In a column for the USA Today, attorney Chris Truax began by suggesting no one should wish the worst for Donald Trump now that he is battling the deadly effects of COVID-19, but it is okay to revel in the fact that the coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged the country has now also taken its toll on close aides to the president, including those overseeing his re-election efforts.
With Trump quarantined at Walter Reed Medical Center for the near future, top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway also sidelined and Trump 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien also quarantined, the opinion columnist wrote that the re-election effort has been effectively "decapitated."
Writing that the rapid spread of COVID-19 among conservatives and Republicans like occurred at Trump's "spike-the-ball" announcement of the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett at the White House -- now called the "Rose Garden massacre" by some Trump aides -- Truax said Trump has only himself to blame as his already struggling re-election campaign falls apart at the seams.
"Had Republicans stood by their own "Garland Rule" and decided not to try and force through a Supreme Court nomination a few weeks before the election, none of this would have happened," the attorney wrote.
"What’s left of Trump’s campaign is now in tatters with the next debate likely to be canceled, the president unable to campaign, and his campaign itself decapitated. Depending on how many Republican senators get sick and how badly, Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination may even end up on hold," he continued before sardonically adding, "This accelerated karma is about as close as you can come to irrefutable proof that God exists and that he has an excellent, if slightly dark, sense of humor."
Having said that, Truax said Trump is likely making things worse by pushing Vice President Mike Pence out onto the road to campaign on his behalf.
"The president and his advisors have learned absolutely nothing. When the president is known to be at risk, America must protect the vice-president's health and safety at all costs. To do otherwise risks an unprecedented disaster. Pence should be in a bunker at an undisclosed location," he advised, before adding, "Allowing Pence to campaign with a pandemic raging and an infected president in the hospital is an act of sabotage against both the American government and the Constitution. This isn’t just bad judgment. It’s completely reckless. Who cares about safeguarding America’s chain-of-command when you’ve got an election to win?"
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