A confirmed case of Coronavirus on the part of an attendee of the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has rocked those who’ve spent weeks insisting that coverage of the illness is just a ploy to smear the president. Now, journalist Raheem Kassam has pointed out that even top Trump Cabinet official Betsy DeVos, who serves as Education Secretary, may have been exposed, because she was around the conference’s green room at the same time that the infected individual may have been.
Kassam reports:
‘I have now spoken to a number of people who were in/around the green room at CPAC when the attendee with coronavirus was there. People are apoplectic about how they have not been better informed of what happened. The attendee was there for much of Thursday at LEAST..’
I have now spoken to a number of people who were in/around the green room at CPAC when the attendee with coronavirus was there.
People are apoplectic about how they have not been better informed of what happened.
The attendee was there for much of Thursday at LEAST…
— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) March 9, 2020
Here are some of the other people who may have been in the green room on Thursday afternoon at the same time as the CPAC #coronavirus infectee:
– Rep Louie Gohmert;
– Ronna McDaniel
– Michael Knowles
– Kay James
– KellyAnne Conway
– Betsy Devos
– Rep Matt Gaetz
– Diamond/Silk— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) March 9, 2020
Apparently, they were also at CPAC events for Shabbat over the weekend. Those “in-the-know” have so far refused to release the name of the patient, but they’ve already been confirmed to have interacted with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), both of whom have responded by quarantining themselves, just to be safe. There’s no apparent self-quarantine plan on DeVos’s part, although obviously, her possible exposure puts the virus just steps away from the president himself — who’s led the charge of the baseless claims that negative Coronavirus media coverage is a conspiracy against him.
Panic about the situation has been spreading to the point of a decline in the stock market this Monday morning which was so sharp that trading was temporarily halted. Industries like travel have already been bracing for huge losses, as people have decided to stay home instead of risking possible exposure to the Coronavirus, which has been community-spread within the United States. Other locales, like Italy, have experienced huge spikes in cases — hundreds have died from disease, and thousands more have been infected, which the government has responded to with sweeping travel restrictions that amount to an attempt at quarantining large communities.
In the U.S., the response has recently included the approval of more than $8 billion in emergency funding to deal with the situation, which is significantly more than the amount that the president’s team initially requested.
