Donald Trump is being taken to Walter Reed hospital for COVID-19 treatment

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President Donald Trump, who tested positive for the coronavirus, gave a ‘thumbs up’ as he walked from the White House to Marine One to be airlifted to Walter Reed Military Medical Center on Friday evening. 

The President is being admitted to hospital for tests ‘out of an abundance of caution’ after he developed a fever, congestion and a cough. He is expected to remain in hospital for ‘a few days’ where the White House says he will continue working.    

He waved to reporters on the South Lawn but didn’t speak as he walked to Marine One. He walked on his own with no help. 

Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was with him, also wearing a mask. Several senior White House staffers, including press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, were on the lawn to watch the president’s departure. They were also wearing masks, an unusual image for the Trump White House.

Trump walked slowly down the stairs of Marine One when he arrived on the hospital grounds after the 15-minute journey holding on to the handrail as he descended.

He got into a waiting motorcade for the short ride to the hospital, where he will be admitted into the presidential suite.

In a video message posted to Twitter, the President thanked the American people for their support following his diagnosis.

‘I want to thank everyone for the tremendous support. I’m going to Walter Reed hospital, I think I’m doing well, but we’re going to make sure things work out,’ he said in the 18-second clip.

‘The First Lady is doing very well. So, thank you very much, I appreciate it. I will never forget it.’  

On Friday evening, Eric Trump tweeted that his father ‘is a true warrior’ and asked Americans to ‘join me in praying for his recovery’. 

‘He will fight through this with the same strength and conviction that he uses to fight for America each and every day,’ Eric wrote. ‘I ask you to join me in praying for his recovery. I have never been more proud of someone and what they have had to endure.’ 

Trump’s daughter Ivanka also called him a ‘warrior’ saying he ‘will beat this’.  

‘I love you, Dad,’ she added.  

White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah confirmed that Trump had not transferred power to Vice President Mike Pence, despite his hospitalization. ‘The president is in charge,’ she said. 

Pence is at the Naval Observatory where he lives. He tested negative for COVID on Friday morning.    

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Trump, 74, and the First Lady Melania Trump, 50, announced they tested positive in the early hours of Friday morning and at the time were self-isolating at the White House. 

Melania, who tweeted that she has ‘mild symptoms’ has not been taken to hospital with the President and will remain quarantined in the White House. 

Earlier today, Trump’s physician said he was treated with a single dose of Regenron’s experimental polyclonal antibody cocktail. He added that the President was ‘fatigued but in good spirits’. 

The next week is considered the critical phase in his illness.  

Supporters of Trump gathered around the military hospital on Friday night as some held a prayer group for his recovery. 

Trump’s presidential suite in the hospital has its own ICU, secure conference room and kitchen. Doctors are vetted in advance if the president needs specialty care and the White House physician has sleeping quarters. 

The White House Chief of Staff also has his own office space in the president’s area, which is controlled by the White House, not by the Department of Defense.  

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, 77, and his wife Jill have tested negative. The President’s 14-year-old son Barron, Ivanka and Jared Kushner have also tested negative, as has Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Three White House reporters tested positive Friday. 

Later in the day, the White House National Security Council ordered all staff to begin wearing masks in White House common areas and to ‘avoid unnecessary visits’ to the West Wing, according to an internal email. 

Mask use on the White House grounds has mostly been lax, with Trump often having questioned and sometimes ridiculed their use despite medical experts´ insistence the practice saves lives. 

As news of Trump’s hospitalization broke, Biden stressed that the president’s illness ‘cannot be a partisan moment’.

‘It must be an American moment. We have to come together as a nation,’ he tweeted. 

Former President Barack Obama also wished Trump a speedy recovery on Friday night. 

‘It’s important … for all of us to remember that even when we’re in the midst of big political battles with issues that have a lot at stake, that we’re all Americans and we’re all human beings, and we want to make sure everybody is healthy,’ he said. 

‘Michelle and I are hopeful that they and others that have been affected by COVID-19 around the country are getting the care that they need, that they are going to be on the path to a speedy recovery.’ 

Obama was speaking at a fundraising event with Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who said she shared her deepest prayers for ‘the health & recovery of the president and the first lady’.

‘The threat of this virus is real for all of us. Let it be a reminder to all of us that we must remain vigilant and take care of ourselves and take care of each other,’ she added.  

Also on Friday evening, Biden’s campaign confirmed that it was pulling all negative advertising about Trump from their rotation of paid media. 

Trump’s campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said that they would not be doing the same.

‘Joe Biden used his speech in MI today to attack the President repeatedly on Social Security, the economy & job creation. Now Biden wants credit for being magnanimous?’ he said. 

Earlier in the day in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Biden said he and Jill were praying for the Trumps – and, in a break from past practice, wore a mask to speak. 

‘My wife Jill and I pray that they make a quick and full recovery,’ he said, at a campaign event with union workers, which had been moved outside and attendance limited. 

‘This is not a matter of politics. It is a bracing reminder to all of us that we take this virus seriously. It means wearing a mask in public and encouraging others to do so as well.

‘We as a nation need to be better in dealing with this pandemic.’  

He added: ‘For all those who are fighting this, including the First Family, my prayers are with you. My prayers are with those who died – 207,000 I think today.’ 

At the end of his speech, Biden said: ‘May God protect the First Family, and every family that is dealing with this virus.’ 

Trump and Melania announced they had tested positive hours after he returned from a campaign fundraiser at his New Jersey golf club where he is believed to have come into contact with at least 100 people. It raised $5million for his campaign, which has now canceled all future events in light of the president’s diagnosis.   

Trump was due to take part in a conference call with governors at 12.15pm Friday but was replaced by Vice President Mike Pence, who has tested negative. 

Pence told the governors Trump asked him to take his place because he’d tested positive, but would not elaborate on the President’s condition.  

Sources cited by The New York Times say the President was already lethargic on the way back from Thursday’s  New Jersey event, and that he fell asleep on Air Force One on Wednesday night when returning from a rally in Minnesota – something that is highly unusual for the energetic President, who ordinarily spends his time on the aircraft watching television and tweeting. 

The Minnesota rally was also only half as long as his other rallies. Air Force One is now being deep cleaned. 

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said it was deemed safe for the president to attend Thursday’s fundraiser. 

‘It was deemed safe for the president to go. He socially distanced. It was an outdoor event and it was deemed safe by White House operations,’ she told reporters at the White House on Friday.

Trump is 74 years old and at 244lbs and 6ft 3, is technically obese which puts him at higher risk of serious complications from the virus. 

His Chief of Staff said on Friday that he is ‘in good spirits’ and is not only ‘on the job now, but will remain on the job’.  

People who attended the fundraiser said he seemed healthy. He spoke to supporters for 15 minutes and then took questions for an hour. 

There are questions about when White House staff learned Hope Hicks – one of Trump’s most trusted aides – tested positive, when Trump learned about it and why, with that knowledge in mind, he still went to the fundraiser.   

‘We said, “How is this guy doing it? Look at the stamina of this guy.” I can’t tell you how healthy he looked. I’m sure that this will come and go,’ comedian and radio host Joe Piscopo told North Jersey.com.  

John Sette, the former chair of the Morris County Republican Committee, told Politico: ‘First of all, he looked 100 percent normal. 

‘He spoke 100 percent normal. He spoke for about 15 minutes and he took questions for an hour.’  

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Friday told reporters that they discovered Hicks had tested positive on Thursday afternoon, just as the President was preparing to travel to the fundraiser at his golf club, at around 1pm. Bloomberg claims the President found out about Hicks’ diagnosis hours earlier. 

Meadows said that they ‘pulled people off’ Marine One who they thought had been in close contact with Hicks to try to limit the spread, but they still allowed the President to go despite the fact that he’d traveled with Hicks on Air Force One on Tuesday and Wednesday, and had spent much of last week working with her.  

If Trump becomes seriously ill, there are constitutional procedures that would allow Vice President Mike Pence to assume power temporarily, just weeks before the November 3 election. 

But if Trump suffers mild or no symptoms, the president would be able to tout his recovery as evidence that the virus is a less grave threat than many believe. 

Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Friday morning, Meadows said: ‘His first question to me was, “how is the economy doing? How are the stimulus talks going on Capitol Hill?’ 

‘The American people can rest assured that we have a president who is not only on the job but who will remain on the job. 

‘He’s in the residence now. In true fashion he’s probably critiquing the way that I am answering these questions.’  

‘In terms of Hope Hicks, we discovered that right as the Marine One was taking off yesterday we actually pulled some of the people who had been travelling with her,’ Meadows added. 

Those people are understood to be Dan Scavino, Social Media Director, and Kayleigh McEnany, White House Press Secretary, both of whom have since tested negative. 

On Wednesday night, the President was on the plane with Hicks but she kept a safe distance from him and others when she started experiencing symptoms.  

She was quarantined away from others on the plane and her diagnosis was confirmed Thursday, according to an administration official.

Trump then continued with his schedule Thursday and traveled to and from his Bedminster, New Jersey golf resort to take part in two campaign events. 

He flew back to the White House on Thursday evening, when it was publicly confirmed Hicks had the virus. Hours later, Trump and Melania shared their own diagnoses on social media. 

First Lady Melania, 50, tweeted: ‘As too many Americans have done this year, @potus & I are quarantining at home after testing positive for COVID-19. 

‘We are feeling good & I have postponed all upcoming engagements. 

‘Please be sure you are staying safe & we will all get through this together.’  

The White House had earlier distributed a schedule for Friday that showed he planned to go forward with a fundraiser at his Washington, D.C., hotel and a political rally in Sanford, Florida. That has since been canceled. 

The second presidential debate on October 15 is also in doubt. 

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, one of Trump’s biggest opponents and critics, issued a statement expressing concern. 

 ‘My thoughts are with President Trump and the First Lady and I wish them a full and speedy recovery. This virus is vicious and spreads easily. Wear a mask. Let’s all look out for each other,’ he said.

Markets reacted badly after Trump’s diagnosis today, with stock futures losing 1.9 per cent on the S&P 500, while oil prices also slipped. Europe’s major stock markets also dived in opening trade on Friday, with London’s FTSE 100 and Frankfurt’s DAX 30 both shedding more than one per cent.  

‘To say this potentially could be a big deal is an understatement,’ Holland’s Rabobank said in a commentary. 

‘Anyway, everything now takes a backseat to the latest incredible twist in this US election campaign.’ 

 

The hospitalization announcement came after the markets closed.

It will be two days before the markets open again, giving investors time to recover from the shock of the president of the United States being hospitalized for COVID. 

Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the FDA, said that it was unlikely Hicks was the source because Trump would not have started showing symptoms as soon as Thursday had she infected him on Wednesday. 

It’s more likely that they were both exposed by another source days earlier, he said. 

Trump, who typically shuns masks, was around hundreds if not thousands of people this week, traveling to a campaign rally, his golf club, the presidential debate, fundraisers and meetings with people involved in his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

He visited three states in total.  

Barrett tested negative on Friday as Democrats called for her confirmation process to be slowed down in lght of Trump’s diagnosis. 

Leading Republicans said they still planned to go ‘full steam ahead’. 

The White House Medical Unit is slated to trace the president´s contacts. 

The president received reassuring words from Dr. Scott Atlas, a key coronavirus advisor whose influence on the president has raised alarms among top government scientists, including CDC head Dr. Robert Redfield and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Atlas told Fox News he expects Trump and the first lady to make a ‘complete, full and rapid recovery.’

‘There is zero reason to panic. It is no surprise that people get the infection, even with precautions. I anticipate a complete and full and rapid recovery back to normal after his necessary confinement period. I anticipate he’ll be back on the road and in full swing,’ he said.

Atlas, who does not treat Trump as his physician, also vouched for Trump’s health.

He called Trump a ‘super vigorous man,’ and said he has ‘never seen anyone with more energy and more vigor, at any age, but particularly at his age.’

In a letter to McEnany, White House physician Sean Conley said medics would keep a ‘vigilant watch’ on the president’s health. 

He added that doctors were providing Trump with an experimental antibody cocktail; vitamin D; famotidine, which is typically used to treat heartburn and acid reflux; the sleep aid melatonin; and an aspirin. 

Vice President Pence said: ‘Karen and I send our love and prayers to our dear friends President Donald Trump and [first lady] Melania Trump. 

‘We join millions across America praying for their full and swift recovery.

‘God bless you President Trump and our wonderful First Lady Melania.’

UK prime minister Boris Johnson, who survived a scare with the virus in April, sent his best wishes to the president and first lady on Twitter, saying: ‘Hope they both have a speedy recovery from coronavirus.’ 

Trump’s ally Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, said that ‘like millions of Israelis, Sara and I are thinking of President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump and wish our friends a full and speedy recovery’. 

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyeusus, the head of the WHO who has clashed with Trump over the agency’s handling of the pandemic, also sent his best wishes to the president for a ‘full and speedy recovery’. 

Trump has accused the WHO of being too close to China and announced earlier this year that the US would cut off funding for the Geneva-based body.  

News of Trump’s infection has turned attention to Hope Hicks and her travel schedule after the White House aide first felt poorly on the way back from Wednesday’s rally in Minnesota. 

Along with the trip to Minnesota, Hicks had been aboard Air Force One to fly to Tuesday night’s first presidential debate in Cleveland, Ohio.  

She was spotted by DailyMail.com getting off Air Force One in the city without her mask. 

On Tuesday, she was seen in a car without her mask with White House senior adviser Stephen Miller and campaign adviser Jason Miller. She is said to have worn a mask when on Marine One with Trump.  

Hicks also traveled with the president to a rally in Pennsylvania last Saturday where she was seen maskless and clapping to the Village People’s YMCA.  

Before announcing his positive test, Trump tweeted to say he and Melania were in quarantine while they awaited their results because of Hicks’s diagnosis. 

 ‘Hope Hicks, who has been working so hard without even taking a small break, has just tested positive for Covid 19. Terrible!,’ the president said. 

Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday, the president described the 31-year-old Hicks as a ‘very warm person’ and suggested she got close to supporters and contracted the virus.

‘She’s fantastic and she’s done a great job,’ Trump said. 

‘But it’s very, very hard when you are with people from the military and from law enforcement and they come over to you and they, 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,’ the president added. 

Trump said he was ‘surprised’ to hear that Hicks, who previously served as White House communications director and re-joined the administration this year ahead of the election, tested positive. 

‘She wears a mask a lot, but she tested positive,’ the president said.

Typically, according to the CDC, a person develops symptoms five days after being infected, but symptoms can appear as early as two days after infection or as late as 14 days after infection, and the time range can vary.   

All the attendees at the Cleveland debate were tested beforehand, while the former vice president’s wife Jill Biden kept her mask on throughout, unlike members of the Trump family. 

The second debate on October 15 is now in jeopardy. Trump could be out of quarantine in 10 days if he shows no symptoms, but if he develops symptoms he would have to isolate for longer. 

In addition, the October 7 vice-presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris also appears in doubt, because Pence will have to isolate if he has been in contact with the president. 

On Thursday evening, before Trump revealed he had tested positive, Biden berated the president for ‘doing everything he can to distract’ from his ‘failed Covid-19 response’. 

In pre-taped remarks to the Al Smith charity dinner, Trump told guests on Thursday night that ‘the end of the pandemic is in sight’. 

‘Through advances in treatment, we have reduced the fatality rate by 85 percent since just April. We are on track to develop and distribute a vaccine before the end of the year, and maybe substantially before,’ Trump claimed. 

Biden has held a consistent lead in the polls, prompting Trump into an ever-more aggressive schedule of campaign rallies around the country.  

Hicks becomes the latest in Trump’s circle to contract the virus after National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and White House coronavirus task force spokeswoman Katie Miller.

Hicks is one of the president’s most trusted and longest-serving aides, having worked as spokesperson for his 2016 campaign. 

She originally served as White House as communications director, and re-joined the administration this year as an adviser ahead of the election. 

White House spokesman Judd Deere had earlier said: ‘The president takes the health and safety of himself and everyone who works in support of him and the American people very seriously.

‘White House Operations collaborates with the physician to the President and the White House Military Office to ensure all plans and procedures incorporate current CDC guidance and best practices for limiting Covid-19 exposure to the greatest extent possible, both on complex and when the president is traveling.’

Deere did not mention Hicks by name.  

Multiple White House staffers have tested positive for the virus, including Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller, national security adviser Robert O’Brien, and one of the president’s personal valets. 

Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is dating Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump J., tested positive in South Dakota before an Independence Day fireworks show at Mount Rushmore. 

After earlier cases close to the president, the White House instituted a daily testing regimen for the president’s senior aides.  

On May 11, a memo to the president’s staff told them to wear face coverings, and discouraged unnecessary visits from other parts of the White House complex to the West Wing area.

‘Common sense has finally prevailed,’ one senior administration official said at the time.  

It is not known why the president’s test took so long to come back or whether he was tested Wednesday evening when Hicks first began displaying symptoms.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people who have been in close contact with a virus patient quarantine for 14 days, White House staffers are considered essential workers. 

CDC’s guidelines for exposed essential workers allows them to return to work if they take precautions, including taking their temperature before going into work, wearing a mask at all times and practicing social distancing.

Trump, the White House and his campaign have flouted other CDC guidelines and recommendations from public health officials, and largely refused to wear masks or practice social distancing.  

Instead, Trump has continued to hold campaign rallies that draw thousands of supporters. 

By contrast, Biden is running a deliberately low-key campaign with social distancing at most events, no large gatherings, and conspicuous use of his mask. 

Still, Trump has consistently played down concerns about being personally vulnerable to contracting COVID-19. ‘I felt no vulnerability whatsoever,’ he told reporters back in May. 

Trump mocked Biden at Tuesday’s debate for wearing ‘the biggest mask I’ve ever seen’, while pulling a face covering out of his pocket and saying he wears one when needed. 

The president had previously mocked Biden for wearing a mask in May, saying it was ‘very unusual’ to wear a mask outside and accusing a reporter of trying to be ‘politically correct’ by wearing one himself.  

Biden called Trump a ‘fool’ in response, saying in an interview that ‘this macho stuff’ was costing lives.  

Trump previously said he ‘did not want to give the press the pleasure’ of seeing him with a mask, while saying he had worn one away from the cameras. 

He added that he could not see himself greeting ‘presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens’ while wearing a mask. 

But the president finally changed his tone in July, saying it was ‘patriotic’ to wear a mask. 

Melania had let Americans see her in a face mask as long ago as April while urging people to take the health regulations ‘seriously’. 

‘As the CDC studies the spread of Covid-19, they recommend people wear cloth face coverings in public settings when social distancing can be hard to do,’ Melania said on April 9. 

Trump also sparked outrage and ridicule after suggesting in April that people could inject themselves with disinfectant to fend off the virus, which would be extremely dangerous.  

‘Then I see the disinfectant which knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside for almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that,’ he said. 

Early in the pandemic, Trump played down the dangers – saying in January that ‘we have it totally under control’ and in February that ‘it’s going to disappear’.  

Discussing the virus in an interview with Bob Woodward on March 19, Trump admitted that ‘I always wanted to play it down’ – despite having previously told Woodward that the disease was ‘deadly stuff’. 

Those comments sparked anger when they were revealed last month, with Biden accusing Trump of a ‘life and death betrayal’.   

The virus has killed more than 200,000 Americans and infected more than 7 million nationwide.  

While there is currently no evidence that Trump is seriously ill, the positive test also raises questions about what would happen if he were to become incapacitated due to illness. 

The Constitution’s 25th Amendment spells out the procedures under which a president can declare themselves ‘unable to discharge the powers and duties’ of the presidency. 

If he were to make that call, Trump would transmit a written note to the Senate president pro tempore, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Pence would serve as acting president until Trump transmitted ‘a written declaration to the contrary.’

This has happened occasionally, with Ronald Reagan briefly putting George H.W. Bush in charge during surgery in 1985, before George W. Bush temporarily transferred powers to Dick Cheney during colonoscopies in 2002 and 2007. 

These were all brief, scheduled transfers of power and came nowhere near a re-election campaign.  

There is also a second, never-used option: the vice president and a majority of either the Cabinet or another body established by law, can declare the president unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, in which case Pence would ‘immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President’ until Trump could provide a written declaration to the contrary.

Trump’s infection has also led to suggestions that the election could be delayed, but this is highly unlikely because voting is already underway. 

While the Constitution does not specify an election date, moving the poll would require an act of Congress including support from the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. 

And regardless of the election date, Trump’s term ends on January 20. 

If no president or vice president is elected by then, others in the line of succession would take over – although Pelosi might also be without a job if the House elections were delayed too. 

Trump joins UK prime minister Boris Johnson and Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro as the most high-profile leaders to contract the disease. 

Johnson, who was 55 at the time, spent an alarming three nights in intensive care at a London hospital before eventually recovering, while 65-year-old Bolsonaro rode out the infection at home.   

When Johnson was ill, UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab deputised for him although the nature of his constitutional powers was not fully clear. 

The White House offered to supply medicine for Johnson’s treatment, as did the Chinese government, but London said the PM was receiving the best possible care from Britain’s National Health Service.  

Johnson has blamed his experience on being overweight, and his scare has prompted him to launch a crackdown on unhealthy eating. 

Bolsonaro, a former army captain who has described the virus as a ‘little flu’, had long played down the risks and predicted that he would easily survive an infection with Covid-19. 

Germany’s Angela Merkel, 66, self-isolated after a doctor who gave her a jab tested positive, and Canada’s Justin Trudeau, 48, worked from home after his wife fell ill.  

News that Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus sparked an explosion of rumors, misinformation and conspiracy theories that littered social media feeds.

By Friday morning, nearly 30,000 Twitter users had retweeted a variety of conspiracy theories about the news, according to an analysis by VineSight, a tech company that tracks online misinformation.

The news is ripe for foreign and domestic internet instigators to exploit by pushing online disinformation about the two presidential candidates and opens the door for unwitting people to spread misinformation without realizing what they´re sharing is false, experts say.

Facebook said Friday that it immediately began monitoring misinformation around the president´s diagnosis and had started applying fact checks to some false posts.

Twitter, meanwhile, was monitoring an uptick in ‘copypasta’ campaigns – which are attempts from numerous Twitter accounts to parrot the same phrase over and over again to inundate users with messaging – about Trump´s illness. 

The social media company said it was working to limit views on those tweets.