stagger. >> right. >> it'll be staggered in a way. it might be geographic. it might be timing. it might be who got hit first. if you're in seattle, you might be back to work before d.c., where we're way behind in terms of the curve and the virus hitting our area versus the other washington. so those will be the things that we'll know, once we have a better handle on exactly what's happening. the other thing to watch for is a lot of these instant testings. not whether you have it but whether or not you have the antibody. if they can get those to market quicker, that could affect the back to work schedule. >> hearing from scientists and doctors, that'll be key. stand by. we'll see you in a second on "morning ios am. you can sign up at signup.axios.com. that does it for me on this thursday morning. i'm yasmin vossoughian. "morning joe" starts right now. we've been working very closely with dr. deborah birx and all our health care experts on the white house coronavirus task force, to give the

president the very best projections. they call it modeling, wolf. they look at what's happened around the world. we think italy may be the most comparable area to the united states at this point for a variety of reasons. so we've built thatted m emodel >> vice president mike pence yesterday saying that the white house modeling suggests the impact of the coronavirus in the united states may be most similar to italy. for reference, italy accounts for more than a quarter of all deaths worldwide from the virus, cordi i recording over 12,000 deaths. the death toll could be higher, as one study suggested some elderly victims died alone in their homes because they never made it to the hospital and were never tested for the coronavirus. >> willie, that certainly is sobering news from the vice president of the united states.

italy, of course, has been fighting through this for a month. as the "wall street journal" investigation uncovered, a lot of people in italy died at home, and they never bothered testing. obviously, there were concerns about health and getting people in there to test. so those numbers are underreported. we've heard doctors in the united states and nurses saying the number of deaths in the united states are underreported. not out of any malicious design, but just because in some places, it's happening so fast, that the numbers just get lost. you look at this country, over 320 million people. you put a per capita number on the united states, comparing it with italy. that is grim news indeed. >> yeah, that was another sobering number. the sobering number two days ago, the statistics dr. birx and fauci gave us, about the 100,000 to 240,000 potential deaths. if you're on italy's trajectory,

that's the last trajectory in the world you want to be on. a lot of the deaths, as mika said, not reported because people never went to the hospital. they were only reporting deaths in the hospital. many more than that. as we've said now a thousand times in this country, not deaths, but in terms of numbers of cases, we still have no idea. we don't have our arms around how many people have coronavirus in this country. >> we really don't. we've got some news on lockdowns that, obviously, will help us bring some order to this. there's news, of course, out of washington state and california that lockdowns, early lockdowns, are really making a difference. willie, i look at the numbers out in california. you know, i think a lot of people kept expecting the numbers in san francisco and los angeles to explode. san francisco has been on the lockdown for a couple of weeks. if they've been adhering to the lockdown, maybe they dodged this bullet. i mean, i don't want to say

anything too early because, again, this goes in waves, but the numbers are not exploding in california as much as they're exploding in new york. a lot of people at the very beginning thought they would. >> yeah. it's been very interesting to watch that. remember, san francisco, in particular, was way ahead of the game in terms of imposing just on the city a municipal lockdown. >> right away. >> a lot of people thought it was wild and crazy at the time. they thought it was authoritarian. there were pictures of coyotes roaming the streets because people weren't allowed to get outside. we don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but that looks like the way to go. florida shut down yesterday, as we hoped it would. governor desantis made the decision to tell people to stay at home. we wonder, in the weeks that were lost on those beaches, in those bars, how many more lives could have been saved if they'd taken a more aggressive approach early. >> well, you know, we pleaded with the president of the united

states to call ron desantis yesterday. he did call ron desantis yesterday. the governor of florida finally issued that lockdown order, after weeks and weeks of reckless reck less behavior. you hope, mika, that senior citizens, you know -- we have over 20 million people in the state of florida. one out of four is a senior citizen. you hope the senior citizens don't pay a disproportionate share of the pain and the suffering, the disease, the death. but there is no doubt, and you need to commend dr. birx. from the beginning, she has been speaking to millenials, begging them to take this seriously. spring breakers in florida did not do that. we got the reports last week of five students from tampa coming down with the coronavirus. now, we have reports coming out of university of texas, austin, that 44 u.t. students went on

spring break in mexico. against the advice of health care professionals. 44 now -- i mean, a lot went down there, but 44 now reported having the coronavirus. sure, if they're healthy and don't have underlying symptoms, they're going to be fine. but the impact of that, as it spreads out on the communities they go back to. >> yeah. >> on their grandparents. on their parents. it could be devastating. you know, erik erikson yesterday tweeted out about how you had all these people driving quite some distance to go to a church service. three people unknowingly were affected in that church service. the impact of it across georgia now is being felt. people left the church service, and erik erikson said that that virus spread. this is how it spreads. it's not a one-on-one spread. it's a one-on-three spread, which fwogoes to a ten spread.

>> happened in arkansas, as well. >> it spreads exponentially. that's why it's so important, as dr. birx said from the beginning, for young americans to take it seriously. >> as the number of coronavirus cases continues to balloon across the nation, more governors are now issuing statewide stay at home orders. among them, florida, governor ron desantis. his state ranks fifth in terms of the number of confirmed cases in the u.s. as the cases mounted, and the death toll ticked up in florida, desantis resisted calls from public health experts to issue the order. it wasn't until the phone call with president trump yesterday. also, more than 3,000 new cases over the last three days. then the governor heeded their calls. over 7,000 cases and 100 deaths. we're hours from the order taking effect. it is set for midnight tonight. the governor previously said he

was waiting for directives from the federal government, which prompted this response from the u.s. surgeon general. >> my advice to america would be that these guidelines are a national stay at home order. they're guidelines that say, look, the more we social distance, the more we say at home, the less spread of disease there will be. >> was it the surgeon general's comments earlier today that shifted your thinking on a statewide stay at home order? >> i had decided on this, you know, when the president did the 30-day extension. to me, that was, people aren't just going to go back to work. that's a national pause button. i had concerns about how some of that would effect different communities in florida who have not been hit the same way. i don't anticipate getting hit the same way as places like miami-da miami-dade. i wanted to see what their guidelines would actually say. even the guidelines, they never actually said to do that. the surgeon general, u.s.

surgeon general never told me that's what they were looking for. you know, but i think that given that we're having a 30-day, i think that's a signal from the president that, look, this is what we're going to be fighting for a month. >> okay. that decision from the florida governor is likely welcome news for former food and drug administration commissioner dr. scott godley, who expressed that the u.s. can avoid the death toll projected by the white house if states like texas and florida act. >> i think the wild card here, and the decision point on whether or not we're going to have the bad outcome that dr. fauci and dr. birx talked about, is what populous states like texas and florida do, that haven't taken aggressive steps even now. they're large states. they have large urban areas that have dense populations. if they don't get more aggressive, we could be on the

cusp of some of those bad outcomes. i think if those states start to act aggressively right now, we could keep this, hopefully, well below those kinds of models. >> mississippi and georgia have also issued statewide stay at home orders. the order from mississippi comes more than a week of the governor superseded local efforts in his state to promote social distancing. according to data gathered by the covid project, mississippi has the highest hospitalization rate from the virus in the country. >> let's stop there for a second. mississippi has the highest covid-19 hospital rate in the country. jonathan lemire, let's bring you in. also, jim vandehei with us, as well. jonathan, this is actually a governor who is contemptuous a week ago of the stay at home orders. he, in fact, undercut some local officials who had stay at home

orders, trying to protect people in their towns and their cities. he wanted people to pray for him but was going to continue to be reckless. it's like, you know, drinking on a saturday night, and then saying, hey, everybody pray for me tomorrow morning in church. no, doesn't really help. don't drink on saturday night, and you'll be much better, you know, getting to church on sunday morning. but this guy was like, pray for us, but i'm not going to do anything. in fact, i'm going to ignore health care officials and everything they're begging me to do. i'm not going to let my local mayors do what they're trying to do to save people in their town. now, look what's happening in mississippi. all too predictable. >> right. the kanumber of cases there hav exploded. we finally saw yesterday florida, governor desantis acted. i know this show in particular has been championing for that

for quite some time. images this weekend of beaches near jacksonville where you could see the line, which counties closed the beaches and which had not. those that didn't, the beaches were packed with people. obviously, a real risk to spreading this virus. there are still a number of states, of course, that don't have this. i believe alabama is surrounded by states that have stay at home orders, but it does not. don't expect there to be a federal guideline on this. the federal was pressed on this in the white house briefing, and he wanted to continue to defer to the states. he and the vice president, they said they believe in federalism. the state's governor should make their own decisions. that the white house, at least for now, was not going to impose a national stay at home order, even though there is mounting pressure, even from within the administration, from dr. fauci and dr. birx, behind closed doors, suggesting that is what is needed right now. pau because, as we've been documenting, yes, the hot spots are big cities on the coasts,

but they're spreading. eventually, it'll head to states that don't have the medical capabilities, health care capabilities that, say, a new york city does. new york city hospitals are overrun right now. no question. there is at least the capacity to handle influx of people. other states, less density, sure, but also, perhaps, doesn't have the adequate health care system for the influx of patients surely coming. for now, the president continues to want to put the onus on the states. we saw it in terms of medical equipment. his slowness to invoke the act. he wants the states to be responsible to find res separpi and masks. though the president extended stay at home guidelines, suggestions through april 30th, there doesn't seem to be an order coming from washington requiring all citizens to follow. >> the problem with that, mika, is, of course, that people travel across state lines. as you travel across state lines, you take the virus with you. you infect other people in new states. also, the president relying --

we've talked about this for a very long time -- the president relying on 50 governors, it is a patchwork approach, and it doesn't make any sense. you know, it was the president who got the intel briefings in january warning him. >> right. >> it wasn't governors. it wasn't governor kay. it was the president that got the warnings back in january. it was the president who has actually a secretary of health and human services who tried to talk to him starting early january. the president wouldn't talk to him for two weeks about the coronavirus. when he did, he wanted to talk about vaping. the president had everybody around him in the white house in january warning him about this, and he kept ignoring it, of course, and said, i'll push it off to the states. well, there's not a state approach to a pandemic. it's a national crisis. that pandemic sweeps across country lines. it sweeps across state lines.

it impacts people whether republicans or democrats, red states or blue states. taking this piecemeal, patchwork approach to a pandemic doesn't work. >> it is not like every governor is governor cuomo. governor desantis in florida, weak leadership, waiting for directives from the white house. waiting as people went to the beaches. i mean, this decision by this governor in florida, waiting for trump to tell him what to do, is going to lead to people losing their lives. he should have done more. he should have been engaged. he should have understood the virus. he didn't. then there's this. georgia's governor also relented and issued a statewide order after the southwestern part of the state was identified as a national hot spot. get this. in a stunning admission, governor kemp said he only just learned that asymptomatic people can transmit the virus.

>> i think the reason i'm taking the action, like i've continued to tell people, i'm following the data, following the advice of dr. toomey. her and i both mentioned in our remarks, you know, finding out that this virus is now transmitting before people see signs. so what we've been telling people from directives from the cdc for weeks now, that if you start feeling bad, stay home, those individuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt bad. we didn't know that until the last 24 hours. as dr. toomey told me, she goes, this is a game-changer for us. >> my god. my god. >> willie, where do i begin? where do i begin? everybody, haven't we heard this from dr. fauci? haven't we heard this from dr. birx? i'm sure the president even said it, the vice president. everybody has been saying, right? if i'm wrong, correct me. >> has he been doing his job?

>> haven't we known for some time that people who are asymptomatic can pass this on? isn't that when we watch tv and hear the doctors? they all warn that you can have it. one of the dangers is that it is asymptomatic. you can pass it on without even knowing you're passing it on. deborah birx. >> why we need testing. >> warning that children and teenagers are often asymptomatic. they can catch it and pass it along to all of these other people without even knowing it. so this georgia governor yesterday says, we just found out yesterday. it's a game-changer. i can tell you -- >> is that a joke? >> -- as a native of georgia, that's kind of embarrassing. >> yeah. of course, you're right. we've nobody fknown weeks and w can be asymptomatic and carry it around with you.

what governor kemp is doing is covering for his rhetoric the last weeks and weeks and weeks. where he effectively said along with the governor of mississippi and detesantis in florida, we'r not letting a flu bug shut down our state. there was almost a swagger. we we're not going to be like new york and other states. it is asymptomatic. it is coming to atlanta. it is coming to mississippi, and we've known that. what you're seeing, joe, is what we said yesterday morning. the power of president trump. specifically with governor desantis, who was grateful to president trump. he believes he helped him become governor of the state of florida with his campaigning. president trump knows he needs florida. president trump called governor desantis yesterday and compelled him to shut down the state. once that was done, the governors of georgia and mississippi did the same. so that is the power of president trump over certain governors, over certain populations. what he says s becomes law.

jim vandehei, the president has an incredible power, as we've been trying to sort of say to him on this show the last few weeks, to set in motion the kind of action that happened yesterday. to stop governors, to save them from themselves, to save their populations by shutting down their states. it looks like, finally yesterday, the president made the phone call to governor desantis and the dominos fell from there. >> yeah. what you're seeing here, and this is a bigger problem for society, is information inequality. like, why did desesantis do wha he did? why did georgia wait so long? they were listening to president trump. they were watching fox news and listening to rush limbaugh. the information was there. in the information bubble, they were basically getting a lot of sort of noise and news pollution. it has huge consequences.

all of these steps, which you talk about on the show every day, could have been done months ago. certainly could have been done weeks ago. nothing new. what the governor reacted to wasn't new news or a debatable fact. we knew anyone who is asymptomatic can pass it on to others, and often to many others. the problem has only been rectified really in the last five or six days. you have seen a different tone from the president, and you have seen a different tone from more people on fox news. there's still a lot of garbage out there. you go on facebook, twitter, follow some of these conservatives who have big followings, that maybe people watching the show don't follow or are aware of. they're still spreading nonsense. it is a big government trying to jam down their dumb rules on us. it has massive consequences. short of a national declaration that you have to sit in, there are going to be conservative states who sit out. i think that's why if you want to get to the low end of the projection, you have to take

strong, national steps. trump doesn't want to do it. one reason, he doesn't want to own the whole thing. two, there's people inside the white house who don't like mandating what the states have to do. in a crisis, and a pandemic is a crisis, you sometimes have to do that. >> if you're at war, the entire country goes to war. you know, it is true, what jim is saying. yeah, there's still so much garbage out there every day, and now, a lot of the more extreme trumpists are doing everything they can to try to defend the president and his extraordinarily slow start. trying to pretend that the intel committees, or that the intel community, his own intel community, warned him starting in january about this coming pandemic. it could be a pandemic. it could be very dangerous. the department of hhs, secretary azar, was troying ingtrying to two weeks, and the president wouldn't see him. when he finally saw him the middle of january to talk about the pandemic, the president only

wanted to talk about vaping. that continued on throughout january. there were other people in the white house taking meetings, trying to figure out what they could do. one staff member said, we just couldn't get him to focus on that. they're going that direction. for me personally, i got attacked by somebody from a website. i will not mention. why give people, you know -- why promote any website that spreads lies? but i was attacked, along with somebody on fox news, believe it or not, for recking the economy. because i was quoting the imperial college study that suggested up to 2.2 million americans could die. then, of course, after that, the president on monday, what did he do, he quoted the same exact numbers. on friday, i'm the bad guy for wrecking the economy, for quoting the imperial college

study, which is the gold standard according to people inside the white house. by the way, people inside the white house were looking at the immeeperial college study. that was the attack on friday. on monday, they moved the attack to something else because, of course, that's that. we've seen this sort of nonsense in politics for three and a half years, with the president's most rabid supporters. also, there are, of course, useful idiots for russia who are out there doing the same thing. so there still is -- even when we're talking about a pandemic that the president's people say could kill millions of people, but now maybe 100,000 to 240,000 people, you still have all of this nonsense going on out there. when so much is at risk. when the president's own people are saying it. my god, we're going to get to this story later, as well, but dr. fauci now has to get -- get this -- dr. fauci is now having

to get protection because of the number of death threats that he has received for doing what? trying to save as many american lives as he can. this is the sickness of certain extreme, rabid supporters online of donald trump. certainly not everybody. certainly not the majority of people. but there is this rabid strain. we've had democrats talk about it in bernie sanders supporters. we have it with donald trump supporters. can you imagine the man who is doing more to save you and your family's life, having to get security, having to get protection from u.s. marshals because he is getting death threats from people who think that this is a conspiracy to bring down donald trump? it's madness. >> for so many reasons, everybody needs to get on the same page with the scientists. >> it's madness. >> the top scientists. about what is coming at us. >> the president now appears to be listening to his scientists.

that should be a signal. back u really quickly. so this isn't a partisan strike at governors. we talked about republican governors from mississippi, georgia, florida, three states where i spent most of my life. but we can talk about democrats, as well. i mean, again, to make the bigger point, that this is a national issue. we are at war. you cannot trust governors. you can't trust mayors. you can't trust senators to protect people if you're at war and you're the president. you get the intel information in january, you have to take the lead. i mean, we have talked about republicans saying reckless things. go back to ealate april/early m. remember de blasio getting hammered for going to his gym as they were shutting down new york city?

bill de blasio telling people to go out and do things. andrew cuomo, yeah, he's going great now, but back a month or so ago, he was actually pushing back against bill de blasio and the stay at home order. you know, we've got tweets. we've got receipts. my point here is, not that these people aren't doing a great job now, just like i hope ron desantis starts doing a great job now for the sake of the people in their states. just that this can't be a patchwork approach. people get sick and tired of me saying that, but they've opinbe saying it. you can't have a patchwork approach to a pandemic. it needs to be nationalized. for whatever reason, the president wants to say he is a wartime president. he wants to declare war against this pandemic but will not take charge of it. he is scared to take charge of it, and it's caused a lot of chaos across this country in our

approach to beating this virus. >> joe, you know how much bill de blasio's gym routine personally offends me. >> yes. >> when it is left in the hands of the state, statehouses, and city halls, we get a variety of results. yes, certainly, governor cuomo is getting a lot of laudatory eviluati evaluations now, but new york was slower to move on the stay at home guidance. he didn't move as quickly as, say, california and washington state. governors inslee and newsom were quicker on some of that. de blasio is a good example. he, for a while, kept new york city public schools open, pointing to the need to feed underprivileged children and give children of rescue workers, and there's the value of education. there came a point where that was untenable. that was acceptable. health experts feel the

unacceptable part is he left the bars and restaurants open the last night, and encouraged new yorkers to have a last night out at their favorite bar. it was a recipe for disease. president trump here, you are right, he has not wanted to fully embrace this. as much as he is declaring himself a wartime president, it's only the last few days where he stopped down plays the severity of the virus, leveled with the american people as far as how pad bad it can be, how m can die, and to batten down the hatches and prepare for what can be a terrible two weeks. he is not fully mobilizing the government to do that. the united states government ordered more body bags to have delivered but has still not stepped up its production of making private companies produce the necessary number of ventilators and masks. masks, in particular, as a final point, is going to be a focus the next couple days. the president mused from the

podium yesterday that perhaps americans -- wasn't mandating it -- but perhaps americans should wear masks or scarves. the city of los angeles encouraged citizens to wear them, were they to step outside at all. >> mika, the "wall street journal" this morning in the opinion pages talk about the importance of these antibody tests. we've fallen behind in the diagnostic tests. we've got to catch up. if we get to the point where we're doing a million a day, 2 million a day, where if you wanted a test, you could get a test, it's great. still can't do it in donald trump's own palm beach county, where you have 1.4 million people and a couple thousand people are the only ones who had tests. 300,000 according to the "palm beach post" a few days ago. you have the diagnostic tests that are so important. as "wall street journal" was writing about this morning in opinion page, it is also important to get ahead of the game on the antibody test.

if somebody has the coronavirus -- and we're all starting. you probably know somebody who had the coronavirus and gotten through it. we know a lot of friends that had the coronavirus. >> people who have died. >> and gotten through it. there are a lot of people who have gotten through it that don't even know they had it. if you have a test, and we can get everybody to take that test, to see if you have the antibodies, if you do, then most doctors, most scientists believe that you're immune to the disease for at least a year. you can go back to work. you can go back to work. you can go back to restaurants. you can start your life back. so instead of five more, like, trillion dollar bailout bills, why don't we focus on where we should have from the beginning? that's testing. germany is ahead of us again on testing. other countries are ahead of us on this testing, according to

the "wall street journal." on this testing for immunity. let's focus on that. get the immunity tests out there. get the diagnostic tests, of course, out there. that's how we're going to open up our society fastest. mr. president, you need to take control of that. if you really want the economy to open up more quickly, if you want to be able to trace this disease, track it down, and figure out what states are ready to open up, what cities need to stay locked down, do the diagnostics. even in new york state, i know, i lived in upstate new york for a while, big difference between upstate new york and new york city. if you have these tests. i mean, one of my friends in upstate new york thinks he had the coronavirus. he takes the antibody test, it ends up that he's got the antibodies, he can go back to work that day. that's the key here. we've got to do better on testing.

we failed miserably once. >> we lost two months. >> we lost two months. let's get this right. we can get people pack into their lives, back to school, back to work, and get america running again. >> yeah. jonathan lemire and jim vandehei, thank you both. two more developments before we get in a quick break. really, prime minister benjamin netanyahu has gone into self-isolation after his health minister tested positive for coronavirus. net i can netanyahu's office said he was put in isolation at the advice of his personal physician. he'll be in self-isolation until next wednesday. and tennis is the latest sport to be impacted by the coronavirus. the wimbledon championships have been canceled for the first time since world war ii in 1945. the all england club announced yesterday. it is also the first time since the tournament began back in 1877 that the event will not be

played during peacetime. speaking of tennis, here in the u.s., the tennis courts that host the u.s. open in new york city are being turned into a field hospital for coronavirus patients. mayor bill de blasio said the part of the usta billie jean king national tennis center in queens will be converted into a temporary hospital with 350 beds for non-icu patients. the mayor added that he and tennis officials are still hopeful the open can continue as scheduled this august. who knows? still ahead on "morning joe," the top democrat in the u.s. senate, new york's chuck schumer joins us. plus, it doesn't better than this. >> oh! >> that is the best hug ever. amid work travel restrictions and a quarantine in china, nbc's

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welcome back to "morning joe." do we have janis mackey frayer with us, guys? let's turn to ecuador's largest city. "washington post" reports that bodies are piling up all over the largest city in that country. abandoned in hospitals, decomposing inside of homes, even wrapped in plastic and left on the streets, as families struggle to find cemeteries. the mayor of the city, who

tested positive herself, said four large refrigerated trailers would be sent to hospitals to serve as mortgages. ecuador reported the most coronavirus infections and deaths in latin america. meanwhile, guys, following the news from the white house. health professionals say the u.s. could see 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. pentagon ordered 100,000 body bags in anticipation. fema made the request yesterday for the nylon body bags, which were typically distributed to war zones. bloomberg reports that a fema spokesman said the agency is making prudent planning for potential future needs, and that includes preparing for mortuary contingencies for the states. it is not fun to report those statistics, but it's the reality from where the projections from all the charts we've seen from the doctors take us. >> yeah, no, that certainly is symbolic of where we're headed. >> you know, mika and willie, it is important, and i know both of

you remember 9/11 very well, and mika reporting it, and willie obviously knowing so many people impacted by it, we hope that people like scott godley were right. if americans aggressively take the caution that they take, that the death toll won't be as bad as we're hearing right now. i remember, you know, the ordering of 10,000 body bags for 9/11. people believing the death toll was going to be 10,000 or more. it ended up, of course, being far less than that. still an extraordinary tragedy. but these body bags have been ordered. this, unlike 9/11, mika, this is really in our hands right now. it's in the hands of americans and the decisions they make, how aggressively they self-isolate. it's in the hands of this administration and our federal government, how aggressively

they get the ventilators and the masks and the equipment that our people on the front lines need. like we've all said before, the doctors and nurses are the firefighters and the new york city cops who are on the front lines at 9/11. they're the ones on the front line in this crisis. if they get the support they need, and we all do our job, maybe, just maybe, we can hold the death count pe low the numb numbers we're hearing. >> it's in the hands of the president directly, who needs to message in a uniform way, in line with his stop sitop scient. so governors who aren't able to understand the science, or aren't able to live up to the leadership skills they should be having, they need to be able to listen to him. so it is in the power of the presidency to communicate effectively and to try and save lives. coming up, amid the outbreak, the overarching goal is to stay out of the hospital. still, it is critically important to know what's

happening inside those centers. our next guest is shining a light on that. we'll talk to an emergency physician who is reporting on the real life impact of the pandemic. that's next on "morning joe." yes. it's the first word of any new discovery. but when allergies attack, the excitement fades. allegra helps you say yes with the fastest non-drowsy allergy relief and turning a half hearted yes, into an all in yes. allegra. live your life, not your allergies. i often see them have teeth sensitivity as well as gum issues. does it worry me? absolutely.

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oh! >> that was a scene we all needed to see yesterday. let's bring in right now the woman in those pictures. nbc news foreign correspondent janis mackey frayer in beijing, who after 49 days of covering the coronavirus pandemic in china, in japan, and in the uk, and then 14 days as a part of the quarantine at home, reunited yesterday with her little boy. janis, that lit up the internet yesterday. it lit up our hearts. tell us what the moment was like, when you saw your little boy jumping up and down behind that fence, waiting to see you. >> reporter: it was incredible. it was something that i thought, oh, i need to video this, so i can show him someday. i basically threw the camera away. i just wanted to throw my arms around him. it had been just such a long

time. you know, hugs feel good. you know, it had been a lot of days and weeks of video calls. i missed two teeth coming out. he's reading now. so every day felt like an eterni eternity. so to be able to hold him again, it was incredibly special. it was hard to leave the house today because he wanted to make sure that i was actually coming back in good time. he said, you know, you know that was a lot of days that you were away, mommy. i said, yeah, i know. he said, let's not do that again, okay? i said, okay. it's a deal. >> we can report to your son that mom will be home in a little while. you have been doing such great work from the beginning of this. >> reporter: he'll appreciate that. >> in china, japan, and the uk. then you had to spend 14 days in quarantine after that.

can you just describe a little bit what that was like? so many of us are living that way, though for most of us, thank goodness, not away from our children and spouses, as you were. >> reporter: well, quarantine means different things in different places these days, obviously. here, as the restrictions were tightening, as the borders were getting tighter, as well, the quarantine period evolved. when i came back, it was -- the requirement was 14 days of quarantine in isolation. if you weren't able to do that at home, then you had to do that in a government-appointed facility. so my family moved out. they moved to a temporary apartment for the two weeks so i could have the comfort of home to carry out this period. i reported my temperature twice a day from the time i arri. from the time i arrived at the hospital, i was escorted by

people in hazmat suits, delivered to my building's management. there had to be approval from the neighborhood committee to allow me to do the quarantine at home. it is something here that's not a choice or a suggestion. it very much is a requirement that is enforced by law. now that i have finished the quarantine, like many other people who have been coming back to beijing, i now have an app on my phone that proves that i have a clean health record and that i'm able to move around more freely. these are some of the measures that china has been putting into place at this stage of the pandemic, to try to prevent imported cases. they've been saying that this is their concern, as they're trying to get the numbers under control here. they didn't want cases coming back into the country with people who were returning. so now, in the last ten days, they're just banning foreigners all together. any tourists with a visa or even

a residence permit is now not allowed to come back. we're seeing that trend with a lot of countries throughout asia. >> as i said, you were there i recall early on in beijing reporting on the story. yesterday, we got word that intelligence agencies believe china wasn't accurately reporting the extent of the spread and the problem of coronavirus inside its own cow tri. obvious -- country. obviously, president trump said it would have been helpful for the world to know how bad it was inside beijing. do you believe now that inside the country, and now the world, actually has some grasp for how beijing has been handling this and how big the problem was and is there? >> reporter: well, there's certainly the lag from when the first case was believed to be reported in wuhan to the time that the central government here actually acknowledged that there was this growing problem. it came through

whistle-employeerwhistle-employe -- whistle-blowers and social media accounts. there's always some question with numbers here. there is a long tradition of a lack of transparency. so the numbers they are giving in terms of cases and deaths are certainly met with a degree of skepticism. not only outside of china but within china, as well. what beijing, in terms of the central government, has been trying to do is to, at the same time revive the economy here, also provide some sort of template, as it would be, to the rest of the world on the sort of measures that they had to take in order to get things under control here. do people believe that there are now no cases being transmitted domestically in wuhan? certainly not. if you read a lot of the comments on chinese social media here. what people do see and what they do acknowledge is that after months of restrictions and

limits on how people live their lives here, those restrictions are beginning to relax somewhat. people are easing cautiously towards a more normal way of life. there's still a lot closed here. theaters are still closed. schools are closed. they've cut international flights. they've banned foreigners all together. what they are trying to do is stabilize the numbers. and then on the part of the government here, it's to get the world to believe them. >> all right. nbc's janis mackey frayer, live for us in beijing. we can report she will be home to her boy again today. thank you for all your reporting and for the sacrifices you've made with your family in doing it. thanks so much, janis. >> thank you, willie. all right. >> mika? >> joining us now, emergency room physician in new york city dr. calvin sun. he is a per diem doctor, picking up shifts in emergency rooms as needed. he is also a blogger with a

following on instagram and has been posting pictures and videos of experiences treating victims of coronavirus. so, i guess first of all, how are you doing, navigating? how many shifts are you taking on? and tell us about what you're seeing. >> i'm pretty tired. i've got to say. as a per diem doctor, i chose this lifestyle so that i could be more flexible and work however much i want. i planned maybe 6 to 11 shifts a month. usually a full-time physician works 11 a month. i worked 19 shifts in the last 22 days. not because i had to, but because it is a calling. like, i needed to. it was something i saw my colleagues were suffering from, with so many open shifts because my claeg colleagues were callin sick or being hospitalized, some on life support. i didn't feel i had a choice. because with all the open shifts, these shifts need to be taken so patients can be seen

and taken care of, and also to support my staff at the emergency rooms around the countcowaity. so they feel supported, and to take care of the patient volume we've never seen or been able to handle in recent memory. >> when you talk about patient volume, tell us what you're seeing. what is happening to the patients as they come into the er? is there enough space? how are doctors and nurses able to cope with their challenges, their pain? >> when you call 911, you expect to be seen immediately. an ambulance picks you up, and you're taken to the emergency room, when a doctor is supposed to see you quickly because you're arriving by ambulance. patient volumes are so high, in some hospitals, ems stretchers and ambulances wait five hours in line to be triaged. you have to wait in line to wait in a line to probably be sent to the waiting room, where you

might wait another 11 to 12 hours, which i've seen, before you go inside the emergency room. when you go to the emergency room, it is like a giant room of stretchers that's organized like tetr tetris. you can't move to see a patient 3 feet away. you have to leave the emergency room and enter in another exit or entrance to see another patient. they're 1 feet away from us, doctors, nurses, mps, trying to work as hard as they can, but with conditions that are 1 feet away from us, all covid-19 positive. waiting up to 80 hours for a bed before they go upstairs. or some dying before they get a bed because hospitals are full. that is our new normal. it is our new reality. when our colleagues are getting sick, that does a number on our emotional toll. it is going to create ptsd. a lot of us have that now. every day, every morning we wake up, wondering if we have a fever. like a soldier in war, wondering

if they got shot waking up. that's our reality right now. >> the president and his top scientists say in the next week and a half, two weeks, this is going to get worse. much worse. you were talking about the emotional toll. how does that news sit with you? >> it is just jarring to have my own nurses be my patients. i've already intubated a few nurses, and i know some of whom did not make it. those are the same people that i work with side by side. i mean, we go to -- when people fight wars, they do it -- the ones in the trenches do it for one another, our brothers and sisters, you know, people we fight alongside. thoesz a those are our main reason for going in. to see them work with you one day, then become a patient the next day is, you know, it hits more close to home than we could have wanted to or imagined.

to feel like we're not having enough, an adequate personal protective equipment, whether it's not enough or, you know, it's just running into battle without enough gear, is also emotionally jarring. then to have those thoughts in the first five minutes of a shift, we can't function as well as we want to if we're scared. i had nurses work with me at the new york city marathon, the finish line. 5,000 patients in six hours. no problem. we've done critical care medicine outside this country where we've had to ration care. we felt we were protected. those same people who never blinked an eye are we me right now in new york city, and they're looking to me and saying, i'm scared. these are the teams i need to lead into battle every day to try to fight this pandemic that we don't know enough about. this virus spreads so quickly, and it kills very, very quickly. people can look good one minute,

looking great, talking to us, and the next hour, they're dead. that's what we're seeing inside the emergency rooms. >> dr. sun, it is willie geist. thanks for being on with us this morning and thanks for all you're doing. we appreciate the insight from inside those emergency rooms. i've talked to doctors across new york city hospitals, and i've heard varying accounts of personal protective equipment. they'll say one day, we feel good. okay, we've been bolstered. we got a shipment, doing okay. the next day, they're in a crisis because they don't have any. as you've been to different hospitals, have you seen where some places have what they need and others don't, or is it across the board that we're lacking everywhere? >> it's across the board. every single emergency room i go to is missing something that is crucial, right? it doesn't work for me if i just have a mask. i also need protective eye wear. it's not enough to have eye wear. i need a mask or a facial. i need head to toe bunny suits. some people have more gowns. some people have more masks.

it's different, right? they're all lacking something uniformly across the board. to no fault of hospital administrators or higher ups, people are trying patchwork. they're trying to keep up. we had no idea that the volume of which we need to switch out gear as quickly as possible because every patient now has covid-19 until proven otherwise. the proper use of gear is to switch it out. they're supposed to be disposable. in between patients. now, patients come in 10, 20, 30 at a time. we can't switch ten gowns and protective wear within five minutes. we have to keep it on, which is an infectious control risk. it is a practical problem, too, right? so it's across the board where, like, my personal protective equipment is cobbled together from many different emergency rooms but they have different things. the first five minutes of every shift, i usually hear, oh, where'd you get that?

it's usually, hospital x, y, or z. and i'm now getting by in week four, i have what i feel makes me a little more comfortable, based on personal donations i've received from loved ones and friends. when i went on social media and was like, this is what we got, but look at the standard of care they're giving health care workers in italy and china. they look like they're in chemical warfare. with us, we're cobbling together different things, just getting by. we're doing our best. everyone is doing our best. us on the bottom and people at the top, it is not enough. we need to feel like we can go into work and not feel like we're lacking at all. we don't have to worry about something else in the back of our mind, let alone our team members getting sick. >> all right. emergency room physician in new york city, dr. calvin sun, thank you so much for all of that. we hope -- we wish you the best and hope to see you back here again soon. it is the top of the hour right now. let's talk more about what's

happening in new york state. one, grim, 24-hour stretch, nearly 400 new yorkers died from the coronavirus. the empire state's death toll towers at a staggering 1941. 1,941. governor andrew cuomo warned yesterday these numbers will continue to climb at alarming rates. >> what are we're looking at now is the apex, top of the curve, roughly at the end of april. which means another month of this. people say, when is it over, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks? this model projects you're going to have a high death rate through july. if this model is correct, this could go through the summer.

>> the usns comfort now docked in new york city, in central park's temporary tent hospital. it's admitted its first patients in an effort to combat the coronavirus outbreak. mayor de blasio announced that by sunday, the city needs at least 3.3 million masks and 400 ventilators. joining us now, former nypd commissioner, james o'neill. he is serving as mayor bill de blasio's coronavirus senior adviser. thank you very much, sir, for being on the show with us. i want to start with what's going on in the nypd. a lot of cops are out sick. i think at last check, it was 17% or 1,400 members members out sick. are we going to have a shortage of cops? >> this is something that nypd is a very resilient organization, resilient law enforcement agency. they have a great person at the helm. great leadership over there.

they'll get through this, as they've gotten through so many crises in the past. new yorkers should have complete confidence in the nypd. >> so as the city itself prepares for an alarming death toll day by day, what is mayor blasio, your commission doing to get hospitals in sync with the reality, especially separating people so doctors and nurses don't get sick? we just heard from an er doctor who is watching nurses fall ill and treating them. they're dying in front of him. i mean, this is a huge cluster. is there any way to try and spread this out so we can separate the ill from the well? >> yeah. so let me give you background. i called the mayor up a couple days ago. told him i was coming back to the city. my sons are here. my mom is here. i was out in san francisco. first of all, i want to thank al kelly from visa for giving me

the opportunity to do this. it is a great company. i asked the mayor if there was anything i could do. he said, yeah, i'll have something for you to do. yesterday morning, he called me and said, listen, this is what i need you to do. i need you to make sure to pay attention to the supply chain. make sure we're getting, first of all, the equipment in and it is being sourced properly. n-95 masks, surgical masks, the gowns, ventilators, goggles, face masks. when it comes into the city, that it is distributed to the hospitals that need it most. so i'm heading into oem after i do a couple interviews. been on the phone last night. i hit the ground running. assembling, i think, what will be a great team. some nypd folks who know how to do this work. new yorkers should be confident that we're going to move forward and get through this, and we're going to come out the other side and be proud of what we have done. we can sit back -- not sit back,

duh but we can say we did our best to help as many people as possible. >> commissioner o'neil, it l, g to have you in the fight. >> good morning. >> let's talk about the supply chain. it is the critical question. i'm glad you're overseeing it. we heard it is a piecemeal effort right now. apple just donated 2 million masks to new york state. you'll get some of those coming in. 3m is working hard, and other companies, to make those. from where you sit, because, again, i think a lot of people watch this and go, hey, those new york hospitals need the masks and the gowns. get them the gowns. what are we waiting for? why is this taking so long? i guess i'll ask you, where are the masks and the gowns, where are they being produced and coming from, and how do you get them into the hospitals quicker than we are right now? >> yeah. that's the challenge, willie. we have to make sure it is sourced with as many different sources. there's the federal government, the state government, the city, the local government. the de blasio administration is

working in the brooklyn navy yard. there's a company that's producing masks and goggles. a lot of the equipment is coming from the private sector, too. my responsibility, my goal is to make sure that as we source that, it gets sent to the hospitals that need it most. of course, it'll be a challenge. if you look at the hospital system in new york city, the hospital system, this is non-profits, city hospitals, it'll be a challenge. i know i'm going to get a great team together. there's great work being done anymore. now is the time for everybody to work together. this is about saving lives. nothing more important than that. if we can't do that at this point, we'll never be able to do it. it is a great honor to do this, and i'd like to thank the mayor for giving me this opportunity. >> commissioner, you've been with the nypd for a long time. i'm sure you're seeing things now you've never seen before. most new yorkers obviously have

never seen before. field hospitals being set up in central park. usns comfort being sailed in to have 1,000 additional hospital beds. tennis center in queens turned sbood into a hospital. javits center turned into a hospital. you were here on 9/11. how are you viewing this problem more broadly? >> i said it yesterday during the press conference. i was out in california. i'm seeing and reading and hearing about everything that's going on throughout the world, throughout the country. take a look at the health care workers and the courage they show each and every day. look at the firefighters. look at the port authority police, the state troopers. look at the military. this is a country, this is a state, and this is a city that's coming together. we're going to get through this and come out the other side. we're all going to be proud we did our best to save as many

lives as possible. >> former nypd commissioner now mayor bill de blasio's coronavirus senior adviser, james o'neill, thank you very, very much. you know, willie, you love the attitude. new york has been through so much in the past. but you look at the situation, that you're hearing, that we're hearing from friends that are inside the hospitals. already, it seems they're pressed and completely maxed out. they're watching their colleagues die in front of them. if you listen to what governor cuomo said yesterday, they're not expecting the apex of the infections and the deaths until the end of the month. so things, if you look at that line, it is going to ramp up exponentially over the next two

to three weeks. you look at the data, the numbers, it is going to be so much worse in the coming weeks. >> i think that's why it is important to hear from doctors like dr. sun, who was on a couple minutes ago, who was in there, witnessing with his own eyes and treating patients to come out and tell us about that. it can start to look like a bunch of statistics. we're looking at graphs and when is it going to peak and when is it going to come down? these are people. these are human beings. we're calling them heros because they are. as i talk to a bunch of them, and i'm sure you do, they're scared. that's what dr. sun said. they've never seen anything like this, and they're scared to go in. they're worried they are going to become infected and be taken off the field. they're worried they're going to become infected and that they're going to infect somebody at home. they're worried about their own families. but they continue to go in, which is the definition of heroism. but we are there. all these theoretical models, well, the new york homes are going to be slammed at some point. they'll be overwhelmed.

they're there. they're overwhelmed. they're slammed. they need the protective equipment. they also, as i talk to doctors who are on the front lines, they need more doctors and nurses. they need more bodies. people who can go in and offer some relief on the shifts. so they don't get infected, can stay in the game, and rotate in and out. >> it's what governor cuomo has been asking doctors in upstate new york who are available, nurses in upstate new york, also from the region, whose own areas aren't impacted. he begged them, come help him. when their time of trouble comes, they will reciprocate. as it moves through new york city, they'll be able to g oo o and help the rural hospitals facing the crisis in the future. one of the real concerns has to be, if you're on the front lines in new york city, has to be from the white house every few day, you hear discouraging comments.

whether it's the president of the united states suggesting that health care workers are stealing masks. 300,000 masks. maybe putting them on the black market. or the reports out yesterday that the white house is suggesting that cuomo, governor cuomo is exaggerating and doesn't need the ventilators that his doctors and nurses says he needs. again, the apex comes three to four weeks from now. they're already stressed. the suggestion that new york is exaggerating the problem or trying to get things and putting them on the black market is -- has to be distressing for those on the front lines fighting the pandemic. >> painful things to hear. also, what must be incredibly undermining for doctors and nurses and medical workers in the hot spots is to hear things from the very top that are void

of reality. like 15 days to slow the spread. or 30 days to slow the spread. really? it's going to change. it is going to be 45. it is going to be 60. there's no way, if you're looking at it from the front lines, that this ends by easter, which the president was saying days ago. for these doctors on the front lines, who are so stressed, it is going to be a mental health crisis for the medical community. because as dr. sun was saying, these doctors are scared. they're operating with their mind in a fear mode, which makes you less able to do your job. when you are in fear, when your mind is fully embraced in emotion, you're not able to think as clearly. doctors are able, like dr. sun was saying, to be at the end of a marathon and, you know, dealing with thousands of patients. they can stay calm in a crisis. but when they are dying next to each other, their colleagues are dying in front of them, it puts them in fear mode. we have doctors falling apart,

whether succumbing to coronavirus, getting it from the patients that are pouring into the ers, but they're also scared it at this point. they have ptsd, and it hasn't even ended. >> i think it really helps when you set out realistic guidelines. the president moved beyond -- >> the truth helps. >> he talked about the end of april. several days ago, he talked about june 1st. it's really a date when things might get started back. maybe that's optimistic. maybe it'll work out okay. we don't know until we get through april. april is, t.s. elliott said april is the cruelest month. that'll certainly be the case in new york and around large swaths of the country. but we still are going to have to wait to see what happens in michigan. we'll have to wait to see what happened in florida. we took so long to shut down. have to wait to see what happens in mississippi, in louisiana, and a lot of these other states. let us hope that it all does

come to an end at the same time in april. but judging by how this pandemic moved across the globe, that certainly doesn't seem to be what the past rate of spread has shown us. >> as the number of coronavirus cases continues to balloon across the nation, more governors are issuing statewide stay at home orders. among them, governor desantis' state is fifth among the states in the country. desantis resisted calls from public health experts to issue an order. it wasn't until a phone call with president trump yesterday and 3,000 new cases over the last three days that the governor heeded their calls. right now, there are nearly 8,000 cases and at least 100 deaths. we're still hours from the order taking effect. it is set for midnight tonight.

mississippi and georgia have also issued statewide stay at home orders. the order in mississippi comes more than a week after the governor superseded local efforts in his state to promote social distancing. according to the state data gathered by the covid project,my now has the highest hospitalization rate from the virus in the country. and georgia's governor relented and issued a statewide order after the southwestern part of the state was identified as a national hot spot. stay at home orders in pennsylvania, which had only been enacted in some counties, have now been ordered for the entire state. that leaves 11 governors who haven't yet issued statewide stay at home orders. willie? >> more now about the health care workers on the front lines, as the disturbing news that covid-19 cases among those workers are growing now at an alarming rate. with the lack of testing, the

actual rate of infection is very difficult to pin down. state health departments in ohio and minnesota are reporting that up to 20% of those infectedprof. that's a number in line with italy and other hard-hit parts of the world. new york currently, as we said, the epicenter of this pandemic. one division there tells nbc news they feel abandoned, as they have a shortage of everything and everybody. saying, quote, as an american, i feel ashamed. we are on our own. the government has failed us. that's from a new york city doctor. so far, health care worker deaths have been reported in new york, in florida, in california, and georgia. following the news from the white house health professionals, that the united states could see between 100,000 to 240,000 deaths, the pentagon ordered 100,000 body bags in anticipation. fema made the request yesterday for the nylon body bags, which typically are distributed to war zones. bloomberg reports a fema

spokesman said the agency is making prudent planning for potential future needs that includes preparing for mortuary contingencies from states. let's bring in chief medical correspondent dr. dave campbell, who is following every aspect of this. earlier in the show, we talked about the antibody testing and how important it could be to really this opening up and allowing the country to reopen, giving us a road map. where are we with testing and, specifically, that kind of testing? >> mika, this was an important week for antibody testing. just yesterday, dr. fauci addressed the issue, so did dr. birx. both of them pointed out the importance of antibody testing, both now and into the future. dr. fauci more looking at it as a surveillance tool. very important moving forward, to identify and allow people to get back to work safely. dr. birx, on the other hand,

really laid down a challenge this week to universities to develop antibody testing protocols. most importantly, so we can get health care workers across entire hospital systems tested to give them, as she said, peace of mind, to know whether, in fact, they've been infected and are now through it and have some immunity. moving forward, we will see more antibody testing, combined with antigen testing, the current system we have now from abbott and all the others. that's going to give us an ability to backfill those health care workers and first responders who get sick and are taken out of the system for around a month. you figure if you get inoculated, about five days later, most people get symptoms. the disease tends to run for about eight days in the average. then you need another two weeks

of being in relative quarantine. that's a month. so if you -- that's also the reason that everything everybody can do right now still to lismi their exposure is important. florida's peak is may 3rd, about a week after new york's. so we are seeing this already. i have canvassed the state speaking to most of the hospital systems, ceos, chief physician executives. this is already here, and we're going to see this wave from miami to broward to palm beach county to orlando to jacksonville. >> dr. dave, obviously, you've heard, we've heard, that miami is going to be a hot spot. you spoke to a lot of medical providers, a lot of physicians, hospital administrators in miami. what's the situation there?

>> miami has been very proactive. i spoke to dr. page, the chief executive for jackson health, my alma mater. he is in charge of the entire system. just as a quick note, after i hung up the phone, i read the newspaper and realized their ceo, who i was to have spoken to, tested positive three days ago. he is in isolation. so i spoke to dr. page. they've been planning since january, communicating with people in wuhan, in italy. they've been staffing. they've been suppressing the hospitalization rates. they've stopped, of course, all elective procedures and surgery. they're at 65% capacity, much lower than normal. so the hospital has a lot of open beds. they have 80 positive patients in jackson. they have one-third of their ventilators being used, which means two-thirds are being kept and ready. they will be needing those in the days and weeks to come.

>> all right. dr. dave campbell, thank you so much. >> thanks, dr. dave. >> appreciate it. mika, it is interesting that that hospital, starting in january, started preparing for this, talking to china, talking also to what was happening in italy. it seems that sort of preparation has been absolutely critical. unfortunately, nobody was prepared early enough in new york city for the onslaught they're going to be receiving the next weeks. >> we're getting moving pictures and stories from health care workers across the country. emts, technicians, doctors, nurses, cleaning crews, everyone who helps keep our hospitals and medical facilities going during this unprecedented crisis. email your stories and pictures from the front lines. email at know your value at

nbcuni.com. know your value @nbcuni.com. >> thank you for your service. let's bring in capitol hill correspondent and host on sunday nights on msnbc, kasie hunt. and chairman of the libertarian party. >> what is the talk about the next stimulus plan? we understand there's already discussions about phase four, about how the federal government helps workers, how they help small businesses, how they help companies being absolutely gutted right now by this pandem pandemic. >> reporter: so, joe, we're a couple weeks away from the next version of this. that's partly because we are still so in the thick of just grappling with this crisis. racing. the government is racing to get the programs from the initial

relief bill into place for people. but i think you can think of the next iteration of this. if this was the plan to kind of keep the boat floating, the next phase of this is to get everyone who manages to stay on the boat back to work. so infrastructure projects across the board. we've talked about infrastructure so many times, it's almost become a joke. it's not a joke anymore. this is going to be something, i think, especially if this crisis continues and deepens, that we're going to very much need as a country. but i think how and whether it gets done successfully is going to depend on that relationship between the house speaker, nancy pelosi, and mitch mcconnell. pelosi did a long conference call yesterday that i was on with reporters, talking about priorities. there was an interview with bob costa at the "post," saying nancy needs to stand down. they squared off in the last bill, and they need to work together, americans will, if this sort of project is going to

get through. pelosi did say they've had overtures already from the administration. if this is what president trump wants to do, and he is willing to work with pelosi to do it, i can see it happening. it might mean the republicans in congress get steam rolled. >> what's going on with mitch mcconnell, kasie? you have mitch mcconnell, and we were talking about this before, talking about how he exploded on the senate floor, lost his cool. he's been very angry lately. he struck out yesterday against nancy pelosi. what's going on with mitch mcconnell, who has always famously kept his anger in check in the past? >> reporter: joe, honestly, i think it is because he's relatively powerless in this situation. if you think about everything he's done as he's been running the senate in this particular era, he's done it with 51 republican votes. you know, he's kind of crammed the -- jammed up the systems. he's changed some of the rules,

and he's moved forward under, you know, these procedures that let him do that. technically, it is budget reconciliation, which i know you're familiar with, which we'll set aside for a second. if he wants to do these thing, if they want to put the plans in place that's going to be needed to rescue this economy that's already in recession, if not headed for a depression, he actually needs to work with democrats. i think you're seeing the fallout of that. those relationships haven't existed. you know, we've talked a lot about how, you know, republicans have failed in many ways in the trump era. you and mika have focused on that. a lot of people have gotten upset about the idea you have to talk about what both sides are interested in doing. people are frustrated when you say that. you shouldn't equate those things. but this, i think, is a prime example of why it is really important for people who belong to different political parties, come from different cultural backgrounds, are able to get

together and work together. there's literally no way out of of this crisis, if those relationships don't exist. the reality is our system has broken down so much and become so polarized that we're not really very well prepared or situated for the congress to be able to make these kinds of moves in this era, joe. >> kasie, it is willie. we had speaker pelosi on a couple days ago, and she was insistent there needs to be a fourth piece of legislation to follow the bill that made its way through congress pretty easily in the end, anyway. where does it leave us? you have mcconnell saying, stand down, nancy pelosi, calling this premature. she's insistent we have to do something else. the previous three were steps along the way. where does that leave us, if the two of them aren't getting along, they're not speaking? we know nancy pelosi isn't speaking to the president of the yi united states. how do you get to the fourth piece of legislation?

>> reporter: i think that's the main question, willie. pelosi did yesterday on the conference call acknowledge the house isn't going to come back until april 20th. that's several weeks away. she said god willing, or coronavirus willing, we'll be able to be back then. it gives some breathing room. it is a space of time for these new programs from the relief bill to be rolled out. to get a sense of whether they're working. get a sense of what people are really going to need. it is a question, what exactly do we need to do? i think she is trying to get a jump, to make sure that when that opportunity comes and they're ready to sit down and talk, she has her line of policies ready to go. i think that's part of what is frustrating to mitch mcconnell, as well. you can see the power play kind of rolling out in public between the two of them. nancy pelosi holds a lot of cards right now. the fact that she is over running the house, i think, is something that, you know, we

have seen her in public take on the president directly. seen her take on mcconnell. i think she is in a pretty strong position to shape this the way she wants to, willie. >> all right. nbc's kasie hunt. thank you so much. we greatly appreciate it. let's go to the head of the libertarian party. obviously, you've had real concerns with last several bills, relief bills, stimulus bills that have been passed in washington. i don't know a libertarian that wouldn't have a concern with the bills. what does the next bill need to look like to you? >> i mean, the next bill needs to look like -- let's talk about what it needs to not look like. it can't be $2.2 trillion put on the backs of our children and grandchildren. that's over $6,800 for every man, woman, and child in this country. how do i look at, as a parent, how do i look at my daughter and say, you're going to have to pay

back $6,800 extra of national debt so your dad can get a $1,200 check? most of this stimulus bill funds government programs that couldn't otherwise get funded, or it gives a $500 billion slush fund to steven mnuchin so he can pay off big businesses, while americans are struggling and we're tightening our belts and helping our neighbors. the best thing that nancy pelosi and mitch mcconnell could do is go sit in time-out and think about what they've been doing to this country. you can't solve a pandemic with money. the virus can't be bought. it doesn't care who is in charge. it doesn't care whether republicans or democrats, whose fault it is. it is killing americans. we still don't have adequate testing in this country. you know, the president is like a shady contractor, where everything is always two weeks aw away. it'll be two more weeks, just two more weeks. you know, what the government

should do right now is focus on the infectious disease that we're all fighting as americans. not as republicans or democrats or libertarians. no bill should be passed that does anything other than fight the health crisis or give direct aid to individual americans who know best what they need in their lives. >> let's talk about it. so you're for direct aid to americans. that sort of relief bill. let's talk about -- follow up on something i was talking about yesterday. small government conservatives have been fighting to balance the budget for years. it is why i ran for congress in '94. we actually achieved that. of course, everything exploded in the 2000s. it seems that when republicans decided they were going to be small government conservatives, they gutted -- they focused on the 12% of the budget, which was

discretionary domestic spending, taking care of things like pandemics, national institute of health, and other items like that. of course, ignored the explosion in pentagon spending, tax cuts to the wealthiest, multi-national corporations on the planet. i'm curious, do you support the funding as a libertarian? do you support the funding of that 12% of the budget that has been gutted by republicans over the past decade for pandemic planning, for the national institutes for health, for r&d, to prepare for these sort of disasters? >> what i would support is a government where there is open debate in both houses of congress about what our national priorities really are. but it has to start from the same place that you and i start in our budget, which is how much money do i have, and what am i able to spend it on? the problem that we have right now is structural.

the senate and the house are really just leadership, and the president can spend money on any project they want to pay off any corporate crony they want, but they're using your money to do it. you know, they're adding money to your credit card to buy things for them. at this point, the national deficit for this year, not the debt, the deficit is approaching $3 trillion. so what i want congress to go back and do and sharpen their pencils, figure out which of these wars overseas we can get out of now. which of these drug wars we can scale back. instead of, as the administration is doing, trying to scale up the drug war in the middle of an infectious pandemic. is there anything more absurd? we need to take a hard look at what's important to us as a country. if our elected officials can't take that look and figure out how to balance a budget when they're spending our money, they need to be replaced.

>> all right. chairman of the libertarian party, nick, thank you so much for being with us. what nick said, mika, reminded us of what a tweet was you pointed out to me earlier. >> right. >> from framass strategy to lea the press conference with a new counter-drug strategy instead of talking to corona, trump is trying to show control of something since he lost control of corona. these are old plans dusted off to distract. it was strange yesterday. >> it was weird. >> they started out saying that these drug lords were trying to come to the united states and kill americans. we've heard other distractions in the past. i know a lot of people just skipped oskip ed over that part of the press conference. i didn't watch it. we waited for -- >> everything is a trick with him. >> we waited for the doctors to come because that's what americans want to listen to. it is about the doctors. it's about the pandemic.

it's about figuring out how to ramp up testing. i just want to say this, too. every government in the world right now is obsessing on testing. i talked about the "wall street journal" opinion piece. not just the diagnostic testing that the south koreans just absolutely beat us with, but also the antibody testing. >> yeah. >> which is going to be so critical. again, willie, we sound like broken records. i'm so tired of talking about testing, and i know people are tired of hearing us talk about testing. >> we still don't have it. >> we still don't have it. it's like nick said, we keep getting promised. we have been promised since donald trump said, if you want a test, you can get a test. when was that, a month ago or something? we keep hearing, going to have great news on testing on tuesday. oh, we'll have great -- there have been breakthroughs in private industry. abbott labs, five-minute test is

fantastic. some places are starting to get drive-up labs. keir simmons reported that even if we test a million people a day, it will be six months before all americans can get tested. that all americans who want a test can get a test. we are so far behind in testing. see, this is what frustrates me, willie. i think most americans get this, but i don't understand why the administration hasn't understood that with expansive testing, you have the ability to reopen the government -- i mean, reopen the economy. if you combine expansive testing on diagnostic testing, whether somebody has the virus or not, along with, as the "wall street journal" opinion page said today, with expensive antibody

testing, to find out if people already had it. you combine that information, you combine that data, you can reopen businesses across america. maybe not in the hot spots, but you can. you can reopen schools. maybe not in the hot spots but, you know, if somebody like in germany has a certificate that shows they have a antibodies, they're free to go back to school or to work or on with their lives. there's been such a staggering disconnect on testing from the very beginning. it is beyond comprehension that it has cost us trillions in the bailouts. unlike south korea, where i couldn't told us that story many weeks ago, unlike south korea, we were caught asleep at the switch. we're still asleep at the switch. >> yeah. there was a recognition early on in south korea, much smaller

country in terms of population, that they had to test right away. they did and went to private companies and ramped up testing quickly. as you say, joe, what we've had to do, instead of knowing specifically who has coronavirus, isolating those people and trying to keep other pieces of the country open, we have to do these blanket treatments, these blanket containment measures, like shutting down entire states, shutting down new york city piece by piece, going across the country and telling everybody to stay home. because you ask any medical expert, and they cannot tell you with any degree of certainty whatsoever, how many people in this country have it. all they know is it is many more than they're able to report because the tests are people we know who have it, not the many, many more who have it out there, who haven't been tested, or the many, many more who are asymptomatic. let's turn back to a medical expert who can help us. the dean of practice at mayo clinic. dr. amy williams. dr. williams, thank you for being with us this morning. can you speak a little more specifically about where we are

in terms of testing as a country and why that's so important? >> certainly. first, thank you for having me here this morning. and thank you for including mayo in this discussion. testing is incredibly important. at mayo clinic, we have stood up our own testing here, and we have expanded that to help others across the country. as you remember, or as you know, mayo clinic is in florida, in arizona, and also in the midwest. through our connections in all of these states and throughout the country, our mayo clinic laboratories have been able to share our testing capabilities with health care systems throughout the united states. it's as you pointed out, it is incredibly important to know who has it, but it is also just as important to know who has had it and if they're developing

immunicipaliimmun immunity or not. we are beginning our antibody testing that was developed in our mayor clinic laboratories next week. we are looking at these antibodies and trying to also figure out what does it mean? if you have a certain antibody that says you've been exposed to the virus, does it mean you're immune or not? so we need to continue to follow symptoms. we need to monitor this closely as we get more experience with the antibody testing, to truly understand what it means. >> dr. williams, as a health care professional, someone who sees this in the big picture, what could the country be doing today to ramp up testing? we're obviously months and months and months behind the game. we weren't ready for this. what could we be doing today to get the tests out to hospitals, to get drive-through testing in places that need it, to start to get our arms around the magnitude of this epidemic, of this pandemic?

>> that's a wonderful question. wonderful question. we need to have absolute collaboration with local government, with our national government, our federal government, to get the resources where they're needed. we need to collaborate with industry to get these tests up and running across the country. this will be very important for us to tackle this. as we get out of the big wave we all know is coming in the next couple of weeks and into may, we need to understand how we get out of it at the other end. so we can continue to care for those individuals who have medical needs, whether they have covid-19 or they don't have covid-19. and that's part of the preparation now, is how do we care for those that still need urgent and emergent medical care if they don't have the virus? how do we keep them safe, along

with keeping our health care workers safe and save lives? >> so, doctor, okayed in on one thing you said, which is, we need to -- with all the science working it on different levels, we need to understand how to get out of this. >> yes. >> the obvious, we still don't have a way out of this. i would like to ask your opinion of the government's guidelines, which was 15 days to slow the spread. now it's 30. is 30 realistic, given what we don't know and what we don't have in place right now? >> mayo clinic absolutely believes that social distancing is very important to flatten the curve and delay the surges. so we need to continue to look at our communities, understand the community spread, and we'll probably have cyclic social

distancing and shelter in place, sort of strategies in the future. >> dean of practice at mayo clinic, dr. amy williams. thank you very much. coming up, tomorrow's jobs report won't be pretty. may take weeks though to show the full depths of the crash. this morning's jobless claims will give us a sense of the economic picture. we'll have the numbers when they cross straight ahead on "morning joe." plus, church and state. amid the outbreak, many government offices have told religious leaders to put their services on hold. but not everyone is listening. we'll talk about that issue next. and this glimmer of good news as we go to break. a million n-95 masks are coming from china, on board the new england patriots' plane. "wall street journal" reports yesterday morning, the team's plane departed shenzhen with 1.2 million n-95 masks bound for the

u.s., due to land in bonn dstons morning. the effort began with charlie baker, who believed he struck a deal to acquire the masks from a collection of chinese manufacturers. he had to figure out how to get them back to his state. he turned to robert kraft and patriots after an intense process to land the plane in china. the kraft family agreed to handle logistics, as well as pay $200 million or half the cost of the goods. this story even has good news for new york football fans. kraft has been, quote, moved by the leadership of governor andrew cuomo over the last several weeks. that gave him an idea. with the agreement of governor baker, they pledged to send 300,000 of the masks to new york. it's nice. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. joe." we'll be right back.

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as governors across the country issue emergency orders to fight the deadly outbreak of the coronavirus, some religious leaders are balking at the decision to suspend in-person church services. in florida, a pastor at a megachurch was arrested on monday after holding two services on sunday, bussing in members even after prior warnings from the sheriff and local officials.

in louisiana, after a pastor was arrested for defying the governor's ban on large gatherings, worshippers again gathered for a church service on tuesday. in texas, governor greg abbott's order deems churches an essential service, and says they can remain open as long as they adhere to social distancing guidelines. governor abbott's order comes after a group of pastors sued the county that oversees the city of houston for violating religious liberty in its ban on in-person church services. joining us now, host of msnbc's "politicians nation" and president of the national action network, reverend al sharpton is with us. also with us, state attorney for palm beach county. good to have you both. >> so i guess small government conservative in me believes if you want to go to church, under normal circumstances, even if your life is at risk, well,

that's your choice, obviously. but if you going to church actually spreads a pandemic across the church, and then the church spreads out, and you're infecting entire communities, and that action is killing other people, two, three, four times removed from you, it becomes a problem. i talked about this eric eriksson tweet. an outbreak happened in georgia. it began after some drove 200 miles to attend a church service where three people were unknowingly infected. unknowingly, governor kemp, infected. four counties in georgia have outbreaks because of that one church service. er erik eriksson, a guy who is a devout christian, says churches don't meet. rev raerend al, this is a probl

that you're dealing with right now, trying to make sure that ministers, that pastors, do not do anything that is going to spread this pandemic pandemic a communities all across the country. tell us about it. >> two weeks ago reverend w. franklin richardson who heads the conference of black church organizations and i started having a series of national conference calls with denominational leaders in the black church community and reaching out to the evangelicals in the white community, saying that we must openly call on our brothers and sisters that pastor not to have live-audience church services. they can do it viral. they can do it in li live streaming. but to put the risk of your

congregants' lives at stakes is a disgrace. it is disgraceful, in fact, because you are not helping to feed the sheep, you are risking their lives. and to try to act as though this is some act of faith, faith is not based on recklessness and in some cases self-aggrandizement. some of them are sincere but i think it is misguided. so we are concerned particularly now, joe, because we are three days away from palm sunday, a major day in the christian faith and a week from easter, a major day. we are concerned that as we see these ministers arrested and we see what governor abbott did that there will be an increase where people feel this is some kind of holy defiance when it is, in fact, something that is against the interest of the people and i do not think it is an act of faith. if they think it is an act of faith, it is as reckless as you going to the window in the room you are in and jumping out and saying, okay, god, send an angel

to grab me before i hit the ground. that's not faith, that's madness. i think it is madness for people to convene people when they don't even know who may be a carrier of coronavirus. >> well, and to carry your example a little further, it is one thing if you are jumping out the window yourself, but in this case you are jumping out a window and possibly crushing ten people on the ground at the same time. it is interesting. most church leaders, i want to underline this because i think it is so important, reverend al. i know a lot of people of faith who have adjusted and who have adapted. you know, i have seen services streamed from the congregational church of new canaan and chapin gardner and my son and other members of my family, you know, andrew watches "elevation" every sunday. that's where he gets his church

service from. my other children, other family members, they're staying connected with their church and they're still seeing the church service. they're staying connected because a lot of times you can obviously while the sermon is going on, while the service is going on, you could add comments. that is happening with a lot of churches across america. so people can still convene, just it is just dangerous to convene in person right now, right? >> that's exactly right. you are not breaking your fellowship. you are not breaking your bond with god. in some ways it intensifies, and i think that that is something that we not only applaud, we endorse, we encourage. >> yes. >> but you don't have to do it by coming and putting yourself and putting others in danger's way. people ought to go online and livestream on palm sunday do whatever it is they can do to get other family members to do

that as well as easter, as well as the jewish holiday starts on wednesday. we are talking about the in-person attendance is not an act of defiance. it is certainly not civil rights. one of the things that bothered me, joe, was one of them said, reverend al, you stand up for civil rights, you have been arrested in civil rights protests over 30 times. this is not a civil rights issue to stand up to the government. this is about standing up for the people that you lead and that you give pastoral comfort to. that is the reverse of doing. we fought a government and authorities for the people. >> right. >> you can't go against the people and act like that's defying government and doing something in a civil, human rights context. >> it is about protecting the flock. now, dave aaronburg, let's talk about the legal side of this. obviously you and i learned in law school when it came to speech rlgs it is time, place, manner. you can't yell "fire" in a

crowded theater, you can't slander somebody. there are limits to speech like there are limits to every amendment. but in this case talk about the balancing act between the freedom of religion but also the safety of the entire community when there are other ways to practice your faith that cause less of a direct threat to the health of your entire community, your entire state, your entire nation. >> joe, i agree with reverend al. you're supposed to love thy neighbor, not put thy neighbor at risk. these pastors left law enforcement with no other choirchoir choice. the last things cops want to do is walk into a church and arrest a pastor. they sent buses out into the community to pack their pews, and the pastor in florida even told his congregation to shake each other's hands to show they're not scared of the virus.

>> oh. >> come on. >> yeah, the charges are appropriate, especially in states like florida and louisiana where the virus is spreading like wildfire. as far as the constitutional arguments, the courts have said as long as you apply these orders uniformly, where you're not singling out religious institutions, that they are constitutional. what is interesting is that it wasn't just governor abbott but also governor desantis that said that religious services are essential activities under a statewide order. i think governor desantis was playing to his evangelical base. even mike pence said it is not a good idea, and when you have lost mike pence when it comes to a religious item you are standing alone. >> you are saying that ron desantis is saying mega church-esque still pack thousands of people into those churches? >> yes, even though his executive order was kind of ambiguous on the question of shutting down the beaches, it is not ambiguous when it comes to

religious services. he says those are essential activities and they can continue. now, what is interesting, joe, is that hillsborough county where this church is located said that is a no-go, that they have stopped live services, that you have to go online. the counties have the right to be tougher than the state fortunately. so that's why these charges are going to be upheld. my advice for the pastors would be to be grateful it is just a second degree misdemeanor. those are low level charges, because if someone gets sick or, god forbid, dies because of their negligence they could face much more serious crimes. >> you know, reverend al, i was reminded of when jesus said if anyone causes harm to little ones better than a mill stone be hung around their neck and they be thrown to the bottom of the ocean. >> saint matthew, 18th chapter you're quoting.

>> and i'll tell you, these pastors may have people in their church that may not know any better than the governor of georgia that didn't know this could be spread by people who are asymptomatic. they, it seems, have a responsibility to their flock to keep their flock safe, to keep their flock healthy, to get their flock through this pandemic. >> absolutely. that's why dr. richardson and i are so committed, particularly now. i hope people that are believers celebrate and deal with palm sunday and celebrate the resurrection on easter and those in the jewish faith celebrate the holiday. but i want to challenge our clergy leaders that if god you believe gave you charge over people, that charge is to also use your charge to keep them safe. the holy ghost does not suspend common sense. >> there you go, reverend al sharpton. thank you very much. state attorney for palm beach

county, dave aronberg. still ahead, senator chuck schumer joins us plus a look at musicians giving back. country star brad paisley joins us. >> brad paisley, all right. not that i'm not excited about chuck, but brad paisley is awesome, too. >> we're back in 90 seconds. i just love hitting the open road and telling people that liberty mutual customizes your insurance, so you only pay for what you need! [squawks] only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ has you covered withe fast, reliable internet.finity with advanced security to help keep you secure online. and with the most tv shows, movies and streaming apps all in one place.

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experts on the coronavirus task force to give the president the very best projections. they call it modelling, wolf, where they look at what's happened around the world. we think italy may be the most comparable area to the united states at this point for a variety of reasons, and so we built that modelling. >> vice president mike pence yesterday saying that the white house modelling suggests the impact of the coronavirus in the united states may be most similar to italy. for reference, italy accounts for more than a quarter of all deaths worldwide from the virus, recording over 12,000 deaths, but that total death toll could be even higher as one study suggested that some elderly victims died alone in their homes because they never made it to the hospital and were never tested for the coronavirus. >> well, and, willie, that

certainly is sobering news from the vice president of the united states. italy, of course, has been fighting through this for a month, and as a "wall street journal" investigation uncovered, a lot of people in italy died at home and they never bothered testing. obviously there were concerns about health and getting people in there to test. so those numbers are underreported. we've heard doctors in the united states and nurses saying the number of deaths in the united states are underreported, and not out of any malicious design but just because in some places it is happening so fast that the numbers just get lost. but you look at this country, over 320 million people, and you put a per capita number on the united states comparing it with italy, that is grim news indeed. >> yes, that was another sobering number, the sobering number two days ago where the statistics dr. birx and dr. fauci gave us about 100,000,

240,000 potential deaths. if you are on italy's trajectory, it is about the last trajectory in the world you want to be on. a lot of the deaths as mika just said not reported because people never went to the hospital. they were only reporting deaths in the hospital, but many more than that. as we've said now 1,000 times in this country, not deaths but in terms of number of cases, we still have no idea. we still don't have our arms around how many people actually have coronavirus in this country. >> we really don't. we've got some news on lockdowns that obviously will help us bring some order to this. there's news, of course, out of washington state and california that lockdowns, early lockdowns are really making a difference. willie, i look at those numbers out in california, and, you know, think a lot of people kept expecting the numbers in san francisco and los angeles to explode. san francisco's now been on a lockdown for a couple of weeks. if they've been adhering to that lockdown, maybe they dodged this

bullet. i mean i don't want to -- i don't want to say anything too early because -- >> yeah. >> -- again, this goes in waves. but the numbers are not exploding in california as much as they're exploding in new york, and a lot of people at the very beginning thought they would. >> yes. it has been very interesting to watch that because, remember, san francisco in particular was way ahead of the game in terms of imposing just on the city, a municipal lockdown. >> right away. >> a lot of people thought it was wild and crazy at the time, they thought it was authoritarian. there were pictures of coyotes roaming the streets because people weren't allowed outside. >> yeah. >> as of now, that looked like the way to go. yes, florida shutdown yesterday as we hoped it would. governor desantis made the decision to tell people to stay at home. we just wonder in the weeks lost on the beaches and in those bars how many more lives could have been saved if they had taken a more aggressive approach early.

>> well, you know, we pleaded with the president of the united states to call ron desantis yesterday. he did call ron desantis yesterday, and the governor of florida finally issued that lockdown order after weeks and weeks of reckless behavior. you just hope, mika, that senior citizens, you know, we have over 20 million people in the state of florida, one out of four is a senior citizen. you hope those senior citizens don't pay a disproportionate share of the pain and the suffering, the disease, the death. but there is no doubt and you need to commend dr. birx because from the beginning she has been speaking to millennials, begging them to take this seriously. spring breakers in florida did not do that. we got the reports last week of five students from tampa coming down with the coronavirus. now we have reports coming out

of university of texas austin that 44 ut students went on spring break in mexico against the advice of health care professionals, 44 now -- a lot went down there, but 44 now reported having the coronavirus. sure, if they're happy and don't have underlying symptoms, they're going to be fine. but the impact of that as it spreads out on the communities they go back to -- >> yeah. >> -- on their grandparents, on their parents could be devastating. you know, eric erickson yesterday tweeted out about how you had all of these people driving quite some distance to go to a church service. three people unknowingly were infected in that church service and the impact across georgia is being felt because people left the church service and eric erickson said that that virus spread. this is how it spreads. it is not a one-on-one spread.

it is a one-on-three spread which goes to a ten spread which goes to -- >> yes, it happened in arkansas as well. >> it spreads exponentially. that's why, as dr. birx said in the beginning, for young americans to take it seriously. as the number continues to spread across the nation, more governors are issuing stay-at-home orders, among them florida. governor ron desantis, his state ranks fifth in terms of the number of confirmed cases here in the u.s. as the cases mounted and the death toll ticked up in florida, desantis resisted calls from public health experts to issue the order. it wasn't until that phone call with president trump yesterday and also more than 3,000 new cases over the last three days did the governor heed their calls. right now there are nearly 8,000 cases and at least 100 deaths and we're still hours from the order taking effect. it is set for midnight tonight.

the governor previously said he was waiting for directives from the federal government which prompted this response from the u.s. surgeon general. >> my advice to america would be that these guidelines are a national stay-at-home order. they're guidelines that say, look, the more we social distance, the more we stay at home, the less spread of disease there will be. >> governor, was it the surgeon general's comments earlier today that shifted your thinking on the statewide stay-at-home order? >> no, because i had decided on this -- you know, when the president did the 30-day extension, you know, to me that was people aren't just going to go back to work. that's a national pause button. i had concerns about how some of that would affect different communities in florida who have not been hit the same way, and i don't anticipate getting hit the same way as a place like miami-dade. but i wanted to see what their guidelines would actually say, and even the guidelines, they

never actually said to do that. the surgeon general -- u.s. surgeon general never told me that's what they were looking for, you know, but i think that given that we're having a 30-day, i think it is a signal from the president that, look, this is -- this is what we're going to be fighting for a month. >> okay. that decision from the florida governor is likely welcome news for former food and drug administration commissioner dr. scott gottlieb, who yesterday expressed optimism that the u.s. can avoid the striking coronavirus death toll projected by the white house if states like texas and florida act. >> i think the real wild card here and the decision point on whether or not we're going to have the bad outcome that dr. fauci and dr. birx talked about is what popular states like texas and florida do that haven't taken aggressive steps even now. they're large states. they have large urban areas that have very dense populations, and

if they don't get more aggressive then we could be on the cusp of some of the bad outcomes. i think if those states act aggressively right now we could keep it hopefully well below those kinds of models. >> mississippi and georgia have also issued statewide stay-at-home orders. the order from mississippi comes more than a week after the governor superseded local efforts in his state to promote social distancing. according to state data gathered by the covid project, mississippi has the highest hospitalization rate from the virus in the country. >> let's stop there for a second. mississippi has the highest covid-19 hospital rate in the country. jonathan lemire, let's bring you in. also jim vandehei with us as well. jonathan, this is actually a governor who is con tetemptuous

the stay-at-home orders, in fact he undercut local officials who had stay-at-home orders to try to protect people in their towns and cities, and he said wanted people to pray for him but was going to continue to be reckless. it is like, you know, drinking on a saturday night and saying, hey, everybody, pray for me tomorrow morning in church. it doesn't really help. don't drink on saturday night and you will be much better, you know, getting to church on sunday morning. but this guy was like, pray for us, but i'm not going to do anything. in fact, i'm going to ignore health care officials and everything they're begging me to do. i'm not going to even let my local mayors do what they're trying to do to save people in their town, and now look what's happening in mississippi. all too predictable. >> right. the cases, the number of cases there have exploded. we finally saw yesterday florida, governor desantis act. i know this show in particular

has been championing for that for quite sometime. there are images this weekend of beaches in duval co, jacksonville, where you could see the line which counties closed the beaches and which are not, and those that didn't beaches still packed with people. obviously a real risk to spreading the virus. a number of states don't have this. i believe alabama is surrounded by stay-at-home order but it does not. don't expect there to be a federal guideline on this. the president was asked about this yesterday, he was pressed on it in the white house briefing and he said he wanted to continue to defer to the states, he and the vice president said they believe in federalism and the states avenue governors should make their own decision and the white house for now was not going to impose a national stay-at-home order even though there's mounting pressure, even from within the administration, from dr. fauci, from dr. birx behind closed doors suggesting ha is what is needed right now. because as we've been documenting, right now, yes, the hot spots are in a lot of the

big cities on the coasts but they're spreading. they eventually will head to states that don't have the medical capabilities that say new york city does. senate minority leader chuck schumer is standing by. we will talk about the work to shore up the economy and also what is happening in his hard-hit state. plus, our next guest just performed at the grand ole opry left vacant by the coronavirus. we will talk to country music star brad paisley about that performance and his work to address food insecurity in nashville, especially among this time of crisis. brad joins us next on "morning joe."

i recently spoke to a group of students about being a scientist at 3m. i wanted them to know that innovation is not just about that one 'a-ha' moment. science is a process. it takes time, dedication. it's a journey. we're constantly asking ourselves, 'how can we do things better and better?' what we make has to work. we strive to protect you. at 3m, we're in pursuit of solutions that make people's lives better.

won't be a new thing. and it won't be their first experience with social distancing. overcoming challenges is what defines the military community. usaa has been standing with them, for nearly a hundred years. and we'll be here to serve for a hundred more.

c that was a scene we all needed to see yesterday. let's bring in right now the woman in those pictures, nbc news foreign correspondent janis mackey frayer in beijing who after 49 days of covering the coronavirus pandemic in china, in japan and in the uk and then 14 days as a part of that quarantined at home, reunited yesterday with her little boy. janis, that lit up the internet yesterday. it lit up our hearts. tell us what that moment was like for you when you saw your little boy jumping up and down behind that fence, waiting to see you. >> it was incredible. it was -- it was something that i thought, oh, i need to video

this, you know, so i can show him some day, and i basically threw the camera away because i just wanted to throw my arms around him because it -- it had been just such a long time. you know, hugs feel good and, you know, it had been a lot of days and weeks of video calls and i missed two teeth coming out. he's reading now. so every day felt like an eternity. so to be able to hold him again, it was -- it was incredibly special and it was hard to leave the house today because he wanted to make sure that i was actually coming back in good time. he said -- he said, you know, you know it was a lot of days that you were away, mommy. i said, yeah, i know. he said, let's not do that again, okay? i said, okay, it is a deal. >> well, we can report to your son that mom will be home in

just a little while, janis. thanks so much. >> thank you. coming up, senate minority leader chuck schumer is our guest. plus, with record-shattering unemployment claims few agencies have a heavier lift right now than the labor department. we will talk to someone who ran that office under president obama next on "morning joe." ♪ this side of me ♪ inside of me ♪ inside of me with advanced security to help keep you secure online. and with the most tv shows, movies and streaming apps all in one place. with simple digital tools you can get the help you need or or just say help into your xfinity voice remote. we are working to ma things a little easier on everyone. download the xfinity my account app today.

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one week after the senate unanimously passed a $2 trillion millennial relief bill, majority leader mitch mcconnell said he would move slowly on considering any other legislation and would ignore house speaker nancy pelosi's efforts on a fourth relief bill. in an interview with "the washington post" mcconnell said, quote, she needs to standdown on the notion that we're going to go along with taking advantage of the crisis to do things that are unrelated to the crisis. mcconnell further said he is concerned with how congress would pay for another wave of federal spending. pelosi responded in a statement saying in part, quote, the victims of the coronavirus pandemic cannot wait. it is moving faster than the leader may have suspected, and even he has said that some things should wait for the next bill. joining us now, the top-ranking democrat in the senate, minority leader chuck schumer of new york.

>> senator schumer, thanks for being with us. >> good morning. >> let's begin by asking for an update. i know you are staying in touch with people running the hospitals, the doctors, the nurses, people on the front lines of this epidemic who have been hit by it worse in new york state than any other region in the world. tell us -- tell us how things are going. >> well, new yorkers, you know, we love to be together. the fact that there's so much uncertainty in so much, what are the exact symptoms, how long do you get it. i just heard today if you are on a respirator the chances of you surviving are small from one of the leading heads of one of our hospitals. i asked doctors a question, for instance, can you get it again or you get immune? they don't even know. the other thing that plagues new yorkers maybe more than anybody else is isolation. we like to be together. we like to touch each other, feel each other, be close. we love riding the subways and seeing the whole diversity of

our city spread before us in one subway car. so that hurts, too. but new yorkers are tough. i've been on the phone with just about everybody and we'll get through this. before 9/11 they said new york was finished as a city. it will never be finished as a city, but can i make two quick points here that are important for new york and for the country? that is we need to do two things immediately. today the unemployment numbers will probably be staggering, very bad. we need those unemployment checks to start going out in the next two weeks. as you mentioned, mika, we passed a very good, strong bill aimed at workers first, creating the marshal plan for hospitals. now the administration has to get the money out quickly to those unemployed people or they're going to really be stuck and their businesses will be stuck as well, their small businesses and others. the second thing we need, this is terrible, my governor, who is doing a great job, my mayor, i think he is doing a very fine

job. they're calling all over the place for equipment, for ventilators or for masks or for ppe, and that's because the system that the administration has put in place is horrible. i am sending a letter to the president. we need him to put in charge a czar of the whole production and distribution of these materials under the dpa. that should be a military man. the military knows how to get lots of materials in lots of different places quickly. somebody who knows quarter mastering, who knows logicistings, who knows command and control. i spoke to mr. navarro who is in charge. i was disappointed. he is a good man, he knows a lot about china, he knows nothing about this. i'm calling on the administration to put in charge of both production and distribution of materials the -- a military man as czar under the dpa. as you may remember, i called

the president two weeks ago. i said, enact the dpa. he said, i would. and then three hours later he changed his mind. we need someone unpolitical to produce the materials more quickly including supply chains and to distribute them to the places that they are most needed. to not have my governor have to call up california and compete with other states. my mayor told me he called sweden to try and get some ventilators. that is not how this should be run. so we need the unemployment checks to go out very fast and we need a real czar, a military person, to be in charge of both production and distribution of desperately needed medical supplies immediately. >> so you had a conference call with the president a week or so ago where you encouraged him to implement the defense production act, and he acted -- >> yes. >> -- on your request. i talked about new york, how it is the worst -- if it is not the

worst right now hit region, it will be if you look at projections very soon. >> true. >> across the world. but could you give the president a call again and talk to him about the need to have a military man or woman in charge of this production effort, and do you think the president might be open to that? >> well, i hope so because we desperately need it. i will call him again. i am sending him a letter this morning and he has taken my calls, i'll give him credit. look, the president was way behind the eight ball in so much of this. he didn't see the need, we were way behind in testing. this idea that mitch mcconnell said that impeachment was diverting, ridiculous. i called for a national emergency on january 26th, you know, while impeachment was going on. we can do two things at once, and this virus was already raging in china. so the president on testing and now on distribution and

production, behind the eight ball. but let's hope he has seen now finally -- you know, sometimes he thinks if he says something it becomes true, so he says it is a hoax, he says it is not much, he thinks it is true. this virus is stronger than anybody and we have to all be together and try to solve this problem. i will demand that of the president. i'm sending him a letter right now this morning on this. >> senator schumer, it is willie geist. >> hi, willie. >> it has been said that you speak new york in a way that donald trump can understand and sometimes your messages get through better than anybody, so let's hope he does listen to you. we just had james o'neill on the show, the former police commissioner of new york city. he has been brought in by the mayor of new york city to effectively do the job you are talking about just in new york, to get this chain, the supply chain in new york city. you are talking about a military leader, it could be a business leader, somebody like fred smith who, of course, was a marine himself and founded fedex and

knows better than anybody how to get things where they need to be. i guess the question for americans is -- and i guess i sound like a broken record -- they're aware of the needs in the hospital for all of this equipment. they say it is the united states of america, we have great companies who can move quickly. why aren't they getting into the hospitals right now? what is the problem? what's the hold up? >> and the two problems are, one, still production is not raf ramped up enough because it is not that easy. you can't go to one place and say, make this, you have to make sure their suppliers are there as well. worse is distribution. i don't know who is in charge of distribution. you have a spectacle where governors and mayors are reaching out and hunting and pecking for things. a military man, it could be a business leader, but someone who knows logistics. professor navarro in all due respect is a professor. he hasn't done this before. i don't have anything against him but they ought to replace him with somebody that knows how to do this and then the distribution would work.

today it might be new york that gets all of the stuff they need, ppaest. tomorrow it might be somewhere else if new york, praise god, we manage by social distancing reduce the rate. but we need someone in charge and it is not just going to be ppes and masks. we are going to find we need other things as well. secondly, those unemployment checks, got to get out quickly. the administration has got to move heaven and earth to get those checks out. i was glad to hear last night in response to our letter we had 41 dems that will send their $1,000 checks to social security people and others who haven't filed tax returns. but the unemployment checks are the most important things. they augment and are larger over the period of time than the one $1,200 check. >> okay, so -- >> mika, just -- >> yeah, go ahead, willie. >> to both of you, the number

we've been looking for crossed and you will forgive me if my jaw on the ground. u.s. weekly jobless claims 6.6 million in unemployment claims made in this country last week. >> think of that in human terms, of each individual. most of them have worked hard and long at their companies. they have pride if their work and they're gone, through no fault of their own. at least, you know, our unemployment on steroids which we passed, we had to force the republicans to do it, says you will get your full pay or close to it from the federal government for four months and you can be furloughed by your company, not, you know, kicked off. that means that when, god willing, we beat this virus, the company can reconstitute. companies, you know, big and little are organic. a restaurant, it has a chef, it has some waiters, they're a team. if we can bring them back together because the federal government is paying for their

salaries, but at the same time they're only furloughed by their employees and stay on the books, we can recover much more quickly. so we got to get this plan up and running. >> all right. again, u.s. weekly jobless claims hit 6.65 million. senator, i want to go back to the president using the full force of the dpa. i know that you -- >> yes. >> -- want him to appoint a czar who perhaps could do that, but the bottom line is it stands with him. is there any logical reason why he would not be using that? my understanding is it streamlines, you know, testing and supplies getting directly to the american people, would make it go faster which literally amounts to people's lives being saved. what's the logical reason to not use it? >> i have no idea because, you know, i called him about two weeks ago and i said, use it.

he said, that's a great idea and he hollered. he must have been in the oval office and he was on the phone, i was still in washington. he said, get the dpa enacted, get it going, and they said yes. then three, four hours later he said no. i don't no who whispered in his ear or what got into his head. i do not know a single reason during this emergency crisis why we shouldn't invoke the dpa. it will work. we put a billion dollars in covid-3 just to help implement that, you know, for this military man or it could be a fred smith, military and business, but someone who knows logistics, someone who knows nonpolitical how to get from place to place and thing to thing. >> yeah. >> why he hasn't done it, i don't have any good reason. >> so, senator schumer, will you be speaking to mitch mcconnell today, who obviously is dragging his feet on moving towards another relief bill and is attacking nancy pelosi for

whatever reason? in light of the new number, the 6.6 million -- >> god. >> -- number, the shocking number, will you be talking to mitch mcconnell today? >> well, i could talk to him. look, i think we need a covid-4 for a lot of reasons. one reason is we have to deal with the immediate. we're not going to solve the economic crisis until we solve the health crisis but we haven't sofrld th solved that and there are lots of holes we will have to fill we may not know today, so we need it. but we have to get our economy going long-range. i have spoken to a lot of the economic experts and they think even after, god willing, we have erased covid for the time being, the economy is going to take a long time to recover. >> yes. >> when you look at something like an infrastructure bill, that's for the long term. but in covid four, we still will have to focus on the health crisis. you know, i hope we can get, for instance, hazard pay enacted retroactively for all of the brave nurses and doctors and

health workers who are going and risking their lives and make that mandatory in the -- in the covid four. but there are also going to be long-term things. i think we have to do it, and i hope that leader mcconnell will seed the light. he's been reluctant to cross the board. when we wanted unemployment on steroids he said no initially. when we wanted to have state and local relief to the governments, he said no. but, you know, we pushed. we didn't let him have his way when we voted no, and then it passed 96-0, which showed the congress, democrats and republicans, the american people coming together. i hope that will happen again and he will see the light. >> all right. senator chuck schumer, thank you so much. >> thank you, senator. >> we greatly appreciate you being with us. let's bring in to talk about the staggering weekly jobless claims number released moments ago from the labor department, let's bring in steve ratner.

again, 6.65 million unemployment claims made. let's bring in steve. also let's bring in former acting secretary of labor under president obama, seth harris. steve, let's start with you. 6.65 million claiming unemployment. just an absolutely staggering number. what's your initial reaction? >> my initial reaction is that it is a staggering number. it is twice what the -- most of the forecasters thought was going to happen this week. it is twice more or less what happened last week. to put it in kind of context, two weeks ago, week before last we had 281,000 claims for unemployment insurance and now we're dealing with 6.64 million. it does suggest that we are well on our way to massive unemployment in this country. people are talking about as high as 6% next month. the number we get this friday will not be that meaningful, it is too early, but the one a month from now could be as high

as 6%. we could be looking at double digits in the summer. beyond the unemployment number, joe, what that obviously refleblts r reflects is a massive downturn in the level of economic activity in this country. i wouldn't say the country has come to a stop, but, for example, we had car sales for march down 40%. of course, march itself was a transition month into this lockdown, kind of full-force quarantine situation. you will see car sales fall more. i was talking yesterday to someone who runs a bunch of fast food restaurants, sales down 35%. you are dealing with an economic contraction that is massive. in the second quarter we will probably see the economy shrink by 1.5 times the total amount of shrunk during the great financial crisis in just one quarter. everything that chuck schumer was talking about a few minutes ago becomes a key to the solution. this is a problem that only government can really solve. we can debate the right ways to do it, which stimulus bill when

and to do what, but clearly the government has to do what it has been doing and is going to need to do more. >> so, seth harris, when are we going to start feeling the effects of the relief packages, the bail-out packages that have been passed? when will we start seeing that in the numbers? >> i think it is going to take a little while. as leader schumer was saying, the unemployment checks aren't going out. they're just beginning to go out now to these 10 million people who have lost their jobs in the last two weeks. also, the checks from the treasury have not gone out, the stimulus checks of $1,200 per person, $500 per child, those checks have not gone out. the loans, applications for loans from the sba and the treasury just open up tomorrow. so we haven't even begun to fight this fight. we haven't gotten our resources on the battlefield yet, and millions and millions of americans are really in despair, they are terrified.

they don't know how they're going to pay their bills. following up on steve's point about the scope of this thing, during the great recession our highest unemployment rate was 10%. with these 10 million people losing their jobs over the last two weeks, filing for unemployment claims, we now know roughly that the unemployment rate now is at least 9.5% and almost certainly higher because a lot of people who want to file claims haven't been able to get through. there are a lot of people who are confused, haven't been able to file, don't know if they should file, don't know if they're eligible. so we've already in two weeks essentially reached the lowest point of the great recession, and this is just the beginning. we've only been doing this now for two weeks. >> hey, steven. it is willie. to follow up on what both you and seth have been saying about where this is headed, i'm struck looking at that staggering number. remember, last week was 3.28 million jobless claims. that shattered the previous

record. now we're talking this week about double that number just in a week at 6.65 million. but i'm struck thinking that florida hasn't even really shut down yet. texas hasn't shut down and hasn't even said whether it will. these are major population centers, major centers of course of business and commerce that could down the road be shut for business. we know florida will be as of midnight tonight. where do you see this going? because this doesn't even account for all of the country and the problems that may still be ahead. >> no, willie, that's an excellent point. we really are not yet even in the full force of the kind of shutdown that we're likely to have. by the way, this sort of backs up through the economy. if people -- as people stop buying cars, then the car par suppliers start to lose orders, they start to shut down, they start to furlough people. you have seen in the last few days major retailers furloughing virtually all of their workforce. so, no, as seth was indicating and as you are saying very

clearly, this has not yet reach its full force across the country. i'm not here to terrify people, it is not my goal in life, but you have, for example, the st. louis federal reserve bank, part of the federal reserve system so a completely non-partisan organization, talking about unemployment levels in the 32% range eventually which would be substantially above the great depression, which only reached about only 25%. so as you are indicating, until this economy gets back to work it is simply going to continue to slide this way. now, i'm not here to advocate that we should do anything that is contrary to the best practices from a public health standpoint, but that -- that becomes the gating issue. whenever the public health people tell us we can get back to work is when you can start to see the economy get back to work. just one other point. we've talked a lot. you had a really excellent piece earlier today from the correspondent in beijing, more

about talking about what is going on there. people are starting to get back to work thanks to the harsh and abrupt measures they took, and the economy is starting to recover but it is nowhere near full potential. so even in a place like china that took very, very aggressive measures it is a slow road back for their economy. so we should expect i think under the best of circumstances -- and these are not the best of circumstances -- a slow road back even when we finally get to the bottom, to the worst point in this cycle. >> let's talk about immediate options. seth harris, if you were advising the president, is there one thing you would tell him to do now whether it be an actual move or working on his messaging to the american people? >> i'll be honest, mika, i would ask him to resign. i think he's the worst failed leader our country has ever seen. he's not setting achievable and aggressive goals. he is not marshaling the resources that we need in order

to be able to solve the problems, the extremely complex problems that we're facing both from a health perspective and economic perspective. he's not clearing away the obstacles that are keeping us from achieving our goals. just we have a complete failure at the federal level. congress is doing its best but it is really limited in what it can do. we need top-level leadership that can succeed, and so far it has really been more of an obstacle to success than it has been a path to success. we don't have to be where we are today. we don't have to have 10 million people on unemployment. we don't have to have people shut down -- shut up in their houses all across the united states if we had comprehensive testing as south korea and other countries have done, if we had all of the personal protective equipment we needed, all of the medical supplies we needed, if we accelerated the production of ventilators, if we had smart shutdowns across the united

states rather than waiting until yesterday in florida and not at all in texas. i mean this is really failed leadership that has put us in a catastrophic position. we are far behind the rest of the world. we are really going to end up being the shame of the world when this epidemic is over, and we should all be ashamed of where we are and how we ended up here. >> seth harris, steve ratner, thank you very much for coming on this morning. we are going to catch our breath a little bit. we've got some incredibly tough news, especially with the unemployment numbers that just came in. so we'll catch our breath with the next segment that we've been highlighting, musicians who are making a difference during this pandemic. up next, country music star brad paisley joins us to talk about his efforts to give back during this crisis. keep it right here on "morning joe." ♪ (aurelia) i did have hearing aids from another company.

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that jesus is the answer can rub them wrong ♪ ♪ it ain't bad to sing about tractors and trucks ♪ ♪ i guess that's true but this is country music and we do ♪ >> that was award-winning musician brad paisley performing a tribute to the late country music star kenny rogers at grand ole opry. brad joins us now. also with us, former senior adviser for the house oversight and government reform committee kurt bordella. and perhaps most relevant to this discussion, the country music email tip sheet that he launched five years ago "morning

hangover" which, for the politically minded, has been described as akin to a political playbook for nashville. now reaches 40,000 subscribers. >> and i'm one of them. and i love them. >> yes, he is. >> brad, talking to you today on tv, it's kind of like talking to you when kurt facetimes with you and me and tim. but it's funny. i was watching you play -- beautiful, beautiful -- in front of the grand ole opry with nobody out there. that scene epitomizes my music career. i play to plenty of empty spaces. >> i love it. >> i was socially separating long before everybody else. so, brad, tell us how you're helping out in this crisis. you're doing such great work. what's your focus? >> well, thanks for talking to

me about this today. i -- we are really lucky that in nashville, there's sort of been such a great tradition of people helping one another. i mean, we are a community that excels in times like this, honestly, and we -- we somehow ended up launching a charity a couple of weeks ago that we have spent years building up that was envisioned to be a free grocery store. it's called the store. and it was envisioned to be a place of dignity where people can go when they lose their job, when they are down on their luck, and they need food for their family. and it's a normal shopping experience. it's a place that you can go with your family, walk through with a shopping cart. it's called the store so that you have the dignity of saying the normal phrase, which is that, hey, let's go to the store today. and they go get food and the

only difference is they don't pay for anything. we launched this a couple of weeks ago and had about a day of normal operations where we got to see our dream realized, and then all of it went out the wind oh, and we became -- we've had to evolve and we've become this thing for the last couple of weeks that we're going to be for the indefinite future where we're now -- it's like, okay, wait. let's deliver food to the elderly. let's make sure that we have to give food out at the door. we can't have people in the store now. but i'm really proud of the work we're doing. but i can't believe our timing that somehow we launched this charity as this bomb dropped. >> no, it's great. we've got willie geist with us, a guy who knows a little bit about nashville. he's got a question for you, brad. >> hi, willie. >> hey, brad. you're right that no community rallies like nashville. even just a couple of weeks ago after the tornado and now having

to do it again, i'd point out the great dolly parton donated yesterday a million dollars to vanderbilt university medical center to help get closer to a cure, a vaccine for corona. you all snap into action so quickly. what are you hearing from town with other artists that you're close with because you are a family, about what they're doing and trying to get out there right now? >> well, there's a lot of people doing great stuff. one of the main concerns, really, is the music community as it is hit. band members, people that work, you know, within the studio industry, within the touring industry especially. there's a lot of fear there because we don't know when we're going to be on the road again. as willie nelson, who is famous for never stopping touring, and, meanwhile, here we are. we're all -- all the buses are

parked, the trucks are parked. we aren't doing what we normally do. and so while everyone is giving back, right now we're trying to figure out how that's going to work with the industry where everybody is dependant on people showing up. so i think a lot of other -- i've watched a lot of artists that are really being creative about how to raise money for that. i think we're at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to figuring that out. we have to keep people somehow employed in some way in our industry when there's just not as many -- there's not going to be as many jobs right now. >> you know, kurt, we talked about this several weeks ago. two or three weeks ago. you were saying that there's so many country music artists that are on the edge, on whether they succeed or whether they have to give up the music careers. and for them, summer is the time where they have their best shot at making this a way of life. and now, of course, so many of those dreams are shattered as well. talk about the impact on that

and also following up on willie's question. what else is the country music community doing to help people in nashville? >> well, we're seeing, again, nashville comes together. this industry comes together like no other genre in entertainment. we're seen the kennedy community country launch of covid-19 relief fund, the cma, country music association, donate $1 million to help a lot of the folks who are out of work. like we just saw the unemployment number comes in and how high those are. outside of the artsists you see every day, there's an entire army of people behind them supporting them. people on the road. drivers, sound guys, tech guys, it's a real family. and everyone in this industry is coming together to try to do all that they can to support those people who, right now, don't know where their next paycheck is going to go. and a lot of the artists, too. they're having to be creative. brad just the other week had an amazing live stream on instagram, facebook live with, i guess we'll call it a captive

audience of, i think it was his son's stuffed animals, but it was creative. he had artists. carrie underwood, tim mcgraw called in through facetime. brad has always been someone who uses technology. he's been ahead of the curve from hits like online in the early 2000s to the selfie song on his last album. brad, as you look forward now at trying to still be entertaining while doing all these philanthropic things, how are you approaching that creative process? >> it's an interesting time because, on one hand, it's like we are -- there's a lot of fear, but there's a lot of creative time right now. like what this is, is a time period where, i mean, we are all -- like i'm figuring out. before we did this shot i had to move this big rolled up vacuum cleaner tube that was right in

the shot. i've learned more about cleaning houses than i ever cared to know right now. and it's like -- but at the same time, i'm writing. i'm trying to come up with stuff. i've got a studio here, thank god, that i can work on. and so i think that there is going to be this awesome explosion of creativity from this time period when the machine gets rolling again. i'm trying make sure we're doing everything we can to take good advantage of the opportunity that we have to make some music and to make a difference. you know, i -- every day it enters in my mind a few times a day, okay, are we set -- are my employees okay right now? do we have this figured out? i'm one of the artists that's -- i'm able to sort of have a plan and i've built a war chest for this to some degree.

but when it comes to the newer artists, and the guys that are struggling and trying to make it on broadway that play songs every day or session musicians, this is tough. we've got to get through this. >> brad payslisley, thank you. brad will be performing with darius rucker and kurt, thank you as well. >> brad, thank you. kurt, thank you. donald trump obviously, our number one viewer, attacking chuck schumer for what he said on our show. and then attacking new york saying, unlike other states, new york, unfortunately, got off to a late start. you should have pushed harder, stopped complaining and find out where all of these supplies are going. cuomo working hard so he attacked chuck schumer. he says positive things about cuomo, governor