After Trump said he ‘learned a lot about Covid,’ his trip outside the hospital suggested otherwise.
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Version 0 of 1. The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, announced Monday that she had the coronavirus, and the news of two other aides’ diagnoses became public as well, in a raft of cases that has upended the federal government and President Trump’s campaign a month before the election. Ms. McEnany announced her test result on Twitter, saying that she had experienced no symptoms and was planning to begin isolating. Her announcement came a day after Mr. Trump, battling the virus and trailing in the polls, grasped Sunday evening for the singular certainty he craves as a person and requires as a politician: the adulation of his fans. Republican officials — seeking to spin something positive from Mr. Trump’s announcement he had the coronavirus on Friday — quietly floated the idea over the weekend that his illness could give voters a sense that he was finally approaching the pandemic with appropriate gravity. A video posted to his Twitter account Sunday evening seemed to reinforce that idea. Mr. Trump, his voice husky but manner relaxed, called his illness “a very interesting journey.” “I learned a lot about Covid,” Mr. Trump said of a scourge that has killed more than 200,000 Americans. “I learned it by really going to school. This is the real school, this isn’t the let’s-read-the-book school. And I get it and I understand it and it’s a very interesting thing and I’m going to be letting you know about it.” Then, moments later, he proved how little had really changed. Guidelines published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tell caregivers to “limit transport and movement of the patient outside of the room to medically essential purposes” to stem the spread of the disease. But Mr. Trump loaded up his Secret Service detail (he wore a black cloth mask; they appeared to don N95 masks) for a slow-roll past supporters gathered outside the gates of the hospital. “God bless our president — I will die for him. I will die for that man happily!” shouted a man in the crowd, according to audio and video posted by C-SPAN. On Twitter, many others pointed out that Mr. Trump, who is still infectious, had unnecessarily exposed his security detail to risk. Mr. Trump’s actions on Sunday were not just about making himself feel better, but also reflected his deepening worry. His two main imperatives as a politician are to project strength, even invincibility — and staying in a hospital bed deprives him of that — and to control his own narrative, which simply is not possible when fighting such an unpredictable disease. In an apparent attempt to do so, the president’s Twitter account was active Monday morning, issuing a series of all-caps exhortations: “LAW & ORDER. VOTE!” “RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. VOTE!” “MASSIVE REGULATION CUTS. VOTE!” This week, the severity or relative mildness of the president’s illness may become more apparent, as well as the extent of the infection’s spread among his staff and other contacts. And then there is the matter of the looming confirmation fight over Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Mr. Trump’s appointee to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. Senate Republicans, spurred on by the White House, had hoped to push her nomination through quickly, but three Republican senators so far have tested positive for the virus, throwing the future of Judge Barrett’s confirmation hearings into question. To complicate matters further, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who has tried to hold the polarized court together, is facing a succession of major decisions — including the possibility of being called upon to rule on the election — with either one fewer justice on the bench, or one new conservative who might upset the center-right balance he has sought to maintain, especially on challenges to the Affordable Care Act. |