Donald Trump has said that the former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was admitted to hospital on Sunday after being diagnosed with Covid-19, was “doing well” with the virus.
“Rudy’s doing well,” Trump said in response to a question from reporters at the White House. “He’s doing very well. No temperature and he actually called me earlier this morning. Was the first call I got.”
Neither the White House nor doctors for Giuliani released information about Giuliani’s condition, and the basics of Giuliani’s health status remained unknown. He was admitted to Georgetown University hospital on Sunday.
Giuliani, 76, who has kept up a schedule of constant public appearances in recent weeks as the spearhead of Trump’s campaign to spread conspiracy theories about the US election, announced his Covid diagnosis on Twitter on Sunday.
“I’m getting great care and feeling good,” Giuliani tweeted. “Recovering quickly and keeping up with everything.”
Giuliani has appeared frequently in public recently closely surrounded by people not wearing masks or observing the social distancing measures health officials recommend to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
The Giuliani appearances, which have included press conferences as well as video-streamed meetings with Republican legislators in Michigan and Pennsylvania, are part of an improvised traveling show that Trump has put together to challenge the election result.
Following one such appearance, at the offices of the Republican National Committee in November, multiple attendees announced Covid diagnoses, including Giuliani’s son, Andrew, who appears to have had a mild case.
For years, Giuliani has worked to build and feed conspiracy theories designed to help Trump politically. Before the impeachment inquiry that concluded earlier this year, Giuliani tried to get Ukrainian officials to make public statements the Trump campaign hoped would be damaging to Joe Biden.
But Giuliani’s remit has changed since Trump lost the presidency, shifting from weaving complicated stories about a shady conspiracy in a former Soviet republic to weaving similar – entirely false – stories about a shady conspiracy among US elections officials.
While he has made a great show of his fraud allegations for the cameras, with likely corrosive effects on US democracy, Giuliani did not dare advance fraud allegations in a court appearance last month, where lying could come with a price in the form of disbarment or other sanction.
“It’s not fraud,” Giuliani told a district judge in Pennsylvania of the Trump campaign’s case. “This is not a fraud case.”
As one of the highest-profile members of Trump’s inner circle, Giuliani had previously served as a significant source of misinformation about coronavirus. In one Fox News appearance, he mocked contact tracing, asking why it was not used to fight obesity and heart disease.
Trump, 74, was hospitalized in early October at Walter Reed medical center in Maryland. He spent three days in the hospital.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
