BETHESDA, Md. — President Trump's doctors attempted to paint a rosy picture as they updated members of the press of the president's condition Sunday morning.
In fact, Dr. Conley said, they are hoping to discharge the president as early as Monday.
“He continues to improve. He has remained without fever since Friday morning. His vital signs are stable," Dr. Conley said, adding "he’s not complaining of shortness of breath.”
He also confirmed media reports that Trump was, indeed, given supplemental oxygen at the White House Friday, despite refusing to answer the question in his update Saturday.
When asked why he did not disclose the information Saturday, Dr. Conley said he was "trying to reflect the upbeat attitude of the team."
"I didn't want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in the other direction, and in doing so it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn't necessarily true," he added.
This is a developing story. Read below for live updates throughout the day:
9:57 p.m. EDT
President Donald J. Trump participates in a phone call with Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley Sunday, Oct. 4, 2020, in his conference room at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Not shown in the photo also in the room on the call is Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
7:30 p.m. EDT
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has tested negative for coronavirus.
"Vice President Biden underwent PCR testing for COVID-19 today and COVID-19 was not detected," his campaign said.
7:15 p.m. EDT
White House Press Sec. Kayleigh McEnany briefly spoke to reporters after her Fox News appearance, answering questions about COVID-19 testing in the White House.
When asked if they would be releasing the number of positive cases of COVID-19 in the White House, McEnany declined, citing "privacy concerns."
“There are privacy concerns we take very seriously safeguarding the information of the personnel here in the White House," she said. "So that’s basically where we stand right now.”
She was also asked if Trump was tested Tuesday before he went to the presidential debate and Thursday before he went to a fundraiser in Bedminster, New Jersey.
“I’m not giving a detailed readout of his testing," she said. "But safe to say, his first positive test was upon return or at least after Bedminster.”
7:00 p.m. EDT
Attorney General William Barr will self-quarantine out of caution after President Trump, as well as several other lawmakers and aides, tested positive for the coronavirus.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department said Sunday that Barr has had four COVID-19 tests since Friday, and all have come back negative, but he will self-quarantine for several days out of an abundance of caution.
Barr attended one meeting at Justice Department headquarters on Friday and stayed home during the weekend, except to be tested. He plans to remain home for several days.
Barr attended the White House Rose Garden event for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett last weekend and was seen on video having a conversation with former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, who has tested positive for coronavirus. Neither was wearing a mask.
Meanwhile, Trump is itching to get back out onto the campaign trail – and even attend the second presidential debate – if his doctors clear him to travel.
White House Press Sec. Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News that the president is “very hopeful about getting out there in short order when the doctors deem it appropriate.”
6:45 p.m. EDT
Earlier Sunday, White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah told reporters that officials would share the number of positive COVID-19 cases in the White House.
In an about-face from that statement, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said they would not be sharing that number due to "privacy concerns."
Meanwhile, the Associated Press' Zeke Miller, the president of the White House Correspondents Association, isued a scathing statement slamming the decision for Trump to leave the hospital without the White House press pool.
“It is outrageous for the president to have left the hospital – even briefly – amid a health crisis without a protective pool present to ensure that the American people know where their president is and how he is doing," he said. "Now more than ever, the American public deserves independent coverage of the president so they can be reliably informed about his health.”
5:22 p.m. EDT
President Trump greeted supporters outside Walter Reed medical center from inside a car in the presidential motorcade on Sunday evening.
The surprise visit came minutes after the president issued an update on his health to Twitter, saying he had something up his sleeve for all the wonderful supporters outside.
4:00 p.m. EDT
The New Jersey Department of Health has reached out to over 200 individuals who visited the Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster to “make them aware of possible exposure” to COVID-19, the department said Sunday afternoon.
In a statement on Twitter, the department said they were provided information of at least 206 people who attended events alongside President Trump at the golf course earlier in the week from the White House.
“DOH has reached out to these individuals to make them aware of possible exposure and recommend that they self-monitor for symptoms and quarantine if they were in close contact with the President and his staff,” the department said of the individuals. “... Health Dept. are interviewing staff members of the club and assessing the level of contact they had with the President and his staff and providing public health recommendations accordingly. The majority of staff reside in Somerset County.”
“The contact tracing process is ongoing,” the statement added.
President Trump flew to his Bedminster resort in New Jersey for a private fundraiser on Thursday, Oct. 1. He announced that he tested positive for coronavirus early Friday morning.
Comedian Joe Piscopo and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rik Mehta both told The Associated Press on Friday that President Donald Trump seemed completely normal at his Thursday night fundraiser in New Jersey, going as far as calling Trump “energetic.”
Piscopo said Trump came out of the portico to talk to guests seated at tables yards away. Both men said everyone was socially distanced. The president gave a 30-minute speech and answered several questions from supporters.
2:20 p.m. EDT
White House communications director Alyssa Farah addressed the mixed messaging coming from President Trump’s medical team on Sunday, assuring reporters that they can “trust the information” coming from the president’s physician, Dr. Sean Conley.
When asked why the president’s team seemingly gave contradictory statements regarding the president’s use of supplemental oxygen, Farah said: “I would disagree though that Dr. Conley's update wasn't accurate. We came and gave supplemental information after the fact.”
“This is a very distinguished military doctor, we all know and love Dr. Conley, he's treated the president for some time,” Farah added. “We can trust the information he's giving but if we later have supplementary information you have my commitment.”
(It's worth noting that Farah continually referred to Dr. Conley as "Dr. Connelly," according to Axios reporter Alayna Treene in the White House pool.)
Earlier, Dr. Conley told reporters outside of Walter Reed medical center that the president had in fact received supplemental oxygen on Friday morning, despite declining to confirm the news just a day before.
When asked why he would not answer questions about the president’s supplemental oxygen the day before, Conley said he “was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude” of the team and the president.
Farah supported Conley’s decision, telling reporters Sunday, “It's a very common medical practice that you want to convey confidence and raise the spirits of the person you're treating."
“Regular updates” to the president’s health will be provided in the coming days, Farah added.
12:00 p.m. EDT
President Trump's doctors have provided an update on the president's condition, saying that his condition is improving, but offering little else in terms of clarity.
The main takeaway from Navy Cmdr. Dr. Sean Conley's update is that the president is responding well to treatment, and could be discharged as soon as Monday.
However, new details emerged from Dr. Conley's update that attempted to clarify some of the confusion from Saturday's update.
Saturday, Dr. Conley refused to admit that Trump has received received any supplemental oxygen.
Sunday, he said that Trump receivied supplemental oxygen at the White House on Friday, confirming reports from the Associated Press and the New York Times.
The doctors also said "over the course of his illness, the president has experienced two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen saturation” where his transient oxygen levels dropped below 94%. The second instance of a drop took place Saturday morning, according to the team.
When asked if Trump needed supplemental oxygen yesterday, Dr. Conley said he would have to check with nursing staff.
Responding to Mark Meadows’ comments after his briefing Saturday, Dr. Conley called his statement about the president's condition “misconstrued.”
Trump's doctors also said that he is being treated with dexamethasone, a corticosteroid used in a wide range of conditions for its anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant effects, per the WHO.
"It was tested in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in the United Kingdom’s national clinical trial RECOVERY and was found to have benefits for critically ill patients," according to the WHO's website.
When asked by reporters why Trump wasn't wearing a mask in any of the video updates he has posted to social media, Dr. Conley said "the president wears a mask any time he’s around us."
Dr. Conley declined to say whether or not Trump is in a negative pressure room: “I’m not going to get into the specifics.”
11:00 a.m. EDT
The White House has not offered an official update on the president’s health since Saturday, but Trump was up and tweeting from his hospital room at Walter Reed early Sunday morning.
The president shared a video showing a crowd of supporters on the streets outside the medical center, many of whom were not wearing masks. “Thank you so much!” Trump wrote alongside the video.
Trump also offered his own assessment of his status Saturday evening in a video from his hospital suite, saying he was beginning to feel better and hoped to “be back soon.”
National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien – who himself contracted COVID-19 over the summer – appeared on CBS’ Face The Nation Sunday, where he told host Margaret Brennan that the president is feeling, “very well.”
“I spoke with the chief of staff this morning and the good news is the president feels very well, and he actually wants to get back up in the White House and get back to work,” O’Brien said, adding, “but I think he’s going to stay at Walter Reed for at least another period of time.”
Trump will join O’Brien, as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, for a remote national security briefing later today. The president will participate in the discussion via video chat, with the advisers at the White House, O’Brien said.
As for a possible temporary transfer of power to the vice president? “That’s not something that’s on the table at this point,” O’Brien said Sunday.
On ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller accused former Vice President Joe Biden of using masks as a "prop."
“A mask is very important, but he could be 20, 30 feet away from the nearest person and still have the mask on. That’s not going to change anything that’s out there,” Miller said. “We can’t all just stay in our basement for the rest of our lives. We have to get out there and live our lives and take this on.”
Later in the show, Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield responded to Miller's claim: “Tells you a lot of what you need to know about how the Trump campaign has treated this from the outset."
Miller also said that White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, who helped Trump prepare for the last week's presidential debate, tested negative for COVID-19.
Five people out of nine known participants who took part in this debate prep have tested positive, including Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, top aide Hope Hicks and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie.
According to the AP, Trump's prep team also included White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Jason Miller, and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Meanwhile, Trump campaign advisor Steve Cortes appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, where the moderator of the first presidential debate took him to task about how the president’s family and team flouted the debate venue’s rules about wearing masks.
“The rules from the Cleveland Clinic could not have been more clear,” Wallace said. “Everyone – everyone in the audience – was to wear a mask … After the First Family came in, they all took off their masks. So did the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Do they think that the health and safety rules for everybody else do not apply to them?”
Cortes replied that they were tested before entering the debate hall, to which Wallace interjected, “Steve, it doesn’t matter.”
Wallace added that, at future debates, people will be escorted out if they don’t wear masks, according to the Commission on Presidential Debates.
10:15 a.m. EDT
A new poll from ABC News and Ipsos suggests that nearly 3 in 4 Americans believe that President Trump neither took "the appropriate precautions when it came to his personal health," nor did he take the "risk of contracting the virus seriously enough."
72% of respondents to both questions answered in the negative on both questions – in both questions, 43% of Republicans (2 in 5) responded negatively regarding Trump's actions, compared to 94%/95% of Democrats.
The poll was split 50%-50% on whether or not the president would be able to "effectively handle his duties as president if there is a military or national security crisis."
Overnight
The changing, and at times contradictory, accounts created a credibility crisis for the White House at a crucial moment, with the president’s health and the nation’s leadership on the line. With Trump expected to remain hospitalized several more days and the presidential election looming, his condition is being anxiously watched by Americans.
In the hospital video, Trump defended his decision to continue campaigning and holding large events during a pandemic.
“I had no choice,” said Trump, who refused to abide by basic public health recommendations, including mask-wearing. “I had to be out front ... I can’t be locked up in a room upstairs and totally safe ... As a leader, you have to confront problems.”
The president was reportedly angry at Meadows’ public assessment of his health and, in an effort to prove his vitality, Trump ordered up the video and authorized longtime confidant Rudy Giuliani to release a statement on his behalf that he was feeling well, a Republican close to the White House, who was not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations, told the AP.
Trump is 74 years old and clinically obese, putting him at higher risk of serious complications from a virus that has infected more than 7 million people nationwide and killed more than 209,000 people in the U.S.
First lady Melania Trump remained at the White House to recover from her own bout with the virus. She was “really handling it very nicely,” Trump said in the video, noting with a touch of humor that she was “just a little tiny bit younger” – 24 years younger, to be precise.
the White House has been working to trace a flurry of new infections of close Trump aides and allies. Attention is focused in particular on the Sept. 26 White House event introducing Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. That day, Trump gathered more than 150 people in the Rose Garden, where they mingled, hugged and shook hands — overwhelmingly without masks. There were also several indoor receptions, where Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Amy Coney Barrett, her family, senators and others spent time in the close quarters of the White House, photographs show.
Among those who attended and have now tested positive: former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, the president of the University of Notre Dame and at least two Republican lawmakers – Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC).
The president’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, and the head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, have also tested positive, though they were not at the event.
Another prominent Republican who has tested positive: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), the third Republican senator to test positive for the virus that has killed over 200,000 Americans.
Saturday also saw former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was present at the White House Rose Garden ceremony where President Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, announce that he had tested positive for COVID-19. He would later check into a hospital as a "precautionary measure."
One of the president’s personal assistants, Nick Luna, tested positive after having traveled with Trump several times recently, a White House official said Saturday night. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
- Catch up on all of Saturday's news and events here.
- Catch up on all of Friday's news and events here.
- Trump's doctors painted a confusing, at times conflicting, picture of Trump's COVID timeline.
- President Trump had a busy schedule the week leading up to his positive COVID-19 test. Here is a timeline of the president's busy schedule.
- With about a month to go until Election Day — what happens if the Trump becomes too sick to continue his time in office? Read more about that here.
- Doctors say President Donald Trump's coronavirus diagnosis is potentially concerning for two reasons: his age and his weight.
- Joe Biden’s campaign is taking down its attack ads in the wake of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus infection, according to reports. Read more about that decision.
- Trump's positive COVID-19 diagnosis sparked an explosion of rumors, misinformation and conspiracy theories on Friday that littered the social media feeds of many Americans.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.