(Washington) Former President Donald Trump tested positive for COVID-19, then negative, three days before his debate with Joe Biden on September 29, 2020, according to a book by his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, whose Guardian got hold of a copy.
The Republican billionaire said in a concise statement Wednesday that it was fake news. “The story that I had COVID-19 before, or during, the first debate, these are fake news. In fact, a test showed that I did not have COVID-19 before the debate, ”he said.
Mark Meadows writes in a book to be published next week that “nothing was going to stop Trump” from debating his Democratic opponent in the 2020 presidential election.
The last chief of staff of the former president ensures that Donald Trump presented at the time of this positive test, carried out on September 26, 2020, signs of fatigue and symptoms of a “slight cold”.
Mark Meadows, according to the Guardian, says he warned Donald Trump of his positive test while the latter was aboard Air Force One, on his way to a campaign rally.
He indicates that after the first test, carried out with an “old model”, a second test was carried out with a more recent system and considered “much more precise”, the “Binax” model. This time the result was negative.
The former chief of staff claims to have found Donald Trump, then 74 years old, more tired than usual before the debate with Joe Biden (77 years old at the time). The billionaire had arrived too late to be tested on the spot, according to the journalist who hosted the exchange between the two candidates.
None of this has been made public.
The White House announced on October 2, 2020 that Donald Trump had just tested positive for COVID-19, shortly before he was taken to hospital, where he stayed for three nights.
Mark Meadows is the first of the former president’s relatives to have agreed to collaborate with the parliamentary committee investigating the assault on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, by a crowd of Donald Trump supporters.
The elected Democrat who chairs it, Bennie Thompson, made it known on Tuesday, adding that the former chief of staff had already provided a series of documents.