Trump tested positive for Covid few days before
Biden debate, chief of staff says in new book
Mark Meadows makes stunning admission in new memoir
obtained by Guardian, saying a second test returned negative
Martin
Pengelly in New York
@MartinPengelly
Wed 1 Dec
2021 06.00 GMT
Donald
Trump tested positive for Covid-19 three days before his first debate against
Joe Biden, the former president’s fourth and last chief of staff has revealed
in a new book.
Mark
Meadows also writes that though he knew each candidate was required “to test
negative for the virus within seventy two hours of the start time … Nothing was
going to stop [Trump] from going out there”.
Trump,
Meadows says in the book, returned a negative result from a different test
shortly after the positive.
Nonetheless,
the stunning revelation of an unreported positive test follows a year of
speculation about whether Trump, then 74 years old, had the potentially deadly
virus when he faced Biden, 77, in Cleveland on 29 September – and what danger
that might have presented.
Trump
announced he had Covid on 2 October. The White House said he announced that
result within an hour of receiving it. He went to hospital later that day.
Meadows’
memoir, The Chief’s Chief, will be published next week by All Seasons Press, a
conservative outlet. The Guardian obtained a copy on Tuesday – the day Meadows
reversed course and said he would cooperate with the House committee
investigating the deadly Capitol attack of 6 January.
Meadows
says Trump’s positive result on 26 September was a shock to a White House which
had just staged a triumphant Rose Garden ceremony for supreme court nominee Amy
Coney Barrett – an occasion now widely considered to have been a Covid
super-spreader event.
Despite the
president looking “a little tired” and suspecting a “slight cold”, Meadows says
he was “content” that Trump travelled that evening to a rally in Middletown,
Pennsylvania.
But as
Marine One lifted off, Meadows writes, the White House doctor called.
“Stop the
president from leaving,” Meadows says Sean Conley told him. “He just tested
positive for Covid.”
It wasn’t
possible to stop Trump but when he called from Air Force One, his chief of
staff gave him the news.
“Mr
President,” Meadows said, “I’ve got some bad news. You’ve tested positive for
Covid-19.”
Trump’s
reply, the devout Christian writes, “rhyme[d] with ‘Oh spit, you’ve gotta be
trucking lidding me’.”
Meadows
writes of his surprise that such a “massive germaphobe” could have contracted
Covid, given precautions including “buckets of hand sanitiser” and “hardly
[seeing] anyone who ha[d]n’t been rigorously tested”.
Meadows
says the positive test had been done with an old model kit. He told Trump the
test would be repeated with “the Binax system, and that we were hoping the
first test was a false positive”.
After “a
brief but tense wait”, Meadows called back with news of the negative test. He
could “almost hear the collective ‘Thank God’ that echoed through the cabin”,
he writes.
Meadows
says Trump took that call as “full permission to press on as if nothing had
happened”. His chief of staff, however, “instructed everyone in his immediate
circle to treat him as if he was positive” throughout the Pennsylvania trip.
“I didn’t
want to take any unnecessary risks,” Meadows writes, “but I also didn’t want to
alarm the public if there was nothing to worry about – which according to the
new, much more accurate test, there was not.”
Meadows
writes that audience members at the rally “would never have known that anything
was amiss”.
The public,
however, was not told of the president’s tests.
On Sunday
27 September, the first day between the tests and the debate, Meadows says
Trump did little – except playing golf in Virginia and staging an event for military
families at which he “spoke about the value of sacrifice”.
Trump later
said he might have been infected at that event, thanks to people “within an
inch of my face sometimes, they want to hug me and they want to kiss me. And
they do. And frankly, I’m not telling them to back up.”
In his
book, Meadows does not mention that Trump also held a press conference indoors,
in the White House briefing room, the same day.
On Monday
28 September, Trump staged an event at which he talked with business leaders
and looked inside “the cab of a new truck”. He also held a Rose Garden press
conference “on the work we had all been doing to combat Covid-19”.
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“Somewhat
ironically, considering his circumstances”, Meadows writes, Trump spoke about a
new testing strategy “supposed to give quicker, more accurate readings about
whether someone was positive or not.”
Meadows
rubs his head as doctors speak about Trump’s health in Bethesda on 4 October.
Meadows
rubs his head as doctors speak about Trump’s health in Bethesda on 4 October.
Photograph: Erin Scott/Reuters
The White
House had still not told the public Trump tested positive and then negative two
days before.
On debate
day, 29 September, Meadows says, Trump looked slightly better – “emphasis on
the word slightly”.
“His face,
for the most part at least, had regained its usual light bronze hue, and the
gravel in his voice was gone. But the dark circles under his eyes had deepened.
As we walked into the venue around five o’clock in the evening, I could tell
that he was moving more slowly than usual. He walked like he was carrying a
little extra weight on his back.”
Trump gave
a furious and controversial performance, continually hectoring Biden to the point
the Democrat pleaded: “Will you shut up, man? This is so unpresidential.”
The host,
Chris Wallace of Fox News, later said Trump was not tested before the debate
because he arrived late. Organisers, Wallace said, relied on the honor system.
The White House
had not said Trump had tested positive and negative three days before.
Three days
later, on 2 October, Trump announced by tweet that he and his wife, Melania
Trump, were positive.
That
evening, Meadows helped Trump make his way to hospital. During his stay,
Meadows helped orchestrate stunts meant to show the president was in good
health. Trump recovered, but it has been reported that his case of Covid was
much more serious than the White House ever let on.
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