Then-President Trump tested positive for COVID-19 three days before his first debate with Joseph R. Biden, according to his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
Mr. Meadows writes in a book due for release next week that Mr. Trump tested positive for COVID-19 on Sept. 26, 2020, three days before the first presidential debate in Cleveland.
He said Mr. Trump soon got a different test and the second result was negative, although he was suffering from mild symptoms by that time.
Although each candidate was required “to test negative for the virus within seventy-two hours of the start time … Nothing was going to stop [Mr. Trump] from going out there” to debate Mr. Biden, Mr. Meadows wrote, according to an advance copy of the book obtained by The Guardian.
Mr. Trump denied the story Wednesday in a statement.
“The story of me having COVID prior to, or during, the first debate is Fake News,” Mr. Trump said. “In fact, a test revealed that I did not have COVID prior to the debate.”
His statement didn’t specifically address whether he tested positive initially on Sept. 26.
President Biden, asked about the report Wednesday, told reporters, “I don’t think about the former president.”
The White House never told the public or the debate organizers about the positive test or the negative one. Mr. Trump announced on Oct. 2, three days after the debate, that he had contracted COVID-19. He was hospitalized later that day at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
The book, titled “The Chief’s Chief,” will be published next week by All Seasons Press. Its release comes just as Mr. Meadows has agreed to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Mr. Meadows said Mr. Trump’s positive test result came as a shock, just after the White House had staged a crowded and buoyant Rose Garden ceremony for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
He said he noticed that Mr. Trump seemed “a little tired” and believed the president might have a “slight cold.”
As the president departed in Marine One for a rally in Pennsylvania later that night, the White House doctor called, Mr. Meadows wrote.
“Stop the president from leaving,” Mr. Meadows quoted White House physician Sean Conley as telling him. “He just tested positive for COVID.”
He said he gave Mr. Trump the news on Air Force One a few minutes later.
“Mr. President,” Mr. Meadows said, “I’ve got some bad news. You’ve tested positive for COVID-19.”
The president’s reply, Mr. Meadows said, “rhyme[d] with ‘Oh spit, you’ve gotta be trucking lidding me,’” The Guardian reported.
The positive test had been conducted with an older-model test kit, the former chief of staff wrote. He told Mr. Trump that a new test would be taken with “the Binax system, and that we were hoping the first test was a false positive.”
The second test showed a negative result, and Mr. Meadows said the president took it as “full permission to press on as if nothing had happened.”
But Mr. Meadows “instructed everyone in his immediate circle to treat him as if he was positive” throughout the Pennsylvania trip.
“I didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks, but I also didn’t want to alarm the public if there was nothing to worry about — which according to the new, much more accurate test, there was not,” he wrote.
New York Times reporter Michael Shear, who was on the flight on Air Force One and later contracted COVID-19, suggested Wednesday that Mr. Trump might have given it to him.
“Hours after he received the call from Meadows informing him of a positive test, Trump came to the back of AF1 without a mask and talked with reporters for about 10 minutes,” Mr. Shear tweeted. “I was wearing a mask, but still got COVID, testing positive several days later.”
On Sept. 28, Mr. Trump hosted business leaders at the White House and held a Rose Garden press conference on efforts to combat the pandemic.
“Somewhat ironically, considering his circumstances,” Mr. Meadows wrote, Mr. Trump talked of a new testing strategy “supposed to give quicker, more accurate readings about whether someone was positive or not.”
On the day of the debate, Sept. 29, Mr. Meadows said the president looked “slightly” better.
“His face, for the most part at least, had regained its usual light bronze hue, and the gravel in his voice was gone,” the book states. “But the dark circles under his eyes had deepened. As we walked into the venue around five o’clock in the evening, I could tell that he was moving more slowly than usual. He walked like he was carrying a little extra weight on his back.”
Debate moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News later said Mr. Trump was not tested before the debate because he arrived late. He said debate organizers relied on the honor system.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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