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CBS Correspondent Says North Korea is Safer Than White House

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October 5, 2020

CBS News White House correspondent Ben Tracy tweeted that he felt reporting in North Korea was safer than reporting in the White House on Monday.

"I felt safer reporting in North Korea than I currently do at the White House," Tracy said. "This is just crazy."

Tracy’s comments follow the infections of President Donald Trump, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, senior counselor to the president Hope Hicks, and other officials who have spent time in the White House with the coronavirus.

Before reporting at the White House, Tracy covered North Korea and China, reporting on nuclear weapons and trade between the two authoritarian regimes. While reporting on the demolition of a North Korean nuclear weapons testing facility in 2018, Tracy—the only American network correspondent invited to view the test site's destruction—said that North Korean officials confiscated radiation-detecting devices upon journalists' arrival in the country. He said officials reassured reporters that they had never detected radiation emanating from the former testing facility.

The president, who was diagnosed on Thursday, tweeted Monday afternoon that he would be leaving Walter Reed Medical Center later that day after receiving treatment.