Today, Explained - Contact tracing President Trump

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

The president had a very busy week, then tested positive for the coronavirus. Vox’s Aaron Rupar traces his steps and Ella Nilsen explores the possible scenarios. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Never has a story been more surprising and predictable at the same time than this one. Because when a guy who mocks masks and doesn't social distance keeps traveling across the country with the highest case count in the world, it's only a matter of time before he tests positive for the coronavirus. Very early this morning, President Donald Trump revealed his time to test positive had finally come.

Aaron Ruppar, you cover the president for Vox. that we can't be totally sure what the chain of transmission was. But what it's looking like is that the spread may be linked to this trip that Hope Hicks, who is a top White House aide, took with the president and a number of other White House officials, including Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner, on Wednesday. The chain of events here is kind of illustrative of how, you know, some of the shortcomings with coronavirus testing, because apparently what happened here is Hope Hicks on Wednesday morning took a test for COVID, which is something that regularly happens for White House officials. And on Wednesday morning, she tested negative for the virus. So that day, there's a photograph of her boarding Marine One, one of the White House helicopters, for a trip to Minnesota, where Trump delivered a campaign speech in Duluth. Apparently, towards the end of the evening during Trump's speech, Hope Hicks began to feel ill. And when Hope Hicks took a test that evening for the coronavirus, she tested positive.

And we also just don't know if the president was infected through Hope Hicks or someone else because he has seen so many people, right? That's exactly right. And, you know, that's the other thing that is worth keeping in mind is that, you know, we're still in a state of affairs here in the United States where, you know, there are 30,000 to 40,000 new cases a day. When you have that much virus circulating, contact tracing becomes more difficult because there can be different chains of spread.

So we just can't know for sure at this point what the chain of transmission was. But again, given what we know surrounding Hope Hicks and given that we know that she traveled, you know, on a helicopter and on an airplane with a number of White House officials, including Trump on Wednesday, it seems pretty reasonable to assume, you know, that she was the vector that ended up spreading it to the president. Ladies and gentlemen, the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. Well, let's just talk about what the president's been up to, let's say, for the past week, so we can try and figure out when this may have happened, and then perhaps to whom he may have spread this. Where do

we begin? So I think a good place to begin is last weekend, where both on Friday and Saturday, Trump held campaign rallies on Friday night in Newport News, Virginia, on Saturday in Middletown, Pennsylvania. And of course, as we've drawn nearer to election day, Trump has basically resumed a normal campaign schedule with almost every night having campaign rallies with thousands of people there. In the Commonwealth of Virginia with the thousands of loyal, hardworking American patriots. And, you know, at these rallies, Trump has regularly spread misinformation about the coronavirus. And, you know, they always said, oh, Europe is doing better. Actually, we did better.

He's downplayed things, telling people that... We'll crush the virus. The end of this pandemic is right around the corner, that, you know, vaccines will be available within weeks that will kind of make this whole thing go away. But we've done a great job with the FDA and clearing a path. And you'll be seeing it very shortly. And these are great companies. Now, it already feels like it was a month ago, but wasn't Saturday also the day that Trump announced that he was nominating Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court?

And she was there at the White House with him, with her entire family. Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States and Mrs. Trump, accompanied by Judge Amy Coney Barrett and family. I'm looking at a photo right now from that event where, yeah, they're standing right next to each other, definitely, you know, not social distancing. Her entire family is walking behind them. They had a Rose Garden event, you know, where dozens, if not over 100 people were in the crowd, some of whom were wearing masks, but some weren't. I want to thank the members of the Senate.

We have so many of them here today. Thank you very much. I see you in the audience. A video was circulated on Friday after the ceremony of Mike Lee, a senator from Utah, hugging other people. And Mike Lee is one of the attendees at that event who has now tested positive for coronavirus, along with Notre Dame President John Jenkins, who is there without a mask, shaking hands. Thankfully, Judge Amy Comey Barrett does not have it, but it does seem like this event was a vector for the virus.

So thank you very much for being here. Thank you all. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Congratulations, Amy. And then we kind of go from there through the rest of the week, where on Monday, Trump had an event at the White House about coronavirus testing. In a moment that looks kind of ominous in hindsight, at one point, Trump turned to Admiral Brett Giroir, who is the White House coronavirus testing czar, and said to him. Good luck. Hope you don't test positive. Then Tuesday, of course, brought us to the presidential debate.

President Trump, you have begun to increasingly question the effectiveness of masks as a disease preventer. And in fact, recently... You know, the events surrounding the debate are raising a lot of questions as well, because Trump was on stage with Joe Biden. Tonight, as an example, everybody's had a test and you've had social distancing and all of the things that you have to,

but I wear masks when needed. They were standing a good distance away from each other, but of course it was a very animated discussion. I don't wear masks like him. Every time you see him, he's got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from me and he shows up with the biggest mask I've ever seen. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that there could have been some sort of virus transmission there. Again, we don't know if at that point that was pre-exposure for Trump.

You know, the Biden campaign has said they are testing everybody who traveled with Joe Biden to the debate. You say that's the end of it? This is the end of this debate? Honest ballot count. We're going to leave it there. Okay, and that brings us to Wednesday, which is the day where we think President Trump may have encountered the virus from Hope Hicks, potentially on his plane, on his helicopter. What was he doing Wednesday? So Wednesday was a little bit of a quieter day during the day, given the debate the night before, which was in Cleveland, Trump traveled back to D.C. We don't know who all was on that flight.

Of course, those people now will be part of the contact tracing that occurs. But Trump, you know, that afternoon as he was preparing to go to Minnesota, did a press availability, one of the news conferences that he sometimes does. Then he got on the plane with Hope Hicks, with Jared Kushner, with Stephen Miller, and they all traveled to Minnesota for a flight that now seems like it may have been the vector for the spread that occurred to Trump and to First Lady Melania Trump. And we know the president shares the information that he's tested positive late Thursday night, early Friday morning, depending where you are in this country. But what did he do on Thursday?

Did he travel? Did he stay put? What happened here is that Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs reported on Thursday evening that Hope Hicks had coronavirus. This was not announced by the White House until a reporter reported, you know, that she had it. And so that has raised a lot of questions about, you know, did Trump test positive before Thursday night? Trump went up to Bedminster,

his private club up there, for a fundraiser, you know, despite the fact that he knew that he had been exposed to the coronavirus the day before. The New York Times reported that at this fundraiser in Bedminster, he was feeling lethargic or, you know, he appeared to be lethargic, according to someone who was there. So instead of kind of canceling all of his events and hunkering down and quarantining, he basically kept up appearances and had a normal day of campaigning. And it's raising, you know, it has raised a lot of questions about, you know, when exactly did Trump know that he had tested positive? Because another thing to mention is that on Thursday evening,

just hours before Trump announced on Twitter that he had tested positive, he called in to Sean Hannity. She's a hard worker, a lot of masks. She wears masks a lot, but she tested positive. He confirmed that Hope Hicks had tested positive. And he basically, you know, he sounded kind of resigned to his fate. But it's very, very hard when you are with people from the military or for law enforcement and they come over to you and they want to hug you and they want to kiss you because we really have done a good job for them. And you get close and things happen. I was surprised to hear. I know there's a lot of unknowns right now, but do we have any idea what happens next? The president is quarantining, he says.

Yes, he announced along with his positive test that he is quarantining and he has canceled his events for this weekend. He was supposed to have two campaign rallies on Saturday in eastern Wisconsin. Of course, there are big concerns now about the fact that Trump is symptomatic, given his age, you know, 74 years old, given that based on his medical records that have been, you know, the very limited records that have been released by the White House. You know, we know that he is obese. We know that he has a form of heart disease. And so when you start, you know,

when you start displaying symptoms of COVID along with those comorbidities at his age, it's very concerning. You know, at this point, it's basically, you know, the focus should be at least on just making sure that he gets healthy before he starts thinking about campaigning. But, you know, with the compressed schedule, you know, now people are already speculating about whether the next debate will have to take place over Zoom, you know, and what the

rest of the stretch run of this presidential campaign is going to look like. Presidents have gotten really sick before. They've died in office before, but maybe not this close to an election. Some scenarios after the break on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family. And Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame.

When you give an aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an aura frame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday, and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids, and so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift

by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. All right, Ellen Nielsen, you cover politics for Vox. President Trump has tested positive for the coronavirus, and we know that his age and weight put him in a much likelier group for

complications. He's 74, something like 8% of 65 to 74-year-olds who test positive die. That goes up to 18% for 75 to 84-year-olds. If he does get seriously ill or even dies from this, what could happen here? Yeah, so there are two different things that we need to consider here. One is what happens to the office of the presidency that Trump currently occupies. And the other is what the Republican Party does with their nomination because Trump is the Republican nominee in the 2020 election, which is only a month away. OK, let's start with the office of the presidency. What could happen there?

What happens is pretty clear cut. That is in Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. And that amendment states that if for whatever reason the vice president and a majority of sitting cabinet secretaries decide that the president is, quote, unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, then they can put that down in writing and send it to the Speaker of the House and the Senate president pro tempore. That means that the vice president, in this case, Mike Pence, would immediately become the acting president and take over all of Trump's powers as president. And I guess everything that happens in 2020 can feel just so 2020, but it's worth reminding people that this isn't without precedent, right? This sort of transfer of power in a circumstance like this? Yeah, so obviously, you know, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated when he was in office

and his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, took over as president. William Henry Harrison, way back in the 1800s, famously got pneumonia and died after a very long-winded inauguration speech in the middle of winter outside. So this, at least this part of the process, there is precedent for it. We know what to do if a president dies. Yeah. That being said, of course, we are very close to an election, which makes this feel a little different. Yeah. I mean, this is where we sort of get into kind of unprecedented territory because, I mean, obviously we should,

it bears repeating that we don't know how serious or mild Trump's coronavirus case is. You know, it could just be he has mild symptoms and he'll be fine. And it's also worth repeating that people of any age get coronavirus and they recover from it. But if things were to take a turn for the worse, we are in the middle of an election right now. November 3rd is the election date, but because of coronavirus and because of how unique this election year is, early voting has already started in a number of states and many states have already mailed out absentee ballots so that people can vote by mail. And all of those ballots have Trump's name printed

on them. And it would be really difficult for states to basically recall all those ballots and reprint new ballots with a new person's name on them. So what happens? I mean, is it as simple as the 25th Amendment, where if something terrible happens to the president, it goes to Pence? Is Mike Pence just automatically the nominee? No, the 25th Amendment is completely separate from what would happen with the nomination process because the nomination process is determined by the parties. So if Trump is incapacitated or dies

or something happens to him because of COVID, it would be up to the Republican National Committee, which is 168-member body, to basically vote on a replacement nominee. So even if Mike Pence is the acting president under the 25th Amendment, he is not automatically guaranteed to be the replacement nominee for the Republicans. He would likely be the replacement nominee because he's on the ticket, but he's not automatically guaranteed.

And this body of 168 committee members on the RNC needs to take a vote. Hmm. Has that ever happened before? Not to my knowledge and not to the knowledge of the election law expert that I spoke to this morning. So, yeah, in this case, with this time and how close we are to the election, we are in uncharted territory. I mean, the situation that we're in right now, the president testing positive for the coronavirus, it doesn't feel totally out of left field because President Trump has been holding these rallies.

Herman Cain went to one and then died. There was the RNC that was held at the White House South Lawn. There was that White House event where Trump announced Amy Coney Barrett on Saturday, where a bunch of people who attended that have now tested positive. Were they prepared for this? Did they have a plan? I mean, no. You know, it's really, really critical to note the difference between Biden's campaigning

style and Trump's campaigning style in 2020. Biden's events have all been very small. People are spaced out six feet apart. I was looking at an event of his a couple of days ago, and there were literally circles drawn designating where people could stand. Everybody wears a mask. And in Trump's campaign events, it's a free-for-all. And, you know, reports that we've been getting about, you know, how the White House operates, I think it's similarly kind of a free-for-all. They have a lot of testing at the White House. Everybody gets

tested daily. But, you know, this is a president that has cast doubt on the efficacy of wearing masks and other things that are accepted by science as best practice for COVID. And there could have been a lot more that the campaign could have done to try to prepare for this possibility, in my mind. And we've talked a lot on the show about Trump's sort of unwavering support within his base, how the numbers hardly fluctuated in iota since he was elected. Could this be something that changes Trump's support in either direction?

Do we have any idea? I mean, it's really hard to answer that question because we don't know how serious Trump's COVID case could get and sort of what the fallout from that is. I don't know if this is going to make, you know, Trump's base rally around him more, or if it is going to turn some people off. I think it's just way too early to tell what this means politically.

Well, Ella, thanks for your reporting, and I'm sure we'll be speaking again soon. All right. Thank you, Sean. Ella Nelson, Aaron Rupar, and many more of our colleagues are covering this developing news from all angles over at Vox.com. Stay safe and smart, and we'll be back with more on Monday. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained.