Trumpism is a cult

The response within the President’s political and media echo chamber following his brush with coronavirus bring a worrying conclusion into focus.

President Trump denied the realities of COVID-19, even bragging about not wearing a mask at the first presidential debate, before finally contracting the virus and being flown to Walter Reed military hospital. He has the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans on his shoulders; his reckless actions and words have undermined the public health response in America more than anything else, by a country mile.

People have compared Trump and his supporters to a cult, among many other hyperbolic things. These last few days after the President’s steroid powered recovery have brought me around to the worrying conclusion this is quite possibly an accurate assertion to make.

Mr Trump has resumed rallies, bragged about immunity (we don’t even know he has it) and feeling younger in the typical way a despot does, attempting to project an image of strength and a god-like glow. That’s what he wants to achieve, weather anyone outside his base will enjoy it is doubtful, but the whole thing in the States at the moment smacks of a failed state, the ruins of which are being presided over by a corrupted cult of personality.

The way this whole God-Trump complex has come out after the President’s visit to Walter Reed has been embraced by the Republican establishment, by the conservative media machine, and by Trump supporters generally has cemented in my mind the belief Trumpism is a certified cult; and one America should opt out of come November 3rd.