protect the nation and the public interest? both men have now served as president, so their actual records can be assessed. for all the understandable focus on trump s legal problems and controversies and rhetoric, it was his substantive handling of the covid panic that dragged him down in the eyes of many americans who concluded he failed that task when faced with that all-important leadership test. as for trump, he said at the time he did not see the emergency as his test of a lifetime. was there a moment in all of this last two months where you said to yourself, ah, this is the leadership test of a lifetime? no. no, and no hesitation. now, that is a small part of one of trump s news worthy interviews with legendary journalist bob woodward who secured more time with president trump than any other writer. 20 interviews across that stretch. trump sometimes making the calls. somethinge apparently now regrets. the former president is suing woodward, we should note, over p
peril. but you know, it was a success. yeah. i m running out of time. dr. patel, do you agree we re in a different world now? very different world. we re in a very different world. and i think there s a lot of reasons we re in a different world. number one, we have threats that we haven t even understood. it s not just bioterrorism. we modeled that in the obama administration. we couldn t have even thought of some of the forms of bioterrorism taking down our standard labs, having threats with infiltration of computers that can take down any sort of even national surveillance system. and we have no we haven t learned even with the biden administration, we ve taken away the public health funding to create that very infrastructure to stand up a manhattan project if we need it. then the humanity that s missing. i think a lot of us that kind of have survived and watched these deaths, what i would have loved to have seen from the president was that moment of humanity that we saw when
was no fault of anybody s. it just happened. except maybe china. our special continues and we are joined by dr. ka vitae patel, former white house medical adviser, bob woodward. what stands out to you? it s remarkable that we have a parallel universe that donald trump was living in. you described where he got his information from, who he did not listen to. he had this covid task force that he asked vice president pence to put together. it was basically for theater because, as we know, all of the recommendations fauci, burks, anybody that was part of that team, including pence himself, he didn t take that advice, nor did he even heed the advice of doctors or people that he talked to describing how bad the virus was. and i think what s hard for those of us who were kind of working clinically and policy-wise as well, in parallel, there were those mask shortages, confusion about whether this was airborne, what kind of direction we could give
it s a three-alarm fire. 50 years, what goes on in the oval office, what the president hears from advisers, very rare for somebody to say, you ve got a three-alarm fire coming. and this is not just somebody who walked in off the street. this is somebody who knows. let me bring dr. patel in on this point. we talk about learning from all of this. could we handle another such emergency? are we improved or not? many people see the problem. then you compare that to what bob is referring to, the idea that a world war or a 9/11 sharpened something because of the role of enemies and evil. it summoned something in us that is not proportionate to the threat or the body count. covid was quite literally this kind of threat, where you have the president getting the warning that bob mentions. i want to listen to how bob on the tapes raises that with the
let the candlelight vigil not far from here for the lives we lost. that s all we want. the show we lived through, you can t run from it without facing it. dr patel, thanks for joining us. bob, i have more questions for you, stay with us. introducing ned s plaque psoriasis. [camera shutter sfx] he thinks his flaky, red patches are all people see. otezla is the #1 prescribed pill to treat plaque psoriasis. [ned?] it can help you get clearer skin and reduce itching and flaking. with no routine blood tests required. doctors have been prescribing it for nearly a decade. otezla is also approved to treat psoriatic arthritis. don t use otezla if you re allergic to it. serious allergic reactions can happen. otezla may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. some people taking otezla had depression, suicidal thoughts, or weight loss. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. [crowd gasp]