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Stephen Miller, one of Donald Trump’s top advisers, has tested positive for Covid-19, joining a growing list of figures close to the president who have contracted the virus as the White House struggles to contain a growing outbreak.
“For the last 5 days I have been working remotely and self isolating, testing negative every day until yesterday. Today, I tested positive for Covid-19 and I am in quarantine, ”Miller said in a statement.
More than a dozen White House officials and others in the president’s orbit have tested positive for the virus. Earlier this year, Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, who is Mike Pence’s press secretary, contracted the virus.
Miller, who has served as a policy advisor and speechwriter for Trump, He was one of the strongest defenders of the administration’s policy of separating children from parents.
Miller, a hardliner on immigration who has publicly defended racist and white nationalist ideas that immigration and amnesty for immigrants would “decimate” the US from his parents.
On Wednesday, less than two days before Trump announced he had Covid-19, Miller was seen boarding Marine One, the president’s helicopter, as he left the White House to fly to Joint Base Andrews. He boarded the helicopter with other top advisers, Hope Hicks, Dan Scovino and Jared Kushner. Trump announced that Hicks tested positive for coronavirus last week, hours before confirming her own diagnosis.
Meanwhile, Trump, who is recovering in the White House, tweeted his enthusiasm to return to the election campaign on Tuesday, even as the outbreak that has killed more than 210,000 Americans increasingly reached the upper echelons of the US government. United. Trump faced intense criticism after returning from the hospital, where he spent three days, and staging an unmasked photo shoot outside the White House despite remaining contagious.
US military leaders also quarantined themselves on Tuesday following the Pentagon’s announcement that a senior coast guard official had tested positive.
Eager to project strength just weeks before Election Day, Trump tweeted Tuesday morning that he planned to attend next week’s debate with Joe Biden in Miami. “It will be great!” he said.
Biden, however, has said that if Trump remains positive for Covid for the next presidential debate, the event should be canceled.
“I’m not sure what President Trump is about now. I don’t know what his status is. I look forward to discussing it, but I just hope all the protocols are followed, ”Biden said, speaking to reporters in Hagerstown, Maryland.
“We shouldn’t have a debate” if Trump is still sick, Biden added. “Too many people have been infected.”
So far, Biden has tested negative for the virus, despite interacting with Trump during the first presidential debate last Tuesday, when the president may have been contagious.
Katie Miller did not immediately respond to inquiries about whether she will refrain from seeing the vice president and whether to isolate herself from her partner to minimize the risk of transmitting the virus or contracting it again.
The CDC says information on reinfection is limited and recommends that anyone who has had close contact with an infected person self-quarantine for two weeks, unless they have had the illness and have recovered within the previous three months. , and remain symptom free.
Agencies contributed reporting
