One of the most infuriating things about this whole Trump-Coronavirus debacle is that no one can provide a straight answer on some fundamental questions. When was Donald Trump’s first positive Covid test? When did he begin to feel symptomatic? Who thought it was a good idea for Trump and his staff (many of whom were already symptomatic) to travel to New Jersey on Thursday? Was Hope Hicks trying to cover up her diagnosis? Was Hope the first person in Trump’s inner circle to feel symptomatic? Why did Trump and his team go through such pains to avoid testing at last Tuesday’s debate? And of course, why were all of the Trumpers still going maskless even when many of them were feeling symptoms? The Wall Street Journal thinks they have an answer to at least one of those questions:
President Trump didn’t disclose a positive result from a rapid test for Covid-19 on Thursday while awaiting the findings from a more thorough coronavirus screening, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump received a positive result on Thursday evening before making an appearance on Fox News in which he didn’t reveal those results. Instead, he confirmed earlier reports that one of his top aides had tested positive for coronavirus and mentioned the second test he had taken that night for which he was awaiting results.
“I’ll get my test back either tonight or tomorrow morning,” Mr. Trump said during the interview. At 1 a.m. on Friday, the president tweeted that he indeed had tested positive.
Under White House protocols, the more reliable test that screens a specimen from deeper in the nasal passage is administered only after a rapid test shows a positive reading. Based on people familiar with the matter, the president’s tests followed that protocol. As the virus spread among the people closest to him, Mr. Trump also asked one adviser not to disclose results of their own positive test. “Don’t tell anyone,” Mr. Trump said, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
Mr. Trump and his top advisers also aimed to keep such a close hold on the early positive results that his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, didn’t know that Hope Hicks, one of the president’s closest White House aides, had tested positive on Thursday morning until news reports later that evening, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Trump campaign said Friday evening that Mr. Stepien had tested positive.
The initial secrecy within Mr. Trump’s inner circle has created a sense of anxiety within the West Wing. Publicly, the White House has issued evolving and contradictory statements about the president’s health that has some officials worried about their own credibility.
“I’m glued to Twitter and TV because I have no official communication from anyone in the West Wing,” an administration official said.
[From The Wall Street Journal]
The lack of contact tracing by the White House is particularly awful – Trump and his virus-ridden staff put so many people in danger. White House reporters are testing positive too, as are lowly White House staffers. Biden’s people have already said that at no point did the White House contact them about all of these people testing positive, which is especially galling given their proximity last Tuesday. As for Trump’s haphazard attempt at a Covid coverup…it is what it is. I mean, what did people expect from Trump? Full disclosure and transparency?
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red.
I’ve said it right from the beginning. I don’t believe he has a positive test for COVID. I think it’s a strategy. He can get out of public appearances after the debacle debate, and when he comes out ok, he can claim to be the strongest survivor, and that it really isn’t that bad, and he did exactly what he’s said to do, and that’s take hydroxychloroquine. So it looks like he was right all along and can get more votes.
Agreed it’s about re-framing the whole COVID debacle and some strategists desperate aims to humanise him.
I have a horrible feeling it’s working because people don’t understand the real essence of social distancing. We know the death rates are low, but social distancing is in place to give the weakest in our society a chance to survive.
I also urge people to read the accounts of those who’ve had COVID but never seemingly recovered many months later. There is a small proportion whom develop a kind of chronic fatigue or ME.
Wear a mask everyone.
Agreed, but how is he going to explain the rest of his staff? Are they all in on it? Or does he now regard them as weak losers who caught the flu?
I hope the Biden’s test themselves everyday!!!!
I am so worried about them. On the other hand it is quite well possible that he doesn’t really have it and is trying to pull of some distraction, so there’s that.
I get why people think he’s lying and he could be- he’s a lying liar who wouldn’t know the truth if it came to his personal party and jumped down the throats of him and all his cronies.
The fact that so many people around them have tested positive, though, makes me think this is true. This destroys their whole coronavirus narrative and only a few short weeks before the election (many people are already voting) puts several key figures out of commision (and also in the ground?). Bigly Dumba§§ is so stupid and chaotic that he delivered his own October surprise. I’m just waiting to see how many of these decrepit, unhealthy seniors start dropping. Herman Cain’s death was barely a blip to them.
@ Yup, me, I know!! He wasn’t even mentioned by the WH press to honor him for his work to Agent Orange and his death was, it is what it is.
I have read many reports that he had actually tested positive on Wednesday, not Thursday or Friday, but Wednesday!!
All we can do is get out the vote and make sure that everyone we know VOTES come November 3rd!!!
Yeah, agreed. I wouldn’t put it past him, but he brags endlessly about his health so I don’t think he would pretend to have it if he doesn’t. It gets crazier as this goes on because him doing that little motorcade parade was probably bad for his precarious health. Also so incredibly dangerous for everyone around him. He’s going to make himself worse by pretending he’s not as sick as he actually is. At the end of the day he is an old man in already poor health and all of the pretending in the world won’t change that.
All of his cohorts who tested positive probably will not take safety precautions and continue to spread it to everyone around them, staff and family included. Many Republicans in government aren’t spry chickens which makes them higher risk as well. Yes they are all ghouls, but they’re also really really stupid.
I’m not sure. I think he *would* lie about it if he could emerge the victor and say that he kicked COVID’s ass, which is what he could be doing now. Not only the victor but the hero.
I don’t think he would have ever let them say his oxygen was low and he’s on all these medications if it weren’t true. I think he was actually in pretty bad shape (there were rumors that he freaked out at how fast the symptoms hit him, and that they moved him to WR while he could still walk out to the helicopter) and he’s all hopped up on steroids right now. The doctor even said there were “expected” findings on his lung imaging, but didn’t specify. He’s not a healthy man by any stretch, and has multiple risk factors.
Too many people around him have tested positive.
Do you think he’s headed for a crash that will land him back in the hospital? I don’t know what to think.
Donald Trump does not give a fig for anything except his own ego. If he didn’t have COVID, he wouldn’t have gone to Walter Reed, since that shows vulnerability, which he refuses to admit–that’s why he forced secret service people to suffer contamination from him in his little parade. He is not a mastermind. He is an ignorant little man who needs adulation.
I know from experience that COVID sprinkles days of feeling okay among the days of feeling terrible. I had symptoms for about six weeks. He still has at least ten days of illness ahead of him, the old, fat, drug-addled diabetic.
Trump has covid.We know that he was exposed because a journalist broke the Hope Hicks story. We know from the doctor got his first positive on Tuesday or Wednesday, and was on oxygen and steroids to treat the illness before announcing it via Twitter. His chief of staff leaked how bad it was to the press. We have people like Claudia Conway showing that her family too, has covid. Trump wasn’t lying about having the illness, he was lying about NOT having it until he got caught. What he was clearly wanted to hide his illness, assuming he would have only mild symptoms, but he couldn’t.
But what we don’t know, and probably never will is how sick or not he is or was, but it does seem that he’s not dying, not on a ventilator, and is just as callous, cruel and deranged as before.
There will be no enlightenment. No sudden acceptance that this pandemic needs more than for people to wash their hands.
The fight for this country is still as precarious as it was last week. Voter suppression and ballot tampering efforts are still under way. They still intend to hold hearings and a vote for Amy Barrett. The Covid relief bill is still stalled. Mass layoffs are still happening.
Speculate all you want about Trump’s lunatic ways and health but it doesn’t change anything …unless it gets Democrats to lose focus.
+1 Also Ali. We can argue all day long whether or not tRump has COVID, I personally believe he does, and it’s worse than his team is letting on. At the end of the day, arguing about his diagnosis gets us nowhere. But let’s not forget what really really matters.
We can’t lose focus!
Did anyone really expect him and his team to handle this any other way? I would have been shocked of this was handled responsibly.
My take: he’s had he for a while now. I think he’s the superspreader who gave it to everyone at the SCOTUS event. They’ve either not tested him regularly, or hid a positive test.
I also think the staged pics/videos are his idea and I feel for the person taking them.
He’s got it, and like everything else, he’s botching it with his stunts to show how “good” he’s doing. Because he can’t stand to look weak.
He clearly misses the rallies and attention. I’m guessing his doctors only say they may release him today because they need to placate him…like a child.
They analyzed the pictures and the metadata said they were taken 10 minutes apart.
Are you saying the lying liar who lies LIED about something? No WAY.
I personally believe he really is sick. He sounds unwell the videos he’s been posting and he’s been trying to claim how not-serious and not-contagious COVID is, so he wouldn’t admit to it unless he absolutely had to. And it’s no coincidence that so many Republicans around him are now sick as well.
COVID is a horrible virus by all accounts and I would not wish it on anyone. I just hope we get rid of this guy and all of his cronies in a few weeks by voting them out in big, unquestionable numbers.
But where do they go from here? That’s what I’m wondering. If he gets sick again and is rushed to the hospital for a second time, it’ll just make him look “weak.” His whole narrative will be blown to bits.
Not that I expect sense or consistency from him, lol, I’m just wondering what their next move is. They’ve hemmed themselves in.
I think Hope’s result was floated to set up a timeline once Trump was symptomatic. Kayleigh will not tell anyone when his last negative test was for a reason – either no testing or he knew sooner than they are saying. He likely knew he was sick at the debate but because he didn’t have symptoms yet, he could get Biden sick and continue as if he’s fine.
I am pretty sure he does have it because logically of course he does, the mofo never wears a mask and does risky shit all the time. But… all the theories about him lying aren’t without merit because all these people are insane. The doubt and confusion is by design. This is North Korea style leadership. I am completely without sympathy and have no well wishes for any of them either way.
Lawsuits.
Lawsuits are coming.
Lots of lawsuits.
That is why they are trying to fudge the dates, to ward off some of the lawsuits.
Everyone who attended the Amy Covid19 Barrett Swap Party should have been quarantined immediately. Instead, they are traveling all over the country, exposing others.
Three businesses in North Carolina, one of which hires people with disabilities, are now closed and must do major cleaning because Ivanka did campaign stops, at taxpayer expense, on Thursday.
And what did Ivanka tweet yesterday? Concern for those affected? An offer to pay for the cleaning and lost wages? No. She ordered a staffer, Carolina Hurley, to waste our tax money sending a rage tweet about someone pointing out what she had done, claiming that Princess Nagini, special adviser to and daughter of the President, didn’t know on Thursday that people she had been with most of the week, including her father, were testing positive for the disease.
I think she and The Boy have it and are hiding it as they are not showing symptoms. Also what about Tiffany, Uday and his plastic GF?
The plastic girlfriend had it back in July. Possible she could get it again.
It’s very strange none of them have confirmed a negative test. I bet at least one of those jackals has it.
I don’t think he’s lying about having it. I think he’s using North Korean style propaganda to try to illustrate how strong he is and will fight it off but that 4 minute tape was clearly doctored to edit out coughs.
Side note: we’re supposed to turn down the rhetoric out of respect for him but he blasted Hilary when she had pneumonia on the campaign trail and got light headed 4 years ago. He’s an asshole and I’m really trying my best to be a better person than he is despite his owing $400 million to someone he won’t reveal, paying only $750 in taxes while enjoying the best health care there is to offer while suing to get rid of healthcare for millions, and I’m not even mentioning the sexual assaults, bullying, double speak, lying, racism and misogyny. He’s such a pos Covid or not,
Whether the diagnosis is true or not, I am so done with this excuse for a president. It’s thoroughly disgusting- the hypocrisy, lies and fear this entire administration spreads. I cannot fathom how he has one legitimate follower. It really makes me doubt humanity.
The awful thing about this whole debacle is that it will probably take a death, not just gravely ill , or really ill, or widely spread to get someone to blow the whistle.
I started to suspect Trump as the spreader, definitely in Christie’s case, as more info is revealed.
They’re all lying to save the election. Not necessarily to protect Trump, but to save all their asses, because there is so much on the record crap that they didn’t take this seriously enough, and wantonly exposed people.
But if everyone survives to live another day, then this awful group of people will never take responsibility or be held accountable. They have all made it clear that the truth doesn’t matter. But death? Almost equal to manslaughter or murder in this case, may be the elephant in the room that will stomp them all.
Herman Cain already died after attending a Trump rally. No one cared. I think it would have to be a big one (a Trump, or Barr maybe) and even then it would turn into a conspiracy theory.
I think he definitely has it. Too many other people around him are coming down with it. And people like Claudia Conway are putting others on blast.
I totally understand people questioning whether this is real or not. I did too, but I’m at the point where I think, yeah, he definitely has it but I’m questioning the timeline. I think the plan was for him to lie through his teeth until he became obviously symptomatic. It’s too close to the election and they didn’t want him off the campaign trail.
As far as his crazy drive by and those videos, he’s pumped up on dexamethasone and that stuff is known to make you euphoric and manic and keeps you up all night. He’s CLEARLY tripping right now thinking he’s getting better but he will inevitably crash again.
“He” also tweeted during the debate so who knows who is in control of it at this point.
When he was first on camera at the debate, I told my daughter he looked sick then. Go figure.😒
I’m split. He either has it or he doesn’t. If Hope Hicks has it, his rumored girlfriend, then he definitely has it. On the other hand, he’s faking it all to deflect from the debates & the white supremacy mess. When I’ve been in the hospital, I’ve been so sick I can barely get up from my bed, let alone film videos & take a ride in a car, so that makes me suspicious. I don’t put anything past that lying SOB.
Symptom surge and subside with COVID.
I suspect he may have tested positive before the debate and hoped to infect Joe Biden. I don’t think there is a bottom to the depths to which he’ll stoop
I think he absolutely avoided that test before the debate on purpose. Whether he knew about hope Hicks already or already knew about himself I don’t know but there’s no way that happened by accident.
That timeline makes sense since he showed up too late to be tested prior to the debate as agreed to. I don’t want him to die because then he can’t do jail time for his crimes. We need it all exposed so that nothing like his “reign” ( I can’t call it a presidency because using that word in reference to him makes me vomit) ever happens again.
What worries me is NO ONE in the administration will tell when trump had his last negative result. Why not??? Chris Wallace said the Trump brigade came too late to get tested before the debate (which was the protocol) Then the family all sat down without masks. There is something sinister about this whole situation and I wouldn’t put it past them to be hiding that he tested Pos. before the debate.
That’s what I think too. He tested positive before the debate but thought he could hide it because he’s in such astonishingly excellent shape that the virus couldn’t touch him. I think he only admitted the positive test once he was sufficiently ill that it was clear he would need to be hospitalised. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense that he’d be on dexamethasone within a day or two of diagnosis.
What is the purpose of these debate rules if they’re not enforced? When he was too late to be tested, he shouldn’t have been allowed to participate. The debate should have turned into a campaign rally for Biden.
Oh, wait, I forgot. Rules only apply to brown people and women who don’t know their place.
I definitely think he has it-he would not want to show any weakness and this would be a weakness to him. I cannot believe how fast people are going down with this…though my cousin sent me a link saying this was planted to get rid of the republicans. When I said this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard, he told me 2 sides to every story. My question – HOW ARE PEOPLE SO NUTS and why do I seem to have them as relatives????