On October 2nd President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump announced that they had both tested positive for coronavirus. To be honest, after spending the last six months watching helplessly as over two-hundred-thousand people lost their lives because of a deadly virus and Trump's gross inaction, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of unapologetic schadenfreude. I felt and continue to feel no sympathy for Trump or anyone in his administration for that matter and I know that I'm not alone in that.
In the days since the diagnosis, I've had many people unfriend and block me, call me evil, tell me I'm going to hell, etc. and I really don't know how to express to you how very little I care. This man and his administration have destroyed the livelihood and well-being of hundreds of thousands of people (myself included) within the past six months. People have lost their jobs, homes, friends, family members, and sense of normalcy among many other things because this administration has refused to take action in protecting their own citizens from a deadly respiratory virus. Its obviously very clear that Donald Trump couldn't care less about people like me. In May of this year, Donald Trump retweeted a video from a group called "Cowboys for Trump" in which the speaker stated that "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat". Trump also made a statement recently in regard to the United States' response to the pandemic that they have done well if you "took out the blue states". Regardless of whether he "likes" the blue states a leader needs to step up and take charge and deal with the problem at hand. Trump doesn't care if those who disagree with him live or die, so why am I expected to be sympathetic when he contracts a virus he has vehemently denied the severity of? In the past six months, Donald Trump has taken nearly every single thing from me that I enjoyed and held dear in life. I am unable to attend my sophomore year of college in person because my family and I are considered to be high risk and Trump has greatly politicized the response to the virus. Perhaps if he had taken this virus seriously from the beginning rather than divide the country over something as simple as a mask, maybe I'd be at school living in my sorority house with my sisters. Trump has also taken away one of the things that bring me the most joy in life. Theatre has quite literally died in the year 2020. Broadway will be closed until at least January 3rd, 2021 but it will likely be much longer until live theatre becomes "safe again". That is if the theatre industry can even survive the pandemic. I'm terrified that I will have spent all these years pursuing my dream and studying and training to be apart of the industry one day for it to be destroyed by this one administration.
I also feel absolutely no sympathy for Donald Trump and his administration as they battle coronavirus because actions have consequences. This administration chose to ignore the severity of the virus and heavy politicize the handling of the virus for months on end. Donald Trump is currently reaping the consequences of not wearing a mask until the middle of July and downplaying the severity of the global pandemic while hundred of thousands of people are losing their lives. That man has failed grossly as a leader and deserves to feel the pain and suffering of all those who needlessly died scared and alone in the ICU because they were misled by him. I have no sympathy for Trump because this is well-deserved karma.