EMAIL DETAILS

Biden helped “Morning Joe” producer after brain hemorrhage

The Washington Post’s Reliable Source gets a peek at the forthcoming book from “Morning Joe” executive producer Chris Licht, “What I Learned When I Almost Died,” which tells the story of his near-fatal brain hemorrhage last April.

Now in the book, he describes some interesting behind-the-scenes machinations: As ER doctors puzzled over the source of his bleed, his worried “Morning Joe” star Mika Brzezinski started making phone calls — to hospital brass. . . and to Joe Biden.
The vice president — himself a survivor of an aneurysm — agreed to help. According to the book, Biden cold-called Dr. Vivek Deshmukh, a highly recommended neurosurgeon in town whom the veep had never met: “I have a good friend in your ER,” he asked (though Licht admits he’d never met Biden, either, at that point), “and could you make time to see him?” Within minutes, Deshmukh was examining Licht’s CAT scans.
Licht says in the book that the hospital “probably would have reacted the same way if Biden had never gotten involved,” and a George Washington University Hospital rep confirmed to the Post that indeed the hospital had reached out to Dr. Deshmukh separate from Biden’s call.

The book comes out May 24 from Simon & Schuster.


Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC
1010 Wisconsin Ave., NW
Suite 705
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com
P Consider the environment before printing this email.