Donald Trump condemned for Covid stunt ‘insanity’ as US approaches 7.5m cases – US politics live | US news

Both Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, have tested negative for the virus, according to CBS.

Pence has a busy week of travel scheduled: he will head to Utah on Monday ahead of his debate with vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris in Salt Lake City. He is also scheduled to hold a MAGA rally in Arizona and stop in his home state of Indiana, where he will cast an early ballot for president.

This travel contravenes public health guidance, which recommends anyone who has been exposed to the virus self-quarantine for 14 days.

The pool of White House reporters charged with covering the president is headed to Walter Reed hospital. Previously, that has indicated that there will be an update from Trump’s medical team. We are standing by.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany declined to release the number of staff infected with coronavirus after the First Couple, aides and allies tested positive for the virus, citing “privacy concerns.”

Removing her mask to briefly answer questions, McEnany also refused to say when the president was tested for coronavirus prior to his diagnosis.

“I’m not going to give you a detailed readout with timestamps of every time the president is tested,” she said. “He’s tested regularly and the first positive test he received was when he returned from Bedminster.”

The White House has been widely criticized for its lack of transparency and conflicting messaging in the wake of the president’s diagnosis.

New Jersey governor Phil Murphy said Trump should have canceled a big-dollar fundraiser at a golf club in his state after a top aide tested positive for the coronavirus, rather than risk contagion among the hundreds of attendees and staff at the event.

“This borders on reckless in terms of exposing people not just in New Jersey, but looks like from folks around the country, who have now scattered by the way,” he told CNN.

Authorities are working to contact trace for the more than 200 people who may have been exposed at the fundraiser Trump held last week, hours before the White House said the president received his own positive diagnosis.

But Murphy called on the federal government to assist with contact tracing, particularly given that a number of guests traveled to the event from out of town.

“We’re taking the lead. We got on it immediately, both at the state level and the local level. But, you know, we need cooperation from the feds,” he said in the interview. “Remember, the staff all live in New Jersey even though the attendees were from around the country.”

He also urged all attendees to self-quarantine.

“Please, god, if you know you’re exposed to someone who is Covid-positive, you need to quarantine,” he said. “I don’t want to be the grinch here but that’s the way we have got to deal with this virus.”

Sources told CNN that Trump had demanded to be released from the hospital on Sunday.

Trump, as ever, is concerned about the optics of staying in the hospital, according to CNN’s Jim Acosta. He worries the visual of him being hospitalized “makes him look weak,” a source told the network.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said earlier that a decision on whether to release Trump from the hospital would after a meeting with his medical team later in the afternoon.

Donald Trump said in March he “didn’t have a lot of time” to meet the top public health expert Dr Anthony Fauci for a briefing about the coronavirus outbreak that was then gathering pace, according to a new recording released by the reporter Bob Woodward.

The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly has a nice summary on the latest tape to be released by the veteran journalist, whose interviews with Trump revealed that the president was aware of the dangers of the virus in February even as he downplayed its seriousness publicly.

As Pengelly notes, “Trump, who has been widely criticized for failing to advocate mask-wearing, social distancing and other public health measures to contain the virus, said he had learned a lot” from his positive diagnosis.

“This is the real school,” Trump said from Walter Reed, to which he was admitted on Friday. “I get it and understand it. [It is] a very interesting thing and I’m going to be letting you know about it.”

Read more:

As they say in Trump’s America, there’s always a tweet.

The president on Sunday was sharply criticized for leaving the hospital to greet supporters. Doctors and experts said he put the health of the personnel riding with him in the car at risk.

In 2014, during the Ebola outbreak, Trump had a word for such behavior: “selfish”.

In a pair of 2014 tweets being shared online, Trump attacked a New York doctor who had returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea. Craig Spencer’s positive diagnosis set off a sprawling contact tracing effort, made difficult by the fact that he rode the subway, went to a bowling alley and rode in a taxi.

But here, context is key. Spencer did not know he had the Ebola virus when he used public transport or met up with friends. And, critically, people infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they begin to show symptoms, and it cannot be spread through the air.

As such, his travel and activities were not deemed to be a risk to the public because it occurred before he displayed symptoms. No one is known to have contracted the virus from Spencer.

Trump’s allies have defended his decision to leave Walter Reed. On Monday, Corey Lewandowski said he was told the Secret Service agents “volunteered for that assignment.”

Whoever is writing the headlines at Reuters this morning has summed up the scenario very succinctly with “Trump’s Covid-19 status unclear, could return to White House Monday”. Unclear is something of an understatement.

There’s been the optimism on Fox News from chief of staff Mark Meadows that Trump is ready to return to a normal working routine, but Reuters note that if the medical information supplied to the public is accurate, Donald Trump has some way to go yet on the path of recovery.

They point out that the 74 year old is being treated with a steroid, dexmethasone, that is normally used only in the most severe cases.

Even if he does return to the White House later today, he will need to continue treatment as Trump is still undergoing a five-day course of an intravenous antiviral drug, remdesivir.

The normal quarantine period for anyone testing positive for the coronavirus is 14 days.

Michael D. Shear, who is a White House correspondent for the New York Times, is one of the journalists who has tested positive for coronavirus in recent days, and he believes that he probably picked it up while covering events at the White House. He has told CNN this morning that he’s had no official messages from the administration to try and do contact tracing with him, saying:

It’s now, you know, 10 days … 11 days, whatever, since I think that I was probably infected on that Saturday. I’ve not been contacted by the White House. Nobody from the White House has said ‘boo’ and asked anything about where I was or who I talked to, or who else I might have infected. And so I think that that just shows you that they’re not taking it seriously, at least as it pertains to themselves.

You can watch the interview segment here:

Here’s a reminder that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has spoken to Fox News this morning, and is optimistic about the president’s progress.