After Trump tested negative for COVID in a second test done shortly after the positive one, he continued campaigning.
Details from an upcoming book reveal that Trump tested positive for coronavirus just a few days before his first presidential debate with Joe Biden. The book is written by Mark Meadows, who served as chief of staff to former President Donald Trump during his final year in office. In response to reporting on the excerpt from Meadows’s book, Trump described the anecdote as “fake news” — a term he frequently uses to describe negative reporting on him, despite the fact that such reporting often turns out to be true. Meadows’s book, titled The Chief’s Chief, offers an inside look at the Trump White House from the former chief of staff’s perspective. In the section detailing the days surrounding the first debate, Meadows recalls how Trump found out that he had tested positive for COVID-19 while on his way to a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on September 26. The positive diagnosis shocked White House staff, Meadows wrote — even though the White House had just hosted a ceremony for then-Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, an occasion that was later described as a “super-spreader” event due to the number of people who tested positive for coronavirus shortly after attending.
