Donald and Melania Trump have tested positive for COVID-19 shortly after Trump’s close aide, Hope Hicks, tested positive for coronavirus as well. Just two days ago, Trump had said, ‘I put a mask on, you know, when I think I need it.’
President Donald Trump‘s disdain for wearing masks to protect against the spread of COVID-19 has come back to haunt him. Trump and his wife Melania, 50, have tested positive for COVID-19. “Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!,” the president tweeted on Oct. 1.
Melania followed shortly afterwards with her own Twitter announcement. “As too many Americans have done this year, @potus & I are quarantining at home after testing positive for COVID-19. We are feeling good & I have postponed all upcoming engagements. Please be sure you are staying safe & we will all get through this together,” Melania wrote, just five months after her husband insisted that he wouldn’t wear a mask despite CDC recommendations.
This news arrived shortly after Trump revealed that his close aide Hope Hicks had tested positive for the virus. The POTUS tweeted earlier on Thursday night, “Hope Hicks, who has been working so hard without even taking a small break, has just tested positive for Covid 19. Terrible! The First Lady and I are waiting for our test results. In the meantime, we will begin our quarantine process!”
Hicks travelled with Trump on Tuesday aboard Air Force One to Ohio for his first presidential debate against Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden, which took place on Sept. 29. Ironically, Trump had mocked Biden for always wearing a face mask (meanwhile, the president said, “I put a mask on, you know, when I think I need it”). After the debate, Hope was with Trump the following day on a campaign stop in Duluth, MN, and began feeling mild symptoms of COVID-19 on the flight back to Washington D.C. She tested positive for the virus this morning.
It wasn’t just the president who Hicks was in contact with, as while leaving the White House to head to Minnesota aboard POTUS’ Marine One helicopter, she was in the company of the president’s other advisers Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, and Dan Scavino, according to ABC News. It is unclear if those men will also go into quarantine as well. Hicks was photographed deplaning AF-1 in Cleveland on Sept. 29 without a protective face mask.
“She tested positive and I just went out with a test…so whether we quarantine or whether we have it, I don’t know. So I just went for a test and we’ll see what happens. Who knows?…We spend a lot of time with Hope, so we’ll see what happens,” Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity during a live interview on Oct. 1.
Trump continued, “It is very, very hard when you are with people from the military, or from law enforcement, and they come over to you, and they want to hug you, and they want to kiss you because we really have done a good job for them. You get close, and things happen. I was surprised to hear with Hope, but she is a very warm person with them. She knows there’s a risk, but she is young.”
The president has a full re-election campaign schedule ahead, so it is unclear what his quarantine will mean to getting back on the road. He has a Make America Great Again rally scheduled in Sanford, Florida on Friday, Oct. 2. The following day he travels to Janesville, WI for a 12:30pm rally in local time, before heading east to Green Bay, WI for a 3pm rally the same day.