just because -- he goes to the doctors and said i don't want to do this. what doctor is going to tell him he needs to do what he doesn't want to do. he should be willingly, eagerly taking the test in order to model the appropriate behavior for the american public. >> what pro foundifound irony t with the task force and exhibiting behavior that is 100% contrary to what we want the public to do. >> i'm just waiting for dr. fauci to take a q-tip up his nose. maybe tomorrow. my thanks, thanks to you for watching. we'll get through this, guys, hang in there. we'll be with you every step of the way. "mtp daily" with chuck todd starts right now. welcome to friday. it is "meet the press daily." . the president has just declared

the coronavirus a national emergency during a press conference at the white house rose garden where he and the officials around him and members of the private sector attempted to assure the public they had the situation under control and they were once again working furiously to address a testing shortage, which has left the public with an unclear picture of just how severe the threat really is. basically it feels as if every week at the white house we get a new promise of improved, ramped-up testing. but perhaps the bigger headline out of all of this for the average person watching, looking for guidance, were simply the mixed messages of just how seriously we should take all of this. while declaring a state of emergency, a national emergency mind you, and praising institutions that have virtually shut their doors, including many sports leagues, simultaneously the president at times downplayed the threat and said it would just wash away. he dismissed his own potential exposure to the virus multiple times. but then he said he would likely be tested soon. he was also defiant that the testing issues that have plagued our understanding of the scope

and severity of this threat were not his fault. so what should the average person do right now? public health experts and officials across the country are urging the public to take this threat seriously and act urgently. avoid crowds, cancel unnecessary travel, work from home if you can, and obviously, continuously and constantly wash your hands. there are now more than 2,000 confirmed cases in the united states with more than 40 deaths. due to those profound testing shortages in the nation's capabilities, some health officials are basically telling us that we should assume the virus is already everywhere. in ohio, for instance, the number of confirmed cases this morning was only five. but officials there believe the actual number was higher, by a factor of 20,000. >> even though we only have five confirmed cases, we feel that we could have up to 100,000 people in ohio right now who are carrying around the coronavirus.

this thing multipliemultiplies, told, every six days. so you're going to see those numbers just go out like that. that's what i've been warning the people of ohio. >> we heard similar warnings today from the governor of new york. >> this is going to be everywhere. this day-to-day count, we're up two, we're up seven. my guess is that there are thousands and thousands of cases walking around the state of new york. >> and this morning one of the nation's top infectious disease officials, dr. anthony fauci, was crisscrossing the air waves to warn the public that the number of cases will spike. deaths will go up. the disruption to our daily life is going to last weeks at a minimum. >> what you're going to see is an acceleration of cases, there's no doubt about it, because that's how these outbreaks work. you go along like this the way

we were and then you have a big spike that goes way up. then after a while, after much disease and suffering and death, it comes back down again. >> but to be clear, we have not peaked yet? >> no. there's no doubt that we have not peaked yet. people i believe, i'm telling you, are putting too much emphasis on testing. what we need to do is respond right now. if we do the mitigation and the containment that would make this turn into this, you're talking anywhere from four to five weeks, maybe more, maybe eight, but maybe even less. i think the four to five-week component is probably a good guess with the understanding that you may go longer into a few months. >> there are also some experts already warning that the surge in cases is likely going to overwhelm our hospitals and our health system. that's part of the system to declare the national emergency right now, by the way. in addition to an increased loss of life would mean an even greater level of social and

economic disruption than what you're seeing now. bottom line the public is grappling with wildly different messages about just how bad and severe this could get and what as a citizenry we should do about it. joining me from the white house, my colleague geoff bennett. also dr. david shulkin, former veterans affairs secretary who was a hospital system executive and dr. amesh adalja. geoff, let me start with you. forgive me if i look at today's event and i'm a bit confused in that i believe this is, i feel like the third friday in a row at least, where we're being assured the ability to test is being ramped up and by the end of next week it's going to be working. here we go again. but the overall event itself felt like an event that should have taken place a week ago, getting these private sector labs involved, getting walmart and target to donate their

parking lots. all of this seems like -- all of this felt a week late. >> reporter: you're right about that, chuck. i'm told the president was considering delivering or making this declaration earlier in the week, maybe even on wednesday when he gave that oval office address, but that he ultimately balked because he thought at th t -- send the right message. here we are on a friday evening after the stark warnings you played from dr. fauci and others and it was clear to the president that he had to do more and he had to say more. on tuesday, when the white house coronavirus task force held that press conference in the briefing room, i asked then when test kits would be widely and readily available across the country. at the time the vice president said there are millions more test kits on the way. he felt like they would be in a good position. here we are at the ending of the week and there is still a deep and vast bottleneck across the country, shortages where people

can't get tested. even a sitting member of congress in virginia who is self-quarantining because of his own exposure, he can't get a test kit. so apart from the news that came out of this press conference today, the president announcing this declaration, unlocking billions more dollars worth of federal funding, all of that, what we didn't get was a specific timeline for how this testing capacity will ramp up in the coming days. the president said something that struck us as rather extraordinary. he said he had no idea that john bolton, when he was named national security advisor, disbanded the global pandemic group at the nsc. whether or not that's true or not, that's what the president said. >> he did at times at these pressers sometimes question the questioner and him talking over each other, it's never 100% sure where he's going with that, but that was an oddity. let me bring in dr. adalja and dr. shulkin. i think we've asked you guys to

take two different aspects of this. let me start with the testing capacity. help me out here. we've now heard i thought today at least they gave the best explanation of why it's taken so long to ramp up this testing situation. yesterday dr. fauci seemed to indicate in some ways, look, the ability to use testing to at least help us create a containment or mitigation strategy, that's out of the barn. is that still the case? >> i do think that we really have now to move to the point where we're trying to do aggressive social distancing because the time is running out, the window is closing. we know this virus is spreading in many communities undiagnosed, unrecognized chains of transmission. so we do need to start social distancing before we get this testing ramped up. i do think testing is very important to have so we can have some idea of what's going on with with this virus, understanding who's hospitalized with this virus, who isn't. i think like governor cuomo

said, we can't have this scoreboard approach because we know this is everywhere, this community spreading virus. >> let me ask you this, on what you heard today on testing, were they being factual about describing the current situation, that was was a bureaucratic bottleneck? >> i do think there was definitely bureaucratic issues that happened as well as some just logistical issues of getting it out. there was this delay in having tests make their own tests based on some regulations that were in the way and there was some red tape there. but there's also this idea that the cdc's guidance said only test people if they had been to china. we knew this had been spreading since november in china so this wasn't a travel-related illness. and that really got people not testing or not thinking about it and it's seared in people's mind this is a china disease, an italy disease and not an america

disease. that's still a problem in many hospitals. you have to get an administrator to approve your test in many hospitals. you can't order it as a physician. >> dr. shulkin, one of the important things of this national emergency is it essentially allows now hospitals to prepare for being overrun, whether it is designating certain facilities as sterile enough to handle temporary icus and things like that. explain to me now, now that this has been declared, what can these major hospitals do that they couldn't do yesterday? >> chuck, as you know, the primary role of government is to ensure public safety. i was glad to see the president declare a national emergency, but quite frankly our hospitals now have to be prepared for the potential onslaught of patients. because the federal government has been slow in responding, we're now seeing the state and local governments really stepping up their responses and

taking control. working with the local hospitals, we have to be prepared to make sure that our staff and resources in each community are where they need to be. i do believe these public/private collaborations and coordination of resources are the best way that we're going to get through this. i'd like to see the federal government continue to reach out to our private sector colleagues so we can accomplish that. >> walk me through the issue, because it does seem as if in your community, in the medical community, the stories we're hearing out of italy has got major hospital administrators already enacting emergency plans, letting staff know, look, you're going to be working overtime. you'll get paid for it but not right away. all of these preparations are being put in place. are we going to expect to see icu units in empty warehouses, in boston, new york, washington? is that something hospitals have to prepare to be able to do?

>> i think our hospital leaders are preparing for that scenario right now. we're fortunate in that we can look at the experience both in asia and europe and see that hospitals have been overwhelmed by the supplies. we saw the chinese building hospitals in short periods of time. the u.s. actually has less hospital beds per capita than what we see in asia or europe, so we have to be much smarter about our resources here. if we were seeing large numbers of patients all at one time, we would run out of hospital capacity and run out of ventilators. one of the things i would like to see the federal government do is distribute the supply of ventilators and other protective equipment in our national stockpiles. it's important to stay ahead of this. i'd rather see us return equipment to national stockpiles rather than sit in warehouses where they are now when people are in need of life-saving resources. >> dr. adalja, if you have come

into contact with someone that has tested positive for coronavirus, what should you do? >> you need to monitor yourself very closely for the development of symptoms, fever, runny nose, cough, sore throat. at the first instance of those symptoms, you need to get tested and you self-isolate yourself so you don't expose others. that's really what we're doing for our health professionals that get exposed. some of them get self-quarantined but you need an aggressive approach if you've been around somebody that has this because you don't want to spread it to somebody else. if you're somebody above the age of 60 or have any other health problems, you have to worry what this might do to you. if you're younger, you're likely to do fine. but if you're older and have health conditions, you could be in trouble with this virus. >> are you one of those that believes that we should be more aggressive in shutting down public spaces? >> i think that these are complicated decisions and they actually should be driven by the context of what's going on with

transmission in the community, what that event is and making a decision how impactful that will be. it's not an easy thing to do. it's even harder when you don't know what's going on in the communities because we don't have testing. again, we're still lacking situational awareness of what's going on in each of these places so you're seeing blanket closures. maybe some things could go on if there was proper social distancing and you had the elderly people and those with other medical conditions stay away, but we can't have that nuanced discussion because we're in the dark with where this is in our country and what each community is facing right now. >> speaking of being in the dark, dr. adalja, why is the test itself so difficult to -- why is it that this is such a difficult situation? we test all the time patients. why was this such a complicated -- is the testing procedure complicated in order to rule out the flu? is that the issue, that you have to rule out so many other

viruses? >> no, this was a novel virus. it was sequenced pretty rapidly by the chinese and then they built a test kit. so they had to make one. that usually is what happens during a public health emergency. the public health labs like the cdc are the first ones that can test. usually the first test takes four to six hours to run and then you get more rapid tests. it's not necessarily hard but it had to be added to commercial labs' panels for respiratory illnesses. when this first started, flu was much more prevalent and you didn't want to miss flu. we have antivirals for flu so if people tested negative 230 flu, then you think about the coronavirus. but you should be much more open about the fact this likely was spreading here unbeknownst to anybody and think about flu and coronavirus equally and rule them both out rapidly. >> dr. shulkin, i understand, and i don't want to say which hospital, but a hospital out

west, it's my understanding they are in the process of potentially postponing elective surgeries. if you were going to get a hip replacement or if you were going to get something that can be postponed, they're going to start postponing those. is that something that folks should expect to hear if they have a planned procedure coming up in the next three to six weeks that isn't life-threatening. >> every hospital should have an emergency preparedness plan that has that type of plan in place where elective surgeries and people who don't need to be in hospitals aren't in hospitals. wlp you see that implemented is whether you're seeing patients requiring your services and whether patients are coming into your hospital with the active coronavirus. you do not want to be in a hospital if you don't need to be if there is coronavirus in your community. that's why testing is so important and why we've been several steps behind, because that testing data just hasn't been there. i think you do need to assume that there is widespread community virus around and take

the precautions that are necessary. >> geoff bennett, before i go, i have to say part of me assumed this press conference and the delay, it was supposed to start at 3:00 sharp. got delayed about 15, 20 minutes. while that's nothing new with frankly any administration these days, i thought, oh, maybe they have a hill deal to announce. nope, nowhere close. it was awfully dismissive, the president was, yet we were getting hints this thing is close. what do you know, quickly? >> steve mnuchin had spoken to house speaker nancy pelosi nine plus times today as they try to hash out some sort of agreement. the president today didn't explain specifically what he wanted to see in the bill, what would get him off the fence potentially to yes. so that we'll have to wait and see there. i suspect it has to do with the payroll tax cut that he's been talking so much about and desperately wants and the democrats are so far against. >> geoff bennett at the white

house, amesh adaljo, david shulkin, appreciate all of your expertise and reporting as well. thanks very much. up next, what is going on with the emergency coronavirus funding bill? we teased it there with the president. we'll go inside congress and find out a little more there. why is washington making something that's normally pretty easy in a time like this so difficult? also more school closings are being announced around the country. this is a real divide in both the medical and political communities. when should schools be making the call? should they all be going out? i'll speak with former education secretary arne duncan who also ran the chicago school system. that's ahead. ahead cut. liberty mu... line? cut. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. cut. liberty m... am i allowed to riff? what if i come out of the water? liberty biberty...

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welcome back. as the white house declared a national emergency, congress is still working on a package to grant more resources to fight coronavirus and try to insulate the economy. this is literally step one of what will be a number of

emergency spending bills. while this spending bill would normally be a slam dunk, trust me, washington loves to spend money. when you have a bill that is nothing but spending money, it is usually pretty easy to get done. and yet for some reason, washington is struggling with this one. right now house democrats led by speaker nancy pelosi are negotiating with the treasury secretary, steve mnuchin, on a package that could get -- should get broad bipartisan approval before heading to the senate. moments ago at the white house, the president says he is still not on board with the bill. >> we just don't think they're giving enough. we don't think the democrats are giving enough. we're negotiating. we thought we had something, but all of a sudden they didn't agree to certain things that they agreed to. so we could have something, but we don't think they're giving enough. they're not doing what's right for the country. >> joining me now with the latest on the negotiations on both ends of pennsylvania avenue, cnbc's eamon javers at the white house and nbc's lee ann caldwell on capitol hill.

it's an awfully confident nancy pelosi who believes they're passing a bill today. basically ready for the senate. it certainly looks to me in my own reporting that the house republicans want to be on board with this. they're ready to go, but they're not going to do it if the president isn't publicly for it. what is the stumbling block, just this payroll tax issue or is there something more? >> reporter: chuck, so many points there to respond to. let's start with the stumbling block. no one is being exactly clear on what exactly there is. we're told there's technical issues, but what those technical issues are, usually that's a comma in a wrong place. but perhaps it's something bigger now. we don't have a lot of insight into that. we do know they changed the bill to accommodate some of the republican concerns. we also know that republicans, like you said, cannot support -- do not want to support this bill without the president's buy-in. in so many of these

negotiations, the president is always the obstacle here. minority leader mccarthy went to the white house earlier today to talk to the president about it. he returned from the white house, avoiding reporters, not answering our questions, which is pretty rare for mccarthy to do. so it sounds like it was not the best meeting between mccarthy and the president. but as far as pelosi saying that she's going to move forward on a bill today, she has the votes. she has enough democrats to support it, but she wants this to be a bipartisan bill. but she's always had the upper handing here and that's because she knows she can pass this bill and she has the upper hand in messaging as well. if republicans don't get on board, her members can go home and say we tried, we negotiated, i spoke with secretary mnuchin dozens of times over the past couple days but the president would not come along. so pelosi seems confident that there's going to be a vote at some point. the big question is, is it going

to have the support of the white house or republicans? >> eamon, what can you add to this? here's the question i have for you. you're a cnbc guy. the payroll tax cut is something that makes a lot of sense in three in six months when we know the extent of the damage to the economy. i understand why lawmakers are going why are you doing it now, it doesn't make any sense to do it now. but it's my understanding that the president has been told that and he's not listening? >> reporter: yeah, look, the payroll tax cut is an idea being pushed internally by peter navarro, the president's trade advisor. the president likes it because it's a big stimulus, about a trillion dollars a year if you eliminate the payroll tax on the employer and employee side. folks here want to make that permanent. there's a big question about how you're going to fund social security and medicare, which is what those taxes do. >> oh, my god. >> if you get rid of that going forward. >> right. >> reporter: that's a huge hole they're going to fill. there are no answers here as to how they're going fill it. as far as the question of what the stumbling block is here, my

reporting squares with lee ann's. it's a bit of a mystery. i spoke to a senior administration official just minutes after nancy pelosi got done speaking today, emailing back and forth with this official. he told me several pieces of the text which go beyond provisions kept limited to address covid-19 do not yet have sign-off from us. so the official not saying which pieces of the text are at issue here or when they might get sign-off from the president, but the official using that word "yet" which is always one to watch in washington, that means maybe they could come around. the president clearly not willing to go there tonight, though. >> lee ann, i thought i heard the speaker say this, this is likely the first of many bills to try to address this. this is one of those where you live to fight another day. if you don't win on this, this is one of those -- spenders know there's always another bill, especially with this one. >> yeah, she's repeated that message over and over again. she said this is just the first

step. there's going to be more down the road and those are going to be the more complicated bills because you can be sure that payroll tax will be a big issue and the republicans can come back and say, look, we did your bill the first time, let's do ours this time, but they have to get through this bill first. >> eamon javers, lee ann caldwell with important reporting for our viewers. thank you both for sharing it. up ahead, it's arne duncan on the difficult decisions that schools are facing nationwide. he himself was a local school superintendent, so he knows what these folks are thinking. we'll be right back. e thinking we'll be right back. at fidelity, we can help you build a clear plan for retirement to help cover the essentials, as well as all the things you want to do. because when you have a retirement partner who gives you clarity at every step, there's nothing to stop you from moving forward. who gives you clarity at every step, ♪ do you recall, not long ago ♪ we would walk on the sidewalk ♪ ♪ all around the wind blows ♪ we would only hold on to let go ♪

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welcome back. as more and more events get cancelled and more and more places are prohibiting large gatherings, the questions of whether schools should be open becomes more and more urgent for public identifies. seven states and the district of columbia have cancelled classes for k through 12 for a period of time, a week to three weeks. several districts and cities have made a decision to shut down. los angeles will close on monday, putting more than 670,000 students out of school there. new york city, home of the country's largest school district. mayor bill de blasio said school officials will do their damndest to keep the schools open. that's to avoid first responders to have to stay home with their kids. former secretary of education arne duncan joins us now for

more insight on some of this. he also is somebody that ran the chicago school systems. arne, it's good to see you. look, i'll be honest, we had an internal medical professional on our -- one of our calls this morning who said the medical community is divided on this, on the necessity to close schools. on one hand students are super spreaders of viruses. on the other hand, everybody is mindful of the other issues, school lunches and the child care issue. where do you come down on this? >> i'll say i ran the chicago public schools for seven and a half years and we didn't take one day off of school. we never had a snow day and never did anything. i know at multiple levels how important it is that our schools be open. chuck, quite honestly this is different. up to eight schools now where schools have closed. i think the only way to stop the spread of this disease is to

stop spreading it. so it's almost inevitable. i think the vast majority if not all schools in all states will close. those that haven't should be preparing to take those steps. but the issues you talked about are very real. when you close schools, you can't just flip a switch. there are at least three big buckets that you have to think about. one obviously to start with is learning and how we do online learning, how we reach kids when they don't have access to wi-fi or technology. we have to think about that very carefully. we have to think about students with disabilities. secondly we have to think about families. we really need employers to think about letting parents stay home to care for those kids. finally, the issue of food is a really big one. we have about 30 million chipper around the united states who rely on schools to get their food. but we can think about this differently. think of schools, not just as school buildings but as food distribution centers. if people are ready to step up, we can give food to kids to take home for a lunch, for a day, a

week of food. so we can think very differently in a time of crisis. we have to try and stop the spread of this pandemic and we have to prepare to have all schools potentially close and do so, frankly, very, very quickly. >> i was just going to ask you, you know, why not take the free lunches essentially and distribute them school by school. that is a common sense idea. how possible is that logistically? think about your days in chicago. >> yeah, it's very possible logistically. this is at a time, chuck, a time of crisis that the community has to rally together. i hate that as a country and as a planet we're in this crisis, but i have to tell you, i'm actually unbelievably inspired. times like this can bind us together in some really, really positive ways. i'm talking to educators and people who run food banks and food depositories. i'm talking to people used to providing food after a crisis, an earthquake, a hurricane, and

we can work together and use food as food distribution centers. when i ran the chicago public schools we'd send home on weekends very discreetly a couple thousand kids with backpacks full of food because we worried with them not eating during the weekend. so schools can be food distribution centers. volunteers can help. outside providers can help. we think about online learning. if employers could take care of families, we can get through a tough time together and learn some really important lessons. while there may be a lack of credibility and trust at the federal level, we have great local mayors and governors and school superintendents and health care professionals. what i'm seeing at the grounding level feels really, really good and inspiring at a time of high stress and worry. >> so both of my kids are -- both are going to have three weeks minimum, maybe a fourth week that they will have without learning. let me ask you this -- >> no, no, no, no. let me stop you.

they should not be doing without learning. there is online learning and things we can do. >> no doubt there is, but some of these schools don't have the full system and full ability to do this. how would you extendi the schoo year? would you go to saturdays if necessary? would you extend the day so that you don't extend the calendar of the school year? what are the different options that you think are reasonable for different people in your former capacity as school superintendent should be thinking about? >> i think, steve, those are honestly questions that we can answer a month or two from now and options, longer school year, longer school day, saturdays. let me be really clear. i'm not ready to concede at all that learning won't be happening for lots of kids, including my two children on monday. the idea of children continuing to learn, doing online lessons, continuing to get guidance from teachers, i absolutely think learning can and should continue so we may not need to extending the school day or school year if

that actually happens. that has to be the goal now. >> a love your optimism on that. i am right there with you. i just wonder if we have the capacity nationwide to do this for public -- you know, for every public school system. >> we won't do it perfectly, but again, these are amazing people who have great hearts for children who want them to learn, who want them to be safe, who want them to be fed and that's what's giving me hope. >> secretary duncan, arne duncan, good to see you and talk to you and some tremendous recommendations. i hope school superintendents take your ideas under advisement. cities across the nation are bracing for new coronavirus cases. up next we'll talk to the mayor of austin, texas, as the city deals with its first confirmed cases today. and remember, this was supposed to be south by southwest opening week. not so much now. keep it here. uch now. keep it here your mission: stand up to moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. and take. it. on with rinvoq. rinvoq a once-daily pill can dramatically improve symptoms...

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and accessoriesphones for your mobile phone. like this device to increase volume on your cell phone. - ( phone ringing ) - get details on this state program call or visit welcome back. the first two cases of coronavirus were announced in

austin, texas, early this morning just hours before texas governor greg abbott declared a statewide public health disaster and then another case was confirmed in austin this afternoon. as we said at the top of the show, the expectation is that across the country there are going to be many more cases and that the ones that have been announced will just seem like trickles and then all of a sudden you'll have an explosion. case in point, the university of texas austin president announced that he is currently quarantined with his wife and another family member. these cases come a week after the city cancelled south by southwest that brings over 100,000 attendees to austin every year. it was one of the first large events to be cancelled as coronavirus concerns grew. the person who made that decision, mayor addler, joins me now. mayor adler, at the time you probably had people barking in your ear that you were overdoing it. after you watched the week that was, i'm sure the critics have gotten more silent. >> you know, when we made the initial decision, we were quite

the outlier and there were a lot of people that were weighing in at that point in time. but it was the right thing to do. you see that with the decision that cities are making all across the country right now. it's horrible to have to close down an event like that, but when you take a look at the public health repercussions, there's really only one choice. >> where are you in the public school system there? you heard -- i don't know if you got to hear my conversation with arne duncan and i know different mayors have different authorities over their school system. would you like to see your school system closed? and has that decision been made? >> i agree with what secretary duncan said. our school district here, the predominant one in our area, austin independent school district, closed classes today. fortunately we lean into spring break next week. >> gotcha. >> so we'll have some time to take a look at it. >> do you -- what you heard from the federal authorities today and what you've had your interactions, what do you need

that you don't have? >> i tell you, we need a lot more testing. you know, the fact that we have now just two -- three confirmed cases in our city is something we know not to accurately reflect, the number of infections we probably really have. and if we knew what the real number was, everybody could plan for this a lot better. we're working both through our state and through the government to get testing equipment. we're also working with the private labs in our city to source testing because we can't wait. we need the drive-up facilities, so we need that. we also need assistance and support. you know, when you close a big event like south by southwest, that was worth about $350 in income to my region. i have a lot of people that are hurting right now. i have a lot of people that are losing their jobs right now. so it's almost like a hurricane

or a tornado went through our city. we have a disaster. >> well, what would you like -- so do you want to see some of these, whether it's paid leave money now, is it sort of almost like the way fema sometimes brings in cash early right after a disaster and it's just sometimes a lot easier to do that because people need to pay bills immediately, is that the kind of help you're looking for that you think is necessary or is this something down the road that you're looking for help? >> i wish we had that kind of help right now because the impacts we're feeling are right now. obviously there are some things we're not going to know for sure until we are further down the road in terms of the ultimate impact. but very real impact is happening right now. south by southwest had to lay off a third of its workforce when they closed. we have cancellations as cities have across the city right now for hotels. people are not traveling the way that they were before and they should not be doing that.

but at the same time, there's a ripple effect. i wish right now -- you know, we passed sick leave, an ordinance requiring that in the city of austin and we were taken to court by the state and that's not in force right now. boy, i tell you i wish that i had everyone in my city insured right now. it would make a big difference. i have people that are probably going to work right now because they don't have insurance despite our best efforts to keep them at home. >> i have to tell you, mayor, if there's one issue that i think may get depolarized after this, it might be paid sick leave. i think people are now seeing what it means to have it versus not having it. we shall see. anyway, mayor adler, good luck to you. thanks for coming on and sharing your experience. much appreciated. >> thanks for the invitation. up next, more mixed messaging today from the white house on the virus. virus is thr pharmacist-recommended memory support brand.

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welcome back. at his press conference this afternoon, president trump did not take responsibility for the lag in coronavirus testing that he assured would be ramping up. the administration has now been promising to ramp up testing for weeks now. >> we're going to move a lot of volume of testing kits. and on the subject of testing, we've been making steady progress. >> testing and testing capabilities are expanding rapidly day by day. we are moving very quickly. today we're announcing a new

partnership with private sector to vastly increase and accelerate our capacity to test for the coronavirus. >> joining me now is nbc news national political reporter sahil kapur, ruth contributor, michael steel, a former adviser to jeb bush. i do think it's clear the administration knows the testing issue is basically at the forefront right now of sort of -- of this response, and it has been a struggle and it feels like every one of these press conferences is an attempt to say we got this now, trust us this time. today's event felt more competent than any yet, so maybe this is it. this has been a struggle for them. >> it certainly has, chuck. this is a crisis that has tested president trump in a way that he has never really been tested before. the old playbook he's used on

previous challenges simply doesn't work here. he can't tweet it away. he can't claim it's being fabricated by critics or political opponents to hurt him. he can't distract people in the hope it goes away. this is a moment that requires technocratic competence and a willingness to rely on expertise even when it goes against your short-term political interests. to put it mildly, those are two things president trump is not known for. you're right, chuck, the markets seem to react better to this press conference than the president's oval office address on wednesday which caused more panic and caused the worst stock market crash since 1987. there's a look way to go. public health specialists expect this to get worse before it gets better. this is life and death. there will be political impacts. we're in an election year. a lot is riding on this. >> it's going to leave a mark and take a while to see whether

the mark is left. it's a mixed message when we're telling people generally, dr. fauci, all these people are saying, if you come in contact with somebody do this, this and this, when the person, the president of the united states is not doing any of that stuff. >> yeah. look, we only had one president at a time. he was better today than he was on wednesday. we have to hope for continued improvement. i think this is exactly the case you were talking about earlier, he usually benefits from the public and the media's short attention span. usually the daily churn means we aren't talking about the same thing on friday that we were on monday. this is the situation, a public health crisis, economic crisis where we're going to be talking about the same thing for weeks and weeks and weeks and that creates a degree of accountability that he's not used to and not well suited to. >> michael steel, before i get ruth's comments in, i am curious, you've got to be scratching your head. congress spending money in an emergency situation is usually among the easiest bills to make

happen. this one is perplexing to me. >> it looks as though, at least publicly, there is some distance between the president's administration and the negotiators on capitol hill and the president himself. i think congressional republicans are once bitten twice shy when it comes to the president not specifically, publicly verbally endorsing something before they vote for it. >> that clearly is the reason for it. ruth marcus, look, i think the long-term politics of this is all going to depend on how we look as a country after the fact. it does seem as if the president has done some things that he's created metrics and markers for himself that seem to be digging a whole at times. >> dr. fauci has told us it's going to get worse before it gets better. but the president doesn't seem to be really accepting that or really preparing people for that. so he's gone out and

simultaneously told us how magnificent a job he's doing and the administration is doing and, of course, vice president pence spent his opening time explaining what a magnificent job the president had done, at the same time he's declaring a national emergency. i think he would do better for himself, the administration would do better for itself, as much as this is against the president's instincts if he would say, this is hard, we're doing our best, we all need to work together and buckle down. but instead he just has to pat him self on the back and not tell everybody to work together. >> sahill, i feel like the president is getting assists from every other elected official in the country, democratic and republican who i think there would be times they would be wanting to point out these faults in the president's response. i think everybody realizes they're being judged, too, and worried about doing their own job. >> chuck, there's an element of

self-congratulation has been at the heart of every public comment president trump has given on this. he expects people around him to praise him. one of the startling things about this is that, unlike previous crises, the president and the white house is not -- don't seem eager to have congress pass something to get this done. the bush administration during the financial crisis was desperate, eager to get congress to pass something, anything to mitigate this. in this case it seems like house democrats are pushing a little faster and further on this. whereas president trump is making some demands. he was a little fag at the press conference when he said they're not giving us enough. the speculation is that's about the payroll tax cut. the president is credited or blamed when things are mitigated in a crisis or go wrong in a crisis. the fact that he's not trying to get congress to pass anything to help him with this is remarkable. >> it is. and it does tell me in about

three or four months when they have to do the second and third attempts to stimulate the economy, if they can't agree on this simple package, oh, boy, it's going to be some volatile days perhaps in the summer. then again, if that's where we are, it means we've gotten through this virus. sahill, ruth and michael, maybe that will be good news if we're fighting congressional fights. stay clean weekend. stale healthy. we'll be right back. stale healt. we'll be right back. or from the things they love to do? with right at home, it doesn't. right at home's professional team thoughtfully selects caregivers to help with personal care, housekeeping, meals - and most of all, staying engaged - in life. oh, thank you, thank you. you're welcome. are you ready to go? oh, i sure am. we can provide the right care, right at home.

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that's all for to night. sunday a special edition of "meet the press." i'll talk to dr. anthony fauci, get the latest from two governors, other experts from different health care systems to explain to you, a special edition of "meet the press." "the beat with ari melber" starts right now. >> we join you as we report on a health crisis. as the week draws to a close, consider what's changed. when this very week began, coronavirus hadn't been declared a pandemic or national emergency in the u.s. while it was straining life around the world to be sure, it had not fundamentally upended american life yet. tonight we can report, as you know, all those things are changing, the president declaring the u.s. officially