President Trump was always a reluctant handshaker. Now the known germophobe won’t be forced to extend the greeting.
As coronavirus cases with White House links keep cropping up, questions are being raised regarding whether Trump will change how he goes about his administration’s business and reelection campaign.
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One way public health officials have suggested slowing the spread of the novel respiratory illness is not to shake hands. Trump this week followed their advice by not pressing the flesh with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.
“We looked at each other and said, ‘What are we going to do?’” Trump told reporters Thursday. “You know, it’s sort of a weird feeling.”
It’s unclear whether Trump has taken similar precautions, such as elbow bumps in lieu of handshakes, in all his public and private meetings and engagements. A spokesman for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who was at the White House on Friday amid negotiations for a legislative response to the coronavirus, declined to comment on the record.
Republican strategist Henry Barbour said he would counsel Trump “not to shake hands until this pandemic is behind us.”
“Everyone needs to be cautious and protect yourselves and others,” Barbour told the Washington Examiner.
Fellow strategist Chris DeRose agreed, adding, “The stakes are too high for the president to get sick.”
Questions about Trump’s approach to the crisis are swirling after he interacted with a Brazilian official who tested positive for the coronavirus and as Ivanka Trump did the same with an Australian minister.
During his prime-time Oval Office address to the nation, Trump said his team was “coordinately directly with communities with the largest outbreaks, and we have issued guidance on school closures, social distancing, and reducing large gatherings.”
Yet his campaign came under fire from Fox News for not immediately canceling scheduled rallies and events, while mocking 2020 Democratic presidential rivals Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders for shelving theirs.
Trump has since nixed a Western swing to Nevada and Colorado, as well as a “Catholics for Trump” stop that was slated during a Wisconsin trip. Plans for a previously unannounced March 25 rally in Florida were being reconsidered, according to the president.
“I’m not going to do it if I think it’s going to be negative at all,” he told reporters Thursday. “I don’t want people dying.”
For Reagan biographer and historian Craig Shirley, Trump “should do what he is comfortable doing.”
“I think he would be applauded by his supporters, and knocked by his opponents, if he shook some hands, but my guess is most people will now not offer their hand to be shaken as they also don’t want to catch anything,” Shirley said.
He continued: “After this thing has played itself out, he can go back to rallies when they really become important later this year. And shake hands.”
Trump has described himself as a germophobe more than once, including when he was trying to shoot down allegations of a “pee tape” recorded by Russia so it could potentially blackmail him in the future.
The president reportedly soured on Chris Christie during the 2016 campaign when the former New Jersey governor arranged for then-President Barack Obama to call his phone on Election Night rather than Trump’s. Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci also claims Trump once made him get a penicillin shot on Air Force One after he complained of a sore throat.
