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AGI – The October surprise has arrived. Donald Trump and First Lady Melania test positive for the coronavirus. Destiny loves to play with words. Covid in the White House comes with Mrs ‘Hope’ and her name is Hope Hicks. “Hope” was Barack Obama’s catchphrase in the historic 2008 campaign. Hope is the factor that could erase any hope that Trump will be reelected to the White House.
Hope hicks
Apart from the intrigues, this is not House of Cards, the story has another title: House of Virus. The name of 31-year-old Hope Hicks, a beautiful former model and former chief communications officer for the president, flashes on the AGI network monitors in the middle of the night, it’s barely 2.00 a.m., the sound of broken dishes is heard as a chamber concert in progress. Hope Hicks was sull’Air Force One. Hope Hicks was on Marine One. Hope Hicks is one of President Trump’s closest associates. Hope Hicks was in Cleveland, Ohio on Tuesday and Duluth, Minnesota on Wednesday. Hope Hicks is the contagion. And from now on the Trump campaign has less “Hope”.
Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through it TOGETHER!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2020
“Tonight, the first lady and I tested positive for Covid-19. We will immediately begin our quarantine and recovery process. We will do it together.”. The medical bulletin comes with a screech. The news gallops from the health front, the noise of Twitter’s armored cavalry. It is a sequence of images and words that will go down in history: first the rumors and indiscretions triggered by the news of Hicks’ infection, then Trump’s interview with Fox News, where Sean Hannity celebrated mass, and the first flash of the flare at the American Night: I did the test. Finally, drum roll, and the news that gives another direction to the presidential campaign, 32 days after the vote, everything changes and everything could be as before.
A new chapter of America2020 opens
“They’re fine,” says White House medic, Naval Officer Sean Conley., and “the president continues to carry out his functions.” The story suddenly changes plot and register, a new chapter of America 2020 opens.
While Wall Street futures are sinking deeply and key employment figures are expected (661,000 new jobs in September, less than expected), on K Street, in the heart of Washington DC, in the offices of political strategists and Capitol lobbyists wonder: Who will win the coronavirus campaign? Joe in a mask or the infected Donald? Will the Democrats’ campaign of fear and health win, or sympathy for a battered president and first lady like millions of Americans? Will it be the final blow to the game of Democratic prudence, or the epic moment of the commander-in-chief taking on the invisible enemy and beating him up? We are in the prairie of the imagination, the story of an (un) expected event, the story of the shadow that hung over the field, the contagion of the president.
Air Force One
Joe Biden from a distance or Donald Trump in the fray?
Will the campaign symbol be Joe Biden from a distance or Donald Trump in the fray? Those who study presidential campaigns are faced with a unique case destined to enter electoral strategy manuals. It is not the first time that a leader has contracted the coronavirus (Before Trump, there were the cases of Boris Johnson and that of the President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro), American history is marked by biographies of presidents who get sick, die, fall, get up. The easiest, almost exclusive, way for a vice president to rise to the presidency is the disappearance of his boss, the impediment to doing his job. The disease, the accident, always lurk, take over individual biographies and transform them into collective history, the history of a nation.
From the beginning of this American novel, one of the scenarios we talked about at the end of the day, with a whiskey in hand and the pages of Truman Capote squared, was that of one of the two “lame” candidates in the race. by the impact with the coronavirus. And of course, given the style of the campaign, it was clear that the favorite in the event of misfortune was The Donald. It happened, and this really changes everything, no one can predict how the American voter, the man on “Main Street” will react.
In the German vocabulary there is a very particular word, with a persuasive and sinister sound, ‘schadenfreude’, that particular feeling of pleasure that one feels for the misfortunes of others. It’s sage advice from history: enjoying the evil that rained down on Trump could be deadly for Democrats.
Attack on Reagan
It is the biography of Ronald Reagan that reminds us how to do it in these cases. When the Texan John Hinckley tried to skin him in 1981, firing 7 shots in seconds, Reagan entered the hospital and while he was on the gurney at the entrance of the operating room he looked the doctors in the face and said: “I hope they are all Republicans.” . It is again he, Reagan, who acts as a souvenir in this incredible phase of the campaign, because the Democrats of the time said “today, president, we are all Republicans.” Who would say that now among Democrats? Perhaps none. The institutional bon ton for now stops in due course, we hope it will recover. Greetings for a speedy recovery and “The show must go on”.
Biden now has a double advantage
Biden now undoubtedly has a double advantage that is the union of opposites: he does not have coronavirus and he has coronavirus. You can campaign freely and seize the strategic advantage or make the spectacular turn of events, stops his campaign and waits for the rival to return to the field.
Trump canceled his rally scheduled for today in Florida, Biden is expected in Michigan. Two crucial battleground states for the presidential race. Even if he were asymptomatic, Trump would be out of the game for at least two weeks, forced into quarantine. Trump is his age, he is 74 years old who is among the subjects most exposed to the effects of the coronavirus, he is a man who is clinically defined as slightly obese (weighs 110 kilos for a height of 1 meter and 90 centimeters), obesity the risk of hospitalization triples and also people between 65 and 74 years have a risk five times greater than the population between 18 and 29 years. If he gets too weak to lead the nation, Mike Pence will take over.
Hypothesis carousel
We are in the carousel of hypotheses, but at this point each scenario must be considered. And if Pence gets sick too (he was away from the president in the last few days, he was in Georgia on Wednesday and Iowa yesterday, he gets regular coronavirus tests and the last one is also negative) Power would move to third place in the state, Speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi. An emergency within an emergency.
Nancy pelosi
“The speaker of the House must be protected and isolated,” warns on CNN Jonathan Reiner, cardiologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney, who knows about hospitals and power. “To ensure the continuity of the government, it is necessary that we have a clear leader here because it is very possible at this point that both the president and the vice president get sick.” The commander-in-chief could give a speech to the nation today to reassure his health. For months, the president has refused to wear a mask as deaths in the United States top 200,000 and infections top 7.2 million. Only yesterday, 43,000 new cases and 857 deaths were registered.
What will happen to the presidential campaign? On the agenda are two other debates between the presidential candidates, a Miami (October 15) and Nashville (October 22). They are in the balance, like the race for the White House, it all depends on Trump’s recovery and the ongoing conversations between the committee that organizes the debates and the campaign staff.
The problem until tonight was that of the rules, now there is the possibility that the game table will be skipped, in any case another phase of the challenge has been opened. Trump will no longer be able to continue playing with the economic and security arguments that had put him back on track, the story of the campaign is the coronavirus. What a story.
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