White House residence staffers are reasonably worried about the ongoing spread of COVID-19. While President Trump was transferred to Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday after testing positive for COVID-19, he’s headed back to the White House on Monday evening. First lady Melania Trump never left. But weeks before their diagnoses, two housekeepers at the White House also tested positive for COVID-19. And while they worked on a different floor than where the first family stays, they were told to use “discretion” and avoid talking about their illness, The New York Times reports.
More info on 2 White House residence staff members who tested positive – they worked for the housekeeping department on the third floor, and didn’t come in direct contact w the first family. When their tests came back positive, they were told to use “discretion” in discussing it.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 5, 2020
Around 90 “ushers, butlers, housekeepers, valets, florists, engineers and cooks” make up the White House’s permanent residence staff and usually stay on the job from president to president, The Washington Post details. “Discretion” is always a “key component” of their job, and “speaking out about anything, including working conditions, can be a cause for dismissal,” the Post continues. But former staffers have come out to say they fear the first family hasn’t worn masks around staffers, even in the residence’s tight hallways. Kathryn Krawczyk When President Trump was helicoptered to the hospital with COVID-19 on Friday, “some of his campaign advisers saw a potential opportunity,” Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni report at The New York Times. If Trump recovered quickly “and then appeared sympathetic to the public in how he talked about his own experience and that of millions of other Americans, he could have something of a political reset” for his flagging campaign.
Instead, the Times notes, he told people not to fear the deadly virus, returned to the White House while still contagious, started selling “Donald J. Trump Defeats COVID” commemorative coins, and “framed the virus as something akin to a weekend at a spa.”
Trump’s theatrical hospital check-out and White House balcony scene “won him the TV news clip he’s been dreaming of from his hospital bed,” Sudeep Reddy and Myah Ward write at Politico, and what happens next is flushed with “Trumpian-level suspense.” But Trump and his aides “know the virus is now in charge of the campaign,” they add:
Already down in the polls, they’re playing their hand the only way Trump can — betting it all on a quick presidential recovery, making Trump’s physical strength a metaphor for the nation. If it works, Trump could have a shot at turning a crushing October embarrassment into a come-from-behind November surprise. …
If Trump takes a turn for the worse — some patients take weeks or months to recover from the virus at home — then his fate will be sealed before Election Day: He’ll be the president who downplayed the virus while hundreds of thousands of Americans died, who mocked his opponent for following common-sense health guidelines, who shrugged off his own coronavirus threat to own the libs. [Politico]
Whatever happens with Trump’s health and campaign, Politico says, “it’s largely out of his hands now.” Peter Weber
While participating in an NBC News town hall in Miami, Biden continued his push to get all Americans to embrace the use of masks to curb the spread of coronavirus. The town hall started after President Trump returned to the White House following a three-day stay in the hospital to receive treatment for the coronavirus. COVID-19 has spread across the White House, where Trump and others regularly gathered without masks, and moments after his arrival on Monday evening, a still-contagious Trump took his mask off and placed it in his pocket. Biden told the town hall audience he “would hope that the president, having gone through what he went through — and I’m glad he seems to be coming along pretty well — would communicate the right lesson to the American people. Masks matter. These masks, they matter. It matters. It saves lives. It prevents the spread of the disease.” Biden said he saw Trump’s Monday afternoon tweet telling people not to be “afraid of Covid,” and he disagreed with the message, saying, “There’s a lot to be concerned about.”
Moderator Lester Holt brought up a new poll that found two in three people believe Trump is at least partially responsible for becoming infected with the virus, and Biden said that “anybody who contracts the virus by essentially saying masks don’t matter, social distancing doesn’t matter, I think is responsible for what happens to them.” In a message to the “tough guys” who won’t wear a mask, Biden said they need to remember it’s not just about them, and donning a face covering “should be viewed as a patriotic duty to protect those around you.” Catherine Garcia.
