Podcast: Senator Daschle on The West Wing Weekly

Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is a special guest on an episode of The West Wing Weekly, the popular podcast that explores storylines from the NBC hit TV show, The West Wing. In No Exit, an episode from Season 5 of the series, the White House is placed in emergency quarantine after detecting the presence of a suspected biological agent. Podcast hosts Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway invited Sen. Daschle, a member of the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, to share his experience as an elected official whose U.S. Capitol office received letters laced with deadly anthrax spores in October 2001. “While fictional, this episode certainly rang true to me,” said Sen. Daschle. “Thanks to Josh and Hrishi for the opportunity to not only recount the challenges that we faced that day – including exposure, decontamination, and medical treatment, all without an established plan – but also the challenges that still remain. Many of the efforts to better our response over the past 17 years have come up short, and our nation is still largely unprepared for a large biological incident. We need to shore up our national biodefense – otherwise, the price we pay will be in American lives.”

Listen to the podcast here at the The West Wing Weekly.

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