Dowd spikes ball, which hits her in the face

Coronavirus in Chief, Trump takes off mask as he returns to WH. pic.twitter.com/ukCyhU1Nv0

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 5, 2020

President Donald John Trump's triumphant return to the White House after kicking covid 19's ass freed some time for me to catch up on Maureen Dowd's latest column in the New York Times.

The Mistress of Washington Society and maybe some guy named Sulzberger was in fine fettle in her column on Sunday, titled, "Reality Bursts the Trumpworld Bubble," subtitled, "In a moment that feels biblical, the implacable virus has come to the president’s door."

Biblical?

Well, when politics is your god, any development you believe favorable to your position may be regarded as biblical.

She began, "Fate leads the willing, Seneca said, while the unwilling get dragged."

Seneca was Nero's consul for a year. I think he made sure the fiddle was in tune when Rome burned.

Dowd next wrote, "For his entire life, Donald Trump has stayed one step ahead of disaster, plying his gift for holding reality at bay.

"He conjured his own threadbare reality, about success, about virility, about imbroglios with women, even about the height of Trump Tower."

Speaking of threadbare realities, has the Times returned either of its two Pulitzers for the Russian Collusion story? It turned out to be a hoax.

Anyway, Dowd was glad President Trump got covid 19.

She wrote, "This was the week when many of the president’s pernicious deceptions boomeranged on him. It was redolent of the 'Night on Bald Mountain' scene in Fantasia, when all the bad spirits come out in a dark swarm."

Only in Washington is it considered classy to publicly wish death upon a political adversary. And she is a lifelong Washingtonian.

She aired a list of hoary and discredited thought crimes by President Trump, "The man whose father told him there are only killers and zeros, the man who cruelly castigated others as losers, the man who was taught to fear losing above all else, has been doing some very public losing of his own.

"Upsetting as it is to see the president and first lady facing a mortal threat — and the glee and memes from some on the left were vulgar — it was undeniable that reality was crashing in on the former reality star."

On and on she went with personal attacks on the man, like a spurned schoolgirl. 

Dowd's column revealed that she has long wanted his downfall, and on Friday afternoon or so, when she spun this yarn for publication on Sunday, she felt sure that covid 19 would fell him.

At the same time, I looked at Donald Trump's track record, and went all in on Trumpzilla defeating covid 19. I am an hour flight and half-hour car ride away from Washington and I could see it in Poica, West Virginia. Millions of others across the country saw it coming too.

But she lives in the Washington bubble where she mocks the president's bubble.

Dowd wrote, "And, in the end, the con man in the Oval Office could not con the virus. He was a perverse Pied Piper of contagion, luring crowds to his rallies and events on the White House lawn, even as he mocked the safety measures recommended by his own government, sidelined and undermined Dr. Anthony Fauci, and turned the mask into a symbol of blue-state wimpiness."

After a while, Washingtonians believe all the garbage they tell the rest of the nation.

Sad.

Dowd wrote, "It seemed inevitable that Trump would get infected, given his insouciance on the issue of protective measures combined with his age, weight and ambitious travel schedule. He seemed oddly intent on tempting fate. Certainly, he put a lot of his fans, especially older ones in the most vulnerable demographic (like Herman Cain, who died of covid after attending a Trump rally in Tulsa, Okla.), at risk with his dismissiveness about the virus, laxity on testing and tracing, and his insistence on continuing rallies.

"Even for Trump, it was an astonishing act of hubris, asking his base to choose between paying homage to him or protecting their own lives."

Maybe there is some hubris in President Trump. However, it is minuscule compared to Dowd trumpeting his demise.

She wrote, "I have long marveled that Donald Trump never seemed to get sick, either during the campaign or in office, and had an extraordinary amount of energy for a man of 74 who binged junk food and skipped the gym. He has been a great advertisement for not smoking and drinking. So it was stunning to see Trump walk out, finally wearing a mask, waving as he took off for Walter Reed, with the election only a month away and the next scheduled presidential debate two weeks from now."

Ah the gloating. Didn't the Philistines mock Samson once Delilah did him in and they blinded him?

How did that work out for them?

She ended her column, "It’s impossible to know how — or even whether — this illness will change the president. But hopefully it will change his skeptical followers and make them realize that this vicious microbe really is contagious, that President Trump is not invulnerable and that therefore they are not either, that crowding together at rallies is not smart, that wearing a mask is important, and that it’s not all going to disappear like a miracle."

On Monday, President Trump returned from Walter Reed hale and hearty. 

I wonder how small Maureen Dowd felt at that moment when she realized even covid 19 cannot bring him down. Reality burst into her world, singing Never Bet Against Donald John Trump.