I remember there was some speculation about this here on TPM given the timeline of the final announcement that he was positive. It’s not much of a bombshell though, due to the false negative that let Trump and his team proceed on the assumption that he was clear. Of course anyone else would have done the “abundance of caution” thing and rescheduled the debate, but this is Trump.
I don’t believe he was intentionally trying to infect Biden, as some here were speculating at the time. He would have pushed the boundaries more, coughed in his face or something.
What’s more interesting to me is that Meadows is including this info in his book. He just burned all his bridges with Trump by doing this. Maybe it’s why he’s now deciding to cooperate with the 1/6 committee; he knew this was coming out?
His behavior almost certainly led to his testing positive, but what difference did his contagious condition mean to him, others who wanted the privilege of being in the presence of “his highness” understood the risk and welcomed it all other were collateral damage.
He has his personality cult followers, but I still think the majority of those who voted for him in 2020 held their nose, and were voting on issues like abortion, gun rights, taxes, and keeping the browns out of their neighborhood. They were never going to vote for a Democrat, so he was going to get their votes no matter what he did in the campaign.
I don’t think he was trying to infect Biden, I think he just thought he could tough his way through this “hoax” and nobody would be the wiser — in other words, he could keep up his “untouchable” facade.
But covid had other ideas and it came out anyway. Possibly because he tried to act so long as if nothing was wrong, rather than seeking treatment earlier?
I think that’s impossible to know one way or the other. We can say it was extraordinarily reckless at the very least. They evaded all the measures designed to prevent having infected people at the debate. We know Trump’s a textbook malignant narcissist, which involves antisocial personality disorder. We know he prefers to get out of difficult situations the easy way, and he has no conscience. I think walking over and coughing on Joe would have been a bit too obvious even for Trump. We know he’s a coward, but if he thought he could get away with this, I think it’s within the realm of possibility. And that’s shocking enough.
I’m just glad he didn’t stalk Biden the way he did Hillary. I guess those plexiglass barriers were useful for something.
And if I remember correctly, the entire Trump family (though I suppose I shouldn’t assume they’re close contacts) forego mask wearing in the audience section.
It wasn’t, and we may never know for sure, but I think it’s reasonable to take the story on face value based on his actions at the time.
If there was only the one positive result with no second test, or the second test was actually a positive, I don’t think even Trump could have resisted those around him telling him to avoid all the public events including something as high-profile as the debate with Biden. That really would have been a bombshell, and leaks happen. I don’t think he would have risked it. He’s evil but he’s not completely stupid. His actions at the time indicate that he took the false negative as permission to follow the schedule.
That he’d been positive before the debate was pretty obvious if you counted on your fingers. That he knew he was is a different issue, but it isn’t surprising again. Donald Trump is subhuman in every way. And the people who love him for being so are the same themselves.
