For months, the president recklessly disregarded mask-wearing, and aides and supporters followed his lead.
NewswatchNigeria can report that AFTER SIX MONTHS of refusing to wear a mask for the coronavirus pandemic, and just two days after mocking his opponent Joe Biden for routinely doing so, President Donald Trump early Friday morning revealed that he is tested positive of Covid-19.
The president’s result came after he spent months playing down the severity of the outbreak that has killed more than 207,000 in the United States and hours after insisting that “the end of the pandemic is in sight.”
The 74-year old President had also revealed that the first lady of the United States, Melania Trump, had also tested positive for the coronavirus, throwing the nation’s leadership into uncertainty and escalating the crisis posed by the pandemic spread by re4spiratory droplets.
Trump made known in a tweet that he and his wife immediately will quarantine in the White House for an unspecified period of time, forcing him to withdraw at least temporarily from his political campaign trail only 32 days before the election on Nov. 3.
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In her own tweet about 30 minutes later, Mrs. Trump wrote that the first couple were “feeling good,” but the White House did not say whether they were experiencing symptoms. The president’s physician said he could carry out his duties “without disruption” from the Executive Mansion.
Trump whose Twitter message dropped just before 1 a.m. followed an earlier reports that Mr. Trump’s close adviser Hope Hicks had tested positive.
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Mr. Trump’s positive test result posed immediate challenges for the future of his campaign against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, with barely a month until Election Day. Even if Mr. Trump, 74, remains asymptomatic, he will lose much of his remaining time on the campaign trail. If he becomes sick, it could raise questions about whether he should remain on the ballot at all.
The White House did not say how long Mr. Trump would have to remain isolated, but it canceled his plans to fly to Florida for a campaign rally on Friday, stripping his public schedule for the day of everything except a midday telephone call “on Covid-19 support to vulnerable seniors.” Appearances at rallies in Wisconsin on Saturday and in Arizona on Monday also appear sure to be scrapped, and the next debate, scheduled for Oct. 15 in Miami, was left up in the air.
