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tv   The Rachel Maddow Show  MSNBC  October 1, 2020 9:00pm-10:00pm PDT

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...our agents put in the time and legwork for you, ...so saving on auto insurance is easy. because saving a little extra goes a long way. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. evening, everybody. midnight here on the east coast, 9:00 out west. and this is why our coverage looks a little different at this hour. if you've been out or away from a device or a television. the lead story is this. there is enough chance the president has had exposure to the coronavirus that the president himself has announced tonight that he and the first lady are, quote, beginning the quarantine process. this goes back, as all cases do, to a traceable case.
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hope hicks, who has been working so hard without even taking a small break, has just tested positive for covid-19, the president wrote in that tweet tonight. in the tweet we had up on the screen, he went on to say, the first lady and i are waiting for our test results. waiting for our test results, more on that in a moment. in the meantime, we will begin our quarantine process. that's all we have been left with. remember, this president in the white house has, including traveling with him, the white house physician's office. they are usually active-duty military, and they are physicians, more than one, to service the president, vice president, members of the first family, even senior staff, and especially when the white house is on the road. we are hoping for a fuller statement from the white house medical office on the test
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results tonight. we have reason to believe the president and first lady were initially tested hours ago now, perhaps in the 9:00 p.m. hour eastern time. we have reason to believe that the first go-round on white house testing is the abbott instant test, which, full disclosure, the president has shilled and promoted on the white house lawn, including having an example of the product itself on a pedestal in ways that would make supermarketer ron poe peel stand back in admiration. maggie haberman from "the new york times" adds this on social media. saying i'm going to quarantine changes the cable news chyrons, the headlines we use at the bottom of the screen. but if he, trump, tests negative and they announce that in short order, he likely isn't quarantining. well, the president has put those words out there in the intervening 39 minutes since that was posted.
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we quoted shannon pettypiece, our own correspondent at the white house for nbc news digital, and apparently her ears were ringing at home when she heard that. shannon, you and i both heard the same thing. when the president was asked about hope hicks having the coronavirus -- and cnn, by the way, is reporting she is symptomatic -- the president deflected a bit and talked about the people who come up and see you when you're on the road. you and i were both struck by the fact that he mentioned members of the military who want to, in his words, kiss you and hug you, and he couldn't help but remind sean hannity, because we've done such a good job. so talk about that and any other reporting you've been able to receive tonight. >> well, and we don't know, at least based on our reporting at this point, how hope hicks got
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infected, if it was at all related to a service member, we don't know if there was a service member working closely with the white house where they believe she contracted this. we just don't know at this point. so that's why it was odd that the president would go to referring to the military, and his quote was -- he said, it is very, very hard when you are with people from the military, and this is in the context of talking, you know, right about this, you know, infection with hope hicks. he said, you know, they come over to you. they want to hug you and kiss you because we really have done a great job. you get close, and things happen. so take from that what you will, but a surprising layer to all of this. we have learned a little bit, but we don't know how they believe hope was infected. we have gotten a little bit of the timeline. my colleague hallie jackson reporting tonight that we believe -- or at least our reporting indicates that she was showing signs of symptoms last night while traveling with the
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president for a rally in minnesota and that this morning, she received positive results. now, if that timeline's correct, it is notable that the president today traveled to bedminster, where he held a fund-raiser. we also know, as far as timeline, a little bit about what hope's contact has been with the president, and it is extensive. our reporting indicates that she was very heavily involved in the debate prep that the president did. she traveled with him to cleveland, including on marine one, a very confined space, to that debate, was traveling again with him in minnesota. so the president, and as his quarantine indicates, has been in what the cdc defines as close contact with someone, within six feet of someone for more than 15 minutes. that's what the cdc considers a close contact, and if you are a close contact, you are someone who needs to get tested and
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needs to quarantine until you have received an all-clear from the testing. as far as people close to the president, they don't get much closer than hope hicks. you know, i remember talking about when the president's valley got infected and how that was someone incredibly close to the president all those months ago, who prepared his meals, who saw him multiple times a day. i would say hope hicks might be even closer when it comes to the amount of time, hours a day that, you know, our reporting indicates she has spent with the president throughout her time at the white house, not to mention in the past few days. so that would give you some sense of why the president is taking this so seriously and acknowledging for the first time that he may actually have covid-19. in past situations where we have seen people in the white house infected, the president has never gone as far as to suggest he needs to quarantine, he may have covid-19. so that is certainly a change from anything we have seen in the past, you know, although
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there have been a number of people in the president's inner circle who have gotten sick. >> shannon, if you learn anything, wave your arms wildly, and we will come to you. and, shannon, as is his custom, reminds us to repeat the headline at this hour. and that is we are unaccustomed to saying this. the president of the united states is entering quarantine along with his wife in some form or fashion. details tba for what is believed to be an exposure to coronavirus. this raises more questions for dr. vin gupta, who remains with us and part of our coverage. doctor, at the risk of going over some already asked and answered questions, can the president test negative for something he indeed has been exposed to and later test positive? is there a gestation or german
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nation period noting that we are still learning so much every day about what is still an out of control pandemic in our country. >> brian, the answer to that is absolutely. this is why this is such a complicated virus for us to control, because it's so mysterious when it exposes one individual versus another individual. the response can be dramatically different. here's what we know. we know that that time between exposure and when you might have a positive test -- the president seems like he had a pretty significant exposure. what the key piece here is that if hope hicks was symptomatic, that is deeply concerning, especially in an enclosed space for a long period of time. that's a very high-risk exposure. that's very different and should be treated as such. but the incubation period, meaning time from exposure to when you might get a positive test, varies from 48 hours all the way out to 14 days. that's why the cdc -- if we're being religious about cdc guidelines, let's be clear.
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the cdc actually says on their website, even in the setting of a close contact, high-risk exposure -- i'm paraphrasing -- even if you have a negative test, if the exposure was high-risk enough, because tests are not perfect, you should -- you should quarantine for 10 to up to 14 days. some workplaces are actually instituting that policy. they're not trusting a negative test. i'm hoping that the test that was employed was not the abbott i.d. now test. i have nothing against abbott at all. but the test itself has had quality issues. false negative rates unacceptably high. so the president, i hope, is getting a lab-based test, that nasal test where you stick a swab in your nose and it gets sent to a hospital for a pcr. that's what we want for the president's safety. it's for the president's safety. let me quickly say a few other comments, brian. we know this is a high-risk case for an exposure because we have studies, for example, out of china. there's a really compelling, frankly alarming study published
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a few weeks ago in one of our best medical journals t. shows that one person was positive in a bus that was recirculating air-conditioned air, infected 40% of the passengers. not that different from an airplane cabin. so an enclosed space, even if it's better ventilated, a plane is better ventilated than a bus, is high risk for everybody that's in close contact. so not only the president and the first lady and whomever else might be on the flight, but everybody on that plane should be quarantining. not just those two individuals. everybody. one test should not be the pretext to say let's go to wisconsin or let's continue the schedule apace. no. we need a legitimate quarantine for the sake of the president and for the sake of those who he may expose unwittingly. so the whole schedule should be revisited, not just the next few days. >> dr. gupta, i sometimes forget we are not your job, and i've been reminded that your job, i.e. patients in the e.r.,
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await, and we are losing our ability to talk to you. with our thanks for explaining rolling, breaking news that we're all dealing with, thank you as always, doc. jonathan lemire of the associated press remains with us. jonathan, someone you and i both know, the afore quoted maggie haberman is back on the board as i'm looking at social media. and i quote from a few minutes ago, most aides who would normally travel with the president did not go with him to bedminster today. again, closed-door fund-raiser, mostly because of hicks' positive test earlier today. she had symptoms last night as we've reported around the time of the rally, quarantined on the plane home. confirmed positive today. so, again, jonathan, we're all absent more information from the white house medical office, we're all doing kind of amateur contact tracing because this is a more important exposure than most. >> that's certainly true, brian.
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and, yes, the timeline maggie just laid out there is one that we have as well, my colleagues and i at the a.p. it was noted today that kayleigh mcenany, the press secretary, did not join the president on his trip to bedminster, new jersey, for this fund-raiser, and was replaced by one of the department press secretaries for that journey to new jersey. she did, however, still conduct her briefing in the white house briefing room, which she came in fairly close contact to reporters. this would have been after she had been exposed to hope hicks in the previous day or so. and it raises questions also about how the white house notified this. the idea of contact tracing, well, hope hicks was on air force one and certainly had contact with a number of senior white house staffers, who many of them had contact just with one group, for instance, the white house press pool that was on the plane with them on tuesday for the debate in cleveland and yesterday for the trip to minnesota. and there's been no contact tracing done that we know of for
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any of those reporter who's were on the plane. that included nancy cook, who was on earlier today, who was part of the trip to minnesota yesterday. so there has always been questions about how effective the white house contact tracing program has been, how robust it is and how frankly seriously they take it. and now there's great question as to what happens next for the president. this certainly -- there could be a tweet coming from his account at any minute. it could be in the dead of night where he says one way or the other the result of that test. and to reiterate, we think he's had the rapid test already and has now had a second one, a more substantial test that's more accurate but takes a little longer to process. it's possible we won't find out until the morning, and then what happens? he does have a full schedule tomorrow. he's going to be in washington with events in the white house for the first half of the day and then a fund-raiser at his hotel. then he's supposed to get on air force one, and i will be part of that trip as part of the press pool tomorrow for a rally just outside orlando. that, as of now, is still on the
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books, followed by a couple of rallies in wisconsin on saturday and then further trips sunday and into next week. will those happen? we don't know. a lot depends on the actual definition of would be. >> i'm tempted to say, jonathan, enjoy the flight on air force one. i hope your affairs are in order, but that would shabe kidding. on the serious side, it is possible, as i keep saying, that the president's public schedule
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is running behind the news. the news thus far has been generated on his phone. >> as it usually is, brian. yes. certainly there's no question that that schedule may totally change. it is -- it heads out every night usually after what lid has been killed. lid is a word that has picked up a lot of traction this week in context of the joe biden campaign. but basically what it means is to show that the candidate or in this case the president will not have any more public events, that reporters won't lay eyes on him or her, and that lid was called earlier this evening after the return from bedminster. the schedule came out shortly thereafter as it normally does. it could be completely revisited. presidential schedules, there's always a degree of fluidity. they can change at a moment's note. entire days can be scrapped or revised at any time. so it is possible that perhaps
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out of an abundance of caution, they will pull down tomorrow's events or this weekend's as well. it's also very possible that they won't. if another test comes back and the president is negative, it's not impossible, considering how this white house -- its attitude towards the coronavirus has been, it wouldn't be shocking at all if they forged forward. let's remember they have tried to change the subject every chance they can. they know that the argument is one that they're losing if they're having an argument that the president has handled this pandemic effectively. public polling suggests that. they've been trying to make this campaign about anything else. we saw the president try so desperately tuesday night to do that at his debate with joe biden. and we have seen him time and again, critics say, act cavalierly towards and certainly unrealistically about the progress america has made, whether it be about testing or therapeutics or the vaccine, offering accelerated timetables and suggesting yet again -- he did so today -- that we're in the home stretch with the coronavirus, that we're rounding the corner even though there are many days still where 1,000
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americans lose their lives each and every day to this virus. so as he tries to sort of paint as optimistic a picture as possible about how this country has handled the pandemic, it's certainly hard to project a sense of normalcy, which he has done with a return to rallies, with a packed lawn for his speech at the republican national convention. he may not want to seem like he is deterred by this virus, health risks aside, and may indeed keep up his campaign schedule in the days ahead. >> yeah, jonathan, indeed to your point, the president a covid denier publicly early on. it's going to go to zper. it will disappear. we now know thanks to bob woodward he knew exactly the risks and the scope of this way before he was willing to discuss it with the public. for those just joining us, president's entering quarantine, or as we call it, early friday, october 2nd, 2020. we're going to take a break.
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our live coverage as we await some modicum of medical information out of the white house physician's office, continues after this. little theo's nose had cause for alarm. his ordinary tissues were causing it harm. they left his nose raw, with each wiping motion. so dad extinguished the problem, with puffs plus lotion. puffs have more lotion to soothe through the blows... and more pillowy softness, to cushion your nose.
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we're back 21 minutes after the hour here on the east coast. it's 12:21, october 2nd, early on in this new friday of the fall season. our lead story remains the same. veteran trump white house aide hope hicks has tested positive for coronavirus. reports indicate she is at least mildly symptomatic, and let's not let it get lost in this coverage. we obviously wish her nothing but the very best as we've been showing this nonstop video of her and all those she was with and dealt with as of yesterday, including but not limited to the president's son-in-law and
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senior white house aide. all we know is the president of the united states, as a result of what may be his closest aide testing positive, has entered what he is calling the quarantine process. love to be able to fill you in on exactly what that means, but we can't because we've received no further medical information. we must hope that they are formulating a statement from the white house to further clarify. we simply don't know the test results of the test. the president said on live television tonight he was having done. joining us to talk about all aspects of this are three veteran guests of ours. clint watts, former fbi special agent, a distinguished research fellow at the foreign policy research institute. he is among our national security analysts. dr. irwin redlener, pediatrics
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physician, senior research scholar at columbia university, also happens to be the founding director of columbia's national center for disaster preparedness. and peter baker, chief white house correspondent for "the new york times." thank you all for staying up with us. thank you for being patient with us, and we're glad to have you all onboard. doctor, i'd like to begin with you because i've been thinking about you given the many days and nights you and i have been on live television talking about this illness. my usual tip of the hat to the author cor mac mccarthy. if this isn't a mess, it will do till the mess gets here. what do we do about this instance, doc, where the president has announced only that he is entering quarantine? >> yeah. obviously the president of the united states getting -- no matter who the president is, getting a disease like covid-19 is something that we need to pay a lot of attention to. and obviously that's probably
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happening. we should be getting more information, and we could be getting more information at this point because i'm sure the president has been getting at least one, two, maybe more confirmtory rapid tests, and it would be good for us to know what was going on there. but there's no question in my mind here this is a huge crisis for the inner circle at the white house. hope hicks was symptomatic yesterday, it's been reported, and that means she was probably infected for many days before that, which means she was able to transmit the virus to others in her proximity. and the trick is staying away -- if you knew you had it, you needed to be staying away from people for a distance of at least six feet and really making sure you were positive as quickly as possible for somebody in that kind of job that she's in. so it's very likely that she has actually spread the disease to any number of those people we saw her in the video that she was walking in close proximity to and then going into an airplane, which of course is another place where we can get
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relatively mixed circulation and ventilation so that that becomes a hotbed for possibly igniting a little mini outbreak among all those people she was with, including the president of the united states, brian. >> peter baker, in plain english, this makes it a little tougher for the president to say, as he has, paraphrasing, everything's okay. nothing to see here. light at the end of the tunnel. >> he just tonight, brian, addressed the al smith dinner and used the phrase "the end of the pandemic is in sight." for him at this point obviously it's now inside his inner circle as you point out correctly. hope hicks isn't just another aide. she's somebody he trusts implicitly, who is there with him throughout the day, throughout the weeks as he's campaigning for re-election. and i think one of the things we're left to do, of course, is to wonder about information because we haven't been getting solid information. you point out rightly we only have this tweet at this point and a couple of sentences he mentioned on hannity earlier to
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figure out what's happening with the president himself. so we're left to speculate. we're left to make what we can out of imperfect and incomplete data. but here are a couple of important data points. the president's own military valet tested positive earlier this year. the president's national security adviser got sick earlier this year, and they never quarantined them. the fact that he's now saying he's entering the quarantine process even though we don't know what that means, indicates there's a more serious concern for the president's health this time than we've had even when two people and others in fact around him as well have tested positive or become sick. we don't know what that means. we don't know what that will indicate. but given, you know, the fact that as the doctor just said, we have multiple tests before we feel confident necessarily about a diagnosis, it's very possible he's had one or two tests already. they're trying to wait until they get a more definitive result. >> peter, help me flesh out and remind our viewers that trumpism has affected the medical and, in
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many cases, military personnel around this president in just the time he's been in office. i am reminded of admiral ronny jackson's briefing in the briefing room about the virility and stamina and medical stats of this president. os,&
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he simply dismisses them and mocks them. you know, we don't know how a virus would affect him. we do know that statistics are not good for people of his age range. eight of the ten people who have
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passed away in this country. it affects the older generation much more harsh than those younger. so he is in a vulnerable category. in fact, on his schedule for tomorrow, at least if he goes through with it, is a phone call he's supposed to have at 12:15 from the oval office in which he's talking about how to protect vulnerable elders from this virus. well, right now there's no more prominent vulnerable senior in n this country thanio the preside of the united states. >> clinton watts, the chant th years ago from the young people surrounding the chicago political convention in '68 remains true today.in even more true given the devices we carry+++[fi
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talk about this in that context. >> brian, it's a disaster. we talked about this two months ago, laid out seven scenarios. one of the scenarios we laid out was one or both candidates were to get covid-19 before election and here we are one month from the vote, and we may have the president either having covid-19 or becomingav even very ill. think of the scenarios that could play out with this. and if you just rewind 48 hours, we were looking at one of the biggest o barrages of domestic-based conspiracies that we've ever seenme around the health of joe biden, the former vice president. if you went to social media today, you would have a hard time understanding what the truth is. this information gap that we have right here, if you're a foreign adversary, is an incredible opportunity to sow confusion in our country. it's a great time to maneuver. we have a country in crisis, pandemic issues, george floyd
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protest, battles between political left and political right. proud boys discussions of mobilizations, and now we'reon talking about the president potentially having covid-19. you could not line up a set of issues all in a row in such a short time that provides so many opportunities to our adversaries around the world and particularly the ndrussians, wh are masters at the art of disinformation. combine this with the political setting right now. will we as constituents, as voters, have trust in the information that we're hearing? if the president comes out tomorrow and says he's okay, will we believe him? it would be very tough to believe that he's fully cleared even if he said he was. s so we're going to have this battle, i think, for the next three or t four days to wait an see does the president come out of this, or does he not? and the only way we'll know is if we see him, we publicly see him, and then add that, the campaign. he's going to want to move out, be into the public, which increases exposure, and it
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undermines the whole idea of trying to control this virus from spreading even further aroundpr the country. >> clint, one more on this front. explain to our viewers how little to no investment this takes to pull the pin out of a grenade in our society and our electronic media. all you need is a working phone, a data plan, and the ability to fog up a mirror. it costs nothing to throw tweets in that spread misinformation, that divide us further, that cause whispers and rumors and doubt. add it to everything you just outlined with 33 days to go until we vote. it's chaos. >> it is chaos, brian. this isos why we have to have elected leaders and institutions that are telling the truth, speaking to the public from data, advancing science, listening to experts. this is the doomsday scenario of
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all of those things over the past six months of this pandemic being ignored, where we're not sure what to believe. some people think masks are effective. some doubt.th some are afraid to get a vaccine now, and we need people to get a vaccine. add toet that the president, wh ate times has scoffed at these control measures, and now may actuallyd have this virus. it will be so difficult to try and control the information environment. i think it will be very difficult for americans to know what to trust, and this is an incredible opportunity forw fractures to foment in our country atto a time where everyone's heading to the ballot box. >> irwin redlener, a medical question, and then i got to hit a break, and we can all continue this. and thatco is i'm thinking of having been backstage in holding rooms covering presidents, you see what goes on, pandemic or o no. sometimes people have an extra passionan to meet the president to thank the president. sometimes it's the loved one of
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a service member. sometimes they have another need to get close to the president, and it takes everything you have to repel them, to keep them back. so people have contact even within a pandemic. what must that be like? and,e irwin, who takes the lea on possibly figuring out all those points of contact between not just hope hicks but the agents around the president, let's not forget, the body men and women in the presidential protection division of the united states secret service, valets, aides, the people who take his coat, serve his food, and everyone on the road. >> listen, you know, brian, covid-19 is a terrible, threatening disease for any of us, any citizen. that it's happening to the president of the united states potentially opens up dimensions of concern that are mind-boggling, including the national security concerns that
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your guest just talked about. but i think to answer your question, it is an extraordinarily complicated thing to deal with right now. if you think about t the president has been undermining the credibility and the authority and thean expertise o all of his major scientific advisers at the cdc, the fda, health and human services, and so on. so now at a moment where we need those people to be believed, to be credible, to be understood, he has really knocked their feet out from under y them, and we'v created this situation, a vacuum of federal and national expertise when we most need it. in the meantime, we have lives at stake, not only the president's butly all that incredible entourage and all those people that need to come up to o him. and we're really in a jam now, and, you know, hopefully everybody is going to need to be quarantined. it's very possible that more than the president is in serious potential trouble right now, and we're just going to have to be
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testing and quarantining as effectively as we possibly can. but we have a huge challenge now in front of us. and to happen to the president of the united states in the midst of this foreign affairs issues and national security issues and with an upcoming election in a few weeks is absolutely mind-boggling and unprecedented. of course we say something like that almost every day now, but this really takes the case, brian, ande i'm worried. >> yeah, i a join you in that. and to ouru viewers, as we runo a rsbreak, you've been seeing t graphics running at the bottom of the screen.of that is the sum total of what we know yet. we join everyone in hoping for negative test results all around and happening that hope hicks goes to a quick recovery. but the president of the united states is in quarantine, and whether the test results are positive or negative, the advice and expertise you're hearing from especially our medical
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guests still stands. it's not depend end ent on whetr not the president has this illness, god forbid anyone should get this. it speaks to the danger and the nature of what we'ver learned about coronavirus. it's the reason most of us remain largely out of circulation and wear masks when we're out in circulation. as i said, another break for our live coverage. we are awaiting what has so far beenas a mythical statement fro the white house medical office. perhaps we'll be able to send folks to bed with more information on the president's test results, the first lady's test results. more after this. ♪ since pioneering the suv in 1935, the chevy suburban has carried many things.
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we're back on the air. our breaking news coverage continues. new territory for all of us who cover the news, cover this president. new territory for everyone watching at home when we say the
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president of the united states has entered some form or fashion of quarantine after having come in contact with one hope hicks, one of his very closest aides, who has a confirmed case, indeed mildly symptomatic case of coronavirus. one of our white house correspondents, shannon pettypiece, has been able to rejoin us. and interestingly, shannon, i know our white house unit has put together a graphic, just kind of a first blush list of the kinds of folks on the road with hope hicks, with the president when the president travels. this is recent travels. you'll note member of congress, ohio congressman jim jordan. you'll note as we go down, former mayor of new york city rudy giuliani, chief of staff mark meadows, daughter and white house aide ivanka trump, her
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husband, ditto white house aide jared kushner. don junior, kimberly guilfoyle and on and on. we are leaving off the names not known by the general public, people like the men and women in what is casually known around the white house 18-acre complex as ppd, the presidential protection division. you want to talk about people who are very close to this president as a condition of employment on a daily basis? it's members of the u.s. secret service, the drivers in limos, the crews inside marine one, the stewards aboard air force one, the stewards in the residence portion of the white house. shannon, it is a mind-boggling list of people. >> right. and, you know, we were talking a few minutes ago, brian, about the president suggesting that hope may have gotten infected by having interaction with service members or members of the military. we have no idea if that is
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actually how she may have gotten infected. but there's enormous number of members of the military who come in contact with the president, senior staff of the president himself. you mentioned marine one. you have the marines there who are transporting the president, working throughout the white house, other members of the military are working there on air force one. members of the air force, other branches of the military working there too. the spread of this virus, as the doctors were talking about, can be so widespread to so many people affected who we're not even talking about. we've been getting some additional reporting on the timeline of, you know, when hope hicks may have gotten infected, over the past hour or so, to give an indication of how broad this might be. and what we do know is that while traveling tuesday at a rally in minnesota, she was symptomatic.
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people familiar with the situation have told us, and tested positive this morning. . now, what has happened since then is the press secretary, kayleigh mcenany, who was on that list you put up a moment ago, held a briefing today around 11:30 with reporters. the president traveled to a fund-raiser in bedminster, new jersey, where he traveled on marine one and then on air force one. there was a much smaller group of aides traveling with the president, one of those, rather than mcenany, one of his top communications deputies, judd deer, one of the sort of deputies in the communications office was the one who traveled with the president on marine one. of course this was a short trip. it didn't necessarily require a full entourage, but notable that we saw a much smaller staff traveling with the president to bedminster. the president got back this evening, and we only found out about this infection with hope hicks because of the reporting
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of my former colleague and good friend jennifer jacobs at bloomberg news. the white house has not put out a formal, on-the-record statement about this yet. nbc news has confirmed this. multiple news organizations have confirmed this. we've been reporting on this for hours, but we still have no on-the-record statement from the white house. and i think that is notable and, you know, the president confirmed this himself at around 9:00 when he was on sean hannity, but that was only after this was first reported by bloomberg news. so you have to wonder how long was this going to go on before anyone informed the public that the president had to be in quarantine and was awaiting test results, brian? >> all right. shannon pettypiece, thank you for staying on this. thank you for adding that background and context. and for the folks watching, when we say the president takes a smaller group to something like a fund-raiser where there will
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not be open media coverage, that is not always a good thing where coronavirus is concerned. he normally takes the smaller aircraft known by the designation air force once whenever he's on board, but the backup is a single-aisle 75 as opposed to the normal air force one, a wide body 74. on the 757, there's less room for the presidential cabin. there's less room for staff, generally a smaller fuselage on what are all traveling aluminum tubes in the sky after all. so when we're thinking about close quarters, things like contact tracing, you have to consider all of it. another break. live coverage continues after this. this (sneeze)
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shingles doesn't care. when disaster strikes to one, we all get together and support each other. that's the nature of humanity. ♪ it has encouraged other people to take the time for each other. ♪ ♪ we are back covering the breaking story that the president has entered quarantine
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in some form or fashion after the positive diagnosis of his -- perhaps his closest aide, hope hicks, who is at least mildly symptomatic with coronavirus. as all of us, including health professionals and white house aides and the traveling press corps try to piece together the days and hours of this week when that young woman, who sadly is being cast in the repeating video age as kind of a typhoid mary even though none of this is her fault, she did nothing outwardly wrong to get this, and i'm sure she would prefer not to be dealing with coronavirus symptoms. but because that young woman in the president's circle, seen with, in these pictures with the president's son-in-law, with aide stephen miller, was in the president's circle while
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positive for coronavirus. peter baker, longtime white house koefrnt for "the new york times" remains with us. peter, at the start of our conversation, you reminded me that in taped remarks for the annual catholic fund-raising al smith dinner in new york tonight, the president referred to this as nearing the end or perhaps resorting to his usual wording of "we're rounding the corner," he also said tonight, and you and i may have discussed this on a normal night, that democrats were anti-catholic. it's a catholic fund-raising dinner for the archdiocese. been there many times, presided over by a full-bird cardinal. joe biden is a guy who carries a rosary ring in his pocket every day of his life and manipulates the prayer beads as a matter of course. that now seems like a normal occurrence these days. here we are talking about this lead story, which is going to hand us the outline probably for the rest of this campaign, is it
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not? >> yeah, i think that's right. i mean the first question, of course, is the health of the president. that's got to be the number one concern. >> hang on, peter. looks like the president of the united states has tested positive for covid-19. the statement just out, we will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. the president and first lady have tested positive for the coronavirus. this puts us in all new territory. the uncontrolled pandemic that has been ravaging our country, that has killed close to a quarter million of our fellow citizens, has now racked up in the list of positive patients north of 7.3 million as of air
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time tonight, no less than the president of the united states and the first lady of the united states. as we were saying, this started with a positive diagnosis of longtime and very close trump aide hope hicks. hope hicks said to be mildly symptomatic. we thought in plain english something was up as we thought it was during the 9:00 p.m. eastern time that the president was initially tested. gallons of ink will be spilled and much time and attention granted to what was going on in the intervening hour and days since the first suspected case, positive case around the president. that would be hope hicks. the president is believed, if past performance was the guide
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for tonight, to have been given the rapid test at the white house. and then when we didn't hear anything, when we saw his tweet talking about beginning the quarantine process, nothing more, nothing less, we suspected perhaps multiple tests to rule out a false positive or false negative. but this president, who has been outwardly and publicly, from the start, can fairly be called a covid-19 denier, did his best publicly to diminish the threat, diminish what it was doing in its travels across our country, many times promising it will go away. it will disappear. early on telling us cases would go down to zero. we now know thanks to tape recordings with the journalist bob woodward he knew better. he knew better privately. he was willing to discuss that
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over what he thought was a private telephone call. but he said as not to panic the public, he was not willing to share that with the public and was eager to play it down and keep playing it down. we can't make that graphic at the bottom of the screen large enough to express the import of this moment, the impact of this on the president, his life and health as a 74-year-old man, the life and health of the first lady. hope hicks is also in our thoughts tonight. but the impact on the country, the impact on the presidential race with americans going to polling places, those who haven't already, in just over one month to decide who will lead our country through the
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next year of what will be -- and one of the sure things we know about 2021 is we will still be dealing with this pandemic. peter, baker, as chief white house correspondent for "the new york times," has been forced to deal with breaking news circumstances. to sum them up, turn them around, and after that buildup, i'm told we've lost comms with peter baker, who i'm guessing is busy on the phone and working to write the lead-all piece for "the new york times" website tonight. shannon pettypiece with us. shannon, put this news into some perspective. >> well, i mean i think you summed it up really well, brian. i mean we have so many different aspects here. we first have the health of the president of the united states, who is a man in his 70s, who is overweight, which is considered one of the pre-existing conditions.
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he is not in perfect health. he has comorbidities here. so we have the health of the president of the united states to think of first and foremost, it seems, who now has contracted a virus that's killed 200,000 americans in the course america course of a few months, and implications of what that is, in preparation for this, doing supporting and reaching out to people on what it means constitutionally for the cub. should the president be unable to carry out his duties, that will go out to the vice president. my colleagues and i have been trying to track the latest contact between the president and the vice president. a lot of times, they will pop in and interact with each other throughout the day. we don't know of any real recent contact with them. the vice president could have had contact with him. we know vice president joe biden had contact with the president in the past few