Hi, this is Josh Marshall, and this is the Josh Marshall Podcast.

This is a special sort of emergency edition of the Josh Marshall podcast.

It is a minute at a couple minutes after 9.30

on Friday morning on the East Coast.

We have all learned either late last night

or this morning that President Trump and the first lady

both have tested positive for COVID. They either got it from Hope Hicks or gave it to Hope Hicks or what I think is actually most likely is there's some other person in the you know in the inner circle or something like that who gave it to both of them.

But obviously the relevant issue here is the President of the United States has a potentially

deadly illness.

He was in relatively close proximity to Joe Biden just two days ago.

So we are really in a crisis situation.

So we are going to give you some quick updates and get back to covering the news.

So I'm here with my co-host Kate Riga and just two of us this morning, Kate, what are we, what's going on here?

You know, it might be callous, but you know, as soon as I heard the news, I kind of immediately started thinking, what does this mean for the race?

And the kind of inescapable fact of this is, I think it does multiple things the first is which highlights

Trump's age and his you know unhealthiness the fact that he's overweight is also

a contributing factor.

The second thing is, I just, I don't see this as the kind of,

you know, sometimes a tragedy will happen

and a politician will get this big

uprising of sympathy even from people who usually wouldn't support him.

And that is not what this is to me because it's so self-inflicted.

...