| | |  | BY RYAN HEATH AND RENUKA RAYASAM | With help from Myah Ward UNANSWERED QUESTIONS — Covid infiltrated one of the world’s most secure bubbles this week. President’s Donald Trump’s positive diagnosis wasn’t the first infection in the White House, a workplace that’s been notoriously lax about Covid protocols. But his admission to Walter Reed shows just how sneaky a threat the virus can be. Almost 20 hours after the most notable tweet of Trump’s presidency, we still have a lot of questions. Among them: Who infected Trump? There’s no evidence that Hope Hicks infected the president. Based on the timing of his symptoms, Howard Forman, who directs the health care management program at the Yale School of Public Health, said: “It does seem more than likely that the Supreme Court nomination event on Saturday was at least part of a super-spreading event. But it wasn’t the event itself until you can start there and try to work backwards from that.” It’s possible the exposure could have happened earlier this week, when the president campaigned in Pennsylvania, or even before then. How severe are his symptoms? Trump disclosed his condition early this morning. The CDC does not define mild symptoms, but the World Health Organization classifies the most serious symptoms as “difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, chest pain or pressure, loss of speech or movement.” What were the White House safety protocols and were they violated? Trump has been known to denigrate masks and those who wear them. What’s not clear is who has been within six feet of the president for more than brief interactions. Trump and Joe Biden were eight feet apart during the debate — more than the usual required six feet — but the length of time they were together and arguing could affect transmission. How many more people close to Trump will test positive? Forman is critical of the White House procedures so far. “This is not a complicated contact trace,” given official event logs, Forman said, adding, “This is what goes on in South Korea every day.” Time matters: At Saturday’s Supreme Court nomination event, “a good number of people were older in age, and it really could have significant health consequences and safety effects to identify those people sooner than later.” Campaign officials and Trump aides who were contacted by the White House Medical Unit as part of contact tracing measures were asked to report for testing early this afternoon, but others at risk of exposure were left to procure coronavirus tests on their own. Will the Bidens get sick? The Bidens tested negative today but that’s not the end of the story: “As we now well know, #COVID19 tests can be negative today, positive tomorrow,” tweeted Eric Feigl-Ding, epidemiologist and health economist at Federation of American Scientists. “I want to see at least 3, preferably 5 negative tests over the next week to be honestly sure.” How many Republican senators will get the virus? And what will it mean for Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination? Utah’s Sen. Mike Lee has already tested positive. Mitch McConnell has promised it’s “full steam ahead” with the nomination process, but he may not control that. How does this change next week’s vice presidential debate, assuming it happens? Trump’s diagnosis and Biden’s age underscore the importance of the No. 2 in the line of succession. If Trump were to get sicker and invoke the 25th Amendment, Kamala Harris could end up debating Acting President Mike Pence. The Biden campaign has raised a health and safety objection with the Commission on Presidential Debates: It wants 12 feet space between Harris and the vice president. The Pence team wants seven feet. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam. | 
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows exits the West Wing today on his way to speak to reporters about Trump's positive coronavirus test. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images | | | A SICK PENCE WOULD BE REALLY COMPLICATED — A Covid-19 outbreak inside the White House brings into sharp relief the literal nightmare scenarios that constitutional and presidential scholars have warned about for decades. What happens if Trump is sick or incapacitated and unable to fulfill the duties of the presidency? And what happens if both Trump and Pence get sick? Who takes over then? There are two major problems with U.S. executive succession rules that inject enormous uncertainty: First, while the 25th Amendment neatly covers what happens if the president resigns, dies or falls sick in office, it says nothing about a sick or incapacitated vice president — a problem that led Dick Cheney to write a secret resignation letter and have his White House lawyer hide it away in case his heart problems ever left him unable to function as vice president, Garrett M. Graff writes in POLITICO Magazine. Second — and more problematic for a scenario where Nancy Pelosi is second in line to the presidency — the presidential succession plan laid out by Congress is legally murky and might actually be unconstitutional. Today, it remains an open debate whether the House speaker is actually eligible to succeed to the presidency. All this is to say that, while the news that Trump has tested positive and is showing symptoms of Covid-19 is worrisome, true fear about the future of the Republic shouldn’t settle in until either the vice president falls ill or the vice president takes over. Both these scenarios could lead to potential power struggles and fraught questions about who military and government officials should be listening to.
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| | GET THE SCOOP FROM THE MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE: POLITICO's Ryan Heath and Ben White are teaming up to write a special "Global Translations" newsletter and bring you exclusive coverage and the top takeaways from the 23rd annual Milken Institute Global Conference, featuring 4,000+ participants and 500 speakers representing more than 70 countries. Don't miss out on insights from the most influential minds and thought leaders reinventing health, technology, philanthropy, industry, and media. This year's conference will center on the theme "Meeting the Moment," and will address the dual crises of a global pandemic and social injustice. Sign up today for everything you need to know direct from #MIGlobal. | | | | | WILL THE DISEASE CHANGE TRUMP? Trump’s Covid diagnosis is the most serious known health threat to any sitting president in decades. In the latest edition of 2020 Check-In, Video reporter Eugene Daniels talks to Ryan Lizza about the implications of the president’s Covid case.
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| ‘WEAKNESS WAS THE GREATEST SIN OF ALL’ — The wee-hours shockwave of his diagnosis has exposed the fragility of Trump’s bravado, senior staff writer Michael Kruse writes. The man who’s trumpeted his genes and his blood and his virility while deriding his foes for low energy is now stricken and sequestered, cut off from the adoring supporters who stoke not just his political prospects but his needy psyche. He is 74 and obese, and already was facing a pending public reckoning — and the fear of being seen as anything other than strong in the end is precisely what has made him so weak.
| | WALL STREET SHRUGS — Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis rocked the political world but ultimately caused only a ripple on Wall Street. Stocks opened sharply lower but mostly bounced back after Biden said he’d tested negative. The market moves suggest that one of Trump’s signature rally riffs — that a Biden win would crush the market and evaporate 401(k) accounts — is a fantasy, chief economic correspondent Ben White emails us. Markets also performed just fine after online betting markets and snap polls suggested Biden won the first debate. It’s hard to find a single serious Wall Street trader or executive who thinks markets couldn’t handle a Biden victory. A long, bitter fight over the results is a much bigger concern. The relatively muted reaction to news that the president of the United States is suffering from a potentially deadly virus also came on renewed hopes that Washington might finally produce a deal on new fiscal stimulus for a flagging economic recovery that clearly needs it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on airlines to stop their recent wave of layoffs because economic aid from Congress would come in one form or another, either in a large deal or a stand-alone bill. The repeated collapse of stimulus talks pressed markets lower in the last couple weeks, alongside evidence that the recovery is in danger of tanking. Most of the nearly $4 trillion already spent in fiscal stimulus trickled out of the system at the end of the summer. Today’s jobs report showing a gain of only 661,000 (ordinarily a great number but not after we lost 22 million in two months) highlighted the need for another cash injection from Washington. Wall Street tends to worry about chaotic situations like this depressing consumer confidence and driving down spending. But increased consumer uncertainty is no certainty. Morning Consult’s index of consumer sentiment in the U.K. and Brazil showed little deterioration after each of those country’s leaders tested positive for Covid-19. And analysts noted today that Trump’s diagnosis could (possibly) lead to increased mask-wearing and social distancing among Covid skeptics, possibly limiting spikes in new cases.
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| | NEW EPISODES: LISTEN TO POLITICO'S GLOBAL TRANSLATIONS PODCAST: The world has always been beset by big problems that defy political boundaries, but in 2020 many of those issues have exploded. Are world leaders and political actors up to the task of solving them? Is the private sector? Our Global Translations podcast, presented by Citi, unpacks the roadblocks to smart policy decisions, and examines the long-term costs of the short-term thinking that drives many political and business decisions. Subscribe now for Season Two, launching Oct. 21. | | | | | | | LEFT BEHIND — New Jersey authorities, already facing alarming spikes in coronavirus cases after a months-long lull, are now dealing with a possible super-spreader event — and Trump may be the source, Matt Friedman reports. “He looked 100 percent normal,” John Sette, the former Republican chair of Morris County, said of Trump’s appearance at a high-dollar fundraiser at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on Thursday that was attended by about 100 people after Hope Hicks tested positive. “He spoke 100 percent normal. He spoke for about 15 minutes and he took questions for an hour.” Other media accounts have cited anonymous attendees who said the president appeared “lethargic” and “not himself” during the event. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said “the contact-tracing process is underway.” “We urge everyone who was in and around the Bedminster event or events yesterday to take full precautions, including self-quarantining and ultimately getting tested,” Murphy said at a press briefing today.
| | Nightly asked you: Have you adopted a new pet during the pandemic? Below are some of the photos you sent us.
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| | | BAD HEALTH HASN’T BEEN GOOD POLITICS — If you’re a national leader contracting Covid-19, don’t bet on a political boost. Seven leaders have acknowledged positive tests, and only the U.K.’s Boris Johnson got a temporary approval boost. Johnson was diagnosed in March when less was known about the coronavirus and before his government was definitively panned for its ham-fisted pandemic response. Johnson himself was expecting a child with new wife Carrie Symonds, and was hospitalized — including in intensive care — for a week, all of which helped attract sympathy and support. While Johnson achieved a 19 percent approval boost from mid-March to mid-April as the pandemic intensified, according to Morning Consult’s tracker poll, most of that boost (14 points) came before his March 27 diagnosis. Johnson would go on to hit 65 percent approval by mid-April, but the 5 point boost he achieved while hospitalized disappeared by April 24, less than two weeks after he was discharged from hospital. Johnson’s approval then steadily dropped to 38 percent by the end of September. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro received multiple positive coronavirus tests in July, with virtually no effect on his support levels. Both his approval and disapproval ratings remained static in the 45 to 48 percent range throughout his convalescence. In Europe’s last dictatorship, Belarus, opinion polls don’t mean much. But since President Alexander Lukashenko contracted coronavirus in July — in the lead up to a widely discredited presidential election — his regime only faced increasing political condemnation. A months-long protest movement — the biggest in Belarus’ post-Soviet era — is calling for fresh elections and had prompted U.S. and EU sanctions. Lukashenko dismissed mask-wearing, and claimed vodka drinking and sauna use could stave off the virus. Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei achieved skyrocketing approval ratings of 87 percent in April — a 31 percent jump from February — after introducing strict Covid-19 control measures. Those numbers didn’t leave much room for improvement when he was diagnosed with Covid-19 two weeks ago. Giammattei lives with multiple sclerosis. Leaders from Honduras, Bolivia, and Prince Albert of Monaco have also contracted the virus. The first ladies of Honduras and Spain have also tested positive. | | SEE YOU NEXT TIME — Given today’s news, we’re postponing Part 2 of executive health editor Joanne Kenen’s interview with Howard Frumkin, a leading expert on environmental health and the former dean of the University of Washington School of Public Health, until Monday.
| | THAT’S A WRAP — Brooke Minters takes us through the week that was in political cartooning and satire in the latest Punchlines, featuring the first presidential debate and the ultimate October surprise: Trump’s Covid diagnosis.
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| | | WHAT A YEAR — People who find something amusing in news that the President of the United States has coronavirus — or that any citizen of any land has contracted the potentially deadly virus — must in their own way be pretty sick, writes founding editor John F. Harris. And yet: Does it not seem a little like the cosmos is toying with the U.S. of A, like a cat’s paw swatting a frightened mouse? At a minimum, a tragic year is taking on slapstick dimensions. The natural human reaction to slapstick is to laugh. So, is it OK to laugh at Trump’s news? My recommendation: Nope, not OK. Once done with the wisecracks and punch-drunk delirium of this year of warped national destiny, decent-minded people should hope he gets better soon — and that a troubled country does so, too. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
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