The “many White House doctors” didn’t say that

He’s a virus bomb.

He fingered the microphone and put his lips up close. He shook hands with everyone he could. Donald Trump, who promised you’re going to win so much you’ll get sick of winning, might also just make you sick.

In the White House rose garden on Friday, the US president defied the advice of medical experts standing behind him and behaved like a one-man coronavirus cannon.

Reporters wanted to know whether this 73-year-old man with a [bad] diet – his former doctor reportedly hid cauliflower in his mashed potatoes – is putting himself and others at risk. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s press secretary tested positive for coronavirus days after taking part in meetings with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

And two more people who were at Mar-a-Lago have now tested positive.

Should Trump therefore self-isolate? “Well, I don’t know that I had exposure, but I don’t have any of the symptoms,” he replied. “And we do have a White House doctor and, I should say, many White House doctors, frankly. And I asked them that same question, and they said, ‘You don’t have any symptoms whatsoever.’ And we don’t want people without symptoms to go and do the test. The test is not insignificant.”

That’s completely wrong. People can transmit the virus days before they show any symptoms. That’s a major reason tests are urgent: so that people who don’t know they have the virus can quarantine.

He has to be lying about what the doctors told him.

When the celebrity businessman has his back to the wall, he calls for the cavalry of corporate America. At Friday’s press conference he rolled in business titans to save the day, treating them to plenty of handshakes and little social distancing.

I hope they’re sweating.

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