Donald Trump says that he and Melania Trump have tested positive for SARS-CoV‑2

Hav­ing spent months utter­ly fail­ing to pro­tect Amer­i­cans from COVID-19 and com­plete­ly dis­re­gard­ing the guid­ance of pub­lic health experts, Don­ald Trump now finds him­self and his wife Mela­nia infect­ed with the virus with less than forty days to go until the end of vot­ing in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, which has already been defined in almost every imag­in­able way by the pandemic.

COVID-19, the dis­ease caused by the virus, has already claimed 200,000 Amer­i­can lives. Mil­lions more have got­ten sick. Some have recov­ered, while a few (known as long-haulers), appear to be stuck with the illness.

Trump is now among their number.

“Tonight, @FLOTUS [First Lady of the Unit­ed States Mela­nia Trump] and I test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. We will begin our quar­an­tine and recov­ery process imme­di­ate­ly. We will get through this togeth­er!” Trump tweet­ed at 9:54 PM Pacific/12:54 AM East­ern. (Just four hours pri­or to post­ing that tweet, Trump had revealed that his aide Hope Hicks had test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.)

U.S. Navy Com­man­der Sean P. Con­ley, the Pres­i­den­t’s physi­cian, released a state­ment con­firm­ing the test result. The state­ment read:

“This evening I received con­fir­ma­tion that both Pres­i­dent Trump and First Lady Mela­nia Trump have test­ed pos­i­tive for the SARS-CoV­‑2 virus. The Pres­i­dent and First Lady are both well at this time, and they plan to remain at home with­in 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 fur­ther developments.”

Tweet­ing and watch­ing tele­vi­sion are what con­sti­tute Trump’s main “duties”, by Trump’s own choos­ing and those can be done even by some­one who is bed rid­den, so in one sense, Con­ley’s expec­ta­tions are not far-fetched.

How­ev­er, to sug­gest that there will be no dis­rup­tion as a con­se­quence of this devel­op­ment is pre­pos­ter­ous. Don­ald and Mela­nia may not feel sick now; they may not be expe­ri­enc­ing any symp­toms at this moment. That does­n’t mean they nev­er will. And regard­less of how bad their cas­es of COVID-19 get, they can­not be around oth­er peo­ple. They will have to isolate/quarantine for weeks.

That means Trump can­not trav­el. He can­not appear at pre­vi­ous­ly sched­uled ral­lies. He can­not go to fundrais­ers like the one he was at last night in New Jer­sey. And he most cer­tain­ly can­not “debate” Joe Biden again — at least not in per­son. (There are two more pres­i­den­tial debates sched­uled, in addi­tion to the vice pres­i­den­tial debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris.)

There has arguably not been a threat to the health of the nation’s top offi­cial this grave since the assas­si­na­tion attempt against Ronald Rea­gan in 1981.

Many, many ques­tions remain unan­swered at this hour.

How long has Trump had the virus? Did he get it from Hope Hicks? Do Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, Mark Mead­ows, Kayleigh McE­nany, Amy Coney Bar­rett, and oth­ers have it? What about Joe Biden, who was only a few feet away from Don­ald Trump in an audi­to­ri­um on Tues­day? (Biden and Trump did not shake hands or stand right next to each oth­er, but Biden was exposed nevertheless.)

Why was Trump per­mit­ted to trav­el to New Jer­sey when the White House knew of Hope Hicks’ pos­i­tive test ear­li­er today and of her symp­toms last night? Why did Kayleigh McE­nany con­duct a press brief­ing with­out men­tion­ing this?

While this is unques­tion­ably an omi­nous devel­op­ment, it is not a sur­pris­ing one. Don­ald Trump put his own health at risk and that of count­less oth­ers by fail­ing to mod­el the behav­iors pub­lic health experts have been telling Amer­i­cans are a require­ment to com­bat COVID-19, includ­ing mask-wear­ing, phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, and not orga­niz­ing large gath­er­ings. The blood of hun­dreds of thou­sands of dead Amer­i­cans is on his hands. Trump’s con­duct has been monstrous. 

Now he is reap­ing what he has sown.

We at NPI do not wish ill­ness or death upon any­one; it’s against our moral code. We hope Don­ald and Mela­nia recov­er and live to wit­ness the reclaim­ing of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy from their destruc­tive, neo­fas­cist regime.