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

[The Mikado]

https://twitter.com/albamonica/status/1311846165596590086?s=21

[The Mikado]

Also, so many states have those stupid "electors HAVE TO VOTE for the ticket the voters voted for" laws now that a bunch of GOP states will be handcuffed into voting for Trump/Pence while other ones would be voting for Pence/??? (Haley, let's be real), and there'd end up no electoral majority.

[The Mikado]

Bitecofer here with the hot take:

https://twitter.com/RachelBitecofer/status/1311864758094753792

Bitecofer seems to be doing everything she can to be thrown off of the island of Elections Forecaster Twitter. Like, the only thing G. Elliott Morris, Dave Wasserman, Nate Silver, and Nate Cohn agree on anymore is "Bitecofer makes us all look bad."

[The Mikado]

Here we go. This is truly uncharted territory.

[The Mikado]

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.

[The Mikado]

There are legitimate reasons why presidents conceal their illnesses with both domestic and foreign implications. There is also historic precedent where presidents are not being transparent with the health.

FDR, for example, hid both his polio and the fact that he was literally dying as he sought his fourth term.

People really need to stop their blind rage at Trump. It’s tiring.

He hid it because stigma associated with being disabled (that still exists today) and not wanting to show weakness during a war that the enemy could take advantage of.

COVID is not sentient so that's not an issue and FDR didn't hide or downplay his polio during a national polio pandemic that was actively killing people, so this comparison is a weak attempt at whataboutism.

Also, FDR didn't hide the fact that he had had polio. He founded the March of Dimes! He didn't keep his polio a secret, nor even the fact that his legs had issues. What he did do was never ever ever ever let himself get photographed that way and to make it a point to give speeches standing up with his leg braces etc. It's one thing to know in the abstract that FDR "has difficulty" walking. It's another thing to actually see a film clip or a photograph of him in a wheelchair or literally carried up a flight of stairs by the Secret Service like a sack of potatoes, and FDR's political instincts told him that that would be absolute suicide if an image like that ever got out.

[The Mikado]

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1314627983471239168

In which the President curses live on the radio on the Rush Limbaugh show. Hoping the FCC hears this and goes after Limbaugh for allowing this kind of filth on the public airwaves.