For New Yorkers like Amy Grimm, the best way to describe her feelings about Donald Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis is qualified sympathy.
“I am sympathetic. I wish him and Melania a speedy recovery,” Grimm said, pausing for the inevitable “but” that came next.
“But, at the same time — I hate to be this person — but it’s him, and he’s a terrible person. I feel like karma, what goes around comes around.”
With a hint of disdain, Grimm said: “It is what it is.” It’s a paraphrase of an August interview in which Trump referred to the number of dead in the United States from coronavirus.
Trump announced in a tweet early Friday morning that he and First Lady Melania Trump were diagnosed with COVID-19 and were beginning the quarantine process.
It’s not clear where the president contracted the virus. Trump’s positive test came after one of his chief aides, Hope Hicks, tested positive for the virus Thursday. She experienced symptoms during an event with the president in Minnesota on Wednesday.
A White House official said Trump was experiencing mild symptoms of COVID-19 Friday.
To date, New York City has logged more than 240,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 19,000 deaths, with another 4,600 listed as probable deaths. New Yorkers know intimately the pain the virus has caused — a pain many feel the president has rarely empathized with.
“I think it’s funny that he was against wearing masks and thought everything was fake, fake news, fake news. I guess we got some real news now,” said Luciano Suriel as he waited for a bus outside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
In a sign of how Trump’s exaggeration, distortion of the truth, and outright lies have impacted how the public views news about the president, Grimm at first doubted whether the positive test was even real.
“After first I was a little skeptical. I was texting with my dad this morning and I was saying, ‘You know, do you really think he has COVID?'”
Little faith Trump will change
More than 208,000 people in the United States have died from the virus, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University, Grimm doubts that contracting the virus will change Trump.
“I would hope that this would make him and Melania a little more sympathetic to people who have had the virus and whose families have lost loved ones due to the virus. But I have my doubts,” she said.
“I’m a lifelong New Yorker, and we all knew that he was a carnival barker and a clown and obnoxious and did things for publicity. So I have my doubts.”
In recordings by author and veteran journalist Bob Woodward, Trump admitted early in the pandemic that he was playing down the threat of the virus. He often compares it to the flu and has said many times that it will just go away.
When New Yorker Michael Mack was asked if he thinks having the virus will change how Trump approaches the pandemic, his response was pointed: “Hell, no.”
“He’s stubborn. He’s very obdurate. He doesn’t care,” Mack said.
WATCH | How Trump’s diagnosis will affect his re-election campaign:
The news that U.S. President Donald Trump has tested positive for the novel coronavirus has dropped a new layer of disarray on the presidential election. Our Washington correspondent Alex Panetta says U.S. election law has no clear path for such a situation. 4:16
Randall Rasey, a commercial lawyer, also doesn’t see the virus influencing Trump’s views.
“I think his view is politically based and not reality based, so I don’t think it’s going to change anything,” he said.
Lindsay Hubert said the president often holds competing views of issues as they relate to others versus how they relate to himself.
“Like the mail-in voting, he votes by mail, but nobody else should,” Hubert said. “His wife is an immigrant. But other people shouldn’t be given that opportunity.”
Evidence that the president’s diagnosis wasn’t having a substantive impact on White House protocol came Friday, when a senior official said masks would not be made mandatory at the White House.
The official described facial coverings as a “personal choice,” according to the Associated Press.
More election chaos
Trump’s diagnosis comes 32 days before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, adding a new layer of confusion and chaos to an already contentious race.
Trump cancelled a trip to Florida on Friday. With stops upcoming in Wisconsin on Saturday and Arizona on Monday, his campaign announced the events were shifting to virtual platforms or being temporarily postponed.
The Trump campaign has temporarily postponed events involving Trump’s children, but Vice-President Mike Pence, who tested negative and was given a clean bill of health by White House doctors Friday, will continue with his schedule.
At the bus stop in Brooklyn, Suriel said he thinks Trump’s diagnosis will hurt his chances of being re-elected.
“He’s not going to have as much momentum when he gets out, of what, I think it’s two weeks’ quarantine? [Democratic candidate Vice-President Joe] Biden better jump on this right now.”
But in such an unpredictable election cycle, where views of the president are so deeply entrenched, Hubert said it’s impossible to know what impact this will have.
“It’s so close, who knows? It could do nothing.”
