All of our ongoing coverage of Trump’s deeply ironic positive test here. Ironic, but still a legitimate crisis.
You’ve probably already seen the news. The President and the First Lady have both tested positive for COVID, according to a tweet a short time ago from the President. Presumably they were infected by Hope Hicks, though I don’t think we can rule out some other chain of transmission, like Hicks and Trump both being infected by some as yet unknown person.
I don’t want to be alarmist. But the President spent almost two hours in relative proximity to Joe Biden only 48 hours ago.
Trump, Hicks and Melania Trump are almost certainly not the only three people at the White House with COVID.
This is a grave situation, coming in the midst of what was already a developing national crisis.
Hope Hicks, one of President Trump’s top aides, has tested positive for COVID. She traveled with him on Air Force One to Tuesday’s debate. She was apparently also traveling with the President yesterday when he held a rally in Minnesota.
If you watched the debate on Tuesday or have paid attention to the Trump family’s public appearances in the last 48 hours, you don’t need me to point out the irony here.
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A friend asked me to read and give my reaction to this debate reaction piece by Tim Alberta in Politico. Of late I haven’t been on the same page on many things Alberta has written. There are various assumptions and claims in this one I don’t agree with. But on the big point I think Alberta really nails a key element of what happened Tuesday night. I mentioned yesterday that there’s a certain roguish fun and entertainment Trump can bring which we shortchange ourselves not to understand and credit no matter how much we might loathe him or despise what he represents.
This was one of Trump’s campaign superpowers in 2016. Whatever else you could say it was really, really clear that Trump was enjoying himself. And why wouldn’t he be? He was breaking the rules and getting away with it. On his maiden political campaign he was felling the men who were supposed to be the futures of the Republican Party one after another. He was being himself and it was working. He would provoke, crack a joke, offend and while his competitors were prepping tut-tutting press releases he was on Fox or on Twitter moving on to his next stunt.
I missed this post-debate assessment yesterday from David Sanger of the New York Times:
But what worried American intelligence and homeland security officials, who have been assuring the public for months now that an accurate, secure vote could happen, was that Mr. Trump’s rant about a fraudulent vote may have been intended for more than just a domestic audience.
They have been worried for some time that his warnings are a signal to outside powers — chiefly the Russians — for their disinformation campaigns, which have seized on his baseless theme that the mail-in ballots are ridden with fraud. But what concerns them the most is that over the next 34 days, the country may begin to see disruptive cyberoperations, especially ransomware, intended to create just enough chaos to prove the president’s point.
For Inside Members, I can hope you can join me tomorrow at 2 PM for an important briefing with Bob Bauer (Obama White House Counsel) and Jack Goldsmith (Office of Legal Counsel, Bush DOJ). We’ll be discussing a critical question we’ll face perhaps either in four months or four years: how to reconstruct, how to batten down the presidency in the wake of President Trump’s lawless presidency. The two have written a new book, After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency, with a range of proposals for bringing the 18th century office of the presidency up to code on issues ranging from conflicts of interest, pardon powers, foreign interference and control of nuclear weapons.
I hope you can join us. As an Inside Member an email invitation should already be in your inbox.
Please join me at 2 PM.
Rage, narcissism, self-loathing, fear – each vividly on display. We got a clear view last night of something very basic about this moment. The country isn’t so much facing an election as a hostage negotiation. Trump is losing, probably not just the presidency but just as critically his immunity from the law. Does he come out peacefully? Or is he one of those degenerates who kills his wife and kids on the way out?
If he’s going to lose he wants to burn the country down.
As my vivid and ugly analogy suggests, this isn’t strategy. It’s instinct. It’s rage.
He’s been one of the most confusing senators to me for some time.
JoinHaving had a night to sleep on it – and sleep very soundly – I’m much closer to what I said was the downside possibility for the President: not just a missed opportunity but a self-immolation. This was truly the worst of Trump: racist, belligerent, angry, unstable. I’ll give the man his due. Trump can be if not funny then jocular, entertaining in a predatory, roguish way. Last night had none of that. It was pure id and an id under threat.
Beyond all the individual offenses one of the underrated sub-themes of anti-Trumpism is exhaustion. One of the deepest traumas of living in the home of an abuser stems not from the outbursts of physical violence, verbal abuse or manipulation but the accumulated stress of ambient tension, uncertainty, the reflexive, unshakeable hyper-vigilance. It is exhausting in a profound way. Trump is exhausting – I suspect even for some who share his dark values. This was 90 minutes jam-packed with everything that makes Trump exhausting. Living with an abuser means being trapped in close quarters with the abuse, being unable to run. In a month voters get the chance to walk away.