A new report from New York Magazine takes a brief look into the second half of Donald Trump's presidency, when he was becoming "isolated" due to the COVID-19 pandemic and reportedly "started to scare even those who had been willing for years to forgive anything."
One former White House aide told NY Mag's Olivia Nuzzi that the pandemic "really f***ed up his head."
“He was already on that path, he was so desensitized and emboldened, and then during COVID, his interactions with real people were so cut off," the former aide said.
The aide went on to say that while the pandemic was raging, Trump wasn't experiencing any of its horrors. Also compounding the issue was the police killing of George Floyd, which created an "ugly cocktail" of societal upheaval -- all things that "activated his worst features."
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"He lost touch with what was real, whatever limited ability he had before to connect was just gone," the aide said, adding that "there were always weird people around him, but the more the normal people disappeared, and all he’s surrounded by are the cuckoo birds ... His brain was vulnerable too because I think he was probably whatever his version of depressed is.”
“I always wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt,” the aide said, “to see the good things, and I think a lot of that was just giving myself a reason to be there.”
Trump first mentioned the new coronavirus in public on January 22, 2020, during a visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
"We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China. It's going to be just fine," he said at the time.
The populist Republican consistently downplayed the threat posed by the pandemic, saying on numerous occasions that the virus would disappear as the weather warmed.
"Typically, it will go away in April," he said in February.
According to The Washington Post, which analyzed the president's statements, he said 34 times that the virus would disappear on its own.
Instead, the outbreak spread rapidly, forcing state governors and local authorities across the country to impose lockdowns.
By mid-March, the US had ground to a standstill, with schools closed and links to the rest of the world drastically reduced.
The economy soon collapsed and with it one of the president's main arguments for re-election.
During his first debate with Democratic rival Joe Biden, Trump maintained that he had built "the greatest economy in history." But he was harking back to pre-pandemic conditions that no longer hold.
With additional reporting by AFP
