Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host Sarah Isger joined by Steve Hayes. And this week we are talking to ABC news chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Carl about his new book betrayal the final act of the Trump show.

Let's dive right in John Carl. There is now news coming from Mark Meadows, the president's former chief of staff about a positive COVID test that the president had about a week before the final debate.

He then tested negative several times right before the debate, but then tested positive a few days later.

Mark Meadows now trying to walk this back reports that the president is furious. What are we supposed to make of this?

Well, first of all, I've kind of a unique vantage point on this because I had heard precisely this when I was doing the reporting for betrayal and it was one of the things that I spent quite a bit of time trying to chase down.

I had heard that there wasn't an initial positive test just as meadows is now saying in his book. And one of the people that I asked about that was a guy named Mark Meadows.

And Meadows at the time told me not true, not true. And I said to him, and I feel comfortable talking about this now that he has written the book, I said, OK, can you tell me that on the record like with your name attached Mark Meadows tells me, you know, not true.

And he said, let me get back to you. Let me get back to you. I got to see if it's OK. Let me see. Like you gave me the impression you're going to check with Trump. And believe it or not, he never got back to me. And then I also when I sat down with Trump and Mar-a-Lago for the book in March, I asked him specifically, and he'll get the question.

And as precisely as described by Meadows, I said, you know, I had heard people say that there is there was an initial positive test. I didn't say you had COVID during the debate. I said there was an initial positive test before the debate.

Is that true or is that not true? Is the way actually I wanted to really just kind of get a very specific answer from Trump. And listening to the audio now, which I have done for the first time since the interview of that part of, you know, of that section of the interview, he says, no, no, that's not true.

But I swear when you listen to the tone of voice, he's obviously lying. I mean, he's like, he gets a little quieter. And he's like, he's got a planet. But anyway, you know, the other thing Meadows writes in his book is that Trump was displaying symptoms that he was tired and seemed to have a slight old.

So you take that combination that combined with the fact that there was this initial positive test. Now they did go and he says, retest the sample on a different machine.

I still don't know exactly what he means by that. And it came back negative. Now, as you know, there are these tests are not perfect.

But the more common mistake is a false negative, not a false positive. I mean, if the infection is there, it's there.

So, you know, the height of recklessness and one other thing on this, because I, again, I say, said, I really looked rather deeply into this, because I was convinced that they had violated the rules of the debate rules.

The debate, by the way, you know, was, was hosted by the Cleveland Clinic. And I was there. And the protocols were very strict terms of testing before you go in in terms of a mask in the hall, all that stuff.

Well, Jason Miller posted photographs that day. Did they have the debate of Johnny Macinty and Max Miller and various other luminaries?

Robert Brian, the National Security Visors. Trump advisors with Trump on the stage doing the walkthrough as soon as they got to Cleveland.

This is before the debate you guys have all been part of this stuff. You know what it is.

And none of these guys are wearing masks, a total violation, which was outrageous at the time.

But I mean, not wearing masks when they knew that there was, there had been a positive test of the guy that, I mean, it's, I don't know, it's unbelievable.

Oh, it's believable. It's shocking and entirely believable.

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