President Trump signaled on Tuesday that his COVID-19 diagnosis will not stop him from participating in any of the remaining presidential debates.
“I am looking forward to the debate on the evening of Thursday, October 15th in Miami,” the president tweeted Tuesday morning. “It will be great!”
The White House says the president first tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday, two days after the first debate against former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump was flown to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Friday. The president returned to the White House on Monday after his doctors said he was feeling better, though not “out of the woods” yet.
“We are looking forward to the debate,” Symone Sanders, a senior campaign adviser to Biden, said on CNN over the weekend. “We are hoping President Trump can participate. We’re hoping that he’s medically able to participate, and that is up to his doctors to clear him. But Joe Biden will be at that debate.”
During the first presidential debate, neither candidate arrived in time to be tested by the Cleveland Clinic, who was hosting the event, but debate moderator Chris Wallace said there was an “honor system” in place whereby candidates would report the results of a coronavirus test conducted by their own campaigns. The Fox News Sunday anchor also noted that neither the president nor his top aides wore masks while doing a walk-through of the debate venue and that members with the president took their masks off once they were seated at the event.
Biden has repeatedly tested negative for COVID-19 and has returned to the campaign trail.
Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate is expected to proceed as planned, according to officials from the White House, the Commission on Presidential Debates, and the University of Utah. The two politicians will be separated by plexiglass barriers as the number of positive COVID-19 cases in Trump’s orbit has grown in recent days.
