AGI – The October surprise has arrived. Donald Trump and First Lady Melania are positive for the coronavirus. Destiny loves to play with words. Covid at the White House comes with Mrs. ‘Hope’ and her name is Hope Hicks. “Hope” was Barack Obama’s slogan in the historic 2008 campaign. Hope is the factor that could erase any hope of Trump being re-elected to the White House.
Hope Hicks
Other than intrigues, this is not House of Cards, the story has another title: House of Virus. The name of Hope Hicks, 31, a beautiful former model and former head of communications of the president, flashes on the monitors of the AGI network in the middle of the night, it is just 2.00 am, the sound of broken dishes is heard as a chamber concert in progress. Hope Hicks era sull’Air Force One. Hope Hicks was on Marine One. Hope Hicks is one of President Trump’s closest associates. Hope Hicks was Tuesday in Cleveland, Ohio, and Wednesday in Duluth, Minnesota. Hope Hicks is the contagion. And from now on Trump’s campaign has less “Hope”.
Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2020
“Tonight the first lady and I tested positive for Covid-19. We will immediately begin our quarantine and recovery process. We will do it together.”. The medical bulletin comes with a chirp. News gallops from the health front, the noise of Twitter’s armored cavalry. It is a sequence of images and words that will go down in history: first the rumors and indiscretions triggered by the news of the Hicks infection, then the Trump interview with Fox News, where Sean Hannity celebrated mass, and the first glare of the flare in the American evening: I took the test. Finally, drum roll, and the news that gives another direction to the presidential campaign, 32 days after the vote, everything changes and everything could remain as before.
A new chapter of America2020 opens
“They’re fine,” says White House doctor, Navy Officer Sean Conley, and “the president continues to perform his duties”. The story suddenly changes plot and register, a new chapter of America 2020 opens.
While Wall Street futures go deep in the red and key employment figures are expected (661,000 new jobs in September, lower than expected), on K street, in the heart of Washington DC, in the offices of political strategists and Capitol Hill lobbyists are snaking the questions: Who will win the coronavirus campaign? Joe in a mask or the infected Donald? Will the fear and health campaign of the dems win or sympathy for an evil-stricken president and first lady like millions of Americans? Will it be the final blow of the game of the prudence of the dem, or the epic moment of the commander in chief who faces the invisible enemy and beats him? We are in the prairie of the imagination, the story of an (im) expected event, the storytelling of the shadow that hovered over the countryside, the contagion of the president.
Air Force One
Joe Biden at a distance or Donald Trump in the fray?
Will the campaign symbol be Joe Biden from a distance or Donald Trump in the fray? Those who study presidential campaigns are faced with a unique case destined to enter electoral strategy manuals. It is not the first time that a leader contracts the coronavirus (before Trump, there were the cases of Boris Johnson and that of the president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro), American history is marked by biographies of presidents who get sick, die, fall, get up. The easiest, almost exclusive, way for a vice president to rise to the presidency is the disappearance of his boss, the impediment to do his job. The disease, the accident, are always lurking, seizing individual biographies and transforming them into collective history, the story of a nation.
From the beginning of this American novel, one of the scenarios we talked about at the end of the day, with a whiskey in his hand and the pages of Truman Capote squared, was that of one of the two candidates “lame” in the race from the impact with the coronavirus. And of course, given the style of the campaign, it was clear that the favorite in case of misfortune was The Donald. It happened, and this really changes everything, no one can predict how the American voter, the man of the “Main Street” will react.
In the German vocabulary there is a very particular word, with a persuasive and sinister sound, ‘schadenfreude’, that particular feeling of pleasure that one feels for the misfortunes of others. It is wise advice that comes from history: enjoying the evil that rained down on Trump could be lethal for the Democrats.
Attack on Reagan
It is the biography of Ronald Reagan that reminds us how to do it in these cases. When the Texan John Hinckley tried to skin him in 1981, firing 7 shots in seconds, Reagan entered the hospital and while he was on the stretcher at the entrance to the operating room he looked the doctors in the face and said: “I hope you are all Republicans” . It is again him, Reagan, who acts as a memento in this incredible phase of the campaign, because the Democrats of the time said “today we are all Republicans president”. Who would say that now among the Democrats? Maybe none. The institutional bon ton for now stops at its due, we hope it will recover. Best wishes for a speedy recovery e “the show must go on”.
Biden now has a double advantage
Biden now undoubtedly has a double advantage which is the union of opposites: he has no coronavirus and he has coronavirus. He can campaign freely and take advantage of the strategic advantage or do the spectacular turn of events, stop his campaign and wait for the rival to return to the field.
Trump canceled his rally scheduled for today in Florida, Biden is expected in Michigan. Two crucial Battleground States for the presidential race. Even if he were asymptomatic, Trump would be out of the game for at least two weeks, forced into quarantine. Trump is his age, he is a 74 year old who is among the subjects most exposed to the effects of the coronavirus, he is a male who clinically defines himself as slightly obese (he weighs 110 kilos for a height of 1 meter and 90 cm), obesity the risk of hospitalization triples and moreover people between the ages of 65 and 74 have a risk five times higher than the population between 18 and 29 years. If he becomes too weak to lead the nation, Mike Pence will take over.
Hypothesis carousel
We are on the merry-go-round of hypotheses, but at this point each scenario must be considered. And if Pence gets sick too (he was away from the president in the last few days, he was in Georgia on Wednesday and in Iowa yesterday, he is periodically tested for coronavirus and the last one is negative too), power would pass to the third position of the state, the Speaker of the House, the Democrat Nancy Pelosi. An emergency within an emergency.
Nancy Pelosi
“The Speaker of the House should be protected and put in isolation”, warns on CNN Jonathan Reiner, cardiologist of former Vice President Dick Cheney, one who knows about hospitals and power. “To ensure continuity of government, it is necessary that we have a clear leader here because it is highly possible at this point that both the president and the vice president become ill”. The commander-in-chief could make a speech to the nation today to reassure his state of health. For months the president refused to wear a mask while the deaths in the US are over 200,000, the infections over 7.2 million. Yesterday alone, 43,000 new cases and 857 deaths were recorded.
What will happen to the presidential campaign? On the agenda there are two other debates between the presidential candidates, a Miami (October 15) and Nashville (October 22). They are in the balance, like the race for the White House, it all depends on Trump’s recovery and the ongoing talks between the committee organizing the debates and the campaign staff.
The problem until tonight was that of the rules, now there is the possibility that he will skip the game table, in any case another phase of the challenge has opened. Trump will no longer be able to play on the economic and security arguments that had put him back on track, the story of the campaign is the coronavirus. What a story.
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