The headline quote is from DailyBeast, here. Excerpt:
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said the state had begun contract-tracing for everyone who attended the event, writing: “We urge everyone who attended yesterday’s event in Bedminster to take full precautions, including self-quarantining and getting tested for COVID-19.”
The event may have exposed dozens of people to the virus and adds to a long list of people who have had recent contact with Hicks or Trump who may now need to isolate. They include a large contingent from Trump’s family who traveled to Tuesday night’s debate in Ohio together. Hicks was also seen boarding Marine One on Wednesday with President Trump and senior White House advisers Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller.
Democratic candidate Joe Biden will reportedly undergo an urgent test Friday due to his proximity to Trump at the first presidential debate, where the two men exchanged aerosols for 90 minutes. [Biden since has tested negative.]
The fact that the Bedminster event went ahead despite Hicks’ symptomatic case has been met with stunned disbelief. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said: “The fact that the president still went, knowing he’d had very close contact with somebody who’d tested positive, is irresponsible.”
Reporters also voiced their incredulity at the fact that press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who has also been in contact with Hicks, held a news briefing at the White House on Thursday and didn’t wear a mask. Neither Hicks’ symptoms or rest were mentioned at the briefing.
CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins asked: “Why did the president still go to New Jersey, knowing that he could potentially put these people at risk, these donors and fundraisers? And of course, why did the press secretary still hold a briefing despite knowing she had come into contact with somebody who had just tested positive for coronavirus?”
On Friday morning, Meadows didn’t wear a mask while briefing the press on Trump’s condition.
[links in original, bolding added]. On tape to Woodward Trump acknowledged that from the start he knew the virus is easily spread and mortally dangerous. His comorbidities include age, obesity, and daily stress. He went to Walter Reed to be checked out and treated. We hope for the best. Detail from the hospital, if reported, has not been found online by Crabgrass.
NYT coverage ends:
The nature of the campaign will be disrupted as well. And after having gone forward with the large rallies he craves, despite rules against large gatherings in many states, Mr. Trump will not be able to leave Washington during a final, crucial stretch of the campaign.
Moreover, one of his central arguments against Mr. Biden, that the 77-year-old former vice president is enfeebled and unfit to lead the country, has now been undermined by questions about the president’s own health.
“Trump is now in the position of becoming exhibit No. 1 for the failure of his leadership on coronavirus, and he runs the risk that his supporters will feel misled by his dismissiveness of the virus and the need for precautions,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster.
The president was already lagging in the polls in part because of his difficulties with older voters, a constituency that leans Republican but is also at the highest risk from the virus.
Some of Mr. Trump’s aides began the day Friday discussing ways for him to be seen by the public. But it became clear by the afternoon that was not possible, and they released a statement from his doctor acknowledging he was fatigued and was taking an experimental antibody cocktail.
In private conversations, members of his staff were also candid that the president had some underlying conditions that could make him more susceptible to a severe bout of the virus.
No modern president has publicly endured a health crisis this close to a re-election attempt. Ronald Reagan was shot and convalesced in 1981, just over two months after he was first sworn in. And Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack while in office, but it was more than a year before he faced the voters for a second time.
Some Republicans hoped his ill-fated June rally in Tulsa, Okla., when he couldn’t come close to filling the arena and some of his own staff members got the virus, would serve as a wake-up call.
But while the event put an end to his rallies for a period, it did not make Mr. Trump more sober about the threat of the virus.
The president restarted the rallies during the Democratic convention in August. The events have been mostly, but not always, outdoors, often in hangars at smaller airfields. Yet his supporters, journalists, White House staff members, security workers and others are around one another for hours at the rallies. And many of those who attend, including Mr. Trump and members of his staff, have not worn masks.
Earlier in that NYT item:
Mr. Biden’s aides said he had no plans to step away from his travels — at least for now.
The president’s illness is certain to keep the coronavirus pandemic front and center in the remaining weeks before the election, a development that would appear to favor Mr. Biden, whose campaign message is focused on criticism of Mr. Trump’s stewardship of the deadly disease.
In the White House, advisers to the president acknowledged that the positive test would remind voters of how dismissive Mr. Trump had been about the virus, not only with the neglect of his own safety but also in his overly rosy assessments about a pandemic that has killed more than 208,000 Americans. Mr. Trump’s recklessness, one adviser acknowledged, amounted to a political “disaster.”
[...] This limits Trump’s opportunity to turn this thing around and drive a winning message,” said Terry Sullivan, a Republican consultant. “He’s lost any ability to control the narrative.”
Should the final weeks of the campaign be dominated by the coronavirus, Mr. Trump’s challenge will be intensified by his casual approach to the disease and its deadliness.
The president spent months disregarding and mocking the basic precautions, such as wearing a mask, that his health advisers were urging Americans to take to protect themselves.
Still, few Democrats had any degree of confidence on how the final weeks of the race would play out.
Representative Dina Titus of Nevada said Mr. Biden should proceed. “I don’t see why he should quit campaigning unless something really bad happens,” Ms. Titus said. “And then all bets are off.”
What some Democrats feared, and Republicans hoped, is that there would be a rallying around Mr. Trump and he would garner sympathy from voters. Yet even the most optimistic Republican allowed that those sentiments wouldn’t automatically translate into votes.
At the very least, Republicans said they hoped Mr. Trump’s illness would prompt him to refrain from the inflammatory rhetoric that has alienated many voters and make the election less of a referendum on his behavior.
It is an election and Joe Biden owes his supporters and donors a continuation of his effort to win. The potential severity of the virus infection Trump is experiencing is a worry for everyone. Nobody wishes morbidity or health impairment on another human being. Even those most set against four more years should feel a sadness and worry. One can say with his attitude and conduct, he had it coming, which has a degree of truth, yet everyone in the nation should show the goodwill to hope Trump, the person, comes out of his suffering fully intact and not permanently debilitated or worse. While wishing against four more years here at Crabgrass, there is sympathy and hope for the Trump spouses, Hicks, and all others in the nation showing positive for the virus if unlucky enough to be suffering very adverse effects. The virus is a killer. Two hundred and eight thousand Americans so far have died. We do not want death among any of the White House and other executive officials. We hope otherwise. We worry over the health of a President, however well or ill we judge the success and sagacity of his Presidency.
__________UPDATE__________
A DWT post ends noting a Covid 19 related anti-Trump documentary is set to be released in October. From the trailer of the documentary DWT posted, it is harsh on Trump judgment and conduct regarding the virus he now is fighting personally. The documentary appears harshly judgmental, but accurate, from the trailer. With hundreds of thousands of U.S. deaths from the pandemic, criticism of its handling at the federal level remains entirely appropriate. Criticism is due.
It is ironic. We hope against circumstances which could happen which would render public release of that documentary inappropriate. The worse could happen. We hope against it. We want both Trump spouses to survive. That holds even while most of us want Trump and his entire administration out of the White House next January. Biden will continue to seek the Presidency. This illness likely helps his chances. While some of us are happy that Biden's effort is helped, again, we feel sympathy with a suffering of illness by another human being.
As already noted, the word "irony" applies. The word "uncertainty" also. "Hope" for the best medical outcome, also. With all the fault found at this site with Joe Biden and his ticket, it is thought the lesser evil, and this untimely infection does not alter that basic outlook.
The illness softens discord, but Trump has had a consistently aggressive mistake-prone personality and job performance, a fact which cannot and should not be overlooked in his time of personal distress.
We feel his pain but we continue to want him and his crowd out of running the executive branch of the federal government. There is no inconsistency to that as a bottom line.