 With Donald Trump's positive COVID-19 diagnosis, you know, my thinking was that, okay, well, at least at a minimum, this is going to pressure him to take COVID-19 more seriously, because if you have it, if you experience it firsthand, then you are going to know this is no joke. However, that's not the case either, because after announcing via Twitter that he would be leaving Walter Reed Medical Center today, he also took some time to downplay the virus, saying via Twitter, I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6.30 p.m. feeling really good. Don't be afraid of COVID. Don't let it dominate your life. We have developed under the Trump administration some really great drugs and knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago. Yeah. So I mean, there you have it. If you contract COVID-19, just do what the president did. You know, have a helicopter escort you to a hospital for precautionary purposes just to make sure that you receive the best medical care in the country with some experimental drugs that are probably costly. But, you know, don't be afraid. You could just do what he did. He's downplaying it as he leaves the hospital after contracting COVID-19. So there is going to literally be nothing that will get him to take it seriously. Now, a lot of people thought, well, this is karma after saying that this affects virtually nobody. You know, now he's going to realize how serious it is. No, that's not the case. Because even if he felt like death, he's not going to tell us the way he truly feels. And over the weekend, we have been getting mixed messages. How serious is the president's COVID-19 diagnosis? Is he actually doing okay? Is he requiring one or two, you know, measures of supplemental oxygen? We just don't know. We're kind of left out in the dark. And a lot of people may be wondering, Mike, why didn't you talk about this over the weekend? And I'll be honest, I was just exhausted and admittedly a little bit lazy. Like dealing with Donald Trump's shenanigans, it really weighs you down. And I mean, I would have talked about it if he died, of course. But like this is something that really it's shocking to hear that the president got COVID-19. But at the same time, it's not really that shocking because he hasn't been taking it seriously. And it seems like most Americans agree that this is kind of his own fault. So as Justine Coleman of The Hill reports, an ABC news Ipsos poll found that 72% of adults said the president did not take the appropriate precautions when it came to his personal health. The same percentage of people also said Trump did not take the risk of contracting the virus seriously enough. Among Republicans, 43% said Trump didn't take the appropriate precautions nor the risk of catching the virus seriously enough. For Democrats, 94% said he didn't take needed precautions. And 95% said he wasn't serious enough about possibly contracting COVID-19. And I agree with most Americans. And I feel like the events over the weekend kind of confirmed that we are living in a simulation, at least to me, because it feels like we're watching a parody of 2020 while experiencing it for the first time. Because this is just, this is bizarre, like the set of circumstances, you know, leading to us learning about his COVID-19 diagnosis was extremely strange. And when you have an administration that won't be straight up with the American people, it makes matters even worse. And I can't not mention how insufferable liberals have been throughout this process as well, because Joe Biden decided to suspend all negative advertisements about Donald Trump for whatever reason, because Trump wouldn't do the same thing. On top of that, you have some liberals saying, well, you know, I don't wish the president ill will. In fact, Mr. President, we're praying for you. We're wishing you a speedy recovery because we want you to see yourself lose in a landslide. And we can't wait for you to go to jail. Oh, please, as if that's ever going to happen. And perhaps even more insufferable than smug liberals like Rachel Maddow, who wished him well and said she was praying for him, or the Republicans who are now clutching their pearls talking about how negative the left has gone, you know, to Donald Trump, when, as these tweets point out, Ben Shapiro in no way has ever held back wishing others harm such as Trayvon Martin and whatnot. So, you know, this is just, this whole situation is exhausting. And if you are a normal American, I don't know how you're keeping up. Like I am forced to keep up with this stuff because this is my job. But this is exhausting. Now, I have to share something with you. So, in case you aren't necessarily sure what's happening to the president, this animation that Dr. Oz brought to Fox News definitely will clear things up. I think I sent you an animation if you're able to show it might be beneficial here, but the virus itself isn't the main culprit oftentimes. The virus, here you are seeing little virus particles, those little red things are spike proteins. And they're looking for areas there. They're going into the president's nose. We don't know what had happened, but a couple days before he tested positive down through his throat, into his lungs, those little virus particles set up shop and begin to cause irritation. They attached to the little green receptors that like a key opening a door, they step right in there, they take over the cell and they hijack the cell to release lots of virus, which is exploding through here. That was really helpful because if he didn't confirm that the virus was in fact going into the president's nose, then we wouldn't have known for sure. You know, the animation itself wasn't sufficient. We definitely needed that commentary from Dr. Oz. Thank you so much, Dr. Now we're going to kind of recap what took place starting with the genesis of this entire event, but all of it has culminated in a dispute with the Trump family where somehow Trump Jr. is the one who has the most common sense in Trump's inner circle. Yeah, so it started out when we learned on Friday evening that Hope Hicks, senior advisor to the president, tested positive for COVID-19 after going on Air Force One with the president and other individuals within Trump's circle. Now she reportedly self-quarantined on Air Force One, but still that wasn't enough because we learned that the president after taking a test, tested positive for COVID-19. We learned about this at approximately 1 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, but turns out the president knew that he was positive the day after the debate and knowing he tested positive for COVID-19, he went to an in-person meeting with donors, exposed all of them more than a dozen people, and he pretended as if everything was peachy keen and there was nothing to worry about. Now on Saturday, he was escorted to Walter Reed Medical Center via helicopter after we received reports that his condition had worsened. He was being treated with remdesivir and reportedly received supplemental oxygen. The White House then tweeted out quote-unquote proof of how well he's doing because he was actually still working in the hospital. As you can see here, he was hard at work signing his name on a blank sheet of paper. Then things got even more weird when he was escorted around with his motorcade, all while positive for COVID-19, might you, because he wanted to wave at all of his sick of fans that gathered outside of the hospital and that of course was dangerous because as one physician at Walter Reed Medical Center put it, 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 theater commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity and members of the Secret Service whose lives were put at risk because of Donald Trump's antics also spoke out. But I've already gone ahead of myself because it seems as if we learned that the nomination announcement of Amy Coney Barrett, that event, that seemingly was the super spreader event that led to 12 people at the time I record this video testing positive for COVID-19. That includes of course the president himself, his wife, Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway, RNC Chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, Senator Mike Lee, Tom Tillis. We have Chris Christie, who is in Donald Trump's inner circle, who also attended a debate panel on Tuesday evening without a mask on ABC. We have Kayla McEnany, Nick Luna, all of these people have COVID-19. And after we were learning about more and more people within Trump's inner circle catching COVID-19, they still decided we're not going to institute a mandatory mask requirement at the White House. It's personal. What? You're leaving that up to personal choice when we don't know how many people were exposed? Now thankfully, they reversed that because it is affecting them personally. So, you know, they quickly learned, okay, a lot of people have it or have been exposed to it. We have to do something to stop the spread and contain it. So we're all wearing masks. So that's actually surprising to me because I didn't think they'd actually budge. But another weird aspect about this story is that Trump's behavior as it becomes even more bizarre than it usually is, is actually worrying people in his own family, not just like in his inner circle, but members of the Trump family are getting worried because what he's doing is bizarre. So on Monday, he went on a really long and bizarre tweet storm in all caps, tweeting about why you have to vote for him. And it's gotten to the point where even Trump Jr. wants to stage an intervention, literally. His family is fed up with the tweets and Trump Jr. wants to step in and try to get everyone close to Trump to rein in his behavior. In an article for Vanity Fair, Gabriel Sherman explains, Donald Trump's erratic and reckless behavior in the last 24 hours has opened a rift in the Trump family over how to rein in the out of control president according to two Republicans briefed on the family conversations. Sources said Trump Jr. is deeply upset by his father's decision to drive around Walter Reed National Military Medical Center last night with members of the Secret Service while he was infected with COVID-19. Don Jr. thinks Trump is acting crazy, one of the sources told me. The stunt outraged medical experts including an attending physician at Walter Reed. According to sources, Don Jr. has told friends that he tried lobbying Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump and Jared Kushner to convince the president that he needs to stop acting unstable. Don Jr. has said he wants to stage an intervention, but Jared and Ivanka keep telling Trump how great he's doing, a source said. Don Jr. is said to be reluctant to confront his father alone. Don said, I'm not going to be the only one to tell him he's acting crazy, the source added. One area where the family seems united is over the president's manic tweeting early Monday morning. After Trump sent out more than a dozen all caps tweets, the Trump children told people they want Trump to stop. They're all worried, they've tried to get him to stop tweeting, a source close to the family told me. So when members of Trump's own family are concerned that his behavior is more strange than it usually is, you know something is going on. Now as to the severity of Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis, it's really difficult to say because we're not getting a straight answer from people. Mark Meadows basically admitted to lying and downplaying the severity of, you know, his sickness. We just don't know. He could still be very sick as he's being released. And he's just like acting like nothing's a problem, exposing more people. He apparently said he met with veterans while he was at the hospital. Was he wearing a mask? Should they be quarantined now? We just don't know. There's so many questions that we don't have answers to. And all we can do is really just step back and think about how weird this moment is and try to appreciate this because this really is something that we will look back on. And even though we now know how weird it is, but like when we look back on this, this is going to be one of the strangest moments in American history, where the president catches a very contagious deadly virus after months of downplaying it and not taking it seriously and leaving the hospital. He encourages people to not let it control their lives and downplays it more. And he may still be very sick. He may possibly be meeting with more people, exposing them. I mean, what do you even say? This is just so weird. Again, it really feels like we're watching a movie, like a satirical film, you know, about the downfall of the American Empire and how stupid it became. So that's all that I've got. I'll try to keep you all updated, but you know, this story is changing rapidly. And I'm sure it's gonna get weirder. I don't know if I'm ready for that, but we better be ready because it's gonna get even more weird. And there's less than a month until the next election. All of this happening before a major election. Strange times. I'm unsubscribing.