Why the End of Trump Is Sadly, Never the Actual End of Trump

On March 13th, The Atlantic ran an adorably optimistic article by Peter Wehner with the hopeful, optimistic headline, “The Trump Presidency Is Over.” It was shared widely for a very simple reason: people like myself DESPERATELY want to believe that Trump’s reign of terror is drawing mercifully to a close and it’s only a matter of time until he’s violently ejected from office. 

Trump haters want so desperately to believe that clowntime is nearly over, as far as the presidency is concerned, that they’ve allowed themselves to be lulled into a fake sense of optimism over and over again as one potentially presidency-ending crisis after another resulted in roughly zero political damage to the Teflon Don in the White House. 

This delusional belief that it is DEFINITELY all over Trump this time pre-dates his presidency. It originated in his presidential campaign, when a similarly never-ending series of disasters, most notably the Access Hollywood “Grab ‘em by the pussy” leak, similarly inspired pundits to confidently assert that there was NO WAY he could possibly get elected after his latest seemingly unforgivable yet instantly forgotten or forgiven gaffe. 

The logic of the Atlantic article is that this crisis is different and more serious, damaging and fatal to Trump’s presidency than previous fuck-ups because the stakes have grown so astronomically, impossibly, terrifyingly high.

This is a matter of life and death; the lives of millions, even tens of millions hang in the balance. This isn’t just a tough issue we’re facing; it genuinely feels like a possible apocalypse is at hand. 

Surely, an extinction-level event will rouse Trump’s followers out of their delusional belief in his God-like abilities, right? 

I wish I could share Wehner’s optimism. I very much want to believe that this is a huge turning point in his presidency, and that Trump’s shameful handling of the Coronavirus will make re-election unlikely, if not downright impossible. 

But I do not believe that. Not at all. Besides, the Trump cult is so deeply invested in the fiction of Trump as a heroic leader that I suspect not even millions of easily preventable deaths due to the Coronavirus could change that. 

Instead of holding Trump accountable, his followers will lash out in rage at Trump’s opponents for “politicizing” a tragedy. Trump has socialized his base to believe what he says no matter how transparently false and self-serving. So if people start dying en masse the brainwashing will continue and Trump’s supporters will hold Barack Obama responsible for any deaths because Trump, by his own account, is doing an amazing job, and has such incredible instincts when it comes to medicine that he’s pretty much a doctor already, and consequently UNUSUALLY qualified to handle this manner of crisis. 

The incumbent has enjoyed a massive inherent advantage over the challenger in American presidential politics through the years, even when the incumbent is as staggeringly, spectacularly inept as Trump. 

I fear that this innate impulse to stick with what you have, leadership-wise, no matter how terrible it might be will be even stronger in a crisis. You shouldn’t change ships halfway through a voyage, the thinking goes. This holds doubly true in a crisis like war or a recession/depression and there are a lot of Trump super-fans who genuinely believe that Trump is getting amazing on-the-job experience dealing with the Coronavirus FIRSTHAND that Biden won’t have. 

I hope I’m wrong and that Trump will either resign or be soundly voted out of office by a wised-up public but Biden’s emergence as the clear-cut front-runner for the Democratic nomination has me feeling even more pessimistic than usual. Someone like Elizabeth Warren would inspire confidence in a crisis; Joe just seems lost and confused and unable to handle the demands of the hardest, most impossible job in the world under ordinary circumstances, let alone something like the Corona apocalypse. 

I don’t allow myself to believe in headlines and sentiments like “The Trump Presidency is Over” because if I genuinely held onto that conviction then it would never stop breaking my heart and making me angry that the end of Trump is NEVER the end of Trump. Motherfucker is more resilient than most slasher movie villains and about as moral. 

The subtitle of the Atlantic article promising doom for Trump reads, “It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain.” 

Here’s the thing: Americans have seen the con man behind the curtain over and over again. They’ve seen that he’s a con man and that his “power” is a narcissistic hoax. They know Trump. They see Trump and they either don’t care, or they like that he’s a con man and a pathological liar. 

Three years of disastrous mismanagement haven’t changed that. I don’t think the preventable death of thousands, or tens of thousands, or even millions, will change that either. 

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