[ inaudible ] more than 30% but it's time we strengthen the balance sheet. we will be looking to continue to do that as we go, because we are going to wake up from this in a forever changed retail landscape for certain, definitely in restaurants, and i think those companies that can show that they can get back to growth, that can be building the things that people want, shake shack was born in the great recession of 2008-09. maria: thank you. i know, randy, you are going to be my special guest, you will be my special guest this weekend so we continue the conversation then. randy, thanks very much for being here. randy garutti from shake shack. that does it for us. we cut into "varney & company." want to get to ashley webster, in for stuart today. take it away. so sorry about that. ashley: no worries at all. i feel like i want a shake shack now. good morning, maria. good morning, everybody. stuart, i can tell you this, will be back tomorrow. we look forward to that. as for today, president trump

says the economy will take off quote, like a rocket ship when it reopens. the questions, though, are when will that be and what will it look like. the market is asking those very same questions as it searches for direction this morning. more green on the screen but again, markets want to know how much economic damage has been done. meanwhile, moody's says economic output fell a staggering 29% in the first week of april. that is compared to march. that is the first full week of true social distancing rules in place across the country, and that was the result. down 29%. the other big story of the day, the w.h.o. is under fire from president trump. the president saying he may freeze funding to the organization over its response to the pandemic. this is happening as we get more clarity on what may be in a fourth stimulus package. president trump wants $250 billion more for small business. senator schumer wants a $25,000

bonus for front line heroes like health care workers. and we also have some amazing images for you from wisconsin to wuhan. china reopening the city that was the epicenter of the virus there. serious questions, though, surrounding that decision. meanwhile, voters line up in wisconsin wearing masks and gloves, doing their best to social distance as wisconsin votes in its primary. serious questions surrounding that decision as well. so much to talk about. good morning. i'm ashley webster. we begin with president trump talking about reopening the economy. >> we have the greatest economy in history, the greatest economy that we've ever had, the greatest economy that anybody's ever had and one day they said you got to close it down, close the country, because we have to get rid of the plague and that's exactly what we had is a plague and we're seeing light at the end of the tunnel. you see it, i see it and i think we're going to go like a rocket ship once we get back to

business. there's a lot of pent-up energy and demand. ashley: i like that expression, like a rocket ship. a lot of pent-up demand. liz peek joins us now. hi to you, liz, fox news contributor. do you think the president is right, if we can just get back to work, we are going to take off like a rocket ship? >> look, ashley, i think it depends on the timing, but the sooner, the better. i think what we are seeing now, smaller countries in europe, for example, beginning to reopen. we are going to be watching that very carefully to see does it require absolutely universal testing, does it require finding out if everybody has antibodies. i think the president is totally right. for one thing, every woman in america wants a haircut, ashley. there are businesses where there truly is enormous pent-up demand. but i think what we're going to see is regionally and by industry, people, this is going to have to come from the private sector, with federal guidance,

but i think there are a lot of businesses that could carefully begin to reopen, such as restaurants with less density, personal care like beauty salons, if people are very judicious about wearing masks and other kinds of protective gear, we may not be able to toss away all of our careful protections in the next several weeks but i do think there are businesses which could begin to reopen and by gosh, we need to do that. ashley: we do. i guess it's all about the timing, liz. certainly the markets, it's interesting, we had a big push on monday and dow started to come in, how soon can we get back to work, is the fiscal stimulus enough to tide us over until we get to that point? because if we come back too soon, we could get into this cycle of reopen, reclose, reopen, reclose, and that would be catastrophic for the economy. >> that would be catastrophic.

equally catastrophic is holding this economy completely suppressed until, for example, august. that just isn't going to work. so i think, look, it's going to be an incredibly tricky balancing act. again, it may not include all of our citizens. if we can tell who has had this virus or who is immune to it for some other reason, those people can get back to work. younger people can get back to work. by the way, it's not all about a vaccine being the ultimate panacea. it would also be comforting if there was a therapy. if we knew that if you got sick, you could get well, i think that -- whether it's hydroxychloroquine or whatever else, i think there are 29 paths of different products going on now, if we knew you could go back to work, get sick but survive and be okay, that would also change the calculus enormously. ashley: it certainly would. hopefully we can get to that

point. liz, stay right there, if you would. lauren simonetti, could you come in. we have news on mortgage applications. i can only imagine. what have you got? lauren: mortgage applications to buy a new home down 24% year over year. so the spring housing market is all but dried up but take a look at this. applications to refinance surging on an annual basis by 168%. here's the moral of this story. you want cash so you are refinancing your mortgage to lower your monthly payment and if you are about to buy a new home, you are not doing that because you want to save that down payment, if you need it for, well, the rainy days we're in right now. ashley: exactly right. we are in that rainy day. thank you. as we sit and wait to get back to work, we are hearing about more furloughs. susan li, come in. tesla is the latest, right? susan: furloughing non-essential

workers. salaried ones will still get paid but are getting their pay cut. this will be in place until at least may 4th and these pay cuts will last until at least the end of the second quarter. so workers' pay will be cut by 10%, directors getting 20% pay cut. but tesla says they have the cash to weather this storm, about $6.5 billion. in the past they've had concerns about tesla and their cash position and whether or not they have the dollars to see them through these tough times. apparently they say they do. it's not just -- i want to quickly get through this because this is important for employed workers and those who are unemployed. tj maxx which has around 286,000 workers worldwide, say they are furloughing their workers at tj maxx, marshall's, home goods and home sense and also pch announcing this morning they are going to furlough about 75% of their stores, office workers as well in north america and cutting full-time staff pay by

5% to 20%. we know it's a very very tough jobs market. ashley: it is. with each passing day we get more and more news just like that. susan, let's bring back liz peek. liz, we just had a head line number, economic output plunging by 29% in april compared to the same week in march. i mean, the longer we sit here, you talked about it, the worse the damage is going to be. >> oh, without a doubt. look, the fed can only do so much rolling out these loans. it's obviously incredibly important for small businesses and thank heavens they got that done quickly and thank heavens they're looking for more because i think that is really going to be the backbone of whatever recovery we see but the numbers are incomprehensible. we have never seen anything like this. of course, we are going to see another unemployment number tomorrow or benefits number and that's going to be horrible. it will probably be seven million or more people applying

for unemployment benefits. the good news is, some of those people are being furloughed because their employers know, small businesses know that they will hire them back and that they are going to be tided over by these programs the government is rolling out. but again, the depth of this decline, i do think the president's right, whenever we have seen a really sharp contraction, you do get a pretty good recovery and hopefully that's what we get. ashley: fingers crossed. let's bring in market watcher shah gilani, if we can. shah, great to see you. my first question is, are we seeing the bottom of the market now, since those late march lows? we kind of flattened out a bit yesterday but have we already seen the bottom? >> we have seen what i call a soft bottom, and i'm calling that in terms of numbers, 21,000 on the dow. i like the market in here.

i think we have room to go on the upside. 24,000, we came close to that yesterday before falling back at the close. it's another milestone. if we get to 24,000 on the dow, get above there and consolidate, then it bodes very well for the market. right now, all bets are off because we are still in the range. that range for me is really the pivot point is 22,000 on the dow. we could go up to 24,000, hit there, we've got some resistance there, come right back down and it's possible to then go from 22,000 down to 20,000. below 20,000 does not look good. we are not anywhere near there now. we are on the upside, closing in on that 24,000 level. that bodes well. i think the soft bottom is in and we are starting to acquire some positions in here already. ashley: all right. a glimmer of hope. thank you very much. we will be back with you in just a bit. let's take a look at oil, why don't we. this is of course ahead of opec holding an emergency meeting tomorrow. at least we think they will. they just can't agree on production cuts so we have had this impasse over a price war. but crude, as you can see, up

barely, 2%. $24. brent crude which is more widely used around the world, just up .33%. by the way, talking glimmer of hopes, let's go back to susan li. we have travel restrictions being lifted in wuhan where all this began, right? susan: 76 days. so close to ten weeks in a profoundly damaged industrial city of 11 million which has been in lockdown because it is the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. now, are things back to normal? some would say no. indications are if you hear the anecdotal stories from those who live in the city, some are rushing to get out once the lockdown has lifted so they can take the trains and buses and leap to other cities but businesses are not back up and running. people are still scared about whether or not there might be a reemerge ence of the coronaviru and spread of the disease. we know masks are mandatory across china but there is some semblance of some normal life but is it 100%? anthony fauci says it probably

won't be in the u.s., definitely not the case in wuhan. ashley: but we will certainly be covering, watching what happens there very carefully. thank you. check this out. this is a popular tourist spot in china. it was mobbed by visitors after the coronavirus restrictions were eased. oh, my god, look at that. talk about pent-up demand just to get out of the house and to a tourist spot there. i don't know. right after the pandemic, would you want to be in that crowd? anyway, there it is. the coronavirus not stopping thousands of people in wisconsin from voting yesterday. on your screens is video showing huge lines of people and yes, they are all basically wearing masks, what i can tell. they were all lining up to vote in the proper style of about six feet apart. lot of people surprised that people were out voting yesterday in wisconsin. by the way, few big guests on the show to tell you about. kicking it off, football legend

joe namath will be along. in the 11:00 hour, celebrity chef tom colicchio and i always think of seinfeld but he was a great baseball player, too. keith hernandez will be along in the 11:00 hour. let's take a look at the futures with about 18 minutes before we open on wall street. we are up 300 on the dow. that's the implied open. the s&p and nasdaq also up more than 1%. we heard this story, banks are struggling to process hundreds of thousands of small business loan applications. next, we tell you how much they are given out so far, and so much more ahead. we'll be right back. you wouldn't accept an incomplete job from anyone else. so why accept it from your allergy pills?

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the world health organization receives vast amounts of money from the united

states and we pay for a majority of the biggest portion of their money, and they actually criticized and disagreed with my travel ban for the time i did it and they were wrong. they've been wrong about a lot of things. they had a lot of information early and didn't want to -- they seem to be very china-centric. ashley: there's no doubt the president, not very happy with the w.h.o., the world health organization, and threatening to pull back funding. coming up later, we will be talking to the congressman who introduced a resolution to defund the w.h.o. we will get into that issue as well. let's get straight to edward lawrence. edward, banks struggling to process hundreds of thousands of small business loan applications, right? how much have they given out so far? reporter: yeah, the demand is huge for this program, ashley. so far, the payroll protection

program has given out 330,000 loans over the past six days, processing through $88 billion. it's a wildly popular program here and needs more money. both republicans and democrats say that even with its failing, they want to give it that more money. house speaker nancy pelosi releasing what she believed should be in the package with the money for this program. the first thing she says in addition, $250 billion added to the program. the house speaker wants to add $100 billion to help hospitals, $150 billion for state and local governments to mitigate losses. plus a 15% increase in the food stamp program. treasury secretary steven mnuchin is only asking for that $250 billion in assistance. a vote in the senate will happen tomorrow related to that, but the banks, from their side of things, the delay so far has been because they can't get new passwords. what's happened is their password for their portal at the

sba has expired and that delay is waiting for new passwords there. again, the sba, small business administration, processing billions of dollars in loans per hour and both republicans and democrats saying this program needs more money. back to you. ashley: yeah. the scourge of the passwords. i battle with them every day. now even the big banks are doing the same thing. i know we need them but they are a pain. edward, thank you so much. a new idea to get americans back to work, a second task force to focus on that very issue. joining us, betsy mccoy, former lieutenant governor of new york, here to explain her idea to get us back to work. good morning, betsy. what's your plan? >> good morning, ashley. in effect, we do need a strategy right away. we can't wait until the virus peaks and the reason is that the shutdown could kill more americans than the virus itself. more americans could die from suicide, drug overdoses and heart attacks related to

despair, they lost their jobs or lost the businesses they spent decades building. right now we are seeing 12,000 deaths in the u.s. from the virus, very tragic, and it's predicted to increase to perhaps 82,000 but think of this. every year in good times, 48,000 americans commit suicide and as the unemployment rate rises, every time it goes up 1%, more suicides in the u.s. similarly, with drug overdoses. in areas like ohio and kentucky, where unemployment has been ravaging those areas for years, opioid overdoses are a severe epidemic and so we have seen with the shutdown and a 30% unemployment rate predicted by the st. louis fed that we could be overwhelmed by a second tidal wave of deaths, not the virus,

but deaths of despair. that's why we need to act now. we have the tools, ashley, that we didn't have a few months ago to implement a new strategy, a new task force could do this. this will be a treatable disease by summer. we have antivirals already being used in clinical trials and the fda is not waiting until the trials are done so that those drugs can be rolled out. ashley: we are running long but you made your point very clearly and some very sobering statistics to go along with it. we all just want to get back to normal as quickly as possible so we appreciate your input. betsy, thank you so much. i want to get to lauren simonetti. disney parks we are told could soon add temperature checks before you go in the park. lauren: how do you make people feel safe going to a theme park and going on a ride? can you maintain social

distancing on a ride? tough question. so what disney is doing, per chairman bob iger, is taking temperature checks when the parks do indeed reopen around the world. the stock is down a little bit right now, 25 cents. wells fargo downgraded the company, saying attendance could take two years to normalize. so as we talk about returning to normal, would you go on a ride? would you go to a theme park? these are questions everyone has to answer. ashley: they certainly do. it's a good point. is that the new normal, temperature checks going to disney parks, to sports stadiums, to concerts? is that what we're looking at? interesting. masks as well. thank you very much. now just about six and a half minutes away from the opening on wall street. guess what? lots of green on the screen. the dow up 317 points. good for a near 1.5% gain. we will head to wall street soon. we'll be right back after this.

ashley: all right. we are now just two minutes away from the opening on wall street. before we jump in there, let's go to lauren simonetti. got some news on mcdonald's? lauren: yeah, 75% of their restaurants worldwide are quote, operational. the company says at the same time, because the dining rooms are closed, global same store sales fell 22% in march. ashley: 22%. that's mcdonald's. the economic data we are getting, unless you're in the business of keeping the people going as they're trapped at home, obviously if you are one of the businesses in any of the sectors that are shut down, we know how much damage is being done and those numbers over the

next several weeks are going to be very tough indeed. let's bring in susan li, if we can. susan, we have seen a lot of companies kicking in, helping out with face masks and ventilators. that effort goes on. and apple is one of those. i want you to go back to that. weren't they going to produce like a million face masks? is that right? susan: face shields, that's right. they are developing and producing a million face shields each and every week which they will donate of course to the front line health workers. but also, let's talk about other technology trends and things that are happening in the technology space as well, and the news we wanted to talk about was amazon. amazon has a third party shipping service called amazon shipping. now they are going to pause that starting in june because they need the workers. they're looking to fill 100,000 jobs. 80,000 already being filled because there is just so much traffic and orders taking place online, especially on amazon, and they need to get the goods

to people that need them. it looks like they are going to pause this service and don't forget, amazon is going to be the world's biggest shipper in 2022, shipping over six billion packages each and every day. ashley: all right. very good, susan. as you can see, the bells are clanging at the nasdaq. of course, no floor trading going on. it's all electronic these days because of the virus. right out of the gate, the dow up 270 points. a lot more green than red. walt disney is one that's lagging a little bit in the early go. there you go, 29 of the 30 dow stocks are up. just disney which is down very slightly. overall, the dow up 268 points after yesterday's somewhat lackluster performancen given what we saw on monday with that 1600 point gain. let's get to the s&p, up 31 points. modest gain, 1%, at 2688. let's have a look at the nasdaq, if we can. the big tech index, if you like. up also, just over 1% on the

nasdaq, up nearly 90 points. let's bring back shah gilani, if we can. shah, in this environment, i was reading your note, you said we'll buy on the dips after the rally is extinguished and you like to put in some stops, so if you make money on the way up, you put in a stop so if the stock starts coming back, you take your profits and wait for the next dip. is that the strategy? >> it's straightforward. everybody is looking to get in, there's a lot of fear of missing out because a lot of great companies are quote unquote, on sale. so it's not a bad time to get in. we got a little bit of soft bottom here which i like to buy against so i buy something and it goes up, i like to see it keep going up, i'm going to put stops in there. for the most part i don't put actual stops down in the marketplace in terms of orders, but i know the levels i want to get out of the stock if it comes back down. generally it's around a 10% move from where i like it, where i expect it to hold.

if it goes higher i will raise the stop up. if it comes down 10% from there i end up getting out with a profit. that assumes i first of all get in with a 10% profit but everything i have gotten into has already gotten more than a 10% profit because stuff coming off the lows is skyrocketing. ashley: yeah. look, we had that big day on monday. was that, as you say, a little bit of fomo, little bit of fear of missing out? was it short covering? was there substance to it? >> it was both. there's been a lot of short covering which has taken the market up off of those lows for sure. but right behind the short covering is really probably ahead of it, actually, is fear of missing out. a lot of investors recognize that if we have had a bottom, even if we come back down again and maybe touch the bottom, there are still so many great companies on sale that have been on sale and they watch them go up 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% a day, some of these stocks, skyrocket, some like airlines and cruise lines have come right back down, shot back up.

it's a great trading environment. if you get into those stocks and get a 20%, 30% move in a couple days, you've got plenty of cushion to put stops in to come back down, you end up with a profit. i'm not sure that we have seen the bottom yet here as the economy unfolds in terms of what i think we are going to see some horrible numbers this week, horrible gdp numbers. i think the market may go back and test its lows. ashley: susan just told us a couple minutes ago about amazon's third party delivery service essentially on pause right now because they need the drivers themselves. do you think amazon has handled this lockdown very well? i mean, obviously there's a lot of pressure on amazon literally to deliver. susan: that's a very good way to put it. in some ways, they are delivering with their stock price, aren't they. yes, they will end this third party delivery service because they need the people right now. i want to talk about the winners and losers in the technology space. yes, we talked about amazon already but what about netflix? i think netflix is a runaway

winner, especially with some of these really binge-worthy content that netflix has spent $13 billion to $15 billion on each and every year and netflix some would say in the age of covid-19 is the hands down, one of the hands down stay-at-home winners. they are looking to improve what they call the average revenue per user. this is a metric people use in technology and with so much streaming taking place, people are upgrading to more expensive packages. this is going to benefit names like netflix and possibly getting more eyeballs and subscriptions since domestic ads have been down the past two quarters. ashley: we took 33 minutes before our first "tiger king" reference. there you go. lauren, you have news on the airlines? what's going on? lauren: yeah. airlines are doing well today. so if the airlines, for any that accepted federal money, they have to now maintain minimum service.

let me explain what that means. so let's say for instance american airlines flew between laguardia and logan 25 times a week. now that has to go to five times a week. so they save money, as you can see the airlines are liking this. it's a new approval from the department of transportation they can maintain just minimum service from what they flew b.c., before coronavirus. ashley: exactly. let's take a quick check of the big board, five minutes into the session. just reading a headline here that the u.s. treasury secretary steve mnuchin saying that some areas like new york will indeed take longer to reopen. not having any impact on the dow. we are still up 258 points. but a word of caution from steve mnuchin, the treasury secretary. let's take a look at tesla, if we can. says it will start furloughing workers starting next week. the stock, though, not hurting, up eight bucks. $553 on tesla.

the parent company of tj maxx and marshall's making cuts as well. as you can imagine, it's tough. tj maxx companies up 2%, up at $47.59. let's also take a look at disney, if we can. got a downgrade from wellsfargo. they plan to introduce temperature checks when parks reopen. they were downgraded by wells fargo, who says park attendance could take two years to get back to full capacity. disney down just over $1, exactly $100 a share. pinterest, take a look at pinterest. the shares are soaring after strong preliminary first quarter earnings for pinterest. up 11% at $16.72 on pinterest. we like to keep a check on the ten-year treasury yield. the u.s. bond there, let's see what the treasury yield is doing. it's up, at .75%. the ten-year treasury yield.

little more higher on the yield. gold, meanwhile, also moving higher. gold has been one of the best performers year to date, up another six bucks. gold at $1689 per troy ounce. and oil, so much turmoil in the oil patch. will we have a meeting tomorrow between opec and russia? can they agree on some production cuts to try and, you know, add support to oil prices. who knows. it all seems very tenuous. we don't have the oil page right now. susan, i want to bring you back in. you mentioned netflix earlier. they have a new edge on streaming competition, right? susan: as i mentioned, $13 billion to $15 billion in content which is a great edge, if you have it. but technology-wise, i think it would be a very interesting earnings quarter, don't you think. we just had apple finally announcing they will be announcing their earnings on the 30th, at the end of this month, and don't forget, apple is one of the first companies to say that look, we can't give you the guidance and the sales that we

indicated we would because the coronavirus is going to hurt our stores being closed and the production lines over in china. i think it will be a very interesting first quarter to see what they guide forward of course especially for netflix which some people see as a positive for these type of stay-at-home stocks. on the other end, the companies that have had to close their stores, that had to furlough workers and how that impedes production and what this means for jobs and the economy going forward. ashley: that's a good point. shah, how can these companies give any guidance? obviously the earnings are going to be severely hit but it's very difficult to look out to the end of the year. that's why so many are not even giving guidance. >> you are absolutely correct. the thing that really bothers me, a lot of analysts for certain, is that this earnings season, we are not going to have the transparency like we have ever had. in fact, there's probably going to be such a lack of it, investors will scratch their heads and wonder how are you going to price, how are they going to price securities when you have no transparency, in

terms of -- don't forget, the s.e.c., two weeks ago, granted a 45-day extension for filings from march 1, so retroactively to june 1. so some of these companies are going to take that not as a path to not report earnings, but to delay some of the material information they may have to report. so it's going to be very confusing earnings season and if it's negative and we're not even seeing the worst of it, i think investors will get very nervous. ashley: yeah. i think you're right. shah gilani, as always, great to have you here. enjoy. you can't go to the beach but enjoy the view out your window. thank you very much. >> thank you. stay safe. ashley: you, too. coming up in the next hour, football legend joe namath. i want to know what he makes of a virtual nfl season. a virtual nfl draft. we will get his thoughts on that. the next legend on the show, keith hernandez. what does he make of major league baseball playing games in empty ball parks in arizona? of course i will ask him about

that. but next, i've got a guest who is predicting a short recession. i hope he's right. he will make his case next. with va mortgage rates suddenly

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if in fact we are successful, it makes sense to at least plan what a reentry into normality would look like. that doesn't mean we're going to do it right now, but it means we need to be prepared to ease into that, and there's a lot of activity going on. i was down at the white house in the roosevelt room last night until late at night discussing just what you're saying right now. ashley: that was dr. anthony fauci talking about reopening the country. he stressed the word "ease" back into normality and we heard earlier from treasury secretary mnuchin saying that easing back might take longer in cities like new york, but at least we're talking about it, right? i want to bring in greg smith, evolution vc partners.

joining us now. greg, thanks for being here. i like what you're predicting. you say the recession will be a short recession. make your case. >> well, good morning, ashley. thank you. i think this is going to be a shorter duration recession because it was really caused by this external shock to the system known as covid. i have lived through multiple prior recessions in my lifetime and if you look at those recessions, they were caused by major structural imbalances to the system such as really from hyperinflated asset bubbles. if you look at commercial real estate in 1990, you look at the tech bubble in 2001, and certainly housing in '08, those took a long time to unwind and were really a massive shock to the system. i think as you look at that coupled with the fact most people have cabin fever, they want to get out, they want to get back the life as normal, as we knew it and also look at the fact that we've had, you know, endless monetary and fiscal support from the fed, it's been very aggressive, i think it will continue to be endless and we really saw them write history on march 23rd and they really

showed up with a bazooka and the implementation has really been swift. ashley: well, all that said, i want to know what kind of timetable you're looking at. having a short recession, when do you see this economy kind of getting up and coming along again? how long a time period are we talking about? >> well, the average recession has lasted say 13 months and even if you look back at 1918, 1919, during the last spanish flu which might be comparable to this, different time frame, that lasted six months. but you know, again, today i think the equity market is really going to be a leading indicator and it's certainly going to precede the economic turn in the economy and i think the equity market had begwill b tell us what's going on and that we have actually peaked and are started to come over the hump of this bell curve, if you will, and hit the back nine. i think that it will be shallow and i think that we're going to see, you know, people again want

to get back to work and i think it's very hard, obviously, to time the market. we all know you can't pick tops, you can't pick bottoms and the best thing we can do is really assess the risk return of the equity market today. i truly believe we are going to be in a better position a year from now than we are today. so i have been a gradual buyer of equities, etfs and betting that we will be in a better position in the future. ashley: what makes this situation, though, you touched on this on the first question, what makes this different from the housing and tech bubbles? >> well, again, that was major structural imbalance in the system built up over a long period of time, right, so we didn't really have that today. today, this was a black swan event that showed up in record time. the adjustment to equity prices has been very very swift and dramatic. it happened in record speed. you had massive unwinds of positions from all the market neutral funds that unwound

positions very very quickly and i think you get to a position of, you know, re-risking as people start putting back on positions and they realize that, you know, equity prices are going to be more attractive certainly as they relate to fixed income. so i think you will start to have a rebuild. people will start to tip-toe back in. and my favorite expression that generally dumbfounds people, i believe the buyers will be higher. i think you have a lot of people on the sidelines that are waiting for that turn and as equity prices start to turn and go higher, people will be waiting for that one last big dump in the market to buy and that might never come, and you will end up having people re-risk and start to buy equities again at higher prices. ashley: gregg, we are almost out of time but give me your top stock pick right now. what do you like? >> well, i don't really pick stocks. i have been buying etfs and i would, you know, recommend for myself what i have been buying, i have been buying etfs on the

s s&p, financial and tech. i like the levered etfs, tecl and fes. it gives me a levered return to the equity markets. i have been gradually accumulating those and really making the bet that in a year from now we are going to be in a much better position than today. and in private portfolio, you know, i have many private investments, i know you have tom colicchio coming up at 11:00. i would ask him about try hungry, it's a great way to have meals delivered at home to you. he's an investor in that company. ashley: i will do that. gregg, thanks very much for joining us. i hope you're right, a shorter, more shallow recession in your opinion. let's hope you are right. thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. ashley: check this out. robots replace students at the graduation ceremony in japan. that's a little creepy but it's all because of course of the virus. we will have that story for you. also coming up, next we will

be talking to the head of uber eats for america and canada on how that company is handling contactless delivery and supporting local restaurants. more "varney" after this. when we first opened our doors, it didn't take us

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ashley: welcome back, everybody. just a quick check of the market

for you. as you can see, the dow up 175. the s&p and nasdaq also up about .75%. again, we are losing some of our steam. we have seen tech and oil, energy today leading the way. oil up 5%. all right. let's bring in our next guest. her name is janelle. she is head of uber eats for america and canada. thank you so much for joining us. i was just looking at some numbers. your food orders are up 30% since mid-march. how are you handling the big demand in this unprecedented time? >> ashley, it is quite unprecedented and it has been i will say a real challenging time for the restaurant industry, as you can imagine. we are seeing huge spikes in demand from consumers in some of the cities that have been hardest hit. we have seen other cities where we have seen more moderate growth. but for so many restaurants around the united states and canada and frankly around the world, they've had to take a

very small part of their business which was delivery through online platforms and really made it the dominant part of their business. we've had some days where it is ten times the usual number of restaurants trying to come on to the platform. ashley: how are the drivers doing? of course, we have contactless deliveries now that are very important. how much of a challenge has that been for the company and the drivers? >> i think we recognized, as many did early on, that it was important that we make changes in our app and in our technology to make it -- continue to make it safe and really feasible for not just the drivers on the platform but also for the restaurants, to be able to have the safest hand-off exchange in food, to be able to make contactless delivery for consumers so the user can request food be left in a certain area maybe outside the home or in a hallway and that has been met with tremendous reception because it is simply the safety of everybody at stake

here. we continue to work with restaurants to ensure that they are enforcing their food standards and that we are providing sanitation equipment that's needed. ashley: well, we are already out of time but thank you very much for joining us. i know you have committed free meals to health care workers and first responders. you have also done a lot to try and support independent restaurants of course who are really struggling right now. thank you so much for joining us. much appreciate it. quick check of the market. the dow up nicely but starting to lose a bit of its oomph. up 175 points. we also, don't forget, have a huge lineup of legends still to come on the show, including football legend joe namath and a celebrity chef and two-time world series champion. we'll be right back. (announcer) carvana's had a lot of firsts.

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ashley: it is 10:00 a.m. on the east coast. good morning, everyone, i'm ashley webster in for stuart varney today. the markets have been open for about 30 minutes and guess what? we're higher but certainly off the highs. we were up 300 points. still 124 point gain on the dow. half a percent on the s&p and nasdaq. we're starting to lose a little bit of wind in the sales. by the way wisconsin holding its primary in the middle of the pandemic. saw long lines of voters, seen throughout the state. i will talk to jason chaffetz about that it is strange sight everyone is suppose towed be

indoors. they got out and voted in wisconsin. president trump threatening to cut funding to the world health organization because of it is reaction to the crisis and with china. it is projecting 60,000 americans will die from the pandemic. that is actually down 26% from its first projection. so again, a little glimmer of hope, although that is 60,000 americans. that is a lot of people but slightly better than the first prediction. also this hour, there he is, football legend broad way joe namath joins us. the nfl will hold the annual draft virtually. what does joe by about that and think about the college football season pushed to next year? we'll ask joe. let's talk about united airlines. lauren simonetti, they're in the middle of a class-action lawsuit

lauren: absolutely. the class-action lawsuit because he wants cash back money refunded for a flight ultimately canceled. a lot of airlines are giving you a voucher to use at a future date, but the law says if you cancel the flight because of coronavirus or whatever else, you have to pay the customer back in cash. where is that cash coming from? department of transportation on the matter but they do advise cash. don't count on it. they will exercise enforcement discretion. we'll see. last month nine democratic senators, wrote a letter to the top airlines, look, try to refund those customers their cash back. ashley: interesting case. a case for guess who, judge andrew napolitano is on this one judge, great to see you. i'm fascinated by this is this a legitimate case, should the airline, united in this case give the customer the cash back instead of a voucher? >> think about it.

you purchase ad product from a company and they couldn't deliver the product and now they want to keep the money thaw gave them to purchase it. so under the common law, you remember those old laws in england judges sort of made up? under the common law you would have to give money back. in america as lauren so nicely just told us, the department of transportation which we lates airlines, for better or worse it does, has expressly decreed that whatever the reason for the cancellation, you have to give the money back but also, as lauren reported, because of the coronavirus, the department of transportation doesn't have the person power with which to enforce its own decrees. so what should you do? you should do what this particular passenger, by the way is a police officer in milwaukee, wisconsin. we were doing a story about wisconsin, filed a class action. remember how stuart loves these class actions, ashley? he is filed a class action

purporting to represent all people in the united states who bought a ticket on any united flight which was canceled and where united refused to return the ticket. i think he has got a very good case and i think he is going to win. it is a windfall for the lawyers but it will cost a lot of money for united going to get the money? from the federal government that is bailing them out. ashley: right, from the taxpayer. this gentleman paying his taxes hopefully will get his money back. judge, you know that small print comes with everything that you buy these days, is there anything that can protect airlines. if we can sell the flight we give you a credit for future flight, if that is the small print, does that save the airlines. >> it is in the small print but the department of transportation says for better or worse, ruled it does not save the airline. we're kidding around about this,

lawsuit. this is one lawsuit, ashley. expect a flood of them in next couple weeks and months. ashley: absolutely. judge, we're already out of time, great stuff as always and we'll continue to follow this story among many others. judge napolitano, have a great day. >> thank you. ashley: all right. thank you. let's get to this now. the continuing media attacks on our president trump. listen to what don lemon at cnn had to say. roll that tape. >> the president says that he wants to be a cheerleader for the country. he has to the one part of that right. it's leader. leader. not cheerleader. ashley: all right. there you have it. pregnant pause at the end. jason chaffetz, thank you so much for joining us. you know, what is wrong with being a cheerleader. they're picking up everything. just lop off the cheer and just be a leader.

this is a continue all attack on the president, parsing ever sentence he uses, threatening not to take the daily updates on the coronavirus situation. what is your reaction to all of this, jason? >> silly nonsense coming from don lemon who tries to pretend he is being a serious journalist there, but he is not. he is an opinion person. that's fine. he entitled to his own opinion but those are just cheap shots. every single chance they get to try to take a cheap shot. the president being a cheerleader for the united states is, of america is a good thing. he is also been leading -- they, cnn does note like that the president goes to the microphone day in, day out, updates america. they don't even take the broadcasts anymore. it is kind of an embarassment. ashley: it is indeed. look at some of the headlines. this is from "the washington post." it says, this pandemic is trump's vietnam.

he has earned his spurs. i guess that's admission from "the washington post." then this from susan rice. trump is the wartime president we have, not the one we needed. that is susan rice, the one who lied repeatedly about benghazi, but we'll get into that at another time. he is a war-time leader. he recognizes that. what would your report card be on the president right now. >> look, i think the president gets an a on this. you start from january where he put in the travel ban and it was a hoard of democrats and media pundits mocking the president, calling him some sort of a racist because he was trying to impede the ability of people who may have been affected. ashley: infected to coming to the united states of america. they didn't have his back. it took a long time for him to

be able to convince people this was serious. and you had the intel committee preoccupied with impeachment instead of actually looking at intelligence that the president was looking at. that was the opportunity cost that i think cost the country when adam schiff and nancy pelosi were running this mockery over there in the house of representatives. ashley: i also, jason, wanted to get your thoughts on this, this was a strange sight given we're all locked down, what did you think of wisconsin sending people out to vote yesterday. >> so the democratic governor tried to change the rules at the last second. i think the court there in wisconsin made the right decision. it is precursor what we'll see over all in november. president trump is right. we should fight hard and make sure that everything is not just pushed to mail-in ballots. if you want to, we just went through an allegation where there were allegations, much of it not substantiated there was some sort of hacking going on.

if you want to authenticate the vote which should be the goal, you can't just move to mail-in ballots which leads to all kinds of fraud. it really should be an effort to authenticate the vote. i really do believe you should present yourself and everybody should vote on the same day with the same information and authenticate the vote. that ought to be the goal for the country. ashley: indeed it should. we're out of time. but as always, jason chaffetz, thanks so much for taking time today. we appreciate it. >> thank you. ashley: jason chaffetz there. let's get back to the markets if we can. let's bring in susan li. we're up more than 300 points and now we're up 37 points. is there anything behind this? perhaps comments combing out from health officials or treasury secretary? what is going on? susan: anthony fauci uncertainty on how to reopen the economy and whether or not the u.s. will get back to normal, 100% after we

beat the coronavirus. he says no until we get a vaccine. something we heard from bill gates as well. this is the pretty much the playbook yesterday, 1200 point rally evaporated at the close. despite the fact we have federal reserve money, $4 trillion worth. japan pumping in trillion dollars worth of stimulus. china opening with the european central bank as well. is this enough to alleviate some concerns whether or not the economy reopens hopefully the next few weeks? how big will the economic pain be? central banks, predicting 30% contraction for the u.s. economy? how will that impact the corporate balance sheet? will they rehire individuals again and will we see money flowing back to the balance sheets? ashley: very good questions. all questions investors are pondering and they're not quite sure what those answers are. the dow coming back up again, up 106 points. we'll keep an eye on that.

thank you very much, susan. news on in order stram. lauren, come in. lauren: news is not good, for the quarter ending may the 2nd and beyond, the company says they will be adversely impacted by coronavirus. here's the thing, when we talk about going back to normal which stores survive? do the department stores survive? i can tell you online, was a third, 1/3 of nordstrom sales last year. they're making progress. it might be too little too late. 850 million in cash, two billion dollars in debt. adversely affected per the company by the coronavirus even though they have the bulk of their sales happening online. ashley: yeah. all right, interesting update, lauren. thank you very much. again take a quick check of these markets. we were up 300. almost came down to the water mark. up again on the dow 105 points. a big worry right now for americans is of course their noters. later this hour we have a

congressman working to ease the burden. he wants more action from the fed. plus the nfl draft coming up in a couple of weeks but this year, because of the virus, it is going to be done virtually. so what does football legend joe namath think about all that and other topics? we'll ask joe later on the show. we'll be right back. save 40%!!! that's safe drivers save 40%. it is, that's safe drivers save 40%. - he's right there. - it's him! safe drivers do save 40%. click or call for a quote today. from anyone else. so why accept it from your allergy pills? flonase relieves your worst symptoms which most pills don't. get all-in-one allergy relief for 24 hours, with flonase.

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ashley: welcome back, everyone. president trump is threatening to put hold on funding for the world health organization. just listen to this roll the tape, then we'll get some reaction. >> the world health organizations receives vast amounts of money from the united states and we pay for a majority, biggest positioner of their money, and 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 had a lot of information early and they didn't want -- they seem to be very china centric. ashley: let's bring in hillary vaughn to get more. what is congressional reaction to all of this, hillary? reporter: well, ashley, some

senators in congress want to rip funding away from w.h.o. in the next appropriations bill after what he just heard, the president floating the idea there should be a hold on funding to the organization because the president says they botched the call, they screwed data coming out of china. they also initially criticized the u.s. response to close the boarder in the u.s. to travel coming from china. senator lindsey graham saying that he does not want a dime going to the organization in the next appropriations bill. >> the next appropriations bill there is not going to be any money for the w.h.o. i'm in charge of the appropriations subcommittee. i'm not going to support funding the w.h.o. under its current leadership. they have been deceptive. they have been slow. and they have been chinese apologists. reporter: ashley this would be a big deal for the organization to lose out on funding from the u.s. because we are its biggest donor. 20% of all the money chough gets comes from the u.s.

from 2008 to 2019, we gave $93 million. that is double what the second member, uk. china gives 2% of their funding. we heard from senator marco rubio, says he is open to putting a halt on that funding going to w.h.o., but he wants to see the director resign. arcly? ashley: interesting stuff. hillary vaughn, thank you very much. let's bring in fred fleitz if we can. fred, former national security council chief of staff. you've been a cia analyst. you have had quite the career but i want to ask you about this issue. is president right to be critical of the world health organization and being china centric? is he right? >> ashley he is exactly right. let me point out that in the 114 year history of this organization, goes back to the league of nations, tedros is the only non-medical doctor to head this organization.

african states thought it was their turn to head it. china put in strong support and instead of holding china accountable for its lies and deceptions about this virus which caused to turn it into a pandemic, tedros, likes to be called dr. tedros, phd in global health. he likes to attack the united states and president trump. this guy needs to be get out and a accountable health organization be created. ashley: just the role that china played in this, their initial denials, coverups. they wouldn't give health officials with the w.h.o. access to china. it was a complete snow job but will they ever be held accountable? >> they're not going to be held accountable as long as tedros head this is organization. he knew very well china wasn't cooperating and what was going on in wuhan but was more interested in protecting china and to not stopping travel from

china, between china and other nations t was outrageous. i think the president was exactly right to threaten to withhold funds. ashley: how important are those funds to the w.h.o.? our reporter hillary vaughn said that china chips in just 2% but clearly they were steering the health organization from the very beginning. so what impact could it have if we just, you know, freeze the funding? >> it will have a big effect. it is worth noting the reason that africa wanted head of this organization, china did, because the world health organization directs huge amounts of funds and grants to nations worldwide t also has all kinds of jobs in the organization. so i think it is more than just fronting for china by tedros. i think there is enormous corruption in the world health organization this is it an opportunity to tackle that. ashley: i mean, you know, i was looking at some of the stats. it wasn't until march 11th that the health organization,

w.h.o. would declare a actual pandemic. in fact january 22nd they denied there was any reason to declare a international health emergency. it feels like they completely bungled this? >> yes. around january 20th, there was a board within the world health organization that wanted to declare this world health organization, health emergency but tedros resisted because he was using data from china he must have known was wrong. other members of the worth held organization, they knew this, but tedros dragged its feet and cost the world vital time that may have stopped this crisis. ashley: maybe lives at the same time. fred fleitz, thank you so much for joining us. much appreciate your input today. >> good to be here. thank you. ashley: all right. lauren simonetti, come on in, something about south korea. what is going on there? lauren: as we talk about returning to normal. tracking us via our phones or

even as they're think about doing in south korea, slapping an electronic wrist ban on you is something that might being under consideration. so in south korea the idea of this wristband you would get buzzed or the government woe get notified if you're supposed to be self-isolating and on lockdown and you break that lockdown. they're doing that now in south korea with, on your smartphone, on your gp-a, but what a lot of people do, turn the gps off. that is what they're doing there. will they do something like that here in the u.s. when we reopen our economy and start to go out again? facebook and google they're working on some measures to kind of track where you go but is that a level of personal invasion if you will americans would be okay with? ashley: yeah, like being under house arrest and you have an ankle bracelet also. it is that situation. be interesting to see what they decide. lauren, thank you very much. we have more from around the world for you. you're looking at spain's, once

bustling capital madrid. it is a beautiful city but completely empty as the country grapples with coronavirus. a lot of tax sys waiting outside the airport, whatever that is, bus station, there is no one around. check this out. this is a mcdonald's restaurant in israel. it has been converted into a testing site for coronavirus. what a great idea. we'll have more "varney" after this.

ashley: all right. welcome back, we got an update on uk prime minister boris johnson. let's go to lauren for that. lauren: the prime minister remains in intensive care. he spent two nights in the hospital, ashley. downing street says boris johnson is responding to treatments. he is in stable condition in icu. has not been on a ventilator as far as we know thus far, ashley. ashley: all right. fingers crossed for boris johnson. lauren, thank you very much. we have news coming out from air canada. susan you have that. susan: they're rehiring 16,000 of laid off workers they announced last week. it looks because they will get some help from the government. 75% wage subsidy as part of that stimulus package from ottawa. they're hiring retroactively

going back to march 15th. companies seeing sales fall in 15% in march because of covid-19. gets help from ottawa. this might be sign of what is to come for those working with airlines. capacity has been cut, 50, 70, 100% in some cases that there is is life light at the end of the tunnel. ashley: some positive news. we could use it. susan, thank you very much. let's bring in david kelly were jpmorgan. david, thanks for joining us. you say we need to crush the curve, not flatten it. so how do we do that? >> that's right because right now where we are is we're having 30,000 new cases every day in the united states, unfortunately over 1000 people dying from it every day in the united states. this is even with social distancing. we talk about flattening the curve and idea, we could just stablize things then the health profession could do its job to

reduce mortality. i think that's right, if you want to get the economy running again you have to crush that curve, 10,000 a day, 5000 a day, a few hundred a day in terms of new cases. you have to ramp up testing with contact tracing so professionally try to follow this and isolate the people who have it because if you don't do that, the nature of the virus is going to infect more and more people. obviously what the government should be doing apart from all the things it is doing trying to scene the economy right now is ramping up the testing with great urgency. really enforcing a nationwide shutdown. it is so important everybody do this, because if we have steady stage of 10, 20,000 cases per day, we're not going to get out of this until we have a vaccine. we want to deal with the, you have to flat enthe curve, if you want to reopen the economy you have to crush the curve. ashley: crush the curve. i like the expression.

david, stay right there if you can. i want to go back to susan li. you have oil inventory. susan: much more than anticipated, it is a big build, ashley. it could depress oil prices at 20-year low last week. we're looking at build of 15.2 million barrels in the week. that is much more than 9.3 million-barrel build we were looking for. so we are awash in oil. there is a glut of it because people are not using it. demand is down 30%. this adds fuel to the opec plus teleconference we're expecting amongst the biggest oil producers in the world tomorrow. will they cut 10 million barrels per day with russia, saudi arabia, even u.s. on board. they need to lift the oil prices in order for a lot of oil companies to survive. ashley: we do not need to be pumping anymore oil. we are as we said, running out of places to put it. susan, thank you very much. bring back david kelly if we can. david, you want to crush the

curve. meantime we're starting to see the actual severe damage being done to the economy. some of these numbers are quite staggering. how long can we hang on? you mentioned stimulus is very important to enable the bridge, between now and when we can reopen. but this economy, what is the recovery going to look like when we actually get there? >> i do think it will be a u-shaped recovery, but i would rather see a v-shaped recovery. what the cares act does i think we'll see phase four, phase five, i think we'll see the government put more money into this, we're holding the economy in suspended animation. you have mass unemployment but without poverty that comes with unemployment. a lot of companies with revenues, not necessarily going bankrupt. the good news we arrive at vc days, vaccine for coronavirus days, we line up get tested or get the vaccine, get back to normal i do think most of the industries badly affected, sports, leisure, hotels, restaurants, you can reopen this

stuff pretty fast. it may be unfortunately in some cases under new ownership. i think companies will go bankrupt and replaced by new once. i think the economy bounces back fast at that point. the government is right to sustain things to that point. more than anything else, before that point as i say pushing down the number of cases by being very aggressive across the country and in our ports of entry around the country just to make sure we pushed down that caseload as close to zero as possible. ashley: we had a guest on earlier, david, who said that he believed that the recession was going to be a shallow one, a short one but doesn't it really depend on the confidence of the consumer? the consumer feels confident and safe to go out, engage, and spend money? and how long is that process going to take? >> well, yes, i'm afraid it is not going to be shallow. we know it is not going to be shallow. we'll have a gdp decline of double digits annualized rate in

the second quarter. that is pretty much baked in. we'll see unemployment go above 10%. that is pretty much baked in based on what we know already. how long it lasts does depend whether we get back to work before. again the key is, people are watching numbers. so if the case of really gets down very low, if it is a situation where it is very, very unlikely that the person next to you has the disease because of all of this contract, contact tracing, then i think people will slowly get back to the normal. we won't quite bet back to normal until people are vaccination and feel safe. we can get back to normal earlier if we do that. no, this will not be shallow and i do not think it will that be short even in the best of circumstances. ashley: they say the virus doesn't move. it is people that move the virus. so you're right, if everybody, paul 50 states shut down maybe we do this quicker.

there is so much pent-up demand even to this point it is a hard ask, would you say. >> we have to think in terms of our social responsibility, our national responsibility, just do logic on this thing. you're right, virus, numbers of the virus dictate this. there is a lot of pent-up demand, but if we all do it -- incredibly frustrating thing, if literally everybody in the world, all 7.2 billion of us did the for a month the virus would disappear from the planet. it thrives on our social behavior. our lack of discipline among anything else will keep the virus alive. as a country we need to pull together all be disciplined dealing with this the next few weeks to push that curve down and hopefully get it down to a level where the doctors an scientists would be worried about it and the average person doesn't need to be worried about it. ashley: that is a good place to leave it with that message. good stuff, david kelly. thanks for joining us this

morning. don't flatten the curve. crush it, i love it. bring susan li in. what are students in japan doing? susan: japan has quirky traditions but very high-tech. they use robotic stand-ins for graduation ceremony as you see on the screen. life-size robots, bearing caps and gowns with tablets bearing live faces of students, controlling robots from home. this is business break through university in tokyo. now japan for itself has recorded somewhat 3900 cases of the disease, fewer than 100 deaths which is very important to note but we have shinzo abe, the japanese prime minister, enacting state of emergency in tokyo, but will things return to normal? in japan they're trying to find something, some semblance of it in a different way. ashley: yes, some semblance. that is fascinating to watch, susan. thank you. lauren simonetti. you have news on panera bread?

lauren: what a pivot from panera bread, from a lunch spot to a grocery store. look, when we had the shutdown of our dining rooms we lost half of our business. we do have delivery workers, drive-through. if you need bread, milk, pastry, whatever, let us know. we'll deliver it to your house within 40 minutes. if you tried like me, tried multiple times a day to order groceries from the grocery store and have them delivered to your house, it is near impossible right now. thank you, pa nair i can't for come -- panera, coming to the rescue. another option. ashley: great idea, another option we need. lauren, thank you very much. we'll check the market for you, we've only been open just over an hour. we were up 300. went down flat again. we're now up 240 points. same story on the s&p up nearly 1%, on the nasdaq. the nfl will hold the

upcoming draft this month but virtually t will start out commissioner goodell announcing the first pick from home, how weird is that? what does football legend joe namath think about it? we'll ask him next. ♪ ♪ ♪ i have always wanted to be a teacher. i've been teaching for over 20 years. with everything going on,

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ashley: welcome back, everyone. take a look at market the for you. we haven't gone negative for the session thus far. we're above the highs. dow up still 176 points. s&p and nasdaq up close to 1%. oil making a comeback today. we saw the latest inventory oil numbers, not great. there he is, football legend joe namath. handsome devil, isn't he, my life in four quarters. that is the book. joe namath, good to have you with us. thank you. the virtual draft, apparently, the commissioner, goodell will have the first draft pick

announced from his home. how weird is this going to be. >> it will not be all that weird to me. we as fans are going to miss being there, with the excitement of the crowd and auditorium and all but we'll adjust. the animal that we are, man, we can adjust. the nfl adjusts and it is going to be good. ashley: so what about the football season? can it be saved? if we do get through this thing, and when we do, are we going to be able to fill stadiums? will people be nervous about being in big crowds? >> well, naturally, ashley, covid-19 is going to decide this for us but people are going to continue to be nerve just. we all are, without any clear understanding of what's going on and, that we still need the separation. we need to listen to our medical people first of all. whenever they tell us it's all right to get together, good. i know as far as the football

player and football season goes, these guys can get the ready, they can get ready, matter of couple of weeks, man. it is a level playing field. if everybody goes back to work at the same time together, it is a good possibility. i would not rule the 2020 season out, either for the college players or the pro players. we're going to go ahead, if the medical people give us the okay. ashley: you make some good points, joe. college football, they're now kicking around the idea of pushing off this season into the spring of next year. i mean that would be financially devastating, would it not, to many of the colleges and universities? >> they will overcome the financieral problems. the main thing is the health problem. the competition, you know, the animal that we all are, man, we're competitive and we love to watch competition. i have gives us an emotional lift when we're down.

gives us the opportunity to bounce back. covid-19 will dictate the thing. we need to listen the medical people, look you can get together again, socially, shoulder, to shoulder, again, whatever, they can get a football season, basketball season together a matter of weeks. really not any excuse for it. we used to do it, used to be done getting together. you didn't have the football season year-round with the training and all. that is the least of our worries, getting this covid under control, man. and listening to what the medical people have to say is what's most important. ashley: with that said, joe, we're all social distancing, at least i hope we are, what's your day like these days? >> well my day is good except, man, when i'm watching you guys give us reports that i hear about our health care workers and what they're going through on all levels, you know, it just, well, it gives me strength

in believing character of our people and i worry about them like you probably do like all of us do. ashley: yeah. >> what has been pointed out about our health care people going through some awful tough times, getting sick, man, your heart goes out to them. i just can't thank them enough for what they're doing. ashley: i certainly echo that and all our viewers do and everyone else. joe, are people listening, are you employing people listening to the medical, the doctors, and what have you where you live, are people listening to the advice? are they doing the right thing? >> yes, most of us, ashley, certainly are. i haven't seen anyone out and about. i haven't been out and about. ashley: good. >> i haven't heard of reports like came out doing spring break where the beaches, i'm in southeast florida, where the

beaches had many people. our beaches have been closed down. our local governments have been really doing a good job notifying us to maintain separation in the best possible way. it is an awful tough jobe, overwhelming for the government people. we need to listen to what they're saying, you know. they know better than we do, the medical people know better than we do. we need to abide by the guidelines. ashley: we do. are you eating a lot of take-out food? >> [laughter]. no, as matter of fact, i'm having simple foods at home. i have help from my daughter and a couple grandchildren. we stocked up the freezer. we still have our local supermarket available and, we do some shopping once or twice a week, or she does.

and i have had some take-out food but that was early on. ashley: all right. as always, it is a pleasure to have you and an honor, joe namath joining us on the show. joe, be safe. thanks so much for joining us. there is the book, "all the way, my life in for quarters." i think there are more than four quarters in your life, joe namath. that is the title of the book. joe, thank you very much. let's look at the markets if we can before we head to break. dow has been up very much positive same for the s&p and nasdaq. we're holding those gains. now this, weekly noter applications dropped nearly 18% over the coronavirus fears, but coming up next, we have a guest working to help americans who may miss their noter payments. he will explain next. munity, we've seen you go through tough times

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ashley: let's check the market for you. we were up more than 300. we were down to 30 up. closing in at 300 gain after a big sell off at the end of the session yesterday. dow closing in on 23,000. s&p up more than 1%. same story on the nasdaq up more than 1%. i want to go checkups and fedex stocks.

they are higher. check this out. ups up 3 1/2. fedex up almost 7%. this after amazon announced it is suspending its delivery service that directly competes with ups and fedex. that is why those two stocks are moving up nicely higher today. we also have news from american airlines. lauren, you got that story. lauren: flight attendant unfor american airlines says 100 of their 127,000 flight attendants has tested positive for the coronavirus. 100 flight attendants testing positive. the union says they have been begging american airlines to provide ppe masks and such to the flight attendants since january. they are finally getting it. the good news here is that because of the relief package, yes, workers will get paid for six months, only because flying and demand is still down. only 25% of flight attendants will be in the air these days.

of course flights are, well, they are bare bones. not many people on them. so, we are social distancing in the air naturally. yes, exactly. ashley: yeah. you don't want to be empty middle seat of a crowded plane right now. of course that is not happening. lauren: no. ashley: lauren, thank you very. i want to bring if we can ohio congressman warren davidson. congressman, thanks for joining us. we're talking about noters. you are working i understand to help americans who may, through no fault of their own have to start missing their payments. what exactly are you proposing? >> yes. a lot of this is already underway. we've seen banks offer forbearances this is essentially, rather than go into default, people are able to delay payments. generally they're 90 days. then on the back end, federal gurantors, fannie and freddie. once your bank make as noter, they essentially sell it to a government entity fannie mae and freddy and they hold a huge

percentage much the noters. post-dodd-frank the last great global financial crisis, a lot of nonbank lenders were in there. we're working to get some language for all of the potential ways people could default. again the economy is effectively closed. so we want to prevent people from defaulting. ashley: how big of a problem is this, and how bad could it become and how responsive are the banks right now? as we know there is always red tape to cut through. >> the banks have been very good and the bank regulators were early to get guidance out to the banks to say, you know, as they're looking over late payments they will treat that more favorably than they have in the past. so they're getting support through the whole treasury department to be able to accommodate this, you know, forbearance. but it is a big problem. already in march, you've seen

probably 15,000, 1500% increase. so, 15 to 20 times as much interest in this as normal. and we expect that you're going to see more of it. so for residential and then you will start seeing the same kind of dynamics in the commercial market as well. ashley: congressman davidson, we're already out of time. thank you forking here and sharing your thoughts, what will be a growing problem of missing noter mortgaged payments. a congressman has legislation to defund the world health organization. much more at the top of the hour our team is standing by right now to take your call. and from start to finish, you can do it all without ever leaving the house. with our va streamline refi,

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ashley: and it is 11:00 a.m. on the east coast, 8:00 a.m. on the west coast. good morning. i'm ashley webster in for stuart varney who, by the way, will be back tomorrow. we look forward to that. but let's get right to the markets. markets have been open for an hour and a half and we are still higher, up 322 points on the dow, kind of heading toward session highs now. the s&p up another, well, about 1.5%, 1.33% on the nasdaq composite. all of this amid optimism the coronavirus is starting to plateau. we will see the confidence that we saw earlier in the week starting to come back just a little bit. we want to check oil for you as well. up just 68 cents, about $24 a

barrel, up about 3%. earlier we reported that oil stockpiles rose much more than expected last week, an extra 15 million barrels slopping around. we've got a lot of oil running out of places to put it. now to some of the headlines. the world health organization is under fire over its treatment of china during the coronavirus pandemic. coming up this hour, we will have the republican congressman who introduced a resolution to defund the group until the director general resigns. americans are eager to get back to normal. listen to what dr. anthony fauci said earlier today on reopening the u.s. economy. >> if in fact we are successful, it makes sense to at least plan what a reentry into normality would look like. that doesn't mean we're going to do it right now but it means we need to be prepared to ease into that and there's a lot of activity going on. i was down at the white house in the roosevelt room last night

until late at night, discussing just what you're saying right now. ashley: just ease into it, says dr. fauci. moments ago, the president tweeted quote, once we open up our great country and it will be sooner rather than later, the horror of the invisible enemy except for those that sadly lost a family member or friend must be quickly forgotten. our economy will boom perhaps like never before. by the way, 5:00 p.m. eastern time today, the white house coronavirus task force will be holding the daily briefing. we can expect more news on that. that's the latest tweet from the president. let's get right to our first guest. the wonderful elizabeth macdonald, host of "the evening edit." liz, great to see you. mr. kudlow is predicting reopening the economy in about four to eight weeks. is that optimistic or not? what do you think? >> it's optimistic for the

national, nationwide economy, to reopen. americans keep saying stop the spinning, give us the facts. there's a big push to get to the facts. we have to do it safely. that's what health experts keep telling us. it's different from europe, when you hear individual countries opening. they can do that. we are in a 50-state model so it would be a slow kind of rollout of opening areas where it's safe to do so, where there's widespread testing to find the people with the antibodies who are immune and also, we know jared kushner, we are already hearing he's working on a health technology platform to do surveillance of where potential hot spots are breaking out in realtime. so there's talk of opening the economy in places like iowa, wisconsin, nebraska, maybe even the dakotas, but the word is do it safely. ashley: exactly.

to your point, liz, it might be easy for norway and denmark but the united states is a whole different proposition. hang on, i just want to bring susan li in. susan, wuhan, the epicenter of where this virus first was reported, is lifting its travel restrictions, right? susan: yeah, that's right. after 76 days, more than ten weeks in lockdown, this industrial city of 11 million has now reopened but still with some restrictions because you are only allowed to leave after you provide a government sanctioned app that says we know your home address, your recent travel and medical history and whether or not you are a contagion risk. there is tracing, there is surveillance involved in opening cities and economies like china. 94% of businesses are back up and running. however, in terms of normal life, if you hear the anecdotal stories, not many people are going out to restaurants or going to movie theaters. is that necessarily normal even though businesses are reopened. ashley: yeah. that's kind of wondering if

that's going to happen here when we can finally start to reopen. also, this is amazing pictures, popular tourist attraction mobbed by visitors, right? susan: this past weekend in china was a holiday weekend. this is one of the unesco heritage sites in china called yellow mountain. 20,000 flocking to this very popular tourist site. they are saying look, we kept our distances and we were only offered free entry on saturday if we provided some evidence again, the government-sanctioned app that says we are free of covid-19, we had to wear a mask, we had to have temperature checked before entering the park. still there's a lot of concern if you are reopening china, a country of 1.5 billion, they will get back to normal practice of clustering together, especially in popular tourist destinations and there might be a reinfection with covid-19. ashley: yeah, concerns of a second wave. i didn't see any six-foot social distancing in those pictures. let's bring back liz, if we can.

not with that many people. liz, what is your reaction to china? the initial denials and coverup at the beginning of this pandemic. what do you think about china? >> you know, there's a growing backlash against china in countries like bangladesh, afghanistan, southeast asia, asia, all through greece, turkey, europe. there are concerns of, you know, on social media people posting in those countries that china is trying to become a global superpower in health, that it's building a new medical belt and road to dominate the world while it's selling flawed, detetests, has sent back millions, as has the czech republic, saying their covid tests are flawed. they are also talking, i'm looking at afghanistan right now, people on facebook in afghanistan sharing posts, saying quote, china should be isolated completely until the

chinese quote, change their lifestyle. i'm looking at social media posts right now in india, bangladesh, saying you can't trust china, you can't trust its numbers and what it says and does. we are looking at widespread growing global backlash against china for triggering humanitarian crises around the world, and so i'm looking at this, too, there is deep concern china has been hoarding billions of separate medical supply items, then charging people, countries more for those same items, hoarding before this epidemic broke out into a pandemic, and this. we found out china was trying to get an exclusive patent on gilead sciences' remdesivir in january. we are seeing people are looking at this potemkin village of deception china has built up and growing global backlash against china right now. ashley: exactly. liz macdonald, great stuff, as

always. host of "the evening edit" 6:00 p.m. every day. thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us this morning. all right. let's move on. lauren, you have some news from chuck schumer. what's he saying? lauren: congress is talking about this fourth relief package, rescue package, and the senate minority leader, new york senator chuck schumer, is saying well, how about giving money to those on the front lines, whether it's doctors, nurses, health care workers or delivery people. it would work out to up to $25,000 for the remainder of the year or an equivalent of $13 an hour on top of what you make now, plus this. they need more health care workers. they need more delivery workers and grocery store workers. so if you sign up, you could get a $15,000 recruitment incentive. ashley: wow. good money but they are on the front lines. i understand that sentiment

entirely. all right. lauren, thank you very much. let's bring in edward lawrence. he's been doing a terrific job of tracking these small business loans, how many are going out and how much money in particular. what's the latest count? reporter: yeah. you are talking about supply and demand at its most fundamental level here. there's a huge amount of demand from these small businesses to get this help in this program here. now we are seeing the community banks really come through with this money. the big banks have been taking applications but still, not yet processing through those loans. here are the latest numbers. take a look at this. we are talking about 340,000 loans over the past six days, distributed more than $90 billion. that money is in the hands of small businesses. more than 3500 lending institutions have given out those loans. this is the most amount of money the small business administration has ever processed in a six-day period. a small business administration official telling me that they saved an estimated 9.5 million jobs related to this.

that's the total amount of employees who are in all those applications at this point. now, when processing through these loans, when the big banks finally come in, the official tells me they expect to be closer to that final number, the cap of $350 billion with this. that's why tomorrow we are going to have a vote from the senate about $250 billion more being added to this program. democrats on board with that, but they also would like to see in this help for state and local governments as well as money for hospitals and also increasing the food stamp program. we will see how quickly this process moves. ashley? ashley: thank you very much, edward. yeah, the community banks have been doing a tremendous job. it's time now for the big banks to kick it into high gear. great job on tracking those numbers, edward, thank you. let's check hanes brands, if we can. the teeshirt maker is now producing cotton masks. that stock up about 10% today at $9.20. also donating -- looking to donate 320 million of those masks in the coming weeks. that's hanes brands.

take a look at disney. wells fargo downgrading the company saying it will take two years for park attendance to get back to full capacity. disney only just down slightly, right around $100 a share for disney. also take a look at pinterest. they announced strong first quarter earnings and no debt. pretty impressive. but withdrew their full year guidance. we are hearing that a lot from companies. they simply don't know what the rest of the year holds. pinterest up 11% in today's session. you know him from the hit show "top chef." tom colicchio, says it took him 19 years to build his restaurant empire and the coronavirus has gutted it in just a matter of weeks. we will speak to him later in the show. the world health organization under fire. we have the congressman who introduced a resolution to defund them. he will join us next. (music)

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many years we have been funding, as we say w.h.o., the world health organization, and for years, we funded them and it's probably spending at least $58 million a year but we're going to look at it now because every -- i think every step that they made, everything that they said was wrong and always in favor of china. they never viewed it as that serious so you know, it's one of those things that we're the one that is the primary funder. and so we're going to take a very strong look at that. ashley: well, that was president trump slamming the world health organization which he has done in recent days. let's bring in hillary vaughn. hillary, tell me more about the director general of w.h.o. reporter: ashley, the man in

charge of the world health organization is getting a lot of blowback for decisions he made. senator marco rubio saying he's been politicized and essentially making these decisions under duress that favor china but this is not the first scandal that the director general has been caught up in. he's also been accused of covering up three cholera outbreaks in ethiopia in 2006, 2008 and 2011. he told the "new york times" there were no outbreaks during those times, instead saying that there was just cases of quote, acute watery diarrhea. he was also a leader in the peoples liberation front in ethiopia. that organization has been categorized by the state department as a terrorist organization. but it's not just tedros coming under fire in the u.s. other countries are criticizing his response under his leadership for how he's handled the coronavirus outbreak. taiwan has said they told w.h.o. about human-to-human contact and spread of this virus back in

december but in late january, the director general said there was no evidence of human-to-human spread and also did not declare a global health emergency. that is something that is having many people around the world sign on to a petition right now calling for him to resign. we also are awaiting a press conference with him any moment now. we are expecting him to address this. perhaps we see him take some responsibility. we shall see. ashley? ashley: all right. interesting stuff. hillary, thank you very much. of course, we have a congressman who has introduced a resolution to defund the w.h.o. we are hoping to speak with that congressman very soon. guy reschenthaler from pennsylvania. we will work on that. meantime, lauren, there's a potential game-changing treatment, is that right? lauren: a plasma treatment. this has been tried on about 20 patients right here in new york. so if you are very sick from the coronavirus, what doctors are starting to do is give you the blood plasma from someone who

had the coronavirus and recovered. it's being called a game changer and as one of the recovered coronavirus patients said, it's like passing a life raft to the next person. this could also be good if you give the plasma to someone like a health care worker. so eventually it can be preventive for them. consider it a game changer, especially right here in new york. ashley: right. sounds very promising. lauren, thank you. susan, you have some news on nike? susan: just doing it. they are joining in and making face shields, like apple. apple is making a million a week for the front line workers, health workers and nike stepping up as well. so they say their factories are pivoting. they will make full face shields, powered air purifying respirator, lenses and they are using all the tech and gear they use in their nike air shoes, including the soles, also from apparel, bags, plastic, you name it. looks like nike says their first shipment will go to ohio state

university on friday and they are looking to make just around 100,000 or so a week. new balance also making masks and with under armour as well, all the gear makers jumping in. ashley: the swoosh on the face mask. all right. susan, thanks very much. lauren, what about cannabis stocks? if all the stores are closed, especially in areas where it's legal to buy, where do you get your weed? lauren: curbside pickup or delivery, not in the u.s. this is in canada. nonetheless, look at the reaction by the pot stocks, if you will. what ontario has decided, first they said you know what, marijuana shops, recreational weed, it is not considered essential but they didn't want to encourage illegal trading, so they said okay, pot stores, retail businesses, you can reopen if you are willing to deliver and allow curbside pickup and it's happening all

day long from early in the morning until late at night. ashley: let me just point out, i didn't mean you personally, where do you get your weed. i meant you, the universal you, and you explained it very well. also, what about news on airbnb? lauren: airbnb. okay. so as you know, the company is trying to ipo or direct list this year and that's been challenged right now because people are canceling their trips. airbnb has promised hosts and people who have booked and paid for their travel, you can get your money back. you can get your money back in cash. okay, fine. thank you. however, customers are complaining that it's near impossible to get that money, that airbnb is making them jump through hoops, providing documentation that they're sick or a health care worker or that there is indeed a government lockdown in the place they live or that they were going. so it's been hard.

airbnb says we will give you the cash but that's not happening as fast as a lot of customers would like. ashley: yeah, i can imagine. lauren, thank you very much. let's check tesla, if we can. we know they have announced they are furloughing workers and cutting pay through may. look at the stock, though, up half a percent, a couple bucks, three bucks, at $548 on tesla. also take a look at amazon. they, as we have been talking about, are suspending delivery service for non-amazon packages. that's good news for competing with ups and fed ex. ups and fed ex stock moving higher. amazon saying they need all of its employees handling its own customers' orders. amazon up nine bucks above $2,000, $2,020 per share. coming up, later on the show, two-time world series champion keith hernandez will join me. we will discuss the future of major league baseball under this pandemic.

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ashley: we have some breaking news. senator bernie sanders is suspending his presidential campaign. that of course now leaves a clear path for joe biden to grab the democratic nomination and ultimately a showdown with donald trump. bernie sanders, expected to address supporters during a livestream here in about 15 minutes. we will keep an eye on that. any news that breaks from here, we will of course be sure to let you know. sanders had said for the longest time he still saw a narrow path. well, that path is now blocked and the path is wide open for joe biden. there you have it.

bernie sanders suspending his campaign. joe biden has the nomination, it appears. let's check the markets. we have been moving steadily higher in the last hour or so, the dow up now as you can see 469. we are at session highs. s&p and nasdaq also up around 2%. the dow now above 23,000. we also have news on jack dorsey, twitter guy. what's the other company he has? susan: square. twitter. square. he's donating $1 billion to charity. that represents around 28% of his total wealth which includes $3 billion stake in square which is where this money is coming from. he still owns about 2% of twitter. he's saying i'm pledging $1 billion for covid-19 relief. other billionaires, i challenge you to step up as well. this will go into an llc called start small and this has a very

smart, i think there's a smart way to do it because first of all, he avoids the capital gains tax by this donation and he still retains his voting rights when it comes to those square shares. square, though, is down 40% over the past month. twitter is also lower as well. he just won a bruising internal battle with activist hedge fund manager elliott management that actually want the push him out of twitter as ceo. he says m goii'm going to use m money to do good and for you other rich people out there, you do the same. ashley: thank you very much. a billion dollars, we throw that around but that's a lot of money. just want to get reaction very quickly -- it is a lot of money. i just want to get company reaction, no big surprise bernie sanders is now out? susan: if you look at the stock market, it hit session highs in reaction to it which shows you that wall street is relieved a man that wants to break up the big banks, break up tech and tax every stock and bond trade is

out of the race. ashley: very true. joe biden seen perhaps more friendly to the market, right? lauren: certainly more friendly to the market. and for bernie sanders, we were expecting this for awhile because everyone was saying what's his path forward, and insiders were saying well, it all comes down to the primary yesterday. he was supposed to make the sti decision after those results. he made it today and stocks did hit session highs on word that he was ending his campaign. ashley: socialist candidate, democratic socialist, as he would call himself, bernie sanders out. as you can see, markets reacting. go ahead, lauren. lauren: yeah. remember scott shellady yesterday at the top of the show, you put out a tweet saying coronavirus is showing us what socialism is like and he meant it tongue-in-cheek but it's kind

of true. as we are all on lockdown and quarantined, this is an idea of what socialism could be like and maybe people are saying no way. susan: i think the democratic party is relieved. it clears the way for biden, of course, to face president trump in the election in november, especially as he isn't getting a lot of air time right now, being stuck at home in his basement. ashley: some would argue that's probably doing him a favor. anyway, i don't want to be snide. edward lawrence has some news on the fed, right? oh, grady trimble. i'm so sorry. grady trimble. let's switch stories. i hope you can hear me. you are talking about truckers, right? reporter: it's not news on the fed, it's on truckers. this coronavirus outbreak has really put a spotlight on how important truckers are to our economy right now. just to getting goods that we need at a time when most of the

economy is shut down. you can see it's noticeable how many truckers are on the road right now. so the industry association that represents tens of thousands of truckers is asking congress for help. first and foremost they want help now, they want testing and protective gear, particularly for those drivers who are going into hot spots. but they also want changes that will help drivers long after this pandemic passes, things like more parking, obviously long haul truckers need rest and don't want to waste time searching for a place to park their rig. they want relaxed restrictions as well on how long truckers can drive and financial incentives for shippers and lookeders to get goods on and off trucks faster so the drivers aren't waiting around when they could be out on the road. lastly, one thing that one industry association pointed out, particularly one that's in charge of training drivers, is that a lot of dmvs are closed right now so they want to make sure that training and licensing continues for new truckers so that there's no shortage at a

time when drivers and truckers are needed the most. ash? ashley: yeah. all right, great stuff, grady. i appreciate it. the truckers do an amazing job to keep the goods going in these crazy pandemic times. grady trimble, thank you very much. now i jumped the gun, apparently. now we can go to edward lawrence with news on the fed. reporter: yeah, the federal reserve has now loosened restrictions against wells fargo, specifically and narrowly related to the payroll protection program. you know wells fargo is under those restrictions because the fraudulent accounts that were created back in 2018. well, now the federal reserve saying they will lift those restrictions just for this program and the main street lending facility the federal reserve is about to announce. wells fargo had capped at $10 billion the amount of loans for small businesses they will process. now they can grow beyond that, because what the restrictions did was limit the balance sheet side for wells fargo going forward. because of that balance sheet

couldn't grow, they couldn't give out any more of those loans under the program, so again, this modification of a 2018 order by the federal reserve for just wells fargo narrowly related to the payroll protection program and the main street lending facility that's going to come out, going to be announced later this week. back to you. ashley: very quickly, edward, once we get through this, do those restrictions go back in place on wells fargo? reporter: again, the restrictions are only related to these two programs and it does say temporary. that tells me maybe down the road once the eight weeks is done for this loan program, they will snap back to the way they were. their balance sheet can grow now and wells fargo can give out money under this program specifically. ashley: just got to get it to the people who need it. edward lawrence, great stuff. thank you very much. we still have a very big show ahead, i've got to tell you that. baseball legend keith hernandez is here and celebrity chef tom -- wait a minute, colicchio.

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ashley: all right. breaking news, again to recap, senator bernie sanders is suspending his presidential campaign. that of course now leaves a clear path for joe biden to snag the democratic nomination. bernie sanders expected to address supporters during a livestream address here in just about 15 minutes from now. of course we will look through the headlines and any news that breaks, we will let you know. what's interesting is we get this announcement, perhaps not a huge surprise, but it is definitely now been announced, we know sanders at one point said i still see a narrow path. i think he said that on one of the late night shows. but apparently, he now does not see a narrow path to victory and has decided to bow out. what has reaction been on the market? take a look. the dow up now 577 points. bernie sanders and his democratic socialist agenda

would have not been friendly on the markets and wall street for sure, is out and now we are up almost 600 points on the dow. there has to be no doubt not a coincidence that we are seeing this reaction on the market as we get that political news. susan: three sectors in particular are probably paying positive attention to this. that has to be the health care, right, health care has been depressed this year because bernie sanders like other candidates on the democratic stage said he wants medicare for all. that would actually crimp some of their profits if they have to lessen and lower the charges they have on their health care and also the drugs they provide. also, big banks. we know that bernie sanders says big banks should not be forgiven for 2008. he wants to break them up once again. so banks, financials are relieved and big technology, as you said, billionaires should not exist so what about jeff bezos and mark zuckerbergs of this world? i think there's relief there in those three particular sectors. ashley: what's fascinating is that to date, this market has

been so influenced by every headline on the coronavirus and perhaps more optimism, but now completely out of that world, we get a political headline and boom, there's the demand and people are buying. lauren: -- don't know how to react to it. this is not a medical story, it's a political story, like the good old days, but the market is responding to this news. at the end of the day today, if these gains stick, not only do you have the dow in a new bull market, but you might have the s&p 500 out of bear market territory and indeed, in a new bull market. now, a lot of people might say and we have heard many particularly investors say we are moving a little too fast because back to the medical, the future is quite murky when it comes to the coronavirus but we did hear from dr. anthony fauci saying the turnaround could happen after this week. ashley: yep. just got to ease in. lauren, thanks very much. i want to bring in bruce daisley, former twitter vp, also author of "eat sleep work

repeat." i think that pretty much describes what everyone is doing right now. i want to talk to you about the ups and downs of now working from home which has become the norm for so many of us. >> yeah, absolutely. i think we are all coming to terms with exactly what it means. i think those states that went into lockdown earlier like california, i think they are into a second wave of understanding how initially this might seem like a novelty but before long, we start realizing it does have an effect on our psyche, on our mental wellbeing. i think it's something that all employers are probably thinking about right now. ashley: and bruce, we wonder a lot whether some of this may become permanent once we get on the other side of the virus, that the benefits of working from home from the employee and employer point of view is strong enough we will carry on doing this once things get back to

normal. >> absolutely. the world's biggest advertising firm, wpp, he said we have seen ten years' innovation in four weeks. i think a lot of firms not only office-based firms but a lot of firms are thinking what can we do to actually take some of this change, some of this disruption we are seeing around us, how do we make our firms leaner, faster, better, because of it? ashley: social media also finally is certainly a lifeline but there's been some criticism that the social media platforms haven't done a good enough job of blocking some of these conspiracy theories. this must be a difficult time, too, for social media companies to keep an eye on that. >> no doubt. when any firm, when any social media firm, we are thinking about 2020, they were focused on one thing, election integrity and avoiding the disruption that we might have seen in the past. this was not in the plan. and i think social media firms

are very much now having to rescramble their plan to try and work out how this works. the challenge, of course, is where do we draw the line. we have seen pop stars sharing news about 5g, we have seen politicians sharing news about unproven drug tests, and i guess to some extent, we need to try and work out what we're willing to see policed and what to some extent we will allow to pass. ashley: yeah. that has been a question for awhile now and we are still wrangling with it. bruce daisley, thank you so much for taking time to chat with us today. much appreciated. thank you. we now can bring in congressman guy reschenthaler from pennsylvania. great to see you. you introduced a resolution to defund the w.h.o. before i get to that issue, i want to get your reaction to bernie sanders dropping out. was it inevitable? >> well, bernie sanders dropped out but his opinions and

platforms sure didn't. you've seen the democrat party move drastically to the left so they are still talking about giving illegal immigrants taxpayer-funded health care. they are talking about open borders even in the midst of a global pandemic. and they are talking about the green new deal which would cripple our economy. bernie might be gone but his radical, dangerous ideas are still around. ashley: although you would say that perhaps joe biden is more moderate, i know they have been trying to drag him to the left but certainly wall street seems to think it's better news for the market that sanders is out. the dow up 575 points. so maybe not as bad as the markets were thinking. >> well, i'll tell you, i don't consider anybody moderate if they are for banning fracking. if you want to have a war on natural gas, that's not going to play in southwestern pennsylvania. that's going to cripple our ability to exert influence on the international stage. we are in a very strong position because we control our energy resources and the fact that joe

biden wants to ban fracking should scare everybody. to me, that's no moderate. that's a far left radical and he may be joe biden in name but his platform is that of bernie sanders. ashley: point well taken. let's get back to the issue we were going to talk about earlier, congressman. your resolution to defund the world health organization. what does the resolution do and why are you doing it? >> yes. it does two things. one, it says to the director general right now, he's got to step down. this director general was either grossly negligent in handling this pandemic or he was working hand-in-glove with the chinese communist party. that's one. number two, it ties federal funding to the world health organization only if there's an investigation into how china and the world health organization mishandled this pandemic. if you think about it, the world health organization went out of their way to parrot the talking

points of the ccp, chinese communist party. we know from data and a study put out by the southampton university, that had china just acted three weeks sooner, the world would have seen 95% reduction in this global p pandem pandemic. the chinese lied about this from the start. taiwan warned china back in december that this was transmitted person to person and the chinese lied about it, they jailed doctors and those who spoke up against it and people are dying around the world because the chinese communist party put politics above public safety. ashley: very quickly, i just have a headline from the director of w.h.o. who says we have kept the world informed about the latest data information and evidence. i have a feeling you would disagree. >> that's rich. because we know that they have suppressed numbers in china, and the world health organization parroted that. we also know if wuhan would have

locked down and avoided travel around china, around the world, we could have suppressed this. but it was the world health organization that criticized the united states and the president's desire to shut down travel from china and to keep this pandemic local. but because the world health organization parroted the chinese communist party platform, ignored the united states, ignored taiwan, we now have a global pandemic which has killed in the hundreds of thousands. ashley: we have to leave it right there. thanks so much for taking the time today, congressman. much appreciated. now it's time to bring in tom colicchio, celebrity chef. you know this guy. great to have you, tom. listen, let's start with something you are doing. you are donating meals to hundreds of health care workers. explain what you're doing. >> well, it's a company that actually i'm involved with called hungry. they are a platform that connects chefs and usually

better known chefs with companies that are looking for catering. obviously, that business closed now with covid, so they transition to a platform to provide meals to health care workers. they teamed up with a nonprofit called pivotal moments and so you can actually order through the platform, tryhungry.com, and you can actually purchase meals that will go directly to health care workers. ashley: you know, i want to talk about you personally. you spent 19 years building up your restaurant business and as you have said, it just takes some weeks, just a couple of weeks for this coronavirus to really put a huge dent in that business. explain to me what this has done to you personally. >> well, more than a dent. we're closed. we were forced to close. i actually decided to close a couple days before the forced closure. i wanted to make sure my staff was protected.

i had to lay off about 470 people in my restaurants in new york and california. and since then, i co-founded the independent restaurant coalition. we hired some representatives to represent our position in washington and we have been involved in negotiations to explain to lawmakers the unique position that restaurants are in and try to get lawmakers to understand the ecosystem that we sort of total in our restaurants. if you look at the 11 million people that small independent restaurants hire directly, indirectly we are talking about another probably ten million people when you consider fishermen and guaardiners and farmers and cheese makers and wine makers, plumbers, electricians, you know. so we think we are uniquely positioned to take a lot of those stimulus dollars and put

them through our businesses to get people back employed, take care of our entire ecosystem but also, we are looking for additional money so when we open up, we can actually stay in business so we're not back to unemployment again after we open up. we are looking to change some of the terms of the care act to better support restaurants. ashley: if you don't get that money, tom, how many restaurants are just barely hanging on by their finger nails right now? >> oh, i suspect that if we don't have the care act change a little more, add more money to it which it sounds like that's coming out of mcconnell, that he thinks it should be increased by another, i don't know, $350 billi billion, if we can't get to where we need, i suspect that 75% of the restaurants in this country close. keep in mind that again, small independent restaurants employ 11 million people. ashley: wow. well, listen, in the meantime,

try to hang on. we have no contact delivery and some restaurants trying to, you know, at least keep going through that. but is that enough? >> no. i mean, two issues with the no contact delivery. number one, i'm still concerned about bringing my staff into new york city if you're taking public transportation. we are told keep people inside, flatten this curve, so i think -- ashley: tom, i'm sorry, we have to jump in and listen to bernie sanders. >> you got bernie sanders. okay. >> -- contribution averaging $18.50 a donation. i want to thank those who phone banked for our campaign and those of you who sent out millions of texts. and i want to thank the many hundreds of thousands of americans who attended our rallies, town meetings and house parties from new york to california. some of these events had over 25,000 people, some had a few hundred and some had a dozen, but all were important. 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, 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 modern world history, famously said, and i quote, it always seems impossible until it is done, end quote. and what he meant by that is that the greatest obstacle to real 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 school 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 droughts, 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 wealth 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 idealogical 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 and more americans understood that we must move to a medicare for all single payer program. during the primary elections, every poll 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. 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 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 dr. 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 idealogically, 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 all painfully aware, we now face an unprecedented crisis. not only are we dealing with a coronavirus pandemic which is taking lives of many thousands of our people, we are also dealing with an economic meltdown that is 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 vice president biden and