A Letter from a Deceased Trump Supporter
By: Brian Kean
Tags: Covid 19, Society, Perspective, Politics, Trump Administration

Where do I begin? How do I begin?

Yes, I was that guy. The “loud mouth” in the Walmart letting everyone know my thoughts on this Covid-thing; just a Chinese-Democrat hoax — like climate change.

I was that guy. Wearing my MAGA hat and going out of my way to shake hands and get in real close to everyone — to show how brave I was. Proving my freedom I wanted , my support was for our president — the man preserving our freedoms.

I was that guy who accosted the lady who dared to wipe down the keypad on the ATM after I used it — I overexaggerated a cough in her direction, and while it was a windy day and most likely no droplets hit her, it did scare the hell out of her. I laughed as she ran back to her car. The terrified look on her kid’s faces made me laugh then. I would cringe now if I could but I can’t.

I am dead, just a wisp of energy flowing in a direction-less pool of warmth — feels like nothing, it just is.

I began to feel odd a few days after the Trump rally. Back home, I went to my usual local diner, unmasked of course, and told everyone about the life-changing experience the rally had been. I had seen our “greatest” president.

The rally was packed with my fellow brave and free Americans, patriots. When he looked directly at me and gave a thumbs up, I squealed like a teenager. If I die tomorrow, I’ll die a happy man, I announced to all — looking in the direction of the two women sitting socially distanced up near the front window. They were both masked, disrespecting our president with their paranoia, I believed.

The women were not enjoying my loud narrative of the rally. I really wanted to go over and do another fake coughing fit but that had become an offense they could arrest me for now.

I didn’t die the next day —but fifteen days later. It was there, in the diner, sitting next to two World War II vets in their late nineties, both masked, that I first felt something might be wrong. Thinking I was thirsty, I kept drinking water but the back of my throat was slowly dissolving into sandpaper. A heaviness pulled at my eyes creating a perpetual mist in my vision.

You people are really a bunch of whiners, Ed, one of the vets told me.

A decorated veteran, he stormed the beaches on D-Day and ended the war in Austria having fought in the every significant battle. Trump was the enemy in his book. He was the only person I would tolerate expressing that opinion to me; well he and the guy next to him.

If others dared admit such emotions about Trump, whatever happened to them after was not my fault — I used to say I would die for Trump. I recall this conversation with Charlie quite well because it was one of the last ones I had before my lungs filled and I drowned. You being racist, who are you people? I was joking. We were both white.

Your generation. Whining about these God-damned masks, he elbowed his buddy next to him, Ted. Ted had also been at D-Day. There are only about 200 vets left who landed on those Norman beaches and two were eating breakfast with me. They’d cry about the water being too cold, Charlie, Ted piped in. They both laughed.

No understanding of sacrifice for the good of the nation, just worshiping that orange, draft-dodging clown and watching that Fox, Ed continued. Me, me, me, he added, whiners the whole lot of them.

Vets or not, those words hit home too closely and I lost my cool. What I did next, however, was stupid. Listen you old, son’s of bitches. You don’t know what year it is or whether you peeing yourselves or shitting yourselves. Trump is saving the country your generation almost killed with that damn Johnson and his war on poverty. My throat was itching so that I took Charlie’s water and took a big gulp. The icy water cooled the rising heat I could feel on my neck, easing the dull ache in my head — the itch was scratched.

I got up and left out the back door without touching my breakfast. It then hit me that Charlie shouldn’t drink that water — I went back in but he was already sipping it. It’s just a hoax anyway, he’ll be alright, I assured myself.

By that night, I was in the hospital and within two days on a ventilator. No longer able to speak, I became a prisoner of my thoughts. Alone in the room, as the guy next to me had died shortly after I was brought in — Covid-19, they said, but who knows — the nurse put on Fox News at my request — this is all I watched lately, just the news. A patriot needs to be informed, right?

They showed the rally I was at. The president was going on about how the pandemic was over. I remember him telling us what a great job he had done. I shouted in agreement at the rally. Now, I am beginning to question whether some things could have been done differently? Nevertheless, he is a very smart man and I am inclined to believe him.

When I first arrived to the hospital, it was pretty shocking — even a little scary — to see the precautions being taken by the medical staff. The amount of people lying around on gurneys, checking in and looking as bad as I felt was totally unexpected — for a second it crossed my mind they might be actors but then I thought, there is no way they could pull off such a massive fraud. While I kept telling myself it was just a bad cold, probably even the flu, seeing those barely-conscious people was making me think I could catch Covid for real from them.

You have tested positive for coronavirus, sir. Your lungs are filling and there is a good chance we will have to intubate you, the very tired-looking doctor told me.

This was the first moment I recall that something wasn’t jibing between the reality of this thing and the White House/Fox narrative being sold to us. I remember as the doc was telling me in a very weary voice about how this was all likely going to play out, he suddenly just stopped and looked up at the TV. Kayleigh McAnany was talking about how Covid cases were dropping and the blues states were politicizing the faux pandemic to make Trump look bad.

The doctor looked at me, grabbed the remote and muted the television, you still buying their bullshit, Mr. Jackson? I wanted to hit him because I knew he was one of them — he might try to kill me now in order to make President Trump look bad. Without any political rhetoric, Mr. Jackson, you are in very bad shape but we will do our best to get you out of here alive. I waited to see if he was joking, perhaps exaggerating. Be strong. science-willing, we will have you back home and watching that Fox News stuff in a few weeks. He was clearly taking advantage of the fact that I couldn’t talk back. Their science didn’t know a thing — one day masks don’t help, next day they do. It was all just a ploy to control us, Tucker thought.

One more question, Mr. Jackson. Just nod…did you ever wear a mask?

Over the next three days, my wife was hospitalized and also intubated — she survived. Charlie from the diner died from a Covid-induced stroke five days after I sat next to him. Ted was admitted a day after Charlie died— I had killed one of our finest and hospitalized another one.

My condition worsened and I could feel the energy waning. It is an odd thing, the process of dying, you kind of know it is happening but it takes a strong person to survive. There is an ebb and flow of conversation inside the trapped mind, posing the question over and over: Do you really want to go on fighting? Maybe we should just let go?

So used to being supplied with truths and answers, I would focus in on the Fox News, praying a sign would come from our president. All he kept saying was that the pandemic was over and that the rising cases were fake news — to make him look bad he said. To be honest, I was beginning to lose interest in his image. What was really messing with my head was the surprised looks the doctors had that I was still here, in this life.

Seems there was nothing too fake about this, pandemic, after all. I still can’t really say that I had coronavirus but whatever it was, it was like nothing ever before. Lying there, beginning to realize that I may never see my kids again, my wife, taste a beer or put up the Christmas tree, the questions started ripping through my head fast and furious — could you have protected yourself, Ed? Was wearing a mask such a big inconvenience or did it just make me feel good being one of the so-called miserable Trump supporters? Going to Trump rallies made me feel like a bad boy — the way I did back in high school.

One of the last things I saw before I passed on, suffocating in my own fluids — it really was a horrible sensation and nothing I would ever wish on anyone, not even on a Trump-hater — was how the president was already being discharged. Seems he too had gotten sick and was out in three days. Why did he get drugs that I didn’t? Why was his life more valuable than mine? After all, he was the one who told us to show our support by not wearing masks.

The noise I heard before dying sounded like a thunderstorm, like wind and water beating against the window — but as I write this I recall that I was in a windowless room. That sound might of have been my final struggle to breath.

Before, I let go, I saw my wife and three of my four kids waving from behind the glass, in the hallway. Seems that they had all been infected from me— as I cried, I wondered where was my middle daughter? She suffered from asthma.

As I write this to you, I can say my daughter is out here with me in this energy field somewhere. I stole her life. She was only 14. The president and his boy survived. Looking back on it all, I can say it wasn’t worth it, not in the least.

It’s funny the things you miss when you are dead. I miss hearing the popping noises the refrigerator would make at night. I am totally going to miss that smell of freshly cut grass in the summer.

To think, I gave it all up for Donald Trump. I must have been out of my mind.