Friday, October 2, 2020

Thoughts on President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis

During the current COVID-19 pandemic a number of people I know often wondered what would happen if President Trump ever tested positive for the coronavirus.

We’re about to find out, since it was announced last night that he, First Lady Melania and other members of the White House’s inner circle have done so and are now in a mandatory two-week quarantine (and thus won’t be campaigning).

To those of us who admittedly don’t like Trump, this appears to be poetic justice. Since its discovery stateside in January of this year (and he later admitted that he understood the next month just how bad it would be but kept silent because he didn’t want to cause a panic), he has sought to downplay its effects — perhaps in the hope that what his supporters call economic “sabotage” would be minimized. Later, while visiting factories and holding rallies, he refused to wear a mask out of concern that doing so would make him look weak.

He may not realize that he isn’t God and that if you have to pump yourself up as “strong” you’re already weak — not just in the face of COVID-19 but also in his desire to humiliate his opponents.

And this is where I must speak out. If you ask people to join in prayer that the president recovers but not that he changes his ways, your prayer might fall on deaf ears. Understand that he got elected and remains popular with his base due to his bad attitude, and it’s that attitude that got him into this predicament in the first place.

Perhaps Trump’s diagnosis is thus the result of divine discipline — not for Trump per se, since I don’t believe that he’s a true Christian, but for many of his supporters who are believers. There are consequences to actions or the lack thereof which affect others, and now it’s apparently come back to haunt him. Repentance is in order, but I’m not counting on that happening.

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