US President Donald Trump salutes as he poses without a face mask on the Truman Balcony of the White House in Washington October 5, 2020.
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump was not in the Oval Office yesterday, the day after he was discharged from hospital, a White House spokesman said — contradicting a top aide to the president.
The behaviour of the president — who was hospitalised on Friday with Covid-19 — is under intense scrutiny as the number of positive cases continues to rise among people working at the White House, including journalists.
“While the President wanted to be in the Oval Office yesterday, he was not there — he stayed back in the residence working from there,” tweeted Ben Williamson, a spokesman for the president.
Moments earlier, Trump’s economic advisor Larry Kudlow told CNBC that “the president actually showed up in the Oval Office yesterday with extra precautions, with respect to his Covid-19.”
“The government is functioning,” Kudlow said.
The White House said safety preparations were indeed underway in the event Trump moves to working out of the Oval Office in the coming days.
Shortly before Trump was discharged from the Walter Reed military hospital on Monday, his doctors warned he “may not entirely be out of the woods yet” and that they would not consider him fully recovered until a week had passed.
