I was surprised that Rhode Island would take such a measure without at least talking to me. I called Governor Raimondo and expressed my displeasure and concern with her actions. A quarantine was one thing. Other states have done it. A blockade is something else. I made the point that many people from Rhode Island traveled into New York for business and pleasure. We would later impose a quarantine on Rhode Island, but if we were to set up blockades, it would be detrimental to both states.
Within minutes our worst fears came true. The news reported that while boarding Air Force One, President Trump said he was considering a blockade for all of New York—referencing his conversation with Governor DeSantis. It was a dramatic, obscene threat; there haven’t been blockades in this country since the Civil War. And the psychological damage and resulting stigma that such a move would cause New York would be devastating.
I had spoken to President Trump earlier in the day about additional aid for the state, in the form of temporary hospital beds. He never mentioned anything about a blockade. But that meant little.
The truth is, it would have wreaked havoc in the financial markets as well. Wall Street is the financial center of the world. To blockade New York is to effectively close Wall Street and the markets. I knew that was the only thing that would stop Trump. Any political benefit he would get in Florida would be overwhelmed by the political cost he would pay for causing the markets to plummet. But he had to hear the message.
I called Rich Azzopardi, my communications guru, and told him to set up whatever television interviews he could get as soon as possible. About fifteen minutes later I was live on CNN being interviewed by Ana Cabrera. She asked me first about Rhode Island, and I said, “I think what they did was wrong. I think it was reactionary. I think it was illegal but we will work it out amicably, I’m sure…If they don’t roll back that policy, I’m going to sue Rhode Island because it is clearly unconstitutional.” Ana then asked me about “Trump’s newly floated New York lockdown,” and I said if it happened, the stock market would “drop like a stone…It would be chaos and mayhem and that would drop this economy in a way, I think, that it wouldn’t recover for months if not years.”
The sensationalism of Trump’s proposal was not lost on the press, and my remarks generated a firestorm. About thirty minutes after my CNN appearance, Melissa walked into my office and told me that she had heard from Rhode Island that they would reverse the executive order. That night the president reversed course on the idea of a New York blockade via tweet.
MARCH 29 | 7,195 NEW CASES | 8,503 HOSPITALIZED | 237 DEATHS
“Everyone is afraid.”
THERE WAS A FRESH RUMOR about a new possible COVID drug nearly every week. And there were constant conversations about the race to a vaccine. People were so desperate to find a cure they seized on any ray of hope. The president encouraged drug companies to work diligently, but he didn’t really have to. The billions of dollars that a company that develops the cure to COVID-19 will make are likely incentive enough.
The Trump administration was suggesting that we would have a vaccine by the end of the year. This would be perfect timing for the Trump administration, because it would offer optimism through Election Day. Yet they had scarce facts. Even if development of a vaccine were expedited and testing facilitated, there were still the issues of mass production and the country’s capacity to afford and implement hundreds of millions of vaccines.
In the midst of this, hydroxychloroquine dropped from the sky and into President Trump’s mouth. The president took every opportunity he could to explain to Americans that hydroxychloroquine was a very effective cure for this disease. He said he spoke to doctors and patients who had been treated and everyone agreed it was the “miracle drug.” The president’s media mouthpieces immediately amplified the chant. Watching Fox News on TV, one would be convinced that hydroxychloroquine could immediately cure COVID, even the common cold, and increase weight loss, testosterone, and hair growth. Hydroxychloroquine was the silver bullet.
But the medical community was skeptical. Hydroxychloroquine had been on the market before and was used to treat malaria. Bona fide medical professionals raised questions about the risks and doubted its effectiveness to treat COVID. But the president and his supporters were 100 percent convinced. As usual, the president needed a villain, and he suggested that political forces were conspiring to keep the COVID virus alive to hurt him and his reelection and were therefore trying to discredit hydroxychloroquine. The president was so successful in communicating his message there was a run on the drug. Pharmacies and suppliers couldn’t keep up. Patients who normally use hydroxychloroquine to treat illnesses such as lupus couldn’t get it because the demand was so high from doctors prescribing it for their patients. New York had to pass a regulation limiting prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine to fourteen days so there was a supply for people who normally relied on it.
At the same time, the president and the FDA wanted to expedite testing for the drug. Because New York had the highest number of cases, it was the obvious and best location to do it. Hydroxychloroquine’s potential was the one topic that Trump repeatedly raised in every conversation I had with him for weeks.
Hospitals in New York began participating in a standard testing regiment with FDA protocols to see if the drug actually worked. The test took about five weeks, but the president was eager to get the results and communicated total certainty
