Journalists, security, military leaders, their families, and now Stephen Miller. Then 28 days, Cornell Belcher on how to read new polling showing biden way ahead. Four weeks to november 3rd. And the vp debate. Why there will be a plexiglass divider between the head of the Coronavirus Task force and Kamala Harris tomorrow night. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. Over the last five days from when the president first announced he had covid to when he was hospitalized at walter reed, scarily, with what appears to be a severe case, returned to the white house despite still being infected and likely contagious and then took off his mask and entered the building. Every single venal pathology of this president , this administration and the party that supports him that have led to one of the worst responses in the world and the deaths of more than 211,000 americans and counting, all of them have been on display. The denials and the shiftiness and the lies, the propping and the narcissism, the disinformation and misinformation and miscommunication. The subsuming everything to the president s narrow sense oft will play best politically. The contempt for safety precautions and Public Health expertise, but more than anything else, its the recklessness. A recklessness so egregious and aggressive and acute as to only be described as evil. But we know we dont know the full story, is that someone in the president s inner circle tested positive for covid on thursday. The president then went to a lunch buffet fundraiser, potentially infecting all kinds of other people, including the attendees and the staff of his own resort. New jersey officials have been frantically working to contact the guests and try to control the spread. And then during the president s hospitalization for the coronavirus, he insisted on a joyride for pure propping and ego purposes, locking secret Service Agents into a hermetically sealed car with him despite his ongoing sickness. And then he returned to the white house still sick where he theatrically took off his mask and entered the building to infect ian mo infect even more people. This behavior which reflects the attitude he and the white house have been taking for four months now. I mean, honestly, since the beginning of the pandemic, has produced an outbreak in the white house with more confirmed cases than there are in entire countries right now. Just a short time ago a Senior Administration official told nbc news that Senior Adviser to the president Stephen Miller has now tested positive and is in community. Consider the sheer size of the cluster that miller is now part of. At least 25 people, among them the president , his wife, hope hicks, Stephen Miller, Trumps Campaign manager, a number of republican senators, chris christie, Kellyanne Conway and her daughter claudia, Kayleigh Mcenany and at least four press staffers, people that work for her, at least three white house reporters who have to go and interact with them as they bark at them without mask, including michael sheer of the New York Times whose wife now has been infected. Thats not to mention trumps personal valet, a coast guard admiral whose infection prompted the joint chiefs to quarantine. That is what this white houses cavalier attitude toward the white house has wrought. And these are only the people weve been able to publicly identify, often through diligent reporting. The administration is not doing it themselves. No, they are not Contact Tracing, despite the cdc standing by to do so. They are not even contacting people who they know have been exposed. All of that would seem to be in furtherance of a coverup of the magnitude of their stupidity and incompetence and cruelty, even if the coverup now further inperils peoples health. Meanwhile, the person running against trump has taken the opposi opposite tact. Joe biden at a speech today in gettysburg pennsylvania lets end the politics and follow the science. Wearing a mask wearing a mask is not a political statement, its a scientific recommendation. Social distancing isnt a political statement. Its a scientific recommendation. Testing, tracing, the development and all of the approval and distribution of a vaccine isnt a political statement, it is a sciencebased decision. It would be one thing if the president was just being personally irresponsible. Still awful. Still putting people around him at terrible risk. But at least that would be somewhat contained, i suppose. But, no, after getting the best health care taxpayer dollars can buy, a fourroom suite at walter reed, a medevac. Hes the president. That comes with the territory. A team of doctors monitoring every up and down and setting up ways to treat him back at home, he comes back to tell everyone not to worry about covid, indeed, to basically pitch it as if hes hocking a vitamin supplement. Youre going to beat it. I didnt feel so good. Two days ago i felt great, like better than i have in a long time. I said just recently, better than 20 years ago. Thats the kind of message that will get people sick. And when people get sick they die. Statements like that dont just encourage people not to worry about a virus that might very well kill them, particularly if they are in his age group, they devalue and denigrate the loss of so many of our fellow americans to this virus. After trump tweeted something similar yesterday, telling people not to be afraid of the disease, no big deal, u. S. Olympic runner responded, as my grandfather lies in a bed struggling to take his last breaths due to covid, im not sure ive ever read anything more offensive or tone deaf in my life. We lost an average of more than 700 americans every day to the virus over just the past week, seven months into this. Over the course of this pandemic, thousands of americans have died alone at home because the hospitals were so overrun they stayed home until it was too late. And then some were found by family members or concerned neighbors. There are hospitals as i speak to you right now that are at capacity in wisconsin, which has an outbreak, right now, and yet this president who got the best care in the world on the public dollar that he paid all of 750 in taxes for has the gall to tell the rest of us not to worry. Im joined now by democratic senator brian schatz of hawaii. Sent a letter to the white house chief of staff requesting the white house immediately conduct Contact Tracing and testing of resident staff, including housekeepers, food service and maintenance staff. Senator, maybe we start there. I mean, there are so many people that work in that white house complex who are not famous and they are not powerful and they are not close to the president who have been forced to toil in an unsafe workplace not that different from a meatpacking plant. Yeah, and i think whats first of all, theyre not going to start Contact Tracing. And whats crazy to me about this, this particular issue, is Contact Tracing actually is hard. Weve had some difficulty in the state of hawaii getting it operationalized. They dont have that problem. They had the cdc standing by. You could immediately get an army of contact tracers. And so whats really going on is they dont want to know who else they infected. But for me, the way this is different is that so much of the president s cruelty over the last four years has been, unfortunately, intermediated by politics or the media or peoples personal ideology, and whats different, i think, from the standpoint of people observing it is that this is personal cruelty. This is a person who is sick infecting others physically adjacent to him because he needs to fill the hole in his soul. It doesnt even make political sense for him. So you get a window into his pathology, his endless need for attention aadlation. This is a little different to observe. It may not be different in terms of its origin, but it is different to observe a man who actually doesnt even care about the people who work right next to him. I think of george w. Bush and ronald reagan, president s with whom ive disagreed on everything, but even those president s would have been at least nice to their staff. Would have not wanted to infect the people close to them. And this president is uniquely awful in that way as a human being. Whats more troubling to me, i mean, and all of that is true and its also theres a connection between what happened in the white house and the country. I mean, theyre the same story. Everything theyve done in the country, theyve done in the white house. Why would it be any different . But whats more trouble toimg are your colleagues like senator kennedy of louisiana. Senator kennedy, you know, hes not an idiot. Hes a quite smart guy. Hes impressive in his own right. Hes not, like, some anomalous crazy character, you know, with the psychology of donald trump. Hes a, you know, republican senator. Hes out there the next day saying, actually, it turns out the virus is not as deadly as we thought. Ron johnson talking about how hes going to, you know, do whatever it takes to go vote for Amy Coney Barrett. Like, no matter what he does, they are with him and that is the pathology that, to me, its both incomprehensible and also unforgiveable. Youre right. Because, you know, as as a now wellknown political pundit and writer said, everything trump touches dies. You see a person a physician with a reasonably good reputation coming in ruined. By being close to the president. Yeah. And you see these members of the United States senate on the republican side who will absolutely and do quietly talk about how insane the president is and how theyre just trying to manage this situation, and yet when it comes down to it, they stand absolutely with him. All the way to the bitter end. And we are pretty close to the bitter end. The fact that the president has withdrawn from covid relief negotiations in favor of installing a Supreme Court justice in order to take away health care six days after the election, like, im not expecting them to be liberal. Im not expecting them even to be decent, but i am a little puzzled at why they are so insistent at going down with the ship. And some of these people i know, youre right, theyre bright, and theyre pretty good politicians other than the fact that they are clearly under his spell. So its not just enough to beat trump, we have to repudiate trumpism. The president tweeted out this this announcement that he personally was killing the stimulus talks. Because he doesnt want crimeinfected democrat cities to get any money, as if they are not americans. Of course the the rescue money on the table, which is for state municipal governments, would go to everyone, not just democrats. This this the markets tanked. Everyone i know who follows this is destory about this. There is unbelievable suffering in the country and hes choosing to be hoover at a time of crisis similar to the Great Depression and announcing it. Yeah, i think we can abandon the supposition that hes secretly a political genius. He is absolutely ruining his electoral chances by pulling out of covid relief talks. And because were democrats and were actually we care and were desperately trying to help the people that we represent, we were willing to give him a 2 or 3 trillion lifeline into the economy two weeks out, three weeks out from the election, and you can make an argument that that wasnt in our political interests, but because we represent the people, because we see the desperation, we were willing to do the right thing and compromise with this president , with whom we disagree so vehemently, and yet he decided to pull out of these talks. So my view at this point is the only way were going to get covid relief, the only way were going to protect your health care, the only way were going to get any kind of sane Covid Response is when not just trump but trumpism, especially as its manifested in the United States senate, is repudiated across the board on november 4th. All right. Senator brian schatz who is there in his home state of hawaii far, far, far from the white house, which is probably a good idea. Thank you for your time tonight. Thank you. For some historical perspective, i want to turn now to nbc news and msnbc president ial historian michael beschloss. Thanks. President s have been, you know, president s have been ill before and theyve tried to cover up their illness. True. Thats actually kind of a through line in american history, but i dont think i can conceive of a personal close proximity to management failure that so closely mirrors a larger policy failure in the history of the american state. Yeah, you know, Woodrow Wilson got the flu in 1919 and he was responsible for the influenza pandemic of 1918 1919 in the United States. It killed 675,000 americans and wilson was their executioner. His secretary got it. His daughter got it. His secret service got it. The tragic park was soldiers he had been shipping off to europe got it on these ships that were called coffin ships. Military officers and doctors begged him not to send these soldiers on to those ships because they knew that they would die of this plague. He sent them anyway. And the result was that wilson never for the entire duration of his pandemic ever once gave a single Public Statement to americans that this was happening, never once told them how to protect themselves, and never apologized for it. You know, this is one of the big negative lessons in history i never thought i would see this happen again, but it looks as if its happening once again and has been almost biblically the last six or seven months. The president seems intent and his party seems intent now on essentially telling people theyre not seeing what theyre seeing. I mean, im right. The hoover comparison, to me, is really the only one when you think about a, you know you know the that were going to right around the corner and americans are were coming back and the idea that hoovers sort of epitaph will forever be that he failed to grapple with the magnitude of the problem and he was ushered out of office in an historic drubbing because of that. Its hard to find any precedent other than that 32 incumbent massively screwing up a response to a National Crisis that resembles anything weve seen in the last seven months or last five days. Right. And trump is so terrible he makes hoover look like gandhi. Hoover was someone with empathy. He had done a lot to get food to people at the time of world war i and he was actually considered a pretty progressive republican. In Donald Trumps case, why did he cut off those negotiations today . The nice explanation is he did it because he wants to be able to blame it on democrats in congress. The not nice explanation is a lot uglier, which is that tyrants through history when theyre turned out by the people, they say if im not going to be the leader, let them suffer. Right. Sampson pulling down the temple. There is a real question, too, about president s condition and what the implications of that are. Im sitting here thinking were watching the president tweet. Those tweets are official statements. If the president were to tweet an announcement we were moving naval ships into the South China Sea or some aggressive military action against some state, that would be read as a president. I dont know, is the president actually tweeting . Is someone tweeting for him . Is he of sound mind right now . We have no idea. Seems pressing and relevant. And we have all to sleep, i think, for the next four weeks at least with one eye open because we dont know. Assuming that this debate comes off with joe biden, number one, you know, why in hell are they going to be in the same studio . Cant this be done virtually . The third Kennedy Nixon debate was done with kennedy new york, nixon in los angeles. Wow. The technology is a lot better now. Instead, were talking about all the people in that studio taking the risk of being around donald trump, the members of his entourage. You know, its a Health Hazard to everyone and its completely unnecessary. But as we watch his performance, were all going to have to ask the question, is he on drugs . Has he been reduced by illness so that he cannot function at president , not only for the next four years but during the next several weeks . That that point about Kennedy Nixon just blew my mind. I had no idea that was the case. Sure. We should say Vice President joe biden today was asked about this and basically said, look, were going to follow the cdc guidelines and precautions here. Right. But basically said if he still has covid we probably shouldnt debate in the same room. Seems sensible. There is no reason on earth for these guys to be in the same room. Joe biden is 77 years old. He narrowly escaped getting infected by the president of the United States a week ago. And thank god he didnt. Michael beschloss, always great to have to you. Same here. Thank you so much for your time. Four more weeks, chris. Thank you. All right. Up next, trump aide Stephen Miller to the ever growing coronavirus cluster as the administration deliberately does little to help. White house reporter olivia nuzzi with the view from the inside next. With my hepatitis c. I felt i couldnt be at my. Best for my family. In only 8 weeks with mavyret. I was cured. I faced reminders of my hep c every day. I worried about my hep c. But in only 8 weeks with mavyret. I was cured. Mavyret is the only 8week cure for all types of hep c. Before starting mavyret your doctor will test. If youve had hepatitis b which may flare up and cause serious liver problems during and after treatment. 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