It was a meeting of the campaign’s money guys—at least those who were left. Trump, in a happy surprise, seemed suddenly nearly realistic, or at least moving off his dug-in position. It was an uphill battle. Impossible to say what might happen. Everyone had seen what Rudy was saying, right? Right? But they might not make it. But if they didn’t, they would be back “in four years and beat this sleepy bastard.”

Could he count on everybody to stick with him? To continue the fight, now and in the future? It was heartening for some in the room to hear this: a clear-eyed recognition of political realities. But one of the participants noted that Trump hardly knew Sean Dollman, the campaign’s CFO, or Alex Cannon, campaign counsel, and wondered if this new seeming reasonableness was tailored for them. But, possibly, there was a corner being turned, a sense of accomplishment about having raised all this money, and now a more realistic way of looking forward four years hence.

Still, there was that sinking sense of worlds not aligned, of Trump in this place of his own, blind beyond the people in front of him and deaf beyond the sound of his own voice.

“Great job. Really impressive. Boy, we need someone like you on this. Any chance you could come in and work full time?” the president enthusiastically asked Dollman.

“But, I do,” said a bewildered Dollman.

“Do what? What do you do?”

“Well … I’m the CFO of the campaign, sir.”

“Really? How long have you been in that job?”

“Since the beginning of the campaign.”

“Wow,” said Trump, seeming to acknowledge the depth of his oversight. “And what did you do before that?”

“I was the CFO of the 2016 campaign.”

Giuliani came down with COVID on December 6. Boris Epshteyn, the shuttle (or, some thought, double agent) between Rudy’s people and the remaining West Wing and campaign leadership, who had gotten COVID days before, was blamed—probably by Rudy’s people, but not inconceivably by the other side. (Two weeks before, the former mayor, who had apparently failed to catch the virus from his own son, had bragged of his indomitability.)

As much as all other factors emptying the White House, there was the fear of COVID and its persistent domino effect, as relentless in the White House as it was in many prisons and nursing homes. You could walk the West Wing halls for minutes on end without seeing another living person, other than Secret Service and the president.

Everyone sheepishly held to the president’s preference that the virus be mostly unacknowledged, masks eschewed and superspreader events overlooked, but there was, nevertheless, even without a formal tracking program in the White House, a reflex to blame each infection on someone, as the president had continued, at the least opportunity, to blame his own case of it on Chris Christie.