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The White House that President Trump woke up to Tuesday morning was in utter chaos, even by the standards of the ravages of the Trump era.
Attendees said the president’s voice was louder after he returned from the hospital Monday night, but that at times he still sounded like he was trying to take a breath. The west wing was nearly empty, with no advisers who were sick with the coronavirus or had been told to work from home rather than in the capital’s most famous virus hot spot. Staff members at the White House residence wore full personal protective equipment, which included yellow gowns, surgical masks and disposable protective eye covers.
Four more White House officials tested positive, including Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s top advisers, bringing the number of people carrying the virus in the White House or in the president’s close circle to 14. Trump, diagnosed with Covid-19 last week, was still furious with his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, whose effort Saturday to squash the rosy portrait of Trump’s condition given to journalists by his chief physician was caught on by the camera. . Other officials were angry at Meadows for not even trying to control the president.
Some aides tried to project confidence: “We feel comfortable working here, those of us who are still here,” said Alyssa Farah, the White House communications director, in an interview on Fox News, but many saw the situation as spiraling out of control. . . The pandemic that Trump had treated with disdain for months appeared to have blocked the White House. West Wing aides, shaken by polls showing the president lagging far behind Joseph R. Biden Jr., were concerned that they were living through the final days of the Trump administration.
Disorder was spreading through Washington at the same time. Nearly the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, including its chairman, Gen. Mark A. Milley, went into quarantine on Tuesday after coming into contact with Admiral Charles W. Ray, the Coast Guard deputy commander, who tested positive for the coronavirus. . At the end of the day, the stock market crashed when Trump abruptly canceled talks for a congressional coronavirus relief bill after Fed Chairman Jerome H. Powell said such stimulus was badly needed.
Some White House staff members wondered if Trump’s behavior was spurred by a cocktail of drugs he has been taking to treat the coronavirus, including dexamethasone, a steroid that can cause mood swings and can give a false level of high. energy and a feeling of euphoria. .
Staff members said the president was glad to be back in the White House after spending four days and three nights at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which his aides said made him feel like he was in a cage. Meadows and Bobby Peede, the director of the White House advance team, accompanied him there for hours and served as lifeguards for the rest of the administration. He called another aide, Max Miller, on Sunday to stay with him.
Aides said Trump made calls from the White House on Tuesday and wandered around the areas of the presidential residence that had been set up for him. Although he was described as eager to return to the Oval Office and prove he was in charge, a possible live speech to the nation was discussed but scrapped in favor of a planned recorded one.
Prominent supporters of the administration said Trump should have stayed in the hospital until he was no longer contagious or should remain confined to his residence.
“When a boss confronts Covid, whether that boss is the president, a CEO, a school principal, a union foreman at a workshop, and the boss shows up for work, it sends a very worrying message. everyone around the boss, “said Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to President George W. Bush. “There is a community of people who work in the White House, not just people appointed by politicians. A good boss always takes care of his employees ”.
The exact state of health of the president is still unknown. Dr. Sean P. Conley, a White House physician, said Tuesday that the president is “reporting no symptoms” of the virus and that his vital signs were stable, but no one at the White House said what the “expected findings” were. on Trump’s chest X-ray that Dr. Conley had mentioned over the weekend.
There were also no responses as to when Trump last tested negative for the virus, crucial information the White House and Dr. Conley have declined to respond to that would establish Trump’s known state of health prior to the presidency. debate last Tuesday or before he attended a fundraiser in New Jersey on Thursday. The White House first made public that Trump had tested positive early last Friday.
Coronavirus outbreak at the White House
Two officials maintained that Trump had been tested before the presidential debate, but the White House has yet to affirm that.
White House officials admitted Tuesday that the impression had been created that Trump was getting tested every day and a reliance on testing as if it were a curative measure rather than a diagnosis.
However, the president himself was not examined every day, according to two people familiar with the practices. A senior administration official would say only Tuesday that Trump was screened “regularly.” Trump himself told reporters in the White House meeting room in July that “I probably take a test on average every two to three days.”
As the day progressed on Tuesday, parts of the White House resembled a danger zone. Workers dressed in head-to-toe protective suits sanitized common spaces in the west wing, and staff members were told that the White House residence had hired a “wellness” consultant with whom they could speak. anonymously, specifically to focus on mental health. worries.
Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary who tested positive for the virus on Monday, appeared on television from her home. Hope Hicks, Trump’s close adviser who also tested positive, had been trying to help with the messaging of the videos the president recorded of Walter Reed and the comments about the virus he wanted to make upon his return.
And the signaling continued.
Ms. Hicks had been upset last week that she was blamed for infecting the president, according to three people who had spoken to her. She had not attended a Rose Garden event announcing Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court and had tested positive for the virus on the same day as Trump and the first lady, so it was highly likely that I would have contracted the virus from the president.
Among White House advisers, anger grew against McEnany because your statement announcing your diagnosis seemed to blame Mrs. Hicks. There was also frustration in many corners of Meadows for not doing more to try to protect staff, a criticism that advocates said was unfair given the scope of their duties.
By Monday night, some of the staff members still in the White House had gathered to watch Trump return. When he defiantly removed his mask on the Truman Balcony for a made-for-television moment, attendees said that of course it was a statement. But they also wondered if the facial covering made it difficult for the president to breathe.
Either way, some of them ignored the message he was sending to tens of millions of Americans about taking the coronavirus seriously.
The sentiment, according to a Trump aide, was that “it’s his home.”
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