Former aide says Trump was COVID-positive before debate
Donald Trump tested positive for COVID-19 three days before his first presidential debate in September 2020 with Joe Biden and days earlier than that diagnosis was previously disclosed, according to a new book by Trump’s former chief of staff.
In “The Chief’s Chief,” obtained by The Guardian before its Dec. 7 release, Mark Meadows writes that the then-president received a negative test shortly after the positive test and resumed his usual activities, including attending the debate against his Democratic challenger. Trump on Wednesday denied Meadows’ claim. The revelation, if confirmed, would further show that the Trump White House did not take the virus seriously even as it spread among White House and campaign staff and eventually sent Trump to the hospital, where he required supplemental oxygen and experimental treatments.
The former president said that Meadows’ story “of me having COVID prior to, or during, the first debate is Fake News.”
Trump announced in a tweet early on Oct. 2, 2020, that he and first lady
Melania Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus. He was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center later that day.
But Meadows writes that Trump first tested positive on Sept. 26, three days before the debate and the same day that he held a Rose Garden ceremony for his final Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, according to the paper. Trump traveled that evening to a rally in Pennsylvania.
Meadows, Trump’s fourth and final chief of staff, writes that he received a call from the White House doctor as Trump’s helicopter was lifting off from the White House for the rally.
When Meadows told Trump of the result, the president’s reply, according to The Guardian, “rhyme(d) with ‘Oh spit, you’ve gotta be trucking lidding me.’”
But Meadows said the test had been conducted with an old model kit and he told Trump it would be repeated with a newer version. Meadows reported that the second test had come back negative.
Trump took that result as “full permission to press on as if nothing had happened,” Meadows wrote, according to The Guardian.