Donald Trump’s irresponsible handling of having COVID-19—itself a product of his irresponsible handling of the risk of getting COVID-19—is throwing his White House into chaos. Even more chaos than usual.
The West Wing is basically empty and aides are scared and angry that, after they spent months signed onto a program of putting the entire United States at risk, they are now at risk. Even Jared Kushner has been wearing a mask, while white supremacist ghoul Stephen Miller tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday following the news of an outbreak in the press office. It’s now at least nine White House employees who have tested positive. White House residence staff, who can’t work remotely, are working in full PPE in an attempt to protect themselves from Trump.
Trump meanwhile is pushing to breathe virus through as much of the White House as possible, and of course his top aides are enabling him.
Trump aides gave conflicting accounts on whether Trump has already gone to the Oval Office, with Larry Kudlow claiming Trump had gone on Tuesday, and a White House aide contradicting him directly, while Meadows blathered about the plans to make it safe for other people if Trump continues to insist on doing the unsafe thing.
There’s reason to suspect, though, that Meadows would rather people be talking about Trump’s dangerous return to the Oval Office rather than all the questions the White House and Trump’s doctors have continued to refuse to answer—questions like when Trump had his last negative COVID-19 test and what exactly his lung scans over the weekend showed. We all saw him gasping for breath on Monday night, and on Tuesday Team Trump floated and then scrapped the idea of him giving a live address to the nation. Since nothing Trump’s aides and doctors say about his health can be trusted, at this point there’s nothing but rumors and Trump’s increasingly unhinged tweets—suggesting the likelihood that his personality is being affected by dexamethasone—to go on in assessing the situation.