Getting COVID-19 only seems to have made Donald Trump reject public health more furiously than before. Whether he’s reacting against his personal panic and fear by lashing out or is under the influence of medications that impair his already questionable judgment, Trump has gone from negligence to outright defiance, as if the virus cares what he thinks about it. But while the virus may not care what Trump thinks, he’s endangering the people around him, few of whom have a choice and many of whom are now living in fear.
“Don’t be afraid of Covid,” Trump tweeted on Monday, giving a slap in the face to the 210,000 people who have died of the disease in the U.S., to millions of those who have been very sick, and to all the people who’ve lost loved ones. Then he returned to the White House and took off his mask. At the White House, Trump is cared for by the residence staff, many of whom are people of color and in vulnerable age groups, working for decades through changing presidential administrations to support their families and ultimately earn pensions. They are intimately involved with the first family, and they don’t have a choice.
Trump also endangers the Secret Service agents who protect him. While putting their lives on the line to protect a president is at the center of that job, being willfully exposed to a deadly virus for no good reason is another matter. Trump campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley mocked the concern over the safety of the agents forced to accompany Trump on his joyride outside Walter Reed hospital on Sunday, saying it was “absolutely stupid and foolish.”
”How do they think he’s going to leave? Is someone gonna toss him the keys to a Buick and let him drive home by himself? They’re always around him because that’s their job,” Gidley told Fox News. But there’s a difference between accompanying Trump on a necessary trip between the White House and the hospital or vice versa and being closed in a vehicle with him to just drive around to stroke his ego, and it’s a difference Secret Service agents have made clear to reporters they understand and feel deeply.
White House reporters are another group with reason to be furious after Team Trump has persistently put their health at risk, with White House press staffers refusing to wear masks even as Trump and several of his staff contracted COVID-19. The New York Times’ Michael Shear tested positive himself—as did at least two other White House reporters—then tweeted that his wife has also tested positive.
One group that is reportedly afraid and upset but gets no sympathy is Trump’s political staff. Those people have participated in the culture Trump built—and they can leave. They’re not butlers and housekeepers proud to serve the institution through administration after administration and trying to earn a comfortable retirement. They’re not Secret Service agents who committed to an ideal and similarly have long-term careers on the line. They’re part of the problem of Trumpworld, and if they suddenly object because Trump is putting them in danger like he’s done to so many vulnerable communities in this country for four years and like he’s done to the entire country since the start of the pandemic, well, they should walk.
For his part, Trump is fully committed to this path of denying that he’s been sick in any way that should worry anyone. We can all see him gasping for air, but his commitment to pretending that’s not the case includes the “slap in the face,” as the daughter of one COVID-19 victim described it, of telling people “Don’t be afraid of Covid.” It includes taking off his mask upon arriving at the White House—in the process showing his disregard for the health of those around him. He’s not backing off from that message, and he’s lying about flu fatalities to do it:
Donald Trump has been responsible for the United States’ disastrous, inept, irresponsible response to the coronavirus pandemic from day one. Now, somehow, while he’s sick himself—possibly dangerously so—he’s finding ways to make it worse.