Inside Donald Trump and Jared Kushners Two Months of Magical Thinking – Vanity Fair

On the afternoon of Thursday, March 19, Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office obsessing over the beaches in Florida. CNN footage of shirtless spring breakers packed onto the sand while the coronavirus pandemic raged sparked national outrageand pressure on Trump to act. The next morning, New York governor Andrew Cuomo would announce strict stay-at-home orders for residents, but Floridas Republican governor Ron DeSantis refused to close his states beaches, a position even Floridas Republican senator Rick Scott called reckless. Lots of people were telling Trump to lean on Ron, a Trump adviser said.

Trumps view of the situation was complicated, though. For weeks, his top medical advisers, Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci, had been hectoring him about the seriousness of the crisis and the necessity of swift action, testing, lockdowns. We knew from the beginning...we were going to get cases in the United States, Fauci told me.

We knew we were in for a very serious problem.

Sometimes, Trump listened. The disease was coming closer to his own circlechief of staff Mark Meadows and communications director Stephanie Grisham were self-quarantiningand the number of cases in New York City had reached 4,000. But the substrate of his thinking hadnt evolved, and it kept reappearing. He worried about the economy, which was crucial to his reelection. He vented to friends that the doctors were alarmist, and that the crisis was something Democrats and the media were doing to him. Trump was obsessed with Pelosi, Schiff, the media, just obsessed. He would say, Theyre using it against me! recalled a Republican in frequent contact with the White House. It was unhinged.

Florida was a test case of his magical thinking about the novel coronavirus: That it was temporary, that warm weather would make it disappear. But eight Florida residents had already died from COVID-19 and more than 400 had been diagnosed. Given the elderly population, if that took off, it would be a nightmare, a person close to Trump told me. At an advisers urging, Trump called DeSantis to tell him to shut down the beaches.

Ron, what are you doing down there? Trump said, according to a person briefed on the call.

I cant ban people from going on the beach, DeSantis snapped, surprising Trump.

These pictures look really bad to the rest of the country, Trump said.

Listen, were doing it the right way, DeSantis said.

DeSantiss intransigence backed Trump into a corner. The 41-year-old governor was a Trump protg and a crucial ally in a must-win state. Trump is worried about Florida, electorally, said a Republican who spoke with Trump around this time. Trump did something he rarely does: He caved. He told DeSantis the beaches could stay open.

I understand what youre saying, Trump said, and hung up.

It was inevitable that Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar would become the West Wing COVID-19 scapegoat. An avuncular Yale educated lawyer with owlish glasses and a beard, Azar was not, as Trump liked to say, out of central casting. Equally bad, Azar was a Bushie, as Trump called Republicans who served in George W. Bushs administration. Azar was briefed on a new and dangerous coronavirus sweeping the Chinese city of Wuhan by CDC director Robert Redfield on January 3but he struggled to communicate this knowledge to the president. At the time of the outbreak, Trump had soured on Azar, whom he blamed for his weak health care polling numbers. Trump thought Azar was a disaster. He is definitely on the gangplank, a person close to Trump told me. Azar wasnt able to speak to Trump about the virus for two weeks, even though Trump called him during this period to scream that the White Houses ban on e-cigarettes, a response to a health crisis that he believed could help him politically, had become a drag on his poll numbers. I never should have done this fucking vaping thing! Trump told Azar on January 17, a person familiar with the call told me.

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Inside Donald Trump and Jared Kushners Two Months of Magical Thinking - Vanity Fair