Sick Puppy

This is how fast the news cycle moves these days.

Remember when RBG died, a year ago? Since then we’ve had the beginning of the Amy Coney Barrett drama, the New York Times’ bombshell revelation of Trump’s decades of tax fraud, the pro wrestling spectacle that was the debate debacle (or DebatcleTM), the Proud Boys gearing up for civil war, and most recently, the revelation of Trump’s COVID diagnosis quickly followed by the Nixonian spectacle of Marine One lifting off the White House lawn to medevac him to Walter Reed (and sadly not San Clemente). All that in less than two weeks.

Conspiracy theories about whether Trump really has COVID immediately began swirling, a measure of how little credibility this administration has, how thoroughly its dishonesty has poisoned our culture, and how cynical and suspicious it has left us as a nation.

I don’t buy it…..not because I think he’s above such deceit (ha!), but merely because I don’t see how it benefits him politically. At best his illness is a mixed bag for his already wobbly electoral prospects, and more likely hurts him. Right off the bat he had to cancel three of his favorite things — big Leni Riefenstahl brand rallies, one in Florida and two in Wisconsin — a harbinger of how his sickness is likely to hamper him in the final thirty days of the race. (There is also the pragmatic question of how one would fake all this, given…