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  • My name is Jeff Mason, and I have covered the White House for 12 plus years now, which means I covered all eight years of Barack Obama's presidency about two weeks of George W.

  • Bush's presidency.

  • So I don't really count that.

  • And in all four years of President Trump's presidency and now beginning of President Biden, journalists did definitely get some attention over the last four years because of that tension between the White House and the press corps.

  • And certainly when some of us had tense exchanges with the president, those occasionally went viral, and I had a couple of them.

  • Most recently in 2020.

  • I had a couple viral moments with the president, where he asked me to take my face mask off in the middle of the pandemic, and I declined and politely just said, No, I'll speak up on speak louder And the first time that happened, he accused me of being politically correct.

  • That was in the summer.

  • The second time was in the fall.

  • He just he he just didn't like it, and that was at a time when you know the country, as it is now, was struggling with this pandemic.

  • and when healthcare professionals were and continue, Thio encourage people to wear masks.

  • And though I was in a plenty of distance between myself and the president, he was absolutely right about that.

  • I was standing next to other reporters, which is why I left my mask on.

  • So that was one.

  • I'll start by describing the top of that story, which came from, uh, Justin observation I made on the morning of January 20th.

  • My job that morning was to watch President Trump depart the White House and after he did leave on Marine one for the final time is the as the 45th president, um, way walked back in to the White House because the press corps stays and I went over to the hallway that leads up towards the Oval Office, which I can't just walk into a Remember the press.

  • But I can walk into the area called Upper Press where, where the press staff sit.

  • And I noticed that the Guard desk had had a plastic shield put up or a plexiglass shield put up in the same way that you see those shields at the supermarket now.

  • And it was just striking to me that within minutes.

  • Essentially, if President Trump having left Andi in the few hours of transition before President Biden was to come in, these types of physical changes had already been made to the White House.

  • That represented a new seriousness about Cove it.

My name is Jeff Mason, and I have covered the White House for 12 plus years now, which means I covered all eight years of Barack Obama's presidency about two weeks of George W.

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