“I don’t know Beau,” Trump said. “I know Hunter. Hunter got thrown out of the military. He was thrown out, dishonorably discharged.”
“That was not true,” Biden interjected. “He was not dishonorably discharged.”
“For cocaine use,” Trump said. “And he didn’t have a job until you became vice president.”
“None of that is true,” Biden said.
“Once you became vice president, he made a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow, and various other places,” Trump said.
Again, Biden interjected: “That is not true.”
But Trump kept at it. “He made a fortune and he didn’t have a job,” he said.
“My son, like a lot of people [watching] at home, had a drug problem,” Biden said. “He’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him. I’m proud of my son.”
Trump may have believed he succeeded in scorching Biden for the troubles of his son, but some of his campaign advisers cringed at the president’s clumsy and overly hostile delivery. They feared the exchange showed Biden was a proud and loving father and risked turning off the white independent suburban voters with whom Trump needed to make up ground.
The debate got especially tense on the subject of race. Biden said Trump “has used everything as a dog whistle to try to generate racist hatred, racist division.”
“He’s just, he’s a racist,” Biden added of Trump.
Both Wallace and Biden pressed Trump to condemn white supremacists, but the president demurred.
“Give me a name,” Trump said. “Who would you like me to condemn?”
“The Proud Boys,” Biden interjected, referring to neofascist, male, white nationalist organization whose members had attacked Black Lives Matter protesters that summer.
“The Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said.
With those eight words, the president sounded a call to arms. Few could imagine then what the Proud Boys and other warriors for the far right had in store.
Fourteen
Nobody’s Immune
On September 30, President Trump traveled to Minnesota, a state that traditionally leaned Democratic. He had lost narrowly there in 2016 and was hoping to win it in 2020. As Trump spoke with supporters at a campaign fundraiser in Shorewood, at the Lake Minnetonka home of a wealthy area businessman, Hope Hicks was waiting with other traveling White House aides in a side room. She felt ill. Her symptoms worsened later that evening as she accompanied Trump to a MAGA rally in Duluth. On stage, the president’s voice sounded raspy and his speech was shorter than usual. He spoke for only forty-six minutes, while many of his recent rally speeches had stretched well past an hour. Something was amiss.
Hicks talked to Sean Conley, the president’s physician, who was traveling with them and told him she wasn’t feeling well. But she didn’t think she had COVID-19. Like other staff who worked in close contact with the president, Hicks was tested daily for the virus. Her test that morning had come back negative. As she later recounted to friends, Hicks wondered if she might have caught a cold or was just wiped out from all the travel and late-night events she had been doing with Trump and needed a good night’s sleep. Conley instructed her to try to rest and self-isolate on the flight home to Washington that evening, so as not to risk infecting others. She sat alone in the president’s private office aboard Air Force One. Hicks was discreet; some other aides on the trip were unaware that she had fallen ill or that she had ensconced herself in the forward cabin.
The next morning, October 1, Hicks woke up feeling the same, so instead of rushing into work at 7:30 a.m. as usual, she went back to sleep, hoping to kick the bug, whatever it was. At about 11:00, she went into the White House to take her daily COVID test. The rapid test was positive, so she then took a more reliable PCR test. She got the results shortly after noon. Positive again. Hicks had COVID-19.
She immediately went home to self-isolate and informed Mark Meadows and other key officials about her diagnosis. Word spread quickly among White House staff, who were alarmed because of how much time Hicks spent around Trump and the seniormost members of the administration. Some staffers suddenly started wearing masks around the White House. Trump was scheduled to depart around 1:00 p.m. for another campaign fundraiser at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Meadows and other aides scrambled to change the flight manifest. Kayleigh McEnany had been scheduled to travel to Bedminster but was pulled from the trip because she had been in close contact with Hicks. Deputy press secretary Judd Deere traveled in her place.
Trump and Meadows did not want Hicks’s diagnosis to become public, and the president carried on with his New Jersey trip, where he was slated to raise $5 million for his reelection. The decision to proceed with the fundraiser after the president’s extended and recent close contact with an infected person flouted both the CDC recommendations and the advice the White House gave its own staff. What’s more, Trump himself wasn’t feeling well after sounding hoarse the night before. He could be a vector.
As Dr. Kavita Patel, a practicing physician and former health adviser in the Obama White House, explained at the time, “They knew she was positive and they still let Marine One take off with the president. Why didn’t they ground him? That was the break in protocol. The CDC’s protocol clearly states that as soon as anybody, i.e., Hope Hicks, was confirmed positive, anybody she came into close contact with for at least forty-eight hours prior should have at least isolated.”
In Bedminster, Trump hosted an intimate gathering for the biggest donors. It was held indoors, with guests seated around a large table with the president. Many did not wear masks. The president then spoke outdoors to a few hundred supporters, some of whom wore masks. Many of the attendees were elderly, putting them at high risk if they contracted the virus. On the flight home, Trump talked with his traveling entourage about Hicks’s diagnosis and said he would take a test.
Trump also made a virtual appearance that night at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, an annual white-tie charity event in New York that had long been on the political calendar. In a recorded message, Trump proclaimed, “I just want to say that the end of the pandemic is in sight.”
Sometime that evening, a White House official confidentially contacted Stephen Hahn to seek information about the FDA approving the compassionate use of monoclonal antibodies for a patient who was a high-level White House individual. Hahn didn’t ask for the name of the patient. With compassionate use approvals, the FDA doesn’t require a name, but does require some medical information to process paperwork. But Hahn assumed it was for Hicks, since he knew about her diagnosis. It was actually for the president.
Shortly after 8:00 p.m., nearly eight hours after Meadows and other officials learned of Hicks’s diagnosis, the public found out—not by a White House announcement, but the reporting of Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News, who had been tipped off by sources. About ninety minutes later, Trump called into Sean Hannity’s Fox show, where the president said he had just taken a test and was awaiting his results. He spoke as if he knew he had the virus and was looking to cast blame.
“You know, it’s very hard,” Trump said. “When you’re with soldiers, when you’re with airmen, when you’re with Marines, and I’m with—and the police officers. I’m with them so much. And when they come over here, it’s very hard to say, ‘Stay back, stay back.’ It’s a tough kind of a situation. It’s a terrible thing. So, I just went for a test, and we will see what happens. I mean, who knows?”
Suspense built into the night. And then, just before 1:00 a.m., Trump made a dramatic reveal on Twitter: “Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER.”
Conley wrote in a memorandum released overnight: “The president and first lady are both well at this time, and they plan to remain at home w
ithin the White House during their convalescence. The White House medical team and I will maintain a vigilant watch, and I appreciate the support provided by some of our country’s greatest medical professionals and institutions. Rest assured I expect the President to continue carrying out his duties without disruption while recovering, and I will keep you updated on any future developments.”
The diagnosis left Trump’s advisers and aides in a state of disbelief. The virus hadn’t only punctured the president’s bubble. It also infected the president himself, as well as his wife. Their minds raced with questions: How did Trump get infected? At the September 26 Amy Coney Barrett announcement? Or at the September 27 Gold Star families event, where he had complained about guests getting too close to him? Or at his recent golf outing or debate prep sessions or campaign rallies or fundraisers, none of which followed social distancing or mask protocols? And who was Patient Zero? Media reports that evening left the impression that Hicks may have given the virus to Trump. But it was just as likely that he gave it to her, and it was also possible that they both got it from someone else. Unlike Hicks and other staff, the president did not get tested every day, so it was possible he had become infected earlier in the week.
Those around the president also fretted about how badly the virus would hit Trump. He was seventy-four years old, had high cholesterol, and at a reported 244 pounds, was considered obese. He made no secret of his cheeseburgers-and-steaks diet or his lack of daily exercise. Trump’s age and weight both made him particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus. But Trump had been unusually secretive about his health—resistant to releasing details about his condition and treatments over the years, including the reasons for an abrupt and unannounced visit in November 2019 to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. So even White House aides weren’t sure whether to believe Conley’s assurance that Trump was doing “well.”
White House officials also worried about whether they, too, had been infected, considering how lax their workplace had been about virus precautions. And what would become of the campaign? The election was just thirty-three days away. The next scheduled debate was in less than two weeks. How long would the president be grounded? MAGA rallies, after all, were the lifeblood of his campaign. And how would his illness play politically? How could Trump convince voters he could protect their families from the virus if he couldn’t protect himself?
The morning of October 2, Meadows stepped outside the West Wing to update a gaggle of reporters on Trump’s condition. The chief of staff said the president was “in good spirits.” Even now, despite his close interactions with Trump and Hicks, Meadows did not wear a mask. He said defensively, “I’ve obviously been tested. We’re hopefully more than six feet away.”
Later that morning, Trump’s condition worsened. When Conley checked on him at his bedside, the president had a high fever. A standard pulse oximeter reading showed the level of oxygen in his blood had dropped below 94 percent. A normal reading was 96 to 100 percent, and doctors considered anything lower a warning that could not be ignored. It wasn’t definitive, but it was a signal the patient could be on a rapid downward trajectory, and in grave danger. If this trajectory continued and was left unaddressed, it could lead to hypoxia and sudden death. Trump needed supplemental oxygen, stat.
“I was concerned for possible rapid progression of the illness,” Conley later told reporters. “I recommended [to] the president we try some supplemental oxygen, see how he’d respond. He was fairly adamant that he didn’t need it. He was not short of breath. He was tired. He had the fever. That was about it. After about a minute and only two liters, his saturation levels were back over ninety-five percent. Stayed on that for about an hour, maybe, and it was off and gone.”
Conley called other experienced doctors for their opinions about the president’s treatment, including Anthony Fauci and Robert Redfield. Having both trained in the military, Conley and Redfield had mutual respect. The younger Conley had learned his profession in the navy and Redfield in the army. Though Conley spoke on the phone with a calm voice, the news he shared alarmed Redfield, who was in his Washington office at the time. Conley told the veteran virologist he was concerned about the significant dip in the oxygen levels in the president’s blood. He was giving Trump supplemental oxygen. He also wanted to transport Trump from the White House to Walter Reed immediately because he wanted the intensive second-by-second monitoring that was best provided at a hospital and its critical care at the ready if Trump’s condition rapidly worsened.
Redfield asked some detailed questions about the pulse oximeter readings of Trump’s oxygen saturation levels. Called SpO2 readings, they measured the amount of oxygen-carrying hemoglobin in the blood relative to the amount of hemoglobin not carrying oxygen. Redfield also urged Conley to consider starting some experimental but promising treatments as soon as possible. He said the president would be a great candidate for monoclonal antibodies, though the promising results seen in some patients were based at that point on very little data, as well as remdesivir. Trump’s heavy weight and advanced age meant Conley had to protectively assume that Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis could spiral into the frightening lung problems seen in many severe cases. Though Trump had early in his term tried to get his White House doctors to deny it, he had high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries to his heart. Redfield and Conley agreed that Trump had a strong likelihood of ending up in intensive care. The two doctors discussed the facts clinically, without any trace of panic. Redfield agreed that the president had to get to the hospital soon, and he had to receive the most aggressive treatment Conley could safely order for him.
For Trump, there was an additional motivation to agree to these aggressive steps. If he developed pneumonia and breathing difficulties, he would be unable to communicate and become incapacitated, meaning the vice president would have to temporarily assume his duties.
At the first mention of going to Walter Reed, Trump was resistant. He worried about how weak and vulnerable it would make him—and the country—look. It was bad for the person leading the fight against the virus to actually contract it, he thought, though he had long believed contracting COVID was inevitable. “At some point I’m going to catch it because it’s so contagious,” he had told aides earlier that fall. But hospitalization would only increase the impression of weakness, he felt. That afternoon, Conley released another memorandum stating that Trump was “fatigued, but in good spirits.”
Conley authorized that the president receive a single eight-gram dose of Regeneron’s cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies, which was still in the experimental phase but showing great results with reducing the severity of the disease’s impact on patients, and he had Trump taking zinc, vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin, and aspirin. Conley’s memo mistakenly said Trump received a “polyclonal” cocktail, which was not the case, but a Regeneron official later corrected the error in the doctor’s statement.
That evening, Conley pulled another arrow from his quiver and arranged for Trump to receive his first dose of Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir, the first of a five-day course of an antiviral therapy that was supposed to prevent spread throughout the body. And the next day Trump was administered dexamethasone, a steroid reserved for more severe illnesses.
The varied and heavy treatments concerned medical experts. “Suddenly, they’re throwing the kitchen sink at him. It raises the question: Is he sicker than we’re hearing, or are they being overly aggressive because he is the president, in a way that could be potentially harmful?” Dr. Thomas McGinn, physician-in-chief at Northwell Health, the largest provider in New York State, told The New York Times.
* * *
—
Shortly after 6:00 p.m. on October 2, Marine One landed on the South Lawn of the White House and the president walked out of the residence. He was wearing a suit and blue tie, as well as a black mask across his face. He walked out alone, with a notably masked Meadows following behind, as well as
a military aide carrying the nuclear codes, known as the football. They loaded into the helicopter and it flew to Walter Reed in nearby Bethesda, Maryland. Trump was hospitalized. The image-conscious president could hardly have wanted footage of him on every media platform in a mask as he was being airlifted to a hospital, not with the election just one month away.
Trump was taken to Ward 71, the palatial presidential suite at Walter Reed where Richard Nixon had battled pneumonia and Ronald Reagan had undergone colon surgery. The suite contained bedrooms, offices, a conference room, as well as a dining room—space not only for Trump to feel at home, but his aides and visitors, too. Meadows stayed with Trump there, sleeping overnight at the hospital.
As Trump got used to his new surroundings, Redfield worried about the president. He knew Trump could easily deteriorate and possibly die. In his life and career, the power of prayer had been sustaining for Redfield in some of the most trying moments of his life. He had prayed when he and his wife had lost a baby in childbirth. He had prayed when he had been working in third-world conflict zones, knowing things could go badly quickly and he might not make it home. That night, Redfield put his fingertips together and prayed hard for Trump. He would do the same the next night and the night after that. Redfield had prayed before about the president, that Trump would embrace wearing a mask and serve as a role model for all Americans. This solemn devotion was not answered. God, Redfield said to himself, must have wanted him to suffer more on that plea.
The morning of October 3, Trump didn’t feel so great when he woke up, worse than he had felt the night before, as if the treatments still hadn’t fully kicked in. He later said in an interview for this book, “The last thing I want to die of is COVID if I’m president.” He explained fearing that if he had died, “that’s almost like you’re losing to the invisible enemy. We can’t do that, so I had an obligation to get better.”
I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year Page 33
