Former President Donald Trump is believed to have tested positive for COVID-19 three days before his first presidential debate with Joe Biden, according to an upcoming book from his former chief of staff. Trump, Mark Meadows.
Trump tested positive on September 26, 2020, three days before the September 29 debate in Cleveland, reports Guardians, obtained a copy of Meadows’ memoir, “The Chief’s Chief,” to be published next week by conservative publisher All seasons of press.
But Trump received a negative result from another test shortly after it was positive, Meadows writes in the book. The White House on September 26 also hosted an event for Amy Coney Barrett, who has just been nominated by Trump to the Supreme Court. The meeting was then considered Likely COVID event is “supers spreader”.
Six days later on October 2, Trump announced he and first lady Melania Trump will begin isolation after testing positive for COVID-19 the night before – same day White House Counsel Hope Hicks, who had traveled with Trump, tested positive.
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In a statement on Wednesday, Trump called Meadows’ claims “Fake News. In fact, a test revealed that I had no COVID prior to the debate. “
Earlier this week, the House committee investigating the January 6 uprising in the Capitol said Meadows cooperated with the committee, to be able to counter the contempt charge for defying a subpoena from the panel to obtain documents and testimony.
The revelations in Meadow’s book will is likely to raise concerns that Trump may have put current President Biden and others at risk in the debate., just two days before Trump announced the positive results.
While debate attendance rules mandated that all spectators wear masks, many in Trump’s entourage refused. “Anyone in that hall, quite honestly, could be exposed,” says Susie Welty, a contact tracing expert and director of surveillance engineering at the University of California-San Francisco. USA TODAY in October 2020.
Meadows writes that while he knows each candidate is required to “test negative for the virus within seventy-two hours of the start of (the debate)… Nothing will stop (Trump) out of the way.” there,” reported The Guardian.
On September 26, when Trump went to a rally in Middletown, Pennsylvania, the president looked “a little tired” and may have had a “mild cold,” wrote Meadows, who was “comfortable” with the decision to hold Demonstration.
But when the Marine One helicopter took off, White House Doctor Sean Conley called Meadows and said, “Stop the president from leaving. … He just tested positive for COVID. ”
Meadows said it was too late to stop Trump, but while Trump was on Air Force One, Meadows told him, “Mr. President, I have some bad news. You have tested positive for COVID-19. ”
Trump’s response, Meadows wrote, “rhymes (d) with ‘Oh spit, you’ve got to get me overland’.”
The first positive test was performed with an old model test suite, Meadows writes, and a subsequent test was performed using BinaxNOW test. “We hope the first test is a false positive,” he wrote.
With a negative test result, Trump continued “as if nothing happened,” Meadows wrote. However, the chief of staff told “everyone close to him to treat him as if he were a positive person” during the Pennsylvania trip, he wrote.
On the day of the presidential debate, Meadows wrote, Trump looked “a little better” than he did. “At least his face was back to its usual bright bronze color, and the gravel in his voice was gone,” he writes in the book. “But the dark circles under his eyes have deepened. When we entered the venue around five o’clock in the evening, I could tell that he was moving slower than usual. He walks as if carrying a bit more weight on his back.”
Social distancing procedures were used at the debate and Trump and Biden did not shake hands. But there are a lot of fuzzy spots in the confrontation. trumpet Biden kept interrupting during the debate, while Biden called the president a “clown” and said: “Will you shut up, man?”
Three days later, Trump will announce that he has COVID.
Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.
