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As the eyes of the world are on Washington, D. C., following the announcement that President Trump and the first lady tested positive for COVID-19, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter joined Seattle’s Morning News.

While there are still a lot of unknowns, there has been some speculation that as events on the president’s calendar get canceled, this could also delay the confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett.

“I’ve definitely seen that, too,” Fahrenthold said. “I mean, Coney Barrett had contact with the president on Saturday, and if she decides to quarantine, that might mean — they were running on a pretty tight timeline anyway, if she decides to quarantine, that could push it all back, and it could mean the vote would come after the election.”

“Members of Congress also have had a lot of contact with Trump, but in Congress, it’s really sort of up to you. The Congress is kind of the Wild West on COVID, so if members want to quarantine, they can. But they don’t have to,” he added. “I imagine many Republicans will not.”

³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio’s Dave Ross has heard that many White House staff spend the day unmasked, though they do get tested often. Fahrenthold confirmed that.

“The description of Trump’s debate prep, … was Trump, Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Hope Hicks, and I think some other people in a small conference room for days at a time, unmasked, in a little space,” he said, as an example. “Why not do that outside? … It’s one thing to try to claim political credit by telling people that it’s getting better. But to pretend like, as you said, in your own life, that this disease doesn’t exist and risk your own health? It’s just amazing.”

It goes without saying, Fahrenthold noted, that we’ve never had a situation like this in an American presidential election.

“Apparently, if a nominee dies before Election Day, the party can replace them,” he explained. “The question is, can the states print out ballots and what about all the ballots where people have already cast votes? If Trump is incapacitated, I imagine that the election will just carry on. People would campaign in his stead, and he’ll try to recover before Election Day. Same if Biden gets sick. I don’t see them replacing, either party replacing their candidate unless, God forbid, one of them were to die.”

As far as the atmosphere in D.C. after the president’s diagnosis, Fahrenthold says it seems most people were just in shock.

“On the one hand, the Trumps, the whole family, and Trump particularly, have been courting this risk for so long … Trump and his family have been doing events unmasked, indoors, with lots and lots of people packed together, the exact sort of thing you’re not supposed to be doing,” he said. “And I think maybe they just felt like they were invincible because they’ve been doing this for a long time and nothing bad had happened yet. So on the one hand, it’s not that surprising, but the other hand, it is surprising. The President of the United States has a potentially deadly and incurable virus.”

“We haven’t had something like that in this country for years and years,” he added. “It’s hard to know how people are going to react.”

In terms of how this impacts his supporters, Fahrenthold hopes it convinces more people that this virus is not a hoax and that masks can help to reduce our risk.

“I hope it convinces people who believe COVID is a hoax and believe masks don’t work, I hope it convinces some of those people that that’s wrong and they should start protecting themselves just for their own health,” he said. “What does it mean for his political support? I think you’d have to know more about the course of the disease. If he’s like Bolsonaro in Brazil, who had a pretty mild case and got over it, it only reinforced Bolsonaro’s denialism. And, you know, ‘it’s not a big deal. Look at me. I got over it. I was fine.'”

“If it causes, God forbid, any sort of serious medical complications like what happened with Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the U.K., you know, that could change people’s perceptions of Trump, could change Trump’s own beliefs,” he added. “I don’t know, we’re so close to the election though, I feel like so many of the attitudes about him are kind of baked in. It may be hard for anything to change it, even the president’s illness.”

If the president remains asymptomatic or only has a mild illness, Dave Ross said he could potentially come out after and say, “I got through it. What’s the big deal?”

“That would be the worst outcome,” Fahrenthold said. “… If that’s his message afterwards, it would be the worst outcome for public health because people would be like, ‘Oh, yeah,’ even more emboldened about let’s get it and get it over with.”

“I hope he recovers asymptomatically, hope he doesn’t have any sort of illness. Apparently he’s had mild symptoms today. But … however he recovers, I hope the message people don’t take away from it is: ‘This isn’t a big deal. I don’t mind catching this disease.'”

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