Deus ex machina.
Literally: god from the machine.
An unexpected event saving a seemingly hopeless situation. For the Greeks who coined it, in a theatrical context, a contrived plot twist.
President , by testing positive for — the global plague that he mocked, lied through his teeth to diminish, issued absurdist advice to counteract (ingesting bleach) — has not saved himself from the hopelessness of his re-election chances, as projected by every poll out there. But the republic may have been saved, at least temporarily, from the exhausting madness of his berserk election campaign.
America was still trying to recover from Tuesday’s jaw-dropping debate between Trump and Democratic nominee — essentially a primal scream from the president, every facet of his unfitness for office on full public display — when the country learned both Trump and his wife, Melania, had tested positive and were entering isolation in the White House.
Indeed, the president had ridiculed his rival for following the government’s own protocols for limiting infection, beating that nag again in the debate. “I don’t wear masks like him. Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet from him, and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.’’
Then Trump attended fundraisers in Minneapolis and New Jersey, the latter apparently after his adviser and close confidante, Hope Hicks, had already tested positive for the coronavirus. Hicks was part of the entourage that had travelled to the Cleveland debate with the president, aboard Air Force One. Trump’s adult children and senior aides were also on that flight — none of them wearing masks or physically distancing. If Bloomberg hadn’t broken the news about Hicks on Thursday, would the White House have tried to sit on that information, prevent it from getting out?
The state of the president’s health is not a private issue.
So now Trump is the same boat as 7.31 million Americans who’ve contracted COVID-19, an unknown number likely because they were following their president’s indefensible lead when he could have and should have promoted safety measures. Upwards of 208,000 have died.
It’s unclear when Trump contracted the virus. It usually presents within five to 10 days after exposure. So maybe not Hicks; maybe the rally held at the White House lawn last Saturday, 200 people present for Trump’s announcement of his Supreme Court pick, Amy Coney Barrett. Or the rally he attended that night at Harrisburg International Airport in Middletown, Pa. Either occasion may turn out to be a super-spreader.
Every single person who was in close proximity with Trump needs to self-isolate, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who’s on the Senate judicial committee, was at the White House lawn event, unmasked. Lee revealed Friday that he’d tested positive. That could throw a wrench into advancing Barrett’s nomination from the judicial panel to the full Senate for a confirmation vote. Pshaw, countered McConnell: full speed ahead.
The president is 74 years old and, at 244 pounds, officially obese. Both are factors placing him at high risk for the worst portents of the disease, although the White House said Friday that Trump was experiencing only mild symptoms. “He continues to be, not only in good spirits, but very energetic,’’ White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters.
But, as we now know about COVID-19, symptoms are usually mild in the first few days after infection, even in cases that subsequently rise to the level of requiring ventilation. By late afternoon, there were reports Trump had a fever and was receiving experimental therapies. He was taken by helicopter to the Walter Reed military hospital Friday evening, and tweeted a short video saying he thinks he’s doing well.
Tell me one good reason why anybody should believe anything coming out of this White House, anyway.
For nearly four years, the administration has obfuscated, prevaricated, falsified and outright deceived the country, on matters large and matters picayune. The Washington Post fact-checker blog had tracked 20,000 lies that came out of Trump’s mouth, as of mid-July. Even his supporters concede Trump is a bald-faced liar. An ABC-IPSOS poll last month showed seven in 10 Americans (69 per cent) didn’t trust the president on the pandemic specifically.
He may be the liar-in-chief but that duplicity cascades through his administration. Nobody can take any comfort from their assurances now, especially given the opaque bulletins provided about the president’s condition. They have no history of giving straight answers.
Which leaves the election campaign — the , only a month away — in utter chaos. All of Trump’s scheduled events for the next week have been postponed or will, according to the White House, be conducted virtually.
It Trump’s condition deteriorates, that could trigger the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, his powers transferred to Vice-President Mike Pence, who said Friday that he has tested negative. But of course that doesn’t mean he might not test positive tomorrow or the next day, given the COVID-19 incubation period.
This campaign, from the Trump camp, has been all about sidestepping the pandemic. Earlier this week, he maintained happy days again were “just around the corner,’’ the coronavirus crisis almost laid to rest. Wasn’t true then, certainly isn’t true now, probably won’t be true for months and months to come. The only consolation is that Trump, recovered or convalescing or seriously ailing — as so many victims who’ve “recovered’’ complain about ongoing fatigue and aches and breathing issues — will, fingers crossed, not be occupying the White House for much longer.
The country was already bracing for potential mayhem on Nov. 3, in no small part because Trump has steadily undermined the legitimacy of the election, casting thoroughly discounted imputations against mail-in ballots. He hasn’t explicitly agreed to accept the results; indeed, tacitly invoking an army of brownshirts to stand by. Such is the spectre of violence hanging over the election that the Justice Department is planning to station officials in a command centre at FBI headquarters to co-ordinate a federal response to disturbances that may arise across the country.
Trump has bickered endlessly and publicly with his own health experts, with the scientists, over the seriousness of and treatment for the pandemic. He’s shown reckless and wanton disregard for the lives of Americans. Now here he is, a symbol of his own folly, surrounded by the erosion of truth and facts.
The White House has provided a case study in how not to handle a highly contagious illness in the workplace. They didn’t even inform the Biden camp about Trump’s positive result. Trump has rejected the clear risk of COVID-19 from the start, doubling down on its harmlessness to most people, even as his generic fabrications and sophistries — on everything — reached breakneck speed.
It was patently clear from Trump’s conduct during the debate — the childish insults, the overwrought bullying — that he knows he’s headed for defeat on Nov. 3 and that the balance of his campaign would be scorched-earth bedlam.
There is one way out of this mess. Trump can withdraw. Deus ex machina.
There’s no precedent for it but there was no precedent for a president of such buffoonery and malice either. It would be a gracious retreat.
But what knows Donald Trump about grace and integrity and honour?
Proud Boy that he is.
Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:
