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Trump reveals he has been tested for COVID-19

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Trump says he took the coronavirus test himself — now the country waits on the results.

Inside the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room on Saturday, March 14, President Trump told reporters he had been swabbed for COVID-19 the night before. It was a reversal from a man who spent days insisting he felt “perfectly fine,” and it came just hours after he declared a national emergency and a bipartisan aid bill cleared the House overnight.

• Trump confirmed he was tested for COVID-19 on Friday night, with results expected within a day or two.
• The disclosure followed his exposure to members of a Brazilian delegation at Mar-a-Lago the previous weekend, several of whom later tested positive.
• The House passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act 363-40 overnight, providing free testing, expanded food assistance, and paid sick leave, hours after Trump’s Friday declaration of a national emergency unlocked up to $50 billion in disaster relief.

A Reversal Prompted by Reporters’ Questions

Trump had spent the prior week brushing off calls to get tested, but he told the briefing room that pointed questions from journalists at Friday’s Rose Garden press conference are what pushed him to act. “I tested very positively in another sense, so this morning — no, I mean, this is a certain sense that I’m positive,” he had joked earlier in the week about his mental outlook, a comment that only intensified scrutiny once his Mar-a-Lago contacts became public. By Friday night, with a growing list of people he’d shaken hands with turning up COVID-19 positive, he agreed to the swab.

The Mar-a-Lago Connection

The exposure risk traced back to a Brazilian delegation Trump hosted at his Palm Beach club the previous weekend. Multiple members of that delegation subsequently tested positive for the virus, putting Trump — along with aides, donors, and other guests who mingled at the resort — in the position of having had direct contact with confirmed cases. That chain of contact is what turned “I feel fine” into a question reporters wouldn’t let go of.

The sample was sent to a lab Friday night, with the president telling reporters results were expected within a day or two.

New Screening at the White House Gates

The same Saturday briefing marked a visible shift in White House protocol. Officials began temperature-screening every journalist and staffer entering the briefing room, and at least one reporter was turned away after registering a fever. It was the first tangible sign that the building housing the president was applying the same precautions it was now urging on the rest of the country — a posture that would later harden further, as detailed in the White House’s later mask directive after staff contracted the virus.

A Fast-Moving 24 Hours in Washington

Trump’s testing disclosure didn’t happen in isolation — it capped a whirlplash Friday-to-Saturday stretch in the capital. Friday brought the national emergency declaration and its $50 billion in unlocked disaster funds. Overnight, the House passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act 363-40, guaranteeing free testing and paid sick leave nationwide. By Saturday afternoon, the president who’d downplayed the virus for weeks was standing at the podium describing his own test.

Results were still pending when Trump left the podium Saturday, expected within “a day or two,” by his own account. Whatever they showed, the temperature checks at the briefing room door weren’t going anywhere — and neither was the pressure on a White House now measuring its own exposure the same way it had asked the rest of the country to.