The madness of King Donald

Donald Trump is by no means the worst President in American history, as his Democratic opponent Joe Biden claims. His achievements are not inconsiderable and his mistakes are no worse than those of most others. But his administration’s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic has been so woeful as to doom any chance of re-election. And since he himself succumbed to coronavirus last week, his decision-making has become so erratic as to call into question his sanity.

Trump’s refusal to obey his doctors — first driving around to show himself to supporters, then insisting on a premature return from hospital to the White House — could be put down to a desperate desire to get back to the election campaign. But his pronouncement that Covid is “far less lethal” than flu is deeply irresponsible. So is his suggestion that “sometimes over 100,000” a year die of flu. In fact, this has not happened for more than half a century. Facebook removed the post and Twitter flagged it as misleading, but coming from a “POTUS” who has apparently recovered from the virus, it is bound to embolden conspiracy theorists.

The fact is that 211,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 and more than seven million have caught it. For the President to set such a bad example when the public health authorities are struggling to contain new outbreaks, with over 40,000 cases a day, is a disgrace. Trump’s refusal to take elementary precautions, despite the fact that he, his wife and many of his staff have been infected, has undoubtedly exacerbated the pandemic. On returning to the White House, his first major decision was to scotch a bipartisan economic stimulus package worth $2.2 trillion. This sent the stock market spiralling down, further undermining the economy — the strength of which had been one of the Trump Administration’s genuine achievements. The fact that Wall Street has not collapsed may indicate that it has already factored in a Biden victory. The latest CNN poll, carried out after last week’s TV debate, gives the Democrats a 16 point lead.

The possibility that Trump may indeed no longer be responsible for his actions will have crossed the minds of many Americans. He appears to have crossed the line that separates those who are merely sceptical about lockdowns or masks from those who deny the potential of Covid-19 to cause death on a vast scale. Even assuming that he will lose the election on November 3, Trump will remain in the White House for another two and half months. That leaves plenty of scope for the pandemic to take off again. Can the United States afford to leave such a man in charge?

The dilemma that Americans now face is not unprecedented. Many readers will recall the Oscar-winning 1994 film The Madness of King George, based on a play by Alan Bennett, in which Nigel Hawthorne gave the performance of a lifetime as the stricken monarch. It is worth recalling the facts behind this memorable movie.  

George III has never been forgiven by the British for losing America — even though his ministers and Parliament deserve to share the blame. Yet for much of his lifetime, “Farmer George” was a popular king, admired not least for being the first Hanoverian monarch to speak English as his first language. He was intelligent and cultured, too: he and his family enjoyed making music with, among others, the infant Mozart.

But George is also remembered as the monarch who went mad. Doctors and historians still debate the cause of his mental illness, which may have been the royal family’s hereditary curse of porphyria, bipolar disorder or some other undiagnosed condition. Whatever it was, it incapacitated the King ever more frequently until Parliament had no choice but to appoint his son as Prince Regent. The last decade of his long reign were spent in seclusion.

Nobody is suggesting that President Trump’s behaviour is as manic as King George. To judge from his Tweets, his sentences certainly have not grown much longer, nor has his vocabulary expanded, as was the case with George III’s letters written while incapacitated. But Trump does display the “incessant loquacity” that was one of the King’s most obvious symptoms. Biden’s exasperated comment in their debate — “Will you shut up, man!” — reflects the fact that Trump simply cannot stop talking. He comes across as deranged.  

One of the President’s most consistent demands in this campaign has been that his 77-year-old opponent should submit to various tests. It is long overdue for Trump to do the same. His conduct has always been colourful, at times outrageous. Now it is positively alarming. It may not matter that he is sabotaging his own election campaign, but he has no right to sabotage his country’s campaign against the deadliest threat to public health since the Aids epidemic of the 1980s. This presidential election is no longer about who should lead America for the next four years. The question now is: what can be done about the madness of King Donald?