Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[kenberg]

A doctor affiliated with Walter Reed hospital summed up this presidency when he talked about Trump's car ride while ill with Covid:

 

 

 

"This is insanity" - a perfect summation of the entire Trump presidency.

 

A reckless teenager has more regard for the life and well-being of others than Trump has. At least I did, and I was a full-fledged teenager. If any of his supporters are still reading this thread, I ask that they think about that. And one further point: A president, any president, has a responsibility to the nation, and that includes taking care of his own health. Bush I did some sky-diving, but he did it after completing his term.

 

One can argue that DT is out of touch with reality, or doesn't care about reality, etc. It doesn't matter what the explanation is. Someone this careless about life needs to be somewhere else. It's just crazy that this even has to be said.

[y66]

 

Amy Coney Barrett's superspreader event in the White House Rose Garden on Sept. 26.Alex Brandon/Associated Press

 

Millions of Americans have gone months without seeing some of their closest relatives or their colleagues. They have canceled weddings and graduations. They have said goodbye to dying loved ones by phone.

 

But when many of the nation’s political leaders gathered at the White House nine days ago to celebrate the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, they decided the pandemic rules that applied to everybody else didn’t apply to them.

 

Some of them assumed, wrongly, that because they had received a fast-response virus test when arriving at the White House, they could not be infectious. Others simply chose not to think about the virus, it seems. Instead, dozens of them sat, unmasked, within inches of one another. They shook hands, hugged and kissed. After starting outdoors, the event moved indoors, where the participants continued to celebrate like it was 2019.

 

There is now reason to believe that the gathering was a superspreader event for the coronavirus. The president and the first lady are sick, as are two senators who attended, a former governor, the president of the University of Notre Dame and multiple White House staff members, journalists and others.

 

And anyone infected at the White House that day may have later infected others.

 

Andrew Joseph of the health publication Stat wrote this weekend that the event at the White House “offers a case study in what experts say has been the administration’s recklessness.” The Times has compiled photos from the event, with labels identifying many of the attendees.

 

Rebecca Ruiz of Mashable tweeted, in response to a photo of the indoor reception for Barrett: “I haven’t hugged my parents since March 8 and they haven’t hugged their grandchildren since then either. 6yo desperately wanted to hold hands w/ her grandpa on her birthday and I said no, we can’t take that risk.”

 

David French of the conservative website The Dispatch, wrote, “What a breathtaking contrast to the way so many millions of Americans have lived their lives.”

 

Perhaps the most poignant response came from, the Notre Dame president, the Rev. John Jenkins. This spring, Jenkins had made the case that colleges had a moral obligation to reopen, for the sake of the “body, mind and spirit” of their students. But Notre Dame would do so carefully, he promised. When some students violated campus rules by holding parties — without masks or social distancing — and a virus outbreak followed, Jenkins canceled in-person classes for two weeks as a punishment and a precaution.

 

Early last week, even before it was clear that the White House helped spread the virus, Jenkins wrote a letter to the Notre Dame community expressing regret for his behavior there. “I failed to lead by example, at a time when I’ve asked everyone else in the Notre Dame community to do so,” he wrote. “I especially regret my mistake in light of the sacrifices made on a daily basis by many.”

[y66]

A West Wing meltdown. Staffers say they went days with no internal communication from Meadows about protocols and procedures — including whether they should show up to work — as COVID tore through the West Wing.

 

https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-mark-meadows-west-wing-65fb1a74-59b4-4cb3-9326-47aa7d83b946.html?utm_campaign=organic&utm_medium=socialshare&utm_source=twitter

Business as usual in Trumpworld.

[y66]

Code blue for the Trump campaign.

 

The Trump campaign is hoping the nation will rally around the ailing president as he battles the coronavirus. But the first polls conducted since the president’s announcement of his diagnosis early Friday did not seem to show a sympathy bounce.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/05/us/trump-vs-biden?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage#polls-find-most-americans-do-not-believe-trump-took-the-virus-seriously-and-show-no-signs-of-a-sympathy-bounce

[johnu]

Doctor Warns Trump’s Coronavirus Treatment Can Cause Psychosis, Mania

 

A doctor told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Sunday that the medication cocktail currently being given to President Donald Trump to treat coronavirus could have some serious side effects, including psychosis, mania and delirium.

This seems like scientifically grounded observations, but honestly, how would you tell if the Manchurian President is more psychotic, manic, or delirious than normal???

[y66]

When Chuck Norris tested positive, COVID went to the hospital to recuperate while he stayed home.

 

For the rest of us "The key to getting out of the hospital early is to live in a giant mansion run by the federal government that includes a 24/7 urgent care facility and full-time medical personnel" per Matt Yglesias.

[thepossum]

You know what is insanity. The international media storm over someone going to hospital for a few days

 

EDIT What is also highly amusing is that the conspiracy theory boot now seems to be on the other foot :)

[y66]

“Don’t be afraid of Covid,” President Trump tweeted, on the same day that the White House outbreak spread further and another several hundred Americans died from virus complications.

 

The president has survived Covid-19 so far, with help from more aggressive medical care than virtually any other American would have received. But about 210,000 of his fellow citizens have not survived, according to the official death count. The real toll, based on the number of excess deaths this year, is probably closer to 275,000.

 

Given Trump’s campaign to make the virus seem like a minor inconvenience, I think it’s worth taking a minute this morning to take stock of the virus:

 

Only cancer and heart disease will kill more Americans this year than Covid. Already, the virus has killed more than twice as many Americans as either strokes or Alzheimer’s disease, about four times as many as diabetes and more than eight times as many as either gun violence or vehicle accidents.

 

Most other rich countries have been much more successful in fighting the virus than the U.S. A chart is the simplest way to see this:

 

By The New York Times | Sources: Johns Hopkins University, World Bank

Outbreaks are again increasing in the U.S. The number of new cases per day has risen more than 25 percent since mid-September. “Covid-19 is spreading again across most of the U.S., hammering rural America and smaller cities and raising anxiety in New York,” Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The outbreak connected to the White House is responsible for about 30 known cases so far — more than the average daily number of new cases recently in all of Australia.

 

The virus is genuinely terrifying for thousands of people. In addition to the more than 200,000 deaths — and all of the Americans mourning those deaths — many other people have spent weeks battling fatigue, shortness of breath, cardiac problems and more.

 

Dr. Sean Conley, the White House physician, said it would be another week until doctors could feel confident that Trump had beaten the virus. A preliminary plan calls for confining him to the White House residence, where he can receive 24-hour medical care, and keeping him away from the West Wing.

 

The White House has decided not to trace the contacts of guests and staff members at the Sept. 26 Rose Garden celebration for Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Health officials suspect that event may have spread the virus to Trump and others.

 

The Trump administration is blocking proposed stricter guidelines for the emergency approval of a coronavirus vaccine. The White House chief of staff objected to provisions that would push approval past Election Day.

[y66]

Daily polling diary: No Democratic presidential candidate has won Arizona since 1996. But a new Times poll shows Biden with an eight-point lead there and the Democratic Senate nominee with an 11-point lead. It’s evidence that Republicans are losing their grip on the state, Nate Cohn writes.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/presidential-polls-trump-biden?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20201006&instance_id=22849&nl=the-morning&regi_id=59211987&section_index=2&section_name=the_latest_news&segment_id=39939&te=1&user_id=2d8b72dd84a9ff194896ed87b2d9c72a#poll-arizona-election-biden

[y66]

We can say one thing for sure now: If Donald Trump wins the 2020 presidential election, it will be either the biggest October comeback or the biggest polling error in the polling era.

 

With four weeks to go, it’s hard to find good news for the president. Former Vice President Joe Biden leads by a bit more than 8 percentage points in national polls. Trump still has a bit of an Electoral College advantage, meaning that if each state moved equally in his direction, he could win the election even if he loses the popular vote. But as of now, the advantage doesn’t appear to have grown from 2016, and he’s too far behind for it to save him. Polls have him down 6.2 percentage points in Pennsylvania, 7.0 in Michigan and 6.7 in Wisconsin. Those are the three states that gave him the presidency in 2016. Could the polling be wrong? Sure. Is it likely? Not particularly. There are far more surveys in Michigan and Wisconsin this time around, and pollsters think that they’ve learned their lessons from last time.

 

Also remember: National surveys in 2016 were only off by a small amount, and polling in many states was just fine, as it was for the 2018 elections. So it matters that Trump also seems to be lagging in states such as Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, and Ohio, and perhaps even Iowa and Georgia. That’s why forecasting models have Biden as a solid favorite. He has a bit better than a 4 in 5 chance according to FiveThirtyEight, and a nine in 10 chance according to the Economist — in both cases, the strongest position he’s been in so far.

 

That certainly doesn’t mean it’s impossible for Trump to win. Biden has gained some after the first debate (and all the other events of last week); that could prove to be a bubble that will deflate, perhaps if Trump does better next time. Or Trump might find some way to close the gap a bit more at the end of the campaign, as he did in 2016, which could get Biden’s lead down enough to allow the president — if he overperforms his polls in just the right places — to pull ahead.

 

There are a bunch of problems with that scenario. The polls have been quite stable this cycle, much more so than in 2016, which makes any big late shifts less likely. Similarly, fewer people are telling pollsters that they’re undecided. It’s also a problem for Trump that, unlike Hillary Clinton in 2016, Biden is relatively popular, making it less likely that those now supporting him are uneasy with their choice. As for some external event changing things? Trump seems to think that announcing approval for a vaccine would do it. But polling shows that few people other than his strongest supporters trust him on the pandemic.

 

As has been the case throughout Trump’s presidency, it’s just very difficult to see anything he does as even plausibly appealing to swing voters. Removing his mask semi-dramatically after returning to the White House on Monday and then arguing that people shouldn’t let the pandemic dominate their lives? That’s just more of the same from him, and it’s hard to believe that if it hasn’t worked for seven months it will suddenly work in the next few weeks.

 

One more thing: No matter what the Republican spin says, there’s no reason to think there are hidden Trump voters out there. It’s just as likely that Biden will do better than the polls suggest. Of course, as long as Biden is in the lead, we’re going to pay more attention to the (still very real!) possibility that polling error could make it a closer race than it looks. But don’t forget that all the maybes and could-bes and last-minute surges could just as easily go in the other direction.

[kenberg]

We are told that Trump might not be entirely out of the woods. It doesn't really matter what that means since nobody believes these guys anyway. However, observation suggests Trump is more likely than not to continue living. Realism suggests going forward on that assumption.

 

I recently spoke with a Minnesota friend who, like me, can't stand DT, and also like me could not stand to watch the debate all the way through, and, also like me, did not think Biden presented himself very well. Growing up with all that snow and ice teaches you about reality.

 

So I am hoping that after the coming debates we might be able to say something more than "Well, at least he isn't trump". Or, for that matter, "At least he isn't Bernie".

 

Here is a rather long WaPo article about the recent relief package, its strengths and weaknesses. Now I am less critical, since in an emergency it is not always possible to get everything right. But still there are points to be addressed. Becky and I received some money from it. A little after that, we bought a new computer for Becky and I got a new lawn mower. But but but. Becky's computer had been acting up, Dell said they thought the hard drive was about to die. I had had the old mower repaired last year and it was acting bad again, I decided it was time for a new one. So replacing them had nothing to do with getting money from the government. If someone sends me money, I am inclined to accept it. But it affected my spending not at all and affected my well being not at all. So maybe there is something to address.

 

this relates to many things. I will mention again the problem with student loans. I realize it is a crisis. ok, it is a crisis. But if we find that we now need to spend a trillion r so to get us out of this crisis, and that's a trillion or so that no one mentioned when the program was put in place, it seems fair to acknowledge that someone screwed the pooch. Yes, we have to address the problem, but we start my acknowledging error.

 

Right now we Biden voters are driven at least in part by the horror of Trump, and at least some Trump voters are driven at least in part by extreme distrust of the Dems. I hope we can do better. I know I am sometimes seen as unrealistic, I certainly consider this possible, but I am ot yet ready to say that nobody will listen to anything. I had hoped that at the first debate Biden would knock it out of the park, creating applause and enthusiasm. That did not really happen. Well, after the seventh inning stretch, it's time get up to the plate. Go Joe Go.

 

Added: I see Susan Page is the moderator for tomorrow night. Good! And I can say "Good" rather than "At least she will be better than Chris Wallace". That's what we want, people to say "Good" about Biden, rather than "Better than Trump".

[y66]

The title and subtitle of the WaPo article kb linked are

 

‘Doomed to fail’: Why a $4 trillion bailout couldn’t revive the American economy

 

An avalanche of U.S. grants and loans helped the wealthy and companies that laid off workers. Individuals received about one-fifth of the aid.

Clearly the solution is for individuals to become corporations.

[shyams]

Clearly the solution is for individuals to become corporations.

Then, it will be apt to say "People are corporations too" :)

[y66]

Abundance of caution is a useful principle when the president's health is at risk but it's highly questionable in other contexts.

[kenberg]

Abundance of caution is a useful principle when the president's health is at risk but it's highly questionable in other contexts.

 

Yes, the pres has assured us that covid is nothing to be afraid of, he will be having his mass gatherings, etc etc etc. A new standard: I wish to have a president who is not a total embarrassment to the country. Someone that I could disagree with without feeling that it is crazy to have to even think about it.

[johnu]

Then, it will be apt to say "People are corporations too" :)

That been absolutely true since 2010 with the Supreme Court Citizens United decision. About the only thing corporations can't do is vote, which doesn't matter because they can literally buy millions of votes with unlimited expenditures.

[shyams]

That been absolutely true since 2010 with the Supreme Court Citizens United decision. About the only thing corporations can't do is vote, which doesn't matter because they can literally buy millions of votes with unlimited expenditures.

My attempted jest was based on the original remark by Romney which was "Corporations are people too". IIRC he made it during his Presidential bid.

 

Then the implications was that Corporations should be "people" when it favours the Corporations; be independent legal entities when it doesn't favour being "people". The twist now is that perhaps people can turn it around and choose their legal status based on which is beneficial.

[Winstonm]

I think Trump's base has finally been discovered: it's two guys, sitting in a bar in Queens, watching pro wrestling, and bitching about pro basketball players' makin' too much fu#$in money - but they know who holds Trump's debt, and they have the receipts.

[y66]

From Bloomberg:

 

Surprise! Trump’s Still Losing

 

An October surprise is sudden, last-minute news that alters the shape of a political race. True October surprises are surprisingly rare. But President Donald Trump really needs one to turn around the 2020 election.

 

Trouble is, he keeps springing the wrong surprises. Giving himself coronavirus probably won’t help him, even if his campaign is playing it as a strength. And Trump’s latest surprise — shutting down stimulus negotiations and tanking the stock market — also seems unhelpful.

 

Today brought a new raft of polls suggesting last week’s debate and the whole Covid-19 thing have put Trump even further behind his rival Joe Biden in both the national vote and swing states. Trump benefited from James Comey’s October surprise in 2016, and nobody should count him out this time, writes Jonathan Bernstein. But with every October day that passes, his chances grow slimmer, especially when he keeps sabotaging himself.

 

Political prediction markets echo the polls, as they will do. A lesser-known prediction engine, the Treasury bond market, is making its own bet, writes Brian Chappatta, and it’s starting to price in a blue wave that brings unified Democratic government. How can he tell? The yield curve — or the gap between short- and long-term interest rates — is steeper than it has been since the last time a party won the White House, Senate and House, in 2016:

 

The yield curve steepens, generally, when traders see stronger growth and inflation coming. It steepened in 2016 partly because they saw tax cuts and deregulation coming from Republicans. Now they may see stimulus coming from the Dems. Only another month of surprises until we find out.

The yield curve thing is for one of my favorite posters.

[y66]

So McConnell blew it up for unclear reasons....

During their phone call today, Mitch McConnell suggested to Trump that Speaker Pelosi was stringing him along and no deal she cut with Mnuchin would could pass the Senate, per 2 ppl w/ knowledge of call

 

Trump blew up the talks shortly after the call.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/10/06/trump-kills-stimulus-talks/

Edit:

Generous aid to state & local governments, cash assistance to households, and low interest loans to businesses are like dexamethosone for the economy.

President Trump on Tuesday abruptly ended talks with Democrats on an economic stimulus bill, sending the stock market sliding and dealing a final blow to an intensive set of on-again-off-again negotiations to deliver additional pandemic aid to struggling Americans before the November elections.

 

Mr. Trump announced that he was pulling the plug on the effort in a series of afternoon tweets in which he accused Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California of “not negotiating in good faith" and urged Senate Republicans to focus solely on confirming his nominee to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks.

 

Instead, Mr. Trump said that he had instructed Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, to stop negotiating, sending the S&P 500 down as much as 1 percent in the immediate aftermath of his tweet. It had been up more than half a percent in the moments before. The index closed down 1.40 percent for the day.

 

“Our Economy is doing very well,” Mr. Trump tweeted as the market fell. “The Stock Market is at record levels, JOBS and unemployment also coming back in record numbers. We are leading the World in Economic Recovery, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”

 

Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Mnuchin, who had previously been scheduled to speak later Tuesday afternoon, briefly spoke after Mr. Trump’s tweet, with Mr. Mnuchin confirming that the president had discontinued talks and Ms. Pelosi expressing disappointment “in the President’s decision to abandon the economic & health needs of the American people,” Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, said on Twitter.

 

The president’s move came not long after Jerome H. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, had made his latest urgent plea for additional stimulus, warning that a failure by Congress to inject more federal help into the economy would risk weakening the recovery.

 

The announcement came after the president had spoken by phone with Mr. Mnuchin, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, according to two people briefed on the conversation.

It looks to me like Pelosi's promise to the airlines to bail them out regardless undercut her position.

[y66]

The 10 Bellwether Counties That Show How Trump Is in Serious Trouble

 

In an era of stark political polarization, it is difficult to find any one place that is a true microcosm of the country. But it is possible to find places on which the November election pivots. These communities that hold the key to the vote are as varied as the nation — and they reflect a notable inversion of its politics.

 

Polls now show Joe Biden with a surprising opportunity to capture Sun Belt suburbs that have voted reliably Republican for decades. He is also performing better than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 — but perhaps not as well as Barack Obama did in 2008 and 2012 — in heavily white, historically blue Frost Belt small towns and midsize cities where Donald Trump enjoyed a breakthrough in 2016.

 

These 10 bellwether counties — five in Sun Belt battlegrounds, five in the Frost Belt (loosely defined to include Iowa) — could point us toward each state’s winner. They run the gamut from meatpacking hubs to white-collar office parks, and from peach orchards to yacht-dense retiree havens. But there is something they all have in common: Their votes will matter a lot.

 

To win the White House, Mr. Biden will need to flip some combination of the 10 states Mr. Trump carried by less than 10 points in 2016 (in ascending order of margin): Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Texas and Iowa. Mr. Biden has several paths to victory, and the first three states alone, in addition to every state won by Hillary Clinton, would be enough to put him into the Oval Office.

 

Conversely, Mr. Trump would likely need to win at least eight of those 10 states for a second term. A look at these bellwethers — all either tossups or leaning toward Mr. Biden — makes clear that Mr. Trump is in serious trouble.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/opinion/biden-trump-bellwether-counties-.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

[y66]

In our endorsement today, the board wrote that above all else it is Biden’s promise to be a president to all Americans that argues most persuasively for his election. After four years of the most divisive president in modern times, this is both welcome and urgently needed. And what a therapeutic it would be.

 

Readers might notice that the board’s endorsement of Biden makes no mention of Donald Trump. The case for the former vice president needs no foil to make it stronger.

 

Also, the editorial board — which has been weighing in on Trump’s presidency for the past three and a half years — will issue its verdict on his term in office later this month.

 

To many readers, particularly younger ones, newspaper endorsements might feel like a vestigial organ, something from another time. We tried to bring some transparency — even some levity — to the process with our Democratic primary endorsement process.

 

Today, we’ve returned to the traditional form: the best choice, clearly stated.

 

“Biden knows that there are no easy answers,” the board wrote. “He has the experience, temperament and character to guide the nation through this valley into a brighter, more hopeful future. He has our endorsement.”

[Chas_P]

Biden knows that there are no easy answers,” the board wrote. “He has the experience, temperament and character to guide the nation through this valley into a brighter, more hopeful future.

If that is, in fact, the case I wish him well should he win the election. We are all Americans and we all have the same hopes, dreams, whatever....life, liberty, happiness. I have mine. I wish the same for you.

[y66]

anniekarni and me on the latest in a White House where people are simultaneously stunned by the virus outbreak there and yet still unconvinced it's a serious illness.

 

Trump’s Return Leaves White House in Disarray as Infections Jolt West Wing

The White House that President Trump woke up in on Tuesday morning was in full-blown chaos, even by the standards of the havoc of the Trump era.

 

Aides said the president’s voice was stronger after his return from the hospital Monday night, but at times he still sounded as if he was trying to catch air. The West Wing was mostly empty, cleared of advisers who were out sick with the coronavirus themselves or told to work from home rather than in the capital’s most famous virus hot spot. Staff members in the White House residence were in full personal protective equipment, including yellow gowns, surgical masks and disposable protective eye covers.

 

Four more White House officials tested positive, including Stephen Miller, a top adviser to Mr. Trump, bringing to 14 the number of people carrying the virus at the White House or in the president’s close circle. Mr. Trump, diagnosed with Covid-19 last week, was still livid at his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, whose effort on Saturday to tamp down the rosy portrait of Mr. Trump’s condition given to reporters by his chief doctor was caught on camera. Other officials were angry with Mr. 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,” Alyssa Farah, the White House communications director, said in an interview on Fox News — but many saw the situation as spiraling out of control. The pandemic that Mr. Trump had treated cavalierly for months seemed to have locked its grip on the White House. West Wing aides, shaken by polls showing the president badly trailing Joseph R. Biden Jr., worried that they were living through the final days of the Trump administration.

 

The disarray was at the same time spreading across Washington. Almost the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, including its chairman, Gen. Mark A. Milley, went into quarantine on Tuesday after coming in contact with Adm. Charles W. Ray, the vice commandant of the Coast Guard, who tested positive for the coronavirus. Late in the day, the stock market took a dive when Mr. Trump abruptly called off talks for a congressional coronavirus relief bill after the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, said such a stimulus was badly needed.

 

Some White House staff members wondered whether Mr. 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 energy and a sense of euphoria.

 

Staff members said the president was glad to be back in the White House after spending four days and three nights at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which aides said made him feel as if he were in a cage. Mr. Meadows and Bobby Peede, the director of the White House advance team, kept him company there for hours and served as a lifeline to the rest of the administration. He summoned another aide, Max Miller, on Sunday to stay with him.

 

Aides said that Mr. Trump made calls from the White House on Tuesday and roamed the areas of the presidential residence that had been set up for him. Although he was described as itching to get back into the Oval Office and show that he was in charge, a potential live address to the nation was discussed but scrapped in favor of a planned taped one.

 

Prominent supporters of the administration said Mr. Trump should have stayed at the hospital until he was no longer infectious or should remain confined to his residence.

 

“When a boss comes down with Covid, whether that boss is the president, a C.E.O., a principal at a school, a union foreman on a shop floor, and the boss shows up for work, it sends a very worrisome message to all of those around the boss,” said Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary to President George W. Bush. “There is a community of people who work in the White House, not just political appointees. A good boss always takes care of his or her employees.”

 

Still unknown was the exact status of the president’s health. Dr. Sean P. Conley, the White House physician, said on Tuesday that the president “reports no symptoms” of the virus and that his vital signs were stable, but no one at the White House would say what the “expected findings” were on Mr. Trump’s chest X-ray that Dr. Conley had mentioned over the weekend.

 

There were no answers, either, on when Mr. Trump last tested negative for the virus — a crucial piece of information that the White House and Dr. Conley have refused to answer and would establish the known state of Mr. Trump’s health before the presidential debate last Tuesday or before he attended a fund-raiser in New Jersey on Thursday. The White House first made public that Mr. Trump had tested positive early last Friday.

 

Two officials maintained that Mr. Trump had been tested before the presidential debate, but the White House has yet to affirm that.

 

White House officials conceded on Tuesday that there had been an impression created that Mr. Trump was getting tested every day, and a reliance on testing as if it were a curative measure as opposed to a diagnostic.

 

Yet the president himself was not tested every day, according to two people familiar with the practices. A senior administration official would only say on Tuesday that Mr. Trump was tested “regularly.” Mr. Trump himself told reporters in the White House briefing room in July that “I do take probably on average a test every two days, three days.”

 

As the day progressed on Tuesday, parts of the White House resembled a hazard 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 “well-being” consultant whom they could speak with anonymously, specifically to focus on mental health concerns.

 

Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary who tested positive for the virus on Monday, appeared on television from her home. Hope Hicks, Mr. Trump’s close adviser who has also tested positive, had been trying to help with messaging for the videos the president shot at Walter Reed and the remarks on the virus he wanted to make upon his return.

 

And the finger-pointing continued.

 

Ms. Hicks had been upset last week that she was being blamed for infecting the president, according to three people who had spoken with 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 Mr. Trump and the first lady — making it just as likely that she had contracted the virus from the president.

 

Among White House advisers, anger grew at Ms. McEnany because her statement announcing her diagnosis appeared to blame Ms. Hicks. There was also frustration from many corners at Mr. Meadows for not doing more to try to protect the staff, a criticism that his defenders said was unfair given the scope of his duties.

 

On Monday night, some of the staff members still at the White House had gathered to watch Mr. Trump’s return. When he defiantly took off his mask on the Truman Balcony for a made-for-television moment, aides said it was of course a statement. But they also wondered if the face covering was making it harder for the president to breathe.

 

Either way, some of them shrugged off the message it was sending to tens of millions of Americans about taking the coronavirus seriously.

 

The sentiment, according to one aide to Mr. Trump, was that “it’s his house.”

Wow. This is too surreal.

[kenberg]

A quickie history of Pence and Harris debates, for those such as myself who need such things.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/06/trailer-guide-how-pence-harris-debate/

 

I think that tonight is a pretty big deal (and yes, I recall the extra adjective provided by Biden in describing the ACA). If I were to be given a four year task, I can imagine there would be interest in what happens if I am not around to complete it. Of course that's always the case with veeps, but maybe it is more so this time around