Former President Donald Trump leaving the White House for Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after testing optimistic for COVID-19 on October 2, 2020.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Trump was so weak when he contracted COVID-19 that he could not carry his briefcase, Meadows wrote in his new book.

Meadows and Dan Scavino “stared at each other” as they determined who would carry the “possibly contaminated” briefcase.

Before contracting COVID-19, Trump repeatedly downplayed the specter of the virus to the general public.

When then-President Donald Trump was contaminated with COVID-19 in September 2020, the illness weakened him to the purpose the place he could not carry his briefcase, in response to a brand new book from his former chief of employees, Mark Meadows.

As Trump ready to depart the White House on October 2, 2020 to board Marine One en path to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, he laid his briefcase on the ground and apologized to Meadows for being unable to carry it, as Meadows particulars in “The Chief’s Chief.”

“I’m sorry,” Trump reportedly stated at the time, in response to Meadows. “I-I just can’t carry that out there.”

Meadows and Dan Scavino, one other high aide in the Trump administration, then needed to resolve who would carry the briefcase.

“We stared at each other in silence for a moment, wondering who was going to pick up the possibly contaminated briefcase. Although I’m sure Dan would have if I had hesitated for a second longer, I ended up being the one to squirt on some hand sanitizer, bend down, and grab it,” Meadows wrote.

He continued: “As I walked with President Trump toward Marine One, he looked down at the briefcase in my hand, seemingly impressed.”

“‘I knew you were my guy,’ Trump reportedly told Meadows.

Trump’s team did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

In the book, Meadows disclosed Trump’s previously unknown September 26 positive test, which came three days before the first in-person debate with then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in Cleveland, Ohio.

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The chief of staff informed Trump of his diagnosis before the debate, but then told Trump that the positive test came from an older-model kit. He also emphasized that another test could be performed with the Binax system. When the second test came back negative, aides thought Trump was in the clear.

But Trump was sicker than the White House had previously revealed, with Meadows noting his visible signs of fatigue between late September and October 1. The then-president publicly announced his diagnosis in the early morning hours of October 2.

Trump contracted the virus after repeatedly downplaying the threat of COVID-19. Throughout much of 2020, Trump consistently refused to follow guidance from top public health experts, such as wearing a mask or face-covering in public, which was recommended for reducing the spread of the coronavirus.

In a recorded interview with veteran journalist Bob Woodward, Trump admitted to deliberately minimizing the dangers of COVID-19.

“I wished to all the time play it down,” Trump said in March 2020. “I nonetheless like taking part in it down, as a result of I do not need to create a panic.”

Over 400,000 Americans had died from COVID-19 — which first emerged in the US in early 2020 — by the time Trump left office in January 2021.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the former White House COVID-19 response coordinator, in her October testimony to the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, said that over 300,000 lives could’ve been saved if Trump had publicly emphasized scientific recommendations and embraced measures promoted by experts.

“I imagine if we had absolutely carried out the masks mandates, the discount in indoor eating, the getting associates and household to know the danger of gathering in non-public houses, and we had elevated testing, that we most likely might have decreased fatalities into the 30% much less to 40% much less vary,” Birx stated at the time.

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