The director of White House security, Crede Bailey, has reportedly lost his leg to COVID-19. Bailey contracted the coronavirus when it surged through the White House staff earlier this year and was hospitalized for three months, according to a report by Forbes. Due to the severity of his case, Bailey needed his right foot and lower leg amputated, and he is now at a rehabilitation center learning to adapt to his prosthetic.
Previous reports already indicated that Bailey had one of the most severe cases of COVID-19 to come out of the White House outbreak back in late August and early September. Now, his friends have spoken out to reporters about just how bad it got, and his long road to recovery. Dawn McCrobie told reporters from Bloomberg that she is a friend of Bailey’s, and she started a GoFundMe campaign to help raise money for his “staggering” medical bills.
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“Let me say that Crede will NOT be happy I’ve done this as he is a proud man who is the first to help everyone else but would never ask for help himself,” McCrobie wrote on the fundraising page. “But the reality is this. His family has staggering medical bills from a hospital stay of 2+ months and still counting in the ICU and a long road ahead in rehab before he can go home. When he does make it home there will be major changes necessary to deal with his new, and permanent, disability.”
The crowdfunding campaign has now raised over $54,000 to help Bailey, with a total of 735 donors. In her latest update on Monday, McCrobie asked followers not to politicize the campaign, but to focus on helping Bailey. She added that Bailey wants his friends and family to “let the media tell their story without your input.”
The Trump administration has not responded to other outlets’ requests for comment about this severe illness for one of its staff members. Around the time that Bailey first became sick, President Donald Trump himself contracted COVID-19 and was hospitalized for several days at Walter Reed Military Medical Center. In the months that followed he joked about his illness, though many critics argued that he was being insensitive to those who could not afford the state-of-the-art care he received.
“Sometimes when you’re a celebrity, they’re worried,” Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani said during a radio interview after his own bout with coronavirus this month. “If something happens to you, they’re going to examine it more carefully and do everything right.”
Some donors pointed this out in the comments on McCrobie’s GoFundMe campaign. One wrote that Bailey is “an example of how Trump ignored the seriousness of the virus and was unwilling to do the simplest things to protect those who serve him so loyally.”
