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A five-day stretch in October 2020 — from the moment White House officials began an extraordinary effort to get Trump lifesaving drugs to the day the president returned to the White House from the hospital — marked a dramatic turning point in the nation’s flailing coronavirus response. Trump’s brush with severe illness and the prospect of death caught the White House so unprepared that they had not even briefed Vice President Mike Pence’s team on a plan to swear him in if Trump became incapacitated. (Paletta and Abutaleb, 6/24)

Former President Trump reportedly suggested sending Americans infected with COVID-19 to Guantanamo Bay in an effort to stem the rapidly growing number of cases on U.S. soil in the early days of the pandemic, according to a new book. Trump, during a February 2020 meeting in the Situation Room as administration officials were discussing whether to bring infected Americans home for care, reportedly asked the attendees “Don’t we have an island that we own?” and “What about Guantánamo?” (Schnell, 6/21)

When former President Trump contracted COVID-19 in October, the White House was reportedly so unprepared that officials had not briefed then-Vice President Mike Pence’s team on a plan to swear in Pence if Trump was unable to carry out the duties of the presidency, according to a new book. The revelation comes from the book “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History,” authored by Washington Post journalists Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta. The book is set to be released on Tuesday. (Schnell, 6/24)

Donald Trump wanted Covid-19 to “take out” his former national security adviser John Bolton, a new book is set to reveal, as a heated summer of further colourful revelations about the controversial former president spills out from competing tomes. The forthcoming Nightmare Scenario will stake out the claim, in addition to telling of how Trump advocated shipping Americans who contracted coronavirus while abroad to the prison at Guantánamo Bay. (Betancourt, 6/23)

Former President Donald Trump last year reportedly tried to joke about COVID-19 "for months," mocking people who got sick and saying he hoped his former national security adviser, John Bolton, would die from the virus. That's according to the new book Nightmare Scenario written by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta, an excerpt of which was reported Wednesday by Axios. They write that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump "tried to joke about the virus for months, sometimes even mocking people who had become ill." (Morrow, 6/23)

Former President Donald Trump is blasting early detractors of the “lab-leak theory” ​in a new interview, pointing out he “called it a long time ago” that the coronavirus may have escaped from the virology lab in Wuhan — adding, “we have to make China pay.” “​I said it a long time ago​,​ right from the beginning​. And when you look at Wu​han and that’s where it all started​,​ and then you look at the ​Wuhan lab and that’s what they were doing​,​ it seemed pretty obvious to me​.​ I called it a long time ago​,” Trump said in an interview Wednesday on Fox Nation. (Moore, 6/24)