Coronavirus continues to close in on Donald Trump and the White House, with the president's valet and the vice president's press secretary having tested positive this week and 11 Secret Service agents currently having active cases of COVID-19.
"All of which raised an obvious question: If it is so hard to maintain a healthy environment at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the most famous office address in the world, where staff members are tested regularly, some as often as every day, then how can businesses across the country without anywhere near as much access to the same resources establish a safe space for their workers?" New York Times reporters Peter Baker and Michael Crowley wondered on Friday.
The newspaper interviewed former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Intergovernmental Affairs Julliette Kayyem.
“The virus is in the White House, any way you look at it,” Kayyem explained. “Whether it’s contained or not, we will know soon enough. But the fact that a place — secured, with access to the best means to mitigate harm — is not able to stop the virus has the potential of undermining confidence in any capacity to defeat it.”
The case of Katie Miller, the VP's press secretary who is married to White House advisor Stephen Miller, has alarmed the White House.
"The latest positive test further rattled a White House already on edge after the president’s military valet came down with the virus. Katie Miller, the vice president’s press secretary and a top spokeswoman for the White House coronavirus efforts, had tested negative on Thursday but then tested positive on Friday morning," the newspaper reported. "But Ms. Miller has been in the vicinity of the president in recent days, including during his Fox News appearance on Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial and again on Thursday in the Rose Garden. Her husband is in meetings with the president even more frequently as the architect of his crackdown on immigration, although he and other aides have sat farther away than they have in the past."