24 newyork| october12–25, 2020
tragic. He still needs to go to prison for the
rest of his life. It’s not a defense. But it’s sad.”
For two weeks before he died, Fred
Trump was hospitalized at Long Island
Jewish Medical Center in what Mary
remembers as “a very beautiful corner room
with lots of sunlight.” With her uncle at his
father’s bedside, she said, “everyone just
stood around chitchatting, making small
talk—theyjust don’t understandhowtobe
human.” When his mother was in the hos-
pital, often for osteoporosis and once after
a brutal mugging, Trump visited with an
attitudeof“WhythefuckdoI havetobe
here?” shesaid.“It wasofnousetohim
whatsoever.”WhenMary’sfather,FredJr.,
diedin1981,hisbrotherdidn’t evenshow
uptothefuneral.
In his 2007 bookThinkBig,thefuture
presidentrecalledhow,a decadebefore,he
“unexpectedlycamedownwitha wicked
caseoftheflu”inthemiddleofhisnegotia-
tionstobuya newspaper(hedidn’t say
whichone).“I feltterrible.It wassobadthat
I calledthesellersandtoldthemwewould
havetopostponetheclosinguntilI wasbet-
ter,”hesaid,whichwas“very unusual”
because“Inevergettheflu.It’sbeenten
yearsandI haven’t beensicka day since
then.”Trumpdidn’t sharethestoryofthis
freakillnesstorevealhishumanity butto
addto hismyth.He lost outto anotherbuyer
intheend,hesaid,andhewashappyhedid
because,heclaimed,theunnamedpaper
turnedouttobea badinvestmentthat was
someothersucker’s problem.“Catchingthe
fluwasa lucky breakthat savedmefrom
ruin,”hesaid.“Sometimesluckmakesbetter
deals than talent.” In other words, the idea
that sickness is weakness, except for when it
happens to him, took root a quarter-century
before he made it his case for reelection.
Trump is aware that he isn’t healthy. His
wife, an Eastern European former model
who eats salmon and greens, lengthens her
muscles on a Pilates reformer, and glows as
if cast in bronze, is “healthy.” As a 74-year-
oldwhotakestheunscientific positionthat
human beings have a finite amount of
energy that exercise needlessly drains, and
who thus never engages in any physicalactivitymorestrenuousthangolfortweet-
ing,andwhosevicesincluderedmeat,
Frenchfries,icecream,Oreos,andDiet
Coke,heknowsheis very muchnotthat.
Andheunderstoodthat withage and
weightcomesheightenedriskinthecoro-
naviruspandemic.Buthecouldn’t accept
thathewouldn’t befine,that hewaspart of
the“at-riskseniors”hisadviserskepttelling
himheshouldthinkaboutsincetheywere
animportantvotingdemographicand they
wereliterallydyingbythethousands.What
hecouldacceptevenlessthannotbeing fine
wasnotseemingfine.His supporterslike to
imaginehimasa cartoonishrepresentation
ofhisvigorous,manlyspirit,a joke directed
atanyonewhodoesn’t finditfunny. In
memes,hebody-slamshisenemies.A video
fromtheTrumpcampaign,released the
weekofhiscovid-19diagnosis,shows him
body-slammingthevirus.WhenI stopped
bythehomeofWillardandDollySmith in
NewHampshirelast month,theflagon the
couple’sfrontlawnshowedTrump’sfleshy
faceonRambo’s rippedbody. “I’mbackbecause I’m a perfect physical specimen
and I’m very young,” the president joked on
Fox Business on Thursday. But the stabs at
self-deprecation, more necessary at this
moment than ever before, do little to mask
deep insecurity. Since his illness, the
makeup the president applies himself has
gotten so heavy and so dark that rather than
obscure his pale coloring, it emphasizes the
contrastbetweenhisunnaturalfaceandthe
bare skin of his ears and hands. (All those
years spent judging beauty pageants, and he
never learned from the contestants the
valueofbodymakeup.)
Personality is policy in the Trump admin-
istration, and the president’s insecurity has
made the uncertainty about the country’s
leadership—unavoidable when any chief
executive falls ill—even worse. His unwill-
ingness to admit human frailty has led the
White House and its doctors to keep infor-
mation about his illness not only from the
public and the press (three members of
which have, so far, been infected at the
White House too) but from his own staff.
After Hope Hicks began experiencing
symptoms at the Minnesota maga rally on
Wednesday, forcing her to isolate in the
back of the plane on the trip home, officials
with whom she’d had contact remained in
the dark. After she tested positive on Thurs-
day afternoon, the White House failed to
notify others who would soon test positive
themselves. They learned about it when the
world did, not with an official disclosure but
with a leak to the media. “The president
could’ve given it to her,” one of those people
told me, in fairness, but “I would’ve done
things different that day, had I known.”
Trump did know, but he didn’t change his
plans. At 1 p.m. on Thursday, he flew to his
Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, for a
fund-raiser with hundreds of his support-
ers, some of whom he spoke with indoors.
Later that night, he tweeted about Hicks
being sick. “Terrible!” he said. “The First
Lady and I are waiting for our test results.
In the meantime, we will begin our quaran-
tining process.”
Reading the message, the person said,
“I assumed he must’ve had a preliminary
positive one.” The lack of transparency, this
person added, is “symptomatic about how
people I work with always keep the wrong
things secret.” Suicidal in all senses, this is
the Trumpian madness that threatens the
president’s political and earthly future as it
puts at risk everyone around him.
As one White House official put it:
“Everybody at the top should be fired.” ■intelligencer
OC T. 7: Trump spoke from outside the Oval Office about having covid and the vaccine.