October 2, 2020
Today’s media was consumed with news of the spread of coronavirus to the president and First Lady, as well as concern over the degree to which it has spread to other people associated with the White House. A number of those who attended the Rose Garden announcement of Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court have tested positive. That number includes the Trumps, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), and Fr. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame. Also infected are Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, and at least three journalists who have attended White House events in the past week.
And tonight, presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway reported that she, too, has tested positive.
As I write this, just before midnight, Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien has just announced he, too, has tested positive for the coronavirus.
Five minutes after midnight (sorry for breaking the midnight rule again), we learned that 11 staffers from the Cleveland debate also tested positive.
We will not learn of infections among the Secret Service.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tested negative, as have Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden.
This evening, medical professionals transferred the president to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center “out of an abundance of caution.” He walked from the helicopter under his own power, and posted a short video to his Twitter account assuring viewers that he is doing “very well.” He remains in charge; power has not transferred to Vice President Mike Pence.
Aside from the personal implications of the spread of this illness—and let’s remember that there are 46,459 other Americans who have contracted the coronavirus in the last day-- this major news story has huge implications for the upcoming election. It also illustrates how the administration’s secrecy and lies take away our ability to make informed decisions about our own lives, as well as about the nation.
The Trump entourage has refused to wear masks, social distance, or follow the advice of public health experts for reducing the spread of the virus. Now it appears that White House officials deliberately withheld information about their condition, directly endangering other people who acted on the presumption that the Trump people weren’t infected. The Washington Post reported that Secret Service agents, who risk their lives to protect the president, are angry and frustrated: “He’s never cared about us.” The 30-50 Republican donors who met with Trump Thursday night at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, are “freaking out,” one report noted. Tickets had cost up to $250,000, and Trump met privately with about 19 people for 45 minutes. Trump knew his adviser Hope Hicks had tested positive when he left for the club, but he went anyway. He did not wear a mask.
Reporter Chris Wallace of the Fox News Channel, who moderated Tuesday’s debate and so was one of those the Trumps’ entourage endangered, revealed today that Trump arrived too late on Tuesday for a COVID-19 test, as the venue required. Instead, there was an “honor system.” Organizers assumed the people associated with the campaigns would not come unless they had tested negative. Trump’s people arrived wearing masks, which they had to have to enter the auditorium, but then removed them shortly after sitting down, and refused to put them back on. During the debate, Trump mocked Biden for his habit of wearing a mask.
The campaign did not tell the Biden camp that Hicks, who attended the debate, had tested positive for coronavirus the day after the event. The Biden organization learned it from the newspapers. The White House did not even tell former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who spent four days in close quarters with Hicks and Trump, helping the president prepare for the debate. He, too, learned the news from the media.
This crisis shows how the administration’s refusal to share information and its insistence on its own version of reality creates confusion that leaves Americans vulnerable and anxious. Its history of secrecy and lies means that few people actually trust anything its spokespeople say. It was striking how many people did not believe the Trumps were actually sick when the news broke; we are so accustomed to Trump’s lies that many people thought he was simply looking for a way out of future debates.
The constant lies—about coronavirus and virtually everything else—destabilize the nation because we cannot know what the truth really is. And if we don’t know what is actually happening, we cannot make good decisions. Today the editorial board of the Washington Post warned that the White House simply must let us know the truth about the president’s health so that we know who is actually running national security, the economy, and the election on our behalf.
That plea did not appear to make much of an impression on the White House: it did not bother to tell Pelosi, who is third in line for the presidency, that Trump was being helicoptered to Walter Reed Hospital.
And so we are facing a pandemic spreading through the upper ranks of the government just before an election with little faith that we will learn the truth about what is happening. That, just as much as the infections in the administration, is a crisis.
To its credit, the Biden campaign has identified this crisis and is doing its best to restore our sense of a shared reality, based in our history and our better principles. Rather than expressing outrage that the Trump camp exposed him and his wife and guests to coronavirus, Biden offered his best wishes for Trump and the First Lady, as did his running mate Kamala Harris. Biden’s campaign pulled all its negative ads out of respect for the president’s illness (the Trump campaign refused to follow suit).
Biden spoke in Michigan today, assuring the audience that “We can get this pandemic under control so we can get our economy working again for everyone.” But, he emphasized, “this cannot be a partisan moment. It must be an American moment. We have to come together as a nation.” He promised to get rid of the toxic partisanship that is keeping us all off balance. “I’m running as a Democrat,” he said, “but I will… govern as an American president. Whether you voted for me or against me, I will represent you... and those who see each other as fellow Americans who just don’t live in red states or blue states but who live in and love the United States of America. That’s who we are.”
To an increasingly weary country, he offered hope that we really can heal the nation’s ills. “There’s never been a single solitary thing America’s been unable to do. Think of this. Not once. Not a single thing we’ve not been able to overcome when we’ve done it together. So let’s get the heck up. Remember who in God’s name we are. This is the United States of America,” he said. “There’s nothing beyond our capacity.”
Notes:
Pelosi informed:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/02/politics/president-donald-trump-walter-reed-coronavirus/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/02/us/notre-dame-president-covid-trnd/index.html
Biden:
Earpiece ad: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/02/politics/fact-check-trump-facebook-biden-earpiece/index.html
didn’t tell Biden camp: https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-coronavirus-positive/h_378e07069dded1b1f71539db60bcdae5
Honor system:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/02/trump-campaign-manager-tests-positive-for-covid-19-425722
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/02/trump-campaign-manager-tests-positive-for-covid-19-425722
11 staffers:
Christie:
Tonight Steve Schmidt of The Lincoln Project tweeted this call to the Biden campaign to seize the moment with a take-no-prisoners mindset. I wholeheartedly approve! What do you think?
I wish Trump and Melania an expeditious recovery and hope very much that they will be in good health as they face electoral humiliation, repudiation and the harsh judgement of the American people on Election Day. Trump’s lying has become one of the most lethal events in our nation’s history. If US mortality rates were what they are in Germany, more than 150,000 Americans would still be alive. Trump’s cruel disregard for the American people has ravaged our economy, our kid’s educations and fundamental elements of the American way of life.
There is no person in America that has done more to spread Covid than @realDonaldTrump and no one has tried harder to catch it. Trump couldn’t have been more personally reckless than if he went to Sturgess and licked the doorknobs on the porta-johns. He politicized mask wearing and thus sentenced tens of thousands to cruel and lonely deaths. He has let loose a national insanity that manifests itself in the lunacy of antimask protesters storming Walmart’s and supermarkets in spasms of idiocy and craziness. His political rallies are dangerously delusional events where the advice of public health experts and MD’s is stupidly ignored. Each gathering spreads a disease that kills. It kills here more than anywhere else.
This week has stripped bare the rotting and vile roots of Trumpism. It began with the revelation that the great conman and tax cheat paid $750 in Federal taxes and owes more than $400 million to undisclosed lenders, much of it personally guaranteed against no discernible income. The debate was a moment of national humiliation that disgraced the Presidency, the United States and the American people. At the end of the debate Trump incited extremist militia groups by delivering what they interpreted as a weapons ready order from the Commander in Chief. Heavily armed fascist Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and dozens of white supremacist Groups heard a lock and load order. Ask them. Believe them. Take them seriously. Trump has threatened the peaceful transition of power and intimated violence should he lose. He has made clear that his loss would be THE evidence of a stolen election.
He has made up false and wild stories about corrupted ballots for the purpose of underming faith in our election’s integrity. These are unpardonable actions for an American President and they desecrate the sacrifice of every patriot from the fields at Lexington and Concord to Gettysburg, Normandy and the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Trump has lied to the country on more than 25,000 occasions, assaulted the rule of law, assailed our institutions, stoked racial animus and been spectacularly corrupt. He is singularly responsible for one of the great tragedies in American history. His campaign is imploding. Paschal, Miller, Guilfoye, Melania, all of them have disgraced themselves and stained the Presidency. They are a wretched, corrupt and self interested gang of incompetents and malicious people who have done profound damage to this country in four short years. There should be no political mercy shown towards Trump and Trumpism in this moment.
Mr. Vice President, your duty requires you to order your campaign to put its ads back on the air. @JoeBiden Trump is out of money. Spend him into the ground. Georgia is close. @MikeEspyMS is close in Mississippi. The Kansas Senate race is close.
Trumpism is an authoritarian and UNAMERICAN ideology that teems with menace and intimations of violence. It is a cult of personality led by a lethal liar who lacks intelligence, grace, empathy, and competence. Trumpism is a scourge. It is a metastic cancer. We need to crush it. Should Trump be disadvantaged in this moment, then we should rejoice. Pour it on. Vote him out. No let up. The pace and intensity of attacks should be increasing and should not stop until he is humiliated and sent home to face the judgement of history and in hopefully a good long time, his maker.
When his zero-co-pay, taxpayer-funded, world-class treatment at Walter Reed hospital has healed him, Donald Trump will redouble his efforts to avoid paying income tax and to strip healthcare coverage from millions of ACA enrollees. As the cliché has it, "You can't make this stuff up."