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WASHINGTON: United States President Donald Trump on Monday (May 11) rejected concerns about the possible spread of COVID-19 at the White House, but said it may limit contact with Vice President Mike Pence.
Trump, speaking to masked reporters in the Rose Garden of the White House, suggested that Pence was in quarantine after his press secretary tested positive, though he did not say so directly.
Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for Pence, who heads the White House coronavirus workforce, tested positive for coronavirus last week along with a personal aide to Trump.
Since then, three members of the task force have been quarantined: infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Stephen Hahn, chief of the Food and Drug Administration.
A Pence spokesman denied over the weekend that the vice president was also in quarantine, but Trump suggested he was asked Monday whether he had considered limiting his contact with him.
Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence. (Photo: AFP / Saul Loeb)
“I would say he and I will talk about it,” Trump said at an occasionally irritable press conference.
“During this quarantine period, we will probably talk,” Trump said. “I haven’t seen him since.”
“We can talk on the phone,” he said of Pence. “It tested negative, so we have to understand that, but it comes in contact with a lot of people.”
“Without any vulnerability”
Trump tried to minimize any concerns about an outbreak of the virus in the narrow neighborhoods of the west wing, where the president works in the Oval Office.
“We want to keep our country running so that we have a lot of people in and out (of the White House) and many of those people, most of those people, are evaluated,” he said.
“Everyone who enters the president’s office is tested and I don’t feel any vulnerability,” he said.
A protester displays a Trump poster during a demonstration in Los Angeles. (Photo: AFP / Mario Tama)
Trump, desperately seeking to restart the economy ahead of the November election, said the United States was making “tremendous strides” in increasing testing and that the number of virus infections “is falling very rapidly.”
He said it was essential to reopen the country.
“People want our country to be open,” said the president.
“Some states may move faster,” he said. “People are also dying in the closed position.”
Trump abruptly ended the press conference after an exchange with a CBS News reporter who asked him why when Americans were losing their lives he continued to insist that the United States was doing better than other countries when it came to evidence. .
“Well, they are losing their lives everywhere in the world,” Trump said. “And maybe that’s a question you should ask China. Don’t ask me, ask China that question, okay?”
CBS journalist Weijia Jiang, who is of Chinese-American descent, asked Trump, “Sir, why are you telling me that specifically?”
“I say it. I tell anyone who asks an unpleasant question like that,” Trump replied before abruptly ending the press conference.
“It is scary to go to work”
Although it may seem spacious in movies and TV shows, West Wing is quite narrow, making social distancing difficult.
It houses not only the office of the President, but also that of some of his closest advisers, the press room and the desks of the White House correspondents, who work side by side.
Kevin Hassett, the president’s chief financial adviser, told CBS over the weekend that “it’s scary to go to work.”
“I would be safer sitting at home than in a west wing which, even with all the evidence in the world and the best medical equipment on Earth, is a relatively crowded place,” Hassett told another network, CNN.
In a note issued Monday, the White House instructed all personnel to wear a mask when inside the West Wing, except at their desks.
Cleaning staff disinfects the lectern in the White House press room. (Photo: AFP / Jim Watson)
Unlike other world leaders, Trump, 73, has not worn a mask in public.
He said Monday that Americans “have learned about facial masks.”
“The good and the bad, by the way,” he said.
“It is not a one-sided thing, believe it or not,” Trump said without elaborating.
The United States is the country most affected by the virus with more than 80,000 deaths and 1.3 million infections.
