A defiant Trump delivers divisive speech at the White House

(CNN) – A defiant President Donald Trump resumed public events Saturday with a divisive speech at the White House, potentially putting lives at risk yet again, just nine days after revealing his own positive covid-19 diagnosis.

After being on the sidelines of the election campaign for more than a week, Trump leaned on his message of law and order in a speech full of falsehoods that was clearly a campaign rally disguised as a White House event.

Trump claimed that if the left wins power, they will launch a crusade against law enforcement. Continuing with his highly inaccurate campaign ads suggesting that Democratic candidate Joe Biden would withdraw funding for 911 operations and have a “therapist” answer calls about the crime, Trump falsely claimed that the left is focused on taking guns away from him. fire, funds and authority to the police.

With just three weeks to go until an election in which he is far behind in the polls, and millions of citizens are already voting, Trump deployed familiar scare tactics.

Biden has not made any proposals that affect the ability to respond to 911 calls. As CNN’s Facts First has noted many times, Biden has repeatedly and explicitly opposed the idea of ​​”withdrawing funds from the police” and has proposed a $ 300 million increase in federal funding for community policing.

The event was reportedly aimed at African Americans and Latin Americans, who, he argued, are benefiting from his agenda. In attendance were members of a group known as “BLEXIT” that was founded by conservative Candace Owens to encourage African Americans to leave the Democratic party. His speech, however, seemed clearly aimed at white suburbanites who are not sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Trump’s ignorance of inviting a group of Black and Latino communities, who have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, to an event at the White House at a time when it could still be contagious, was appalling for Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency room physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

“The images we see are absolutely extraordinary,” Faust told CNN’s “Newsroom,” as the South Lawn attendees did very little social distancing, and many did not wear masks. “Literally luring (black and Latino activists) into the White House, into a critical zone, is extraordinarily inept in terms of public policy and public health… If you think nuclear power is safe, you don’t go and have a picnic in Chernobyl every day next to prove that point.

The large gathering followed Trump’s acknowledgment during a televised interview with Fox News on Friday that he may have contracted the virus in one of the recent events at the White House. Trump gave an incomprehensible answer about the results of his latest coronavirus tests on Friday.

“I haven’t even figured out the numbers or anything yet, but I’ve been reassessed and I know I’m at the bottom of the scale or not,” Trump told Fox News medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel on ” Tucker Carlson Tonight ». “They do tests every other day I guess, but now it’s really at a level that’s been great, it’s great to see it disappear.”

CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, noted that the Fox interview offered very little clarity about Trump’s level of contagion and said that if the president had had a simple answer about the negative test, he would have given it: “They’re being deliberately lazy on this, but I think they’re trying to track their viral load,” Gupta noted in “Cuomo Prime Time.”

Americans still do not know the date of Trump’s last negative test for covid-19. But when Trump recorded the interview with Fox, he said he had stopped taking drugs eight hours earlier. But he also underscored the severity of his illness when he acknowledged that scans of his lungs at the hospital had shown congestion and that he took the steroid dexamethasone because it keeps “inflammation of the lungs down.”

White House doctors have not spoken directly to the press since Trump left the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday, and his doctor did not reveal his temperature in the latest statement on his vital signs Thursday. Trump’s doctor, the commander of the Navy. Dr. Sean Conley, said in his statement Thursday that Saturday would be the 10th day since Trump’s diagnosis and based on unspecified tests the team performed, “I fully anticipate the president’s safe return to public engagements at that time. moment”.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates on its website that patients with mild or moderate illnesses are infectious for up to 10 days, while those with “severe or critical illnesses” could remain infectious for up to 20 days after the onset of symptoms. The drugs Trump received have suggested serious illness to many of the doctors interviewed by CNN.

No evidence of change in White House protocols

Either way, the president’s illness does not appear to have changed the security protocols adopted by the White House or the Trump campaign, despite the fact that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, said Friday that It is now clear that Trump’s Rose Garden ceremony for his Supreme Court appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, two weeks ago was a “super propagator event.”

“We had a big publicity event at the White House,” Fauci told CBS News Radio on Friday. “It was in a situation where people were crowded together, they weren’t wearing masks. So the data speaks for itself.

Attendees of Saturday’s White House event must bring masks and will be subject to temperature controls, a source with knowledge of the planning told CNN. But while Trump said he may have contracted the virus in the White House, he did not mention the masks when Siegel asked him about the lessons he had learned from contracting the coronavirus. Cases are now rising in 28 states, and Friday marked a record number of new coronavirus cases worldwide – more than 350,000 in a single day, according to the World Health Organization.

“They had some big events at the White House and maybe there,” he said when asked by Siegel where he thought he got the virus. “I really do not know. Nobody knows it for sure. Many people have contracted it, but you know that people have contracted it all over the world. It is highly contagious.

Trump said his main takeaway from the disease was that covid patients should seek medical treatment as soon as possible symptoms are detected.

“I think the secret for me was that I arrived very early,” Trump said during the interview with Siegel, acknowledging that many Americans do not have the same level of health care or access to doctors as he. “I think going early is an important factor in my case.”

Nonetheless, when it comes to preventing the spread of the disease, the White House still appears to be disobeying basic public health precautions, and its protocol on Saturday doesn’t look much different than the Rose Garden event on September 26, where At least 12 people who attended – including former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who was released from the hospital Saturday after a week-long stay – contracted the virus, forcing the White House to empty itself after that his assistants went into quarantine.

The Presidential Debate Commission canceled the second debate on Friday, which was scheduled for next Thursday, after the president refused to participate in a virtual debate despite concerns about his covid-19 diagnosis, organizers said.

Trump has three events planned for next week – in Florida, Pennsylvania and Iowa – including when at least nine people who attended Trump’s Sept. 18 rally in Bemidji, Minnesota, tested positive, according to Kris Ehresmann, director of infectious diseases. of the state.

«Nine cases reported that they attended the event. One case was found to be infectious, “Ehresmann said. “There were two hospitalizations that were associated with that. One who is in intensive care and there are no deaths so far.

That would normally be chilling news for any campaign, but it hasn’t affected Trump’s desire to get back on the road to receive the adulation of his fans at a time when he is trailing Democratic nominee Joe Biden by 11 points in a US poll. CNN.

He has not hesitated in the past to put his followers or those who protect him at risk. The president put Secret Service agents in danger at the worst moment of his own illness, traveling with them in a van to thank his supporters who cheered him on in front of Walter Reed Hospital.

Agents wore scrubs, masks and eye protection while escorting him on an unnecessary trip out of the hospital, but Trump still defended that much-criticized photoshoot during his Fox appearance with Siegel.

“After two days I said, ‘You know I want to go out and greet people,’ and I went to the Secret Service, and these are the people who are with me all the time, and they said, ‘We have no problem, sir.'” Trump said in Friday’s Fox interview.

CNN’s Kevin Liptak, however, reported that Secret Service members have expressed growing concern about disregard for their well-being amid a deadly pandemic.

A current Secret Service agent working in the presidency and for the first family said, “That should never have happened.”

“We are not disposable,” the agent told CNN.

Trump offers varied descriptions of his illness

As medical experts try to assess the risks to Trump supporters with the events planned at the White House this weekend and in Florida next week, the president’s own descriptions of the severity of his coronavirus case have varied wildly this week. .

Returning from Walter Reed Medical Center Monday, Trump implored Americans not to fear the coronavirus and not to let it “take over” and said, “They will beat it.”

On Friday, amid a series of interviews with supportive media outlets, he said on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show that he might not have recovered if he had not received the monoclonal antibody treatment from Regeneron.

“I was not in very good shape and we have a drug that cured me, that made me up,” Trump said on the show. It’s great medicine. I mean I feel better now than I did two weeks ago. It’s crazy. And I recovered immediately, almost immediately. I may not have recovered at all from the covid.

On Friday in the Fox interview, Trump also acknowledged that many people have died from covid and that the pandemic had been very painful for many American families. But in a moment of cognitive dissonance, he seemed unaware of the lives he could put in danger with his return to the campaign.

Biden clearly plans to make it a campaign issue in the coming days. During an event in Las Vegas on Friday, he criticized the president’s “reckless personal conduct” and said it was having “a destabilizing effect” on the government.

“He didn’t take the necessary precautions to protect himself or others,” Biden said. The longer Donald Trump is president, the more reckless he becomes. How can we trust him to protect this country? ”