The week's big question: What are the implications of Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis?
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A crazy week for political news crescendoed early Friday morning with President Trump's stunning announcement that he and the first lady had tested positive for COVID-19. The president's symptoms are supposedly mild, and the White House physician wrote in a memo that he expects Trump to "continue carrying out his duties without disruption." Still, COVID-19 is notoriously unpredictable and other world leaders have struggled through long and difficult recoveries.
This week's question is: What are the possible implications of Trump's diagnosis?
2.
Following the news that President Trump, the first lady, and adviser Hope Hicks have tested positive for COVID-19, there are a lot of questions we critically need answers to in order to protect the health of everyone else in the White House. Firstly, we need contact tracing. Hicks tested positive on Wednesday, before Trump did, but we need to know when and where she was infected. This is hard to pin down, but given that the virus' incubation time is, on average, five days, it's possible they were both infected before the Tuesday debate and only tested negative because PCR tests often don't detect cases before day three of infection, depending on an individual's incubation time.
If that's the case, they could have been spreading it. So, it's likely this White House outbreak cluster is bigger than we think, and in the coming days we'll learn of more positive cases. We're already seeing this: Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has reportedly also tested positive, and has been positive since Wednesday. She has not left Michigan since meeting Trump last Friday. This suggests there could be many others infected in the upper GOP sphere.
This outbreak reinforces the need for rapid testing on a national scale, along with a working track-and-trace system. If the White House can't get this under control, how can America?
3.
President Trump has COVID-19. It's hard to imagine someone who has asked for it more than him — he's held multiple in-person, indoor rallies, he's attempted to bully states into ending their containment efforts, he's cast doubt on the efficacy of masks (and largely refused to wear one in public), and on and on.
This may be the first time Trump has ever experienced any kind of serious, obvious consequence for his actions. He successfully avoided hundreds of millions of dollars in estate taxes on a massive inheritance from his father. When he had almost squandered the entire thing on failed casino and real estate projects, NBC rescued him with The Apprentice. When the money from that was drying up, he made a ludicrous bid for the presidency, happened to draw an extraordinarily unpopular opponent, and squeaked out a victory on a razor-thin margin. He seems to have the devil's own luck.
However, Trump is after all just a human being. And while media executives and political parties can quietly bail out a comically inept businessman, the coronavirus will simply infect any available host. Given his age and weight, the president now faces a significant chance of severe illness or even death.
Hopefully he will start taking the pandemic more seriously.
4.
Early in the coronavirus pandemic, the wives of the prime ministers of Canada and Spain were diagnosed with COVID-19 in close succession. Their husbands were not, which raised the question of political "immunity": Would the public would be told were a head of government infected?
President Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis answers that question for Americans. Unfortunately, that won't keep this diagnosis from being a font of conspiracy theories and misinformation.
If Trump never becomes gravely ill — as is entirely possible — his supporters who already believe COVID-19 is a "hoax" or "mild flu" will see proof of their assumption in his experience. After all, Trump is 74 and has at least one comorbidity (obesity). If he skates through this infection, pandemic truthers will reason, anyone can. Deaths can be discounted and masks discarded.
At the other end of the spectrum, critics of the president have already suggested he may be faking the diagnosis to win sympathy and easily "recover." Such a stunt, the conspiracy theorists say, would reinforce Trump's push to re-open the economy because the risk of further contagion is acceptably low. Faking the results would be a handy distraction from negative stories about Trump, diagnosis skeptics add, like his debate performance Tuesday and the exposé of his tax returns published Sunday.
Neither of these narratives holds up under scrutiny. Trump still could develop a serious case, and plenty of elderly people with comorbidities have escaped with relatively mild symptoms. The single data point of Trump's infection will prove nothing at all. And faking test results, besides requiring finesse and discretion not in evidence in this administration, doesn't fit with Trump's manly man narrative. He'd be more likely to hide an infection, tweeting boasts of his immense immune system between racking coughs, than claim an illness he doesn't have.
5.
President Trump's most important challenge in the wake of his coronavirus diagnosis isn't political. Serious illness — even death — are real possibilities for an obese, elderly man. But if he doesn't fall gravely ill, this could perhaps be the last opportunity for the president to reshape the narrative of this race.
For weeks he has been recklessly crisscrossing the country, holding indoor rallies, meeting with donors, advisors, and even his Supreme Court nominee without a mask. He has directly jeopardized thousands of his fellow citizens, some of whom may not be thrilled by the news that their hero potentially spread the virus while freebasing Hunter Biden rumors at the podium. He will be knocked off the campaign trail for at least two weeks and his status for the remaining two debates is up in the air. None of this sounds helpful for a candidate trailing by more than 7 points in polling averages.
But what if the president were to break character by showing some rare contrition for his actions? He need not confess that he never took the virus seriously — as the country heads into its third COVID-19 wave, all he needs to do is position himself, for the first time, as a sober steward of the crisis, newly awakened to the gravity of the threat. He could publicly apologize to people he recently endangered. He could, in other words, behave like the kind of normal leader the American people are craving.
If, instead, he blames Hope Hicks, tweets maniacally about his incredible strength, and returns to his regular program of hurling conspiracy-flecked invective about the "radical left," he may have squandered his last chance to upend the race.
6.
Even more than President Trump's supporters, his critics should pray that his coronavirus diagnosis does not knock him out of the presidential race. Why? Because a defeat at the polls is the only way to ensure that Trump does not become a martyr for his agenda.
This is not a ghoulish prediction of Trump's demise. Already there is talk that Republicans in Congress will ask Trump to step down voluntarily in the event that he becomes too sick to perform his duties. There is also speculation that if he refuses, they would trigger the 25th Amendment to install Vice President Mike Pence in the Oval Office and put him on top of the ticket.
Democrats and Never Trump conservatives might prefer to fight Pence rather than Trump in the final stretch of the 2020 race, but they should be careful what they wish for.
For starters, any such eventuality would turn Trump into a martyr with the 40 million Americans who are his die-hard supporters. They will forever feel that they were robbed of an opportunity for another comeback and four more years to advance his agenda. And this lingering sense will encourage more political entrepreneurs to seize the MAGA mantle, a toxic brew of nativism, protectionism and culture wars.
Furthermore, elections are essential for a national reckoning of an incumbent's record. They give a sitting president an opportunity to present his best case and voters to cast their collective judgment. And even though Trump had been trying mightily to discredit the outcome of the 2020 race, the fact is that a loss would still be a repudiation of his agenda and would burst the bubble of political invincibility that he has built around himself.
COVID-19 will not defeat Trumpism. Only a hard fought election can.
7.
As of Friday morning, Vice President Mike Pence has tested negative for COVID-19, and the president's symptoms are mild. But if that changes, with House Speaker (and Democrat) Nancy Pelosi next in line of succession, things could get scary very quickly — and nowhere more so than in foreign policy.
The greatest danger would be the possibility of foreign powers taking advantage of the domestic chaos embroiling the senior leadership of the country to make bold moves on the world stage, perhaps in coordination. Imagine Vladimir Putin making a deeper incursion into Ukraine or attempting to seize one of the Baltic states (probably Lithuania) — while China, in the boldest and riskiest act of all, makes a move against Taiwan. One or both of these scenarios are likely in the coming decade, as rising or defiant powers seek to test American resolve in attempting to uphold the liberal international order. But a succession crisis would present a unique opportunity to undertake the test ahead of schedule, at a moment when the country is maximally distracted.
Of course our internal confusion wouldn't guarantee that the U.S. would let the provocation(s) stand. On the contrary, one could imagine a scenario in which some combination of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff bypass a sidelined West Wing to mount a military response. Would this be a responsible act of bold statesmanship by unelected officials? Or a military coup?
Two weeks ago, it seemed we were already living through interesting times. Two weeks from now, we could learn that we hadn't seen anything yet.
8.
Americans are in the habit of ignoring the vice president, at least when the VP isn't Dick Cheney. President Trump's diagnosis with COVID-19 is therefore a moment of constitutional education, and it puts an unaccustomed spotlight on not only Mike Pence but also Kamala Harris. It also forces us to think seriously about the age of our leaders: Trump (74) and Biden (77), as well as the other politicians in line for presidential succession, notably House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (80) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (87). Why are our leaders today so superannuated, and what weaknesses does this create in our politics? It tells us something about the young talents in both parties that they continue to be overshadowed by their elders to such an extraordinary degree.
My hope is that one consequence of Trump's diagnosis is to prompt Americans to think about “anti-fragility,” and what it means to have a vice president you trust and a bench of leaders-in-waiting in both parties who are prepared to take up responsibility and who also, crucially, possess a sense of legitimacy not only with their parties' activists but the public at large. A debilitating mediocrity has crept into our politics alongside polarization and ideological grandstanding, and this chronic disease must be diagnosed and treated as early as possible. The treatment requires more measuring and weighing of the leaders soon to come after President Trump and Vice President Biden.
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