Category Archives: Donald Trump

Footage suggests Trump was short of breath during maskless photo op at White House – video

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After a three-day stay at a military hospital to treat symptoms of coronavirus, a contagious Donald Trump returned to the White House and immediately took off his face mask while posing for cameras.

Video footage suggests the US president was experiencing laboured breathing during part of the photo op in which he also gave two thumbs up and saluted as he watched Marine One lift off from the south lawn. 

Trump later waved and walked inside, where masked staff were visible, only to reemerge for what appeared to be a film shoot. In the film, which he tweeted soon after, Trump offered some bizarrely contrary advice about the virus, which has killed more than 200,000 Americans: 'Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re gonna beat it'

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Donald Trump’s desperation to leave hospital shows the dangers ahead

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The president’s carelessness about others’ safety shows he will do almost anything not to lose in November

The desperation that has driven Donald Trump to leave hospital prematurely and theatrically pull off his mask on the White House balcony while in the throes of coronavirus infection gives some measure of how dangerous the next four weeks will be.

Many students of Trump’s life and career have warned that he would be prepared to sacrifice anyone – even those closest to him – to spare himself the humiliation of a one-term presidency, but even they surely could not have anticipated how literal that sacrifice would be.

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Contagious Trump removes mask for photos upon return from hospital

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President poses near his staff and downplays threat of virus after three days at military medical center

A contagious Donald Trump returned to the White House on Monday and immediately took off his face mask for a photo op, despite being in close proximity to his staff.

After a three-day stay at a military hospital to treat symptoms of coronavirus, the US president stepped off the Marine One helicopter just before 7pm and walked up the south portico staircase. He stopped in front of an illuminated entrance with four US flags, turned to face the south lawn – and brazenly removed his mask while posing for cameras.

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‘Don’t be afraid of it’: Trump removes mask as he returns to White House – video

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Donald Trump has returned to the White House following his hospital stay at the Walter Reed Medical Center. He removed his surgical mask on the White House balcony and recorded a video message telling people not to be afraid of Covid-19. 'Don't let it dominate you, don't be afraid of it, you're going to beat it,' the US president said. 'I know there's a risk, there's a danger but that's OK'. He suggested he may now be immune to the disease though he added he did not know. 

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‘Listen to the scientists’: Biden urges Trump to support mask wearing – video

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Speaking in Miami, US presidential nominee Joe Biden said he was glad to see his rival Donald Trump's recovery from coronavirus but made a plea for the president to take mask wearing seriously. 

'Now that he’s busy tweeting campaign messages, I would ask him to do this: listen to the scientists. Support masks. Support a mask mandate nationwide,' Biden said. 

Trump mocked Biden for his mask-wearing habits during last week's presidential debate, before testing positive for coronavirus. 

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White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tests positive for coronavirus – live

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A fascinating dispatch from Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair, who cites “two Republicans briefed on the family conversations” in reporting that Donald Trump Jr is worried by his dad’s car-ride-and-tweet-storm response to being hospitalised with Covid-19:

‘Don Jr has said he wants to stage an intervention, but Jared and Ivanka keep telling Trump how great he’s doing,’ a source said. Don Jr is said to be reluctant to confront his father alone. ‘Don said, ‘I’m not going to be the only one to tell him he’s acting crazy,’’ the source added.

One area where the family seems united is over the president’s manic tweeting early Monday morning. After Trump sent out more than a dozen all-caps tweets, the Trump children told people they want Trump to stop. ‘They’re all worried. They’ve tried to get him to stop tweeting,’ a source close to the family told me.

…Trump’s father, Fred Trump Sr, insisted on working even after his Alzheimer’s disease advanced in the 1990s … Every day Fred Sr would go to the office in Brooklyn and they would give him blank papers to sort through and sign. The phone on Fred’s desk was set up so that it could only dial out to his secretary. “Fred pretended to work,” the family friend said.

A new Times/Siena survey has Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump in Arizona, a traditionally conservative state-turned presidential battleground.

Biden leads Trump 49% to 41% in Arizona, with just 6% of likely voters saying they were undecided. He is buoyed by his lopsided support among Hispanics, women and young people. The candidates are effectively tied in their support among seniors, a critical voting block in the state that has soured on Trump amid the Covid-19 outbreak.

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‘This is insanity’: Walter Reed physician among critics of Trump drive-by visit

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President briefly left hospital for surprise drive past supporters with at least two others in vehicle

Donald Trump drew immediate rebuke from doctors on Sunday afternoon for an “insane” surprise drive-by visit to supporters outside the Walter Reed military medical center, where the president is being treated for an infection of Covid-19.

At least two other people, probably Secret Service agents, wearing respirators and eye protection, were seen on video in the vehicle accompanying Trump, who was also masked, during the short drive.

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Donald Trump drives past supporters after saying he has ‘learnt a lot about Covid’ – video

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After releasing an upbeat video message from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, US president Donald Trump left hospital to wave to his supporters in a motorcade. Throngs of flag-waving Trump supporters gathered outside the hospital where Trump was being treated for Covid-19. The move was criticised as insanity' by one Walter Reed doctor. In the video message Trump thanked the medical team, saying: 'The work they do is just absolutely amazing.' He added that his time in hospital has been 'a very interesting journey' and that he has 'learnt a lot about Covid'. 

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Sean Conley: who is the Trump doctor whose updates are raising questions

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Physician’s press briefings leave medical experts, analysts and the public searching for the truth as to how sick the president really is

Donald Trump has often boasted of surrounding himself with “the best people” and the medical skills of Dr Sean Conley, the personal physician now charged with steering the US president back to health through his encounter with Covid-19, have never been called into question.

Related: Trump's steroid Covid treatment adds to confusion over health

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Trump’s steroid Covid treatment adds to confusion over health

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Dexamethasone ‘normally reserved for people going into respiratory failure’, says expert

The latest intervention from Donald Trump’s medical team has been to put the president on dexamethasone, a steroid that is proven, thanks to the UK’s Recovery trial, to benefit Covid-19 patients who are having breathing difficulties.

But the decision to administer the steroid now has only added to the confusion surrounding the president’s state of health. Normally, dexamethasone is reserved for patients who have been ill for at least a week and whose oxygen levels are low.

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Trump 14 points behind Biden a month before election, new poll shows

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Trump’s advisers scramble to find a strategy for final weeks, saying ‘it’s important that our campaign vigorously proceed’

Donald Trump’s beleaguered campaign team woke up to another setback on Sunday as the president began his second full day in hospital: a new national poll showing their candidate 14 points behind his challenger Joe Biden with less than a month until the election day.

The NBC/Wall Street Journal survey indicating a 53-39% advantage for the Democratic party’s nominee injected urgency for Trump’s advisers already scrambling to find a strategy for the final weeks of the campaign until 3 November.

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Donald Trump received oxygen at least twice since Covid-19 diagnosis – video

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Donald Trump’s doctor, Sean Conley, said the president experienced two drops in his blood oxygen levels and had needed to be given supplemental oxygen twice since becoming ill on Thursday.

Speaking at a press conference, Conley said he had been upbeat about the president’s health in a previous briefing because he hadn't wanted to 'steer the course of the illness' but in doing so had made it seem as if Trump's medical team were trying to hide something, which, he said, 'wasn't necessarily true'.

Another member of the team, Dr Brian Garibaldi, said the president may be released as early as tomorrow

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America is having a code red moment. Which of its enemies is likely to strike first? | Simon Tisdall

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With Trump in hospital and the election campaign in chaos, the US has never been more vulnerable to foreign threats

US presidential elections and the uncertain transition periods that follow have traditionally been viewed by military, intelligence and security officials as moments of maximum national vulnerability. They will be especially worried now.

The fact that Donald Trump is ill in hospital, presidential advisers and Republican senators are also unwell, or self-isolating, and the election campaign is in chaos will intensify a sense of dangerous exposure at the Pentagon, CIA and state department.

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Trump’s New Jersey event showed perilous neglect for his staff, supporters – and himself

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Why did the White House allow a fundraising event to go on after one of Trump’s closest aides tested positive for Covid?

On Thursday afternoon Donald Trump held a roundtable of 19 top Republican donors at Bedminster, his 36-hole golf course in New Jersey, where he vented his frustrations about how his push for a rapid vaccine against Covid-19 was being undermined by the deep state.

According to a description of the meeting recorded on video by one of the donors present, “the president said that the approval for vaccines has been slowed down for political reasons by people who wanted to hurt him”.

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Panic and confusion permeate White House following Trump’s Covid diagnosis

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Concerns mount over spread of the virus within the building, and whether it could disrupt the functioning of government

Golden autumn sunshine shone down on Washington on Saturday to illuminate a US capital upended as Donald Trump began his first full day in hospital battling coronavirus amid a presidential election thrown into chaos.

Related: Amy Coney Barrett: quick confirmation under threat as three senators infected

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Coronavirus: ‘I’ll be back, I think I’ll be back soon,’ says Trump as Victoria records 12 new cases – live

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A couple of follow ups to those White House photos of Trump Signing Things.

The photos released by the WH tonight of the president working at Walter Reed were taken 10 minutes apart at 5:25:59 pm and 5:35:40 pm ET Saturday, according to the EXIF data embedded in both @AP wire postings that were shared by the White House this evening. pic.twitter.com/EzeqIkGdf7

ZOOM: @realDonaldTrump appears to be signing his name to a blank sheet of paper in this photo. pic.twitter.com/xlNX24CXn4

In the UK, millions of employees preparing to work from home this winter will face a collective hike of almost £2bn on their energy bills, and tougher working conditions, with only a “pittance” in compensation from their employers.

Half the UK’s workforce is likely to work primarily from home over the coming months as they help to contain the spread of the coronavirus, and may see their winter energy bills rise by a fifth as radiators and boilers are kept running through the day.

Related: Working from home in UK over winter ‘will add £100 to fuel bills’

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‘I feel much better’: Trump releases first video message from hospital room

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President says next few days will be the ‘real test’ as he battles Covid-19

Donald Trump released a new video message on Saturday evening saying that he is “doing well”, his wife Melania is “doing very well” and the next few days will be the “real test” after he was taken to hospital with Covid-19.

“I came here, wasn’t feeling so well, I feel much better now. We’re working hard to get me all the way back,” Trump said from behind a desk in his suite at the Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.

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Trump films first message from hospital: ‘We’re going to beat this coronavirus’ – video

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Donald Trump has posted his first video message from Walter Reed hospital, saying: 'I came here, wasn’t feeling so well. I feel much better now. We’re working hard to get me all the way back ... I’ll be back, I think I’ll be back soon.'

During the four-minute video posted to Twitter, the president said that he could have stayed isolated at the White House after his Covid-19 diagnosis, but that he 'can't be locked up in a room and totally safe' - adding that 'as a leader you have to confront problems'. 

Trump acknowledged that the 'next few days will be the real test' and said the first lady, Melania Trump, who also tested positive for coronavirus, was 'really handling it very nicely' – with the president joking about their 24-year age gap during his video message

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Trump medical team ‘cautiously optimistic’ after Covid hospital admission – video

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The White House doctor Sean Conley said Donald Trump was 'doing great' after the president was admitted to the Walter Reed military medical centre on Friday. Trump has received antibody therapy and is on a five-day treatment of remdesivir, and was reported to be 'in exceptionally good spirits'

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Nancy Pelosi says Trump illness ‘sad’ but criticises pandemic response – video

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The Democratic House speaker said on MSNBC that Donald Trump’s announcement early on Friday that he and his wife, Melania, had tested positive for Covid-19 was 'very sad'. She added, however, that Trump’s actions during the pandemic were 'a brazen invitation for something like this to happen'

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