Hollywood star wants Trump arrested for ‘trying to kill’ Biden

Bette Midler is calling for Donald Trump to be jailed for attempted murder. The actress claims the former president had aimed to see off his rival Joe Biden by trying to infect him with Covid-19 during the presidential campaign.

“He tried to infect and kill Joe Biden at the debate,” Midler told her two million Twitter followers on Friday. She added that Trump had purposely showed up at the September 2020 presidential debate too late to be tested for coronavirus, “knowing full well he was positive, then screeched, sputtered, spit and foamed at the mouth, hoping to infect Joe. He is the devil.”

The rant apparently stems from a claim in an upcoming book by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that Trump had tested positive for the virus three days before the debate. However, the then-president had taken another test that subsequently came back negative, according to an article on Wednesday by The Guardian, which cited an excerpt from the book.

Trump has denied that he tested positive for the virus before the September 29 debate. “The story of me having Covid prior to or during the first debate is fake news,” he said in response. He reportedly had another negative test the day after the debate, but the next day, October 1, he and then-First Lady Melania Trump tested positive. Trump was hospitalized on October 2 and returned to the White House on October 5. A debate that had been scheduled for October 15 was canceled.

Asked by reporters on Wednesday whether he thought Trump had put him at risk during the debate, President Biden declined to enter the fray, saying, “I don’t think about the former president.”

Midler has long been an outspoken Trump critic. She joked in June 2019 that “maybe someone in his camp can gently give him a shiv, I mean, shove.” A shiv is, of course, a slang term for a home-made knife. During a protracted online spat, Trump  referred to the actress as a “washed-up psycho” and a “sick scammer,” after she shared a debunked quote in which he had supposedly insulted Republican voters.