tuesday morning. i'm yasmin vossoughian. "morning joe" starts right now. >> we're very worried about every city in the united states and the potential for this virus to get out of control. if we do things together well, almost perfectly, we could get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities. >> so if we do things almost perfectly, 200,000 americans could still die from the coronavirus. already, the death toll stands at 3,003, more than the number of lives lost on 9/11. >> so we keep getting to these grim milestones, willie. yesterday, more americans had died by the coronavirus than died in the afghanistan war. american troops over, gosh, the past two decades. by the end of today, more people will have died than died from

terrorist attacks on september 11th. you've seen that, as the doctor said yesterday, we can expect it if we do everything right. >> best-care scenario. >> best-case scenario. if we do everything right, then maybe 200,000 americans will die. if we do everything right. that, obviously, is more people than died in world war i and the vietnam war combined. this pandemic that a lot of donald trump supporters are still trying to underplay, that the president, of course, tried to underplay for a very long time, this is not the seasonal flu. it is extraordinarily is that the president's doctors are now admitting that publicly. it appears that the president is still following their advice.

that is really good news. even though we're going to be going through two to three horrible weeks. >> yeah. in a month, joe and mika, of daily, sobering headlines, that one we woke up to yesterday was quite high on the list. dr. deborah birx, who has been pretty sober in analyzing the data, said, yes, 200,000 if we do everything right. we may lose 200,000 americans to coronavirus. as you talk about this in the context of war, joe, if you live in new york city, if you've lived in new york city for a long time, there are images that were just -- will be seared into our minds from yesterday. of the field hospitals going up inside central park, places where we walk our dogs and our kids play. of the u.s.n.s. comfort sailing past the statue of liberty and finding its dock on the west side of manhattan to provide 1,000 more beds for new york city. the jacob javits center where

we've been to boat shows and various events, turned into a massive hospital on it own. of course, the sight that com l compelled the president of the united states to action, those freezer trucks pulled up outside hospitals in queens, not far from where the president grew up, that have bodies being loaded into them because there's not enough room in the morgue of a hospital in queens. these are images that will come to represent this crisis. as we know, mika, the president responds to that kind of a thing. he went out of his way to say, did you see those images? i saw it up the street from where i grew up. he's been compelled in the past in places like syria, when he saw children dying, to take military action. he saw some images through the media that compelled him to take this very, very seriously now and extend that date through april at least. >> mika, you and willie both were in new york city on september 11th, on 9/11. i know for a lot of americans who came in after that, new york city seemed almost to be under a

state of siege. it was -- its routine was broken, and it seemed to be a country on the front lines at war. you look at these images, and look at what new york is going through now. it seems there are parallels with 9/11. >> there are. and then there's some differences. in the weeks and months after 9/11, the ground zero area of the city was really the hot spot that really symbolized the war and the situation we were in. the rest of the city carried on. right now, we're watching new york city get completely stopped in its tracks with not one section of the city that's not impacted. it will be something to see how history looks at the failed response to this pandemic, which had so many warnings so early on. the fact that we are still scrambling on testing, still scrambling on testing at this

point, i can't imagine history will be kind on the presidency and on washington's reaction. >> well, you know, as we get to testing, again, i want to say what i said yesterday. the most important thing, the signal versus the ground noise, is the most important thing is that the president is listening to his science advisers and that he is moving aggressively in that direction. the ground noise, the attacking of the reporters, reporters, we should just ignore that. because he's trying to bait reporters into overreacting. his followers love that. >> it is part of a bigger story. >> but there is some ground noise that he makes in these press conferences, willie, that we have to point out. because it's, as he would say, fake news. there's a health connection to it. when he says that testing is

great, we had a conversation with governors and there's no problem with testing, well, that's a lie. it's not helpful because it sends the wrong message to americans, that we don't need to work harder on tests. we do. there's a story in the "palm beach post" this morning, which is, of course, the home paper of donald trump in mar-a-lago, in a county of 1.4 million people. county of 1.4 million people, only about 2,300 have had tests. i mean, look at it specifically here. so 1.4 million citizens in trump's own tests have been given. there are 330,000 people, according to this "palm beach post" article this morning, 330,000 people, willie, out of a

population of 1.4 million, who are calling, begging for tests. for a president who, several wee weeks ago said, anybody who wants a test can get a test, which that just wasn't true, and is now saying we're not having a problem with testing, we are. that's why all health care officials i've spoken with say, take the number of infections the united states has right now and multiply it by ten. per capita, we're doing worse than anybody in the world in testing people. the undertesting, actually, is still making this country fly blind. i knnoknow there is some good n. abbott labs, other people rushing tests out. 100,000 a week. let's hope that continues. we celebrate that, and we want that to continue. but the president doesn't need to lie about this. when he does lie about testing being perfect, and continues to lie about it, well, that gives

people a false sense of security in the middle of what he has called a war. that's like saying, oh, the nazis, they're not a threat. we're doing great. or the japanese, yeah, they bombed pearl harbor, but everything is going perfect. no, we have to continue to prepare americans and let them know where we're failing. the united states government is still failing in testing. it's ramping up, and that's really good news, but the president doesn't need to lie about how we're doing at war. >> yeah. he opened his briefing yesterday at the white house by showing that device that will provide tests quickly, that laboratories are ramping up and trying to get out there. it's one point. although he's moved with dr. fauci and dr. birx on moving the date to april 30th, when everybody should stay home, he won't concede that point on testing. which is key because we don't know how big the problem is. we can't get our arms around the problem until we have enough tests to test all these people. we're months behind.

all these companies are helping catch up, but there's still a lot of work to do. that story you mentioned, two sources now confirming to nbc news that president trump did, in fact, tell governors on a conference call yesterday, he, quote, hasn't heard about testing in weeks. suggesting the lack of kits nationwide no longer a problem. here is audio obtained by cbs news from a conference call between the white house and the country's governors. >> do you have any system in place that you feel can adequately identify cases and isolate them and contact trace them, or are the capabilities and resources there that is not something that you can do, given what you have? >> yeah, dr. fauci, we are trying to contact tracing, but literally, we are one day away if we don't get any test kits from the cdc, that we wouldn't be able to do testing in montana. we have gone time and time again to the private side of this.

the private market has been telling us it is a national resource, then taking our orders apart. basically, we're getting our orders canceled. that's for ppe, that's for testing supplies, that's for testing equipment. so while we're trying to do all the contact tracing, we don't have adequate tests to necessarily do it. we don't have the ppe along the way. we're not finding markets to be able to do that. along the way, private suppliers. we do have to rely on the national chain of distribution or we're not going to get it. but we are doing our best to try to do exactly that, and like gallatin county would be an example, where we have almost half of our overall state. we are trying to isolate that in the contact tracings, but we don't have enough supplies to do the testing. >> tony, you can answer if you want, but i haven't heard about testing in weeks. we've tested more now than any

nation in the world. we've got things straightened out. we have another one tomorrow, where it is almost instantaneous testing. i haven't heard about testing being a problem. >> that, of course, was preside president trump ending the call, saying he hasn't heard about testing in weeks. governor bullock of montana saying we are one day away from not being able to test. there's not enough test kits, which is a point the president will not concede. >> this is -- this is where his alternative facts and his alternative reality costs lives. i mean, this is a good example of an audio tape that, i think, historians could key in on, to talk about his failed leadership. it's one thing to be caught off guard at the beginning.

he was caught off guard at the beginning. as we said, as i said -- i'll put this on me -- i don't care about what happened in the past. i care about what he does in the future. we can debate the past in the fall in the election. when the president lies yesterday in a call with governors, where you have dr. fauci saying, what do you all need? are you able to do tracing? and a governor articulately explains in detail the crisis they're having in their state. they're always one day away from getting testing, and that the federal government actually crushes their efforts to get testing. and then the president of the united states comes in and he does that sort of rote response. i haven't heard about testing in weeks. we have beautiful testing, blah, blah, blah, blah. >> instantaneous. >> it is just so reckless. the correct answer is, yes, there is a shortfall. we're doing everything we can to bring it up to line.

governor, we're going to make sure that we don't step on you, that the federal government doesn't step on the states. we're excited about abbott labs' five-minute testing. . they're going to have dozens of points across the united states. i mean, that's what a leader would do. in this case, mika, you actually have the president of the united states lying, saying he hasn't heard about testing in weeks. i don't bring this up to be partisan. i bring it up to say, he can't act this way. we are at war. that would be like a general being pinned down against the nazis, you know, as he's moving toward berlin, and calling and saying, we don't have any air support, and headquarters saying, oh, i haven't had anybody complaining for weeks about not having air support. you have beautiful air support. while people are dying on the ground. we can't afford alternative

realities. we can't afford rote political speeches. we can't afford lies. we need action. we need tests, whether you're talking about montana or whether you're talking about president trump's own palm beach county, whether you're talking about new york. this pandemic continues and, yes, we're ramping up on tests. just tell americans that. don't lie. they've all got the receipts. they've all got the video clips. they all know what you say. turn the page completely. you've done it on science when it comes to keeping the united states quarantined, closed down until this is done right. you've got to do it on testing. you've got to do it on ppes. you've got to stop the conspiracy theories about ventilators. stop the conspiracy theories about masks. stop the conspiracy theories

about gloves. there is no black market. there's a lot going on here. there are a lot of shortages. this is -- don't project. nobody is stealing these masks and reselling them on a secondary market, mr. president. that's distracting from the life and death decisions that are being made every day in emergency rooms and, yes, even in governors' mansions. >> let's bring in senior white house reporter for nbc news digital, live from the white house. key points we got out of the president's news conference? it seems we need to go through these, i don't know, 90-minute events, where we have to piece through the ceos who have to suck up to the president and say, thank you for your leadership. we had mypillow, the my pillow guy up yesterday. in terms of real information, what moved this forward? what did we get out of the top scientists or the president that

gave us a sense of where we really stand with this crisis? >> reporter: well, i think a big question that remains, us in the rose garden yesterday were pressing the president on, are these guidelines enough? there's been a lot of talk about testing and supplies, but are we doing enough to slow the spread, to stop the spread of the virus, or do we need additional guidelines in place? one of the questions i asked the president was about a nationwide lockdown. while you do have a lot of states who are putting these stay at home orders, they do vary state by state. there is a wide variety of things that are considered an essential business. for example, some states, hair salons are open, while other states are closing them. they've allowed the states to do things on a piecemeal approach. does there need to be some singular, nationwide, stay at home, shelter in place type of o order? the president said that was something he thought was unlikely, and seemed to suggest that people are staying at home. he mentioned looking down fifth avenue and not seeing any people

there. of course, that's only one place. if you drive out to suburban maryland, you can see plenty of people around. i think that's one issue that we'll keep pressing him on and they may address more. dr. birx suggested there may be additional guidelines coming today. we'll see how expansive or broad they are. the president doesn't seem to have an appetite for a national lockdown. another question is face masks. not only face masks for the doctors treating this, the people infected, but for people to protect themselves. one of the pushbacks on that is there's not the supply. if they are getting the supply ramped up, apparently, allegedly, as they claim, should the public start wearing face masks? on that front, the president did indicate it's something he would be open to. he would be considering, he said, you know, maybe for a short period of time. i could see him in the rose garden making eye contact with dr. fauci, who seemed to be nodding, signaling, yes, it was something that they could be

open to at some point. i think that's another thing that might come out of today, that we could continue to press him on and hear about. >> shannon, obviously, again, there are a lot of distractions. attacking reporters, bringing up my pillow guy who, by the way, we thank him for making 50,000 masks. but bottom line, bottom line, most important part of this story seems to be the president is deferring to his scientists. are you picking that up? you talked about the president shooting a look at dr. fauci on masks. it seems he's been doing that lately, fedepending on his scientists and his doctors more, in a way that actually can save a lot of lives over the coming months. have you been picking that up in your reporting? also, just what you've seen in the briefings. >> reporter: yes, absolutely. i think this past weekend is evidence of that.

so a week ago, the president was taking his leads from economists, from ceos he was hearing from, and those were the ones who were driving him to push to open up the economy, to say this is unsustainable, we can't do that. well, this past weekend, his scientists got to him and presented him these numbers, presented him these models, and made the argument, made the case that we have to extend these guidelines. we cannot open things up back too soon. dr. birx said yesterday that at the briefing today they're going to outline and detail those models a bit more and show the public what exactly they showed the president to change his mind and hope, presumably, of changing the mind of some skeptics, some governors out there who haven't gone as far yet. for now, the president is listening to his scientists. as we've seen in the past, the president is often influenced most by the last person who talked to him. there could always be a shift in that perspective. >> nbc's shannon pettypiece,

thank you very much. willie? meanwhile, the coronavirus death toll in the uk has shot up by nearly 200. even as the country's chief medical expert announced recently implemented social distancing measures are, in fact, working. this happening as prince charles exits his own self-isolation period after he was diagnosed with coronavirus. in london, a 4,000-bed emergency field hospital, the nhs nightingale, preparing to open. let's bring in senior international correspondent keir simmons. he is in london. keir, good morning. good to see you. field hospitals in london, as there are field hospitals in the united states. how is that national lockdown impacting the numbers you all are seeing there? >> reporter: hey, willie. well, the numbers are incredibly difficult to read across europe and in the u.s. that is because of exactly what

joe and mika were talking about in regards to testing. to give you an example, willie, and scientists here described these numbers as utterly unreliable, the pretbritish dea rate is around 2.6% compared to people testing positive for coronavirus. it is nothing like the numbers you're seeing in other countries. the reason for that, there hasn't been enough testing. now, the testing here in the uk is being rolled out, but there are other confusions. like in germany, for example, where there are large numbers of cases and, apparently, low numbers of deaths. in italy, exactly a different story. so testing is absolutely crucial. people are realizing that. what people are understanding, willie, which is kind of stunning, is that if it had been possible, and maybe it wouldn't have been, for a mass testing to take place early on, so that you could trace people with the virus, you wouldn't need this lockdown that you are seeing here now. willie, here in europe,

particularly mainland europe, they are a few weeks ahead of the u.s. what you're seeing now is real te restlessness, particularly in italy, for example. you're seeing companies go under, collapse here in the uk. airlines in serious trouble. so the impact of not being able to test, and there isn't -- there are big questions in the u.s., as well. for example, the cdc attempted to bring out a testing program that was more sophisticated than the world health organization recommended. it didn't work. that was back in february. the states made thaurtheirs, to. testing is more crucial. as i say, people begin to get restless when you lock them down over a long period of time. testing is a way people are realizing we'll get out of this situation. you have to find the people who have the virus, trace who their contacts are, and then you can

begin to control it. willie? >> uk and the u.s. have that in common, joe, playing catchup on the testing. >> keir, what you said about testing, we do have that in common. you're right, if we had robust testing early on, the entire economy wouldn't have had to shut down. let me ask, what is the impact on the psyche of the british people, that prince charles tested positive, boris johnson tested positive, his key adviser tested positive, the health minister tested positive? has that had an impact on the psyche of the british people to under the seriousness of this? also, could you give us a quick update on the well-being of each one of those leaders i mentioned? >> reporter: well, we saw the prime minister, boris johnson, trying to lead the country by recording a message on his phone

from isolation. so that's pretty stunning for people to take in. i think there are so many stunning aspects of this that you can't really put your finger on one that rocks people's psyche. dominic cummings, the adviser, as you mentioned, he's the guy, people say, who was advocating for this herd immunity theory some weeks ago. so there is some irony there in the sense of him testing positive. i think prince charles coming out of isolation is clearly good news. there is good news from europe. these lockdowns, even while there's still painful numbers, still seem to be having an effect. one other thing, joe, what we're seeing around the world, and this is crucial, too, is we're seeing governments, particularly autocratic gorvernments, bring n powers that are unprecedented. in hungary, for example, with orban, you're seeing him bring in emergency powers that include suspending elections. the impact of this coronavirus,

but not just the coronavirus but the mistakes that have been made, the lack of testing is going to be test for years to come. some freedoms may have to be fought for again when this is all over. >> yeah. all right. thank you so much, keir. we greatly appreciate it. mika, as keir was talking about in britain, the lack of testing has led to a lockdown. same thing happened here. every time a bailout comes -- i understand the importance of the bail jouts to help working americans who have been punished because of this -- but you do wonder, when economists and scientists look back at this, whether the united states' abject failure to get testing early on, and its refusal to take the world health organizati organization's test kits and start in january, when the president's intel community was warning him, you wonder if it'll

be a $1 trillion or $2 trillion mistake. we had to shut down the entire economy. >> yup. >> because we didn't have the testing which required us and our leaders to be flying blind and not knowing who was infected, who wasn't. who needed to be isolated, who could remain at work. >> the president ran through blatant warnings. it wasn't, you know, a monday morning quarterbacking, looking back at a report that might have come across his desk. these are blatant warnings from around the world that the president had, that this whoit hou white house had, and decided to wing it. >> what concerns me even more right now, because, again, that was the past and we're worried about misinformation being spread right now, but there actually have even been in the past week some of his media hacks who have been promoting

more bad science, more bad medicine. like having entire segments suggesting that people in middle america are basically immune to this. this is a new york problem. that this is not a problem for middle america. having guests on that sit back and laugh at the thought that people in middle america need to be concerned by the coronavirus. they do need to be concerned. whether you're talking about detroit or louisiana, whether you're talking about other places in middle america, there is a great need for concern there. we're hoping that the distancing is going to make a big difference. for people to still be talking this way is the height of responsibility. rush limbaugh was on yesterday, i read. of course, rush limbaugh was saying this was nothing more than the flu. yesterday, he came back on and said, this is pneumonia times

ten or pneumonia times 20, something like that. no reference to the fact that he had lied to the american people several weeks before and told them there was nothing. i wonder how many people who are infected right now listened to that sort of talk and listened to people saying that it was a media hoax, that they're whipping people into a frenzy and overplaying this to try to get president trump impeached. i wonder how many people are in the hospital today, how many people are infected today because they heard those lies in the media and they believed them. i wonder how many rush limbaugh listens, of the 20 million listeners who listen to him each week, how many people depended on those lies, relied on him, and found out that even he is saying this is pneumonia times ten. >> important question. ahead on "morning joe," speaker of the house, nancy pelosi, is our guest. plus, the iconic jon bon

jovi on his inspiring message amid the outbreak. plus, is china finishing with the virus that started there? we'll go live to beijing for the latest on that country's battle with the pandemic. a moment of humanity during this really tough time. one doctor was pulled over and expecting the burden of a speeding ticket. a state trooper, instead, handed her a lifesaver. n-95 masks. the doctor was originally pulled over in montana for going 15 miles over the speed limit. when state trooper brian schwartz noticed used n-95 masks in her bag, he let her off with a warning and handed her the crucial masks in the process. the gesture moved the doctor to tears, writing in a facebook post, quote, this complete stranger, who owed me nothing, and is more on the front lines than i am, shared his precious masks with me, without my even

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let's do a couple. let's check off a couple of boxes here on some of the ground noise really quickly. the president has been talking about these 300,000 masks that a hospital got. maybe they're putting it on the black market. he doesn't know. it's ridiculous. also obsessed with these 2,000 or 4,000 ventilators in a new jersey warehouse. well, the president himself has said correctly, and others have said correctly, that this is going to peak in the next two weeks. april 15th may be the worst day. so if you're a hospital, and

you're usually using 20,000 masks a day, but now because of the rush, you're using 50,000, 60,000, if you have 300,000, you stockpiled them. if you have the ventilators and know the rush is coming in two weeks, and the surge is coming, overwhelming surge is coming and you'll be beyond capacity, you get the ventilators so they're ready. you can't build them the day that everybody comes into the hospital. this is like attacking a military leader for stockpiling weapons when he knows the battle is coming. or for people in florida, boarding up their homes when the hurricane is three, four, five days offshore. that's one thing that's ridiculous. second thing is, willie, this my pillow guy, everybody was attacking this my pillow guy. here's my thought. if you're going to make 50,000 masks and give them to doctors and nurses on the front lines in new york city, i'm fine with you

going up. you can talk about jesus, mohamed, you can talk about the pittsburgh steelers, you can talk about jon bon jovi if you want to. if you're making 50,000 masks, yeah, go ahead. say whatever you want to say. just get the masks to the people on the front line, and we as americans should salute anybody doing that masks. >> yeah. >> if i had the capability to make 50,000 masks, i'd like to make 50,000 masks. i can't. that guy can. i salute him. >> yeah. i actually had the same thought watching that. is it unconventional and weird? of course it is. it is president trump. that horse left the barn four years ago. but if you're willing to stand up there, whether you're ford or ge or my pillow, and you want to help in this effort, and if mike lindell, the founder of my pillow, takes 75% of his manufacturing capability right

now, god bless him. we can live without the speech and the ceos plugging their companies. but if they're helping and in the fight, the idea you mock those people -- of course, he pops up and you recognize him from the ad. what is the my pillow guy doing here? if he wants to help, i'm all for it. >> by the way, anybody that wants to get up and talk, if you're making ventilators for dying americans, if you're making masks, gloves, gowns for our nurses and doctors on the front line, good for you. i mean, you're helping the cause. we appreciate it. and while we're talking about this, mika, let's very briefly talk about the great collaboration between ford and the uaw, united auto workers. man, they are coming together and doing a great job. gretchen whitmer talked about it yesterday. they're doing a great job making ventilators. that is a success story. we really want to salute the people of ford and the you

flig united auto workers, volunteering their time and doing an incredible job. they're on the front lines. detroit went to war in 1941 and 1942 through 1945. that they're doing it again now, and we salute the workers and ford. >> also, general electric stepping in, as well. >> yeah. we salute general electric for being part of the partnership. >> so china is tightening border controls as the coronavirus outbreak deepens worldwide. the country is now starting to focus on asymptomatic cases, as the virus continues to spark global fear. let's bring in nbc news foreign correspondents mackey frayer in beijing. what can you tell us? >> reporter: borders have been tightening across asia the last couple weeks, and china is effectively barring foreigners, allowing citizens to come back but making them do a mandatory 14-day quarantine. i came back just before the

rules changed. this is my last day of quarantine. it is not a choice here. it is an obligation. it is enforced by law. there have been countries that have started prosecuting people for floating the rules. the real concern here, and in much of asia, is a so-called second wave of infections. the concern is because, until this point, china hasn't been tracking asymptomatic cases. could be thousands of people who could be positive for carrying the virus but aren't showing any symptoms. they're now going to start tracking those people. because as the restrictions are being relaxed here in wuhan, in hubei province, as people start to move around a bit more, as china tries to revive the economy here, those people are going to be moving around the country. they could be as infectious as people who are confirmed cases being treated for the disease.

so that is the concern at this point. it's trying to ensure that they aren't going too quickly and relaxing some of the harsh restrictions that have been in place for two months now because they don't want to have this second wave of infections. if it does happen, we should be looking at the numbers probably toward the end of april. there are a lot of countries around the world, the u.s. included, that have lock downs in place now, that will be looking to the trends in china to see if they might be a sign of things to come. >> hey, it's willie. good to see you. you've been on this story for months and months. frankly, alerted a lot of us and a lot of the world to what was happening in china before it was front page news. i'm glad you're a day away from being out of quarantine. i want to ask you about the numbers that come out of choo th china. we've learned to take them with a grain of salt, to put it mildly. you can't get good numbers because of the way china handled this, suppressing information,

silencing doctors, whistleblowers, people from the part of this. what is your sense, actually, as if it is possible even to know, based on the way this government pop rate operates in beijing, how big the problem was and how big the problem is right now in china statistically? >> there wasn't seem to be much of a lag between when the cases were first highlighted or when authorities were first alerted to when there was actual action. the lockdown in wuhan was the 23rd of january. that was just over two months ago. the tactics that have been put in place since then have been quite aggressive. it changed the metrics. sometimes they included people who didn't have symptoms, sometimes they did. so the numbers have been

difficult to follow. certainly, now, when china has wanted to show it's had some progress and it does appear to be recovering, it wants people to believe these are real numbers. as of tomorrow, they will start including asymptomatic cases in their official tally every day. this hasn't been happening. this has been growing in significance over the past week, especially since china closed its borders. can't say imported cases are causing the case anymore. it'll be telling to see exactly how many people they believe are asymptomatic. they are now saying also they're going to do a better job at treating those asymptomatic cases. in terms of trusting all of the numbers, it's really hard to say. they are acknowledging the importance of tracking the

asymptomatic cases in order to have their recovery story more believed. >> really good. nbc's janis mackey frayer, thank you. live for us in beijing. thank you very much. >> we really appreciate that. you know, willie, you asked a great question about the numbers. how do we trust the numbers coming out of china? it's very hard to trust those numbers, especially when you consider that they've kicked journalists from the "new york times," "washington post," and "wall street journal" out of the country. one of the real problems for those trying to track this and map it across the globe is the world's two superpowers right now, china and the united states, in their own ways, haven't been as transparent as they've needed to be during this crisis. of course, the chinese have been less transparent by order of magnitude that we can't even begin to comprehend. every doctor i've talked to and, you know, there were 5,000

people with the coronavirus here in the united states. the doctors and the scientists and mathematicians were telling me, well, that really probably means we have 40,000 or 50,000. now that we're at 130,000 or so, i don't know a scientist or mathematician who says we're easily over 1 million cases. the republican ason is, again, testing. even in donald trump's home county, you're only getting 2,700 people tested out of a population of 1.3 million, you know the infection rate is much larger. so the next time this happens, we have got to have an understanding, at least between the world's two superpowers, that they're transparent from the beginning. china being transparent from the beginning would have been a game-changer. donald trump being transparent from the beginning with americans would have been a game-changer. when he was getting warnings in early january. there has been no transparency

with the two superpowers, and i'm afraid it's the people of the world who are suffering because of it. >> yeah. i mean, china is obviously an authoritarian government. they didn't want to acknowledge the problem was as big as it was. in wuhan province alone, the numbers that were reported, which were bad enough, were much higher than the chinese government said. as you pointed out, joe, i've heard, and i'm sure you have many times from public health officials and doctors, as we've reported through the crisis, said, i wish you guys wouldn't put up the map that shows how many cases there are right now. the number is so much different and so much higher than we're able to report because we don't have testing. that's the available data we have. we'll continue to show it, but the numbers, obviously, in terms of numbers of cases, is much higher than we can even state right now without testing. >> absolutely. hard to say it, but we're still

completely in the dark as to where we really stand. when you listen to the president speak, he doesn't put a timestamp when he is announcing things like new testing and new devices and new research and new medicines. all these things are weeks, months away, if that. he doesn't talk about the now, which is bad because we're completely in the dark as to where we stand. the coronavirus outbreak in new york city is taking a toll on the medical professionals at the front lines of this crisis. a growing number of whom are getting sick. a nurse at the jacobi medical center in the bronx that contracted the virus said to the "new york times," quote, i feel we're being sent to slaughter. another nurse from the long island jewish medical center said it is literally wash your hands a lot, cross your fingers, and pray. the "wall street journal" reports that nyulangone health

told emergency room doctors they have sole discretion over who gets to use ventilators, and that they should think critically about it. some physicians were unsettled by that directive. one told the "journal," as a doctor, i don't know how to make the call. adding that it seems, quote, way too close to playing god. let's bring in dr. steven corwin, president and ceo of new york presbyterian hospital, one of the largest hospital systems with ten hospitals and more than 200 primary and specialty care centers in the new york area. dr. corwin, thank you so much for being on. any new numbers that you have to share? also, the bigger question i have, are there any new ways to help protect health care workers who are exposed on a daily basis? >> well, thankfully, after we last spoke, our mask situation is much better, particularly the n-95s. we're treating everybody who comes into the hospital as if they have covid. we've partnered with columbia

university to develop face shields, which we're 3d printing. the mask situation is far from ideal, but it is better. if you can't protect your workers, you can't protect patients. so we're in a better situation there. we are going to be short of icu beds and icu ventilators, as well. currently, we have about 600 icu beds, but we're going to surge up to 1,100 icu beds. >> doctor, i believe the last time we talked, as well, the idea was out there that other countries are using hotel rooms and things like that, dormitories, to separate health care workers. because they get exposed and they go home to their families, or they get sick themselves, and a lot of them are really scared. why hasn't that idea taken off? is something else being put in place to create some separation between the sick and those on the front lines?

>> we're actually using -- we have 700 hotel rooms we're using. we're using dormitories at columbia university. we're using dormitories at the medical school. we have about 700 health care workers now that are domiciled in those facilities, thanks to the generosity of columbia and, for that matter, cornell. >> that's great. >> you're 100% right. the other thing we're doing is we've ramped up production of scrubs. we want people to wear the scrubs in the hospital, and then we will launder them for them, so they don't have to bring their clothes home and potentially contaminate their families. >> amazing. willie? >> doctor, it's willie geist. appreciate you coming on. will you tell us what your doctors, nurses, and health care professionals are going through on a day to day basis? take us inside the room. i spoke last night to a surgeon who works in operating rooms, who is now retraining and brushing up on icu skills and things she will need to know coming up here in a couple of

days. what is it like right now inside the icu and the er of your hospital? >> it's tough. the stress, the trauma that our physicians and front line workers are feeling is really ws is feeling is really enormous. our environmental service workers. it's quite difficult. as i said before, we've converted operating rooms into icus. so ordinarily we operate about 500 icu beds and surged to 700 and this weekend surged to 1100 icu beds. the only way you can do that is to actual create icu beds that are operating rooms out of general floors and our construction people are working night and day to do that. then you have to staff them. to your point we've asked all of our physicians who have any critical care experience, help in the critical care units, especially if you're no longer operating as a surgeon. it's tough. and it's going to get tougher. we expect the surge to happen in

another two to three weeks. we're going to be up against it to be honest with you. >> doctor -- >> wow. >> we want to certainly thank you for everything you're doing and certainly everybody that works with you on the front lines. let me ask you before you go, what is your greatest need? what are health care providers' greatest need right now? whether that comes from the private sector, comes from the state government or comes from the federal government, what do you need right now? >> ventilators. we're going to need more ventilators. we calculate that we're going to run out of ventilators by april 10th or 11th if we don't get more. i think that's going to be the rate limiting feature. i think we can create the bed capacity as i said to you, and our staff is going to get very, very stretched. we have a number of staff,

physicians and nurses, in our icus not doing well. i'm very worried about the staffing as well. it's a combination, joe, of all three things, do you have the staff, can you protect them, can you create enough facilities and do you have enough ventilators. >> dr. corwin, thank you so much, president and ceo of new york presbyterian hospital. >> thank you. >> we really appreciate the -- you coming on and appreciate the update and please come back soon. >> let's bring in "morning joe" chief medical correspondent dr. dave campbell, and we want to play for our audience what dr. anthony fauci had to say yesterday when asked about the possibility of a second wave of the coronavirus in the fall. >> i would anticipate that that would actually happen because of the degree of transmissibility. however, if you come back in the fall it will be a totally different ball game of what happened when we first got hit with it in the beginning of this

year. there will be several things that will be different. our ability to go out and be able to test identify isolate and contact trace will be orders of magnitude better than what it was just a couple months ago. it in addition, we have a number of clinical trials that are looking at a variety of therapeutic interventions. we hope one or more of them will be available. importantly, as i mentioned to you many times at the briefings, is that we have a vaccine that's on track and multiple other candidates so i would anticipate that, you know, a year to a year and a half we will be able to do it under an emergency use if we start seeing an efficacy is signal, we may be able to use a vaccine at the next season. things are going to be very, very different. what we're going through now is going to be more than just lessons learned. it's going to be things that we have available to us that we did not have before. >> okay. so dr. dave, kind of let's look into the future here. there's been a lot of talk among experts about a second wave,

about this really perhaps cresting and then having a june, you know, somewhat of an end, if that's possible, and then resurging again in the fall. what are we learning in the process of shutting down and instilling physical distancing measures that could potentially help with that second wave? >> mika, dr. fauci put it well and also dr. corwin, but i would add another thing to what they both said. this issue of antibody testing which is now starting in germany and is what will be used to identify those that have gone through the disease, even sometimes mild disease, to see if they have developed immunity, so what i'm really waiting to hear is when the united states, the cdc will be able to

effectively determine the status of immunity in those that have gone through the disease, either asymptomatic or with mild disease, develop antibodies and develop immunity. if the immunity is equivalent to what a vaccination would be, then this horrendous year-long wait as dr. fauci just described for a vaccination to come, may be somewhat foreshortened, but that information is not yet available in the united states but it could begin to be told as we ramp up the antibody testing and determine, in fact, who was exposed, who had mild disease or who was asymptomatic. of that growing number, as joe mentioned, that number may be well over a million people who have been exposed, either had no symptoms or mild disease, and this can go back to february. the number of people who could

wind up being able to return to back ph backfill the frontline health care workers and first responders is a number we have no idea how big that number is. i'm waiting to hear that and i actually believe we will. >> let's talk about the scope of that day, dr. dave, and why that's so important. right now we're saying we had 160,000 or so cases that we can actually identify because those people have been tested or have gone to hospitals. if you take what most health care professionals say, you got to multiply that by at least ten to figure out what the real number is because of our lack of testing. that's over a million. by the end of this, dr. fauci and others are saying we could have over a million people infected by this easily. that means you could have 10, maybe 20, 30 million people that had the coronavirus, 80% of them really weren't impacted by it significantly and went through

them, some of them without really knowing they had it, that means a significant part of a population will have had the coronavirus and will go through this time period with antibodies that would allow them to go back into the economy, go back to work, go back to restaurants, go back to their lives. that could be a huge boost, not only for their mental well being but economic well being and the well being of this country. >> joe, that's right. i think the reason that we're not hearing much about this yet is, this is a novel coronavirus. we don't know if this novel coronavirus will act like other coronaviruses, sars, mers, so the scientists are having to study the development of immunity and only four months to do that. there's a logical reason that we are not hearing a lot about this, but we will as time

passes. >> all right. dr. dave campbell, thank you so much. >> thank you, dave. >> mika, right now most doctors and medical professionals i speak to believe there will be immunity, perhaps up to a year's time. >> coming up, trump finally submits to reality. eugene robinson joins us with what he calls the president's road to damascus conversion. speaker nancy pelosi will be our guest. "morning joe" is back in two minutes. " is back in two minutes. the american red cross urgently needs blood and platelet donations and asks all healthy donors

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i am asking is health care professionals across the country if you don't have a health care crisis in your community, please come help us in new york now. we need relief. we need relief for nurses who are working 12-hour shifts is, one after the other after the other. we need relief for doctors. we need relief for attendants. so if you're not busy, come help

us, please. >> new york governor andrew cuomo calling for reinforcements in his state's desperate struggle against the outbreak. welcome back to "morning joe." it is tuesday, march 31st. joining joe, willie and me, msnbc national affairs analyst co-host of showtime's "the circus" and editor and chief of "the recount" john hallman, washington anchor for bbc world news america katty kay. the u.s. suffered its deadliest day yet of the coronavirus outbreak yesterday with more than 500 deaths, more than half of those were from new york. the u.s. is now at more than 3,000 deaths. we recorded 2,000 just three days ago. 1,000 just five days ago. there are now nearly 163,000 confirmed cases in the u.s. with more than 60,000 coming in just the last three days. we don't have enough testing

right now. new york state announced the deaths of more than 1,200 new yorkers from the coronavirus. that number is up about 250 from sunday morning. just over half of the latest fatalities were reported in new york city alone. about 75% of the state's death toll. that includes the first death of a minor who tested positive for the coronavirus in the city. as emergency 911 lines continue to be flooded, fema will loan new york city's fire department 100 fully staffed ambulances to respond to the record-breaking number of calls. willie? >> roughly three out of four americans now are being asked to stay at home as states across the country attempt to contain the spread of coronavirus. governors and officials in arizona, maryland, virginia and the district of columbia all now issuing stay-at-home orders that happened yesterday. arizona's governor doug ducey

announced he signed an executive order that will require people in that state to limit time outside their homes at the end of business today. maryland, virginia and washington, d.c., stay-at-home orders went into effect yesterday with virginia's scheduled to stay in place until june 10th. in washington, those caught violating the order could be charged with a misdemeanor and fines up to $5,000. in the san francisco bay area, health officers in six counties are expected to announce today they will extend their shelter in place order until at least may 1st. joe, it's extraordinary to watch these dates slide back. we heard about schools closing maybe until the middle of april. the president of the united states has the federal guidelines in place until the end of april and at least in the state of virginia, they're talking about early june until people can sort of resume their lives. by the way, no one knows where or when this ends so that could be extended from there.

>> i suspect it will be. i really do believe and i said it when the president talked about easter, that that was the president sending a message to businesses. i don't think he ever believed that we could go back to business, go back to work by easter. i found it was interesting, katty kay, and important, that when the president talked about the end of april that he threw out a june 1st date there just to have that backstop in place already, because again, the health care officials i've been talking to over the past several weeks have talked about how april is going to be the cruelest of months, may is going to be a period of transition, and maybe we can get moving back into the economy by the beginning of june. i suspect is that's what britain is looking at as well as the united states. we're going to see these rolling dates for quite some time. >> yeah. in a sense, the united states is

fortunate to have had a road map to this. we had china and europe to look at. there was an element of disbelief thinking we're not going to be like that. the real change that has come in the white house in the last 24 hours, thankfully, is a realization that yes, the united states is not different from those other countries. it is going to be like that and we look at wuhan which is just now starting to open up, people being allowed back into the city, that's january, february, march, that's three months. we look at italy, they've already had i think it's now five weeks on lockdown. they've got another four or five weeks at least to go. if you follow that pattern, that takes us and probably always did, joe, i mean when we were talking about this two weeks ago, we probably could have said, yeah, this is going to take us through march, april, may. any idea that we were going to get out of this quicker than other countries was fanciful. some of this we have to keep going back and asking these questions of the white house

where is the testing, where is the testing, because the testing is going to be what allows us to start reopening up the economy. if the president is still worried about the economy and talking to his business advisors, we need to keep asking about the testing because the testing is not just the key at the beginning, it's the key today as well. >> you're right. widespread testing is what will allow the united states, britain, the rest of the world to go back to work and antibody testing especially which they're starting to talk about doing in germany and giving people certificates that actually have the antibodies that will allow them to go back to work. that is a great step moving forward. john heilemann, we don't usually talk about politics these days. we talk about health care. based on what -- i know there's a new harvard/harris poll out that shows joe biden up by ten

points, the fox news poll had joe biden up over donald trump by 9 points and abc closer than that. you look at the swing states, the president is not doing very well there. even the president himself acknowledges most of the polling right now is irrelevant, that you have to look at what happens after the pandemic leaves and then i think the president and both joe biden understand that's really when we're going to have a clearer look at what impact this pandemic is having on who the next president of the united states will be. >> yeah, i think that's right, joe. there are several kind of core realities, one which is you look at the president's approval rating has held up after having declined for many of those weeks when he was in denial. when he made that turn a couple weeks ago to the wartime president footing, you start to see his approval rating tick back up.

when he started to take the virus more seriously at least in terms of his public posture. you also saw -- you were talking -- you've been talking the last several days about the president deciding to choose public health and with the science advisors in terms of pushing this deadline back to the end of april. this is not a place where it's clean between politics and public health. i think the president was hearing from a lot of his political advisors also that the decision if he tried to push for reopening by easter and not extending this deadline the politics could have been bad and the kind of public health damage on the country under those circumstances he would have borne the brunt of that and his political advisors as well as his public health advisors were saying the right thing to do for his long-term future was to extend further that america is not just in the blue states but red states also, are making these sacrifices right now and they would punish the president

if the sacrifices seem to be for the not. his decisions about dying to -- sdooig to extend the deadline, he's setting those markers out for june being more the time frame and i also think, just as a last point, he's starting to set markers down politically for what would be considered success. it's astonishing to hear the president talking about how a couple hundred thousand deaths that's what he wants to campaign on, a couple hundred thousand deaths that's the marker and 2.2 million would have been a disaster, i deserve credit for anything less than that and if we can get through with 100,000 or 200,000 deaths that will be a success he tries to campaign on. there is politics in this time and it's coming through in the way the president is trying to frame this debate. >> i heard that. i wonder if the people hear themselves say this, people support issing the president, if he holds it to 100,000 deaths

that's a win for the president. that's not a win for anybody if 100,000 people die. he did sayhing the president yesterday, talking about the cure being worse than the disease. in other words shutting down the economy might be worse than what happens with health. what he said yesterday, quote, the economy is number two on my list. first i want to save lives. dr. fauci and birx, as they spread out those documents and showed the data on the resolute desk in the oval office, they got to the president on that point. he's not talking about easter anymore. he's saying out loud the economy is number two on my list. >> that is just great news for americans. that belated move will save lives moving forward. that is what dr. fauci, dr. birx, it's what they've wanted all along. the president -- it's been a long time coming to get to the table. jonathan had a story in the associated press where he talked about how those doctors spread

the charts out over the president's resolute desk. he looked at it and understood that he had no choice and actually said, we have to do this. it is one of the rare times, willie, where good science is good politics. one of the rare times in this administration, good science does equal good politics, as john heilemann was saying, and in this case, it also is good economically because the worst thing that could happen would be for this first wave of coronavirus infections and deaths to stagger on through the summer and then into the fall and the only way to stop that, of course, is to shut things down, as the president is starting to do. >> yeah. and he listened, mika, to the doctors, of course, but as "the new york times" reports this morning, politics is never too far away with his president. he also was shown polling from

his own people, internal polling, that showed a majority of americans support a nationwide shutdown. in other words, the country is taking this seriously now. the country is listening to the doctors. not all of the country. but when he sees the country moving forward the scientists, he's more able to go with them as well. >> can i really quickly, to john heilemann, and then we want to get to italy, one more point on this, i'm wondering whether you have any insight on it, on some of these polls, i think the fox news poll, showed the president doing very poorly in swing states. i certainly -- i think he's really put himself in a terrible position with michigan and that's going to be an uphill battle for the president because of how he's handled this crisis and disrespectful he's been to michigan's governor. i don't think that's going to really help him out with groups in the suburbs and women he's already having trouble with. you look at florida, sort of the reckless approach that florida's

governor has taken where spring breakers have jammed the beaches. we continue to get spring breakers up and down the east coast. up in jacksonville, you know, on sandbars you have tuns of people jammed on sandbars all across the state of florida. they're still out there. they were still out there this it weekend. a lot of them proudly displaying trump flags on their boats. it looked like a campaign rally. a very unhealthy, very dangerous campaign rally, but a campaign rally all the same. those images are being seen by senior citizens across florida whose lives are on the line. the callousness of this all, the governor's refusal to shut down the state so teenagers and people in their 20s can continue to get sun and continue to party, that's something that i suspect, talking to seniors i've

been talking to in the state of florida and trump supporters, that's not going to be forgotten this fall. >> yeah, right. let's remember, joe, you know, we always -- you know politics should not be the forefront of our mind right now for all the obvious reasons, but there is going to be an election in november and as you pointed out, the polling persists. president trump and his political people look at that polling on a daily basis and look at his approval rating and governor cuomo's approval rating and they continue to look at a very hard way at the five or six states where the election will be determined and those states are wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania and north carolina and florida and arizona. and if you look at the map that you guys put up earlier about where the shelter in place orders are, one of the biggest outstanding one that still doesn't have a shelter in place order, that state is florida, the most important swing state in many respects, the one that has the most electoral votes as the states i just mentioned and a state if you ask strategists from both sides the clearest tossup state in the country, if

democrats win that state they don't need to win many of the other battleground states if any. there's so much on the line if florida and governor desantis' decisions have been inexplicable in a lot of respects, almost as the decisions of the president to attack governor wit mer of michigan, a state he must win. she is sitting on a 75 or 80% approval rating in michigan. to see president trump attacking her is politically insane. but the florida question really looms large. it's the you thi-- you think ab states feeling this, places like new york, in california, obviously, mostly hard-core blue states but florida if you listen to the scientists, the place where the next big disaster could be coming and the governor's behavior is close ally of president trump's, could end up really being in the end, if it's right that the coronavirus and the -- and the handling of it end up being the central issue of the 2020

collection, what's happened in florida could end up being the central state where the failures took place that could put president trump's re-election out of reach. >> well, you say this is n a time we usually talk about politics and we certainly don't, but they are talking about politics and polls every day inside of the white house. >> of course they are. >> they are obsessed on how this is impacting them. i know that firsthand. but, you know, mika, you look again at michigan. >> right. >> and a lot of people who support donald trump are very concerned that he has put himself in such a bad political position by continually attacking the governor of michigan who has 75, 80% approval ratings in michigan and then you look at florida and ron desantis has been given every chance to shut down the beaches. >> yeah. >> to tell people they need to stay home, and there's still a lot of people in this state who are still partying on the beaches, that are partying on

sandbars, that aren't taking this seriously. for the past two weeks, what have we been hearing? the next hot spot may be florida. >> absolutely. >> and with all the senior citizens here, one of the oldest states in america, it is extraordinarily reckless for the governor and the president not to take more aggressive action here. >> and the political risks, i mean yes, from what you laid out, michigan and florida, as it stands right now, could be problematic for this president, but what's worse is that he can't redact this crisis, he can't rebrand it or lie and pretend it didn't happen. all these companies are being forced to step up and repurpose their abilities because the president and this white house didn't respond from the get-go. this problem, as it is, is a huge crisis. you have staffing issues in new york city with health workers,

emts. you've got 20%, 15% of the police department out sick. i mean the unrest that could ensue come november given the fact that this isn't being dealt with, we're still in the dark with the lack of testing, the many ways this could metastasize for this president and create more problems for him, you can't lie through it -- >> we -- >> the facts are there every day. >> we hope that it doesn't. >> of course not. >> we're all grateful that the president listened to his doctors and his top scientists over the past weekend and we hope that that continues moving forward. it's important. >> john heilemann, thank you so much for being with us today. please stay safe, please stay well. >> let's go to italy which makes up over a third of all deaths worldwide from the coronavirus, but there are some signs that the country's strict measures could be having an effect as italy recorded its lowest number

of new cases in one day. does the country's lockdown that enters its fourth week, the strain is starting to kick in, in the southern part of italy. police have been deployed to sicily's capital amid report that gangs are plotting attacks on stores. it p italy extended its lockdown to april 12th, easter sunday. let's bring in foreign correspondent matt bradley in rome. what more can you tell us? it appears unrest is spreading in many different ways. >> well, mika, i want to walk that back. the unrest really hasn't been seen in the streets in any real obvious way. it's more of a concern. it is a concern that parallels what we've been seeing in the states. willie just mentioned the trump administration's concern that the cure can't be worse than the disease. that's something we're seeing here. i've been banging on about this, italy is the canary in the coal mine for the united states and

that's really true, especially when it comes to the geographical balance. it is so geographically lopsided here. the affliction of this disease is almost entirely in the very wealthy north. in the south, in sicily and naples, there really hasn't been that many cases. there haven't been that many deaths relative to the north, but what the problem in the south is, is economic, social and political and that's one of the things that the southern people are worried that they're going to be carrying an economic burden even if the northerns are carrying the disease burden. i spoke with the mayor of a city, he told me he spent his entire life, whole career fighting the mafia, after decades of work, it's violent, his partner was assassinated doing it, trying to wrench back control of palermo and sicily from the organized crime families, he told me he's worried about the virus and southerners are worried about

rising death tolls in the south but worried about the economic costs. here's what he told me. >> polermo, we have just defeated the traditional mafia, but the risk that social protests can be by behaviors. it is the risk we come back to the past [ inaudible ] where it was excited and safe. >> we're obviously talking about social unrest in southern italy. let me ask you about the continuing disconnect between northern italy where you are in rome and also southern italy, not as many deaths, not as many infections. what -- tell me, especially it is strange especially because in the north they have a much

better health care system and are wealthier, tell me what people -- what health care officials in italy are suggesting is making such huge difference when it comes to health care in northern italy versus southern italy? >> it's really strange. we've been asking this time and time again to just ordinary health care workers, epidemiologists no one seems to have a solid answer. one answer is that in the north it's a bit more cosmopolitan and that's why the infection spread so quickly there. they think there could have been -- some conjecture, maybe there was a connection between the milaneese garment industry and china. it goes to show having a superior health care system like in the north of italy didn't really protect them interest having t -- from having the most lethal outbreak of this disease. in southern italy where the health care system is notoriously less stable, less well funded, the health care

system in italy is very regional, like it is in the states, they still managed to not have that many cases. even when they put on lockdown more than a month ago, northern italy, lombardy, they managed -- a lot of people fled south because they didn't want to be on lockdown. they got on trains and in their cars and went south and there still hasn't been a massive outbreak further south. the numbers are rising and people are concerned and hospitals down further south in rome and in naples and sicily, they're really girding for a major outbreak. guys? >> has there been a suggest condition, matt, that it had anything to do with the heat? that it is warmer in southern italy than northern italy? >> that hasn't been something i've heard. there's been a lot of people have been tossing this around. they're wondering why this was so geographically lopsided. the answer we keep getting, joe, is that this is going to be part of the reckoning that's going to happen after all of this is done. why did it spread so quickly in

italy and why did the health system, that was so good in northern italy, seem to kind of crumble under the rate of this. why did italy, a relatively small country, have to carry such a great burden compared to even countries like china where the outbreak originated. there's going to be a lot of questions when the dust settles why this happened and this country was so badly afflicted. that's going to be one of them. why didn't it spread further south. again, it's a lesson for new york and the rest of the u.s. new york is kind of the lombardy of america. it has such a geographically lopsided, greater affliction, number of cases than the rest of america, and so i'm sure a lot of american policymakers will look to italy wondering why or how that virus was able to be contained in the north of italy and didn't spread further south. >> all right. nbc's matt bradley, thank you so much, matt. stay safe, please. katty kay, let's go through the different countries that have really been hit hard in

europe. you have italy, obviously france got hit hard, spain really taking the brunt of this as well. if you have heard anything in your reporting on why those countries have been particularly hit hard, france and spain, it would be great to hear that. also, is there a fear that great britain is next, that great britain may suffer numbers like italy or spain? >> the death rate is rising alarmingly fast overnight. people in the uk are concerned about that. you have the kinds of measures you have in d.c. where you can face a fine if you go out for reasons that are not valid. italy we heard about the aging population there and that might be why they've been particularly badly hit. spain, which seems to be the new hot spot and numbers rising very fast of deaths in europe. i'm not quite sure.

we haven't heard. again, i think as matt says, there will have to be reckonings why some countries get it more than others. other anomalies, sweden, for example, which is not in lockdown, has very few cases and very few deaths, maybe it will come to sweden. why is sweden a country that seems to have escaped this? germany we've heard as lot about the early testing that is going on and question about are they counting in the same way as other european countries and maybe more people are dying of coronavirus and are not counted in the same way. it seems the early testing was a key. again, early testing, isolation, and early action by governments, the uk didn't have that early action. it lost a week. now a week doesn't sound like very much but we're learning in the states now that a week can be a huge difference. i think the other thing that america has to look at from what we've learned in europe and dr. birx talked about yesterday is that it might look like this is all new york now, but we are going to be talking a lot more

about detroit, chicago, about louisiana, even alabama now, and all of those areas of the states which are at the beginning of their curves and which, as this moves further into the country are likely to start picking up at the same rate of growth of cases and deaths unfortunately. >> so, of course, if you talk about alabama and you talk about other areas, other than outside of new orleans, which is pretty compact, a lot of areas in middle america are not as congested as new york city, so there aren't subways where people are packed on subways even a couple weeks ago in new york city. congestion obviously, has a big role to play in spreading this disease around, which leads me to ask you the question, you brought up sweden, there's another example that makes absolutely no sense to me, and if you have any insight or anybody has any insight i would love to hear it. tokyo, a couple days ago "the new york times" had a story about how tokyo is for the most

ning to bands in acted by this tokyo, and it hasn't exploded there. there does seem to be -- >> singapore the same. >> a randomness. >> singapore the same. what do you hear about that? >> singapore hardly had a lockdown. they did very early testing and very early isolation and very early tracing. very methodical tracing. anyone who had come into contact with somebody that was positive was tested. anyone who tested positive was put into quarantine for 15 days right at the beginning of this back in january they were doing that. they had the example from sars and singapore is really being held up amongst medical professionals i've spoken to as almost the gold standard of how to deal with this. the city, singapore, people are out in the streets. yes, they're careful, but out in the streets and the economy is functioning fine. tokyo, people with weear moving. it was not an uncommon thing to

see people wearing masks. they were used to it. a society that is extremely law abiding and community minded and keen on protecting the elderly. there was never a question in asian countries that the elderly might be sacrificed in order to pro tegts the economy or to protect young people. so is people will have adhered to guidelines much more strictly in a country like japan even in tokyo where it's dense, than they will have done here in the west and in the united states. >> something we heard in the news conference yesterday, there was discussion at the highest levels of masking here in the u.s. people wearing masks on a day-to-day basis. katty kay, thank you very much. still ahead on "morning joe," the speaker of the house nancy pelosi is our guest. she's already pushing forward on a fourth coronavirus relief package. one that politico says puts her on a collision course with senior republicans. we reported on friday there

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thank you, mr. president. you said several times that the united states has ramped up testing, talk a little louder, mr. president, you said several times that the united states has ramped up testing but the united states is still not testing per capita as many people as other countries like south korea. why is that and when do you think that that number will be on par with other countries? >> well, it's very much on par. >> it's not per capita. >> per capita. we have areas of country that's very -- i know south korea better than anybody. it's very tight. do you know how many people are in seoul? how big the city of seoul is? 38 million people. bigger than anything we have. 38 million people, all tightly wound together. we have vast farmlands.

we have vast areas where they don't have much of a problem. in some cases they have no problem whatsoever. we have done more tests. i didn't talk about per capita. we have done more tests by far than any country in the world, by far. our testing is also better than any country in the world. when you look at that as simple as that looks, that's something that's a game changer. every country wants that. every country. >> again, no timeline. another tense exchange between the president and the reporter from pbs news hour. while trump is jostling with reporters may be the noise, not the signal, we will point out that south korea's capital seoul has a population of around 10 million, not 38 million -- >> i think that was -- >> as the president stated. >> some bad staff work. did you see willie yesterday, somebody pointed out that if you actually googled seoul, that it was actually its elevation was

38 m. >> oh, my god. >> 38 meters. >> no. >> somebody circled that on the google page. i think what happened is a staff member probably checked google, handed it to the president, and said look 38 m, 38 million. it's an awful random number. >> he posed it as a pop question as if he was going to get her and he was off by 30 million. if you're generous and include the metro area it only includes 20 some million. that's beside the point of what we're talking about today. >> that is what we call noise. i will say it again, i think we can talk about it on the side, but that is not what saves lives whether the president decides to follow the scientists and doctors and made that choice on sunday, if he continues in that direction, hundreds of thousands of lives literally do hang in

the balance of him staying the course and doing that. >> coronavirus infections have sharply spiked nearly 800 cases in massachusetts as the governor says, 1,000 additional ventilators are on the way. the death toll has risen. after at least five died from the virus at a veterans home in the state, joining us now infectious diseases physician and associate professor at boston university medical school, dr. badila. doctor, thank you very much for coming back on the show. the president doesn't answer the question about wide spread testing, when we're going to be out of the dark. he talks about what's coming with no real time stamp. from what you've heard and seen, is there any sense of when we will be out of the dark as it pertains to being able to test all americans? the president said anyone who wants to have a test can have a test. that's not true. we're testing in hospital and

people are waiting several days and sometimes more for their test results. we're talking about rapid tests. we need antibody tests to see who had it. when will we be in a position where all of that is in place? >> mika, there's some good news on the rapid testing front. the fda released emergency use authorization or ability to sort of crowd test including one from abbott that takes 15 minutes, which basically means a huge number of samples can be done at the same time. one of the limits in the equation hasn't just been the number of test and test kits, it's been that to run a test you need a health care worker, somebody in personal protective equipment and who can have the testing kits to run that in the laboratory and so many hospitals at this point in massachusetts have moved the testing in-house and that has improved our turn jaurnds time within the hospitals to a shorter period and some point about a day or

so. the rapid test is going to help because if that can be -- if deployed in more outpatient or generalized settings in the population that gives us a much better idea of how many people have this disease and might have mild symptoms and don't know that they have it, which is why when we talk about cure versus the disease, the social and physical distancing, case isolation a stud out of northeastern oxford looked at the chinese data and said the biggest impact that mattered was the testing, isolation of cases and the physical distancing. we're seeing that in seattle and in washington, the numbers are coming down. even here in boston, you know, since i last spoke to you two weeks ago, we're in the throws of our epidemic. when you look at the models because of the physical distancing, we don't see the curve as steep as we would expect for mod else that show no impact of social distancing. >> and what about health care workers? i do want to get back to testing

because it sounds like we're not close to actually having a uniformed mass testing ability across the country and people want that in place. they want to know what the timeline is. but in terms of health care workers, what we're seeing in new york, as they're calling in for reinforcements. they've got a police department that has hundreds of cops that are out sick. in boston, 342 medical workers so far at last count are ill. is there going to be a shortage of doctors from what you are reading and seeing? >> yeah. i mean as a health care worker, i think this is worrisome to me. it's not about my own illness. my worry if i get this disease and i'm not that sick i may not know i'm sick, will i pass it on to my patients and families and colleagues, right. that's why the huge part of protecting health care workers is a critical linchpin in outbreak response.

we -- even in our own section are having to pull ranks from different areas in our department, people who are not on clinical services bringing them in to attend on patients. that's already happening and the worrisome thing is, if this outbreak goes on and does this happen in new york, if more people call and are sick and having to be quarantined and isolated because of expo sure, you are having the left of the people leftover carry a bigger burden of patients which puts them at risk as well. there is good news on this front. you know, one of the reasons i think there's been worries about health care workers getting sick are these scarcities, the dearth of personal protective equipment and one thing that the fda did last week is release a guidance on how you could decontaminate masks to reuse it. a company called patel is deploying this technology that uses the same technology we use in the hospitals to disinfect other things, vaporized hydrogen

peroxide. that's promising, a new study last week says the virus can stay on a mask for seven days. as you know we were telling health care workers to reuse mask or extend the use of masks. technologies like that are going to help health care workers stay safe. >> boy. >> doctor, it's willie geist. good to have you on this morning. i want to get your opinion and your view as a doctor and a public health officials about what -- how the rest of the country should be looking at this? there is so much focus rightly right now on new york city, on cities along the east coast because of the acutety of the problem here, but if you're in a town right now, it would be completely understandable in the middle of the country saying i don't see it here, my hospitals are not overrun, i don't know why there's so much alarm about this and why i have to stay in my house and close my small business. what would you say to cities and states that haven't been hit by this yet? >> it's going to be a slow burn, unfortunately what we're going

to see is this disease move out of the cities and it will take time, as you said, because of the population density, because of the spread of the geography, but the resilience of rural health care systems probably is not the same. not as many health care workers, not as much capacity within the hospitals and so it won't take a lot of patients to overwhelm those health care systems. my biggest concern is, some of the biggest states that didn't take them -- the expansion, have the highest rates of uninsured, texas, georgia, and the worry i have in those cases, when people get sick they won't be able to access care. it's not just that there will be in the rural areas, but they won't be able to get the health care they need and we need to really be able to improve access to care in those areas, aside from building the capacity of the health care systems. it's coming. it's going to be in all our communities. all we can do is prepare every

community to be safe in america. >> infectious diseases physician and associate professor at boston university medical school, dr. bhadelia, thank you very much. coming up, our friend walter isakson, just penned a powerful new piece on the virus, in louisiana, a state no longer a stranger to challenges. why he says this plague is not a hurricane. walter joins us along with the head of one of louisiana's largest health care systems. that's next on "morning joe."

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louisiana's governor extended the state's stay-at-home orders yesterday to april 30th after a spike in cases there this past weekend. joining us now, professor of history at tulane university, walter isaacson, and president and ceo of oxner health, louisiana's largest non-profit academic health care system, warner thomas. thank you both for joining us. warner thomas, i'll start with you, as you serve the residents of louisiana, what challenges are you facing? >> well, certainly it's the very difficult time and we've seen the number of covid patients escalate pretty significantly over the past week. we anticipate this will continue over the next couple of weeks and hopefully peaking in the next two to three weeks. it's been a challenge from a staffing perspective and we've

had to, you know, surge into new icu beds across our entire system. >> talk a little bit, if you could about staffing, we hear in other cities about health care workers, medical workers, coming down with coronavirus and not being able to work. is that escalating in your systems and what measures could the governor take, what more measures, if any, that would help as you try and help the sick? >> we certainly have seen probably one of our largest issues is staffing. we have added about 50 additional icu beds in the past week. we do anticipate adding 60 to 70 more over the coming week and are looking to surge plans that could move into long-term acute care facilities or into our ors. the key thing is staffing. certainly a key goal for us is to keep our staff healthy. we have about 350 of our employees that are currently quarantined and that certainly is a challenge for us.

we're reaching across the country to bring new staffing into new orleans specifically, but we will be working on this day and night overs the coming days to make sure we can staff those additional icu beds and i have enough staff to take care of our patients. >> warner, it's willie geist. appreciate you coming on this morning. obviously new orleans is one of the most single social places on the place of the earth. a lot of people look at those images around mardi gras packed shoulder to shoulder at a time when many were told to stay inside. are you able at this point to trace the root of this explosion in cases that you've had in louisiana, but particularly in the new orleans area back to mardi gras or is something else going on here? >> i think that certainly is one of the things that people think, that they may have been spread from mardi gras. once again, going back to before mardi gras, there was not a lot of call across the country that shelter in place or social

distancing was really an issue at that point in time. had that been the case, probably a very different approach than mardi gras. that was not the national knowledge at that point. that was not where we are. but certainly i think because of so many people coming into new orleans and so many people from new orleans leaving and going to other parts of the country and coming back to new orleans, that probably had some impact that we'll receive today. >> walter isaacson, your latest piece in the "washington post" entitled "this plague is not a hurricane." and in it you look how new orleans, a sue herera familiar with hurricanes is dealing with the current pandemic. you write in parse this -- while the toll will be nowhere near the 1,500 or so who were killed in louisiana by katrina, i understand why we have been called an eye of this hur karen. it's an apt analogy, because the atmosphere in much of the city, other than the hospitals, is eerily calm but just as in a

hurricane's eye. during a hurricane we no longer feel alienated or uncertain, we know what to do and we do it. we are together in the same boat. then we have a hurricane party. but this plague is not a hurricane's in the hurricane you know if you ride it out for a day the sun will begin to shine, the waters will recede and the earn wiearth will begin to heal. during this plague we're not quite sure what to do other than stay socially distance. new orleanians are not good at social distancing. it's also unclear how this storm ends. there's a resilience in a city that has come through many plays and hurricanes in its history and which, like our make, will come through this one. walter, so many uncertainties giving that new orleans itself it hasn't peaked yet but seen as one of the hot spots and could be a tremendous challenge on the

city at every level? >> one of the good things that's happening is now there's widespread testing. we're lucky to have walter thomas, a great hospital system and also a wonderful civic leader. i also think the governor and mayor put a very firm shelter in place and people are start ing to to obey it. in the last few day, the numbers have gone down than what they were before. it's working. around the country you've emphasized, mika, the need for testing. it's kicked in with academic institutions l like dr. ba dey talking about. doing 1,000 to 2,000 tests a day, cross-country rivals, doing 2,000 test as day. it's almost as if the academic

community is stepping in when the government has failed. >> hey, walter, it's willie. you have something in your piece in the "post" i think a lot of us are feeling, but my bet is especially as pertains to new orleans because it is such a social place which is you know exactly what to do after, say, a hurricane. you write, the sun comes up. time to clean up and rebuild. but you're almost helpless. a lot of people in the country feel that way. helpless in some ways inside your home, it's hard to come to terms with the fact the best thing you can do is to stay home. how would you describe the mood in new orleans right now as you talk to all of your frerniends neighbor there's? >> you're a music buff, willie. go on youtube and look at the neville brothers cover of "sitting in limbo." a mournful song about not kn knowing what to do and what things are going to break. new orleans is, still a little music on the street.

doreen kechhams is still playing on royal street but people are clustering around here. you see some civic spirit i think. my tulane students creating funds to help the community and hospitality workers. greater new orleans foundation has kicked in. people know they can donate and do things. the real problem is, as you say, just sitting out a storm. ste instead of saying get us into the same boat. hurricanes, we get out there and get in the same boat. this is very unnerving. i will say one thing, though. new orleans has gone through most plagues than most cities. i don't mean just hurricanes. 1840s and '50s, cholera, yellow fever, other plagues. tulane university was started because of the yellow fever pandemic in louisiana. so i think people here are used to these things. it's a pretty resilient place,

but also our country is pretty resilient. we're going to get through this. >> walter isaacson, glad to hear you say that. thank you very, very much for being on. warner thomas, thank you so much. >> i want to thank one or two if i may just being here one of my neighbor, thank you, warren. >> thanks. for all your preparedness in the city. >> thank you both. coming up, house speaker nancy pelosi is just moments away joining us live top of the hour. plus, as our upcoming guest posted online "if you can't do what you do, do what you can." that's jon bon jovi washing dishes at the soul kitchen community restaurant earlier in the month. now the rock icon is spreading this message worldwide with a little help from his fans. he joins live straight ahead on "morning joe." at&t has connected us every day for over 100 years.

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we don't know who has it. we can't get tested. i cannot get tested. i can't get my family tested. even though i have confirmed exposure from the staff that i work with and from the patient. why do we not look like the people in italy? why do we not look like the people in china? they have better ppe than we do by far and they still got infected. there's nothing, there's no other risk. there's nothing else to lose except our lives.

>> we still cannot get testing. that that was the urgent plea, mika, from a nurse in new york city, is that they can't get the testing which the president said a month ago, if you want testing you can have testing. i told you, in his own home county, palm beach county, 1.4 million people there and yet only a couple thousand tested while 300,000 are calling in begging for tests. even our people on the front line can't get the tests to know whether they are safe or not. >> americans were told at the daily briefings tests are a week away. days away. they're going to be fast. they're going to be quit. we are not even close. that was a nurse at mount sinai new york city, posted by the "washington post." welcome back to "morning joe." it is tuesday, march 31st. speaker pelosi is our guest. first the latest with the

numbers. the u.s. suffered its deadly yesterday with more than 500 deaths. more than half from new york. the u.s. is now at more than 3,000 deaths overall. we reported 2,000 just three days ago, and 1,000 just five days ago. this is rapidly escalating. there are now nearly 164,000 confirmed cases in the u.s. with more than 60,000 coming in just the last week. >> as you look at those numbers, 163,000 since our testing is so poor per capita, every health care official you talk to says that you can multiply whatever number you see there, the 163,000, most likely by 9 or 10. >> new york state announced the deaths of more than 1,200 new yorkers from coronavirus. that number is up about 250 from sunday morning. just over half of the latest fatalities were reported in new york city alone.

about 75% of the state's death toll. joining us now, the speaker of the house, democratic congresswoman nancy pelosi of california. madam speaker, we thank you so much for being with us on "morning joe" this morning. i'll start by asking you, there have been so many questions about the president's leadership through this crisis, his lack of action. if you could speak to him directly, what do you wish he would be doing now that he is not doing? >> first, let me just join you in mourning the loss of so many lives and the prospect of more to come. we all come to this discussion with very heavy hearts about what we can do to prevent more, more of a spread of this, and so to the president i would join those, whether it's the governors, the mayors, people across the country who are saying, we need the equipment, the personal protective equipment, for the workers. the ventilators and other

equipment for the patients. we need proper testing, testing, testing. so i would say to the president, immediately implement the defense production act insisting that businesses in our country turn to producing the equipment that we need. the american people, their representatives, officialsdom, all the rest, are united in that recognition of that need. it will save lives. we're asking people to risk their lives to save other lives. we're asking people to make judgment it's about who gets a vent la ventilator or not. that should not be happening. one thing that we could do that we all agree on, democrats and republicans alikealike. ppe, personal protection equipment as well as the equipment to save the patients' lives. proper testing. the problem since the start.

that we haven't had the proper testing, testing, testing. >> madam speaker, when you ask the president, why don't you invoke and utilize the defense production act? he says he is doing it. is there more he could be doing to actually trigger it? to streamline the process to get testing to the people quicker? >> yes. he has discreetly just in a discreet way done something about ventilators, but there's an overall appeal for him to do much, much more, and this is nothing that can be handled piecemeal. it has to be across the board. again, this isn't partisan in any way. two things the american people -- two of the things the american people are concerned about is the personal protective equipment for our workers. the equipment to save the lives of our patients. equipment, and that act, can help with that.

then the other is how we, again, try to address the livelihood issues. the lives and livelihood of the american people, and i'm hoping that the administration will move quickly to disburse the opportunities, the benefits that are in the legislation we just passed in a very strong, bipartisan way. >> madam speaker, it's been frustrating to see the lives of millions of americans in the hands of one person, one man who up until the past few days was not taking the advice of his doctors and his scientists seriously. is there something that the house can do? is there something that the legislative branch can do that it may not be doing right now, because it's just so frustrating to think that in this wonderful government we have with separation of powers that one man can literally hold us to his

will on whether he's going to follow science or whether he's going to be listening to economic advisers who have basically told him, well, people have to die. let's reopen the economy? >> well, let me just say that i'm very proud that we passed three bills in a very strong bipartisan way. first bill a few weeks ago about testing, testing, testing. recognizing that you can't get a handle on the challenge unless you have, take inventory and that you know what the challenge is, and how it is disbursed, distributed around the country. a. second bill was about masks, masks, mask, equipment, recognizing we didn't have enough and again all of this with a strong investments in research for a cure hopefully, a vaccine taking more time. so then our third bill. so let me put it in this way. first we had emergency. the first two bills addressed the emergency that we saw.

a second bill -- the third bill, the second phase, was about mitigation. mitigation for the loss in our economy, also some setbacks that we had in dressing the virus. the challenge of the virus. this third bill, fourth bill but third phase, will be about recovery. again, always addressing emergency and mitigation aspects of it, but to talk about how we go forward. and in a way, that is specific to the coronavirus. i want to be very specific, because i hear people saying they're doing this wish list and -- that isn't so. we have agreed in our negotiations that everything that we're doing is specific to the coronavirus challenge. and that would be, infrastructure for water systems are so essential. broadband, because so many people are relying on telecommunication and social media and the rest.

another, other aspects of infrastructure that will help get us through all of this as we proceed with, again, issues that relate to surface transportation and the rest, but i do think that we've acted in bipartisan ways every step of the way, and we will continue to do so. we may have our differences but we have to find our common ground. i can't really speak to the nature of the president. i wish that the scientists had been more public about the recommendations, if -- when did they tell the president? was it two months ago? what did he know and when did he know it? you know what? right now we just have to focus on getting the job done, and the comments that i had made recently were based and conversations i had with scientists that if we don't go on a different course of action, we will have more deaths. i'm glad that the president is finally heeded, i guess, the numbers. one set of numbers or another, whatever they may be, may have

had him heed the guidance of the scientists. long overdue, but nonetheless, let's go forward with that in the hope that -- like yesterday he -- yesterday with the governors, my understanding is that he said testing, i've never heard there's a problem with testing. how could that be? nonetheless, we just have to compensate for that without spending too much time worrying about it. in an after-action review we can review that. and i was interested to hear dr. fauci this morning reportedly saying, when we get the second wave, if we get the second wave, question were have loss son hav learned and perhaps some therapies. whether a cure or vaccine. i hope that those lessons learned will be something that we can clearly recognize and deal with, but for now, for now, let's just work together to get that equipment, to get those,

the checks, i hope electronically out to people so that some of their anxiety is relieved. imagine being concerned about being sick and just not even having any resources to address your family's needs? we have important work to do. again, three bills, strongly bipartisan. i'm proud of that. and what we do next will be bipartisan as well. >> and's madam speaker, obviously, we're dealing with such a crisis on the front lines from medical workers to emts, to police. you see in new york city what will fan out to other cities where they have a lack of staffing, because literally those on the front lines are getting sick. and so there will be questions about actually society functioning as we move forward big picture, are you concerned at all about preserving our election process? >> well, before i go to the

election, let me just say that yesterday we had a day dedicated to personal protective equipment, and ventilators and the rest. we had over 100 reported calls with chairman pallone and chairman scott, the two committees of jurisdiction that deal with this. we had an hours' long, a couple of hours' long conversation with our full house democratic caucus and it just focused on how we get this equipment to these workers who are risking their lives. who are -- their hearts of breaking for what they see, but they also know that they are at risk. how would you like it, any of us like it, if one of our loved ones was in this situation where they needed care, and there were, they were diagnosed and the doctor or the nurse or the, whoever the health care professional who was dealing with them was using equipment

for the fourth patient in a row when they should only be using it on one patient in terms of gloves and gowns and the rest? so, again, this is in the immediate "now" that has to happen and it has to happen with recognition of that need, and i feel so sad about what's happening in new york and my own state of california, but new york being the center of it all right now, and i salute governor cuomo for his outspoken challenge to the conscience of all of us to get that equipment there. in terms of the elections, i think that we'll probably be moving to vote by mail. that's why we wanted to have more resources in this third bill that just was signed by the president to get those resources to the states, to facilitate the reality of life. that we are going to have to have more vote by mail, and would hope that we would have also some funding, which was

rejected, for the postal service, which is, implement the vote by mail as well as implementing right now getting equipment to where it needs to be, when it needs to be by mail. again, our ear lectilection sys integrity of the election system is sen stral central to our dem. how anybody could oppose vote by mail raises so many other questions, but let's just be hopeful and have public opinion weigh in on that. >> well i was going to bring that up with you. joe scarborough here. i was going to bring that up with you. the president of the united states said in a tv interview yesterday that if vote by mail was allowed, and if more americans were allowed to vote, he said, republicans would never be elected again. were you surprised that the president would make such an admission? that if we allowed americans to vote safely and in high numbers

that there wouldn't be a republican ever elected again? >> well, nothing surprises me about what the president said, but as i say, let's not go there, but i certainly -- i believe that the republican party is a grand old party. i say to my republican friends and i do have some take back your party. i think that that's necessary for our country, for us to have a strong republican party, and i feel sad that the president doesn't have competence that his party cannot convince the american people about a path to go forward. but that's what elections are about. what is your vision for the future? what do you know about our challenges? how strategic are you to get the job done? how do you connect with the kitchen table needs of the american people? that the vitality of a democracy, having disagreements is part of that. our founders certainly had their disagreements, but i feel sad that the president doesn't have confidence in his own party that

vote by mail would deter any future elections. no. i don't think that's the case. >> we have willie geist with us, safely, socially distanced and he has the next question for you, madam speaker. >> hi, willie. good morning. >>si, we appreciate your time. good morning to you as well. we've obviously for the last weeks, several weeks, cataloged the failures of the white house, the failures of the president, the failures to take seriously what is now obviously a pandemic and a crisis in cities across the country. but the good news is we live in a federal government with equal branches of government and your body has great power as well. so as you look back on the last, say, three months or so, do you believe that you all in congress should have moved quicker? do you take any responsibility for this slow response? >> no. not at all. we have -- first of all we had hoped there would be leadership from the white house, because the president has to sign the bill, but we've had, as i say,

three very strong bills that we had passed in a very positive way. again, addressing the shortcomings that we saw. testing, testing, testing. that was the theme of our first legislation way back when. i do think that as we go into this fourth bill, that will be important for us, for the republicans, to recognize the challenge that is out there. again, in these bills when the country has a republican president and republican senate and a democratic house, you have to make your compromises, but i feel very proud about the work that we did. the speed with which we did it. the bipartisanship that was the hallmark of it all, but that also means that compromises were made. i hope that in this next bill that we will be able to address the concerns of our state and local governments. that is absolutely essential. we need to do more. we need to do more by way of our

probations, by way of our tax code and by way of policy and also by way of the fed doing more to help the state and local governments with the challenges that they face, which are massive. we have to do more, you want me to give you the list of what we would have in a new bill, but, no. i think that congress has ban very positi -- been a very positive force in this, but again we can only go as fast as the signature and i feel very sad that there was no recognition, no respect for science right from the start, but, again, willie, i really think that what we have to do is go forward, after what we can have as we would always do, and after action review about what worked and what didn't work, but i do think that rather than spending time on the president, because he will say and do what he does, we cannot be limited by that. we must be, again, guided by

science. we said from the start we must have a government-wide, evidence-based, science-based coordinated way to go forward. if we had had that from the start emanating from the white house and, again, i respect dr. fauci. i worshipp eped with him at his shrive over 30 years but i don't understand why the scientists didn't have much more sway with the president early on. certainly science had its impact on the congress from day one. >> and speaker pelosi, one more question for you just on a personal note. one of your colleagues, congresswoman velasquez believes she's tested positive for coronavirus at least has all the symptoms. you were at the bill sign wig her not long ago. she spoke on the floor of the house. will you get a coronavirus test? do you have concerns for your own health?

>> no. i'm not sure she had a test. she spoke to a doctor, described her symptoms and he advised her directly, but she has that in other own tweet or however she put it out. in terms of my situation, i kept my distance. we all had tos six feet apart and i kept my distance from all of the members, and at the signing, you will see a great distinction between our signing and the president's. we had bipartisan signing enrollment ceremony in the house. with the republican -- republican leader and leaders on the committees of jurisdiction there. we were very, very spaced in the room that we took a bigger room so that we could have more space among us, and if you look at the picture you'll see that the congresswoman is well in her own space in that picture. so when i called the doctor, i said, this is -- you know, what

we had experienced, and he said, your situation is low risk and you have no reason to take on any measures, because you've just not -- you just weren't -- you know, if you had lunch for two hours and spoke -- you know, it's a completely different thing than being in the same room spaced the way we were. i think i was very proud of us, of the congress, because, you know, we had that nuisance challenge about, well, we have a quorum and the rest. i knew we'd have a quorum and pass the bill by voice vote, i knew it would be strongly bipartisan, leader mccarthy and i worked closely on that with our leader, mr. hoyer, mr. clyburn our whip and others to be sure we had wa was needed to ensure that the bill would pass, but in order to do so and following the guidens of our sergeant-at-arms and our capital physician we needed to be six feet apart from each other in.

a real is hoarhistoric moment t spaced six feet apart in the gallery and it took one minute. i said to the colleague in question, my thinking is that his one minute, his 15 minutes of fame would be 1 minute of shame, because this is going to be over very quickly, and we could abide by the guidance of the sergeant-at-arms and the capitol physician and at the same time have a voice of a vote that is very bipartisan to get the job done in a way that, that could quickly meet the needs of the american people in their lives and livelihoods, but now we have to do more. >> speaking of bipartisanship, the president has said that you and he have not spoken with each other in quite some time. would you like to speak with the president of the united states

in this time of a pandemic? would you like to begin communicating with him on a regular basis again? and if so, how do you we get from where we are to that point for the sake of the american people? >> well, i've always spoke ton presidents on an as-needed basis. it's an historic occasion when the speaker and the president speak. it's history. when it's a purpose, and what is the urgency? so we have -- we have, he tasked his people to negotiate with us on the legislation and we respect that. i did that with president bush as well. he would say, this person speaks for me. this cabinet officer, whatever. actually under president bush it was more of a reality than it was this time, but nonetheless, with the urgency and the purpose, we were able to do that. you ignore the fact that i was there for the state of the union

address. people say, oh, you haven't spoken to him since october -- no. we were there for the state of the union address. you remember that. but, again, if it's necessary, i'm sure we will speak, but at this time, since we're basing what we're doing on evidence, science, the needs of the american people, we, again, in the congress, our two different parties in the house and the senate, and our negotiations plus the involvement of the president's representative as to what he would sign, as long as that gets the job done, i think that's fine. i don't know what i would learn in a conversation with the president. we speak to each other right now, and that's what he really hearing what people say publicly. much more than what you might say in a call. and i think that those should be public anyway. so everybody knows what actually

happened in the conversation. >> hmm. that is for sure. house speaker nancy pelosi, thank you so much. we are praying for the president. we're praying for you and we thank you so much for your service and for being on this morning. >> i appreciate that and prayer, prayer, prayer. so -- i always say science is an answer to our prayers so we need both and as we go into holy week next week we'll have a, it will be a sadder time for us as lives are lost, but we have to be hopeful, and pray for a better future and i thank you for bringing that up. thank you for the opportunity with you this morning. >> thank you so much. >> thank you so much. >> thank you so much for being with us and thank you so much for your leadership, speaker pelosi. be safe. willie geist, your thoughts on the speaker? >> well, i thought speaker pelosi clearly wants a fourth piece of legislative relief here

going forward. she views the first three as steps along the way to another one she'll be working on. also i noted several times when she was asked by you and mika about her sort of approach with donald trump. she wanted to turn the corner and look forward, which is obviously a marked change from her remark a couple days ago. people are dieing why the president fiddles is looking backward about his sort of ignorance of are the problem or unwillingness to confront the problem. saying no time for that. an after-action report, look forward now and hopefully that's everyone's pos khmer ture at th moment. >> also note, mika, she talked about speaking to the president by phone. something we've learned that often, it just doesn't take. you say one thing one day and the next day things change dramatically. and it's almost like the

conversation was forgotten. i know the president attacks the speaker more, but at this point, i'm just saying, we really do hope for bipartisanship as we move forward, and that is the responsibility primarily of the president of the united states, but we certainly hope that our leaders can at least speak to each other, mika, in this time of pandemic. because it is -- we are a nation at war, and we all, as the speaker said, we all need to come together. >> and still ahead this hour, the "washington post"'s eugene robinson will join us plus jon bon jovi had a great idea for a song title. he just needed the song itself. for that he turned to fans to offer their inspiration during this challenging time. the acclaimed artist joins us ahead to talk about that. allergy relief and turning a half hearted yes,

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mika. the speaker talked about how we forget they were together at the state of the union address. >> there's that. >> kind of impossible to forget that moment when -- >> something like this happened. >> the speaker tried to shake the president's hand, and he refused to shake her hand at the beginning. the beginning of the state of the union. then at the end of the state of the union she was offended by many of the lies she considered, and tore up the speech. so, yes. we do remember that. and one of the more interesting state of the unions i've seen in a very long time. >> yes, it was. so despite efforts to protect workers under the $2 trillion stimulus bill, major retailers still made the decision to halt pay for much of their workforce. macy's, kohl's and gap joined a number of retailers who have recently decided to furlough many workers brings total number of workers at major u.s. chains without phi more than 500,000

according to bloomberg. these three retailers opted against receiving a tax break as part of the stimulus package, which they would have obtained if they continued to pay workers who could not do their job during the quarantine. however, the retailers will continue to pay for their employees' health care and the furloughed workers should also have access to unemployment packages which was boosted to $600 a week. in the past few days, l brands, over's victoria secret, steve madden, and tailored brands and others, the owners of joseph a. banks decided to furlough employees as well. it's rough. >> it is. the economic crush is so terrible. not only for the people who have lost their jobs, the people who have been furloughed, but there are a lot of people out there who were laid off and who may be

getting 60% of their salary. again, if you -- if you have -- not only your mortgage or your rent and all of the costs associated with your medical needs, so many people have student loans which i know they're suspending for a while, but, i mean, there's just an economic crisis that is going to continue to grow. >> it's crushing. >> that has to constantly be balanced by our leaders in washington and across the country, up next we'll bring in stephanie ruhle who says end of the month, says end of the month, what it means for big decisions ahead for people's finances in this crisis. plus, there was denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance after going through the five stages, eugene robinson said president trump may have finally surrendered to the facts about this outbreak. gene joins us with his perspective next on "morning joe." we cannot do all the good that the world needs.

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welcome back to "morning joe." joining us now pulitzer prize winning columnist and associate editor of the "washington post" and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson and nbc news senior business correspondent and msnbc anchor stephanie ruhle. good morning to you both. steph, start with you. we were just talking about tomorrow being april 1st. the day, of course, the rent is due. this is the first, the 1st of

the month since this crisis escalated. what are the implications of that for small businesses, homeowners and all the people worried now about making those payments? >> they're massive across the board. while people at home, individuals and small businesses might watch our programs and see headlines with members of congress and the president touting how great the cares act is, $2 trillion, and it is, but of those $2 trillion, no checks have been cut. talk to any, anyone in new york state. right? people trying to file for unemployment right now, it's a two-step process. first, you've got to go online. these websites are crashing over and over. then you've got to make a phone call and the lines are busy. whether talking about new york, california, connecticut, take your pick, these governors are saying, we are frantically trying to hire retired employees we used to have. staffing up to solve for this but it's not solved yet and the

small business loans people are so excited about. those paycheck protection loans, which are essentially these short-term emergency loans for businesses to get them through this period potentially having them completely forgiven, they're not even set up yet and you can only get one through your own bank. those 1,800 banks working with the sbsa don't even know the details yet. a huge amount of lag time, and bills are due tomorrow. now, you could call your landlord, call your credit card company and try to work something out, but there hasn't been a federally mandated national economic holiday. we have to pay our bills tomorrow, and that's just the way it is. >> yes. steph, thinking about all of those small businesses that anyone watching this show has been frequenting all they're lives. that little restaurant or the bagel place in jersey or the dry cleaner, who's struggling now and looking for federal help and wondering what life is going to be like on the other side of this crisis. what is the best hope for that

restaurant that's got a sign on its door that says "we're closed for now but will be back soon, we hope." there's a lot of heaviness in that "we hope" part of the statement. >> well, twofold. i mean, these loan programs are expansive. they could be hugely helpful, but they're not they're yet and people need to pay their bills immediately. if you remember when the president spoke sunday he said he spoke to wolfgang puck and daniel ba lulewd. we'll bring things back to the way they used to be. people can deduct those, expense them. what the president is talking about, rules where you can entertain people, where companies can and spend more than $100, well that would impact huge, fancy restaurants, but the mom and pop establishments that you're talking about, when you think about all of those people who are losing their retail jobs, these problems are real and they're not going to be solved overnight, and one other point i want to make is when the

president signed that bill into law, he added a statement, which basically makes things more hazy around corporate oversight. remember when there was that pushback that steve mnuchin treasury secretary would have that $500 billion essentially slush fund to decide which corporation, which industry they were going to bail out and then said, well, put an inspector general in, have real oversight. the president had an additional signing statement that basically said, i'm signing this bill but there's some elements in here that are either unconstitutional or infringe on my executive power and i'm not down with that. so while congress does have some level of oversight, they don't have subpoena power and i can tell you behind the scenes, every ceo in this country is knocking on steve mnuchin's door saying, please, sir, may i have some more and right now he's in position to be a corporate king-maker. >> absolutely.

stephanie ruhle. thanks so much. gene, your latest column in the "washington post" entitled "trump finally submits to reality." something we've talked about this morning which is that yesterday the president going up publicly saying, yes. i heard my scientists. i heard dr. fauci, i heard dr. birx. they came into my office as our friend jonathan lemire stated and spread them out on the desk. no choice. extended date to april 30th when we want people to be at home and probably farther from there. it's unfortunate it took this long to get here. i guess the question is, what is your confidence that he will stay here? because he's known to see a segment somewhere or read an article somewhere else that sort of distracts him and sends him down a rabbit hole. >> look, we are all betting on hope over experience at this point, willie, because we know president trump's history and we know how capricious he can be, how he believes the last person

he talked to. and goes off in a different direction. that said, especially on sunday at that, that first rose garden briefing. i thought i detected a real change. i thought i detected a kind of surrender to reality, the briefing that dr. birx and dr. fauci gave him about the potential for deaths in this country, if he did nothing, or if he did too little. really seemed to me to have made an impression, and so i am -- you know, that made me kind of hopeful for the first time. as hopeful as you can be in this situation. it is, according to all projections going to be awful. i spoke with a friend, a doctor at a top new york hospital yesterday. in his unit, which is a cardiology unit of the 17

doctors, 7 are out right now with symptoms of suspected coronavirus, and it looks like they're all going to be okay, but i mean, that gives you a sense what's actually happening on the ground out there, and this is not one of the hospitals that's overrun at this point. they're trying to get ready. i mean, this is really a situation for leadership. we got a little bit of it on sunday, and at this point i'm thankful for that. >> yeah. it was an extraordinary moment as we talked about earlier in the show where the president said the economy is number two on my list. first i want to save lives, which is an about-face for the president from the way he's been talking about this the last couple of weeks. eugene robinson, we'll read your column in the "washington post."com. thanks gene. coming up next, from neil diamond to joan jett, featuring musicians spreading positive message in the middle of the coronavirus crisis. up next -- a big one for you.

jon bon jovi standing by with his inspiring new collaboration. that's next on "morning joe." from one day to the next.

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♪ shutting down the borders, and they've boarded up the schools ♪ ♪ small towns are rolling up the sidewalk, one less beach is coming through ♪ i know you're feeling kind you' nervous, we're all a little bit confused ♪ ♪ nothing's the same we've got to make it through ♪ ♪ when you can't do what you do you do what you can ♪ ♪ you've seen my prayer it's just a thought i'm wanting the same ♪ ♪ we bend we don't break down here we all understand ♪ ♪ you can't do what you do you do what you can ♪ >> that was part of jon bon jovi's new song "do what you can" which needs an ending, and that's where you come in. john is asking america to help finish the song by sending along their stories of how the coronavirus pandemic is impacting their lives.

and jon bon jovi joins us now. >> thank you so much for being with us, jon. let's talk, first of all, how the coronavirus has impacted you personally. you've got a bandmate and a son, you believe, who had to go through the coronavirus. everybody doing okay now? >> yeah, thank you, joe. we're all healthy here in our house. my son jake had very mild symptoms, all intestinal and in three days the fever passed. he's 102%. he's wonderful. thank you. david brian had respiratory illness. he's had the virus for a couple of weeks now, but he wants everyone to know that he's really doing better, and although it's slow, he's doing much better. >> we're going to talk in a second about this inspiring song and how you were inspired by a picture your wife took of you volunteering. how it led to that.

first, i want to talk about the music side of this and how people are connecting with their fans and getting them through difficult times. jimmy buffett is doing something almost every day and it's getting over 100,000 people that are streaming and listening. i know you're also reaching out. the music community really has stepped forward, haven't they, in a special way to just get people's minds off of the terrible fight that everybody is going through now. talk about what that means to you as an artist to be able to do that from home. >> you know, the thing about music, joe, i know you like music very much and you are a player. and the truth is that music knows no borders. at the end of the day it's the great healer and great communicator. and through generations, music has brought people together. and i know that personally because, you know, both as a fan and as a writer, i've been able to communicate these messages. in these trying times, you find

something that is about the narrative that we're all living. when does a writer have an opportunity to be in the same situation as his audience? and so when i came up with the idea for this song, i had written it in its entirety, but i shared the first verse and chorus because everyone has a story to tell. and thousands and thousands of these submissions have been coming in telling me what they're going through. and in truth, you know, while we're all in quarantine and doing the right thing, when you can't do what you do, you do what you can. >> it's a great idea. it's a great title. and sort of reminds me. it's far more high minded than the old "love the one you're with." sort of plays on -- a little bit off of that. so we have, of course, new

jersey's favorite son. there's always a back and forth between you and bruce springsteen and willie geist. and it changes every day. but we have new jersey's own, engelwood's own willie geist. we'll let the jersey boys take it from here. >> i think jon is ready to concede this morning that i'm moving up right on his heels coming in hot on that new jersey list. jon, i love this idea, do what you can." help people understand how they can do it. you laid it out. here's the melody. here's the chorus. you guys pick it up from here. for people watching today, how do they add their own verse to this? >> thanks, willie. the story goes that we are all living in realtime this virus. and we all have to participate in this story. so as a writer, i have asked that you in eight lines tell me your story. how would i have known the bite

of the nurse, the doctor, the truck driver, the grocery store clerk, the teacher, the mom and dad who are home with their kids? everyone has a story to tell. and by sending in your lines on all of the social media categories, #do what you can, i'm then pulling several of these at a clip and singing them back to you. so i'm telling your story back to you and including it in this social exercise of a song. and it's been fascinating because i'm getting submissions from across the country and around the globe. >> it's such a cool way to do it. and there's a connection here to the soul kitchen which is your wonderful wife dorothea took a picture of you washing dishes at the soul kitchen. you captioned it do what you can. it was started in 2008 in the middle of another national

crisis, the economic downturn where people needed a little hand up, a little help. what are you doing at soul kitchen now in this next crisis, and how can people get involved? >> we have three of them here in new jersey. red bank, new jersey, potomac river and college campus, rutgers university being the first to embrace food insecurity on campus and bringing a jbj soul kitchen there. there's no prices on our model. if you participate in the model, you earn your meal. it's a hand up, not a hand out. if you, willie geist, come to the restaurant and you want to effect change directly, leave $20 on the table because it covers your meal and the cost of the guy next to you who may be in need. our volunteer opportunities, our dish washers in particular. in the case of me being back out of retirement and behind the dishwasher is because i was once there and taking the volunteer position away.

now we can't have volunteers in the restaurant so i'm there out of retirement. the dishwasher all-star. and it's great because we are practicing social distancing. as you can see, it was just the chef. the sous chef and myself because there's still an in-need population that we have to make sure they're getting fed every day. >> jon bon jovi, always lifting people up and doing it again when the country needs it right now. people, pick up. sing along with jon bon jovi and add your verse to his song "do what you can." great to see you, my friend. >> thanks, willie. all the best to all of you all. >> and that does it for us this morning. we'll be right back here tomorrow morning. for now, stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage after a quick two-minute break. ♪

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hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it is tuesday, march 31st, the last day of the month. here's what's happening. today is the day that millions of americans have been dreading ever since the coronavirus pulled the economic rug out from under them. that is because tomorrow is the 1st. the day rent is due, property taxes are due. all those bills that people no longer have the money to pay. that is because the government has rightly put our health first. of course, the big picture is still the health crisis. and as of this morning, there are more than 163,000 known cases in america. 20,000 more