Like the Sex Pistols’ legendary 1976 Manchester concert, which was coincidentally attended by future members of seminal bands like Joy Division, the Buzzcocks, and the Smiths, the guests at Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination bash last month, and what happened to them afterward, may well be immortalized in history. In the days following the White House’s September 26 event, attendees Donald and Melania Trump both tested positive for COVID-19, alongside Kayleigh McEnany, Kellyanne Conway, Chris Christie, and senators Mike Lee and Thom Tillis. However, Trump and his coronavirus-ridden entourage are determined to not allow their physical health—or their status as potential vectors of a deadly virus—to slow down any part of their march toward November 3.
Despite being just 10 days removed from his hospitalization, the president is returning to the campaign trail, kicking off a tour of battleground states in the southeast and Midwest. His first campaign stop will be held in Central Florida’s Seminole County on Monday night, followed by rallies this week in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Des Moines, Iowa, and Greenville, North Carolina. While Trump has always prized rallies over every other form of campaigning, he appears more insistent than ever on holding massive, raucous gatherings as national polls show Joe Biden leading by a historically high margin, one no previous challenger has held at this point in a race since such data began being tracked 21 elections ago.
But questions persist about the president’s health, particularly because of his reckless return to hosting his rallies that will bring thousands together—often mask-less—amid a pandemic that has killed 215,000 in the U.S. and counting. He attempted to shrug off the concerns regarding his health during a Sunday appearance on Fox News, during which he claimed, without evidence, to be “immune” to the virus for the time being and for either “a long time,” “a short time,” or the rest of his life. “Nobody really knows, but I’m immune. So the president is in very good shape to fight the battles,” he added. By Sunday afternoon the president was telling supporters that he had tested “totally negative” for the virus. White House physician Sean Conley released a statement Saturday that Trump was “no longer considered a transmission risk to others.” Still, the word “negative” was noticeably absent from the doctor’s note, marking a continuation of the White House’s refusal to provide a definitive answer on his latest test results. Conley said Monday evening that Trump tested negative for coronavirus on consecutive days using an antigen test.
On October 2, Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, became another member of the president’s inner circle to test positive for coronavirus, but he’s already back to working from the Trump campaign’s Virginia offices. Stepien asserted to reporters on Monday that his decidedly quick comeback was done “in full accordance with” the COVID-19 mitigation guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adding that the reelection-campaign HQ is following numerous safety precautions and employs an in-house nurse to look after staff. (McEnany, however, appears to be quarantining: She appeared on Fox News remotely Monday.)
On the other side of the GOP’s two-front war against COVID-19 and Democrats, Republicans in the Senate—including those who tested positive in the aftermath of the Rose Garden super-spreader incident—are eagerly pushing forward with Barrett’s confirmation hearings. Lee, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, attended the Barrett hearing on Monday after saying he had endured “the appropriate number of days” of quarantine and claiming that he was “no longer contagious.” The Utah senator was apparently so confident in his health status that he opted to go mask-less while presenting his opening statement and half-masked—i.e., a classic case of covering the mouth, only to leave the nose uncovered—while speaking closely to the committee’s chair, Senator Lindsey Graham. In the case of Graham, he clearly shares Lee’s confidence. “As to the hearing room, I doubt if there’s any room in the country that’s been given more attention and detail to make sure it is CDC-compliant,” the chairman said of his COVID-positive colleagues.
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