No Clear Picture Of President's Health As Questions Loom After Medical Team Briefing; President's Illness Causing Ripple Effects on Both Campaigns
COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Now Fred, yesterday college football fans were seen in stands all across the country, up to 20,000 fans were in attendance for the number 4 Georgia Bulldogs win over number 7 Auburn in Athens, Georgia. They were required to wear masks while entering the stadium and within concourse areas, but they could remove them once they got to their seats, according to the school. And there were nearly 8,000 fans in Dallas, Fred where SMU, Kansas police were forced to clear out the student section in the middle of their upset win over number 25 Memphis. The school telling CNN that the students repeatedly ignored requests to wear masks and maintain social distance. Fred, we've seen sports open back up in stages from sports without no fans to sports with some fans. And now we're seeing more fans, loud and rowdy. Some of the visuals from games yesterday gave the perception that there's not even a pandemic happening anymore, Fred.</s>FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: I was going to say, those pictures look like the word is not out, there's a pandemic, there's this thing called COVID-19, and it's killing people. All right. Coy Wire, thank you so much. Hello again, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. We begin this hour with an attempt at clean up on the messaging of the president's condition in his battle with COVID-19. Today, yet another briefing from his medical team igniting more questions and confusion, few were answers. The president's doctors maintain President Trump is doing well, but his medical team is now admitting that he has experienced two episode of low oxygen that required an oxygen supplement and a steroid. This after doctors sidestepped questions about the president's oxygen problems on Saturday. They also say the president has received a second dose of Remdesivir, a five-day treatment that was just approved for emergency use in May. And despite the president's troubling symptoms, his doctors say he could be back at the White House as soon as tomorrow.</s>DR. SEAN CONLEY, WHITE HOUSE PHYSICIAN: Today he feels well. He's been up and around. Our plan for today is to have him to eat and drink, be up out of bed as much as possible, to be mobile. And if he continues to look and feel as well as he does today, our hope is that we can plan for a discharge as early tomorrow, to the White House where he can continue his treatment course.</s>WHITFIELD: All right. With the growing contradictions and mysteries on the President's health, there are now major questions about the credibility of the story that we're being told about the president by his staff as well as that of the medical team. We have a team of correspondents covering these developments. Boris Sanchez is at the White House. Let's begin with Jeremy Diamond at Walter Reed Medical Center. And Jeremy we hear a lot of activity outside, because there are a lot of supporters that continue to, you know, show up there outside Walter Reed. But tell us more about this medical team that was trying to set the record straight, only to throw in more confusion.</s>JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you know, this has really just not been a model of transparency in terms of what we have been hearing from the White House as well as from the president's medical team, which is being led by the president's White House physician Dr. Sean Conley. Dr. Conley yesterday, you know, he danced around this question of whether or not the president had received supplemental oxygen at any point. And after it was widely reported yesterday by many outlets including CNN that the president had indeed received supplemental oxygen on Friday before arriving here at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Dr. Conley today finally coming forth and saying that yes indeed the president received supplemental oxygen on Friday. He shared some more information about the president's condition, making clear that the president's fever was very high on Friday before he left for Walter Reed, that he received supplemental oxygen because his oxygen levels dipped below 94 percent, and that it happened not only on Friday, but also yesterday at some point, though he could not say for some reason whether the president had once again received supplemental oxygen. But there is this over all question and he was asked directly, you know, who we were to believe? We know that the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows yesterday offered some contradictory information after that rosy picture from the medical team, saying that the president's condition was very serious and that there was no clear path yet to a full recovery. Listen to Dr. Conley address the fact that he was so optimistic in his assessments just yesterday.</s>DR. CONLEY: So I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, his course of illness has had. I didn't want to give any information that might be steer the course of illness in another direction. And in doing so, you know, came off that we were trying to hide something. That wasn't necessarily true, and so here you have it. He is -- the fact of the matter is that he is doing really well. Now he is --</s>DIAMOND: And so you hear there Dr. Conley essentially admitting to the fact he was hiding information yesterday about the president's health, couching it in this notion of an upbeat attitude as if that would have some kind of impact on whether or not the president gets better or not. It doesn't but it does have an impact on the confidence of the American people in terms of what they're hearing from these doctors and from this medical team. And so it's clear, Fredricka, that there are still a lot of questions even though they provide some more details, many questions remain. They refused to say exactly what was going on with the president's lungs and the lung scans that he received and learning the fact today that he is on this new steroid dexamethasone indicates that there are some serious concerns about the president's prognosis and it is an indication that the president's condition may have worsened over the last 24 hours or so, Fred.</s>WHITFIELD: Ok. Jeremy, thanks. Boris, you're at the White House now. The White House chief of staff has, you know, been giving statements that contradicted what the medical team, you know, had said earlier in the day. And that mixed messaging, you know, is not going over well with the president and that, you know, clearly the president wants a message that he's strong, that he's well, that you know, no one should be concerned at all about his condition. But tell us more about, you know, this struggle of messaging involving his own people.</s>BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: A struggle it certainly is, Fred because you're getting these contradictory messages that Jeremy just laid out from the White House medical just yesterday, struggling to answer basic questions. And then today clarifying that they were not completely transparent with the messages that they sent just yesterday. The president apparently furious though, not at his medical team, at Mark Meadows, the chief of staff for giving comments about the president's health that revealed the level of concern, and saying that the next few days are going to be crucial in ensuring that President Trump recovers from COVID 19. Obviously we didn't hear that today from the president's doctors who suggesting he may be leaving Walter Reed Medical Center tomorrow. Apparently the president believes that Meadows is hurting the credibility of his medical team even though they have contradicted themselves and struggled as I just noted, to answer basic questions. We should note a source also telling CNN that the president met with Dr. Conley before yesterday's briefing. We're still working to confirm if they met before today's briefing. But the source made clear that the doctors would not reveal any information that President Trump himself didn't approve of, Fred.</s>WHITFIELD: All right. Boris Sanchez, thank you so much, at the White House. Appreciate them. All right. So much to discuss now. Dr. Matthew Heinz is a hospitalist and internist with Tucson Medical Center. Julian Zelizer is a historian and professor at Princeton University and a CNN political analyst. And Astead Herndon is a national politics reporter with "The New York Times" also a CNN political analyst. Good to see all of you, gentlemen. So Dr. Heinz, you first. I want you to listen to a little bit more from the president's team of doctors.</s>DR. CONLEY: I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, 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, came off as if we were trying to hide something, which wasn't necessarily true. So he is -- the fact of the matter is that he is doing really well. That he is responding, and as the team said, if everything continues to go well, we're going to start discharge and back to the White House.</s>WHITFIELD: So Dr. Heinz, your thoughts about that. Is that the role of the president's, you know, physician to try to spin a message that everything is going great even at the risk of people feeling like you're hiding something?</s>DR. MATTHEW HEINZ, HOSPITALIST AND INTERNIST, TUCSON MEDICAL CENTER: No, absolutely not. And I'm sure that these are excellent physicians, but when called upon to do, I guess, public relations or political spin like this, they're going to fail, because they're not really good at it. And they shouldn't be, because political spin often involves lying and withholding truths about what's going on with our president which the American people must be told, it's not very confidence- inspiring. And you can't apologize for withholding information from yesterday's briefing by then walking away from the microphone when asked a very simple question about are there pulmonary findings on the radiographic studies, on his CT scans. This is very -- it's not confidence inspiring and it's just not what the people deserve.</s>WHITFIELD: Confidence-inspiring, I mean isn't that perhaps the objective that this doctor wanted to have especially in saying hey, as early as tomorrow the president could be discharged.</s>DR. HEINZ: I think that's what they're trying to reflect but low look when you look at the list of things going on -- low blood oxygen, high fevers, feeling short of breath, hospitalization, experimental antibody treatment that I can't get for my patients, initiation of Remdesivir therapy, and then now dexamethasone therapy, which has been studied really only in seriously and more critically ill patients.</s>DR. HEINZ: That paints a little bit of a different picture as compared to what we're hearing from the gentleman at the microphone and it's really distressing.</s>WHITFIELD: Julian, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll from Friday and Saturday finding that 72 percent are Trump has not taken the risk of contracting coronavirus seriously enough. And the same share 72 percent saying he did not take the appropriate precautions when it came to his own personal health. I mean this is not the first time that the president, you know, hasn't, you know, handled news of illness, you know, in public well. But with a month, you know, to the close of election day, you know, since people have already started their early voting, what does this tell you about the trust in the president in the handling of coronavirus and his responsibility with truth?</s>JULIAN ZELIZER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think for many Americans, trust is incredibly low and there is a credibility gap that statements like we just heard from the doctor only compound. And I think it's more than what does the president's team do when the president is ill, or how did the president handle his own inner circle with the pandemic, it relates to the bigger question of pandemic policy. And due to personal failures and personal resistance to basic measures reflect in the administration, it hasn't taken this seriously enough at the national level and that is very damaging.</s>WHITFIELD: Astead, again information from this new polling. There's a 50/50 split over whether Trump, you know, will or will not be able to effectively handle his duties as president if there's a military or national security crisis. You've heard some of the analysts who say right now, this is a national security crisis, this pandemic, and that the president is being hospitalized?</s>ASTEAD HERNDON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I think what that public opinion represents is the kind of political challenges that this has presented. There are obviously the personal health concerns and that is kind of one question here. Another question is does this incident reflect a White House and administration that has not taken the coronavirus seriously and that Americans have previously said they did not believe that their response to the pandemic as adequate and organized. If this incident reinspires those feelings of most of the public about the White House's larger response to the pandemic or maybe some feeling that things that were good enough for the President are not good enough measures for those to be taken for the American people. I think that that creates some separate political challenges for this White House. This public opinion poll that you're talking about speaks to an immediate crisis. There is -- we don't know if that's going to come. We should not speculate that that is going to come, but what we do know is that as election day, the formal election day, gets closer and closer, Americans will be rendering their verdict on an administration that it was already wrapped up in the coronavirus response, and this has just focused more attention to that.</s>WHITFIELD: And then Julian, you know, this president's predecessor, not all of them have been honest about their medical conditions or hospitalizations, et cetera but why is this difference?</s>ZELIZER: Well, just because in the past presidents like Woodrow Wilson or FDR hid illnesses or had their illnesses hidden doesn't mean that's what we expect today. We're in a current age where much greater transparency is expected. And so I think that's the biggest difference. We're actually in the election already, even though it's not election day. People are voting. And finally we are in a crisis, the pandemic is a crisis equal to any war we've been in. And so we have as citizens a right to know what's the status of the president who is the leader, the commander-in-chief in a public health battle as well. So I think all of that makes it different, and is why many people want straight answers and honesty.</s>WHITFIELD: And Dr. Heinz, you know, how important is it to know when the president's last negative coronavirus test was? Because the president has been boasting for a very long time, you know, I get tested every day, but for the second day in a row, when that question has been asked of his doctors about well, when was the last negative test, I mean it's important to know, is it not?</s>DR. HEINZ: Well, it sure is. And remember that these tests are imperfect. They can have anywhere from a 20 percent to 25 percent chance being falsely negative, but it sounds to me like they are not going to reveal that information for fear that that will when applied to the timeline make it clear that the president or his team I mean knowingly endangered not only his donors and supporters at an event and the staff in the White House and the West Wing and countless others. And that kind of reckless endangerment is exactly what we see leads to these super spreader events.</s>WHITFIELD: All right. Dr. Matthew Heinz, thank you so much. Julian and Astead, stand by and I'm going to talk to you again after this short break. Still ahead, conflict of interest? The president's physicians double as military commanders under the president's direct command. So is following orders contributing to this lack of transparency on President Trump's health. Plus swift U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings under threat as multiple senators are also now diagnosed with COVID-19. Now, the top Democrat in the Senate is calling for a delay.