Billionaire Uline Owners Fought Evers’ COVID Safety Efforts. Then They Caught it at the White House.

The billionaire Republican donors join a number of other people with COVID-19 infections possibly contracted at a Trump campaign event.

Liz and Dick Uihlein, prolific billionaire Republican donors and owners of packaging giant Uline, tested positive for COVID-19 after attending an election-night party at the White House last week, according to a Thursday morning report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The couple joins a growing list of others who attended the White House party last Tuesday and have since tested positive for coronavirus, including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Liz Uihlein notified company employees of the diagnoses in a Wednesday email, according to the Journal Sentinel. UpNorthNews could not immediately reach the company for comment. The Journal Sentinel reported a company spokesperson refused to confirm the diagnoses to reporters there.

“Dick and I tested positive for COVID,” Liz Uihlein wrote, according to the Journal Sentinel. “After all these long months, I thought we’d never get it. Well, Trump go(t) it… If we had not been around people with COVID, we would not have been tested.”

She wrote the couple plans to return to the office on Nov. 19, according to the Journal Sentinel.

The infections come months after Liz Uihlein called the coronavirus pandemic “overhyped” in an April interview with The Guardian in which she criticized Gov. Tony Evers’ now-defunct statewide stay-home order. 

At that time, about 500,000 Americans had contracted the virus and about 50,000 had died, according to data tracked by Johns Hopkins University. Now, nearly 250,000 Americans have died and almost 10.5 million have been infected. Wisconsin reached 285,891 infections and 2,457 deaths on Wednesday, according to the Department of Health Services.
Dick and Liz Uihlein, whose company is headquartered in Kenosha County, have donated millions to Republican candidates and political action committees.