As of Saturday morning, President Donald Trump was at Walter Reed Medical Center, where he had been transported the previous day after getting positive Coronavirus test results. White House officials have attempted to characterize the president as doing fairly well, and White House physician Dr. Sean Conley said that he himself recommended Trump’s stay at Walter Reed to allow for “further monitoring.” Shortly before his own positive Coronavirus test results, but after his top aide Hope Hicks had already tested positive, Trump appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show — and he bizarrely seemed to blame members of the military and law enforcement for spreading the virus to Hicks and maybe others.
To be clear: there is no particular evidence that members of the military or law enforcement spread the Coronavirus to the top members of the Trump administration. (Besides Hicks and the president, First Lady Melania Trump has also tested positive.) Since his pre-1 A.M. Friday announcement of the positive test results for himself and Melania, there has been very little public comment from the president.
In his pre-diagnosis Hannity appearance, Trump said, referring to Hicks’s positive test results:
‘It’s a tough kind of situation; it’s a terrible thing. I just went for a test, and we’ll see what happens — I mean, who knows? — but you know [Hicks] very well. She’s fantastic and she’s done a great job, but it is very very hard when you’re with people from the military or from law enforcement and they come over to you and they want to hug you and they want to kiss you, because we really have done a good job for them, and you get close, and things happen. I was surprised to hear with Hope, but she is a very warm person with them, and she — she knows there’s a risk.’
Listen to his comments in the video clip below:
Good morning. This is a reminder that Trump blamed the troops and law enforcement for spreading COVID to his administration. pic.twitter.com/LxPkRZskQA
— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) October 3, 2020
Again — there is no particular evidence that “hugging” and “kissing” members of the military or law enforcement spread the Coronavirus to Hicks or anyone else in the Trump administration. The president himself has traveled widely — including twice with Hicks in the days before her positive diagnosis. Republican Senators including Mike Lee (Utah), Thom Tillis (N.C.), and Ron Johnson (Wisc.) have all also tested positive for the virus. Lee and Tillis were both at a White House event last Saturday that had been held for the official rollout of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
BREAKING — Sen Thom Tillis also tests positive for covid-19, his office says. Tillis is also a member of the Judiciary Committee, was at the White House SCOTUS event Saturday, met with Barrett on Wednesday. pic.twitter.com/FMGFWkOiFA
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) October 3, 2020
