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Uncertainty Over Trump's Condition after Joyride Around Hospital. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired October 05, 2020 - 06:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Questions about how seriously the president is taking the virus, even in the face of his own struggle. Getting into that car and doing that drive-by.

[05:58:53]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump wanted to, as a sign of gratitude, show folks that he's still fighting for them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Here, he has his own protective detail, and he's putting them at risk so that he can go out and wave.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The White House doctor is having a difficult time answering very difficult questions.

DR. SEAN CONLEY, WHITE HOUSE PHYSICIAN: I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team has had. In doing so, came off that we were trying to hide something.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It shakes the public's confidence, and it makes it that much harder to believe.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In medicine, you don't throw the kitchen sink at a patient with an abundance of caution. I think the president might be the only person on the planet ever to receive this particular combination of medicines.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Monday, October 5, 6 a.m. here in New York.

This morning, the president of the United States is waking up in the hospital with coronavirus, and we have no idea how long he intends to stay there or how severe his illness is.

Yesterday, the president took a spin outside of the hospital to wave to his supporters. The White House medical team apparently okayed this drive-by, but other doctors say it put the Secret Service agents that he's with there in the car. It put their health at risk.

The White House gave no notice to reporters, which breaks long- standing protocol. And the stunt follows a dizzying weekend of conflicting reports about the president's condition.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So this morning, we want to tell you what we know, but we need to preface it with this disclaimer. The president's doctor has admitted lying to the American people.

Beyond that, the president's doctor and the White House are deliberately withholding information that would shed light on how many people's lives the president put in jeopardy.

So the following is what they tell us, but really, it's unclear whether it can be believed.

They tell us -- again, those who have lied tell us the president is receiving a variety of treatments: Remdesivir; an experimental antibody cocktail; and a steroid, Dexamethasone, that the NIH suggests only to give to people with severe breathing issues.

The president's doctors say he's experienced two drops in his oxygen levels and was given supplemental oxygen on Friday. Dr. Sean Conley lied about that in his first news conference.

The president had a high fever. They won't tell us how high. Now they say he has no fever. They say they've looked into his lungs, but they won't tell us if there's any damage.

We know that this giant White House event to announce the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett might have been a super spreader event. Ten people in the president's inner circle are now infected, including the first lady, two senators, the president of Notre Dame, and Governor Chris Christie. You know, he's still in the hospital, and we've had no word since Saturday on his condition.

The pandemic itself is showing signs of surging. Twenty-three states are reporting rising case numbers. All the states there in red. And we are seeing a rising number of deaths in certain states, as well.

Let's begin outside Walter Reed Medical Center, where the president is. Joe, I know we're trying to get reliable information, but that word, "reliable," has been trod upon over the last few days, Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Sure has, John. And the president's been here since Friday, but there's still a lot of uncertainty about his condition.

His doctors say he's made great progress, but the medications he's taking suggest a very sick COVID-19 patient.

And then there's a drive-by out here on the road, just last night, a political photo op, certainly, also indicating more questions about the president's health and the health of the people who are protecting him. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS (voice-over): A political photo op meant as a show of strength, raising questions this morning about how seriously the White House is taking the president's COVID-19 diagnosis.

President Trump being driven past supporters outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, seen through his SUV window wearing a face mask and waving to his supporters. A member of his Secret Service detail in personal protective gear. The drive-by prompting outcry from medical experts who question Trump's judgment and his doctors.

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Amazingly irresponsible. And his physician should have said "no."

JOHNS: An attending physician at Walter Reed hospital who is not treating the president had this response.

DR. JAMES PHILLIPS, NON-MILITARY ATTENDING PHYSICIAN, WALTER REED: I have a hard time believing that, without undue influence, based on their chain of command, that those physicians would have cleared that. Masks or no masks, being inside a vehicle that is hermetically sealed circulates virus inside and potentially puts people at risk.

JOHNS: The White House saying this event was cleared by Trump's medical team.

JASON MILLER, SENIOR ADVISOR, TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN: I don't think this was a stunt at all. I think this was President Trump showing people that he's very gracious for the hospitality they've shown him.

JOHNS: The president also releasing a video recorded in the hospital, saying he had learned a lot about the virus, more than eight months after the first U.S. cases were reported.

TRUMP: I learned a lot about COVID. I learned it by really going to school. This is the real school. This isn't the "let's read the book" school. And I get it, and I understand it.

JOHNS: Meanwhile, Trump's doctors saying he is receiving an aggressive cocktail of medications, including a five-day treatment of antiviral drug Remdesivir, the steroid Dexamethasone, and an experimental antibody treatment.

But Trump's doctors are evading some direct questions about the president's condition. Trump's physician contradicting overly optimistic statements he made on Saturday, revealing that the president's blood oxygen levels dropped on both Friday and Saturday and that he received supplemental oxygen at the White House on Friday.

Dr. Sean Conley admitting his team had not fully disclosed the president's concerning condition.

DR. SEAN CONLEY, DONALD TRUMP'S PHYSICIAN: I was trying to reflect the -- the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, that his course of illness has had. I didn't want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction. And in doing so, you know, it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn't necessarily true.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[06:05:05]

JOHNS: And what about the presidential campaign? Vice President Pence is back out on the campaign trail today. He's going to hold a rally in Utah. And that appearance will be ignoring CDC guidelines that say if you've been exposed to a person who has COVID, you should self- quarantine for about 14 days.

Alisyn, back to you.

CAMEROTA: Right. I mean, that's what we've all been told for eight months now.

Joe, thank you very much.

Joining us now is Dr. Jonathan Reiner, CNN medical analyst and professor of medicine at George Washington University. John Harwood, CNN White House correspondent. And Margaret Talev, CNN political analyst and politics and White House editor at Axios. Great to see all of you.

Dr. Reiner, we'll get to what happened over the weekend in a moment, but I want to talk about what might happen today. President Trump's doctor said he could be released from the hospital today, but we know that he's on this Remdesivir treatment, and isn't that a five-day protocol, which would mean he has to get it again today and tomorrow, and can that be administered at the White House? Or is that only administered in a hospital?

REINER: Good morning, Alisyn.

It can be administered at the White House. I'm not sure why you would administer it at the White House. The president is likely still infectious, although we don't know that. The -- his team has not disclosed whether they've rechecked whether he remains positive.

So if you think about the environment in which he is staying now, it's a very sophisticated, large suite that occupies almost an entire floor at Walter Reed. Very self-contained with all of the communications and security equipment that the president of the United States would require. So he's in a very safe, monitored environment.

Why would you move him from that right now? Particularly if he remains infectious. You're going to bring him to the White House, and then you're going to have to isolate him in the relatively small residence upstairs.

Leave him there at Walter Reed for now. He can work from Walter Reed. And be monitored and receive the drugs. It makes no sense to move him to the White House, until he's truly recovered and no longer requires isolation. So I have no expectation that they're going to move him today.

BERMAN: We don't know. And if they do, it really doesn't tell us anything about his medical condition, because what we do know, the one thing we now know for certain is that politics is superseding medicine here. There's just no question about it it at this point.

When Dr. Conley lies on Saturday and then gleefully admits to lying on Sunday, you know that politics has taken precedent, John Harwood. And when the president gets in an SUV with Secret Service agents, I don't care if they're wearing masks. I don't care if they're in scuba gear. But when by a guy who is, by all accounts, still infectious, it's clear that politics is more important than medicine.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: John, this has been an episode over several days that encapsulate the dishonesty, the incompetence, the irresponsibility that has characterized the administration's approach to coronavirus from day one.

It is shocking that Dr. Conley made a fool of himself repeatedly over the weekend, giving misleading, evasive, comically evasive answers. Everyone could see that he was evading answers. And then explaining them by saying he didn't want to influence the course of illness.

You have these ridiculous statements from Jason Miller, the campaign strategist, who went on to criticize Joe Biden for using a mask as a prop while his candidate is sick in the hospital with coronavirus.

And then the candidate himself putting in danger his Secret Service detail by going out for no reason at all, other than to wave through the car window at supporters who were out, you know, honking their horns and waving flags there for him. It is just unreal that this is the president of the United States, this is the White House team, this is the Trump campaign behaving in this way.

But it helps explain why the administration response has been so bad. Why we are 4 percent of the world's population and have 20 percent of the world's deaths and cases. It is all right there in front of us right now.

CAMEROTA: And Margaret, President Trump, you heard a little clip of this in our open, now says he's gone to school on coronavirus. So ten months into this, now he says -- I mean, he was sort of implying he's been to the school of hard knocks, because he's gotten it. Now it's real for him. Now he's gone to school on it. And he looks forward to sharing, at some point, what he's learned. Not yesterday. He didn't feel like sharing it. Now he will share it. I don't know what that means for the public when he gets out, what he plans to tell them.

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, Alisyn, I think what the president seems to be previewing is the idea that -- that he wants to get back out there to campaign in some format in the closing weeks and that he will attempt to take what we have all been living through the last several days and turn it into a closing argument for himself. I think that's some pretty high-level politics.

But it's -- this is about him putting a spin on this in terms of his strength or his ability to survive this. And I think anyone who has had coronavirus or lost a loved one to coronavirus knows that the primary lesson is not leave your bedrest before it's safe to do so and go out to give people political assurances.

The deep frustrations inside the White House are truly uncontainable in terms of staff being worried about their own health and their own confusion.

Axios spent the weekend reporting on people's frustrations over the lack of guidance. And our Jonathan Swann went to the White House press office shortly after 8 p.m. last night to ask for their response for a story we're preparing to publish. It was about 15 minutes after that that the White House, the president's side of the White House actually finally released guidance for the first time. The first lady's office, the vice president's office, had released that guidance days ago.

This has been, unfortunately, a matter of keeping people in the dark, both the public in terms of these public presentations and the staff inside the West Wing, keeping many people in the dark in order to be able to try to maintain this narrative of upbeat, you know, mild symptoms, et cetera, in the face of really different information.

BERMAN: Yes. It tells you how much you care about their own employees, that the first email went out last night.

"The Wall Street Journal" is reporting that when a White House employee tested positive last Thursday, the president specifically told that person not to tell anyone.

And Margaret, I know you have some reporting on this also, but CNN is reporting about immense displeasure inside the Secret Service, that they were made to drive in that hermetically-sealed deathmobile with the president last night.

This is a quote here: "A veteran Secret Service agent harshly criticized President Trump's motorcade photo op. 'It's reckless and irresponsible. Unbelievable.' He said he shared a view expressed by a confidant of an agent who told The Washington Post of Trump, 'He's never cared about us.' That is a true statement."

Margaret, Axios has got some reporting on this, too.

TALEV: Well, that's right. I -- I talked to a supervisory agent, a former supervisor in the detail last night, who shared some of these concerns, as well. The concern is there among their agents. It's there among their spouses about them bringing it home and about their own safety.

And there's a -- beyond the health aspect, there's just a real concern about politicization of this. We know that the president's deputy chief of staff is a former top agent in the presidential detail. There are real concerns that the only job, the job of the Secret Service detail, is to protect the president. They don't get to think about protecting themselves.

So if -- you don't -- you don't -- I think if you're an agent, you don't have that split second to think, Is this really a good idea? Like, that's not your job. Your job is to protect the president, and that means driving him, even if he wants to take a drive-by past supporters.

But there are steps in that chain of command where people are supposed to have time to plan, have time to think this through and understand the contingencies. And when that doesn't take place, it's a matter of national security. And that's what a lot of these concerns are about.

CAMEROTA: We have a lot more questions for you guys, so we're going to carry you over to the next block. Thank you very much for your patience.

BERMAN: We're going to talk about the things we have been told. Again, we can't trust them, because the doctors have admitted to lying, but we're going to try to understand the things that we have been told and what they might mean for the president's health moving forward. That's next.

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[06:18:05]

BERMAN: So the White House released a Twitter video of the president speaking to the camera last night, and he looked better. Wouldn't you say he looked better on Sunday than he did on Saturday. But honestly, that's all we have to go on. Because as I keep saying, the president's doctor, the White House doctor admitted to lying to the American people.

Why do I keep saying this? What you're about to see is this doctor, Sean Conley, first on Saturday, telling us that the president did not receive oxygen on Friday. He said, no, he did not receive oxygen Friday or Saturday and then Sunday, he cleaned it up and said, Oh, yes, he did. But listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONLEY: Yesterday and today, he was not on oxygen.

The only oxygen that I ordered or that we provided was that Friday morning, initially.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So he said yesterday and today, he was not on oxygen. Then he said, the only oxygen we gave him was Friday. That was yesterday in that formulation. That's not a rosy picture. That's not trying to put things in a good light. That is a lie.

CAMEROTA: I think he also got oxygen on Saturday.

BERMAN: We don't know. He said he didn't know. And the Saturday thing, his oxygen level dropped. And then he was asked, did he get oxygen. He was like, I don't know. You'll have to ask the nurses.

Because apparently the White House doctor doesn't know if the president received oxygen on Saturday.

CAMEROTA: Well, we're in good hands.

BERMAN: So back with us, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, John Harwood and Margaret Talev.

So Dr. Reiner, the reason I wanted to establish that is at this point, really, we just can't trust. We can't trust what the doctors are telling us, but we try to -- we have to try to piece together the president's condition based on, you know, what they may be telling us the truth on.

One of them, after first, you know, refusing to tell us whether he was on steroids on Friday, yesterday they finally admitted they gave him Dexamethasone. So what does that tell us in and of itself? Because it has been shown to be very helpful for certain patients, but the WHO and NIH also say, it should only be given to patients with severe breathing problems because of potential side effects.

[06:20:02]

REINER: Right. Well, let me just say something quickly about -- about Sean and the briefings. He's broken the cardinal rule of being a physician and briefing the public on a public official, which is, you must tell the truth and the entire truth. Physicians are truth tellers. And once you breach that, you have no credibility.

And now you're seeing the outcome of that. As for the Dexamethasone, yes, the recovery trial, which was a large U.K.-based trial, looked at hospitalized, sick hospitalized patients with COVID-19. And patients who were either receiving supplemental oxygen or who were intubated did derive a benefit in terms of a reduction in mortality when they received Dexamethasone for up to ten days.

But I want you to know, these are sick patients. And even the best arm in the recovery trial, the dexamethasone arm, the mortality out of 28 days was 23 percent.

So if the president was truly sick enough to receive Dexamethasone, and that's what it suggests, then it really shows you the magnitude of -- of his risk.

And, you know, Dr. Conley also sort of slipped a little bit and disclosed that it sounds like the president has either X-ray or CT evidence of pneumonia, which is almost certainly why they added the Dexamethasone to his regimen.

CAMEROTA: Dr. Reiner, I have one more medical question for you. Is there anything we can glean as regular people from this one-man clinical trial that President Trump appears to be in at the moment?

Because the rest of us have been told for ten months, you do not go to the hospital until you can't breathe. In fact, the hospital, the emergency room, they're going to turn you away. So you wait until the last minute, OK, until you go to the hospital; and 209,000 Americans are dead. What President Trump did -- of course, he's the president -- was

different. He went to the hospital right away, and he got this trifecta of Remdesivir and Dexamethasone and the monoclonal antibody treatment.

So can we take anything from that? Should we go to the hospital sooner? Can the rest of us get that combo of drugs?

REINER: Well, the answer is no. Because no one on the planet has ever received this triple regimen of monoclonal antibodies, Remdesivir, and Dexamethasone. I don't think it's been given to a single patient on the planet. So this speaks to the urgency of the situation.

So either the president was desperately ill at the end of the week, or his physicians panicked, or the patient was panicking. There's no other explanation. Either he -- they felt he was on death's door or there was just a loss of control in the White House.

There's one other thing I want to say about that. We must know when the president was last tested negative. And this has become a tightly- guarded secret in the White House.

The reason that's important is that, if he truly was negative multiple days during the week -- I mean, he should have been tested the day of the debate. They say he's tested every day. That's why he doesn't wear a mask. When we know that date, we'll know what his risk is. Because if he was -- if he was truly negative on Wednesday, then he hasn't reached his peak risk yet. That we tend to see that seven to ten days after someone turns positive.

But, if he indeed could have been positive for several days, then he actually may be on the road to recovery now. The worst might be over. We need to know that. That also speaks to his -- the risk to the vice president on Tuesday.

BERMAN: There's also a serious political reason why I think they're not telling us when his last negative test was. And I think if it painted things in a good light, they would tell us. I think we have to assume that's why they're not telling us.

There was this event at the White House last Saturday for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, where so many people have now become infected. Was the president tested after that? Did he receive a negative test on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday?

I don't know, because they won't tell us. If the answer is no, he wasn't tested, that means the president, with no testing after that event, John Harwood, did debate prep. Chris Christie is now in the hospital. He went to the debate, stood on stage with Joe Biden, who is now being tested every day.

He went to Minnesota on Air Force One. Michael Scherer, who we're going to have later on the show, flew on that trip. He has now tested positive. Actually, that was on Saturday that he flew. And then also onto New Jersey. So it's possible that the president wasn't tested at all and that the White House has been lying about testing, including lying to the debate commission.

HARWOOD: Exactly. And, you know, the big event on Saturday, the colossal event on Tuesday night, when he was onstage with Joe Biden, the other man who could become president after this election.

Think about the wreckage that Donald Trump has left in his wake. So many people close to him now having been diagnosed positive after close interactions with a president who recklessly has defied public health guidance.

[06:25:18]

And you know, John, you were talking about, with Dr. Reiner, about Sean Conley and how dishonest Sean Conley has been. Let's don't forget, this flows from the top. The president of the United States is a deeply dishonest person.

In fact, the American people have known this throughout his presidency. Pollsters have asked from the beginning of the Trump administration, Do you think the president is honest or not? A majority of Americans have said he is dishonest from the beginning.

But those numbers have gone up this summer. You had a finding from Quinnipiac: 66 percent of the American people said they thought the president's dishonest. And "The Washington Post"/ABC poll, 64 percent of the American people say they don't believe what the president says about coronavirus.

This is now playing out in real time with staggering consequences for him personally and for the people closest to him.

CAMEROTA: Margaret, what should we be focused on today? What are you looking at?

TALEV: Well, the big question that everybody will be watching today, of course, is whether or not they decide, in fact, to release the president and to return him to the White House. What that looks like in terms of his care and what kind of messaging we will see follow.

I think there is also a real fallout in the White House in terms of what to watch. And we're watching to see which other senators or people who have come in contact with any of the people who were in contact with the people there in the Rose Garden or anywhere down this chain of command, how many additional positive diagnoses that we see.

And there is one other issue that Dr. Reiner can probably talk to better than I can, but this also goes to that timeline question, and understanding the president's real path to recovery. And that is that they're -- we don't know yet what his recovery will be like. Will he bounce back quickly?

Will he fall into this category of long haulers, who we have heard about? Chris Cuomo, your Chris Cuomo, our Chris Cuomo on CNN talks about this a lot. The after-effects. There can be physical after- effects, cognitive after-effects that can last "X" period of time. How will that impact the president's ability both to campaign, but of course, also to govern in the weeks or months ahead?

CAMEROTA: Such important questions. Margaret, John, Dr. Reiner, thank you all very much.

And the White House coronavirus outbreak extending to Capitol Hill. Three Republican senators also testing positive. What does this mean for the fight over the Supreme Court nominee?

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