“I don’t comment on any health-related issues as it relates to the White House ever,” Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, told press reporters on Wednesday, KYW reports.
KYW is also reporting that Josh Wingrove, a White House reporter for Bloomberg News, reports that the White House is declining comment. When asked about the report, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, “I’m not here to give people’s personal identities” and that “close contacts” with a person who has since tested positive would be notified, according to Bloomberg.
.@johnrobertsFox: “Have any members of White House staff recently tested positive for coronavirus?”
.@PressSec Kayleigh McEnany: “I don't share people's personal medical information.”
Full video here: pic.twitter.com/ZLkTVtBMXx
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 16, 2020
President Donald Trump was in Philadelphia about 24 hours ago for a town hall at the National Constitution Center with undecided voters. As usual, Trump was maskless, and did his best to dismiss the necessity for anyone wearing them. Mayor Jim Kenney was asked earlier today in a virtual briefing about the presidential visit.
“It’s certainly not something we were looking forward to doing, considering all that we’ve been through in the last number of months but presidents come to cities based on lots of reasons,” Kenney said. “The other thing that’s a little frustrating is it costs us a lot of money and we’re not reimbursed for it and it does have to reorder our police presence in areas where normally they wouldn’t be as heavily needed.”
At the signing of the historic diplomatic pacts on the White House lawn yesterday, where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed all participated along with Trump, several hundred people sat shoulder-to-shoulder and watched, most without masks.
The president and his three guests spent the morning in maskless bilateral meetings in the Oval Office, and the whole day could be summed up as largely ignoring the ongoing pandemic, and focusing primarily, if not almost entirely, on the signing the peace agreements.
Even Vice President Mike Pence and a number of Cabinet and senior staff members were seen without masks. And while this casual attitude over a virus that has infected 29, 684,258 people worldwide, while causing 937,355 deaths, didn’t seem to bother Trump or any of those attending, not everyone was happy.
Israeli officials were especially troubled at Trump’s failure to follow the pandemic rules in force at home. And of course, Netanyahu was not spotted with a mask. The Jerusalem Post is reporting that at this point, it is unknown whether the employees in question attended the ceremony with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the Israeli delegation.