Introduction: How to Survive a Presidency

"150,000 DEAD—OFF WITH GEORGE'S HEAD."

ACT UP and Queer Nation activists chanted those words outside the Astrodome at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston. The protestors amassed to scold George H. W. Bush for his mishandling of the AIDS epidemic, which had left scores of LGBTQ people dead since it was first reported in 1981. By the time they arrived in the Lone Star State, queer activists had spent the last decade pushing for policies to expand access to healthcare, implement educational curriculum to stem infection rates, and bolster legal protections for people living with AIDS. While delegates to the convention cheered wildly for Pat Buchanan's "Culture War" speech and reluctantly absorbed Mary Fisher's harrowing address "The Whisper of AIDS," the demonstrators continued their long campaign of compelling the White House to acknowledge its ongoing role in systemic murder. The advocates had long settled into the reality that their cause was a marathon, not a sprint, and that trying to marshal resources and public support would continue to be a dispiritingly daunting endeavor. In the years that followed, many more people would die from AIDS, though no one could predict the unconscionable threshold that would need to be met to motivate the government to act.

As I write this introduction in early August 2020, roughly 150,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and that is, no doubt, a conservative estimate. The Trump administration has routinely interfered with the accurate reporting of fatalities in an attempt to make the president's mismanagement of the crisis appear less calamitous. This well-rehearsed sycophantic mendacity has repeatedly inhibited the dissemination of information that would help Americans stay well and has replaced the most rudimentary medical advice, such as wearing a mask, with ludicrous conspiracy theories and consequential partisan stonewalling. The chaotic style that has come to define the Trump administration has left millions of people infected, unemployed, uninsured, depressed, and unsure about what the future holds. Trump's inability to rise to the challenges of the presidency, coupled with his deplorable response to the ongoing protests against racism and police brutality following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, has had a ruinous effect on American life. It took over ten years for administrative neglect to kill 150,000 people from complications related to AIDS but COVID has already surpassed that gruesome benchmark. It took just six months to realize one of AIDS's deadly milestones.

The momentousness of Trump's failure cannot be overstated. The rapid escalation of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths has not impelled the White House to expand testing, detail plans for contact tracing, or find equitable ways to provide relief to the states. If anything, the constant deferral of confronting the pandemic has given rise to one of its defining rhetorical features: this is a manufactured disaster that is marked by quotidian tumultuousness, but that incessant disorder has not displaced the staying power of the pandemic narra-tive.¹ The frequent social media refrain, "there is no bottom," points to the endless list of outrages provoked by the president but COVID-19 has been impervious to redefinition and has instead become the interpretative lens through which every issue of the day is processed. The administration has relentlessly attempted to replot the narrative, including with tweets containing videos of racist supporters vocally championing white supremacy, but none of these hurtful tactics has succeeded in altering the looming presence of the novel coronavirus. Months of at-home schooling, business closures, physical distancing, devastating unemployment rates, and international ridicule have cemented themselves as an integral component of Trump's legacy of malpractice. COVID-19 has found refuge in Trump's lies and seized the opportunity to circulate unabated in both the national body and the American psyche.

The president's malfeasance has disproportionately, though unsurprisingly, wreaked havoc on communities of color, LGBTQ people, immigrants, incarcerated people, and those who live with disabilities. The government's response to COVID-19 has reproduced some of the most murderous effects of medical racism and amplified institutional ills such as transphobia and class...