Coronavirus could have united nation
PHOENIX » Soon after he woke up on Friday morning, Cruz Zepeda, a 54- year- old Trump supporter, received a text from a lifelong friend eager to share a sentiment he found on Twitter: “Looks like RBG successfully argued her first hearing with the Lord.”
Still in a bit of shock, Zepeda felt his anger rise. The friends once shared similar political beliefs but disagreed more often than not over the past 15 years.
“This is not funny,” he shot back. “This is real time, real life and really happening.”
The pandemic could have been a great unifier — a widespread and life- altering tragedy that inspired a notion of shared national purpose, as at other moments of crisis in the country’s past. And perhaps in another moment, in another place, a president falling ill would have seen citizens keeping vigil regardless of partisan affiliation. But the coronavirus, which has sickened more than 7 million Americans, including the president, has deepened divisions rather than united the country.
Now, a month before Election Day and with the president in the hospital, interviews with voters in some of the most contested battleground states make clear that the divisions that the president himself has stoked in the country are being reflected back at him, with his supporters defiantly insisting he will hold rallies again before Nov. 3 and Democrats, if not wishing him a turn for the worse, certainly not shedding any tears.
A day before the president disclosed his illness, Zepeda stopped by a South Phoenix campaign office in a strip mall, wearing a blue “Keep America Great” mask, to pick up another Trump- Pence lawn sign. He said several had been stolen from his yard. In his eyes, Trump’s revelation on Twitter that he had the virus was a powerful admission to be admired.
“He doesn’t have to tell anybody,” he said.
In the same neighborhood, at a different strip mall, Sandy Kaintz, 73, saw a completely different version of events unfolding. As she walked into the Biden campaign office as a first- time volunteer, wearing a tie- dyed mask a friend had made for her, she lamented that the president hadn’t taken the same precaution: regularly wearing a face covering. Asked if she thought his illness might unite the country, she quickly replied, “I hope not.”
“Because he hasn’t done anything to unite us at all,” Kaintz added.
There are few places in the country where the difference in partisan perspectives is as obvious as it is in Phoenix, one of the nation’s biggest cities within a battleground state that has had some of the highest infection rates in the country. The alternate realities can be seen in the basic approach to the campaign field offices: The Trump operation has held in- person events for weeks, with temperature screenings but no mask requirements. The Biden team opened two local offices last week, requiring supporters to wait 6 feet apart outside, before picking up yard signs.
Concern over the virus in Phoenix lined up as neatly along partisan lines. After Tuesday’s debate but before the president disclosed his illness, people coming to the Trump campaign office described the pandemic as a nuisance, exaggeration or an outright hoax. Many said they thought masks should be optional, and anything else was a violation of their rights. Few said they knew anyone who had fallen ill or died from the virus.
At the Biden field office in South Phoenix, a woman waiting to pick up signs began to cry as she described the ever- climbing death toll.
In other battleground states around the country, the voters each campaign is working hardest to win over churned with a chaotic mix of thoughts and feelings on Friday, including concern for the country if Trump’s health worsens, private ( and not so private) gloating, and resignation that what might have been a unifying national moment most likely will not be.
Mostly responses were filtered through the partisan lenses that have divided Americans on seemingly every issue during the Trump years, both consequential and trivial.
Joyce Brodsky, a retired art teacher in Kewadin, Mich., noting how Biden and his wife, Jill, extended sympathy to the Trumps, said she was unable to feel so selfless.
“I’m more of a ‘ serves you right’ type of person,” she said.
Trump’s supporters were eager to wish him well and move forward.
Mira Katerinos, 59, a registered nurse in Waukesha, Wis., said she was a strong supporter of the president — and that, to her, he appeared strong physically and mentally. “Trump will probably do more campaigning with COVID than Biden with no COVID; he hardly seems to be campaigning at all,” she said, repeating a Trump campaign criticism of his opponent’s schedule. She said she saw no problem with Trump resuming rallies after recovering, which she expected him to do.
“Life has to go on,” she said.