14 newyork| october12–25, 2020
inside: A week that surpassed satire / Trump’s terrific DNA / The problem of Claudia ConwayD
onald trump was on the phone, and he was talking about dying. It was
Saturday, October 3, and while his doctor had told the outside world that
the president’s symptoms were nothing to worry about, Trump, cocooned
in his suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda,
Maryland, was telling those close to him something very different.
“I could be one of the diers,” he said.
The person on the other end of the line couldn’t forget that unusual word the president
used: dier. A seldom-said dictionary standard, it was a classic Trumpism, at once sinister
and childlike. If being a loser was bad, being a dier was a lot worse. Losers can become
winners again. Diers are losers forever. But aren’t we all diers in the end? Donald Trump,
the least self-reflective man in America, was contemplating his own mortality.
He said it again: “I could be one of the diers.”
The previous day, at 12:54 a.m., he had announced that he and the First Lady, Melania,
had tested positive for covid-19 in an outbreak that would sideline dozens across the West
Wing, the East Wing, the highest levels of the federal government, the military ranks,
Trump’s 2020 campaign team, and prominent supporters in the religious community. The
virus had barreled into the very White House that allowed its spread throughout the
United States, where 213,000 were dead and 7.6 million more were infected amid the
biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression.THE SWAMP:
The EntirePresidency Is aSuperspreadingEventDown in the polls, high onsteroids, and clinging to good health whileendangering everyone else’s.
by olivia nuzzi