a.m. in a little bit. you can get it at signup.axios.com. "morning joe" starts right now. they gave us the ppe, it's mandatory to wear it. so we are here today making sure we do everything safely. i think it's a set of meant to the testament to the people who thought about this election. they worked really hard to make sure everyone who is here, people who are coming in in their cars everybody is here safe. they have very minimal exposure. there's less exposure here than if you want to the grocery store. you can come to a polling place and do it safely. you have the ability to do curbside voting like they're doing here even if it's in a different municipality with drive-up voting. you can request the person come out, they'll deliver you a ballot and check your i.d. you are incredibly safe to go out. >> what a clown. that actually is the republican speaker of the wisconsin state assembly in full-on protective gear. this guy who looks like he's in

a hazmat suit telling wisconsin voters that they were, quote ris, incredibly safe to go out. of all the things that i've seen in my 25 years of politics and being associated with politics and reporting on politics, i don't know that i've ever seen anything as reckless and irresponsible with the public health as what i saw yesterday where republicans, republicans jammed down the throat of wisconsin voters an election in the middle of a pandemic where they had to stand in lines close to each other. and, yes, you can say this, the republicans that jammed this election through risked the lives of countless wisconsin voters and those in other states. this is, afterall, mika, if you

want to know what this is about as we look at these pictures, this is about a wisconsin legislature and a wisconsin republican party in wisconsin that has spent the last decade doing everything they could do to twist and distort voting outcomes and elections. you don't believe me? in 2018 the numbers here, democratic candidates won by more than 190,000 votes for the state assembly, right? pretty much a landslide. yet, the gop has so gerrymandered and twisted up the state, that despite the fact that democrats won by 190,000 more votes than republicans, the gop held a 64 to 35 advantage in that chamber. wisconsin -- it's just been an ongoing effort, willie, by

wisconsin republicans to make sure that black voters, to make sure hispanic voters, to make sure democratic voters, they don't get their say and that -- that it's not one person, one vote. and yesterday was the most extraordinarily reckless thing i've seen in my political life. in the middle of a pandemic, just not waiting till june like every other state. because you know what? they had a supreme court seat that they wanted to win. they wanted the democrats to stay at home. they wanted to win the supreme court seat so they could pass more legislation which would disenfranchise more black voters. >> it was a total travesty. you're looking at those pictures of people standing outside and you just say to yourself, why? why? every other state that had a primary in the month of april either moved it to june or went to full mail-in voting.

milwaukee, guys, had previously 180 polling places. milwaukee, the biggest city in wisconsin. five yesterday. five polling places. so not only was everyone being asked to go out and vote in the middle of a pandemic, but they were also being asked to stand in line very close to other people for hours and hours and hours to vote. they were given the choice, and god bless those voters for wanting to exercise their right. they were given the choice, either lose your vote, stay home, or go outside and vote in a pandemic. and you just ask again, why? why not just move it to june? >> well, that's -- that's, joe, i think where americans need to pay attention and look at what the president's -- pull back and look at the big picture at the entire election process and you can see the president already trying to chip away at the process. >> yeah. and jim vandehei's with us. jim, you're a wisconsin guy. i don't want to put words in your mouth. you're a reporter. i'll just say i was sickened by

the images that i saw. we are a nation that is desperately trying to flatten the curve of the numbers of deaths, more people, of course, have died in the united states of this pandemic than died on 9/11, died in the afghanistan 20-year war, died in the tragedy of a war in rairaq. and yet you look at the pictures from your home state and people are shoved together because republicans forced this election today. >> about 100 people have died in wisconsin, half of those in milwaukee whereas willie pointed out there's only five polling places instead of 180 that you would typically have. the reason why people should pay attention to this, this could become a national crisis come election day in november. if we have a resurgence of this virus, this is going to play out in 50 different states. and you have the president of the united states yesterday saying that mail-in voting is

inherently corrupt. >> right. >> and you're having all these states have to make this choice between one and the other. and wisconsin is often a microcosm because wisconsin used to have pretty moderate politics. it used to be defined by governor tommy thompson and over the last few years has become very partisan, the republican party very conservative, very replier reliant on the state's supreme court to be able to back the things that they're trying to do. and now you saw the manifestation of it. not getting too far in the weeds, the supreme court that said that they wouldn't allow for the extension of absentee voting that allowed yesterday to unfold the way it did, they were basically saying it's a technical matter to the conservatives on the court saying they just don't think that a governor, in this case a democratic governor, but they're saying any governor should be able to represent write the election rules one way or the other. and if they apply that or if even look at what the supreme court's been doing in general on voting rights, you could see a mess come election day because

we're expecting a record number of court challenges on both sides to different aspects of voting rights for individuals. >> so -- and, you know, you think about the conversation you were just having, jim, with yasmin. this pandemic we're in right now, it's not safe to go out and stand in long lines and vote and it won't be for quite some time. we're looking at many months of life being completely uprooted. our children are not in school. nobody can be close to each other. and this is going to go on for months and beyond that, it the take many more months, even years for people to get back to some semblance of normalcy. there will not be voting in the traditional way withstanding in lines and pressing buttons. yet, joe, we have to have our elections. our elections are something must stay right in place for the sanctity of this country. and there's a way to do it, and

once again the president wants to undermine the process. i say pay attention. the american people need to pay attention to what he is already beginning to do in the midst of chaos. >> we still believe even in these times, even in the paebd, ev pandemic, even when we have a president who is desperately trying to limit the number of people voting, even when we have a president who admitted in a press conference last week that if more people got to vote republicans would never be elected again. i don't believe that. but that's his mindset. he believes if more americans vote, that that's a bad thing for republicans. he said it, the speaker of the house of georgia said it. republican speaker said if you get more people out voting, republicans won't win elections. well, that same president who we've been showing you this week all the lies when he says things like, oh, nobody ever saw this coming. we saw all the lies how in early

january nerve h january everybody in his administration saw this coming. azar said the coming pandemic is keeping me awake at night when we have the next pandemic and it's keeping everybody in this room awake at night. how in 2015 bill gates predicted exactly what's happening now is going to hoop a going to happen and we were ill prepared for it. george w. bush being obsessed with the next pandemic come together united states. they saw it coming. yesterday donald trump lying and we'll show you this saying i believe the same thing peter navarro believed, this was going to be a terrible pandemic that could kill up to 500,000 people. we've got all the quotes, mr. president, we've got all the results, we've got you saying, of course, at the same exact time that there's nothing to do it, it's one person, then you said it was 11 people and then it was 15. it was all going away. on this voting that the president said last week this is horrible, melon voting, it's

terrible if we do it, republicans will never win an election again. then he starts to lie. he starts to lie to you again saying how fraudulent mail-in voting can be despite the fact 50 million americans did it four years ago in states like oregon have been doing it since 1987. like, since -- since like thriller and purple rain and like albums and songs like that were out. he's been doing it. like, voter -- american voters have been voting since ronald reagan was president they've been voting by mail. i mean, roughly 33 million ballots, 25% of the total of the 2016 presidential election were cast by mail. and according to the "new york times," more than 23% of voters had cast their ballots by mail

in the 2016 general election, that's twice as many voters that did it in 2004. and so the president lies. and i got to say, he's not a particularly good liar. in fact, he's one of the worst liars since eddie haskell. in fact, for you -- for you -- for you people that are not as old as i am, eddie haskell was on "leave it to beaver" i saw the reruns, okay? but he's a worst liar since eddie haskell. and so he's lying about voting by mail, how fraudulent it is, and we can't allow voting by mail to happen when a reporter yesterday brings up an unfortunate point. >> carol lee. >> that last year donald trump voted by mail. take a look.

>> mr. president, you were highly critical of mail-in voting, mail-in ballots. >> i think it's horrible. it's corrupt. >> you voted by mail in florida's election last month, didn't you? >> sure, i can vote by mail? >> how do you reconcile that? >> i'm allowed to. that's called out of state. you know why i voted? because i happened to be in the white house and i won't be able to go to florida and skblot would it make a difference mail inside the state and outside the state? >> there's a difference between somebody that's out of state and does a ballot and everything's sealed, certified and everything else. you see what you have to do with the certififications. and you get thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody's living room signing ballots all over the place. no. i think that mail-in voting is a terrible thing. i think if you vote, you should go. >> yeah, we don't need listen to the rest of it. willie, oh my god. he said i should be able to do it, that's allowed because i'm

not able to travel and i'm not able to vote. well, guess what? there were a lot of people in wisconsin yesterday that really should have said, we have a pandemic that's killed more people than five wars combined, we can't vote. so we'll just mail in our votes. i mean there are guy is such a liar and a hypocrite on this issue, he does it, he just doesn't want democrats to do it. and especially the wisconsin republicans and a lot of other republicans don't want black voters to be able to do it. let's be -- let's just be honest about it. >> the president either didn't know or didn't remember that one month ago he himself voted by mail. and first of all, joe, i can't believe you're defaming eddie haskell at this early hour in the morning. you'll be hearing from his estate, i'm sblure. >> leave eddie out of this. mail-in voting is going to be important this year. this pandemic is going to keep people away from the polls.

we don't know how long it's going to last. you have dr. fauci talking about many people won't go back to school in the fall. that means it won't be safe in many communities and cities to stand in line and vote. we have to start thinking now about how is this election going to be held? how is it going to be held securely and fairly? and part of that is going to be mail-in voting. what you heard the president do yesterday is begin, as he always does, early to soften the ground and say the process is corrupt in case he loses that election, he's preparing his defense that there was somehow corruption in mail-in voting which, as you say, has been used for generations in states across the country and already has been used this year in some of the primaries. >> so i think that's why it's so important to frame this as one of the key pieces of news that happened yesterday. yesterday had so many going on, but it's important to note that president trump feels comfortable cheating at the

election process. that's why ukraine might come to mind and trying to get dirt on the political rival from a foreign leader. maybe some americans didn't understand what was wrong with that the. there's a lot wrong with it because he has a very loose framework as to what the president thinks is right and wrong and, again, chipping away at the election process is something we need to watch very carefully. yesterday also saw yet more chaos at the white house as jonathan lemire points out, in power days, trump has fired one inspector general tied to his impeachment, castigated another he felt was overly critical of the coronavirus response, and sidelined a third meant to safeguard against wasteful spending of the coronavirus funds. oh, and by the way, the acting secretary of the navy also resigned yesterday and the white house press secretary stepped down. and jonathan lemire joins us

now. also with us former white house adviser for health policy, professor and advice provost for the university of pennsylvania, dr. ezekiel emmanuel. he's an nbc news and msnbc contributor and host of the podcast, making the call. it's good to have you all on board. >> jonathan lemire, talk about the chaos going on in the white house. i got the sense that donald trump wanted the administration basically to be stripped down to donald trump, jared kushner and his daughter. >> it practically already was. >> we're getting there quickly, and in this chaos the president is firing anybody, anybody that can show any independence in making sure that american taxpayers' money is not squandered and making sure that he doesn't have orban-like

powers. >> you're right. first backing up to the wisconsin point, it's not just that wisconsin is a state, it's perhaps the state that is going to matter the most this november. i mean, obviously the electoral map is perhaps thrown into a chaos because of the pandemic, but a lot of predictions prior to this suggested the whole election may come down to wisconsin. so it's worth keeping an eye on going forward there and across the nation. in terms we had the president yesterday mind you tweet out encouraging wisconsin yieites t out and vote. in terms of the inspector generals, you're right, we have had since -- particularly since the impeachment trial ended with the president being acquitted by the republican-controlled senate, we have seen more of these moves to sort of curtail any kind of oversight within the federal government. we had one inspector general go, he was harshly critical of the

hhs 1 earlier this week. there's certainly those in the white house are anticipating there may be a move there to thau oust that one as well. he was critical she served under president obama and also george w bush. but what we're seeing here is -- it's yet another example of the lack of guardrails and frankly any sort of -- any sort of control within that white house. this is the president doing what he wants. weapon did have the press secretary stephanie grisham be ousted yesterday. she is not a favorite of new chief of staff mark meadows. but more than that we have a replacement coming in, fox news contributor who went on to become a campaign spokeswoman. but the president believes that he himself is his best spokesperson and he's there day after day in the podium. >> wait, wait. jonathan, let's be clear, this is, of course, the president's

new spokesperson. what did she predict about the president in the pandemic? >> yeah. >> joe, you're certainly right. that just a few weeks ago she appeared on fox news and predicted that the coronavirus would never get to the american shores, that the president would control it and it would never become a political issue. she appeared on a show with a fox news host who has since lost her job for saying similar things. and now she's the new white house press secretary starting in a few days. what we saw yesterday is also the president is going to be up there and revise the truth, revise history from the podium. it was attacks on the world health organization was the latest front of this. he was sharply critical of them and accused them of being in the pockets of china when the w.h.o. and perhaps their response not perfect to the pandemic, but they advised an international emergency, they advised travel guidelines well more than a month before the president of the united states did himself. >> yeah.

so, again, this is just, again, the president and the people around him are terrible liars. they're stupid. they look stupid. i'm not saying they're stupid, they look stupid when they lie the way they do. the new spokesperson at the white house told trish regan a couple weeks ago that president trump would never let the coronavirus come to the united states. he was so great that terrorists and coronavirus were never going to come to the united states ever. that was a couple weeks ago. that was about the same time -- actually it was probably a little bit after peter navarro wrote his memo. but, mika, we talk about how the president is such a bad liar, how he looks so stupid when he lies and gets caught. it's like the i.g. that he fired, remember he fired the i.g. and then he's, like, thinks that he got -- i think it was jonathan, oh, who do they work for? tell us who do they work for? and he actually thinks that he's

going to prove something when we find out the inspector general, yes, worked through eight years under barack obama. he, i guess, didn't know that the inspector general also worked eight years under george w. bush and had been there since 1999. that's a sort of stupidity that passes for 1-upmanship in this white house. these people are not even donald trump supporters, these are the cult-like followers who watch him lie unconvincingly every day saying nobody could have seen it coming when there can be books written on the amount of people, even in his own administration, that warned him that it was coming. >> yeah. so president trump, we talked yesterday about the president not reading, which is something we had noticed about

him. he says he never saw the memos detailing a potential pandemic from his adviser peter navarro. now, this adviser he brings up on stage with him, this is one of his guys. he didn't read a memo or two really pleading with him to look at some serious threats to this country's safety. he didn't read them. he admits openly. >> a memo where somebody in his white house, a close aide says up to 500,000 americans can die if the white house is not prepared for it. >> right. so the president, however, says his course of action would not have changed if he had read those memos. >> did you see these memos that reportedly peter navarro wrote back in january, when did you see them and how do these memos square with what you often said that nobody could have predicted this. it sounds like he was predicting

this. >> i didn't see them but i heard he wrote some memos talking about pandemic. i didn't see them, i didn't look for them either. but that was about the same time as i felt that we should do it. that was about the same time that i closed it down. >> so at the time, though, when peter navarro did circulate those memos, you were down-playing the threat. you consider saying things like think it's a problem that's going to go away. >> which i'm right about, it will go away. >> you said within a couple days cases will be down to zero. >> well, if the cases really didn't build up for a while. but you have to understand, i'm a cheerleader for this country. i don't want to create havoc and shock and everything else. but ultimately, when i was saying that, i'm also closing it down. i obviously was concerned about it because i closed down our country to china which was heavily infected. i then closed it down to europe. >> do you feel like someone among your staff or peter navarro himself should have told you about the memo earlier?

>> not at all. it was a recommendation. it was a feeling that he had. i think he told certain people in the staff, but it didn't matter. i didn't see it. but i did -- i closed it down. i don't remember it even being discussed. we had a meeting where there were a lot of people. most people thought that we shouldn't close down to china, but i felt we had to do it. and that was almost the exact same time as the memo. >> okay. just a couple things, mika. a couple things. first of all, the president when he says he closed it down and he was feeling the same thing, no, wasn't feeling the same exact thing. i got to keep going back to this when he said he closed it down. he didn't close it down from china. you know, 430,000 people got into the united states from china from the time of this outbreak, and even after he claims to have closed it down, he put so many exemptions on the travel ban from china that about 40,000 people got from china to the united states after he supposedly closed it down with

his toothless ban. he should have shut it down. and then europe, he talks about europe. then later on i did europe. you know what? his own administration was begging him to shut down travel from europe. his own administration. you can talk about oh, this was what the w.h.o. said not, people in his own administration were begging him, he think it was the hhs secretary, to shut down travel from europe at the same time that he had this toothless ban shut -- that shut down part of travel from china. but he and steve mnuchin said we're not going shut down travel from europe. we're not going to shut down travel from italy. it might hurt the economy. and so we're not going to do that. it might panic the markets. so we had to wait another two or three weeks until there actually was a ban from europe, a ban from italy, a ban from some of the most infected countries on the planet.

so he's lying about shutting it down. and, mika, as far as -- we don't need a cheerleader. we don't need a cheerleader. we don't need, like, ponzi, potsy or whoever the happy days cheerleader was. we don't need potsy in the white house. we need a president in the white house that follows the advice of scientists, of doctors, of other people, of other people, willie, who -- who actually were warning the president starting on january the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th that a pandemic could be coming. >> the president said of the navarro memo, i basically -- i didn't read it but i basically did what the memo said anyway. he didn't do what the memo said. he had, as you say, the restriction on travel back to the united states, not for everybody, for some people from china. what those memos, what the pandemic playbook we're talking about is, the preparation that

comes before that pandemic arrives. which is stocking up on ppe. getting it to the hospitals in new york city, they're going to probably need it first. getting the country ready, being honest with the country. part of being a cheerleader for the country is saving the lives of the people. you can stay hopeful and optimistic and speak truth to the people. but here actually is what president trump was saying about coronavirus and the outbreak around the times in late january when those navarro memos were written. >> they're worried about a pandemic at this point? >> no, we're not at all and we have it totally under control. it's one person coming in from china and we have it under control. it's going to be just fine. we have a total of 15 people and they're in the process of recovering with some already having fully recovered. we're at that very low level and we want to keep it that way. so we're at the low level. as they get better we take them off the list so that we're going

to be pretty soon at only five people. and we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. and, again whether you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done. >> so, willie, we played two clips there. the first clip was a couple days. >> before the navarro memo when he was probably putting it together, that was the 22nd of jan. a january. we played the second clip because it was almost a full month after the navarro memo. almost a full month after peter navarro told donald trump the administration half a million people could die from this pandemic, we are woefully ill equipped if we don't get what we

need. half a million americans could die. >> and we could have gotten what we need. >> and we could have gotten what we needed. we could have gotten the testing ready. we could have gotten the ppes ready. we could have been prepared. we could have started social distancing. >> it was possible to save lives. >> earlier. but a month later, the president says in that clip, it's 15 people. a month later. we only have 15 people and soon it will be down to zero. so bringing us back as the president lies so much in these press conferences, i still for the life of me don't understand why the networks, including our own, allow donald trump to lie for two hours to the american people if he were giving good information, that would be one thing. >> let us fact check him. >> but it is a lie. so if this network or cnn or fox is going to run him lying for two hours. >> fox will.

>> -- a night, they need a real-time exact checker. because in this case, willie there are was february the 26th when donald trump said only 15 people have it and soon it's going to be down to zero. and, of course, that's, again, almost a full month after peter navarro wrote his memo, a memo that donald trump said, oh, i believe the same thing, i was doing -- no, he didn't. even a month later he thought it was about 15 people instead of 500,000 deaths. >> yeah, and there was a second navarro memo, by the way, right around the time of that second clip we showed, which was more dire than the first saying we've lost a month now, here's how bad it could be now, and it was worse than the first memo. so it's actually twice as bad, even as you're describing. i will say, i think some of the networks are figuring this out and adapting. i know we come out of it in our anchor whoever it is that day runs down a list of what the president just said and sort of

debunks if it needs debunking those facts. so there is some evolution there think there that's a good thing. and i would just ask -- >> but you know what, willie? you know what we don't sneed hold on a second. we don't need glibness when we come out of a press conference with the president, oh my god, he said this. they get distracted sometimes. i'm not just talking about our network, all the networks, they get distracted by the ground noise? can you believe the president said this? can you believe he tweeted that? no. get the facts, get his quotes, get the death toll. >> there you go. >> get the people in his administration that warning him from early january, put up his words, not your words. we don't care what you have to say, we don't care about your editorializing in april. get his quotes. get his words! get his statements! get the fact that he's trying to stop americans from voting in the election by mail! and then get when the president says, yeah, i voted by mail

because i'm allowed to do it but you're not scla! i'm sorry, willie, i'll let you go to jonathan lemire right now but these can't continue unless they have a serious fact checker that cuts in while the president is lying to the american people! if he gives facts, great, i'm all for it. i said from the beginning of this we're all in this together. i said from the beginning, i want the president to succeed because when he succeeds, we succeed and americans don't die! >> he's not succeeding. >> but he's not succeeding. he's not trying to succeed. in fact, he's spreading disinformation. he's trying to cover up all the mistakes he's made over the past two months instead of looking forward trying to save senior citizens lives in florida and arizona and wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania and ohio and north carolina, and all these states he actually gives a damn about. go ahead, willie, i'm sorry. >> as we've been saying all along, i would take every day

twice a day a news conference from dr. fauci and dr. birx just giving us the facts of what's going on. the president will never let that happen, that's why it's important that we have people like carol lee saying wait a minute, you voted by mail one month ago and put him on the spot. jonathan lemire, let me ask you about the president. we've been sort of tracking every day he's finding some else to blame for the failures of his own administration. yesterday it appears he found a new one in the world health organization, as you were mentioning a little bit earlier. he went through moment by moment things that the world health organization he claimed had done, failures he claimed. couple of them were not true. is this his new sort of boogeyman, the world health organization which, as you point out, has not been perfect obviously here, is but that his new person to blame? >> well, there's been sort of an evolution. we've obviously had democratic governors have taken some blame for the response to the virus after the president was sort of quiet and reluctant to criticize china for a time.

he has now sharpened his attacks there. and, then, yes, the world health organization appears to be his latest scapegoat. first of all, it's of course, note the president has been skeptical of a lot of international organizations since taking office. the world -- the w.h.o. included in february, that was as this crisis was beginning but before it had really come to the american shores, the trump administration threatened to cut its funding for the world health organization's budget by more than half. so that was already in the works. as this pandemic was growing in china, as it was starting to spread beyond the borders of asia, the trump administration was already looking to slash funding to the world health organization. and he obviously pummelled them from the briefing room podium yesterday. and which has been a concerted effort to sort of pass the buck, to sort of place the blame elsewhere. though, again, as noted, though the w.h.o. has had some flaws in

its response here, got out ahead of the trump administration on a number of guidelines and warnings and the u.s. here still lags behind a lot of other countries in terms of its response, including, of course, testing. and while we should be rightly skeptical of a lot of what china has put out in terms of their data, it should be noted that wuhan yesterday was allowed to reopen and that the people who live in the province where this outbreak started are going back to at least in some semblance to their everyday lives mostly because of the thanks of widespread testing. >> so let's talk about two of those overseas cities that are so see, as jonathan mentioned, wuhan is one of them. in london we have nbc news foreign correspondent richard engel and in beijing, nbc news foreign correspondent jackie frayer. let me start with you and the condition of prime minister boris johnson taken to the icu a couple of days ago. how is he doing today? what's his status?

>> so he spent a second night in the icu in this hospital and british officials are saying that he is stable, that he is in good spirits, that he was never put on a ventilator, never intubated, breathing on his own requiring oxygen. they are not giving hourly updates, but they are saying that his condition is stable and that had the government is proceeding, is moving on, that his foreign secretary dominic raab has been deputized to continue some functions of the government, although he didn't have complete authority. and the queen sent him a message hoping him -- wishing him a speedy recovery. but so far no indication that he has taken a turn for the worse. and that was what happened a couple of days ago when he was initially moved from the hospital into an icu. but so far things do seem to be

more stable. but that is not the case across this country. here in the uk they are bracing for a very, very tough week ahead. the last 24 hours have seen the highest death toll since the beginning with about 800 people dying in a single day in this country. so that's approaching italy and spain in its worst days. italy and spain seem to be coming out of this. the uk trailing behind. and there are many who are drawing parallels to the way the british government handled this initially and the way the trump administration handled it. boris johnson in this hospital behind me still in icu hopefully stable was also skeptical about the severity, also claimed that it was under control and when the tests were not under control and people didn't have easy access to them, he consistently

said they were in the pipeline and very soon there would be wide scale testing and even now there is still not wide scale testing. boris johnson also said that he wasn't going to practice social distancing himself and he quite infamously was -- gave a statement in which he said he was going to continue to shake hands, that that was part of his job, that he went to a hospital, he met with coronavirus victims, shook their hands, he thought. so this is a -- there are some parallels here to what is happening in the uk and what is happening in the united states. >> we're glad to hear his condition is stable this morning. richard engel in london, thanks so much. we'll look forward to more of your coverage this weekend on msnbc. janis mackey frayer in beijing, in wuhan, the place where this all began has ended its lockdown. what gave the chinese government the confidence to end that? >> reporter: well, increasingly the statistics have been suggesting that the situation is under control here, that doesn't mean that the epidemic is

completely over. but it has reached a point where the authorities believe they're able to ease some of the restrictions that have been in place in wuhan's case for 76 days. the city has been sealed off. people haven't been allowed to travel in and out. and for most of this 11-week period, they haven't been able to leave their homes without special permissions, special passes, and a time limit to go and get groceries. think about it, 76 days is how long the lockdown lasted in wuhan. new york city is on day 20 of its stay-at-home order and it's been 26 days since the u.s. declared a national state of emergency. so that gives a sense of where china is along this timeline. there are a lot of questions about the numbers, you know, the scope of the epidemic still isn't clear. what we can look at is trends. and we have seen enough of a decline in the number of cases that the authorities that

brought in all of these harsh measures to begin with are now relaxing them. some of the thousands of health care workers who have been brought into the province have now gone back home. a lot of these temporary hospitals where people were being warehoused, those who had mild symptoms have been closed. and the pressure that had been put on the health care system in wuhan has eased to the point where authorities say that they believe that they can now let people move around. there are still restrictions and there are still concerns, of course, the last thing china wants say second wais a second infections. >> thank you so much, janis, greatly appreciate it. it's important to listen to her underlying fact that life is not returning to normal there. that, yes, you read the headline and it says wuhan's opened up, but you get deep near it and you

hear what janis is saying and read deep near the article you find out that in china, most like lie in t likely in the united states or so, we will not be returning to normal. we may be moving to the next stage, but it is not going to be a return to where everybody piles into subway cars, everybody goes to baseball games, everybody jams into elevators at work. >> it's not happening. >> it's going to be -- there's going to be -- >> possibly ever again. >> -- a transition. let's go to zeke emmanuel who has been waiting by as we've been talking about politics and the president's lies and misquotes. i want to talk to you, zeke, this morning about america's largest city and america's largest state by population. let's start with america's most populated city, new york city. it looks like a tale of two different data points, one talking about how the number of deaths unfortunately went up again, but hospital admissions are actually going down.

the need for ventilators have not maxed out past 4,000 yet. there seems to be some good news there, silver lining there, along with obviously the terrible -- the terrible death toll. what's your take on where new york city is now and where we can expect it to be in the next week or two? >> well, as pointed out, new york is now in week three of its shelter-in-place order. and that physical distancing, as well as people now beginning to wear masks has decreased the demand, decreased the spread of coronavirus and is leading to a decline in the number of new cases. and that's reflected in the decline in hospitalizations. on the other hand, mortality death occurs afterwards. so you get a case and it takes, you know, 14, 15 days before someone gets sufficiently sick to be -- have a life-threatening

condition. so mortality is going to be a lagging indicator, as we say, it will come after you might get a decline in the number of cases. but, while we've had a decline in number of cases, it's not zero. we're only three weeks into it and be you heard that it was ten weeks in wuhan before they could feel like they could open up. i would caution that, you know, i don't want to make dire predictions, but it's unlikely wuhan is not going to have a second wave. it's -- i mean, almost inevitably that's going to happen. you're going to have people who come in or you're going to have people who are shedding for a long time. singapore had eased up and they had seen a very large rise in their number of cases and had to close schools and just close nonessential businesses on friday. so, i think what you're seeing is the first phase where people can ease up, but we should watch carefully. and i think in new york, you

know, it's a proof case that physical distancing can have an effect and that say gois a good thing. people around the country can take heart if they physically difference that they're going to make a difference in this pandemic. >> so from the largest city to the largest state, let's talk about california. by most measures, california has outperformed what anybody expected of it. of course, when this first hit, there were dire warnings about san francisco, about seattle, which obviously has had problems in washington state. los angeles, all of the west coast cities that have such close connections with china, business in china. but let's talk about california where gavin newsome is reporting that he's not going to need the ventilators he has and he's going to be sending those back east to help americans who may be facing problems of their own and need those ventilators,

hospitals that need ventilators. what has california done right so far? why are they doing much better than many health care experts expected among ago? >> well, gavin newsome, the governor there, was pretty aggressive. also the big tech companies in the san francisco area sent their workers home because they could mostly do their work from home. and so you had this combination of shelter in place as well as the employers sending people to work in home -- from home. and so you had a very effective physical distancing process. and that decreased the spread of the virus and, basically, eased off the pressure on the health care system and decreased the number of people who are dying. and, you know, you seif that in the low mortality statistics. seattle, similar story. seattle got the first mortality

case in the nursing home there, how the virus got to the nursing home we don't know, but that, you know, triggered a very substantial response by governor jay inslee there of closing the schools, closing businesses, amazon and microsoft sent their workers home. again, you had this very effective early distancing that seemed to decrease the demand on the health care system. and so it was very important to have these early responses. and i would just note going back to the president's comments, you know, he has been -- he said he locked down china, but did he nothing to prepare the american people and the american health care system from the end of january where he supposedly shut down air traffic to china to get -- prepare for this virus. and that was a critical time that was missed in this country, getting the testing ready, getting the hospital system ready, getting surge capacity ready. i wrote on march 2nd in the

"washington post," you got prepare for surge capacity, you've got to have these hospital beds ready, and we didn't do anything. and now what we're seeing is that the president and, by the way, his right wing clones in the media like tucker carlson are attacking people for saying how bad this could be. so yesterday tucker carlson took after bill gates, dr. fauci and myself when we were all saying, listen, if we don't do physical distancing, we are going to have hundreds of thousands of people die. and instead of dealing with the fact that we need the physical distancing, they were attacking the messenger. and the w.h.o. was just part of that. they don't like the messenger, they don't like the message, so attack the messenger rather than confront the actual data and what policies we need going forward. and, again, everyone's pointed out we don't have enough testing if we're going to ease up the way china has been able to do. >> dr. emmanuel, it's really geist. i want to ask you again about

some of those numbers inside new york city, because it's the epicenter of this crisis in the united states. i had a couple of doctors warn me and i understand why governor cuomo wants to emphasize some good news, which is a little bit of flattening of hospitalizations. a couple of doctors said to me yesterday, take that with a bit of a grain of salt because, remember, we've told people now and they understand now over the last couple weeks that if you feel like you have the flu, don't come to the hospital unless you're having difficulty breathing. so they're getting fewer of those people coming in. and also people are being turned away because some of the new york hospitals are at capacity. so if your condition isn't bad enough, they send you home. so i guess what i'm asking, doctor, is what statistic are you zeroing in on? what will you see in the data, in some of those graphs that we've all looked at that will tell you that this is getting better? >> well, i think you sneed need look at three data points. the doctors are right, our threshold for sending people to the hospital and the threshold for admitting people is going up

and up because of the shortage of beds. and because you don't want people with mild conditions in the hospital. it's not good for them to be there. but i look at a combination of three statistics. the number of new cases. now that's not reliable because, again, we have a high threshold for testing. we should be testing some asymptomatic people and community people which we're not doing. the number of hospital admissions. and the ultimate test is the mortality rate. because while it's a lagging indicator, you can't fake it. you might say, well, there's some deaths and you might attribute it to something else and not coronavirus, but that is going to be your most solid indicator. but, the three of them together give you a flavor for what the directionality is in the community. and as you've seen in california, there's enough directionality that the death rate is low, the number of new cases might be continuing to rise but it's relatively low. and so i think there's no one perfect statistic in this

country, but the combination of those three is what i think is useful to look at. we have changed american medicine. there's just no doubt about it. we've gone to telemedicine. we say don't come into facility, don't come into hospitals. and, you know, that may be actually a good thing because a lot of stuff can probably be handled at home and doesn't need to come into a facility. but it does make some of those numbers about hospitalization and icu admissions a little problematic to interpret as the absolute truth. but you've got to look at trends over time to get a good handle on things. and we're not out of the woods, let's face it. we're not out of the woods. >> zeke -- >> yeah, mika. >> so let's talk about being out of the woods. is the realistic timing of being out of the woods when there's antibody testing and a vaccine that's widely available? is that when we turn the corner? and also physical distancing, can that eradicate the virus from society?

>> so first of all, i do think we're going to turn to what we think of this normal, sort of the precovid-19 situation only with the vaccine or some very effective preventative that everyone can take. that is 18 months away and we need to keep very, very clear about that. we're not getting that around the corner. can physical distancing eradicate this virus? in theory, that's possible. in practice it's not going to be possible because we cannot maintain that physical distancing long enough and continue to live in this world, you know. you still have to go get groceries, you still have to go out to the pharmacy. there are things people do that is going to spread it. so physical distancing is going to reduce the numbers. >> the realtime line is 18 months. >> yeah. >> sorry dr. zeke, thank you so much for being with us. we greatly appreciate it. jim vandehei, what are you looking at today?

>> i think continuing to watch what you were talking about earlier with trump and sort of the broader purge in the white house, because it's not just about the inspector generals. remember, he, his son don junior told me they think there's a lot of snakes left, quote unquote, snakes left throughout the administration. and the danger here, you talked earlier but this person worked for george w. bush. they don't care. they're not looking for republican credentials. they're looking for people who are loyal to donald trump. and the reason that they're most concerned say whatever, every party does that. no, they don't. not every party has such a sort of black and white litmus test. and the reason you should care about it is that you really want as many smart, capable people as humanly possible stacked in the most important offices in the most important agencies for moments just like the one that we're going through. this is going to be one hell of a crisis for the next 18 months to twors years and you want sma

people in every level of government because amid the pandemic, other things are going to happen. god forbid it's a cyberattack or some kind of military confrontation. >> exactly. >> but we need more good people, not fewer. >> exactly. jim vandehei, thank you so much. it's great having you. just a couple notes quickly on what zeke said. first of all, he talked about donald trump shutting down china. donald trump didn't shut down china. he had a toothless ban. as we said 430,000 people got in to the united states from china from the outbreak of this ban before, but even after his so-called toothless ban was passed, 40,000 people got here from china to america because there's so many exceptions. the other thing was, we heard tucker carlson's name brought up. tucker was one of the first people -- >> he was concerned. >> one of the first people over at fox news early on, very early on was concerned about this and actually warned the president early on. the president, of course, got a lot of warnings, didn't listen to many of them. >> all right.

coming up, a vaccine is still months away. but what kinds of treatments are available now? our chief medical correspondent explains that next. plus, the uk's ambassador to the united states will be our guest with an update on the condition of prime minister boris johnson. we'll be right back. prime min boris johnson. we'll be right back. for many of our members, being prepared... won't be a new thing. and it won't be their first experience with social distancing. overcoming challenges is what defines the military community. usaa has been standing with them, for nearly a hundred years. and we'll be here to serve for a hundred more. when i needed to create a better visitor experience.

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our chief medical correspondent

our chief medical correspondent health officials are looking at a convalescent plasma as a potential treatment for the coronavirus. let's bring in "morning joe" chief medical correspondent dr. dave campbell. dr. dave, i feel like these are the stories that perhaps give us the guidebook on when we can turn the corner on this. explain this convalescent plasma therapy and could it help the fight against the virus? >> of course. the convalescent plasma therapy is quite simply the use of antibodies that are collected from those that have been sick and recovered and then given to patients who are critically ill or severely ill with covid-19. that's been -- it's been used for years. it was used in sars, in mers, and ebola and even before that. and it is very exciting, but i must temper that excitement with the reality that if it was such

a great thing that's been around for a long time, there would not have been 731 deaths in new york yesterday. and, in fact, if it were such a great thing, it would be in wide use already. it's under investigation. the fda came out just a few days ago and made a clear statement for doctors across the country that while it is, let's say, exciting, while it is possible that convalescent plasma therapy will help, that it has not been proven, it is under investigation. there are three pathways the fda has that people in the united states could have access to convalescent plasma therapy. it's always through a doctor, it's always through the fda, and to think more than that is, perhaps, false hope. but, to me, it's exciting. >> right. i can imagine that as a doctor.

but for the american people who are physically distancing, their kids are out of school. the only, at this point, defense against the virus is how they severely hamper and change their lifestyle, are we, as zeke put it out, is your estimate 18 months from a vaccine or a treatment that can thrill turn the corner from this virus? >> you know, dr. emmanuel is very clear eyed and correct in everything he just said. the antibody treatments, the antiviral treatments, the hydroxychloroquine with the z pack, all of that stuff is interesting and exciting. there are no fda approved cures right now. there are no fda approved vaccines right now. and it will be 2021 by the time we see a vaccine. so between now and then, it is physical distancing and it is preventative measures. and once people are sick and

they're in the hospital, it's largely supportive care. leading up to, including being put on a mechanical ventilator. so we have a long way to go, mika, and it will be 12 to 18 months, as dr. emanuel pointed out. >> which just shows that those months that the president didn't do anything we lost precious time. dr. dave campbell, thank you very much. it is the top of the hour now. jonathan lemire is still with us, white house reporter for "the associated press." joining the conversation we have msnbc mike barnicle. and, just to sort of bring us up to speed, the u.s. recorded the world's highest number of deaths from the coronavirus for a single day, according to nbc news yesterday. and the second highest number of newly confirmed cases. we are now at more than 400,000 cases in nearly 13,000 deaths. >> all right.

can -- >> we are number one in a way that we don't want to be. >> can we keep that up right now? as we look at this, mike barnicle, 400,000 total cases. 12,893 deaths. more americans dying of this pandemic than died on 9/11, the iraq war, the afghanistan war over the past 20 years. i mean, it's extraordinary. and, yet, on -- on january the 22nd the president was asked in davos, let's keep these numbers up, whether he was worried about a pandemic coming. and he said, no, it's totally under control, it's only one person. and then a month later on february the 26th almost a full month after navorro warned the president, after azar warrant president, a month and a half after the intel communities

warned the president in his daily briefings, on february 26th, donald trump said, oh, no, coronavirus, it's only 15 people. it's only 15 people and soon it will be down zero. and talked about it going away magically in april. well, we're in april, april 8th, 2020, 12,800 americans have already died, more than died in the wars in the past 20 years. the endless wars that donald trump talks about all the time. and our cases that are reported with some of the poorest testing in the world at 400,000. most doctors say you multiply that number by eight or nine, possibly ten and that's where you know what the true infection rate is. so, mike, the president's trying to run away from the past, but unfortunately the past, especially the past two months,

are just littered with one comment after another comment that was not only wrong, but proved to be deadly. >> yeah, you know, joe, i'm in massachusetts, as you know. there are 15,000 cases that have been registered here in this state. nearly 400 deaths in just two weeks, just since about march 23rd. and oddly enough, if you go around, as i have done for the past week or so, early in the morning driving around safely from a distance, seeing people who i know in neighborhoods that i know, you find out from them, from talking to them that donald trump in a sense has become irrelevant to their lives because of his lack of leadership. but what has not become irrelevant to these people, and i think they're representative of a lot of people in this country, is his incompetence. that's his brand now.

incompetence. >> yeah. >> and the level of leadership that is lacking, people talk about it all the time, but it's really rooted in he just simply hasn't done the job and can't do the job. >> no, he can't. and i certainly shouldn't give any advice to anybody, and i'm not, i'm just making a political observation here that, willie, these press conferences are hurting donald trump. he may be able to survive shooting somebody on 5th avenue and some of his supporters may still support him, but him revealing his incompetence and him lying for two hours every night, maybe it feeds his ego, but it is hurting him in the polls. the more he's on tv, the more he lies, the more he exposes himself as incompetent. like, these press conferences,

which i don't think we should be showing, these press conferences are terrible for him politically because it's misinformation. the american people know it's misinformation. he's not lying about some bureaucrat in washington, d.c. or robert mueller, he's lying about people's health. and they've got doctors and they've got nurse friends and they've got people that can tell them that it's a line. and mike's up in the consequences of those lies have been deadly because americans haven't been prepared for this. mike's in massachusetts. the veterans that have died in va hospitals up there is a real tragedy. and that tragedy continues all across massachusetts and across the country with veterans. something that i know you care a great deal about. >> yeah, that's an underreported part of this story.

some veterans dying at home who don't make it to the hospitals. but the president of the united states now, and you know this, he views his job as going up every day at 5:00 when they have that briefing and protecting his reputation, protecting his record on this. the problem is, his record has been laid bare. it's all out there. it comes from people in his own administration. it comes from peter navarro's memos that have been made public. people know how this played out. for him to go out and blame governors, the governors who are literally trying to save people's lives every minute of every day, to blame the world health organization, of course they didn't do everything right. people want a leader who takes some responsibility and they want to know what he's doing today, not saving his backside about what he did yesterday. what's he doing today to make this better? because you're right, jonathan lemire, it is happening inside people's communities. they know people who got coronavirus now. it's moving from cities to rural areas. is there any sense, jonathan lemire, that he's watching this?

that he's saying yesterday a record number of deaths in his home city of new york city and saying, maybe i messed this up? i can't ever admit to that publicly because it's not in my constitution so i have to go out there and spin what happened and hang my hat only on a partial, and i say partial, lockdown of travel from china back into the united states a couple months ago? >> well, there's no evidence that the president either publicly or privately is showing that level of regret, of showing that level of self-admission that he had made some errors along the way. what we're seeing him from the podium every day is sort of his usual bluster. the question is, do those tactics that have served him well for this point in his career, is he president, you know, can they get him through this crisis? and to this point the answer has been no. they have -- they have fallen short.

in fact, the night of his oval office address to the nation i wrote that very story saying that what he has done to this point won't measure up. and in the weeks that have followed, that has borne out to be completely true. what we are seeing here, because the nature of this crisis is changing. he acknowledges the top of these press briefings every day, the number that we're entering right now, the week or two that's going to be the heart efardest nation's history in the death toll. but we hear about the china ban a lot, otherwise noted here on this morning's program effectively, it wasn't a full ban. and this sort of rosy let's say optimistic look. and, you know, it is part of the president's job to try to rally a nation, that's fine. but not when it crosses the line to being distorting the facts and not leveling with americans in terms of how bad things are, promoting drugs, this combination anti-malarial

medication that there is no sense of -- no clinical evidence that it will work treating people with the virus and members -- the health officials on his own staff are preaching caution. so i don't think we're going to see, though, any sort of sea change in how the president has been handling this. to joe's point, these briefings are not going away. he wasn't supposed to have one on sunday for palm sunday. he went ahead -- he went ahead and had one anyway. he has told people around him, according to our reporting, he's not going to give them up. it's a substitute for the rallies in terms of his ability to command attention. he knows they draw big tv ratings. he knows it makes him the center of attention. he knows as one adviser put to me recently, it helps to block out the sun, and that includes his would be democratic foe this fall, joe biden. he's going to be out there, he needs to be fact checked. but americans need to watch him, but don't expect the way he does this to change at all. >> blocks out the sun, no, actually it doesn't block out the sun, it shines the light on

everything that donald trump has done wrong over the past two months. every lie he makes during these press conference, every misstatement he makes, all we have people going back finding the quotes that were so disastrously wrong in january and february. he actually would do much better to actually go -- to just step aside, be quiet. >> step aside. >> work quietly, let his scientists come out and talk, show the american people what the scientific plan is, stop the blustering. it's not going to work. all it does is make him look worse every single day. and you can look at polls in florida where he's down 46-40 to joe biden after leading in that state and every poll that has been taken over the past several years. the same thing in wisconsin last week, i think it was a marquette

poll. they mean nothing now, but they do reflect that americans don't trust him. in florida, i think the swing state he's the strongest in, something like 56% of the people in this poll said they don't believe what he's saying in the press conferences. and, yet, every day he does that. he submits that feeling in americans' minds in the middle of the worst crisis we have faced. i think most americans would say since world war ii. >> the only number that really does matter, as this goes on, and that number keeps climbing, every minute the president speaks somebody dies. the number of people who have died from this, the records that we are breaking are now records that we want to be breaking as a country right now. and the death toll is really what's going to come back and face this president with the facts. >> well -- >> about how he conducted

himself in the beginning of this pandemic. >> especially when you have a president who said on february the 26th, let me get it right, on february 26th the president of the united states said that it's only 15 people and soon it's going to be down to zero. >> that's -- >> that's february the 26. >> let's look at the death toll right now. >> yeah. >> this is -- this has just spun out of control. it's totally slipped away from him. >> yeah. >> because a clear measures that are would have prevented these numbers. prime minister boris johnson spent a second night in the intensive care unit as he continues to get treated for coronavirus. he's being closely monitored at saint thomas hospital in london and is reportedly in stable condition. officials say johnson is receiving standard oxygen treatment and was breathing without any ventilator assistance. johnson was admitted to the hospital late sunday after suffering coronavirus symptoms for more than ten days.

his battle with the deadly virus has shaken the nation as the united kingdom is now in its third week of lockdown. experts say this will be the deadliest phase of the nation's coronavirus which has already taken the lives of over 6,000 people there. joining us now, british ambassador to the united states, dame karen pierce. we thank you so much for joining us. is there anymore you can tell us about the prime minister's condition? it's been piecemeal, just that he's in the icu, but not on a ventilator. is there anything more? is he improving? is his condition declining? >> what i can say, and thank you for asking, the prime minister so far remains stable. there will be a bulletin later today issued by london giving an update. i don't have much more at the moment. i can say that saint thomas's hospital, which is very close to

10 downing street, is just across the river, is one of our very best hospitals. the prime minister is being monitored closely in intensive care. he's getting extremely good treatment from the doctors and nurses there. he's in good spirits. he's keeping in touch. dominic raab, who's our foreign secretary, is in charge of the government while the prime minister's in hospital. but the cabinet had already discussed the plan for handling the virus, and that's what's been implemented in the prime minister's absence. >> i know that he's not right now carrying out his duties, but is he awake? is he cogent and is he able to interact at all with family members or members of the cabinet? >> he's not running the government at the moment, so -- but he is in touch with people. i can't tell you, i'm afraid, whether family members have been allowed to visit. obviously in intensive care unit

visitors have to be kept to a minimum. but i have heard that the pm is in very good spirits. and i think one thing everybody knows about boris johnson is he's a fighter, so that's going to be helping him in the days ahead. i also think he'd want me to say thank you very much to you, to the administration, to congress, to all those americans who have sent him good will wishes. the prime minister was born in america, but he feehe feels ver america, and i think he'll be very heartened to know how many people are rooting for him. >> well, madam ambassador -- >> ambassador, it's willie -- >> i'm sorry, go alert willie. >> i was just going to say i want to add our well wishes to the prime minister as we've been doing all week. we hope he's recovering quickly. i wanted to ask you, ambassador pierce, just about the response to this. the uk has been criticized for a slow response to coronavirus as

has the united states. and you said just a week ago that we haven't seen the kind of coordinated international response to what is an international crisis the way, let's say, we did during the 2008 financial crisis. has the uk come to terms better today than it did and do you think that the uk moved too slowly? >> i think it's been a learning process for a number of countries. and i think our ministers have been clear that we'd include the uk in that. for example, in response to what we saw on the ground, in response to the science, we've dramatically increased our testing. so i think we're learning all the time on this. as far as the international response goes, as i said, about a week ago we hadn't seen the full frontal international coordination that we saw in 2008 with the financial crisis. but i think what we are seeing

now is coming together in the g7 where, of course, america is the lead country, lead nation, this year in the goode 20 where saudi arabia g 20 where saudi arabia is the lead. but under g7, for example, there are a number of work streams forming that the british foreign secretary put forward when foreign ministers have their virtual meeting shared by secretary pompeo and so they are focusing on getting international help to the most vulnerable countries, working on vaccines. as we know it's difficult, but we need to do the work. working on getting british nationals and other people's nationals home. and also, of course, working on keeping the international economy going, international trade routes, supply chains, all of these things are important. >> madam ambassador, joe

scarborough borrow here, juhere just wanted to add our thoughts and prayers are with your prime minister boris as well as the rest of the british people. how are other members of the cabinet, other members of the government faring? i know we had heard early on that others had tested positive or had gone into self-isolation. is everyone else doing well other than the prime minister? >> well, thank you very much for asking, joe. we appreciate that and i think both our countries are pretty close at this time. a couple more members of the cabinet have been thought to have covid-19, but they have not had as severe a dose of it as the prime minister appears to have. and some of the officials who work with the prime minister a couple weeks ago, they caught the virus.

and a couple of those were quite serious. but i'm glad to say at the moment everybody seems to be recovering. but thanks for your concern. >> well, and finally, it is -- my children make fun of me, as do a lot of -- >> and mine. >> -- parents, children make fun of us for always going back and either taking them the movies or being caught reading books about what the british did, what the british people did in 1940 during the battle of britain. extraordinary resilience that we believe saved western civilization. can you tell me how the british permanent doing rig people are doing in this latest chal sfleng what's t challenge? what's the greatest challenge

for the british people today? >> well, thank you for those kind words. of course the queen when she gave her broadcast she was invoking some of that spirit. the phrase i particularly liked of the queen's was her quiet good-humored resolve which i think captures brits pretty well. on the whole, people are following government guidelines. they're staying indoors. they're looking after the vulnerable. we've had lots of volunteers for hospitals and to deliver food parcels. i think that's quite a characteristic of the british people. the warm weather, of course, say challenge, as it will be for people here in the uk. normally when there's the smallest bit of sunshine, everybody goes out into the parks. and of course that's very difficult to do at the moment. but i think on the whole people are staying indoors, following guidance, looking out for their family and friends. and learning all sorts of new

virtual quiz games, virtual book clubs, keeping going one way or another. >> all right. and the queen's address, we thought, was remarkable, dignified. >> it was. >> and just what britain and the wo world needed. we'd like to borrow her for a year or two if that's okay. >> british ambassador -- >> sorry, i was just going to say the queen has very great affection for america, so thank you for that. >> british ambassador to the united states, dame karen pierce. thank you very much for the update this morning. and still ahead on "morning joe," as the number of coronavirus cases balloons across the country, data shows that african americans are facing an alarming rate of infection. the reverend al sharpton joins us for a look at the racial disparities. plus, the american medical association has a message for our elected officials. focus on science and data. >> amen. >> not the ideology and

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we want to find their putic therapeutics and vaccines because that will solve everyone's problem. but why is. african-american community is numerous times more than everybody else? and we want to find the reason to it. >> health disparities have always exited for the african-american community, but here again, with the crisis how it's shining a bright light on how it's unacceptable that is. >> president trump says his administration will release data in the coming days on the racial disparities among those affected by coronavirus. but the small amount of data that's already been released paints a devastating picture. in milwaukee county, for example, blacks make up 28% of the population and 73% of the

covid-19 deaths. in louisiana were 70% of the deaths are among black people who make up only 32% of the state's population. in nillinois, 15% of residents ever black but they represent 43% of deaths. and in michigan, 14% of the residents are black, but they represent 40% of the covid-19 deaths. joining us now, host of msnbc politics nation and president of the national action network reverend al sharpton. reverend al raised the issue of racial disparities and the effects of the coronavirus earl learly on in this pandemic and he spoke to the president and the treasury secretary about it. also with us, co-host of show time's the circus and editor and chief of the recount, john heilemann.

joe, these numbers show how the virus is pulling back the curtain on a lot of issues our societies are facing in the u.s. >> dr. fauci said it, reverend al sharpton, there are health disparities between white americans and black americans. there are disparities in health care service between white americans and black americans as well as from rich americans and poor americans. and this really highlights those disparities. let me ask, what did the president say to you when you warped him i guess about a month ago now of the disparities between black americans and white americans and this disease? >> well, he and i talked about testing the homeless and testing the incarcerated, and i talked to the treasury secretary about making an equal plan for small businesses who are being neglected in the black and brown communities of and which there's an ongoing meeting today about

it. what i think the real problem is, dr. fauci said it correctly, these disparities have always been there. this has put a light on it where we're seeing what was always there. it's stunning when you look at the data that mika read, but it's not shocking to those of us that have dealt with the disparities in this country. now the question is whether or not we're going to do something about it. as we move toward a new normal, once we get out of this pandemic, whenever that may be, the new normal must also deal with equalizing and dealing with these disparities. and i'm going to call the president today, hopefully he returned my call before, surprisingly he may return it again, though we disagree and we'll not change our opinions on each other, we're talking about people dying here. and they need to be talking, this task force, to people like patrice harris of the american medical association or people like tonya lombard, the leading

black executive, bringing these people, lori lightfoot, leading mayor, the black caucus, they ought to be part of what this task force is gleaning once they get the data on how we solve the problem. if the president cannot only say we're going to come with the data when it comes but here's how we're going to solve it by gleaning from those who have the answer, may be politically adverse to him, may have an answer because we're talking about human life here. 10,000 more people are dead, we can't play politics on this. >> follow up with us, if you will, and let us know how your conversation with the president goes. john heilman, speaking of race, let's talk about wisconsin as "the new york times" said yesterday was just the latest. some saw it in a decade-long effort by wisconsin republicans to dilute the voting power of the state's democratic and

african-american voters. and early on i read this from the times article, that the gerrymandering is so bad in wisconsin that in 2018 democrats won by 190,000 votes in state assembly races. 190,000 votes. and they still are in the minority. gop holds a 64-35 advantage in that chamber. and we ask why the republicans forced this election in the middle of a pandemic. and you look at the pictures that are absolutely horrifying to any public health care official. and it comes down to ideology. i must say, in 25 years i've never seen anything as reckless in the political arena as what i saw yesterday in wisconsin in the middle of a pandemic. and republicans and the legislature and republicans on the court forcing people to risk their lives to have their vote

counted. >> yeah. i mean, i think it's not just reckless -- it's not just reckless, it's grotesque what we saw yesterday. and what makes it all the more grotesque i think is the fact that it wasn't just republicans in the legislature, it's that the courts were on those republican side. and i state it goes beyond the bounds of wisconsin, it went all the way up to the united states supreme court. i think that there are a lot of things to worry about here. one of them is that the partisan -- both the actually partisan -- the impetus behind those court rulings and the perception of the impetus behind those court rulings, there's no one who voted yesterday in the state of wisconsin who doesn't feel as though they were forced to make a ridiculous choice between their public safety and their right to exercise the franchise. and there's no one, i think, who looks at this reasonably who doesn't think that the entire process the was tainted by politics and by ideology. and if we get to a point where

the nature of our voting is perceived by people as being driven bipartisan impulses and not by ones related to democratic values and public safety, we have a giant problem. and that problem, as i've said yesterday and i'll keep saying it, is going to loom very, very large when we get to november. >> it most certainly is. mike barnicle, i want you to take a look at robin voss, the speaker of the assembly, the republican speaker, robin voss speaker of the assembly. and -- well, you know what? it speaks for itself. take a look. >> they gave us the pp esh, it's mandatory to wear it. so we are here today making sure we do everything safely. i think it's a testament to the people who have really thought about this election. they knew what they were doing. they worked really hard to make sure that everybody who is here, the ones who are at the poll place working, people who are coming into their cars,

everybody is here safe. they have very minimal exposure. there's less exposure here than if you went to the grocery store or walmart. you can come to a polling place and do it safely. you can do curbside voting like they're doing here even if it's in a different municipality without drive-up voting. you can "person come out, they'll deliver you a ballot, they'll check your i.d. you are incredibly safe to go skblo out. >> and he's sitting there in what looks like a hazmat suit. it reminds me of kevin bacon in the final scene in "animal house" after the parade goes askew and he's yelling everybody relax, he everybody relax, everything's under control, nothing to worry about here. i think, john heilemann, used the correct word. for the republican lec slatetgi

and the court to force people to go out and make that choice yesterday was grotesque and a danger to the public health of thousands and thousands of wisconsin residents. >> yeah, joe, the decision by the republican legislature of wisconsin, the republican-dominated supreme court of the state of wisconsin and the united states supreme court endorsing what they're doing basically is saying, we got what we want, we don't care if you die while standing in line to vote. and this gets to something else that heilman raised and you raised it earlier. it's the battle between his perceived and recognized incompetence on the president of the united states' behalf, and ideology. and incompetence in the voters' minds will win out. he's incompetent, he cannot do the job. and when it comes to issues like voting, when it comes to issues like dealing with the

coronavirus, you go out around, even around here, as i've been doing for the past week or so, you sense the anxiety in people's lives. it's not fear, it's anxiety. who has it? who has the disease? who might get it? where could i get it? the supermarket? the drugstore? and the anxiety builds. and it's there every day in their lives. and, unfortunately, what's going to happen, some are going to get it because of the lack of leadership. and the other thing that happens, joe, and i know you might appreciate this, in these times when we're home, when we're stuck at home you get a chance to do things you never done before or haven't done in a long while and you get a mixture of history and today. you read the second inaugural address by abraham lincoln. you read churchill's speech after dunkirk in which he says a fact-based reality speech to the british people. he says withdraw is not victory. and then you think of more

current things. you think of george w. bush and the two weeks after september 11th, i realized what happened after, but in those two weeks after september 11th he was tremendous in terms of giving the country a sense of direction. faith, hope, and direction. that's leadership. i thought personally about barack obama singing amazing grace at the funeral in charleston. all of that is out there. >> and all of those examples from churchill forward at the center of them have a dose of reality. they weren't all painting a rosy picture during the blitz. church him, as jon meacham has reminded us many times, you remember the flowery parts at the beginning and the end, but in the middle he said this is going to be hard and bad but we will overcome this. reverend sharpton, just to look back at those pictures again yesterday in wisconsin, it's maddening, frankly, to see those people standing in line doing what they view to be their duty, their civic duty. they want to have a voice in

their own election, which of course they should have, but they've been asked to go stand in line and minute get sick to do it. and so many of them did, it makes you proud on the one hand to see americans standing out there voting. on the other and that outrages you. but it is worth, as john heilemann and mike talk about, thinking ahead to november and what we may be looking at. so what should the government and the democratic party, what should they be thinking about in terms of how we vote in this continues in some or all areas of the country, this pandemic continues into the fall? >> this should be a real wakeup call that we should now, right now, begin to build the infrastructure around how we deal with transferring the country to a voting by mail and voting by absentee ballot in case that becomes a circumstance in november. we should not wait and see going

outside every day sticking our finger in the air to say, oh, is the pandemic going to be over in time? we should plan now for the worst and pray for the best by having a real campaign to really change the process and to make people become familiar and become adjusted to a process of voting by mail. what we saw yesterday was voter is you parisian wi suppression on steroids and we cannot afford to have that. we need to start planning and make people acclimated to it in april and not wait until september and play catch-up. >> you can hear the president already sort of trying to undermine the process. up next, we'll talk to a congressman and decorated navy s.e.a.l. who says as a nation we are currently locked in a battle against an enemy that we can only fight together living by the mantras of combat. congressman dan kren shaw joi

congressman dan crenshaw joins us next. "morning joe" will be right back. orning joe" will be right back.

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joining us now, member of the house budget and homeland security committee is republican congressman dan crenshaw of texas. he's the author of "fortitude: american resilience in the era of outrage ". boy, do we need fortitude right now. >> we do. we were talking about the fortitude that britain showed in 1940 during the battle of

britain. we and the rest of the world need it right now. thank you so much, congressman, for being here. let me ask you first, how's your district doing? how's the state of texas doing fighting the coronavirus? >> i'm optimistic here in texas. you know, the virus hasn't hit us as bad as it has other states. we were praying for states like new york and new jersey. of course we're not seeing a huge uptick in cases, though we still expect that. we had the texas medical center right here in houston, we've still got a lot of icu space. we're used to disasters, unfortunately, which means our hospitals are often ready for this kind of thing. we still got problems with, you know, getting some of the equipment to the right places at the right times, but for the most part i think we're optimistic, happy with the way our governor's handling this and we are in it together. >> and so as you -- as you look across the country, if you look at new york to california, what do you think congress should do? we're talking about another relief bill coming up.

what should the next relief bill look like? >> well, right now there's talk of adding funds to the small business portion of the relief bill. and that's because it's really popular and because it directly gets at the problem. remember, we paused the economy and our goal should to be keep -- keep pay rolls going, keep employees attached to the employers. and that was the purpose of those funds. and it's doing quite well and there's a chance it runs out rather quickly. so in the short-term, that's what we should be looking at. >> i wanted to ask you, how do we make sure that the money doesn't get sent to the boeings and to the lockheeds and to the ibms and, i mean, you name it, where the small business owners your district don't get what they need. that's what i always found whenever we would pass a relief package it always seemed that the huge multinational corporations were getting it and the small business owners that i knew in pensacola seemed to come

in last. you know, or in houston or in any -- how do we protect small business owners? >> right. i would point out a couple things here. first, an american that loses their job from a large business is the same, it's just still your neighbor, still an american when they lose their job from a large business or small business. >> right. >> okay. secondly, there's two separate tranches of money. one is the distressed industry's fund which would be loans, not any grants and not forgivable loans, but loans that have to be paid back to larger corporations. so all the ones you mentioned would potentially be eligible for that. the small business -- the small business side has their own set of money, they're not competing against each other. so i don't foresee this problem where -- where large businesses get help at the expense of small businesses. >> well, that's good. i would just say that i agree with you completely. and people that work small businesses, though, are as valuable as those that work for

the largest businesses that sometime when all of this money is passed around seems the smaller business owners are blocked from the sunlight and the attention. let's hope it doesn't happen this time. willie's with us and has a question for you. willie. >> sure. >> hey, congressman crenshaw, good to see you again. appreciate you yok being on tbe morning. what would you say to the american people and specifically what would you say to the president right now about american resilience? it's a balancing act that a president has to do and in a crisis projecting optimism and hope to people that there's something better over the horizon. we were just talking about with churchill's speeches and the rest of them that there has to be some realism in the rest of it. how would you tell the president, someone something that's been resilient in your life, how is how he be talking right now to the american people? >> it's an interesting question. i think i write about this at some points in my book where i

note that in s.e.a.l. leadership we have a saying, calm breeds calm and panic breeds panic. the last thing we want to do is exude panic to people and make them worry. and i understand that's the debate going on between the president and the media. i want to look at the president's actions. as far as the lessons from the book, there's a chapter called a sense of duty. and i think that's the most prominent lesson that we can look at as americans, because we're talking about the small things. there's not a whole lot that every american can do. some americans are right on the on from lines. you know, our health care workers are right on the front lines. they know what their duty is. but what about the rest of us? well, it's the small things, the things that maybe we didn't care about before. the things we didn't pay attention to. washing our hands for 20 seconds, not five seconds, but 20 seconds. when you wear gloves to the grocery store, don't leave them on the ground afterwards. don't make somebody else pick them up. feel a sense of shame and sense of duty to do better, to maintain that six-foot distance as we interact with each other

as we move back into society and live in this new normal. and we have to be able to do those small things correctly if we are going to effectively transition to a point where we're opening the economy back up alongside the fight against the pandemic. it's going to take discipline and duty. >> and what is -- what's the big takeaway you think americans will get reading "fortitude: american resilience in the era of outrage." what do you think the big takeaway will be, or what would you like the big takeaway to be from this book? >> look, every chapter is a lesson in resilience. and i think you'll find that they're rather unique, it's probably not the book you expected from me. i think a lot of people expected an autobiography. and at first this book was written about petty outrage culture, but it's highly applicable to right now, because every chapter is a lesson derived from combat and s.e.a.l. training, lessons to be still in the face of chaos, and to stop

and to think before you emotionally react. lessons in being detail oriented. lessons in challenging yourself and the value, the psychological, the moral value of challenging yourself on a daily basis. not challenge yourself like go through s.e.a.l. training, not what i'm saying, but challenge yourself in a way that is harder than what you did yesterday. and this builds preparedness, this builds mental resilience. and when we're facing crises like what we're facing now, these lessons become so much more important. so this is the worst time to come out with a book. i wish i could have changed the date, but i can't. but also, i'm proud that this book is out and i'm proud that i could deliver these lessons to people. >> the book is "fortitude: american resilience in the era of outrage." congressman dan crenshaw, a lot of messages that are very applicable right now. thank you for being on. >> thank you for having me. so the world has lost

another music legend. country folk singer and songwriter john prine. prine's family says he died from coronavirus complications yesterday in nashville. he was 73 years old. known for his unmistakable raspy voice, prine spent nearly five decades perfecting plainspoken country folk songs that chronicled the struggles and stories of everyday working people. the two-time grammy award winner's hit such as "hello and there," sam stone, helped to change the face of modern american roots music and inspired other chart-topping greats, including bob dylan. >> john heilemann, kris kristofferson went to hear john play in 1969 and was absolutely blown away. and he wasn't the only one over the course of his career, as mika just said. greats like bob dillen considered him one of the best in music. >> yeah, you know, that story

with the kris kristofferson story, joe, a similar thing happened with roger ebert in chicago. people would wander into these bars in chicago around that time and stumble on to this guy who was playing music and writing lyrics in particular, unlike anything they'd heard this side of bob dillen. dillen said he was so pristine existentialism on the page. and if you think about people purely as songwriters in the second half of 20th century, you would have to put him on the short list of three or four who were the best writers out there. and he had a career that went on for many decades. he won grammys. lifetime achievement awards. he was in the folk category, he was in the country category. he wrote ballads that were covered by people like bonnie ray and other famous singers who did them, who paid tribute to

his writing. when he survived two bouts with cancer, which is why this is such a gut punch to a lot of people, having gone, had lung cancer and throat cancer that he got through and was still making some of his best music into his 70s. so to lose him now is a particularly acute -- a particularly acute punch in the solar plexus for people who care about music and songwriting. the thing i loved about him -- one of the things i loved about prine most was, is he said once that writing was staring at a blank piece of page -- a blank piece of paper and deciding among all the things in the world what not to put on the page, which told you something about his theory about how everything in life was material for prine and i think one of the things that was so powerful for a lot of people was not only that was he so poetic, but he also had an incredibly dark and hilarious sense of humor about the human condition. that was something that dylan and christoffersen and others found so compelling about him.

the last thing i'll say for anybody who doesn't know the song "in spite of ourselves," a late career duet he did with iris demint, it's a song that my wife and diana played at our wedding. i strongly recommend it to anybody who wants to hear a joyous celebration of love, but with a great sense of humor and a wry kind of understanding of what couples have to do in appreciating themselvesing to make it last for a long time. >> all right. john heilemann, thank you so much. that was beautiful. we really appreciate it. and thanks for being on this morning. and mike barnicle, a little bit of possibly positive news regarding entertainment. baseball, the possibility of spring training in may in arizona. what can you tell us? >> well, the players' association would love to get the players on the field.

this would be without fans in the seats. there are numerous ballparks in and around phoenix, spring training sites, state of the art facilities, most of them brand new. everyone would love to see it happen. we need to see, i think, as a nation, would like the safety valve of seeing something on tv. athletics, sports, obviously fills the bill. it is baseball season. myself, i'm kind of pessimistic that they'll be able to pull it off. the danger is still out there, joe, as we all know, we speak about it here every day. and i think it will end up not getting done, but i would love to see it done. one other thing, john was absolutely right. the song, john prine's song "in spite of ourselves" is a treasure. go play it today. you'll feel better. still ahead, president trump has been pushing an anti-malaria drug to treat coronavirus, despite little evidence of the drug's effectiveness.

nbc's heidi przybyla spoke to one cardiologist who is sounding the alarm about hydroxychloroquine. she joins us with that new reporting. plus, while the country is focused on the coronavirus crisis, president trump has ousted two inspector generals and publicly criticized a third. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪ there will be parties again soon, and family gatherings. there will be parades and sporting events and concerts. to help our communities when they come back together, respond to the 2020 census now. spend a few minutes online today to impact the next 10 years of healthcare, infrastructure and education. go to 2020census.gov and respond today

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they gave us the ppe. it's mandatory to wear it. so we are here today making sure we're doing everything safely. i think it's a testament to the people that really thought about this election. they knew what they were doing. they worked really hard to make sure everybody that were here, the people who are coming in in their cars, everybody is here safe. they have very minimal exposure. actually, there's less exposure here that you would get if you went to the grocery store or to walmart. you can come to a polling place and do it siafely. you have the ability to do curbside voting, even if you're doing here, even if it's in a different municipality, you can request that you come out. you are incredibly safe to go out. >> what a clown. that actually is the republican

speaker of the wisconsin state assembly in full-on protective gear. this guy who looks like he's in a hazmat suit telling wisconsin voters that they were, quote, incredibly safe to go out. what an absolute clown. mika, of all the things -- >> that went on yesterday? >> no! that i've seen in my 25 years of politics and being associated with politics and reporting on politics, i don't know that i've ever seen anything as reckless and irresponsible with public health as what i saw yesterday, where republicans -- republicans jammed down the throat of wisconsin voters an election, in the middle of a pandemic, where they had to stand in lines close to each other. and yes, you can say this, the republicans that jammed this election through risked the lives of countless wisconsin

voters and those in other states. this is, after all, mika, if you want to know what this is about, as we look at these pictures, this is about a wisconsin legislature and a wisconsin republican party in wisconsin that has spent the last decade doing everything they could do to twist and distort votie ing outcomes in elections. you don't believe me? in 2018, i have the numbers here, democratic candidates won by more than 190,000 votes for the state assembly, right? pretty much a landslide. yet, the gop has so gerrymandered and twisted up the state that despite the fact democrats won by 190,000 more votes than republicans, the gop held a 64-35 advantage in that

chamber. wisconsin -- it's just been an ongoing effort, willie, by wisconsin republicans to make sure that black voters, to make sure hispanic voters, to make sure that democratic voters don't get their say. and that it's not one person, one vote. and yesterday was the most extraordinarily reckless thing that i've seen in my political life. in the middle of a pandemic, just not waiting until june like every other state. because you know what? they had a supreme court seat that they wanted to win. they wanted the democrats to stay at home, they wanted to win the supreme court seat so they could pass more legislation, which would disenfranchise more black voters. >> it was a total travesty. and you were looking at those pictures of people standing outside. and you just say to yourself, why? why? every other state that had a

primary in the month of april either moved it to june or went to full mail-in voting. milwaukee, guys, had previously 180 polling places. milwaukee, the biggest city in wisconsin. five yesterday. five polling places. so not only was everyone being asked to go out and vote in the middle of a pandemic, but they were also being asked to stand in line, very close to other people, for hours and hours and hours to vote. they were given the choice and god bless those voters who wanted to exercise their right, they were given the choice. either lose your vote, stay home, or go outside and vote in a pandemic. and you just ask again why. why not just move it to june? >> well, that's, joe, i think, where americans need to pay attention and look at what the president's -- pull back and look at the big picture, at the entire election process, and you can see the president already trying to dhchip away at the process. >> and jim vandehei is with us.

jim, you're a wisconsin guy. i don't want to put words in your mouth. you're a reporter. i'll just say, i was sickened by the images that i saw. we are a nation that is desperately trying to flatten the curve of the numbers of deaths. more people, of course, have died in the united states of this pandemic than died on 9/11, died in the afghanistan 20-year war, died in the tragedy of a war in iraq. and yet, you look at the pictures from your home state and people are shoved together, because republicans force this election today. >> about 100 people have died in wisconsin, half of those in milwaukee, whereas as willie pointed out, there's only five polling places instead of 180 that you would typically have. the reason people should pay attention to this is this could really become a national crisis come election day in november. because if we have a resurgence of this virus, this is going to play out in 50 different states.

and you had the president of the united states yesterday saying that mail-in voting is inherently corrupt. and you're having all of these states having to make this choice between one and the other. and wisconsin is often a microcosm, because wisconsin used to have pretty moderate politics. it used to be defined by people like governor tommy thompson and over the last 15 years has become very partisan. the republican party there, very conservative, very reliant, as you've pointed out, on the state's supreme court to be able to back the things that they're trying to do. and now you saw the manifestation of it. and not to get too far in the weeds, the supreme court that said that they wouldn't allow for the extension of absentee voting, that allowed yesterday to unfold the way it did, they were basically saying, listen, here's -- it's a technical matter to the conservatives on the court saying, they just don't think that a governor, in this case, a democratic governor, but they're saying, any governor should be able to rewrite the election rules one way or the other. and if they apply that or if you

even look at what the supreme court has been doing in general on voting rights, you could see a mess come election day, because we're expecting a record number of court challenges on both sides to different aspects of voting rights for individuals. >> so -- and if you think about the conversation you were just having, jim, with jasmine. this pandemic we are in right now, it is not safe to go out and stand in long lines and vote. and it won't be for quite some time. we're looking at many months of life being completely uprooted. our children are not in school. nobody can be close to each other. and this is going to go on for months and beyond that, it will take many more months, even years for people to get back to some semblance of normalcy. there will not be voting in the traditional way with standing in lines and pressing buttons. yet, joe, we have to have our elections. our elections are something, a

write-in place for the sanctity of this country, and there's a way to do it. and once again, the president wants to undermine the process. i say, pay attention. the american people need to pay attention to what he's already beginning to do in the midst of chaos. >> we still believe, even in these times, even in a pandemic, even when we have a president who is desperately trying to ultimately the number of people who are voting, even when we have a president who admitted in a press conference last week that if more people got to vote, republicans would never be elected again, i don't believe that. but that's his mind-set. he believes if more americans vote, that that's a bad thing for republicans. he said it, the speaker of the house of georgia said it. republican speaker of the house said, if you get more people out voting, republicans won't win elections. well, that same president who we've been showing you this week all the lies. when he says things like, oh,

nobody ever saw this coming, when we show all the lies, how in early january, everybody in his administration saw this coming, how in 2019, the department of hhs secretary azar was asked what kept him awake at night, and he said, the coming pandemic is keeping me awake at night, when we have the next pandemic, and it's keeping everybody in this room awake at night. how in 2015, bill gates predicted exactly what's happening now is going to happen and said, we were ill prepared for it. george bush in 2005 doing the same thing, being obsessed with the next pandemic that came to the united states. they have -- they saw it coming. yesterday, donald trump lying, and we'll show you this, saying, oh, i believed the same thing that peter navarro believed that this was going to be a terrible pandemic that could kill up to 5,000 people. we've got all the quotes, mr. president, we've got all the repe receipt. we've got you saying, there's nothing, there was 11 people, it

was 15, it was all going away. on this mail-in voting, the president saying, this mail-in voting, it's terrible, it's horrible if we do it, republicans will never win an election again, and then he starts to lie to you again. he starts to lie to you again saying how fraudulent mail-in voting can be, despite the fact that 50 million americans did it four years ago and states like oregon have been doing it since 1987. like, since like "thriller" and "purple rain" and albums and songs like that were out, he's been doing it. american voters have been voting since ronald reagan was president, they've been voting by mail. i mean, roughly 33 million ballots. 25% of the total in the 2016 presidential election were cast by mail.

and according to "the new york times," more than 23% of voters had cast their ballots by mail in the 2016 general election. that's twice as many voters that did it in 2004. and so, the president lies -- and i've got to say, he's not a particularly good liar. in fact, he's one of the worst liars since eddie haskell. in fact, for you -- for you -- for you people that are not as old as i am, eddie haskell was on "leave it to beaver." i saw the reruns, okay? but he's a worst liar since eddie haskell. so he's lying about voting by mail and how fraudulent it is. and we can't allow voting by mail to happen when a reporter yesterday brings up an unfortunate point. >> it was carol lee.

>> that last year, donald trump, voted by mail. take a look. >> mr. president, you were highly critical of mail-in voting, mail-in ballots for -- >> i think mail-in voting is horrible. it's corrupt. >> but you voted by mail in florida's election last month. >> sure, i can vote by mail for -- >> how do you reconcile -- >> because that's allowed to. that's called out of state. that's because i happen to be in the white house and i can't go to florida and mote. >> what's the difference between voting out of state -- >> because there's a big difference between everything's sealed, certified and everything else, and you get thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody's living room signing ballots all over the place. no, i think that mail-in voting is a terrible thing. i think if you vote, you should go. >> yeah, i mean, we don't even need to listen to the rest of

it. willie! oh, my god. he said, i should be able to do it, that's allowed because i'm not able to travel and i'm not table to vote. well, guess what, there were a lot of people in wisconsin who really should have said, we have a pandemic that's killed more people than like five wars combined, we can't vote, so we'll just mail in our votes. >> this guy is such a liar and a hypocrite on this issue. he does it, he just doesn't want democrats to do it, and especially the wisconsin republicans and a lot of other republicans don't want black voters to be able to do it, let's -- let's just be honest about it. >> the president either didn't know or didn't remember that one month ago he, himself, voted by mail. and first of all, joe, i can't believe you're defaming eddie haskell at this early hour of the morning. come on, leave eddie out of this! >> i know, i know. >> mail-in voting is going to be

important this year. as you guys have been pointing out, this pandemic will keep people away from the polls. we don't know how long it's going to last. you had dr. fauci yesterday talking about the possibility that many people won't go back to school in the fall. that means it won't be safe in many communities, in many states to go out and stand in line all day and vote. we have to start thinking now, as jim says, about how is this election going to be held. how is it going to be held securely and fairly, and part of that is going to be mail-in voting. and what you heard the president do yesterday is begin, as he always does, early, to soften the ground and say the process is corrupt, in case he loses that election, he's preparing his defense, that there was somehow corruption in mail-in voting, which, as you say, has been used for generations in states across the country. and already has been used this year in some of the primaries. still ahead on "morning joe," politico calls its president trump's latest incursion against independent watchdogs. how the white house is

fundamentally changing government oversight. you're watching "morning joe," we'll be right back. >> you are incredibly safe to go out. ht back. >> you are incredibly safe to go out. >> remain calm. all is well! remain calm all is well! many of our members, being prepared... won't be a new thing. and it won't be their first experience with social distancing. overcoming challenges is what defines the military community. usaa has been standing with them, for nearly a hundred years. and we'll be here to serve for a hundred more. did you know prilosec otc can stobefore it begins?urn heartburn happens when stomach acid refluxes into the esophagus. prilosec otc uses a unique delayed-release formula that helps it pass through the tough stomach acid. it then works to turn down acid production, blocking heartburn at the source.

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yesterday also saw yet more chaos at the white house, as jonathan la mir points out, in four days, trump has fired one inspector general tied to his impeachment, castigated another he felt was overly critical of the coronavirus response and sidelined a third, meant to safeguard against wasteful spending of the coronavirus funds. oh, and by the way, the acting secretary of the navy also resigned yesterday and the white house press secretary stepped down. and jonathan la mir joins us now. also with us, former white house adviser for health policy, professor, and vice provost for global initiatives at the university of pennsylvania, dr.

ezekiel emanuel, he's also an nbc news and msnbc medical contributor. and host of the podcast "making the call." it's good to have you all onboard. >> jonathan la mir, talk about the chaos going on in the white house. i get the sense during the transition that donald trump wanted the administration basically to be stripped down to donald trump, jared kushner, and his daughter. >> it practically already was. >> we're getting there quickly. and in this chaos, the president is firing anybody, anybody that can show any independence in making sure that american taxpayers' money is not squandered. and making sure that he doesn't have orbin-like powers. >> joe, you're right. first, just very briefly, backing up to the wisconsin point, it's not just that wisconsin is a state, it's perhaps the state that is going to matter the most this

november. i mean, obviously, the electoral map is perhaps thrown into a little bit of chaos now because of this pandemic, but a lot of predictions prior to this suggest that the whole election may come down to wisconsin. so it's absolutely worth keeping an eye on going forward there and across the nation. in terms of we had the president yesterday, mind you, tweet out, encouraging wisconsinites to go out and vote, despite the fact that of course that would violate the social distancing policies his own cdc has put out. in terms of the inspector attorneys generals, you're right. we have had since the impeachment trial ended with the president being acquitted by the republican-controlled senate, we have seen more of these moves to curtail any sort of oversight within the federal government. we had one inspector general go. he was harshly critical of the hhs one earlier this week. there's certainly those in the white house are anticipating there may be a move there to oust that one, as well. he was very fixated in the news

conference that she had also served under president obama, though, that inspector general also served for eight years under president george w. bush. but what we're seeing here is, it's yet another example of the lack of guardrails and frankly any sort of -- any sort of control within that white house. this is the president doing what he wants. we did have the press secretary, stephanie grisham, be ousted yesterday. she was not a favorite of mark med d meadows. but we have a replacement, a fox news contributor who went on to become a campaign spokesperson. >> by the way, we -- >> -- that is why he is there day-d after day at the podium. >> let's be clear, this is the president's new spokesperson, what did she predict about the president and the pandemic? >> yeah.

>> you're certainly right. just a few weeks ago, she appeared on fox news and predicted that the coronavirus would never get to the american shores, that the president would control it and it would never become a political issue. she appeared on a show with a fox news host who has since lost her job for saying similar things. and now kayleigh mcenany is now the new white house press secretary starting in a few days. but the president will be up there, revise truth, revise history from the podium, and attacks on the world health organization was the latest fronts of this, where he was sharply critical of them. he accused them of being in the pockets of china, when in fact, the who, maybe their response was not perfect to the pandemic, but they advised an international measure, they advised travel guidelines well more than a month before the president of the united states did himself. >> coming up on "morning joe," in the words of president trump, you're not going to die from this pill, adding, quote, i say try it. we'll take a closer look at

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them. >> i didn't see them, but i hear he wrote some memos talking about pandemic. i didn't see them. i didn't look for them, either. but that was about the same time that i felt that we should do it. that was about the same time that we closed it down. >> but at the time, though, when peter navarro did circulate those memos, you were still downplaying the threat of coronavirus in the u.s. you were saying things like, i think it's a problem that's going to go away -- >> i think it will go away. >> you said, within a couple of days, the cases will be down to zero. >> well, the cases really didn't build up for a while. but you have to understand, i'm a cheerleader for this country. i don't want to create havoc and shock and everything else. but ultimately, when i was saying that, i'm also closing it down. i obviously was concerned about it, because i closed down our country to china, which was heavily infected. i then closed it down to europe. >> do you feel like someone on your staff or peter navarro yourself should have told you about the memo earlier?

>> no, no, it was a recommendation, it was a feeling that he had. i think he told certain people on the staff, but it didn't matter. i didn't see it, but i did -- i closed it down. i don't remember it even being discussed. we had a meeting where there were a lot of people -- most people felt that we shouldn't close down -- that we shouldn't close down to china, but i felt we had to do it. and that was almost the exact same time as the memo. >> okay -- >> no. >> just a couple of things, mika. first of all, the president, when he said "he closed it down," and "he was feeling the same thing," no, he wasn't feeling the same exact thing. i've got to go back to this when he said he closed it down. he didn't close it down from china. you know 430,000 people got into the united states from china from the time of this outbreak, and even after he claims to have closed it down, he put so many exemptions on the travel ban from china that about 40,000 people got from china to the united states after he supposedly closed it down with his toothless ban.

he should have shut it down! and then europe, he talks about europe. he goes, well, then later on i did europe. you know what? his own administration was begging him to shut down travel from europe. his own administration, you can talk about, oh, this is what the w.h.o said, oh -- no. people in his own administration were begging him, i think it was the hhs secretary, to shut down travel from europe, at the same time that he had this toothless ban that shut down part of travel from china. but he and steve mnuchin said, no, we're not going to shut down travel from europe. we're not going to shut down travel from italy. it might hurt the economy, so we're not going to do that. it might not panic the markets. so we had to wait another two or three weeks until there actually was a ban from europe, a ban from italy. a ban from some of the most infected countries on the

planet. so he's lying about shutting it down. and mika, as far as -- we don't need a cheerleader. we don't need a cheerleader. we don't need like ponzi, potosi, or whoever the "happy days" cheerleader was. we don't need potsy in the white house. we need a president in the white house who actually follows the advice of scientists, of doctors, of other people, of other people, willie, who actually were warning the president starting on january the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th that a pandemic could be coming. coming up, the president of the american medical association is our guest when dr. patrice harris joins the conversation ahead on "morning joe." rris joi ahead on "morning joe. ♪

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ato help you stay informed. just 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. he will always protect american citizencitizens, we wi see diseases like the coronavirus come here, we will not see terrorism come here, and isn't that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of president obama. >> more than 400,000 coronavirus cases in the u.s. later. that is your new white house press secretary.

also yesterday, president trump removed the inspector general tasked to oversee the $2.2 trillion outbreak relief package. the ousting of glenn fine is president trump's latest attack on government watchdogs who serve as oversight on the executive branch. on friday, trump fired michael atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general who forwarded to congress a whistle-blower complaint that ultimately led to the president's impeachment in the house. and on monday, the president publicly condemned the acting health and human services watchdog over a survey of hospitals about the coronavirus response. joining us now, "usa today" opinion columnist, "morning joe" contributor, and former senior adviser for the house oversight and government reform committee, kurt bardella. what should americans be clueing into here when it comes to these igs that the president is focused on and the oversight of

the money. >> well, understand, mika, that the inspector generals are really the watchdogs of taxpayer dollars in this country. and when you start to remove those barriers of oversight away and strip those away, really what you're doing is you're turning this $2 trillion that's supposed to go to help people in this time of need, you're turning that into a personal slush fund for donald trump. the only reason why you strip away oversight is because you want to do things with that money that you know the american people would not find palatable. that they would not find okay. that violate the spirit of why this money was put in place. there's nothing to stop donald trump from giving this out to people who maybe have given to him in his campaign, maybe the people that personally benefit his businesses. we know from this president, he has no hesitation about mixing his money, his personal, his professional mixings, his businesses, with his office. so using that position to exert undue influence over this process is not underneath this

president, mika. >> so not getting too ahead of our skis here, but what are the areas of concern when it comes to that fund not being given oversight? >> well, i think there are two concerns. first, sending the message that if you do your job, if you're inspector general and you follow the law, your job is on the line, you can get fired for that. because that's what happened to atkinson. the second concern is, if you take away this oversight and nobody is actually paying attention to how this money is being administered, it makes it a feeding ground for waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, and corruption. that's what republicans, by the way, believed all throughout the obama administration. when i worked at the oversight committee, people like darryl issa, every day they would sign off about how they need to protect inspector generals, how they were important, how they can't have to look over their shoulder if they're expected to do their job. where are those republicans now when this is happening? because this is the type of thing that if it had happened during the obama years, the republicans would be having hearings, they would be launching investigations, they would be giving testimony.

they would not stand for this, and we shouldn't either right now. >> reporter: okay, kurt, it's willie. so you can see why the president wanted to get rid of michael atkinson, the intelligence community ig, because his processing of that whistle-blower complaint, doing his job, led to the impeachment of president trump. i haven't heard yet why he's intent on getting rid of glenn fein, who was going to oversee this $2.2 trillion bill, that went through, that became law last month. what's the problem with glenn fein, someone who served in the department och defenf defense, has served under both republican and democratic administrations. >> and this is the thing that makes it so obvious, willie, what trump is trying to do here. it's not that he has a personal issue with glenn fein, it's that he doesn't want glenn fein to do the job. glenn fein is someone who has drawn respect from both sides of the isle, who even trump's own secretary of defense spoke out and said '9wfine was someone he respected and.

the only reason you take someone like that away is because you don't want someone who will be ethical and not succumb to trump's whims. the only reason you take someone like that away is you want to put someone in that job who will do what you want. one of the things that he did, he put in place a new inspector general to oversee the department, he put one of his own cronies in there to help oversee this thing. that tells you exactly what he's thinking right now, which is i think he wants to use this money to dole out favors to friends, to supporters, to donors and tone rito enrich his own personal finances. >> kurt, mike barnicle is here. he has a question for you. mike? >> so, kurt, given the guidelines issued by the treasury, literally written quite quickly, and i'm told, very loosely, do you think it's possible that without a truly independent inspector general overseeing the money given out to small businesses, do you

think it's possible that a smaller private equity company, under 500 employees, a very exclusive private school, you know, in fairfield county, connecticut, or wherever else in the country could apply for the same money really, ostensibly meant for hair salons, for small grocery stores, for small shoe stores, small businesses that we all know and want to keep going. do you think it's possible that that could be subverted? >> oh, it's not just possible, mike, it's almost a certainty that it will be. that's the only reason why this is happening right now. this is effectily a bank heist in broad daylight of the american people's money by donald trump. he's getting rid of all the watchdogs, he's getting rid of all the oversight. he's doing everything he can to make sure that there is no transparency with how he decides to dole out this money. and make no mistake about it, the people who he ends up putting in place to look to quote/unquote do oversight are going to be friends of trump,

people that are only loyal to him. we're seeing this great purge government wide right now. and let's just be clear, this is just the beginning. he's just getting started. it says a lot that in the middle of a national pandemic, something we've never seen before, that he's taking time to extract revenge against his perceived political enemies whereby that he's cleaning out oversight, getting rid of the watchdogs. this is just the start of what will be a government-wide purge of anybody that he thinks he can't trust to look the other way while he doles out taxpayer money to whoever he wants. >> all right, kurt bardella, thank you very, very much. i'm just looking here. the president is tweeting about mail-in voting. with a lack of oversight and him chipping away at the election process, this is going to be a time where we pray the american people pay attention. and as we continue to cover the multitude of developments endanger this historic pandemic that has now killed nearly 13,000 americans, we cannot

forget its devastating effects on everyday americans. here's just a sample of stories from the past few days alone. in new jersey, a husband and wife each died alone in the same hospital within days of each other after one came down with coronavirus. the couple, married for 44 years, both fell sick three weeks ago after attending a family gathering to mourn a relative's death, where the majority of attendees reportedly became ill. in ohio, within a matter of days, a woman lost her brother and her parents to coronavirus. her husband now clings the life on a ventilator. it has destroyed my family. it has broken my family, the woman told the local paper. and in new york, a 73-year-old grandmother near death and suspected of having coronavirus was rushed to a local hospital when family members called to

check on her. a day later, the hospital could not find her. for five days, family members contacted every fire department hospital and emergency medical department they could think of. a striking example of how the coronavirus pandemic has stressed the city's hospitals and emergency response system in unheard of ways. a week later, an unidentified woman was found in a morgue under -- listed under the wrong name. it was their grandmother. she had died the same day she was rushed to the hospital. we'll be right back with the president of the american medical association. k with the president of the american medical association. being prepared and overcoming challenges. usaa has been standing with them for nearly a hundred years. and we'll be here to serve you for a hundred more. ♪ (vo) athey're adapting to supportou their communities.s.re. but many need our help.

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to learn more, visit paycom.com a woman last night, i watched her on one of the shows, good show, laura, and she was -- she thought she was dead. she was a representative from michigan. she was just in horrible shape

for 12 days, 14 days. she thought she was dead. but now, this is a democrat representative, a person that, you know, perhaps wouldn't be voting for me. she asked her husband, she said, please go out -- i'm not going to make it. please, go out, get it. he went at 10:00 in the evening to the drugstore, he got it, he gave it to her. now, you know, it's -- i don't say it works like this at all -- four hours later, she awoke and she said, i feel better. the way she told the story was beautiful. i asked my husband to go and get it, he got it. she is now okay. i mean, she was interviewed last night on television. and she thanked me. there are many of those stories. and i say, try it. okay, please? if you're in trouble, if you're going to die and you're going to -- you're not going to die from this pill. >> president trump yesterday, as

he does at nearly every one of his daily briefings, continuing to tout the potential benefits of hydroxychloroquine and the united states scales up purchase and use of the drug to treat coronavirus patients. he hopes it will continue to do that. but a leading mayo clinic cardiologist is sounding a warning that anyone promoting the drug also needs to flag its rare but serious and potentially fatal side effects. nbc news correspondent heidi przybyla spoke with that doctor. he joins us now. heidi, good morning. as we've said many times, this is a drug approved for malaria, autoimmune diseases, not fda approved to treat coronavirus, though as the president points out, there are anecdotal cases where it has helped people. so where did the doctor you spoke to at mayo clinic come down on this? >> and that was the concern of this doctor. dr. michael ackerman, who is the head of mayo clinic's genetic heart rhythm clinic. i spoke with him yesterday, willie, and he said he became

concern as we're seeing this massive scaling up and promotion of this drug that at the same time we're talking about the potential, potential benefits here of this drug for some coronavirus patients, that we are not also talking about the potential, and it is small, it is rare, but it is very, very significant, the potential cardiac side effects of this drug. now, he said that this particular combination of hydroxychloroquine and the azithromycin, they call it a z-pack, i guess, that in particular called the coronavirus cocktail can be very dangerous for some patients. and that is why this is not a drug that anybody should just go out and take. and while it may prove beneficial in a big population, and we have not yet to see those studies, for individual patients who have not been screened, for example, through an ekg or some other method of getting a base line reading on how the

mechanics of their heart are doing, it can be very dangerous. and that is why dr. ackerman, when he saw this debate going on, he became very concerned that it wasn't just politicians, but it also was doctors who were not talking about this dangerous side effect. he said, just like we don't have definitive studies on the benefit of this for coronavirus patients we're starting to get studies, and they are small as well, about what's happening with potential side effects. he pointed me to one study in particular, a small study that just came out, showing that up to 11% of coronavirus patients who are already on this coronavirus cocktail of hydroxychloroquine and azithromyacin were in the potential red zone for cardiac arrest. and it's likely safe for 90% of the population. so did he concede, though it's

not fda approved, that it may in fact help coronavirus patients? >> he said that we just don't know yet, but the important thing is that we can experiment with this drug. we can give this drug to coronavirus patients who we think it may help, but it has to be done, again, in the right way, at the reason why he's speaking out again is that it wasn't just being done and tout fred the podium of the white house, but he started to see pierce, other doctors who were talking about it as if it was a wonder cure without talking about the side effect, which drove him not only to speak to us, but put out an algorithm that other physicians will use before prescribing this drug. there's an entire nursing home in texas that is on this drug. don't know if all of those patients have been screened in

the way they're supposed to be sdreend. screened. >> fascinating report. you can read it in its entirety on msnbc.com. heidi przybilla, thank you very much. let's bring in the president of the american medical association, dr. patrice harris. dr. harris, we're trying to figure out why this drug is being so aggressively pushed by some, including the president. where does the ama stand on this? what are doctors saying on whether this drug should be prescribed? >> certain from the ama standpoint, we support of clinical trials. we need to make sure we have efficacy data. we may find and everyone is hopeful that we will find some medication for treatment, but it's also so very important to know the risk profile. as a psychiatrist i prescribe medications every day, though the risk of death or a severe

outcome might be minuscule, it's my obligation and my patients expect me to talk about the full range of side effects. we just don't know. we really have to make sure that we allow the clinical trials to proceed. based on that data we can move forward. >> what's the business side of this and the clinical trials? how long do they take? can they be moved up given the situation? what would be the reason to push this drug out there sooner? what would be the motivations behind those who are pushing it? >> well, i can't speak to the motivation behind those pushing it, but in an address i gave yesterday, i encouraged everyone at all levels to make sure we are following the science. again, we all want to find a cure, but we have to make sure that it works, number one.

and number two, we have to know the side effect profile. we have to know drug-drug interactions for this particular coronavirus. yes, this is approved for malaria. we also know that it works well for those who have lupus and arthritis, but we have to make sure that it works and we have to understand the full side effect profile for coronavirus. i also wasn't to say there is great concern that because of drug shortages now with hydroxychloroquine, that our patients who have lupus and have arthritis cannot get the medication, so we really have to be very thoughtful and make sure we follow the science and the evidence. >> mike barnicle has a question. >> yes, years ago i was on this

drug. to my memory, and i'd like you to respond to this, given the level of misinformation that we often get sadly, tragically, from the president of the united states, his story he just related that we just heard about the husband running out to the drugstore at 10:00 at his then supposedly dying wife's request, please go get the drug, is it not a prescription drug? do you not have to have a doctor's prescription to get this drug? >> to the best of my knowledge, you do need a doctor's prescription, and when a physician would prescribe this medication, we know that -- and i certainly can't speak to that particular case, but i would say, yes, you need a prescription to get this medication. when physicians decide on any treatment alternative, they are not deciding based on a whim or an opinion. even for compassionate use, even

oncologists who are thinking about compassionate use at the end of life, they are still basing their recommendations on science and evidence, not whims or personal opinions. that's where we need to stay regarding covid-19 or really any illne illness. >> dr. harris, i want to ask you about the state of supplies moving into hospitals and what you are hearing from your doctors. i've heard from some doctors in new york city that the ppe question is getting a bit better, that they don't have enough for the long term, that they have enough day to day and week to week, ventilators still not quite enough in? places. where are the needs as you see them? where are they likely to continue? let's say things stabilize in new york, although we don't know that it will be true. where would the need be as you look out across the country. >> i'm hearing those stories too

regarding new york. that's a testament to the folks in new york, even the governors and states around new york, at least getting together, mobilizing, making sure they have some data and evidence, based on that getting the supplies that they need. i can't speak to other hospitals across the country as to what they need and what they will need at the peak. that is the critical missing piece here. that is why again the ama from the beginning called on the president to invoke the dpa. part of that would be to have a tracking system, a federal tracking system, so that you would know who has need at what time. so you can mobilize and get the needs -- or get the supplies to the areas that need it most. so we really need to make sure that we are doing that, because certainly new york may be at their apex. we don't know where the next hot

spot will be. we really have to have a national system to be able to be proactive and predictive. >> dr. harris, we are seeing staggering numbers across coronavirus and race. in chicago, for example, 70% of the cases are among african-americans, milwaukee is far outstripping the -- louisiana is another one. dr. fauci talked yesterday about the previousliens of underlying conditions among african-americans, whether it's hypertension or diabetes. can you speak specifically to how the country can address this problem? >> yes, those numbers are startling, but unfortunately not surprising, because we were proceed-covid-19 where there were significant health inequities in this country. the first thing i think we need to do is collect the data.

you mentioned a few states, but we need every state to collect the data, and disseminate that data. then we'll be able to track that daughters. we do gps mapping all the time in tracking. could we overlaid that over zip codes, and then we will know who needs what. then the second phase will be testing. we need to get into the hardest-hit communities and make sure that all of the forms of testing are available, particularly the rapid test results and antibody tests. so those are two high-priority areas we need to address as we look at these huge inequities. that's the short term. we will get through this as a country, and we will not and should not forget these inequities against many of us who are already working on -- we are at the ama. we have a new center for health inequity, and we need a

long-term strategy to address these continuing inequities. president of the american medical association, dr. patrice harris, thank you very much. as we close today, i just want to urge the american people to really pay attention, because chaos, confusion, desperation mixed with corruption is a really bad dangerous mix. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's wednesday, april 8th. here is what's happening now. just a few hours ago the united states hit a new milestone in the fight against the coronavirus. more than 400,000 americans have in and out officially contracted the virus, roughly double what it was one week ago. nearly 13,000 americans have died. across the country, several states a