♪ hi, everyone it's 4:00 p.m. in the east as americans learned last night that the president has called for the entire nation to shelter in place for at least another 30 days. donald trump managed to muddy the messes with the startling and unfounded accusation against hospital workers, amid an on going outcry from medical professionals across the country for more protective equipment like masks, face shields and gowns. trump last night accusing front line health care workers of fudging the numbers or as trump put it -- doing something, quote, far worse than hoarding with the equipment. even urging reporters to, quote,

look into it. >> something is going on. and you ought to look into it as reporters. where are the masks going? are they going out the back door? we're delivering millions and millions of different products, and all we do is hear that -- can you get some more? i don't think it's hoarding. i think it's worse than hoarding, but check it out. check it out. trump being trump may be so baked into the collective consciousness that despite his below the belt attack on america's undisputed heroes, the trump show rolls on, creating a parallel reality for many americans who woke up today to new warnings that the coronavirus crisis is expected to get worse, all over the country. dr. deborah birx saying this morning on "today show" that 2340 u.s. city is sistered safe and that the death toll we could eventually see in the u.s. may be staggering. >> i think in some of the metro

areas we were late in getting people to follow the 15 day guidelines. i think everyone understands now you can go from 5 to 50 to 500 to 5,000 cases very quickly. we see this in many metropolitan areas. we're very worried about every city in the united states and the potential for this virus to get out of control. we really believe that americans with the right information will stay home. if we do things together well, almost perfectly, we could get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities. >> up to 200,000 deaths in this country if we do everything perfectly. already the u.s. is facing a death toll of nearly 2,800. more than 150,000 confirmed cases in total, that's despite on going testing shortage which makes it difficult to confirm many cases in the first place. new hot spots are emerging in

new orleans, detroit, chicago and well beyond as the number of cases in new york, the united states epicenter surpasses 66,000. with more than 1,200 deaths. and as fear and dread and financial insecurity take hold, "the new york times" is out with some stunning reporting over the weekend about a lost month when the president and his team were caught flat footed on testing and other much-needed containment measures, despite warnings coming in from around the world. the times writes this -- as the deadly virus spread from china with ferocity across the u.s. between late january and early march, large scale testing of people who might have been infected did not happen. because of technical flaws, regulatory hurdles, business as usual bureaucracies and lack of leadership at multiple levels. the result was a lost month when the world's richest country armed with some of the most highly trained scientists and infectious disease specialists squandered its best chance of

containing the virus's spread. instead, americans were left largely blind to the scale of a looming public health catastrophe. that's where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friend. dr. lina wen, former baltimore's health commission, phil rucker and former top state department official rick stangle. dr. wen, let me start with you. please, take us inside what the president and his team had to be looking at to recommend 30 more days of being hunkered down when we know the president was very eager to get the country back to work much sooner than that. >> well, i'm glad in this case that president trump listened to the science and followed the guidance of public health experts, because frankly there is not one public health expert i've spoken to who thinks that releasing the restrictions is a good idea at a time when we have an escalating number of cases,

from front line health care workers are begging for supplies, begging for ventilators, knowing that we are rationing supplies and ultimately patient's lives are on the line. so i'm glad that we're continuing these restrictions, but i also hope that during that time we'll use the time that we're buying wisely in a sense that we have to stabilize our health care system, we have to ramp up testing. look, we can point fingers and look back and say all these things should have been done differently and a lot of things should have been done differently, but now we have a chance to move forward and really about with an urgency that we need. and frankly, looking at this concept of up to 200,000 people dying, even if we act as you were saying perfectly, that's terrifying. and that's why we need to do everything that we can as americans to practice social distancing. the federal government does everything it can in order to produce supplies and really make

sure that we are acting with the urgency and a manner that our country needs at this time. >> i'm so glad you hit on that because that number 200,000, you have to be sort of stripped of any humanity not to feel knocked over by that, to hear them saying that if we're perfect the best case scenario is that 200,000 americans will die? how do we process that? >> and we think about what that means in terms of the number of people who will become infected and the number of family members who are going to be affected by all of this. i mean, the pain and suffering that is coming our way in america i think is just something that we can't fathom right now. but, we also have to recognize that all is not lost at this point, that we can do our part. we can certainly do our part when it comes to preparing our families and talking to our families and doing everything we

can to practice social distancing. but i think we also need the federal government to really step up and say, this is the best case scenario. so, how do we prevent the worst case scenarios from happening, and that includes not forcing hospitals to ration their resources because that will be the most tragic of all if people who could have survived are now dying because we just weren't able to treat all of them in a timely way. >> phil rucker, if you could pick up from dr. wen. last night's rose garden performance from this president -- and i know he views them that way so i think it's fair to call them performances -- was all things trump. there were moments where as dr. wen said it appeared he yielded to the advice of his scientists and medical professionals. i think everyone is happy about that. but there were also flashes of the trumpiest trump, getting into it with a cnn reporter, lashing out and cutting the microphone and really refusing

to accept the premise of a shortage of supplies, which every governor is concerned about. talk about -- take me inside this trump white house at this moment. >> and nicole, to add one more trumpy thing, there was the suggestion although trump didn't clarify what he meant that perhaps local officials and hospitals had been hoarding ppe, the supplies that they so desperately been needing. now the president last night said that he made this decision to delay the goal liuidelines t the end of april on the data that had been presented but as with so many decisions president trump made, it was also about the personal and about the political. our reporting shows that over the last week a number of his political allies, including senator lindsey graham, were privately warning him that if he were to reopen the economy prematurely, he would be responsible in the november election for all the death that follow. and he's thinking first and foremost, of course, about his own political survival in the

election. then he talked about the images he saw from the hospital near where he grew up in queens, his new york neighborhood. and he said he saw body bags being put into these freezer trucks and it seemed to be a moment that really struck him the severity of this crisis because it was personal, because it's the hospital he recognized the place he had been so many times. often times with donald trump it takes that personal element for him to really comprehend the suffering of so many people because he's thinking about personnel for doing something worse than hoarding was his statement last night, governor cuomo responded to that, phil rucker. let's listen to governor cuomo's response and talk about it on the other side. >> for someone to say, well, the warehouse has equipment in it. you should be using that equipment today. that defies the basic concept of planning and the basic operation that we have to have working not just in this state but across

the country. if you are not preparing for the apex and for the high point, you are missing the entire point of the operation. in terms of a suggestion that the ppe equipment is not going to a correct place, i don't know what that means. i don't know what he's trying to say. if he wants to make an accusation, then let him make an accusation. but i don't know what he's trying to say by inference. >> phil rucker? >> yeah. nicole, that was an explanation from the governor about why he is keeping his ventilators in a warehouse. it's not on his part as the president has been insinu e insinuating the last few days. rather he's acting as if he were amazon. you collect all these goods. you put them in a warehouse. you wait until you find out exactly where they're needed and then you can deploy them

efficiently and effectively in emergency situations. that's what he's doing with this equipment. it's not needed today but, of course, the officials all think it's going to be needed ten days from now, two weeks from now, a month from now and that's why he's bringing it into new york and putting it in play. >> dr. wen, can you talk about how quickly this equipment is needed when a city faces a crisis? and why so many ventilators are needed? i've read "the new york times" and "the washington post" that the reason that so many ventilators are needed at once is because people are staying on ventilators for 20 and 30 days, which is not typical with a common flu season. >> that's right. and the federal government's own studies showed that in a case of a moderate outbreak that we will need something on the order of 200,000 intensive care unit beds. the u.s. at any given moment in time only has about 100,000 icu beds. so you can see that the demand for these acute care services

will far outweigh the supply. and so we do need stay alive because at that moment patients are so acutely ill that they cannot breathe on their own. they have to stay on these ventilators, nicole, as you said for multiple weeks in order to get them through that acute period. and i'll just say that the idea of accusing health care workers somehow of hoarding supplies or worse is so insulting. i mean, i wish that president trump would go to hospitals and just see how personal protective equipment are used and how desperate health care workers are, how they're facing their own death potentially and compromising their own family's lives in order to save patients. and today is national doctor's day. and i just want to take a moment and thank not only the doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists all those who put their lives on the line and those who need this equipment desperately.

>> rick, let me bring you in on extraordinary reporting "the new york times." i don't think it's been a week since stephanie grisham warned about journalists doing tiktoks and looking backwards. new york times didn't heed that advice lucky for us because we had a detailed picture of what went wrong. the headline is this the lost month, how a failure to test blinded the u.s. to covid-19. they report this, at the start of that crucial lost month when his government could have rallied the president was distracted by impeachment and dismissive of the threat to the public's health of the nation's economy. by the end of the month, mr. trump claimed the virus was about to dissipate in the u.s., saying, quote, it's going to disappear. one day it's like a miracle. it will disappear. by early march after federal officials finally announced changes to expand testing it was too late. with the early lapses containment was no longer an option. >> nicole, it's an extraordinary piece of reporting. and by 34i reading of it seems

more like six weeks or two months. let's go back and look at the timeline. it was january 11th that the chinese government released the genetic sequencing of the coronavirus. right? that was to everybody. that was to public health care officials. january 26th donald trump said there are 15 cases and it will probably go down to 0. the next day he said it will dissolve like magic. he kept saying that for another month. that gives the message to every public health official, every governor, every mayor not to take this seriously. we saw all the reporting yesterday about the governor of louisiana saying, well, i'm not going to cancel mardi gras. the president of the united states a couple days before said there are 15 cases and they're going to go away. it's really an extraordinary amount of irresponsibility. and when you don't have tests, it's like driving around at night without headlights on your car. and that's what we did for about six weeks. >> uh-huh. you know, rick stengel, there is

this debate going on and i think our viewers are savvy enough to understand where some of those pressure points lie about covering the president or not covering the president, about taking those briefings or not taking them, but the truth is whether you voted for him or not, all of our lives depend on the things he says and does. and i just wonder if you can expand a little bit on this lost month and if you were to sort of put the sound track of those dates on the tv or on a loop, you would hear it's going to disappear like a miracle. you would hear everybody who wants a test can have a test. you would hear him calling reporters nasty. you wouldn't hear him even today acknowledging these mistakes. >> yes. it's a funny and fine line we have to walk. i mean, everybody is cheering on the federal government and wants president trump to succeed in helping us wipe out this disease and making the pandemic as mild as possible and bending the

curve. at the same time, there are things that the president did, that the federal the curve, that probably will spike the curve. i think there are plenty of time afterwards to kind of do a due diligence about what happened and again i take my guidance from governor cuomo today who took the high road in response to the accusations from president trump. we'll have a lot of time to analyze this when it's over. like everybody else, i'm hoping that the federal government gets its act together. again, i want to say, as you've said and he should say much more of, is the extraordinary bravery and heroism of the men and women on the front lines the health care workers. you can't talk about that too much. i wish the president would talk about that more and i wish he would talk about it more with the sense of empathy, not only with the people who are saving lives but the people who are losing lives.

>> dr. wen, let me get you back in on that. i mean, as you pointed out, he did the opposite last night. today is a new day. he's very responsive to media coverage, but when given the opportunity to do what rick stengel just said praise the health care workers he suggested reporters who are not his favorite species on this what do you think the impact, if any, is of the president's words on the mlines, as you so eloq t eloquently said, putting their lives on the line. >> well, i think the people on the front lines are just focussed on doing their job. regardless of what the president may or may not say. certainly doesn't help to hear demoralizing words from anyone, but frankly i think that everyone is focussed on doing their jobs, the people in new york, they're getting overwhelmed. people in other cities, health care workers in other cities are seeing what's happening in new york and getting ready for that

kind of deluge in their own areas, too. and ultimately we know that this is not just about what's happening right now or in a week or two. this is a marathon. and we are barely on mile one. and we are already out of supplies and so many people are getting ill. and so we need to prepare for the long hau in the country to realize and to fully support. >> let me ask you one last question, dr. wen, do you think in 30 days will it be ready to lessen our social distancing requirement? >> i wish i could say yes, but that's not what the epidemiological modelling would show. most models would show to be effective, social distancing should be implemented early, consistently and done for eight weeks, maybe more on the order of ten weeks. that's assuming that we get everything else in place. we have to get our health care system stabilized.

we have to have mass testing so that we know what data we're actually collecting and then we need to see tapering off, not just in one area but in multiple areas across the country for at least 14 days. at that point we can talk about backing off our restrictions, but if we back off too soon then all these sacrifices that people are making now will be in vain. >> dr. leanna wen thank you for spending time with us. we're grateful. everybody else is staying put. when we come back, we go to the world's coronavirus epicenter, it's new york city where hospital has been built in central park, the u.s. navy has sent a floating hospital. the u.s. ns comfort. the grim possibility of a catastrophic number of american fatalities wasn't the only thing donald trump communicated from the rose garden yesterday. we'll show you the president's harsh attacks on members of the white house press corp., pushing him for answers on ventilators and his harsh attacks on democratic governors. we head to london for a live report as hospitals across

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two striking visuals coming out of new york city today. the u.s. navy ship comfort, a floating hospital built for times of war, docking in new york harbor this morning. the comfort is there to ease the strain put on city hospitals by taking care of patients in need of other medical care so the hospitals can devote their resources to covid-19 patients. new york mayor bill de blasio spoke earlier about watching the ship arrive. >> i had this incredible feeling of peace actually that help was finally coming, that we were not alone, feeling the presence of

the united states military here just gave me a sense that things were going to be okay. and just is such a moving sight. the ship is so impressive. it just looming there in our harbor, you know, was like a beacon of hope. >> the last time the u.s. ns comfort was in new york was right after september 11th when it provided meals, showers and support for ground zero first responders. there's tents being erected in central park over the weekend. mount sinai hospital and the humanitarian aid organization samaritans purse set up a temporary field hospital with 68 beds to be up and running by tomorrow. new york state still has the most coronavirus cases in the country by far. with more than 66,000 people infected and the state has just passed a grim and sad milestone its death toll is now over 1,000. joining us now from central park, nbc news correspondent

gabe gutierrez. i live in new york, i live near that park. i have never seen this. take me inside what is happening in central park. >> reporter: hi there, nicole. quite surreal. look around me. this is actually still being constructed this park. constructed by samaritan's purse, just by mount sinai. and this has been going up since over the weekend. and it's going to be 68 hospital beds if we look at this tent right here. pan in there and just show from a distance inside what's going on in there. we were given a tour earlier. ld point out this does not open until tomorrow. but right inside you see those hospital beds. you see critical ventilators that new york authorities have been asking for, they say that they need thousands of ventilators, of course, president trump suggested over the weekend that he wasn't quite sure that they needed quite that many, but new york authorities including the governor, including mayor bill de blasio say this is something they urgently need. now, nicole, we should point out

again just 68 hospital beds here. the usns comfort that you mentioned has about 1,000 beds coming. that is far short of what local authorities say they will need in order to deal with the peak of this crisis. new york governor andrew cuomo has said that this city needs up to 140,000 hospital beds. so, this is a small drop in the bucket. however, it is meant to ease the strain of hospitals like mount sinai and also mount sinai west on the other side of the city. patients will be brought here in order to open up room at those e.r.s over there. but you mentioned the grim milestone today, nicole, 1,000 deaths in new york city. and this is something that local authorities say they expect to get worse over the coming days. that's why they're building this hospital in the most iconic of locations. >> gabe gutierrez, thank you so much for being there for us. phil and rick are both back with me. phil rucker, the scenes in new york, "the new york times"

headline on that story about the hospital elm hurst was accurate about elm hurst becoming increasingly accurate about new york, apocalyptic. >> yeah, it's horrible. frankly to see these scenes and to see the overcrowding and the hospitals and the desperation, but there's also signs of heroism and i don't live in new york, i live in washington. but i've been there many times. i have a lot of friends there who have been posting instagram videos at 7:00 p.m. at night when people open the windows to their apartment buildings and cheer all of the heroes the hospital workers and so forth who are there trying to save lives and keep the city running as everyone else is stuck inside. it's a beautiful thing to see. >> rick stengel, you know, we have seen those images from italy, from china, for so many months, and i think there's a sense it couldn't happen here, but as it happens here, what are your thoughts? >> well, those pictures are so sobering. i live on the other side of the

park right there. and not something we would ever expect to see. it's probably something that hasn't happened since world war i. i do think the incredible heroism of people needs to be -- we need to remind people about it all the time. and of course, your point about what's happened in italy, what's happened elsewhere, what's happening in spain now, we thought it could never happen here. we have the most advanced health care system in the world. we spend more per capita on health care than any country in the world. we spend more as a percentage of gdp than any country in the world. why would this happen? will, we didn't plan well. and you know, one of the things about america, you know, winston churchill said america always does the right thing after doing everything else first like after world war i we disbanded the military. after world war ii we disbanded the military. when we start up, we end strongly. that's the way it works.

>> you know, phil rucker, i'm going to ask you this, just because you cover this white house, this president and his obsessed with polls. new yorkers on leadership. 87% of new yorkers approve of cuomo's handling of the coronavirus outbreak while 41 approve of donald trump's handlings. your thoughts? >> yeah. it just shows two completely divergent ways of handling the crisis. for trump, he's got to look at this as a missed opportunity if he's thinking about it through a political lens, which we know he is. when you see there in cuomo's approval rating number is sort of the same effect you saw for george w. bush in the wake of 9/11, so many americans overwhelmingly approved of his leadership in that crisis and that helped carry him three years later to re-election in 2004. you see the overwhelming majority supporting andrew cuomo and yet for donald trump he remains with half the country not supporting him.

and not believing what he's saying and he's had a really difficult time trying to summon that spirit, that collective energy behind a president that we so often historically have seen at moments of national crisis. >> you know, rick stengel, it's not on us, i think, as citizens of states where he's done battle. i think that whether it was immigration policy and his flirting with putting migrants in sanctuary cities, whether it's his fights in the last ten days with democratic governors. i haven't note nid fights he's had with republican governors. the sense, this divide, and i thought about george w. bush and i thought ai mean, new york cit state, we're not places where you could find a car full of, you know, george w. bush voters, but i do not remember anyone ever blinking or flinching the entire duration of that city, my hometown city now, rebuilding

after 9/11. and i just -- there is no, you know, similar dna that we have seen yet in donald trump and new york city is his hometown. >> yeah. i was thinking back to 9/11, and i have no recollection of george bush politicizing in any way. he always talked to all americans. he always said this was a challenge for all americans. he didn't put it in terms of red and blue. i mean, president trump does politicize it. and he does seem to regard states as red or blue states and they deserve more aid if they support him and his asking for respect and gratitude from the governor's. i don't remember george bush ever asking for gratitude of anything he did around 9/11. and in fact, it's also just -- the kind of spitefulness spites himself, right? americans want to see a president who goes beyond party, right? who doesn't think about red and blue. he would be getting better

ratings about his leadership if he wasn't being partisan and wasn't polite sizing it. but he just doesn't have the -- seem to have the gene to be able to express empathy, the gene to be able to talk about what unites all americans, what a challenge like this does to band the american spirit. he just doesn't have that ability. >> phil rucker and rick stengel, thanks for holding my hand in a block that made we cry. you can see those images of a hospital in central park or a hospital ship pulling up in our harbor without being moved. thank you, guys. after the break, donald trump's rose garden temper tantrum, how he reacted to a journalist merely reading his own words back to him. that's next. next.

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♪ but i have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas just bigger than they're going to be.

i don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. >> you said repeatedly that you think some of the equipment that governors are requesting they don't actually need. you said new york -- >> i didn't say that. >> you said it on sean hannity's fox news. >> why don't you people act -- let me ask you -- why don't you act in a little more positive. it's always trying to get you, get you. and you know why, that's why nobody trusts the media anybody. >> that's why you used to work for the times and now you work for somebody else. look, let me tell you something, be nice. >> mr. president, my question is -- >> don't be threatening. be nice. >> wow. even in the midst of a national crisis, a master class in deflection and projection. unpresidential conduct from the president of the united states. obviously incapable of addressing his own words simply read back to him. >> joining our conversation political strategist steve schmidt and chief public affairs

correspondent kareem jean pierre. >> the term you would use is dereliction of duty. that's what donald trump has been. he has been derelict in his duty since the beginning of this. and the reality is that the amount of misinformation that's come out of his mouth over the course of the last month, month and a half in the end has made this situation immeasurably worse. he displays everyday all of the qualities that you do not want to see in any type of leader in a life and death circumstance. and so, we have an alpha and an omega of leadership virtues on display and in competition against each other in this country. we see the absolutely brilliant leadership of governor andrew cuomo in the city of new york with compassion, with empathy, with knowledge, with facts. somebody who has his hands around the deadly situation, is

delivering tough news honestly. and then you see the 6:00 follies that play out in the briefing room where you see the grievance, the sense of self injury, the selfpity, all of the qualities that are anef fa to to ek nothingfy of american greatness and american heroism which fall throughout our entire history. there has never been a president more mismatched, more outmatched, more not rising to the occasion in a critical moment than donald john trump the middle of this historic crisis. >> i want to -- we could have this conversation for the whole hour and i want to get back to it, but i want to ask you to jump to yamisch there. it is not easy -- the power dynamic and i know this from working at the white house, it hangs over any interaction with the president. a president is always elevated. he's on a podium.

the president -- this white house -- in this white house, the white house and the president control the mic, they literally cut your mic if they don't like a followup going. but yamisch there standing strong. the president insulting her, you used to work for the times not exactly a news organization he has very many nice things to say about. and basically insinuating that he ended up somewhere else. she's a very well regarded, well-respected and important journalist at pbs. just talk about yamisch in this hour covering donald trump. >> so she did exactly what she was supposed to do. she was professional, as she always is. she behaved as a journalist, and she asked the hard question. really the question wasn't all that hard. she was repeating what he had said already, what we know is all on the record. and, you know, i applaud her. i texted her yesterday. i said continue doing the work that you're doing because we need that.

she's actually asking questions that many of us want to know. we want the answers from the president of the united states on key, critical issues during this crisis. we have to remember, this is the president of the united states that's behaving this way. that's talking this way. and the thing about donald trump, nicolle is he wants credit for all of the good things, but he does not want the blame for all of the bad things or the things that go poorly. that's not how this works. this is not the real world that we are living in. this is not celebrity apprentice where he gets to fire dennis rodman. this is right now a global pandemic that is literally killing hundreds of people a day in the united states and he does not know how to behave. joe biden isn't the one that got briefed about this six weeks ago and did nothing. it was donald trump. nancy pelosi wasn't in front of everyone down playing this crisis or lying about this crisis.

it was donald trump. it wasn't yamisch that was saying necessary supplies were not going to the states. it was donald trump. and we have to be honest here. this is one of the greatest failures by our government in our generation. why, nicolle? because donald trump decided to squander it. we were ahead. we could have been ahead of this. but he squandered it by lying, by giving misinformation, and now he cannot deal with the truth which is why he acts out this way. >> so, steve schmidt, karine mentioned nancy pelosi and joe biden were on the receiving ends of attacks by donald trump after 15 hours earlier donald trump admonishing to be nice. so the idea that this has changed him in any way, shape or form is magical, wishful thinking. >> of course, it is. look, it's been said for a long time that the presidency, what it does is it elevates or it exaggerates your character. and so we see all of donald

trump's character deficiencies playing out in a magnified sense the middle of this -- the middle of this crisis. and what you see is someone who is clearly interested in himself, in his re-election and the lack of discipline, the lack of focus just extraordinary to see the american president attacking political foes who attacking the senior democrat in the house to attacking governors who are on the line in the states. it's a ship of fools being run from that white house in a deadly moment. and we remember now the consequences of elections. and we have another election. people will say i think incorrectly that this isn't a moment for politics. it's not a moment for politicization where people use the virus to elevate themselves in our politics, but it's certainly a moment for politics because we understand the deadly consequences of having people that are incompetent, that are

ignorant, that are completely unprepared for decision making. we see his vacillations. we see the misinformation. we see the deadly missteps accumulating now for a month, month and a half and the consequence will be a lot more dead americans than there otherwise would be. when we look at the casualty numbers from coronavirus on the right of the screen, 2874, we're very q numbers that will exceed the 9/11 totals as we get up to around that 3,000 number. then very quickly we'll see all of the totals that exceed the total casualties for the wars in iraq and afghanistan over the last 20 years. we'll see that. when we talk about numbers of 100,000, 200,000, i think it's important to remember we lost 58,000 men in the vietnam war. we lost 400,000 americans in the

second world war. so the scale of the tragedy that we're in the front edge of is really hard to overstate this historic moment. this is the biggest moment that's occurred in this generation. and the government has shown itself completely outmatched by this crisis where we needed bigness. we got smallness across the board and the president i'm sure later today will once again demonstrate that he is simply not up to this at a moral level, at a mental level, and at a basic competency level. >> steve and karine are sticking around. after the break, checking in on our neighbors abroad. a live report from london and the new steps being taken in spain. those stories coming up. those stories coming up.

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news correspondent cal perry. these are some of the most beautiful european capitals and they're haunting images. "the new york times" had some this weekend. i have seen some on twitter and social media of just empty, empty plazas and even more tragic the stories coming out of the hospitals of spain and italy. take me inside what you understand from your reporting. >> you know, it's interesting because you sort of live these moments and watch the news here in europe and you feel like you're witnessing history as it happens. you see the prime minister of italy giving an address to the nation at 11:30 at night telling people that the death toll has crossed 10,000. france today becoming the fourth country around the world to cross 3,000, that very grim number. there is some signs that those extreme measures of keeping people home, those dramatic pictures that our viewers are seeing of empty streets in italy. we're not seeing a flattening of curve in italy and spain but

certainly slowing down of the cases. today, in spain, we saw around 5,000 new cases in italy we saw 4,000 new cases. those numbers have been generally higher. that number 4,000 new cases in italy is the lowest number of new cases we have seen since march 18th. the government is saying not for social sdadistancing but the lockdown measures are working. what you said about the hospital is the conversation here. it's the only evidence we have, this data is the only evidence we have of what is about to hit the united states in full. we're seeing these health professionals are being hit very hard. we've had 61 front line health care workers killed in italy by the coronavirus. 11 in the last two days. some 5,000 have tested positive for koe vids. in spain, it's worse. 10,000 medical professionals have tested and that number is

up 12,298 have tested positive in spain. it's why the hospitals are getting overwhelmed. it's why six of the provinces in spain are so overwhelmed that the icu units have reached their limit. patients in france and italy are being sent to germany. you watch the bbc channel 4, you see president trump and you see governor cuomo and you see this argument about ppe taking place because it's what people in london are worried about. that personal protective equipment is what doctors are calling out for because it's what is cracking these systems. when the doctors are getting sick, it's putting an incredible amount of pressure on the systems. it's what rising the death toll. what is what europe is talking about on daily basis is needing to stay home. not to stop the spread but to keep the health care professionals healthy. >> if you read everything that the world health organization went in and sort of studies after china had bent their

curve. after south korea seemed to avoid disaster and you look at death rates much higher in europe. it would appear if testing is a varab variable. in china they were testing people every two hour. we did not take the china south korea path with daily, sometimes hourly testing. we seem to be more on the european path. what's the thinking there? the w.h.o. started saying testing, testing. they are isolating. if you enter china as a foreigner today, you're going into 14 days of quarantine in a government hotel. that gives you an indication of how dangerous and how deadly this virus is. if the chinese government is quarantining every one that flies into the government for 14 days, you see not only the stress on the health care

facilities but you see how significant that really is. >> it's a conversation we need to keep having. thank you so much for joining us today and spending time with us. next, details on a new stay at home order for washington, d.c. y at home order for washington, d.c. on light, america's oldest lighthouse, has stood strong through every dark hour and bright dawn our country has endured. it has seen the break in the clouds before anyone else. for the past 168 years, we've also stood by you, helping you weather storms like this one, to protect your loved ones. and we'll do it for 168 more. helping you weather storms like this one, i am totally blind. and non-24 can make me show up too early... or too late. or make me feel like i'm not really "there." talk to your doctor, and call 844-234-2424.

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a barn. and hay. lots of hay. you need a tractor built to get every job done right. the kubota l series tractors. news breaking, in just the last few minutes gnaw stay at home ordinaer in the nation's capital. today due to an increasing number of coronavirus cases in d.c. and across the region and the nation, i've issued stay at home order for the district of columbia. this order reenforces my direction to residents to stay at home except to perform essential activities. dchl d.c. shutting down has a special sort of gut punch. >> it is. this is the capital. this is where everything gets move and going.

it's another like wild, wild sign of how donald trump has failed in this moment. his leadership moment, the void he's put out there that mayors and governors have foil in and step in and make these difficult decisions. as you were talking about what's going on globally, he's also failed globally as a leader. he could have led in this moment but he decided not to. when south korea got their first positive case of coronavirus, the u.s. did as well. we got it at the same time. they were able to take this seriously, put public health first and not economic factors and now they are flattening the curve because they did the testing. because they had lockdowns. donald trump wants to be america first and what is that getting us? america first sgegetting the fi leading in numbers of cases and pretty soon the first in turms -- numbers of death. we got to let that sink in.

this is where we now. >> steve, you made the point this is very much a political moment. you and i worked on some political campaigns together. we're being accused of incompetence would have been a death now is the thing we feared now. is that an argument that bernie sanders or joe biden could or should be making? >> it's an essential argument. right now in the middle of the early days of the emergency, there will be time where the political argument can be made but the simple facts are, it doesn't matter, 58% or 68% or 72% say they approve of the president's handle of this crisis. we know because of the things the president said that he wished this away about a month ago when there were 15 cases. he said soon there would be zero. over and over again this was down played, denied it was happening, took none of the steps, none of the precautions,

none of the things that should have been done to prepare the country for the level of emergency that was in front of us. it's not true that none of this is predictable. bill gates has been warning about it for years. the national security council studied it. donald trump defunded the pandemic office in the white house. moved it out of the national security council. we see a response that in the end, there's no way to separate the outcome from the actions that were taken. the outcome result will be many more deadotherwise would have b. the horrible images of this great crisis are not yet before us. soon they will be. it will be the images of refrigerator trucks and other temporary facilities filled with american bodies as the body count climbs into ten digit numbers and higher. we didn't have to be here. this is an epic failure of

executive leadership, of government leadership and the fact that our medical workers in the united states of america and the wealthiest country in the history of the world don't have the proper equipment is truly a scandal for the ages. >> we are out of time nap will have to be the last word. my thanks to you for letting us in your living rooms during this extraordinary time. we'll be here with you every step of the way. we're working on our technical issues. thanks for bearing with us. the white house briefing is scheduled to begin any time. katy tur picks up our coverage of that. welcome to monday. it's "meet the