America has a super-spreader president He put us all and himself at risk

Maybe Donald Trump got Covid-19 at the Rose Garden ceremony announcing his nomination of Amy Coney Barret to the supreme court. On Saturday, 26 September, Donald Trump gathered major Republican party leaders at the White House to celebrate his nomination of the rabidly anti-choice judge, along with national leaders in the anti-choice movement. At the event, onlookers were seated uncomfortably close together, and virtually none of them are wore masks. Barrett and her pointedly large family huddled around Trump both indoors and outdoors, without a thought of social distancing. Later, videos emerged from the event of Republicans hugging. In one, the attorney general, William Barr, wipes snot from his nose on to his hand, and then goes on to shake hands with many others – a metaphor for his time at the justice department that is perhaps a bit too on the nose. As numerous national Republicans sicken, at least eight cases of the virus have now been linked to that event.
Or maybe Trump got it the night before, on Friday, 25 September, when he mingled, again unmasked and indoors, at a campaign fundraiser at the Trump International hotel in Washington. He rubbed elbows there with members of the Republican National Committee, including Ronna McDaniel, the committee chairwoman. McDaniel flew home to Michigan the next day, and began exhibiting symptoms of the virus a few days after. She has since tested positive.

Or maybe he got it at the presidential debate in Cleveland the following Tuesday, 29 September. Trump and his entourage were supposed to be tested upon their arrival at the venue, as the Biden camp was. Instead, the Republicans showed up late, and refused both testing and masks. Trump proceeded to scream, unmasked and nearly uninterrupted, for 90 minutes. Viewers watching on high-definition screens could see droplets of spittle flinging from his mouth. Among other things, at the debate he disparaged his opponent, Joe Biden, for wearing masks in public. Eleven cases have now been traced to that event.

It’s not clear when Trump last tested negative for the virus, and the White House has been elusive at best and deceptive at worst in their public accounts of when the administration became aware that the virus was circulating in the president’s inner circle and just how bad his condition has gotten. This past Friday, 2 October, Trump was airlifted to the hospital – but not until after financial markets had closed for the weekend. When a team of doctors gave a rosy depiction of his condition to assembled news cameras on Saturday, saying his prognosis was good, his chief of staff promptly contradicted them in an attempted off-the-record conversation with pool reporters, in which he said that the president was doing much worse than the doctors had made it seem.

The administration’s handling of the president’s illness has had the shambolic quality of Wile E Coyote attempting to catch Road Runner. They are caught in such absurdly transparent lies that one almost expects their noses to grow long as they speak, or a cartoon anvil to drop on their heads in divine retribution. It would be funny, if only these people did not also possess such terrifying power along with their ostentatious incompetence.

But even the Trump camp have not been able to deny that the president knew he had been exposed by Thursday, when Hope Hicks, the senior White House aide to whom the president is usually in breathingly close proximity, tested positive for the virus. Hicks had begun feeling ill while traveling with Trump on Wednesday night, but accompanied him on flights both before and after the onset of her symptoms. Despite Hicks’ positive test, Trump departed on Thursday for a campaign fundraiser at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he schmoozed with guests both indoors and outdoors, did not wear a mask and welcomed donors to a buffet dinner.

Why would Trump endanger his own supporters like that? It has long been clear, both from their own statements and from reporting done by outlets such as Vanity Fair, that the Trump administration considers deaths and illness from the virus in blue states to be insignificant, acceptable casualties. But the choice in Bedminster to endanger his own supporters defies that logic. Unless of course, you are Donald Trump, who views every interaction as transactional and every human being as a number. The Bedminster event, remember, was a campaign fundraiser – it ultimately raised more than $5m for his re-election bid. To Trump, even those who fulfill his own need for constant adulation are less valuable as human beings than they are as sources of revenue. And Trump certainly does not care about the workers whose labor is necessary to put on such events – the security and janitors and caterers and tech staff whose health, lives and families are threatened by his carelessness. The reason Trump continued on to the Bedminster fundraiser even after knowing he had been exposed is simple: he cares l