[ad_1]
WASHINGTON – The United States’ presidential race was thrown into disarray, just 32 days after Election Day, when President Donald Trump announced on Friday (October 2) that he and his wife Melania had tested positive for Covid-19.
The president and first lady are doing well and plan to stay home in the White House during their convalescence, and Trump is expected to continue to fulfill his duties without interruption while he recovers, the president’s physician, Sean Conley, said in a memorandum. . Barron, the Trumps’ 14-year-old son, tested negative.
Trump has mild symptoms but was expected to stay at work, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Friday.
Vice President Mike Pence, who is next in line for the presidential succession should Trump be medically incapacitated, also tested negative along with his wife Karen on Friday morning, his press secretary said.
While the impact of the diagnosis on the race is uncertain, Trump’s quarantine forces him out of the election campaign for now, a blow to his efforts to gain support at in-person events at a time when he is behind the presidential candidate. Democrat Joe. Biden by seven points nationally.
Trump was scheduled to meet with Biden on October 15 in Miami, Florida and on October 22 in Nashville, Tennessee for the second and third presidential debates, which are now on the air.
In response on Friday, Biden, who debated Trump indoors in Cleveland, Ohio on Tuesday, said on Twitter: “(My wife) Jill and I send our thoughts to President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump for an early Recovery. We will continue to pray for the health and safety of the president and his family. “
The president’s diagnosis was announced hours after news broke that his close aide Hope Hicks, a former White House communications director who was among Trump’s entourage aboard Air Force One this week, had tested positive. by the virus.
“Tonight, (First Lady Melania Trump) and I tested positive for Covid-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get out of this TOGETHER! “Trump wrote on Twitter just before 1 am (1 pm Singapore time).
The president’s public calendar was updated to show that several events on his calendar for Friday had been canceled, including a panel discussion with supporters at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC and a campaign rally in Sanford, Florida.
Trump was yet to make a phone call about Covid-19 support to vulnerable older people at noon on Friday.
The national media outlets raised a number of questions, including whether there would be possible interruptions in the election cycle and even lines of succession in the event that the president and vice president were medically incapacitated.
Trump has consistently downplayed the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, which has infected 7.5 million in the United States and killed more than 210,000 of them, giving mixed messages about the need to wear masks to slow the spread of the disease.
As recently as Thursday night, he told supporters that a vaccine was on its way to be distributed before the end of the year and that “the end of the pandemic is in sight.”
Several other world leaders have tested positive for Covid-19, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Trump, 74, is among the age cohort most vulnerable to severe cases of the virus.
The White House said in June this year that his annual physical indicated he was healthy, although observers noted that his height of 1.9 m and his weight of 110.7 kg at the time placed him above the medical threshold for obesity. .
If he is incapacitated by illness, Trump’s party may have to face the nightmare scenario of replacing its candidate midway.
[ad_2]
