Despite all the warnings and the cautionary tales, President Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien still managed to leave the NBA bubble to get wings from world-renowned Atlanta strip club, Magic City.
Managing Editor Genetta Adams: Stephen, you are mixing two stories together. NBA player Lou Williams left the NBA bubble to go to the strip club and he’s not tested positive for COVID-19, but he’s in trouble with the league.
Me: So Lou Williams didn’t take a photo with Robert O’Brien at the strip club?
GA: No. Different white guy. That was rapper Jack Harlow.
Me: Ahhhh, got it.
Well, O’Brien holds the distinction of being the highest-ranking member of Trump’s administration to have tested positive for the coronavirus. According to CNN, it’s unclear when O’Brien and the president last met, but the two are in close contact often.
“Their last public appearance together was over two weeks ago during a visit to US Southern Command in Miami on July 10,” CNN notes.
O’Brien is reportedly experiencing “mild symptoms” and is “self-isolating and working from a secure location off-site,” according to an unnamed statement to the press from the White House. Get this: O’Brien’s staff didn’t even know he’d tested positive and only learned of the news after news outlets began reporting it.
From CNN:
A senior administration official told CNN that O’Brien has been working from home since last week. A source familiar said O’Brien was last in the office last Thursday, when he abruptly left the White House. The White House statement said there is “no risk of exposure to the President or the Vice President.”
The National Security Council chief was accompanied on the trip to Europe by Secret Service agents, staffers and multiple reporters. Multiple pictures released from the trip showed O’Brien neither practicing social distancing nor wearing a mask.
At this point, how has the president or the vice president not tested positive for the coronavirus? Several staffers have already tested positive, not to mention the number of Secret Service agents who have also had the virus and yet, somehow, both the president and his robotic VP have escaped the virus.
I mean, just look at this: “Last week, administration officials were alerted that a cafeteria employee on White House grounds had tested positive. Kimberly Guilfoyle, the President’s son’s girlfriend and top campaign fundraising official, tested positive before a trip to Mt. Rushmore earlier this month. Multiple Secret Service agents and campaign staffers tested positive after becoming infected while preparing for the President’s Tulsa campaign rally in June. Vice President Mike Pence’s communications aide Katie Miller tested positive for coronavirus in May, and one of the President’s personal valets tested positive earlier that week,” CNN reports.
Despite switching his tune for the American people, the president continues not to wear a mask or social distance, and CNN notes that many White House staffers seem to believe that they don’t have to either because they are tested every day.
If for some reason—like having the coronavirus—it makes it impossible for O’Brien to continue his work with the president, Trump won’t care, considering O’Brien is the president’s fourth national security adviser since taking office.