presidential daily brief

It can’t get much nearer. In two days, one of President Donald Trump’s military valets, who serves meals to the commander-in-chief, and Vice President Mike Pence’s spokeswoman — the wife of senior presidential adviser Stephen Miller — tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. But yesterday, Trump, 73, met with members of Congress and World War II veterans without a mask and said he wasn’t worried about getting a disease that has killed more than 9,000 Americans in his age bracket. Meanwhile, the infected Katie Miller tweeted from quarantine that she was “doing well” and looking forward to “getting back to work.”

Follow OZY’s comprehensive pandemic coverage.

On one side, it’s a blustery tale of derring-do. On the other, it ranges from “are these guys crazy?” to “nothing to do with this.” What’s clear is that Florida-based Silvercorp USA’s failed Venezuela coup would have been laughable, if not for eight dead mercenaries and two captured American ex-soldiers. U.S. officials deny involvement, while Venezuelan opposition figures say they had lost faith in Silvercorp CEO Jordan Goudreau. The former Green Beret, who reportedly launched Operation Resolution Sunday after opposition contacts refused to pay him, claims his assault hasn’t ended, despite much evidence to the contrary.

Donald Trump will not surrender to Obamacare, even amid a pandemic. The president confirmed Wednesday, the deadline to change the administration’s stance on a lawsuit brought by Republican-run states, that he wants the Affordable Care Act gone. Even Attorney General William Barr has reportedly warned his boss that killing health benefits as the pandemic rages is not a good look. Democrats have seized on the decision, calling it “senseless and cruel” and marking it as a major voter concern — one that may haunt Republicans when the justices convene just weeks before the Nov. 3 election.

OZY analyzes Obamacare’s changes.

Although experts don’t agree with Republican politicians that China unleashed the coronavirus to weaken the United States, the claim has certainly helped China. As President Trump snubs international efforts to fight the pandemic, China is filling the leadership vacuum. When it holds its pandemic-delayed National People’s Congress May 22, it will signal to the world that it has defeated the virus that will still be killing Americans by the thousands each day, and that it’s ready and able to assert control over disputed South China Sea waters while the Pentagon waits for its aircraft carrier crews to recover.

OZY’s Butterfly Effect argues that Trump needs China.

By the end of May, all passengers entering Britain (except from Ireland) must be quarantined for 14 days, airlines say. South Korea has closed bars and nightclubs after fresh coronavirus outbreaks, which China has offered to help North Korea fight on its side of the border. And U.S. regulators have approved the first coronavirus home test.

In the week ahead: Don’t forget that Sunday is Mother’s Day in many nations. On Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court hears testimony on whether investigators are entitled to the president’s financial records. And Wednesday is singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder’s 70th birthday.

Coronavirus update: More than 275,000 people around the world have died from among nearly 4 million confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections.

Sadly, it’s not a trick. Roy Horn, who created one of the world’s most famous magic shows with fellow German Siegfried Fischbacher, has died at age 75 after a struggle with COVID-19, the act announced Friday. Horn tested positive for coronavirus last month, and had been treated in hospital in Las Vegas. Siegfried & Roy was one of The Strip’s main attractions from 1989 to 2003, when Horn was bitten by a tiger and paralyzed. Fischbacher, who met Roy on a cruise ship six decades ago, mourned his “best friend,” saying the world had lost “one of the greats of magic.”

The U.S. military is under siege. By the start of this week, 5,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 had been identified within the ranks and the top brass say they plan to have every member tested by summer. Military medicine has a long history of responding to health crises from malaria to influenza, but budget cuts and restructuring has undermined that work. And it’s left officers and analysts alike worried that the military is unprepared for what’s ahead, and wondering whether it’s once again time to bring the fight to the world’s microscopic enemies.

OZY explores the impact of COVID-19 on national security.

Nazism met defeat 75 years ago this weekend, but humankind was losing another war. GIs all over Europe were smoking — a habit pushed on them during the previous world war, notes OZY’s resident history professor, Sean Braswell, in the second episode of our Flashback podcast. It began innocently enough, with the YMCA comforting World War I doughboys with free smokes. Its unintended effect was to get them hooked. That addiction boosted the tobacco industry and fueled divergent tobacco tax schemes, spawning smuggling that profited 1920s gangsters and even financed modern-day terrorism — militating for more soldiers, hunkered down “over there,” asking for a light.

Was the Sundance Film Festival America’s pandemic ground zero? On Jan. 27, actress Ashley Jackson decided to power through symptoms for the last day of the indie film festival attended by 120,000 people from 27 nations. Returning to Atlanta, she was diagnosed with the flu but not tested. Other festivalgoers also fell ill as they returned home across the country. One microbiologist says that the January event — which started the same day as the Wuhan lockdown — was “the perfect formula to contaminate everybody.” The mystery will remain, though, until antibody tests become widely available.

OZY remembers a movie theater murder.

It was a sure thing until it wasn’t. High-rolling sports bettors and the sportsbooks that service them have no MLB, no NBA or any of the usual contests to wager upon even as states increasingly legalize such gambling. Some have found alternatives, like Belarusian soccer, the weather and even elections, but there aren’t enough analytics to make them interesting — or safe enough bets. Even when sports return, how many betting operations will have folded, and how many more states, desperate for revenue, will jump into the fray?