welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm john king in washington and this is cnn's continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. important new numbers today in the coronavirus fight. a model the white house often cites from the university of washington now estimates 60,000 deaths in the united states by august. while that number is numbing, the same model predicted 82,000 deaths yesterday, and 102,000 or more a week ago. perhaps an improved longer term outlook, but the daily death toll is beyond staggering. more than 1900 americans lost to coronavirus yesterday.

the current total now approaching 13,000. americans are souring on the trump administration response. a majority, 55%, now say the federal government has done a poor job preventing the spread of the virus. that's up eight points from just a week ago. abc news also reporting today that u.s. intelligence officials raised alarms as far back as november to the pentagon and to the white house, as the virus began spreading in china. there are some global developments today as well. president vladimir putin says the next two to three weeks are defining as russia's cases spike and the government struggles to contain the spread. and in wuhan, where the outbreak first started, chinese officials lifting a lockdown, the city's 11 million residents now free to leave their homes for the first time in ten weeks. >> even before today's update to that university of washington model, president trump was upbeat. >> we're way under any polls or any of the models, as they call them. they have models, and we're way

under, and we hope to keep it that way in terms of death. >> now, his team is a bit more cautious or a bit more balanced. suggesting social distancing and other restrictions are working, but also noting, there are some very tough days ahead, and the pr prospect that some areas spike as others flatten their coronavirus curve. >> it's doing to be a bad week for death, but driving that and ahead of that is the fact we'll start to see the beginning of a turnaround. we need to keep pushing on the mitigation strategy. >> we are concerned about the metro area of washington and baltimore. and we're concerned right now about the philadelphia area. all of our previous areas seem to be steady at least. >> the estimates of deaths going down is a result of the fact that we have listened to the president and the vice president and the task force. >> joining me now, cnn chief medical correspondent, dr. sanjay gupta, also dr. patrice harris. doctors, both, thank you for

being here. sanjay, it's hard to find the words. you can't call it good news because the model still projects 60,000 americans will die, but it's an improved outlook. why, and what does it tell us? >> when you looked at the original models, john, what the university of washington was sort of basing that on was primarily, you know, the evolution in china, in wuhan specifically. and sort of saying, look, if we do those same sorts of stay-at-home orders, what is that going to look like here in the united states? but also, taking into account that it probably would be difficult to do those same sort of stay-at-home orders. and that, as a result, pushed the numbers higher. i think as they have started to look at other countries, primarily countries in europe, which were behind china, maybe a little bit more lax with regard to their stay-at-home orders, they did still see significant benefit there and they started to add those data points and those modeling numbers into this model here in the united states. and that seemed to improve things. john, it is still a model.

there are many models out there. a lot of people are focused on this one out of the university of washington. we have been looking at several different models, and you know, when you start to put those all together, you do see a bigger variation. as statisticians like to say, all models are wrong, but some are useful, and i think that applies here as well. just have to keep an eye on this over the next several days to see if the trends continue. >> i want to stay with you for a second, sanjay, and pup up the numbers of the projections. 81,766 yesterday. 60,00 60,415. you don't want to use optimistic, good. it's better and improved. when you look at the numbers, you hear the president, you hear him publicly itching if it's not as bad as we thought, it's time to reopen. lay down some milestones for doing that. >> you know, as with the models, there are different projections and milestones in terms of

opening up the country, so to speak. let's put some of those up. as you look at these various criteria, keep in mind that there's not going to be an all clear sort of flag that is waved. in addition to the physical sort of issues, there's going to be a psychological concern. are people going to be willing to go back, push elevator buttons, you know, touch handles? here's what you're trying to see, you have to make sure the hospitals are equipped to take care of patients. in several places around the country, they're redlining as they describe it right now. you want to be able to test, john. we talked about this for three and a half months now. you need to be able to test so you can isolate people who are positive and trace their contacts. the 14-day reduction in cases. they want to see the trend go down. how long? two weeks in a row. one number that came out of the yufr yufrtd university of washington, and again, once we see below 60

people dying, and i'm with you, it's hard to talk about this so clinically, but when you see below 60 people a day dying, that's a sign we're getting close to reopening. >> dr. harris, come in on those points. sanjay showed those milestones. number one, you want the case count to go down. especially in the large areas with big populations, you want to be on the downside of the curve. you also need to have in place, i believe, a more robust testing system. sanjay is right, we have been talking about this for three months. the president says the united states is testing more people than anyone. that might be true numerically, but we're still way behind other countries per capita, and the former president weighed in, social distancing bends the curve and relieves some pressure on our heroic medical professionals, but the key will be a robust system of testing and monitoring, something we have yet to put in place nationwide. how far away are we from a testing system nationwide that would make you comfortable as

the head of the ama to say we medical professionals are ready to say we can at least start a reopening of the american economy? >> well, thank you for having me on. and first of all, sanjay is correct. and sanjay reminds us that we have to have data points and evidence before we can even think about reopening government or reopening our society, whatever that ultimately means. and that will be a slow process. it wouldn't be we're off today and on tomorrow. so we need to continue to collect the data. a critical piece of that data will be related to testing. we knew that we were behind on testing from the very beginning. sanjay notes that we have been talking about this for three months. and we are still not there. we need to see the data, how many tests are happening in every state across this country, even down to the county level, where are these tests being

offered? you know, yesterday, we had conversation about the disproportionate impact on african-americans. we want to make sure that tests are available from the urban areas to the rural areas, and all pockets of this community so we can make informed decisions about when is the right time to reopen our society. i do -- >> go ahead. >> yes, i'm sorry. we cannot forget about physical distancing. and what the flattening of the curve shows is that as sanjay said, basic public health principles work. physical distancing is working. and that's why every state needs to make sure that they have enacted shelter in place, stay home policies. >> and part of what makes it so difficult, doctors, and sanjay, to you first on this one, is we have 50 pieces of the american puzzle just in the mainland

united states. that's not even counting puerto rico, guam, other places we should also keep an eye on, too, they're our brothers and sisters as americans. if you look, you see new york, you think it may be at its apex. we'll hear from governor cuomo later this hour. the question is, is it a long plateau, do they start to drop? you can look at louisiana, detroit, but then you have florida projected to peak on april 23rd, different states, there are states that are behind, if you will, the states we're focusing on most urgently at the moment, but that doesn't mean their problems are not significant. the question is, how do you manage this when things get better, quote/unquote, again, that term in new york or louisiana, but we're still going up the curve in other places? >> right. that's an excellent point, and i think dr. harris would agree. i mean, we keep thinking of this as a curve, but it may look more like an upward slope and then a flat trajectory for a while

before we start to see a downward slope. and that would be a desirable thing as opposed to a significant peak where you have exceeded hospital capacity and all that. so we'll keep an eye on that. but with regard to these other states, john, first of all, as we said for some time, everyone's behavior is sort of, everyone is dependent on each other in terms of their behavior, how people are behaving in different states affects people elsewhere in the state and the region and the whole country, but more practically speaking, it really is about these hospital resources. you're hearing about ventilators for example being sent from california to new york. if there's other hot spots that start to develop, are they going to have enough resources? are we going to need to deploying the most critical resources to those places? when we talk about the peaks in the country of deaths, we want to make sure that the hospital resources in the country as a whole are not being outstripped, whether that's in a place in texas or in new york or in

california, wherever it may be is the point. so we are all in this together, and we still have a finite amount of resources. hopefully, we don't outpace the resources that we have. but places that just two weeks ago had dozens of cases, john, now have thousands. so places that think that they have dodged the bullet, they still, as dr. harris said, have got to be vigilant right now. people are going to look at these models and say, hey, good news. it's all working. we can take our eye off the ball, our foot off the pedal. can't do that yet. >> can't do that. if it's a little bit better, again, that's the best i can say. i don't want to be optimistic, maybe it gives you a chance to think more broadly and spread your resources and do the scramble. doctors, appreciate it very much. as we continue to try to judge where we're heading. >> up next for us, the blame game that comes with the coronavirus fight. as the president faces growing criticism over his response to the crisis, he's lashing out at a new target. that's next. the sign? when i needed to create a better visitor experience. improve our workflow.

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today, there's more evidence the united states government missed or ignored some loud warnings about the coronavirus outbreak. there's a shift in how americans feel about the president's crisis response, and an attempt to shift blame from the man in the oval office to just about anyone else. abc news reporting u.s. intelligence officials concluded as far back as late november that china was masking the severity of the early outbreak. abc says those findings were briefed across the government, including to the white house, the pentagon, and the national security council. the white house's first action on coronavirus didn't come until late january, two months later. president trump bristles when asked whether he underestimated the tret and he's quick to assign blame to others. yesterday, it was the world

health organization. >> they actually criticized and disagreed with my travel ban at the time i did it. and they were wrong. they have been wrong about a lot of things. and we're going to put a hold on money spent to the w.h.o. we're going to put a very powerful hold on it and we're going to see. >> now, the president also said the world health organization got it wrong. that tracks with what the president is seeing on fox news. but it runs count toor his own past words and tweets. in early february, for example, the w.h.o. and china were great. >> well, i think china is very professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control. i really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. you know, in april, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. and that's a beautiful date to look forward to. but china, i can tell you, is working very hard. we're working with them. we just sent some of our best people over there, world health organization, and a lot of them are composed of our people,

they're fantast, and they're in china helping them out. we're in good shape. >> fantastic, in very good shape. two weeks later, the president tweeted more praise and one of many assessments that has not stood the test of time. this in the president's tweet, the coronavirus is very much under control in the usa. we're in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. cdc and world health have been working hard and very smart. stock market starting to look very good with me. here to share their insight, dana bash and maggie haberman. this is trademark president. number one, he doesn't care what he said yesterday. he'll say something completely different today. but he is looking for a scapegoat at a time more and more people are questioning, did he underestimate this? he says it was just being a cheerleader. if he was doing that, then he was misrepresenting it. >> i think that's right, john. look, there's a third factor i would say, which is that he is getting pressure and questions about when exactly the u.s. will be opened up. we have seen him wrestling with

himself at the briefing podium about how long he should keep these social distancing guidelines in place. he talked about how the country has big decisions to make, and that's part of what you're seeing in trying to find a scapegoat. a, two things can be true at once. it could be there are issues with the w.h.o. and the president still underplayed this and still has to be accountable for his own words. and to your point, in january and at various points over the last couple month, the president was very praising of china. he might have had reasons for that, but he has to own that he said it. i understand he's going to try not to do that. the w.h.o. is going to be the latest person in addition to states that didn't respond quickly in his measure or others who he's going to suggest who are at fault here. that is his entire m.o. it always has been, to shift blame and to claim credit where things are positive. >> and if you go through the timeline, i take no pleasure in beating up the president or holding the president accountable for his past words. i don't. i know the trump people out there think that's what we do.

i do not, but if you get back to this on january 27th, he was in davos. he was asked on cnbc, do you see a pandemic coming? he said no. this is tom cotton speaking to hugh hewitt this week. but tom cotton the same day the president said no, wrote a letter to the administration saying don't believe china and be prepared because there could be a pandemic coming. listen to tom cotton say why he was so alarmed. >> i saw two things from china about mid-january that told me this virus posed a great threat. on the one hand, all of the hoppy talk the chinese communist party and all the lies they were telling the world and the w.h.o. like they had it under control and it couldn't be transmitted from person to person, so on and so forth. that contrasted with the extreme draconian measures they were taking. you know, locking down an entire city, larger than new york city. >> dana, there's nothing that tom cotton can see that the president of the united states can't see. tom cotton was acting.

liz cheney also, a few others, very few people in congress who do their jobs, who take their committee assignments seriously and read the briefings. intelligence was telling them china is saying this but doing that, and they saw a great problem there. if tom cotton has that information, the president of the united states or at least all the people around him have that same information. >> no question about it. and tom cotton and liz cheney were called alarmists by their republican colleagues in particular. look, in fairness to those of us who didn't have access to the information, it did seem the notion of closing down new york city like they did in china to wuhan was impossible to wrap our minds around. but we didn't have the access to information that people like tom cotton did. and the fact that the intelligence community had information that was very cleary putting them and putting the u.s. government on the path to

understanding how bad it was or if not how bad it was, how much the chinese were covering up, and at the same time, the president of the united states was doing happy talk about the chinese response, about the w.h.o. that he is now using as a scapegoat. it's remarkable. i mean, i remember sitting in the impeachment trial in the united states capitol, john, watching tom cotton with his fidget spinner because he was,uous know, kind of trying to pass the hours during the impeachment trial. well, it turns out when he wasn't doing that, he was reading important intelligence briefings that the president and his aides should have been focused on instead of him tweeting constantly about impeachment. >> right, the privilege of that response, the privilege of having access to that information comes with a responsibility to act on it. he tried to, some of the administration had that information. i want to ask you to stand by because we have breaking political news. cnn now told vermont senator bernie sanders is suspending his campaign for the presidency. this, of course, in a campaign

put on pause by the coronavirus crisis. ryan nobles has been covering the sanders campaign from the beginning and joins us. the senator deciding it's time to bow out. >> that's exactly right, john. this is a long time coming for senator sanders. his campaign basically had been put on hold because of the coronavirus crisis, and with each passing vote, he was falling further and further behind former vice president joe biden in the delegate count, and now finally, vermont senator bernie sanders has decided it's time for him to bow out of the race for president. we're told that he informed his staff during an all-staff call that took place a little after 11:00 today. and then later this morning, at 11:45, excuse me, he'll hold a live stream where he will address his supporters and talk about his reasons for getting out of the race and what his plans are going forward. of course, john, this was a difficult decision for bernie sanders on many levels. excuse me. mainly because he had been at this fight for so long. i'm not just talking about his time running for president of

the united states, which he's basically been running for president for more than five years if you go back to his entry into the race to take on hillary clinton back in the last go round. sanders has always been working on many of these progressive issues for 40 years of his career. it seemed like he was on the precipice of winning the democratic nomination, right before the vote in south carolina, he won 3 of 4 contests. he and his team felt they were in a good position going into super tuesday and it all felt apart after losing big time in south carolina and then the moderate vote coalescence around former vice president joe biden, and after that, sanders was never able to regain that footing he had once established. the big question i think, john, now, is exactly what does bernie sanders do to encourage his supporters to get behind the campaign of joe biden. one thing that sanders has said consistently since he decided to get into this race in february of last year that was regardless of who the nominee was, that he was going to do everything he

possibly could to help that democratic nominee defeat donald trump. and you can already see it on social media, there are many sanders supporters who are still uncomfortable with the idea of vice president joe biden being their standard bearer. that's a significant portion of the electorate. obviously, not enough to win the democratic primary, but a big enough portion of the vote that it would be very important to bring those folks into the biden camp if they have any hope of beating donald trump this fall. so that is going to be his big test. i imagine we're going to hear something along those lines during this 11:45 address to his supporters, that outreach to them that it's time to get behind joe biden in order to win the presidential election this fall. but the way that sanders conducts himself between now and november, john, could play a key role in who wins and loses this presidential election. john. >> ryan, stay with us. ryan nobles. i also want to bring in david chalian, maggie haberman and dana bash are still with us.

this is a giant question for how does senator sanders go about mending fences with joe biden, and to flip a coin, it's a challenge for joe biden who is a definition of the establishment that bernie sanders for years has run against. the 2020 campaign has essentially been put understandably and justifiably so behind the curtain because we're covering a global pandemic, but it election is still scheduled for november. may be a virtual democratic convention, but joe biden has a huge challenge now. the one thing he has working in his favor that maybe hillary clinton didn't have four years ago is he does have a better relationship with senator sanders. >> and that is no small thing, john. he also has more time here. right? senator sanders is getting out earlier in this cycle as you noted the campaign on hold, than he did last cycle with hillary clinton. so there is more time here to heal the wounds, which is what a lot of biden supporters were hoping they would have. you noted, john, correctly, i think, this burden is not just on senator sanders for bringing his supporters into the larger

democratic fold to achieve that goal of defeating donald trump that both joe biden and bernie sanders say they share. it is also a burden on joe biden and one you see he has been taking on since before their last democratic debate on cnn march 15th, a few weeks ago. you saw joe biden starting to take on some of elizabeth warren's issues and being friendlier to some of the issues bernie sanders had brought into the fold. that's all the work that joe biden started to do and will have to continue to do to make sure that this wing of the party remains energized, enthused, and is able to be part of the broader democratic effort in trying to defeat donald trump. >> and to maggie first and then dana, part of the question here is, and you see it. there are already some people around biden or in the democratic establishment, who are now for biden saying well, we don't have to worry as much about sanders because, look, he didn't run as strong against joe biden as he did against hillary

clinton. i would argue that that is a false comfort, if you will, in the sense that if you look at electorate map and how close michigan, how close pennsylvania, how close wisconsin were in 2016, maybe joe biden can assemble a different coalition, but the lesson of 2016 is you better not leave anybody in the democratic party at home, whether it's sanders supporters, african-americans, whether it is anybody. >> that's exactly right. if you look at current polling of the sitting president, the incumbent, you can see how little his numbers really have moved. they went up and then they come back down to where they have been. the stability of donald trump's approval rating speaks to the fact there is a group of voters who are going to vote for him. this idea that there is this wide swath of people who are in between on him is not clear. and so joe biden is going to need to broaden the coalition that he is putting together. that is going to require sanders supporters, and just because we have all been sort of in this suspended animation because of coronavirus and what it has wrought against the country over the last couple months does not

mean that all of the issues that bernie sanders was fighting for and talking about for decades have now been suspended in the minds of his supporters. it's going to be incumbent on joe bide toon find a way to way to bring those people in and turn them out on election day. >> the question, i guess, dana, is how. joe biden clearly gets it. the question does he understand the depth of it, does he have the team to do it? he has spoken in recent days as senator sanders was debating what to do, about being a bridge, the bridge to a younger generation of democrats. the question, he has a big choice. he's now starting the vetting process for a vice presidential pick. that could be one way to reach out to the sanders base. there's the sanders people, including alexandria ocasio-cortez of new york, who has been quite critical of joe biden and what he represents. how does he, and maybe the flip side is elizabeth warren, who has been much more complimentary, how does he find a way with progressive democrats

to say i get it. we may not agree on everything, but my door is open. you will be at the table. >> let's be clear. there is, i think it's fair to say, a minority of sanders supporters who joe biden will never get. you know, as we were going through the process, i was texting with somebody who was a bernie sanders delegate in 2016 who was telling me that he and several people who he went with were never going to be joe biden. but it's in the hopes of the joe biden campaign the minority. what is going on right now is people in and around bernie sanders, texting with a couple of them as our colleagues have been speaking, are working with and have been working with bernie sanders to extract maximum leverage. and even though he has suspended his campaign, he still has leverage because, when i say leverage, i mean leverage to get joe biden to at least give voice to some of the issues beyond

what he's already done that sanders has been pushing for for decades, never mind in this campaign. he has that leverage because joe biden and his campaign understand reese nlcent history 2016, understand the perils of brushing those ideas aside and that means that more bernie sanders people are going to stay home if they don't feel included. that is happening as we speak, john. that sort of to and fro, the negotiation, and it will continue to happen up until the convention, however that happens, and more importantly, through the general election. >> and i want ryan nobles, we were talking a lot about how this impacts joe biden and the campaign. i want to come back to senator sanders. i may have to nrtd rupt you if andrew cuomo comes out to give his daily coronavirus briefing. he has had to say in recent days he does not plan to make a late entry into the democratic race because of all the high-profile attention he's received leading his state, but in terms of

senator sanders, he ran in 2016, he was very formidable in the beginning of 2020, but we often forget the personal challenge of running for president. he had a heart attack in the middle of the campaign, and he came back and was just as aggressive and energetic on the trail. when they went back to vermont, three in a row tuesdays where he was shellacked by joe biden and said he had to think about this. take us inside of that, because whether you're a sanders supporter watching or not, it's a healy personal thing to run for president, for yourself, for your family, and for all the people who get up every day and support you. fwl that that's exactly right, john, and also when you take into account that bernie sanders felt he had brought a movement for a long time had been just not appreciated by many in the political class and brought it to the forefront, brought it to the mainstream, the idea that he was just going to abandon it in quick fashion is not what was going to happen. when he came back to burlington

after every one of those super tuesdays, he had a close group of associates he sat with, a very tight circle of advisers he trusts the most, including his wife, jane sanders. what they talked about wasn't just bernie sanders' future t was the future of the progressive movement. if he exits the stage, who is going to be there to pick up the mantle, and how important will it be to make sure the big issues like health care for everyone, eliminating college debt, making college more affordable, creating a more level playing field when it comes to economic inequality, he's very concerned about those issues no longer being a priority to the people running for president. and i think the other thing a lot of folks don't take into account enough about is just how well sanders really understands his supporters. i think he knew if he just abandoned his campaign say after the second super tuesday when it looked pretty unlikely that he would be able to capture the nomination, that would go a long way to actually alienating that group of supporters he is hoping he can bring into the fold to support joe biden. he needed to show them that he

was going to fight until his last breath, and then only at that point, when he felt that there was no fight left, that he would then turn around and throw his support behind joe biden. i think that's actually going to go a long way to bringing some of those sanders supporters into the biden fold, but they know that sanders left it all on the table, that there was nothing left for him to do, and now it was time for him to xitd the stage. i want to make one other point about his relationship with joe biden and how different that is with his relationship with hillary clinton. he didn't really have a personal relationship with hillary clinton. he didn't -- wasn't someone that didn't like her, but he didn't have the same personal relationship that he has with joe biden. they are legitimately friends. and while they don't see eye to eye on a number of policy issues, you know, there was a fierce debate within the campaign as to just how aggressive sanders should be in attacking joe biden, and it was actually sanders himself who really held the line on any kind of personal attack. there was a period of time when one of the sanders supporters described joe biden as corrupt.

if you remember, it was sanders himself who stood up and said he was not going to tolerate that. now, there is a serious internal disagreement within his campaign with folks who believe that sanders didn't go far enough, but there was a reason for that. it is because he admires and appreciates joe biden as a human being, and that is going to make it a lot easier for him to rally not only his personal support behind joe biden but also give an authentic plea to his supporters that they need to support joe biden as well, especially if it means beating donald trump in november. >> and you could see that, the clubbiness of the united states senate in breaks in the debates, before and after the debates. senator sanders and former vice president biden. we live in the new normal. if this were six months ago or the campaign four years ago, we know roughly how this would pay out. joe biden would go to burlington, bernie sanders would

go to joe's house, but there's a playbook for how to do a come together rally and moment. except now. how do you play this out in this environment? virtual town hall, virtual link up? >> i would imagine so, john. i mean, it's starting, as brian was reporting, with senator sanders giving a virtual speech, you know, through virtual means to his supporters in just a few minutes to talk through his reasoning and his thinking about suspending his campaign. i think you're right, with that television studio that's been built in joe biden's basement in wilmington, delaware, you may see bernie sanders being piped in there for some kind of joint event. i also was thinking about elizabeth warren who had been holding on the sidelines and now can be part of this effort to sort of turbo charge that left-wing more liberal progressive side of the party into the biden fold here. but i do think there will be

lost opportunities here, as you said. it's not like just because this big development of sanders getting out is now upon us that all of a sudden the campaign is going to come roaring back in some fashion. we're in the midst of this national public health crisis and that's still going to dominate. they will find a way to get some kind of image out there, i'm sure, of them in some unified fashion when that gets worked out, but you're right, you're not going to be able to extend this moment other campaigns in the past have been able to do to just get news cycle after news cycle and more headline victories as you're doing the hard work of making sure the party is unified going forward. >> and one would assume they have spoken, as bernie sanders prepares a live stream to address his supporters. joe biden did call bernie sanders to say i don't want you to take offense, but i'm going to start my vetting process. they have tried to keep a relationship so nobody shocks the other with something. as joe biden tries to do this and as bernie sanders decides

how to do it, he has the lesson of 2016, he said he did everything hillary clinton wanted for him. there's tension between the two camps. let's set that aside. joe biden does have something to prove to the sanders base, to the degree he wants to prove something to the sanders base. we also now have an incredibly different campaign than if we were having this conversation three, four, five, six weeks ago in the sense that this campaign, because of coronavirus, and because it is with us through the campaign, through the election, is going to be about president trump and leadership. will the issues that matter so much to the sanders supporters be pushed down anyway? >> i think to some extent, john, but i do -- and i agree with you that i think this is now going to be a referendum on donald trump in a way it's not going to be a binary choice as people thought it was going to be heading into 2020 prior to january. but i do think that the of the issues that bernie sanders has been focusing on, inequality, a number of progressive checklist coronavirus, and i think you'll

hear more about that as the months go ahead, as we emerge from the very darkest period we're in right now in various parts of the country. so i don't think it totally goes away, where i do think there is a difference is i think that sanders and we touched on this a few times in the last several minutes, but sanders was able to get a lot of media attention for his issues that he won't be able to, his supporters won't be able to now. it will be easier for biden to look past that. again, i think there is a danger in doing that. i think how he unites the party, when you can't meet in person for several more weeks, is an enormous challenge, but it is not likely to define the remaining six and a half months or so of the election, and i think that he is going to have to tend to it. yes, this is a redefined election, but there are going to be issues from, you know, pre-coronavirus that will remain. >> and the issue will be joe biden often talks about how he can getta anin a room with mitc mcconnell, with anybody and work it out. that will be a test for him.

we're still waiting to hear from the governor of new york, andrew cuomo. we're also just moments away from senator bernie sanders making official what we're reporting to you, he has decided to suspend his campaign for the 2020 democratic presidential nomination. a quick break, our coronavirus coverage will be back in just a moment. did you know that feeling sluggish or weighed down

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major breaking news in the democratic presidential campaign trail. senator bernie sanders of vermont is moments away from officially dropping out of the 2020 race. he told his supporters he plans to suspend his campaign. we're waiting for a live stream from senator sanders. joining me to discuss are cnn correspondent ryan nobles, our cnn political director david chalian, and chief political correspondent, dana bash. this makes joe biden the presumptive democratic nominee. it also makes bernie sanders someone who still has enormous influence on the party and on this campaign. i guess my question is how much, again, he did not run as strong in this race as he did against hillary clinton. but his supporters are not about -- his supporters don't quite accept that, i guess is the best way to put it. they believe joe biden has something to do to prove it. >> oh, absolutely, they do.

and on the joe biden note, look, this, the next hours certainly when we listen to bernie sanders and the next day or so, there's going to be a lot of looking at and talking about the remarkable campaign. really remarkable campaign that bernie sanders ran. but i think it does behoove us to take a second and note that we expected it, but this makes it even more on the road to official, that joe biden is the presumptive democratic nominee. and that's where the polls started out in this democratic primary race. there was a lot of -- there was a big roller coaster, as happens in a lot of these races on both sides of the aisle. but that is where we are right now, which is kind of remarkable given joe biden's history in trying and failing at this, at least to be the nominee. on the question of getting bernie sanders supporters onboard, it is an open question how far he will go. but the one thing that we have to keep in mind, well, there are

lots of things different between now and 2016, but the biggest according to a lot of bernie sanders supporters but more importantly the candidate himself, is donald trump is president. it's not a question of, well, if we don't go and vote for the democratic nominee, you know, they'll still win. they saw what happened in 2016. that did not happen. hillary clinton lost, donald trump became president. and that is by all accounts one of the most, if not the biggest goal of bernie sanders right now. yes, he cares a lot about his issues that he's been promoting for decades. but right now, at this moment in time, he cares most about defeating donald trump, and that will, i think, go a long way in his messaging towards his supporters on how much they need to get behind joe biden. >> and david chalian, dana mentioned president trump a couple times. you see the countdown clock on the sanders live feed. i like that. gives us a good clue of what to wait for. president trump throughout the primary campaign, especially

late in the primary campaign when biden was winning kept saying there they go again, suggesting the democratic establishment was putting their thumb on the scale. that was a sanders complaint in 2016, and he had reason to complain about it in 2016. he did not have that reason this time. joe biden just flat out beat him after being given up for lost and coming back in south carolina and beyond. you know the current president of the united states is going to try to stoke that, that establishment went after sanders again, which again, makes what senator sanders says in a couple minutes and then for the rest of this campaign so important. >> so very important. and you know, i think president trump was doing that in a way to try to elongate the democratic nomination process for as long as possible. no incumbent president wants somebody to emerge early and focus all of their attention on them, but also, i think it was to create real division for joe biden, to make his task of uniting the party that much harder. i think that is what the

president was up to when he was doing that. i will just note, though, the coronavirus moment that we're in and the economic impact that this virus is going to have across the country is going to actually create opportunities for joe biden to come in with some policy prescriptions that might be very appealing to bernie sanders and the sanders wing of the party. and that shouldn't be lost here. there is going to need to be a massive rebuilding. look at what the government has already done with the stimulus that's already there, and as you know, nancy pelosi and chuck schumer and mitch mcconnell are already all onboard with the notion there is more to come. looking for how to tailor that money and government spending into fixing some of the economic ills that will be so apparent in this recovery period after coronavirus that i think there's real opportunity for joe biden to appeal to some of those sanders -- he's not going to support medicare for all. that's not going to happen. and he has made that clear.

but i do think there is some combining of interests here in these wings of the party because of the current economic crisis that the country will be facing. >> >> excellent point, government reinvestment. you see the republican president of the united states spending $2 trillion on the last stimulus, talking about another $2 trillion here, infrastructure pushed down the road. there may be opportunities here, they just reset the clock. we do that sometimes in our business, they reset the clock to 1:57. senator sanders getting ready. this is obviously a big moment for him. to the point of how this plays out, we are in a new world. but even as the math started to work in his way and as he started to pull away in the delegate chase, joe biden did understand, one of his challenges as the presumptive democratic nominee was to extend an olive branch. >> senator sanders and his supporters have brought a remarkable passion and tenacity to all of these issues. together, they have shifted the fundamental conversation in this country. so, let me say, especially to the young voters who have been

inspired by senator sanders, i hear you. i know what's at stake. i know what we have to do. our goal as a campaign and my goal as a candidate for president is to unify this party. >> ryan nobles, that was the one giant weakness, if you will, in what became a biden route. he was running it up among african-americans. he was holding his own with the exception of nevada and california among latinos. he was doing much better with those blue collar men, people who work with their hands. that was a bernie sanders strength against hillary clinton in 2016. not so much thyme. joe biden was running it up in the suburbs, but he had a giant weakness. let's listen. audio dropped from the feed there. we will try to fix that as soon as we can. as we do so, ryan nobles, we see senator sanders speaking in vermont. as we try to pull this up, we're going to try to correct the audio issues here.

joe biden's weakness was younger voters. he was doing well among every other democratic constituenccon. younger voters was the giant hole. senator sanders has that base. >> yeah, that is right, john, and i think it was a source of frustration for senator sanders that he continued to do so well with young voters, particularly in polling, but then they would not necessarily see the turnout numbers that they were hoping from young voters, despite what their polling was telling them and despite the energy and enthusiasm that he saw from the big crowds he was drawing on a regular basis, even after it seemed impossible for him to win the democratic nomination. he was still drawing huge, huge crowds. and another point i think that was a source of frustration for senator sanders and is going to have to be something that -- >> and i want to thank the many hundreds of thousands of americans who have been to our rallies, town meetings and house parties from new york to california. some of these events are over 25,000 people. some had a few hundred. some had a dozen. but all were important. and let me thank those who made

these many events possible. i also want to thank our surrogates, too many to name. i can't imagine that any candidate has ever been blessed with a stronger and more dedicated group of people who have taken our message to every part of this country. and i want to thank all of those who made the music and the art an integral part of our campaign. i want to thank all of you who spoke to your friends and neighbors, posted on social media, and worked as hard as you could to make this a better country. together we have transformed american consciousness as to what kind of nation we can become and have taken this country a major step forward in the never-ending struggle for economic justice, social justice, racial justice, and environmental justice. i also want to thank the many hundreds of people on our campaign staff. you were willing to move from

one state to another and do all the work that had to be done. no job was too big or too small for you. you rolled up your sleeves and you did it. you embodied the words that are at the core of our movement -- not me, but us. and i thank each and every one of you for what you've done. as many of you will recall, nelson mandela, one of the great freedom fighters in history, famously said, "it always seems impossible until it is done." and what he meant by that is that the greatest obstacle to reach social change has everything to do with the power of the corporate and political establishment to limit our vision as to what is possible and what we are entitled to as human beings. if we don't believe that we are entitled to health care as a human right, we will never achieve universal health care.

if we don't believe that we are entitled to decent wages and working conditions, millions of us will continue to live in poverty. if we don't believe that we are entitled to all of the education we require to fulfill our dreams, many of us will leave schools saddled with huge debt or never get the education we need. if we don't believe that we are entitled to live in a world that has a clean environment and is not ravaged by climate change, we will continue to see more drought, floods, rising sea levels, and increasingly uninhabitable planet. if we don't believe that we are entitled to live in a world of justice, democracy, and fairness, without racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, or religious bigotry, we will continue to have massive income and wealthy inequality, prejudice and hatred, mass incarceration, terrified

immigrants, and hundreds of thousands of americans sleeping out on the streets in the richest country on earth. and focusing on that new vision for america is what our campaign has been about and what, in fact, we have accomplished. few would deny that over the course of the past five years our movement has won the ideological struggle, in so-called red states and blue states and purple states, a majority of the american people now understand that we must raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour, that we must guarantee health care as a right to all of our people, that we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuel, and that higher education must be available to all, regardless of income. it was not long ago that people considered these ideas radical and fringe. today they are mainstream ideas, and many of them are already

being implemented in cities and states across the country. that is what we have accomplished together. in terms of health care, even before this horrific pandemic we are now experiencing, more americans understood that we must move to a medicare for all, single-payer program. during the primary elections, exit polls showed in state after state a strong majority of democratic primary voters supported a single government health insurance program to replace private insurance. that was true even in states where our campaign did not prevail. and let me just say this. in terms of health care, this current, horrific crisis that we are now in has exposed for all to see how absurd our current employer-based health insurance system is. the current economic downturn we

are experiencing has not only led to a massive loss of jobs but has also resulted in millions of americans losing their health insurance. while americans have been told over and over again how wonderful our employer-based private insurance system is, those claims sound very hollow today as a growing number of unemployed workers struggle with how they can afford to go to the doctor or not go bankrupt with a huge hospital bill. we have always believed that health care must be considered as a human right, not an employee benefit, and we are right. please also appreciate that not only are we winning the struggle ideologically, we are also winning it generationally. the future of our country rests with young people. and in state after state, whether we won or whether we lost, the democratic primaries

or caucuses, we received a significant majority of the votes, sometimes overwhelming majority, from people not only 30 years of age or under, but 50 years of age or younger. in other words, the future of this country is with our ideas. as we are all painfully aware, we now face an unprecedented crisis. not only are we dealing with a coronavirus pandemic, which is taking the lives of many thousands of our people, we are also dealing with an economic meltdown that has resulted in the loss of millions of jobs. today families all across our country face financial hardship unimaginable only a few months ago. and because of the unacceptable levels of income and wealth inequality in our economy, many of our friends and neighbors

have little or no savings and are desperately trying to pay their rent or their mortgage or even put food on the table. this reality makes it clear to me that congress must address this unprecedented crisis in an unprecedented way that protects the health and economic well-being of the working families of our country, not just powerful special interests. as a member of the democratic leadership in the united states senate and as a senator from the state of vermont, this is something that i intend to intensely be involved in over the next number of months, and that will require an enormous amount of work, which takes me to the state of our presidential campaign. i wish i could give you better news, but i think you know the truth, and that is that we are now some 300 delegates behind