'Irresponsible man-child' Trump has himself to blame for getting sick and crippling his campaign: conservative
In his column for the Daily Beast, conservative Matt Lewis said Donald Trump has only himself to blame for not taking precautions against the coronavirus pandemic that had now led him to get sick, possibly killing off his re-election hopes.
According to ex-Republican Lewis -- who has already declared he would not vote for the president in November -- Trump has been acting like an "irresponsible man-child" and now he is paying the price.
As Lewis noted, it was only two days ago the president was downplaying the virus and ridiculing his Democratic presidential opponent for wearing a mask during their first -- and possibly last -- presidential debate.
“Every time you see him, he's got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from them and he shows up with the biggest mask I've ever seen," Trump claimed -- words that are now coming back to haunt him as he and his wife Melania enter quarantine.
"It goes without saying that I wish the Trumps a speedy recovery. No decent person should wish for anything else. But that doesn’t excuse his personal irresponsibility. Already, there are consequences. Stock futures have plunged. It’s also not crazy to wonder how this might impact the election. Here’s one immediate question: Will there even be any more presidential debates?' he wrote before adding, "Another thing we don’t know yet is how bad this will get. At the risk of sounding alarmist or macabre, Trump is 74 years old, out of shape, and overweight. Could Mike Pence replace him on the ballot? People are already voting."
Lewis went in to note that, should Trump have a light case and get back out in the campaign trail boasting that COVID isnt so bad after all, he is likely to pass on even more bad information.
"If he has an easy recovery, he could gain something he’s never had: sympathy. And he’s already dismissed and downplayed the virus, and says that he took hydroxychloroquine even before he had it; imagine how irresponsible he might be after an easy recovery," he suggested.
"The impact on the election and the second order effects are almost incalculable. If this affects the polls in key states, it could really roil the politics of everything, possibly even the Supreme Court nomination. No matter what your politics are, a chaos president is a negative," he added. "There are few things more important or precious to the stability of a nation than a president’s health, and with this latest development, our nation’s health (mental health, at least) is stretched to the limit."
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