The White House asked reporters to wear face masks after a second staff member in two days tested positive for the coronavirus. Critics of President Donald Trump reacted with joy after finding out who it was.
Trump personally confirmed on Friday that a member of Vice President Mike Pence’s staff tested positive for the virus, causing a delay in Pence’s scheduled trip to Iowa. This follows the news that Trump’s valet’s test returned a positive result on Thursday.
“She’s a wonderful young woman, Katie. She tested very good for a long period of time,” Trump said, during a press spray, following a meeting with congressional Republicans at the White House. “And then all of a sudden, today, she tested positive. She hasn’t come into contact with me. She’s spent some time with the vice president.”
Reporters quickly identified the woman as Katie Miller – who recently married the president’s speechwriter and senior adviser, Stephen Miller. The outspoken immigration hawk is considered a member of Trump’s inner circle, and spends a lot of time with his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, likewise presidential advisers.
On Friday, all the reporters at the White House press briefing wore face masks, though press secretary Kayleigh McEnany did not.
Both Trump and Pence apparently get tested daily, and have returned negative results so far. After the president’s valet tested positive, the self-styled Twitter #Resistance was hopeful that Covid-19 would help them get rid of the president, since everything else they have tried has failed. They were positively giddy when Miller was identified, however, as her husband is likely the only White House figure they hate more than Trump.
Los Angeles Times reporter Molly O’Toole described Miller as someone “who has long been looking for a disease to shut [the] US border and keep out migrants,” citing a hit piece from the New York Times published earlier this week.
“Lots of thought. Zero prayers,” tweeted Resistance activist Hamish Mitchell, also referring to the NYT piece, to argue Miller “was using the coronavirus to push his white supremacist anti-immigration policies.”
Another Twitter commenter with almost 600,000 followers, who goes by the moniker ‘Tea Pain,’ joked that Miller – who is Jewish – “says he’s not worried because the virus doesn’t jump species.”
More than 1.2 million Americans have tested positive for Covid-19 so far, and 76,368 have died of the disease as of Friday morning. The draconian lockdowns implemented by states at the urging of scientists and public health officials have resulted in 33 million Americans losing their jobs in just two months.
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