good day, everyone. i'm andrea mitchell in washington, where the white house is now on a coronavirus hotspot. even as the president produced what he clearly planned as a triumphant return, four days after being hospitalized for covid. a drama replete with sunset images of him arriving, timed to appear live on the nightly news broadcasts as he slowly climbed the steps from the south lawn to the truman balcony where he dramatically removed his mask. he then appeared a little short of breath as he stood and directed photographers both in front and behind him before giving a thumbs up.

he is apparently sleualuting mae one's liftoff from the south lawn. then he walked back into the building and a cluster of staff, again without wearing a face mask. the president paused to record a twitter video against the backdrop of the washington monument, defying all public health guidelines about the virus. >> one thing that's for certain. don't let it dominate you. don't be afraid of it. i know there's a risk. there's a danger. but that's okay. now i'm better. and maybe i'm immune, i don't know. >> the list of those infected at the white house on the staff is growing. nbc news confirming now that a valet to the president tested positive for covid-19 over the weekend. joining me now, nbc news white house correspondent and "weekend today" co-host peter alexander. pulitzer prize winning journalist laurie galen, and dr. peter hotez, director of the

texas children's hospital. peter, a lot of controversy over the president's speech and tweet this morning. >> you're right, andrea, we're learning about the 15th positive case to the best of my knowledge, among the white house or those connected to the president and this white house. this is one of the military valets who would be among those who serve meals to the president. not the first time that a valet here at the white house has tested positive. we first learned about a valet testing positive on may 7. so almost five months ago. nonetheless, it is a remarkable scene we're witnessing here as this building behind me has really become a hotspot itself. kayleigh mcenany, the press secretary, yesterday announcing her positive tests results as well as two of her staff members testing positive as well. on this very topic, what's striking is you see the way the president is trying to cast this right now. his aides saying that when he shows up at the debate later

this month, they insist, his campaign does, he intends to participate in person, that he'll effectively arriving there as a survivor, like some form of an invincible hero. consider what the president said a little earlier, though, the message he's sending to americans that's been infuriating public health experts. here is a tweet that he posted, comparing the coronavirus to the flu. he said, many team evepeople ev, sometimes over 100,000, despite the vaccine, die from the flu. are we going to close down the country? no, we are learning to live with it just like we're learning to live with covid. worth noting in the last several minutes twitter has now flagged that tweet, saying it misrepresents the flags and is potentially harmful because it's misleading there. his facts are wrong. he said sometimes 100,000. in fact since 2010, the average flu deaths in this country are between 21,000 and 60,000. nonetheless, the president is trying to downplay this virus again. the message sort of being, in the words of rudy giuliani, one of his advisers earlier, that

it's like roosevelt, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself. but public health experts again, andrea, say this idea that you should not be afraid of covid is dangerous and reckless, to say nothing of the president taking off his mask before he entered the residence here, even as there were other staffers around him. >> and laurie garrett, on that point, the white house staff, not just the political appointees, but the staff, the 150 or more people who work there all the time, the military valet just referenced, cleaning personnel, cooks, all these people, and their families, are now more vulnerable because he's back in the quarters even though they do have a medical facility and he has his own suite of rooms. what are the risks here? and i want to also ask you about the cdc guidelines on a longer distance and infections could be spread by the virus, small droplets and particles lingering in the air. this is what many people are calling a long overdue updated

guideline. >> hi, andrea. i think we need to think of the white house now as being akin to a nursing home, where we see risks from individuals that are ailing and their to the next pa or the next individual down the road. let's keep in mind that melania trump is also an inpatient, if you will, in the west wing. and somebody is looking after her, presumably there are medical personnel, perhaps a quite large team behind the scenes in the west wing. all of this makes for an environment that's very dangerous, especially if the president refuses to wear his mask. he's really seriously endangering others. it's interesting, the cdc released the report that you referred to that is about airborne contagion with this virus. it has gone back and forth in many permutations, there's been a lot of controversy about it,

but it's out. it's a reasonable report. but a for stronger one, about 47 pages long, was submitted to angela merkel's government about a week and a half ago. it goes through in great detail all the different sizes of droplets, from those that you can actually see with the naked eye and those that are microscopic in size, how they move in the air, how they are propelled from one human to another, which are blocked completely by masks, which are blocked, perhaps can get in on the sides if the mask is not a snug fit. and the details in the german side are just so superior. they're the kind of thing that any physician, any epidemiologist, any schoolteacher, any business owner, could use as a template to decide, am i creating safe distances between people. one thing is clear. now, i haven't had as much time inside the white house as you have, andrea, but i've had time in the white house, and i know,

a lot of the hallways are very narrow, a lot of the rooms are very small given the import of the facility overall. there are quite a number of places in the white house where it's frankly impossible to be six feet apart, much less 12 feet. if people are not going to wear masks, we're going to see continued spread, just as you would in a nursing home. >> and in fact there's an old ventilation system of course as well, so you don't have the air circulation or any of the modern systems that you would have hoped for for this kind of an eventuality. dr. hotez, so much concern over how sick the president really is. i know you're not involved in his case, but there are a lot of questions, given how his doctors evaded, at least the white house physician certainly evaded any answers about his lung capacity, the ct scans or other scans of his lungs, what his blood test showed, the oxygen level, how

low did it fall, did it go below 93, was it in the 80s, the chest x-rays. what would you want to know bout a patient who is leaving after two episodes of his oxygen dropping? >> andrea, what we want to know is what actually happened. you know, what we're hearing are two very different narratives. we're hearing on the one hand that they were just admitting him to walter reed out of an abundance of caution, that he was never very sick. and then at the far other extreme we're hearing he was quite ill and deteriorating with low oxygenation, with respiratory distress potentially, or periods of respiratory distress and high fever. and it would be nice to know which one of the two is more accurate. i suspect that, reading between the lines and connecting the dots, he was getting pretty ill, and that was what prompted all of the interventions which included the remdesivir and the dexamethasone, and also very

interesting, the monoclonal antibody cocktail. we know, we've learned working on coronaviruses for the last decade, that virus neutralizing antibodies can make all the difference in terms of whether or not you survive covid-19. given the fact that the regeneron monoclonl antibody cocktail as well as others that are going to come online from lilly and others, that may have been game-changing. there is the possibility that that monoclonal antibody cocktail saved the president's life. it's hard to know, because it isn't a controlled experiment. it's hard to know if he got better in spite of the antibody or because of it. i suspect it was the latter. and i'm just so worried that this kind of monoclonal antibody cocktail will not be made available to the rest of the country for quite a while, and we have to focus on that as well.

>> andrea, i think it's a very important point that dr. hotez just raised. the regeneron is an experimental protocol. and the average american is not going to have any access to this drug, iffa monoclonal antibodies are the decisive factor in the president's health. for him to go out and say, it's really no big deal, maybe i'm immune, i'm getting over it, people shouldn't be scared of it. well, the average american is not going to have access to the regeneron monoclonal antibodies or the other various antibody cocktails in the pipeline, anytime soon. and god knows how much it will cost. >> and to the other point, i just wanted to check back with dr. hotez as well on the steroid. what concerns would you have about them prescribing that steroid use, which according to all the guidance we've seen, is usually for very severely ill patients?

>> that's right. this came out of clinical studies, trials based in okay ford oxford in the uk. this makes us think the president was very ill and required steroids, which makes you wonder why they were so quick to get him out of the hospital, that's not consistent either. so there are so many inconsistencies in his care. clearly if somebody was ill, required that type of intensive therapy, monoclonal antibodies, the antiviral drug, the remdesivir, the dexamethasone, this is not someone you want to bump out of the hospital just after a couple of days, but somebody you want to monitor for a while longer to make certain he doesn't rebound. and again, we have the complexity that we don't have much experience giving these medicine together. so how will they interact? there are so many reasons why he should have remained at walter reed for a couple of more days. presumably he was just very

insistent. one of the defenses that i can give for the physicians is, you know, the fact that we're all frustrated by the absence of information. my guess is probably the president came down pretty hard on them and insisted that he doesn't -- that no information get divulged. >> i think that is very clear indeed. peter alexander, laurie garrett, thanks so much for you. dr. hotez, please stay with us, we'll come back to you in just a bit. ahead, why the white house is reportedly refusing to block coronavirus vaccine guidelines for the fda. but first, the closer. michelle obama's final pitch to get behind joe biden after biden made his case to voters at a msnbc town hall last night. stay with us, you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. eports" on msnbc.

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on an nbc news town hall last night with joe biden, moderator lester holt asked the candidate if he is surprised that president trump contracted covid-19. >> recent polls say 65% of americans think the president bears some responsibility for contracting this virus. do you agree? >> look, anybody who contracts the virus by essentially saying masks don't matter, social

distancing doesn't matter, i think is responsible for what happens to them. >> joining me now, nbc news political reporter ali vitali in salt lake city. reuters white house correspondent jeff mason who was on that trip in florida with the vice president yesterday. and an msnbc news political contributor, shauna thomas. jeff, you were there at the town hall, the vice president was performing much stronger, talked about how he felt about that debate last week on camera about just how difficult it was. what was your takeaway? >> he sure did. i thought it was interesting he was asked in part whether or not he had stooped to the president's level, by calling him a clown, by asking him to shut up. vice president biden sort of conceded that maybe he should

have not called him a clown. it was interesting to me that he wasn't ready to go so far as to say you're right, i'm not proud of my performance. he kept the focus on the fact that president trump was the one who did the vast majority of the interrupting. he also faced questioning, andrea, and i thought this was interesting too, about his ability to stand up to a bully such as president trump. his response was to talk about his history of meeting with president putin and other dictators around the world during his long tenure as a senator and vice president. >> and in fact we have part of that answer right now. let me play it for everyone. >> he didn't want to answer any questions. he did not want to talk about substance. i did get frustrated. i should have said, this is a clown-ish undertaking, instead of calling him a clown. >> so, you know, jeff, as you're pointing out, he kind of

indicated that he perhaps wishes he hadn't gone that far, but expressed the frustration. and now we know that the president is planning to go next week to the second of the debates which is a town hall meeting. again, shauna, this is not particularly conducive to his format. well, who knows who is going to be better at