President Trump and the the First Lady have Covid. From the NYT:

Even if Mr. Trump does not become seriously ill, the positive test could prove devastating to his political fortunes given his months of playing down the enormity of the pandemic even as the virus was still ravaging the country and killing about 1,000 Americans every day. He has repeatedly predicted the virus was “going to disappear,” asserted that it was under control and insisted that the country was “rounding the corner” to the end of the crisis. He has scorned the advice of scientists, saying they were mistaken about the severity of the situation.

For months, Mr. Trump has refused to wear a mask in public on all but a few occasions and has repeatedly questioned their effectiveness. And as recently as Tuesday, at their opening debate, he mocked Mr. Biden for wearing one. “I don’t wear masks like him,” the president said, his voice dripping with derision. “Every time you see him, he’s got a mask.”

More:

In his eighth decade of life, Mr. Trump belongs to the age category deemed most vulnerable to the coronavirus. Eight out of every 10 deaths attributed to it in the United States have been among those 65 and older. In private discussions, Mr. Trump has been fatalistic with associates when talking about whether he or others would get sick from the virus, describing it as essentially a roll of the dice.

Watch this short clip from the debate the other night:

You might think that this is another episode in a reality show. It feels theatrical. But that seems insufficient. This feels like we’re nearing the climax of a Greek tragedy. Plague. Hubris calling down nemesis. Character being destiny.

Let us pray for the recovery of the President and the First Lady. Even if you have no love for them, you do love your country, I expect, and your country doesn’t need this crisis. But here we are. One month before the election, here we are.

The campaign is essentially over now. Assuming that the president is going to recover, it’s impossible to see how, so far behind in the polls, he turns his fortunes around.

UPDATE: I’m with Jesse:

We sincerely pray the President& the First Lady do not have the worst of this disease.We must all pray for the full recovery of the President& his wife.For whatever religious or political persuasion you may be, we must all pray as millions of people are affected by this disease.

— Rev Jesse Jackson Sr (@RevJJackson) October 2, 2020

UPDATE.2: Good on you, Biden:

Jill and I send our thoughts to President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump for a swift recovery. We will continue to pray for the health and safety of the president and his family.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 2, 2020

UPDATE.3: Folks, I’m not saying that Trump shouldn’t campaign (though he’ll obviously have to do so on social media and maybe by video). I’m saying that the normal campaign is over. With one month to go, it is unlikely that we will have any more debates. No more presidential rallies — which Trump needed to rally his base, given how far behind he is. Biden could afford to campaign from his basement, because he has such a formidable lead.

Biden has also been raising massive amounts of money, while the Trump campaign has been hurting. If you were a Republican donor, would you give money today to the campaign of a president who has just been diagnosed with Covid, and is showing symptoms?

I hope he recovers, but his acquiring the virus under these conditions, especially days after ridiculing Biden for being overcautious, invites scrutiny and judgment of his leadership. It is a matter of political psychology.

Reagan’s communications director Michael Deaver had a theory. Every time he was able to control the environment in which Reagan faced the press, he made sure that the president was in front of American flags, or some other patriotic backdrop. Deaver explained that it didn’t really matter much what the president said; what people saw on the evening news, or on the front page of the morning paper, was an image of the president in front of flags. Deaver was practicing political psychology in the visual age.

Similarly, I have heard from Trump-supporting friends this morning saying that Trump was actually correct to chastise Biden for his over-reliance on masks, because [insert facts and logic here]. Even if their facts and logic are correct, that completely misses the point of political psychology. What the nation has seen is a president who, all year long, has been downplaying the seriousness of Covid. On Tuesday night, in front of a national audience, he made fun of his opponent for being a scaredy-cat for wearing his Covid mask too often. By week’s end, Trump had been tested positive for the virus, and was reportedly showing symptoms.

We don’t know yet how this is going to affect the nation’s political perceptions, but I think that the power of the narrative that we have seen with our own eyes is going carry more psychological and emotional weight than any kind of logical analysis. Why should the fact that Reagan appeared in front of American flags carry more weight than his actual words in response to media questions? Well, it did, because we are not brains on a stick. Why did the fact that candidate George H.W. Bush held a rally at a flag factory matter? The media made fun of it as a pathetic sop to patriotism — but the pictures conveyed that Bush was a solid patriot, while his opponent Dukakis, hey, who could be sure about that guy?

The clip of Trump making fun of Biden for masks at the debate is going to be played a thousand million times between now and Election Day. This is going to matter, whether any of us like it or not.

UPDATE.4: And I say that as someone who is more likely than not to vote for him, because of the radicalism that the Democratic Party represents on cultural issues. But I do not intend to deceive myself about the kind of man for whom I will be voting, if indeed I vote for Trump.

UPDATE.5: Jim Geraghty at National Review:

I don’t think anyone knows how this will affect the presidential election. This could spur a wave of sympathy for the president — as well as the First Lady and Hicks and the White House staff. No doubt some will see this as comeuppance for a White House that disdained masks, quarreled with Dr. Fauci, and apparently did not practice precautionary measures consistently enough.

More:

However, this is a giant flashing neon sign that we must see this problem with clear eyes and not flinch in the face of scary truths. We’re not done with this pandemic, and this pandemic isn’t done for us. That vaccine is getting closer, but we can’t get lax or reckless yet. I’m thinking of all of those people who assured us for months that “herd immunity was just around the corner” or “the outbreak is gone in most places or on the way out” . . . and I wonder what they’re thinking at this moment. As I wrote on September 15, “the primary problem in this coronavirus has been that many, many Americans, both in government and outside of government, insisted it wouldn’t be that bad and thus underestimated the risk to themselves and others.”

A couple of months ago, I spoke to someone on staff at a nursing home in Baton Rouge. She told me that there are two kinds of people in this country city: those who have had Covid (or know someone who has), and who therefore take it really seriously, including wearing masks — and those who have not, and who are cavalier about the virus.