Schadenfreude: President Donald Trump and his wife Melania have announced that they have tested positive for the coronavirus and are isolating in the White House.

  It was only a matter of time.

  Trump, who most of the time has refused to wear a mask and won’t let people wear one in his presence, has held huge rallies of people who don’t wear them either. He said on Twitter, “We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!”

  At age 74, Trump is at high risk for dying of the disease.

  Vice President Mike Pence is reported to have tested negative.

  The news broke after Trump’s close adviser Hope Hicks, who’s been travelling with Trump on campaign stops, had been diagnosed with the coronavirus yesterday morning. She is reported to have been not feeling well on Wednesday. News of her infection was leaked to the press, not announced, and there’s some evidence that the White House was trying to keep it on the down low.

  Hicks, 31, traveled with Trump to Pennsylvania on Saturday, to Cleveland for the debate, and to Minnesota for another rally. She was photographed without a mask at the Pennsylvania rally clapping to the Village People’s “YMCA” and in Cleveland getting off Air Force One.

  It’s unlikely that the President, First Lady, and Hicks are the end of this trail of infections. Trump is reported to have prepared for the debate in a small room in which no one was wearing a mask. Former Vice President Joe Biden stood only a few feet from the shouting President during Tuesday night’s debate.

Denial Ain’t a River: Trump has made virus denial a feature of his campaign, claiming the pandemic is nearly over and a vaccine is only weeks away from release.

  But not everyone is so casual. The Trump campaign relocated a rally planned for Saturday night in La Crosse, Wisconsin after the local mayor pleaded with the campaign to move it because of rising cases of the coronavirus. 

  Three of the four metropolitan areas in the US with the most cases per capita are in northeast Wisconsin, and one hospital in Green Bay was nearly full this week. Trump was still planning on going ahead with rallies in Wisconsin, a key battleground state that is considered a “red zone” because of the high rate of infections. 

 Researchers at Cornell University analyzed 38 million articles written in English about the virus and concluded that Trump is the biggest purveyor of misinformation about the virus. They call it the “infodemic.”

 The study’s lead author, Sarah Evanega, the director of the Cornell Alliance for Science, to The NY Times, “The biggest surprise was that the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid.”

  This morning, 207,816 Americans are dead of the coronavirus and 7,279,065 have been infected, including at least three inside the White House.

Econ 101: Major companies announced big layoffs this week as the pandemic continues to stall the economy. United and American Airlines, 30,000; The Walt Disney Company, 28,000; Allstate, 3,800.

  The Labor Department reported yesterday that 787,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week.

Pre-judged: Despite President Trump’s debate claim about his Supreme Court nominee that “you don’t know her view on Roe v. Wade,” it’s in print. Before she became an appeals court judge, Amy Coney Barrett was among those who signed a 2006 newspaper ad that supported overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision establishing the right to abortion.

  Trump has promised to appoint justices who will overturn the right to abortion. The ad in The South Bend Tribune called  Roe v. Wade “an exercise of raw judicial power” and urged overturning its “barbaric legacy.”

The Vote: As President Trump and some Republican leaders rail on about the danger of massive vote fraud, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued an order making it harder for some people to vote. He says all counties in the state may have only one location where voters can drop off mail-in ballots in person. Abbott said the move is necessary for voting security. He said in a statement that “These enhanced security protocols will ensure greater transparency and will help stop attempts at illegal voting.” 

  Several counties had opened satellite drop-off locations that must close by Friday. Now, Texans will have to do some driving if they want to drop off their ballot. The size of just a few counties: Crockett, 2808 square miles; Crosby, 5899; Hudspeth, 4571; Pecos, 4764.

First F-ing Lady: A former aide to Melania Trump who’s about to publish a tell-all book has released a profanity-laced tape recording of the First Lady complaining about the burdens of Christmas decorations and mocking the plight of migrant children separated from their parents at the border in 2018. 

  “I’m working like a — my ass off at Christmas stuff,” Mrs. Trump laments to the former aide, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff. “You know, who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decoration?”

  She goes on, “I say that I’m working on Christmas planning for the Christmas, and they said, ‘Oh, what about the children?’ That they were separated.” Punctuating her complaint with another obscenity she says,  “Where they were saying anything when Obama did that?”

  It’s sad. She’s so well dressed.

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