I wouldn’t have guessed it, but according to a new report Trump is a germaphobe and uses Purell all the time:
POLITICO – He asks visitors if they’d like to wash their hands in a bathroom near the Oval Office.
He’ll send a military doctor to help an aide caught coughing on Air Force One.
And the first thing he often tells his body man upon entering the Beast after shaking countless hands at campaign events: “Give me the stuff” — an immediate squirt of Purell.
Two and a half years into his term, President Donald Trump is solidifying his standing as the most germ-conscious man to ever lead the free world. His aversion shows up in meetings at the White House, on the campaign trail and at 30,000 feet. And everyone close to Trump knows the president’s true red line.
“If you’re the perpetrator of a cough or of a sneeze or any kind of thing that makes you look sick, you get that look,” said a former Trump campaign official. “You get the scowl. You get the response of — he’ll put a hand up in a gesture of, you should be backing away from him, you should be more considerate and you should extricate yourself from the situation.”
As I was reading this I thought this might have something to do with him singling out Mulvaney in his interview with George Stephanopoulos last month. Sure enough…
The president’s hatred of involuntary bacterial emissions burst into the open last month when his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, started coughing in the Oval Office while ABC’s George Stephanopoulos was interviewing Trump. “I don’t like that, you know. I don’t like that. If you’re going to cough, please, leave the room,” Trump said before shaking his head.
White House staffers told to steer clear of Trump if they are even remotely sick:
White House staffers know that if they’re visibly sick or sound hoarse, they must steer clear of a president who doesn’t want to be around anyone who’s under the weather.
“It was serious that you shouldn’t spend much time in front of the president [if you were sick] because he would be extremely annoyed by that,” someone close to the White House said. “He doesn’t want to get sick. … Everyone understood that if you were sick or sounded sick, your involvement in front of the president should be extremely limited.”
Sniffling staffers have been told they should take a break to drink some tea or otherwise get cleared up before going into the Oval Office, this person said.
Someone pointed out on Twitter that Obama told a CBS News newser that his advice would be to always use Purell:
— Matt Wolking (@MattWolking) July 8, 2019
From the sounds of it though, I’m guessing that Trump is more like Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory than Obama:
Via TRS
