brooklynite
brooklynite's JournalTrump's other coronavirus complication: His credibility gap
PoliticoThe president who once dictated his own doctor’s note is now asking a worried nation to trust his doctors’ notes.
President Donald Trump's bout with coronavirus amounts to the most serious medical crisis facing a president since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981 — and now Trump’s long history of dubious claims about his own health has suddenly gone from water-cooler chatter in Washington to a key issue hanging over his ability to govern and win re-election.
A Morning Consult/POLITICO flash poll conducted on Friday found 68 percent of respondents said the president should address the public directly about his positive Covid-19 diagnosis. But given his track record, a president who's rarely at a loss for words is short of one crucial quality in a moment of national anxiety: Credibility.
A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last month found that just 40 percent of Americans trust Trump to provide "reliable information on coronavirus," and only 36 percent of respondents this summer deemed the president "honest and trustworthy" — which was actually an improvement from last year's mark of 34 percent, according to Gallup's long-running poll.
U.S. Senate candidate Cal Cunningham admits to sexual texting with California strategist
Source: News & Observer
North Carolina Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cal Cunningham, a married father of two, sent text messages of a sexual nature to a woman who is not his wife, his campaign confirmed Friday night.
The text messages between Cunningham and Arlene Guzman Todd, a public relations strategist from California, were first reported Thursday night by NationalFile.com.
...snip...
Cunningham, who has been leading in polling in his pivotal U.S. Senate race against Republican incumbent Thom Tillis, said Friday night that he is not dropping out of the race.
"I have hurt my family, disappointed my friends, and am deeply sorry. The first step in repairing those relationships is taking complete responsibility, which I do. I ask that my family's privacy be respected in this personal matter," Cunningham said in a statement sent to The News & Observer.
Read more here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article246191610.html#storylinkcpy
Read more: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article246191610.html
Sigh, this would have been a lock for the Dems. May still be because of votes already banked.
Laurie Garrett: Almost everyone infected with COVID at Barrett event...
...was seated in the first three rows near the center.
Narrows down the list of potential super-readers.
Invincibility punctured by infection: How the coronavirus spread in Trump's White House
Source: Washington Post
By Friday afternoon, Trump’s condition had worsened, officials said, though they maintained he was “in good spirits.” The president had a low-grade fever, a cough and nasal congestion, among other symptoms, according to two people familiar with his condition who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss a sensitive matter.
Trump was transported about 6:16 p.m. Friday to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for further treatment out of what the White House described as an abundance of caution.
As Trump’s condition deteriorated during the day Friday, the president and his team ultimately made the decision to send him to Walter Reed preemptively — and, from a public relations perspective, when he was still able to walk to Marine One on his own, according to one outside adviser in frequent contact with White House officials. They feared the possibility of a further decline, and what that might mean, both for the president’s health and his political optics.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-virus-spread-white-house/2020/10/02/38c5b354-04cc-11eb-b7ed-141dd88560ea_story.html
Trump's campaign has an epically bad day -- and it's not just the virus
Washington PostTrump’s illness means that he’ll be in isolation at the White House for the immediate term — and, therefore, not actively campaigning. The president has long seen his rallies as instrumental to his political success, one of the reasons he was eager that they resume earlier this year. Until his health is improved and the risk of infecting others reduced, he won’t be holding any event, much less a large rally.
As The Washington Post has reported, it’s not clear when Trump contracted the virus or when he might have been contagious to others. Over the course of this week, he traveled or met repeatedly with members of his family, campaign aides and elected officials. Out of an abundance of caution, his reelection campaign has canceled events including members of his family, who generally serve as prominent and active surrogates on his behalf. The duration of that ban isn’t clear, but it means a loss of a number of events with a little over a month to go until Election Day.
The ongoing pandemic is one of the primary reasons that Trump has consistently trailed former vice president Joe Biden in the polls. As a result, his campaign had repeatedly tried to redirect voters’ attention, training it instead on crime or the economy. The Trump diagnosis throws that out the window entirely. Over the short term — and probably as long as Trump is not on the campaign trail — the pandemic will be the most important campaign issue by far.
It gets worse for Trump’s campaign. After all, the focus of the race will be not only on the pandemic but specifically on Trump’s decision to repeatedly downplay the threat the virus poses as he has pushed for the country to return to normal. Trump’s broad effort to suggest that the pandemic was all but over meant that a number of states and tens of thousands of Americans treated it as if it was. Over the summer, that approach contributed to a big surge in new cases in the South. Trump’s own infection seems like a microcosm of his “ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away” national strategy.
Laurie Garrett: Only State-of-the-Art Medicine--and Luck--Can Save Trump Now
Foreign PolicyCombined, these pieces of evidence suggest that Trump may have some of the underlying health conditions that put COVID-19 patients at risk for severe outcomes.
If current reports are accurate and the president has already displayed symptoms of fatigue and breathing difficulties, he may soon become too ill to do his job, as was the case with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. As one of my friends put it while she struggled at home with the virus, “It feels like an elephant is sitting on my chest.” In the coming days, the severity of Trump’s illness will become more apparent, including whether—like Johnson—he requires hospitalization and respiratory support.
More worrying, from the point of view of Trump’s role as commander in chief, is increasing evidence that SARS-CoV-2 can infect the brain and cause cognitive dysfunctions, including hallucinations, severe headaches, dizziness, and impaired judgment. The list of neurological symptoms connected with COVID-19 is very long, including confusion, delirium, senility, and permanent brain damage. These, and other brain-associated symptoms, may persist for months.
Laurie Garrett is a former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Pulitzer Prize winning science writer.
White House residence staff 'nervous' after Trumps test positive for Covid-19, source says
Source: CNN
(CNN)Staff at the White House Executive Residence are feeling "nervous" over President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump testing positive for Covid-19, a source familiar with White House operations told CNN Friday.
The residence staff, who serve, cook and clean for the first family, is "very careful, but there is concern," the source said.
The first couple is currently in isolation inside the White House residence after the President announced on Twitter at nearly 1 a.m. ET Friday that he and the first lady both contracted the virus.
The White House residence is typically staffed by approximately 90 full-time workers, including six butlers and eight ushers, multiple cooks, housekeepers, florists and other maintenance and support workers who assist in the upkeep of the 132-room, 55,000 square foot mansion.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/02/politics/white-house-residence-staff-covid-19/index.html
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