very good friday evening. chris cuomo is off tonightment i'm jim sciutto. president trump will be addressing a large group of people from all over the country gathered closely together, and most of them not taking the simple step of wearing a mask. he is at mount rushmore in south dakota at an event the governor there proudly declared would not observe social distancing, as recommended.

before leaving today, the president played golf at his club in virginia, not wearing a mask, even though he did say this week he liked the way he looked in them. and before that, he once again tweeted out his false notion blaming the country's record spike in coronavirus cases simply on more testing. which is odd because members of the european union where they do plenty of testing have gotten their outbreaks very much under control, as have countries around the world. but you look at the graph there, look at that green line, how sharply it is rising. it's clear this country has not. tonight the president is once again flouting the best advice we have on stopping the spread. joining us now from a nonsocial distancing mask optional event in mount rushmore is cnn's joe johns. joe, you've been there all day. tell us what you're seeing in the crowd there, how close together are they? how many folks wearing masks, et cetera. . >> jim, this place is packed. there are two levels.

the lower level is full of people. they've been coming in all day. the upper-level now is very full as well. as you said, very few people wearing masks. we were told that that was going to be optional. they could get masks from the government if they wanted to. the fact is it doesn't appear that a lot of people wanted to. as for social distancing, same thing really goes. the governor made it clear there was not going to be social distancing at this event. and people aren't practicing it. now down on the lower level, there are bleacher seats, if you will, as well as some black folding chairs which are connected with essentially pieces of plastic. and up here, there are nothing but chairs connected the very same way. what it means is people who come here to see the president, who come to see the fireworks could very well be sitting right next to very closely somebody else,

perhaps even that they don't know. so clearly a concern about social distancing. the fact of the matter is it's just not happening here, jim. >> and we've seen it before. we saw it in tulsa. we saw it in phoenix, and folks got infected. members of his secret service detail got infected. they have the disease right now. so what do we know about the president's message tonight? he says he is going to talk about the real history of the country. i assume not about a response to the coronavirus outbreak. >> well, it doesn't sound like it. we've only gotten snippets, bits and pieces. my colleague jeremy diamond over at the white house reports that among other things, we're going expect the president to attack what he calls the left wing mob. he is going to go after people who he says divide our country, care down our country. so it sounds like the president is going to be playing to his

base right here in trump country. we do know this is an election year. this isn't supposed to be a campaign speech. nonetheless, it sure sounds like one, jim. >> yeah, in that setting, it might be showing up in some pam cain ads. joe johns, thanks very much. more breaking news now. these numbers just in. for the third day in a row, new cases in this country have again topped 50,000. 50,000 in one day. joining us now dr. peter hotez. he is dean of the tropical school of medicine at baylor college of medicine in houston. so dr. hotez, you're watching this event. you and i have talked before about what every doctor worth his salt in this country says and knows, that you got to social distance, you've got to wear masks. large gatherings, bad idea. what do you think when the president of the united states holds event like this? >> well, it's -- the event is concerning, but it's the bigger piece of this that alarms me,

jim. last week we talked and we were at 40,000. and we were alarmed that we reached 40,000, which is the highest we've ever been. this week now we're at 50,000. and if i'm lucky enough to speak with you next week, it will be 60,000. and so on and so forth. it will continue up at least until dr. fauci's apocalyptic prediction of 100,000 cases a day. and on a per person basis, we're already there in texas, in arizona, and florida. so this seems to be spiraling out of control in terms of this massive resurgence across the south. and we still have not heard from the federal government, from the white house coronavirus task force on what the plan is. there appears to be no plan. let the states lead. we'll provide the ppe and the supply chain management, but that's -- that's the realization. there is no plan. an these numbers will continue to accelerate.

>> it is talk now that the message is going to be live with it. we had a researcher on last night who put it in these terms. a wuhan a day is what's happening in the country right now. let's set the president aside because he is clearly not going to change on this, or giving no indications he is going to change on his approach to this. let's talk about americans at home who are watching tonight. it's a holiday weekend. they, like me, like you want to see family and friends. they want to enjoy the weekend as best they can. what should they be doing? what should they feel comfortable doing? what should they not feel comfortable doing? >> in the states where the disease is rapidly accelerating, across the south, especially texas, california and arizona, the states are left to figure it out on their own, and they're making the december of it. so here in texas we now have a stay at home -- not a stay at home, we have a voluntary stay at home. and the workplace there is stay at home at in turn metro areas

we have mandatory masks. those are all good things we're putting into place. the big unknown is whether these measures are by themselves are sufficient or whether we're going have to go to something more dramatic. for this weekend, people are just going have to hunker down. do not -- you do not want to be in crowds. you do not want to be in groups because the transmission is just so intense. and our fire and rescue are being overwhelmed in houston. that was just reported in the houston chronicle today. the numbers are starting to climb in our intensive care units. the texas medical center, houston's largest in the world. so we still have some room to go. but who wants to get there? it's the community transmission that is just so overwhelming. >> okay. there are a lot of outrageous claims come from the white house. one of them today, the trade adviser, peter navarro talking about this. alleging that this virus somehow weaponized.

china seeded and spread this virus. looking at the science, especially given how we know the virus came to the states. most likely most of the cases came from europe, what does the science tell us about the origin of this and how it is spread? >> well, what peter navarro said this afternoon, and i heard the clip, and it was alarming because it was what i read it as a total failure to accept any personal -- any responsibility on the part of the administration for what happened. and what we need to do to correct it. instead it was conspiracy theories. this was the chinese communist party deliberately sending operatives into the u.s., infected with this virus. and then it was -- and it just went on and on. and there was pointing fingers at dr. fauci. it was outrageous. i don't know what their goal.

i'm na scientist, not a politician. this is an administration that can't seem to come up with a plan. and it's also the white house coronavirus task force. they have to come up with a national plan. we will not solve on our own with the states in the lead operating individually. there is a reason we call it the united states and we have to function that way. >> we do. well, it's good to hear from you, dr. hotez. we wish you well this weekend. >> thank you so much. have a good weekend. >> you too. thanks very much. next, the mayor of miami-dade county on how he intend to do his part to slow the outbreak in a state that now has the dubious distinction of leading the nation in new cases. later, the death of an african american man during a police encounter and a photograph, if you can believe it, reenacting the moment that he died. it's being called, quote, appalling and inexcusable. when you see these images, you'll agree. business can be ready for it. a digital foundation from vmware

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reopening of movie theater, arcades, casinos, and other entertainment venues where people gather in numbers. the mayor joins us now. mayor jimenez, good to have you on. we've talked a lot throughout this. i know you've had a lot of hard decisions to make every day on this. latest data in miami-dade shows something concerning. that's the icu capacity at just above 73%. given that you have this daily rising toll of infections, do you believe your hospitals are in a position to handle this as people get sick? >> yeah, we do. but just in case, that's why we took the measures that we did. we closed the beaches for the fourth of july holiday. i've imposed a 10:00 curfew for now until further notice because we actually had a sharp increase in the number of young people that had come up positive. and for us, it's not the number of people that are coming up positive. it's the percentage of the positives. because we know we've had well over 200,000 people here that have either had the virus or

have the virus. we ran a medical study. we know the official number really is underreported by a factor of 10 to 20. i expect that would be the same throughout the country. so it's actually how many people go to the hospitals, how many people are using icus, how many people are using ventilators. we have sufficient capacity and we also have the capacity to add more. so we're not there yet. but being a firefighter, i want to make sure the first thing we're taught is contain the fire. right now we're trying to contain the virus before we try to beat it. so that's what we're trying to do right now. >> did florida reopen too soon and too quickly in your view? >> no, i don't think so. i think people thought that this thing was over. and we had it pretty well under control. and then when we started to reopen, we had the rules in place that would have kept people safe. we have a mask order that we put badge in april that still any time you're indoors, you're supposed to be wearing a mask.

any time you're outdoors you're supposed to be wearing a mask, unless you maintain social distancing. we change that to any time you're outdoors, you have to wear a mask. we had sanitation. we had all rules that were put together with our infection control doctors that they told us, look, if the people follow these steps and these rules, the likelihood of con the age john is low. but unfortunately, a lot of people, especially the young did not follow these rules. that's why we had the sharp rise in the young which infected other people. that's why we had increasing cases of covid-19 in our hospitals. >> is you talk about the two simple rules there, mask wearing and social distance. the president is holding an event tonight again without required mask wearing, without social distancing. does that hurt your efforts to try to save live there's in miami, to have the commander in chief not be willing to follow those rules or ask people at his

events to do that? >> well, look, what i've said before about what the president does is he needs to follow what the local rules are. i don't know what the local rules are in south dakota. i would expect that -- >> why should there be local rules -- there is not a health expert in this country that doesn't say wear a mask and social distance. >> yeah, but you follow the -- >> locality to locality. >> yeah, except that in south dakota i think they had 85 cases in the entire state yesterday. so they have different rules. >> not in tulsa. not in tulsa. >> even in the state of florida, they have -- we have counties with much less. that's why the governor has allowed us local leaders to make rules that are in excess of what he's got in place, and that's what we've done in miami-dade, broward, and palm beach counties. we're a lot stricter here because the cases we have here are much higher than the rest of the state. >> you don't want to see

leadership from the president. i know you're trying to do your best to save lives. you don't want to see leadership from the president saying you know what? i'm taking this simple step. i'm wearing a mask. and keep yourself safe, even as you come to watch me here to speak. you don't want that kind of leadership? >> he comes through miami-dade county, i would expect he wears the mask because that's what we make him do down here. we make everybody wear a mask down here. >> all right. mayor jimenez, i know you got a lot of work to do down there, and we wish and the people of miami-dade the best of luck. >> thank you. appreciate it. >> coming up next, the latest on the investigation into the death of elijah mcclain. the police chief taking action today due to a photo by officers that the mayor called appalling, recreating the circumstances around his death. we'll have that coming up. when you shop with wayfair, you spend less

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breaking news now on the investigation of colorado police officers involved with the death last year of a 23-year-old black male elijah mcclain. this concerns a photo taken by fellow officers of those being investigated that today the mayor of aurora called, quote,

appalling and inexcusable. cnn's omar jimenez joins us now. omar, tell us exactly what these photos show here. >> well, jim, these photos show multiple officers posing at the site, or near the site where elijah mcclain was placed in a chokehold back in august of 2019, including one of the photos showing an officer actually mimicking a chokehold there. the interim police chief there vanessa wilson did fire three of the officers involved almost immediately after -- or i should say days after learning of these photos. one of the officers resigned earlier this week on tuesday, but one of the three officers fired was actually among the initial officers that responded to the scene with elijah mcclain back in august of 2019. to use the words of the chief here, they don't deserve to wear a badge anymore. >> tell us what's happening now with the investigation of the officers directly involved in

mcclain's death. >> well, there are a lot of simultaneous investigations going on between the department of justice, the fbi, the state of colorado, and of course local officials there in the city of aurora as well. to start on the federal side, the fbi and doj say they had already started reviewed into elijah mcclain's case, stemming back from 2019, exploring the possibility of whether civil rights charges could be filed. the family attorneys had said they may have to file civil rights investigation on their part. now on the local level, even though we saw the actions taken by the aurora police department, the mayor of aurora says the actions taken does not end the response that they are planning to take as he points to an independent investigation to the city of aurora that is set to be under way soon. >> understood. a lot to follow there. and so much sadness for that family. as well to have to go through this all over again. omar jimenez, thanks for covering the story for us.

and that does it tonight for "ac 360." up next, jake tapper takes a closer look at how president trump sees the pandemic and how he's reacting to it. if you're at home thinking about your financial plan... so are we. prudential helps 1 in 7 americans with their financial needs. that's over 25 million people. with over 90 years of investment experience, our thousands of financial professionals can help with secure video chat or on the phone. we make it easy for you with online tools, e-signatures, and no-medical-exam life insurance. plan for better days. go to prudential.com or talk to an advisor.

the following is a cnn special report. >> tonight we look to the timeline for the truth. >> we think we have it very well under control. >> the very next day his administration declared a public health emergency. >> what did the president do about the coronavirus? >> i issued a travel restriction from china. >> public health experts, they say he bought himself a little bit of time and then he just squandered it. >> what did the president say? >> it's going to disappear. one day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear. >> and did it match reality? >> a cdc official said publicly that it was not a question of if this virus spreads but when. >> how delayed actions and false statements from beijing to the white house contributed to missing supplies. >> we're running out of

medications. we're running out of equipment. >> slow testing, and confusion about the best way forward. >> it's frustrating. it's disheartening. we can do this. we know how to do this. >> a cnn special report. "the pandemic and the president." the human toll so far, more than two million u.s. citizens infected with the novel coronavirus, and well over 100,000 american lives lost. with projections that tens of thousands more will die in the months ahead. the nick toll too also staggering, with tens of millions unemployed and the government handing out billions upon billions of dollars in stimulus checks and business loans. president trump's top adviser and son-in-law jared kushner recently said that the trump administration, quote, rose to the challenge. and this is a great success story, unquote. did it? it is?

as president trump tries to steer the u.s. back to some semblance of normal, it is worth taking a look at how we got here. what president trump did, what he did not do, and how the united states ended up with, at least according to official records, the most cases and the most death of any country on earth. >> five, four, three -- >> revellers shoulder to shoulder. celebrating a new year that would bring a new virus. a new normal. emptying these streets. >> in early january, this is when the trump administration really gets the first word out of china, and it goes to the

head of the cdc that there is this series of respiratory illnesses going around. they haven't identified it. and this is already a concern to the top health officials in the administration. >> the chinese government reported dozens of cases of pneumonia in city of wuhan, closed down a market as a cause and assured the world health organization, or the w.h.o., that there was, quote, no evidence of significant hume and a half-to-human transmission. but as chinese president xi jinping's government was trying to contain the spread of the virus, it also was trying to contain the spread of the truth. >> not a lot of folks out. >> as cnn international correspondent david culver found out. >> it was back in late december when li warned friends about a sars like virus going around. he sent a email from a hospital quarantined where we worked

showed a patient had coronavirus. but hours after hitting send, wuhan city health officials tracked him down. >> days later dr. li was summoned to a police station and reprimanded for circulating rumors. >> early in january, the deputy national security adviser matthew pottinger has a call with a doctor in hong kong who really delivers for the u.s. government one of the earliest warnings about what is to come. pottinger, who had been a "wall street journal" reporter in china in the early part of the century had known this doctor and become a friend. and what this doctor tells him was chilling. he says that the chinese are not revealing the extent of the problem. they are really covering up what is happening inside the country, and perhaps most importantly for mr. pottinger, this problem is coming to you. >> on january 6th, robert redfield offers to send help, including cdc scientists to china to look into the virus to work with the world health organization.

china does not want a cdc scientist to come in the country at that point. >> but the chinese government's great wall of deception could not stop the deadly virus from migrating beyond its borders. >> 21 people in hong kong return from wuhan with fever or respiratory symptoms. >> still, the xi government insisted its investigations had, quote, found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission. >> in the early days, i don't think anybody knew for sure what to believe. so the concern was are we getting the full story? how likely is this to be contagious? how likely is this to kill people. >> it all seemed to leave u.s. infectious disease experts somewhat in the dark. >> based on the information that cdc has today, we believe the current risk from this virus to the general public is low. for a family sitting around the dinner table tonight, this is not something that they generally need to worry about.

>> but during that same teleconference, the cdc announced a handful of u.s. airports would start screening passengers arriving from wuhan. >> the new coronavirus is causing infections, fever, and pulmonary infections. >> u.s. intelligence agencies were warning the president about the novel coronavirus, according to "the washington post" in more than a dozen daily classified briefings. >> they were calling attention to the threat of the coronavirus in a way that amounts to a fairly steady drumbeat throughout january and february. >> so eventually, alex azar, secretary of health and human services goes to the president to talk about this coronavirus issue that is emerging from china. the president is completely preoccupied with other issues. he wants to talk about vaping and the sale of flavored vaping products. and it just shows you kind of how the president's focus was not on this coronavirus issue.

>> which is worse, the impeachment hoax or the witch hunts from russia? >> his focus, much of it, was on the u.s. senate. >> and ready to present the articles of impeachment against donald john trump. >> the president went into this year with this view that it was time to get payback for the people who brought on the impeachment crisis for him. and in his view, it was the so-called deep state, people in government who were hell bent to bring him down. so by the time the coronavirus pandemic really started to worsen in the united states and scientists and experts were telling him of the problem, he saw some of these people as just an extension of the deep state. and so that led to i think some of the skepticism that he had towards the advice he was being given. >> and china's government?

in late january still downplaying. >> health officials in wuhan held a press conference yesterday. they say this is preventible. they say this is controllable. >> the next day, the u.s. had its first confirmed case of the coronavirus. the president's response was to claim it was under control. he said he trusted the chinese government. >> the worworried about a pande this point at all? >> no, we're not worried at all. we have it under control. it's one person coming in from china, and we have it under control. it's going to be just fine. >> president xi, there is just some talk in china that maybe the transparency isn't everything that it's going to be. do you trust that we're going to know everything that we need to know from china? >> i do, i do. i have a great relationship with president xi. we just signed probably the biggest deal ever made. it certainly has the potential to be the biggest deal ever made. and it was very interesting

period of time. but we got it done. and no, i do. i think the relationship is very -- very good. >> this period of time was a period of real crosscurrents in the trump initiative's policy towards china where different factions in the government had different interests in addressing china's role in a growing pandemic. >> the president first and foremost wanted to solidify a trade agreement during this period of time that he wanted to use as kind of a cornerstone of what he could run for reelection on in november. so that was one reason why president trump very much wanted to downplay any kind of hawkish rhetoric about china and china's role in the growing pandemic. >> we ask the white house to participate in this documentary, but they declined. on january 24th, chinese

authorities initiated a lockdown of 30 million people in ten cities. including the presumed ground zero wuhan. trump praised china, tweeting "china has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus. the united states greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. it will all work out well." but behind the scenes -- >> health professionals across the government were tracking what was happening in china and getting alarmed. >> some were sharing their fears in an email chain dubbed red dawn, originated by duane caneva, the chief medical officer at the department of homeland security, an email chain leaked to "the new york times." >> emailing to each other that this is going to be bad, and we, the scientific community, the medical community have to develop some real advice to

policymakers to try to mitigate the potential damage. >> the projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe, wrote a department of veterans affairs senior medical adviser. you guys made fun of me screaming to close the schools. now i'm screaming close the colleges and universities. >> exactly what came to pass six weeks later. but at the time, many in the trump administration, including some of the medical community, including dr. fauci, were not ready yet to declare that those kinds of steps would be required. >> an infectious disease doctor at the university of nebraska shared this bit of dark humor. great understatements in history. napoleon's retreat from moscow, just a little stroll gone bad. pompeii, a bit of a dust storm. hiroshima, a bad summer

heatwave. and wuhan, just a bad flu season. david, hundreds of americans were just evacuated today from wuhan by the state department. what precautions are being taken to make sure they are not carrying the virus back with them to the u.s.? >> they went through not one, but two health screenings here in china, one done by chinese officials, the other done by u.s. officials. and then they'll go through a third screening once they land in anchorage and be cleared to then go on to california. then, jake, they're going to spend anywhere from 3 to 14 days in quarantine. >> the president did something that he would do over and over again throughout this crisis. offer a ray of hope, distant hope, retweeting "johnson & johnson to create coronavirus vaccine." >> peter navarro, the president's trade adviser circulated a memo through the national security council, but then it went out broadly to dozens of administration officials in which he was very clear.

he detailed the potential for millions of death, one million to two million deaths, as many as 500,000. he went through the economic costs which he predicted would be staggering, in the trillions of dollars for the country. the president was told about the existence of this memo. we've been told by sources, and he was irritated that these estimates had been put down on paper. >> that memo was dated january 29th. a day that also brought this. >> the white house announced the creation of a coronavirus task force to deal with the threat here in the united states. >> in the final days of january, a world health organization emergency committee praised the chinese government's leadership, commitment to transparency, and saw no need for any travel or trade restriction. secretary of commerce wilbur ross declared the coronavirus would be good for the u.s. >> so i think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to

north america. >> and trump again told the country everything was fine. >> we think we have it very well under control. we have very little problem in this country at this moment, five. and those people are all recuperating successfully. >> so the very next day after the president made those comments in michigan was when his administration declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency. >> in china, the doctor reprimanded for sounding the alarm was dying after being infected by a patient. >> struggling to communicate, li spoke with cnn briefly by phone. you can hear the hospital machines pulsing in the background. >> china's supreme court commented that if li's warning a month earlier had been heeded and action taken, quote, it might have been a fortunate thing for containing the new

coronavirus. next -- >> once we saw that this outbreak grew exponential rates, we knew this was going to be a rapidly disseminating virus. >> their hearts just sink when they're trying to use this test, and it's malfunctioning. i'm not hungry! you're having one more bite! no! one more bite! ♪

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february began with a ban. >> not one person has died, and i issued a travel restriction from china. >> the restriction stopped most chinese residents and foreign nationals who had recently been in china from traveling to the u.s. the restrictions also started a clock. >> when you talk to public health experts, they really look with despair at those couple of weeks, because they say whatever your feelings were on the travel ban at the time, it was a perfectly fine and reasonable step to take, and he bought himself a little bit of time and then he just squandered it. >> there were only nine known

cases of the novel coronavirus inside the u.s. the first step to keeping that number low, according to the experts, was a working test for the virus. >> testing was, is, and always will be the cornerstone of trying to stem a pandemic. you've got to identify the people who are infected. you've got to be able to isolate those folks, and you've got to be able to treat them. it all begins with testing. >> february 6 is when the cdc starts sending these test kits out to public health departments. they can pras trace people and get ahead of it. >> but the tests, the only tests approved for use in the united states were not working. >> their hearts just sink when they're trying to use this test

and it's malfunctioning. >> there was a test available from the world health organization, but the cdc did not choose to get it. and nobody inside the government asked outside labs to help. >> officials were told not to do it, that they didn't need to do it, it was too alarmist. >> the delay in testing concerned the expert, who now saw the virus spreading from human to human, and quickly. >> i think it was pretty clear in early february that there was human-to-human contact. >> once we saw that this outbreak grew exponential rates, we knew this was going to be a rapidly disseminating virus. >> researcher eva lee was working to see how much would reach the human virus. >> those models projected between 2 and 10 million people in the u.s. would become infected. on february 9th, she sent an email to that red dawn chain of public health experts calling for social distancing.

>> we need the citizens to know and practice social distancing in the way that best protects them. every action counts. >> it was a full five weeks later before president trump would take that step. >> thank you very much. >> that same day, some of the nation's governors met with dr. anthony fauci and cdc director robert redfield. they got some disturbing news. >> they gave us a pretty detailed outline of what they felt was happening with this virus. and what they thought what might happen in the country. when i left the briefing, we knew this was going to be a serious crisis. >> it was exactly the opposite of what president trump was saying publicly. >> looks like by april, you know, in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. >> the president's cdc director contradicted him later that week in an interview with dr. sanjay gupta. >> i think this virus is

probably with us beyond this season, or beyond this year, and i think eventually the virus will find a foothold. and you can think of it a sense like seasonal flu. and the only difference is we don't understand the virus. >> a very small number of people in the country right now with it. it's like around 12. many of them are getting better. some are fully recovered already. so we're in very good shape. >> he was still of the view that you could stop flights, build walls, and keep coronavirus from coming to the united states. >> the chances of that were near zero, partly because it was now more than two weeks since the cdc test had been approved and it still was not working properly. public health officials were telling me like washington and california, they knew the virus was spreading in their community

and couldn't test. >> they were right. two coronavirus deaths in california by middle of february. and around seattle washington. >> >> over at the white house, robert redfield, who is the director of the cdc and alex azar, secretary of health and human services are assuring other administration officials we're going to get it fixed quickly. >> not quickly enough. february 22nd, the food and drug administration, or fda, sent an expert to the cdc headquarters to help figure out the problem. >> this expert realized that there was contamination in the manufacturing process, and that the cdc had actually violated its own manufacturing protocols in trying to produce this test, and that is why the tests were malfunctioning. >> you have to wonder if president trump had been directly involved or his staff had, and if they had understood that you only contain the virus if you understand its spread, they might have pressed for more widespread testing earlier. >> a little to defense here,

there were certainly indications that it was going to be bad, that it was going to spread, but there was no clear data, even in mid-february on exactly how it was spreading through the united states. >> but during the third week of february, public health officials were preparing for the worst, just in case. >> they gathered in "the situation room" to run a tabletop exercise of what it would look what like if the pandemic fully hit the united states. and so while the president was talking about 15 cases going to zero, they were talking about 15 cases going to the thousands and then the tens of thousands and then the hundreds of thousands. >> two days later, dr. robert kadlec, an assistant secretary for preparedness at the department of health and human services spotted a red dawn email that set off warning bells in the administration. >> this is really a critical moment for this group that is studying the problem. they see an email about a patient in china who had shown

no symptoms of coronavirus and yet had spread the virus to family and friends. >> that means people who did not know they were sick were unknowingly spreading the virus. eva, is this true, dr. kadlec wrote to dr. eva lee? if so, we have a huge hole on our screening and quarantine effort. she responded with a link confirming the story and added -- >> simply people are carrying the virus everywhere. >> that then sets in motion a greater urgency from the group that they've got to get to the president a plan to mitigate the problem inside the united states before it spreads further. >> it was now february 24th, and it was time dr. kadlec and his colleagues decided to tell president trump he needed to recommend social distancing measures, including shutting down big public events and schools. but president trump was in

india. >> they planned basically the moment he got back to the united states, they were going to sit down with him, advocate for these measures, and hopefully try to convince the president to move forward with it. but one thing happened. a doctor from the cdc, dr. messionnier got ahead of the messaging they were working on and warned publicly there is going to be severe disruption to america life. >> we are asking the american public to work with us and prepare in the expectation that this could be bad. >> the president was angry than and said why are they overplaying the problem? it's leading to the stock market crash. >> breaking news. >> the dow is taking a dramatic hit down, almost 900 points. >> president trump actually considered firing dr. according to the "wall street journal". messionnier but ultimately did not. >> if the president was less concerned with what the warning

sounded like and more concerned with the content of the warning, he might have concluded the cdc was right and moved much more quickly to try to mitigate the effects, trying to prepare the american people. >> instead, the day the president returned from india, he blamed the media, tweeting that msnbc and cnn are, quote, doing everything possible to make the coronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible, unquote. before railing at the media, the president was angry with dr. messonnier. the president, it seemed, viewed anyone delivering ugly facts about the virus as the enemy. that evening, he held a presser and said something completely opposite from what his experts were saying. >> when you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done. >> the president also announced a new leader of the coronavirus task force.

>> i'm going to be putting our vice president, mike pence, in charge. >> on that day the president returned from india, dr. kadlec and his colleagues did not tell the president it was time to start social distancing. it would be nearly three more weeks before the president took any of the steps they had planned to recommend. >> i think one of the big questions we're always going to have is what would have happened if we had acted sooner. if we had started these physical distancing measures a week earlier, the question will be asked how many lives would have been saved? according to some models, they say, you know, 50, 60% of people within that first wave may not have become infected. do you think lives could have been saved. if it started february instead of march? >> you can logically say if you had a process that was ongoing and started mitigation earlier

you could have saved lives. obviously no one is going to deny that. but what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated. >> so in late february, the president was still holding crowded rallies. his administration had not yet recommended social distancing, and they had not solved the problem with the testing kits. then on february 27th, a breakthrough in the form of a phone call arranged by dr. anthony fauci. >> he wants the other health experts on the line. and the message when they get on the line is we're not getting off this phone call until we know how to fix the testing issue. you have the head of fda on this call and we have redfield on this call. it's really striking that this isn't happening until the end of february. one of the solutions that coming out of it is the fda needs to loosen its regulations. >> that was a big deal. those regulations made it difficult for commercial labs to come into the process and scale up testing. the regulations were officially lifted on the last day of february.