♪ hello from new york. i'm chris hayes. it is midnight here on the east coast and what appears to be the end of a long day and a seeming route for joe biden in those three states that voted today. as we wrap up what i think is fair to say the strangest election day in recent memory, there is of course the global coronavirus pandemic. we as a country currently attempting to slow the rate of infection, to flatten the curve in order to save lives and save the health care system. we are doing that with things like social distancing, closures of schools, dine-ins, restaurants, gyms, bars and in some places like the bay area a almost full shutdown of

everything except for essential goods and services. here on the set tonight, we'll be going to people remotely. amidst all this, today is supposed to be the day where voters in four states went to the polls in the democratic presidential primary. florida, arizona, illinois and ohio. of course ohio governor mike dewine thought it was too dangerous given the pandemic. yesterday he sued to delay the election. a judge denied his request. then the ohio director of health, dr. amy acton, ordered the polls closed anyway, saying she made the decision in order to, quote, avoid the imminent threat with a high probability of widespread exposure to coronavirus with a significant risk of substantial harm to a large number of people in the general population. so we will not have results from ohio tonight. they've extended their deadline till june. we do have, however, arizona, illinois, and florida all plunging ahead with in person voting although it was not without issues which we will talk about. we don't have exit polling tonight due to the social

distancing policies in place since exit polls require in-person interviews. we do have results and a sense of turnout, which is obviously a particularly big issue. going to these latest contests, joe biden led the presidential democratic race with 871 delegates. bernie sanders was in second place with 719. tonight as polls closed in florida, nbc news projected that joe biden will win the democratic primary there by quite a margin. nbc news also projecting biden will win the primary in illinois, and nbc projecting just an hour ago that biden will also win arizona. all three states a clean sweep. and this is how things look at this hour. biden with a total of 1,132 delegates. sanders with 817. take us through what happened in these latest states i'm joined by msnbc political correspondent steve kornacki at the big board. so what do we have tonight, steve? >> yeah, a couple of headlines here. just in terms of the delegates, the story here, ground zero for that is florida.

this massive biden landslide. we certainly expected this was going to happen. this was a terrible state for sanders four years ago. it's an even worse state for him tonight. closed primary, no independents voting here. that hurts him a little bit. heavy senior citizen population. he got destroyed with voters over 65. look at the delegate picture from florida. look at that, 148 for biden. just 33 for sanders. they got a few more they're going to give out. that's where biden's huge delegate haul comes from tonight, from the state of florida. by the way, turnout in florida is up a little bit compared to 2016. and the reason it's up at all is the early voting, the mail-in voting. the same-day there was very sparse today. arizona, the turnout here is up significantly over 2016 already. they're still counting the votes. they're already over the 2016 level. here again, this is a heavy mail-in voting, early voting state. you see joe biden with a double-digit lead.

significantly, the sanders campaign says arizona was their best bet today because they'd been doing well with hispanic voters. the hispanic vote was basically a tie. then there's illinois. the turnout is way down in illinois. this is not a heavy early voting state, not a heavy mail-in state. there's some of that but not a lot. and the same-day vote here was very, very thin. so it's going to be down probably 20% statewide. but biden does win this by 20-plus points. this was basically a two-point state in 2016. it continues to trend. i think this is the most notable trend big picture that i've seen in the primaries here. i'm circling ohio. we didn't get numbers from ohio today. but these are the kinds of states demographically where the general election in 2016 was decided, where donald trump got that margin, that critical margin with non-college white voters that allowed him to beat hillary clinton in the electoral college. and you see that demographic is particularly pronounced in these

states. and what you saw tonight in illinois is what we saw in missouri, in minnesota, and in michigan earlier. massive, i'm talking 30 to 40-point swings here among white voters without college degrees. blue collar white voters here who in 2016 lined up with sanders by double digits, and now tonight biden in illinois won them by 32 points. that, to me, demographically is the single biggest change from '16. we'll see if that translates to something in the general election. but if you're the biden campaign looking to a general election at all, that's got to be the most encouraging demographic finding you've got. >> steve kornacki, thank you. for more on what this means to the two candidates and their delegate counts going forward, i want to bring in david plouffe, campaign manager for the 2008 obama presidential campaign. the architect behind the obama strategy to win that democratic presidential primary. we have checked in with each other numerous times through the arc of this primary including before the votes were cast in new hampshire and way back when, you said once you get a delegate

lead for proportional representation, it's hard to give it up. we now have a very large, substantial delegate lead for joe biden. what's the math look like tonight? >> well, chris, joe biden's the democratic nominee. i mean the delegates he got out of florida tonight was bigger than our lead in the entire primary at this time in '08. he's got a much bigger lead in pledged delegates than hillary clinton had with pledged delegates. the race from a delegate standpoint is over. i think it would be an impossibility for the lead to be diminished at all. it doesn't mean bernie sanders isn't going to take some time. we don't even know when the next primary is going to be. do these primaries in april happen? i'm dubious about that. we'll see. but joe biden now, you know, came back from maybe his last political life to be the democratic nominee, so that's great. they deserve congratulations. but we have a general election in 7 1/2 months, which is one of the most consequential elections in american history. so they have to -- every ounce of thought, every dollar, every

moment has to be to building a general election campaign that can beat trump. i think it's not just delivering what we need to do now to get ourselves through this crisis. what's pretty clear, chris is we're going to be facing an economic catastrophe, and what the american people are going to be looking for, if you're the next president, what are you going to do about that? not just the acute crisis of the moment but how are we going to dig out of this hole? so he's got to get into general election mode right away. he doesn't have a second to lose. >> how do you think you navigate that? you just made an important point. this is a larger lead out of florida than you had back in '08 in a primary you won. and i think also there is a definitiveness here that wasn't quite the case on any one given night outside the south in the hillary clinton/bernie sanders race. i mean partly because of that demographic shift that kornacki is talking about. how do you navigate that if you're the biden camp?

>> well, yeah, because the truth is when you're down to a two-person race, i think you can be a little more confident in making assumptions. >> right. >> and than what steve does with the demographics. there might not be another state bernie sanders wins, but if he does, he's not going to get north of 55. the fact of the matter is if we execute the rest of the primaries and they ran hard campaigns, he's probably going to add to his delegate lead. so i think you need to say, listen, i'll respect bernie sanders' decision, continue to reach out to his supporters. i'd certainly begin to do a lot of work with younger voters with an eye towards the general election, certainly latino voters where i think biden did better tonight in arizona and florida certainly than he did previously. and say, listen, if we're going to have primaries, i'd like to get support, but i need to beat donald trump. this is a burden joe biden and his campaign have right now. they have to beat donald trump. we cannot fool around with this. we don't have time. the general election will be here, assuming we have it, and we've got to make sure we do and we have vote by mail. it's going to be here before we

know it, chris. like the thing you never have enough of in politics is time. they have to get at this right away. they can do it in a respectful way, and that's going to be important. i'm not suggesting that you don't work overtime to earn the support of bernie sanders supporters, hire some of his staff. bernie sanders when he's ready i think will be a powerful, powerful surrogate out there. i thought the way he talked about what we needed to do right now to cushion the blow for people today was enormously powerful. so he'll be a big asset, i think. but my point is it's here. we know who the two candidates are, and there's not a second to lose. >> all right. david plouffe, as always, thank you so much. >> thanks, chris. ohio republican governor mike dewine has been very proactive in his state's handling of the coronavirus. shutting down a number of things including the election earlier than many others. but the confusion and strangeness of it is causing some deep questions for the elections taking place now, primaries going forward and crucially the election in november. here to talk about that, ashley allison, executive vice president which has been pushing

for elections not to be canceled. ashley, let me start with that question. i find myself persuaded by arguments on both sides. you don't want to get into the business of canceling elections. you don't want to do it by fiat on one hand. on the other hand, there was no way to conduct voting today that adhered to the cdc's guidelines. we saw pictures of people standing near each other. we know there was exposure that was happening. why did your group come down on the side of going ahead today? >> well, thanks for having me and thanks to all the voters who did participate either by early voting or absentee ballot or voting by mail or in person today. we weren't telling states how to conduct their election, but what we were saying to election administrators, governors and secretaries of state is that however the -- if the primaries took place today, if they're taking place next week, if they're one of the 25 or so primaries that are going to

happen over the next few months, that they need to make sure a couple of things take place. one, that they do follow the cdc guidance. they have hand sanitizer, they're able to sanitize machines, they keep voters standing a significant distance apart as guided by the cdc. but, two, that they also create more access for voters to vote, whether it be early voting, extending hours, increasing more days, whether it be vote by mail, ensuring that as many voters as possible can have a ballot via mail, or absentee ballot. states can make their own decisions, but whether the primary took place today, the future, or even for the general election, we want to make sure that administrators are putting these procedures in place and informing voters in a reasonable time. >> do you think we should have mandatory universal no excuse absentee balloting, essentially vote by mail everywhere? >> i think vote by mail is an important step.

it's not the whole journey to make sure that all voters have access to vote. vote by mail is a good option, but we also know that usually black and brown voters, those ballots are rejected when they do vote by mail, and black and brown voters usually like to vote in person whether it be early voting or on the day of the election. same with the disability community, making sure that they have access to ballots. vote by mail is not always the most friendly procedure for them to vote by as well as native americans because of the whole p.o. box issue. so vote by mail is a great option. it's not the only option that administrators should take, which includes, we believe, early voting, same-day voting, and extending hours to vote. >> so do you think -- i mean let's fast forward. let's imagine a universe in which we have similar conditions pertaining in november. god, i hope that's not the case, but lord knows what is coming for us. >> me too. >> yes. it makes me slightly nauseous even to pursue the thought experiment, but were that the

case, i mean today when we saw like turnout quite far down in a state like illinois, i just -- it seems like we need something more innovative than what we had today in terms of replicability if we're going to have a big, important, high-stakes election in november under these possible conditions. >> that's right. november is several months away, so there is time to take the necessary actions. the first thing is that congress needs to fund the states to actually be able to implement these procedures. >> right. >> it is very expensive to have online voter registration, one, be set up in states, and, two, make sure that it works, that it doesn't crash. we've seen that happen in states before. first up, congress needs to fund the states to do these steps. then the states need to start acting tomorrow. the first time they go into the office they need to learn from the mistakes or the experience that voters had today and make the steps necessary for their primaries and for the general election. we definitely hope that we are not in this state of pandemic when it comes to november, but

if we are, there are steps that the secretaries of state, governors, and local election administrators can do today to ensure that every voter, every eligible voter who wants to vote can vote and that their vote is actually counted. >> ashley allison, thank you so much for your time. joining me now to help digest this, maya wiley, bill de blasio. careen jean-pierre and sam seder. i wish you were all here sitting next to me, but it's great to have you here virtually. sam, i saw reporter from "the new york times" saying fundamentally when it comes down to what happened to the sanders campaign, particularly in that trajectory between nevada, south carolina, super tuesday and now tonight, was that there's a theory of the politics of this of changing the electorate that fundamentally did not bear out, that he never made inroads with older voters particularly and he just kept making too big a share of the electorate. when you put that math together, you end up with the kind of margins you're seeing.

>> yeah. i mean i think that may have been the case. but i think fundamentally the real answer in my mind to the election is that you see it in the exit polling when people are looking for a candidate almost -- 65% in many states were saying i'm just looking for the person who can win. i think for a long time, the electorate did not have an idea who could win. and i think when all of the candidates essentially that were running in the race ended up coalescing around biden, i think that provided a signal to people. i mean obviously clyburn started it in south carolina, but i think absent buttigieg and klobuchar and starting to create that signifier for the voters, i'm not sure we would be in the same place right now. >> karine, where do you think we are right now in this democratic primary? david plouffe said the math here is essentially insurmountable.

it certainly looks like that to me although i will give this caution. the world as it exists now was unthinkable six weeks ago. i feel so tentative about offering any predictions about what is or is not insurmountable. >> yeah. we're kind of in this black hole, in a space that we've never, ever seen before with no historical context. that's the reality of where we are. but the problem is the math is the math, and this race seems to look to be all but over. and i think one of the reasons i think folks really feel that way is when are we going to have another primary? >> right. >> when is that going to actually happen? and so, you know, we can -- you know, we can ask people to vote, but then there is the -- how do you ask people to vote when you can't be around more than, like, ten people on a line? i mean that is -- it is very difficult to do. so bernie sanders is going to have to make some really difficult decisions. look, i've worked for many campaigns. i've worked for winning

campaigns and losing campaigns. and running is incredibly difficult. and i do believe that we have to give bernie sanders the space to do this. but i do want to touch a little bit on what sam said, which is, look, these are different times. this is a moment in time that we have not seen before. and you saw in exit polling that sanders was actually -- had better favorabilities in polling more than other candidates. he was actually very liked, and his ideas, medicare for all, were very, very popular. this is a time where voters want to beat donald trump, and now you have the coronavirus and they're even more so looking at that contrast, looking for a leader. when you think about joe biden, he's been in the oval office. he's been in the white house. he was obama's number two. so that really resonated with voters, and i do think that played a really big part of this. and i think so in the moment that we're in right now with coronavirus, people are just -- you know, politics are going to

have to take a back seat, and this is not what folks are going to be thinking about is these primaries and how this is going to move forward. >> we should note this is -- i mean there was a primary upset tonight where a challenger -- >> yes, marie newman. >> beat probably the most conservative, i think it's fair to say or one of the most conservative democrats in the caucus, in the chicago suburbs, a son of a congressman, a sort of old product of that southside chicago machine, pro-life as well or anti-abortion, and he was defeated. she ran against him in 2018. she won tonight. so the reason i'm saying that is when you talk about, karine, you know there's not going to be a lot of headspace for primaries, like primaries don't exist just for the presidential election. >> yeah. >> there's all sorts of elections around the country. >> that's so true. good point. >> all up and down, right? there are challengers all over the place. there's a democracy we're running and solving that problem

remains unsolvable, although i'll say this, maya, and i'd like to get your feedback on this. my big fear heading into today with the messy muddiness of ohio, right? very uncharted waters. i was compelled by the argument made by mike dewine and the state public health director. i was compelled by not liking the precedent of canceling the election. the worry for today, to me, was some kind of legitimacy problem. when you see a state when turnout was up in arizona and they're all biden wins, you don't have that same kind of legitimacy worry. >> i think that's true although it's interesting because, you know, one of the things that bernie sanders has is a very committed base of voters who are completely loyal to him because of his positions on important issues like universal health care, like free college. and so for them, they're still raising some concerns

particularly about illinois. but i think you are right that the reality is that in this primary in general, including before today, what we were seeing was record turnout numbers. i mean really important states for democrats like north carolina and virginia, we were seeing 200,000 to 500,000 more voters voting than in 2016. and those aren't the only states, but they're just really good examples. and it's going to be a turnout race in that general election assuming we have an election. but it's critically important to be thinking about that enthusiasm factor, about showing up. it's not just that people want someone who can beat trump. it's that they're very committed to showing up and voting in order to beat trump. and i think that's a very important fact for us all to remember. >> maya, karine, sam, you guys are going to stay with me remotely. coming up, the house passed a coronavirus aid package last week. so why hasn't the senate voted on it? what mitch mcconnell has been up

to instead of voting on it after this. ♪

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there are a million ideas flying around washington about how to deal with what is looking more and more like an unprecedented crisis. but as i speak to you now, the house bill passed late friday that senate republican leader mitch mcconnell ignored and sent the senate home for a long three-day weekend -- that bill, the senate still has not passed. the bill the house passed includes things like free

coronavirus testing, paid sick leave for some workers, paid family leave, increased food assistance, strengthen unemployment insurance among its many provisions. the senate will reportedly vote on the bill tomorrow finally. leader mcconnell said today he's advised republican members who have objections to the house's bill to, quote, and this is an all-timer, gag and vote for it anyway. more on that and what congress plans to do next. i'm joined by congresswoman karen bass who just completed a teletown hall with her constituents focused on the coronavirus. first, is it your expectation and the expectation of the leadership that the senate will indeed pass this tomorrow? >> yes, it is. it's shameful. it should have been passed on sunday. >> let me show you -- you bring that up. i just thought this picture was quite remarkable. mitch mcconnell let the senate go after you guys stayed, and he went to louisville on friday for an investiture ceremony for a former kavanaugh clerk. there's brett kavanaugh, mitch mcconnell at a swearing in ceremony for a new federal

judge. and that was part of the reason they got a three-day weekend and they sat on it for more than 72 hours. do you think that was a good choice by the senate majority leader? >> no. i mean i think one of the reasons why there's so much chaos and confusion and anxiety is because we have not had leadership. we haven't had leadership from the white house. we have watched him lie for 3 1/2 years, and so now how can we really take him seriously, especially because he downplayed this? and i think mcconnell, he abdicated his leadership a long time ago. so what you really have in the country right now is you have speaker pelosi leading the country because the other ones are absent without leave. but i think that now they're beginning to come around. but they should have stayed in session. the minute we passed that bill saturday morning, they should have been there ready to receive it, go through their process so they could have passed it on sunday. that sends the wrong message to the american people. >> you said speaker pelosi is leading the country. >> that's right.

>> you said she was proactive on this. but is the scale of what you all in the house are doing up to the crisis? here's an example. originally i think the draft of the bill had essential universal paid sick leave. that was negotiated down by steve mnuchin. in the white house. employers over 500, employers less than 50. the paid sick leave is starting to like look a disturbingly small piece of the puzzle here, especially when we're talking about giving people 14 days. the much greater problem is there's going to be no work demand for millions and millions of service workers with perhaps months to come. are you thinking big enough? >> oh, no. well, i don't think we thought big enough in that package. but, believe me, we knew that we were preparing another package right on the heels of it. what was most important about the last package was that we got the testing done. that was absolutely critical. but the house is busy at work on the third package, and i do believe that that will be much

bigger. but we should prepare because a point of contention is going to be that the republicans don't want to have paid sick leave at all, and there are many jobs where you don't have sick leave. we don't want people to go into work. we're telling them to stay at home, and then they have no income. so we absolutely need to do this. now, i'm worried that where the president is coming from is that he's going to want to bail out the industries, and some of those industries do need to be bailed out. but if you're going to bail out the airlines, you need to think about the flight attendants, the people that clean the planes, the people that work in the restaurants in the airport as well. so we have to make sure that the next package that we do extends benefits to as wide of a population as possible. >> all right. congresswoman karen bass, thanks for staying up for us. i appreciate it. >> thank you. when we come back, what the future of the presidential election looks like as the global pandemic grows. where we are after this.

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♪(rocky theme music) fifty-six straight, come on! that's it, left trade right trade. come on another trade, i want to see it! more! ♪ 80s-style training montage? yeah. happens all the time. ♪ going into tonight, joe biden had just over a 150 delegate lead over bernie sanders. as of right now with tonight's gains, biden has doubled that lead in delegates. over 300 delegates. those are where the numbers stand. it is of course an extremely strange time to be conducting a national election amidst the coronavirus pandemic, everything in flux. to talk about where things go from here, i want to bring back to the conversation maya wiley,

former counsel new york city mayor bill de blasio, karine jean-pierre, and sam seder. both of the candidates, senator bernie sanders and joe biden gave addresses although again in the strange, surreal world we find ourselves in, not the classic rally in front of a bunch of people. sanders gave an address focused almost exclusively on a coronavirus rescue package. biden too largely on that. take a listen to what they had to say. >> in the midst of this crisis, what i believe we must do is empower medicare to cover all medical bills during this emergency. now, this is not medicare for all. we can't pass that right now. but what this does say is that if you're uninsured, if you are underinsured, if you have high deductibles, if you have high co-payments, if you have out-of-pocket expenses, medicare will cover those expenses. >> it's moments like these we realize we need to put politics aside and work together as americans. the coronavirus doesn't care if

you're a democrat or republican. it will not discriminate based on national origin, race, gender, or your zip code. it will touch people in positions of power as well as the most vulnerable people in our society. we're all in this together. >> you know, part of what's so strange, maya, about this moment among many things is we had a long campaign, a lot of issues people were talking about. we find ourselves in this moment in which the possible future that's spread out before us, a campaign that was going to basically be on this terrain, donald trump is unliked by a big chunk of the population who think he's unfit and terrible, but the economy is pretty good. that was -- that was a year plus of what the campaign was going to be. everyone knew it. even among are -- you know, high growth and low unemployment. we're in a totally different world politically.

what do you think about the messages you're hearing from biden and sanders? >> what's interesting to me is it's been one of the differences between bernie sanders and joe biden for much of the primary, which is bernie sanders is the person who comes forward with a way to get americans health care. >> right. >> that has been central to who he is as an elected leader for decades, and it's been central to his campaign in 2016, and it's still central. and so he's constantly focused on that. he's passionate about it. it's significant to him. and he's constantly thinking about how is that going to get done, how is health care factoring in in this moment. i think what joe biden is doing is he's running a unity campaign. in other words, he's really thinking of this as we're a country deeply divided. we have seen extreme partisanship. we have hate on the rise. we have a president who has stoked it, and i'm the one who's going to be able to bring us together. and i think that has constantly been a distinction in their messages.

i also think that joe biden may be focused on this as a general election, meaning when you start to look at a general election as opposed to a primary, you're not battling as much in the first instance on policy. and americans aren't thinking about policy right now. they're thinking very much about literally how they're going to get through tomorrow. >> right, although that connects to policy, right? >> it does. >> in a weird way, it's like people aren't thinking right now about policy as like i want to look at the policy part of your website. they're thinking about policy in the most urgent, visceral, brutal way, which is can i pay my rent, and can i watch after my kid, and can i do everything in life right now, which is going to be dependent upon government policy? >> it's interesting. in a way, if bernie sanders had started talking about eviction

moratorium, that might have been a little bit more relevant, and i don't mean that the health care coverage is of course extremely relevant, and that's why congress was looking at paid sick days. it's that, you know, right now we're facing a crisis in hospital beds, in ventilators. you know, that's so much of what people are starting to see is, yes, can i even get the test? but if i need a bed or if my loved one needs a bed, are they going to get kicked out of their bed because we have such limited space in icus? we're really in a very, very deep hole right now, and i think people are looking at this. yes, you're right about policy, but they're looking at tomorrow. they're looking at it in a very practical sense. and, you know, i think joe biden is going to have to step up to that moment, and i absolutely agree that bernie sanders was speaking to it in a substantive way. >> sam, everything has changed now, and i think that, you know, i agree with what maya said and i think there's real returns politically to the unity message and the back to normal message and away from this aberrant thing.

it's a different world now. the biden campaign for instance needs to release what their rescue plan is. >> yeah. >> and sanders came out today and said $2 trillion and $2,000 per household and the biden people will do that and work with the democrats. but this stuff is very important suddenly. >> i mean first off, i can't even begin to fathom where we're going to be in a week, never mind seven, eight months from now. but i think, you know, look, there is obviously -- and i think the assessments that we've heard about biden are correct in terms of what the voters are looking for. but no one who is watching us right now is for a moment not going to be enthused about voting against donald trump. and what i worry about is that there is a segment of the population, the same segment that stayed home in 2016 and saw no consequence, and as horrible as this is, and i think it's hard for us to imagine that people could see it that way,

but i think there are still some people who perceive there to be no consequence as to who the president is, that they're going to lose out regardless. and i think joe biden has an opportunity or really -- you know, i was surprised frankly because in the last debate, bernie sanders said, here are the keys. i'm giving you the questions. i'm giving you the answers. you know, come to -- come to us essentially, you know, because this is not about bernie sanders. this is about the people who have been supporting bernie sanders. and i'm not sure that bernie sanders can simply just say, you know, none of the stuff that we've been talking about, we're going to see it all. but we should still support joe biden. i don't know if that works. and i think joe biden has to sort of like head in that direction. i think the unity message is effective, but i think those people were already planning to come out and vote against donald trump.

>> right. maya, karine, sam, i want you to stand by. we're going to have a little update coming up. the coronavirus is now in all 50 states. testing here in the u.s. is still, still lagging. i'll talk to someone who started developing a test for covid-19 weeks ago after this. r this and snoring? no problem. ...and done. so, i'll wake up ready for anything? oh, we've got your back. so, you can really promise better sleep? not promise. prove. don't miss the final days to save up to $900 on select sleep number 360 smart beds. only for a limited time.

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epidemic, having essentially shut down the entire country for much of the past week. while our own testing capacity is finally beginning to scale up, it's still the case we are lagging far, far behind, which makes a lot of things difficult. here to talk more about that, someone who started working on his own test in late february, dr. alex greninger, assistant director of the clinical virology lab at the university of washington medical center. it's great to have you here. thank you for the work you're doing. how are we doing? >> thanks for having me, chris. so we're doing better. i mean a few things have happened in the last couple days. so both roche and hologic got an emergency use authorization from the fda. labcorp and quest are offering tests now. the state public health labs are hitting about 4,000 tests a day. between all that capacity, it does take a little bit of time for those kits to get shipped, for you to verify the performance of those tests and bring them online. but we're doing much better. here in seattle we're still testing about 1,800 specimens a

day, unfortunately making about 150 detections a day of the virus. it's still very pervasive here. >> what is your sense -- in cable news, we tend to be number obsessed, so it's like a metric. here's the delegates. here's the confirmed cases. and i'm as obsessed as anyone. but realistically, we know that's a lagging indicator. when we look at that curve, when you look at that curve which tracks so close to italy, are we seeing a real thing there? are we seeing an actual signal, or are we seeing a measurement issue? >> i think we're seeing both. i think that, you know, one of the problems with this virus is that when you detect a case, it itself is a lagging indicator. it as a long incubation time. it has a long time between when you develop symptoms and between when you seek medical care. so you're detecting transmissions that occurred maybe 2, 2 1/2 weeks ago. so it in itself is a lagging indicator. certainly measurement is a big aspect. you're seeing a lot of cases

in new york, new york state, and city, labs, doing a lot of testing. we're seeing a lot of cases here where we're able to perform a lot of tests as well. i think there's definitely a measurement aspect to this. i think as we continue to have these tests come online in the next coming days, we'll see more and more cases. one of the problems is as you noted, like the exponential growth, no one's supply chain doubles every five to six days. so actually providing these tests is a challenge with the supply chain. >> that's a great point. i saw the chair, i think, of the new york city council health committee today talking about testing being fighting the last war. i sort of get this from the point of care perspective. like if you're the medical system in new york or in seattle or in sort of greater metro seattle, you're worried more about caring for sick people, identifying people, and getting them icu beds and ventilators. but is that true? like how important is testing to the actual fighting of the

epidemic? >> testing is very important from the standpoint it allows us to identify people who have this virus and isolate them, prevent onward transmission of the virus. it allows us to determine, you know, icu beds and ventilators. those are mostly determined symptomatically. but it allows us to protect our health care workers, our first responders. right now for instance when you send a test, you have to wear personal protective equipment around that patient until we've cleared them of that virus. the speed we get that test back is very important to conserve personal protective equipment. so it's really -- you know, it touches on many, many aspects. but i do agree what's most important is access to supportive care, questions about beds, ventilators and protecting our health care labor supply so we continue to provide health care ask that can protect and save lives. >> thank you so much for the work you're doing and thank you for making some time for us. >> thank you.

stick around. more on what congress is doing to prepare for the massive impact coronavirus will have on american life after this.

back for our final time tonight with maya wiley, mayor bill de blasio, karine jean-pierre, and sam seder. host of majority report podcast. just about an hour ago, "the new york times" published a remarkable story, a sort of behind the scenes look. it has a very sort of understated headline. trump slowly enlisting more agencies in the whole of government response to the virus. the details are jaw dropping. there's an on the record quote from the army corps of engineers that says, we stand ready to help but we have not been given a mission yet.

that is after governor andrew cuomo has explicitly asked for their help. in perhaps building out hospital capacity. there are stories for governors asking for masks and not getting a response, getting one-third of the masks they asked for and all the masks were expired. karine, one of the things about the transformation of where we are substantively, policy-wise, politically and the election is i just think it cannot be overstated the degree to which the federal response in the last two months has been an abject failure as bad as anything i've seen in the time i've covered politics. that includes the financial crisis and that includes katrina and the iraq war. this is on a level of incompetence and malfeasance from the president of the united states and the people that he handpicked all the way down, and i feel it is incredibly important, incredibly important that that be a strong message from every democrat up and down the ticket. >> i agree with you wholeheartedly, chris. look, this is the moment that we all have been saying was going to come.

and let's be clear. donald trump has had a lot of failures. they've been his own policymaking. when you think about the migrants at the border, the young kids being separated from their parents, and many other things that have been devastating, this one, this one is just one of those things where he just ignored it for eight weeks. he just ignored it. he didn't care. he had no kind of plan. he disbanded the pandemic -- the white house office that dealt with pandemic that was started under obama, and it is really just abhorrent. and here's the thing. in this moment, voters really -- americans really need consistency, and he has not provided that. one week it's a hoax. another week it's a crisis. then we talk about how somber he is, and then five hours later, he is on twitter attacking democrats, talking about hillary clinton, and talking about tv ratings. so this is something that needs to be called out.

and then there's another underlying thing too which is incredibly important, which is the racism and the xenophobia, the type of language that he uses when he says foreign virus, when he talks about -- >> the chinese virus. >> a chinese virus. that is also problematic. this is the thing that democrats need to make sure they talk about and show the contrast of how much he is not a leader and how much trouble that he's going to get americans in and how much they're going to suffer in the next couple of months because of this virus and this moment that we're in. >> and that's -- you know, sam, you said this before. maya, i want to get your reaction to it, which is everything's changed now. things are changing by the minute. who knows what the election looks like when november comes. but two things to me seem clear. competence and management now as an urgent task for an opposition party to hold accountability for things to happen better, and laying out an ideological vision of how we all take care of each other so this does not descend into a situation in which the people in the bottom of the

social pyramid are ground to absolute dust while the people who have privilege and money and access to social capital and financial capital are able to sort of hunker down and get through it. >> absolutely. look, we don't want to be italy. that's what we're measuring ourselves against and right now we're going in the wrong direction because what we're seeing is a jump in cases. we now for the first time have every state in this country has a case of infection. and the startling thing about that article is that you have the mayor of seattle begging for tents. you have governors who are begging, begging for creating more access to hospital services because what we know now just from looking at italy is that we don't have enough icu beds. we don't have enough equipment, and we may not have enough personnel if it goes in that direction.

and all of that says that donald trump will have blood on his hands if he does not do what he has told the nation he will, which is step up. >> and we have watched him now, sam, and i was going back through my favorite books on the great depression actually, and i was reading back about hoover. and hoover of course has gone down in history as a failure. he's a fascinating guy who actually delivered this incredible humanitarian response in world war i, and was very active from '29 onward. he just thought if he met with enough ceos and he jostled enough american business people, they could solve the problem. and the problem was you needed state capacity, which is what fdr understood. and i've watched donald trump meet with ceos now for two weeks while we get this story that the state capacity we have is not being used. >> yeah. i mean i don't think it's analogous because i think what donald trump has perceived this from the beginning was simply like, you know, poor optics. >> yes.

>> and frankly, you know, i also want to be clear -- and, i know, i think you and i have had a similar conversation like this over the past three or four years. the entire republican party lined up for him. >> absolutely. >> mitch mcconnell took a couple of -- you know, took a day to go to a brett kavanaugh, you know, some type of celebration about one of his judges getting passed, i mean in the midst of trying to pass and deal with this. you had rush limbaugh, who was given the medal of honor, three weeks ago saying this was a hoax. >> yep. >> the president did too. >> they were all on board. thank you all so much. that does it for me. i'm chris hayes. you can find me tomorrow night. i guess it's technically tonight at my normal 8:00 p.m. hour. msnbc's coverage continues after this. (sensei) a live bookkeeper is helping customize

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♪ this morning, we're following two major stories, first, the coronavirus reaches a grim milestone. more than 100 deaths reported in the united states. now, the virus has been confirmed in all 50 states and local leaders are weighing more predictions to keep the vices to spread. >> the former vice president won three major primaries in florida, illinois and arizona. ♪ good morning, ev