For an additional time on Wednesday, President Trump somberly described a private connection to the coronavirus as he mentioned the results of the
For an additional time on Wednesday, President Trump somberly described a private connection to the coronavirus as he mentioned the results of the pandemic at his every day briefing together with his virus job drive.
Typically he has referred to a buddy who has the coronavirus and different occasions to associates. His aides have repeatedly declined to establish whom the president has been speaking about.
However three individuals aware of the matter mentioned he was describing Stanley Chera, a New York Metropolis real-estate developer who has recognized the president for a few years and had decamped to Deal, N.J., a number of weeks in the past because the coronavirus unfold.
However it was unclear whom else Mr. Trump might need been referring to when he mentioned he has different associates who’re additionally unwell.
Mr. Chera, 78, turned sick sooner or later in Deal, and was rushed to New York-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital, in line with two of Mr. Chera’s associates. Two of these associates mentioned Mr. Chera was in a medically induced coma.
However it’s unclear whether or not he has examined optimistic for the coronavirus. One of many associates mentioned his situation had been described as viral pneumonia.
Mr. Chera’s assistant didn’t reply to a message looking for remark. A White Home spokeswoman declined to remark.
Mr. Trump described a buddy being affected by the “viciousness” of the coronavirus and falling right into a coma in remarks on Sunday, the primary time he talked about somebody he knew turning into sick with the virus. Then, on Monday, he mentioned multiple buddy had been affected.
“You see the numbers. You see the numbers like I see the numbers. I’ve some associates which might be unbelievably sick,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden, leaving the impression that those friends had weighed on him as he made the decision to extend the guidelines for social distancing through April 30.
“We thought they were going in for a mild stay, and in one case, he’s unconscious, in a coma,” the president continued. “And you say, how did that happen?”
“When you send a friend to the hospital, and you call up to find out how is he doing — it happened to me, where he goes to the hospital, he says goodbye,” Mr. Trump said.
“He’s sort of a tough guy. A little older, a little heavier than he’d like to be, frankly. And you call up the next day: ‘How’s he doing?’ And he’s in a coma? This is not the flu,” the president intoned.
Asked at Wednesday’s briefing if that friend’s illness had been a turning point in his understanding of the severity of the crisis, Mr. Trump replied: “Not a turning point. No, before that, I knew.”
But he added: “It hit him very hard. He is strong. A very strong kind of a guy. He is older. He is heavier. He sort of is central casting for what we’re talking about, and it hit him very hard.”
Mr. Trump has a history of mentioning the comments or experience of unnamed friends. And it has not been clear whether they all exist.
For instance, he has often talked about a friend named “Jim” who used to love visiting Paris, according to Mr. Trump, until it became a haven for extremists. The president has never said who “Jim” is, and aides have declined to give a last name.
But Mr. Chera is an old friend of Mr. Trump’s, as well as a donor to his re-election effort whom the president has acknowledged at fund-raising events in the past. Mr. Chera also partnered in the past with the company owned by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for retail space at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.