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Each step was choreographed for television. How he entered the golden doors of Walter Reed Military Hospital, posed for the cameras, and then carefully walked to the car that took him to the helicopter. How he, upon reaching the White House, climbed the stairs, removed his crown mask from the balcony, crumpled it up and put it in his pocket and posed again in nothingness, this time waving. How he finally got out two more times to film an election video
“I learned a lot about the corona virus,” Donald Trump said in the minute-and-a-half clip that he later posted on Twitter. “One thing is for sure: don’t let him dominate you. Don’t be afraid of him.”
With this strange scene, the president of the United States returned from the hospital to the White House on Monday night. Although he claims to be infected with the virus. Although his personal physician, Sean Coney, admits that “he still hasn’t crossed the mountain.”
But Trump insisted on being fired. Or rather, be transferred from one infirmary to another, more luxurious. He had announced that afternoon, before his doctors made it official, that he would be leaving the magnificent hospital for the night. It feels really good. There’s also the – dangerous – political message: “Don’t be afraid of Covid.” Shortly thereafter, his campaign team repeated them verbatim in appeals for donations to his followers.
It sounds like a variation on a familiar theme from Bob Woodward’s recently published book “Rage.” In an interview with the journalist, Trump admitted in mid-March that he was deliberately minimizing the danger posed by the corona virus for the population: “I always wanted to downplay it. I still hold it back because I don’t want to panic.” And because he wants to win the elections.
But this message could lead to oversight, possibly with fatal consequences.
The White House has become a corona hotspot
He felt better himself than 20 years ago, the president wrote. It remains to be seen how long the high feelings that may have been triggered by your medication will last. Because Trump is returning to a White House that long ago became a Corona hotspot: Just hours before Trump’s announcement that he wanted to leave the hospital, his press spokesperson, Kayleigh McEnany, announced that she too had been infected.
McEnany wrote in a message distributed on Twitter that he has been tested daily for the new corona virus since Thursday: always negative. A test carried out on Monday morning was finally positive. She has no symptoms and will now go into quarantine, the press spokeswoman said.
What does this mean for those who regularly ask you questions? “No reporter, producer or member of the press is considered a close contact by the White House medical team,” McEnany wrote. That should hardly reassure journalists in the White House media group. The day before, Trump’s spokeswoman had spoken to reporters on the driveway to the White House, without a mask.
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin advised White House reporters not to take anything McEnany says at face value. And PBS correspondent Yamiche Alcindor noted on Twitter that journalists wearing masks often asked White House employees why they weren’t wearing mouth and nose protection. So the answer: because they are often tested and the tests are negative.
They don’t do that anymore. Shortly after McEnany announced his contagion, CNN reported that two other members of Trump’s press team had tested positive.
These recent cases make a finding increasingly inevitable: Trump and his employees and confidants are not only unable to control the virus that prevails among them. Potentially endangers others; whether they are Secret Service agents who lead the infected president along with his supporters who cheer him on at the weekend, or journalists who ask questions of McEnany and his press.
The list of those infected is long
Reporters asked a Trump spokeswoman on Friday if she would wear mouth and nose protection at her briefings going forward. No comment. The day before, Trump’s close adviser Hope Hicks had tested positive; in the evening it was made public that the president had been infected. The Hicks infection, which appears to be central to the infection process in the Trump area, continues to surround numerous open questions. McEnany said he definitely did not know about Hicks’ diagnosis before giving a news conference Thursday.
Sometimes it is difficult to determine where the inability to deal with the virus ends and where the deliberate danger from others begins.
McEnany and his colleagues on the press team are just the last around the president to test positive for the virus. In addition to them, Hicks and First Lady Melania Trump would be:
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Wahlkampfmanager, Bill Stepien, Succeed
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his former adviser, Kellyanne Conway,
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Ronna McDaniel, leader of the Republican Party,
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Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who coached Trump before the first television duel with his Democratic challenger Joe Biden,
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Trump’s “body man” (protector), Nick Luna,
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Republican Senators Mike Lee of Utah, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
Three journalists from the White House press group have also been infected in recent days.
In the fight against the coronavirus, the United States is in the process of mastering “the last curve,” Trump recently announced. Despite the president’s return, the White House still seems a long way off.
