Trump Has COVID megathread (update 10/24: 2 Pence staffers test positive)

[Crumpets]

I was in (Republic of) Georgia when Hillary had her health scare at the 9/11 memorial in 2016 and people asked me if I thought it would hurt her chances. I said no because Americans don't really care about that sort of thing. Turns out I was wrong and that was actually one of the big inflection points of the campaign. People don't want to vote for someone they see as old and weak, even if they have personal sympathy for their situation. If Trump is asymptomatic, I don't think this changes much. But if he's coughing, sweaty, and short of breath for several weeks, I think he's headed down the same path as Hillary.

[Crumpets]

He won't stay in quarantine and in the next couple of days will be holding a rally. Bet on it.

Reposting my prediction from July of what would happen if Trump got COVID:

Trump goes to a rally, tells everyone about the glories of herd immunity, and offers to cough on anyone who wants to come up on stage. He then does a reverse-faith-healing and coughs on everyone's face who then immediately go to the cameras to express how excited they are that they are all now immune from the disease and how generous Trump was for saving them from the horrors of COVID.

[Crumpets]

Quite an October surprise and on day 1.

We should make an advent calendar.

[Crumpets]

Any word on how the Q crew is taking the news?

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/PeterAlexander/status/1312042588669718546

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/timjhogan/status/1312070457097678849

I'd just like to note how extra pissed off I am that 1) They feel they can get together in a large group when none of the people they're supposed to work for are able to and 2) I'm sure many of these people have just been going about their lives as usual over the past couple of days, possibly infecting many people across DC that won't have as easy access to healthcare as they do.

I think it sometimes goes under-reported just how many working class people support the White House that are not an immediate part of the White House staff. I worked at a Starbucks in DuPont and we got Secret Service people picking up orders for meetings. Have all the restaurants, cafes, and convenience stores around the White House been informed of possible exposure? Does the White House even care if they spread it? I'm guessing no.

[Crumpets]

Biden can turn this around.
He has expressed his hopes for Trump to recover, and that’s good, it is necessary, but now he needs to go back to the message.
He needs to suggest to the American people that this could have been prevented, and that the current administration should not have ignored this threat as it killed hundreds of thousands. If Biden can successfully connect the two (easier said than done) I do think he can balance out any sympathy effect.

There
Is
No
Sympathy
Bump

Yes
There
Is

You have zero evidence to support this claim. We will have no idea what the implications of this are in terms of public opinion for at minimum three days. Anything you come up with sooner than that is either unreliable, fabricated, or conjecture.

[Crumpets]

TRUMP WASN'T TESTED BEFORE THE DEBATE!!!

https://twitter.com/AndrewKirell/status/1312121190597586944?s=20

Why would Biden's team ever agree to any sort of "honor system" with the Trump campaign?

To use a certain Georgia senator's favorite analogy, that's like agreeing to an honor system with Attila the Hun.

Attila the Hun kept his end of the peace treaty with the Romans. When the Romans broke THEIR end (not returning all Hun refugees fleeing Attila back to Attila as Rome had promised), he was pretty ruthless in exacting retribution, though. And, to be fair, he was basically just WAITING for the Romans to break that very difficult to enforce part of the agreement as a justification to attack.

I don't even care how true or fair this story is. I'm just happy this is where this thread has ended up.

[Crumpets]

I think we all know who's behind this

Herman Cain and RBG tag teaming in the afterlife to take down Trump is an unforseen development.

[Crumpets]

I like to be smug and think that younger generations just "get" a lot of issues that older politicians are too set in their ways to understand. But I do have to give Joe Biden credit that, if this were a younger crowd running a campaign, we would not be able to resist going for the throat right now, and I think the country is all the better that we have someone with the capacity to be so magnanimous at this point poised to take over in a couple months.

[Crumpets]

Unless I've missed something, he's not actually at Walter Reed yet. Marine One is waiting on the White House lawn. (Isn't Walter Reed normally a short car trip from the WH?)

I'm not certain, but I think Trump has avoided going full motorcade more than previous presidents for some reason. If he can take a helicopter somewhere, that's usually what he does.

[Crumpets]

Morning Consult appears to have done a snap poll following the news of Trump having COVID. The quick turn leads me to think we should take this with a huge grain of salt.

https://twitter.com/MorningConsult/status/1312125566946959361

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1312172504148893698

A live look at said White House officials:

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1312100547890044928?s=19

[Crumpets]

No joke, this could rip through the Judiciary Committee at the most inconvenient time imaginable for the GOP.

Ruth's Revenge

If the Senate doesn't get to appoint a new justice until after it's too late solely because all the Republicans catch COVID, I think we'll all have to accept that RBG has pulled an Obi Wan Kenobi and became more powerful than we can possibly imagine.

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1312233807991496704?s=21

Why is the second "L" in "well" a capital i?

No clue but I'm sure the QAnoners have a perfectly rational explanation for this.

Brad Parscale picked a bad time to have a breakdown. He will now feature in their theories as someone with advance knowledge of Trump's positive test.

I pity the future historians who try to write the story of this time period in an APUSH book and not make it sound completely faked. Maybe there'll be a conspiracy theory that other historians fabricated the events this week as a cover story to hide something else, because this could never have actually happened, right?

[Crumpets]

Presumably from the same sources as the above Tweet. Even if it's more salacious to talk about this as a life-death situation, I think the more pertinent conversation to have right now is how long Trump will be out of commission as President and as a candidate.

https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1312426033451278336

[Crumpets]

So we're debating whether Trump's doctor is 1) an idiot who doesn't know how long ago Thursday evening was or 2) in on a conspiracy to cover up when Trump got diagnosed and is an idiot for spilling the beans. Clearly he's in very good hands.

[Crumpets]

Barr, I think, can be accurately described as the Beria of the Trump Administration

So far in this thread we have Barr=Beria and Pence=Malenkov. Any others? I'd offer Graham=Molotov. The big question would be who is Khrushchev? Kushner?

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1312442195509563392

[Crumpets]

NPR has a pretty good timeline of the last week vis. when people may have been exposed, when people became symptomatic, etc.

https://www.npr.org/sections/latest-updates-trump-covid-19-results/2020/10/03/919898777/timeline-what-we-know-of-president-trumps-covid-19-diagnosis

[Crumpets]

EDIT: I just looked it up and Wilson had his stroke exactly 101 years ago yesterday. [Twilight Zone Theme]

[Crumpets]

My guess is that he had a real scare yesterday and the day before but is now getting better based on the info we have.

Why do I feel like this will become the evergreen statement of the next week or so?

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/corinne_perkins/status/1312793102474784770

Last two days we've seen Mark Meadows talking to people without a mask, touching his face, now all we need is a picture of him coughing into his hand to complete the trifecta.

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/LMartinezABC/status/1313605502069362691?s=20

That's not an important job, right?

Somewhere there's an alternate timeline where Trump has to use the nuclear football while visiting New Jersey... and then comes down with COVID.