What Kayleigh McEnany Revealed About Donald Trump's COVID-19 Experience
In her new memoir, former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany dropped a serious bomb about former president Donald Trump's experience with COVID-19. According to her recounting of events, she discovered that Trump was positive for COVID-19 in the midst of his October 1, 2020 live interview with Fox News, Business Insider reported. McEnany received a phone call from and aide with the results of Trump's rapid test mid-interview.
While on the phone with the aide, McEnany asked if Trump knew the results of the test, but they didn't know. Additionally, the team was waiting on the results of a PCR to determine if it was a false positive. "Was I learning this information before President Trump?" McEnany wrote that she asked herself at the time, a feeling she described as "total and complete disbelief."
This isn't the first time that reports have circulated that Trump may have been aware of his diagnosis when attending his Fox News interview. Three days after his appearance, The Wall Street Journal reported that he received the results of his test prior to going on air. At the time, Trump shared with host Sean Hannity that one of his aides, Hope Hicks, had COVID and that Trump himself was waiting on test results. "I just went out for a test. They just did it. It'll come back later, I guess — and the first lady also because we spend a lot of time with Hope and others," he said at the time.
Donald Trump's 2020 COVID-19 diagnosis
Just a few hours after the interview concluded, Donald Trump tweeted that he and wife Melania Trump were both positive for COVID-19. Speaking with Trump following his diagnosis, Kayleigh McEnany wrote in her memoir that she told the president he would make it through. "'You will rise above this, and America will rise with you,'" she told Trump, per Yahoo!, "You are a victor.'" She then added, "'America is going to rally around you,'" and, "'We will overcome.'"
Despite her encouraging words, McEnany wrote in her memoir that she was "genuinely scared" for Trump following his diagnosis as "a boss and friend whom I grew to know and love." "To me, this was not just the president of the United States testing positive and being transported to a hospital," she wrote.
The exact timing of Trump's diagnosis has been somewhat controversial. In his own memoir, Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows wrote that the president tested positive for COVID-19 well before his Fox News interview, per The Guardian. According to Meadows, the positive test result came on September 26, three days before his first presidential debate with Joe Biden. However, Trump has called the report in Meadows' book "fake news," and insisted that he didn't have COVID at that time, per The Rolling Stone.
Who exactly could have been exposed to COVID-19 due to Donald Trump remains unclear, but it seems that those close to him will continue to add to the information available.