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A Dangerous Year in America Enters Its Most Dangerous Month

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entered what may be one of the most dangerous months in recent memory. That was true even before Thursday night, when a virus that should have been easy to keep away from a responsible White House sidelined entire ranks of West Wing staff, senior Republican leaders, and .Now, instead of a country focused on successfully defending and executing a rapidly approaching and logistically complex election, the United States is as splintered and distracted as it has been in modern history.Trouble and worry mount in every direction. The final run-up to Election Day—and the days after—have been appearing more fraught all year, as or, just as troubling, silenced entirely, . At the same time, the president has recklessly spent the fall of an already complicated and unprecedented election, as state election administrators attempt to transition and adopt .Throughout this incredible, news-packed year, Twitter jokes and online memes have suggested that the screenwriters of 2020 have gone a bit too heavy on the chaos and apocalyptic overtones. And yet, in the final month before the election, you would be hard-pressed to write an election scenario more worrisome than what the US now faces.There are seven distinct factors over the next month that threaten to combine, compound, and reinforce each other in unpredictable ways, each contributing to a moment when the nation seems set for trouble:A President Isolated by Virus and EgomaniaPresident Trump’s brief joyride around Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Sunday afternoon epitomized the most troubling aspects of his Covid-19 diagnosis. On the one hand, the leader of the country is isolated in a Maryland hospital suite with an uncertain medium-term prognosis and troubling and conflicting information about his health. Regardless, he will be out of commission for days under the best of circumstances, even if he’s discharged back to the White House.“They don’t exercise this stuff. They haven’t done any of it.”Senior national security officialAnd yet just as troubling was the joyride itself, a reckless and unnecessary publicity stunt that put a highly infectious patient inside a hermetically sealed vehicle with otherwise healthy staff. It was immediately reminiscent of the photos circulating of what appears to be —the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, where the nation’s leadership, White House staff, and top GOP officials mingled at length, indoors, often without masks, breaking every piece of public health guidance in the pandemic.The fact that no one seems able to say no to the president—that he seems incapable of listening to logic and prudence even when he endangers himself and others—presents its own crisis. Presidents normally rely on their staff for advice and to save them from themselves; Trump appears incapable of listening to either medical or political professionals. The fact that he’s so poorly staffed, day in and day out, represents a true crisis for American security.His prognosis—and behavior—presents an ongoing risk to the United States, as for the first time in history, the president is literally prohibited from being in the room with his top advisers. Should a crisis arrive, Trump will be governing and making decisions over a speakerphone or video teleconference, with little of the normal staff structure and aides available to help.Most PopularAnd all of that also presupposes the best case scenario: The president’s health rapidly improves, with no complications, and he’s fully out of the woods within days. Should his condition worsen, linger, or require medical procedures that involve anesthesia, we might very well find ourselves either without a fully functioning chief executive or with an “acting president,” Mike Pence, who would necessarily be politically constrained in the decisions and actions he could make in a crisis. The “acting president” procedures, meanwhile, are filled with thorny legal issues and unsettled constitutional questions.A West Wing Staff Focused on Themselves, Not the World BeyondAt a moment when all national efforts should focus on securing the election, containing the pandemic, and jump-starting the economy, White House staffers spent the weekend unsure whether they should on Monday. , they were then kept in the dark, furious, about the dangers they faced to their own health over the last week—who tested positive, and when. Only on Friday—literally months after the nation broadly began adopting and even mandating mask use—did national security adviser Robert O’Brien order the staff of the National Security Council in common areas. Only at did they get their first guidance about how to care for themselves and what to expect in this week ahead. So many White House staff have now that White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany refused Sunday to release any additional numbers or names. Monday morning, McEnany herself she had contracted Covid-19.The White House and government emergency planners, of course, have all manner of contingency plans, backup facilities, and redundancies, but they’re precious little prepared for a situation where the biggest threats to the government’s functioning are coming, as the old horror movie line would say, from inside the house. As a senior national security official said to me this weekend, this administration is also uniquely unprepared for the moment and unsure of the contingency plans that do exist. They’ve skipped the annual exercises meant to prepare for emergencies and have already proven their willingness to of plans written for crises. “They don’t exercise this stuff. They haven’t done any of it,” the official said. “Those binders are dusty.”Adversaries Abroad Who Sense WeaknessFew images could more starkly make clear a president who is unable to protect his own country than a president unable to prevent even himself and his staff from getting Covid-19.Throughout the year, officials have that , , and Iran all appear to be attempting to interfere with the election. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) put together a last week warning of the evidence of electoral threats that have been overlooked amid this fall’s deluge of news, crises, and catastrophes. As he said, there’s a “massive coverup campaign underway to disguise the octopus-like Russian election interference operation being run on Trump's behalf.” Just days ago, Facebook took down a apparently run by Russian intelligence. Now, any country already considering electoral attacks or disinformation shenanigans finds a nation even less capable of responding.Most PopularBeyond cyberthreats, Iran appears focused on retaliating for the US assassination of one of its top generals earlier this year. by Politico says Iran at one point was—and perhaps still is—considering an attempt to kill the US ambassador to South Africa.There are global flashpoints and fighting underway far from the US election, too. Armenia and Azerbaijan have in recent days, a conflict heavily influenced by regional powers Turkey and Russia. China and India—two billion-person, nuclear-armed nations—have been since the summer, resulting in the in their regional dispute since 1975.A Nation Primed to IgniteA year of historic Black Lives Matters protests has collided with the rambunctiousness and from armed right-wing militias and white nationalist groups whom the Department of Homeland Security and FBI director Christopher Wray have as the nation’s most dangerous terror threat. “We’re monitoring very closely a trend that may be starting to emerge, for example, of neo-Nazi actors here in the US who are communicating online with similar like-minded individuals overseas,” Wray told me earlier this year.The political atmosphere from the White House has only exacerbated such dry tinder in America’s streets. Day after day in recent weeks, the president has refused to promise to respect the most basic premise of American democracy, the peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next. Instead, his , rallies, and White House remarks have continued to signal that any loss in November is the result of a stolen, illegitimate election, . Trump has further warned that he retains the backing of who would get “tough” and defend him in the result of a loss at the ballot box. In last week’s debate, Trump called the nation’s pandemic embrace of mail-in voting a “disaster” and urged his followers to on Election Day and monitor voting—raising new fears of voter intimidation.The FBI is so apparently concerned about the nation’s combustible nature that it is planning a to monitor election-related violence in the weeks ahead.Government Mischief Already AfootDonald Trump’s administration has uniquely poisoned the well of national goodwill among the very institutions meant to protect the country from moments like this. Even leaving aside ongoing and the census, the government’s security apparatus at all levels seems more focused on scoring political points than protecting the nation.Any one of these seven unique risk factors could upend the next month.Through a year of protests that has seen the president for a photo op, he’s politicized the Department of Homeland Security, making it harder for the same department to play its critical role in helping state and local administrators protect elections. His attorney general has undermined the nation’s confidence in the Justice Department’s political independence; even Friday, as the president was rushed to the hospital with Covid-19, the Justice Department was rolling back Michigan’s pandemic protections. Attorney general William Barr has seemingly spent the entire year planning an “” of his own to boost the president’s reelection. Meanwhile, the director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, last week declassified a baffling letter about Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election that was widely , , and appeared to . No less an authority than Trump’s own former national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, accused the president last week of “” Russia.A Virus Still on the RampageThe Covid-19 pandemic is a health crisis, but it’s also one of the greatest national security failures in American history. A virus that every other Western nation has effectively contained now kills a number of Americans equivalent to those lost on September 11, 2001, every three days.Even half a year into the pandemic, cases are rising again in many parts of the nation. Some 100,000 Americans have been diagnosed with Covid-19 since the president was on Thursday.Most PopularMeanwhile, across the country, Americans continue to face the ongoing economic, social, and health effects of the virus. Tens of millions of Americans are out of work, facing the prospect of going hungry or being evicted. The country is literally , and yet congressional leaders on Capitol Hill have been deadlocked for five months on any further stimulus or economic rescue packages. Now the Senate has been forced to close for two weeks because of the outbreak of Covid-19 in the ranks of the GOP’s thin majority.A Challenging Election Under Any CircumstanceFederal, state, and local officials—not to mention civil rights and voting rights advocates—have warned for six months now that this fall’s election, from state legislatures to the presidency, would be challenged as never before, from misinformation online and a Covid-fueled pandemic of ransomware to the sheer logistics of processing millions of mail-in and absentee ballots. Voting places are , traditional poll workers , and in quarantine many voters have relocated from their normal haunts. “[Election officials are] being asked to adjust procedures much more quickly than they normally would. That invites risk,” Matt Masterson, the top election security official at DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, this summer.News organizations and election officials are already trying to set expectations that, unlike what Americans have grown accustomed to, the presidential results might not be clear on election night. Tallying the millions of mail ballots correctly might take days or even weeks.Beyond the logistic realities of the election, Mother Nature seems likely to continue to spring disasters on us in the weeks ahead. A still rages out west, while an batters the East Coast. Either, or both, could cause disruptions, displacements, and devastation even as America begins to vote. (In 2012, Superstorm Sandy hit at the end of October and beginning of November.)Any one of these seven unique risk factors could upend the next month. Taken together, though, they pose an almost unprecedented threat to the nation’s security and the legitimacy of American democracy.It is entirely possible that none of these complications will matter: that fears of attacks from abroad and unrest at home might be unfounded, that President Trump’s health will rapidly improve, and that the result of the November election will be clear and viewed legitimately by both the winner and the loser.Yet given the trajectory of 2020 and its constant twists and turns, it doesn’t seem a safe bet that the next month will go smoothly. The first rule of 2020 has seemed clear even since January, when the nation appeared and seemed likely to be the biggest story of the year: It will only get crazier.More Great WIRED Stories () is a contributing editor at WIRED and a director at The Aspen Institute. He is the author of the No. 1 national bestseller&nbsp;. He can be reached at&nbsp;.

entered what may be one of the most dangerous months in recent memory. That was true even before Thursday night, when a virus that should have been easy to keep away from a responsible White House sidelined entire ranks of West Wing staff, senior Republican leaders, and .Now, instead of a country focused on successfully defending and executing a rapidly approaching and logistically complex election, the United States is as splintered and distracted as it has been in modern history.Trouble and worry mount in every direction. The final run-up to Election Day—and the days after—have been...

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Garrett M. Graff

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A Dangerous Year in America Enters Its Most Dangerous Month

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