"mercy" already arrived in los angeles as of today. we just spoke with its commanding officer. the "usns comfort" will be arriving in new york city we believe by monday. that does it for us tonight. we will see you again on monday. be well. hello and a good saturday to you. welcome to msnbc's special coverage of the coronavirus. i'm richard lui in new york at 30 rockefeller center. president trump says he is now considering a federally mandated quarantine of new york, new jersey, and connecticut. this has cases of the coronavirus in the united states still setting daily records as of this hour. across the country, more than 110,000 cases are confirmed. the virus has killed more than 1,900 people. the president is now weighing up whether to place new york and

new jersey and connecticut areas on quarantine. >> i am now considering and will make a decision very quickly, very shortly. a quarantine, because it's such a hot area of new york, new jersey, and connecticut. we'll be announcing that one way or the other fairly soon. >> now, new york and new jersey governors, they're saying they were not aware of such plans that the president discussed. just hours ago, the usns comfort just set sail for new york city to provide 1,000 hospital beds to the tri-state area. covid-19 has claimed more lives in the city than homicides did all of last year. on the way to help, $2 billion in government aid in the coming weeks. michigan is the latest state to receive a disaster declaration by the president. and there are now more than 600,000 cases worldwide. italy overnight now reporting

almost 1,000 deaths in just one day as the virus claims over 10,000 lives in that country as of today. joining me now, nbc correspondent alexa litaud in new york city, priscilla live from houston, and calperry in london. alexa, we had the latest briefing from the governor in new york, and what was the headline out of his briefing? >> reporter: hey, richard, the headline out of the briefing is twofold. first, wanting to make sure that people know of the options they're aware of in terms of helping first responders. i'm actually outside of an ems station right now where we've been hearing sirens all day. the governor talking about the resources that he can potentially give first responders in the state. i spoke with a paramedic and a union leader earlier today, and

he talked to me a little bit more about what he was hoping for in terms of support from the state as well as the city. take a listen. we've heard about the volume, the sheer number of calls that emergency services is getting from new yorkers. what happens if that volume of calls -- if the number of calls just continues to increase? >> so, yes, it's unprecedented what we've been getting. if it continues to increase, we're going to have to get some help. the normal call volume for ems on a regular day would be about 3,500 to 4,000. we are now about 40% above that. you know, we're hitting 6,000, 7,000 every night. it means people are going to wait for an ambulance a little. i have a lot of members who are exhausted. they've been working multiple shifts every day. they're not going home to sleep. a lot of them have slept in their cars because they don't want to infect their families. >> what do you say as a first responder to new yorkers who feel concerned? >> these are trying times, and

it's -- it's appropriate to feel concern. but when you call 911, we will be there. >> reporter: there, richard, you just heard him talking about the strain on first responders, again, that governor cuomo also mentioned in his briefing, but also wanting new yorkers to feel as though the emergency services will be there for them and are working as hard as possible to keep new yorkers safe. richard? >> all right. from the epicenter in the united states, let's head over to priscilla. you're in houston. i was looking at the "houston chronicle." the headline reading from the mayor the cases have tripled to over 230 so far. >> reporter: yeah. cases have increased dramatically. in texas overall, you know, around this time last week there were only about 100 cases and now the state has a whole has more than 1,700. a lot of that has to do with just the amount of testing. there's more testing being done, and so, you know, we're hearing

about more of these cases. i actually met up with the mayor earlier today. he was out and about in houston, sort of checking on folks to make sure that they were abiding by the stay at home order that's been put in place in harris county. and so he was out at some of the parks reminding people to spread out, and he said he doesn't mind having to remind people because this is very important. take a listen to what he had to say. >> i know it's hard because we're asking people to change the way that they interact and engage, socially engage, and we're asking them to do it very quickly and abruptly. that's rough. but when you tell people why, people can handle the truth. you just got to tell them the truth. >> reporter: people that i've spoken to here have said they are taking this seriously. i spoke to a couple who is at home with the kids and the dogs, and their parents wanted to bring them some food, and they said, no, do not leave the house. we will pick it up on the curb. no contact whatsoever with even

their parents as they were sort of making some food for the family. and so the mayor says looking ahead to this next week, he's really going to be focused on reminding people. he knows it's tough. they're going into the second week of the stay at home order, but this is what's got to be done. >> priscilla, thanks for that from houston. let's head over to london. cal perry. you know, cal i was just mentioning the numbers coming out of italy. so many comparisons have been made in terms of how bad new york can get. just look at italy. yet another bad day, and they were hoping things were leveling off. >> reporter: yeah, they were hoping that they had depressed that curve, that they had flattened that curve. unfortunately we reached some incredibly grim milestones today across europe. at least 10,000 people now dead. in italy, at least 2,000 people in france. at least 1,000 people dead in the united kingdom where i am from covid-19. the other thing that we're seeing here, if we want to keep looking at europe as perhaps the future that america is going to see, it we're seeing that those

frontline health workers get hit incredibly hard. at least 41 frontline health workers in italy have died. some 5,000, 5,000 health workers in italy have tested positive for covid-19. double that in spain. 10,000, perhaps a quarter of all the health workers in spain now positive for covid-19. that's why we're hearing so much discussion from, for example, the governor of new york state talking about that ppe, that personal protective equipment. more discussion about that is going to be necessary in the future because if these health systems start cracking, richard, obviously people are not going to be able to receive the treatment that they so desperately need. here in the united kingdom, we saw the first world leader that we know of testing positive for covid-19. boris johnson, the prime minister here testing positive yesterday on friday afternoon. he said he has mild symptoms, a cough and a fever. but it gives you an indication of how these governments are starting to be affected. the health secretary here as well in the united kingdom now under isolation. he tested positive as well. so just even from a visual

standpoint, what people here are used to seeing every day in those daily briefings, now the leadership is changing because of this virus. so a very grim sort of 24 hours indeed here across the continent, richard. >> we have not reached the apex certainly in so many places around the world, including the united states. alexa, thank you so much. priscilla as well as cal covering the story for us at the top of the hour. let's bring in our panel now. nbc news digital senior white house correspondent shannon pettypiece. pbs white house reporter yamiche alcindor. and former deputy secretary of labor chris lieu. thank you all three. shannon, let's start at the top here. the president today saying he is considering a quarantine in three states. what do we know about that? >> not very much at this point. there's a lot of questions about what specifically the president is thinking, what he is talking about. but the idea seems to be that he wants to stop people moving from new york, which obviously is a

hot spot, to other parts of the country, namely florida is one of the big areas that has seen a lot of new yorkers going down there to get out of the city that's in lockdown and that has become, you know, really ground zero for this pandemic in the u.s. right now. so that's what he is trying to avoid is people in the new york region going to other areas. but the big question is what can he actually do as the president? the broadest authority on quarantining the citizens and a population lies with governors and local mayors, and we have already seen the governor and the mayor in new york city put strict measures in place on where people can go, what people can do, closing business, all those sort of steps. under some laws, public health laws that were expanded under the obama administration following, you know, the situation with ebola, the cdc has the capability to detain someone if they have reason to believe that that person could spread a communicable disease. but that is not detaining

anyone. >> right. >> who could be healthy. that is only infected people. so a lot of questions here we need to answer about the legal aspects here and the practical aspects as well. >> yamiche, what are you hearing on this story? the governors were saying, as i mentioned earlier, they hadn't heard anything, two of them at least. >> that's right. the president sounds like he's very worried about -- new york, which is now the epicenter, going to other states. and the president sounds like he's leaning towards some sort of physical -- he said he wouldn't be using the national guard to do this but it would be an enforceable quarantine. governor cuomo was just on tv and he was very forcefully pushing back on it. he said it would be a federal declaration of law. he also said it would be a civil-war type idea -- you have andrew cuomo making it very clear he's possibly willing to sue the federal government. he said he sued the federal

government for other issues. so it's clear that this is at least one governor saying, i am not going to stand for the federal government to say that my citizens can't physically move around. but the president all week has been talking about this idea of easing restrictions, so it's interesting to see him now talk about actually putting a physical quarantine into new york because what we've seen is a president eager to try to get this economy back rolling, ta talking about this week, we'd see the churches packed by easter sunday. it's still unclear what the president is actually thinking of doing. >> chris, building off what we heard from shannon as well as yamiche, what was this like during the obama white house when you were there discussing potential such moves where the federal government would have to work along with state governors to implement in this case quarantines? >> you know, the key is federal/state cooperation right now and the fact that the governor of new york has not been notified about this is

striking. it is not clear that the president has the legal authority to do this. but leaving that aside, this doesn't even make sense from a scientific standpoint because we know that pandemics don't respect orders. we know that we've seen this outbreak in these mid-atlantic states, but in part that's because they've been doing more aggressive testing. and yet we also see significant outbreaks now in places like louisiana, detroit, and florida. so it's probably just a matter of time before this spreads to other areas. in many ways, this is kind of the inconsistent approach that this president is taking. we've gone from a couple weeks ago to saying this is under control, to saying we need to exercise social distancing, now to he wants to open by easter, and then obviously now kind of a big 180, saying we're going to quarantine. so it's not clear what the approach here, but the messaging is all over the place. >> and we may have more messaging today, and we'll wait of course here at msnbc and report the very latest. yamiche alcindor, i apologize

for the technical difficulties there. chris lu, thank you so much. shannon as well. all righty. the internet is making this stay at home crisis more bearable in a way but not without a cost. in hubei province, for instance, china's epicenter, mobile speeds fell by more than a half. in the u.s., download speeds dropped almost 40% in san jose, california, and 24% in new york according to research during the coronavirus outbreak. why? because broadband traffic overall, that's up almost 25% and major internet broadband hogs, they're trying to help by cutting back. netflix, for instance, reduced re resolution, therefore lowering data use. facebook did the same for live video, hopefully trying to save data for essential service needs. the beauty of this is there's a spike in using the net. we can now still work together as you saw in our first segment of our show.

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from just a dollar a day per employee, run your entire business with zoho one. the operating system for business. . there is one weapon crucial to lowering death rates from the coronavirus, and that's testing. "the new york times" compared testing rates as of today. south korea has tested 7 out of

1,000 people, italy 6 out of 1,000. the united states just 2 out of 1,000 so far. but there's some good news to share this saturday. two types of tests getting the green light in just the last two days. one test is a home test. no health care worker involved, so no potential unwanted exposure to the virus, no personal protective equipment needed either. it's about an inch by about three inches in size. it works in minutes and costs a handful of dollars to make. you could get it by amazon or snail mail even and like a pregnancy test, the results show up in front of you right in front of your eyes. similar models were made in the millions during other outbreaks. then friday, the fda approved another out of the hospital test. it can be used in clinics and doctors' offices. it's the size of a toaster roughly with results in as little as five minutes. the manufacturer says it will be pushing them out next week and ramping up delivery to get to 50,000 tests per day. let's bring in dr. david ho, who is working on solutions and

vaccines that can normally take up to five years, now trying to do it in just over a year for covid-19. he is ceo of the aaron diamond aids research center at columbia university. he helped governments battle sars in the early 2000s. dr. ho, thanks for being with us. you and i spoke exactly a week ago, and i first of all wanted to get your thoughts on what has changed in the last week that gives you some inspiration, some hope that we may be finding solutions or getting closer to solutions? >> well, i'm certainly inspired by the scientists around the globe making major efforts to come up with drugs, antibodies or vaccine, and the tremendous dedication is telling me that we ultimately will find a solution. but we have to now do this in a

short period of time in contrast to the usual five to ten year period. we need to get it done in a year, at most two years given the urgency. >> i started talking about tests. you actually have one of those tests there. the okay by the fda, is that good news, or is it great news, and can you show us what one of those tests looks like? >> yes, i can. this is just one of many tests now available that you can prick one's finger and drop one drop of blood and then read the results in approximately 10, 15 minutes to detect whether you have antibodies against covid-19. now, we have to remember that all the testing that's been done so far largely detect the virus,

in particular the viral rna. but this test will look for antibodies. so it will take some time for an infected person to develop the antibodies, typically more than a week. so it serves a different purpose. >> yeah. >> the previous test would detect virus. this would detect immune reaction to the virus. and both are extremely useful in tracking the epidemic and trying to get a clearer picture so we could respond properly. >> more data, more data. dr. ho, we've been hearing the reports of using plasma from those who have recovered from covid-19. will that work, and how does that work if it were to? >> well, obviously recovered patients develop antibodies so they're directed to the virus, and the hope is that you could use plasma which contain the

antibody from convalescent ca s cases. in china, they had collected something like 300 liters of such plasma and administered to 250 infected individuals, but we're actually still waiting for the readout from that experiment. obviously as the surge of patients is occurring, many places in the u.s. are now in the process of trying to collect plasma from convalescing cases and hoping that such an approach could be useful. >> as we look at the evolution, you may have heard the reporting at the top of the hour here. we're looking at italy. we're looking at the cases in the united states. the question is when will we hit that peak, right, that will help us understand a lot as you have been telling me and others so many times. the governor of new york is saying 14 to 21 days before we hit the peak.

would you agree with him in terms of his estimations? >> well, i don't have a clear answer for that. from what i could see, we're still on the upswing of this exponential growth curve, and i don't think he's far off. i hope it's shorter than that, but time will tell. i think we're hoping to see several days of plateau in terms of new infections each day. once we see that, i think we could be sure that the epidemic will gradually come under control and the curve being flattened. >> 15 seconds here, dr. ho. how is you and your team doing in terms of finding a treatment or vaccine? >> well, we're working very hard. but as you know, this is a process that requires time. i think we and other groups have small hits, but they need to be further investigated and further

optimized. >> dr. ho, keep on swinging. we support your team of researchers and you in trying to help us trying to find treatments for covid-19. dr. david ho, appreciate your time. >> thank you, richard. >> all righty. while nearly 2,000 people have died from coronavirus in the u.s., death tolls in some other countries are far lower. can we learn from what they've done? up next, we'll talk to the man who played a critical role in responding to another american disaster about what we could learn from containment models abroad. you're watching msnbc. as a caricature artist, i appreciate what makes each person unique. that's why i like liberty mutual. they get that no two people are alike and customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. almost done. what do you think? i don't see it. only pay for what you need.

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some estimates say one in three americans could get the coronavirus in the end. to avoid such high numbers, some countries have implemented detailed measures. singapore is one of those. when the pandemic started, the government isolated the 100-plus confirmed cases in hospitals, not at home. then they quarantined the

3,000-plus people that may have come in contact with that 100. this was assisted by government detectives tracking many of them down. this step seriously putting into question civil liberties many americans hold dear. singapore also would call those who had more fleeting encounters with those confirmed cases. they'd call them for 14 days in a row to see how they're doing. when you pick up the phone, don't lie. you could go to jail for six months. you could get fined $10,000 as well. singapore's process has resulted in a death rate of 1 in 350 cases according to johns hopkins. the u.s. >> reporter: only some states have stay at home orders, one person has died for every 60 cases. let's bring in retired lieutenant general russel honore, who also served as joint task force commander during hurricane katrina. lieutenant general honore is in baton rouge, louisiana. the state is on track to become the next epicenter of the virus. general, thanks for joining us.

before we get to the singapore model, i want to get to what's happening in louisiana right now. the governor saying that right now, on a per capita basis, louisiana has the second highest death rate. how are things going on there in the state? >> well, the numbers speak for themselves, and we are still climbing. you know, we keep talking about hitting this peak and start to level the bubble off. well, we're still climbing, and i think it's going to get worse before it get better. and our governor has been very articulate in making sure the president and all know the federal help they need. the mayor of new orleans have been repetitively on television and sending messages that they're going to need help because all of the numerations show that it's going to get worse before it gets better, and they don't have the capacity to deal with that worst-case scenario as it plays out. >> i was mentioning what other countries are doing right now.

would singapore's process work at all here in the united states? >> i think it would have a month ago or 40 days ago, but i think we're past that now. you know, there's some talk of looking at a quarantine. my advice to the president is very damn clear. don't give an order you can't enforce. in that case, that would be very hard to enforce. right now once you quarantine a place -- i had an experience with this with a parish president in katrina who said his parish was contaminated and quarantined. the next day he ordered workers in there to go in there and get the powder grid on. guess what happened. the workers wouldn't go because the parish president said the parish should be quarantined. that quarantine word takes all the connotation that would go

way beyond this incident, and knowing that northeast corridor that he's talking about -- and many people have spoken to this and will speak to it. you've got people who work in one state and live in another state. you will absolutely shut the economy down from the hotel people that open the doors to the people who run the trains. many of them live in other states. that model will not work. if it would have worked and it does work in isolated cases. you know, we've got an airplane coming in or a ship. we've used a quarantine for contamination very well. the other thing is once governors start to close their borders, we're into a doo-doo show because when one governor closes his border like the governor of florida now don't want people to come in. what happens now with those thousands of -- or hundreds of

thousands of students leaving florida if the governor of alabama and georgia decide to block those interstates, which by the way is against the law. so we will end up with a cascading mess. i wish this word "quarantine" go away quickly. i hope it was just a fleeting thought on the president's mind. but, again, don't give a damn law you can't enforce. >> general, you are probably watching rhode island because i can tell you're sort of hinting towards the ideas of closing borders. rhode island starting today, they're knocking on doors. they're stopping folks that have a new york license plate. they're taking down identities because if you have come from new york or traveled to and fro from new york, you now face potentially if you violate their regulations, either a fine and/or maybe some jail time if you continue to violate their

regulations. what do you make of what rhode island is doing? >> well, i think that is a form of control, but, again, i think that word "quarantine," just remember that once you quarantine a place, you won't have people for years scheduling a vacation in a place that's been quarantined. you will have pilots that will not want to fly through a city that was quarantined. so just watch what you're asking for because i played it out in mental games, and you end up with some results you don't want to see. i think the control measures have been working. it would have been better if we had started earlier, but where we are right now, i think keep all the governors working together. make that control, checking people coming in and reminding them they need to go and self-isolate. i think that's a good move. but to go and make a leap to quarantine, i think, is a big problem when we have some states that still got restaurants open.

>> yeah. >> up until three days ago, florida had people on the beaches. now all of a sudden they want to quarantine. >> yeah. >> what's wrong with that governor? >> general, very quickly here, if we were to release -- and i remember our conversations during hurricane katrina many, many moons ago. and we were watching you take command and control. if we were to release the ragin' cajun one more time, what would you suggest right now in terms of what we should be doing to get control of the processes that need to happen across the country if you could tell us very quickly? >> i would have make sure i've got a general officer with every governor and the adjutant general of that state that can communicate directly back to the white house to get critical supplies where they're needed. i would have at least a two-star with every governor to make sure along with the national guard that we got a lean chain of

command that can assess where the next group of supplies are needed because to stop this, we're going to need supplies and take care of our first responders and get those immediate tests out there. that's what i would do. and i would recreate some more lieutenant general seminole and get them in the field. you saw what the corps of engineers have done in a few days. imagine another 25 or 30 of them out there helping those governors get stuff done. we can get on that side of the -- the physical problem. what we got to fix is the medical problem and medical supplies to take care of our penal to ke people to keep them alive. >> lieutenant general russel honore, thank you so much for your advice and expertise. >> good day, sir. ventilators, ventilators, ventilators. they slow and even stop the coronavirus' march. now how some doctors and nurses are macgyvering a way to battle the shortage of them.

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president trump on friday signed a directive ordering general motors to make ventilators, enacting the defense production act for the first time. he says they will make 100,000 ventilators in 100 days. that still, though, might not be enough. estimates project a potential shortage of over 700,000, and they're expensive, 25,000 to $45,000 each, and that price is rising. yeah, it's frightening because

as the covid-19 virus progresses, more patients cannot breathe. and if allowed to progress, the virus will effectively suffocate patients to death. ventilators slow and even stop that virus' march, though. one key difference with covid patients, they stay on ventilators for 11 to 21 days. normally the average, says new york's governor, is three or four days. this is an icu nurse who posted this how-to online. how to use one ventilator for two, three, or even four people. this wartime macgyver move now being considered for covid by many other doctors as well. there is yet more hope, though. some are looking at retrofitting anesthesia equipment to work as ventilators. dyson and airbus released a new design wednesday to ramp up production as well. and two entrepreneurs formed the ventilator project. they're trying to hack the ventilator gap.

they're talking about converting c-pap machines and using 3-d printers. in just one week they've gathered over 300 volunteers. joining us now, dr. charlene babcock, emergency medicine physician in detroit. thank you for joining us, doctor. and you're also very aware of this macgyvering of ventilators. what's your view? there are some concerns about it, but might that be one of the steps? >> so a league of mine, dr. greg neiman, did a project in 2006 that was published, and we looked at taking one ventilator and ventilating up to four test lungs. we did that because it was around the pandemic, i believe one of the bird flus. we found it was very successful but it was only a feasibility study. but when we found out that people were dying in china, it became important to share that research with other people because i think at this point in time, i think it's going to be very difficult for physicians on

the front line to be looking at four patients all of which are going to die if they don't have a ventilator, and i have one ventilator. >> yeah. >> so how do you decide? do you flip a coin? do you look at a sopa score and figure out who's got the best probability of surviving, or do you go out on a limb and say, look, we haven't tried it in humans. you would never try it in humans. it wouldn't be appropriate because if you have an extra ventilator, you have one per ventilator. >> would you do it, doctor, if push comes to shove? would do you that? would you divide it up to two or three patients? >> so, yes, i would. probably two to start off with because it is new technology in terms of splitting a vent. it hasn't been done before and there's a lot of things that we may not understand yet until we actually do it. but if it was my brother or sister and it was either let them die or have them share a ventilator with somebody else, i'd say what the heck, just try it. i'd rather go out on that limb than let them die. >> those who had loved ones, me included, seeing them go through

that, it's important. you'd go for it. is that all you need, what you have in your hand? >> this is a splitter. we use it for a trach bag. and an adapter. this is the one i used in the video that i launched on march 14th that started this whole cascade. i've been working with several colleagues, and one of them is a gentleman by the name of dr. leonard bunting. and he went to a hardware store and got this pvc copper tubing. this is three-quarter inch t and it works together just fine. >> it's about $2 or $3 right there, right, doctor? two or three bucks maybe? >> obviously you have to disinfect it and make sure it's okay. there's lots of different ways you can, what you described, macgyver a t-tube together. people worry about infection because you're sharing a ventilator with somebody. well, in this configuration here, this is a filter that

supposedly filters bacteria and virus. so in this configuration, you can see this piece here goes to the vent and then these are the expiration ports for the two patients hooked on the same vent. so technically it can work. there is some people doing research with animals that have not been published that have told me it does work in animals. it's going to be the biggest challenge when we actually try it on a patient or two patients. the way i would envision it is you have one patient already on the vent and stable so we know what their parameters are. we know how bad their lungs are. you have another patient also on a vent. you know those parameters. so you want to match them up as best you can so that each patient has similar requirements in terms of the ventilator. >> great to have you. doctor as well as entrepreneur in some ways, dr. charlene babcock, thank you so much. very informative segment there. >> thanks for having me. >> you bet. stimulus checks, you know, they're on the way to most americans, yet some are calling the relief bill a missed opportunity. at outback steakhouse,

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"the washington post" wrote, the just passed stimulus bill is not only a missed opportunity to give american workers the benefits enjoined by those in other wealthy countries, but yet another successful cash grab by corporate interests and the wealthiest in a statement released hours after the signing, the president has already announced intentions to defy the oversight measures in the new law. joining us now, the author of that story, opinion writer at the "washington post" and back with us is senior digital white house report shannon pettypiece. let start with this. as you look at how that decision will be made and at the moment the trump administration saying, oh no, we're not going to allow that or we don't want that, what can congress do? >> there's really not that much they can do. they can hold hearings and do the usual parade of shame and call people up to account, but in and of itself, there's not tons of power here if the president really decides to defy

them. that's really concerning because trump is now claiming he's not going to abide by even the strictures within this plan. you could take the president to court but then what happens? >> as the president is saying that, might there be a change of tune as time goes by? might that be possible as those, especially his voters will be looking at the amount of money going to big business, if you will, compared to every day americans? >> well, what we've gotten from our reporting is the white house is still trying to fully absorb what is in this bill, just as members of congress are. it was an expansive bill. there was a lot of negotiations going on back and forth very quickly. steven mnuchin was very involved in those, heavily involved. he would be the person in the administration that understands that bill better than anyone else, but i think when it comes to the president's understanding of how this money is going to be doled out, what type of

oversight there is, he at one point when pressed by reporters about how will the administration ensure there is oversight and the money is given out properly, he essentially said "i am the oversight," that he personally would be the one overseeing it. this is something that's going to obviously be playing out over months. the money to individuals is going to be going out very quickly, to corporations and companies, that's going to take a bit more time. so there is going to be a lot of i think room for that to shake out and we'll just have to see where it lands. >> kurt, putting on your old oversight hat as we often ask you to do here, why do the democrats let this bill pass then? >> you know, it's like history repeating itself, richard. i was on capitol hill when the last time we went through the tarp and the stimulus during the obama years went through and how much republicans at the time ironically enough were preoccupied with worrying about oversight and waste, fraud and

abuse. remember some of the disastrous ways that money was spent. and here we are again. this is what we see oftentimes with congress, chaos is the best mechanism to help waste, fraud and abuse permeate throughout the government. this time we're going to know, as this crisis and pandemic continues, it's not going to be a short-term thing. they're going to have to go back to the well and pass another type of bailout, stopgap measure to keep the economy going. when that happens, they'll have that cause and effect. they'll see this money didn't go to the workers and the people who need it most and the voters will be incredibly upset about that. and the next time a bailout have required, they'll have those mechanisms in place. >> good point to you, elaine. if there is a fourth bill as discussed is possibly needed, that be discussed, how that was decided, can they put that in the fourth potential bill? >> they can try. as i put it in the article,

democrats operate at something of a disadvantage. they actually care about what happens to us. whereas a lot of republicans seem willing to sacrifice people so that they can give big business a big break. as recently as the day this passed, there were republicans saying that the unemployment benefits were too generous and were trying to, you know, stop the $600, you know, benefit to everybody so that people wouldn't get more or as much as they were earning when they were when they were working. so democrats are operating where they are trying to get something done and the other side is really less than concerned about that. they're more concerned about getting the money to big business and that's a big problem. >> and, quickly, flip side of the coin here not talking about big business, there's the question and the point being made, it those that don't have much that really need the most help during this time. >> right. and this is the thing, it's about expectation management. as the president goes out there and touts this deal, says it

going to save the economy, says it's going to help the american people, says it going to put money in the average working person's pocket, the reality on the ground is going to be a lot different because the money is going to big corporation, going to big business. i think there's going to be a severe political backlash because the president owns this. he's the face of everything. he makes himself the face of everything. so when this doesn't work the way that it should and people are suffering, people can't pay their rent and pay their bills because $1,200 isn't enough to make ends meet in a month, he's going to have to play the political price for it. >> thanks to you all. have a good saturday. we're going to finish with a salute to the new first responders, restaurant workers. waiters at local watering hole and more. they make about $10 an hour or $20,000 a year. now they keep us fed with takeout food orders. there's over 5 million workers, if you count them. remember those who can't go to the restaurant and are at home. they don't have cushions of

cash. are effectively jobless. also these new first responders, grocery store workers, over 2.5 million who must serve dozens of customers face to face each and every day. it's not safe but we need them. what about folks on a bike, in a car, on foot bringing us our breakfast each day, our lunch, our dinners, many of them newcomers to america. their spouses pleading for them to stay home. but knowing these delivery workers are doing something important for home and community, they still do it. so thank you to all the new first responders. that does it for me this hour. thanks for watching. ♪ limu emu & doug

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only have 14 to 21 days, not a significant amount of time. but do everything you can to get ready now. there's an old expression, you go to war with what you have not with what you need. we have been behind this virus from day one. we have been in a reactive posture from day one with this virus. we're waiting to see what the virus does, and then we respond. the virus makes another move and then we respond.