Headed to Sanford Monday, President Trump says he’s no longer COVID-19 ‘contagious’

Image via AP.

President Donald Trump took to the Fox Business Network Sunday morning, making a cable-news base play with an interviewer friendlier than broadcast outlets would allow.

The President, armed with a doctor’s declaration that he no longer poses a transmission risk for coronavirus, is headed to Sanford for an airport tarmac rally on Monday evening.

“I still wouldn’t go to a rally if I was contagious,” Trump said on a day that saw a record high for COVID-19 daily cases.

The President offered reassurance to those who do test positive, adding that “if you catch it, you recover, and you’re immune.”

The President, who told Rush Limbaugh on Friday that he received a “cure” for the virus in the form of Regeneron at Walter Reed Hospital, used that formulation Sunday also, before saying that he perhaps could have done without it.

“It made me better,” Trump said, before saying “I think I would have done it fine without drugs, you don’t really need drugs.”

The President also touched on his steroid treatment, which he had for a “short period of time,” but which has been a frequent talking point among his critics, who contend the president is negatively affected by the regimen.

“They like to give you steroids,” Trump said of the doctors at Walter Reed, saying it was like how a “baseball pitcher” would be given steroids “when his arm blows up.”

“They gave me a steroid, which is a very easy thing to take,” Trump said.

The President contended the infection happened during the White House event where Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was introduced.

“Somebody got in, there was a day of celebration with Notre Dame, et cetera et cetera, and somebody got in and they got infected,” Trump told host Maria Bartiromo, before defending his decision to begin having public events again.

“I’m the leader, and I can’t be like Biden where I hang around in the basement every day. If I wanted to hang out in the basement, I wouldn’t catch it. I meet a lot of people, and I have to, because I’m the president of the country. I can’t hang around in the basement.”

That would be fruitless anyway, the President added.

“You’re not going to protect yourself against this with your standard anything unless you don’t come out,” Trump said, and even then there’s risk, as illustrated by one virus-positive senator.

“Senators that wore masks all the time,” such as Thom Tillis, tested positive, Trump noted.

“He was known as Mr. Mask, Mr. Mask we call him,” the President quipped.