newyorker--2020-10-05--Inside the Lincoln Project’s War Room

Inside the Lincoln Project’s War Room

The week of Labor Day , the founders of the Lincoln Project , a super PAC of Republican operatives who have disavowed their own party in order to defeat President Donald Trump , set up a war room in a location far outside Washington , D.C .
Since January , the group , whose founders include the consultants Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson , had been targeting Trump with the kind of merciless ads that the strategists had aimed at Democratic candidates throughout their careers .
A spot titled “ Regret ” features the comedian David Cross offering such a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ the blatant racism , and the crass sexism , and the deranged narcissism , and pandering to Nazis ” —that the recitation is still unspooling as the ad fades out .
This type of message is aimed at convincing Republican voters that Trump ’ s dangerous and divisive impulses imperil the country .
Another type of ad is designed to unsettle a single viewer—the President himself—and often appears during TV programs he is likely to watch .
“ Shrinking ” directly addresses Trump , saying , of his notorious Tulsa campaign rally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve probably heard this before , but it was smaller than we expected.
” The founders knew that they were getting to the President when he started tweeting and talking about them , predictably calling their organization the Losers Project .
The founders , who consider themselves Trump “ anthropologists , ” try to predict the President ’ s missteps , stockpiling material that can be deployed at the ideal moment .
A recent spot , “ P.O.W.
, ” contrasted images of honorable military service with Trump ’ s denigration of people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ débuted shortly before The Atlantic reported that Trump , during a 2018 trip to France , had refused to visit an American cemetery and had referred to the war dead as “ suckers.
” In the ensuing public outcry , the Lincoln Project tweeted , “ Let ’ s show @ realDonaldTrump what real heroes look like , ” and asked its followers to tweet photographs of veterans , hashtagged # WeRespectVets .
Within an hour , the hashtag had become the leading Politics topic on Twitter .
On September 9th , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Carolina senator Lindsey Graham , “ Parasite , ” in which gruesome footage of feasting maggots is accompanied by narration mocking Graham ’ s obeisance to Trump : “ Parasites don ’ t care if they feed off a good host—or an evil one.
” At one of the strategists ’ regular morning meetings , Wilson—a gregarious Floridian , an aggressive adman , and the most likely of the founders to swear in public—said that a reporter had asked him , “ What do you guys say when people think that you ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ language that Trump uses ?
” Wilson said , “ I was , like , ‘ Who gives a fuck ?
’ I was , like , ‘ Dude , I ’ m not running for President.
’ ” Schmidt , who headed John McCain ’ s 2008 Presidential campaign and now elegantly eviscerates Trump on MSNBC , reminded the group that the President has insulted everyone from Gold Star families to disabled people .
The Project had endorsed the Democratic candidate , Joe Biden , and was airing positive spots about him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The founders discussed how to target their advertising in such swing states as Florida , Arizona , and Pennsylvania .
Stuart Stevens , an adviser who has worked on five Presidential campaigns , suggested , “ Basically , look at it like we ’ re running three governor ’ s races.
” It would waste resources , he warned , to try “ to boil the ocean.
” An excerpt of Bob Woodward ’ s new book , “ Rage , ” had reported that Trump knew about the deadliness of the coronavirus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ promise that the virus was going to “ disappear.
” The founders decided to tweet about Woodward ’ s news and to produce a short video about the revelation .
As the group chatted , the Project ’ s communications director tweeted “ # TrumpKnew.
” The hashtag reached No .
1 before the meeting ended .
The Project , which was founded by eight people , now employs about thirty-five paid staffers .
For the first months , everybody worked remotely—in Tallahassee , Denver , East Hampton , Sacramento .
Once the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a dozen employees began arriving at their assigned housing with luggage and pets , prepared to stay until November .
The selection of a temporary headquarters had been complicated by the pandemic , but security was also a factor .
Founders had been publicly accosted for opposing Trump , and the Project had received menacing voice mails .
A Las Vegas caller : “ Get the fuck out of my country , bitches !
” From Pennsylvania : “ Fuck every last one of you motherfuckers !
And when a civil war happens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fisher Stevens and Karim Amer , along with the producer Amy Redford , had arrived to shoot a documentary about the Project .
Stevens , a Hollywood actor and a liberal activist , had wanted to make anti-Trump ads himself , but every time he had an idea for a spot he discovered that the Lincoln Project had already done it .
“ These guys were out there every day , putting out a movie !
” he told me .
“ I thought , Who are these fucking people ?
Who is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Reed Galen , whose father worked for Newt Gingrich and Dan Quayle , oversaw with Schmidt the reëlection campaign of the California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger .
John Weaver , a Texan whom the Democratic strategist James Carville nicknamed Meat Cleaver Weaver , spent a decade trying to get McCain elected to the Presidency .
Stuart Stevens was Mitt Romney ’ s chief strategist in the 2012 race against Barack Obama .
A notable early Project participant was George Conway , the lawyer who antagonizes Trump on Twitter— “ You .
Are .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , was a top White House adviser until she resigned , in August .
The couple , citing family demands , receded from public life , and George Conway quit the Project .
The consultant Sarah Longwell , who heads a group called Republican Voters Against Trump , said , of the leaders of the Lincoln Project , “ They ’ ve very successfully tapped into the rage that a lot of people feel , including me.
” The Project ’ s scorched-earth approach distinguishes it from similar organizations : the founders , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican identities , have left themselves no clear path of return .
( Wilson and Schmidt are now registered Independents . )
Longwell said , “ In many ways , this is their last stand.
” Most of the Project ’ s core founders are in their fifties and came of age under Ronald Reagan .
They were drawn to Reagan ’ s optimism and to his belief in fiscally responsible government , which , as Galen points out , “ doesn ’ t necessarily mean lower taxes—it means being smart with taxpayers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ individual liberty : worship however you want , marry whomever you want .
They support responsible gun ownership and a judiciously interventionist foreign policy .
Weaver served in the Air Force , and Wilson worked in the Defense Department , but all the founders revere military service .
In 2015 , Trump disgusted them when he mocked McCain—a fighter pilot who was a P.O.W .
during Vietnam—by saying , “ I like people that weren ’ t captured.
” After Obama won his second term , the Republican National Committee commissioned a study @ @ @ @ @ @ @ report.
” The country ’ s voting population was diversifying rapidly , and , the report said , young voters were “ increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents.
” It noted , “ Many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country.
” In a recent book , “ It Was All a Lie , ” Stevens writes , “ How do you go from dedicating a political party to expansion and inclusiveness and two years later rally around a man who calls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a religious test to enter the United States ?
” He goes on , “ For decades , conservatives attacked liberals for living by ‘ situational ethics , ’ but the ease with which Republican leaders abandoned any pretense of being more than a whites-only party is the ultimate situational ethic.
” In January , Wilson told Trevor Noah that Trump “ has broken the Republican Party—it doesn ’ t believe in anything.
” Stunningly , the 2020 Republican National Convention put forward no new platform , signalling that the Party ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In 2017 , Jennifer Horn , another Project founder , chose not to seek a third term as the chair of the Republican Party of New Hampshire , unable to countenance “ a President and Party leadership that think the President himself is above the law.
” She told me , “ Look at the deficit spending since Trump took office—we ’ re supposed to be the party of limited spending .
We ’ re the party of a strong national defense—we have a President who is colluding , basically , with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Horn said , she waited for Republican senators to uphold their constitutional oath , only to watch “ each one fall ” —except for Romney , who voted to convict .
Senators who condemned Trump privately said nothing publicly .
Schmidt told me , “ You have an entire political class that is scared to death of being tweeted at or given a Presidential nickname.
” Mike Madrid , a founder who analyzes voting patterns , joined the G.O.P .
as a young Latino with “ the idea that it could lift @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nineties , he served as the political director of the Republican Party in California , his home state .
He continued working for Republican causes , but , in 2016 , he was mortified when colleagues and friends “ somehow found the rationale ” to support Trump , even after his vilification of immigrants .
When Schmidt publicly left the Party , in 2018 , he tweeted that the Administration ’ s policy of separating migrant families at the border was “ connected to the worst abuses of Humanity in our history , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the current G.O.P .
represented a “ danger to our democracy.
” Galen ’ s long-held concerns about Trump intensified as he watched the President unleash unmarked officers on Black Lives Matter demonstrations .
He told himself , “ That ’ s about as anti-Republican as you can get—unfettered federal power , applied at the state level.
” The Project ’ s sole millennial founder , Ron Steslow , a political strategist , has said , “ My generation is being forced to learn that democracy can not be taken for granted.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assembled the loose coalition now known as the Never Trump movement tended to represent certain interest areas , such as veterans ’ affairs .
No group had what Galen called “ the skills or the willingness ” to fight Trump publicly—or to convey explicitly the constitutional dangers of a second term .
“ He will be unrestrained , ” Schmidt said .
“ And he will be validated.
” The Project ’ s founders felt that the Democrats largely lacked killer instincts .
Watching the primary debates , they were dismayed that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on liberal policy divides , they were doing little to win over Republicans .
The founders had been combatting Trump individually , through books , tweets , podcasts , op-eds , and TV appearances .
Then , last fall , they decided to unite , in a move that Vox later compared to “ Darth Vader , at the very last minute , switching sides to help Luke Skywalker defeat the Emperor.
” On December 17th , they published a Times Op-Ed , written by Galen and bylined by Conway , Schmidt , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lincoln Project ’ s aim to persuade “ disaffected conservatives , Republicans and Republican-leaning independents ” to vote Trump out .
They also sought to remove Trump ’ s Senate “ enablers , ” even if it meant ceding Republican control of Congress , and to “ salt the earth ” —insuring that none of Trump ’ s children or other loyalists could become President .
Republicans have always invoked their connection to Abraham Lincoln , the Party ’ s first President ; the Project sought to weaponize it .
On February 27th @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cooper Union , in the East Village , where , in 1860 , Lincoln delivered an address that urged the containment of slavery and the preservation of the Union , propelling him to the Presidency .
His speech began with “ the facts ” ; in his conclusion , he said , “ Let us have faith that right makes might.
” Exactly a hundred and sixty years later , Wilson stood at the same lectern that Lincoln had used and invoked a tough-guy monologue from the vigilante movie “ Taken ” : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political philosopher Liam Neeson once said , a particular set of skills—skills that make us a nightmare for people like Donald Trump .
”

The week of Labor Day, the founders of the Lincoln Project, a super PAC of Republican operatives who have disavowed their own party in order to defeat President Donald Trump, set up a war room in a location far outside Washington, D.C. Since January, the group, whose founders include the consultants Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson, had been targeting Trump with the kind of merciless ads that the strategists had aimed at Democratic candidates throughout their careers. A spot titled “Regret” features the comedian David Cross offering such a long list of Trump’s flaws—“the blatant racism, and the crass sexism, and the deranged narcissism, and pandering to Nazis”—that the recitation is still unspooling as the ad fades out. This type of message is aimed at convincing Republican voters that Trump’s dangerous and divisive impulses imperil the country. Another type of ad is designed to unsettle a single viewer—the President himself—and often appears during TV programs he is likely to watch. “Shrinking” directly addresses Trump, saying, of his notorious Tulsa campaign rally, in June, “You’ve probably heard this before, but it was smaller than we expected.” The founders knew that they were getting to the President when he started tweeting and talking about them, predictably calling their organization the Losers Project.
The founders, who consider themselves Trump “anthropologists,” try to predict the President’s missteps, stockpiling material that can be deployed at the ideal moment. A recent spot, “P.O.W.,” contrasted images of honorable military service with Trump’s denigration of people in the armed forces. The ad débuted shortly before The Atlantic reported that Trump, during a 2018 trip to France, had refused to visit an American cemetery and had referred to the war dead as “suckers.” In the ensuing public outcry, the Lincoln Project tweeted, “Let’s show @realDonaldTrump what real heroes look like,” and asked its followers to tweet photographs of veterans, hashtagged #WeRespectVets. Within an hour, the hashtag had become the leading Politics topic on Twitter.
On September 9th, the group released an ad about the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, “Parasite,” in which gruesome footage of feasting maggots is accompanied by narration mocking Graham’s obeisance to Trump: “Parasites don’t care if they feed off a good host—or an evil one.” At one of the strategists’ regular morning meetings, Wilson—a gregarious Floridian, an aggressive adman, and the most likely of the founders to swear in public—said that a reporter had asked him, “What do you guys say when people think that you’re using the same harsh tactics and language that Trump uses?” Wilson said, “I was, like, ‘Who gives a fuck?’ I was, like, ‘Dude, I’m not running for President.’ ” Schmidt, who headed John McCain’s 2008 Presidential campaign and now elegantly eviscerates Trump on MSNBC, reminded the group that the President has insulted everyone from Gold Star families to disabled people. The Project had endorsed the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, and was airing positive spots about him, with titles like “Decency.”
The founders discussed how to target their advertising in such swing states as Florida, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. Stuart Stevens, an adviser who has worked on five Presidential campaigns, suggested, “Basically, look at it like we’re running three governor’s races.” It would waste resources, he warned, to try “to boil the ocean.”
An excerpt of Bob Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” had reported that Trump knew about the deadliness of the coronavirus in early February yet went on to promise that the virus was going to “disappear.” The founders decided to tweet about Woodward’s news and to produce a short video about the revelation. As the group chatted, the Project’s communications director tweeted “#TrumpKnew.” The hashtag reached No. 1 before the meeting ended.
The Project, which was founded by eight people, now employs about thirty-five paid staffers. For the first months, everybody worked remotely—in Tallahassee, Denver, East Hampton, Sacramento. Once the war room was ready, more than a dozen employees began arriving at their assigned housing with luggage and pets, prepared to stay until November. The selection of a temporary headquarters had been complicated by the pandemic, but security was also a factor. Founders had been publicly accosted for opposing Trump, and the Project had received menacing voice mails. A Las Vegas caller: “Get the fuck out of my country, bitches!” From Pennsylvania: “Fuck every last one of you motherfuckers! And when a civil war happens . . . duck.”
The filmmakers Fisher Stevens and Karim Amer, along with the producer Amy Redford, had arrived to shoot a documentary about the Project. Stevens, a Hollywood actor and a liberal activist, had wanted to make anti-Trump ads himself, but every time he had an idea for a spot he discovered that the Lincoln Project had already done it. “These guys were out there every day, putting out a movie!” he told me. “I thought, Who are these fucking people? Who is doing this stuff?”
The Project’s founders are a murderers’ row of conservative operatives. Wilson, who has worked for Rudolph Giuliani and Dick Cheney, counts hundreds of elections, from “dogcatcher to U.S. Senate,” that he and the other founders have helped Republicans win. Schmidt served in the George W. Bush White House, where he was instrumental in seating the Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts. He is widely known for having suggested Sarah Palin as a running mate for McCain, in 2008. Schmidt clearly regrets choosing someone whose crude populism presaged Trump. He was a source for “Game Change,” a book about the McCain campaign that characterized Palin as unprepared and difficult; in September, he said that Palin represented “the beginning of the politics of cowardice and fear.”
Another founder, Reed Galen, whose father worked for Newt Gingrich and Dan Quayle, oversaw with Schmidt the reëlection campaign of the California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. John Weaver, a Texan whom the Democratic strategist James Carville nicknamed Meat Cleaver Weaver, spent a decade trying to get McCain elected to the Presidency. Stuart Stevens was Mitt Romney’s chief strategist in the 2012 race against Barack Obama. A notable early Project participant was George Conway, the lawyer who antagonizes Trump on Twitter—“You. Are. Nuts.”—and whose wife, Kellyanne, was a top White House adviser until she resigned, in August. The couple, citing family demands, receded from public life, and George Conway quit the Project.
The consultant Sarah Longwell, who heads a group called Republican Voters Against Trump, said, of the leaders of the Lincoln Project, “They’ve very successfully tapped into the rage that a lot of people feel, including me.” The Project’s scorched-earth approach distinguishes it from similar organizations: the founders, some of whom have entirely shed their Republican identities, have left themselves no clear path of return. (Wilson and Schmidt are now registered Independents.) Longwell said, “In many ways, this is their last stand.”
Most of the Project’s core founders are in their fifties and came of age under Ronald Reagan. They were drawn to Reagan’s optimism and to his belief in fiscally responsible government, which, as Galen points out, “doesn’t necessarily mean lower taxes—it means being smart with taxpayers’ money.” Socially, they favor individual liberty: worship however you want, marry whomever you want. They support responsible gun ownership and a judiciously interventionist foreign policy. Weaver served in the Air Force, and Wilson worked in the Defense Department, but all the founders revere military service. In 2015, Trump disgusted them when he mocked McCain—a fighter pilot who was a P.O.W. during Vietnam—by saying, “I like people that weren’t captured.”
After Obama won his second term, the Republican National Committee commissioned a study that became known as the “autopsy report.” The country’s voting population was diversifying rapidly, and, the report said, young voters were “increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents.” It noted, “Many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country.” In a recent book, “It Was All a Lie,” Stevens writes, “How do you go from dedicating a political party to expansion and inclusiveness and two years later rally around a man who calls Mexicans ‘rapists,’ and called for a religious test to enter the United States?” He goes on, “For decades, conservatives attacked liberals for living by ‘situational ethics,’ but the ease with which Republican leaders abandoned any pretense of being more than a whites-only party is the ultimate situational ethic.” In January, Wilson told Trevor Noah that Trump “has broken the Republican Party—it doesn’t believe in anything.” Stunningly, the 2020 Republican National Convention put forward no new platform, signalling that the Party’s sole position was fealty to Trump.
In 2017, Jennifer Horn, another Project founder, chose not to seek a third term as the chair of the Republican Party of New Hampshire, unable to countenance “a President and Party leadership that think the President himself is above the law.” She told me, “Look at the deficit spending since Trump took office—we’re supposed to be the party of limited spending. We’re the party of a strong national defense—we have a President who is colluding, basically, with foreign dictators.” When Trump was impeached, Horn said, she waited for Republican senators to uphold their constitutional oath, only to watch “each one fall”—except for Romney, who voted to convict. Senators who condemned Trump privately said nothing publicly. Schmidt told me, “You have an entire political class that is scared to death of being tweeted at or given a Presidential nickname.”
“Is that better?” Cartoon by Edward Steed Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Mike Madrid, a founder who analyzes voting patterns, joined the G.O.P. as a young Latino with “the idea that it could lift my community up.” In the late nineties, he served as the political director of the Republican Party in California, his home state. He continued working for Republican causes, but, in 2016, he was mortified when colleagues and friends “somehow found the rationale” to support Trump, even after his vilification of immigrants.
When Schmidt publicly left the Party, in 2018, he tweeted that the Administration’s policy of separating migrant families at the border was “connected to the worst abuses of Humanity in our history,” including slavery, and said that the current G.O.P. represented a “danger to our democracy.” Galen’s long-held concerns about Trump intensified as he watched the President unleash unmarked officers on Black Lives Matter demonstrations. He told himself, “That’s about as anti-Republican as you can get—unfettered federal power, applied at the state level.” The Project’s sole millennial founder, Ron Steslow, a political strategist, has said, “My generation is being forced to learn that democracy cannot be taken for granted.”


newyorker--2020-10-06--At the White House, Trump Takes Off His Mask and Sends a Dangerous Message

Upon President Trump ’ s arrival at the White House on Monday evening from Walter Reed hospital , where he was being treated for COVID-19 , he lingered on the balcony of the South Portico , taking off his mask in a theatrical gesture , as if those watching were supposed to be surprised by the identity or the character of the man behind it .
He struck various poses for the cameras before walking into the White House , where people who may or may not yet be infected with the coronavirus were waiting ; public-health officials responded with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Once inside , the President filmed a short video , which he tweeted out later that evening , with the Washington monument and the D.C. night sky behind him , spelling out the recklessness and the cruelty of his approach to the pandemic .
“ I learned so much about coronavirus , ” Trump said , and then proceeded to demonstrate that he had learned nothing—that he had possibly unlearned anything he might have picked up during eight months of briefings on the pandemic .
“ One thing that ’ s for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dominate you !
Don ’ t be afraid of it !
You ’ re gon na beat it !
” Two hundred and ten thousand Americans , at least , have died of COVID-19 , including an average of seven hundred a day in the past week ; they did not die of fear or of a lack of will .
Many of them were low-income elderly people , who had worked all their lives facing struggles that Trump could not imagine , and fought heroically in their last hours to breathe .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is Trump who has given up on keeping Americans like them alive .
“ We have the best medical equipment ; we have the best medicines , all developed recently !
” Trump said .
His tone suggested that an 800 number or Web address was about to flash on the screen , with offers to place an order now .
Trump allowed that , when he arrived at the hospital , “ I didn ’ t feel so good.
” ( That was on Friday , when he required supplemental oxygen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Mark Meadows , told reporters , his vital signs were worrying . )
And yet , he claimed , he could have left “ two days ago.
” ( That would have been Saturday , a day on which his oxygen level again fell ; although the timeline given by his doctors is unclear , at some point he may have received supplemental oxygen a second time . )
“ I felt great , like , better than I have in a long time .
I said just recently ” —in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years ago.
” He then said , once again , “ Don ’ t let it dominate !
Don ’ t let it take over your lives.
” By “ we , ” Trump only—always—means “ I.
” At Walter Reed , he has been abundantly supplied with treatments meant for seriously ill patients , including an experimental antibody cocktail for which he received a “ compassionate use ” exception .
No one really knows how those treatments might interact ; no one in the public , for that matter , knows how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus .
Those speaking for him—from his White House doctor , Sean Conley , an osteopath , to Kayleigh McEnany , his press secretary , who tested positive for the coronavirus along with two of her deputies—have refused to say .
( In the hours before Trump strode into the White House with his mask off , despite his active case of COVID-19 , staff members who had been in contact with colleagues who tested positive had been quickly exiting the White House , scrambling to isolate and switch to remote work .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ will also have access to a high level of medical care twenty-four hours a day .
He may need it ; COVID-19 patients often take a sharp turn for the worse in the second week of their illness .
And yet he talked as though he had walked the path of the common folk .
Or maybe he wants to be seen as a folk hero .
“ We ’ re going back .
We ’ re going back to work—we ’ re gon na be out front .
As your leader , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to do what ?
Flout basic epidemiological guidelines ?
The White House , in defending its practices in the past few days , has been a disastrous source of misinformation .
Official after official has claimed , for example , that the mostly maskless indoor and outdoor events around the announcement of Amy Coney Barrett ’ s nomination for the Supreme Court were no cause for alarm , because participants were given a rapid coronavirus test on arrival .
( Two senators who attended that event have tested positive , along with Kellyanne @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Notre Dame , and others . )
But those tests are known to yield a quite high number of false negatives ; they are meant only to be one of many tools , not an all-clear pass .
And even the best tests can miss positives early in the illness—which can also be when an infected person is most likely to spread the virus .
All that raises the question of whether people in the Administration were willfully ignoring the most basic information about the disease and its course .
Didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the rapid tests ?
Did no one even have an instinct for self-preservation ?
The number of lies that Administration officials would have had to tell—to themselves , to their colleagues , and to the public—to turn the White House into a pandemic hot spot is stunning .
Indeed , even to focus on the advanced medical assets that Trump has access to misses a more basic point .
He is encouraging Americans to do without something that everyone easily can have : a mask .
The sight of someone in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this together and that each person has a role in stopping the pandemic .
A mask is the most effective tool for fighting the pandemic that we have right now .
It is also an emblem of basic , mutual respect and decency , and that may be what offends Trump the most .
He is ready to let people die so that the visuals of American communities don ’ t include reminders—as long , that is , as no one looks inside the hospitals—that the pandemic even exists .
On some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attention paid to the virus ; his vision is the one that is supposed to dominate .
“ Nobody that ’ s a leader would not do what I did , ” Trump said .
He doesn ’ t understand what a leader is ; it is not being the person out front in a march of folly .
On Monday , he tweeted that he would be “ back on the Campaign Trail soon !
!
!
” —with , once again , no regard for the supporting staff that he might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Service agents and people who clean up after him .
The irony , of course , is that if Trump had urged his supporters to take a disciplined approach to wearing masks and social distancing months ago , the pandemic might be under better control , the country might be closer to opening up , and his own electoral prospects would likely be stronger .
It has become a truism that Trump cares only about himself , but the reality is even worse : he cares only about a fantasy version of himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there were in the early days .
McEnany , in an interview on Monday , said that “ President Trump developed them , ” though , of course , that ’ s not true .
Some were figured out by exhausted doctors in New York during the worst days of the pandemic in the spring , when they realized that ventilators were not best for all patients and that measures like turning people over onto their stomachs might help relieve pressure on their lungs .
Scientists around the world are working on treatments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ best of scenarios a vaccine will not , as Trump claimed in his video , be available “ momentarily ” ; even one approved tomorrow will take months to manufacture and distribute broadly to the general public .
But there should be no mistake : we have not cracked the problem of COVID-19 .
People of all ages still die of it .
And , with forty thousand new cases a day and cold weather in much of the country pushing people indoors , there is every indication that the winter ahead will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ running out to avert the next wave of this mass tragedy .
“ I know there ’ s a risk ; there ’ s a danger , but that ’ s O.K .
!
” Trump said .
“ And now I ’ m better , and maybe I ’ m immune—I don ’ t know.
” Nobody knows , but the comment raised the still more alarming possibility that the Trump Administration will become even more enraptured with never-mind-the-virus strategies , such as actively pursuing natural “ herd immunity ” —the idea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sick , the virus will run out of targets .
That could cost hundreds of thousands of lives that masks alone could save .
And the President himself is , again , still early in the course of his illness .
The coronavirus may not be done with Trump .
It is certain that it is not done with America .
More on the Coronavirus • To protect American lives and revive the economy , Donald Trump and Jared Kushner should listen to Anthony Fauci rather than trash him .
• We should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ school-reopening plans .
It is not too late to ask what they really want .
• A pregnant pediatrician on what children need during the crisis .
• Trump is helping tycoons who have donated to his reëlection campaign exploit the pandemic to maximize profits .
• Meet the high-finance mogul in charge of our economic recovery .
• The coronavirus is likely to reshape architecture .
What kinds of space are we willing to live and work in now ?

Upon President Trump’s arrival at the White House on Monday evening from Walter Reed hospital, where he was being treated for COVID-19, he lingered on the balcony of the South Portico, taking off his mask in a theatrical gesture, as if those watching were supposed to be surprised by the identity or the character of the man behind it. He struck various poses for the cameras before walking into the White House, where people who may or may not yet be infected with the coronavirus were waiting; public-health officials responded with shock to that act of total disregard. Once inside, the President filmed a short video, which he tweeted out later that evening, with the Washington monument and the D.C. night sky behind him, spelling out the recklessness and the cruelty of his approach to the pandemic.
“I learned so much about coronavirus,” Trump said, and then proceeded to demonstrate that he had learned nothing—that he had possibly unlearned anything he might have picked up during eight months of briefings on the pandemic. “One thing that’s for certain: don’t let it dominate you! Don’t be afraid of it! You’re gonna beat it!” Two hundred and ten thousand Americans, at least, have died of COVID-19, including an average of seven hundred a day in the past week; they did not die of fear or of a lack of will. Many of them were low-income elderly people, who had worked all their lives facing struggles that Trump could not imagine, and fought heroically in their last hours to breathe. They didn’t give up; it is Trump who has given up on keeping Americans like them alive.
“We have the best medical equipment; we have the best medicines, all developed recently!” Trump said. His tone suggested that an 800 number or Web address was about to flash on the screen, with offers to place an order now. Trump allowed that, when he arrived at the hospital, “I didn’t feel so good.” (That was on Friday, when he required supplemental oxygen and, as his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told reporters, his vital signs were worrying.) And yet, he claimed, he could have left “two days ago.” (That would have been Saturday, a day on which his oxygen level again fell; although the timeline given by his doctors is unclear, at some point he may have received supplemental oxygen a second time.) “I felt great, like, better than I have in a long time. I said just recently”—in a tweet that afternoon—“better than twenty years ago.” He then said, once again, “Don’t let it dominate! Don’t let it take over your lives.”
By “we,” Trump only—always—means “I.” At Walter Reed, he has been abundantly supplied with treatments meant for seriously ill patients, including an experimental antibody cocktail for which he received a “compassionate use” exception. No one really knows how those treatments might interact; no one in the public, for that matter, knows how long Trump has been positive for the coronavirus. Those speaking for him—from his White House doctor, Sean Conley, an osteopath, to Kayleigh McEnany, his press secretary, who tested positive for the coronavirus along with two of her deputies—have refused to say. (In the hours before Trump strode into the White House with his mask off, despite his active case of COVID-19, staff members who had been in contact with colleagues who tested positive had been quickly exiting the White House, scrambling to isolate and switch to remote work.) In the White House, Trump will also have access to a high level of medical care twenty-four hours a day. He may need it; COVID-19 patients often take a sharp turn for the worse in the second week of their illness. And yet he talked as though he had walked the path of the common folk.
Or maybe he wants to be seen as a folk hero. “We’re going back. We’re going back to work—we’re gonna be out front. As your leader, I had to do that.” Had to do what? Flout basic epidemiological guidelines? The White House, in defending its practices in the past few days, has been a disastrous source of misinformation. Official after official has claimed, for example, that the mostly maskless indoor and outdoor events around the announcement of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination for the Supreme Court were no cause for alarm, because participants were given a rapid coronavirus test on arrival. (Two senators who attended that event have tested positive, along with Kellyanne Conway, Chris Christie, the president of Notre Dame, and others.) But those tests are known to yield a quite high number of false negatives; they are meant only to be one of many tools, not an all-clear pass. And even the best tests can miss positives early in the illness—which can also be when an infected person is most likely to spread the virus. All that raises the question of whether people in the Administration were willfully ignoring the most basic information about the disease and its course. Didn’t any of them read the specifications about the rapid tests? Did no one even have an instinct for self-preservation? The number of lies that Administration officials would have had to tell—to themselves, to their colleagues, and to the public—to turn the White House into a pandemic hot spot is stunning.
Indeed, even to focus on the advanced medical assets that Trump has access to misses a more basic point. He is encouraging Americans to do without something that everyone easily can have: a mask. The sight of someone in a mask is a reminder that we are in this together and that each person has a role in stopping the pandemic. A mask is the most effective tool for fighting the pandemic that we have right now. It is also an emblem of basic, mutual respect and decency, and that may be what offends Trump the most. He is ready to let people die so that the visuals of American communities don’t include reminders—as long, that is, as no one looks inside the hospitals—that the pandemic even exists. On some level, he seems jealous of the attention paid to the virus; his vision is the one that is supposed to dominate. “Nobody that’s a leader would not do what I did,” Trump said. He doesn’t understand what a leader is; it is not being the person out front in a march of folly.
On Monday, he tweeted that he would be “back on the Campaign Trail soon!!!”—with, once again, no regard for the supporting staff that he might expose to the virus, including Secret Service agents and people who clean up after him. The irony, of course, is that if Trump had urged his supporters to take a disciplined approach to wearing masks and social distancing months ago, the pandemic might be under better control, the country might be closer to opening up, and his own electoral prospects would likely be stronger. It has become a truism that Trump cares only about himself, but the reality is even worse: he cares only about a fantasy version of himself.
There are better treatments available than there were in the early days. McEnany, in an interview on Monday, said that “President Trump developed them,” though, of course, that’s not true. Some were figured out by exhausted doctors in New York during the worst days of the pandemic in the spring, when they realized that ventilators were not best for all patients and that measures like turning people over onto their stomachs might help relieve pressure on their lungs. Scientists around the world are working on treatments and vaccines, though even in the best of scenarios a vaccine will not, as Trump claimed in his video, be available “momentarily”; even one approved tomorrow will take months to manufacture and distribute broadly to the general public. But there should be no mistake: we have not cracked the problem of COVID-19. People of all ages still die of it. And, with forty thousand new cases a day and cold weather in much of the country pushing people indoors, there is every indication that the winter ahead will be bleak and deadly. Time is running out to avert the next wave of this mass tragedy.


newyorker--2020-10-06--Does Clarence Thomas Now Speak for the Majority of the Supreme Court on L.G.B.T.Q. Rights?

On Monday , the first day of its session , the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Kim Davis , the county clerk from Kentucky who was jailed in 2015 when she refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples , claiming that doing so would contradict her sincerely held religious beliefs .
The case posed a direct challenge to the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges , which found that marriage between two people of the same sex was a constitutional right .
Justice Clarence Thomas , despite agreeing with the decision to deny Davis ’ s appeal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ himself and Justice Samuel Alito in which he called on the Court to overturn Obergefell .
“ By choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment , and by doing so undemocratically , the Court has created a problem that only it can fix , ” Thomas wrote .
“ Until then , Obergefell will continue to have ‘ ruinous consequences for religious liberty.
’ ” This scathing description of the decision , and the call for overturning it , are extraordinary .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ its own decisions , it has historically seen them as binding for at least a generation .
But with its two Trump-appointed Justices and another likely on the way , this is no ordinary Supreme Court .
It is one that ’ s coming to embody the spirit of the current Administration in its gratuitous cruelty .
The desire to take rights away from people reaches a degree of malice that is distinct from not granting people rights in the first place .
Most L.G.B.T.Q .
people over the age of thirty can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I was a teen-ager coming out , in the early nineteen-eighties , for example , I simply knew that marriage was for other people .
Same-sex marriage was unthinkable , in the sense that it had barely been conceived of by even the most imaginative gay activists , much less straight people , the courts , or the legislatures .
In the nineties , some gay and lesbian activists launched a concerted effort to get the country to think about same-sex marriage .
The first reaction in the American political mainstream was panic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Act , a federal law that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman ; President Bill Clinton signed it into law in 1996 .
In 2013 , after nearly half the states had legalized same-sex marriage , the Supreme Court struck down DOMA as unconstitutional in United States v. Windsor .
“ DOMA writes inequality into the entire United States Code , ” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority .
“ DOMA 's principal effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had become used to the idea of same-sex marriage .
Kennedy wrote the Obergefell decision , too , and in it , he traced the evolution of thinking about L.G.B.T.Q .
people and their unions .
“ When new insight reveals discord between the Constitution ’ s central protections and a received legal stricture , a claim to liberty must be addressed , ” he wrote .
He didn ’ t mean that the Court had gained new insight into the institution of marriage—on the contrary , he stressed that the understanding of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , was well established .
Kennedy noted that the Court had previously found a profound connection between marriage and liberty ; that it had held that “ the right to marry is fundamental because it supports a two-person union unlike any other in its importance to the committed individuals ” ; and that marriage “ safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing , procreation , and education.
” In other words , the right to marry was among the “ interests of the person so fundamental that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The new insight here was that L.G.B.T.Q .
people are human beings .
Once this insight had occurred , the Justices could not wait for Congress to act , and had to step in and right the wrongs perpetrated by denying same-sex couples the right to marry .
The urgency stemmed from an understanding of the singular importance of marriage .
“ No union is more profound than marriage , for it embodies the highest ideals of love , fidelity , devotion , sacrifice , and family , ” Kennedy concluded .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be condemned to live in loneliness , excluded from one of civilization ’ s oldest institutions .
They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law .
The Constitution grants them that right.
” I do not share Kennedy ’ s exalted view of marriage .
I do n't think that the unmarried are “ condemned to live in loneliness , ” nor do I think that marriage is essentially bound to liberty .
At the same time , my life , and the lives of my children , would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and likely poorer—had I not been able to marry my former partner .
Many of my friends are similar marriage skeptics who at some point married their longtime partners because of the many rights and benefits marriage can confer : health insurance , hospital visitation , inheritance , survivor benefits , presumed parentage of any children born to one of the partners , joint adoption , immigration , and others , for a total of about a thousand , by the Court ’ s own count , as cited in the Windsor decision @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Thomas is effectively arguing should be taken away from same-sex couples , out of respect for some people ’ s sincere religious beliefs .
In his four-page statement from Monday , Thomas did not appear to argue that the Court should change its view of marriage itself : marriage remains a fundamental right , a right essential to being human .
Yet Thomas maintains that the right of same-sex couples to marry does not exist : he calls it “ atextual ” and “ novel.
” In his dissent in Obergefell , Alito @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the late Antonin Scalia , accused the Court of “ inventing ” the right to same-sex marriage .
Hannah Arendt once observed that the concept of human rights was limited by the ability of people to gain membership in a political community that would recognize the humanity from which their basic rights followed .
By saying that the right to marriage is fundamental but does not accrue to same-sex couples , Thomas is making a case to expel L.G.B.T.Q .
people from the American political community .
Kennedy is retired and Ruth Bader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ written in the past that the Constitution does not protect same-sex marriage , although he appeared to hedge his stance during his confirmation hearings .
Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly refused to state during his confirmation hearings whether he felt Obergefell was correctly decided .
A consortium of twenty-seven L.G.B.T.Q .
advocacy groups opposed the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals , in 2017 ; Barrett is now Trump ’ s third nominee to the Supreme Court .
With more challenges to Obergefell certainly coming , Thomas may now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Court .
There is no doubt that he is expressing the ethos of the Administration that has reshaped the Court : it excludes and it dehumanizes .

On Monday, the first day of its session, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Kim Davis, the county clerk from Kentucky who was jailed in 2015 when she refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, claiming that doing so would contradict her sincerely held religious beliefs. The case posed a direct challenge to the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which found that marriage between two people of the same sex was a constitutional right. Justice Clarence Thomas, despite agreeing with the decision to deny Davis’s appeal, wrote a statement on behalf of himself and Justice Samuel Alito in which he called on the Court to overturn Obergefell. “By choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the Court has created a problem that only it can fix,” Thomas wrote. “Until then, Obergefell will continue to have ‘ruinous consequences for religious liberty.’ ”
This scathing description of the decision, and the call for overturning it, are extraordinary. Although the Court can and does overturn its own decisions, it has historically seen them as binding for at least a generation. But with its two Trump-appointed Justices and another likely on the way, this is no ordinary Supreme Court. It is one that’s coming to embody the spirit of the current Administration in its gratuitous cruelty.
The desire to take rights away from people reaches a degree of malice that is distinct from not granting people rights in the first place. Most L.G.B.T.Q. people over the age of thirty can feel it in our bones. When I was a teen-ager coming out, in the early nineteen-eighties, for example, I simply knew that marriage was for other people. Same-sex marriage was unthinkable, in the sense that it had barely been conceived of by even the most imaginative gay activists, much less straight people, the courts, or the legislatures. In the nineties, some gay and lesbian activists launched a concerted effort to get the country to think about same-sex marriage. The first reaction in the American political mainstream was panic, which produced the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman; President Bill Clinton signed it into law in 1996. In 2013, after nearly half the states had legalized same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court struck down DOMA as unconstitutional in United States v. Windsor. “DOMA writes inequality into the entire United States Code,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. “DOMA’s principal effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal.” The country, and the Court, had become used to the idea of same-sex marriage.
Kennedy wrote the Obergefell decision, too, and in it he traced the evolution of thinking about L.G.B.T.Q. people and their unions. “When new insight reveals discord between the Constitution’s central protections and a received legal stricture, a claim to liberty must be addressed,” he wrote. He didn’t mean that the Court had gained new insight into the institution of marriage—on the contrary, he stressed that the understanding of marriage itself, its centrality and importance, was well established. Kennedy noted that the Court had previously found a profound connection between marriage and liberty; that it had held that “the right to marry is fundamental because it supports a two-person union unlike any other in its importance to the committed individuals”; and that marriage “safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education.” In other words, the right to marry was among the “interests of the person so fundamental that the State must accord them its respect.” The new insight here was that L.G.B.T.Q. people are human beings. Once this insight had occurred, the Justices could not wait for Congress to act, and had to step in and right the wrongs perpetrated by denying same-sex couples the right to marry.
The urgency stemmed from an understanding of the singular importance of marriage. “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family,” Kennedy concluded. The petitioners’ “hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
I do not share Kennedy’s exalted view of marriage. I don't think that the unmarried are “condemned to live in loneliness,” nor do I think that marriage is essentially bound to liberty. At the same time, my life, and the lives of my children, would be different—more difficult, more dangerous, and likely poorer—had I not been able to marry my former partner. Many of my friends are similar marriage skeptics who at some point married their longtime partners because of the many rights and benefits marriage can confer: health insurance, hospital visitation, inheritance, survivor benefits, presumed parentage of any children born to one of the partners, joint adoption, immigration, and others, for a total of about a thousand, by the Court’s own count, as cited in the Windsor decision. These are among the rights that Thomas is effectively arguing should be taken away from same-sex couples, out of respect for some people’s sincere religious beliefs.
In his four-page statement from Monday, Thomas did not appear to argue that the Court should change its view of marriage itself: marriage remains a fundamental right, a right essential to being human. Yet Thomas maintains that the right of same-sex couples to marry does not exist: he calls it “atextual” and “novel.” In his dissent in Obergefell, Alito, who was joined by Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia, accused the Court of “inventing” the right to same-sex marriage. Hannah Arendt once observed that the concept of human rights was limited by the ability of people to gain membership in a political community that would recognize the humanity from which their basic rights followed. By saying that the right to marriage is fundamental but does not accrue to same-sex couples, Thomas is making a case to expel L.G.B.T.Q. people from the American political community.
Kennedy is retired and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead. Neil Gorsuch has written in the past that the Constitution does not protect same-sex marriage, although he appeared to hedge his stance during his confirmation hearings. Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly refused to state during his confirmation hearings whether he felt Obergefell was correctly decided. A consortium of twenty-seven L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy groups opposed the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in 2017; Barrett is now Trump’s third nominee to the Supreme Court. With more challenges to Obergefell certainly coming, Thomas may now be speaking for the majority of the Court. There is no doubt that he is expressing the ethos of the Administration that has reshaped the Court: it excludes and it dehumanizes.


newyorker--2020-10-06--Trump’s Illness and the History of Presidential Health

Earlier on Monday , I spoke by phone with Lawrence Altman , a physician who has been writing for the Times for more than fifty years , with a focus on the health of political leaders .
His interview with Ronald Reagan in 1980 marked the first time a candidate had extensively discussed his health with a reporter .
Altman is currently a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars .
During our conversation , which has been edited for length and clarity , we discussed the media ’ s coverage of Reagan ’ s dementia , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and how transparent a President is obligated to be about his own health records .
How did you get interested in political leaders and their health ?
I think from reporting on it for the Times .
In 1972 , [ Senator George McGovern ’ s Vice-Presidential running mate , Senator Thomas ] Eagleton had to disclose that he had been hospitalized three times for depression , and had had electroshock therapy on two of those occasions .
And Bob Boyd and Clark Hoyt , with the Knight chain , found out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The McGovern-Eagleton team just called a press conference , and denied them their scoop , but they disclosed Eagleton ’ s problems .
And I got called in immediately to work on it .
I went out to St. Louis and reported that the Washington University main teaching hospital , Barnes Hospital , had moved Eagleton ’ s medical records .
And I wrote a story about that for the Times , and raised the spectre that anybody [ who was working at the hospital ] could have examined his records—and it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House had Eagleton ’ s records .
Could you talk a little bit about what the media environment was like for Presidents or politicians , but Presidents especially , with regard to their health , before 1972 , and certainly before 1980 ?
I talked to [ the political columnist ] Russell Baker at one point , and other reporters who were there at the time .
They were working before 1972 , and were covering Eisenhower .
And I think it was like how reporters didn ’ t cover Kennedy ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Presidents and political leaders were entitled to their privacy , and reporters didn ’ t dig into them unless there was some major reason .
And , therefore , they took at face value whatever was said and didn ’ t do what today we would call investigative journalism .
I would call it doing their homework , just digging in and looking for the facts .
Why did Reagan agree to do an interview , and how did that come about ?
That came about because , in 1980 , during the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the oldest person to become President , if elected .
People questioned why he was saying one thing at one time of the day and another at another time of the day .
And some people raised the question , more from political scuttlebutt rather than on the basis of any fact , that he might have senility .
In those days , Alzheimer ’ s was not a household word .
Senility was the predominant word .
And Reagan had , during the campaign , said his doctors would attest to his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ challenged him on it .
And he agreed .
And I had requested that I not only interview Reagan but do so after interviewing his doctors .
I wanted to talk to them directly .
And he agreed to that after some time .
His staff , from what I gather , opposed it for a long time .
But he finally agreed , and I went out to California and interviewed all the doctors he said he had seen , interviewed them as I would any doctor regarding a patient I had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that his mother had senility in the few years before her death .
And then , with that information , I asked him about his mother .
He told me that , and senility was his word .
I told him about Alzheimer ’ s , and he didn ’ t know about Alzheimer ’ s .
And , at one point in the interview , I asked him , “ Well , if you had any question with your mental status , or became senile like your mother , or in any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ word dementia—and I said , “ What would you do ?
” He immediately said , “ Step down .
Resign.
” I asked him how he would know , and he said his doctors would be following him , and he would listen to whatever his doctors told him .
And that became a story that I wrote in 1980 .
It was the first interview that I know of , certainly in recent times , asking a political candidate or a Presidential candidate prospectively about his health .
And he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve just described .
Did some people think that this was poor form , or impolite to ask such things ?
Was there any sort of backlash ?
In a strange way , there was from his White House doctor , who was not his White House doctor at that time .
He was his urologist in Santa Monica .
He didn ’ t say anything to me at the time , but he wrote a book in which he took me to task because he said I went out there purposely to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s .
And he wrote that even though it turned out that Reagan had declared after he left office that he had Alzheimer ’ s .
But he never mentioned that fact .
And it was also that doctor , the urologist—his name was Burton Smith—who said he would never ask questions like “ Who ’ s President of the United States ?
, ” because he thought that was demeaning , but it was never clear what mental-status test Smith used on Reagan .
Other doctors said they went through the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s doctors after he was shot , in 1981 , and what role did the media play in trying to get information ?
I happened to be driving between Seattle and Vancouver for a story on the Shah of Iran and his medical care .
I got to Vancouver , and then I had to come back to Seattle and fly back to Washington , D.C. And I picked up on the coverage the next morning .
I went over to the hospital .
I interviewed one of the doctors who had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and wrote that .
Certainly , no one stopped me from doing that , journalistically or medically .
The hospital probably would have if they had found out that I had found the doctor to talk to .
But I think that in the hours to days that occurred thereafter , all the questions arose , and they had arisen in my mind .
Why hadn ’ t they imposed the Twenty-fifth Amendment , or at least considered it ?
And it hadn ’ t been considered .
And Dr. Dennis O ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capacity of being a spokesman for George Washington University Hospital as well as for the White House , was painting a very rosy picture about Reagan , when he hadn ’ t seen Reagan and was only taking the word of doctors who had been treating him .
But he didn ’ t say anything about the location of the bullet being near Reagan ’ s heart .
It was in his lung , but it stopped short of his heart .
That came out later .
They were downplaying the state of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had done a lot to dampen what the White House spokespeople were saying .
And they went through the usual public-relations episodes of pictures and visitors and so forth .
But , in those initial hours , he was seriously ill , much more than they told people .
And that became more important when it was realized later .
I spoke to Dan Ruge , who was the White House physician , and he said he had made a mistake .
He carried the Constitution with him , and he knew the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it should have been brought up , but it wasn ’ t .
He took that upon himself as something that he should have done .
And then Reagan recuperated .
In answer to your earlier question , I ’ m not sure that there was any further impediment .
They held news conferences , but I don ’ t think there were any barriers that I can think of forty years later that stood in the way of trying to get the story .
I do remember that it made no sense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of blood were transfused at a surgery and pre- and post-operation .
And it didn ’ t fit with the picture .
And then I did my own homework overnight and found out that Reagan had received many more units of blood than O ’ Leary had said he got pre- and post-operatively .
And he attributed that to not knowing that anesthesiologists could order blood during surgery , which to me was a heck of an admission of the dean in a medical school and a hematologist .
But be that as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
How do you think , in hindsight , the press dealt with Reagan clearly aging toward the second half of his Presidency ?
You have to go back in time and try to picture what things were like in 1984 , when he was running for reëlection , and during the 1984-88 period , when he was there .
One , his doctors said they saw no evidence of his mental deterioration .
Two , I don ’ t think the medical profession at large , and the public , were as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ early stages of dementia , whether it ’ s Alzheimer ’ s or any other form of dementia , and they may not have been attuned to picking up some of the early signs .

On Monday evening, President Trump left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he was being treated for the coronavirus, and returned to the White House, after tweeting that he was “feeling really good.” But, since Trump was hospitalized, on Friday, Americans have heard a steady stream of contradictory and confusing information. This weekend, the White House doctor, Sean Conley, was evasive about Trump’s condition but eventually admitted that the President had run a high fever and that his oxygen levels had dropped below the normal range. Trump received supplementary oxygen and was treated with REGN-COV2, an experimental antibody drug, and the steroid dexamethasone—all of which indicate that his disease is serious and potentially worsening. Trump will continue treatment at the White House, but Conley did not give a clear answer as to whether he will remain in his residence. When Trump returned to the White House, where numerous staffers, including two members of the housekeeping department, have been infected, he immediately removed his mask.
Earlier on Monday, I spoke by phone with Lawrence Altman, a physician who has been writing for the Times for more than fifty years, with a focus on the health of political leaders. His interview with Ronald Reagan in 1980 marked the first time a candidate had extensively discussed his health with a reporter. Altman is currently a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the media’s coverage of Reagan’s dementia, the pressures faced by White House doctors, and how transparent a President is obligated to be about his own health records.
How did you get interested in political leaders and their health?
I think from reporting on it for the Times. In 1972, [Senator George McGovern’s Vice-Presidential running mate, Senator Thomas] Eagleton had to disclose that he had been hospitalized three times for depression, and had had electroshock therapy on two of those occasions. And Bob Boyd and Clark Hoyt, with the Knight chain, found out and were ready to report on it. The McGovern-Eagleton team just called a press conference, and denied them their scoop, but they disclosed Eagleton’s problems. And I got called in immediately to work on it.
I went out to St. Louis and reported that the Washington University main teaching hospital, Barnes Hospital, had moved Eagleton’s medical records. And I wrote a story about that for the Times, and raised the spectre that anybody [who was working at the hospital] could have examined his records—and it later was known that the Nixon White House had Eagleton’s records.
Could you talk a little bit about what the media environment was like for Presidents or politicians, but Presidents especially, with regard to their health, before 1972, and certainly before 1980?
I talked to [the political columnist] Russell Baker at one point, and other reporters who were there at the time. They were working before 1972, and were covering Eisenhower. And I think it was like how reporters didn’t cover Kennedy’s escapades. There was a feeling that Presidents and political leaders were entitled to their privacy, and reporters didn’t dig into them unless there was some major reason. And, therefore, they took at face value whatever was said and didn’t do what today we would call investigative journalism. I would call it doing their homework, just digging in and looking for the facts.
Why did Reagan agree to do an interview, and how did that come about?
That came about because, in 1980, during the campaign, Reagan was going to be the oldest person to become President, if elected. People questioned why he was saying one thing at one time of the day and another at another time of the day. And some people raised the question, more from political scuttlebutt rather than on the basis of any fact, that he might have senility. In those days, Alzheimer’s was not a household word. Senility was the predominant word. And Reagan had, during the campaign, said his doctors would attest to his health.
So I and the Times challenged him on it. And he agreed. And I had requested that I not only interview Reagan but do so after interviewing his doctors. I wanted to talk to them directly. And he agreed to that after some time. His staff, from what I gather, opposed it for a long time. But he finally agreed, and I went out to California and interviewed all the doctors he said he had seen, interviewed them as I would any doctor regarding a patient I had.
From that information, I learned that his mother had senility in the few years before her death. And then, with that information, I asked him about his mother. He told me that, and senility was his word. I told him about Alzheimer’s, and he didn’t know about Alzheimer’s. And, at one point in the interview, I asked him, “Well, if you had any question with your mental status, or became senile like your mother, or in any way”—and I probably used the word dementia—and I said, “What would you do?” He immediately said, “Step down. Resign.” I asked him how he would know, and he said his doctors would be following him, and he would listen to whatever his doctors told him. And that became a story that I wrote in 1980. It was the first interview that I know of, certainly in recent times, asking a political candidate or a Presidential candidate prospectively about his health. And he was quite open in the sense I’ve just described.
Did some people think that this was poor form, or impolite to ask such things? Was there any sort of backlash?
In a strange way, there was from his White House doctor, who was not his White House doctor at that time. He was his urologist in Santa Monica. He didn’t say anything to me at the time, but he wrote a book in which he took me to task because he said I went out there purposely to show that Reagan had dementia or Alzheimer’s. And he wrote that even though it turned out that Reagan had declared after he left office that he had Alzheimer’s. But he never mentioned that fact. And it was also that doctor, the urologist—his name was Burton Smith—who said he would never ask questions like “Who’s President of the United States?,” because he thought that was demeaning, but it was never clear what mental-status test Smith used on Reagan. Other doctors said they went through the usual routine.
How forthcoming were Reagan’s doctors after he was shot, in 1981, and what role did the media play in trying to get information?
I happened to be driving between Seattle and Vancouver for a story on the Shah of Iran and his medical care. I got to Vancouver, and then I had to come back to Seattle and fly back to Washington, D.C. And I picked up on the coverage the next morning. I went over to the hospital. I interviewed one of the doctors who had seen him in the emergency room, and wrote that. Certainly, no one stopped me from doing that, journalistically or medically. The hospital probably would have if they had found out that I had found the doctor to talk to.
But I think that in the hours to days that occurred thereafter, all the questions arose, and they had arisen in my mind. Why hadn’t they imposed the Twenty-fifth Amendment, or at least considered it? And it hadn’t been considered. And Dr. Dennis O’Leary, who was in a dual capacity of being a spokesman for George Washington University Hospital as well as for the White House, was painting a very rosy picture about Reagan, when he hadn’t seen Reagan and was only taking the word of doctors who had been treating him. But he didn’t say anything about the location of the bullet being near Reagan’s heart. It was in his lung, but it stopped short of his heart. That came out later. They were downplaying the state of his health, and apparently Nancy Reagan had done a lot to dampen what the White House spokespeople were saying. And they went through the usual public-relations episodes of pictures and visitors and so forth.
But, in those initial hours, he was seriously ill, much more than they told people. And that became more important when it was realized later. I spoke to Dan Ruge, who was the White House physician, and he said he had made a mistake. He carried the Constitution with him, and he knew the Twenty-fifth Amendment. And he knew that it should have been brought up, but it wasn’t. He took that upon himself as something that he should have done. And then Reagan recuperated.


newyorker--2020-10-06--Anthony Fauci on the Coronavirus and the Prospects for a Vaccine

During the weeks when SARS-CoV-2 was first emerging as a global health crisis , good information was hard to come by .
There was much that the public and the medical community had yet to learn about the virus : how it is transmitted , how deadly it is , which measures help quell its spread .
Months into the pandemic , questions about the virus continue to abound .
On the first night of the 2020 New Yorker Festival , Dr. Anthony Fauci , one of the leading figures providing Americans with essential advice and facts about the virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ staff writer Michael Specter , who profiled Fauci for the magazine in April .
An infectious-disease specialist , Fauci has been the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for thirty-six years , under six Presidents .
The current President has presented a unique challenge .
As Specter wrote this spring , “ At White House briefings , it has regularly fallen to Fauci to gently amend Trump ’ s absurdities , half-truths , and outright lies.
” In the video above , you can watch excerpts from Specter and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the hard lessons of the AIDS epidemic , Americans ’ fraught relationship with scientific and medical authority , and possible time lines for the development and distribution of a coronavirus vaccine .
The key questions , Fauci told Specter , are not just when a vaccine will be available but how effective it will be and how many people will receive it .
These are just a few of the factors that will determine the answer to one of the more lighthearted questions posed by Specter , after months of distancing and isolation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to go to the movies again ?
” Fauci ’ s talk with Specter was the first of sixteen events being held through Sunday as part of the New Yorker Festival .
Like the fourteen Festival events that are fully virtual , Fauci ’ s appearance will be available for viewing in its entirety through October 13th with the purchase of a ticket .
While cautious about making specific predictions , Fauci expressed optimism about whether Americans are ever again going to be able to watch a movie in a theatre .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Fauci said .
“ And I ’ ll even buy you a ticket .
”

During the weeks when SARS-CoV-2 was first emerging as a global health crisis, good information was hard to come by. There was much that the public and the medical community had yet to learn about the virus: how it is transmitted, how deadly it is, which measures help quell its spread. Months into the pandemic, questions about the virus continue to abound.
On the first night of the 2020 New Yorker Festival, Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the leading figures providing Americans with essential advice and facts about the virus, spoke about the pandemic with the staff writer Michael Specter, who profiled Fauci for the magazine in April. An infectious-disease specialist, Fauci has been the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for thirty-six years, under six Presidents. The current President has presented a unique challenge. As Specter wrote this spring, “At White House briefings, it has regularly fallen to Fauci to gently amend Trump’s absurdities, half-truths, and outright lies.”
In the video above, you can watch excerpts from Specter and Fauci’s conversation, which encompassed the hard lessons of the AIDS epidemic, Americans’ fraught relationship with scientific and medical authority, and possible time lines for the development and distribution of a coronavirus vaccine. The key questions, Fauci told Specter, are not just when a vaccine will be available but how effective it will be and how many people will receive it. These are just a few of the factors that will determine the answer to one of the more lighthearted questions posed by Specter, after months of distancing and isolation: “Will we ever be able to go to the movies again?”
Fauci’s talk with Specter was the first of sixteen events being held through Sunday as part of the New Yorker Festival. Like the fourteen Festival events that are fully virtual, Fauci’s appearance will be available for viewing in its entirety through October 19th with the purchase of a ticket.
While cautious about making specific predictions, Fauci expressed optimism about whether Americans are ever again going to be able to watch a movie in a theatre. “Yes, we are, Michael,” Fauci said. “And I’ll even buy you a ticket.”


newyorker--2020-10-06--An October Surprise in New England

An October Surprise in New England

During the days , the bees and the wasps seemed to hang in the air , sluggish with the cold , hovering , as if uncertain of their next destination amid the blackened daisies .
I picked the last tomatoes and pulled the stalks .
I canned the fallen pears .
Earlier in the week , I ’ d tried to watch the Presidential debate .
There ’ s a bear in the woods .
I ’ ve seen his scat on the trails ; the smell of it makes the dogs crazy ; you can see it in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ growled and bared his teeth .
The former Vice-President tried not to go crazy , his ears twitching .
I went to bed and watched on my phone , under the covers , with the volume down .
The closed captions couldn ’ t keep up .
“ YOU NO MR. PRESIDENT HE SAID BUT LOOK HEY IF POCAHONTAS LISTEN PLEASE WRONG WRONG WRONG.
” I turned it off .
Each morning , I read in another newspaper , another magazine , another list a chronicle of everything that has happened this year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ puzzlement and despair and exhaustion .
The leaves turn red , orange , and yellow .
The first day they flutter down , the ground looks like a pointillist painting ; after a day of drought , everything fades to sepia .
Bright then brown , brighter then browner , down to the brownest day .
What will happen next , what will happen next ?
The leaves will fall , and the winds will rise , and the sky will turn the white of winter .
And the people , huddled inside @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anguish , will get angrier and lonelier and angrier .
Phenology is the study of the relationship between the changes that come with the seasons , the knowledge of experience and observation , of what thing to do when other things happen .
Plant peas when daffodils bloom .
Plant cucumbers when lilac blooms fade .
Plant corn when the apple blossoms fall .
The week when the new Supreme Court nominee went to the Rose Garden , the farmer next door began harvesting his corn .
I had to call in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ among the stalks , and the boys , who like to play Manhunt out there , lost in the maze .
The time had come to cut the corn , and fight about the Court .
“ The insect season was past its peak , for it was really the time for wasps and fruit , ” or so it says in “ The Once and Future King.
” A fox has come every day since spring .
He turns up at four o ’ clock in the afternoon , like a train @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the chickens and runs away when the dogs bark .
Congress was out of session most of the summer .
The fox never missed a day .
He keeps coming , hungrier and hungrier and hungrier .
The cat sits on the porch , enormously fat .
“ The time is out of joint , ” Hamlet says .
What will right the time ?
The death of the king ?
I read tweets : the President is not sick ; it is a trick .
The President is sick ; his enemies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overhead while I coil up the garden hose .
Does the hawk think the hose is a snake ?
I put the hose in the shed for winter .
On the coldest night , the night after the President flew to the hospital , three dogs on the bed on a three-dog night , I dreamt that I found , on a path in the woods , the President ’ s hair , made of thatch , a pile of tied straw .
I picked it up and left it on a rotting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coyotes howled , baying , a cascade of cries , the sound of chaos .
I had the idea of planting tulip bulbs far away from the house , deep in the woods , amid the stone-wall remains of an old forge , a place no one goes anymore , hidden and mysterious and out of time , a relic .
I dug into the earth .
I looked at the dogs .
They smelled the bear .
The bear has been here .
That bear has been everywhere .

Up in the woods, the temperature dropped below freezing the night after the President was flown to a hospital. Midnight, the coyotes began to howl, lone dogs at first, heads thrown back, teeth bared, yowling, and then the whole pack, yelping, whining: yip, yap, whoop, woo-woo, woo-hooooo. Every coyote sings its own song, piercing the dark, terrifying the forest.
During the days, the bees and the wasps seemed to hang in the air, sluggish with the cold, hovering, as if uncertain of their next destination amid the blackened daisies. I picked the last tomatoes and pulled the stalks. I canned the fallen pears. Earlier in the week, I’d tried to watch the Presidential debate. There’s a bear in the woods. I’ve seen his scat on the trails; the smell of it makes the dogs crazy; you can see it in the angles of their ears. The President growled and bared his teeth. The former Vice-President tried not to go crazy, his ears twitching. I went to bed and watched on my phone, under the covers, with the volume down. The closed captions couldn’t keep up. “YOU NO MR. PRESIDENT HE SAID BUT LOOK HEY IF POCAHONTAS LISTEN PLEASE WRONG WRONG WRONG.” I turned it off.
Each morning, I read in another newspaper, another magazine, another list a chronicle of everything that has happened this year, wrapped in expressions of wonderment and puzzlement and despair and exhaustion. The leaves turn red, orange, and yellow. The first day they flutter down, the ground looks like a pointillist painting; after a day of drought, everything fades to sepia. Bright then brown, brighter then browner, down to the brownest day.
What will happen next, what will happen next? The leaves will fall, and the winds will rise, and the sky will turn the white of winter. And the people, huddled inside, bracing against the winds and the anguish, will get angrier and lonelier and angrier.
Phenology is the study of the relationship between the changes that come with the seasons, the knowledge of experience and observation, of what thing to do when other things happen. Plant peas when daffodils bloom. Plant cucumbers when lilac blooms fade. Plant corn when the apple blossoms fall. The week when the new Supreme Court nominee went to the Rose Garden, the farmer next door began harvesting his corn. I had to call in the dogs, who like to chase rabbits among the stalks, and the boys, who like to play Manhunt out there, lost in the maze. The time had come to cut the corn, and fight about the Court.
“The insect season was past its peak, for it was really the time for wasps and fruit,” or so it says in “The Once and Future King.” A fox has come every day since spring. He turns up at four o’clock in the afternoon, like a train on a tight schedule. He stalks the chickens and runs away when the dogs bark. Congress was out of session most of the summer. The fox never missed a day. He keeps coming, hungrier and hungrier and hungrier. The cat sits on the porch, enormously fat.
“The time is out of joint,” Hamlet says. What will right the time? The death of the king? I read tweets: the President is not sick; it is a trick. The President is sick; his enemies poisoned him. A lone hawk circles overhead while I coil up the garden hose. Does the hawk think the hose is a snake? I put the hose in the shed for winter.
On the coldest night, the night after the President flew to the hospital, three dogs on the bed on a three-dog night, I dreamt that I found, on a path in the woods, the President’s hair, made of thatch, a pile of tied straw. I picked it up and left it on a rotting log. I woke up when the coyotes howled, baying, a cascade of cries, the sound of chaos.
I had the idea of planting tulip bulbs far away from the house, deep in the woods, amid the stone-wall remains of an old forge, a place no one goes anymore, hidden and mysterious and out of time, a relic. I dug into the earth. I looked at the dogs. They smelled the bear. The bear has been here. That bear has been everywhere.