Mark Meadows, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, has the coronavirus, Bloomberg and ABC reported Friday.
Meadows reportedly informed several advisers of his COVID-19 diagnosis after Election Day. Meadows was in the White House on Tuesday night with Trump, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. and others, and attended a party there that had hundreds in attendance.
Meadows also traveled with Trump to the Republican Party’s office in Arlington, Virginia, earlier on Election Day. He stood just behind Trump as the president spoke to a crowd of people, and he did not have a mask on.
Bloomberg reported that a Trump campaign aide, Nick Trainer, also has COVID-19.
Meadows, who was a Republican congressman from North Carolina before becoming chief of staff in March, remained physically close with Trump through the president’s own case of COVID-19 last month, often working in the same room with Trump while he was being treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. During that time, Meadows defended speaking with reporters without a mask despite having been in the room with Trump.
In June, Meadows teased reporters for wearing masks on Capitol Hill. He has repeatedly refused to wear one, going against the advice of the nation’s top health officials.
Trump was diagnosed with the virus in October, along with several other top Republicans, many of whom had been attending events together. Late that month, Meadows told CNN that the United States was “not going to control” the coronavirus pandemic.
More than 9.7 million Americans have been diagnosed with the coronavirus and more than 236,000 have died, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. More than 1.2 million people have died of the virus worldwide.
The U.S. has repeatedly set records for coronavirus cases this week, with almost 122,000 cases reported Thursday.
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