Wednesday, December 1st, 2021
Ex-employees reveal scandal
Trump withheld a positive test before the Biden debate
Officially, Donald Trump will test positive for Corona for the first time at the beginning of October 2020 and then be treated in the hospital. Several former top employees have now revealed that the then US president had previously tested positive – but the White House kept it quiet.
The then US President Donald Trump is said to have tested positive for Covid-19 three days before his first presidential debate in 2020 with the current incumbent Joe Biden and to have concealed the result. This is what the then Chief of Staff of the Republican President, Mark Meadows, reported in his book to be published next week, wrote the English newspaper “The Guardian“who already had the book.
The “New York Times” reported a little later about two other former officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. They confirmed Trump’s positive test result and the sequence of events as described by Meadows in his book.
Trump responded in a statement: “The story that I had Covid before or during the first debate is fake news. In fact, a test showed that I had no Covid before the debate.” Meadows also reported this negative result in the same period, but wanted the president to be treated like an infected person by his staff and his confidants at the time. Biden, who has been president since January, did not respond directly to a journalist’s question at a press conference whether Trump had put him at risk because of his apparently hidden infection. “I don’t think about the former president,” said Biden when he appeared in the White House.
According to Meadows, Trump received the positive test on September 26, 2020, as the Guardian reports. That day, Trump hosted a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, later classified as a superspreader event by medical experts. At least twelve people who attended the event tested positive. Trump announced on October 2 that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. According to the White House, he announced the result within an hour of receiving it. He went to the hospital later that day.
Trump not tested before debate
Trump, who, according to Meadows, looked “a little tired” at the time and had a slight cold, was on the evening of September 26th on his way to a rally in Pennsylvania with Air Force One when Meadows received a call from the then White House doctor received. This informed him about the positive test. Meadows wrote that the doctor told him, “Stop the president from leaving. He just tested positive for Covid”.
The test was a shock to the White House, but Trump was already in the air and could not have been stopped, Meadows said. According to the Guardian, the former chief of staff wrote that the positive test had been carried out with an old model kit. Trump repeated the test with a newer rapid antigen test, which is said to have given a negative result. It is unclear whether the first test was an antigen test or a PCR test.
The public was not informed of these events, Trump continued his rally in Pennsylvania as planned, bathing in the crowd, among other things, and giving a press conference in the White House briefing room on the same day. Trump later said he could have contracted the disease at the Pennsylvania event.
On the day of the debate in Cleveland, Ohio, September 29, the mildly ill Trump looked a little better, according to Meadows – “with the emphasis on the word something.” However, the president still moved more slowly and heavily than usual. Debate moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News later said Trump was not tested prior to the debate because he was late. The organizers, Wallace said, relied on the president’s honor. The White House did not mention the positive test three days earlier.
Unclear status prior to debate
During the debate, Trump and Biden obeyed the distance rules, but there were dozens of people in the room, some of whom were not wearing masks. On September 30, Trump traveled on to Minnesota for an outdoor rally in Duluth and a private fundraiser in Minneapolis.
On October 2, Trump announced by tweet that he and his wife Melania Trump had tested positive. Trump’s positive test came just hours after the White House announced that Hope Hicks, one of the president’s closest advisors, tested positive after spending days with the Republican.
In a later interview with NBC News, Trump didn’t definitely want to say if he was tested for Covid-19 on the day of his first debate against Biden. In the conversation in mid-October, he said he couldn’t remember the last time he tested negative for the coronavirus before testing positive in early October. During a press conference on October 3 when Trump was being treated in the hospital, the White House doctor refused to announce Trump’s most recent negative test for the virus, saying, “I will not go into all of the tests that have been done in the past, but he and all of his employees are routinely tested. “