“He tried to infect and kill Joe Biden at the debate,” Midler told her 2 million Twitter followers on Friday. She added that Trump purposely showed up at the September 2020 presidential debate too late to be tested, “knowing full well he was positive, then screeched, sputtered, spit and foamed at the mouth, hoping to infect Joe. He is the devil.”
The rant apparently stems from a claim in an upcoming book by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that Trump tested positive for the virus three days before the debate. However, the then-president took another test that came back negative, according to an article on Wednesday by the Guardian, which cited an excerpt from the book.
Trump himself denied that he tested positive for the virus before the September 29 debate. “The story of me having Covid prior to or during the first debate is fake news,” Trump said on Wednesday. The former president reportedly had another negative test the day after the debate, but the next day, October 1, he and First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for Covid-19. Trump was hospitalized on October 2 and returned to the White House on October 5. A debate that had been scheduled for October 15 was canceled.
Asked by reporters on Wednesday whether he thought Trump had put him at risk during the debate, President Biden declined to enter the fray, saying, “I don’t think about the former president.”
Midler has been an outspoken Trump critic. She joked in June 2019 that “maybe someone in his camp can gently give him a shiv, I mean, shove.” A shiv is a slang term for a knife used to stab someone. Trump had referred to her as a “washed-up psycho” after the actress shared a debunked quote in which Trump had supposedly insulted Republican voters.
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