GOP brass follow Trump’s lead
Wake-up call? Some wondered whether his illness would change officials’ stance No changes: Top Republicans still making public appearances, not using masks
Last week’s news that President Donald Trump had tested positive for the novel coronavirus and needed to be hospitalized seemed to represent the ultimate wake-up call for the president and his Republican Party.
They had spent the better part of the year playing down the threat of COVID-19 and openly flouting measures that scientists and doctors recommended to stem its spread. Now, the virus had breached the White House to infect the president and an array of top Republicans.
But any thought that Trump would emerge from Walter Reed Medical Center with a changed stance on the severity of the virus was gone by Monday night when, upon his return to the White House, Trump paused on a balcony in front of TV cameras and, still heav
ing with the apparent symptoms of the virus, pointedly removed his face mask.
It was a moment crystallizing Trump’s placement of bravado over science, as he has since the start of the pandemic, this time with the virus still coursing through his body.
Top Republicans have followed his lead even as it became obvious that their disregard for basic public health guidelines had caused a still-metastasizing White House-centered outbreak infecting the president and more than a dozen high-level figures in the party.
In a Sept. 26 Rose Garden party to celebrate Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court, top GOP figures sat shoulder to shoulder, embraced, shook hands and chatted. Most of the attendees were not
wearing masks.
Since then, more than a dozen people who came in contact with Trump or his aides have reported testing positive, including first lady Melania Trump, three U.S. senators, Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and senior aide Hope Hicks.
Exposed administration officials and Republican leaders have continued traveling, politicking and appearing in public – often without that most basic health measure, the mask – in violation of their own government’s recommendations. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines recommend that people quarantine if they have been in close contact with someone shown to have been positive for the virus in the previous fourteen days.
Despite having been at the Rose Garden event with infected colleagues, McEnany continued to interact with members of the media without a mask before testing positive on Monday. Two members of her office reportedly tested positive, as have multiple White House journalists. One reporter has said that his wife also has tested positive, suggesting a widening orbit of the White House spread, and a CBS reporter tweeted that he felt safer in North Korea than covering Trump’s administration.
Attorney General William Barr initially refused to quarantine, even though video from the Rose Garden event showed Conway, who later tested positive, whispering in his ear. He ultimately decided to quarantine, although other Republican officials who were at the same event, including Vice President Mike Pence, have said they will not.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., attended a Wisconsin fundraiser Friday after he had taken a test for the virus, but before the results came back. Johnson, who has been a vocal opponent of a mask mandate, learned the next day that he had tested positive.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who has worked closely with multiple infected colleagues in the Senate, was photographed by a fellow passenger on a Delta flight with his mask dangling uselessly below his chin. Wicker’s spokesperson said he “lowered his face mask to eat a snack and forgot to put it back up.”
Unlike other suspected outbreaks of the virus, there does not appear to have been diligent contact tracing after the Rose Garden event so those who may have been infected could be quarantined. Multiple attendees at the event have said that they were not reached by contact tracers, and the White House has rebuffed the CDC’s offer to help.
Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said the disregard of basic guidelines by members at the highest level of government constituted “willful denial” that they too were beholden to the threat of infection.
“There’s a sense of entitlement,” Schaffner said. “That rules don’t apply to them.”
Schaffner described Trump’s and top Republicans’ downplaying of the virus as dangerous both in the immediate risk posed by possibly infectious officials and in the broader threat of poor public messaging.
Schaffner predicted Trump’s actions during his illness, such as commandeering an armored sport-utility vehicle for a ride around the hospital with a retinue of Secret Service agents, would cause many Americans to be more lax about the virus and rebel against quarantines and other public health measures in ways that have already contributed to COVID-19 rampaging through the U.S. more than in any other country.
“His excursion probably undermined the authority of health officials around the country to enforce quarantine,” Schaffner said.
White House spokesman Judd Deere did not answer specific questions for this article, instead condemning members of the media who he said are “disgustingly rooting against the President’s own health and his message of fight and optimism for the American people as he personally defeats this virus. Any suggestion that the President of the United States has not taken the threat of COVID-19 seriously is completely false.”
Deere also defended the Rose Garden event on Monday night, referring to protesters he said who have “burned down, looted and rioted” in American cities and stating, “It can’t be the case that one group is allowed to assemble but those who support President Trump are not.”
Trump’s bizarre and ongoing medical saga, unfolding with less than a month to go before the presidential election, seems unlikely to help him gain ground against a front-running opponent, Joe Biden, whose campaign has already benefited from Trump’s haphazard handling of the COVID-19 crisis.
Just during the time of Trump’s brief hospital stay over the weekend, the U.S. logged more than 136,000 new COVID cases and nearly 1,900 deaths attributed to the virus. Yet Trump emerged from his suite at Walter Reed, where he received experimental treatment unavailable to most non-presidents, to assert that national concern over the virus was overblown.
“Don’t let it dominate your life,” Trump tweeted. “We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”
And on Tuesday morning, Trump reverted to the sort of false and dangerous comparison he had made earlier in the pandemic, comparing the novel coronavirus to the common flu. Twitter hid the post, finding it “misleading and potentially harmful.”
But Trump’s supporters, including Republican members of Congress, have seized on his hospital room battle against the virus as an inspiring showcase of their leader’s invincibility.
“COVID stood NO chance” against the president, U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, RGa., tweeted Monday, along with a video depicting Trump pummeling the virus in a professional wrestling arena.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., tweeted: “President Trump has once again defeated China.”
Both senators have also shown disregard for safety over the novel coronavirus. Loeffler was among those at the Rose Garden event, and even after Trump’s positive test she and Blackburn continued campaigning, often without masks.
Outside of loyalists, Trump’s efforts to pitch his medical odyssey as a personal triumph seemed a tough sell to a skeptical public.
When the White House released photos showing Trump in different outfits signing documents while hospitalized, suggesting a full workday, online sleuths showed that the photos were taken only 10 minutes apart. In at least one of the photos, he appeared to be signing a blank piece of paper with his Sharpie.
For Trump’s car trip around the hospital, the attention focused on the unnecessary risks it posed and the grimlooking federal agent in full personal protective equipment in the front passenger seat.
And Trump’s return to the White House, captured on video to show him reclaiming a spot on his balcony, without a face mask, seemed to be planned to project an image of his glorious return.
Instead, the word “gasping” trended on Twitter as Americans watched with alarm as Trump labored to breathe through a pained grimace on his face.
Schaffner cautioned that Trump’s victory lap is premature.
“We all wish him the best, an uneventful and rapid recovery,” he said. “But experience with this virus shows that it’s typical for a patient to do pretty well for several days and then crash.”
Like many Americans, Schaffner was most struck by the image of Trump defiantly removing his mask upon his arrival at the White House and concerned that supporters will clearly receive, and follow, the president’s message.
“As soon as he got to his turf, he took off his mask and put it in his pocket, as if to say ‘I’m free of all those doctors.’” Schaffner said. “I think this is going to continually influence the thinking of many people across the country.”