Whether previous guy is covertly helping Mark Meadows sell his book or doing damage control, he’s still lying about his spreading COVID-19 throughout the White House in 2020.
President Donald J. Trump tested positive for coronavirus three days before his first debate with Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, two former administration officials said Wednesday.
The White House did not announce the positive test at the time, and the president received a negative result shortly afterward and carried on with a campaign rally and the debate, the officials said. The account was first reported by The Guardian, which cited a forthcoming book by Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
The two former officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, confirmed the timeline on Mr. Trump’s test results contained in “The Chief’s Chief,” by Mr. Meadows, Mr. Trump’s fourth and final White House chief of staff.
The revelation came more than a year after widespread speculation that Mr. Trump was sick when he first shared a stage with Mr. Biden for their first presidential debate on Sept. 29, months into the pandemic.
The White House declined repeatedly at the time to give a precise chronology of when precisely Mr. Trump first received a positive coronavirus test result. The administration first told the public in the early hours of Oct. 2 that Mr. Trump had tested positive.
Mr. Trump was hospitalized later that same day.
Mr. Trump’s positive result was revealed only after a top adviser, Hope Hicks, was reported to be sick with Covid-19. At the time, Mr. Trump intimated in an interview with Fox News that Ms. Hicks might have given him the virus.
But Mr. Meadows wrote in his book that three days earlier, on Sept. 26, Mr. Trump received a positive test shortly before departing the White House for Air Force One to travel to Pennsylvania for a rally. The White House doctor, Sean Conley, called to deliver the news. “Mr. President,” Mr. Meadows writes that he told Mr. Trump, “I’ve got some bad news. You’ve tested positive for Covid-19.”
Mr. Trump’s response rhymed with “‘Oh spit, you’ve gotta be trucking lidding me,’” Mr. Meadows wrote. The day of the positive result was the day that
Mr. Trump held a large Rose Garden event announcing his nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.