every time you see him, he's got a mask. >> that was then. this is now. tonight the president of the united states is in the hospital. he says he thinks he's doing well. his doctor adds he's doing well. that's all we have to go on. keep it here. updates as they happen. for us, that is our broadcast for this friday night and this week. on behalf of all of our colleagues here at the networks of nbc news, good night. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. i was supposed to have today off, a long planned day off today but i am here because what's going on here is a big deal and there's nowhere i'd rather be than here with you trying to figure it all out. hope hicks, close aide to the president, apparently got her positive coronavirus result yesterday morning, but the white house told no one about it. we only learned of hope hicks testing positive from some intrepid reporting by jennifer jacobs at bloomberg news last

night. in the meantime, again, telling no one what they knew about hicks testing positive, the president, who had been in close contact with hope hicks, nevertheless traveled to a fund-raiser at his new jersey golf club as if everything was fine and attended this event last night with upwards of 100 people even though he had been in close contact with someone who had tested positive yesterday morning. he had been in really close contact with her, in enclosed spaces for significant periods of time inside the president's plane, inside the president's helicopter. the president, the first lady, and hope hicks were all at tuesday night's debate in cleveland, where the host of that debate, the cleveland clinic, required that all guests in the debate hall wear masks. the president's guests nevertheless refused to. nbc news' mariana sotomayor was in the hall. she reported seeing a cleveland clinic doctor literally wearing

a white coat approach trump's family and the trump guests, reminding them to wear a mask, even offering them masks. but the trump family and trump guests did not wear them. then of course at that debate, the president mocked his democratic opponent for his mask wearing. >> i wear masks when needed. when needed i wear masks. >> okay. let me ask -- >> i don't wear masks like him. every time you see him he's got a mask. he could be speaking 200 feet away and he shows up with the biggest mask i've ever seen. >> that was tuesday. a couple of days before that, the president hosted a big gathering in the rose garden at the white house to announce his nomination of amy coney barrett to the united states supreme court. and as you see in the footage from that, yes, the gathering was outside, but pretty much no one was wearing a mask. everybody was packed in really tight. at least five people at that event, including the president, have since tested positive. the five who have tested positive include republican u.s. senator mike lee of utah. you can see him in footage from that event.

no mask. he has his mask in his hand helpfully. giving out big hugs. senator lee has now tested positive for the virus. everybody else in this footage with him has got to be unnerved by that. hopefully they've all been tested. hopefully they're all quarantining. the behavior at this event and the number of people at that event who we know have tested positive so far has led to some speculation that that rose garden event specifically might have been its own super-spreader viral disaster. watching the maskless mingling and hugging and close-talking, you know, you'd think there was no pandemic at all, or at least you were in some alternate universe where everybody pretended there wasn't one because for some reason they thought they were safe. journalists are now trying to do our own version of contact tracing since the white house doesn't appear to be doing it. jurnts have been reconstructing the movements of the president and his staff to try to figure out who else might have been exposed. meanwhile state health officials in places where the president

has recently held rallies and events are advising anyone who attended any of those events that they should seek testing because they may have been exposed to coronavirus from the president and his team. the cleveland clinic, which hosted tuesday's debate, is now reaching out to everyone who was at that debate offering testing. this is the headline today in the local paper in cleveland. president trump, first lady, and hope hicks may have spread coronavirus at cleveland presidential debate. it's just remarkable times. let us start tonight, i think, just by sort of skipping to the end. let's cut right to the chase. there is not reason to expect that the president is going to die from covid-19. a fraction of people who get infected with the coronavirus become ill. the president has become ill. a fraction of those who become ill have to be hospitalized. the president has now been hospitalized. but even among covid patients

who have to be hospitalized, even among men who are older, who are obese, who have existing comorbidities, there is still a wide variety of possible outcomes even for patients who are sick with covid-19, who are in the hospital. and, you know, the president was well enough to walk on his own steam to and from the helicopter that took him to the hospital tonight. he was well enough to speak and seemed mostly like himself in an 18-second video that he posted from the white house thanking people for their well wishes. we are not on death watch tonight for the president. there is no reason to expect that the president is going to die from this. now, of course, it is possible, right? i mean more than 209,000 americans have died from this thing in barely more than six months. the president is a born and raised new yorker. more than 34,000 new yorkers alone have been killed by this thing. heck, the president is one of a relatively small fraternity of republican politicians who have

run for president in the past few years. this thing has already killed another recent presidential candidate, herman cain, who contracted the virus after publicly naysaying its risk and crucially after he went mask free to the first big indoor rally president trump held in defiance of health authorities, the first of many of course. the president for months was the only entity holding congregate events of any kind with thousands of americans at them while the pandemic raged. he has gleefully flouted health guidelines designed to keep people from getting infected. he has mocked as weak and silly and disingenuous anybody who does follow those guidelines, particularly people who wear masks. he's done almost immeasurable harm to the effort to contain and stop the spread of this disease in our country. and when the person doing the most damage to public health efforts is the person in charge of those public health efforts, that's all you need for a guaranteed large-scale public health failure, which is what we

have, which is why the united states has more dead and more infected than any other place on earth, right? it is understandable. it is more than understandable to be enraged at the president and at this white house for endangering all the other people whose lives they have risked and squandered. being enraged at this president and this government for botching the response to this epidemic so royally, still this long into it, for so aggressively undercutting the public health guidelines that could keep people -- including the president himself. i mean the rage you feel about that is righteous rage and inevitable. it is at least rational. but the president himself getting it is a different kind of cat. it is a different kind of thing. and of course it is clear that he and this white house have been playing with fire all this

time. and so, yes, now they've gotten burned in the worst way, right? we all understand that. but we as a country now have a very serious situation on our hands. we need to both understand how we got here, yes, but also how to get out from here. i mean if you -- if you know someone who smoked for years and years and years and never even tried to quit despite knowing the risks of lung cancer from smoking, and then that person who you know got lung cancer, how do you react to that, right? well, part of the way you react is that you understand why they likely got it, right? your instinct might even be to blame them for getting it. go right ahead. enjoy that schadenfreude. but you're a human being. if your friend has lung cancer now, regardless of what you feel about how he or she got it, right, once you find out that they're ill, you wish and hope and try to save them. you get them into treatment.

you help them try to survive it. you move heaven and earth to cure them. that's how we do as humans, right? that's how this works. understanding how we got here and now coping with what we have to do to try to survive it are two things that we can keep in our heads at the same time and two things that we can keep in our soul at the same time. that's how this works too, right? i mean accountability for the president's disastrous mishandling of the epidemic is political accountability. that's what the election is for. accountability for him cutting the legs out from public health authorities and replacing them with quacks and hacks that corrupted what used to be the most authoritative public health assets and expertise on the planet. that's political accountability. that's what the election is for. accountability for all of the americans who died on his watch and who got infected and sick and survived, but they've got long-term consequences because of that. there has to be political accountability for that. there should be political accountability for that and for the economy that was destroyed

by us not getting the virus under control, and for the destruction of the trust we will need to have in public health authorities to even make a vaccine effort possible let alone successful. all those terrible failures upon failures upon failures that have gotten worse, not better over time, those all cry out for political accountability. the election is in a month. that's what that's for. but the president is in the hospital now. with him getting infected and getting sick from it and now needing to be hospitalized because of it, this is a sober thing and a serious thing for us as americans that is accesepara from any political price this president and this administration will pay for his past actions. statistically speaking, the president is absolutely likely to survive. there is a chance he may not. but it is worth trying to understand everything we can about what's going to hatch npp

next, and it's worth keeping perspective. other world leaders have contracted the disease caused by this virus and have recovered. multiple u.s. governors have it, including right now the democratic governor of virginia, ralph northam, and the republican governor of missouri, mike parson. they are both recovering as we speak as are their wives. you might remember the british people went through a similar scare with their elected leader, prime minister boris johnson. back in april. ten days after his positive test he ended up hospitalized in london. the day after he went to the hospital, they put him in intensive care. he had three days in the icu. downing street took care to announce he wasn't on a ventilator but did need external breathing support. he spent three days in intensive care, then three more days back in the regular hospital ward before he was finally released to recover very slowly over a very long time at home. but he has recovered. the british people went through this already with their prime minister. expect that our president is likely to survive too.

i mean prime minister boris johnson is almost 20 years younger than the president, but i don't mean any offense by this. he's just as unhealthy generally speaking as our current president is, and he's out of the woods. he's fine. president trump will likely recover too. but this is a serious thing that we are going to go through. as you know, the president has been hospitalized tonight at walter reed. given the track record of this white house, even specifically about the president's health, it is hard to trust at all what they tell us now about this situation. but if the president is sick, walter reed is a good place for him to be, and he will likely get the best care in the world. and the white house should absolutely level with us and be perfectly crystal clear with us about the president's condition, his treatment, and his prognosis. tonight we're going to talk with a few people who i've asked to be here specifically to help me and hopefully help you understand parts of this story

that i feel like we can't yet fully grasp. for example, we were told by the white house late today is the president is receiving an experimental treatment for covid. why is he getting experimental treatment if his symptoms are mild? covid-19 has no approved treatment. there's no known cure. there is no known drug or vaccine that's been shown to be unequivocally effective against it and approved for that use. the is nevertheless taking an experimental antibody-based treatment. tonight we're going to speak with one of the world's leading antibody and antiviral researchers about what that kind of treatment is, how it works, and why they're giving it to the president. also whether it's a weird thing that the president is taking an unapproved drug at all, let alone at this point in his disease progression. we'll also speak with a public health expert tonight about that antibody treatment but also what appears to be the very quick progression here from the president's positive test to the emergence of symptoms to this hospitalization tonight.

the white house hasn't released the timing of when and where the president was tested, when he last tested negative before he got this positive result. they haven't even told us what exact test it was that produced the positive result. and of course the president so regularly flouts social distance and mask rules that it's hard to piece together a timeline in terms of when he was likely exposed and who he might have infected since he's been positive. but we'll talk tonight with a physician who's worked in the white house medical unit and who knows what kinds of things can be handled for the president while he's at home and what kind of medical worries might exceed what they can do at the white house that would necessitate moving the president to the hospital for what they are saying from the outset is going to be multiple days. they're also remain questions tonight about the protocols or lack thereof around the white house and around the president personally, right, that have led to what now appears to be a white house cluster of infections. we'll talk with somebody who's been part of the white house coronavirus task force and who

has seen these protocols up close. tonight she's saying -- warning that the white house was effectively a petri dish for cultivating the transmission of this virus. those details can perhaps help us understand how it is that the president got infected in the first place but also who else is at risk now from the president, from whoever infected the president, from the rest of the white house staff and for everyone on capitol hill. so far the president and the first lady and a republican senator from utah, mike lee, also just in the last hour we learned another republican senator, thom tillis of north carolina. they've all tested positive. the white house has also advised that three journalists who have been inside white house grounds have also now tested positive. also the president of the university of notre dame, who attended the supreme court nominee ceremony has also tested positive. the chair of the republican party, ronna mcdaniel, has also tested positive. a slew of household names who have been exposed to the

president or exposed to his close contacts, people like the president's democratic presidential opponent, vice president biden, also the vice president serving now, mike pence, and both of their wives. also the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi, the white house chief of staff mike meadows, all of those people have all put out statements today saying that they have tested negative and that's great. but also it is possible that if they were just exposed, it might take a while. it might take a few days for their results to show a positive result. and so that has very practical implications. the question of who ought to be in quarantine right now, away from all other people even with masks, that is a live question. with the president and senator lee and senator tillis and hope hicks and the first lady and the multiple journalists, it's possible that we're talking about a whole lot of people at the highest levels of washington who ought to be in quarantine right now, not to mention all

the people we don't know the names of who work around them. white house staffers, capitol hill staffers, security people, cleaning people, valets, military personnel, secret service officers, drivers, right? there's a lot of people who have been exposed to what appears to be a large cluster at the top of the government in washington, d.c. we will talk with a member of the congressional leadership tonight about that. we will talk with that member of the congressional leadership about the very sensitive of issue of presidential succession. other presidents have had to temporarily hand off power to their vice presidents because of medical issues in the past, because of needing surgery or other temporary infirmity. what do we need to do, and what do we need to be prepared for if the president is temporarily disabled by covid-19 or, god forbid, if he succumbs to it and dies? we've also obviously never had a president hospitalized with a potentially lethal illness just a month before asking the american people to vote him in for another four years, right?

indeed while we are in the middle of that process already, as of tonight with the president in the hospital, 2.9 million americans have already cast their votes. a lot about the trump era is unprecedented. this is both not an exception and also feels like an exception even to that. all right. eyes open, everybody. no days off. lots to learn tonight. lots to report. lots to figure out. joining us first is dr. ezekiel emanuel, a health care adviser to president obama. he's now vice provost of global initiatives at the university of pennsylvania. dr. emanuel, it's nice to see you. thanks for being here. >> nice to be back again, rachel. >> first let me just ask you to correct me if anything that i laid out there seems wrong or if i'm putting the wrong emphasis on it in terms of people understanding the severity of what we're up against here. >> i would say two things. first of all, i think to have the most powerful man in the world, the leader of the free world, our president with

somewhere between a 5% and 11%, 12% risk of dying, i don't think that's so trivial. that's pretty substantial risk of dying in the next few weeks, and that, i think, is a national security threat. it's something to take very, very seriously. i agree with you the odds are for him, you know, but those are very high odds, and i'm speaking as an oncologist who took care of a lot of people with cancer. the other thing is i would say that the white house has consistently downplayed, underplayed, misspoken about the seriousness of the president's condition. early in the morning, he's fine, mild symptoms. in fact, he was symptomatic with fever all day long. he missed a 12:00 virtual meeting. he's been short of breath according to reports. he has some other underlying condition. i think this is much more serious than we've been told, but we won't know until we have a frank briefing from one of the walter reed doctors, who will

actually give us the basic information we need to evaluate the president's condition. >> zeke, because the president is presumably being tested all the time, the progression here seems fast. i mean we've heard a lot of, you know, tragic stories, people talking about their family members, you know, testing and immediately being very ill and very quickly dying. but in a lot of those cases, it seems like people weren't able to get a test until very deep into the progression of their illness. in this case, presumably the president's being tested all the time. it does feel like a very fast progression. as a physician, does it also seem fast to you? does it tell you anything about the seriousness of the president's condition, the way this hasprogressed? >> you must have an m.d. after your name. earlier when i heard the president was going to the hospital, i talked to some of my colleagues.

i said, this is just really fast. just a few days after being confirmed being positive, usually it takes ten days before you need a hospitalization and oxygen and are having fevers and shortness of breath. and, yes, it does make you worry that he got a lot of virus in his exposure, and that his not doing too well in fighting off the infection. look, i haven't examined the president. we haven't had transparency about his condition, so i'm making hypotheses there, and i don't want to make a diagnosis. but i agree with you it does seem very rapid, and to move quickly to an experimental medicine, which as you pointed out has not even gotten emergency use authorization, also raises concerns. you know, as an oncologist, i use medications in clinical trials all the time for my patients. but it was at the end, not at the start, not before they've seen anything else. all of this raises many red flags, and we know for a long

time we haven't had the president's actual health condition. does he have, you know, metabolic syndrome? what are his cholesterol? we haven't had the basic data, and we do note that all day today the white house has been underplaying his condition and somewhat deceiving us about how sick he actually is. >> dr. ezekiel emanuel, former health care adviser to president obama, thank you so much for being here. scary and clarifying. >> it is scary, and thank you very much for having me. >> all right. i want to bring into the conversation now dr. david ho. he is the scientific director and ceo of the aaron diamond aids research center. he is a legend in the fight against hiv, the virus that causes aids, especially insight and research breakthroughs in developing treatments that made that a survivable disease. dr. ho is now working on a

team -- antibody cocktails along the lines of this experimental drug the president was given today. dr. ho, it's an honor to have you here, sir. thank you for making time tonight. >> thank you, rachel. good to be back with you. >> for those of us who vaguely remember tenth grade biology but otherwise don't have an expert grasp of these things at all, can you explain to us in layman's terms what is this type of treatment that the president has been administered? we know that it is on compassionate use. it's not approved as a treatment for coronavirus. we've read that it shows some promise as a potential therapeutic. but what kind of drug is this, and how unusual is it for somebody to be getting it very early on after being diagnosed? >> well, the president is getting an antibody cocktail that is comprised of two

monoclonal antibodies, and these antibodies were isolated from the infected person some months ago. so these are products that came from human beings. so in general, antibody therapeutics are pretty safe. but the therapy that's given today are antibodies that would recognize the surface protein of the virus and bind to it and prevent the virus from entering a cell. and therefore it would interrupt the replication cycle of the virus. in addition, the antibody could mediate the killing of the infected cells. so that's the principle of how such antibodies would work, and we do know from clinical trials now of the regeneron antibody, which is what the president received, or the antibody which

is also in advanced phase clinical trial is that they're beginning to show some promise. for example, the liddy antibody, given to patients who are early in their course of infection could reduce the hospitalization rate from about 6% in the placebo recipients to about 1.7% in those who are treated with the antibody. so that was a study done in about 450 patients, and it's promising, but it's not definitive at this point. and then the regeneron antibodies also are beginning to show promising signs. they have once again administered to about 275 patients, some placebo, some receiving the antibody at a high or low dose. by the way, the president did receive the high dose.

and what the company has reported is that those who receive the antibody, they could see a measurable decline in the amount of virus detected in the nasal pharynx. in addition, the symptomatic duration seems to be short. so these are promising signs, and i work on the antibody side, believe these are the results i expect, and i'm glad he's on this kind of experimental therapy rather than, say, hydroxychloroquine. >> dr. ho, you've already answered a number of my questions about this in terms of the stage of development, why he would be treated early on with something like this, and what the hope is for this kind of thing. two quick follow-up questions, and i will admit to you at the outset these are sort of dumb. one is given the early developmental stage of these types of therapies and this

regeneron won one in particular there any reason to worry it might be dangerous? and, two, is the way these drugs are administered part of what might explain why the president is hospitalized? is this something that you actually need to be in the hospital to receive in the expense that it comes in in some sort of transfusion where the patient needs to be monitored closely? >> well, let me take the second one first. at least from my reading of the online coverage, he apparently had received the regeneron antibody prior to going to the hospital. but in general these antibodies would need to be given intravenously or intramuscularly or subcutaneously. so it would be an injection. it cannot be taken orally. in terms of side effects, as i said earlier, antibodies of this sort came from human beings, so they're not going to be immediately toxic.

now, there are situations where the antibody could cause acute allergic reaction, and that could be dangerous. but the president is well beyond that point. there are infrequent late com application cases, but i don't think they would be so prominent in our anticipation at this point. >> dr. david ho, currently working on antibody based treatments for covid-19, sir, thank you for being here tonight. again, it's an honor to have you here. >> my pleasure. thank you, rachel. >> all right. as we continue to absorb the news about the president's hospitalization for covid-19 and try to understand its implications, we're going to be talking with one of the democrats in the leadership in the house, congressman jim clyburn is going to join us to talk about some of the sobering implications about potential succession issues. stay with us. busy... working, parenting, problem solving.

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news of the president's condition had serious reverberations on capitol hill today. lawmakers raced to determine among other things who might have been in contact with the president and with his close contacts who the president might have exposed. anger also grew over the lack of any comprehensive testing system for members of congress and their staff. this past hour on msnbc, former homeland security secretary jai johnson said the next five

officials in line for the presidency should be quarantined for their own safety in order to protect the line of succession in the country. the next five in the line of succession would include the vice president mike pence, house speaker nancy pelosi, the senate president, who is senator chuck grassley of iowa, and then the two cabinet members who come next in the line of succession, the secretary of state mike pompeo and the secretary of the treasury steven mnuchin. again, former homeland security secretary jeh johnson suggesting they should be quarantined now for the sake of the stability of the american government. joining us now is chairman of the house select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, also the majority whip in the house of representatives, the honorable south carolina congressman jim clyburn. representative clyburn, thank you so much for being here, sir. >> well, thank you very much for having me. >> i first just wanted to get your reaction to the events of today. i know you held your big hearing today on the coronavirus crisis. you had to speak with health

secretary azar. this was all after the president tested positive. now that we know the president appears to be having significant symptoms, or at least symptoms and he is hospitalized, i just wanted to get your reaction. >> well, first of all, i think all of us, irrespective of whatever may be our persuasions, our religious persuasions, ought to be keeping the first family in our thoughts, in our prayers, and hopefully they will have a speedy and complete recovery. that's first and foremost. i do believe, though, that the country must move forward, and our constitution will guide that. now, though the 25th amendment is kind of convoluted in some instances, i think that all of our leadership should gather and have some discussions as to what

will happen, whether or not there will be a vice president, and the president has to kick-start that by ceding power to the vice president. if he's not able to do that, then make some determination that he's not able to do it. i think it's a collective decision that's got to be made by the speaker of the house, the president pro tempore of the senate, and the vice president. and hopefully these precautionary discussions are taking place. if not, they certainly should be. >> congressman, the white house has been less than transparent when it comes to the issue of the president's health. they haven't released information about the president's health that's in keeping with what we've seen from modern presidencies, including a situation where the president went to walter reed and stayed for a long time without explanation, without there being anything ever explained credibly from the

white house in terms of what he was there for. after there was reporting that mike pence, the vice president, had been told to stand by to potentially assume the powers of the presidency at that point, vice president pence simply said that he didn't recall whether or not he had been asked to stand by. all of that is worrying in terms of how much we can trust coming from the white house. have you and other leaders in congress been briefed candidly about the president's condition, or have you been advised that you will be briefed. >> no, i've not been in any briefings about the president's condition. i've been in a lot of discussions about what may or may not be. everybody may be having these kinds of discussions. but i will say this. i do believe that it's necessary for the leadership of the vice president and the leadership of

both houses need to be sitting down, having those discussions now. this country is teetering on two pandemics. covid-19 has taken its toll on this country. we've had some significant racial issues involving law enforcement and other things in this country. these things alone are testing the country in a big way. now to have this issue of leadership, that puts the country in a pretty precarious situation, and it needs to have bipartisan leadership gather around to ensure the stability of this country because it could become an international problem for us, a problem of security for the nation. so we should be having those

discussions, setting our party's differences aside and think about the country for the next several days and get things stabilized. >> chairman of the house select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, the number three democrat in the house, south carolina congressman jim clyburn. sir, thank you for your time this evening. thank you for those words. >> thank you very much for having me. >> i should mention in terms of what congressman clyburn said there about partisanship and needing bipartisan agreement for calm and stability at this point, the biden campaign today took down all negative advertisement, what they call contrast advertisement and are running only positive messaging now that the president is in this crisis. the trump campaign has declined to do the same thing. they're still running all their attacks against biden. we'll see if that changes overnight. i actually frankly expect that it will. maybe i'm naive. all right. more to get to tonight. we'll be right back.

what you have is a virus that is contagious, that certainly continues to be, regardless of whatever protocol we have, that it has the ability to affect everybody. as you know, the president, we keep a pretty wide circle. all of you that have interacted with him know that. >> white house chief of staff mark meadows this morning not wearing a mask, talking to the press about the president being infects, about how their protocols haven't worked obviously to keep even the president himself protected. what protocols have they been following at the white house? joining us now is somebody in a unique position to tell us. olivia troye was a member from day one of the white house coronavirus task force. she was the top aide to vice president mike pence on the coronavirus. she left the white house in august and has since been critical of the president's handling of the matter. ms. troye, it's nice to see you. thank you for taking time to be

here tonight. >> thank you, rachel. it's good to see you again. >> how has it been for you today learning about what appears to be a pretty significant infection cluster in the white house, including among people with whom you used to work? >> rachel, this has been a very hard day for me, the last 24 hours, hope hicks and honestly last night when i heard that, i just knew that we would be hearing more people would be positive just because of proximity of the immediate staff, and i know how close she was to the president, and she was part of the inner circle. as i've watched this develop throughout the day, it's just really been a very somber, sad day for me. it's something that is very serious. i know a lot of these people. i know, you know, that a lot of them are scared right now. i've been in touch with some of them, and this is not -- this is very real to them. and i think it's, to be honest,

a reality check moment for everybody in that white house right now. >> i think that a lot of people, certainly speaking for myself, i think that i assumed that part of the reason that the president was seemingly so cavalier about the risks of this virus was because he was almost exquisitely protected, that protocols in the white house to keep him safe in the white house as president must be so good that he legitimately had no fear of the virus, and that worked against his ability to develop empathy for people, all the rest of us, who are at risk. but i now am obviously calling that into question. what kind of protocols were there in the white house to keep people safe? do you think that it was well run and well informed by science and that they took it seriously? >> rachel, you know, that's the irony. i think that most americans probably thought that looking at the white house. i mean it is the white house. you would assume that the president and the vice

president, it should be the most protected place, especially during a pandemic of this magnitude and knowing how quickly this virus spreads. but the truth is the doctors in the white house, they tried. they tried to install protocols. they had guidelines. they had a mask policy in the west wing. they had masks available. you can get masks in the doctor's office in the white house medical unit. i've had these conversations with dr. sean conley himself and how serious the situation is and how we should all be protecting ourselves in the white house. but the truth is you would walk around the west wing, and masks were rare. people did not wear them. the only time i really saw people actually wearing them was in line for lunch at the mess or, you know, i saw the doctors on the task force. i saw dr. fauci and dr. birx and dr. hahn and dr. redfield when they were coming into the west wing. they would certainly have their masks on. but everyone else around was

pretty cavalier about it. it just -- it didn't make sense. we were -- the messaging we were giving to the public as a task force, you know, obviously not coming from the president because he was giving a completely different message. but we weren't actually following it on the white house grounds. >> one last question for you, olivia. was there ever an explicit plan within the white house coronavirus task force for what the reaction would be, what the plan would be, what the contingencies would be if the president himself got sick? >> you know, obviously we have a continuity of government plan that's run out of the national security council. fema's involved, and so we didn't -- we didn't have those specific conditions on the task force. but i can tell you this, that i find it just interesting because in the past when we've had immediate staffers test positive, it didn't quite seem that we were really following kind of the guidance and measures internally of taking

the seriousness of the virus and, you know, separating people and making sure the vice president and the president were located completely separately. you know, the west wing is a very small place where, you know, we're sitting on top of each other in there. and when you go in and you're meeting with someone, there's really just no personal space. >> olivia troye, former white house coronavirus task force member, top aide to vice president pence. thank you for being here tonight, olivia. i know it's been kind of an emotional day. >> thank you for having me. >> when you talk to people who have worked in the white house, particularly at a high level, one of the things they tell you about the white house medical unit is that there's almost nothing medically speaking that can happen in the white house that can't be handled in the white house. i've literally talked to somebody who worked in the white house who says that she was advised that if she really ever needed to, she could havel her baby at the white house, meaning she doesn't have to go home from

work. they could take care of it there. i'm assuming a lot of that is hyperbole, but there is an expectation the white house medical unit can do almost anything. that's what makes it feel in part very grave that in this case the white house medical unit decided that the president needed instead to be hospitalized. we'll talk with a former doctor from the white house medical unit who in fact served during the trump administration. stay with us. look limu! someone out there needs help customizing

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only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ with priceline, you can get up to 60% off amazing hotels. and when you get a big deal... ...you feel like a big deal. ♪ priceline. every trip is a big deal. the president is hospitalized tonight with coronavirus. the first lady has also tested positive. also a close aide to the president, hope hicks, also two republican senators, thom tillis and mike lee. also the chair of the republican party, ronna mcdaniel. also three journalists who work out of the white house per a white house announcement earlier this evening. white house correspondents association has just sent a letter to its members announcing among other things that the white house has just committed to testing all journalists who have traveled on air force one over the course of the last week. according to the correspondents'

association, that testing will happen at the white house on monday morning. joining us now is dr. jennifer pena, who has a unique perspective on these events. she served in the white house medical unit in the obama administration. she was the white house physician assigned to vice president pence. she resigned in 2018. thank you for your time tonight. >> it's an honor to be on. thank you, rachel. >> is there a protocol established for when a president should be hospitalized at an outside facility? i've never worked in the white house, and i've spent very little time there. but it's always been my impression that the white house medical unit can handle a lot. so that's part of why i felt worried that the president was moved off white house grounds and into walter reed. >> yes. so as white house physicians and medical personnel, we train for a bad day scenario, and this is in fact a bad day scenario. we have different protocols to deal with different situations,

but certainly this is an unprecedented situation with the coronavirus. unfortunately it's one that we should have expected would come given the president and the administration's attitude towards the virus and the pandemic and just the lack of attention to preventive measures. i do wish the president as well as the first lady all the best and a speedy recovery. but, you know, as had been mentioned throughout the show tonight, transparency is really important for trust. and this administration has been consistently obscure with sharing information about the president's health and at times disingenuous. so, you know, we know that the president, just like anybody else, is entitled to privacy protections of their health care. but the president's at the service of the people, and the people have a right to know if he's fit for duty for the presidency, especially as we're nearing a presidential election. and so it's all very concerning and a very, very sad day for the medical unit as well as for the president's health. >> as a categorical matter, though, obviously you're not examining the president. you're not involved in his

medical care, and you can't speak to his specific situation right now. but as a categorical matter, isn't it -- does it worry you as a citizen in terms of the severity of the president's illness that they have moved him to walter reed and they're already saying from the outset he's going to be there for several days? >> absolutely. so the progression of symptoms is concerning. the fact that we went from what appeared to be mild symptoms to now some difficulty breathing. the progression of treatment from something experimental to now being a hospital setting. and as you mentioned, rachel, the projection that he's going to be there for a few days. all of that is -- has been said to be done in an overabun damda of caution. but as somebody who has worked in the white house for four years in the medical unit, all of this concerns me. like you've mentioned, we have robust capabilities at the white house to deal with the majority

of things that you could imagine. so the fact that the president has been transferred, has received experimental treatment, again has been hospitalized with a projection to be there for a few days concerns me that the progression of his clinical course could, in fact, be worsening or is expected potentially to worsen. >> dr. jennifer pena, former white house medical unit physician. thank you for your service at the white house medical unit, and thanks for being here to help us understand tonight. i appreciate it. >> thank you, rachel. >> all right. we'll be right back. still more to get to tonight. still a father. but now a friend. still an electric car. just more electrifying. still a night out. but everything fits in. still hard work. just a little easier. still a legend. just more legendary. chevrolet.

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but despite the rising pain and anguish made worse during the pandemic, insurance companies still refused to cover mental health and addiction treatment. until now. senator scott wiener went to work - taking them on. passing a law requiring the insurance industry to cover mental health and addiction treatment. now more than ever, californians need mental health coverage. i won't let up until the stigma

of mental health and addiction is finally over. that is going to do it for us tonight. i'm going to do my darndest to make this an actual weekend other than weekdays that begin with "s" for saturday and sunday. but the way the news is going, you never know. serious times. this is no time to tune out. but i will see you again at least on monday. now it's time for "the last word," hosted by the great lawrence o'donnell. >> you've earned your weekend, more than earned it. rachel, i've started a campaign about the remaining debates or debate if it's only the vice presidential debate. that is stop the absurdity of forcing these