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WASHINGTON (AP) – It was supposed to be a party scene.
Instead, the Trump Campaign Election Watch party in the East Room of the White House has become another symbol of President Donald Trump’s cavalier attitude towards a virus that is tearing the country apart and infecting it. more than 100,000 people per day.
Polls suggest this stance seriously held back the president’s candidacy for re-election, as voters chose to deny Trump a second term in favor of his Democratic rival, now President-elect Joe Biden. And the party – with few masks and no social distancing – is now under further scrutiny after the president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, became the last high-ranking. A White House official will contract the virus, which has now killed more than 237,000 people in the United States alone.
The White House has repeatedly declined to say who else has tested positive, even as the virus continues to spread. The latest White House cluster, coming just a month after Trump’s diagnosis and hospitalization, includes a senior Trump campaign official as well as a handful of undisclosed White House employees, officials said .
The White House has been increasingly secretive about epidemics. Many White House and campaign officials, as well as those who attended the election monitoring party, have been kept in the dark about the diagnoses, ignoring until they were revealed by the press.
The fact that the virus continues to spread in the White House – even though senior executives and those who come into close contact with the president and vice president are frequently tested – comes as no surprise to health officials public who shrank from the laxity of the White House. approach.
“The administration was cavalier about the risks of the virus for itself and for the country. And that’s one of the reasons we have so many cases, ”said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, professor of public health in the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.
Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he had avoided the White House since August “because my impression was that their approach to how to handle this was different from mine and which I insisted on. so that we do in the Senate, that is, wear a mask. and practice social distancing, ”
Meadows in particular has long tried to downplay the severity of the virus. He rarely wore a mask in public, except during the period immediately following Trump’s infection. At one point, he refused to speak to reporters on Capitol Hill after they asked him to wear a mask.
He was without one again at Tuesday night’s East Room event, where more than 100 of Trump’s staunchest supporters gathered to watch the election results arrive and see him deliver what they hoped was a speech of victory.
It was a festive atmosphere, with half-empty glasses of wine and other drinks strewn across the cocktail tables in front of the television cameras. Meadows, who has previously spent time with Trump’s family, was seen working in the room, including punching those in attendance several times, before Trump took the stage early Wednesday morning.
Although all attendees at the East Room event were pre-tested for the virus, there was no social distancing and minimal mask wearing.
Earlier today, Meadows also accompanied the president to his campaign headquarters in Virginia, where Trump received enthusiastic applause from dozens of staff and volunteers. Meadows did not wear a mask, and neither did the other White House staff. Campaign aides have largely done so.
If Meadows had tested positive on Wednesday – as reported by Bloomberg News – he likely would have been contagious at both events, said Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist who teaches at George Mason University.
Meadows had also traveled with Trump in the run up to Election Day, attending dozens of rallies where he was frequently seen interacting with supporters without a mask.
Trump’s refusal to comply with his own government’s public health guidelines throughout the campaign has been a major source of frustration for local governments as he staged rally after rally in defiance of local caps on the size of crowds, even in hot pandemic areas.
While Trump had hoped his efforts to downplay the virus in an attempt to jumpstart a lame economy would help him with voters, many Republicans now believe Trump could have been re-elected if he had handled things differently.
Yet Trump’s approach reflected the priorities of his supporters. AP VoteCast, a national voter survey, found that about half of Trump’s voters saw the economy and jobs as the number one problem facing the country, compared to just 1 in 10 voters in Biden. A majority of voters Biden, meanwhile – about 6 in 10 – said the pandemic was the most significant problem facing the country.
The White House did not respond to specific questions about the current outbreak, but said contact tracing was carried out by the White House medical unit, in accordance with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Appropriate notifications and recommendations have been made,” the White House said.
The CDC defines “close contact” as spending at least 15 minutes within 6 feet of an infected person from two days before their positive test or symptoms.
But Popescu called the party, in particular, “an environment conducive to transmission,” and said anyone present should have been informed and urged to take precautions.
“While they may not be following CDC exposure guidelines, I think when we look at an indoor event with a lot of people for an extended period of time who are unmasked, out of caution everyone should be warned and encouraged to stay home, ”she says.
“Now is not the time to be a risk rider,” Sharfstein said.
Ohio pastor Darrell Scott, a close ally of the president who attended the party, said he was unaware that no White House official beyond Meadows had tested positive until that he was informed by a journalist and that he had not been contacted by any tracer.
While Scott, like many in Trump’s orbit, continued to insist that fraud was to blame for the president’s loss – despite no credible evidence to support these claims – he also accused Trump of several “unforced errors” during the campaign, including the way he spoke about the virus.
“I can’t be upset if we shoot each other in the foot,” he said.
The latest outbreak came less than two weeks after several aides to Vice President Mike Pence, including his chief of staff, tested positive for the virus. And it came a month after Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and at least two dozen others tested positive after Trump held large gatherings of people not wearing face masks, including the ceremony announcing the appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
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Associated Press editors Zeke Miller and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
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