through right now. because right now, we are in a very intense mitigation. when we get back to normal, we will go back gradually to the point where we can function as a society. you're absolutely right. i mean, if you want to get to pre-coronavirus, you know, that might not ever happen in the sense of the fact that the threat is there. but i believe, with the therapies that will be coming online, and with the fact that i feel confident that over a period of time we'll get a good vaccine, we'll never have to get back to where we are right now. if that means getting back to normal, we'll get back to normal. >> dr. anthony fauci as the white house briefing yesterday, when asked when americans can expect things to get back to normal. that was the key question and the key answer from the briefing yesterday. >> you know, we've said it for a very long time, it all comes down to testing, testing. everybody is actually saying that it all comes down to testing. not only so we can track the virus, so we can map the virus,

so we can contain the virus, but also so americans can go back to work, so they can go back to shopping, so they can go back to getting the economy going again. going back to their daily lives. but the testing has been terrible. you know, these press conferences, i just, again, will repeat again, if you're not going to get any good information from them, if the president is just going to ramble and yell at reporters, say things that aren't the truth, and yell at reporters when they ask important questions, which is what he does, then they shouldn't have the press conferences. i mean, joe biden said about a month ago that if the president of the united states is giving bad information, misrepresenting facts, that that actually is bad for the american people. it concerns the american people and makes the situation worse. you can look at a florida poll, where joe biden is now ahead of

donald trump by 6 points. 56% of americans say they don't believe what the president says. they can't trust what he is saying about this pandemic. willie, more specifically, if you look at yesterday, the president lied, got very angry when he kept being asked about testing. because, of course, the testing has been such a failure. a cynic might think that they don't want americans to get tested because they don't want to know the full extent of how bad things are in the united states. you know, the president yelled yesterday, saying it's not the federal government's job to do testing. that should be up to the states to do testing. well, that's just a lie. it was the trump administration who wouldn't take tests, wouldn't even take tests from the world health organization when they were putting up 250,000 tests early on. we refused.

the trump administration failed so miserably in testing. the cdc failed so miserably in testing. finally, willie, the fda, on february 29th, threw their arms up in the air. said to the cdc, a couple days before, if you were a private company, we would shut you down. the fda finally said on february 29th, after a month of just colossal blunders by the trump administration, they said, okay, private companies can start testing now for the coronavirus. that was on february 29th, after we had wasted a couple of months already. that's just one of the many lies that the president has. "washington post" fact-checked another on the china travel ban. he said he was the first to do the china ban. 38 other countries did it the same time or before that. trump had so many exceptions on his. it was such a porous, quote,

ban. 430,000 people came from china, including 40,000 after the ban. trump's claim that he imposed the first china pan isban is a . 38 other countries did it before him or the same time. the u.s. had so many exceptions, passengers from china still flooded in after the ban. again, this fact-check, 40,000 after the ban, a total of 430,000 since the coronavirus first broke out. >> yeah. the president has hung his hat on instituting that ban as an expression of how seriously he took this early. obviously, that's not true. we know and we've cataloged all those. every media outlet has. the president yesterday, again, talked about the raw number of tests. 1.5 million tests in this country. that's better, of course. remember, we were beginning from a standing start almost. of course, that's an improvement, but as a per capita number, it is still not great.

you ask any public health official, as you both know well, the key to this whole thing is testing, testing, testing. we'll never know how big the problem is, when we can send people back to work, when schools can open again, when you can go to a football game again, unless we know who has coronavirus. right now, we don't know. there's another piece of this, joe, which is, we don't even know how many people died from coronavirus. we see the numbers. they get more staggering every day. there's a lot of reporting that people who have been told, "don't go into the emergency room unless you have trouble breathing," some of those people who stay home die at home. those haven't been registered as coronavirus deaths. so there is a big, big picture about this coronavirus that we don't really see yet. only testing will get us there. >> yeah. along with joe, willie, and me, we have washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay. u.s. national editor at the

"financial times," ed luce. and rogers professor of the presidency at vanderbilt, jon meacham. nbc news and msnbc contributor. we'll be talking in a moment about the -- getting an update on the condition of boris johnson, as well. >> jon meacham, this is a perfect "the buck stops here" contrast with donald trump, saying, "i am not responsible." what we can talk about is ventilators, the national defense production act. we could talk about all the ways that donald trump keeps trying to pass the buck, keeps trying to say, "i'm not responsible." yesterday's example was particularly outrageous, saying it wasn't his job, it wasn't the federal government's job. >> we're not standing on the streets testing. >> to do testing? yes, it is. it's the cdc's job. it has been the cdc's job. it was the trump administration's job. they failed so miserably at it,

that the food and drug administration said that if they were a private entity, they'd shut down the cdc. two days later, february 29th, the fda finally threw their arms up in the air and said, okay. we're going to open this up to private testing. this is after one failure after another failure after another failure from the cdc and the trump administration. yet, donald trump stands there yesterday, lying to the american people again, saying, "it's not our job." >> terrible. >> it was their job. they failed miserably at their job. that mistake, i think historians will probably estimate costs this country at least $2 trillion, having to shut down the economy because we couldn't track the coronavirus. the president still, still shows no interest in taking the lead on testing.

>> yeah. you know, you can always tell when anyone, but particularly the president, is worried about something, because that increases the volume and the velocity of the denials and of the respinning of reality. that's what he's been doing. for, what, an average of an hour and 45 minutes a day, he comes out and makes his case. he's not conveying information. he's not, as franklin roosevelt said, preparing the american people because the news is going to get worse and worse before it gets better and better, and the american people deserve to have it straight from the shoulder. churchill did the same thing across the atlantic brilliantly. this isn't that. what this is, is a defensive man who understands that, at some elemental level, this is why we have a federal government, is for a national kind of crisis like this. look, we tried the articles of

confederation in the 1780s, and there's a reason we decided not to do it that way. and the president is basically, i think, because he knows at some level that, as you say, the paper trail is there, the record is there, and i think our mind is across the atlantic again this morning. i have a strong feeling a shortened general election campaign is going to help vice president biden because it is going to focus very intensely, i think, on this issue. were we ready? if we weren't, why not? who do you want in charge of your affairs when, inevitably, we face something like this again? >> well, the president during the press conference yesterday, and it seems when he is riffing, it stands out more, less literal than usual, he said, quote, we're doing really well.

and the death toll from the coronavirus in the u.s. is now more than 10,000. to put that in perspective, in about a one-month span, more americans have died from this virus than were killed on the battlefield during six u.s. wars combined. i'm not sure that's -- >> the american revolution, war of 1812, the mexican war, indian war, spanish american war, gulf war. also, you can take the wars that haunted the country the last 20 years. you can actually start with 9/11. you can add the iraq war and add the afghanistan war. more americans have died in a month than have died over the past 20 years in these endless wars that donald trump has complained about. >> not doing so well. willie? >> a brief moment of optimism yesterday. new cases in the death toll in new york at least may beginning to show signs of leveling off. fatalities rose 600 yesterday, which is a small drop from the

previously higher weekend rate. the death toll in new york now stands at more than 4,700. governor andrew cuomo extended the stay at home order in the state through the end of the month, as the data gives some hope that social distancing has helped to avoid the worst-case scenario we've all seen. new york city is looking at a grim contingency plan if the death rate continues to overwhelm morgues. temporarily, burying virus victims on public land. >> if we need to do temporarily burials to be able to tide this over, to pass the crisis, and then work with each family on the appropriate arrangements, we have the ability to do that. >> while new york hospitals are flooded with coronavirus patients, running low on medical equipment, the state of california has agreed to loan 500 ventilators to new york. meanwhile, the cathedral of st. john the divine on manhattan's upper west side in the morningside heights neighborhood will open its doors as a

temporary field hospital by the end of the week. the church, which is the largest gothic style cathedral in the world, expects to take in 200 patients. mika, we heard governor cuomo yesterday offering a moment of optimism. as always, he said, let's wait until tomorrow and see what the number is like. we'll take good news, such as it is in the context of this hor r horror, for one day. >> exactly. now to important news. british prime minister boris johnson says he was moved to the intensive care unit yesterday after his condition worsened. it was just 11 days ago when the 55-year-old tweeted a video message, saying he was experiencing mild symptoms and was self-isolating after testing positive for coronavirus. on sunday, the prime minister's office said he was still battling symptoms and was taken to the hospital. insisting it was just a precaution.

now comes the news he's in the icu. his aides insist this, too, is a precaution, in case he needs a ventilator. sky news reports the prime minister had trouble breathing and was given oxygen before he was moved to the icu. we're told he remains c conscience. he's asked dominic raab, british foreign secretary, to step in when necessary. keir simmons? >> reporter: in an interview, it was said boris johnson is not on a ventilator but in intensive care in the hospital behind me. the government reassuring people they will update the public on the condition of the prime minister if anything changes. just to show you some of the front pages here in the uk. some just giving people the news straight. it is, after all, bad enough. "johnson in intensive care after

virus symptoms worse." others more dramatic. "daily mail," "stricken boris taken to intensive care," and talking about the agony for his pregnant fiance. "the sun,," "boris in intensive care and doctors prepared to ventilate him if necessary." to give you a picture of how stunning this feels, we're standing in front of the hospital. if you just look in that way, a short distance, that's westminster bridge. that's the house of parliament. that's the commons where boris johnson has held court for months as the prime minister. just, frankly, hard to take in, that he is now just across the river here, fighting for his life, frankly, although we are only being given limited information about exactly how he is doing. friends, people who worked with him, tell me he's fit.

he's not a smoker. they have, in the past, gone running with him. so people are hopeful. you know, we keep talking about testing, and we can't talk about it enough. it really says something, doesn't it, about the crisis in testing on this side of the pond, that in downing street, that downing street was able to be infected. there weren't tests to try to ensure that didn't happen. just another piece of news op testing, a senior adviser to the british government here telling one newspaper that it will be at least a month before antibody tests are ready that might be able to test for antibodies in the millions. that's the case around the world. it's not -- well, it is a split screen, isn't it? the crisis right now with the man who is supposed to be leading the uk through this fight against coronavirus in his own personal fight now in the hospital behind me there. and the ongoing crisis to try to get a grip on this, particularly through trying to actually test

the population so that we can step fast these lopast these lo >> keir, we've heard skepticism from those reporting around this, that this is even as -- well, not worse than it seems. apparently, he hasn't spoken to his first secretary of state since saturday. he hasn't been in contact with other people in the cabinet since saturday. some rightfully speculating that things certainly may seem worse than, right now, 10 downing is letting on. what can you tell us about that? >> reporter: well, it is the case that the foreign secretary, who currently is stepping in for boris johnson, dominic raab, effectively kind of admitted in a news conference over the weekend that he hadn't spoken to boris johnson since saturday. i think we've got some sound of

him that we can briefly play. you have to look at his face, just how stunned he is. take a listen. >> government's business will continue, and the prime minister is in safe hands with a brilliant team at st. thomas' hospital. focus of the government will continue to be on making sure the pr that at the prime minister's direction, our plans to pull the country through the coronavirus challenge will be taken forward. >> reporter: i think, joe, the honest answer is we just don't know about the condition of the prime minister. that might not simply be that we aren't being given information, but what we know with the virus, and seeing it played out with the leader of britain, we know it can take sudden turns and it's unpredictable. people around the world praying for him, including political opponents. macron of france tweeting his good wishes. the two of them, of course, having done battle over brexit over a sustained period.

politics pushed aside at this stage. >> it is terrible news, and he is certainly in our prayers. keir simmons, thank you so much. we greatly appreciate it. >> katty, there is the question of transparency during this time. what are you hearing? >> yeah. so some journalists have said they weren't really given the full picture, they felt, over the course of the weekend, when they were being told that boris johnson was still very determined he was going to be running things in the country. then there were allegations that appeared on monday, bizarrely, from russian reporters on monday. there were reports in the morning that poboris johnson wa needing a ventilator. downing street said those were disinformation, dismissed those reports as disinformation. it may well be that the russians were sowing disinformation, as well, and it could be a very bad

co coincidence of timing. hours later, downing street had to say johnson was being moved to intensive care. monday, my understanding is he was getting worse, not better, and was being moved to the intensive care unit in order to have access to a ventilator. he had oxygen throughout the course of the day on monday. he started to get worse. they moved him to intensive care. remember, 15% of covid cases in the uk end up in hospital and need oxygen. that's already putting boris johnson in the only 15% bracket. it is only 5% who end up in intensive care and need ventilators. he is at the extreme end of this illness at the moment. we don't know whether he is going to get that ventilator, when he'll need it. of course, it's the prime minister. they'll take extra precautions. they may not move somebody else into the icu in his position, but it is the prime minister. they'll do everything they can. >> katty, thank you. willie? >> sunday night, we were told it was a precaution. i think a lot of people said,

wait a minute, the prime minister of the uk, one of the most powerful men in the world, they don't just casually drop him into the hospital unless it is serious. what are you hearing about his condition and his prognosis from your sources there in the uk? >> i'm quite good friends with members of boris' family, siblings with boris. one of them, leo, his middle brother, texted last night that he is strong as on ox and they're confident he'll pull through. he is robust. he might not be slim. he might not be as thick as some people. he is an extremely durable model. let's put it that way. the element here, boris is a cla classist. the element here of potential greek tragedy, you know, can't be overlooked. he did, as his government did, maintain a stance of herd

immunity for many, many weeks. he went out, and by his own admission, he was happy going around hospitals, as a politician does, he said, shaking hands with people, and would continue to do so. tragically, he got struck down by this. what katty was saying about downing street's communication of his condition is, i think, quite significant. they were saying he was fully in charge, carrying out normal prime ministerial duties, until last night. when, in fact, as we see, dominic raab is de facto number two. hasn't spoken to him since saturday. so clearly there is some skepticism about what downing street is telling us. hopefully katty is right, and others are right, in saying he has been moved into an icu and given oxygen preemptively, rather than because he's in a

critical condition. but i think a lot of people are worrying that it is worse than that. i have to say though, from hearing from boris' family, they've got -- they give him pretty high marks in terms of his robusrobustness. >> ed and katty, can you all briefly tell us about dominic raab, the man who for all practical purposes is running the british government right now? >> yeah. you know, we don't have the same constitutional lineup that you do here in the u.s. unfortunately, in a position like this, where it is clear what the line of succession is. so it was the prime minister who appointed dominic raab effectively to deputize for him. he is a guy who had been involved heavily in the brexit negotiations. he's very much on the brexit side of boris johnson's political wing of the family. he's currently the foreign secretary for the uk. he's, as you saw in the clip, i

think, has nothing of the energy and the charisma of boris johnson. he wasn't a particularly successful brexit secretary. there were a series of brexit secretaries. he had a short stint and wasn't particularly successful as a brexit secretary during his time. it's not clear exactly what happens now because there are some people in the uk calling for a government of national unity, suggesting that, actually, all the political parties, the labor party has a new leader, and maybe there should be at this moment of crisis, if the prime minister were to stay incapacitated for a while, a rethink of how the succession process works. >> ed? >> as somebody humorously put it yesterday, it was a stroke of genius by boris to make dominic raab his number two. now, the entire nation, including boris' political foes, are rooting for him to recover as quickly as possible.

>> oh, my gosh. >> dominic raab was a disastrous brexit secretary. >> i was trying to be diplomatic, ed. >> you were doing a wonderful job, katty. i admire it. as an opinion journalist, i feel less constrained. he's considered to be a very, very hard-line figure. not an emotionally high eq politician. maybe he'll grow into a bigger role, and maybe i'm being a little bit uncharitable. but i think, you know, boris, whether he deserves it or not, i would argue not, but boris has very high opinion ratings. he is liked, even though he might not be particularly trusted. he is a likable prime minister. dominic raab is not cut from the same cloth. >> so, jon meacham, we're going to be talking, as we move

forward, we're going to be talking about this white house memo dated in january that warned the president of the coming pandemic. warned the white house of the coming pandemic. i just want to read these words to you, what peter navarro wrote in january. he said, the lack of immune protection, or an existing cure or vaccine, would leave americans defensiveless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak in the u.s. this lack of production elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperilling the lives of millions of americans. in one worst-case scenario cited in the memo, navarro warned that more than half a million americans could die. and, yet, weeks after that, jon,

you had donald trump at rallies saying that in april when it warms up, this will miraculously go away. put this in context with -- i suppose you could say with 9/11. the memos warning offal kai aq attacks, using airplanes, maybe missed signals fdr didn't pick up on before pearl harbor. i really don't know though what parallel there can be. because so many more people are going to die because of these missed signals. >> yeah. i'm weary of those analogies, partly because al qaeda, the japanese government, they had a certain agency.

so you're talking about an enemy who was making decisions about when to strike you. the 9/11 memo said, you know, al qaeda determined to strike in u.s. i think what the bush administration would say is, well, yes, they already have. what have you got? that was more perspective. this was pretty prescripted. i think that's what makes this memo and this crisis all the more interesting and all the more tragic. ed talked about greek tragedy. the issue here, seems to me, is are we going to be a nation governed by reason and facts? are we an enlightenment influence to nation, uppercase "e," or are we a tribal collection of states and trump supporters and trump detractors who spend our time banging into

each other, instead of actually engaging with modernity and move forward? make no mistake, you've been talking about this, when the president goes out there every afternoon, early evening, he is going out there because he knows what the reality is. he knows that the reality does not bathe him in glory. so he is telling the american people, or that part of the american people who are open to his arguments -- there are no arguments, there are assertions. his assertions that nobody saw it coming. well, this guy who talks about trump time, this guy whom is going to become a hero of the central-left, that everybody disliked before the memo came out -- but that's the way it goes -- it's just not true. so because the president is ill-served by his own ins

tingttingt instincts, essential lack of interest in anything long-term planning. you know, he's a day-trader, to use your phrase. because that mindset, that temperament, has engaged the united states in a way we have not been economically endangered since 1933, and in terms of health, as you just showed, we are losing more people than in many of the wars we spend time studying. this is the calamity. it is an absolute calamity. and the tragedy of this will be there were people who saw it coming. and this is not -- just to underscore this -- this is not partis partisan. i'm not saying this because i think the -- >> it's facts. >> -- president is temperamentally ill-suited to be president. i do think the president is temperamentally ill-suited to his office, but it doesn't matter. people you disagree with on 80% of things can get 20% right.

that's very hard to find that 20% here. it's changing, affecting, anyway, everybody about it, everything. you don't want to be partisan in this moment. you don't want to bang on the highchair, you know. i understand all that. at the same time, that enlightenment injunction, which is, follow the facts, this is what the facts are saying. i would urge folks, look at the facts. don't listen to the spin. >> so, joe, if you look at january 30th, trump's quote is, we think we have it well under control. then think about this, tlurump rolled back much of the progress obama made to strengthen global and health security. i'm reading from someone's opinion piece. he proposed draconian cuts to the national institutes of health, the centers for disease control. >> these are facts. >> agency for development. he dismissed the top white house

officials in charge of global health security. to be blunt, i am concerned that the trump administration short-sighted policies have left us unprepared for a dangerous epidemic that will come sooner or later. that is three days earlier, january 27th. joe biden telling the country, trying to tell the president that a pandemic is on the way. here's the problem. i say this with all seriousness, joe. you know, because we knew him long before the campaign, and we talked to him about this during the campaign, and we shared it with our viewers. he doesn't read. he doesn't read. so if peter navarro wrote something, or biden wrote something, he does not read. everything comes at him. he hears it on tv. >> right. >> this is how he gets his info. >> that's been a concern of people that have been trying to brief him since he first got into the white house. >> he doesn't read. >> it is something we asked him early in the campaign, do you read? i asked, can you read?

are you capable of reading? willie, i think the biggest lie, and donald trump lies in all these press conferences. and, again, this is not opinion, it's just fact. he lied about testing yesterday. he said it wasn't the federal government's job, never the federal government's job. it was until february 29th, when the fda gave up on the federal government because they'd botched this so badly that the fda said, we would shut you down, ccdc, if you were a privae entity. another big lie is when donald trump says, "nobody saw this coming." peter navarro wrote this memo on january 29th. said half a million americans could die if we don't get this right. joe biden, two days earlier, wrote an op-ed in the "usa today," warning of the pandemic that was coming. joe biden saw this coming.

donald trump didn't see this coming. donald trump was still saying it was going to go away when it was warm. we only have 11 people who are sick. >> hearing what he wanted to hear. >> yeah. the same week that biden wrote that memo, he told cnbc he wasn't worried at all. it was one person coming from china. there it was, sleepy joe biden? i don't know. they may need another name than sleepy. oppre oppress oppressient joe biden, perhaps, the same week, said this would be a serious problem, that the outbreak is going to cause a real problem. you can go back, willie, to 2019, when hhs secretary azar was asked in a conference in 2019 what keeps him up at night. he said, well, what keeps everybody up at night in this room, a pandemic. when the next pandemic comes, will we be prepared?

he saw it coming. bill gates predicted it in 2015. george w. bush raised fears about it in 2005. the question is, who could have seen this coming? the answer, everybody but donald tru trump. everybody but donald trump and those who decided they were going to be mouthpieces for donald trump, in playing down the threat that everybody saw coming. >> yeah. you mentioned george w. bush. there's been a lot written in the last couple of days, that he was obsessed with this, both privately and with his team, that this was coming and we had to be drid fready for it. obama administration, a group famously wrote a pandemic playbook, sitting in the white house, waiting for the trump administration. they dismissed it, which would have signalled, this happened on new year's eve in wuhan, china. we need to prepare now. make the ppes, start getting the ventilators out, it is headed our way. the trump administration ignored the playbook, threw it to the

side. as jon says, the president views his job every day at 5:00, whatever they hold the briefing, to distance himself from all of that. to say, look, this is the states' problems. they should have been ready. to throw a hail mary and say, there is a miracle drug for malaria. have fox news hosts into the white house and say, this is working well. some anecdotal cases, sure it is, but the fda says it is not ready. then to attack reporters, as he did yesterday. a fox news white house correspondent asked a good and straight-forward question about testing. when will testing be available to everyone who wants it? he attacked that reporter and says, you should be saying thank you and congratulations for the job i've done. so all he sees up there -- not to convey information. obviously, we'd be better off with dr. deborah birx and dr. fauci holding the briefing with

vice president pence carrying the other side of it. the president was there to spin a tale, to tell everyone it wasn't his fault, no one could have seen it coming, and he is there to save us from other people's failures, when really this is his failure and his administration's failure. >> you know, mika, last week, i think it was, i said that everybody saw this coming in early january. of course, by everybody, i mean everybody in the trump administration, everybody that had information. i just -- who saw it coming, of course, forget about 2019 and hhs secretary azar warning of the coming pandemic, saying it kept him up at night. forget bill gates in 2015, forget george w. bush. on december 31st, 2019, the c dd w cdc was aware of it and started writing up reports for hhs. hhs secretary knew about it in

early january, warned the national security council, who warned the president on january 3rd or in the next few days. actually, the intel agencies by -- in the first week of january were putting it in the president's daily briefing, warning of the coming coronavirus. the intel agencies, of course, kept passing this information around. you actually had the fda all in. i mean, everybody inside the president's white house knew about this. when azar tried to talk to the president, he couldn't get him on the phone because he didn't have a good relationship with him, until january the 18th. when he finally got the president on the phone january the 18th, when the president was at mar-a-lago, to warn him about the coming coronavirus, the president didn't want to talk about that. mika, do you know what he wanted to talk about? he wanted to know when flavored

vaping products would be back on the market. something which, i'm sure, vaping, doesn't help somebody when they're struck with the coronavirus. >> this is the problem, when experts can't get to the president, and he is surrounded by inexperienced suckups, including his family. i mean this with all seriousness. when you're surrounded by people who don't have the experience, they can't help you. >> they're not qualified. >> they can't make you better. >> they don't have the experience. they're not qualified. >> they shouldn't be there. >> he needs -- and joe biden was saying this, also, very early on in this crisis. he said it, i think, january the 31st. we have got to let science lead us here. let the scientists speak. >> said that in iowa. >> as we continue to go through january, i've talked about all that, joe biden, again, on the 27th, was warning of the coming pandemic. on the 29th --

>> of january. >> january 29th, peter navarro was warning in this memo of a coming pandemic that could kill half a million americans. time and time again, the president said, during that time period, he wasn't worried about it at all. no, no, no. we're fine. don't worry about it. it'll go away in april, when things are warm. he said, "we only have one person from china here that has it. we have it completely under control." then he said, "we only have 11 people who have it. we have it completely under control." then he said, "we have 15 people here who have it, and soon that will be down to zero. we have it completely under control." it was at the same time that the president's own administration in january was warning him. joe biden was warning him. scientists were warning him. when donald trump says nobody saw that coming, it's just a lie

of the first order. it is extraordinarily false. he's trying to be a revisionist. unfortunately for him, this isn't the old soviet union. this isn't communist china. journalists have the video. journalist hav isists have the . even though, mr. president, you scream and try to shout down journalists when they tell the truth, they have the final word. they have your words. they have the truth. >> we have the death count. still ahead on "morning joe," an update on that controversy in the military after the acting secretary of the navy ousted, then insulted. a top commander who raised concerns about the threat of coronavirus aboard his ship, he was trying to save his sailors. the acting navy secretary calls him stupid. the "washington post" david ignatius has new reporting on this. you're watching "morning joe."

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we are doing an incredible job of testing. we're doing better than anybody in the world on testing. there's nobody close. hospitals can do their own testing also. states can do their own testing. states are supposed to be doing testing. hospitals are supposed to be doing testing. do you understand that? we're the federal government. listen, we're the federal government. we're not supposed to stand on street corners doing testing. >> the inspector general for the department of health and human services released a report today, a survey, of more than 300 hospitals across the country. and the number one complaint from those hospitals were severe shortages of testing supplies and a really long wait time.

a week or longer. >> did i hear the word "inspector general," really? it's wrong. they'll talk to you about it. it's wrong. >> this is your own government. >> where did it come from, the inspector general? what is his name? >> came from the inspector general report. >> what is his name? >> i don't know his name off the top of my head. >> find me his name. i'd appreciate it. we've done more testing and had more results than any country, anywhere in the world. they're doing an incredible job. now, they're all calling us. they want our testing. what are we doing? how do you do the five-minute test? how do you do the 15-minute test? give me the name of the inspector general. could politics be entered into that? >> her name. the name of the principal deputy inspector general is christy grimm. she previously worked in the obama administration, but she began working at the office of the inspector general in 1999. with that report, was conveying concerns from people working in hospitals, doctors and nurses,

who say they don't have enough equipment to do the job they need to do. that was what her report said. let's bring in nbc news correspondent carol lee. let's talk more about the memo from peter navarro. the first coming january 29th, warning of a possible pandemic. he, by the way, wrote another one february 23rd, where his concerns were raised even further. he's a trade adviser to the president. what was his particular interest and concern here? >> reporter: well, look, willie, we know that he has had an interest in pandemics. he's -- when you talk to some folks inside the white house, they'll say he is inserting himself in an issue he doesn't know that much about. that said, we also know that his memo that's reported by the "new york times" came at a time when the president was basically saying that everything was fine, that this wasn't an issue, and at a time when there were other warnings, whether coming from the intelligence community or elsewhere, that this was a real issue and something the president needed to pay

attention to. one of the questions that we don't know is whether this memo actually got to the president at the time that it was being circulated. i think that's something that you're going to see the white house pressed on today. we know it went to a number of people around him. it's part of this larger picture of a time when a number of people inside and outside of the white house were sounding alarms about this pandemic, that it was going to be a big problem, and really cripple the country. the president, for whatever reason, was not listening, whether he didn't receive this specific memo or not. we don't know. there are other warnings he would have been privy to that he didn't heed at that time. >> of course, peter navarro, the trade adviser, had been in the news the last couple days for his reported fight with dr. anthony fauci in the situation room over the eh crofficacy of malaria drug that worked anecdotally in other cases. carol, you've covered the white

house closely for some time. what is the information flow? in other words, peter navarro sounds the alarm, raises if flag about, hey, this is a pandemic. it is coming. he wrote another one less than a month later that said, it's getting closer, and it could kill more than a million americans, mr. president. what does the president do with that information? why does he ignore it, in some part? >> reporter: well, the information flow in this white house is just very different from other white houses that i've covered. it's basically, there isn't an information flow. there's no real process that's put in place. typically in a white house, if there was a memo written like that, it would be, first of all, probably written by somebody who was involved in that issue, an expert in that issue. peter navarro is not, which is part of the reason why this may have been kind of dismissed by people inside the white house. but, you know, the information getting to the president is just not done in a way that is typical for a white house.

so, you know, he could have written this memo, and people saw it and basically blew it off. he could have written a memo, and it gets directly on the president's desk. it's the way the president consumes information and gets information from people around him, it's just not typical. we know that he has reached out to people outside the white house who have no expertise whatsoever in pandemics to ask them what they think. he's just -- there's a real -- it's not done in any sort of typical way that it is easy to get your arms around. >> carol, there's, of course, this story of secretary of hhs azar, who should be running this instead of donald's son-in-law. azar had such a bad relationship with donald trump, because donald trump was angry because of the vaping ban, that he had the information in early january, tried to get it to the president, wasn't allowed to speak to the president until january the 18th by phone.

when he finally spoke to him by phone, the president was angry at him and wanted to know when flavored vaping e-cigarettes would be back on the market again. azar was concerned, very frightened, and started asking people, how do you talk to the president? how do i get this information to the president? have you heard more stories of health officials in those critical moments not being able to get through to the president with important information they needed to hear, he needed to hear? >> reporter: well, what we know is that the president, the way that he has advisers that he wants to listen to, and when he wants to listen to them, he does. if you're not part of that set of people, then he really doesn't have time for you. so while we don't know exactly the extent -- and this is one of the things, joe, that is going to be really looked at by

congress. the number of warnings that this president -- that the president got, the number of people that tried to get to him to warn him about this, is something that's going to be extensively looked at, looked into. we know the way that this president operates is if you're part of his inner circle, he's going to listen to what you have to say. if he's -- and there is that piece of things. then there is just trying to get him to focus on the issue that you want him to focus on. that's, we know from a number of example, that's been a problem for anyone trying to advise the president on something serious, whether it's on national security issues, the pandemic, whether it's his hhs secretary. i think with azar, you saw both of those two things kind of coming together and really creating a situation where the president just wasn't going to listen to him. >> all right. carol lee, thank you so much. we greatly appreciate it. >> reporter: thanks, guys. >> willie, can you imagine that? the secretary of hhs finally is able to get through to the

president to warn the president. he doesn't want to talk about a coming pandemic. he wants to yell at him because flavored vaping had been taken off the market and was hurting him, he thought, with his supporters. that's where donald trump's mind was while all of these warnings were coming toward him, whether it was the department of hhs or whether it was from the national security council, or whether it was from the cdc. >> it's tragic. it is literally tragic, and it continues. donald trump in the middle of this yesterday is tweeting about the "new york times" subscriptions being down. tweeting about media personalities, things like that. you would hope, he's our president. we want him to succeed. this moment is so important. you would hope he would be focused in this moment, but i'm afraid it is beyond his capability to stay focused on this. just to go back to that exchange he had yesterday on testing with the fox news reporter, the white house correspondent there. he was angry at her for asking

about testing because he knows that reflects poorly on her -- on him, excuse me. he also was upset because he knows that that ig report was not good for him. he attacks the source. tell me the name of the person. he wants names. well, that report was just a clear-eyed look at what's happening in the hospitals. what you and i are hearing from our friends in emergency rooms, in icus, which is that it is getting better in some cases. they're getting more ppe, but that there are just a couple of nurses covering an entire shift. they view it as a good night, as i heard last night out of one new york city hospital, because they didn't lose anybody. you know, this crisis is still very much real, right now, in hospitals across the country. you'd like to see a president who is focused on that more than protecting his backside about how we got here. >> right. mika, what is this president allergic to? it's facts. the ig report that actually told the truth about the president's call with ukraine's president

actually got an inspector general fired. the president doesn't -- he wants to be able to lie. he doesn't want to be -- and this is my question, why do we continue these press conferences -- >> i don't know. >> -- when the fox news reporter asks a question about testing. you're like, great, maybe we'll get some answers. he shouts that reporter down. jonathan karl asks a pertinent question, where you want to hear the answer. instead of him blabbering on about untested uses of drugs. then jonathan karl gets shouted down. you never get the answers to the questions that are actually the most germain to many moment. why are these press conferences allowed to go on? >> i don't know. >> on testing again, the president was lying about testing. yes, it is the federal government's job. it was the federal government's job until the trump administration botched it so badly that the fda finally, on february 29th, said enough. said to the cdc two days

earlier, if you were a private entity, we would shut you down. on the 29th said, okay, private entities can start testing because the federal government has failed so much, in effect, was the conclusion by the end of february. by that time, mika, we had already lost eight, you know, four, five, six, seven weeks. >> i wish someone could impress upon the president that the truth is valuable at this time. he tries to control the information during these press briefings, but the raw, horrific truth is that when somebody walks into a hospital experiencing symptoms, whether that person is a trump supporter, one of trump's people or not, that person will see the inability to get tests. that person will see the lack of masks. that person will say to him or herself, this is the united states of america. what is going on? it will be very clear. >> well, we have much more ahead on poor is joboris johnson, mik

>> ten days, the prime minister went from mild symptoms to the icu. we'll talk to nbc's chief foreign correspondent, richard eng engel. plus, the one word that explains why trump shouldn't be president. eugene robinson tells us what it is. plus, early last week, the trump era came to an end. we have the new piece in the "new yorker" when "morning joe" comes right back. backna, we understand that for some getting a car just can't wait. that's why the new way to buy and sell a car is also the safer way. at carvana, you can do it all 100% online from home with a touchless delivery and pickup process to keep you safe. and for even greater peace of mind, all carvana cars come with a 7-day return policy. so if you need to keep moving, it's our goal to keep you safe. check out carvana, the safer way to buy a car. 450-degree oven, to box, to you, know that from our

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i'm shaking hands. i was at a hospital the other night where i think there were actually a few coronavirus patients. i shook hands with everybody, you'll be pleased to know, and i continue to shake hands. i just urge you not to do that. please, please stick with the guidance now. this country has made a huge effort, a huge sacrifice, done absolutely brilliantly well in delaying the spread of the virus. let stick wius stick with it no >> you know, mika and willie, i think about a week ago, i read an article that said the one defining feature of every culture that's been impacted by the coronavirus is they never thought it was going to come their way. they always thought they were going to be immune to it. and you even see it here in the united states.

when it hit new york, there were people still in florida packing beaches during spring break. five students in tampa, last we heard, that got the coronavirus from spring break. others took the coronavirus pbak home with them spring break. there you saw boris johnson, tragic before and after, making a mistake but making a mistake that a lot of people across the globe have made. it is just absolutely tragic, willie. our thoughts and prayers are with him, as well as the british people. of course, with those doctors and nurses in new york city and across the country right now literally fighting for their lives and for the lives of their patients. >> yeah. we hope the prime minister has a speedy recovery. we'll have more on that story and details. you're right, joe. think about how quickly this has consumed our lives. we look back at the failings of the governments, state at

federal levels. when you think of the human cost of this, the human impact it's had, it's shown there in a month time, the prime minister b bragging about shaking hands with coronavirus patients. one month later to the day, please don't do what i did. it seems quaint, but not long ago we were discussing whether or not to keep the schools open to the end of the school year. whether to have the ncaa basketball tournament. i don't think anybody, going back a couple months, understood how big and consuming this crisis was going to be. >> mika, it is like we've been saying here for at least the past month. viruses don't care about the art of the deal. viruses don't negotiate. pandemics don't care about what you say. in press conferences, you can't wish them away. we're seeing that firsthand here in the united states. we're also seeing it across the

globe. all of those warnings that were made to the president throughout january, all of the warnings that cdc, that the fda, and that the national security council, that the intel spy agencies tried to warn the president about, that the hhs secretary tried to warn the president about on january the 18th, when he was so obsessed with flavored vaping. it just shows, you can't wish this away. years and years of being able to get away with things, of being able to bluff your way through just about everything that you do finally caught up with donald trump. now, he is trying to bully his way through this time period where we need facts. we need the federal government to do what the federal

government's always done. be in charge-te of testing, lik they were before february 29th. we need the federal government to use the defense production act, to push testing, to push ventilators, to push masks, to push the life-saving -- the life-saving therapeutics, the life-saving vaccines, to push for them. we don't need a president who says, "i'm not responsible for anything. i'm going to blame the governors. the buck doesn't stop here. it stops in 50 different states." you cannot have a piecemeal approach to a pandemic. if you do, you will find yourself in the position where the united states is right now, where we have far more infections than anybody else on the globe. >> the big news out of last night's briefing didn't come from the president.

not much came from the president at all, actually. dr. anthony fauci did answer a question about when this would all be over, when things could get back to normal. the answer was a vaccine, which is many months away. so when you look at april 30th, 30 days to slow the spread, just the raw truth here, that's just not the end of this at all. we're still at the beginning in terms of the way americans have to live. we will have to live this way until there is a vaccine and antibody testing which, perhaps, would have been sooner, had the president listened to the warnings. this is how we're going to have to live six months, possibly more. >> willie, it is all about testing, testing, testing. experts have been saying that for so long now. if you want to get the country back going again, you have to be able to test. you've got to be able to track the people that have the virus.

you have to be able to treat them. you have to be able to isolate them. we're talking about antibody testing, to see perhaps those with antibodies in their system, maybe they can go back to work, go back in the economy. willie, when these questions are raised about testing at the press conference, when other questions are raised that are relevant to where we are and, most importantly, where we need to go, the president shouts down those reporters, whether they're from abc, nbc, fox news, it doesn't matter. if you ask the president a question he doesn't want to answer, he shouts you down and moves on to somebody else who will ask an easier question. why do we hold those press conferences, willie? >> carry them live. >> why do we carry them live two hours every night? >> i'd be up for a press conference at 5:00 every night withfauci, and officials who provide information. that's what we need, facts and data.

when the president is asked the fact-based questions, like he was by the fox news white house correspondent yesterday about testing, he knows there is a failure at the federal government. therefore, he views it as a personal attack at him and barks back at the questioner, rather than addressing the question. what do you want the federal government to do, stand on street corners and give tests? well, in some ways, yes. in other words, the federal government needs to be driving this process. what we have now is this piecemeal, where you have private companies scrambling and doing a great job in many cases to make a test, to make a quick test, something we can get out into the communities. we're chasing this pandemic. there were ways that the federal government, to help the president along here, could have start thd ped this process earl. the clock should have started two months ago, three months ago, instead of when it started, as the pandemic playbooks laid out. when you saw something in wuhan, china, the fuse has been lit. it is time to ramp up testing,

get ppe made, ramp up in places like new york city. there were ways the federal government could be proactive here. it is not a personal attack on the president to ask the questions. it is asking the federal government to do its job here. >> as you pointed out, willie, before, south korea and the united states had its first infection the same day. south korea immediately assembled their brightest minds at a train station and said, we're going to be at war with an epidemic, maybe a pandemic. let's get a test put together. sure enough, a week later, somebody had a test. within a month, they had people driving through to get the tests. while we had the president, for another month at least, saying this was going to magically go away. his words, not mine. >> still with joe, willie, and

me, we have washington anchor for bbc world news, ckatty kay. joining us is david remnick. also, from the "washington post," david ignatius. >> david, we were talking about the president of the united states not wanting -- david ignatius, we were talking about the president of the united states not wanting to hear facts that actually go against, go against what he is trying to rush. i would call it the propaganda that he is trying to push. we had an incident in the united states navy this past week, something that i know breaks the heart of many people from my hometown of pensacola, florida, a navy town, where you actually had a captain on a ship desperate to save the lives of the people on that ship. he got fired. you've actually spoken to the assistant secretary of the navy who stepped in it further

questioned by attacking that captain. >> calling him stupid. >> now, you have many calling for his resignation. what can you tell us? >> joe, i've described this as a morality play at sea, and it is that. it invokes some of the great sea stories we grew up reading. here, we have the captain, brett crozier, of a huge aircraft carrier with 4,800 sailors aboard that is stricken with pandemic. pandemic coronavirus is sweeping through the ship. if you've ever been on an aircraft carrier, big ship, you know there's no room really to move around. the captain is becoming increasingly concerned about getting folks off that ship. the ship moves into guam. he writes a very emotional and powerful letter to a broad chain of people on monday. that ends up getting him in what

proved fatal trouble as a captain. the letter leaks in the "san francisco chronicle." the acting navy secretary is furious. extraordinarily, joe, he called me, this acting navy secretary, after firing the captain on thursday. he called me at 1:00 a.m. on sunday morning. he was on his way to hawaii. he called to say, here's what i did and why. he said the captain of the ship panicked and the crisis. most revealing, he said that he had acted because he wanted to take action himself on the part of the navy before president trump jumped in. because president trump wouldn't like this. he said, i put myself in the president's shoes. he wouldn't want to see this. i took action instead. to me, what it showed is how officials across have become so nervous about how donald trump will react to things, that they're taking actions on their

own to try to preempt presidential action, presidential whim. that's part of the problem. people are beginning to scensor themselves. they're taking actions or not taking actions against the coronavirus that they think the boss might not like. i think it's part of how we've got ton thten to this impasse. people are afraid of this personal, sometimes impulsive decision making by the president, and the orderly process of government, even in the military, even in our navy, has been affected by it. it was an extraordinary conversation, joe and mika, with the acting navy secretary, trying so hard to justify himself, using the same kind of language he used when he went to the ship yesterday in guam and called the captain, now suffering from covid-19 himself, called him stupid and naive. he later took those words back. pretty harsh thing to say to the

crew who had cheered this man as he walked off the gangplank, really thanking him for having tried to save the ship and their lives. >> it's really shocking that this acting secretary of the navy would say that. you know, david, i grew up in a navy town in pensacola, obviously. david ignatius, obviously, in a navy town, and our armed services spent a lot of time around navy captains and admirals who had been captains. i can't name one who, if they were in the same position, in fear for the lives of those -- whether it was a co or xo, in fear of the lives of those on their ship, wouldn't have done the same thing. now, we all understand the chain

of command. and you have to be respectful of the chain of command. but when the people you are responsible for, when the men and women that are in your care, when their lives are in danger, and nothing is being done to protect them, you do exactly what this captain did. it's just not even a close call. this has nothing to do with the chain of command. this has everything to do with saving the lives of the men and women with whom you have been entrusted, whose lives you have been entrusted to protect. >> joe, captain crozier, there seen leaving the ship to the cheers of his crew. they're really saying, thank you, boss, for trying to save our lives. captain crozier told the acting navy secretary modly, in his account to me early sunday

morning, that he had felt the situation was so dire that he needed to send up a signal flare. shooting up a signal flare is what you do when you think your ship is sinking. that's a measure of how serious he thought the situation was. there is an investigation now by the navy to see, was it that serious? was it the appropriate action? did he inform his immediate commander, the carrier strike group commander, who is a one-star rear admiral. were the procedures you'd want followed followed? those are legitimate questions. what i find incredible is that the navy secretary would go before this crew that cheered their captain and call him stupid and nieve. he took that back after he said it. oh, no, i didn't mean that. >> ugly. >> exactly, it was an ugly thing to say. so hurtful to those sailors, to their families.

extraordinary moment. it seemed even president trump realized that they had done too far. said, we'll look into this more carefully. an extraordinary drama, as i say, played out at sea. >> david, it's willie. good to see you this morning. acting secretary modly, it turns out, may have misread president trump, if he was trying to channel him. yesterday, president trump said, i'll take a look at this case because i'm hearing good things about captain crozier. trump didn't jump into it in the way that modly did. then you have this groveling apology from modly yesterday, who said i don't think captain crozier is nieve or stupid. i always believed him to be the opposite. he is smart and passionate. what prompted the complete 180 on his rhetoric to the sailors on that ship? >> i think, willie, when he made the remarks to the ship, when you read the transcript -- i've

got the transcript of the remarks -- it was an emotional, self-justification. he was saying, you may hate me. i may have destroyed your hero, but i had to do what i thought was right. it's very self-justifying in that way. he was speaking emotionally and inappropriately. worst possible place to make these remarks. then it got out. a transcript was published and, quickly, people were looking carefully at it. he must have realized how terrible this sounded, read to people. as we were saying earlier, even the president seems to have understood that this was not the message to be sending. but the point i want to come back to is this acting navy secretary thought he was doing the thing that president trump would want him to do. that he was taking action bef e before, to show the navy could be tough. he overdid it badly.

he really upset the top. it's been a terrible few months for the navy. you have to worry about, going forward, how they put things back togetherme. i hope there will be a board of inquiry, a careful process of all the actions people took will be reviewed by senior leadership. i hope the chairman of the house of the senate armed services committee will be serving on the board somehow. it's been a mess. talking to navy people around washington, around the world the last few days, i've been hearing expressions of real concern about the future. >> yeah. >> there are calls in the armed services committee to get the resignation of acting secretary modly. we'll get to david remnick in a moment for his piece in "new yorker." we want to go to london first, where prime minister boris johnson spent the night in the icu. this comes 11 days after he announced he'd tested positive

for coronavirus. his condition may be worse than previously disclosed. let's bring in chief foreign correspondent richard engel. the prime minister went to the hospital on sunday. yesterday, we learned he had been moved to the icu. what can you tell us today? >> reporter: british officials say that he is not on a ventilator, that he had been receiving oxygen, that he was c conscience when admitted to the icu. yes, he's had the coronavirus 11 days. initially, government officials here were saying it was no big deal. he was still in charge. he was running the count counter-covid-19 by teleconferences. primarily working with his deputy, the foreign secretary dominic raab, who is now -- has been deputized to run not only that effort, but to step in and run the country, quote, where necessary, as the prime minister remains in the icu at this hospital in central london. only the most severe cases are

being transferred to icus. they say he is not on a ventilator, but he was having respiratory issues. he needed oxygen. clearly, the concern was that he would be required to be i thi incubated or have some sort of ventilati ventilation. >> richard, globally, coronavirus cases have topped 1.3 million. what new measures are being taken to contain the outbreak, as you have studied this not just from where you're standing in the uk, but arocross the wor when it began in china? >> reporter: this gets to the point mika raised the top of the show about dr. fauci's comments. i thought those were -- she was right to zero in on this. people were asking dr. fauci, when do we get to forget about all of this? when can we go back to life as we knew it and never have to hear the word "coronavirus" again? dr. fauci said, well, until there is, a, either a really, really good medical treatment, or ultimately a vaccine, we're

not going back to status quo. that'll take some time. that doesn't mean we have to always live in the tightest phase of lockdown. what we're seeing globally is different countries trying to experiment, opening up their societies a little bit, trying to manage the peak as they go through it. but virologist told me the problem with the coronavirus is that it is not the most deadly virus in the world. it is not ebola. it is not an end of days pa pathogen. it's that it is so contagious, it hits like a tsunami, spreads through society, and has the power, because it spreads so fast and hits so quickly, to overwhelming health care systems and social systems, to overwhelming a society. you have to get through the first wave. then other waves will come. but the other waves will likely be smaller and more manageable. so you can't let your guard down too much because the other waves are coming. but if you can get through the

first one, you can deal with the others. now, italy and spain, they believe they are just getting over the hump of the first one. they're still on the wave, but they think they're starting to see the back side. other countries in europe, austria, for example, is already talking about reopening shops and is setting dates. on the 15th of this month, it is going to start opening small shops and see how that works. there are several other european countries doing the same. but to get over that wave, you need testing. germany has proved that quite conclusively. testing, testing, testing helps. you need leadership. you need solidarity. italy and spain didn't get over this hump by doing nothing. for weeks and weeks, they've been in a tight lockdown after struggling initially to find the appropriate response. >> nbc's richard engel outside st. thomas' hospital in london. thanks so much. richard has more special coverage this weekend on msnbc.

we look forward to that. mika, as you said at the top, dr. fauci said there is no off switch on there. this is no date certain where we'll say, society has been reopened. we're ready to go back the work, to school, summer camps are open, the football games are back on. >> no. >> this is going to be a process. it starts with testing. >> that's the reality. he actually talked about a reality where we actually never really go back to where we were. ever. but not until a vaccine and antibody testing. that is not in 30 days. at the rate we're going, 1.78 million tests in a country with hundreds of millions of people. the president keeps saying we've done more tests in the world. nope. we're not number one here. >> not per capita. >> not number one when it comes to anything embodying this virus. >> per person, we're not close to number one. dr. fauci is exactly right. we're not going to go back to where we were. certainly not until there is extensive testing, which we've

known for a long time. people have been saying it for several weeks. david remnick is with us. david, you wrote several stories we want to talk about. thank you so much for being with us. one of them had to do with the fact that new york will never be the same again. it doesn't remind you of anything you've seen in new york. 7:00 p.m. at night, when the shifts change, is the one bright moment. tell us about it. >> well, at 7:00 in a lot of neighborhoods in new york, and in a lot of cities around the world and in this country, people go to their windows, their stoops, their rooftops, and they start cheering. cheering for people they can't necessarily see. for emt people, for doctors, for nurses, for medics, for people trying to save our lives. people who are bringi ining foo

our homes. people who are driving trucks. people who are doing essential services that we require, that this country requires, and they show such enormous bravery. they don't deny what's going on. what you have right now is a president of the united states who began his national assent at the republican national convention saying, "i alone can do it." remember that, joe? i alone can do it. >> yeah. >> sure do. >> the era then ends with, "i take no responsibility." i alone can do it. i take no responsibility. yet, my city and your city is being saved by people who take the ultimate responsibility. that's what we're cheering at 7:00. and we feel humiliated by having a president who denies science, who makes jokes about models, who tells us that he is number one on facebook and that his

ratings are so great. it is humiliating to live under such a leader. and the consequences are so immense. what david ignatius was describing with the captain of that aircraft carrier, which is one anecdote, one humiliating anecdote in a thousand. every book that's been written, every honest book written about the trump administration describes this. one incident after another of a nation being led by an empty soul, by someone who denies science, who mocks science, who chooses to humiliate the press rather than tell the truth to the american people. that is a presidency with consequences in human lives, in national spirit. so at 7:00, wite cheer its opposite. >> david, you wrote such a warping. we talked about it. the night of the election, the night donald trump got elected

president of the united states, you talked about, basically warned about all the things that have happened over the past three and a half years. the thing we've been fixated on is donald trump getting away with just about everything. with his core of supporters and the president inf infamously sa he could shoot someone on fifth avenue and get away with it. his supporters would still support him. it is interesting though, and this is something mika and i have been talking about, while i don't believe the press conferences, the two-hour ramblings of misinformation and lies and twisted truths, while i don't believe those should go on, it's not only bad for the american people to be watching that, because it gives them less confidence in their president. it is not only pbad for the word to see how ill-equipped the american president is for this.

but even politically for hims f himself, it is bad for him. it serves nothing but his ego. you look at a poll out of florida where he is losing to joe biden by 6 points. the takeaway from that poll for me is that in the state of florida, that has always been his strongest swing state, 56% of floridians say they don't trust what the president is telling themg t thtell ing them about the pandemic. maybe he gets away with shooting somebody on fifth avenue, but he doesn't get away with showing his ignorance for two hours every night. that's starting to show up in polls from wisconsin down to florida. is this where, as you said, the trump presidency ends? >> well, i don't know. the trump presidency ends when it ends. i mean the evera of self-confidence, that i alone can fix it. the era came out of that. >> that's what i meant. i'm sorry.

>> but i do think that presidencies don't end until they end at the polling place. or if there had been an impeachment conviction. that's it. and so if we've learned anything in this era, it's that trump's capacity to mobilize his base is remarkable. look, if you go on any social media, if you go on twitter, for example, and plug in the word "fauci," for example, don't expect to see all heroic comments about tony fauci and his ability to tell the truth. you will see -- not that twitter is necessarily a poll, but it tells you something. person after person after person who leaves conspiracy theories about fauci, that he is trying to make money aftoff a evacuatv he's trying to stall the markets, or that he is a hillary clinton loyalist. millions of people seem to believe this stuff until the

very end. part of the horrible part of this presidency is that rather than have a president that speaks the truth, tries to communicate with all sides, doesn't deny science, is that he is distorting information. he is confusing the nation, setting it into a state of imbalance. david ignatius was describing the situation on the aircraft carrier. why did the secretary of the navy behave the way he did? he felt he was expected to by the culture of the trump presidency. and the people that were willing to defy that, or finesse it are gone. month after month, we talked about the so-called grown-ups in the room. they were people i didn't agree with on policy, god knows, but these were people who were capable of or tried to rein in a president who is as bad as bad

can be. those people are gone. >> and there -- >> here is where we are paying the price. >> david remnick, one of the starkest examples of that has to do with the secretary of health and human services, who really should be the forefront of this crisis, instead of the president's son-in-law, who, last time we checked, was trying to bring about middle east peace. and so you have the secretary -- >> which seems to be funny, but it's not funny. >> yeah. so you have the secretary of health and human services in early january, i think it was january the 3rd, perhaps it was january the 1st, was warned by the cdc of this coming virus, of the coronavirus. of course, the intel agencies were warning the president in early february. according to reports, it took the secretary of health and human services two weeks to get

donald trump on the telephone, to warn him of the coming epidemic, soon to be pandemic. pause because he had a bad relationship with trudonald tru who was angry at him because he suggested that flavored vaping be banned. when he finally got the president on to talk about the coronavirus sweeping the globe, and the dangers to the united states, this fear that he said the year before had kept him up at night, the president didn't want to talk about the coronavirus. >> yeah. >> he was angry at him and asked, "when are we going to have flavored vaping products back on the market?" afterwards, the secretary of health and human services asked an associate, because he was so worried, how do i communicate with him? how do i get the truth to him? how do i get him to understand this? and that follows up on where you said we find ourselves as a

nation. the consequences are just unimaginably bad. >> this is where we were from day one. this is where we were from day one. look, even in the best of circumstances, people have a hard time understanding reality. remember ronald reagan on aids. it took a long, long time for that administration to act with compassion or any sense of realism. it was a denial of this thing because they thought it was a gay capncer, a marginal thing. dp we have that in our past, that ugliness, and many lives were lost because of the slowness to act on science, on fact. look at what is in our future. and in our present, in terms of climate change, denialism. that's the phrase of michael specter's great book on this, human capacity to deny what is in front of our face. look at the price we're already

paying for the denialism of climate change. again, these are scary issues, but these are the issues that adult politicians, whether they're democrats or republicans, must take on. it's not as if these warnings came in january. fauci and other scientists have been talking about the potential for pandemic to do this kind of damage for years. for years. they've been shoved to the back burner. the attention given was much greater in the obama administration and the bush administration. in this administration, budgets were cut. they were ignored. they were silenced. they were shunned to the side until it was too late. now, we're in a situation where we hope and pray that one fine day, the president of the united states doesn't wake up and fire tony fauci. we all know it's possible. we all know it's possible pause it is perfectly consistent with this kind of behavior, this kind of emptiness of mind and soul.

>> and we talked about it this morning, 2005, george w. bush warning about the coming pandemic. 2015, of course, you had bill gates warning of the coming pandemic. you had last year, secretary azar telling a group of people that the next pandemic was what kept him and everybody in the room up at night. you had the warnings even from inside the administration in january. david brings up a great point. it's been like this from the beginning. what have we heard for three and a half years? we've heard that these are all self-inflicted wounds over the past three and a half years. what happens when there comes a crisis, a challenge from the outside, how does donald trump respond then? i remember very early on, donald trump -- remember, donald trump was given that briefing by the secretary of defense, james mattis. it was just a history lesson

from 1945 forward. the president got angry at the facts. at the history. that's when then secretary of state rex tillerson called him a name that we can't repeat. david is exactly right, it's been like this from the beginning. it's just more pronounced now because, of course, it's something that is not a self-inflicted wound. it is a virus. now, americans are paying for the fact that he continues to have this twisted, this distorted reality. david remnick with the "mork ne yorker," thank you for being with us. david ignatius, we thank you so much, as well. greatly appreciate you being on and giving us insight to this depressing story coming out of the united states navy. we've been following the condition of british prime minister boris johnson, who was moved from his home to the hospital, and then from the hospital to the icu in the hospital.

let's bring in "morning joe" chief medical correspondent dr. dave campbell to talk more about this. dr. dave, a lot of folks are asking for more transparency as it pertains to the prime minister's condition. obviously, we don't know what's going on in there. but what would merit being moved from the regular part of the hospital to the icu? >> mika, johnson's case really should be thought of in terms of a month or six weeks to get to where we are today. so if you look back at the clip you showed us in early march, where he was talking about shaking hands and engaging, the opposite of social distancing, we must know that sometime during that week or two, he was exposed and became infected. fast forward to your question right now. on sunday, he was admitted to the hospital. on monday, he was moved to the icu. he is in the icu right now.

he's there because his oxygen levels are low. we can know that. they've said that. this disease, covid-19, is particularly problematic as it relates to lung tissue. this is a lung illness primarily. those 20% of individuals who develop the disease that is either severe or critical are there because the lungs are not working well. the 5% that are critical have severe damage happening to the lungs, where the lungs are inflamed. there's exudate. that's the tissue, swelling, and fluid that goes into the lungs and blocks the small aveoli in the lungs. you can't oxygenate. can't get oxygen in or carbon dioxide out. so the prime minister

we don't want to go to the polls. what is it going to look like, willie, like a comprehensive mess. it's a preview of the most important fight we'll see playing out over the course of the next six, seven months heading towards the november

election, which is the question of, is vote by mail going to happen across the country? what are we going to do to make the election safe and make sure it happens in a way that's legitimate and doesn't threaten the health of american voters in november? that's a giant, giant battle to come in wisconsin, they give us a sense what it's going to look like. >> yeah. because the rest of the april primaries have been pushed back to june. we don't even know if by june people will be able to go out and vote as they want to. what are the biden and sanders campaign saying about the impact of this? obviously, most warranted this mov wanted this vote delayed. what is the outlook? >> joe biden leads a huge lead in polling and likely to win if the polls turn out true. he has a massive lead over sanders. there's been a lot of discussion, you know, willie, about the pressure on bernie sanders to get out, building

over the past contests joe built up an insurmountable delegate lead and some say within the sanders campaign, if the election plains out the way the polls say it will, might tip the side for sanders to get out of the race and unify the party to get ready for the fight against donald trump. so number one, they think, everybody thinks biden will win. number two, it may be tipping point for sanders. and three, you know, it is the case that sanders, at least, very vocally, has been calling for delay in the election. biden suggested end of last week we thought maybe a way this election could be held safely. my guess is sanders and biden are both going to be today, in the same place. saying they wish something was done to make this election -- not put voters in a position having to choose between exercising their franchise and keeping themselves physically safe. >> so, john, please, explain to the american people, to those who are watching right now, why

would the republican legislature in wisconsin, why would the republicans in supreme court in wisconsin, why would they push forward an election today in the middle of a pandemic? >> that's, funny you should ask that, joe. the main event of the election today, also a bunch of local elections on the ballot a long time and also an election that affects the wisconsin supreme court. so there's a, you saw donald trump talked about this friday in his press conference. he talked issuing an endorsement by twitter of the income bert chief justice on the wisconsin supreme court, which is on the ballot. looks to me like, number one, there is a precedent issue here. republicans do not want vote by mail, and we saw donald trump on "fox & friends" last week explaining why. he said if we had vote by may the way democrats want it, there would never be another republican elected in country.

the president honest there on "fox & friends" said why make it easier for americans to vote? it could cost republicans politically. the game has been given away here. republicans have been for a long time both on the question of voter i.d. and on various other efforts of voter suppression had been trying to make it systemically harder for americans to vote. this is another instance where it looks to me a lot like the president and his republican allies, their attitude is, voters will go to polls if the president tells them it's safe. democrats may stay home from the polls, because they recognize it's not safe, and that's at our political advantage. i hate to be this blunt. pie believe that's how this increasingly looks. republicans' attitude, our voters will show up regardless of public health and democrats will stay home and that works to our political advantage so we don't want to change the system in any way that accounts for hubic health or makes it easier for americans to have access to the polls. >> wow. >> if you actually look at polling throughout the crisis you find people that support

donald trump and people that watch pro-trump media outlets actually are more skeptical of the coronavirus and the truth that is out there, that they're ignoring, but i'm wondering. you say the president's admitted this and also speaker of the house in the state of georgia another republican saying if more people get out and voted, republicans would lose elections. so they have given up the game. is this donald trump also maybe preparing for those states that do vote by mail, preparing already to undermine any results that may be unfavorable to him in the fall? >> yes. super important, joe. i think on friday when you saw president trump asked in the briefing about whether he favored these efforts now under way all over the country to try to extend vote by mail, the president said i'm not for vote by mail. it's a recipe for corruption. you should have to show up at a polling place with an i.d. card

with your picture on it. the only vote that's legitimate. trump said that friday. he doesn't realize apparently 50-some million voted by mail in 2016. we already have widespread mail. everybody watching the show knows that i'm sure. trump try to say vote by mail is illegitimate. an election, no doubt more absentee balloting and more vote by mail than ever before, he's laying down the predicate if he loses election in november he will stand up and say this election was ripe with fraud. way too much vote by mail i do not accept the election. i guarantee you president trump is thinking already trying to build that predicate to dispute the legitimacy of the election on this basis. >> gene robinson, you write in the "washington post," the one word that proves why president trump should not be president. what is it? >> hydroxychloroquine.

the anti-malaria drug also used for autoimmune divisions that president trump is touting as the magic bullet against covid-19, as one of the greatest game-changers in the history of medicine, when his medical and science advisers tell him it's definitely not that. that there is no evidence that it is, but that word, i said that encompasses the reasons why donald trump should never be president, because it shows how much about the way he makes decisions. he's not listening to tony fauci, one of the world's greatest experts in infection disease. he's listening to rudy giuliani and peter navarro, and other cronies of his who are telling him about this drug and doing it based onanecdotes.

a doctor friend said this is effective, it really works. you should get behind that and trump has made up his mind that this is the solution to covid-19, despite evidence to the contrary. this is the way he operates. this is donald trump in action. >> well, from the "new york times," in the "times" this morning. associates, quoting directly. associates of mr. trump has financial interest in the issue, sanofi's largest shareholders include fisher asset management, run by ken fischer major republicans including mr. trump, spokesman for fischer declined to comment and another if pharmaceutical firm is invesco. the fund previously run by wilbur ross commerce secretary. mr. ross said in a statement monday he was not aware invesco had investments in companies producing the drugs. as of last year mr. trump reported his three family trusts

each had investments in dodge & cox mutual fund whose largest holding was in sanofi. gene? >> yeah. joe, as deep throat never actually said, follow the money. so two things are possible here. it is possible that donald trump is perfectly aware of these investments, and his potential stake in -- in this drug, and that this is all deliberate. it's also possible that he, he's open to manipulation by friends and cronies, his billionaire mar-a-lago friends, who have these investments, and who are pushing him in this direction. this is -- you know, this is just not a man who is capable of rising to the challenge of this moment, and you see it every day. >> gene robinson and john

heilemann. thank you so much. we will be right back. >> all right. pay for what you need. what do you think? i don't see it. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ no. uh uh, no way. ♪ come on. no. no. n... ni ni, no no! only discover has no annual fee on any card. to help you stay informed njust say "coronavirus" into your xfinity voice remote to access important information and special reports from around the world. and to keep your kids learning at home, say "education" to discover learning collections for all ages from our partners at common sense media, curiosity stream, history vault, reading corner and many others. for more information on how you can stay connected, visit xfinity.com/prepare.

if back to norm many means acting like there never was a coronavirus rob, i don't think that's going to happen until we do have a situation until you can completely protect the population, but when we say getting back to normal we mean something very different from what we're going through right now. right now we are in a very intense mitigation. when we get back to normal we will go back gradually to the

point where we can function as a society. you're absolutely right. i mean, if you want to get to pre-coronavirus, you know, that might not ever happen in the sense of the fact that the threat is there, but i believe with the therapies that will be coming online, with the fact i feel confident over time we'll get a good vaccine, we will never have to get back to where we are right now if that means getting back to normal then we'll get back to normal. >> dr. fauci yesterday as the white house press briefing when reporters asked when will america get back to normal. the key answer from the briefing yesterday. >> you know, we've said it for a very long time, that it all comes down to testing, testing. everybody is actually saying that it all comes down to testing. nob not only to track and map the virus, so question contain the virus, but also so americans can go back to work, go back to shopping, go back to getting the

economy going again, and going back to their daily lives. but the testing's been terrible. you know, these press conferences, they just -- again, i repeat again. if you're not going to get any good information from them, and if the president's just going to ramble, and yell at reporters, say things that aren't the truth and yell at reporter s when the ask important questions which is what he does, then they shouldn't have the press conferences. i mean, joe biden said about a month ago that, if the president of the united states is giving bad information, misrepresenting facts, that that actually is bad for the american people. it concerns the american people, and makes the situation worse. >> yeah. >> you can look at a florida poll where joe biden is now ahead of donald trump by six points. something like 56% of americans say they don't believe what the president says. that they can't trust what he is saying about this pandemic.

>> uh-huh. >> and, willie, more specifically, if you look at yesterday, the president lied -- very angry when he kept being asked about testing, because, of course, the testing has been such a failure, that -- that a cynic might think they don't want americans to get tested, because they don't want to know the full extent of how bad things are in the united states, but, you know, the president yelled yesterday saying, it's not the federal government's job to do testing. that should be up to the states to do testing. well, that's just a lie. it was the trump administration who wouldn't take tests. wouldn't even take tests from the world health organization when they were putting out 250,000 tests early on. we refused. and the trump administration failed so miserably in testing, the cdc failed so miserably in

testing that finally, willie, the fda on february 29th just threw their arms up in the air, said to the cdc, said a couple days before, if you were a private company we would shut you down, but the fda finally said on february 29th after a month of just colossal blunders by the trump administration, they said, okay. private companies can start testing now for the coronavirus. it was on february 29th, after we had wasted a couple of months already. so that's just one of the many lies that the president has said. "washington post" fact checked another on the china travel ban, the first to do the china travel ban. 30 other countries done the same time or before that and trump had so many exceptions on his. it was such a porous, quote/unquote, ban, that 440,000 people came from china including 40,000 after the ban.

trump's claim he imposed the first chine that ban a ban is a many exceptions that passengers from china still flooded in after the ban. again, this fact checked, 40,000 after the ban. a total of 430,000 since the coronavirus first broke out. >> yeah. the president has hung his hat on instituting that ban as an expression how seriously he took this early. obviously, that's not true. we know and catalogs all those. every media outlet has. the president again yesterday talked about the raw number of tests. 1.5 million tests in this country. that's better, of course, but, remember, beginning from a standing start almost. so, of course, that's an improvement, but as a per capita number it's still not great. and you ask any public health official as you both know very well, the key to this whole thing is testing, testing, testing, because we'll never know how big the problem is,

we'll never know when we can send people back to work, we'll never know when schools can open again, when you can go to a football game again, unless we know who has coronavirus. right now we don't know. and there's another piece of this, joe which is that we don't even know how many people have died from coronavirus. we see the numbers, they're staggering each day, a lot of reporting people told don't go into the emergency room unless you have trouble breathing. some of those people who stay home dip e at home and they haven't been registered at coronavirus deaths. there is a big, big picture about this coronavirus we don't really see yet and only testing will get us there. >> yeah. and along with joe, willie and me we have washington anchor for bbc world news america katty kay and u.s. editor at the national times ed lewis and historian author of "the soul of america" and rogers professor of the presidency at vanderbilt university jon meacham, and nbc

news and msnbc contributor talking in a moment about the, getting an update on the condition of boris johnson. >> and jon meacham, this is a, a perfect, the buck stops here contrast with donald trump saying, i am not responsible. and what we can talk about ventilators, we can talk about the national, the defense production act. we can talk about all the ways that donald trump keeps trying to pass the buck, keeping trying to say, i'm not responsible. yesterday's example was particularly outrageous saying it wasn't his job. it wasn't the federal government's job? >> we're not standing on the -- >> to do testing? yes it is. it is the cdc's job. it has been the cdc's job. it was the trump administration's job. they failed so miserably at it the food and drug administration said if they were a private

entity they would shut down the cdc and two days later, february 29th, the fda finally threw their alls up in the air and said, okay. we're going to open this up to private testing. this is after one failure after another failure after another failure from the cdc, and the trump administration. yet donald trump stands there yesterday lying to the american people again saying, it's not our job. it was their job. >> terrible. >> they failed miserably at theirs job. that mistake, i think, historians will -- probably -- estimate cost this country at least $2 trillion, having to shut down the economy, because we couldn't track the coronavirus, and the president still -- still -- shows no interest in taking the lead on testing. >> yeah. you know, and you can always tell when anyone, but particularly the president, is worried about something, because

that increases the volume and velocity of the denials and respinning of reality. that's what he's been doing for what? after average of 1 hour 45 minutes a day, he comes out and makes his case. he's not conveying information. he's not as franklin roosevelt said preparing the american people, because the news is going to get worse and worse before it gets better and better and the american people deserve to have it straight from the shoulder. churchhill did the same thing across the atlantic. brilliantly. this isn't that. what this is, is a defensive man who understands that at some elemental level, that this is why we have a federal government. it's for a national kind of crisis like this. look, we tried the articles of confederation in the 1780s, and there's a reason we decided no the to do it that way. and the president is basically,

i think because he knows at some level that as you say the paper trail is there, the record is there, and i think our mind is across the atlantic again this morning, i have a strong feeling that a shortened general election campaign is going to help vice president joe biden because it's going to focus intently on this issue. were we ready? if we weren't, why not? >> right. >> and who do you want in charge of your affairs when inevitably we face something like this again? >> still ahead on "morning joe," dr. leana wen, one of the foremost in the country and gave birth in the middle of a pandemic and now is answering questions about the coronavirus and also questions for soon-to-be mothers. she joins us live straight ahead. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. so what are you working on?

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the death toll from the coronavirus in the u.s. is now more than 10,000, and to put that in perspective, in about a one monthspan more americans have died from this virus than killed on the battlefield during six u.s. wars combined. not sure if -- >> american revolution, war of 1812, mexican war, inyanian, spanish-american war. the wars that haunt this country over the past 20 years, start with 9/11 add the iraq war add the afghanistan war. more americans have died in a month than have died over the past 20 years in these endless wars that donald trump has complained about. >> not doing so well. willie? >> a brief moment of optimism yesterday. new cases in the death toll in

new york at least beginning to show signs maybe of leveling off. fatalities rose nearly 600 yesterday, a small drop from the previously higher weekend rate. the death toll in new york now stands at more than 4,700. governor andrew cuomo ex-tetend the stay-at-home to the end of the month, giving home social distancing helped avoid that worst-case scenario we've seen. new york city is looking at a grim contingency plan in the death rate continues to overwhelm morgues temple raorar burying victims on public land. >> if we need to do temporary burials to tide us over to past the crisis we have the ability to do that. >> while new york hospitals are flooded with coronavirus patients returning low on medical equipment, the state of california has agreed to loan

500 ventilators to new york. meanwhile, the cathedral of st. john divine in the morningside heights neighborhood will open its doors as a temporary field hospital by end of the week. the episcopal charge, the largest gothic in the world expects to take in 200 patients. mika, we heard governor cuomo yesterday offering a moment of optimism but said wait until tomorrow to see what the numbers are like, but we'll take good news in the context of this horror for one day, exactly. important news, british prime minister boris johnson says he was moved to the intensive care unit yesterday after his condition worsened. it was just 11 days ago when the 55-year-old tweeted a video message saying he was experiencing mild symptoms and was self-isolating after testing positive for coronavirus. on sunday the prime minister's office said he was still battling symptoms and was taken

to the hospital insisting it was just a precaution. now comes the news that he's in the icu. his aides insist this, too, is just a precaution in case he needs a ventilator. sky news reports the prime minister had trouble breathing and was given oxygen before he was moved to the isu. we're told he remains conscious but asked foreign minister dominic raab step in where necessary. let's bring in nbc news senior international correspondent keir simmons from london with the very latest. keir? >> reporter: mika, senior members of the government here in the uk assuring people in an interview this morning that boris johnson is not on a ventilator. he is still in intensive care in the hospital behind me there, and that member of the government is reassuring people they will update the public on the condition of the prime minister if anything changes. just to show you some of the front pages here in the uk, some

just giving people the news straight. it is, after all, bad enough. johnson in intensive care of the virus symptoms worse and others more dramatic. the "daily mail" stricken boris taken to intensive care. and talking about the agony for his pregnant fiancee, and saying doctors are prepared to ventilate him if necessary. mika, just to give you a picture of how stunning this feels, we're standing in front of the hospital. if you just look that way a short distance, that's westminster bridge. that's the house of parliament. that's the commons where boris johnson has held court for months as the prime minister. just frankly hard to take in that he is now just across the river here fighting for his life, frankly, although we are only being given limited information about exactly how he

is doing. friends, people that have worked with him te ll me he's fit, nota smoker, have gone running with him so people are hopeful. we keep talking about testing and we can't talk about it enough. it really says something, doesn't it? about the testing on this side of the pond that downing street, that downing street was able to be infected. there weren't tests to try to ensure that that didn't happen. another piece of news on testing. a senior adviser to the british government here telling one newspaper that is will be at least a month before antibody tests are ready that might be able to test for antibodies in the millions and if that's the case, around the world. so it's not -- well, it's kind of a split screen, isn't it? the crisis right now with the man who is supposed to be leading the uk through this fight against coronavirus in his own personal fight now in the hospital behind me there, and

the ongoing crisis to try and get a grip on this, particularly through trying to actually test the population so that we can step past these lockdowns. >> so, keir, we've heard skepticism from those reporting around this that -- that this is even as -- well, not even worse than it seems. he, apparently hasn't spoken to his first secretary of state since saturday. he hasn't been in contact with other people. >> reporter: yes. >> and others in the cabinet since saturday. some rightly speculating that things certainly may seem worse than right now 10 downing is letting on. what can you tell us about that? >> reporter: well, it is the case that the foreign secretary who currently is stepping in for boris johnson dominic raab, effectively kind of admitted in a news conference over the weekend he hadn't spoke ton bn

boris johnson since saturday. we have sound to briefly play. look at his face how stunned he is. take a listen. >> the government's business will continue and the prime minister is in safe hands with a brilliant team at the hospital and the focus of the government will continue to be on making sure that the prime minister's direction, all the plans for making sure that we can defeat coronavirus and pull the country through this challenge will be taken forward. >> reporter: i think, joe, the honest answer we just don't know about the condition of the prime minister and that might simply be we aren't given information but what we know about this virus and seeing it play out with the leader of britain. you know about this virus what we do know it can take sudden turn, that it's unpredictable. so people around the world are praying for him. including political opponents.

president macron tweeting good wishes, after having done battle for a brief period. politics pushed aside. >> he is certainly in our prayers. keir simmons from nbc, greatly appreciate it. >> katty, definitely there's the question about transparency during this time. what are you hearing? >> yes. some journalists have said they weren't really given the full picture, they felt, during the course of the weekend when they were being told that boris johnson was very determined he would be running things in the country, and then there were allegations that appeared on monday, actually, bizarrely, from russian reporters on monday, there were reports in the mork that boris johnson was needing a ventilator and downing street said those were disinformation. dismiss those reports as disinformation. it may well be that the russians weren't sowing this information

and could be a bat coincidence but then an announcement boris johnson was being moved into intensive care. my understanding, during the course of monday he was getting worse not bet around movter and intensive care to have access to a ventilator. had oxygen during the course on monday. started to get worse and they moved him into intensive care. remember, 15% of covid cases in the uk end in in hospital and need oxygen. already putting boris johnson in the only 15% bracket. it's only 5% who end up in intensive care and need ventilators. he's really at the extreme end of this illness at the moment. we don't know whether he's going to get that ventilator, whether he'll need it. of course, it's the prime minister. they'll take extra precautions. may not move somebody else into icu in his position, but it is the prime minister and they'll do everything they can. coming up, one of the many things that might never be the same is how we carry out our

political elections. an issue with huge implications for the primaries, for november and for what comes next. "morning joe" is back in a moment. ta-da!

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go to watchtrolls.com for more. my name is jonatan and i work for verizon. i totally get how important it is to stay connected. we're connecting with people, we're offering them solutions. customers can do what they need to do, whenever they need to do it online. because it gives customers the ability to not come in to the store, they can simply tap and swipe. something that they can use wherever they are. we care about keeping you safe. at verizon, we are here, and we are ready. we are open 24/7 online, so you can keep managing all you need from home and through the verizon apps and verizon.com. there are times when our need to connect really matters. to keep customers and employees in the know. to keep business moving. comcast business is prepared for times like these. powered by the nation's largest gig-speed network.

to help give you the speed, reliability, and security you need. tools to manage your business from any device, anywhere. and a team of experts - here for you 24/7. we've always believed in the power of working together. that's why, when every connection counts... you can count on us. welcome back. big cities so far have been the center of the coronavirus

outbreak, but new studies show that the next hot spots of the virus will attack rural areas. joining us now, emergency physician and public health professor at george washington university, dr. leana wen, previously served as baltimore's health commissioner but most recently had a baby, last friday, and she's joining us this morning. we'll talk more about that in just a moment. also with us, pediatrician, epidemiologist and dean of the yale school of public health dr. sten vermin also involved with the nonprofit consortium, recruiting training and deploying 1 million volunteer health workers to address surging health care needs during the covid-19 epidemic. i'll start by asking you both a question. leana wen, start with you. the president, the vice president, talking a lot ak 30 days s slow the spread and

president talking about wanting to open the country back up. yesterday we heard truth from dr. fauci about the country never rushing to normal. would it be in your estimate, and doctor, start with you, unless there's a vaccine and evian testing we really can't open the country? >> well, we look at where we are now, mika, and we are nowhere near being able to talk about returning to the pre-coronavirus normal. i mean, we're seeing hospitals that are so far over capacity that there are lines out the door for hours of potential rationing of ventilators and not having supplies. we're nowhere near the testing that we need in order to figure out what is the true rate of communitien spread in this country. and we also just don't know what the impact of coronavirus is going to look like in -- we don't even know what it's going

to look like in a week's time much less a month's time in terms what are the next communities that will be hit. it's premature to talk about opening up country and instead should focus on doing what we can now, which is social distancing, doing our part to stay at home, to save lives. >> yeah. and also, doctor, would you comment on that also, if you could. is there anything between a vaccine and antibody testing and america opening up? >> mika, i think dr. wen is absolutely right about testing. if we can radically expand capacity for testing both in the medical and public health sphere, we can better return people who are immune to the workforce. we can better evaluate who got infected, but never was symptomatic or mildly symptomatic.

we also are coming closer and closer to understanding the immunity, whether anti-bodies in the blood stream correlate with a lack of risk and a lack of infectiousness as with many other viruses. keep in mind we're making progress on therapies. there are now well over a dozen drugs in clinical trials, and if we can find ones that work, this will also help us open up society. so i don't think we have to have a vaccine per se. these help. you know. the -- the hygiene and masking, and social segregation that dr. wen highlighted, i prefer to call it physical separation rather than social, because we want to stay socially connected through media and telephone and the rest, but i believe that we'll get there. >> dr. wen, willie giest.

first, congratulations on the birth of your child. four daysation. i'm in awe of you even being with us. >> amazing. >> incredible, and here you are talking about this public health crisis because it is so important so we're grateful you're here. you touch and rural hospitals. another epidemic over the last few years in this country. that is rural hospitals closing. they can't support. there aren't enough patients to support these hospitals. with those closed, where do you see this virus going next? because it has been such a new york city story, really. the focus, anyway harks been on new york city and rightly so, but what about those rural areas? where is coronavirus headed next? >> willie, that's exactly the right question to be asking, because i've been getting very worried. i mean, we're talking about this, about covid-19 as if it's only a problem in major cities. only a problem in new york city, because we're seeing the rise in escalation of numbers there. we just haven't seen it in other parts of the country yet. but i think that's the key.

it's "yet." there are numerous studies now showing what we in public health have been predicting. which is that even places that have zero reported cases, maybe one or two reported cases actually there is community transmission that's happening. we're just not picking up on it. and when that happens, when we do pick up on it, because of increased testing or because people get really sick it's going to be really shocking. because in those area there's is already such limited health care capacity. you were talking about hospitals closing. also many of these areas don't have expanded medicaid. many uninsured people with no other source of health care. there are profound social economic and racial disparities also in many of these areas, too. and by the time we see it a rise in cases it's going to be too late. it should be a call to action around the country to have this national stay-at-home order, this national approach, because even the places that have zero

cases likely have something going on already. by the time those are detected the going to be too late and we can prevent that inevitable from happening now. >> dr. vermin are working on the nonprofit to recruit, train and deploy 1 million volunteer health workers in communities across the country. are we at risk of running out of doctors during this crisis? >> doctors, nurses, social service providers, nursing home workers, there's a wide group of people who are stretched to the limit now. there are doctors who are being redeployed, surgeons ordinarily doing elective surgery and are not doing that now, are being asked to provide emergency room service and the like. so i think that there is no

question we have to be flexible. there is the concept of task shifting. if a community health worker can do what a nurse or doctor does, can we deploy that individual to improve the efficiency of the nurse and doctor's workday? that's what our volunteer surge effort is designed to do. it was conceived just about three weeks ago by an entrepreneur, an attorney, jonathan and retired general george casey, and they engaged us a couple of days after they conceptualized this for technical support, and it's because health departments had indicated they had no support staff to transport food, people or supplies, staff these new testing centers that were being established. supporting day cares for health care workers who have to come to

work. providing telephone tutoring for out of school youth. visit and telesupport homebound seniors. so this was the anchor is for our initiative. >> doctor, thank you very much. and dr. leana wen, thank you. it's been great being in touch with you throughout your pre-labor, labor and delivery, and congratulations on the birth of isabelle, just four days ago. you're amazing. and you can see leana's story. she shares the experience for a lot of women who are worried about having babies in the middle of a pandemic, but only at knowyourvalue.com, leana was kind enough to report a video diary what it's like to have a baby in the middle of a pandemic. go to knowyourvalue.com now to see the entire video diary. really a guidebook for anybody

who's concerned about delivering during this very difficult time. things are really different in our hospitals right now, and leana walks us through her own delivery of beautiful isabelle. here's a brief look. ♪ >> thinking a lot about whether i should induce labor to go in before hospitals get too crowded. >> let's bring in emergency physician and public health professor -- >> dr. leana wen. the issues pregnant women are facing during this pandemic, and she is pregnant herself, due right now. >> i'm not sure i'm having contractions or not. i just download add program. >> governor larry hogan just issued a mandatory stay-at-home ord order. this is the right thing to allow for social distancing. >> my contractions, which don't

really seem to be helping right now. >> the labor ward is full. ♪ >> my water broke and a contraction. i think we're going to see a baby pretty soon. >> and everything else isali at kn knowyourvalley.com. your son eli, named after elijah cummings. and the age of coronavirus back then was very different. was it not? >> very much so. i thought a lot about how fortunate i was to be able to have my husband there with me. and how so many patients now who are going through emergency surgery or howho have covid-19 d struggling to breathe they don't have someone with nthem in this time of vulnerability. we don't think about being front lines for coronavirus but

actually they are because so many people around us are asymptomatic carriers and have no idea when patients they're seeing who have coronavirus but just don't know it and i saw how much they are going through rational personal protective equipment, how many they'uch th thinking what exposure they're bringing home to their families. i have such gratitude to all the health care providers out there doing this amazing work at this unprecedented nime our history. >> well, thank you so much for sharing what it's like to deliver a baby in the middle of a pandemic. leana wen, dr. leana wen, thank you very much. we'll see you soon. up next, is voting by mail the answer to a lot of issues surrounding election security? particularly in a pandemic. our next guest is a leading voice when it comes to voter turnout, and the challenges in casting a ballot. plus, with the food industry among the hardest hit in the

fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, celebrity chef rachael ray will join us with what she's doing. "morning joe" will be right back. this is our home. we've never seen it look quite like this.

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welcome back to "morning joe." more now from wisconsin set to hold its democratic primary today after governor tony evers lost a legal battle. wisconsin's supreme court overturned his executive order early monday to postpone the election to june citing public health risk due to coronavirus pandemic. that supreme court was not compelled. preceding a ruling by the united states supreme court refusing to extend it by days. 5-4 vote split along conservative members in the majori majority. joining us, founder, executive director of center for election, innovation and research david becker, and jon meacham is back with us as well. david, good morning. pictures out of state of wisconsin. voters standing in places like waukesha to get into the polling

place, shoulder to shoulder in some cases. your thoughts as you look at those images? >> it's a shameful occurrence happening in wisconsin. honestly, politics has trumped safety of voters and interest of voters expressing our voice in democracy and it's really unfortunate we find ourselves in this position now. i think it's a real testament to the professionalism of the election officials in places like wisconsin election and all officials running elections, doing the best they can under a really unfortunate circumstance. god bless all of those voters who are doing their best to try to both express their voice in our democracy and protect their own health. >> yeah. voters want to have their say. having primary today, we're going to vote. i imagine turnout way down. a lot of people don't want to go out and frankly risk their own health. what would be, david, a better way to go about this today? >> so for today we're really in a triage mode. there's nothing we can do about

that. wisconsin found themselves, with a primary scheduled at the height of the pandemic and everyone's doing the best they can. i think a bigger question is what are we going to do about november where we cannot and should not move the election? election officials around the country are planning how to run an election so that all voters can participate in safety. one of the biggest, most important things here is voter choice. giving them options to sfloet w vote and feel safe. giving everybody the option to vote by mail and also a need for safe in-person voting options. there are lots of people who still prefer to vote by mail. where mail is not an easy way to reach them, because they're younger or because they move a lot or live in urban centers. there's going to be a big challenge there, but election officials are thinking about that. i think election officials all over the country, whether -- both democrats and republicans. republican secretary mack warner in west virginia is offering the

easy opportunity to vote by mail for everyone there. georgia, same there. there are secretary of states of state around country democrats and republicans really thinking about this now trying to prep for november. >> you know, david, oregon started vote by mail, the legislature approved it in 1981. a lot of local races by 1987. 1988, they were using vote by mail. 1996 a lot of republicans worried about the senate election being held by vote by mail, because the attitude then as now was, voting by mail actually gets more people out to vote and may disadvantage republicans. what do you think about the president suggesting that if you vote by mail it's easier to commit acts of fraud, despite the fact 50 million americans voted by mail in 2016? >> well, states that have had a

lot of vote by mail will tell you that's not the case. they have systeming in place to prevent fraud. there's a lot of checking of the ballots. every single absentee ballot is checked for signature matching confirming it was from the voter it was supposed to come from. i don't think that's a big concern. we've seen a lot of, an increase in the language to suggest that fraud is rampant, which, of course, is all part of the effort to delegitimize outcome of elections. something we see foreign adversaries do as well and we know fraud is rare in the united states when it comes to voting. whether it's by mail or in person. the states that do vote by mail really well, they've been doing it for a long time and educated their voters over a long period of time making sure they understood how to do it right. it's going to be harder to do in some other states and we want to be sure voters have a way of voting they feel comfortable and confident about and especially for particularly younger voters,

students, voters who might move a lot. mail isn't always the best way to reach them. we might have limited in-person options and much more vote by mail which is a good thing. we still need to give options to voters making sure everyone who wants to vote can. >> mika? >> what about the concern that some might have about november? the presidential election? >> well, it's a big concern. all i can tell you is that i talked to election officials all over the country, and they're thinking about that now. even if they have primaries coming up. they know that that election is not going to be moved. and one of the big concerns is not only getting people out to vote in a way they feel safe and making sure they know about the options. things are going to change for november. different than people have seen in past elections. a presidential election is a time where we see the largest number of infrequent voters showing up as well. voters who might not have a lot of information how to vote or the process and it will be particularly important to get really good information out to those folks.

then something, joe, you brought up in the last hour that is really important. this is going to be used to further delegitimize the outcome of the election by the loser. foreign adversaries are already doing that. >> hmm. >> this is setting up a up a concern that anything like the coronavirus or any of the other concerns that have often been raised like the myth of rampant voter fraud could be used to delegitimize the outcome. that's something election officials are also very concerned about. >> jon meacham, of course as david said, and as the atlantic has written, this is happening elsewhere. creeping authoritarianism has prevailed. the atlantic writes of what's happening in hungary with orbin who used this coronavirus to grab even more power. basically power by decree. and, you know, i wrote a couple of months ago, forget the comparisons with fascism and with hitler. forget the comparisons with mussolini. look at what's happening in

hungary. look at what's happening with orben. a leader that, believe it or not, a lot of so-called conservatives still praise. and that's what a lot of people fear for the united states of america. and the president's already setting up the delegitimization of the fall election. i'm not saying he's doing this, but there are other people who are very concerned about some of those parallels. >> absolutely. and, look, from lexington and concord to selma, the right to vote has been at the heart of who we are and how we express that. and one of the things that i'd recommend to folks is outside of taking care of your neighborhood insofar as you can safely and the health care workers and taking care of your family, get online and study up on the kinds of issues dave's talking about because this is a useful use of your time right now.

to understand suffrage, to understand how states can make this work because we won the second world war. we won the long twilight struggle of the cold war. we can figure out how to vote between now and november. i'm just convinced of that. and it's going to require mail and i'm interested in the colorado example where it's like library book returns. you can drop it off. there's not going to be one solution here, but there will be a couple. and the other thing to pay attention to is when you don't want more people voting, the question you need to ask is, why does that person say that? and that answer is really jarring. >> absolutely. >> donald trump has said that already. he has said that if we voted by mail, republicans would never win again. the speaker of the house in the state of georgia has said the same thing that you don't -- they don't want more voter

participation. if you want to participate in the fall, ask for absentee ballots as soon as you can in your state. david becker, thank you for joining us. >> jon meacham. >> david stafford said hello. and jon meacham, thank you as well. >> first responders are not the only essential workers beginning to feel the effects of coronavirus. major grocery chains are starting to report their first deaths as cases among their employees continue to rise. according to "the washington post," several workers at walmart, giant and trader joe's from three states have died after contracting the coronavirus. the deaths come after dozens of grocers cases have been reported after many workers have claimed they don't have enough personal protective equipment. meanwhile, as most restaurants shutter and many grocery store shelves are left empty, the food banks around the u.s. are scrambling to serve thousands more families and

laid-off workers as donations hit an all-time low during the coronavirus pandemic. joining us now, author, cook and businesswoman rachael ray, the founder of the nonprofit organization yummo which empowers children and their families to develop healthy relationships with food and cooking. and she has pledged to donate $4 million to help feed families amid the ongoing crisis. rachael, thank you so much for being on. and thank you so much for helping people. tell us what you're doing and what people can do to help. >> thank you for having me on, guys. and honestly, we look to you every single day. thank you for your thoughtful and thought-provoking coverage. we are loyal "morning joers" for many, many years. our foundation, rachael ray foundation and yummo, we do not ask people for donations to us. we use the brand as a vehicle to

raise funds. and what i wanted to do today is tell people what we're doing with the $4 million in combined commitments that we're sending out today. we want to highlight all of the good works that are going on from grassroots to huge programs nationwide so that people can get involved, even if it's $1 or $5. they can help feed their communities. we are dividing our monies between humans and animals. $2 million of relief each. if i may take one minute to give some love and some spotlight on some of the great works going on. share our strength and no kid hungry, $600,000 today because they are focused in rural communities that have very poor infrastructure specifically. they have a how to find meals local texting hot line. and they are working very fast and furious to put a national map so that everyone in every

community large and small can find food in their community. they are also urging congress to release emergency s.n.a.p. funds now to help families, of course, provide for themselves. feeding america is getting matching dollars. feeding america we targeted as a partner because they're focusing on senior relief. much different map than what we're working with with share our strength. they are working with and have also given $4 million already to date. and relief to 81 food banks in their network. they are working and really trying to be the leaders in our communities that have the most seniors that are struggling right now. world central kitchen. my friend jose andres has a three-pronged project including taking his think food group restaurants and turning them into community kitchens and asking other chefs to do the

same. he's using our funds to help chicago get up and running right now. as perhaps the next city that's going to suffer one of our apexes in this crisis. we are also working with the national restaurant association, education foundation in the relief program. guy fieri was just on talking to you guys about that and so many companies and corporations have pledged to match those dollars. and our friends at animal league north america are helping us on our animal front lines to keep our shelters going through this crisis. so we know it's a drop in the bucket, but that's what we're trying to do with the people that support our brand and our show. our little community, we're trying to give back in the best way we can to feed our animals and our people. >> rachael, it's willie. good for you for doing this. it's no drop in the bucket, my friend. $4 million is an incredible gesture by you and your organizations. i've talked to these groups like the ones you list.

i'd add common pantry in new york city as well. they can't have volunteers in all those places where they need to be because of distancing, but you're right. those donations of money allow them to secure food and get it out there. i'm also interested, rachael, in what you're doing around all those products you sell with your name on them, giving a percentage of the profits away as well. >> well, that's how we fund this. instead of asking for donations or throwing parties and fundraisers, we tried that one time over ten years ago. john and i don't have human children. this is how we give back to the next generation. we decided to use business in a smart way, to fund all of the things we care about. feeding our neighbors and being of service. my mom worked in restaurants for 60 years. i grew up in a service industry. this is the natural conduit we can give back. create products that matter for animals and humans and use that to fund our initiatives. we want to take care of our neighbors, and this is how we do it. >> rachael ray, the best.

thank you so much. we love what you're doing. come back and tell us -- >> thank you mika. thank you for all you do. >> thank you. thank you for using your platform so responsibly. a lot of women have a lot of power these days, joe, and they have these incredible platforms, and rachael is a great example of taking the ball and running with it in the right direction. >> it's really inspiring. willie, any final thoughts this morning? >> well, people like rachael, and it's not just famous people. they are the ones we see. i tell my kids all the time, these are scary times, and not just here but there's so much more light than dark in the world. and we see it with nurses who retired stepping up by the thousands and flooding into hospitals that need their help. the light is shining right now, and it's what will carry us through this. >> that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now.

hi there, i'm stephanie ruhle. it's tuesday, april 7th. we're in the midst of what the experts have said would be the peak week for coronavirus spread. but this morning, possible signs of progress as the rate of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths may be slowing in some critical places. overall, roughly 11,000 u.s. deaths connected to the coronavirus. more than 368,000 cases have been reported across the country. the state of florida added roughly 1500 cases just yesterday. louisiana reported an additional 1800 cases. and the state of michigan saw its worst day yet with 110 new deaths. out west, the numbers appear to have stabilized. the governors of california, oregon and washington said they would send ventilators to the states that need it the most.