Trump’s supporters love to claim his critics, people like me, suffer from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” I don’t think it’s deranged to call out facts, question spurious bullshit, or point out hypocrisy. I think the people who were once proud members of the Tea Party, that organization that claimed to be so concerned over government spending (created before Obama even spent a nickel), and who today don’t want to know that Donald Trump charges the Secret Service $17,000 a month to stay at his shitty resorts even when they’re not there, are the ones who are deranged.

If you think the top priority during a pandemic is that Donald Trump receives enough credit and praise, then you are suffering from TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Donald Trump has repeatedly talked about how he’s not receiving enough credit for the job he’s doing responding to the crisis. He’s getting plenty of credit from members of his administration as each of them, like Mike Pence, for example, has to include praise for Trump while giving briefings on the virus. But Trump isn’t receiving a lot of praise from Democrats, the media, general public, and people with eyes and ears who pay attention. That’s probably because he’s lied, misdirected, and acted like a raging imbecile worrying about how much credit he gets.

While discussing the virus yesterday, Trump claimed the coronavirus was improving the economy. He said, “You know a lot of people are staying here and they’re going to be doing their business here, they’re going to be traveling here. And they’ll be going to resorts here. We have a great place. So foreign people come, but we’re going to have Americans staying home instead of going and spending their money in other countries and maybe that’s one of the reasons the job numbers are so good.”

Uh, the jobs report he’s talking came out before the coronavirus hit the U.S. This is the same guy who blamed a Democratic debate for the stock market plunging a day before the debate. He’s also telling foreigners to come to the U.S. when I thought we were trying to restrict people from entering this nation. But then again, he couldn’t make up his mind yesterday over visiting the Center for Disease Control or why it was canceled to begin with. The most shocking thing about Trump’s quote is that he didn’t plug one of his resorts. Hey, you may not get Covid-19 while staying at his resort, but you will bring home bed bugs.

But Trump eventually went to Atlanta to visit the CDC, wearing a campaign cap, and while there he praised the ratings his town hall on Fox News received and called the governor of Washington a “snake.”

Washington Governor Jay Inslee said he would like for Donald Trump to stick to the science when discussing the coronavirus. Donald Trump disagrees with the World Health Organization’s fatality rate because he has a “hunch,” and anyone who criticizes his bullshit is a “snake.”

Inslee tweeted about a conversation he had with Pence and said, “I told him our work would be more successful if the Trump administration stuck to the science and told the truth.” Why that snake. How dare he demand the Trump administration tell the truth. Trump said he told Pence after this “not to be complimentary of that governor because that governor is a snake.”

Then, Trump went on complaining about how he’s not getting enough credit. He said, “If we came up with a cure today, and tomorrow everything is gone, and you went up to this governor — who is, you know, not a good governor, by the way — if you went up to this governor, and you said to him, ‘How did Trump do?’ He would say, ‘He did a terrible job.’ It makes no difference.” Kinda like Obama with the economy right? Except Republicans are totally praising the economy Obama created…but giving Donald Trump the credit.

It’s estimated that between 75 to 200 million people died from the black plague between 1347 and 1351, decreasing Europe’s population from 30 to 60%. It took the continent 200 years for its population to recover to its previous level. It makes you wonder, did they have a leader like Donald Trump?

I can totally understand Europe having a leader like Trump during the Dark Ages. The plague also hit the poor more than the wealthy which sounds like something that’d happen during the Trump era. The doctors hired to combat the plague weren’t even doctors and were probably just as qualified for their jobs as Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Ivanka, Jared, and Donald Trump.

Of course, if Trump was the leader during the Black Plague, he’d probably deny it was killing people and blame black people and immigrants. During the Dark Ages, a lot of cures involved leeches and screaming at the disease. Today, the man Trump appointed to lead the response is Mike Pence, whose response to HIV while he was governor, increased the number of cases in that state…and he’s a fan of gay-conversion therapy.

Seriously, the presidency of Donald Trump is taking us back to the Dark Ages.

The people most susceptible to the Coronavirus are the elderly. Funny enough, those are the same people most vulnerable to Trump Derangement Syndrome. Darn. So in the future, if we ever do see a plague doctor pushing a cart full of bodies, it may also be full of MAGA hats.

Donald Trump is a plague.

Email Clay Jones at [email protected]