Donald Trump just learned he’s been potentially exposed to coronavirus. Now he’s canceling events.
The Washington Post broke the news yesterday that on the final day of CPAC, Donald Trump shook hands with someone who had in turn interacted with another CPAC attendee who has since tested positive for coronavirus. This meant Trump has potentially been exposed to the virus. If he did catch it, he’s now on day eight of a five to fourteen day incubation period.
At the time, Palmer Report suggested watching to see if Donald Trump began disappearing from public in the upcoming days. Last night Trump was spotted hosting an event at Mar-a-Lago, so he clearly didn’t have any symptoms at the time (or at least not any serious ones). But today Trump woke up and decided to cancel his planned St. Patrick’s Day luncheon with Congress which was set to take place in a little more than a week.
Trump is insisting that he’s canceling it because Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is being too mean to him. But the event isn’t for another nine days. If he really were doing this to snub Pelosi, he could have made more of a spectacle of it by waiting until a few days beforehand and then canceling. Instead he’s canceling the event less than twenty-four hours after learning he was potentially exposed to coronavirus.
It’s worth watching this going forward to see if Donald Trump keeps clearing out his schedule for the timeframe in which he would be the most ill from coronavirus. Again, there’s no way to know that he actually caught the virus at CPAC. It’s just that he’s making things look a bit suspicious by already starting to clear out his calendar.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report