After a news brief from a handful of correspondents, George started out with Jason Miller, a senior advisor to the Trump campaign and an all-around good guy, it would seem - and yes, that's sarcasm.
Miller's one of the folks who has tested negative, so far, but he had some very upbeat news from the president:
Number one, that we're going to defeat this virus. President Trump personally is going to defeat it. As a nation, we're going to defeat it and get life back to normal. Get this vaccine.
But then also our campaign is going to defeat it. And I think when President Trump gets out of the White House, or -- excuse me, out of the -- gets back to the White House and back on the campaign trail, it's going to be a slingshot taking us forward.
But he said something that was important, George, and that’s to be careful. To make sure that folks are washing hands, to make sure using hand sanitizer, to make sure they're wearing a mask if you can't socially distance. These are all important things and reminders that President Trump told us.
Those are all important reminders from the president, who doesn't follow any of his own advice. George noted a new poll showing that 72% of Americans "say the president didn't take the risk of getting COVID seriously enough and didn't take appropriate precaution when it came to his own personal health."
Miller's response? It's pretty funny, actually. He said Trump made sure we stopped the foreign travelers from China and Europe, shut down the country for two weeks and a month, "had to go and keep us safe," and that flattened the curve, helped us develop therapeutics, then the vaccines being developed and 100,000 ventilators, and you know what else? NONE OF THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE QUESTION!
Oh, wait, sorry. Let me address the question, which George helped him do by giving some concrete examples:
... the president had to take it head-on, but he didn't have to have -- hold rallies where people did not social distance, where did not wear masks. He didn't have to mock former Vice President Joe Biden for wearing a mask and reporters who wore masks. He didn't have to continue to go to event after event without wearing a mask.
Again, we have an epic fail from Miller: the president is one of the most tested people in the country... anyone spending time with him is tested before hand, they keep their distance -
-- the closest I ever get to the president is about eight feet, maybe six feet, usually a pretty solid distance back. A lot of times it's more like ten feet.
And people wash their hands and use sanitizer and drink bleach.. (sorry, he didn't really say that, and on and on and on about not answering the question. And I'm done with Mr. Miller, I'm not even going to watch the rest of his segment.
The round table gang was all there, except for Chris Christie, who tested positive after hanging out maskless doing debate prep with the president, and was in the hospital due to his pre-existing asthma.
In contrast to Miller, Matthew Dowd (chief political analyst for ABC) said
first thing is I hope we can simultaneously do two things, which is send compassion and concern for the first lady and the president, and be so angry about the cavalier attitude and the cavalier way and the irresponsibility of this president and the White House...
Which means, basically, he's mad as hell and doesn't want to take it any more. For her part, Republican strategist Alice Stewart said that this whole thing does put pressure - "tremendous pressure" - on Republicans up and down the ballot.
Look, the president's base will support him. Biden's base will support him. But these undecided voters, they do have concerns about how this has been handled. And leadership is about not just showing that you're in control but actually being in control. And to be in control, you have to lead by example and heed the advice of these public health officials and also talk the talk and walk the walk. And there's great concern whether or not this president has done so.
Rahm Emmanuel, former Obama chief of staff, talked about what George called "a case study for how not to bring important information to the public."
I will say that what they did there on the White House was everything you're not supposed to do. And it continues to undermine the president's campaign, because it was a lack of information on a very, very important issue. And what they needed to do from the get-go was hit the restart and say, 'here's how we're going to be honest, here's how we're going to lead by example.'
And he said, "the edifice of what Trump is to the public" is starting to come apart.
And I think the White House, in this set of decisions, has actually shown a disjointed -- you got a medical team that saying he's OK, yet all the care he's getting shows he's a very sick patient. And that dissonance, that kind of information that's jarring, is actually undermining the presidency and his candidacy right now.
Which is just one more "thing that makes you go hmm... "
Down the hall in the CNN classroom, Jake Tapper noted the confusing information on Trump's condition, with Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, contradicting Sean Conley, the president's doctor. And, Tapper said,Right now, it is of the utmost importance for the White House to provide you, the American people, with information, accurate information, factual information, about the president's condition.
We asked the White House for someone to be here to do just that today. We asked for the vice president or the chief of staff or the communications director or the president's physician. We asked for members of the Coronavirus Task Force, including health Secretary Azar, Dr. Fauci, or Dr. Birx, or the surgeon general, or the director of the NIH, or the CDC director, or the top vaccine adviser, or Jared Kushner, or the national security adviser.
The White House declined to provide any of them, any of them, to update you on the president's condition. Instead, they referred us to the president's political campaign. We told them we would be happy to take the campaign manager.
But, unfortunately, he, too, is now battling the coronavirus.
Some folks on social media thought that those comments meant that Tapper was picking on the White House. In fact, he was picking on their apparent inability to speak the truth. Not the same, usually, but with this administration, I guess it is.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine was one of the guests. He said there had been no contact from the White House on the potential exposure to anyone who had attended the debate in his state,. And he doesn't know if the White House had reached out to the Cleveland Clinic folks, either - they're the medical consultants for the debates. That said, DeWine didn't seem too upset about the president, his family and his team perhaps putting Ohioans at risk.
Well, I think it's important what the president has done. The president went to the hospital. That will -- could not have been an easy thing for him to do. I'm sure he didn't want to go the hospital. He made the right decision. They put up two videos of the president talking to the people of this country. I think that is very positive.
And I think, look, this is -- what I said at a press conference I did the other day, this is -- should be kind of an alert to everybody that anybody can get the virus. Even the president of the United States can get the virus. And so we ought to use this, and simply just learn from it. And so people who -- maybe who have not worn masks in the past, I'm hoping that they will look at this and say, look, the president can get it, I can get it, it can happen to anybody.
And I hope that that's what happens and that's what comes out of this.
He's quite the tap-dancer, the Governor is. Or, he's physically incapable of saying anything bad about Trump, I'm not sure which. Oh wait - my bad - it's something else entirely. Tapper flat out said to him, "I just don't understand the reluctance to state the obvious, which is, President Trump has been mocking people who wear masks. And now there are a lot of Republicans who won't wear masks.
DeWine's answer?
Look, do I wish -- look, do I wish the president had worn masks all the time? Of course. Of course. When people go vote, there's a lot -- there's other things besides that. I think the president has done a very good job, as I just detailed, in trying to get us the things that we need, the testing that we need... and the PPE that we need. And that doesn't, frankly, a lot of times get reported. And they have done a very good job.
And if I don't keep saying stuff like that, he left unsaid, I won't get the stuff I need. And so in that regard, it's not October, it's March. And April. And May. And June... when all the governors were having to suck up to the president, or Jared, or Pence, in order to get the things they needed.
That's all for now. I'll have more for you in tomorrow's Extra Credit. And, as Chris Wallace said so eloquently, wear your damn mask.
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