Opinion

Jimmy Kimmel did not hold back when he weighed in on President Donald Trump's hospitalization. Although the president is reportedly battling coronavirus, Kimmel took a moment to reflect on Trump and the White House's handling of the coronavirus as he reiterated why the president has arrived at this point.

He wanted their money.

President Donald Trump is now battling symptoms of COVID-19. But instead of his positive diagnosis signaling a warning for White House staff members, the series of events that have transpired this week have only further exposed the Trump administration's carelessness and chaotic pandemic response.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein could be out of a job after the New York Times reported that in spring 2017 – months into President Donald Trump’s administration – he talked about recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power.

The last thing any of us should want is the president becoming some kind of QAnon martyr. Other than that, however, I reserve the right to feel however I want to feel about the president and his wife coming down with a case of Covid-19. My life and your life have been turned upside down—and we’re the lucky ones. Some of us are out of work. Some of us are getting sick or sicker. Some have buried mothers, uncles, cousins and sons. All of us have felt the empurpled rage of being lied to endlessly.

Leave it to Donald Trump to test positive for COVID-19 just two days after a disastrous debate performance. It's tempting to think this is yet another of his reality show stunts, but it's hard to believe that he could get away with faking something like this considering that the Trump White House leaks like a sieve. It's more likely he does have the virus and his best-case scenario will be that he's one of the lucky asymptomatic cases and can spend the rest of the campaign testifying to his youthfulness and strength, no doubt attributable to "good genes."

One of the time-honored principles of American politics goes like this:

Georgia Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler was buried on Twitter Friday morning after accusing China of infecting Donald Trump and his wife Melania with the novel COVID-19 with the all-cap threat: "WE MUST HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE."

Donald Trump’s late night tweet that he and his wife have contracted COVID brings to mind the word “hope” in four ways, all of them tests of the character of Americans.

It’s still unclear to me what Lindsey Graham was complaining about last night. He and three other GOP senators made a stink over a provision in the $2 trillion stimulus bill regarding jobless insurance. It’s unclear because their complaint was incoherent.

One of my preoccupations here at the Editorial Board is getting people to see the problems we face are much bigger than one terrible president. Donald Trump is a symptom of political and institutional rot as much as he is a catalyst. Yet too many people, especially white liberals, seem to think things will get better once he’s gone.

Some of you know I used to teach a course at Yale on the history of presidential campaign reporting. My students read classics like The Making of the President (the 1960 election), Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (1972), What It Takes (1988), and McCain’s Promise (2000, based on David Foster Wallace’s long essay “Up, Simba”).