“I’m running a big, big operation,” the president said when I reached him again by phone on Saturday morning, March 28. The country had surpassed 2,000 deaths and officially had more reported cases than any other country. The day before, Trump had signed a $2 trillion pandemic response bill. “The wo...

On March 26, a reporter asked Trump about the language he used to describe the virus. “I talk about the Chinese virus and—and I mean it. That’s where it came from,” he said. “And this was a Chinese virus.” Later that day, Trump and Xi spoke again by phone about the virus. At the start of the call, T...

In late March, Kushner and Pence had a meeting with the data people at FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They gave Kushner a list showing the country would need 130,000 ventilators by April 1. The message sank in. It meant possibly 130,000 people were going to die because he didn’t get ...

Three days after Trump announced “15 Days to Slow the Spread,” I conducted my eighth interview with him. “This thing is a nasty—it’s a nasty situation,” Trump told me about the coronavirus on March 19, 2020. Earlier that day, California governor Gavin Newsom had become the first governor to order re...

For Redfield it was one of the most difficult times of his four-decade professional life. “15 Days to Slow the Spread” was important, but not enough. In private he told others of his deepest fears. “It’s not to stop the spread,” Redfield said. “We were now in a race. I think we all understood now we...

Trump announced the “15 Days to Slow the Spread” guidelines the next day, March 16, at the coronavirus task force briefing. Asked about his frequent assertion that the situation was under control, Trump acknowledged, “The virus, no, that’s not under control for anyplace in the world.” He added, “I w...

and on the topic of candidates song choices....... biden plays this Biden then played a “Despacito,” a top song from a few years ago, that means “slowly” in English. The song is sexually graphic in nature. The song, translated into English, states (warning—explicit lyrics): I want to breathe in you...

Trump gathered his team in the Oval Office that Sunday, March 15. Pence, Mnuchin, Fauci and Birx crowded around the Resolute Desk. Fauci and Birx unrolled the guidelines to Trump. Physical separation is the key, they said. We should close down for at least 15 days to see what happens. They wanted to...

Birx, Fauci and Kushner had privately been exchanging drafts of guidelines that would ask Americans to take “15 Days to Slow the Spread” of the coronavirus and effectively shut down the country. They’d sent them back and forth a few times, and Jared Kushner had looked at a draft and made some commen...

On March 13, Trump declared a national emergency, the sixth of his presidency. He also announced the launch of a Google-related website that could “determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location.” This would “cover the country in large part.” Shortly ...

“This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history,” Trump said at 9:00 that evening. “From the beginning of time, nations and people have faced unforeseen challenges, including large-scale and very dangerous health threats,” Trump read. “This is the ...

The New York Times headline the morning of Tuesday, March 10: “Markets Spiral as Globe Shudders Over Virus.” The markets had plunged the day before. The Times wrote it was “their sharpest drop in more than a decade.” In remarks to reporters following a meeting with Republican senators, Trump said, “...

On March 9, with the stock market reeling, Trump tweeted, “Last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about...

Two days after giving a green light to a weekend movie and a workout at the gym, Fauci appeared on MSNBC on March 2 sounding subdued and wearing a white coat. “We’re dealing with an evolving situation,” he said. The disease had “now reached outbreak proportions and likely pandemic proportions, if yo...

On the morning of Friday, February 28, eight months before election day 2020, Trump’s longtime campaign manager Brad Parscale was feeling confident. At times, he was exuberant. With a bushy, honey-red beard, a full 6-foot-8, he sat comfortably in his 14th-floor office at Trump campaign headquarters ...

Kushner considered one of Trump’s greatest skills “figuring out how to trigger the other side by picking fights with them where he makes them take stupid positions.” He recalled Trump’s July 27, 2019, tweets about the district represented by the late Black Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings, whi...

According to Kushner, one of Trump’s greatest impacts was on the Republican Party. “Neither party is really a party. They’re collections of tribes,” he observed at one White House meeting. “The Republican Party was a collection of a bunch of tribes. Look at the Republican Party platform. It’s a docu...

Kushner said one of Trump’s greatest strengths was “he somehow manages to have his enemies self-destruct and make stupid mistakes. He’s just able to play the media like a fiddle, and the Democrats too. They run like dogs after a fire truck, chasing whatever he throws out there. And then he solves th...

By early 2020, Kushner thought Trump had assembled a better and more dedicated White House team than they’d had before. “In the beginning,” Kushner told others, referring to the first years of the administration, “20 percent of the people we had thought Trump was saving the world, and 80 percent tho...

Kushner was by turns frustrated and bemused by other people’s confusion about Trump. “He’s unpredictable, which is a great strength. Nobody knows where that line is” that Trump won’t cross. According to Kushner, Trump himself does not know. “This is the difference between a businessperson and politi...

Kushner had no official title during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign but had made many operational decisions—especially on costs, which he knew Trump constantly monitored. Now Kushner played a major role in the 2020 reelection campaign, one he called “a perfect, well-oiled machine” in contrast to...

When I first heard about Jared Kushner, he seemed to worship his father-in-law, acting as an ever-loyal cheerleader and true believer. He once told associates, “When I disagree with the president, I always say, okay, what am I missing? Because he’s proven time and time again to have good instincts.”...

That same day, health officials announced the first U.S. death from Covid-19 had occurred overnight in Washington State. At the Coronavirus Task Force briefing at the White House that afternoon, Redfield said of the deceased, “The investigation at this time shows no evidence of link to travel or a k...

Fauci, who was fast becoming the most recognizable face of U.S. government’s coronavirus response, appeared on the Today show on February 29. NBC reporter Peter Alexander asked the question on many people’s minds: “So, Dr. Fauci, it’s Saturday morning in America. People are waking up right now with ...

In late February, China finally allowed World Health Organization scientists to enter the country to investigate. Redfield had wanted to send his team of investigators but only one CDC official was allowed in the group. Fauci’s deputy director, Dr. Clifford Lane, was the only other American allowed ...