the administration and i are working closely with the governors and this will continue." neil, earlier today we heard from andrew cuomo of new york saying that himself along with other governors will be coming together. the chief economist of the health industry as well to come up with -- ♪ >> jesse: hello, everybody, i am jesse watters along with greg gutfeld, juan williams, dana perino, and bret baier. 5:00 in new york city, and to this is "the five." ♪ a big debate raging over who has the authority to reopen the country. the white house coronavirus task force set to break america in just a moment. president trump tweeting earlier that he will make a decision on reopening the economy shortly. he is insisting that the decision rests in his hands and not the governors of individual states. the president statement clashing with his joint announcement from

new york governor andrew cuomo, and five other northeastern governors. >> we should start looking forward to reopening, but "reopening" with a plan. each state will form a working group that will start work immediately on designing a reopening plan. >> jesse: and here is dr. anthony fauci on what to expect on the reopening of america. >> when i said a rolling reentry, it is not going to be a light switch. it is going to be depending where you are in the country, the nature of the outbreak that you have already experienced, and to the threat of an outbreak that you may not have experienced. we are hoping that at the end of the month, we can look around and we can say, okay, is there any element here that we can safely start pulling back on. if so, do it.

if not, then just continue to hunker down. >> jesse: okay, bret baier, i can expect a lot of drama, not only between governors and the president, but between governors and other governors. they have the authority to open or not open, one drags it out. and the other gets back. it's going to create a lot of animosity between the citizens and to the governors and the federal government. how do they make it work? >> bret: you are right, jesse. the president said he has the authority about turning the government on, that by the constitution is not accurate. he does have the ability to be very persuasive on federal guidelines and what the federal government would like to see. but it is each individual governor and even down to the local municipality, the mayors that have the real say going forward. if you have this different approach, it is going to be haphazard, but it is by law how it is supposed to happen.

>> jesse: greg, i want to talk about your hair. i don't think it is appropriate for me to talk about your hair while people are losing jobs, maybe we can talk about it in another segment, but it does look good. before thank you. >> jesse: in terms of the fight, it is a federal system, the government cannot say you do this, alabama you do that, they have to decide. i cannot see this thing working smoothly, can you? >> greg: i think the population, the general population has to play a role in this for it to work. i have this thing called the oscar theory, it is a point of simultaneous enlightenment among everybody when they are watching the oscars that around the 2.5 hour mark everybody is like, this has got to end. it is a weird thing. we are not talking to each other at all, but we naturally feel that oh, my god, this thing has gone on too long. because humans are so much alike

that we are almost telepathic when we have had enough. one of the things about trump is that he knows the crowd. he knows when the crowd gets tired of something. and he knows -- he is so part of that crowd. if so my is to your point, the general public has to support the decisions even when the media doesn't, because no matter what, there will be a risk involved, and there are risks in driving and skiing, we need to let the leaders know that we support, and that we support their call and that we are adult enough to see the nature of the decision and the risk involved. because you know once the decision is made, the media will count the number of dead after that and put that against the leaders. since we went back to work, 200 people have died. 300 people have died, because that's what the media does. and that's what they are supposed to do, i guess. i don't know. but as the general population instinctively knows that it has to end, there will be a risk,

and that the president or the governor says, we have to go back to work and there happens to be some dead or some suffering, you have to support them for what they did. there are a lot of things that you can do. you have the antibody test. you have them asks, using hydroxychloroquine, that could be the answer. that's me. >> jesse: to your oscar analogy, that's when the sun comes out. and it starts getting hot. and i think the country will have enough of it. dana, you have the governors situation going on, but you also hear from people like fauci and the cdc director, and the fda commissioner, they keep on talking about may. may seems to be the month that keeps coming up. and it seems like those three guys have mentioned the month of may in terms of reopening this thing several times in the last week. you can feel it.

>> dana: writes, they are under a lot of pressure as well. today understand that the president can read a crowd and the president is talking to them all day long, every day. and they are trying to figure out what they can do that will safely allow people to go back to their jobs and their schools, to start visiting each other again. to be able to see your mom or your dad in the nursing home. and as greg said, these are very big decisions. i would say that america has actually been pretty darn good about following instructions from their mayors, governors -- >> jesse: we have been well behaved. >> dana: i have been in this house for so long, i feel like i know what it is like to be under house arrest, and thankfully it has actually been a pretty good place for me. but i think that there is something else that is happening. the cdc last week started to relax some guidelines for essential workers and who could go back to work. and i think one of the things that is going to happen is that you might see a little bit more of that. in certain areas for certain

critical areas where you need to have people working in order to get goods to people, essential supplies, we are going to run out of workers. i don't know if you saw the meat packing plant up in south dakota, there was a huge outbreak of coronavirus up there. they had to shut down the plant. all those jobs lost, but that means that all of that product is lost as well. you are going to have a situation where people are going to have to go back to work, because we have to have people working in order to survive ourselves. i would recommend that everyon everyone -- hold tight, and i think they are saying may, because it sounds a little bit far enough away that people think that they can do that. and when we get to make, what if they say june? but it is like the trainer telling you he you have to do an extra set of squats. >> jesse: no one likes that extra set of squats. maybe juan does, but i don't. you can see a governor from a state that has been hit hard or

is hearing that they are going to get hit hard saying "no" we will keep this thing shut down. i don't care what anybody says, what my neighbor, the president says, and to that point, that could be a strong political position. they just lock into and hunker down. >> juan: i think trust is the key here. i hope that people cannot, let me put it differently. i hope that people can avoid making politicized decisions. to some people say, i'm going to follow what the president says, or i'm going to follow up my governor says, a republican or liberal, a conservative line. we have to avoid that as a nation. and the key here is that we partly have so perform so well, because the estimates of the death is far below what some of those estimates had been previously that were issued. so now people are like, well, hey, things look a little bit better. and people are getting a little

bit of cabin fever, but remember the reason that the numbers look better in new york and elsewhere is because public officials acted, and guess what, the public responded and follow through in terms of social distancing, hand washing, and the like. so now you come to the point, how do you get us back to i'm going to use this word "normal." and the key is that there would be effective testing. that people would be able to say if they want to go back to work or go back into an office, they know everybody going back is able to get tested anytime, anywhere, on demand, and that says this is okay. we can know who has it. who does not have it. and we can have a certain degree of expectation that we are not going to get sick. that there will not be a rebound or there is a second peak and we are back having to shut everything down again. i think the key here is trust based on testing. and until we have that kind of

regime in place, and we don't have it quite yet, then we can start honestly talking about a reopening of the country. >> jesse: i think you are right about that. the coronavirus task force is going to be briefing the country very soon. we will bring you that. up next, president trump firing back at "the new york times" over a report they did on his covid-19 response. ♪ there will be parties again soon,

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♪ >> greg: saturday the times published a piece that hit trump for not being quick to respond to the virus. written by six journalists, all who could have or should have done something sooner, but in it. but the people who keep saying that you should have done something sooner never say that to the guilty party, like the times itself who tweeted this on january 9th "there is no evidence that the virus, the coronavirus is readily spread by humans, and it has not been tied to any deaths, double hoops.

but health officials in china internationally are watching it carefully. so not only did they dismiss the virus, but also trusted china would handle it. and we are supposed to listen to the times? if trump had done everything possible, the press would have screamed "autocrat," because that's what they were screaming already. they called the travel restrictions racist, and accuse the task force of not being diverse, as if viruses have an hr department. the only crisis the times could report on was that trump's president. and about the acting too slow slow b.s., the economy keeps the world afloat. i hope we examine the effects of a shut down before we pulled the trigger. if you did and it's coming you're an idiot or a "times" editor. so we could have done it sooner, because everything good could be done sooner, but the people saying it now could not be bothered then. i can show you how up in the february, the virus did not really excite the media at all.

they were neck-deep in the impeachment sandbox. and now they are taking it seriously. why is that? do we really need to ask? the impeachment failed, so let's try this. so, bret, there was some news today that trump retweeted a tweet calling for fauci to be fired. when that created a little dust up, the white house blasted the idea of firing fauci as ridiculous, he would not fire him, they get along great, blah, blah, blah. so my question to you mr. baier if you care to answer it. i love how the medium has tried to create a schism between fauci and trump. and when it appears that there could be some conflict, they panic. there is a schism that we have been trying to create for two months. >> bret: it's pretty amazing watching the story. it goes up like a roller coaster and then down. wait a second, fauci is not at the briefing.

where is he? and then down, trump says i trust him and i want to listen to everything he says. this is what is going to happen today, i think. he will probably be asked to the same thing a at the briefing today. read tweeting that says fire fauci at the end, is that advisable? no. but the white house quickly came out and said they are not going to fire him. and the president is pushing back on really being attacked for a long time. and he retweeted something that showed that fauci at the end of january said that the virus was not going to be a threat to americans, or was a low threat at best. to the bottom line is there is a lot of blame to go around said what at the beginning. the biggest blame should be china. what they did and did not do and what they also didn't tell the world about how contagious this disease was. >> bret: i agree. juan, would you agree? yes, i'm sure you would pray to that the impeachment process of

bill clinton took our eye off the ball of al qaeda and radical islamic terror that gave us 9/11, and one could make the same extension to this impeachment charade that took us the eye off of the ball of the coronavirus? >> juan: no, i don't think that. i think the media eye, if that's what you are talking about. what was in the headlines, but the president is the president. he gets information that nobody else gets. and what we know from "times" "the washington post" reporting, ap reporting is that he was warned several times by even mick mulvaney who was then chief of staff and national security council, peter navarro, the economic adviser. alex azar, health and human services secretary. and what the president did was downplay a lot of these warnings. in fact, when the woman who handles respiratory and immunization said something

without his acknowledgment, he basically said, these people are alarmist, because it is spooking the stock market. i just think that you have to say the president has some responsibility there. does the press? i like what you read about the "times" because it is a reminder. lots of people were slow to come to this. "the new york times" is not the president of the united states or the governor of the state. and they have information at a different level. that's why when dr. fauci was asked this question yesterday on television, he said, yes, if we would have acted more quickly, lives could have been saved. i like to look forward and say, let's come together. and i don't think you can excuse the fact that we were so slow to act. and the president was much more invested in what he calls being a cheerleader for a nation then speaking to the threat. it was a very visible threat being posed by the coronavirus is.

>> greg: juan brings up dr. fauci who was telling people emerge that they could go on cruises. so i think in the mind of trump and experts, there was a value to keep the panic at bay while they took, came to grips with this and discuss the big decisions about shutting down the virus. it was not a denial phase, it was what they were trying to deal with incoming information where you would adjust your stance as the information changed. you are not trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes, you were trying to protect the country, does that make sense? >> jesse: i would agree with that. and i would also agree with bret that it all falls on china. juan and the rest of the media are comparing donald trump to perfection. he is not perfect, he is not close to perfect either. look at what the media's perfect scenario would have been? they would have said, donald trump in the middle of a senate impeachment trial should have sent to the senator's home to their districts to shelter in

place. donald trump would have told all the boaters of the country, don't go to the polls in south carolina on super tuesday, stay home and shelter in place? he would have said in february before one person died. remember, first death march 1st, don't go to easter church services. you will not be allowed to go. could you give her imagine the reaction if donald trump would have done that in february? you can see the headline from "the new york times" right now. american despotism. right? and donald trump would have tweeted "fake news" and we will all would have had a big laugh. but the travel ban came at the end of january prayed and the full economic shutdown came mid-march. that was six weeks. six weeks went by like that. if you asked me, it was pretty fast. it was not like this whole time in six weeks joe biden, juan,

"the new york times," every scientist in the country were screaming at trump, shut the economy down, man, shut it down. no, they weren't saying anything the whole month of february they were talking about many mike and whether he needed a platform to stand on and debate. that was not in the country's head. so to go back and look at this and say, oh, would've, could've, should've, these are johnny-come-lately is. >> greg: it is funny when you think about what people were consumed with. and i think that for some reason the media can only juggle one ball at a time. and it is a ball that harms their adversary. >> dana: i was thinking about all those days that i sat next to my colleagues, andy mccarthy, martha maccallum, for literally hours. and bret was in washington, d.c., with chris wallace, and we sat there and i could just feel my rear end getting wider as we sat there for hours and hours.

i remember saying, it would be great to cover this china story if we could ever get to it. but you have talked before about how protective america feels because the oceans on either coast, and the fact that we have pretty good neighbors, and so threats like this don't really materialize for a while. the other thing i want to say is i have been a part of a lot of look-back stories. hurricane katrina, the 9/11 commission report, enhancement verification, the financial crisis, those are stories where hindsight is 20/20. they have that saying for a reason. you can connect all the dots very easily if you say, here, you can obviously look and see that you should have done more. the truth is when you are in the middle of something coming you are dealing with the information you have at that time. maybe you make the wrong call, but you try to do better. one thing the white house communications team needs to think about going forward is that is one story, the look back. the look ahead and what the

country will go through economically and possibly healthwise, those stories are going to be even harder to do. so they need to be on top of this. last thing, i'm sorry, i just wanted to say this about dr. fauci. this white house coronavirus task force has mostly been available to any outlet that asks, and they are trying to get the public information out there. if you are a journalist that is trying to figure out a way to drive the wedge between the president and fauci so that you can feather your own nest and then worry that oh, my gosh, the president might fire dr. fauci, but that's what you are seeking coming you should really rethink that. because dr. fauci is being as right as he can. president trump is listening to him and being gracious as well. my last point is, yes, they did send out a statement saying the media is being ridiculous, we never would've fired fauci. it was not that quick. it was a full 18 hours before they did that. they should be a little bit faster if that's what they mean. >> greg: when you make a mistake, everybody makes mistakes in the fog of war, it

is correcting them quickly that makes you a successful effective person. i read that somewhere in a self-help book. the white house coronavirus task force is minutes away, growing speculation over who joe biden might select as his running mate. we have the insider talk next on "the five." ♪ ♪ oh, oh, oh, ozempic®! ♪ (announcer) once-weekly ozempic® is helping many people with type 2 diabetes like james lower their blood sugar. a majority of adults who took ozempic® reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. here's your a1c. oh! my a1c is under 7! (announcer) and you may lose weight. adults who took ozempic® lost on average up to 12 pounds. i lost almost 12 pounds! oh! (announcer) for those also with known heart disease, ozempic® lowers the risk of major cardiovascular events such as heart attack, stroke, or death. it lowers the risk. oh! and i only have to take it once a week. oh! ♪ oh, oh, oh, ozempic®! ♪

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♪ >> bret: welcome back to "the five," yes, "the five." i'm a part of "the five" today. the press briefing will continue, despite the lockdown, the 2020 race still full steam ahead, and presumptive democratic nominee joe biden has a pivotal decision to make, who will he select as his running mate. now there has been a lot of speculation and talk about

former rivals like senators kamala harris, and elizabeth warren, surprising newcomers like michigan governor gretchen whitmer, and illinois senator tammy duckworth on that list as well. democratic insiders talking up senator amy klobuchar saying she is the current favorite for biden's vp pick. but the news today came from senator bernie sanders who officially endorsed biden. take a listen. >> today i am asking all americans, i am asking every democrat, every independent, i am asking a lot of republicans to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which i endorse. to make certain that we defeat somebody who i believe, and i am speaking just for myself now is the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country. >> bret: a streaming

endorsement there. bernie sanders who had on their bingo card that he would endorse before elizabeth warren? i don't know, but your thoughts on the state apply? >> jesse: i honestly don't think anybody cares, bret. i don't think it generated that much buzz when sanders dropped out last week. and then was that supposed to be a big endorsement? it was like two gray-haired men leaning over and falling asleep on television. it was the least enthusiastic i have ever seen either of them. like bernie had a gun to his head. and biden did not know where he was. it is sad, honestly, it is sad. do you think the bernie bros are going to watch that and raced to the polls in november? absolutely not. i feel sorry for the whole state of the democratic party. they did not mean this to happen, this pandemic.

they are doing the best they can, but this is not good enough. it is just not good enough. >> bret: all right, juan, after "the new york times" came out and said they asked aoc, alexandria ocasio-cortez whether she had any outreach from the biden campaign, and she said no, maybe the sanders folks said we need to do is streaming endorsement, who knows? >> juan: i think that is pretty big news. unlike jesse, i think that in fact, the president has been concerned about the idea that the democrats would come together. because there is so much anti-trump power and pressure within the party right now. i think it is pent up. and the president was pushing the idea that there was a division in the party specifically he was aiming at the bernie bros and saying vote republican, vote populace, you don't need to go with joe biden. but here comes bernie sanders way, way before he came out in

2016 for hillary clinton. forget that. he is here really early saying, i am with joe biden. i endorse joe biden. and to me, he just crossed the room. and it may not be shocking, but i do think that it signifies unity within the party in terms of the effort to defeat donald trump. and i can say this, all this talk about the vp, amy klobuchar, she is solid and will do well in the debates with the vice president mike pence, but i think it is really interesting that you also here talk about andrew cuomo, because of what he has done during the coronavirus, and i think it is also interesting that there is less talk at the moment about kamala harris. the senator from california. because i think -- >> bret: go ahead, dana, joe biden has said that he would choose a woman. >> dana: i think that is a

promise he can't go back on with this electorate, with this crowd, with this base. i think if you are going go back on anything, joe, probably the student loan thing, the medicare thing, like all of those things that the policy positions that bush done pushed him hard to the left, those are things that you could actually soften. i would not think that he would go back and take that promise to appoint a woman as his vp. i do want to say something else though. okay, so, this entire thing today was supposed to be a big announcement. as jesse has pointed out in a tough situation, it is not rousing. but why in the world with a schedule it at the very same time the governor cuomo is doing his briefing that all of the democrats are clambering over. it does not make any sense to me? i do not understand what they are doing? and from a communication standpoint, they have to find a way to light a fire under them would it be that hard for them

to go to bernie sanders house in vermont and have some sort of good backdrop put up behind him and get a better lighting system? joe biden looks pretty good in his basement. there are some fundamentals that they are not doing and it makes you wonder how do they think they are going to compete in the environment, the trump campaign announced that they raised $221 million in the first quarter of this year. that is a lot of firepower. >> bret: the democrats are down ten, 11, wrap it up here, greg. 2020. >> greg: i will cut joe some slack, yesterday was easter sunday, probably very tired, waiting by the door for trick-or-treaters and it took the wind out of him. also i wonder how he is going to look at the vp choices, if they will be able to pass the sniff test, but if he wins and beats trump, the vp will be president

and 3-6 months, let's not kid around. he is not going to make it. even the democrats admit it. so whoever is going to be vp will be president. i love how "the new york times" dismissed the sexual assault allegations. it was like aside from the touching and the kissing on the contact to that made people feel uncomfortable, oh, we cannot find anything wrong. so there goes your hypocrisy. the people that went after kavanaugh with torches are okay with this stuff. can't get enough. >> bret: if we have "special report" we have a story on that tonight. at any moment the white house coronavirus task force will begin. in the meantime, coming up next, china under pressure over covid-19, what is the latest with that? stay with us. ♪

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♪ >> juan: welcome back. we are waiting for the white house coronavirus task force briefing to begin shortly. in the meantime, china feeling new pressure after health experts say they misled the world over what they initially knew about covid-19. here's dr. anthony fauci saying the u.s. did not, did not get the correct information from china at the start. >> i don't know where the missteps went, the only thing i know with the end result was that early on we did not get correct information. and to the incorrect information was propagated right from the beginning, because you know, when the first cases came out to that were identified, i think on december 31st in china, and we became aware of this, they said this was just animal to human your end. now we know retrospectively that

there was ongoing transmission from human to human in china. >> juan: dana, i was going to ask, what do you think is a proper response? how can we punished hannah, everybody agrees, china was not forthcoming. >> dana: there are a lot of different ways that we can do it. we have to have a concerted effort and i might have to be covert, whatever, i don't care to push back against china's propaganda. which basically is saying, crazy things like maybe it started here in america. and they continue to do that internally, but also to states that have basically been dead to their will, because of the whole belton road initiative. that is one. at the other thing is that there is a funding issue for the w.h.o., but i think we need to figure out a way to have more influence rather than cutting off funding. because we clearly need some mechanism that we are all

sharing information as a world body. and the last thing i would say is that i think through secretary of state mike pompeo, having some sort of international pushed against china, so where you have someone like a country like japan that is really mad at china, harvest that energy and figure out how to push back collectively. >> juan: you know, bret, i was struck by the fact that the president was talking about talking to president xi last week. and talking about the trade deal, we rely on them heavily for manufacturing, specifically the pharmaceuticals. they hold a lot of our debts, are we hand strong in terms of response? >> bret: you will see a push to get u.s. companies to come back from china, especially pharmaceuticals. you have seen marco rubio and other senators on capitol hill push the administration on this front to try to get the supply chains back inside the u.s.

that is going to happen not only in the u.s., but other countries. dana mentioned japan, in the stimulus bill they put in $2 million for companies that take their physical plants out of china and move them into japan or other countries. so the pushback and the pain is happening, maybe not on a big scale. i think the w.h.o. is going to have to have an after action report. and there is a lot of criticism of w.h.o., but they will have to lead the charge about what china did and did not do. you look at shanghai and beijing, at least by what they are putting out there, they are not anywhere near milan or new york city as far as coronavirus cases. >> juan: that is right, greg, pick up on that, what would you say to the w.h.o. if they said, greg, we got that information from the chinese, why do you want to punish us? >> greg: because you took the bad information knowing that it was not good.

they are the p.r. outfit for that company. they are the people that are the crisis p.r. management for china. you know it is interesting, who was there first on china was donald trump. who was the last immediate, and i'm putting myself in that camp as the media, i learned more about trade and supply chains that i did not know or care about until the last couple, the last few years because trump kept making a stink about it. he was their first as people were making fun of him and saying, ha, ha, ha, we are number one when supposedly our cases of coronavirus past china because they explicitly -- hillary clinton in the press bought what china was saint dominic selling that they had no cases. so i think they enabled china in particular because they weren't russian. >> juan: so jesse, what would you do about the w.h.o.? i mean, it sounds like you are pretty critical of them, but i want to know exactly what steps

he would take it, because do need a global health organization. you can't come finance and say, oh, we don't like what you did in the past, so we don't need a global health organization to help with this fight against the pandemic. >> jesse: the threat to withhold funding does influence the w.h.o. i don't know if you yank it officially, fully, but threatening to take away $400 million, that will get some attention. especially from people that do not get any money handing it over. to dana's point, i agree. we need a propaganda war against the chinese, against the w.h.o. but it is very hard when the media is inciting with this country. the other day "the new york times" ran a report that said the virus came from europe. okay. well, technically it came from china, and then italy, and then new york.

i just don't understand why the media in this country, they can have their rights taken away in china. they can feel the oppression and the abuse in china, and then china says something and trump says something different. and they choose to believe the chinese government over the american president. i don't get it. that w.h.o. is saying, i think that bribes got paid. it's hard to prove, but look at what they do with ethiopia. that's where dr. tedros came from. the guy who is in charge with the w.h.o. big ethiopian guy. the number one client state in africa of china. they have billions and billions exchanging hands between those two countries. largest two countries in terms of trade, africa, and asian countries. somehow they pick this one guy out of anybody in the entire world, they pick the one guy in ethiopia, make him the head of

the w.h.o., and then everything cuts in their favor? listen, they get money from the u.s., but they also get money from other things. donations, trips, travel from foundations. i just want to know where the other money came from. a lot of people might have gotten paid off in ethiopia to make this guy look the other w way. >> juan: jesse, let me follow up with you on that, what about the trade deal with china? oh, i am sorry. the president is coming out, jesse. >> president trump: before i begin, i would like to offer my condolences and best wishes to the people all across our great south who have endured deadly tornadoes and other severe weather. in texas, louisiana, mississippi, alabama, florida, georgia, tennessee, and south carolina. my administration will do everything possible to help those communities get back on their feet. we are speaking with the

governors, and the representatives. fema is already on its way. and they have third -- as soon as we heard the word, what i said get out there. you know the great job that fema does. it is very special. so we just want to say, warmest condolences and we are with you all the way. it is a tough deal. that was a bad, bad, level 5, that's as high as it gets pretty bad grouping of tornadoes. something that is something incredible. the power, the horrible destructive power. america is continuing to make critical progress in the war against the virus. over the weekend, the number of daily new infections remains flat. nationwide flat. hospitalizations are slowing. the hot spots like new york, new jersey, michigan, and louisiana, this is clear evidence that the aggressive strategy to combat the virus is

working, and to that americans are following the guidelines. it has been incredible what they have done. you looked at the charts, and to the charts are, and the models from early on predictions where 100, 120,000 people looked like they did well, they were going to unfortunately perish, and we will hopefully be way, way below that number. so that's will be a sign of people doing things right. but it is still just a horrible thing all over the world. 184 countries. this is all a tribute to our wonderful health care advisors, and experts who have been with us right from the beginning. we appreciate it so much. in fact, dr. fauci is here. maybe i can ask tony to say a few words before we go any further. thank you very much. tony, please. >> thank you, mr. president.

or just a couple of things and then make a comment about something that happened yesterday. you will hear from dr. birx about the numbers that we were talking about. how things are starting to balance off. and i think the more as we go by each day, i think we will see, and again, i never like to get ahead of myself or of dr. birx, but it looks like even though we have had a really bad week last week, remember when i was speaking to you before i was saying, this was really a bad week, there is still going to be a lot of death, but we are starting to see in some areas now that flattening, particularly in a place that was a hot spot like new york. that is the first thing. the second thing is that i had a really very productive conversation with the congressional black caucus this morning for about an hour. and that they really wanted to know what exactly are we going to be doing in the immediate as well as the long range about the health disparities and the discrepancy is both an infection and in poor outcome in the

minorities in general, and specifically african-american. i made it very clear to them that what we have to do is focus on getting the resources where the vulnerable are to be able to get testing done and to get the appropriate identification where proper and where it is appropriate to isolate and contact trace, and mitigate a community that is suffering, and suffering much more disproportionally. the other point that i wanted to make is that i had an interview yesterday that i was asked a hypothetical question, and hypothetical questions sometimes can get you into some difficulty, because what would have or could have come of the nature of the hypothetical question was if, in fact, we had mitigated earlier, could lives have been saved, and the answer to my question was, as i always do, and am doing right now, perfectly honestly saying, yes. i mean, obviously.

medication helps. i've been up here many times telling you that mitigation works. so if mitigation works and to instigate its, and you initiate it earlier, you will probably save more lives. if you initiate it to later, you will probably lose more lives. you initiate it at a certain time. that was taken as a way that may be somehow something was at fault here. let me tell you from my experience, and i can only speak for my own experience is that we have been talking before any meetings that we had about the pros and the cons, the effectiveness or not of strong medications. so discussions were going on, mostly among the medical people about what that would mean, the first and only time that dr. birx and i went in and formally met -- made a recommendation to the president to actually have a "shutdown" in

the sense of naturally shut down, but to have strong mitigation, we discussed it. obviously there would be concerns by some, and in fact, that might have some negative consequence. nonetheless, the president listen to the recommendation. and went to the mitigation. the next second time that i went with dr. birx into the president and said 15 days are not enough, we need to go 30 days, obviously there were people who had a problem with that, because of the potential secondary effects, nonetheless, at that time the president went with the health recommendations, and we extended it another 30 days. so i can only tell you what i know and what my recommendations were, but clearly as happens all the time, there were interpretations of that response to a hypothetical question that i just thought it would be very nice for me to clarify, because i did not have the chance to

clarify. thank you. to be honest with you, i do not remember the date. i can just tell you the first and only time that i went in and said we should do mitigation strongly, the response was yes, we will do it. >> reporter: on travel restrictions? >> the travel restrictions are separate. that was whether or not we wanted to go into a mitigation stage of 15 days of mitigation. the travel was another recommendation when we said, we probably should be doing that. and the answer was, yes. and the other time it was we should do it with europe, and the answer was yes. and the next time we should do it with the u.k., and to the answer was yes. >> reporter: >> reporter: you said there was pushback. >> that was the wrong choice of words. when people discuss, they say this is going to have maybe a harmful effect on this or that, it was a poor choice of words. it wasn't anybody say no you shouldn't do this. >> reporter: are you doing

involuntarily or to the president -- >> i am doing it -- everything i do is voluntary, please. don't even imply that. >> president trump: the travel ban was earlier. if you look at statistics, i happened to right a couple of them down. if you look at statistics, so on january 6th, long before the dates you are talking about, there were cdc issued a travel notice for wuhan, china, a notice. before there was even a confirmed case of the virus in the united states. that's on january 6. it's all documented. we have so much fake news. i like to document things. january 6, long before the dates we are talking about, cdc issued a travel notice for wuhan. on january 11, we have zero cases in the united states, zero. we don't have any cases. no cases reported that we know

of. this is january 11. the cdc issued a level one travel notice for health while there were still no confirmed cases. we had zero cases. people wanted me to act. i am supposed to close down the economy, the greatest economy in the history of the world. and we don't have one case confirmed in the united states. that january 11. i'm january 17, the cdc began implementing public health entry screenings at three major u.s. airports that received the greatest volume of passengers from wuhan, that my instruction. there was not a single case of the coronavirus in the united states. so i'm january, there wasn't the case. the fake news is saying he didn't act fast enough. you member what happened. when i did act, i was criticized by nancy pelosi, by sleepy joe biden. i was criticized by everyone. in fact i was called xenophobic. i was asking biden to please

define that for me. i was called other things by democrats. some others, not too many others actually, so -- by the media definitely. now i'm january 21, long before the time we are talking because tony is talking, i believe he is talking about the end of february. i'm january 21, okay, still early, there was one case of the virus at that time we called it the wuhan virus, right? wuhan. there was one case that will united states, one case. this was all documented and it all comes from you, a lot of it comes from you people. on january 21st, the cdc activated an emergency operations center. there was one case, one person. that's why that ad was such a phony. there was one person in the united states. you see it, there's only one person. that statement was made at that time. one case that will united states. one case. i am supposed to shut down the

government? the biggest, the biggest economy in the history of the world, shut it down, we have one case. seven cases were on january 31. january 21 there was a case, not one person had died. you heard that, steve, right? not one person. we had a massive country, the united states of america, we have the greatest economy in the world, bigger than china spy a lot, right, because what we have done over the last three and a half years. prior to the virus but including the virus. we have the biggest economy, greatest economy we've ever had, highest employment numbers, best employment numbers, best unemployment numbers also. the best of everything. so on january 31, think of it, not one person has died, not one. nobody died, not one, john. i don't think you'll find any. this is reported by cdc