All the Places Trump Went After Secretly Testing Positive for COVID
SlateMark Meadows, President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, has revealed new details about Trump’s coronavirus deceit. According to excerpts from Meadows’ new book, The Chief’s Chief—as reported by the Guardian, which broke the story—Meadows got word of the positive test result just as Trump was taking off on Marine Force One from the White House to Joint Base Andrews, where he was scheduled to fly on Air Force One to a rally in Pennsylvania. Trump and Meadows were in a hurry—the flight to Pennsylvania was short—and the BinaxNOW instruction sheet warned that “False negative results can occur if test results are read before 15 minutes.” An article in Nature, published on Sept. 16, 2020, had cautioned that because such speedy antigen tests needed robust virus samples “to produce a positive result … the test might give a false-negative result.” A CDC review would later find that the BinaxNOW test failed to detect COVID infections in nearly two of every three asymptomatic carriers. I was wearing a mask, but still got COVID, testing positive several days later.” At the White House, Trump’s positive test, combined with the previous infections of several staffers, should have triggered immediate contact tracing. In March 2021, ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked Trump whether, as some sources alleged, “you got an initial positive test even before the debate.” Trump lied again: “No, that’s not true.” On Wednesday, when the Meadows excerpts surfaced, Trump called them “Fake News.” He claimed that “a test revealed that I did not have COVID prior to the debate.” Notably, Trump said nothing about any other test results.