public square." welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you live from new york. today on the show, america is number one in new coronavirus cases. and by far. so how and why did this super power's efforts to contain the pandemic go so wrong? >> we got hit. by the virus that came from china. >> i'll talk to one of the country's preeminent physicians, zika emanuel.

hong kong is forever changed after china imposed a draconian new law there. what's next for the protest movement? can it have a future? i will talk to one of its leaders, nathan law, who is now in exile. also, trump's peace plan has put the final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution. is there a viable alternative that could satisfy israelis and palestinians? peter tells me about his new idea. but first, here's my take. the united states is in a unique position among the world's most advanced countries, far from having flattened the covid-19 curve, it is watching cases spike in several pops states and

dr. anthony fauci recommended this week that these places seriously look at shutting down their economies again. meanwhile, in other rich countries as diverse as germany, south korea, and even spain and italy, the number of new cases plummeted months ago and has stayed low. america is still exceptional, but no longer in a good sense. in order to understand why this is happening, let's start by examining something america got right, economic stimulus. in march and april, despite the most polarized climate since the civil war, congress provided $2.4 trillion in relief and the federal reserve provided even more. this adds up to about 25% of gdp, one of the largest spending efforts in the world. that might explain why the stock market has barely noticed that the economy remains in its worst condition since the great depression. but the size of the stimulus placed to america's one great

strength, sheer heft. the u.s. economy is huge. america's borrowing capacity limitness. the dollar for now supreme. but every other sense, american government has failed. it's not just donald trump and the white house which have done a miserable job bringing coherence to the diverse federal agencies and coordinating with the states. look, the cdc, the fda, and other arms of health & human services all failed in their own ways, as did state officials. americans accepted extensive lockdowns, far more readily than many predicted, but this period of suffering was meant to buy time for the government to set up systems of testing, tracing x isolation so that once the lockdowns ended, people could return to some semblance of normal life, confident that their government was monitor and go reacting to new outbreaks. in truth, it squandered the

time. although trump declared in may we've prevailed on testing, his goal of 5 million tests a day with testing available at virtually every cvs and walmart is still just a dream. most states still don't have comprehensive testing or contact tracing in place. is this about money? what federal spending as a percentage of gdp is where it was? that statistic conceals more than it reveals. spending on entitlement programs, social security, medicare, and medicaid has gone up massively as population ages and health care costs soar. but most of the agencies of the federal government have been starved of resources while being given more tasks and mandates. even the writing of the checks proved hard this time. countries like canada and germany sent out funds more quickly, providing relief for citizens. while the americans had to wait anxiously, navigate websites that didn't work and apply again

and again to get a response. the number of federal employees is smaller per capita than the 1950s, despite the real u.s. gdp is seven times larger. the government barely hires new recruits anymore. as a brookings report notes, one-third of the federal workforce will be eligible to retire between now and 2025, and only 6% of federal employees are under 30 years old. you see, for almost have a century, politicians on the right have pursue add strategy of starving the beast. anti-tax campaigner grover nor quist explained, i don't want to abolish government, i simply want to reduce it to the size where i can drown it in the bathtub. steve bannon's goal was the deconstruction of the administrative state. guess what, it was already happening. winning the fight against covid-19 doesn't require a huge bureaucratic apparatus. hong kong, singapore, taiwan and

south korea have relatively small governments measured by government spending as a shared gdp. on the other hand, denmark, norway, and germany have also done very well and they have relatively large states. but in all these cases, government bureaucracies are well funded, enjoy considerable autonomy, not burdened by mandates, and have people working for the public sector. here we have -- >> the nine most terrifying words in the english language are "i'm from the government and i'm here to help." >> covid-19 should be a wake-up call. america needs to rebuild its government capacity. the goal is not a big state or a small state, but a smart state. for now, what we have is just stupid. go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my "washington post" column. let's get started.

in/ ♪ ♪ i want to bring in one of america's best-known doctors, zika emanuel a top-level adviser on health policy in the obama white house. he is now at the university of pennsylvania where he's professor for global initiatives. he has a new book out called "which country has the world's best health care." if there's one thing you would focus on to explain america's exceptionally poor response to covid, i mean, that's such a big set of failures, but if there was one thing, one variable you could change, what would it be? >> leadership. we got a lack of national leadership and national coordination that you've seen in almost every other country that's done a good job, whether it's taiwan, germany, or even italy where you had actually a

coordinated program across the whole country. that allowed a much more rapid response and not one that was happen hazard and counterproductive. >> when you say leadership, you mean presidential leadership? >> well, leadership at the white house, yes. it has to be presidential passing on that mantel to people who are going to coordinate whether it's ppe or testing or contact tracing or preparing for a vaccine when we get one. we just haven't had that and you've seen the president say he has the authority but passing responsibility to states that have done it in very different ways and in an uncoordinated way. >> when we look at testing, explain this failure. as i say, the point was to buy time to set up a system. it feels to me the american health care system, the public health system doesn't seem to have thought about or planned for a situation like this where

you needed a tremendous surge, kind of zero to 5 million. how would that work and why didn't it work? >> well, you have -- first of all, you have to get the big testing companies, lab core, quest, and others, to actually invest and think this is a good thing to do. they sat on the sidelines for a long time thinking, oh, this will be a bubble. it won't be worth our capital investment. the federal government should've come in and make it valuable to them. the cdc, frankly, screwed around and did not get the tests right and sent out bad testing equipment. we did not secure the supply chain, and we didn't bring on our universities rapidly which have a large latent testing capacity. compare us at 550,000 or 600,000 testing cases today. germany was 350,000 in early april and they have a quarter of our population.

so it can be done, it's just that we didn't have a national coordinated effort with authority that was moving all the pieces and had the money to make sure that this was a viable enterprise. you're right, we're now four months into this and we're no better off than we were in mid-march. >> does it worry you we're going to get to -- certainly by october and november and people are going to be spending more time indoors? that does seem to correlate with the virus spreading faster. >> fareed, as i pointed out over and over for four months now, there are four things that lead to spread, enclosed spaces, indoors, as you point out, crowds, and singing -- coughing. in the south they're indoors. it's 115 degrees if phoenix. we just move the cases around.

we've also increased them because we've too appearedly opened up bars and restaurants, indoor places with crowds where people are fro prolonged period of time. we have not done this in a smart way. contrast this with germany or italy that only opened up early may when the r0 was below one. so actually, the virus was declining consistently. we opened up in many places well before cases were declining and certainly before the r0 was below 1. >> let me ask you about taiwan because it really seems to be a country that against all odds has done extraordinarily well, right next to china, millions of visitors from china. by the way, as you know, because it's in your book, taiwan spends on health care as a percentage of gdp, i forget the number, something like 5%. it's -- >> less than 6%. >> right much lower than us. yet, it's managed to do

extraordinarily well. >> if there's any -- almost every country's made mistakes except maybe taiwan. yes, extraordinarily well. so they were suspicious of china and they prepared since 2004 for this event. second, they have a face mask wearing culture and everyone was wearing face masks and the government used its health care card to track people in real time, and their utilitization of the health system to make sure they get tested, merge it with their travel history so they know who had been in china and get them tested. so they identified all the cases rapidly. to this day they less than 450 cases among 24 million people, seven deaths. near-perfect execution and everyone could learn a lot. their health card has been a secret here, which i think is something we should look at very, very carefully. >> explain that very quickly. we have 30 seconds left. what's the health card?

>> everyone has a health card. you go to the doctor, they swipe it, the ministry of health knows you're seeing the doctor, when you leave, they swipe again. now they know what's been administered and they have near real time in a day or two information about what's happening in the health care system. if you go to our biggest insurers, medicare, it takes three or four months. you can't act rapidly in a pandemic or other emergency using that kind of information. so if we actually had a card, we had a trusted, independent agency, not facebook or google and not the federal government looking at this information, and monitoring it and helping manage patients and managing outbreaks, we could really, really respond more rapidly and know who's at risk and get them tested.

>> zeke emanuel, thanks for being on. bill clinton proposed a version of that card in 1992. >> 1993, exactly. next on "gps," if america's covid response had been so flawed, what can be done to fix it? harvard's danielle allen has a plan.

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health care and the response to covid-19, which has been deeply fort lauderdale. joining me now with a solution, danielle allen. she leads an all-star group of social scientists and public health experts who are studying the response. allen is the director of the center for ethics at harvard university where she's a professor. welcome, danielle. let me ask you if i may to start explaining how do you get around a problem that bill gates talked about on this program, which is, you need a national lockdown to make this work a national strategy for testing, national standards. yet in the united states, power has devolved. there's something like 2,500 different units that have authority over health care, obviously 50 states. what does one do? >> good morning, fareed. thank you so much for your important question. so let me start by saying, yes,

we need a national strategy, national lockdown, we needed it only in the beginning. it's important responses by tailored jurisdiction to jurisdiction according to the incidence levels of covid. we can now see there are places that are at near zero incidents and there are places with 25 new daily cases per 100,000 people. those places we would call in red zones should be going back to stay-at-home orders. but that's not true for places that are at near zero cases. so we need a national strategy of suppression. flattening the curve some, that plateau we saw for a while, what we need to do is breaker the chain, get back down to near-zero cases for the entire country. that's what every successful country has achieved. we can do it, but it does require focus on getting to

zero, it requir zero. >> how do you do that particularly with testing and tracing? you say in your report that is the key, that the only way you can reopen the economy is by having a testing and tracing system in place. >> exactly. we need what we call a ttsi infrastructure, sort of like building interstates. you have to have the infrastructure to deliver the goods and resources we need as a community. so there are two parts. there's what the states do. it's not true we haven't made progress from march. states have made remarkable progress building that infrastructure. it's not everywhere and we need to get that infrastructure everywhere. the second thing we need to solve the testing supply chain problems. we have six categories of labs in this country that could be supporting a bull buildout of the infrastructure. we have only maximally activated two of those categories of lab. we have activated state public health labs and the commercial

clinical labs. we have only partially activated our hospital labs. we have barely activated our university research labs. our commercial nonclinical labs and veterinary labs. germany made great use of veterinary labs. that's often surprising to people. in order to maximize all of our capacity, when we to scale up beyond the state level. we really do need a solution that's at a higher level than state because it's a scaling problem. what we are recommending is interstate compacts, a coalition of states that's formally blessed by congress and then congress can directly fund that compact. the new york, new jersey port authority is an example of interstate compact a group of states solving a complex problem that has to be solved at a higher scale level within the state, but the states need the on-the-ground knowledge. so you need a compact for that. congress can fund it directly. we have compacts for emergency management, so there's an ema

compact. the federal government directs resources that empowers the states to deliver on the strategy that the states design. so if we can have regional interstate compacts, we would then be able to do bulk orders for testing that could add a whole neighborhood of new testing to our capacity. this is hugely important because testing isn't just about the numbers of tests we do, it's about turnaround time. we can't actually do what we need to do with contact tracing is results take 48 hours tops to get back to a person. currently with the spikes we see across the southwest, it's taking the labs six to eight days to get results back. you can't actually use it for contact tracing and break the chain once the results are that slow. so we have to activity all of the categories of capacity we have. to do that, we need a scale that's above the level of the state, an interstate compact could help us achieve that. >> i have to ask you, danielle, when you lay out the

extraordinary plan, how did you come to do this? you are a professor of political philosophy. you're actually trained in classics and ancient greek and latin. you sound like somebody who's got a fire in her belly? >> there are two things. the first was, i'm very fortunate to be a professor at harvard and very early on, february and march was very clear there were bodies of knowledge of our school of public health and medicine and our labs and so forth that were not making it into the public conversation. this was very frustrating to me. so i've been sort of on a path, i call it liberty the knowledge, okay? we actually do know how to control this disease, we do have the capacity in this country. there are places in this country where people have figured out. massachusetts has an impressive infrastructure. >> danielle allen, pleasure to have you on. >> thank you so much. next on "gps," china says its new national security law

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a poll has been cast over hong kong ever since china imposed a new national security law there. books are being removed from schools. journalists are concerned they could be arrested for honest reporting. protesters have had their dna swabbed by the police and ordinary people are worried about which of the people they talk to may be spies. my next guest, nathan, law, has

been a leader of hong kong's protest movement and he fled the city after the law was passed. nathan, first, what is the atmosphere among the leaders of the protest movement among ordinary hong kongers right now? >> of course people are worried because the national security law basically grounds hong kong government sweeping power to prosecute political activists they like to because, well, the law is written in thick form. if you trigger hatred towards the central government or hong kong government, you could be prosecuted. but they have never defined what so-called creating hatred means. it would tailor legal weapons for the government to conduct political persecution. >> so the hong kong government says that the doom and gloom over the slaw unfounded and

other nations impose national security laws, so why shouldn't china. outside groups inspired protesters to violently push for independence, what's your response to that? >> the national security law in hong kong specifically targets freedom of expression, which none of the other national security laws would restrain. on the very first of its implementation, there were cases that suspects -- they were just carrying flags or stickers that had the slogan of the protests. they were already arrested. and the next day, the government announced that the slogans of the movement are conceded to be breaching the national security law. so you could say just see it is not targeting those so-called violent protesters but targeting the freedom of expression of people, and they will prosecute you just because you are exercising your right to speak. so this is a fundamentally different thing in hong kong,

and they're using it as a legal weapon to really target peaceful protesters. >> so what can you do? i mean, the protest movement now under these new pretty draconian positions, and what do you want the united states and other western countries to do? >> for now the hong kong people are resilient and tenacious. we just had a primary election for the pro-democracy camp, and more than 600,000 people came out to vote. this is actually an -- given that the government has been threatening the people that this is illegal or even a primary election that may breach the national security law, which leads them to years of imprisonment. so you can see hong kong movement is pretty much still alive. for the rest of the democracies and the u.s., i issued an open

letter urging the western democracies which have signed up abextradition retreat with hong kong to suspend it in order to show that hong kong now we've got no rule of law now. while signing this retreat will be inappropriate and targeting sanctions and individuals responsible for the human rights violations in hong kong and also in china would be preferable for us because this is how we hold china accountable. >> do you think the world should boycott the winter olympics that will be held in china? >> yes, definitely. the world should reconsider whether our mechanism to hold china accountable still effective. for the past decade china basically circumvented -- any mechanism that holds china accountable so they have endless human rights violations. in china, for example, the

concentration camp in tib bet was happening in hong kong of that so winter olympics is not allowing such an autocratic country to keep abusing its people and it's right for the world to still continue support to the winter olympics in beijing in 2022. >> you are in exile, but i can't imagine, it would be difficult for the chinese government to track you. do you worry about your own safety? >> well, of course. we all know how extensive china's reach could be. but for me, my consideration is more than myself because under the national security law, if we have any progressive international advocacy work that we've been doing for years, for example, pushing legislation that could hold china accountable, then we are submitted to years of sentencing, which will leave

room for work on the ground in hong kong. so my leaving is more than my personal choice. it's a strategic move. i hope i can keep my voice on the international level alive. for me, yes, indeed, i'm not in an extremely safe position, but i will risk it in order to speak the truth to the world. >> nathan law, stay safe. thank you so much. >> thank you. next on "gps," if the two-state solution is dead and peter says it is, he'll explain when we come back. gillette proglide and proglide gel. five blades and a pivoting flexball designed to get virtually every hair on the first stroke,

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a lot goes through your mind. how long will this last? am i prepared for this? are we prepared for this? with fidelity wealth management, your dedicated adviser can give you straightforward advice and tailored recommendations, with access to tax-smart investment strategies designed to help you keep more of what you've earned so you'll know you're doing what you can for your family and your future. that's the clarity you get with fidelity wealth management. although the trump administration's goal was a realistic two-state solution, most who know the region well saw quickly that such a solution wasn't really possible under that plan. for starters, the palestinians have lock sang said they need a

significant amount of land to live in peace. so if the two-state solution is in trouble, what is the alternative. peter beinart has an idea published in "jewish currents" where he's editor at large. he's also a contributor at "the atlantic" and cnn. the premise of your argument is that the two-state solution is dead. what people might feel like this administration has put forward a bad plan or they were other problems, i think there are a lot of people who are still going to say, no, the goal is still two states, israel and palestine. why is that basic idea now essentially dead? >> fareed, i've been hearing people saying the two-state solution is on the verge of

death my entire life. the mayor of jerusalem said if there were 100,000 settlers in the west bank, it would be impossible to create a viable and continuous palestinian state. two of israel supreme court justices live in the west bank. its second most powerful politician lives there. they built a medical center last year in the west bank. at a certain point, those of us who have supported a two-state solution and have been saying for years and years is on the verge of death, as thomas friedman said in 2003, you have the recognize the egg cannot be unscrambled and the price to imagine there couldn't be a two-state solution, is a status quo that leaves palestinians without the most basic of human rights. >> and so the reality that you're describing is a reality of continued israeli occupation

and settlement of parts of the west bank and particularly one should note the parts that are habitable. there are large parts of the west bank there are being given, but a lot of that is desert. >> absolutely. if you look at the trump plan, even earlier plans, what you essentially imagine is that there would be a kind of archipelago of disconnected palestinian towns that might be connected by turnnnels or roads. that the doesn't provide the basic dignity and opportunity for prosperity that palestinians deserve. i say reluctantly that i began to think of alternatives. as i read more and more, i began to think there actually -- that equality could be a viable and even liberating alternative not only for palestinians, but for jews too. >> one state with two -- one

state that encompasses all of israel, the west bank, even gaza and normal voting for everybody? in other words, everybody has the same vote, in which case what kind of government do you imagine? >> well, it could either be one state that gave a lot of automate autonomy to where different groups live, or it could be a confederation that would allow free movement like in the european union. it's hard to imagine a binational state, a state that encompasses two national identities can work, but it's important to remember israel is already a binational state. israel controls all the territory in the west bank and even gaza where israel who controls who comes and goes. we know from political science research that deeply divided societies are more stable and

more peaceful when everyone has a voice in government. that's why the violence in northern ireland stopped when catholics gained a vote in government. it's why the politicize violence from south africa stopped when apartheid ended. an equal binational state would be messy and complicated and difficult in many ways, it would actually be a more stable and peaceful place for palestinians and jews than one state in which people lack basic rights. >> a lot of people would argue with you and have argued with you, the times of israel has a very long -- refuting your arguments. one of the central arguments against your case is the palestinians. you assume that the palestinians would accept this. you assume that the palestinians would accept israel, that they do not seek the destruction of the jewish people and the jewish

state and people argue there's a lot of evidence to the contrary. >> i think, again, what we know from other conflicts is that oppression produces violence, and that justice and equality produces more peace. and i actually think there's evidence of this in israel/palestine too. look at the arab israelis. they center right to vote. violence against jews by israeli/palestinian citizens, even though they have much more access to commit violence against jews is very, very rare. and i think that's because palestinians are acting like other human beings. when you give people the right to express themselves in nonviolent ways by voting, by expressing their opinions, very, very few people want to kill or be killed. it's the dehumanization of palestinians that unfortunately

has affected jewish discourse so much that prevents us from seeing that's true about them too. >> do you think there are people who say this is kind of a fantasy, this is utopian, it's impossible to imagine something like this, how unrealistic is this? >> it's unrealistic today, but the two-state solution is also unrealistic. great moral changes almost always appear unrealistic early on before there is a vast movement for change. look at how black lives matter, that movement, in a few months has made things that seemed completely unrealistic seen now politically possible. the advantage of equality, which is the same message as the black lives matter movement has brought to the u.s., the same message as anti-apartheid movement is it is a messaging compelling enough to produce a mass movement on the ground and around the world that can change what is politically possible. the two-state solution, which now means a fragmented

palestinian state under israeli control is no longer a compelling enough vision to bring the change. >> you argue that some of the founders of zionism would have been comfortable with this because you say what they envisioned was not always a jewish state, but always a jewish home. explain what you mean >> right. today we've come to think of zionism and jewish states as synonymous. up to the 1940s, it wasn't. if you look at the zionist leaders, what they were talking about was a jewish society, a jewish society that could run its own affairs and be a refuge for jews and rejuvenate the entire jewish world, what i call a jewish home. i believe that that would be possible with equality. jews would still have enormous power and influence to secure our interests in one equal state. why south africans have done

fine and they represent 12% of the population, jews represent 50% of the population and are far more economically privileged. i believe this jewish society could continue to enrich jews around the world and a refuge for jews in distress and it would not require to us oppress a people and deny their human rights, which is a system of violence that will sooner or later bring violence on us too. >> peter beinart, pleasure to have you on. >> thanks a lot. we will be back.

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my book of the week is "the precipice." this is a startling, well-written book about existential risk. the author says we do not pay attention to the risks that could really end or drastically

alter human civilization like nuclear weapons and climate change. he takes the reader through the risks. he is not a pessimist. he thinks humans could live for several billions of years on this planet, but to do that, it has so ensure we get off the edge of the precipice. now for the last look. when mexico's president obrador visited the white house this week, he and trump were all smiles. they are unlike allies. one is a self-described leftist and former indigenous rights activist, the other a self-described billionaire and real estate developer. but both are anti-establishment p populists, and this is this similarity that has them facing the pandemic. daily covid-19 infections reached new records in both countries. so how did it get so bad?

well, populous governments tend towards consults of personality, viewing external crises as direct indictments on the leader. so trump downplayed the virus, boasting in early february we've pretty much shut it down. the government of lopez obrador briefly published posters declaring "no es grave" meaning it's not serious. the primary principle of populism. trump has disagreed with masks, testing, and treatment. similarly, obrador's government decried testing as a waste of time, effort, and resources. brazil's right-wing pop list, jair bolsonaro has become the poster child for denial of the virus. until he got infected this week. months ago, bolsonaro claimed even if he got covid-19, he wouldn't suffer much due to his

athleticism. he attended anti-lockdown rallies, challenged supporters to do pushups. like the others, bolsonaro dismiss experts and their guidance. the center for economic policy research found that bolsonaro's supporters have followed his lead in disregarding social distancing. so now brazil has the second highest number of new infections behind only the united states. mass graves populate the countryside, an indication of an overwhelmed infrastructure. bolsonaro, trump x lop, and lop obrador are wondering if this is the end of populism. it's too soon to tell. keep in mind the pandemic also brings about economic anxiety and polarization, the very climate that pop lists thrive this. thanks for being part of my program this week. i'll see you next week. from ve helps you redefine what's possible... now.

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hey, i'm brian stelter live in new york. and this is "reliable sources." our weekly look at the story behind the story, the media news you need to know. this hour, the story behind roger stone's commutation. which tv and radio hosts pushed trump to do it? plus, covering the summer spike in covid-19 cases. one of the world's top infectious disease reporters will join me live in just a few minutes. later, something that affects all of us, a new look at where newspapers are disappearing across america. margaret sullivan will talk about how the coronavirus is compounding the local news crisis. first a cnn exclusive about