Slate Plus Special: The President Has COVID
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 2 October 2020
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this special episode of Slate's Political Gabfest, Emily, John and David talk about President Trump's coronavirus diagnosis and what happens next.
Here are some references from the show:
Matt Stevens for the New York Times: “Kristin Urquiza, a Debate Attendee Whose Father Died of the Virus, Says Trump Showed ‘No Regard For Human Life.’
You can tweet suggestions, links, and questions to @SlateGabfest. Tweet us your cocktail chatter using #cocktailchatter. (Messages may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
The email address for the Political Gabfest is gabfest@slate.com. (Email may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Podcast production by Jocelyn Frank.
Research and show notes by Bridgette Dunlap.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for October 2nd, 2020. Yes, you heard that right. |
| 0:13.2 | It's the president has COVID edition. I'm David Plotz. I'm in Washington, D.C. We're doing a special |
| 0:19.8 | Slate Plus edition about the extraordinary, |
| 0:23.4 | just extraordinary news that came out late last night. I'm joined, of course, from New York City |
| 0:30.0 | by John Dickerson, who's in a punchy, punchy mood. Hello, John Dickerson of CBS News. |
| 0:36.7 | We just put a red bandana on his face for all of our listeners out there. Good morning, David. |
| 0:42.9 | It's been a long morning already, being awakened in the middle of the night and doing morning |
| 0:47.6 | television. But it's good to be with you guys. He's a bandit, I guess. That is Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine and University Law School. She's in New Haven. How do they wake you? Do you have a special alert on your phone that they can wake you? No, no. They just keep calling until I wake up. If someone called me at 2.30 a.m. I would not wake up. Let's get started. So the news came late last night, |
| 1:13.8 | if you're John Dickerson or early this morning for the rest of us, of course, that the president |
| 1:17.4 | and the first lady have been infected with the coronavirus. They have tested positive. |
| 1:23.6 | And they also came the news earlier that Hope Hicks, who was a close presidential aid, had tested positive for the virus. |
| 1:32.9 | And so there was already some alert, apparently, within the White House that this might happen. |
| 1:38.1 | So, John, just orient us for a minute. |
| 1:41.3 | When did the president contested? |
| 1:43.5 | When did they find out that he was |
| 1:46.6 | positive? And what is happening right now? So he was tested on Thursday. Hope Hicks, as you said, |
| 1:54.7 | we knew on Thursday earlier that she had it. The president was tested on Thursday. |
| 2:01.3 | The results came in at some point on Thursday. |
| 2:03.1 | He tweeted about it at, I believe, 1 o'clock in the morning on Friday morning, 1 a.m. |
| 2:08.5 | That he and Melania had it. |
| 2:10.1 | The vice president on Friday was news was released that he and Karen Pence had not tested positive, but as John LePook, Dr. John Lepook on |
| 2:21.1 | CBS pointed out, you know, one of the interesting questions here is, did Hope Hicks give it to the |
... |
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