A Former Coronavirus Task Force Member Speaks
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 October 2020
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Olivia Troy says if you work in the White House, you've got a choice to make. You can wear |
| 0:10.0 | a mask and try to avoid the coronavirus or ditch the mask and fit in. |
| 0:16.4 | In the West Wing, mask wearing was rare. How did you deal with that? Like, did you wear |
| 0:21.8 | a mask sometimes and not others? |
| 0:23.9 | Correct. Unfortunately, I mean, at times I would have a mask if I didn't know who I was |
| 0:27.5 | meeting with. But if I was in the West Wing and with the Vice President outside the office |
| 0:32.4 | or meeting with the staff, it was uncomfortable. |
| 0:35.2 | Olivia worked with the Vice President until August. She was part of the coronavirus task force, |
| 0:40.3 | which is why masks were important to her. You've probably heard her name. |
| 0:44.7 | Since leaving her job, she has been talking to journalists and recording TV ads. |
| 0:49.3 | Olivia's got one goal, getting Trump voted out of office. When she talks about the weeks before |
| 0:56.2 | she left government service, you can hear her frustration that she was working at what arguably |
| 1:02.2 | should have been the safest workplace in America. And yet, she felt remarkably unsafe. |
| 1:08.0 | We finally got temperature checks at the gate. And then there was a reversal on the temperature |
| 1:13.6 | checks when advanced team members and people on the road, when they started going on the road again, |
| 1:20.0 | were testing positive. Suddenly, those temperature checks went away. |
| 1:26.6 | And I thought to myself, we are putting everyone repeatedly at risk. |
| 1:37.2 | To hear Olivia tell it, working at the White House didn't mean you were protected from the virus. |
| 1:42.1 | It meant you were constantly dodging it. And the one day, it found you. |
| 1:47.5 | Back in May, Olivia says she was meeting with Katie Miller, the Vice President's press secretary, |
| 1:52.9 | when Katie coughed. I was around her. I mean, we're talking one foot away, two feet away. |
| 1:59.5 | And what do you do in that circumstance? Like someone coughs, you're worried about COVID. |
... |
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