How the Virus Trumped the White House

The Covid outbreak in the president’s inner circle is America’s pandemic failure in microcosm

- By Robert Langreth and Michelle Fay Cortez

SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t pay attention to party affiliation. Nor does it listen to spin that the nation is turning a corner in the pandemic or promises that a vaccine to solve everything is imminent. All it does is spread, silently and efficiently, wherever and whenever it can, taking advantage of people who let their guard down to find more throats and noses to infect.

The coronavirus apparently found plenty of throats to colonize at the White House. At least 12 people who attended a Rose Garden ceremony for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on Sept. 26, or other indoor events associated with it, have now tested positive, including the president and the first lady, two Republican senators, the president of the University of Notre Dame, former aide Kellyanne Conway, and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Numerous others in Trump’s orbit who aren’t known to have attended the Rose Garden event, including top aides Hope Hicks and Stephen Miller and campaign manager Bill Stepien, have also contracted the virus.

The White House outbreak, consuming the highest levels of the U.S. government, is a superspreader event with geopolitical shock waves. It’s driven several of the country’s top military leaders into quarantine and could ultimately put thousands of ordinary people, including staff at the White House and Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., golf club and their families, in danger. And it’s a microcosm of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic from the beginning: All along, it has bet on quick fixes over unglamorous preventive measures like masks, social distancing, and contact tracing.