Trump given experimental COVID-19 drugs, taken to military hospital for ‘few days’
WASHINGTON (AP) — Stricken by COVID-19, a feverish and fatigued President Donald Trump was flown to a military hospital Friday night after being injected with an experimental drug combination in treatment at the White House.
In a day of whipsaw events, the president who has spent months downplaying the threat of the virus was forced to cancel all campaign events a month before the election as he fought a virus that has killed more than 205,000 Americans and is hitting others in his orbit as well.
The White House said Trump’s expected stay of “a few days” at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center was precautionary
and that he would continue to work from the hospital’s presidential
suite, which is equipped to allow him to keep up his official duties.
Trump
walked out of the White House Friday evening wearing a mask and gave a
thumbs-up to reporters but did not speak before boarding Marine One.
Members of the aircrew, Secret Service agents and White House staff wore
face coverings to protect themselves from the president onboard the
helicopter.
In a video taped before leaving for Walter Reed, Trump
said, “I think I’m doing very well, but we’re going to make sure that
things work out.” He remained fully president, all authority intact.
Just
a month before the presidential election, Trump’s revelation that he
was positive for the virus came by tweet about 1 a.m. Friday after he
had returned from a Thursday afternoon political fundraiser. He had gone
ahead to the event, saying nothing to the crowd though knowing he had
been exposed to an aide with the disease that has infected millions in
America and killed more than a million worldwide.
First lady
Melania Trump also tested positive, the president said, and several
others in the White House have, too, prompting concern that the White
House or even Trump himself might have spread the virus further. He said
in his video that his wife was doing very well.
Several
administration officials pointed to the Saturday Rose Garden
announcement of Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the
Supreme Court as the possible connection between cases that spanned
Washington Friday. Former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, the
president of the University of Notre Dame, and at least two Republican
lawmakers who were also present at the event — Utah Sen. Mike Lee and
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis — announced Friday they had tested
positive and were isolating.
Trump’s diagnosis came during an already turbulent period in Washington and around the world, with the U.S. gripped in a heated presidential election
amid the human and economic toll of the virus. Trump’s immediate
campaign events were all canceled, and his next debate with Democrat Joe
Biden, scheduled for Oct. 15, is now in question.
Trump has been
trying all year — and as recently as Wednesday — to convince the
American public that the worst of the pandemic is past, and he has
consistently played down concerns about being personally vulnerable. He
has mostly refused to abide by basic public health guidelines —
including those issued by his own administration — such as wearing face
coverings in public and practicing social distancing. Until he tested
positive, he continued to hold campaign rallies that drew thousands of
often maskless supporters.
“I felt no vulnerability whatsoever,”
he told reporters back in May. With the election coming up in about a
month, he is urging states and cities to “reopen” and reduce or
eliminate shutdown rules despite continuing virus outbreaks.
The White House tried to maintain an atmosphere of business-as-usual on Friday.
“President
Trump remains in good spirts, has mild symptoms, and has been working
throughout the day,” said press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. “Out of an
abundance of caution, and at the recommendation of his physician and
medical experts, the president will be working from the presidential
offices at Walter Reed for the next few days.”
The president’s
physician said in a memo that Trump received a dose of an experimental
antibody combination by Regeneron that is in clinical trials. Navy
Commander Dr. Sean Conley said Trump “remains fatigued but in good
spirits” and that a team of experts was evaluating both the president
and first lady in regard to next steps.
The first lady, who is 50,
has a “mild cough and headache,” Conley reported, and the remainder of
the first family, including the Trumps’ son Barron, who lives at the
White House, tested negative.
Trump is 74 years old and clinically
obese, putting him at higher risk of serious complications from a virus
that has infected more than 7 million people nationwide.
Both
Democratic presidential nominee Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris
have tested negative, their campaign said. Vice President Mike Pence
tested negative for the virus Friday morning and “remains in good
health,” his spokesman said. Pence was to resume his campaign schedule
after his test.
Barrett, who was with Trump and many others on
Saturday and has been on Capitol Hill meeting with lawmakers, also
tested negative, the White House said. It was confirmed that she had a
mild case of COVID earlier this year and has now recovered.
Very
early Friday, after returning from the Thursday afternoon New Jersey
fundraiser, Trump stunningly tweeted, “Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested
positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process
immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!”
Hours earlier, the White House confirmed that a top aide who had traveled with him during the week had tested positive.
White
House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Friday confirmed that the White
House knew Hope Hicks, the aide, had tested positive before Trump
attended the fundraiser.
“I can tell you in terms of Hope Hicks,
we discovered that right as Marine One was taking off yesterday,” said
Meadows. Several staffers were pulled from the trip, but Trump did not
cancel and there was no direct evidence that her illness was connected
to his.
Many White House and senior administration officials were
undergoing tests Friday, but the full scale of the outbreak around the
president may not be known for some time as it can take days for an infection to be detectable by a test. Officials with the White House Medical Unit were tracing the president’s contacts.
Trump’s
handling of the pandemic has already been a major flashpoint in his
race against Biden, who spent much of the summer off the campaign trail
and at his home in Delaware citing concern about the virus. Biden has
since resumed a more active campaign schedule, but with small, socially
distanced crowds. He also regularly wears a mask in public, something
Trump mocked him for at Tuesday night’s debate.
“I
don’t wear masks like him,” Trump said. “Every time you see him, he’s
got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from me, and he shows up
with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”
In a tweet Friday morning,
Biden said he and his wife “send our thoughts to President Trump and
First Lady Melania Trump for a swift recovery. We will continue to pray
for the health and safety of the president and his family.”
World leaders offered the president and first family their best wishes
after their diagnosis, and governments used the case as a reminder for
their citizens to wear masks and practice social distancing measures.
Multiple
White House staffers have previously 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. An
RNC official confirmed Friday that Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel learned she
had tested positive Wednesday afternoon. She has been at her home in
Michigan since last Saturday and did not attend the debate.
It is
unclear where the Trumps or Hicks caught the virus, but in a Fox
interview, Trump seemed to suggest it may have been spread by someone in
the military or law enforcement in greetings.
The White House
began instituting a daily testing regimen for the president’s senior
aides after earlier positive cases close to the president. Anyone in
close proximity to the president or vice president is also tested every
day, including reporters.
Trump is far from the first world leader
to test positive for the virus, which previously infected Brazilian
President Jair Bolsonaro and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who
spent a week in the hospital, including three nights in intensive care.
Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was hospitalized last
month while fighting what he called a “hellish” case of COVID-19.