that wraps up this hour of msnbc live. "andrea mitchell reports" starts right now with geoff bennett in for andrea. >> right now on "andrea mitchell reports," panic mode, coronavirus fears continue to send global markets tumbling today after taking their worst hit in over a decade as concerns grow deeper over the spread of the virus. >> this is probably the tip of the iceberg. there's probably other patients who are getting this disease who are more mildly affected who have not come to medical attention and that means that everybody in the community is at risk. bad medicine, the vice

president is trying to control the messaging on coronavirus as the president continues to say the threat is being overblown. >> it's going to disappear, one day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear. from our shores, it could get worse before it gets better. it could maybe go away. we'll see what happens. nobody really knows. and southern charm, it's all on the line for joe biden in tomorrow's south carolina primary. can a big win in the state save him on super tuesday? >> south carolina is the trajectory to winning the democratic nomination. thank you. [ applause ] it's good to see you. i'm geoff bennett in for andrea. global coronavirus fears extend a miserable week for the markets. take a look at that, it's persisting today with the dow falling more than 1,000 points at session lows. the uncertainty forcing

governments and major corporations too to act. united airlines announcing more flight cancelations to china and to japan. and switzerland taking an unprecedented step, canceling all public events across that across. the urgency isn't being matched at home with president trump blaming democrats for sparking coronavirus fears and waving off any serious concerns by telling reporters, we'll see what happens. dr. christopher morris is a professor at george washington university. it's good to see you. >> thank you for having me. >> the world health organization increased their risk assessment to very high at the global level. we're starting to get a better sense of what this means for the markets. as this virus could potentially spread across the country, what should families, what should state governments be doing right

now. >> i think right now we need to be looking to our leaders to try and put together the best response plan for -- to project two families, two businesses and make this a coordinated response in terms of preparedness. people need to be looking at their own, everyday patterns and see what flexibilities i have to change how many times i interact with people, what travel needs to be happening right now versus that can be delayed for later. but certainly we need to have a strong and central message from our government leaders at the state level and national level to help us understand how we're going to do this as a nation. >> and about that, there are reports that there's the whistle-blower complaint saying workers didn't have the proper protective gear and training when they received evacuees from china. what does that leave in your mind in terms of the top to bottom preparation on the government level? >> i wasn't there and so i don't know exactly what happened at

the reception of those quarantined individuals here but we need our first responders to have all the equipment necessary to safely care for people that are under quarantine and undergoing isolation and so that gets back to making sure we have the messaging right, we're not causing panic purchases by corporations or individuals that deplete stocks that we need to protect for first responders and health care workers. >> you say it's important to get the messing right. how should the government navigate that balance between talking about preparation but not sending people into panic mode. >> well, it's really tricky. we're basing a lot of our, you know, decisions right now on our readouts from the china outbreak, wuhan. as this is spreading rapidly around the world, we're going to get a different set of data that's going to help us understand trajectories of spread, whose at risk, and that's going to help us refine that messaging over the next many days and it's going to be a

live process here for quite a while. >> should people be nervous about foreign travel? should they be rethinking planned trips? >> that's an individual's decision how they want to address this. there's certainly concern with what's going on right now with cancellation of flights and travel restrictions that people should be aware of, what would happen if i got significantly delayed or quarantined in some other country and could not return. those could have significant personal impacts, right, and so those are things that need to be evaluated before anyone gets on a plane i think right now. hopefully it will not be something that continues for a very long period of time because right now we're looking at many more countries, i think we're up to 54 countries with the virus. once we realize that there's no one way to kind of isolate ourselves from the rest of the world, we can start to address this outbreak on a global level. >> if you are advising this president, what would you tell him to do, first thing? >> i think he is hopefully

staffing up that response team there in the white house under mike pence with the right people, with health experts. he's got a great bench of people there at cdc and nih. if they are the ones providing the leadership and the expertise to them, then hopefully we're going to end on the right footing here for messaging. >> dr. christopher mores, thank you. it's good to see you. let's bring in stephanie ruhle on wall street and gene sperling. steph, let's start with you, we have larry kudlow, he spoke to reporters in the briefing room in the last hour. he talked about the market. he talked about the economy. let's take a listen. >> i just think everybody, whether you're an investor or whether you're, you know, ordinary main street person, people should not overreact. that's the important thing. the market has short-run

correction. and i guess it's 10 or 11% or something. we've been through this many, many times before. and i don't think even though it's a front page story and nobody likes to see their asset values go down, i just don't think at this point it's going to have much of an impact. >> so, steph, truth squad that for us. is that just white house happy talk or is kudlow onto something here? >>. >> listen, larry kudlow isn't necessarily wrong. from a numbers perspective, they're very similar. when the market dropped during the financial crisis, underlying fundamentals were disastrous. right now we don't know the risks associated with the coronavirus and how you would normally say no news is good news. in this case, no news has people more and more concerned. two days ago when we first heard

from the white house, yes, they were caught flat-footed. you had a lot of people not in roles to address these kinds of things. remember, tom bossart used to be the homeland security adviser. when we saw john bolton take over, he wasn't replaced. the white house was flat-footed a few days ago. the lack of information from the white house for the last few days has sent the markets down but also it has caused governments and companies to change their behavior. so goldman sachs isn't wrong when they're dropping their forecast for growth and tim cook from apple isn't wrong when he is somewhat optimistic. both can be true. this economy has been growing because of consumer spending and suddenly if consumers are all going to change our behavior because of the precautions we're taking, then the economy will drop. there's so many unknowns, so it's not fair to say things are disastrously in the red and they're going to stay there. they could turn green.

>> yeah. gene sperling, i want to get you to weigh in on kudlow's comments there. >> well, i couldn't disagree with the approach that they are taking more. this is a serious issue and i think when you're in government, the best thing you can do is to actually focus on the real problem, to look like you have 100% laser focus on preparation, on the actual, on the ground things that will make the united states better prepared and show that we're being serious. this is not irrational behavior by the market. they are looking at a dramatic fall in tourism and travel, one, two, they are looking at a dramatic disruption of the global supply chain that goes beyond the wuhan region at a time when manufacturing was near depression and when global inventories are low and manufacturing operates in just in time manufacturing, meaning a disruption in the supply chain

could be particularly harmful. and to go further on what stephanie said, right now when you've looked at the u.s. economy, the thing that has made you feel more positive was that the consumer had remained strong. now suddenly you have this dramatic "x" factor that we see playing out every day, that every consumer we know in our lives is thinking about adjusting their behavior, every company is pulling back. that is real. it's not just a market psychology kind of challenge, it is about people looking at the economy and the best thing that larry kudlow and the administration can do is somehow we're not about talking up the market, we're not about economics. we're serious and to look more like a clown show that looks like it is, you know, worried about the political spin of the moment or trying to talk up the market or tell consumers to buy the dip before the market goes down another 10%, not only doesn't provide that confidence,

it actually makes the united states government look like they're not on the job and that actually can feed more darkness. >> what do the markets -- >> i will tell you -- to gene's exact point, investors don't here larry kudlow say it's time to buy the dip. what investors are looking for is for the administration to give them confidence around how they're handling the spread of the coronavirus. and given what larry kudlow's focus was, i didn't seem to make sense. if you're a professional investor, they're saying, larry, i don't need you to give me a stock tip. i need you to give us a confirmation that the united states government is handling this appropriately. >> exactly. >> yeah, in fact i was going to ask you what the markets need to see in order to spark a turnaround. what's the best practice? you have experience doing this, how do administrations reassure

nervous investors without completely undercutting what should be an accurate public health message. >> look, there's no question, you don't want to overly feed darkness. but it's also very important that when the public hears you, when the world sees the united government, they say, there is the highest of competence, the highest of preparation, there's the highest of seriousness, and i do believe over the last two or three decades, whether you liked or disliked the u.s. economic teams and different governments, people looked and felt a source of confidence. stephanie has it just right. what they want to hear from the administration is these guys aren't about the spin. they're not overly feeding darkness, but they're not just giving us a line. they're not just talking up the market. so saying, we're on top, we're looking at all the different supply chains, looking at where there may be bottlenecks for critical medical products, we're

talking with all of the other countries, there's no political spin here. we're not defending cuts in the cdc and w.h.o., this is a spin-free zone. this is a serious government that's not looking at today's stock market movement or tomorrow's -- or this saturday's political primary. it's looking at the health and safety of the american government. and what we want to tell you is that we're doing everything we can to contain this and if this happens, we're going to make sure the impacts are as little as possible. we're working with industry, the medical profession. those are the types of things that people want to hear. and when they hear buy the market or there's not a problem, or the president defending cutting cdc members or muzzling people who are trying to tell the truth, that goes in the opposite direction. >> and what makes absolutely no sense is to say, well, there's

no supply chain issues. there's no possible way for larry kudlow at this point to know there's no supply chain issues. so saying less about things that investors know you know nothing about would actually make investors more confident and would have ceos less skittish. maybe there's companies that are being overly cautious, canceling things they shouldn't. when there's a vacuum and not enough information or where they know they're getting spun, they're going to play it overly safe the it's going to keep consumers from spending and that will hurt the economy. >> great points. thanks to both of you for helping us cut through the noise. coming up, biden his time? will south carolina give joe biden the big win he needs to stay alive in this race. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. keep me asle ep? absolutely, it senses your movements andp? automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. it's our leap year special, save up to $600 on select sleep number 360 smart beds. plus, 0% interest for 4-years on all smart beds.ends monday.

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one of the great things, and i must tell you, i'll be straight with you, one of the

reasons i like bernie, one of the reasons i resent bernie though, is he wanted to primary barack in 2012. he said he should be primary, people are disappointed, doing a lousy job. i fundamental disagree with that. >> that was former vice president joe biden last night rallying a crowd of more than 700 people as he makes his final pitch to south carolina voters. biden is leading bernie sanders, as you see there, by 20 points in south carolina, according to the latest monmouth university poll. but the real question is, can a big win tomorrow help jolt his campaign back to front-runner status? joining me now is marc morial, president and chief executive officer for the national urban league, and eugene robinson, "washington post" columnist who hails from south carolina. you're a son of south carolina, you're in your hometown, i read your piece the only day in the post. you've been talking to voters. how are they feeling about the

state of the race? >> well, you know, when you talk to voters in orangeburg, my hometown, it's as if you're talking to a panel full of msnbc political analysts. they're all sort of calculating electability, can bernie win? is biden -- can this put new life into the biden campaign? tom steyer's ads have had an impact here. it's very interesting. clearly, there was a lot of sentiment for joe biden and just about everybody i talked to over 45, was pretty firmly in the biden camp and, frankly, i did not personally see the movement toward bernie sanders that's been reflected in polls among younger african-american voters, but it's -- you know, polls do say it's there. but i would be very surprised if

joe biden didn't do very well in tomorrow's primary. >> as you know, the candidates, this week in particular, they've all been making the case for why they should be the preferred candidate among black voters. i know the urban league is nonpartisan, but which candidate do you think is best positioned to win in 2020 and enact the kind of policies that the national urban league cares about? >> i think the voters are processing that very question, who can win and what would their agenda be and will their agenda help african-americans and help the nation at large? and that is the internal debate that's taking place. what biden has going for him is, that endorsement by jim clyburn that i watched as you all carried it live, was powerful in its timing, in its message. he said joe biden knows us. and i think that you see that

reflected in his polling and that is the long-standing relationship which breeds -- look, is this, can we trust that someone will do what they say versus promise us extravagantly and deliver to us meagerly because they don't have the ability to win or to deliver. and voters, african-american voters and i think many voters in the democratic coalition are evaluating that. it's a balancing test. i think what comes out of south carolina is does this become a two-person race, does it become a biden/bernie sort of race where they're pushing ahead on super tuesday or will the resources of mike bloomberg and the support that pete buttigieg or elizabeth warren has allow them to capture a large number of delegates on super tuesday. super tuesday is a bear of a day because there's so many states and it's a diverse number of

states and it's virtually impossible for candidates to personally campaign in each of those states between now and super tuesday. >> when we talk about momentum coming out of the weekend heading into super tuesday, what kind of margin does joe biden need? right now he has the 20-point lead in terms of polling. what kind of margin does he need to turn south carolina from a fire wall to a springboard, the way he says he wants to? >> first of all, i'm sure the biden campaign will say that a win is a win. if he wins by two points or five points -- it is true. a win is a win. but you make a good point in that he doesn't need a fire wall, he does need a springboard. there's a limited amount you can do between saturday, the south carolina primary, and super tuesday, just three days later. so a big win, a 20-point win, really might have a significant impact on those races if you --

if he wins by a lesser margin, again, it's still a win. but there is not time for -- to buy and put up television ads in the super tuesday states because now and then. there's not time to raise the money even to do that between now and then. so the media you're going to get, it's going to be earned media, free media, and you're going to get more of that and better of that the bigger your win. if it's a 15-point win, a 20-point win, i think the biden camp would be very, very happy with that because they think it would help propel them into being really on the map in some of the super tuesday states. otherwise they might not be on the map in some of these important states and miss out on the delegates. >> in the minutes that we have left, let's talk about the general. i understand the national urban league has launched a reclaim your vote campaign to increase

black participation in the 2020 election come november. how do you plan to do that? >> we're going to be in the streets. we're going to be online. we're going to be in the community sistercenters, barber we're going to work hard to mobilize people now to make sure they reregister in states that have had these awful scorches of voter purges. we're going to call out voter suppression when we see it. we're going to do everything possible. look, in 2016 the african-american vote fell to 59% from where it had been in 2012 which was 65%. those votes would have made a demonstrative difference in states like pennsylvania and michigan and wisconsin. what we've got to make sure is that we fully participate and that we do not fall prey to voter suppression, voter apathy

or cynicism and that's what we're going to be working on hard. the candidates have the challenge of meeting the voters where they are and talking to african-american voters in truthful terms and in visionary terms about how they are going to lead this nation and how they're going to be responsive to the african-american community in a race that's going to be tough against donald trump. >> one last thing for you eugene robinson, senator bernie sanders is speaking in south carolina today. he's slamming president trump on how he's handling coronavirus. let's take a listen to this. >> everybody knows there is a coronavirus spreading all over the world. very frightening. stock market is tanking. you would think that you would have a president of the united states leading, working with scientists all over the world, bringing people together to figure out how we're going to deal with this crisis. he is here in south carolina, he doesn't even have any opposition in the republican primary.

why is he here? he's here to try to disrupt the democratic primary. how pathetic and petty can you be. >> that strikes me as a preview of what we could see in a sanders v. trump standoff, eugene. >> i think we would see something exactly like that. i think we would -- we hear that kind of language. look, you know, people here are concerned about the coronavirus just like they are everywhere else and so i think that's a resident message here. i think it's going to be a resident message for the other democratic candidates during the rest of this primary season and we'll see in the general election what that situation is. the consensus is, it has not been handled well by the president to date. >> thanks to both of you. coming up, doctored messaging? the white house tries to take control of all messaging on the

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to give his money to charity, giving pledge when this californian walked away from his billion dollar company for good. he drives a chevy volt, flies commercial, and spends his days building grassroots campaigns for social and environmental justice.

why? tom steyer believes every child deserves the same opportunities as his. a healthy planet. good schools. quality healthcare, living wage jobs, and life without fear of discrimination. tom: i'm tom steyer and i approve this message. increasing concern today about how the federal government is dealing with the coronavirus. the "new york times" is

reporting the white house moved on thursday to tighten control of coronavirus messaging by government health officials and scientists directing them to coordinate all statements and public appearances with the office of vice president mike pence. they write, the vice president's move to control the messaging about coronavirus appeared to be aimed at preventing the kind of conflicting statements that have plagued the administration's response. joining me now is "new york times" white house correspondent michael crowley and jill wine-banks. her new book is "the watergate girl." michael, we'll start with you. my sources confirm with "the times," with a caveat that the vice president's office is trying to coordinate, maybe not so much control the messaging, but it strikes me that it's president trump himself who is responsible for are a lot of the mixed messaging that we've seen this week and carrying into last

night where the president in the cabinet room said that coronavirus might disappear through some sort of miracle, as he put it. >> yeah, that's right. and in this administration, there's never going to be any messaging that isn't ultimately coming from this president. i guess anything is possible. i guess that after three-plus years after numerous attempts by officials around president trump to control what he says, get him not to tweet about this or that, don't tweet about the russia investigation, don't tweet threats to foreign leaders, you know, take control of the messaging that's coming out of the administration and put it in some other channel, it never ever works. donald trump cannot surrender messaging. he's got to be the center of attention. he's got to be the person driving the story. i just think that anyone who is assuming that's going to change is just expecting a total break from what all the evidence suggests for us. >> jill wine-banks, how does an

administration like this one mitigate this credibility gap? that's not a partisan statement. that's just a statement of fact, this credibility gap exists. >> it's a serious problem and part of the problem is that we don't trust the administration and they haven't shown us any way in which they are really in control of the situation. you know, if we go back to the era of nixon, he wasn't very trustworthy either except we did trust him to run the government and we would have trusted what his administration said, we would have trusted that they would have put in charge the right people, they would have let the doctors tell us what to do and what was being done. they would have been prepared. they wouldn't have let people go to travis air force base without the proper protection and that's the difference between then and now is we trusted richard nixon even though he obviously was involved in a similar scandal. >> and, michael, one day after the briefing -- the press

briefing that the president gave us reporters in the white house on coronavirus, the president spent 45 minutes yesterday talking to the producers behind a play -- a new play that dramaizes the text messages between fbi agencies peter structure and lisa page. he also met with a group of fox news supporters. from a messaging standpoint, this seems like political malpractice. >> look, president trump is playing a very risky game here if he continues his sort of -- you know, if he acts like it's business as usual, if he tries to, you know, hold an occasional press conference or do an interview about coronavirus where he says he's focused on it and then continues sort of being trump as always, if people start getting very sick in this country, if people start dying, if we have huge social

disruption, he may pay an extremely steep price for that. people are going to be expecting absolute, total focus from their political leaders and, you know, maybe he can get away with it now because it hasn't really, you know, touched our shores in a major way, although we have obviously seen several cases in this country. but we're not quite at a total crisis situation in the u.s. once large numbers of people start getting sick and potentially dying, president trump is at the risk of paying a massive political price. i think this is not the most important thing right now, but his re-election is certainly on the line. and the question is, whether he can change, and i think that we've been asking that question for years about donald trump. and he never seems to change. back to your original question about messaging, i wouldn't expect it. >> you mentioned the whistle-blower complaint, that people received some of the evacuees were improperly trained, they didn't have the

proper protective gear. this whistle-blower alleges that she was improperly reassigned after raising these concerns. that has a chilling effect on government officials, career officials, in some cases public health experts, who should be in power to do the work they need to do to keep the american people safe. >> this is just a continuation of the problems with the whistle-blower in the ukraine matter, with all of the people who testified honestly and truthfully, who have been retaliated against. it is a danger to democracy. in terms of the messaging, let's think about if president obama and vice president biden were still in office, how much calmer we would all feel. we would trust them to be taking the right steps, the messaging would calm us, not alarm us. there's panic going on. there's no masks available. although msnbc is very clear that it doesn't help. they're still gone because of the messaging.

>> jill wine-banks, michael crowley. jill's new book, i cracked it open last night. thanks for your time. coming up, the bitter end, michael bloomberg says he's going all the way to milwaukee. is that good news for bernie sanders? you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. vo: heals warn the us is underprepared. managing a crisis is what mike bloomberg does. in the aftermath of 9-11, he steadied and rebuilt america's largest city. oversaw emergency response to natural disasters. upgraded hospital preparedness to manage health crises. and he's funding cutting edge research to contain epidemics. tested. ready. mike: i'm mike bloomberg and i approve this message.

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michael bloomberg isn't even on the ballot in south carolina, instead putting hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising into 14 super tuesday states hoping for a strong showing. but telling kasie hunt that there isn't a result that's going to make him reconsider his candidacy. >> as long as you have a chance of winning, absolutely, why would i spend all this money and time out of my life and wear and tear, it reminds me of my three campaigns in new york for mayor which i did like.

i'm going to stay until the bitter end as long as i have a chance. >> right to the bitter end he says. joining me now is karen tumulty and msnbc national political correspondent steve kornacki. the debates were rough on bloomberg. but the bloomberg campaign infrastructure is still really strong across these super tuesday states. how do you think based on your reporting that things will shake out for the mayor come next week? >> you know, the day he announced i was talking to one of the top advisers of his campaign and he said the thing about bloomberg is that a guy with his resources can run on the last day of the campaign exactly like he runs on the first day. you know, normally, when campaigns start losing, they start running out of money. so, you know, i think super tuesday, which of course will be steve kornacki's version of the olympics, standing there at that board, will really be a test of this entire strategy that

michael bloomberg has, which was skipping these first four states and assuming that he could run an air war which is how you traditionally campaign in big states like california. >> let's talk about that, steve, because we have new polling from cnn and california shows bernie sanders at 35%, he's up 15 points from the last time that poll was taken. biden down eight. the margin of errors looks like it's plus or minus .5%. the real story seems to be biden versus bloomberg. if bloomberg wasn't in the race, you'd imagine that a lot of those voters would be biden voters. >> that's the interesting thing here if you think about the premise of the bloomberg campaign. he waited so long to get into this race, a very late-starting one. the premise was that he was essentially offering himself as

an insurance policy for democrats who did not want sanders or warren to get the nomination and who worried about one of them breaking out in the early states, biden collapsing in the early states and there's mike bloomberg positioned to take one run at them, a sanders or a warren, in super tuesday and beyond. the situation, though, that's now presenting itself is, look at the polling in south carolina, there is the possibility in south carolina that joe biden is not just going to win, but that joe biden is going to win big, double digits. he's got jim clyburn talking about a double-digit win there. if his momentum from that in those super tuesday states, is it complicated by michael bloomberg. you look at sanders' polling out there ahead, you look at biden and bloomberg bunched together. if biden gets a bounce here from south carolina, if he can get a big win here, does bloomberg get in the way of biden having a chance to win. if you look at california,

there's something more critical for joe biden because the delegate threshold in california, biggest state, 15%. if biden comes in where this poll has him, 13%, he does not get a single statewide delegate in california. if the result in california looks like this poll, that is an absolute blowout from bernie sanders and he could emerge from california alone 150, 200 delegates ahead of his nearest rival. >> do we know what kind of margin joe biden needs coming out of south carolina to turn that state into a springboard for him? is that knowable at this point? >> i don't think it's knowable. you look at the expectations game, if you look at the average of all the polls that are out there right now, it's now a double-digit lead for joe biden. if you look at jim clyburn talking about getting a double-digit win, i think that's where the expectations seem to be falling right now. >> karen, what happens to candidates like amy klobuchar, pete buttigieg if sunday,

tuesday come and go and this really looks to be a sanders v. biden race on the democratic side? >> well, i think that they are going to have to make some really hard decisions because the longer we have this large field, this fractured field of democratic candidates splitting up the sort of less liberal vote within the primary, the further and further that bernie sanders is going to get ahead. he's going to continue winning as donald trump did in the 2016 republican primaries not with majorities but with pluralities. supposedly because the democrats allocate their delegates portionly, this isn't supposed to happen in a democratic primary. >> right. >> but it -- they don't have winner take all the way the republicans do. but as long as the field is this big, the effect will be the same and sanders will just keep pushing further and further

ahead. >> two of the greats, karen tumulty, steve kornacki, my thanks to you both. coming up, down-ballot dilemma. could it hurt candidates running on the state level? the democrat challenging lindsay graham for his senate seat joins me next right here on "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. is mealtime a struggle?

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if we want to get jaime harrison in the u.s. senate and do we ever want to do that. and if we want to make sure that we send mitch mcconnell packing, then we need to put someone at the top of this ticket that gets it. >> to make sure that the likes of jaime harrison are there to turn the senate blue and send lindsey graham and mitch mcconnell packing. >> jaime harrison, i'll come campaign against you or for, whatever helps you the most. the 2020 democrats in their final push before tomorrow's primary pledging to support former state party chair jaime harrison in his bid to flip the senate seat held by lindsey graham. it underscores a growing debate against centrist democrats over whether bernie sanders at the

top of the ticket would help or hurt key down ballot races come november. joining me now, is the man who is getting all the attention in south carolina, jaime harrison. good to see you. this isn't an academic argument for you. this could be make or break stuff. how worried are you about the top of the tickets' impact on your senate race? >> i'm not worried at all, because in essence, i'm going to be at the top of the ticket in south carolina. you know, when we think about the presidential elections, normally presidential candidates aren't playing here in the general, and so it's really the race right below. that's our race for the u.s. senate. we will have more staff on the ground here than any presidential campaign. we will send out more mail, more television, more door knocks than any other candidate in the state. really, it will be our campaign, this grass roots movement to bring hope back to south carolina that will actually lead

the charge for the democratic party here in south carolina. so that's why i'm not focussed on it. i'm just focussed on doing our race and making sure we're talking to the issues that people in south carolina really care about. >> i hear you. you're not focussed on it, but is it overblown? the hammering how bernie sanders' candidacy could imperil the democrats from keeping the house. is there anything to that? >> i think it is overblown. listen, when -- in the end of the day, this is going to be a conversation for me that i'm focussed on about the record of lindsey graham. the fact that we've had four rural hospitals that closed in state over the past two years. two years ago 14 counties in south carolina had no obgyns or a third of the state doesn't have access to broad band. those are the issues that people if you talk to the people on the streets and in the rural communities, that they are concerned about. that's why we're building this grass roots movement. we are seeing the emergence of a new south. it's this race that is leading that frt.

that's why i'm asking everybody, come join us at jaime harrison to be part of the change in south carolina. >> you know democratic politics better than almost anybody, better than me. what's going to happen this weekend? >> this weekend you'll see the candidate that did the best job of talking to the hopes, the aspirations, and the fears of south carolina. those are the candidates that will do the best in the state. you have to make sure that you're personalizing this. and that sometimes i see with our candidates that they're talking too much up in the air in terms of the policy aspects. they need to talk about and this is what we do on our race. talk about the reality on the ground. what are things that people -- that's giving them anxiety? what is it that they want to see for their friends, for their families, for their communities? if you can do that, you're going to do very well in south carolina. and because south carolina is right before super tuesday and

there's so many other states in super tuesday with similar demographics your verdict demographics, it gives them a spring board going into that contest. >> good to see you. thank you. >> thank you for having me. >> tune in tomorrow for the south carolina primary. brian williams and rachel maddow will be joined by others at. special coverage kicks off tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc. at today's best western, stay two nights and get a free night for your next stay. one night, two nights, free night. book now at bestwestern.com. free night. we do it every night. every night. i live alone, but i still do it every night. right after dinner. definitely after meatloaf. like clockwork. do it! run your dishwasher every night with cascade platinum. a load with as few as 8 dishes, is all it takes to save water.

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that does it for andrea mitchel reports. thank you for being with us. now chris jansing in new york. >> thank you so much on a busy day. good afternoon. i'm chris jansing. we begin with major new developments in the major global story, coronavirus. including a new nbc report that says as americans are looking for answers, a worldwide threat assessment is being withheld for fear it might displease president trump. amid rising public concerns mulvaney tried to tamp down fears about coronavirus's potential impact. >> are you going to see some schools shut down? probably. may you see impacts on public transportation? sure, but we do this. we know how to handle this. and so that's one of the things that you -- that's the message you try to get out. there are professionals who know how to handle this,