WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien tested positive for coronavirus, making him the highest-ranking official positive so far.
The White House said O’Brien had mild symptoms and “isolated himself and was fleeing from an offsite location.”
Officials did answer questions about the last time the president and O’Brien had contacts, but the White House insisted that “there is no threat of exposure to the president or vice president” and that “the work of the National Security Council continues uninterrupted.” . “
Trump told reporters on Monday that he wasn’t sure when his national security adviser had tested positive and that he hadn’t “seen it recently,” but that he would call O’Brien. Councilman Larry Kudlow had previously said that O’Brien’s daughter was also inflamed with the virus and that’s how officials exposed it.
O’Brien also recently returned from France, where he met with senior European officials and was photographed alongside others without a mask.
O’Brien is the first White House official known to have contracted the virus since May, when a valet from the president and the vice president’s press secretary tested positive for the virus that has now inflamed more than four million people in the country. Country. Many Secret Service agents and Trump’s crusade also tested positive, adding National Finance President Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is friends with Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr.
High-level White House staff and anyone who comes into close contact with the president and vice president undergo daily testing for the virus, but dressed in a mask remains lax in the White House compound.
Trump, who has long rejected the severity of the virus and falsely claimed this month that the “99%” of the cases are “totally harmless,” said in a recent interview on Fox News Channel that he had “lost five people, probably six,” in fact, from that point, I think, very soon “to the virus.
O’Brien is Trump’s fourth national security adviser, having been appointed in September to update John Bolton, who evicted over political disagreements and continued to write a scathing and revealing e-book about his time at the White House. The National Security Adviser oversees the National Security Council and is the administration’s partner on national security issues.
O’Brien had in the past been Trump’s hostage negotiating leader and worked effectively for the release of several Americans, adding Pastor Andrew Brunson, who spent two years in a Turkish prison. Since taking office, O’Brien has worked to identify a friendly date with the president, who has been drawn to O’Brien’s discreet Californian style and vibe.
The Republican lawyer, who also worked in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, is sometimes perceived as a jovial presence that prevents him from chatting with reporters traveling on Air Force One. He regularly works in a corner workplace on the first floor of the White House, a short walk from the Oval Office.
O’Brien’s positive check was first reported through Bloomberg News.
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Associated Press Jonathan Lemire contributed to the report.