Trump’s New Jersey event showed perilous neglect
for his staff, supporters – and himself
Donald
Trump
Why did the White House allow a fundraising event to
go on after one of Trump’s closest aides tested positive for Covid?
Ed
Pilkington in New York
@edpilkington
Sun 4 Oct
2020 08.00 BST
On Thursday
afternoon Donald Trump held a roundtable of 19 top Republican donors at
Bedminster, his 36-hole golf course in New Jersey, where he vented his
frustrations about how his push for a rapid vaccine against Covid-19 was being
undermined by the deep state.
According
to a description of the meeting recorded on video by one of the donors present,
“the president said that the approval for vaccines has been slowed down for
political reasons by people who wanted to hurt him”.
The
president’s attack on scientists within his own administration seems to have
impressed the donors around the table. But what they didn’t know at that time,
because Trump did not tell them, was that just a few hours earlier one of
Trump’s closest aides, Hope Hicks, had herself tested positive for the disease.
As Trump
embarks on a personal battle against coronavirus, having received his own
positive result in the early hours of Friday and now having gone to hospital,
expressions of concern have flooded in from around the world. Political
animosities that have been raging across the country have temporarily been
suspended as adversaries wish the president and the also infected first lady a
speedy recovery.
But the
outpouring of goodwill has not prevented questions being asked about how, when
and why the president contracted this potentially life-threatening illness that
has already claimed the lives of at least 208,000 Americans. At the center of
these inquiries is the Bedminster fundraising event, which the White House
allowed to go ahead even after it became known that Hicks had fallen ill.
Many of the
finer details of what happened between 1.07pm on Thursday, when Marine One took
off from the White House with Trump on board, and 5.55pm when it landed back at
base after the New Jersey round trip, are not yet known. But there is
sufficient information already in the public domain to suggest that the handling
of the Bedminster event bore many of the hallmarks of the Trump
administration’s widely-criticised response to the pandemic since its
inception.
It
demonstrated, for a start, the relaxed approach towards protecting the health
of Trump himself as commander-and-chief and head of state of the most powerful
nation on Earth. As the Atlantic observed back in August, the White House, with
its famously cramped West Wing, has been run for months with a striking lack of
safety protocols that make “the most famous address in America feel like a
coronavirus breeding ground”.
A similarly
casual stance was taken at Bedminster. When Hicks’ illness was detected,
several of the White House staff who had been set to travel to New Jersey were
pulled off the trip, including press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
Yet Trump,
who should have been subject to the most stringent safeguards, travelled on to
the fundraiser regardless.
Other
facets of the administration’s lax response to the pandemic over the past nine
months were also on show on Thursday, not least the absence of masks. As part
of his relentless downplaying of the virus, Trump has tended to eschew masks,
rarely wearing one himself in public and mocking his presidential rival Joe
Biden for doing so at this week’s televised debate.
Reports
suggest that Trump, true to form, did not wear a mask on Thursday, not on
Marine One and Air Force One en route to New Jersey, and not at the roundtable
nor the larger gathering of about 100 supporters that followed.
Testing does not replace safety
measures including consistent mask use, physical distancing, and handwashing.
Tom Frieden, former CDC head
One of the
side effects of Trump acting as a role-model for non-mask wearing has been the
way his supporters have perilously followed suit. Video footage of about 200
Maga supporters who gathered outside the golf course entrance to welcome their
hero shows only one of them wearing a mask, and even he had it strapped beneath
his nose.
The White
House has tried to justify the lack of masks at Bedminster by arguing that
there was no need to wear them, as everyone who attended was tested in advance
for coronavirus. That in itself reveals a sloppy disregard for the scientific
function of testing which can never replace fundamental safety tools such as
masks, given that it can take several days for the virus to build up sufficient
load to be detectable by the tests.
Tom
Frieden, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), highlighted the mistake. In a statement, he said: “This event
demonstrates that we need a comprehensive approach to Covid-19. Testing does
not replace safety measures including consistent mask use, physical distancing,
and handwashing.”
The
fundraiser also exposed the Trump administration’s willful disregard for
state-based regulations, which is paradoxical for a conservative government
that espouses states’ rights. New Jersey has strict laws that require anyone
entering the state from a Covid hotspot to quarantine for 14 days.
On
Wednesday Trump traveled with Hicks to a campaign rally in Minnesota, which is
on New Jersey’s designated list of locations that trigger mandatory
quarantining. Yet the president blithely ignored the provision.
The most
striking aspect of Thursday’s events is that they point to Trump’s apparent
willingness to put even his own most loyal supporters at risk. A day after the
fundraiser CNBC reported that the Republican donors who had been present were
“freaking out” for fear that they too had been contaminated.
The failure
to alert those donors to Hicks’ positive test arguably exposed them to danger.
It bears comparison to the 20 June campaign rally that was staged in Tulsa,
Oklahoma, which was imbued with a similarly cavalier approach to the safety of
thousands of Trump supporters.
The rally
was held indoors despite strong warnings from health experts. Before it began,
campaign organizers arranged for thousands of social distancing stickers to be
taken down inside the venue.
Three weeks
after the event, Oklahoma reported a record surge in Covid-19 cases. One of
those who attended the Tulsa rally, the former Republican presidential
candidate and early advocate for Trump, Herman Cain, tested positive for the virus
and died soon after.
In the wake
of Cain’s passing, Trump denied it had anything to do with the Tulsa rally. The
president provided no evidence to back up his contention.
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