city, where the number of confirmed cases has skyrocketed past 20,000, the death toll nearing 300 with 88 deaths just yesterday. it was the deadliest day in new york city and the deadliest day in the united states since the outbreak began demanding national attention weeks ago. doctors and nurses describe the human toll of the shortage of ventilators, masks and protective gear. one doctor speaking out from that apocalyptic scene in queens at a hospital that recently lost 13 coronavirus patients in one day. >> from our perspective, everything is not fine. i don't have the support that i need and even just the materials that i need physically to take care of my patients. it's america and we're supposed to be a first world country. what's a little scary now is the patients that we're getting are much sicker. many of the young people who are getting sick don't spoke,

they're healthy, they have no co-morbidities. they're just young, regular people between the ages of 30 and 50 who you would not expect to get this sick. i want people to know that this is bad. people are dying. we don't have the tools that we need in the emergency department and in the hospital to take care of them, and -- and it's really hard. >> the emotion and the warnings from those on the front lines about what this looks like when it gets worse could not be more ominous. at bellevue hospital in downtown manhattan a makeshift morgue has been set up outside the hospital in an abundance of caution at this point. it's a scene familiar to new yorkers from the days and weeks after 9/11. and according to "the new york times," amid a critical shortage of ventilators, new york presbyterian hospital, one of

the city's largest, has begun using one ventilator machine to help multiple patients at a time, a virtually unheard of move according to a hospital spokeswoman. today new york governor andrew cuomo who says he's taken to calling dr. anthony fauci in the middle of the night as the crisis in his state has magnified, said he's scouting new sites for makeshift hospitals, but in his daily press conference which has become must see tv in new york and well beyond, he adds a note of good news. >> the outpouring of support for the people of new york has been so inspiring, not just from new yorkers, i'm telling you from across the country, from across the world. you would be amazed at how many phone calls we get, how many offers of support, how many creative ideas from everyone. it gives me such strength and such inspiration, but i don't

want to sugar coat the situation. the situation is not easy, but easy times don't forge character. it's the tough times that forge character. >> the crisis in the country's coronavirus epicenter is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. nbc news correspondent raheem ma ellis is at bellevue hospital, dr. irwin redletter at columbia university is back, and dr. lena wen who previously served as baltimore health commissioner joins us again as well. take us through what we're just starting to understand which is the toll this is taking on its sickest victims and the men and women, the nurses and doctors taking care of them. >> absolutely, nicolle. it's sad to hear the sound from that doctor saying how much she did not have in order to do her job. look what's happening behind me.

there's a tent. this is a makeshift tent. it is a makeshift morgue that is going up here at bellevue hospital. this is where the medical examiner's office is located, the coroner's office. on the other side of this tent there's another one and on the fence that you see behind there, there are six refrigerated container cars being put up here in the event, the grim event, that there is a surge of covid-19 deaths here in this city. the governor has said we have not seen the peak yet. they don't think that's going to come until another two or three weeks, and they want to be ready because they fear that our hospitals as they are set up right now will not be ready to handle it. they want to be ready with this location. they also want to make certain that these nurses and doctors who are on the front line of this fight, that they have what they need. we hear a lot of talk about ppe, what is that? personal protection equipment. the nurses and the doctors that

you heard just a moment ago in the sound bite that you played said they don't have what they need. fortunately the governor said in his press conference earlier today that we do have enough equipment. the disconnect is getting it from where it is to where it's needed. nicolle? >> take me through another system that's being overwhelmed. if you think about the most vulnerable populations, they're not always people that can get themselves into a car or walk into an emergency room. they're people relying on being able to dial 911 for help, and i understand that system is being overwhelmed as well. >> reporter: it absolutely is, to the point that officials are putting out the word not to call 911 unless you are in dire condition. 911 is designed for people who have been in car accidents, et cetera. if you feel, they say, you might be a victim of that covid-19, that you should go to the emergency room, and that is not the best of things to do because the emergency rooms in many of our cities are already flooded with people there. they're asking people to

maintain a six-foot distance between each other. the folks who are using that 911, often they don't have the name and the phone number of their personal physician in their cell phone to call like some people here in new york. their first point of contact is an emergency room, and what officials are saying now is that's where they've got to go, or to an urgent care office. but please, don't call 911. >> we're very fortunate to have you as a colleague and to have you out there reporting on this important story. thank you for spending some time with us. i'm grateful. stay safe. doctor, let me bring you in. it's impossible to cover this story in terms of statistics, in terms of numbers. these are human beings and you heard the physician there, emergency room doctor there in "the new york times" video report, talking about how young they are, how they don't have

other complicating factors. can you take us through what may have been a misnomer, something we didn't understand yet, that many of the victims were otherwise healthy. >> of course. this is something, every aspect of this was not really expected and it feels like years ago but it was actually last week we were comparing this to the swine flu epidemic in 2009 or sars in 2003, but in actuality we're actually talking about the benchmarks and the point of comparison to the spanish flu of 1918 and none of us were alive to experience that. this is what we have now, a monumentally difficult crisis with this particular pandemic. it's as big as it can get and it's going to get worse. i used to be a pediatric intensive care unit director. you have a death, it would be a tragedy. the idea of having makeshift morgues outside of hospitals and more and more reports of younger

people dying, we're sort of dispedi dispelling a lot of myths now. we thought it was going to be older people with lots of conditions. that's not true. i hope we don't get to the point where studies out of china show that young children who have gotten this disease, at least two deaths reported among children, maybe more. i have no idea yet but a 14-month-old and a 10-year-old. it's also worth remembering, this is not just an urban problem. it's mind boggling to see what's happening in new york city and new orleans and elsewhere. i'm telling you, we're also beginning to see real evidence that this pandemic is affecting rural, isolated areas, small towns in mississippi, arizona, and idaho and so on. i've been speaking to doctors in all these communities. they were already experiencing

problems long before coronavirus with respect to insufficient access to medical care in some of these places. now they're going to get a covid-19 hit that's going to be incomprehensible but a lot more coming and a lot more reason to say we have to keep up public health. >> dr. wen, earlier this week you made some very moving and to me surprising comments about being pregnant yourself. you've written a piece in "the washington post" about it. take me through your piece. >> well, i'm almost 39 weeks pregnant as of the time that we're speaking now and actually i've been thinking a lot about this because health care continues to happen during a pandemic. people continue to get sick. they continue to have chronic medical conditions like pregnancy that they have to seek medical care for. that brings up a lot of unknowns and especially in this time when

there are changing guidelines. every day it seems like new information is coming out. it just is a frightening time. it is a time that prompts a lot of anxieties. i know that with regard to, for example, my own hospital, we've just changed our visitor policies so that no one is allowed to have a visitor except for laboring women, end of life care, and children, which may well change. there are already hospitals in new york as an example that are not allowing any visitors, even during labor and delivery. i think this is just an example of how much uncertainty there is and my heart breaks to think if i could not have my husband or anyone else with me during the delivery, but also how many sacrifices everyone is making at this time, people who cannot have a loved one as they're dying, people having emergency surgery and are terrified, who can't have a loved one with

them. this is unchartered territory and all of us are called upon to make these sacrifices. >> just the comments that we all listened to together at the top of the show from that physician in "the new york times" clip, have you seen a situation -- they described it in the "times" on the front page of their report today as apocalyptic. your thoughts about the emerging scale and magnitude of the crisis in new york city hospitals. >> i'm an emergency physician and i was one of the physicians that treated the victims of the boston marathon bombings. that day will forever stay with me, just the number of patients who were coming in and not knowing what was going to happen, i just can't imagine being in the situation now where every day is like that. what these doctors are describing of not being able to protect themselves and also of rationing care, knowing that patients are dying because we don't have enough supplies,

that's facing new york now and it could well face the rest of our country unless we take the steps now to prepare. we're already weeks behind and we really should not be in this position now. >> rationing care and rationing equipment, let me just ask you, a bipartisan group of former national security officials writes in today's "wall street journal" that the federal government needs to use the defense production act now. how is it possible that we're so many weeks into this with the kind of deaths, with makeshift morgues set up outside of hospitals in new york city and we haven't pushed every lever to make sure that sick americans can get the care and equipment that they need? >> you were asking me how is it possible. i'm presuming that's sort of a rhetorical question. how is it possible that the president of the united states was suggesting that we could be starting to reduce the limitations on movement and sheltering in place by easter, it's a preposterous statement which can't happen. this is a situation that i think

this is a concept that i wanted to share with you. crisis standards of care, which is something we started talking about in the late 2000s when we talk about pandemic planning, which means that -- and really to emphasize what dr. wen was saying, we have a situation where we're already changing the standards of care that we're able to provide because of lack of equipment and also because of a tremendous overburdening of really apocalyptic invasion of our health care system with people with covid. it's not just those people that are going to suffer, it's people trying to come to the hospital because of chest pain or trauma that needs to be treated. they may not have covid but the health care system is getting so squeezed right now, i do worry about the care that those people are going to be able to get for other kinds of emergencies. i have a son who directs an emergency room in new york city. he's told his staff when they

come in at the beginning of their shift, put on their gown, gloves, face mask, and leave it on for the entire shift. they're supposed to be changing these things between patients but we just don't have enough supplies to do that. it's another example of this very severe altering of what we expect in normal times. a lot of it has been put aside as we try to cope with this unimaginable emergency in our health care systems. >> that contradicts and it's in line with what raheem record. the equipment is not making it to the people fighting this virus on the front lines. if your son directs an emergency room where they're leaving on potentially contaminated equipment, what is the answer being given to him for not having enough gowns and masks? >> well, they're just now starting to get some supplies that governor cuomo was talking about and hopefully they'll be able to pull back on some of

those relaxations of standards very, very soon, like today, but we'll see. the supplies are not a matter of supplies that they'll need for the coming months. we're talking about getting supplies that will be used in a few days. we're going to have a continuing cycle of this. we have enough today and tomorrow. will we have enough on saturday? no one has any idea. this is what is so frustrating. by the way, i just want to say a point about the danger to these absolute heros, these doctors, nurses, aides, registrars at icus that are going into what is basically the disease analogy to going into battle, combat battle. that nat gj analogy is not hype. this is what we're asking our health care system to do and we need to thank them sufficiently,

but more importantly, make sure that we get the equipment and supplies that we need. we should have been prepared for this a really long time ago and here we are having to deal with a crisis without the tools. it's just incredibly frustrating. >> dr. wen, i want to ask you about two things that dr. fauci has said in the last i think 12 to 15 hours. one of them is about the virus, determining the timeline for when social distancing measures are no longer necessary, not any arbitrary schedule driven by the economy or politics. the other is that coronavirus could be cyclical. we could beat it back a bit now this year but it will come back year after year. that's a terrifying thought for people sheltering in place, teaching their children things that professional teachers are far more qualified to do or facing unemployment, homelessness or heaven forbid having a family member sick. those are really scary announcements and developments.

can you give some context? >> i think the overall context is that there's a lot that we just don't know and for us to put forward arbitrary deadlines that are not based on fact or science or data just doesn't make sense. so that's the first part, that we need to see what happens, although we are not powerless. we don't have to wait just for things to happen to us. we also know that there are very tangible steps that we can each take in order to reduce the number of deaths, reduce the rate of transmission. we keep talking about flattening the curve and that's what that is. if we can somehow stretch out the rate of transmission so that we don't overburden the health care system all at the same time, we can avoid potentially the catastrophe in new york in other states. we can have enough time to strengthen our health care system, get those supplies, try to reduce the rate of transmission, and that's the reason why these social distancing measures should be

implemented everywhere, not just in places that already are seeing spikes in cases. i think dr. fauci of course is right that we are in this for the long haul. the question is, what is it that we can do right now in order to save lives right now? what can we each do through social distancing which is our best measure in order to reduce the rate of death for everyone here in the u.s. >> dr. lena wen -- go ahead, dr. renlenner. >> listen, when we get a vaccine at some point, when we get some specific medical treatments at some point, i think things will change dramatically. in the meantime, i just want to say that we're going to be learning some very important lessons. we, the whole population. we're going to lose unfortunately 2 million americans who are not going to survive this tragically. but we may be learning some

other things that our children can take away from this that have to do with our ability to ada adapt, to accommodate, to figure out how families can function. we're getting rules from on high but every single one of us, myself, dr. wen, you, we're going to have to each figure out what does that mean for our family. how do we keep our children educated, how do we keep ourselves in a reasonably good mental state in spite of what's going on and we're going to learn some lessons unfortunately the hard way but i'm looking forward to seeing how america adapts and how we become increasingly resilient in this unimaginable tragedy that's upon us as we speak. >> that's worthy of a whole separate hour. i'm going to cash in a rain check to have that conversation in the very near term. it's a really important point, as your number, absolutely terrifying of the numbers of people that we will lose. i know you're very smart and

accomplished but my god, how i wish you could be wrong about losing millions of americans. that's incredibly sobering and chilling. both of you, stay healthy and stay well. thank you for spending some time with us. when we come back, americans out of work, devastating new numbers out today on jobless claims now at record levels but there's good news. help from the federal government is on the way. plus, did the trump administration ignore advice on pandemics from obama and bush era officials back in 2016 and before. looking ahead to 2020, how the white house response is shaping the new campaign. new ads hitting trump hard. stay with us. life isn't a straight line. and sometimes, you can find yourself heading in a new direction. but when you're with fidelity, a partner who makes sure every step is clear, there's nothing to stop you from moving forward. so chantix can help you quit slow turkey. along with support, chantix is proven to help you quit.

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a staggering number from the labor department this morning shows some of the first hard data we're seeing on the immense economic toll being felt by millions of americans due to coronavirus. weekly jobless claims reached an all-time high with more than 3 million people in one week filing for unemployment benefits. this marks the worst week. nothing even close has happened since october of 1982 when 695,000 people filed claims. that was during a recession mostly caused by the government's attempts to control inflation. congress has been working for days on an emergency relief bill to help stem these economic losses and pain. the senate anonymously passed a $2 trillion stimulus package last night. it's the largest in american history, which the house will vote on tomorrow where it's also expected to pass with bipartisan support. the bill includes direct payments to americans, a bailout

fund for businesses, and expanded unemployment benefits. the country now reckoning with this new economic reality. restaurants, bars, hair salons, shops, theaters, all shuttered and workers left wondering how to manage. "the new york times" spoke with several americans now without a job, one an airport worker who was laid off with no warning. quote, she was barely getting by on the $10 an hour she earned at the airport. she has no savings and no idea how she will pay her $688 rent bill on april 1. she hasn't been in the job long enough to qualify for unemployment, and a few places still hiring during the pandemic aren't near bus routes. through all the hurricanes and floods i've never seen anything like this, she said. in the movies i have, but not in real life. joining our conversation from t"the new york times," peter

baker and david lienenhart. all of the president's vacillating and erratic public pronouncements and utterances make a lot more sense in light of the 3.3 million jobless claims that we saw this morning. >> yeah, look, he's looking at an economic collapse. not only is it politically difficult for him, this is the one strong card he was bringing into his re-election campaign, it's also something that has affected many people in a way that even coronavirus hasn't. the coronavirus has affected now tens and tens of thousands of americans. the shutdown so far has affected millions. so of course that tug and -- pull and tug would affect any president trying to find the right balance between lives that are being thrown into turmoil as a result. all the public health experts say this is a short-term pain economically. as bad as it might be you need to go through this in order to make sure you actually get to

the other side on the health care crisis. otherwise you're going to be doing it all over again. you can certainly see the president looking at those numbers today and feeling like this is unsustainable from his point of view. >> david, you make a point that seems to elude the president sometimes that peter baker also just made that the economic recovery is tied to recovery from the pandemic. you write today, whatever happens over the next week or two, the country still has no viable way to start functioning normally again without a huge increase in testing. even if new cases slow, the return of typical activity will cause new outbreaks. this is where i don't understand the pig-headedness on trump's part. if the goal is to turn the switch back on in the economy, there are some models in south korea and china. there was testing every two hours so you could have a clean universe of people to send back into offices or work places. those things don't even seem to be on the table. >> i think that's exactly right,

nicolle. there's a really good chance he's not operating in his own best political interests, even setting apart the interests of the country that he is the leader of. we could be a situation in which we come back too sooner we have people circulating on the world sporadically like we see across much of the south which makes the economic pain as well as the human toll much, much worse. i just don't see any way that there's an easy solution to this. the president seems to be wanting an easy solution and thinking he can will that into being, but it's extremely unlikely that he can. >> you know, peter baker, it's the right point and it's the only logical conclusion. he's going to flip the switch on, it would appear based on the public pronouncements when we watch these briefings, before a point where the isolation has done what it needs to do which is to put out wildfires, not that he's very good at that

either. what is the thinking inside the white house? is it pandemic be damned, we've got to get people back to work? >> look, this is a president as you know who thinks in short-term bursts. he lives for the moment. he's not a long-term thinker so he's been frustrated looking at indicators like the ones that came out today on the jobless claims and he's frustrated and wants to be able to move on. the thing he did by using easter as his target kind of extended it a little further. originally it was a 15-day period which would expire i think at the end of this weekend, early next week. by making it easter he extended it out a little further. the question would be in that period between now and then, are the numbers so dire as some of the experts predict they will be, or is the situation in these hospitals so overwhelming that it will be very hard for him actually to do what he says he wants to do. will he be convinced otherwise by dr. faucis of the world. we'll see but i think that if we

really be peaking in mid april, it will make it much harder. we've already seen a number of governors who are the ones who actually execute these orders including republican governors like larry hogan of maryland say we're moving our return to normal date out even further. they're not listening to the president's easter deadline at this point. you can see why that would have an impact in states that haven't been as aggressive, particularly as david said, in the south and other places where there's been a more lax attitude toward it. >> you know, david, it brings up a very sort of trumpian pattern. he seems very eager to pick regional winners and losers. he's done it with tax policy. he's flirted with doing it around illegal immigration, and now he's talking about opening swaths of the country. i live in new york city now but i've lived in less densely populated areas and what could overwhelm new york city is a very different number per capita than what could overwhelm some of the areas that he seems

almost bullish of opening up ahead of time. what do you make of his approach to opening the country back up? >> i think the real problem here is that in many of the regions that he thinks of as regions more friendly to him, we are earlier in the virus. yes, this is unlikely to be as severe in places like georgia or florida as it is in new york city, but it's still likely to be extremely bad in georgia and florida. if he confuses the when of this virus with the how bad and looks at georgia and florida or other places today and gets the sense that they can start to open up again, i think there's a real chance that it's going to be worse there. we're actually already seeing potentially a leading edge of that which is that the biggest percentage increases in the last several days have been in the south, have been in the very states that are taking this the least seriously. so i am deeply worried that both

the president and the governors there are making the mistake of thinking, oh, we haven't been hard hit by this. the reality is they haven't been hard hit by it yet. >> that's exactly right. peter, david, i read everything you write and report and tweet. it's a pleasure to get to talk to you. i know where to find both of you so i hope you'll come back early and often. >> thanks. after the break, is the trump administration's response to the coronavirus outbreak the worst intelligence failure in our history? life isn't a straight line. and sometimes, you can find yourself heading in a new direction. but when you're with fidelity, a partner who makes sure every step is clear, there's nothing to stop you from moving forward.

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it's a question we've been asking over and over and over, why wasn't the united states better prepared to defend itself against such a deadly virus. new documents revealed by politico show that many of the steps the administration is just taking now could have, should have been taken months ago if only the trump administration hadn't seemingly ignored a step by step guide left for them by the obama administration. from that politico story, quote, the playbook lays out different strategies for policy maker based on the severity of the crisis and shares lessoned gleaned. for instance, one section is devoted to addressing 34 key questions and 21 decisions as soon as there's a credible threat which in the case of the coronavirus would have been early to mid january as it raged in china and as the first u.s.

case was detected on january 20th and calls on officials to move quickly. politico also notes it's unknown if this was just an oversight or deliberate decision to do something different but the recommendations made by the playbook could have been useful. for instance, page 44 asks, is there sufficient personal protective equipment for health care workers who are providing medical care? if yes, who are the triggers to signal exhaustion of supplies? are additional supplies available? if no, should the strategic national stockpile release ppe, that's personal protective equipment, to states. with all that considered it's hard to argue this foreign policy headline that the coronavirus is the worst intelligence failure in u.s. history. joining our conversation now, former rnc chairman michael steele and former democratic senator claire mccaskill. claire mccaskill, i'll start

with you. i was told today there was a lot of time and effort spent into preparing this new white house for the potential. every administration the last three back had prepared for various pandemics. we prepared for the bird flu. the obama administration prepared for ebola and h1n1. take us through in your eyes -- and we've talked about this before -- the scope of the failure. >> well, just look at the department of homeland security, nicolle. i've lost track of how many heads of homeland security we've had, how many are acting. have there been any confirmed in a long time. it seems that this president was focused on preening and being very political from day one. so planning for a pandemic did not factor into this. posturing on immigration was big and that's what he wanted his homeland security department to totally focus on, not on the

actual threat to the homeland, whether it be a pandemic or domestic terrorism. so it is really unbelievable how incompetent not just the president has been here but how the inability of his staff to get his attention and say at the beginning, back in january when the intelligence community were doing their job and it was characterized as a flashing red light, the fact that the people around him have given up trying to make him actually do his job, especially in a moment of crisis, is heartbreaking. >> michael steele, you and i both worked in very senior positions in the republican party when another intelligence failure was on the minds or was of concern to the american people. it was around wmd not being found in iraq and thereat getti the bottom of that. i don't see any appetite, especially with anthony fauci saying that this virus could

come again next year in a cyclical manner to trying to understand what went wrong in this initial response. >> i think the important thing for us to contextualize here is we can't start where we are now. we have to go back to september, october, november, and especially in that period of november and december where there was an inkling that there was something coming along in wuhan, china that was a problem and how that information flowed within the intelligence community to galvanize the evidence. i think to claire's point and yours, nicolle, that's how it matters what donald trump thinks and how he reacts to this. the fact that he did not take it seriously in the beginning essentially froze the playing field. so all those smart people in intelligence who are looking at this saying, houston, i think we may have a problem here, and those in the administration saying how do we get this

packaged around all these other things that we've got intelligence looking into, for example, the caravans coming across the border that weren't there, to actually begin to take apart just how problematic and deep this potential problem could go. so the president's response sort of dictates the terms of engagement, and if the president doesn't believe in the intelligence and the information that the doctors, the scientists and the smart people are giving him on the front end, you find yourself on the back end playing catchup like we are. >> michael steele, it's such a brilliant point, and you're right, i think people that cover donald trump sort of categorize things as the things he does that are stupid human tricks where no one's really going to get hurt, the places where he's really juggling with fireworks, threatening to fire robert mueller or firing sessions for not recusing, doing things that would seem to endanger his own legal standpoint, but you're

right, this is the first time that people around him had to navigate around him, around an anti-science president, around someone who can't handle bad news to get the president to buy into what we know from this political report were existing plans should he have chosen to deploy them. where do we go now? >> let's take that point and let's encapsulate it in the moment where the world health organization approached the u.s. as it did every other major nation in the world and said, here are some tests to at least begin to figure out what this is and get slightly ahead of it, right? that was shunted, so again, we're going to find ourselves playing catchup. here's the rub on the back end, nicolle. the president has set an arbitrary date, easter sunday, for all of us to gather in churches and congregate together in a time when governors are saying timeout, no, we're not.

no, we ain't doing that. schools aren't going to be back in session. we're not even going to look at schools starting up again until april 27th for heaven's sakes. so the reality now is going to hit the president around the timeline he's put in place and the reality of the timelines of governor hogan and governor inslee and governor cuomo and other governors around the nation who are dealing with this real time and a magnitude far beyond where the president thinks this country currently is, let alone where it will be in two and a half weeks. 12k3w >> claire, with all this stipulated and beyond debate, what do you chalk up the uptick in the president's approval ratings to? >> well, i think every time there's a crisis in our country, the american people want to support the president. i mean, you can look at your old boss. i think his approval ratings got up to 82% at one point. you would probably remember it.

maybe even higher after 9/11. so there's always, i believe, going to be some kind of bump. the fact that his bump is modest speaks to the fact that most americans know that about half the time at least he's not telling the truth, that he has not told the truth about this crisis in many important ways, and i think that it is really just a function of everyone wanting the president to do better and wanting to be supportive. i do think it's remarkable we got a 96-0 vote on the stimulus and it looks like it's going to go through the house fairly easily. so there is a time when people set aside their partisanship and want to support everyone in this country. unfortunately, the president is not really rising to the occasion. he may have had a bump but he's not enjoying the kind of approval that traditionally

presidents would have when responding to any kind of crisis. >> that's a great point. claire mccaskill in her fabulous kitchen. michael steele in his very distinguished office are staying put. after the break it's a popular new technique in anti-trump advertising. just let him do the talking. life isn't a straight line. and sometimes, you can find yourself heading in a new direction. but when you're with fidelity, a partner who makes sure every step is clear,

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we have it totally under control. it's one person coming in from china. one day it's like a miracle. it will disappear. when you have 15 people and within a couple of people it's going to be down to close to zero, we really think we've done a great job in keeping it down to a minimum. i like this stuff, i really get it. people are surprised i understand it. no, i don't take responsibility at all. >> donald trump's re-election campaign is sending out cease and desist letters to local tv stations threatening legal action if they continue to run that ad that we just aired for you. it's paid for by a left-leaning political action committee. the trump campaign says the audio is manipulated and that trump never called the virus itself a hoax. in response, priorities usa says they're going to expand their ad buy. no matter who his campaign threatens to sue, donald trump's handling of the pandemic has undoubtedly become the campaign

issue. joe biden's campaign has a new ad that's nearly two minutes long playing trump's initial efforts to downplay the virus and his attacks on the media. claire mccaskill, i have long wrestled with this question of how much of trump to show in covering him. but this is an instance where trump makes the own case against himself by talking about the media, by attacking who ask questions on everyone's mind, by putting out information that contradicts the things that tony fauci says sometimes from the same briefing. what do you make of it as a political ad. >> first of all, it's an effective political ad, the best ads are ads where the person is actually speaking and makes the point for themselves. nobody is manipulating his voice there. that's what he said. now, the cease and desist orders, nicole, as you well know, what a joke. i mean, the fact that he is

paying someone to make these threats, what a chump he is. he thinks he's some brilliant business guy. he's wasting money of his campaign or his own money hiring lawyers because you and i both know the cease and desist orders. in fact, they could sell them for what we're in short supply of right now. it is silly that he thinks he can get that ad taken down. i think you're going to see a lot more of that kind of advertising as this cycle goes on because trump said these things. he did these things. and it is -- he is probably the most powerful case that joe biden has in terms of his campaign for president. >> you know, michael steele, go ahead. >> i was going to say, can i just add a slight caveat to that. i agree with claire's analysis of the impact of the ad itself and how it plays politically.

but i'm also concerned about a back end of all of this at this time. it's about this time, not the longer stretch to november. right now my sense is there is a growing anxiety out there in the populous about what all of this means. and i don't think the public is really in a space of mind to play politics right now. they've lost their jobs. they've had to shut their business or they fired someone. so i'm a little bit concerned about the other side, the backlash in the public's mind that these types of ads running now could potentially represent. not that it's going to benefit trump one way or the other. what i'm saying is that the political side of this narrative, while important, is not necessarily at this moment, i don't think, and that we need to be more concerned about how the country is consuming

information, processing that information and then what they feel about the system itself. to our government officials, et cetera. >> let me push back gently and respectfully. let me jump in and ask you michael steele. is there any space left not polluted by politics? donald trump uses the briefings, there was a stunningly revealing and alarming piece about how they have replaced the maga rallies. is there any space left as people that cover trump and watch trump, he hasn't contaminated with his political objectives? >> i don't disagree with that. i think that's exactly right. that's the rub here. it's always been the rub with donald trump. it's something that we always continue to fall into that trap with him. that he doesn't send -- i

referred to these pressers as coronavirus press rallies, because you're absolutely right, he gets in the front end of that and he's going after the press. then the vice president comes on and delivers the sobering important information. that's the part that we need to focus on. you're right, there is that trap there. but what i'm noticing and what i think pushes this for me is what myself and others are seeing out there in the country is a growing anger. i don't think we fully appreciate nor really understand what is animating that anger. it does have a boiling temperature to it. it does have a boiling point to it. i don't want it to be stimulated unnecessarily by something more political because there's a disassociation with trump. they don't look at trump the way they look at that ad. you know what i'm saying? it's not about supporting trump or not supporting him. it's how people are looking at

it. that's my only concern given where people are in their lives right now. we can do the politics later and we can be better than trump at not doing it now. >> claire? >> i'm not -- listen, i get the point. as i said before, i think our country wants there to be unification and it wants us to try to get along and get through this crisis. but i think it would be a big mistake to stand by and watch him wear campaign garb to meetings at the cdc, watch him have a town hall in the coronavirus and call joe biden names. i think it is a mistake to give the field to a guy who cannot find anything, he's not willing to try to score political points on. i think we have to stand up to that and make sure that the american people are reminded what the facts are here. >> right. >> i mean, we have people in

emergency rooms today in america, the wealthiest country in the world that cannot stay safe because the president has refused to do what he needs to do to give them the protection they need on the frontlines. watching what's happening in new york, i have a daughter and her husband who live in new york. facetiming with her for a mother is so hard because she's scared to death. and the notion that this is going on in new york and he is not doing what is necessary to get the supplies out there, i think it's important that people be reminded his failures and how he deminimized, minimized what this was and didn't rise to the occasion and get the protection out there for health care workers. >> no one is going anywhere. quick break for us. we'll be right back. heading in a new direction. but when you're with fidelity,

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we're back. one of the benefits of making tv these days is a lot of people have time to watch. you might otherwise be busy. former national security adviser to president obama, susan rice tweet thd ten minutes ago. nicolle wallace, please qualify. the pandemic crisis was not an intelligence failure. it is plainly a leadership failure. it is plainly the -- the intelligence community provided timely strategic and tactical warnings, you can't blame the intelligence community for trump's refusal to address this crisis promptly and effectively. thank you, susan rice for weighing in. thank you michael steele, claire mccaskill for spending time with us. most of all, thanks to you for letting us into your homes and watching the day's events with us. mtp daily with my colleague chuck todd starts right now. > ♪ ♪ ♪