A Trump campaign staffer was hospitalized with COVID-19 in Tulsa and other infected staffers were told to drive 1,200 miles back to DC, new book says
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
- Eight Trump campaign staffers tested positive for COVID-19 and one was hospitalized in June 2020.
- ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl reported on the outbreak in his forthcoming book, "Betrayal."
- A senior campaign official told Karl the hospitalized staffer "was actually worried he was going to die."
Eight Trump campaign staffers and Secret Service members tested positive for COVID-19 and one was hospitalized for a week with the virus during then-President Donald Trump's controversial June 2020 rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, according to a forthcoming book by ABC News Correspondent Jonathan Karl.
A senior campaign official told Karl the hospitalized campaign staffer "was actually worried he was going to die."
"It was really scary," the official said, according to an excerpt of "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show" published on Thursday in Vanity Fair.
The staffer, who Karl was asked not to name, "had been worried about the dangers of working on the rally because of preexisting conditions that made the prospect of being infected especially dangerous," Karl wrote.
Other infected staffers were told to rent cars and drive more than 1,000 miles back to Washington, DC, despite public health guidelines recommending that infected individuals immediately quarantine for at least 10 days. In one instance, three infected aides drove together. The indoor rally in Tulsa, held on June 20, was the first large campaign event Trump held during the pandemic and would become the first of many.
"There was a car of three staffers who had tested positive that drove all the way from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Washington, D.C.," a top Trump aide told Karl. "We called it a COVID-mobile."
Karl wrote that many of Trump's campaign staffers partied together at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Tulsa the night before the rally. Trump campaign leaders attempted to cover up the outbreak by issuing an order to "stop testing" staff for the coronavirus.
Herman Cain, a Republican activist and 2012 GOP presidential candidate, died from complications of COVID-19 a month after attending the Tulsa rally. One senior Trump aide told Karl told ABC's Will Steakin, "We killed Herman Cain."
A former Trump campaign official didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
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