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Trump 'worried': Biden already knows the debate questions and answers!


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Trump 'worried': Biden already knows the debate questions and answers!

2020.10.09 - 09:21
Trump 'worried': Biden already knows the debate questions and answers!

 

Baghdad - People  

US President Donald Trump said he is concerned that his Democratic rival, Joseph Biden, will know in advance the answers to the questions prepared for discussion, if the next TV debate takes place, by default.  

Trump added, yesterday, in an interview with "Fox News", followed by "People," (October 8, 2020), "We will see what happens next, but I am not interested in having hypothetical discussions."  

And Trump continued, "I am not Joe Biden, I will not conduct virtual debates sitting in front of the computer screen," stressing that "the decisions of the American Presidential Debating Committee, cause him laughter."  

"In this case, (Biden) will have the answers. They will give him the answers just as they usually tell him the questions that will be asked at press conferences," he said.  

The US President added, "They give him the answers as well as the questions in advance. Can they be considered press conferences?"  

Trump suggested that "the following direct discussion be conducted, without the assistance of the US Presidential Debating Committee, using an independent platform for this purpose."

https://www.nasnews.com/view.php?cat=42269

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Trump fears Biden will get "virtual debate" questions and answers

2020-10-09 | 02:03
Trump fears Biden will get "virtual debate" questions and answers
 
 

US President Donald Trump said he is concerned that his Democratic opponent, Joseph Biden, will know in advance the answers to the questions prepared for discussion, if the next TV debate takes place, by default.

Trump added, yesterday in an interview with the channel, "Fox NewsWe'll see what happens next, but I'm not interested in having hypothetical discussions.

Trump went on to say, "I am notJoe BidenI'm not going to conduct virtual debates sitting in front of a computer screen. ”Trump stressed that the decisions of the US Presidential Debating Committee arouse laughter.


"In this case, (Biden) will have the answers. They will give him the answers just as they usually tell him the questions that will be asked at press conferences," Trump said.

The US President added, "They give him the answers as well as the questions in advance. Can they be considered press conferences?"

Trump suggested that the following direct discussion be conducted, without the assistance of the US Presidential Debating Committee, using an independent platform for this.

https://www.alsumaria.tv/news/دوليات/360894/ترامب-يخشى-حصول-بايدن-على-أسئلة-وأجوبة-المناظرة-ال

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Trump announces his intention to participate in an election rally Saturday

 
Free / Agencies - Washington
09 October 2020
 
 

Trump's doctor said the president can return to public activities from Saturday. Trump's doctor said the president can return to public activities from Saturday.

US President Donald Trump, who is still recovering from Covid-19, has revealed his desire to organize an election rally Saturday, which will likely be held in Florida. 

We want to organize a gathering, probably in Florida on Saturday night, "Trump said in an interview with Fox News late Thursday.

Trump added that he might organize another rally, Sunday, in Pennsylvania. 

"I feel very good," he said, after his doctor gave him the green light to resume public activities this weekend.

And Trump's doctor announced, earlier, Thursday, that the president has completed his course of treatment for the Corona virus, and that his condition is stable since his return to the White House, and he can return to public activities starting next Saturday.

In a note released by the White House, Dr. Sean Connelly said Trump had responded "very well" to the treatment.

This comes hours after the Presidential Debating Committee announced that the second debate between President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, will take place via the Internet, after the president was infected with the new Corona virus.

These developments came less than a week after the President and First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive for the Coronavirus.

President Trump was transferred to Walter Reed Military Hospital, last Friday, after it was announced that he had been infected with the Corona virus.

He returned to the White House on Monday, while entering the Oval Office for the first time on Wednesday, six days after his injury.

https://www.alhurra.com/usa/2020/10/09/ترامب-يعلن-عزمه-المشاركة-في-تجمع-انتخابي-السبت

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Trump wants to participate in an election rally in Florida

 
 
 

US President Donald Trump, who is still recovering from Corona, announced in an interview with Fox News late Thursday that he wanted to organize a rally Saturday, most likely in Florida.

“I think I would try to organize a rally on Saturday night if we had enough time for that,” Trump said. We want to organize a rally, probably in Florida on Saturday night. ”

Trump added that he might organize another rally on Sunday in Pennsylvania. “I feel very well,” he said after his doctor gave him the green light to resume public activities this weekend.

The White House doctor announced Thursday that Trump will be able to resume his "public activities" starting Saturday, saying that the US president had responded "very well" to the treatment.

Trump's doctor Sean Conley said in a statement: “Saturday will be the tenth day after the infection was diagnosed on Thursday. Based on the course of advanced diagnostics being made by the medical team, I expect the president to safely return to public commitments, ”Saturday.

Conley added that the president "generally responded very well to treatment," noting that since his discharge from the hospital, "his medical examinations have remained stable and do not show any indication that the disease is progressing."

On the other hand, Democratic House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she would submit a bill Friday to form a committee to investigate Trump's ability to lead the United States.

A statement by Pelosi's office said that this bill would "establish a committee on the president's ability to exercise his position."

The statement indicated that this committee falls within the framework of the twenty-fifth amendment to the American constitution, which provides for the president to relinquish the reins of power to his deputy if he is no longer in a position to govern.

https://takadum-news.com/ترامب-يريد-المشاركة-في-تجمع-انتخابي-بف/

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3 minutes ago, md11fr8dawg said:

Nice try Shabs, when it was the side you seem to choose is up to their necks in corruption and filth. So giving Ole Plugs the questions ahead of time should not surprise anyone, it should be expected when dealing with Rats.

 

Like I said....hook, line and sinker.....Anything Covid-in-Chief spews is gospel to his masses.  Heck, he even blamed his covid case on Gold Star families....What a guy.  

 

GO RV, then BV

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At the end of the day, if Trump comes around after his hissy fit and decides to join the debate, whether that be "in person" or virtually....he can be confident in the knowledge that they will be muting his mic whenever he acts like a petulant child and chooses to not follow the rules set forth and agreed to by both campaigns.

 

GO RV, then BV

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5 minutes ago, Johnny Dinar said:

Will never happen... JMHO

 

I agree.  The debate commission actually did him a favor by making it a virtual debate....that gave him an out.  There is so way he was going to be part of a debate where they could mute his mic when he acts out.  Now he has an excuse and a way to save face....which I believe is a staple of unstable narcissism.

 

GO RV, then BV

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As I seem to recall, the Fake News article about Trump calling dead service men and women, " 'Losers' and 'Suckers' " was pretty heavily endorsed and swallowed (hook, line, and sinker) by the TDS Stricken anti-Trumpers on this site.

 

bhinZDbAww6mL%2BWw8WO9RmHBZzO4sM=

 

"The Democrat Clown Car Is Broken And Only Steers, NO Veers LEFT!"

 

Indy

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Trump complains of delays in results of probe into origins of Russia investigation

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Friday it was a "disgrace" that a Justice Department review of the origins of the Russia investigation that consumed two years of his presidency would not be ready before the Nov. 3 election.

© Reuters/TOM BRENNER U.S. President Trump hosts discussion with state attorneys general at the White House in Washington

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, a Trump appointee and close ally of the Republican president, is said to have told Senate Republicans that the review is unlikely to be completed before the vote.

Trump has been pushing for the investigation to move forward more quickly to give him a boost among his base of supporters. A special counsel's investigation, concluded in April 2019, into whether Trump and his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia stopped short of accusing the president of committing a crime.

Trump has said repeatedly he believes the investigation into the origins of the Russia probe would lead to evidence that the administration of his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, abused power by looking into whether Trump sought help from Russia in 2016. The investigation is led by U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut.

Trump, in an interview with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, said it was a "disgrace" and an "embarrassment" that the Durham report would not be unveiled until after next month's election.

"See, this is what I mean with the Republicans. They don’t play the tough game," Trump said.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; editing by Grant McCool)

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-complains-of-delays-in-results-of-probe-into-origins-of-russia-investigation/ar-BB19SePk?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=U453DHP

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Trump says experimental drugs may have saved him from virus

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press 31 mins ago
 
 
 
 
 

Trump says experimental drugs may have saved him from virus
 
 
 
 
 
 

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday he could have become very ill and might not have recovered from COVID-19 without experimental drugs, a far worse outlook than what his doctors were telling the American people.

© Provided by Associated Press President Donald Trump points to reporters while on the Blue Room Balcony upon returning to the White House Monday, Oct. 5, 2020, in Washington, after leaving Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, in Bethesda, Md. Trump announced he tested positive for COVID-19 on Oct. 2. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) © Provided by Associated Press President Donald Trump removes his mask as he stands on the balcony outside of the Blue Room as returns to the White House Monday, Oct. 5, 2020, in Washington, after leaving Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, in Bethesda, Md. Trump announced he tested positive for COVID-19 on Oct. 2. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

“I was asking the doctors today ... and I said, ‘How bad was I?’ They said: ‘You could have been very bad. You were going into a very bad phase,'" Trump told Rush Limbaugh during his radio show.

“It looked like it was going to be a big deal and you know what that means, right? That means bad because I've lost five people,” Trump added, referring to acquaintances who have died.

Trump said that after contracting the virus, he was “not in the greatest of shape.” He added that “I might not have recovered at all” without treatment with experimental drugs.

Trump's comments on the seriousness of his case of coronavirus contrast with generally upbeat public statements about his condition that his doctors released after his diagnosis and while he was hospitalized.

The White House said Trump's hospitalization at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which began Oct. 2, was precautionary and his symptoms were mild.

On Oct. 3, Trump’s physician gave a televised briefing and painted a sunny picture of the president’s situation, emphasizing that he was still working, walking on his own and not laboring to breathe. But Dr. Sean Conley notably refused to provide some specific details, including repeatedly sidestepping questions about whether the president had at any point received supplemental oxygen. It was later learned that Trump had received oxygen before he was taken to Walter Reed.

© Provided by Associated Press President Donald Trump, left, walks out of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to return to the White House after receiving treatments for covid-19, Monday, Oct. 5, 2020, in Bethesda, Md. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Trump's comments tracked most closely with an update provided by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows after his hospitalization. Meadows offered few details, but said the president’s initial situation had been “very concerning” and, though his health was improving, the following 48 hours would be critical.

Trump credited his recovery to an experimental antibody drug made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. “It was primarily this one drug," Trump said. "It just wiped out the virus. It wiped it out.”

The drug is not a cure, but experimental antibody treatments like the one Trump was given are among the most promising therapies being tested for treating and preventing coronavirus infections. The antibody drugs, which aim to help the immune system clear the virus, are still in testing. Their safety and effectiveness are not yet known and there is no way for the president or his doctors to know whether the drug had any effect in his case.

Trump is among fewer than 10 people who have been able to access the drug under “compassionate use” rules without enrolling in a study. He said he is “bugging” the Food and Drug Administration to quickly authorize emergency use of the drugs more broadly.

Trump said that if the antibody drugs made by Regeneron as well as Eli Lilly succeed in clinical trials, they would constitute a “cure.”

“It's a cure and I'm talking to you today because of it,” Trump said. “And, you know, because I think I could have been a ... bad victim. I fit certain categories that aren't so great. ... I'm telling you this is a total game-changer.”

The White House did not respond to questions regarding the discrepancies between Trump's account of his condition and the weekend updates given by his doctors.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-says-experimental-drugs-may-have-saved-him-from-virus/ar-BB19Sfbl?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=U453DHP

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Presidential Debate Committee Decides to Cancel Biden-Trump Debate


Saturday 10 October 2020 - 02:02

 

The Presidential Debate Committee canceled the planned October 15 showdown between President Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. 

The Wall Street Journal quoted an informed person as saying that the committee decided to cancel the debate scheduled for November 15th after the president said he would not participate in a hypothetical debate.

The organizing body said earlier that it might change the format of the second debate scheduled for October 15 from a personal meeting in Miami to a virtual meeting. 

The decision came after the President and several people in the White House were found to be infected with the Coronavirus.

For his part, Trump said he would not join a hypothetical debate, and his campaign called for the remaining two debates to be postponed. Biden's campaign, however, objected to the change of dates.

Earlier Friday, the president's campaign announced when Trump would return to his regular campaign activity since he was infected with the new Coronavirus.

The Trump campaign said in a statement that Trump will return monday for his first campaign rally since he was hit by Corona.

On Thursday, Trump's doctor said the president has completed his treatment for THE CORONA virus and has been in stable condition since returning to the White House and could return to public events as of Saturday.

Source: Sputnik

https://www.ina.iq/114070/لجنة_المناظرات_الرئاسية_تقرر_إلغاء_المناظرة_بين_بايدن_وترامب

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Inside the Trump Campaign’s Strategy to Make Voting a Tooth-and-Nail Fight

Danny Hakim and Stephanie Saul 8 hrs ago
 
 
 
 
 

Inside the Trump Campaign’s Strategy to Make Voting a Tooth-and-Nail Fight
 
 
 
 
 
 

When President Trump used the prime-time debate last week to urge his supporters to “go into the polls and watch very carefully,” he wasn’t just issuing a call for a grass-roots movement or raising the prospect of intimidation tactics at voting sites. He was also nodding to an extensive behind-the-scenes effort led by the lawyers and operatives on his campaign.

© Doug Mills/The New York Times Bill Stepien, right, President Trump’s campaign manager, has promoted deputies known for aggressive electoral tactics.

Over the summer, Mr. Trump named a new campaign manager, Bill Stepien, who was once a top aide to former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey before being fired amid the “Bridgegate” scandal. Mr. Stepien swiftly elevated a group of lieutenants focused on using aggressive electoral tactics, moves that led Marc E. Elias, the leading election lawyer for the Democratic Party, to tweet that Mr. Trump was “tripling down” on “opposing voting rights.”

© Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Trump banners adorned a home across the street from a polling place in West Miami, Fla.

One of the main architects of the effort is Justin Clark, whom Mr. Stepien promoted to deputy campaign manager. He has been viewed with suspicion among Democrats since he was recorded last year saying, “Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places,” and adding that in 2020 the party would “start playing offense a little bit.”

Other key figures in the campaign include a senior aide who once oversaw a right-wing information-gathering operation for the conservative Koch brothers; an adviser who was involved in a secretive vote-challenge operation for President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004; and a campaign counsel who is coordinating a series of lawsuits aimed at preventing the expansion of mail voting.

With polls showing Mr. Trump trailing Joseph R. Biden Jr. nationally and in most swing states, the president has increasingly focused attention on the voting process, declaring that the only way he could lose is if the election is rigged and refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. With the election less than a month away, his campaign has moved the idea of voting irregularities to the forefront of both its ground operations and its legal strategy.

© Kenny Holston for The New York Times Trump supporters outside the Fairfax County Government Center during early voting in Virginia last month. At one point, they formed a line that voters had to walk around to get to their polling location.

The campaign is trying to shape the voting process in many ways. Following the president’s lead, it has undertaken a legal and rhetorical assault on mail-in balloting, claiming with no evidence that it is rife with fraud. It is also pushing the boundaries of traditional poll monitoring in ways that many Democrats believe amount to voter intimidation. And it has put legal pressure on states to aggressively purge their voter rolls.

Campaign officials tried to downplay Democratic anxiety and insisted they wanted everyone to vote who wants to do so.

“I think we need to just realize that we’re in a political campaign and all just follow the law,” Mr. Clark said in an interview. “There are laws everywhere about how many feet you can stand outside of a polling place and what you can wear and what you can do.”

Few of the campaign’s practices have prompted as much attention as its extensive plans for poll watching. While both parties have trained official poll watchers for decades, the president has stirred alarm among Democrats and some voting experts who fear he is encouraging extralegal menacing at polling sites by far-right groups and even random Trump supporters.

At the debate Mr. Trump said that the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, should “stand by,” a comment some interpreted as a call to arms in aiding his election prospects in ways that could intimidate voters.

Those fears were heightened by an episode in Fairfax, Va., last month, when Trump supporters disrupted early voting, impeding access to a polling site.

“These are not trained poll workers, these aren’t people who were recruited to do anything,” Mr. Clark said. “There are — shocker — there’s going to be politics in a presidential race. And people are going to wave flags and show stuff and drive around and hold mini-rallies and hold sign-waving rallies and do things like that, and it happens in a lot of places.”

Mr. Clark and other campaign officials have said they will put 50,000 poll watchers and electoral observers on the ground, including at least 1,600 in Philadelphia alone. They are instructing them to record minutiae like the timing of paper jams at polling places, but also pushing beyond the typical activity by monitoring people picking up absentee ballots and videotaping the drop boxes where they deposit them. Mr. Trump has even floated the idea of sending sheriffs to the polls.

Republican administrations in several states, including the battleground of Georgia, have appointed voter fraud task forces they say are designed to root out cheating, though Democrats view the panels, stacked with Republican prosecutors, as instruments of voter suppression.

“These come out of somebody’s Republican playbook,” said Cathy Cox, a Democrat who served as Georgia’s secretary of state. “Unfortunately the goal is to intimidate people and ultimately suppress votes.”

One Trump campaign official recently emailed party officials in North Carolina and told them “to not follow the procedures outlined” in a memo sent out by the state Board of Elections. Republican officials have also been tied to efforts to aid third-party candidates who could siphon votes from Mr. Biden.

The most visible Republican effort is in the courts. Matthew Morgan, who was promoted to campaign counsel this summer, had been directing a flurry of election litigation and challenging attempts to expand mail-in voting. Like Mr. Trump, he has disparaged mail balloting, claiming without evidence that “universal vote by mail opens the door to chaos and fraud.”

Election Day operations are now coordinated by Michael Roman, a Philadelphia native who once oversaw an operation for the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch that surveilled and gathered information on liberal adversaries. He frequently airs baseless claims that Democrats are plotting to “steal the election.” Mr. Roman also played a central role in promoting a 2008 video of two members of the New Black Panther Party outside of a Philadelphia polling place, one carrying a baton; the video became a long running flash point for the right-wing media’s claims of election interference by Democrats.

“This is somebody who I think has a reputation for hyping and distorting incidents to make it appear as though Democrats are cheating, and I think it adds to an overall dangerous message about election rigging,” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law who writes the widely read Election Law Blog.

Mr. Roman declined to comment for this article.

Other notable figures doing work for the campaign include Bob Paduchik, a senior campaign adviser, who was involved in a secretive operation during the 2004 Bush campaign dubbed the “Voter Reg Fraud Strategy.” The effort was aimed at challenging the legitimacy of absentee voters, according to emails released in a lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee.

Mr. Paduchik did not respond to requests for comment.

Poll watching is regulated by differing state laws. In official training videos, Republicans instruct workers to be courteous to Democrats, dress appropriately and stay on their toes: “Do not zone out.”

This year, for the first time in more than three decades, the Republican National Committee is taking an active role in poll watching, after the courts in 2018 lifted a consent decree that had barred the R.N.C. from doing so. The ban stemmed from the committee’s involvement in an operation to intimidate New Jersey voters in 1981.

There are already signs that Republicans, who have won only one popular presidential vote since 1988, will be unusually aggressive. In recent weeks, the Trump campaign sent personnel to attempt to enter satellite facilities in Philadelphia where voters could pick up and fill out mail-in ballots — offices that are not regarded as polls. (In an interview, Mr. Morgan pushed back on that concept, saying: “They say this is not a polling place. To us this sounds absurd, when you can register, get your ballot and vote in that location. So we don’t accept that premise.”)

States led by Republicans are also working to restrict access to voting; in Texas, for instance, Gov. Greg Abbott last week moved to close many of the locations where voters can drop off their ballots.

Campaign officials said they had not been in contact with any outside groups to encourage or tacitly support unofficial poll watching and protests at polling sites, beyond the official poll watching activity that typically occurs. And they were confident there would not be a repeat of the kind of intimidation tactics that led to the consent decree.

“That’s why we are recruiting people,” Mr. Clark said. “We are training them, we are working with them to make sure that they’re doing things the right way.”

Still, Mr. Trump stirred alarm at the debate last week by equivocating when asked to condemn the Proud Boys; he only denounced them later amid criticism after the debate. When asked by The New York Times, the campaign also declined to renounce such groups.

Frank Figliuzzi, a former F.B.I. assistant director of counterintelligence, said the president’s remarks could be interpreted by violent right-wing groups as “a call to action, a call to arms.” Mr. Figliuzzi said the organizations’ online communications reveal they are making plans to gather at polling stations.

“There are specific posts, from Proud Boys, for example, that encourage it,” Mr. Figliuzzi said during a call held by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a voting rights group.

Such groups also point to curiously timed and seemingly alarmist announcements of voting fraud investigations arising from small incidents. The Justice Department, for instance, announced it was starting an inquiry after a handful of ballots were found in a garbage can in Pennsylvania, apparently accidentally discarded by a contract worker. It was a highly unusual step, coming as the Trump administration weakened longstanding department policy that discouraged making voter fraud investigations public before an election.

Like the Justice Department, Mr. Trump’s campaign is also amplifying his message.

“We’ve all seen the tweets about voter fraud and blah blah blah,” Mr. Clark said when he was recorded last year, referring to Mr. Trump’s claims. “Every time we’re in with him, he asks: ‘What are we doing about voter fraud, what are we doing about voter fraud?’”

Mr. Clark added, “He’s committed on this.”

Susan Beachy contributed research.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/inside-the-trump-campaigns-strategy-to-make-voting-a-tooth-and-nail-fight/ar-BB19SoOn?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=U453DHP

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Hope Hicks returned to the White House to pull Trump across the finish line. Then coronavirus hit.

Sarah Ellison, Josh Dawsey 9 hrs ago
 
 
 
 
 

Hope Hicks returned to the White House to pull Trump across the finish line. Then coronavirus hit.
 
 
 
 
 
 

When she returned to the White House on March 9 after two years away and a lucrative stint in corporate PR, Hope Hicks was supposed to be a talisman to re-create the magic of President Trump’s against-the-odds 2016 campaign.

© Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Hope Hicks listens as President Trump participates in a Cabinet meeting at the White House in May.

The Russia investigation that she had been caught up in was over, the impeachment had just ended and the headlines about her personal life were largely forgotten. With a new title and a bigger office, she was set to be the main liaison between the White House and the Trump reelection campaign, charged with interpreting a volatile boss and keeping him focused on a message about the thriving economy.

Two days later, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic.

Since then, the virus has claimed more than 212,000 American lives, tanked the economy and forced millions out of their jobs or school, imperiling the president’s reelection prospects. But it may never have been more palpable for Trump than the moment last week when Hicks took ill — closely foreshadowing his own sickness.

Hicks is rarely seen — her disdain for the spotlight is matched by her loyalty to the man who loves nothing more. But for the president she is ever-present. Whatever her title, her unspoken job description has been to prevent reality from intruding on him. She has managed his moods and counseled him on nearly everything, from the most substantive to the trivial. Until last week, she spent more time with him than almost anyone else outside his family.

“She is trusted because she isn’t driving her own policy agenda. She is looking out for him,” said former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who has worked closely with Hicks. “It’s so important for him to have a voice in the room that’s not trying to do anything other than be strictly helpful to him. She is a confidante, an adviser and a strategist.”

But when a reporter broke the news of Hicks’s coronavirus diagnosis last week, it exposed a contagion at the White House that has presented Trump with his biggest challenge at the defining moment of his presidency. It has placed exactly the kind of scrutiny on Hicks that she abhors and put her movements at the center of a conversation about the president’s handling of the nation’s most deadly pandemic in a century.

This story is based on interviews with 12 current and former administration officials or others close to Hicks, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak about her and her recent diagnosis.

© Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Hope Hicks, center, with White House colleagues Dan Scavino, left, and Stephen Miller, walking to board Marine One for a trip with President Trump to Ohio last month.

Hicks had tested negative last Wednesday, the morning after Trump's first debate with Joe Biden, but she started feeling unwell at a rally in Duluth, Minn., that night. She quarantined herself on Air Force One on the return trip, discreetly enough that other staffers did not know she was ill. When the plane landed, she exited from the rear entrance.

The next morning, Hicks reported for work at the White House and tested positive for the coronavirus. She returned home to begin isolating — but told only the president and a small circle of senior staff, including chief of staff Mark Meadows. Many colleagues, including one aide who had been near her during her potentially contagious period, were enraged when they only learned about it several hours later through the grapevine or White House contact tracers; two said they would have curtailed their contact with other people and taken a test immediately had they known sooner. Several aides said they suspected there might be a positive case in the West Wing when co-workers started wearing masks, but by the time they learned about Hicks that evening, testing facilities were closed.

But even after Trump learned of her diagnosis, he continued with a full day of activities, including his plan to attend, maskless, a fundraiser at his club in Bedminster, N.J., that afternoon. Only after he returned to the White House and held three tele-rallies that evening did he take a rapid test for the coronavirus and tested positive. He then took the more reliable PCR test for which it takes longer to obtain results.

In the meantime, news of Hicks’s diagnosis was broken by a Bloomberg reporter — not a statement from Hicks or the White House — at 8:09 p.m. that night. And that immediately raised questions about the president’s health and the timing of his contacts with Hicks, a regular traveler on the presidential plane and daily visitor to the Oval Office — none of which the White House was quick to answer. While Hicks was unique among White House staffers in sometimes wearing a mask, she had recently been seen maskless and in proximity to other aides as well as Trump himself. And although he had known about her diagnosis since that afternoon, and had already tested positive on his rapid test, Trump presented the news as a total surprise in an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity on Thursday evening.

“She did test positive. I just heard about this,” Trump said on air that evening, though he had known for much of the day. “And I just went out with a test, I’ll see — you know, ’cause we spend a lot of time — and the first lady just went out with a test also,” Trump added. “So whether we quarantine, or whether we have it, we don’t know.” He vaguely suggested that “people from the military or law enforcement” who he said are inclined to hug his team in a show of gratitude, may have infected her: “She’s a very warm person with them.”

A few hours later, early Friday morning, Trump tweeted the positive results from his PCR test — a startling development that served as a vividly personal rebuke to his longtime insistence that the pandemic was almost over.

The five hours between the news of her diagnosis and his falsely cemented for a few news cycles the assumption that she was the one who had infected the president with the potentially fatal virus — a great frustration for her, according to current and former White House officials. It was only after a widening circle of Trump-world figures revealed their own diagnoses, such as Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who had tested positive a day earlier, that it became clear Hicks was likely not the White House’s Patient Zero. Hicks was not even in attendance the previous Saturday for the Rose Garden announcement of Trump’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, which has since been identified as a possible superspreader event.

Hicks has been at home alone since her diagnosis last week and says she feels okay, according to friends, but is worried about the president and the White House.

© Provided by The Washington Post © Provided by The Washington Post

Hicks left the White House in March 2018, a day after she had declined to answer 155 questions from a congressional panel while admitting she had told "white lies" on the president's behalf.

She had spent almost her entire adult life working for the Trump family, having joined Ivanka Trump’s apparel company as a junior publicist two years out of Southern Methodist University. A teenage model, she had little experience in her background to predict a rapid rise to the peak of national politics. But she had a pedigree, “public relations royalty,” as one former associate put it — her father the former head of PR for the National Football League, her grandfather a top public-affairs executive for Texaco — and there are few skills Trump respects more.

In 2015, he tapped Hicks, then 26, to join him on his unlikely bid for the presidency. She established herself as a steadying presence, first on the campaign trail and later in an often treacherous West Wing, eventually becoming the youngest communications director in White House history.

“It’s a little crazy that by all accounts she is one of the youngest aides, and at the same time she’s the adult in the room,” said Joe Lockhart, who served as Bill Clinton’s press secretary and is a passionate Trump critic. “He looks around and says, ‘Who are all these people? Get me Hope.’ ”

White House spokesman Judd Deere, who was hired by Hicks, described her as “poised, no matter the situation, and totally committed to her work.”

But her proximity to Trump drew her into myriad scandals, including the drafting of a highly misleading news release that misrepresented Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer. The Mueller Report would mention her name 183 times.

By the time she testified before the House Intelligence Committee in March 2018, her personal life was also in the spotlight, thanks to her relationship with Trump’s staff secretary Rob Porter becoming public right at the time two ex-wives were accusing him of domestic abuse.

The scrutiny drove her to the brink, colleagues say. Trump never wanted her to leave. A photo taken of the two before she departed was later compared to something out of a real-life Greek myth — the president appearing to reach for her as she walks away, her right hand behind her and still in his grasp.

With a glowing recommendation from Trump and many Fox News anchors, she soon got a job with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp., about as spiritually close to the White House as possible even while she relocated to Los Angeles, where Murdoch’s son Lachlan, Fox Corp.’s CEO, is based. Before she moved, former White House deputy national security adviser Dina Powell threw her a 30th birthday party, attended by Jared and Ivanka in Manhattan, to send her off.

Hicks was slow to warm to a city where disdain for the Trump White House was widespread. She acclimated after she found a church to join, former colleagues say, but still missed her friends and family back East.

The White House never relinquished its hold. In June 2019, she was called back to Washington to testify again before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the Mueller investigation. In the hearing, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) referred to her three times as “Ms. Lewandowski,” a slip that her allies say was a deliberate effort to evoke reports that had linked her in the early days on the campaign to Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.

© Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Trump “speaks a language that no one else in the world speaks, and she understands it,” a friend of Hicks says. “That’s how useful she is to him.”

About a year ago, according to former colleagues, she started discussing her return to the White House with Trump, his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. The conversations became more frequent, and by the end of 2019, she was seriously considering a move back to Washington. Ivanka Trump and Kushner impressed upon her that not only did they want her back, they needed her to prepare for the coming campaign.

“Think of it this way,” said a friend of Hicks’s. Trump “speaks a language that no one else in the world speaks, and she understands it. That’s how useful she is to him.”

Meanwhile, she was growing bored in her work at Fox, where she earned $1.9 million in her 17 months there. In March, she agreed to return.

She would no longer have to sit in the cramped vestibule outside the Oval Office, as she did in her first turn in the White House, ceding that space to Trump’s former golf caddie turned deputy chief of staff and social media manager Dan Scavino. Instead, she moved down the hall to a more spacious office across from Kushner’s, with a new title, counselor to the president, that matched her role.

In addition to essentially translating Trump to others, from Cabinet secretaries on down, she had a way of presenting opposing viewpoints to him in a way that would not send him over the edge, her colleagues say. And she came with what Trump saw as perfect instincts — a trait that he admires in himself. In her new role, she strictly limited her behind-the-scenes dealings with the press. Aides say she cares deeply about any mention of her in a story and goes to extraordinary lengths to maintain her public reputation.

“She’s had a heavier focus on the political side and less on the communications side,” said Sanders. “She’s been more hands-on between political affairs and the campaign and with the president directly and trying to figure out how you do a campaign with all of the things going on right now.” Hicks has sometimes mused to colleagues that her current tour in the White House isn’t as fun as the early days, when she bonded with a team of top advisers who have since moved on.

Her advice to Trump, which is not always heeded, tends to focus on how to improve his public image, aides say. Hicks urged Trump to cut short his coronavirus task force briefings, which sometimes rambled for two hours and veered badly off-course.

The quality of her advice is said to vary dramatically. She had his ear at the height of the racial-justice protests that roiled Washington in June, one of the small group of advisers who helped plan his walk across Lafayette Square from the Rose Garden to the fire-damaged St. John’s Church for the controversial photo op that was preceded by the violent dispersal of protesters from the vicinity by police in riot gear. Allies, though, say she was not responsible for the widely lampooned image of Trump glumly holding a Bible for the cameras; she had suggested that he offer a prayer instead.

On other occasions, the president and his counselor are in perfect sync. She was deeply involved in planning the Republican National Convention this summer. She helped develop and vet lists of potential speakers, sometimes vetoing people she knew Trump was likely to reject. By the time the list got to him, he accepted it without a single change.

Staff writer Ashley Parker contributed to this story.

 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/hope-hicks-returned-to-the-white-house-to-pull-trump-across-the-finish-line-then-coronavirus-hit/ar-BB19RGJZ?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=U453DHP

 

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