"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

the president has a cough and a mild fever, WH reports.

Lots of assumptions happening around when and where they were infected. There probably have been many different opportunities.

yeah, why are we speculating?

Trump clearly sees getting ill as a weakness, he mocked Hillary relentlessly for it in 2016, and getting sick means he can't do the thing he loves most, which is hold rallies and get his voting base killed

I think the "conspiracy" here is this - they absolutely knew about this as early as Wednesday night, had news of Hope's diagnosis not leaked out yesterday they would've kept this under wraps

which is fucking stupid, obviously someone close to him would've contracted it and shown symptoms but we all know they are that fucking stupid and selfish

the fact they didn’t tell biden is insane to me.

What if only Melania dies and everyone votes for Trump out of compassion for the bereaved.

idk seems perfectly in character to me xp

gee would be unfortunate if Melania's last public statement was "fuck the kids and fuck Christmas"

_I find the fact biden hasn’t announced a test result yet a little ominous tbh

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, October 2, 2020 10:00 AM_

i do, too. harris and pence already confirmed negative.

Bernie still has a chance.

lol

Isn't Biden always on a train? Like the plot of Snowpiercer?

Refreshing honesty from 538 today

https://i.imgur.com/pJ8xbg2.png

There is timing, there is good luck, and then there's flat out total sorcery:

Omfg @alexgibneyfilm does it again.

pic.twitter.com/7vvW5iqb2W

— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) October 2, 2020

Mike Lee has tested positive for COVID after meeting (maskless) with SCOTUS nominee Judge Barrett earlier this week. https://t.co/lJBQ9O4FmT

— Addy Baird (@addysbaird) October 2, 2020

but she has reportedly tested negative.

Typhoid Barrett

"We need you to get approved by this committee, so make sure none of them die." "Okay!"

What if only Melania dies and everyone votes for Trump out of compassion for the bereaved.

If she was the one who got the 'rona bad it'd be amusing to watch Trump publicly try and pretend he gives the slightest shit about whether his missus lives or dies.

This is a double blow to Melania, since Christmas came early.

— Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) October 2, 2020

god I love Ken

haaaaaaaaaaaa

NEWS: @mikememoli reports Biden has tested NEGATIVE.

— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) October 2, 2020

btw everyone keep in mind that you can test negative for a while and then be positive a week later, in fact this has happened on several professional sports teams already

Yeah it's a matter of follow-ups and precautions. I suspect the campaign was already going to be even more vigilant anyway.

There's your subtweet

I’m happy to report that Jill and I have tested negative for COVID. Thank you to everyone for your messages of concern. I hope this serves as a reminder: wear a mask, keep social distance, and wash your hands.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 2, 2020

That last sentence. Nice.

expert level shade there, nice

PHEW

He has the virus. We won't entertain talk of otherwise. It must be taken seriously. Him lying about it makes no historical, logical, strategic, or political sense. Beyond anyone's sense of vengeance or what have you, there are serious consequences at stake, even if he recovers.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) October 2, 2020

Him lying about it doing anything makes no historical, logical, strategic, or political sense.

reposting all of this, even though it's a premium EXCLUSIVE TPM

The timeline of events leading up to the disclosure of President Trump’s diagnosis point overwhelmingly to some mix of a coverup and gross negligence and likely both.

Let’s review some key facts, as far as we presently know them.

The New Jersey Trip

Yesterday morning Hope Hicks received test results showing she was COVID positive. It’s not clear when the test was administered (we’ll get to that in a moment). But she received the confirmed positive test yesterday morning before Trump left for a campaign/fundraiser trip to New Jersey. On that trip Trump was frequently observed unmasked, including in an indoor roundtable meeting. He appears to have exposed dozens of people during that trip.

It is clear that the President’s medical staff and top staff (and almost certainly the President himself) knew before leaving on that trip that he had been exposed to COVID. But he went anyway and exposed dozens more.

That was at a minimum an act of gross irresponsibility.

As I’ll note in a moment it also suggests the strong possibility that the White House tried to keep the whole situation secret.

Who Infected Who and When?

Most people are assuming that Hicks infected President Trump. But based on what we know that’s not the only or even the most likely scenario. Indeed, their infections being discovered so close in time makes it probably more likely that some other person or persons infected both of them. But there are details here that don’t add up.

We’ve been led to believe that the President and the people around him are tested either daily or close to daily. The White House medical staff have both the rapid saliva tests which take on the order of 15 minutes or so and the PCR tests which a dedicated lab can turn around in something like an hour and a half. If these tests are being done that frequently there should never been more than hours between someone becoming virus positive (and thus infectious) and tripping off a test.

We know that you can be infectious before becoming symptomatic. Indeed there’s significant evidence that you’re more infectious before developing symptoms. But your infectiousness is about your viral load. A significant viral load should trip off a test.

But here’s the problem. We don’t just know Trump, Melania Trump and Hicks are COVID-positive. They all appear to be actively symptomatic, sick. Presumably their symptoms are currently mild. But it is unlikely that all three people reached viral levels capable of testing positive and became actively sick on the same day.

This throws into some question whether the top people at the White House, including the President, are actually being tested on a daily basis. It also suggests that these three and likely others have been infectious and possibly actively sick for a significant period of time. There’s some mix of failed surveillance and/or secrecy about what the surveillance has found.

Were They Keeping It a Secret?

A critical part of this equation is that the White House didn’t come forward with any of this. Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News learned that Hicks had tested positive and reported that last night. That immediately focused attention on the President’s exposure and forced the overnight disclosure of his illness. Were they planning on disclosing that Hicks had tested positive? That is at best unclear. They hadn’t disclosed that Ronna McDaniel, the head of the RNC who met with Trump last week, tested positive. We just found that out this morning. And what about Trump himself? Trump had repeatedly traveled with Hicks. Her diagnosis Thursday morning should have led to President Trump’s being immediately tested and possibly diagnosed yesterday morning or at the latest in the afternoon. But news reports last night suggested – though without saying so directly – that they were being tested and waiting on results last night.

This timeline has serious holes in it.

This is a crisis situation. Things can get confused. And because it is a crisis situation we can’t assume that all the reporting we have is complete or entirely accurate. We can’t point with total confidence to the contradiction between two apparent facts. Because none of them are that certain. But there are lots of indications that the White House was trying to keep this information under wraps and possibly endangered the lives of numerous people in doing so, including that of the President himself and possibly his challenger Vice President Biden.

Lemme know when you get the good stuff from TPM EXTREME.

can't stress enough that the whole TRYING TO KEEP IT SECRET thing is gonna undermine any shred of goodwill people feel towards him for this

Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63

It takes a lot to impress a Russian with surprises in October, but this one is off to a rather impressive start.

can't stress enough that the whole TRYING TO KEEP IT SECRET thing is gonna undermine any shred of goodwill people feel towards him for this

savage

pic.twitter.com/ZnD9jStNZ4

— TJ Ducklo (@TDucklo) October 2, 2020

whoever the fuck these people are who keep bouncing Trump's approval from 39% to 45% and back and forth depending how much he's in the news. I think in a "normal" situation a sitting president contracting a serious disease would generate some sympathy but pretty much all the coverage I've seen of this is pretty clear that this is entirely his fault and most likely he put a ton of other people at risk by not disclosing this asap

After Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) announced he tested positive for COVID-19, journalists on Twitter pointed out that he met with Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett earlier this week. Neither of them wore masks during the meeting.

looks like Barrett thinks she's above common sense and public health and safety, too. shouldn't be surprised

(she tested negative, btw)

she already had it a few months ago I thought

Just announced that the president of Notre Dame, who was also at the Rose Garden ceremony for Barrett, has COVID now, too.

It's almost as though it were spreading like a virus or something.

lol plague inside the castle

A Senate GOP aide, on background, tells the Post that some Rs are now discussing asking Leader McConnell to "take the Senate out of session next week" before the ACB hearings start in mid-October.

"If some in the Republican caucus get sick, we are screwed," the aide says.

— Robert Costa (@costareports) October 2, 2020

interesting if true

Just announced that the president of Notre Dame, who was also at the Rose Garden ceremony for Barrett, has COVID now, too.

― jaymc, Friday, October 2, 2020 11:57 AM

i was glued to the livestream of the aftermath of that Barrett/Rose Garden ceremony, as it happened, since a WashPost camera kept rolling after the ceremony, as all the VIPs stood up to schmooze and make plans to make even more money in the near future.

what was captivating me at the time was a conversation that bill barr and kellyanne conway were having in clear view of the camera. never did get to the bottom of that (even after performing some "Enhance!"-like equalizer/remixing to isolate the speech frequencies), but as it was happening, it was impossible not to be astonished by the total non-covid-19 awareness. almost everyone there was standing in groups of 5-6, tightly spaced, no mask, laughing and talking to each other.

i'm sure you can look in that footage and see the Notre Dame president, too. reports were that he was not wearing a mask and shaking everybody's hands. fucking idiot, but you wouldn't be able to spot him in this crowd, they were all fucking doing that.

A Senate GOP aide, on background, tells the Post that some Rs are now discussing asking Leader McConnell to "take the Senate out of session next week" before the ACB hearings start in mid-October.

i don't want to jump the gun, but is this possibly evidence of god finally paying attention to earth?

here's some of that footage xp

Video of the ACB announcement event on Saturday at the WH featuring Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who has now tested positive for Covid-19. pic.twitter.com/aCqP2JCH73 via @bubbaprog

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) October 2, 2020

YES! that's (part of) the exact footage! and i feel like such a dumbass - i didn't recognize that was Mike Lee while I was watching! during that footage (there's much more than that clip, before and after), Lee is walking all over the place gregariously chatting it up with everyone, he hits the cameraman on accident and apologizes, all sorts of shit happens

amazing

with a mask in his hand!