Drugs and knowledge. I feel better than i did 20 years ago. Some of that might be the steroids talking but it probably goes without saying that that message, aside from being a complete insult to the families of the almost 210,000 americans who have lost their lives because of the coronavirus amounts to dangerous medical misinformation about a serious illness from which trump himself is likely not yet out of the woods. Just ask trumps doctor in a briefing confirming trumps impending discharge just in the last hour. Though he may not entirely be out of the woods yet, the team and i agree that all our evaluations and most importantly, his clinical status, support the president s safe return home where hell be surrounded by world class medical care. The seven to ten days, i dont think were there yet so do you have concerns about potential worsening and what are your plans if that were to happen . Were in a bit of uncharted territory when it comes to a patient that received the therapies he has so early in the course. So were looking to this weekend. If we can get through to monday with him remaining the same or improving, then we will all take that final deep sigh of relief. As i said, 24 7 world class medical care surrounding him down there. Were not going to miss anything that we would have caught up here. Let that sink in. Medically speaking, as a patient, donald trump in uncharted territory. As unsettling as that response might be, even more un ssu suse are the crucial questions that dr. Connolly didnt answer like what the president s imaging shows and doesnt show, what President Trump had his last negative test for covid which would give us a good indication of how many people he might have put at risk. Can you tell us when he had his last negative test . Was it thursday, wednesday . Do you remember . I dont want to go backwards. Contact tracing for people who were around him . I understand. The Contact Tracing as i understand it is being done. Weve done routine standard imaging. Im just not at liberty to discuss. Youre actively not telling us what those lung scans showed, just to be clear . So, there are hipaa rules and regulations that restrict me in sharing certain things for his safety and his own health and reasons. Going backwards is the whole idea of Contact Tracing, one of the tools at our disposal, testing, Contact Tracing and Wearing Masks and social distancing, but lets not go backward. Later in that briefing when pressed further on the same questions, dr. Connolly again declined to answer and ended the briefing, and of course if you were unsure how much stock to put into any assessment from him, trumps doctor, you would be forgiven. The white house and trumps doctors communicating with the public about the president s health have sent confusing and mixed messages since the news first broke early friday morning that donald trump is sick. Since then his doctor, sean connolly, has admitted on camera to giving misleading information about the president s condition. Watch. Why were you so reluctant until today to disclose that the president has been administered oxygen . Thats a good question. Thank you. I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president , that his course of illness has had. I didnt want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction, and in doing so, it came off that we were trying to hide something which wasnt necessarily true. The fact of the matter is that hes doing really well. Now, if i was trying to be upbeat to donald trump telling bob woodward that he downplayed it on purpose, we might be onto something. Of this admission from dr. Connolly, the Washington Post writes this, quote, the episode continued what has been a days long opportunitorrent of falseh imprecision as he faces the greatest threat to a president s health in decades. From the white house doctor to the president s chief of staff, the inability to provide clear, direct and consistent information about trumps condition has been widespread since the coronavirus began rapidly circulating in the west wing. Today questions remain about how to keep the white house safe from the infectious president as it becomes a hot spot all on its own. A dozen in trumps orbit testing positive, most recently his maskless press secretary, kaleigh mcenany. If there was any hope that trump would be focused on limiting the spread to his staff any further, those hopes were dashed last night when trump endangered his entire secret Service Security deal so that he could wave from his car. A photo op with deadly consequences. Donald trump now one of 7 million positive coronavirus cases in the United States but in uncharted territory medically is where we start with our friends. Peter baker, White House Correspondent for the New York Times, some of that remarkable reporting we already quoted, the author of the book the man who ran washington. Former democratic senator claire mccaskill. Lori garrett, contributor to Foreign Policy magazine. Global Health Policy expert dr. Gupta is here. Peter baker, let me start with you on the latest white house reporting. Take me through whether there are pieces of the plot line that i missed or that deserve more context. I think you got it exactly right. Weve gotten a series of conflicting and contradictory messages from this white house, from the medical team, not just the political side of the house, and its only raised more questions than they have answered. The fact that he wouldnt talk about the imaging is very interesting because he cites hipaa law on that fact only and not the only details. That suggests then that the patient himself may have not wanted that particular information out. The president can be monitored at the white house obviously much better than the rest of us could be at home. They have a pretty full scale medical unit. He could be returned to walter reed in quick order if necessary but the message hes sending with that tweet that basically, dont be afraid of covid, nothing to see here almost, is the message is rather concerning, obviously not medical professionals but a lot of Public Policy and Public Health experts who are worried that the message, the lesson of this particular episode has not come home to the one person who has the ability to tell the rest of the country how we should be thinking about this pandemic. Lori garrett, that tweet must have landed like a body blow to people who im thinking of the young woman who spoke at the Democratic National convention about losing her father to covid after he trusted Donald Trumps recommendations to ignore the stayathome orders and not wear a mask. I imagine this message should will land among his supporters in very much the same way, that a segment of the population in a lot of instances has some of the same Underlying Health condition as the president does, his age, sometimes his weight, may read that tweet as nothing to see here, youll be fine. But the truth is literally the doctor said today the president is in uncharted medical territory. Nobody has access to the care hes been given over the last se my goodness, nicolle, when i saw that, i literally was overwhelmed. Its so horrible, so destructive. To say i feel better than i have in 20 years, that i feel spectacular, it reminded me of ball son arrows statements in brazil where he told the people, this is nothing. I didnt even feel as sick as when i had the flu. Of course the president famously back in march referred to this as nothing more than a bad flu. We have no idea what his actual state of mind is at this moment. He is taking a cocktail that no human being has ever taken before, so its not just uncharted territory, its a complete experiment. No one has ever been given this combination of drugs to treat this disease or any other disease. Are we hearing and is he tweeting through side effects . Are we seeing a healing human being or is this typical of what we see with a lot of Covid Patients where you begin in a state of decline, you go through some treatment and feel a bit euphoric and youre on the path to recovery and then, boom. Claire mckcaskilccaskill, ita distressing moment, not just in the trump presidency, the thing that you and i gather and talk about most days but in terms of the history of the american presidency. Never before have we been given some cherry picked information from a doctor clearly performing not for peter baker and his colleagues but for the patient himself, and never before has the patient missed so many off ramps from the path of disposition, denial and endangering the people he represents. This was an opportunity and no one wanted the president to get sick, lets be clear. Nobody here, nobody wanted this countrys president to be sick. But once sick, you thought, i dont know, maybe hell see how serious this is. Maybe a part of his brain will say, not everyone can take a helicopter to walter reed and be monitored on day two after the diagnosis by world class physicians. Maybe this is really serious. The opposite seems to have happened. I actually thought that there could be a turning point here for the president for him to acknowledge that, yes, this is something to be taken seriously. As you say, just the opposite has occurred. I have so many questions. Theres two stories here, nicolle. There is the medical story and there is the political story. They are both very important. The medical story is nuts because they are experimenting on the president of the United States. Think about that for a minute. Is that the person you want to start this experiment with . How did that come about . Secondly, were not getting the right information, were not getting clear information. You cant cherry pick hipaa. You cant tell the American People every detail about his oxygen level and his heart rate and all of that and then selectively say, oh, no, i cant tell you about his lung scan because of hipaa. Thats not the way this works. He is taking drugs that say this is very serious. They are treating him as if its not serious. Hes acting as if its not serious. Theres such a medic medical disconnect and maybe well have time today to talk about the political side because as somebody who ran communications in the white house, this group is the larry, moe and curly of white house communications. I have never seen more malpractice in Political Communications than i have seen over the last three days. It is stunning. Larry, moe and curly are now down with covid, at least kayleigh and hope hicks, but the truth is the team that is responsible for briefing and its not about the press, its through the press. Theyre there asking questions for the American People. They have a lot of illnesses in their ranks now. There are four White House Correspondents who are infected now. It has now become hazardous to do your job on that beat if that is your assignment. I was reaching for my glasses because i want to read to dr. Gupta the list of drugs that donald trump has. I also want to point out that Donald Trumps friend and debate pl prepper, Chris Christie, is laying in a hospital bed in new jersey also receiving hospitalized care. No one wants anyone on the president s team to have fallen ill, but now that they are ill, dr. Gupta, id love for you to explain some of the therapies and treatments theyre receiving and tell us how much of this is the standard protocol for a covid patient. Doctors have said theyve given trump remdesivir, regeneron antibody cocktail, a steroid called dexamethasone, supplemental oxygen which they first didnt tell us about, some zinc, vitamin d, famotidine, melatonin and aspirin. Of Covid Patients about a day after learning of their diagnosis get that regimen, dr. Gupta . Nicolle, good to see you. Thats a fantastic framing. Who gets essentially an aggressive kitchen sink approach within 24 hours of hitting a hospital bed . Ill tell you who gets it, those people who have unfortunately covid pneumonia. They have essentially, their lungs are filled up with inflammatory debris and their airways are not functioning the way you would expect so people experience shortness of breath as the president reportedly was experiencing. They experience importantly, nicolle, low oxygen levels as he was reportedly also experiencing a few times, prompting the supplemental oxygen. Remdesivir and dexamethasone, lets be very clear here because the doctors at the brief were not precise and clear, neither one of those medications is approved by the fda for use for any other reason than for severe covid related low oxygen levels. Hypoxemia is what we call that technically. You dont get it to stave it off. What you would do is pose the president a significant list of side effects. If you gave him remdesivir, he didnt actually need it because it causes liver injury. Dexamethasone can cause your bones to fracture, high glucose levels, you to feel delirious. Theres lots of reasons not to give these medications willy nilly. Thats number one. Number two, the fact that they werent willing to talk about ct scans i brief families all the time who are not necessarily able to access privileged information. What i can say is i can speak about if im speaking about lab values and vital signs which the doctors are doing, im happy to talk broadly about a ct scan. The fact that theyre not willing to talk about his chest imaging says enough, in addition to his clinical course, that he has covid pneumonia. It is case shut, he has it. Its okay that he has it. Its treatable but lets be vigilant about the next seven days because he can be better but he can also decline in the next seven days. Theres no rope to hieason to h. Its silly to hide it. Can i go ahead. I just want to tell our viewers something. Joe biden has started to speak. Were going to go to that in a second but go ahead. Dr. Gupta, id like to throw to you, we also know that even before he took ill trump was already taking propecia, crestor and a drug for high psa count. How might we be seeing cross interactions and to what degree do we know what the drug interactions might be given the highly experimental nature of many of his medications right now . Thats a great point. That raises the specter of to what degree should we be giving the president of the United States an experimental therapy like the regeneron cocktail thats not fully vetted. Its very promising. Infectious disease experts are very high on it but for the reasons you mentioned, thats why we have to be very cautious. Its a hosts dream when yall talk amongst yourself. Peter baker, what questions do you have for the president s team that havent been answered . What medical mysteries remain at the top of your list . A few things. One, you heard the reporters ask and still not get answered when was the last time the president had a negative test. As you mentioned in your opening, that would help us understand better the course of the virus and the spread. And when was the first positive test . Weve been told that the president had a rapid test on thursday evening before he went on sean hannity and said he was still waiting for his test. That was not disclosed to the public. They still havent officially confirmed that although theyre not denying it. Was that the first one . We dont know. Did he have one possibly taken before he went to bedminster, because in fact, at that point they knew that hope hicks was feeling sick and they had every reason to worry about the president. Did they have a positive test and didnt trust it or they had a negative test that turned out to be false . Theres a lot of other questions as well. This is a white house thats always been stingy with information about the president s health. Probably every white house is to some extent, this one more than most. I think all the questions that dr. Gupta and others have talked about in terms of the imaging, in terms of what hes actually damage might be to his lungs or the side effects of all these different drugs and particularly the steroids. We have a detailed timeline of where we know there are a bunch of people who are now infected who were together maskless and not socially distanced. Do we have time to go through the timeline . Let me get into this. Again, if joe biden starts were going to have to cut this short. The timeline of trumps contacts with staffers and supporters in the days since the rose garden event, at least eight participants from the naming of a Supreme Court nominee would eventually test positive. Later that night trump also hosted a rally in pennsylvania accompanied by hope hicks. Three days later, three days during which hours of maskless debate occurred were going to go through this timeline with our experts. Lets listen in to joe biden first. My daughter, wife, family has learned, if there are any angels in heaven, theyre nurses and doctors. Docs let you live and nurses make you want to live. I really mean it. Theyre there at tough times. By the way, thank you for your service in the military but also thank you for at the beginning of this pandemic being a surgical nurse wasnt easy when there wasnt the ppe available to all of you as you walked into those operating rooms and dealt with all the problems. I know my son is a physician. My soninlaw is a physician, surgeon in philadelphia, and the stories at the beginning of this process when we should have had everything available, so thank you not only for your skill and your courage but for your bravery in doing what youve done. I want to thank you for the care and dedication that you and all your fellow members, all your nurses that show up and struggle with illness, coping with the loss of a loved one at terrible times. So many of you had to hold a phone to a patients ear to say goodbye to a Family Member because they couldnt be there, couldnt see them in the hospital as they passed. I want to thank victoria for sharing her familys journey with us today. Victoria and i were talking a little earlier. I was in south asia speaking with a president and he asked me what made america unique and i said immigration because thats the history of this country. He looked at me funny and said why is that . I said because almost everybody whos come here other than those