The following is an opinion made by Caroline Clink.
Donald Trump has Covid, and I don’t feel sorry for him.
I don’t have the energy to be sad for a man I have never liked, and I don’t think I should have to be either.
Trump’s positive test results saw well wishes from many liberals online. I never once felt the same inclination. I never had to hold back the urge to tell him that I hoped he got healthy quickly. I knew that I really would not be bothered if it went either way, and I was not going to put any of my energy into praying for his health.
Secretly, I thought about what it would look like if he did die. A world without Trump in it honestly didn’t seem terrible. It would’ve been cathartic to know that he went through the same pain that I and so many others have gone through as a direct result of his negligence.
Does that line of thinking make me a bad person? Some will probably say it does.
I don’t think hoping bad things happen to those who have deeply harmed you and those that you care about is a bad thing. It is no secret that Donald Trump is a terrible person. He is openly terrible and because of that he has brought harm upon so many marginalized communities. If people in those communities that he has harmed want him to die, nobody is in any place to tell them that it is something that they shouldn’t do.
When Margaret Thatcher died, the song “Ding Dong! the Witch is Dead” was the third most popular song in the UK.
Nobody should have to feel sorry for bad people when they die. When someone like Thatcher or Trump who caused so much systemic harm dies, nobody should be made to feel like mourning their death is required.
Nobody is absolved of all the bad that they have put into the world once they die. They will leave a legacy and the people that they harmed will still feel the effects of their actions long after they die. Their political status does not absolve them of all the bad that they have done nor does any supposed good.
In the wake of so many people on social media talking about Trump dying, different platforms decided to take various stances on the issue.
Twitter announced that it would suspend anybody who wished death upon Trump. This announcement was a shock to many people belonging to marginalized groups on Twitter, especially trans women and people of color, who have repeatedly faced threats from people on the website and been told that there was nothing that could be done about it. But, as soon as people even started to offhandedly mention the death of the president, something that had a greater than zero chance of actually happening, then Twitter decided that this was something they actually could deal with.
This is an inherently political stance that Twitter decided to take. They have always had the ability to delete accounts and suspend users when they say something that goes against their guidelines, but they didn’t choose to actually put energy into doing this until it came to Trump.
Whether or not Twitter explicitly supports Trump does not matter in this situation. They have shown that they will favor him above all other users on their platform, and that speaks volumes.
I have no idea why so many people felt the need to wish Trump well in the wake of his Covid diagnosis. Where were those well wishes for the people that Trump explicitly harmed by refusing to instill governmental regulations for Covid? Where were the thoughts and prayers from these celebrities then?
The New York Times published a front page honoring the deaths of nearly a thousand people as Covid related deaths neared 100,000 in the US. That was back in May. Now, that number has more that doubled, but these people are no longer getting front page recognition. We could only find it in ourselves to be sad for a portion of them.
The pandemic has not stopped impacting all of our lives, but people only have the energy to feel concerned when it comes to Trump.
Covid doesn’t discriminate. Anybody can get sick. The virus does not care who you are. But, not everybody can get better.
Trump can get better despite every sign pointing to the fact that he shouldn’t because of the immense amount of privilege he has. He has access to the best healthcare in the country. Every single stop is going to be pulled out to make sure that he has a full recovery.
Donald Trump was being treated in a hospital suite with multiple rooms and a chandelier while we are only a few months removed from people dying of Covid alone in the hallways of New York hospitals because every room was full. He needs no well wishes because he has access to everything he needs and more to get better.
The harm that Donald Trump has done to people within the United States and around the world will never be fully acknowledged. Those people will never get their justice. The families that he has harmed and the deaths that he has caused will never magically be reversed once he is no longer president.
If those people want to spend their free time wishing that the president was dead, I don’t think anybody is in any place to judge them.