May 21st 2020

By James Rogers Bush

As a classic conman and narcissist, with a long history of using the media and his connections in the world of both entertainment and political celebrity to self-promote, Donald Trump, with the added help of a disgruntled portion of the American electorate, was able to manipulate his way into the highest and most powerful office in the land. And for almost three years this ‘king of fake’ has been able to fake his way through being President by accusing everyone and everything else of being fake, while convincing his followers that he is the only thing genuine in this world of everything fake.

At heart, conmen like Trump are people who do not believe in anything other than the con. Winning by conning is their only ethic if you can call it that. A conman sees the world and the human beings who occupy it, as being nothing more than a world full of fake people, who believe in fake things and live fake lives. And a conman, in his narcissism, sees himself as being someone smarter than everyone else, since he knows that everything is fake. Thus he feels free to manipulate others’ naivete, gullibility, ignorance, beliefs, greed, lust, fear, anger, and hate, to get them to do whatever he wants them to do and get from them whatever he wants to get from them.

Since his election, Donald Trump has been able to manipulate and wreak havoc on our political system. He has succeeded in exacerbating and playing on the divisions within the body politic. He has ruined our reputation in the world. He has given to the rich, including himself and his family, at the expense of the poor. He has accused everything and everyone he doesn’t like of being fake and proclaimed everything and everyone he likes to be real. To the delight of his followers, he has overturned the government and its institutions in a way that no foreign adversary, even Russia, could. And he has manipulated the Republican Party, State Department, Justice Department, and Supreme Court into being virtual servants of a would-be dictatorship.

But then, several months ago, something unexpected happened. Something unexpected and beyond the abilities of even the most skilled conman and narcissist to control, manipulate, or call fake, appeared. COVID-19 began its inexorable march through our country, infecting and killing us, as it infected and killed people in other countries around the world, and even though Trump tried to call it a Democrat hoax; even though he tried to play it down; and even though he dragged his feet on doing anything about it, eventually he had to admit that the virus was real. And then he was even forced to agree to shut down the economy and sign a stimulus bill to help those people and businesses in need due to the shutdown. The conman had met the coronavirus and the king of fake had finally met his match. COVID-19 was finally an adversary Donald Trump could not call fake or manipulate to serve his interests, even though he has tried.

Since its inception, COVID-19 has infected well over a million Americans and killed over 90,000 of them. And though Trump has attempted to play mind-games with its existence, saying first that it would go away quickly, then proclaiming that an unproven drug would work to defend against it, and finally calling on states to open up because staying home is more deadly than the virus, it continues to infect and kill Americans. And since states are taking Trump’s advice to open up, and some Americans are insisting on going out, hanging out in large groups, and doing so largely unprotected, it is inevitable that the numbers of infected and the numbers of the dead will continue to increase.

And so, Trump’s latest wacky con is to say that somehow testing is to blame for the numbers of infected. ‘If we didn’t test, then the numbers would be smaller, but since we test, the numbers are bigger.’ And meanwhile, some people are choosing to believe that the whole coronavirus fiasco is a conspiracy, cooked up by Dr. Fauci, Bill Gates, and the pharmaceutical industry to make money off the new vaccine that will eventually be developed to fight the virus. And yet some other people are choosing to believe that the virus is no worse than the flu and that shutting down the economy was just an attempt by Democrats to make Trump look bad, win the election, take away our freedoms, and usher in a socialist state. The Twilight Zone theme is now running through my head.

But, whatever people believe, the wonderful economy that Trump hoped would get him reelected is not coming back anytime soon, and COVID-19 is not going away. For the next few months at least, and most likely until we have a viable vaccine, the world we are living in today will continue, and no amount of hurried opening will fully bring back our economy while refusing to practice the necessary precautions will only serve to spread the virus. Testing, staying at home, social distancing, wearing masks, wiping everything down, and washing our hands are all still the best things we can do to protect ourselves and each other, no matter what Trump or anyone else says.

Donald Trump was able to con and fake his way into the White House of the United States, and many were beginning to think that nothing could stop him. Some of us even thought that he could be the one who would destroy our democratic republic and replace it with a dictatorship. Then, along came the coronavirus, and Trump’s inability to handle a true national disaster, in a way that would unite the country, give it practical guidelines, and muster all of its people and resources to manage the virus with the least amount of damage to our economy and the least amount of death to our people, has shown him to be the inept interloper that he truly is. And no matter how he spins it, this conman has met COVID-19, and in it, he has met his match.

Now it’s up to the American People to get rid of the conman and replace him with a real President - one who will finally do the job right and see us through this long night of COVID-19 and the ‘king of fake.’