questions, don't miss dr. sanjay gupta's podcast. right now, this is the must listen. coronavirus fact versus fiction, the constant questions you have answers. thank you so much for joining us. ac 360 starts right now. >> good evening, tonight the impact of president trump's decision to declare the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency. we'll look at what it means to people in communities seeking not just help from the federal government but also access to testing, which as you know has emerged as possibly the single biggest challenge to the country getting its arms around the outbreak. there's that and what else the president said, refusing to take responsibility for a significant part of the crisis. here we'll play it for a moment for you, and talk about it later in the hour. in a somewhat related vein, there's a question of the president's personal conduct in the face of this, he has come into contact with one or more people who have come in contact

with the virus, the press secretary to the president of brazil tested positive. this picture was taken at mar-a-lago this past weend, and there's reporting that another person who visited mar-a-lago at the same time has also tested positive. first, though, some of what the president said today about the big decision he made. >> to unleash the full power of the federal government this effort today, i am officially declaring a national emergency. two very big words. the action i am taking will open up access to up to $50 billion of very importantly -- very important and a large amount of money for states and territories and localities in our shared fight of this disease, and every state to set up emergency operation centers effectively immediately. i'm asking every hospital in this country to activate its emergency preparedness plan so that they can meet the needs of americans everywhere, the secretary of hhs will be able to

immediately waive provisions of applicable laws and regulations to give doctors, all hospitals and health care providers maximum flexibility to respond to the virus and care for patients. >> as he said that, and laid out others streamlining medical care and testing, the number of cases in the country kept rising, now stands at more than 2,100 with 48 deaths. more states declared emergencies of their own, more school districts cancelled classes, louisiana pushed back its primary by two months. delta air lines is cutting overall capacity by 40%. the boston marathon was postponed and generally in big ways and small, life across the country took yet more steps toward whatever the new normal may turn out to be. what has not changed is any effort the president made to reassure people today, also including plenty of patting himself on the back, blaming past administrations for some problems today and ducking

responsibility for important decisions made on his watch. it all came together in this exchange. >> dr. fauci said earlier this week that the lag in testing was, in fact, a failing, do you take responsibility for that, and when can you guarantee that every single american who needs a test will be able to have a test? what's the date of that? >> no, i don't take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. it wasn't meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we're talking about. >> i don't take responsibility at all, he said. the president of the united states, i don't take responsibility at all. it is a far cry from harry truman's motto, the buck stops here, and it did not stop there, and there is also breaking news on efforts to hammer out relief

legislation, nancy pelosi announcing in an agreement with the administration, but there are what are being called snags, what those are, we don't yet know. there's also news on testing and the president himself, cnn's jim acosta joins us with more. has the white house given any clarity on if the white house will be tested. i find it hard to believe he hasn't already been tested whether they're saying it or not. >> reporter: yeah, anderson, we're waiting on officials when the president will undergo the coronavirus test. the president essentially had to be convinced to take this test that advisers around him were urging him to undergo a coronavirus test, and that initially he was resistant to it until ultimately deciding he needed to do that, for good reason. you look at what happened down at mar-a-lago last weekend, that brazilian official who tested positive for the coronavirus was photographed with the president, and was in touch with lots of other people down there at mar-a-lago. we're hearing that there was a

fundraiser that occurred at mar-a-lago over the weekend, we where an attendee is coming up positive for the coronavirus. the trump campaign is saying the person did not interact with the president but obviously there is you know, good reason for the president to undergo the test. we're waiting to find out when exactly that's going to happen. >> you know, the white house disbanded the pandemic office inside the administration under their watch. i want to play this clip of how the president responded when he was asked about that, the disbanding of the pandemic office, which was the administration oversaw in may, back in 2018. this is what he said today. >> thank you, mr. president. from pbs news hour. my first question is you said that you don't take responsibility but you did disband the white house pandemic office and the officials that were working in the office left this administration abruptly. so what responsibility do you

take to that and officials th worked in the office said the white house lost valuable time because the office was disbanded. what do you think of that? >> i think it's a nasty question, and what we have done, and tony said numerous times we saved thousands of lives because of the quick closing and when you say me, i didn't do it, we have a group of people. >> it's your administration. >> i could ask my administration, but i could perhaps ask tony about that because i don't know anything about it. >> he apparently doesn't know anything about it, he said. to be specific, it was john bolton, his national security adviser at the time who oversaw the disbanding of the pandemic unit, and nobody else was rehired for that unit. do we know about what the president did or didn't know about it at the time, and why wouldn't he know about it? >> it's a very good question, andererson r. from what we're hearing from white house officials, the people that were part of the unit moved to other parts of the national security council and doing some of the

same functions. that is the official word from the white house. in terms of why the president doesn't know about this or not taking responsibility for it, anderson, that is consistent with how he has been since coming into office. he has been the no responsibility president. when i asked him whether he took responsibility for being impeached during the ukraine saga, he did not take responsibility there, and this is a president during this coronavirus outbreak who said that the virus would miraculously go away when the cases get down to zero, even though we're nowhere near zero at this point, there have been multiple instances, his down playing of the problem with the test, that was going smoothly when there wasn't the case. there has been instance after instance, you have been cataloging this over the last several weeks where the president was down playing the crisis. ultimately he is responsible for it. he has been president for three years. he likes to say well certain things happened during the obama administration, he was doing that today at the press conference. those things didn't happen that he's accusing the obama

administration of doing. disbanding the pandemic office in the national security council is something that happened on his watch. of course he's responsible for it. >> jim acosta. thanks, before we dig further into the more overtly political aspects of the president's remarks, we want to take a look at the public side of all of this. joining us now is cnn's chief medical correspondent dr. sanjay gupta. what do you make of what the president said today. is the this moving in the right direction and what do you think we need to see more of? >> yeah, i mean, i think we're definitely moving in the right direction. you know, it was just not even two weeks ago as jim ados thcos saying, the idea from the white house is this was simply going away, and now we're declaring this a national emergency. i think the public health officials many of whom have been advising the president have sort of seen this coming for a long time. i think that's clearly the right direction. i think the public private partnerships getting them more organized and codified i think is important as well.

we can't buy back the time, though, anderson no matter how much money this ultimately will free up. it's very hard to get those days and weeks back. that's very critical. there's a couple of things that i think are crucial and the president sort of talked about this near the very end o. press conference -- of the press conference and it goes back to breathing machines that we talked about. it's important because this idea of having the types of resources to take care of the most critically ill patients, we're not sure we have enough of those resources now. he did say that we will buy them, lots of them. that was his quote. that's how he put it. i think that's a good sign. obviously we want to see these things come to fruition. and you know, we'll have to wait and see over the next hours and days. >> dr. nguyen, two weeks ago, the president was saying there were 15 cases and they were all getting better and this was all going to go away. you know, two weeks in a fast-moving pandemic is a lifetime, and you know, day

after day that you don't do stuff, that costs people their lives and potentially the spread of this virus. the president announcing this new partnership with the private sector. he said it would vastly increase and accelerate our capacity to test for the coronavirus. but the trump administration has promised millions of tests becoming available. they have been saying -- the president has been saying that the tests, anybody who wants to can get tested. now all of a sudden they have this public private partnership because, i mean, they're not acknowledging that the testing hasn't worked because it hasn't gotten out into people's hands. they're just pretending like they never said it was working and now they're just saying it's going to get better. >> that's right, and it's extremely frustrating to be a clinician or a patient who needs this test. what we really need is a realistic time line that the president and public health officials can stick to. and say, by this time, we'll have x number of tests available, and here are the patients we're testing now. here are the patients we'll be able to test in time to come.

right now, clinicians have no idea. we as a society have no idea how many cases are out there of people who actually have covid-19 but just don't know it. it's so frustrating and terrifying to be a patient in that situation too. >> and that question was asked by a reporter today and the president essentially said, you know, well, you know, anybody who wants to can be tested. that's been happening for a long time. but when he let the vice president take over, i listened very carefully to the vice president's answer, i think it was roughly a minute and a half long, two minutes long. it was a complete non-answer, it just strechtched over a long period of time, and he had another doctor come up to just back him up on what he said, and she went into very detailed things about the test itself but again, there was no answer to when americans can actually get tested who want to be tested or need to be tested. like they have not answered that question. >> and clinicians really need to

know because we have patients coming to us saying that they need testing. they have symptoms, they're concerned about spreading it to their loved ones and we at least need a time line, and something to tell them other than just, wait and see. >> san jay, i want to play an exchange the president had with a reporter over the meeting with the brazilian official who tested positive for the coronavirus. let's play that. >> dr. fauci said this morning if you stand next to somebody who tested positive you should self-isolate and get a test. you say your white house doctor is tell you something different. who should americans listen to, and my second question is -- >> i think they have to listen to their doctors, and shouldn't be jumping to get the test unless it's necessary but i think they have to listen to their doctors. i haven't seen the picture. somebody said there's a picture with somebody taking a picture with me, but ichb haven't seen . >> you might have it even if you don't have symptoms. . are you being selfish by not

being tested. >> i didn't say i wasn't going to be tested. >> i think i will do it anyway. >> will you let us know the results. >> we're working out the schedules. >> sanjay, i mean, there's the question of this president setting a bad example, there's also a question is he just lying here again because the idea that his schedule is so busy that he can't get somebody to give him a test. he has an entire secret service which is designed to protect his life. if they allow a virus to infect the president and nobody tests him, that just seems like, you know, security malpractice. >> yeah, i mean, look, there's a lot of tough calls in this whole thing. it is not one of them. he should be tested. he would fit his own criteria, the cdc's criteria for having contact with someone who tested positive for the virus, he may need to be isolated for a period of time. i think the point the reporter was trying to make who asked the

question, if he is positive and doesn't know it, he's interacting with a lot of people, and he was shaking a lot of hands today even at the lectern, if he's passing this virus on unknowingly, that's a terrible thing. i think he's got to be tested. he said he would. like you, i'm not sure what the hold up is, this is of concern and not just for him, for him for certain but all the people around him. >> dr. we n, do you think this has sunk in with the public to the extent it needs to? should gyms be open? should people be working out next to each other? should, you know, i was out and about, there were people not, you know, next to each other. not within, you know, well closer than 3 feet together talking with each other, complete strangers, you know, on subways, is it sinking in yet? >> i think people are realizing how serious this is. it hasn't hit home for most of

us, but we do see the charts, we see what's happened in other countries, and we know that it's only a matter of time, and we're talking about days to weeks before we have tens of thousands of more cases in the u.s. and we have a chance to make a difference, individual actions now will make a difference in protecting all of us as a society. >> dr. gupta, dr. wen, thaucnk u very much. >> more on how the country may respond to what the president said today in the wake of an oval office address this week that did not reassure most people. the question for political professionals was today any different. we'll be joined by former white house communications director anthony scaramucci, we'll be right back. with advil liqui-gels, you have fast-acting power over pain, so the whole world looks different. the unbeatable strength and speed of advil liqui-gels.

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motor? nope. not motor? it's pronounced "motaur." for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. i've been talking tonight about the president's emergency

declaration and how he evaded responsibility for testing, quote i don't take responsibility at all, also the contact he had with one or more people who since tested positive fr for the virus. cnn political analyst, and "new york times" white house correspondent maggie haberman who broke the story of the second mar-a-lago guest, also cnn political analyst, and former president adviser rs david gergen, and dana bash. president trump has been hesitant to acknowledge the threat the virus takes. he took a big step declaring a national emergency, free up funds, how does it help to curb the criticism he has facing. >> i think it would have gone much further away had he not taken questions. while he was standing with the officials, health experts and corporate officials who oversee some of the nation's biggest drugstore chains, that diluted some of his own credibility problem that he has handed

himself with things he has said that have been inaccurate, the number of people that would be sick, what he said about testing and the speech that has inaccuracies in it but he didn't stop there. he decided to take questions. he likes to be the last one talking, and it got contentious at points. he said things that were not true and claimed to know nothing about, and maybe he doesn't about what was done by his former national security adviser john bolton in folding in the pandemic or global disaster section of the nsc into a wmd directrate. whether he knew it or not he should have known it, and asking a president like that is not abnormal, he's not the first president to get questions about what happens in his administration. he acts as if it's a personal afront, and the other question, he was around this aide to the brazilian president over the weekend at mar-a-lago. he has said he's not getting tested.

he said today maybe he will. likely he will. i don't know that that means anything. he's doing himself actions that health experts have said people shouldn't do if they have been in contact with somebody who has the coronavirus. he was shaking hands today. he was talking into a microphone that everyone else was talking into. that is going to raise fresh questions and it should. >> yeah, dr. anthony fauci i learned is 78 years old, and he's a legendary person who's desperately needed right now. if the president is sick, and gets people on the coronavirus task force sick, i mean, that's -- david, you know, that's the concern. it's not only as megan pointed out, the president undermining his own task force's important fact based messaging, he's not only undermining with his own non-fact based misinformation, he's undermining it with his actual actions, shaking hands in front of cameras, dismissing the idea of taking a test! yeah, he acts as if he doesn't really believe in what he's saying, that he's only doing it because he's under pressure.

he has to do something, but i do think stepping back from this, anderson, most americans do want their president to succeed in a crisis, and i think they want donald trump to do some things, and i think he will get some points today for declaring a national emergency, making much more funds available. certainly wall street responded well to that. he's going to get a lot of points for pushing, expanding the tests and if he gets a deal with pelosi which may be in some trouble tonight, he'll get credit for that. a lot of americans are also going to judge him. i think he's teetering on the edge because of the complacency in the past, and letting this many precious weeks pass without urgent action. and allowing the numbers of people who are infected to probably go up to much higher than they would be otherwise. americans are asking how is it possible that we have only tested just about 20,000 people in the same period of time when italy was on the front edge of this, south korea tested 100,000 people in the time it's taken us

to do 20,000. that's crazy. and i do think the testing is going to be a real key in the next two or three weeks. my bet is a lot of people think it's going to be easy to get these tests and they're going to be much more bureaucratic, they're much harder to get signoffs than anybody believes. we have doctors in boston, you know, who are treating patients and trying to get them tested and i've heard of one case where two people who had to be -- they were denied having tests by the bureaucracy because they were not in the icu. that was a pre-requirement to be in the icu. that's crazy. >> yeah, and maggie, dana, we saw the president shaking hands over and over. obviously we know the cdc has said do not do. >> that's right. >> is there any sense within the white house that president trump has a responsibility to set an example for people and, you know, we all know that, you know, evangelical leaders say

they don't want a pastor in chief, they're not looking for a moral leader anymore, but what about just a, you know, a scientifically responsible leader? >> absolutely. you know, it was only one of the businessmen who kind of had the presence of mind, and it's understandable when you're in the rose garden, it's the president of the united states, you know, offering you a spot at the podium, putting your hand out, it's hard not to do that, but of course there's a responsibility to not do that. and that goes to the whole question that david gergen knows better than any of us of leadership, which is and should be genuinely nonpartisan in a time like this, and just look at what happened just at the very end of the trading day with the stock markets, they did rally because, you know, there is a yearning for somebody who is showing that there is a grown up in the room, and not only has donald trump until frankly today, a little bit with the speech, but because as maggie

said it was so riddled with errors, it contradicted the very policies that he was saying he put in place, it's because he has been down playing and undermining the really grave public health risk that is here by saying, oh, no, nothing to see here. he has been so worried about the economy that has made the economy even worse. today, you know, he made it as if the country is on a war footing. bringing together the key member or some key members of the private sector, never mind the members of the medical community and the infectious disease experts that he has been relying on, and it was a much much more calming event than we have seen before except for the handshaking and the things that they're doing that is not -- they're not leading by example. that was definitely problematic, but in terms of the show of force, better than before. that's true. >> you and i were talking about the president saying that he

hadn't, that he didn't know anything about the white house pandemic office being disup aba. i just want to play that for our viewers. >> thank you, mr. president, ya myrtle bea you did disband the white house pandemic office and officials that were working in the office left the administration abruptly. what responsibilities do you take to that, and officials who worked in the office said the white house lost valuable time because the office was disbanded. what do you make of that? >> i think it's a nasty question because what we have done, and tony has said numerous times that we saved thousands of lives because of the quick closing and when you say me, i didn't do it. we have a group of people. >> it's your administration. >> it's my administration but i could perhaps ask tony about that because i don't know anything about it. i mean, you say we did that.

i don't know anything about it. >> so he says he didn't know anything about it. still doesn't know anything about it. he said a nasty question. we found a moment from a press conference from february 26th being asked about these very cuts and i want to play that. >> calling for enormous cuts, the cdc, nih and who, you talked a lot today about how these professionals are critical and necessary. does this experience give you pause? >> no, because we can get money, and we can increase staff. we know all the good people. it's a question i asked the doctors before. some of the people we cut, they haven't been used for many years, and if we have a need, we can get them very quickly. >> so seems like he knew something about it on february 26th. >> right, i think he was defensive about the question. i want to note quickly, i think david and dana are absolutely right, everything they announced on testing was important and a big step forward and on the national emergency he was getting praise from people like

bill de blasio. then he asks a question like the one yamiche asked him, he got personal with her and nasty and said something about her that was just not true about how she left her previous role. she worked with us at "the new york times" where she was loved. now she's at pbs. when you do something like is that and he does things like that often. it's not a momentary blip that everyone should look away from. it was how he was answering a substantiative question about his administration, he chose to make it personal and i'm sorry that is something people are going to factor into their reporting and their assessment of how this went. >> and it's a woman asking him a question, a tough question, and he uses the word nasty in relation to women, we know this. >> yes. >> absolutely, that is not the first time. nasty or rude. but on the substance of it, the other thing is that not only was the president asked about it last month, there has been, you

know, report after report a remir reminder, i should say from members of congress, people who had important jobs like this in the past from realtime, you know, trying to, you know, raise real big concerns about him disbanding it. sherrod brown, for example, wrote a letter in 2018 as soon as this happened saying this is a very big mistake, mr. president. you need these people in place in case a pandemic happened, and shockingly he didn't get a response. >> he's not responsible. doesn't know anything about it. we got to leave it there. maggie haberman, david gergen, dana bash, what to make about a president who claims he doesn't take any responsibility for the central aspect of the crisis on his watch. i am in so much debt. sixty-two thousand seven hundred and ten dollars and thirty-one cents. sofi allowed me to refinance all of my loans to one low interest rate and an affordable monthly payment. and i just feel like there's an end in sight now and that my debt doesn't define me anymore.

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what president trump had to say about his part in the coronavirus pandemic, both the question he was asked and his reply. >> dr. fauci said earlier this week that the lag in testing was in fact a failing, do you take responsibility for that, and when can you guarantee that every single american who needs a test will be able to have a test? what's the date of that? >> yeah, no, i don't take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. it wasn't meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we're talking about. >> with me now, president trump's former white house

director of communications anthony scaramucci. what do you think today did, not only as positive for combatting the virus, which is the most important thing but also on the president? >> well, they definitely took steps to combat the virus, but i think they had a very big failing over the last seven days where the president, you know, a sign of leadership obviously is the buck stops with him. he said twice today that it doesn't stop with him. he doesn't take any responsibility, but he did something really bad this week which i think is going to hurt him in november. he, a good leader defines the problem, directs people to where he wants to take the american public, but speaks very honestly to them. and so he's had three attempts. i was on your show a few weeks ago, i said that was a trillion dollars, he took another couple of trillion dollars out of the market and they staged that today at 3:00 with everybody on the podium there to try to get the market lifted back up, and

so it was successful in the short term, anderson but the real colossal mistake is that the american people have lost trust in him. maybe the red state voters people who are watching fox are going to still stay in there but the average person is looking at what he's doing and saying wait a minute, we can't really trust what he's doing, he's overreacting to the situation without any moral compass or any scientific compass, and so i think those things are really going to haunt him come november. >> how did the president's, you know, address to the nation, how was that allowed to happen by allegedly professionals who are around him in the white house? i mean, it was disastrous. i mean, it did nothing, if you want, you know, if the very basic point of that was to, you know, calm people and at least give a sense of, you know what, i got my arms around this, we're working on this. i hear, you know, i believe in science and we're going to beat

this thing, it did none of those things. >> yeah, and you could tell from his body language, he knew that that did not go off well. those were ten disastrous minutes. he's made three really bad sort of speeches. but that was by far the worst one, and the main reason why it was so bad was a combination of his body language, his lack of certainty about what he was saying, and then the last piece, which i think really spooks markets and again, forget about partisanship or liking the president or disliking the president, just looking at it objectively, around $10 billion of capital, every time he was speaking he was causing people to get into cash as quickly as possible. again, why that happened, we both know why that's happening. the people that are surrounding him are afraid of him. he's a little unstable. he acts in this really bellicose way towards his staff, and they're, you know, they're on pins and needles. there's a couple of guys inside

that more or less said to me, hey, you know, i'm here. it's better to have me here than, like, alex jones or somebody like that. i'm just going to keep my mouth shut, and i'm going to get under the bunker and hope for the best and hopefully i can make some incremental changes here to help the american people, but yoru know, the whole place is under siege, and they're making a very big mistake. they would be much better off teaming up and having an intervention with the president and say look, it's not going well the way you're handling this, can we just take a pause in the system, and so that sort of happened a little bit today because he was allowing other people to take the podium, but he needs to do way more of that, and we're leeaving out the elephant in the room, anderson is that we're way behind the curve on surveillance and testing here. anybody that looks at this situation from a public health point of view knows that, and he's not telling the truth. you could have a hundred million people infected with this

disease over the next six to eight weeks, and he's got to be very honest with the american people and explain how that fans out and how we eventually get immunity and how we can eventually solve the problem, but he's done none of that, and i think that's why people are in such a, particularly in new york city which is one of the hot zones. >> you know, the one thing you want in a disaster of any kind, whether it's a hurricane, a, you know, a financial collapse, a military takeover, you want to have a sense that there are good people working on it and they are focused like a laser on it, and that they are telling you the truth, and that is what, you know, the truth takes on an even greater importance than in normal times, and that's, i think, to me just personally as a citizen, the most worrying thing when you just get a sense that what they are saying is not what you yourself are seeing in your doctor's office when you try to get a test or whatever it

may be, you know, there's a tweet on the president, talking about leadership in 2013 saying quote leadership, whatever happens, you're responsible. i mean, you know, there's a tweet for everything. if it doesn't happen, you're responsible he even says. >> two quick things, i would say may 1940 when winston churchill took over the parliament, and i would also say rudy giuliani right after 9/11 in terms of the compassion he had and the speeches that he was giving. so you have to rise to that occasion, and the president is failing at that. he's got to be more responsible. he should bring out harry truman's the buck stops here, put it on the desk, see if that helps him a little bit. >> anthony scar hamucci, i appreciate it. good to talk to you. a stark reminder of not only the physical but the psychological impacts of the coronavirus, and it's important to talk about that for what it may and let's hope it doesn't, but what may be ahead for american citizens. i'm going to talk to a harvard trained psychologist about how this country's reacting to the

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people all over the world are reacting in different ways to the coronavirus. there's frustration, anger, hope. in italy, and also fear, we should point out. in italy, the hardest hit european nation, the people in this apartment broke out in their country's national anthem. take a ♪ ♪ >> they're physically isolated but they are not alone. they are together in this. scenes like this seem especially poignant when the entire nation is on lock down in italy, and it's certainly one way of dealing with this crisis, facing it together. joining me is gretchen snelzer, psychologist and author. you need to wash your hands and stay home when you're sick but the biggest work you can do is expand your heart and mind to see yourself and to see your

family as part of a much bigger community that can have a massive, hugely massive impact on the lives of other people. i think i read your blog post, and i just think it's so important, so can you just talk to us about that, about soft of the idea of this not being about us, about us protecting others, the weakness, the most vulnerable. >> absolutely. you know, i think when you're talking earlier about italy, and in the stress we're all feeling, you know, it's important to recognize that extreme stress has a predictable physiological effect. it makes us narrow our focus. it makes us kind of become our smallest selves, and it's really important for us to lower our stress to expand ourselves to our bigger zeselves so we can s the bigger picture. we can remember i'm not just an i, i'm a we, i'm not just a family, i'm a community.

i'm not just an organization. i'm a city. and it's not easy to do that. it takes a lot of discipline. >> and i think especially in this polarized day and age, but also just in regular times, you know, it's only in wars or disaster or big events that we as citizens are called upon to be better than our regular selves, we are called upon to be, to sort of re-learn what citizenship all about, and this is one of those opportunities, i think. >> absolutely. i grew up with the stories of my grandmother in the great depression and hearing how spire families and communities pooled their gas ration tickets so that my grandmother's grandmother could go to her college graduation far away. and you know, there were times when people stepped up and i feel like -- i feel like people just needed the permission to do that in some ways. i think that we had gotten so engaged in fear over the last week that people weren't looking

up. they weren't feeling like they could do something. >> it also seems like, maybe i just spent a little too much time on instagram, but i'm getting sick of watching people sort of make videos in the supermarket and they're talking about, oh, my god, it's so chaotic here, and we got to get stuff, and you know, i feel like this is a time for all of us to put down our phones and to sort of, if you can, okay, stay 6 to 3 feet away from somebody, but you can still reach out to somebody in different ways, and you can reach out to a larger society, and i feel like if you're going to post stuff on instagram, it's not about you and your needs in the midst of this disaster. it should be about, you know, the doctors who are working around the clock right now whose names we will never know who are trying to save the rest of us by taking care of those who are most vulnerable. >> right. i mean, there was a -- has been and really was on tuesday, when i wrote this, a real vacuum of

leadership about what people could actually do to be helpful, and under stress, you know, severe stress also makes us feel hopeless, and the antidote is agency, and the paradoxical situation, inaction, staying home, not going out and taking everything. >> so what do you recommend people do? what can we do? >> i mean, it's starting to happen. so i think schools have stopped classes. i think people can stay home. i think that people can reach out to the elderly, who are afraid to go to the food store. i think we can shop local or order food from restaurants that, you know, might go out of business. i think that we -- you can read books on video, and send them to your nieces and nephews who are

out of school, i think, conversely, i think nieces and nephews can put on a show and tape it. and send it to their grandparents, who might not be able to leave the house. i think we can get out in nature and go for walks. you know, this might be a really good time to reconnect with nature in a way that we haven't been able to because we haven't slowed down. >> yeah. i mean, i'm going to look in ways to do that in my own life. and i just think trying to, again, focus on that we are all part of a larger community. it's very easy to think of ourselves only but that we are part of a larger community, beyond just our families, that i hope is something we see more of in the coming days. gretchen, i'd like to talk to you again. thank you. >> thank you so much, anderson. >> still to come, the latest on the coronavirus relief legislation that so many people are working -- waiting for. we'll be right back. you have p. you want relief. fast. only thermacare ultra pain relieving cream has 4 active ingredients to fight pain

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>> how you doing, coop? so we are going to shift to war mode because that's what this is. the virus is an enemy, and we have to take it on as such. you and i remember, you and the

audience, you so brilliantly put them on the journey of what happened to katrina. that's where we are now so i asked for the general to come on to remind us what wartime looks like, how you prepare for this, what we need to do, and not do, and we are going to do that with the politic -- political side, as well, about what is going to happen in congress and will it be enough? >> good advice, chris. look forward to that. thanks very much. just ahead, a deal reached on the virus relief bill that lawmakers in the white house have been trying to agree on. and the 12-hour pain relieving strength of aleve. so...magic mornings happen. there's a better choice. aleve pm.

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breaking news this evening on the tense negotiations between house democrats and the white house over that coronavirus relief bill we mentioned at the top of the hour. moments ago, president trump tweeted his full support for what he called a compromise and separately we learned a deal has, in fact, been reached between the white house and lawmakers. vote on it is expected tonight. i want to hand it over to chris for cuomo prime time. chris. >> it's just one step but it's an important step. anderson, thank you very much. i'm chris cuomo. welcome to primetime. my brothers and sisters, let's be honest with each other. we are at war. the president has finally declared a national emergency as the virus is attacking the country. okay? it got the jump on us. the election will decide how people feel about how we got here. right now, we have to focus on how we fight back. testing. it's about keeping cases