WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump said Friday morning that he and the first Melania Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, a surprising announcement that plunges the country into deeper uncertainty just a month before the presidential election.
Trump, who has spent much of the year minimizing the risk of a virus that has killed more than 205,000 Americans, said he and Ms. Trump were quarantined. The White House doctor said the president will continue to perform his duties “without interruption” as he recovers.
Still, Trump’s diagnosis is sure to have a destabilizing effect on Washington, raising questions about the extent to which the virus had spread to the highest levels of the US government. Hours before Trump announced that he had contracted the virus, a senior official said the White House. officer who had traveled with him during the week tested positive.
“Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process,” Trump tweeted just before 1 a. m.
Trump last realized through reporters at the White House Thursday night and didn’t seem visibly ill. Trump is 74 years old, putting him in a great threat of serious headaches from a virus that has inflamed more than 7 million people in the country.
The president’s doctor said in a note that Trump and the 50-year-old man “are fine now” and “plan to stay in the White House while they recover. “
The diagnosis marks a heavy blow to a president who desperately seeks to convince the American public that the worst thing about the pandemic is him. At best, if you don’t have symptoms, possibly coming with fever, cough, and breathing difficulties, you will. force him to abandon the electoral crusade a few weeks before the election.
Trump’s handling of the pandemic has already been a major flashpoint in his career opposed to Democrat Joe Biden, who spent much of the summer outdoors during the electoral crusade and at home in Delaware due to the virus. Biden has since resumed a more active crusade. schedule, but with small crowds socially est distanced. He also wears a mask in public, so Trump mocked him during Tuesday night’s debate.
“I don’t wear a mask like him,” Trump said of Biden. “Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He may speak two hundred yards from me, and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen. “. “
There was no immediate comment from Biden’s crusade on whether the former vice president had been examined since he gave the impression in the debate with Trump or whether he was taking on more security protocols.
Trump was scheduled to attend a fundraiser and conduct another election event in Sanford, Florida, Friday night, but shortly after 1 a. m. , the White House published a revised schedule with a single event: a phone call about “COVID-19 for vulnerable seniors. “
Trump’s announcement came hours after confirming that Hope Hicks, one of his oldest and most trusted aides, had been diagnosed with the virus on Thursday. Hicks began reveling in mild symptoms while flying home from a rally in Minnesota on Wednesday night, according to a report. management official who spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal useful information. He walked away from the other passengers aboard the plane, the user said.
Hicks was with Trump and other senior officials aboard Marine One and Air Force One in the direction of the rally and accompanied the president to Tuesday’s presidential debate in Cleveland with members of the Trump family, who did not wear a mask during the debate, in violation of regulations. of the place.
Several of the White House have already tested positive for the virus, adding Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and one of the president’s private camera assistants.
But Trump has consistently minimized considerations about his non-public vulnerability, even after the White House and its allies have been exposed and sick. Given that the coronavirus first gave the impression this year, Trump has refused to comply with the fundamental rules of public aptitude, adding the following issued through his own management, such as dressing up in public and practicing social estgnation, instead, he continued to organize election rallies that attracted thousands of supporters.
“I didn’t feel any vulnerability,” he told reporters in May.
The news will surely shake up an already shaken country that still suffers with how to safely reopen the economy without causing virus transmission. The White House has access to near-unlimited resources, adding a constant source of rapid results tests, and has not yet closed the president’s safety, raised doubts about how the rest of the country will be able to protect its workers, academics, and the public as they reopen businesses and schools.
Questions remain as to why Trump took so long to verify and why he and his aides continued to go to the paintings and after Hicks got sick. Trump traveled to New Jersey on Thursday for a fundraiser, exposing participants to the virus.
Pence’s aides made no immediate comment that the vice president had been or contacted Trump.
It is not known where the Trumps and Hicks hit the virus, however, in their interview with Fox, Trump recommended that it possibly have spread through a member of the military or police.
“It’s very, very complicated when you’re with the army or the police, and they come to you, and they need to hug you and kiss you,” he said, “because we did a smart task for them. “. And you’re getting close. And things happen. »
The White House has begun to institute a test regime for the president’s most sensible aides after positive past cases near the president. Anyone in the vicinity of the president or vice president is also evaluated and adds journalists.
However, since the early days of the pandemic, experts have questioned the protection and fitness protocols in the White House and asked why no more was being done to protect the commander-in-chief. opposed it, and first resisted the test.
Trump is far from the world’s first leader to test positive for the virus, which in the past had inflamed Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who spent a week in the hospital, adding three nights in intensive care. Silvio Berlusconi was hospitalized last month while fighting what he called a “hellish” case of COVID-19.
While lately there is no evidence that Trump is seriously ill, positive control raises questions about what would happen if he were not worthy because of an illness.
The 25th Amendment to the Constitution defines the procedures by which the president would possibly declare “incapable of fulfilling the powers and duties” of the presidency. If I made the call, Trump would send a written memorandum to the pro-tempo president of the Senate. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat. Pence would be acting president until Trump has problems “in writing in the opposite direction. “
The vice president and most of the cabinet or other framework established by law would possibly also state that the president is unable to fulfill the powers and purposes of his workplace, in which case Pence will “promptly assume the powers and tasks of the workplace to act. “president. ” Until Trump can provide a letter to the contrary.
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