Don’t drink bleach. Don’t jack up Dettol. When people have to be told that this is not a good idea – even though their president has floated it – we are definitely not in Kansas any more. Or maybe we are. At a protest where people equate physical distancing with communism.
To be fair, Donald Trump did add the helpful caveat: “I’m not a doctor. But I’m, like, a person that has a good you-know-what,” while pointing at his head.
Yeah, whatever. He should win the “Noble prize”, as he calls it, for his “you-know-what”. He later claimed the disinfectant comments were sarcastic and stopped his press briefings. It was reported that he may have reached “a tipping point” with his advisers. But surely we know by now that, with Trump, there is no tipping point. After calling Mexicans rapists and boasting about “pussy grabbing”, his parade of bile and ignorance seems limitless.
I don’t know how many psychological profiles I have read of him in which he is diagnosed as a malignant narcissist, or it is suggested he has a cognitive impairment, or suffers from delusional thinking or a sociopathic inability to experience basic empathy. Yada yada yada. None of it matters. He promised an end to “American carnage”, but that is exactly what he is presiding over.
Analysing his psyche is not an act of opposition. Trump could not operate without all those around him, especially the support of the Republican party.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, finds the briefings he has to do with Trump “draining”. No wonder, as he talks passionately about physical distancing while Trump contradicts him. Dr Deborah Birx, Trump’s coronavirus response coordinator, recently stood there looking alarmed while Trump riffed on disinfectant. Vice-President Mike Pence looks on, zombified. It is only now that US media has begun to argue with him.
He carries on, vilified, a laughing stock, a pathetic mobster, but with the support of the rightwing establishment. Focusing on his latest lunacy is entertainment. How the Republican party keeps him in power is the issue, for it is they who enable him. The tipping point will be reached when they decide to take him down.
Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnist
