White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said a decision on President Donald Trump’s release from the hospital will be made after consultations with medical staff Monday morning.
“It’s going to be, at the earliest, this afternoon,” Meadows said on Fox News of the decision for Trump to leave Walter Reed National Military Medical Center — where he’s been staying since Friday after his diagnosis with a Covid-19 infection. “We have further evaluations and consultations that have to take place between the president and his medical team.”
Meadows said the president continued to improve overnight, after he made a surprise outing on Sunday, waving to supporters gathered outside from his motorcade. Trump on Monday resumed his campaign via Twitter, with a series of posts urging supporters to vote and reminding them that today is the last day to register in states including Florida and Arizona.
“We’re still optimistic that, based on his unbelievable progress,” he will be released, Meadows said in an interview with Fox News. “Obviously this is an important day,” he said. “The president continues to improve and is ready to get back to a normal work schedule.”
On Sunday, the White House physician, Sean Conley, disclosed forthe first time that the president had been given supplemental oxygen and received a medication that’stypically used in more severe Covid-19 patients.
Asked why he didn’t disclose during Saturday’s briefing that Trump had received oxygen despite repeated questions about it, Conley said, “I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude” of the team and the president.
The president first tested positive after he returned from a fundraiser at his New Jersey golf resort on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters on Sunday evening. Trump made an appearance on Fox News on Thursday night before disclosing on Twitter shortly after midnight on Friday that he had tested positive.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy on Monday criticized Trump’s attendance on Thursday at a fundraiser at his Bedminster golf resort in the state, saying it ought to have been canceled. The president went to the event despite knowing that his close aide Hope Hicks had tested positive.
“The thing that should have happened is that nobody should have come to New Jersey. That trip should have been canceled,” Murphy said on CBS’s “This Morning.” He said separately on CNN that “Bedminster is a chapter in a long book” about the consequences of flouting social distancing and masking.
“I hope it’s a lesson that now we’ve all learned,” Murphy said.
— With assistance by Elise Young
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