watch that. get the latest update on the coronavirus. be well, see you back here tomorrow. >> tucker: good evening and welcome to tucker carlson tonight. the president of the united states will address the nation an hour from now to outline the government's response to the chinese coronavirus. the president's staff has described the speech as an order of 90 soon stronger than anything he has said on the subject before. it is scheduled to begin at 9:00 p.m. eastern tonight. the speech comes as the world health organization has revised its assessment of the threat. the virus will move on, it's now officially a global pandemic. >> the number of cases of covid-19 outside china has increased 13 fold.

the number has tripled. we have the assessment that covid-19 can be characterized as a pandemic. >> tucker: as of now the official count in this country is 1100 cases of coronavirus, that figure is growing quickly. in italy which experts say it's only a few weeks out of where we are in the development of the outbreak, the entire nation is in lockdown. the disease is called a most aren't people in italy in just the past 24 hours. markets are responding to this. the dow dropped almost 6% today. ncaa announced that march madness, the basketball tournament, will be played without fans in attendance this year, that ought to tell you something. schools are closing across the country and so on. the graphic on the bottom of their screen with the closures and cancellations already in effect. you would be wondering could be an overreaction, all of itself are relatively few people have died in this country. but before you reach that conclusion consider this.

the average annual flu, the one that was around every year, every person who gets the virus spreads into a little over 1.3 people. in the case of this virus, they coronavirus, that number is almost double. left unchecked, every infected person affects more than two people on average. of those who get the typical flu virus, about 0.1% die. so far in the united states the coronavirus death rate appears to be over 2.5%. experts say with a new technique cases, it could go down. that is small comfort. to be clear, this is a virus that spreads twice as easily as the flu and is likely to be at least ten times deadlier. it's not something to take lightly. the country needs a clear plan to protect its people. the action in china and south korea appears to somewhat under control in those countries and save lives. one of the reasons americans may have missed the significance of this virus is because unfortunately it came and matched with politics. on television, talking heads of wasted hours upon valuable hours yammering out about the virus

and its potential victims but about how it's racist to tie the coronavirus to china, where it came from. please. now is not the time to indulge in the lowest and dumbest kind of identity politics. in times of crisis, yo euphemiss cal. unit accuracy and clear language and we talk about the threat. it's essential. in grade -- ingrate habits are hard to break. one congressman kevin mccarthy tweeted information about the chinese coronavirus, ilhan omar responded "viruses don't have nationalities. this is racist." oh, shut up. msnbc they are not shutting up. they give the very same lecture. >> want to ask you about the back-and-forth between democratic congressman and house minority leader kevin mccarthy and she is demanding an apology for him referring to the virus and very derogatory offensive terms, calling it the

chinese coronavirus. what is your reaction to that? simone called it the wuhan virus and obviously in very insensitive terminology. what do you make of kevin mccarthy using that terminology? >> i am disturbed by it. it's an american problem now on we need and the rest of american response. >> tucker: offensive and racist. these people are a joke and they are more importantly a distraction. china is watching all of this. the chinese government knows identity politics is america's greatest weakness. it divides us. it makes us stupider. in times of crisis that may even paralyze the national will of the essential moments. it could do that now. beijing has joined the chorus denouncing the west as racist for noticing where the virus came from. chinese embassies are not openly claiming the virus may have come from somewhere else, not china. in the propaganda is working. just a month ago, the american media thought nothing of calling the virus what actually is, watch this. >> the wuhan coronavirus has

surpassed the 2003 sars outbreak. >> the first u.s. case of chinese coronavirus was confirmed. >> inside that building is the world's first lab copy. >> the chinese coronavirus death toll has jumped to at least when he six people. >> the death toll from the wuhan coronavirus biked. >> the chinese virus, the coronavirus whirring the whole world. >> this comes as the chinese coronavirus death toll has jumped to at least 26 people. and sickened at least 835 people. >> they will deny those tapes exist. that's not how they are describing it. why? china pulled them not to in the media were happy to comply and downplay directorates to this country from china, articulated out of the open clearly in print. just last week, china's official news service warned ominously that it might cut off drug

exports to the united states in order to intensify the epidemic and cause even more depth here. keep in mind china makes 97% of the world's antibiotics. what would happen if they cut off the supply to this country? many would die. so our country's greatest rival is denying reality about a plague they unleashed on the world and is then openly threatening to kill american citizens in our country. this is happening right now. our news media are ignoring all of it. which tells you which side they're on. steven mosher is president of the research institute at an author. he joins estimate. thank you for coming on. speculate if you would why do you think the american news media are covering for china and obscuring its connection to the virus. >> i don't think they understand the nature of the chinese communist party first and foremost. nuance had a president who said you can't fool all the people all the time.

the chinese communist party believes it can fool all the people all the time not only in china but around the world as well. these are the people who invented brainwashing back in the 1930s. that was the chinese communist party brainwashing. they think they can wash the chinese in the world's brains free of the facts of the matter. the facts are that the epidemic began in the city of wuhan, spread from there throughout china because of the mismanagement of the epidemic by the chinese communist party. do you know that in very early december, they locked down all the military bases in wuhan and hubei where they had an avid epc raging. they wanted make sure the guys with the guns did not get sick because that's how they stay in power. weeks later they told the chinese people. by million people by then had left wuhan, not knowing they carry the virus and they carried it to all parts of china and the world. it is a made in china epidemic.

calling it the chinese coronavirus simply refers to its country of origin. if there ever was an epidemic that deserved a country of origin label, it would be the made in china china coronavirus or let's call it more properly the made by the chinese communist party coronavirus epidemic because that's what it is. >> tucker: so what you're saying is as the virus began to explode in china, the chinese leadership put political imperatives first and locking on the military, as you just said. how is it different from what our media are doing now? people are dying. world health organization declares it to pandemic in their first concern is that you not be allowed to describe it accurately. i mean, my jaw is open. >> really is a matter of putting politics first and you would think we would put transparency first. we would put information and facts first. we would put caring about people first. why are some people in the

united states putting politics first? i can understand why the chinese communist party does that because they've always done that. they held a meeting in january, the china national health commission which the head of the health commissions and our primary goal he said is to put politics first which means protecting the chinese communist party. to quarantine second, which means segregating from society people sick. and maybe we will find a cure. that was a distant third. we should have those in reverse order. we should have the cure fighting and we should do the transparency and quarantining people first. politics should not even be part of this. we should all be americans working together to fight this crisis. >> tucker: i agree. i want to ask you one brief question. the chinese official daily just a few days ago threatened to cut off the supply of pharmaceuticals and medicines to the united states. in the hope that would kill millions of americans and i think it would've that were to happen. should we take that threat seriously? >> absolutely.

china has as its strategic plan unrestricted warfare against the united states across all domains except we are not shooting bullets at each other. in all of other domains intellectual property and so forth, they are in competition with us and they want to be number one and they want to replace us. we have to see every dependency upon china weatherby for medications or for steel or anything else come as a potential weakness of the chinese communist party will display to their advantage when they decide to do so. you would think nobody in the world would ever deny millions of americans medications that keep them alive and because their deaths. yes, they would. they have threatened to do that. so we need a hard decoupling of the u.s. economy from the chinese economy. and hopefully the china coronavirus, again the china coronavirus, will be the wake-up call that tells the world that you cannot depend upon the people's republic of china. >> tucker: that's right. i think the average american knew how many pentagon officials in washington went to work for china directly or indirectly

after retiring, they would be astounded. i've seen it. mr. mosher, thank you. good to see you. >> thank you. >> tucker: increasingly, events, public events, big ones are shutting down this country in order to contain coronavirus. chief breaking news correspondent trace gallagher has more the latest closures. >> the two big coronavirus headlines other world health organization which for weeks had resisted calling it a global pandemic has not done so. the director general who says he believes countries can still change the course of the disease, and dr. tony fauci with the national institutes of health told congress today things will get much worse if we are complacent. he also recommends banning large gatherings, including nba games. because the nba has now notified teams to prepare to play with no fans, in fact san francisco has already banned large gatherings. so tomorrow night the golden state warriors will play with no fans. also the ncaa announced today college basketball games including march madness will have limited fans, meaning staff

and family. then there's education. washington state governor jay inslee today close seattle's schools for two weeks. at least 75 major colleges and universities will move their classes off-campus and online. harvard, penn state, florida state, berkeley just to name a few. coachella and stagecoach festivals in southern california have been moved to the fall. pearl jam postponed its 17 day tour. the st. patrick's day parade's in boston, chicago, and new york canceled. in the group of seven, or g7 meetings scheduled for pittsburgh later this month, they will now be virtual meetings. tucker. >> tucker: amazing. profound even at this stage. trace gallagher, thanks much. we have a lot more o on the sprd of the chinese coronavirus throughout the hour until the president's address to the nation p.m. after the break, democrats are doing their very best to hide joe biden from public view. why would they do that? we have a hunch.

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♪ >> tucker: joe biden absolutely dominated last night's primaries. all the results aren't in but it looks like a clean sweep. four of the six states in contention, overwhelm bernie sanders by more than 15 points the key state of michigan. everyone in washington now assumes as a matter of faith that biden will be the democratic nominee. they are thrilled by this. just incredibly and profoundly relieved that bernie sanders has been subdued. dolores o'donnell doesn't live in washington but he might as

well. o'donnell is a walking or vesuvius of conventional wisdom. when lawrence o'donnell speaks he is speaking for the entire self-satisfied politic class. here's his conclusion on joe biden. >> his opening line was "this is your campaign." he did it in the most generous ways he could. he had a very soft tone of voice, as if you're in the living room with him. he really was trying to create i think comfort, stability, talked about presidential leadership. he said if you give me the honor of becoming your president. joe biden's use of that word, honor, which in any other time i think would be a throwaway line in the political speech, for me had some real resonance. >> tucker: honor, the all. you could hear the joy in his voice. this is the atheist party's version of christmas. but they are happiest about is

though voting is effectively over, voting is the democracy portion of the process, their least favorite part. that is over with. onto the convention! onto the ni duration and best of all onto power. that's what they are thinking right now. there's a problem. the election is still 237 days away. in the context of a presidential campaign, that's an awfully long time. joe biden is right now about as popular as he's ever going to be. both polling and primary results so far suggest that biden does best with voters who don't follow politics very closely and haven't thought about the race very much. they know biden's name. they know he once worked for barack obama. they know he isn't that radical and scary guy from vermont so the trick for the dnc at this point is to make certain they never learn more than that. democrats would love to go all the way to november without allowing biden out of the house, but they can't do that. it's too obvious. they will have to let him campaign to some limited extent. every time joe biden leaves the suburban, his entire tennessee hangs in the balance. will he brag about the time he

went to burning man with martin luther king? will he mistake his wife for the governor of oregon question wrigley threatened to punch out a cop? you just don't know. with biden, anything is possible. the whole thing makes them very, very nervous. last night congressman jim clyburn of south carolina suggested the dnc ought to step in immediately and cancel any more debates. >> if the night and the way it has begun, i think it's time for us to set this primary down. it's time for us to cancel the rest of these debates. you don't do anything to get yourself in trouble if you continue this contest when it's obvious that the numbers will announce it for you. >> tucker: we have to shut it down. lock him in the basement until november. clyburn didn't say that lightly. at the last democratic debate joe biden spoke for one seventh of the total time. at the debate this on the he will speak for roughly half the total time.

if you are joe biden, that's a lot of time. is a lot of chances to scare the hell out of prospective voters. if you're the biden campaign, speaking at all in public is mostly down side. you can imagine the pressure on bernie sanders tonight to drop out before any of that can happen. as of now, sanders has not caved and actually you can see why he's not caving. biden is very likely to win the nomination but he doesn't yet have it. in fact he's barely halfway to the majority of delegates. sanders could stay in the race for a while and it's not entirely crazy strategy. aat this point honestly who knos what could happen. anyone who believes joe biden will absolutely no question at all be the democratic nominee in november, hasn't been watching american politics for the last four years. that appears to be bernie's position. >> donald trump must be defeated, and i will do everything in my power to make that happen. on sunday night, in the first one-on-one debate of this campaign, the american people will have the opportunity to see

which candidate is best positioned to accomplish that goal. >> tucker: the last point is a fair point. america has the right to see joe biden answer questions on stage. if it were up to the stooges on cable television, biden would be the present already, no election but hold on for second, not so fast. before we make any rash decisions that could alter the course of american history forever, let's take a long, close look at the democratic candidatecandidate, the prisms f nominee. is he really ready for this? we'll get a better idea on sunday. in the meantime we welcome victor davis hanson, senior fellow at the hoover institution and he joins us tonight. thanks so much for coming out. democrats are trying to hide biden until november. they don't have much of a choice. you think they'll be able to pull it off? >> yeah, i think they will get halfway. michael bloomberg spent half a billion dollars and we never even saw him and he was third. his mistake was he showed up and

to hear him and to watch him was to not want to vote for him but he got close. i think they know the strategy what's going to happen. biden is going to outsource campaigning to potential cabinet appointees or promising jobs. they will fan out over the country. he will have five or 10 minutes oon the teleprompter then be whisked away. the talking points will be coronavirus and trumps responsibility or culpability for it, then he will say, you know, the vice presidency is going to be a woman of color, a minority, that will square the democratic circle of having a bunch of old white guys end up as finalists. the vp in this particular race will have an importance that we have never seen before because the obvious implication is that that person might have to step in if biden can't continue were he to be elected. that's the playbook. remember, this rise and fall and rise of joe biden was all due to external events. he rose because we never saw him in 2019, early in 2018.

we saw him on the debate stage and then he rose because michael bloomberg, the savior, turned out to be a disaster and bernie sanders for some reason stopped talking about evil corporations in populism and got onto the glories of socialist republics on cuba and scared everybody to death. out of that matrix, joel was there all along, making the same gaps, doing the stupid stuff is yet wasted but compared to the alternatives he was coordinated. that's where we are. i think there is a strategy that he might get, that's what the strategy is going to be and you could see why, why they are going to embrace it. they have no choice now. >> tucker: i don't know if this is even relevant in democratic politics anymore but that's not exactly an inspiring message. what you've described is the most cynical campaign maybe ever run in american politics. >> well, i mean, to be honest, tucker, people were aware in

2019 that joe biden was not the joe biden, not just of 2008 but 2016. he went off on these tangents about corn pop. he called a person on the campaign trail fat. he called them a liar, a dog pony soldier, what we saw yesterday was typical. everybody knew that. and yet they thought you know what, we can outsource the job. we can get a vp. we can have a diversity candidate. we can run against trump, the evil monster and he's the only alternative we have. i think our mistake was that he peaked too early and all the candidates are gone essentially and now he's their guy but we don't know what bernie will do with him on sunday night, much less what trump would do with him in three or four debates. i would imagine that if he survives bernie on sunday night that they are going to have one debate that most with donald trump. because they don't have a choice. i don't want to use a military metaphor but it's kind of like all these ieds are down the

campaign pathway and they are going to go off, like we saw yesterday. it's tragic to watch it. i have a lot of empathy because he was by no means ready for this campaign and it was cynical -- >> tucker: i've known him for a long time. that's not the joe biden that i knew in washington or anyone new in washington. professor, thank you so much for that. i appreciate it. jason nichols is a professor of african-american studies at the university of maryland and a frequent cast we are proud to say on the show. professor, thank you so much for joining us. the idea that the democratic party has picked its candidate. michigan has spoken and is congressman clyburn said we need to shut it down and get to the coronation. what do you make of that? >> to me it's troubling. i think we should let the democratic process play out. this is why we have primaries. as a matter of fact, bernie sanders is only about 150 delegates, give or take, behind. it's not a huge gap. i think you're absolutely

correct earlier when he said that this has been a strange primary altogether. we were counting out joe biden and then all of a sudden he got up like the undertaker and he all of a sudden is the front runner. so i think we have to let this thing play out. we have to go to these debates, particularly this one on sunday that's going to be one-on-one. you see their message, their messages go head-to-head. we also have to remember that there is a person, your last guest talked about diversity candidates. we have a woman of color who was still in this race. i think we should let this thing play its way out. and that's what our democracy is built on. >> tucker: there is something antidemocratic about the approach to this. kind of shut up and obey. we've got the guy. we don't want to hear more from you. we are going to shut it down. it's a little strange, i know that you are a loyal democrat, but it's a little strange to hear what is essentially an attack on democracy for people who been telling us the last

three years they are defending democracy against the orange fascist on vladimir putin. it's a little weird, right? >> [laughs] again, as donna brazile pointed out on this network, that the republicans are canceling primaries as well. i think this is a problem. it's a democracy problem we're having for both of our parties, or major parties in this country. we need to let things play out and this has been one of the strangest presidential primaries that we have are seen. i would also agree with your previous guest that the running mate is going to be extremely important in this race. regardless of who it is. we have two men who are over 75 running for president. we should i think have a young, vibrant person who can be there to fill in on day two should something happen. i think it's going to be one of the most interesting primary seasons we've ever seen and certainly when we get to the

general election and we can't sell ourselves short by shutting things down. that's not the democratic process. people talked about 2016 and interference in all that. we can't interfere in our own presence and shut it down before it's played its way out. >> tucker: well, exactly. i'm not rooting for bernie sanders obviously. but i agree with you completely. really quickly one last question. is sanders tough enough -- he seems like kind of underneath it all a party guy, if he's is a tough enough in all the abuse he's going to get from the morning show panels to keep going until the convention? >> i think he is tough enough. he went pretty much the very end with hillary clinton in that upset a lot of people. they forgot that hillary clinton went all the way to june 3rd against barack obama in 2008. he is certainly tough enough. he can certainly shake off a lot of the detractors. he had of course my friend tulsi gabbard, also a very tough

person. i think all these people and even, you know, joe biden out there telling people they are full of it are pretty tough. they are all going to be in this race to the very end. >> tucker: professor, great to see you tonight. thank you so much. >> great seeing you, tiger. miss you in the swamp. >> tucker: i'll be back. joe biden's defenders aren't just denying his mental decline. they are trying to censor the very allegation. they claimed that biden's gaffes are a byproduct of a stuttering problem. a starter does not extend why biden is threatening to slap photos and it also doesn't explain the sudden claim he was arrested in south africa. >> great honor being arrested with our u.n. ambassador on the streets of soweto trying to get to see him. when i went down to south africa, nelson mandela. i came back from south africa trying to see nelson mandela and trying to go getting arrested for trying to seem at robins island. he was in prison.

>> tucker: peter is a reporter at "the daily caller" and author of the book "manipulators." thank you for coming on. i wanted to talk to you because you're urgently great reporter but also because you have a significant stutter your whole life. you know what it is to struggle with it. you hear biden's defenders saying his miscues, weird statements, a result of his daughter. i wanted you to assess that. >> yeah, tucker, probably the most dishonest defense of joe biden that we've seen so far this campaign. the idea that a childhood stutter is the reason why he's confusing people and events from decades apart is nonsense of all. as you were saying, i grew up with a starter. i still work at it every day to be able to talk with a normal person. i will be the first person to say that joe biden's childhood stutter has nothing to do with him apparently convincing himself that he was arrested in

south africa trying to see nelson mandela. his childhood stutter has nothing to do with the fact that he keeps confusing female world leaders with margaret thatcher who passed away seven years ago and left -- a childhood stutter has nothing to do with that. nothing to do with the fact that yesterday joe biden's threatened to slap a factory worker in the face after he challenged him on gun rights. nothing to do that but it really speaks to the larger issue which is that the people backing joe biden for president are now having to come to terms with the fact that his mental fitness is going to be challenged, is going to be much more greatly challenged in the general election did in the primary. president donald trump as we all know is not going to give joe biden a pass on his mental fitness the way that bernie sanders has given joe biden to pass on this mental fitness. it's not going to go away. >> tucker: he certainly has given a pass. the biden people are going to

have to have an answer for some of these moments. they are on tape and everyone has seen them and that seems like a fair thing for them to be defensive and fight back but to invoke his stutter, there's something kind of insulting about it. it seems to me, to people who do stutter. do you feel insulted by it? >> yeah, i mean, it's generally laughable and personally offensive the idea that if you have trouble pronouncing certain words or if you have issues with your breathing, that you therefore are liable to delude yourself into having exploits in south africa that you never had. it's insulting. it's implying that it's not a speech problem but a brain problem. that's not the case. only one of them. but it really is just incredibly insulting to use that -- >> tucker: i think it is. really quick, i just want to check your credibility. have you ever been arrested with nelson mandela? >> i've never been arrested with

nelson mandela. i guess that makes me the only stuttering person ought to think that. >> tucker: [laughs] peter hasson, the best. thanks for joining us. president trumpresident addressn on coronavirus very soon. what should the rest of us be doing to protect ourselves from this threat? all of that and more is next. just $55, including unlimited talk, text and data. plus no annual service contracts. only at t-mobile.

>> tucker: this is a fox news alert. minutes from now the president of the united states will address the nation about the epidemic, now the pandemic come out of the coronavirus. a containment zone has been erected in a 1 mile radius around the city of new rochelle, new york, right outside new york city. there could soon be similar zones across the country. according to some reports, that we are still not sure at this hour. trace gallagher rejoins us with what we can expect to make potentially. >> up the majority of coronavirus cases in new york's westchester county are linked to an noor salman who attended services at a local synagogue and infected the rabbi and some others. now you said, new rochelle has a containment zone with the mayor tells fox news he thinks containment has been misunderstood to mean locked down when it's actually just a ban on large gatherings including schools and houses of worship. it does not restrict families or business, and yet business owners say they have no customers. residents are also a bit uneasy because the national guard is on

hand, even though they are not for enforcement but rather to clean schools. and to deliver food and supplies. so there is a difference and was happening on the ground and what's perceived to be happening. the director of disaster preparedness for columbia university told tucker last night that new rochelle is really the canary in the coal mine. listen. >> i don't think any place in the country is really going to be exempt permanently. we are being hampered, this is the other thing, by the fact we haven't been doing enough testing. so one of the restrictions and public health conventions are pretty much guess guess work and every man for himself so to speak. >> it is notable that the government has extraordinary powers, comes to health and safety. think about shutting down air travel after 9/11. shunning cities, very unlikely, certainly not off-limits. tucker. >> tucker: trace gallagher, thanks a lot. what will the president say just about 20 minutes from now? as of tonight, the speech has

not been released. it's tightly held within the white house but we figured if anyone might know some of the details it would be our chief political anchor at fox, bret baier. he joins us. >> senior administration officials are saying that the president wants to be kind of calming and told that wants to say that they are being aggressive not only on the health front. he will likely announce travel restrictions and advisories specifically on europe. he will tout, as he has come of the efforts to shut down the travel from china that he says will buy them time. he will say local communities as you mention, and like new rochelle, going to have to take more aggressive actions in the localities. the federal government is going to do everything they can to support it. he has talked about with various ceos, pharmaceutical companies, health care companies, biotech firms, an executive order to effect the supply chain of pharmaceuticals and materials. likely not going to get that

tonight but a lot of talk about stimulus. the payroll tax holiday is not going over well democrats or republicans, but pushing back the april 15 tax return deadline for the irs, that's probably going to be announced tonight. >> tucker: interesting. so it's a combination of economic stimuli to keep the economy from moving into recession and do you think there will be specific details on travel restrictions? regulations that will affect the life of most people? >> yeah, i think there will be. i think he's going to portray while calming in tone, aggressive in nature and it will be a different sound from this president who obviously is kind of evolved that he's been getting information from his health officials. you just heard dr. tony fauci on capitol hill today am. i think that will be inside this speech. some of the specifics, we don't know exactly but the travel

restrictions and europe is definitely part of it. >> tucker: you say evolves. the evolution seems to have been hard and fast. i'm hearing very different sounds from the white house today from even two days ago. >> exactly. you listen to what's coming out from the health officials. we did not hear from the task force today, the 5:30 p.m. briefing was canceled in readiness for this speech at 9:00 p.m. tonight. i think this is a president who understands this is a moment. i think he's upset that the economy has taken the hit that it has. more importantly, trying to send the signal that his government is going to do everything it can across the lines partisan wise and across the lines countries to try to stop it. >> tucker: bret baier, we guessed that you would have insight and as always, you

delivered. thank you. school is canceled next monday in washington, d.c. countless colleges are closing down, asking students to stay home after spring break. sporting events will play in front of empty arenas or they will not happen at all. is this enough, or is further action needed to protect the population? dr. janette nesheiwat is medical director at citi md and she has been advising the trump administration on how to respond to the virus. she joins us tonight. doctor, thank you so much for coming on. as you assess the responsive, and it is because we don't really have a federal system of many things in this country. you are saying independent decisions being made across the country, doesn't look adequate to you? >> yes. one thing that we need to remember is that our president from day one, his number one priority is the health, safety, and well-being of americans and patients. he has from day one taken aggressive measures and aggressive steps to protect us and is doing everything in his power to keep us safe and help

mitigate the spread of the virus starting from preventing foreign nationals from china coming into this country. don't forget the funneling of the flights, the 14 day quarantine, and distribution of millions of tests this week alone's that we can identify cases, isolate those patients and try to help mitigate and minimize the spread of the vir virus. >> tucker: let me ask you a specific question. hundreds of thousands of americans living outside our borders. a lot are college students studying abroad. a lot are coming home now. do you imagine that any of those americans returning to our country will be asked, forced, to sit through quarantine? >> yes. and it's reasonable. especially if they are coming from an area where there's a large outbreak. we are seeing these huge outbreaks in south korea, obviously china. italy. anywhere there's a large outbreak, we have to take preventative measures. remember, this is temporary. it's a temporary quarantine so

that not only do we protect others, your neighbor in the community but to protect yourself. we don't want you to get sick. we don't want you to have more than a cough, sniffle, runny nose, or develop respiratory pneumonia. so it's a matter of prevention and also protecting yourself so that your circumstances in your condition doesn't worsen. >> tucker: let me ask you a question i hesitate even to ask because obviously a vibrant airline industry is actually vital to running a continental country. we need airlines. they are essential to our country and the economy as well but flying on an airplane during an outbreak of a communicable virus, how would you assess that? is not a good idea? is it not? would you do it? >> sure. it's recommended if you are in a high-risk group, seniors who are most vulnerable to critical infection and complications. the cdc is recommending to avoid unnecessary travel right now. but do keep in mind our aircraft

are equipped with hepa filters, high-efficiency particulate filters to help clean the air. but if you are in a high-risk age group, i would consider postponing your flight to a time where this outbreak has come over the number of cases has diminished, just like we've seen in china the numbers are diminishing. especially if you have underlying heart disease, heart failure, kidney disease, you're on dialysis, you're going to chemotherapy. if you are in a high-risk group i would strongly consider postponing your trip. >> tucker: postponing air travel. but if you're healthy. would you be willing to fly? >> if it's to an area where this in outbreak, i would postpone it. i've a flight scheduled at the end of this month to fish chicago. i'm going to see if there's any major outbreaks. but i would not say absolutely restrict all flights. but i'm going to pay attention to the news, looked at the where there's outbreaks and follow the cdc department of health guidelines and recommendations

which are avoid large crowded areas. don't go out in public if you're sick. stay home if you're sick. the other basic stuff that we not help protect ourselves, number one the best way to prevent the spread of infection is hand washing. 30% of people don't wash their hands. of course get plenty of rest. don't smoke. stay hydrated, and get a good well-balanced diet with fruits and vegetables, that sort of thing. >> tucker: dr. nesheiwat, thank you so much for that. appreciate it. coronavirus is doing a job on the economy unfortunately not just by taking the stock market. on amazon, prices for goods like face masks and hand sanitizers have surged. in supermarkets you've noticed that. prices for airline flights of crash. he can fly round-trip from boston to barcelona, spain, for under $200. and you would fly in style. photos on the internet show planes filled with empty rows. even if you don't fear the chinese coronavirus, is travel

worth it? soon everything worth doing could be shut down. melissa francis hosts "after the bell" on fox business and she joins the show frequently and she joins us tonight for more on the economic effect of the virus. melissa, you've been working on this week, for a couple weeks now. where are we now in the economic effects of the coronavirus? >> it's really starting to set in and i guess every time people look at things with an abundance of caution and say i'm going to stop going to restaurants. i'm going to stop doing this. i always think of the economic impact because that's what i'm trained in. i think about the person that works at that restaurant who's there who now has no customers. it was not going to get a tip. i think of all the industries and the damage that will go on long after this virus reaches its "natural end." the president has the leaders of banking and wall street and everything financed in the cabinet room today and they also the same thing which is the

underlying economy is very strong. that interest rates are basically at zero. it's a fantastic time to refinance, buy a house, do anything that involves credit and that they stand able with the small business association to lend billions of dollars to small and medium-sized businesses that may get into trouble because of what's going on right now. i'm worried about the overreaction and the economic damage that lingers long after this ends. one of the ceos was talking about this is not the financial crisis where we don't know or it's going terms of economic terms. this is something that will have a natural end. you see it pulling back in china and elsewhere. and then at point what's left is the economic damage. i don't want us to go overboard in that sense. one of the things i heard you talking earlier in the show the payroll tax cut. folks on both sides of the aisle don't like that. of course they don't because the payroll taxes, when you go out,

the waiter, when hearing to paycheck, that's the money that washington immediately takes and doesn't allow him or her to keep from their earnings. neither republicans nor democrats want to let you keep your own money right now or ever. they want to spend it for you because they know better. i don't know. i want to add a little skepticism and reason to the economic arguments at least. >> tucker: i'm glad that you are. let me ask you about something that we don't have a lot of control over, and that is economic production in china. which feeds production here. there are lots of ingredients. we talked about it, pharmaceuticals, machines and tools in aircraft engines. all kinds of things made here with products from china. as china back online pretty much? where are we in the chinese factory shut down? >> they say that they are in the ramping up phase. i've talked to people on and off the record and they are back in factories, ramping things appear to think the important lesson, and you and i talked about this a while ago and i think we were

the first have the conversation about it. i think this is what the president was trying to do in the first place. saying hey, guys, do you know how much dependence we have in china? they have slowly taken over all of our industries and we have left them do it because it made economic sense. it was cheaper. but now we are realizing may be a doesn't make economic sense. because all of a sudden they have control, and they have something of a monopoly on a lot of industries like drugs. we have been talking about that on fox business for years now, that these essential ingredients are being made in china and we don't know anything about it. i had a lawmaker on yesterday talking about it and he was talking about a bill he put forward that would require pharmaceutical companies to disclose the ingredients to congress.

i was like okay, then what? well, then congress knows, we have transparency. it's not going to do anything. so i think that is a wake-up call, that we don't want to be dependent on this country anymore. >> tucker: i agree with that completed. our chief global rival, enemy i would say. we have on the screen, and empty flight. >> the empty flights, i understand why people don't want to fly. delta put out this picture of cleaning their planes to reassure people to come back on which meeting he raised the question in my mind, what were you doing before this? were you not doing that kind of cleaning? there's a lot of practices, if i'm going to be the voice of reason, there's a lot of practices that we put into place, why weren't we doing that before? couldn't we have a lot less fluent everything else? for the airline industry, i feel for them but let's keep cleaning up. >> tucker: how about take that pretzels out of the creases in the seats. melissa, great to see you tonight. sorry to leave you with that image.

the coronavirus has exposed this country's dangerous reliance on china for basic things like drugs, medicines, that china is already warning it could deny ask if they like it. needing to depths of americans. what do we do to break the dependency on our chief rival? senator josh hawley has thought a lot about this question we are happy to have them on. senator, thank you for coming on. as you heard melissa francis say, it's awakening a lot of us to this perilous position we put ourselves in. how do we fix it? >> one of the first things we have to do is give the fda the authority to figure out where we have drug shortages. right now we have potential, potential antibiotic shortages of 150 commonly prescribed antibiotics because they are made in china. we also have of course surgical mask shortages because they are made in china. so we need to pass new legislation immediately that will give the fda the authority to figure out what components are made in china and then new authorities to speed the development of replacements. we need to loosen up the

restrictions i'm getting replacement for pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical devices. >> tucker: let me ask a dumb question. who could possibly be against that? would anybody be against it? >> i don't think there's any reason to be opposed to it and there's no reason for congress not to take it up immediately. i hope congress would take this up last week when we passed the emergency funding but is absolutely vital that we do it now and one of the thing, as for the surgical mask shortages, we have companies in this country that make masks. the problem is that under existing law, those masks, the american ones, can't be used by health professionals. we need to change that immediately. i have introduced legislation to do that. the white house has endorsed it to the white house is begging congress to pass it. i hope we do it immediately. >> tucker: for decades after the second world war, this country maintained a helium reserve, a mohair subsidy because mohair was strategically important. we have a strategic petroleum reserve. why shouldn't the u.s. government make certain that we have stockpiles of the most

basic life-saving drugs like antibiotics? >> i think it's vital that we do and i think we've been caught off guard because so much of our supply chain has been shipped overseas and i think it's been difficult for our health professionals and planners to imagine a situation where much of the supply chain gets taken off line, as has happened in china. it's a huge, huge wake-up call that something needs to change. by the way, that includes equipment, things like respirators and hospitals, many of which have not been replaced in over a decade. we have a lot of work to do. we need to take emergency steps to make products made in this country available to help professionals asap. >> tucker: how far are we from that? >> well, the mask thing, the change in that law could be done immediately. there is a bill in the house, a companion bill which i've introduced along with senator fischer and others in the senate. that could be voted on tomorrow. if we could get an agreement. that needs to be done immediately.

the white house has asked for this authority and it something the president cannot do by executive order. congress has to pass it. this action needs to be taken immediately and i we have to wok on bringing the supply chains back to the united states. >> tucker: senator hawley, thank you for coming on. as of right now we are moments away literally about 3 minutes way for the president's address to the nation. what should he say to the rest of us to prepare us for the weeks ahead whatever they may bring? victor davis hanson rejoins us. thank you for coming back. what should the president say? >> i think he has to reassure us that we are going to not get into unfounded panic and were not going to give into unfounded naivete and overconfidence. something like fdr's all we have to fear is fear itself speech he gave right in the middle of the campaign of '32 when the depression was at its depths.

he can do it more specifically and say we have the greatest economy in the world and there are things in motion. cheap energy, cheap interest rates, industries t and fortis pharmaceuticals. we know people are going to get sick but the vast majority wheel cover. we will make sure every american was exposed to this virus is going to be cured and recover. we'll do better than anyone else has done it. he's going to accept the reality of the economic peril that we are in but we are going to pull together and not be naive but we're going to be confident as we conquer both. i think he can do it. >> tucker: this basically seems like his moment to do it, if there's ever a time and ever

a place, it is the white house live on television, 9:00 on the day that the world health organization calls it a pandemic. >> absolutely, because there's a lot of people in the world and in this country that don't want him to do well. it's a challenge. and yet the fact that he has to do well means that millions of americans will have a job or not have a job or maybe recover more quickly than they would otherwise to the degree he leads this country in an effective way, which he has done already. there's things he's done, secure the border, the travel ban, complain about chinese monopolies of our key industries that everybody opposed. he saw that we had to make those changes. that same type of against a green leadership is needed in concert with experts. i think he can do it but there's going to be enormous pressure on him. >> tucker: that's for sure. two and half months ago on new year's day, not one person would person would've imagined we would be here tonight but here we are and the president speaks in moments. thank you so

again, the president of the united states from the white house live on the threat of coronavirus and what we're going to do about it. we'll be covering it in full. see you tomorrow. >> sean: welcome to hannity. this is a fox news news alert. it's 9:00 on the east coast, 6:00 on the west coast and in a few moments president trump will be addressing the nation from the oval office about the coronavirus. the president is expected to be making big important news about how to protect all americans during this pandemic. as soon as the president begins speaking we'll bring it to you all live but first joining us live is white house chief correspondent john roberts. >> sean, good evening to you. we're expecting according to white house sources that the president's address tonight about 10 or 12 minutes in length will be calming in tonight. the president wants to assure the nation that the federal government in conjunction with the private