 The story that gripped the world this weekend was Donald Trump being hospitalized with the virus. He's spent so many months down playing and so seeking news on Trump's health on Saturday. The press were introduced to Dr. Sean Conley and we are, we are assured, sorry, that this guy is a real medical doctor. But he did seem just as shifty as the rest of the president's entourage. And any sign of damage, sir? I'm not going to go into specifics of what the findings of any of those. Can you tell me one thing? Has he ever been on supplemental oxygen? He, right now, he is not on oxygen. I know you keep saying right now, but should we read into the fact that he had been previously? Yesterday and today, he was not on oxygen. So he has not been on it during this, his COVID treatment. He's not on oxygen right now. Has he been on oxygen? He's not on oxygen right now. The doctor, the doctor was not convincing then. In a very Trumpian way, I suppose. Anyway, the next day, he realized, I think, that that was an unconvincing answer. So he tried to, you know, cover his tracks. I was trying to reflect the, the, the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, that his course of illness has had, didn't want to give any, you know, 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. And so here I have it. He's, he is, the, the fact of the matter is, is that he's doing really well. That he is, he is responding. And as the team said, if everything continues to go well, we're going to start discharge planning back to the White House. Such a short clip, actually. Coronavirus doesn't know when you think it's winning. It's not like, oh, lads, we're in the final home straight. Here, let's go. Yeah, I mean, we are, he is a medical doctor. I mean, he must have passed some exams. But yeah, you can't steer the illness in a different direction by saying information about how the virus is, is developing. It can't hear you. My favorite bit from that, though, was it made it seem like we were trying to hide something, which wasn't necessarily the case. It wasn't, it could have not been the case. It was, but it wasn't necessarily. It just, it just happened to be. That's what I mean. That's the thing that I say when I know I've been a real shit. Like, I wasn't necessarily trying to hurt your feelings. I was code for, bitch, I want him to make you cry. Exactly. Anyway, if Trump fans weren't convinced by the doctors, I mean, to be honest, they probably were. But anyway, Donald Trump sort of gave some more physical proof by appearing in a video himself. This was his own Twitter video. We're getting great reports from the doctors. This is an incredible hospital, Walter Reed. The work they do is just absolutely amazing. And I want to thank them all, the nurses, the doctors, everybody here. I've also gotten to meet some of the soldiers and the first responders and water group. I also think we're going to pay a little surprise to some of the great patriots that we have out on the street. And they've been out there for a long time and they've got Trump flags and they love our country. So I'm not telling anybody but you, but I'm about to make a little surprise visit. So perhaps I'll get there before you get to see me. But I just, when I look at the enthusiasm and we have enthusiasm like probably nobody's ever had are people that love the job we're doing. We have more enthusiasm than maybe anybody. So it's been a very interesting journey. 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. And it's a very interesting thing. I'm going to be letting you know about it. In the meantime, we love the USA and we love what's happening. Thank you. The conclusion from that video is clearly America will be much better off if he got COVID earlier, right? Because he's saying I learned things that I wouldn't have learned in the reader in the book school. But still his phrasing was so weird. It was, I learned a lot, fantastic experience. It was really interesting. It's like he was like, oh well, you know what was really interesting? I went to the Valley of the Kings and I learned loads about ancient Egyptian burial practices. It wasn't someone, the tone of Boris Johnson's thing was missing. Boris Johnson, I think, and this is probably on the advice of people in Downing Street. It was, I've gone through this, I know how serious it is. And it was about lending him a sense of credibility and gravitas having fucked up so spectacularly in the early weeks of the pandemic. Take it on the chin. I've shook hands with everybody and that kind of thing. It was almost like a repentant sinner. You know, it was after the punishment. Whereas, you know, Trump's idea is like, well, you know, it took the scenic route around COVID, beautiful people. I learned about it, but actually kind of cool. In the books, it sounded kind of boring. Never really saw it. Why did I have to think about it? It seems kind of cool. Yeah, it's a really weird time. Anyway, you're probably watching this thinking, what was the surprise? What was the surprise? We can take a look at the surprise. It was a tour outside the hospital in a secret service, SUV. There were lots of people, you know, chanting their support for Donald Trump and he waves out the window. I think you're going to see him in one of these windows soon. They're darkened windows, but is he going to appear there? Yeah, there you see. He looks well. I think he looks healthier with coronavirus. Well, I think that he's got a lot less of that pancake makeup on. So it's something approaching his natural skin colour. He looks more human now. A little bit. That was controversial though. So that tour in the SUV, I mean, you can probably work out why it was controversial because the guy's got coronavirus. He's got coronavirus. He was not self-isolating because they were members of the security service in the front two seats. It was obviously an unnecessary trip. And this did not go unnoticed by Dr. Phillips, who is a doctor at that hospital that Donald Trump was staying at. Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary presidential drive by just now has to be quarantined for 14 days. They might get sick. They may die for political theatre. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for political theatre. This is insanity. So people are saying about this trip because it's not just any old car or it's completely sealed because of some sort of security reasons. So this is the beast. This is the beast. This was the Obama commissioned armoured car which has got bulletproof everything. Could survive a chemical attack. You know, it could drop out of the sky. But if the chemical weapon's inside, then it becomes counterproductive to have a big seal on the vehicle. Yeah, but I imagine you could roll down the window if you chose to. No, but I mean the chemical weapon is Trump in the back, right? Oh, he's got coronavirus breathing in. Biological weapon. Biological weapon. All right, let's move on. We are going to talk about still on Trump because this is the sort of levels of his irresponsibility became very pronounced this weekend when people tried to ascertain where Trump got it. And it's pretty clear that there was a super spreader event at the White House which was hosted by Donald Trump. It was the nomination ceremony of Amy Coney Barrett which I think we can see some images from. So it was outside but you can see all the guests sat very close together from the hair color. You can see that some of them are in the high-risk category. This is him introducing his super right-wing nominee to sit on the Supreme Court. At the end you'll see people sort of hugging and kissing. It does not look very COVID secure. USA Today also reported that there were a series of smaller indoor gatherings as part of the occasion. And I mean, there's no doubt this was a super spreader event because we can see how many people who were there got coronavirus. So you've got Donald and Melania Trump, obviously. Former White House advisor, Kellyanne Conway was there. She's now COVID positive, former New Jersey governor, Chris Christie. So GOP Republican senators, Mike Lee of Utah and Tom Tillis of North Carolina and the president of Notre Dame University. So the nominee Amy Coney Barrett is a professor or was a professor at Notre Dame. This video in particular from that event has gone viral. This is Senator Mike Lee. So he has now tested positive for the coronavirus. So he hasn't got a mark, it's gone. He's hugging, kissing. That is a guy who is spreading coronavirus. Although of course we don't know if he was infectious at that point, Chris Christie there also tested positive. And that's not all. Today we learned that Trump's press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany has also tested positive. And the set of people who this is really pissed off, I was listening to the PM show on radio four on my way here, is the journalist class. Because basically this woman, Kayleigh McEnany, the press secretary should have been self isolating days ago, right? So her whole team has come down with coronavirus. If you're boss who you've been spending a lot of time with, Hope Hicks is another person who had coronavirus, she's been spending loads of time with. She has been surrounded by people with coronavirus. And that means she should be self isolating. Instead what she's been doing is giving all of these press conferences, often at very close quarters with the journalists in question with the White House correspondents, not wearing a face mask, no speaking at them, spitting. I don't know if she's spits, but anyway. But the journalists are already pissed off now because now she's tested positive for coronavirus and now probably quite a lot of them have it. So the American correspondent on radio four was like, he seemed really pissed off. He was like, now I've got to go and get a test. You know, like they could tolerate Donald Trump when he was locking up migrant children and separating them from their parents. They could tolerate Donald Trump when he was forced to direct to me, backing white supremacists on the street. But now he's fucking giving us coronavirus and it's all really hit home. It's got serious now. I mean, I think that was, I don't think it was quite as bad, but a similar thing happened in this country in March. Cause what was really striking is that coronavirus just tore through Westminster and it tore through the lobby and it tore through number 10 Downing Street. And there was this thing of, you know, the same journalist who'd been like, oh, look at Iran. Look at Italy. These countries are complete basket cases were like, oh no. But you know, connection to them being at the centre of power and also at the epicentre of one of the London outbreaks. You shouldn't laugh. A little bit of a shadow for it. There was a tiny bit of a shadow for it. The thing that really annoys me about this, you know, kind of the phrase virtue signalling is overused, but pretending that you've got a sympathy for Donald Trump and you really don't is the epitome of virtue signalling. You're doing it for this imagined audience of conservatives who you hope will recognise your civility and return the favour. The fact is, is they're not gonna. So I think that the better thing to do is just be honest about how you feel. And I think when it comes to Donald Trump, he's someone who has so consistently used his wealth and his power to hurt people who don't have that kind of money and power. Even before he entered politics, when he was just a regular, a regular, obnoxious rich man, taking out full page ads and newspapers to call for the executions of the Central Park Five. When asked to backtrack on that, when he was president, you know, basically inferred that they could still be guilty even though they were fully exonerated. So for me it's a question of what did you do with power when you had it? Well, you've been a complete bastard. And then the second thing is the celebrations of the death of Bin Laden was really a bipartisan thing. Because I remember when it happened, watching the Daily Show with John Stuart, who really is just, you know, the poor man's Michael Walker. Yeah, I mean, all he's got is budget and a shiny floor. But when you get a shiny floor, game over for the Daily Show. I want a shiny floor and a matte forehead, that's all I've ever wanted in broadcasting. But I remember watching the Daily Show and I remember, you know, liberal icon John Stuart going like, we got him, boom! And all of this about Bin Laden. And I can really see why he worked. You're a New Yorker, 9-11 hit really close to home. You celebrated that man's death. More recently had the, you know, the assassination of Silomani. People celebrated that as a death. Donald Trump has been responsible for more American deaths than Silomani and Osama Bin Laden put together in terms of his mismanagement of the pandemic. You know, 200,000 Americans have died of coronavirus, which is 40 times more of the number of people who were killed in the war in Afghanistan and 9-11 put together. I think- The American side. The American side, very sorry. More Americans that died in either event. I think it's fair enough to be completely indifferent to his recovery. I am completely indifferent to his recovery. I don't actively want him to die because that would burn precious calories. I can't be asked. I'm just indifferent to it. It is very much, it's about policing the boundaries of who you are allowed to, you know, be angry. It's kind of a patriotism thing, isn't it? Because it's sort of to say, you are supposed to celebrate when foreign, when, you know, your enemies die, but they're not really, when the country's enemies die, but you have to mourn anyone who dies, who was a leader of this country, however much you disagree with them, to sort of say, are you one of us or are you one of them? If they killed lots of brown people, then you should probably still mourn their death. If they killed some white people, then you should celebrate their death, which is basically how it works. We don't have data on whether or not Americans would celebrate if Donald Trump doesn't get better. We do have data though on whether or not they blame Trump for the White House outbreak. So Reuters had a very interesting poll over the weekend which found that 65% of Americans, including nine in 10 registered Democrats and five in 10 registered Republicans agreed that if President Trump had taken coronavirus more seriously, he probably would not have been infected. And this seems, you know, probably the sort of political consequences or the political implications of Trump getting coronavirus can be sort of overplayed as people sort of get caught up in the hype of all of this. But I think the fact that people are noticing that the White House has become a super spreader event, a super spreader place and that it's Donald Trump's fault that can't be good for his electoral chances. I mean, it really undermines his credibility. The question for Trump is how close will Biden's win be? November, because if it's close, it can go to the Supreme Court. He's packed up with his allies. So, you know, we'll see what happens. He's sort of laying the groundwork for a mistrust in the traditional electoral process. But if it's not close, he's kind of fucked. I don't know if you've been as struck by the surrealness of it as I have, but just watching the news and when the news broke, I just sort of sat down and I was about like, you know, as a bit of a David Lynch film, just weird shit was gonna happen. I mean, when Boris Johnson went to ICU, it was kind of a big deal, because then it was sort of like, whoa. I suppose the moment when Trump went into hospital, it was sort of like, whoa, because if he died, that would obviously be, wow. But it seems more like it's gonna be a sort of hiccup in the presidential campaign and one of the candidates dying. We've also got an end of show update on Trump. He will be leaving the Great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6.30 PM. Let's get up the tweet, actually. He's feeling really good. Dude, oh my God. This is so bad. No. Don't be afraid of COVID. No. Don't let it dominate your life. We have developed under the Trump administration some really great drug as a knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago. No. Oh, God. I've never seen someone so committed to killing his electoral base, not in a metaphorical sense, but a very literal sense. Literally, the president. I feel better than I did 20 years ago after getting coronavirus. Don't fear it. That's, wow. Okay, let's look at another Donald Trump. It is reported that the media is upset because I got into a secure vehicle to say thank you to the many fans and supporters who were standing outside of the hospital for many hours and even days to pay their respect to their president. If I didn't do it, media would say, rude. I'm not sure they would have done. You know that meme of Kim Kardashian smacking her sister with a handbag, like don't be fucking rude. Like why didn't you give your secret service agents? Wow, I can't believe that first tweet. I didn't imagine that he would literally be encouraging everyone to get coronavirus. Don't let it dominate your life. It takes off 20 years. Wow, amazing. Oh my God. That's because he wants more people at his next rally, I suppose. And maybe actually he wants an excuse to not self-isolate for the next 10 days because there is an issue for his campaign, which is even if he doesn't deteriorate. And also people can deteriorate after the six to eight day period. It's often in that second phase that you can sort of dip and deteriorate quite severely in a short space of time. But I suppose what he's gonna be worried about is I'm gonna be told to self-isolate for 10 days now and I wanna be out campaigning trying to catch up with Joe Biden. But is the long game here and by long game? I mean, we'll see another tweet in half an hour saying I don't need to self-isolate because I've realized coronavirus isn't that big a problem anyway. I mean, is that where this is going? I mean, maybe possibly, I just fucking idiocy. I just don't wanna sound like a liberal because Trump is a symptom of a system that's been sick for a really long time, right? But to see one man so committed to idiocy, just galling, galling, such a lack of regard for other people's lives, presiding over the deaths of 200,000 of his own countrymen before he'd get to the racism and the white nationalism and the cruelty and, you know, ice detention centers. You're killing your base, bro. What the fuck is wrong with you? Who is advising him? Kill the schmucks who are voting for you. Well, I suppose that the incubation period means that they might have time to vote for him before they pass away.