On October 2nd, President Donald Trump was hospitalized at Walter Reed Military Medical Center after he and First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for Covid-19. Shortly after, on Oct 12, White House physician Dr. Sean Conley announced that Trump had consistently tested negative and thus recovered.
Not long after his release, Trump held a rally in Janesville, Wisconsin, despite repeated warnings from experts that the state was in a red zone due to growing Covid-19 cases. In Wisconsin, Trump declared that should he win the election, he would ensure that everyone would have access to “whatever the hell they gave [him],” referring to his treatment- except Donald Trump’s Covid-19 treatment would have cost an American at least a million dollars.
President Trump’s statements confused many because he has, in the past, called the virus a “hoax.” He also unthinkingly promised a level of healthcare and luxury that he cannot provide, while still denying universal healthcare to citizens and still railing against the Affordable Care Act. In fact, he has given the same care to the people he directly put into contact with the virus, many of whom will not have access to the kind of resources that he does.
I’m not talking about the President or his overwhelmingly affluent cabinet, senior advisers or Republican Senators. I am referring to a population that is largely Black, Latino and working class: custodians, ushers, assistants, and kitchen staff who work in his White House.
Everyone in The White House was asked to wear a mask after the news that the President had tested positive for Covid-19. Even though most staffers had been wearing them before, some advisers and Republicans going in and out of the building were not. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued guidelines saying that there is a much greater chance of contracting the virus if the uninfected person wore a mask but the carrier didn’t; this meant that even if the staff were to take all the precautions possible, there would still be a high risk of them contracting Covid-19 just because the carriers did not. In fact, two housekeepers and five staffers overall received a positive diagnosis soon after Trump did.
For months before the President tested positive, cleaning staff had been anonymously speaking with journalists about their lack of access to protective gear and regular testing. Moreover, the staff did not learn about Trump’s positive diagnosis at the moment it happened, but days later, when it was made public. When a staff-wide response was finally issued, three days after the public announcement, management also told staffers that if they developed symptoms or tested positive, they were to return home immediately. These staffers were then at the mercy of their own home doctors and medical resources and not the White House Medical Unit. The people who look after Trump day after day were not even afforded the simple healthcare assets that should come with the risks of their work.
This does not tell us that Donald Trump is apathetic or cavalier about safety and health– he was swift and cautious when it came to his own. It sends a clear message that he has no problem deliberately putting at risk populations that are most vulnerable to this virus (Black and Latino people are among the demographic groups with the highest death rates and in fact 1 in every 1000 Black Americans has died of COVID-19.)
It illustrates that Donald Trump has no problem stepping on people made invisible by the socioeconomic hierarchy of the United States, a hierarchy he oversees and has interest in maintaining. It is easy for him to ask Americans to not let the virus “defeat” them when he’s lying in bed being pumped with drugs that he doesn’t have to pay for but could certainly afford even if he did. Over the four years of his term, people have been quick to characterize Trump as ignorant, but this President has been in the public eye for long enough that there is abundant proof that he is anything but uninformed or naive.