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      'I feel much better': Trump releases first video message from hospital room

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      Donald Trump

      President says next few days will be the ‘real test’ as he battles Covid-19
      Donald Trump diagnosed with coronavirus – live updates

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      Trump films first message from hospital: ‘We’re going to beat this coronavirus’ – video

      Donald Trump released a new video message on Saturday evening saying that he is “doing well”, his wife Melania is “doing very well” and the next few days will be the “real test” after he was taken to hospital with Covid-19.
      “I came here, wasn’t feeling so well, I feel much better now. We’re working hard to get me all the way back,” Trump said from behind a desk in his suite at the Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.
      The US president, looking pale, said: “I’ll be back, I think I’ll be back soon, and I look forward to finishing up the campaign the way it was started and the way we’ve been doing and the kind of numbers that we’ve been doing.”
      The video countered some reports that Trump’s prognosis had worsened since he was admitted to the military hospital on Friday evening, several hours after he announced on Twitter that he and the first lady, Melania Trump, had contracted the virus.
      Shortly after the video was released, White House doctor Sean P Conley said Trump was free of fever and making substantial progress, but was “not yet out of the woods”.
      “He spent much of the afternoon conducting business, and has been up and moving about the medical suite without difficulty,” Conley said in a statement.
      Earlier on Saturday, the White House had sent contradictory messages about the president’s health, with a senior official saying his vital signs were “very concerning” even as doctors portrayed a patient recovering well from Covid-19.
      While one doctor said Trump had told them “I feel like I could walk out of here today”, the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows gave reporters a less rosy assessment, saying: “The president’s vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care.
      “We’re still not on a clear path to a full recovery.”
      In his message, Trump did not directly contradict Meadows, saying: “I just want to tell you that I’m starting to feel good. You don’t know over the next period of a few days, I guess that’s the real test, so we’ll be seeing what happens over those next couple of days.”
      Trump said his wife was “doing very well” and joked about their age gap.
      “Melania is really handling it very nicely. As you’ve probably read, she’s slightly younger than me – just a little tiny bit – and therefore, just, we know the disease, we know the situation with age versus younger people, and Melania is handling it statistically like it’s supposed to be handled. And that makes me very happy, and it makes the country very happy.”
      The president thanked his medical team – “the incredible medical professionals, the doctors, the nurses, everybody, at Walter Reed Medical Center – I think it’s the finest in the world – for the incredible job they’ve been doing.”
      And he referred to the coronavirus epidemic, which has taken the lives of around 200,000 Americans, derailed the US economy and in recent days threatened Trump’s re-election campaign as White House staff and Republican senators have become infected.
      “This was something that happened, and it’s happened to millions of people all over the world, and I’m fighting for them. Not just in the US, I’m fighting for them all over the world. We’re going to beat this coronavirus, or whatever you want to call it, and we’re going to beat it soundly,” Trump said.
      The decision to put Trump in hospital came after he had experienced difficulty breathing and his oxygen level dropped, according to a source familiar with the situation.
      In his message, Trump said he had “no choice because I just didn’t want to stay in the White House”.
      “I was given that alternative. Stay in the White House, lock yourself in, don’t ever leave, don’t even go to the Oval Office, just stay upstairs and enjoy it, don’t see people, don’t talk to people and just be done with it and I can’t do that,” he said.
      “I can’t be locked up in a room upstairs and totally safe and just say: ‘Hey, whatever happens happens.’ I can’t do that.”
      After being admitted to Walter Reed, Trump was placed on a cocktail of drugs including a five-day course of Remdesivir, an intravenous antiviral drug sold by Gilead Sciences that has been shown to shorten hospital stays.
      He is also taking an experimental treatment, Regeneron’s REGN-COV2, one of several experimental Covid-19 treatments known as monoclonal antibodies, as well as zinc, vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin and aspirin, according to Conley.
      During his message Trump made no mention of being placed on supplemental oxygen before he was admitted. “If you look at the therapeutics, which I’m taking right now, some of them, and others are coming out soon that are looking like – frankly, they’re miracles if you want to know the truth. They’re miracles,” he said.
      Trump is considered vulnerable because of his age and weight. He has remained in apparent good health during his time in office but is not known to exercise regularly or to follow a healthy diet.
      Trump also thanked Americans for their “almost bipartisan” well wishes and concluded his message by saying: “I think we’re going to have a very good result.”

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      Trump films first message from hospital: 'We're going to beat this coronavirus' – video

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      4:09

      Donald Trump has posted his first video message from Walter Reed hospital, saying: ‘I came here, wasn’t feeling so well. I feel much better now. We’re working hard to get me all the way back … I’ll be back, I think I’ll be back soon.’
      During the four-minute video posted to Twitter, the president said that he could have stayed isolated at the White House after his Covid-19 diagnosis, but that he ‘can’t be locked up in a room and totally safe’ – adding that ‘as a leader you have to confront problems’.
      Trump acknowledged that the ‘next few days will be the real test’ and said the first lady, Melania Trump, who also tested positive for coronavirus, was ‘really handling it very nicely’ – with the president joking about their 24-year age gap during his video message
      Trump’s Covid diagnosis: how it happened and what to expect
      Trump’s base stays loyal as president fights Covid
      Sign up for Fight to Vote – our weekly US election newsletter

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      Amy Coney Barrett: quick confirmation under threat as three senators infected

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      Senate Republicans are facing a shrinking window of time before the November 3 election to confirm Donald Trump’s supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, following the news that at least three Republican senators have tested positive for the coronavirus and more are quarantining after likely exposure.Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader and Republican from Kentucky, on Saturday morning said he would seek consent from Democrats to cancel any action on the main floor of the Senate for the next two weeks, until 19 October.But the Senate judiciary committee, which must vote on the nomination first, will still convene as planned on 12 October to begin the confirmation hearing process for Barrett, he said. While senators have attended recent hearings remotely, Democrats have said there is bipartisan opposition for allowing them to do so for something as high profile as a supreme court nomination that could determine the ideological tilt of the court.In a letter on Saturday, top Democrats on the committee said that to “proceed at this juncture with a hearing to consider Judge Barrett’s nomination to the supreme court threatens the health and safety of all those who are called upon to do the work of this body”. Many of the senators on the committee are older and have other risk factors for Covid-19.Republicans are trying to advance Barrett’s nomination as quickly as possible to replace the court’s progressive champion Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last month.This despite refusing to consider Barack Obama’s pick for a supreme court justice in an election year in 2016.Republican leaders are concerned that if they lose their majority in the Senate in the November election, and if Trump loses the White House, it will be harder to confirm a conservative nominee during the lame-duck session before former vice president Joe Biden could enter office in January 2021.Utah senator Mike Lee and North Carolina senator Thom Tillis, both of whom sit on the judiciary panel, tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday and will quarantine for 10 days, until the committee meeting.Both had attended an event at the White House announcing Barrett’s nomination last Saturday. Multiple attendees of the event, including Trump, his wife Melania, former White House counsel Kellyanne Conway and Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and a Trump adviser, have now tested positive.Without Lee and Tillis’s votes, Barrett’s committee approval could be in jeopardy. Democrats could refuse to attend the meeting, denying Republicans the total number of lawmakers required to send the nomination to the full floor.A third Republican senator on the committee, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, who is 87, was also at a hearing last week with Lee. But Grassley’s office argues his doctors have not recommended he be tested and don’t believe he has been in close contact with anyone suspected of having or confirmed to have the coronavirus. At the hearings, senators sit far apart, although neither Grassley nor Lee wore a mask when speaking.McConnell said the judiciary committee has been meeting since May with some senators present and some participating virtually.“Certainly all Republican members of the committee will participate in these important hearings,” he said, of the supreme court confirmation process, which, if completed, would tilt the court dramatically to the right.Wisconsin Republican senator Ron Johnson, who is not on the committee, has also contracted the coronavirus. He did not attend the White House event last Saturday because he was already isolating following a different potential exposure.Senate Republicans meet several times a week for a caucus lunch, where they sit in a large room and remove their masks. All three of the senators who have tested positive were at those lunches last week, according to CNN.If at least three Republican senators are too ill to appear in person to confirm Barrett, the party leadership may not have enough votes.Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, and Mike Pence, the vice-president, could break a tie. Two Republicans, Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, have said they will not confirm a nominee before the election. More

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      Trump medical team 'cautiously optimistic' after Covid hospital admission – video

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      The White House doctor Sean Conley said Donald Trump was ‘doing great’ after the president was admitted to the Walter Reed military medical centre on Friday. Trump has received antibody therapy and is on a five-day treatment of remdesivir, and was reported to be ‘in exceptionally good spirits’
      Trump’s doctor ‘cautiously optimistic’ about president’s health after hospitalisation for Covid – live

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