, and it’s obvious that he hasn’t fully shaken off the virus. It was a big ‘oof’ moment.
I honestly and genuinely feel bad for Trump, this man that I simultaneously detest more than my primary school bully (what up, Mitchell?). It’s such a dissonant thought in my head that I question if I truly do feel bad for him, or if I’m just thinking that because I feel like I should err on the side of being too nice. The more I think about it, though, the more I feel like I can’t bring myself to wish anything this bad onto anyone, no matter how disagreeable I find that person. And yet I do feel that certain level of schadenfreude that comes with seeing someone like Trump having his bill come due.
Perhaps this dual perspective stems from the difference, and subsequent conflict, between empathy and sympathy, which is something I think about a lot in my research on social skills in older adults. Empathy refers to our ability to recognize what someone else is thinking or feeling, and to feel their emotional state within ourselves. That’s different from sympathy, which is the act of feeling sorry for someone who is in a worse off position from oneself.
Sympathy vs. empathy. Source: Grammarly.
One thing these definitions indicate is that while empathy is more of a trait, a quality of our baseline personality that is only somewhat influenced by external factors, sympathy is largely a conscious and deliberate decision and thought. Also, while these two things seem closely related (and they usually are) they’re just always agreeable.
This might be one of those rare situations where empathy and sympathy are not in agreement, at least for me. I feel empathy for Donald Trump. I recognize that he’s going through a rough time, and that he may even be life-threateningly sick. It is awfully debilitating in every sense of the word when something as basic and automatic as breathing becomes so labored and intensive that you have to involve your whole body in the process.
I think about the times I have a stuffed nose and I can’t breathe properly, or when I’ve thrown out my back and I can’t walk or stand up straight, or at all. In those moments, I thought about how much I miss being able to breathe normally or stand up straight without pain, and I thought about how I was never grateful for the ability to do all that until I lost it. I imagine that Trump is currently going through an experience that’s at least ten times worse than that.
And yet, do I truly feel sorry for the guy? A little maybe, but a part of me is still like “Yeah he kind of had it coming.” His actions since his discharge have not helped soften his image in my eyes either. From exposing his virus to Secret Service while going on his little Hunger Games waving lap around the hospital, to whipping off his mask when back in the White House while still infected, to effectively instilling false confidence in his fanbase by telling them the virus is no biggie. Which ignores the fact that his fanbase doesn’t have access to some key aspects of the level of care he received, such as being in the best hospital in the world, having access to every experimental drug in the world and their mums, and his own personal fucking helivac. So yeah, there’s some level of feeling like this is payback, at least on a primal, id level.
Also, I don’t kid myself by thinking that this is karma or providence at play. That’s perhaps another reason why I can’t fully enjoy the schadenfreude. This isn’t the virus or God trying to tie up the loose ends of this dogshit year. COVID-19 doesn’t care about your sense of justice. It just is. A chaotic neutral force of nature. Enabled by the decisions of stupid humans, sure, but chaotic neutral, nonetheless.
So yeah, when I say I feel bad for Donald Trump, I do truly mean that I feel bad for him. I don’t feel fully sorry for him, maybe just a little. Donald Trump doesn’t deserve my sympathy, but he does have my empathy.
Did I make a valid point, or have I been smoking some weird shit and should just shut up? Let me know in the comments below.
