Donald Trump lashed out at the media on Monday for reporting that former chief of staff Mark Meadows revealed in a new book that the 2020 GOP nominee tested positive for coronavirus before the first debate with Joe Biden.
Trump's statement, emailed to reporters after he was banned from social media for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection, came one day after The Washington Post published a deep dive into the fallout from Trump testing positive and then potentially going on to be the source of infections for other people.
"Trump and Meadows hid Trump’s positive test not just from the public, but also from his inner circle and from his top public health officials. He took part in a debate with Democratic rival Joe Biden three days later, never revealing the test result to Biden or event organizers," The Postreported. "One former senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share a candid opinion, remarked, 'Everyone spent months trying to reconstruct the Rose Garden and it turns out it was good old Patient Zero, the president.'"
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"The Fake News continues to push the false narrative that I had Covid prior to the first debate," Trump wrote. He says the report is false because of a denial from Meadows, who is also the source of the initial report.
"There is no way of knowing whether the initial Sept. 26 coronavirus test was a false positive or, rather, the first true indicator of the virus that would fell Trump days later. Both Meadows and Trump have previously misled the public on a host of issues, including Trump’s covid status," The Post noted.
Trump went on to attack Biden and questioning the legitimacy of the sitting president who beat him in 2020.
"Biden goes around coughing on people all over the place, and yet the Corrupt News doesn’t even cover it," Trump complained. "They continue to shield Biden, who has been a disaster not just on Covid, where we have more deaths this year than last, but on the Border, the Economy, Inflation, Afghanistan, Gas prices, and everything else. Probably because he’s not supposed to be in office in the first place!"