White House chief of staff Mark Meadows held a brief press conference outside the White House early on Friday, hours after President Donald Trump had announced that he had tested positive for the Coronavirus. Meadows was not wearing a mask while speaking to members of the press, claiming that he did not need one because he was distanced from reporters and had himself recently tested negative — but negative test results are not some kind of immunity guarantee. The virus is obviously in the White House — the president has it! And Meadows still didn’t think that it was necessary for him to wear a mask in order to help curtail potential spread from himself to others? What would it take for basic personal responsibility from these people?
Meadows on why no mask: "So I've obviously been tested, we're hopefully more than six feet away. And if there's any, concern there, from a guidance standpoint, we have protocols in place.” https://t.co/VTWFVn3Kz0
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 2, 2020
Besides Trump’s own positive test results, First Lady Melania Trump also tested positive for the virus. Their positive test results were revealed shortly after the news broke that Trump aide Hope Hicks, who works closely with the president, had tested positive for the virus. Apparently, the White House discovered Hicks’s positive test results “just as Marine One was taking off for President Trump’s fundraiser” on Thursday in New Jersey, as ABC reporter Katherine Faulders summarizes. That timeline means that Trump still held the fundraiser and interacted with his supporters after known potential virus exposure.
The White House is now on the record saying they discovered Hope Hicks’ positive test just as Marine One was taking off for President Trump’s fundraiser yesterday in New Jersey. The president still did this fundraiser after the positive diagnosis was known.
— Katherine Faulders (@KFaulders) October 2, 2020
According to Meadows, Trump had “mild symptoms” as of late Friday morning, but there is still a potentially lengthy road ahead. Besides the possibility of lingering health complications that have been documented in other patients, the basic infection cycle itself could take weeks. As CNN anchor Ana Cabrera noted, “Doctors say it could be a week or more before the severity of the coronavirus infection impacting President Trump and the First Lady is known since it takes time for the virus to run its course.”
Doctors say it could be a week or more before the severity of the #coronavirus infection impacting President Trump and the First Lady is known since it takes time for the virus to run its course.
— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) October 2, 2020
At his brief appearance before the press on Friday, Meadows summarized the situation as follows:
‘We’ve got the mitigation plan in place to make sure that the government not only continues to move forward but the work of the American people continues to move forward, and so, even as recent as this morning, a little after 8 o’clock, the president was giving me a number of things to make sure that I get done.’
Watch some of his comments in the video below:
The White House has a “plan in place” to ensure the business of government “continues to move forward”, its chief of staff Mark Meadows says
President Trump has “mild symptoms” after testing positive for coronavirus https://t.co/w0RXzgvmMc pic.twitter.com/kKDMTL85RO
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) October 2, 2020
Watch more below:
