Donald Trump and his chief of staff Mark Meadows joked about the then US president having Covid on Air Force One after the first debate with Joe Biden in 2020 – an event at which Trump was not tested but three days before which, Meadows later confessed, Trump had indeed tested positive.
Cassidy Hutchinson, the chief of staff’s closest aide who has now written a memoir, Enough. The book, which describes Hutchinson’s journey from Trump loyalist to key witness in the January 6 inquiry, will be published in the US next Tuesday.
In her memoir, Hutchinson also describes other scenes before and after Trump’s Covid bout in which he also showed complete disregard for his own safety and that of those around him.
On Thanksgiving Eve 2020, Hutchinson writes, a group of Pennsylvania legislators, brought to the White House by Rudy Giuliani as Trump sought to contest his defeat in the election by Biden, were tested for Covid shortly before meeting the president.
Several tested positive and were held back from the Oval Office but Trump ordered “I said everyone! Bring them all! Bring them all now!” Covid-positive guests were given masks to wear but Trump “instructed the masked guests to take off their masks. He assured them it was more important for him to see their beautiful faces, said he was not worried about contracting the virus.”
Trump, Hutchinson writes, said that because he had recently been infected, he did not fear contracting Covid again (1).
Hutchinson describes a visit to a mask-making factory in Phoenix, Arizona, in May 2020, in the chaotic and frightening first months of the Covid onslaught. Trump was widely criticised for not wearing a mask during the tour of the Honeywell facility, though workers did and a sign was visible that read: “Attention: Face Mask Required in this Area. Thank You!” Trump told reporters he tried a mask but did not wear it after consulting the company chief executive.
Hutchinson writes that, in fact, Trump “decided on a white mask”, then asked staffers what they thought. “I slowly shook my head,” she writes. “The president pulled the mask off and asked why I thought he should not wear it. “I pointed at the straps of the N95 I was holding. When he looked at the straps of his mask, he saw they were covered in bronzer.”
Trump’s reliance on heavy makeup is well documented. “Why did no one else tell me that,” he snapped. “I’m not wearing this thing.”
“The press would criticise him for not wearing a mask,” Hutchinson writes, “not knowing that the depth of his vanity (2) had caused him to reject masks – and then millions of his fans followed suit.”
(1) showing the depth of his appalling ignorance, of course - not only could he catch it again but the potential for cross-infection between the attendees became exponential
(2) the depth of Trump’s vanity is deeper than the Mariana Trench
