Donald Trump plans to host his first campaign event since testing positive for Covid-19, appearing at a hastily-organised White House gathering on Saturday afternoon that will focus on the theme of law and order.
The event is expected to included hundreds of attendees and the US president will appear from the White House balcony, according to a person briefed on the plans, which were first reported by ABC News.
The appearance comes as Mr Trump tries to prove that he has recovered from the virus and is healthy enough to return to the campaign trail. On Friday afternoon the president took part in a two-hour interview with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, while later on Friday evening he will appear on the Fox News channel for an on-air “medical evaluation”.
The White House event planned for Saturday comes exactly two weeks after a Rose Garden ceremony for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett that resulted in numerous high-ranking Republicans testing positive for the virus.
On Friday Anthony Fauci, one of the leading members of the coronavirus task force, told CBS News Radio their infections were the product of a “superspreader event at the White House”, where many of the attendees did not wear masks.
Mr Trump also plans to fly from Washington to Florida for a rally on Monday evening, according to his campaign.
With less than a month to go until election day, the president has repeatedly said on Twitter and during call-in television interviews on Fox News Media networks that he has made a full recovery, but coronavirus experts warn that an infected patient could still spread the virus for 10 days or more, depending on the severity of the case.
“I’m back because I am a perfect physical specimen and I’m extremely young,” Mr Trump told Fox Business on Thursday. “And so I’m lucky in that way.”
On Thursday a White House doctor suggested Mr Trump would be able to make a “safe return to public duties” by Saturday if he remains symptom-free after last week’s coronavirus diagnosis.
The White House event is likely to provoke sharp criticism from the US medical community, which has criticised the president for not taking the virus seriously enough.
Mr Trump, who is 74, trails his 77-year-old Democratic rival Joe Biden in most national opinion polls and many battleground states that are key to winning the Electoral College.
On Friday afternoon the president told Mr Limbaugh via telephone — during what his campaign called a virtual “rally” — that he was “not in great shape” last week, but had been “healed” and “fixed” by Regeneron’s antibody treatment. Mr Trump said he would send “hundreds of thousands of vials” of the drug, which has not yet been fully tested in clinical trials or approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, to hospitals nationwide.
“People are going to get immediately better, like I did,” he said. “I mean, I feel better now than I did two weeks ago, it is crazy, and I recovered immediately, almost immediately.”
Mr Trump added that he felt “perfect” and was “not taking anything”, saying: “I am off any regimen that they gave me.”
The Trump campaign reacted with anger after the independent commission responsible for presidential debates moved next week’s duel between the president and Mr Biden to a virtual format, citing health concerns.
In a release announcing Friday night’s broadcast, Fox News said Marc Siegel, a doctor and medical professor at New York University who has served as a regular analyst on the network, would “conduct a medical evaluation and interview” on the Tucker Carlson Tonight show.
Dr Siegel is the author of a 2008 book entitled False Alarm: The Truth about the Epidemic of Fear, which argued that the news media spreads undue panic about pandemics.
Mr Carlson, who has come under attack from critics who accuse him of propagating nativist tropes, has been one of Fox News’s leading proponents of easing pandemic restrictions.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, has suggested that Mr Trump may be suffering psychological side-effects of some of his coronavirus treatments, which have included a steroid known to trigger erratic behaviour.
On Friday Ms Pelosi announced legislation that would create a commission to evaluate presidential health and intervene under the 25th amendment to the US constitution, which allows for the removal of a president who is unfit to serve.
She acknowledged, however, that the commission — which would include former government officials and medical experts chosen by a bipartisan group in Congress — would not be in place in time to evaluate Mr Trump’s current health.
“This is not about President Trump. He will face the judgment of the voters,” she said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “But he shows the need for us to create a process for future presidents.”
Swamp notes
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