How Covid Triggered America’s Downfall During Trump’s Presidency

Picture by Evan Vucci

If we could mark a moment when Trump lost the election, it would certainly be when this pandemic made its first appearance in the US.

Well but what about all the other terrible things that happened during his presidency? Isn’t it at the very least reductionist to blame Trump’s downfall entirely on Covid? Well, Let’s be very clear about this, Covid wasn’t the only factor that played a part here, but it definitely was the drop that spilled the glass.

Let’s take it back to before the pandemic, if we look at the numbers, Trump was doing relatively well in terms of polls, actually, in some polls, Trump’s numbers got better when Covid first started to spread, a lot of people believed the things he was saying about this virus and the way he was going to handle it, this, however, wouldn’t last much because, this crisis, and the many other crises that would eventually intensify or explode as a consequence, became less of a theoretical, speculative and political problem, and more of a concrete and real one.

On the 25th of May, 2020, George Floyd, an African American man of 46 years of age, went to the store to buy some cigarettes, it seemed like a regular day for him, needless to say, completely irrelevant for US history, but it soon turned out to be a tragic day that would trigger the rage, the unconformity, the frustration, and we have to say it, the hatred that had been building up for years in the US. The people were tired of the economic situation, tired of the unemployment rates, tired of the increasing death toll caused by the Coronavirus, and tired of not being able to get proper medical attention. This was disproportionally affecting black people, who, if didn’t die of Covid, were killed by the police for a potential minor crime, as was the case of George Floyd, an African American man who went to the store to buy some cigarettes and paid with was suspected to be a counterfeit 20$ bill, he was murdered after begging for his life for eight minutes straight while a cop pressed his neck in the pavement. The people weren’t going to contain themselves anymore, nobody was going to contain them anymore.

What happens next?
Big protests, a terrible economic situation, more racial violence, more polarization, more unemployment, more rage. The crisis as if someone had put a magnifying glass on it, as Daniel Hamilton, professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University puts it, “Pandemic, recession, systemic racism […]. It’s a combustible brew.”

How did this affect Trump’s plans of reelection?
It all depended on how he decided to handle it, he chose the strategy that had worked for him up to that point: deny, speculate, deflect, evade, but most importantly, polarize. It’s just how Daniel Hamilton said, “Pandemic, recession, systemic racism […]. It’s a combustible brew.” Or rather, how he really said it, “Pandemic, recession, systemic racism — all made worse by Donald Trump. It’s a combustible brew.” Of course, this time his strategy didn’t work that well, because by becoming so polarized he lost a large part of his followers, who had been faithful up until that moment, but who were not going to go to that place with him, not only because it was already far to the right on the spectrum, but because it was no longer a political issue, it was not a matter of debate, it was no longer abstract, speculative and easy to deny in a large echo chamber, because when one of your relatives dies of Covid, when you look out the window and people are protesting, and when you’re afraid of losing your job, it is no longer a matter of opinion, and even if none of this happens to you, it is also now more difficult to reaffirm your own opinions in an echo chamber, or rather, in the echo chamber of Donald Trump, Fox News, which faithfully supported him throughout his presidency, but which is supporting him less and less as Election Day approaches.

A few weeks before Election Day, Trump makes a completely desperate attempt, he gets sick with the same virus that resulted in the dramatic downfall of the country during his presidency, the Coronavirus. Trump almost magically recovers just three days after being diagnosed, it is as if what he had been saying all along was true, it was not as serious as people said. It’s a good try, but it’s not enough.

At first glance it seems like everything is going well for Trump during the start of the elections, he’s leading as the night of November third settles, and soon after, he tweets that he is sure he will win, but, he either forgets one thing or doesn’t want to remember one thing, the mail-in ballots. Mail-in ballots are a voting system chosen by many due to the situation generated by Covid, this means of voting is normally slower to count. People who stayed with Trump, faithful to the idea that the Coronavirus was nothing serious, mostly went to vote in person, but the people who had already realized that the Coronavirus was a serious issue, the people who no longer supported Trump, voted via mail-in ballots, in their majority. As the days went by, Biden began to overtake Trump in key states. On November 7ht, many news networks, Fox News being one of them, projected Biden as the president-elect.

To this day, Trump continues trying to manipulate his base of supporters to try and give himself the presidency. However, it appears that this nothing more than a tantrum from the president in office, and unless something completely unexpected happens, Joe Biden will be the next president.

The people voted against Trump: because he doesn’t take Covid seriously, because he doesn’t take racial tension seriously, and because he doesn’t take the economic crisis seriously.

Biden seems to take these issues a bit more seriously, it seems that, for the sake of everyone, Joe Biden is going to try to calm the waters, and hopefully he will succeed. But this is far from the biggest challenge he is going to face, because we must remember, that even when the waters settle, they will still be very dangerous waters, a combustible brew if you will, a liquid that, with any spark, will ignite again. This is exactly why Biden can no longer return things to where they were in the past, before Trump, because the past is full of a very dark collective unconscious, with a lot of pain, and with many root problems. Biden and all Americans, won’t be able to go back to the past, they are going to have to build the future from scratch.