The White House COVID-19 outbreak was a cluster of SARS-CoV-2 infections that began in September 2020 and ended in January 2021 that spread among people, including many U.S. government officials, who were in close contact during the COVID-19 pandemic in Washington, D.C.

[7] Many of the infections appeared to be related to a ceremony held on September 26 in the Rose Garden for the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, where seating was not socially distanced and participants were mostly unmasked.

[8] Trump himself may have been infectious at that point, but he and his entourage attended several subsequent events unmasked, including the first presidential debate against Joe Biden in Cleveland, Ohio on September 29.

[10] More infections were reported in late October among Vice President Mike Pence's staff,[11] and a second large outbreak occurred after Election Day, after Trump held a watch party in the East Room.

[12] Other infections included First Lady Melania Trump; Republican Senators Thom Tillis, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson; Republican Representative Matt Gaetz; Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien; RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel; former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway; former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie; Notre Dame president John I. Jenkins; Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany; presidential advisor Stephen Miller; Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.

[2][3] At least one person, White House security office head Crede Bailey, was reported as "gravely ill,"[13] having fallen sick in September prior to the Rose Garden event.

[14] According to public health experts such as Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, the outbreak could have been prevented.

[26] Attendees who tested positive include two Secret Service agents, two staffers, the girlfriend of the President's eldest son, Kimberly Guilfoyle and politician Herman Cain.

[49][54] On September 26, 2020, an event was held in the White House Rose Garden announcing Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

"[58] Infectious disease physician Robert L. Murphy said that if the infections are traced to the Rose Garden ceremony, they may have been started by a superspreader (a highly contagious person), and that they could have been avoided if face masks were worn and social distancing was practiced.

[79] The governor opposed the rally, arguing: "It is gravely concerning that the president would insist on holding this event with blatant disregard for social distancing and masking requirements.

Christie complained that neither Trump nor White House chief of staff Mark Meadows had revealed the president's positive test result before or during the debate preparations.

[128][146] On October 7, 2020, Bloomberg News cited four people who reported that head of the White House Security Officer Crede Bailey was "gravely ill" with COVID-19 and had been in hospital since September.

[169] When asked why he was reluctant to disclose that Trump had been given oxygen during the October 3 briefing, Conley stated that he did not want to "give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction" and "it came off that we're trying to hide something, which wasn't necessarily true.

"[170] White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah later stated that it was "a common medical practice that you want to convey confidence, and you want to raise the spirits of the person you're treating," while also asserting that Meadows' anonymous statement to reporters was intended to "give you guys more information just to try to be as transparent as we can," effectively conceding Conley was addressing the president on television, rather than the public.

[164] Later in the day, Trump briefly departed the hospital to ride past a gathering of supporters at the medical center, waving from the back seat of an SUV, before returning.

[173][174] James Phillips, doctor of emergency medicine at George Washington University and an attending physician at Walter Reed, sharply criticized the drive-by as "insanity" for "political theater" and wrote that Trump had endangered the Secret Service agents in the presidential SUV by potentially exposing them to COVID-19.

[169] Trump made phone calls in which he shared the idea of him leaving the hospital feigning frailty, but would then rip open his dress shirt to reveal a Superman T-shirt underneath, as reported by The New York Times.

He added that "Saturday (October 10) will be day 10 since Thursday's diagnosis, and based on the trajectory of advanced diagnostics the team has been conducting, I fully anticipate the president's safe return to public engagements at that time.

The following day, Jared Kushner aide Charlton Boyd[221] was reported to be infected, and Florida Representative Matt Gaetz announced he had developed antibodies for the virus.

[223] On November 12, it was revealed that party attendees Corey Lewandowski, a Trump campaign advisor, and Republican strategist and lobbyist Jeff Miller tested positive for coronavirus.

Following Trump's refusal to participate, the Biden campaign announced that he would instead take questions from voters directly on October 15 via a town hall event hosted by ABC News in Philadelphia.

[257] Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that Trump's hospitalization raises serious national security concerns and that adversaries should be expected to exploit any vulnerabilities of the United States.

[258] However, several former defense officials downplayed concerns of foreign opportunism and argued that the U.S. national security apparatus including the nuclear command-and-control elements of that system is resilient enough to withstand the impact of an ill or incapacitated president.

[266] Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and professor at Brown University, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "I would never want to say the president is experiencing steroid-induced psychosis, but it is certainly concerning to see some of his actions today in the wake of this potentially deadly diagnosis and infectious disease.

[17] Some medical experts noted that dexamethasone is typically administered in severe and critical cases of infection, to suppress an immune system overreaction that attacks vital organs which can lead to death.

Some experts noted a so-called "VIP syndrome," in which a prominent patient insists on directing his own medical care, suggesting the president may have sought aggressive treatment without understanding the potential risks.

Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley criticized Twitter for not taking threats against them seriously, pointing to longstanding posts calling for their deaths that had not been removed.

[295] Many of the conspiracy theories were politically motivated, aided by conflicting and contradictory information announced to the public by the White House, the presidential medical team, and Trump himself (through his tweets).

[298][299] Similar theories were posted on social media, postulating that Trump was feigning the illness so he could quickly recover and downplay the threat of COVID-19, delay the 2020 presidential election, or to distract the public from the reporting about his tax returns.