(A version of this essay was published in the Cape May Star and Wave on Wed. Oct. 7, 2020)
The daddy of all boardwalk hustles on a surreal, cold night in the dead of winter in a boarded-up, barrier island, boardwalk town, beckons.
A carnival barker President takes center stage inside the 7,400-seat capacity Wildwood Convention Center this evening, Jan. 28, 2020, to an amusement-park roar from thousands of fevered fans.
Something’s amiss. Wildwood boardwalk’s famous, sequence-lighted, giant Ferris wheel – which on summer nights, lures thrill seekers from miles away – is ominously dark.
There's no rumble and "clickety, clickety, clack" of the Great White roller coaster, eliciting screams from daring riders. No mic-upped barkers beckoning from either side of “the boards.”
And there’s no creepy, sideshow illusion of a giant snake with a man's head, attracting gawkers. (Yes, I’ve witnessed this.)
There is only the brash, inciting spectacle of impeached President Donald J. Trump.
And boy, does he draw a crowd.
The grand illusionist President and his traveling “Keep America Great” circus sideshow act, with a snap of Trump’s fingers, has turned the boardwalk convention center into one huge, jam-packed, mirrored funhouse.
In this masterful magical trick, the warped, contorting effect of the shifting funhouse mirrors flatteringly work in reverse – reflecting the unrepentant con man as a genuine Superman, fighting for truth, justice and the American way.
It’s smoke and mirrors on a twisted, Twitter-fueled, in-your-Facebook, insult-driven, black ops-level scale.
Yet, it's all so fitting.
Reality is always askew, deceptively grander, amidst the glitzy allure of Wildwood’s renowned two-mile long, sprawling boardwalk, where suckers drop big coin for long odds.
And at a rowdy Trump rally, truth and sensibility are just hostile bubble busters. Trump is his rabid believers’ ticket to shirk reality, sneer at justice, decry the righteous and disparage the less fortunate with impunity.
"While we are creating jobs and killing terrorists, congressional Democrats are obsessed with demented hoaxes, crazy witch hunts .." decried Trump to loud cheers. ""Which is worse? The impeachment hoax or the witch hunt from Russia?"
Watching it all up on the Jumbotron outside the boardwalk convention center with a few thousand uproarious Trump lovers, I’m reminded of the “World’s Greatest Showman” P.T. Barnum’s famous quote:
“The public appears disposed to be amused even when they are conscious of being deceived.”
Trump's raucous fans seem oblivious to the fact that the funhouse floor could drop out from under them at any time.
Death Incubates In The Homeland
Back to reality.
While Trump deluded and distracted both himself, as well as his impressionable fans that night at the Jersey Shore, the Coronavirus had already invaded other American shores – and was incubating death.
More than a week earlier, the first case of Covid-19 infection was reported in Washington State. And studies now suggest that New York's 32,000 Covid-19 deaths can be traced to infected travelers arriving from Europe "as early as January."
It wasn't like Trump was in the dark.
Earlier that day of the Wildwood rally, Jan. 28, according Bob Woodward's book "Rage," Trump was briefed by his national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien on the looming threat of the virus.
"This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency," O'Brien told President Trump. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”
Also, at the meeting, Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, concurred with O'Brien. He told the President that "it was evident that the world faced a health emergency on par with the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide."
On Jan. 23, the World Health Organization had already confirmed that Covid-19 was a contagion that spread from “human to human."
The President also had been briefed by intelligence officials on the deadly virus originating from Wuhan, China, as early as the first week in January.
Trump was fully informed. He knew a disastrous lethal pandemic, threatening to afflict millions of Americans, was looming just over the horizon.
But the President had other priorities: touting the stock market numbers; playing golf at one of his properties on the taxpayer's dime; seeking vengeance against patriots who testified to Trump's malfeasance during his impeachment; and yes, holding campaign rallies.
President Trump wasn't going to allow such alarming reports about a plaque poised to wipe out untold numbers of American lives, sour that night's planned boardwalk hustle in Wildwood.
Newly minted U.S. congressional Republican turncoat Jeff Van Drew was counting on Trump's hucksterism to gin up support for his upcoming face off with his old party come November.
As Barnum, one of Trump's mentors would declare -- the show must go on. And as Bobby Rydell sang in his famous song of the summertime beach resort "Wildwood Days": "Every day's a holiday, and every night is a Saturday night."
Apparently, even in the dead of winter.
To hell with reality. Let's just party, man. Of course, Trump failed to utter even a peep of precaution to the people about the Coronavirus encroaching chaos on their lives that night at the rally.
Funhouse Floor Starts To Give
It wouldn’t be for another grueling six weeks of inexcusable denial on Trump’s behalf before he was forced to publicly recognize the virus menace in mid-March, and only then go through the motions of taking the virus seriously.
The funhouse floor was starting to give.
Even so, Trump has yet to take the Covid-19 virus seriously -- even as the virus has claimed more than 208,000 American lives.
The President called the virus a "hoax," claimed it was “totally under control” and suggested it will simply disappear come April – in essence, the way truth evaporates at one of his ugly, demagogic rallies.
By shirking blame, playing politics and stoking the racial divide, the President has served more as a complicit, facilitating, destructive agent of the Covid-19 virus, than anything remotely resembling a commander-in-chief.
Turns out, Trump's boardwalk hustle carnival act rally is the perfect metaphor for his entire presidency, which, for four chaotic years has lacked anything redeeming, genuine or good.
The Trump presidency literally has been one giant, caustic, distracting sideshow -- playing the citizenry for a bunch of thoughtless fools.
Featured Freak Running Sideshow
And now, the featured sideshow freak has escaped the red-and-yellow circus tent, hi-jacked the barker's box and is peddling discount tickets for a peep inside an empty tent.
And the suckers are still lining up. Trump's cult-like believers are still guzzling down the snakeoil. Will they ever snap out of it?
Nine months since Trump's wild Wildwood rally, the Covid-19 pandemic is on pace to have killed at least a quarter million Americans by the year's end. More than 7 million people -- including the President himself, his wife, White House staff and campaign officials, have been infected.
And just as troubling, millions of Americans have lost their jobs and health insurance.
If Trump had acted just a couple weeks earlier, experts and common sense tell us, instead of waiting until the middle of March to alert Americans of the immediate danger and implement nation-wide social distancing, the overwhelming majority of American lives lost to the Coronavirus, would have been saved.
Trump did this. Again and again, he did this.
The repercussions from President Trump's disastrous and criminal failures to take the pandemic seriously, are seemingly endless and ever painful.
Whether Trump believers allow themselves to see it or not, the show is over. The funhouse floor has finally given way.
(Kevin McKinney is a freelance writer and former daily newspaper journalist, living at the Jersey Shore. He traveled with a small circus in the mid 90's and for a strange, few days filled in as a sideshow barker. His essays have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Hill, Counter Punch and McClatchy Newspapers.)
