Anticipating Donald Trump will go down to defeat on November 3rd, Bulwark columnist and former Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speechwriter Amanda Carpenter has written that the president will likely walk away from office saddled with a legacy of a failure to contain a pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans while embracing a cult of conspiracy-obsessed "loons."
As Carpenter sees it, the devastation wrought by COVID-19 and the rise of QAnon go hand-in-hand, as the country has become consumed with conspiracy theories as the president has railed about "fake news" and the "deep state."
"We have become a country where an entire party will go along thinking that anything that reflects poorly on Trump can be connected to a shadowy enemy or evil cabal—the 'deep state,' the regime behind the 'China virus,' the Obama administration, or the Biden campaign," she wrote. "Connecting the dots is so easy that any redpill addict can do it. One of the main benefits of Trumpism is that it doesn’t require much intellectual work."
As a Republican, she lamented her party embracing QAnon adherents such as House candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene, calling her every bit the "bigoted loon" as House candidate Laura Loomer who is running also running for a seat -- albeit unsuccessfully based upon polling -- in the House representing a Florida district.
"How did this happen?" she asked.
"Once someone is willing to accept the idea that mass shootings at schools might be false-flag operations, the 'unlogic' of conspiracies, as Charlotte Alter memorably put it, takes over," she explained. "The thrill of whataboutism is all-consuming. To someone of this mindset, COVID isn’t a pandemic; it’s a hoax—or a 'planDemic,' as one Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate put it last month."
"It doesn’t matter that Trump booster Herman Cain died from coronavirus, that Trump surrogate and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie spent a week in the hospital after contracting it, or even that Donald Trump got it and needed to be put on oxygen, airlifted to Walter Reed, and dosed with an experimental cocktail. Nothing will stop President Trump, or any of his supporters, from enjoying their COVID joyride now!" she added.
"Such is the natural conclusion of Trumpism. It’s a loyalty cult, where members risk coronavirus infection as a feat of strength. The president of the United States himself has voted for QAnon, and if anyone wants in, they have to follow his lead," she continued before predicting, "COVID and QAnon will be Trump’s enduring legacy—a mass poisoning of the American body and mind."
