Trumpworld delighted in cruelty. Now that Trump has COVID, it demands empathy.

 I don't delight in Trump's having Covid, the way he would if one of his opponents had it, but neither do I feel sorry for him.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trumpworld-delighted-cruelty-trump-positive-covid-test-demands-empathy-coronavirus-2020-10


Anthony L. Fisher
Oct 2, 2020, 12:48 PM

Trumpists love their Dear Leader in no small measure because of his talent for unapologetically engaging in abject cruelty.

Whether he was mocking a disabled reporter's affliction and delighting in Hillary Clinton's health travails on the 2016 campaign trail or separating migrant children with Down syndrome from their parents and ridiculing Joe Biden's son's struggle with drug addiction during his time in office — Trump supporters can't get enough of the Dear Leader triggering the libs, or really anyone with a conscience.

To his fervent supporters, Trump's callous viciousness is funny. It's the humorless politically correct scolds and loser Never Trumper conservatives who need to lighten up, they say.

Now that President Trump and first lady Melania have tested positive for COVID-19, Trumpworld has discovered the value of empathy. And they are shocked — shocked! — that some of Trump's critics have delighted in the irony of Trump's coronavirus denialism contributing to his own infection.

•••••

To be sure, even an amoral bully like Trump deserves sympathy for contracting a dreaded disease that's already killed 200,000 of his fellow Americans. Anyone wishing for his suffering can't claim any moral high ground.

But in a roundup of "liberal ghouls"' tweets on his site, Bongino conflates some truly vicious comments from partisan activists with reasonable and fact-based tweets such as NBC News correspondent Heidi Przybyla saying, "After months of publicly rejecting the advice of his own medical experts, President Trump has fallen victim to his own false narrative around the risks of the coronavirus."

•••••

While it's unkind and inhumane to take delight in another person's suffering, there's not a thing wrong with criticizing Trump's handling of the virus and saying that in some ways he brought this on himself.

•••••