You need to know
At a presidential press conference Tuesday, Donald Trump spent some time enjoying Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
While answering questions about prescription drugs, Trump was interrupted by an RFK sneeze. Pausing his remarks, he turned to HHS’s head and said, “God bless you, Bobby.”
After a while the president added, “Just I just hoped I didn’t catch Covid!”
Pfizer CEO Albert Brula also attended the press conference. Trump turned to his prescription executives and said, “He has a Pax Rovid, give me a Pax Rovid right away!” See antiviral drugs used to treat Covid-19 symptoms.
Francis Chong/Politico/Bloomberg
Trump was president at the start of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and was first ill during a cluster outbreak at the White House that ended in September 2020 to January 2021.
In a 2021 memoir by former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Meadows claimed that the president was positive for the illness three days before facing Joe Biden in the first presidential debate on September 29, 2020.
Following positive results not disclosed to the press and the public, Trump was soon given another, more accurate test.
The doctor told Trump staff to treat him as if he was positive, but Meadows wrote that the president interpreted the negative test as a clean slate and met with military families to compete in a Pennsylvania rally.
A few days later, on October 2nd, Trump announced that he and first lady Melania Trump both had Covid-19 cases. They received treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and the president returned to the public event on October 10th.
Kennedy has his own controversial history regarding the Covid-19 outbreak. In May 2025, he fired for removing the Covid vaccine from the recommended vaccination schedule for healthy children and pregnant women as part of his and Trump’s “American Health” agenda.
The following month, the HHS sent a document to Congress in support of a decision citing unpublished or controversial research and misrepresenting other findings, according to NPR and KFF Health News.
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The document reportedly linked heart conditions such as myocarditis and pericarditis to the covid vaccine, but updated studies suggested a decrease in link between new vaccine procedures and multiple other peer-reviewed studies.
“This is a playbook for RFK Jr.,” Sean O’Leary, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Infectious Diseases Committee, told KFF Health News at the time. “We’re taking Cherry Picks from Good Science or Junk Science and supporting his premises. This has been his playbook for 20 years.”
