The white house across the south lawn to the marine one hospital, which transported him to Walter Reed Medical Center for treatment of his Coronavirus Infection. The white house says he is expected to remain hospitalized for the next few days on the advice of doctors. Put simply, i think its fair to say its been a stunning 24 hours, as stunning as any in the trump error. Around this time last night we learned the president s aide hope hicks tested positive for the virus. The president and first lady were then tested and in a 1 a. M. Tweet the president announced they were both positive. After that tweet we heard nothing from the president , nothing on twitter. We did not see him until he left the white house to board marine one for walter reed. There was no medical information, no medical briefing from white House Doctors or anything released for more than 12 hours and then during that time we got word a bunch of other people in the president s orbit tested positive as well. Two people were at the white house on saturday for the formal nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the sproupreme court. Mike lee, hugging people and no one with masks and the reverend john jenkins, the president of notre dame, both among the tightly packed crowd in the rose garden. Three journalists who work at the white house, thats their workplace, they dont have control over the policiepolicie also tested positive, along with a staffer who sits in the lower pressed area of the west wing. The Republican NationalCommittee Chairwoman tested positive this week, she was last with the president on friday. And the city of cleveland announced 11 people tested positive in getting ready for the president ial debates. There are now urgent efforts to contact those who came in contact with the president of the United States. Joe biden and jill were tested and both are negative. Speaker of the house nancy pelosi was tested it after meeting with the president s treasury secretary earlier this week. She is also negative. Another big area of concern is the president s trip to his bedminister, new Jersey Golf Club yesterday for a fundraiser. He carried on with that trip as planned despite knowing that morning that hope hicks had tested positive and had been in close contact with him and the president at that event came in contact with donors as well as the staff of bedminister. So as the magnitude of this cluster started to become clear today, the president was out of sight. We did not have official word on his condition until Late Afternoon when his physician released this state revealing the president received a dose of the regeneron monoclone al, a worrisome sign. Just about an hour after that the white house announced the president would be hospitalized. They released this brief video statement shortly after the president walked over and took off in marine one. I want to thank everybody for the tremendous support. Im going to Walter Reed Hospital. I think im doing very well, but were going to make sure that things work out. The first lady is doing very well. So thank you very much, i appreciate it. I will never forget it. Thank you. Donald trump is 74 years old. That is in a relatively highrisk category for this virus and we dont actually have much reliable information about the president s overall health. We dont know the extent of the white house cluster. The country is in a state of deep crisis. We are just 32 days away from an election. Joe biden offered his prayers to the president this afternoon. Look, lets id like to start by acknowledging, which im sure all of you do as well, sending my prayers for the health and safety of the first lady and president of the United States after they tested positive for covid19. My wife jill and i pray that he make a full and quick recovery. This is not a matter of politics. Its a bracing reminder to all of us that we have to take this virus seriously. Nearly 50,000 americans tested positive just today. 30,000 plus, including the president , are going to spend tonight in a hospital. Most of them are isolated from family and from loved ones, many of them and perhaps the president himself feeling nervous and alone and scared. And, yes, as joe biden said, we have to take this virus seriously. Im going to turn to one of the best informed people i know about this virus, who it works in the human body, the dean of the National School of tropical medicine at Baylor College of medicine. Doctor, it good to have you on. Ill just start with your assessment based on the publicly available information, the actions taken by the white house and the Statement Released by the president s doctor of how we should understand the president s condition. Yeah, chris, you know ive been saying all day today that, look, hes 74 years old, hes a man, which also puts him at greater risk for severe illness or even death. So between age and sex and then you get into the fact that hes overweight, he may have underlying chronic conditions such as diabetes or hypertension, i dont know that but thats a possibility. When you add all that up, that puts him into one of the very high risk groups, potentially mortality rates of 5 to 12 . So on that basis ive been very worried about the president s health. The fact that hes been having fevers made me feel strongly he needed to be monitored in a hospital setting because patients can decompensate very quickly, have very low levels of oxygen. The white house clearly does not have that capacity to do that intensive level of monitoring. Things can decompensate very quickly. That and the fact that i felt he needed some specific treatments and i think the Monoclonal Antibody was the way to go, a new treatment. All that added up to the fact that i said repeatedly that he need to be the Walter Reed Medical Center where he can respond and finally the white house came to that conclusion as well. And also not to do it in the middle of the night, do it in a time where theres a lot of people around and do it in a controlled setting. Back when i used to admit patients to hospital settings, you want to do it when full staff was there and you can make plans and create a patient plan. In that sense the white house medical staff made all the right chess moves today and i hope the president does well. When you talked about regeneron, this experimental ant b body antibody treatment, this has not been approved for fda use, even emergency use, we dont have a great sense of what the treatment protocols are as a sort of prophylactic but whats your sense of why they would use that treatment . Ive been working on coronavirus and other path generals now for ten years, specifically to coronaviruses and weve developed coronavirus vaccines and one of the most important things can you do to have a successful outcome with a Coronavirus Infection is to have high levels of whats call virus neutralizing antibody, it binds to the spine protein and prevents it from binding to the host tissues. One way to do that is by vaccine and thats how our vaccines have worked. After you administer the vaccine, it takes about two weeks. And clearly that would not be that takes too long for Something Like this. The other way is to artificially give the antibodies either through high titres of plasma but the advantage of the cocktail is its a much better deer find product, it targets that protein of the virus and you can control the dose much better. Theres two experimental Monoclonal Antibody cocktails, one out of regeneron, the other out of lily could suffice. Knowing all of that, i think it was a good call. If it was me and getting sick and going to the hospital, i would want for either myself or my family to get that kind of Monoclonal Antibody cocktail, even though it is still early on in clinical development. I cant help but notice as we show this v. O. Of the president folks are Wearing Masks around him but it strikes me you would want to take some very serious precautions if youre traveling with the president , the president is in a mask, which he normally is not. Hes wearing one right now, he has covid. I guess my question to you is does that strike you as well . Theres a real Public Safety issue with the white house right now and with the people that work around the president. Well, the frustration that a number of us have from the scientific and medical community all year is the fact that theres been kind of this defines about Wearing Masks and all too often we saw events around the president where individuals were not Wearing Masks and it was almost as though they were doing this out of showing some for the of political allegiance, which made absolutely no sense. Without having a vaccine, fighting this epidemic is Like Fighting it with one hand tied behind your back. All you really have for a Public Health measure are masks and Contact Tracing. If you take that away, basically youre not doing anything. So its so exasperating to see event after event where people were not Wearing Masks knowing they were being set up to potentially become very sick or even worse. Maybe now there will be some kind of safe change ea change i white house conducts business. Even if youre doing a lot of testing, this virus is so highly contagious, especially for individuals between the ages of 20 and 44. There was a big study coming out of india this week published in Science Magazine by my colleague. You have to wear masks. Its a little too little too late but maybe now theyll get the message. There was some news today that seven months into the pandemic, the white house has issued a mask mandate for those working in the white house. Thank you for carving out a little time for us on this very, very busy day. Thanks, chris. Thanks for giving all the attention to this issue. Here with me now, two veteran reporters who understand the ins and outs of the white house, Geoff Bennett and jeff mason, traveling in delaware with the biden campaign. Geoff bennett, i will start with you. We should say that the without is the peoples house, its where the president lives and works and it is a workplace for many people, yourself included. There are white house staff, there are people that work in the kitchen. That give us what you have learned about what efforts are being made to run down the tracing chains here so that they can ensure people are tested and safe. Well, the white house, chris, says that they are in the process of what has to be a herculean effort to Contact Trace the great many people with whom President Donald Trump has been in contact this past week starting on saturday in the rose garden when he announced Amy Coney Barrett as his choice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. You see row upon row of trump supporter and elected republican on the south lawn shaking hands, hugging each other, no social distancing, no mask wearing. And that continued straight up until thursday night when the president had that private fundraiser in bedminister. So what you see is his own reckless approach to this disease ripley kaeplicated on t wing, on the campaign trail, the president having put at risk people who work for him, who support him, People Like Us who cover him and then the people who protect him. In your conversation with dr. Hotez, i was watching the secret Service Agents who only had an n95 mask as president had a cotton mask. President donald trump facing the most serious threat facing a sitting president since the nonlett at shootinon nonlethal shooting of president reagan. And it was all avoidable. Now 1. 3 million americans battling this along with him. Jeff mason, you have served the association putting out word that three members of the White House Press corps have tested positive. They dont make the rules for what the policies are. I want to play this exchange youve had with the president that indicate the tensions that have been in that workplace around safety procedures when you asked him a question. I want to play this clip and get you to sort of describe what the situation has been there policywise. Take a listen. Youre going to have to take that off, please. How many feet are you away . Reporter ill speak a lot louder. If you dont take it off, youre very muffled. Reporter im just speak a lot louder is that better . Its better, yeah. Its better. That was a notable moment for me, jeff mason. I wonder do you feel there have been adequate precautions in the white house . And have you felt pressure to not comply with cdc representations like mask wearing . The answer to your first question is no, chris. There have definitely not been adequate precautions and thats one reason why i think we can say completely neutrally that the white house is in the position that it is in today. If everyone in the white house staff had been Wearing Masks, had been paying attention to social distancing measures that the cdc and other members of the White House Task force had been recommending, then no doubt it would have helped the situation. As far as pressure is concerned, you can sort of answer that question by watching the president in that clip that you played and in another moment that he had with me earlier during the pandemic. I think the point of that is more than its illustrative of an ethos that the president set with his staff and more generally with his supporters, suggesting, for whatever reason, that not wearing a mask or that wearing a mask, rather, was not macho or not cool or just not encouraging it or set an example. As a result it has become a very political thing, and unfortunately led, at least in part, to the situation that the white house finds itself in now. I should note we just got some breaking news. A statement put out, Geoff Bennett, by incumbent republican North Carolina senator thom tillis, who is also up for election, that he has tested positive. We believe that he was also at that event again on the south lawn, the event in celebration of Amy Coney Barrett. Theres additional reporting that there were indoor events around that day, indoor receptio receptions, people going around. This is now two United States senators. And thom tillis is not a young man. There are serious repercussions that continue to emanate out here. Thats right. And we should say the trump staffers and Trump Officials today who tested negative and they almost sort of touted their negative diagnosis, thats a snapshot in time. Its a good indicator but its not a final indicator. What we know is that these folks who were in close proximity, either at the vent that preceded that rose garden event for judge amy cohen barrett, theyre going to have to get tested day after day after day. Cdc guidelines would be quarantine for people extended for exposed for an extended period of time. And you were on the bus with the Vice President and his wife announcing they tested negative. What is the perspective from that campaign right now . If is interesting for somebody who is normally hanging out with my friend and colleague, Geoff Bennett, at the white house, its a much different ethos to bring in the word and the conversation we were having earlier. People do wear masks, both in the press corps, which we do at the white house but also amongst the staff, the candidate of course, Vice President biden, former Vice President biden wearing a mask when he got on his plane, when he got off the plane, when he held his event. So there is a much different sort of general attitude about mask wearing and of course that ties in with the overall criticism that Vice President biden has directed at President Donald Trump with regard to his response to the coronavirus pandemic. He did, of course, have more generous words today for the current president and the first lady, saying that he and his wife, jill, were praying for them and wishing them a speedy recovery, but there was also an undercurrent in his remarks in michigan which we just came from, in which he said mask wearing is not about being macho or not macho, its about following the science and it underscores the test that the president announced today that he was positive, underscores how important it is to take this virus seriously. All right. Geoff bennett, jeff mason, two fantastic reporters on that white house beat. Thank you both for sharing your reporting tonight. I really appreciate it. Sure. Thank you. Joining me now, congressman hakeem jeffries, chair of the House Democratic caucus, which puts him fifth in line in the House Democratic leadership. Congressman, first, i want to gauge your reaction and the reaction of your colleagues to this news and how its being processed on capitol hill and among democratic leadership. Well, our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the president , the first lady and in fact every single american who has been infected by the coronavirus and is struggling to battle this deadly dis