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country's best hope for recovery is doubling down on social distancing. dr. anthony fauci this morning with good news about the projected u.s. death toll inside a stern warning that now is not the time for complacency. >> i believe we are going to see a downturn in that and it looks more like the 60,000 than the 100,000 to 200,000. but having said that, we better be careful that we don't say, okay, we're doing so well we can pull back. we still have to put our foot on the accelerator when it comes to the mitigation and physical separation. >> dr. fauci is warning that the country may serve as a very public reminder to the president this morning as americans are waking up to the headline that 6.6 million americans filed jobless applications last week since the coronavirus related shutdowns began in the u.s. a few weeks ago. that is daunting numbers follow

a reemergence from the president over the past 24 hours about re-opening the country sooner rather than later. >> we have to be on the downside of that slope and heading to a very strong direction that this thing has gone. we can do it in phases. we can go to some areas which you know some areas are much less affected than others. but it would be nice to be able to open with a big bang and open up our country or certainly most of our country and i think we're going to do that soon. you look at what's happening. i would say we're ahead of schedule. you hate to say it too loudly because all of a sudden things don't happen. but i think we will be sooner rather than later. >> a new report in "the washington post" shows the gears are already in motion to do all that. president trump is preparing to announce as soon as this week a second smaller coronavirus task force aimed specifically at combatting the economic ramifications of the virus and focused on re-opening the nation's economy. that's according to four people familiar with the plan. the "post" says the goal is to

get as much of the country as possible open by april 30th, the current deadline trump set for stringent social distancing measures. though the president acknowledged in last night's press conference that he yet can't commit for a date to his big bang of an economic reboot, it may be no coincidence that his allies in the conservative media and even his cabinet are agitating for an end to social distancing guidelines in the coming weeks. laura ingraham yesterday on twitter throwing out may 1st, suggesting trump inform the health experts that they'll need to adjust their recommendations accordingly. wow. i can't believe her. this morning on fox news donald trump's attorney general moonlighti moonlighting as an arm chair expect, echoing the rush back out to the public. >> we have to be very careful to make sure that the draconian measures being adopted are fully justified and they're not

alternative ways of protecting people. i think, you know, when this period of time, at the end of april expires, i think we have to allow people to adapt more than we have and not just tell people to go home and hide under the bed. we will have a weaker health care system if we go into a deep depression. just measured in lives, the cure cannot be worse than the disease. >> go home and hide under our bed, is that what he thinks people are doing? people are at home, people are struggling. they're teaching their kids, doing their jobs. that comment is disgraceful. that unsolicited advice from the president's most loyal and subservient cabinet member, the head of our justice department, collides with the painful reality of our crisis in the u.s. more than 16,000 deaths nationwide, more than 432,000 confirmed cases total, new york, the epicenter, claiming more than 150,000 of those cases. that's more than any other

country in the world, except of course ours. the crisis and tug of war over what happens next is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. the director for the national center of disaster preparedness at columbia university, dr. redletter. robert cost is back and former state department official rick stengel is back to help me through this hour. let me start with you, dr. redlenner. what conclusion is it to think that people are hiding under their beds. people are doing anything but. this is the bravest display of concern for your neighbors, concern for your family to be sacrificing for most people their economic security, their family social bonds to be protecting each other. what are they talking about? >> hi, nicolle. apparently doctors barr, ingram

and trump had a meeting and decided they wanted to open the country up and reduce the restrictions at the end of the month. they do so at great paieril of e nation. if they don't do what dr. fauci and others are saying, i shudder to think where we are going to be. if we have a resurgence of covid-19 this is going to be a hellish period of time for america. i'm still startled really that the administration is not following the advice of its own experts. i think that is disgraceful. it's frightening. le but i think that people are adapting as best they can and by the way, nothing i said should undermine the fact that we would all like to get back to business. >> of course we would. >> this goes without saying, but we cannot do that at the risk of more american lives being lost.

the equation doesn't work. it's inappropriate. i don't know where these people are coming from that think they can say by some magic fiat that we'll be done with this by the end of april. it's extremely dangerous and i don't think we should be tolerating it. they're going to say what they're going to say but in the meantime we're hopeful that fauci and the other doctors are going to surveil when it comes to when we re-open. the absence of having appropriate testing, we don't even know who's actually got the disease. many people are mildly symptomatic or nonsymptomatic, and we don't know how many people and to suddenly open the doors and say go back to work and restaurants is really, really dangerous and hopefully some better minds will prevail. i'm hoping they will. >> let me put you on the spot. if dr. fauci came out today and said i'm for the big bang, let's do it on april 30th, would

you -- i guess my point is, do you trust him completely, whatever he came out and said at that podium, do you trust him? >> you did put me on the spot, nicolle. all of us in public health know and respect fauci. he's been through many, many administrations. he's a serious person. his word is good and his judgment is good. on the other hand, he's working for somebody who's authoritarian, does not tolerate dissent. i don't know what to make of it. i don't know another public health expert that would agree to jumping back into full swing with the economy and people getting back to work. i think we should be very concerned if tony fauci actually said that. i doubt that he would but if you press me, yeah, we trust him but he's working with somebody we don't trust. >> robert costa, i put the

doctor on the spot to make a point. there is this -- it's not an undercurrent. there is a loud primal scream coming from the right that questions or concerns that come from people like dr. fauci about drug treatments are being talked down. attorney general barr called it a jihad for members in the media against untested drug therapies. this idea that everyone doesn't share a burning desire to get our economy back and running is a dangerous smear against everyone who is simply reporting and covering what the members of donald trump's coronavirus task force who have a medical or scientific background are saying. i want to ask you this question. this is put everybody on the spot day. is donald trump someone who can be frightened into doing the right thing from a public health standpoint, or is he more frightened of his political fate? is that why he depth tiesed barr to go out and say these things? >> we've seen in recent weeks

people like senator lindsey graham going to president trump and say if you open the country too quickly you will own the deaths. that's something we put on "the washington post," a powerful anecdote. there are two currents i picked up in my reporting. one, this is a white house that is gripped right now by anecdotal optimism, whether it's hydroxy colloolor keen or about economy or the ability to open up in may. this is a white house that despite the data and reservations among officials and experts is very willing to en grace solutions that have not been approved by the fda or the idea that the economy could remember. you have to remember amid all that optimism, you also have a reserve, a very deep reserve of skepticism and antagonism toward the federal bureaucracy and toward experts in general. this is an outsider president surrounded by many advisors who are telling him to not listen too closely to dr. fauci or dr.

birx and trust his own instincts. you have that president so wanting to have a miracle drug or a fast re-opening of the government. it wasn't too long ago that he was trying to re-open the country by easter and he's anxious, i'm told, restless behind the scenes. >> anecdotal optimism is a phenomenal way of describing the way this president seems to be functioning. you guys also have some unbelievable reporting today. i believe your colleague, ashley parker's biline about how donald trump is also hobbled by an inability to be at that podium as the leader of the entire country or as sort of the buck stops here kind of leader that people are used to in moments of crisis. take me through how that's playing behind the scenes. is there any anxiety that he's doing himself harm by being the face of this response, which is

uneven at best and pretty derelict at worst. >> here's one area where there's deep concern, on capitol hill. i spoke to speaker pelosi at length yesterday and she is running the house of representatives, one of the leaders of the government, and she does not have a relationship with president trump at this time of crisis. she says on every front he's shattering norms. he's isolated. he's not following, at times, the rule of law or the right procedures. you have a government in congress, senate republicans who are largely in lockstep with president trump and house democrats who feel like they're not working in a functional way with the president of the united states during a pandemic. when the president is out front, he's out front representing his administration, but there's a lot of cracks behind him when it comes to the broader federal environment. >> rick stengel, i've said this about donald trump for years and bill barr for months, that they're going to desperately

miss their credibility when they need it because i think -- and this chief of staff too, mark meadows. his first leadership move was to pick someone as white house press secretary who made the kinds of comments that got trish regan fired from fox news. he elevated someone on the other end of that conversation to the highest public facing communications official at the time of a national pandemic. what do you make of the fact that no matter -- let's hope that the good news holds. let's hope that the projections are making a bend, that let us lose fewer americans, but what about this credibility crisis at this moment? >> well, it's like the boy who cried wolf. he's cried wolf so many times and "the washington post" itemizes the number of lies he's told over the course of his administration. he does have a credibility problem and when he stands up at

those coronavirus conferences, they're more like campaign rallies. you see that he gets an adrenaline surge from them in the same way he does to those great stadium rallies that he has and that seems to be why he's doing it. it's something that gives him that kind of satisfaction. i've been saying for a while now that networks and the cable stations shouldn't televise them live. they're like televising campaign rallies live. what i would say to the president would be this is the time to be patient. the time when you're not patient is actually the time to exercise patience, and no one a year from now, two years from now, five years from now is going to remember that, oh, you didn't open on may 1, you opened on may 15th or even june 15th. the risk/reward ratio is such now that the risk is extremely high. the reward is rather small. he's got this idea in his head that he's just going to kind of

cut a ribbon and open the economy, whatever that means. there's plenty of parts of the economy that are working right now. we are working right now. the media is working right now. manufacturing is working right now. the country is not in suspended animation. there are parts of the economy that are working and there are parts of the economy that are adapting and evolving that will become stronger when this is all over. so i just would say please, mr. president, hang on. listen to what your medical advisers are saying. don't take this risk because the consequences are ghastly. >> and just to come back to why i put you on the spot, i think everybody wants the country to come back in a big bang, but i've never gone near a medical school textbook. i know nothing about science, and it seems highly unlikely that when we are lucky enough to say we're doing well enough to go back that it will be a big bang. it seems like any recovery, health or community or economic,

is gradual. can you talk about from a medical standpoint what some sort of return to a new normal might look like. >> by the way, it is going to be a new normal. we're not going to be back the way things were five, six months ago for potentially a very long time. so we are going to be adapting and that adapting is going to be difficult for a lot of people and there's no understating the fact that there are people that are going to be having a great deal of difficulty economically and that is worrisome and that's why i said before and everybody agrees and you said the same thing that the entire country would like to get back to economic normalcy. i kind of wonder, i'm only a pediatrici pediatrician, i probably shouldn't say this but what would the dynamic be like if this were not a presidential election year. i have no idea.

i do know that from a medical point of view we cannot and we should not take a chance with reinfection, a resurgence of this disease by rushing back when we don't need to. what rick was saying is absolutely right. this is painful. there's no question about it. it's not as painful as a resurgence of this horrendous pandemic the likes of which we actually have not seen since 1918. we have to be very, very careful here and donald trump should not be taking advice from the likes of laura ingraham or bill barr. he should be listening hard to his medical experts. he's got plenty of them, not just the two we see up front most of the time. he's got agencies full of very, very bright people who are all basically telling him the same thing, don't rush this return. >> from your lips. three of my favorite human

beings, thank you for starting us off today. when we come back, a crush of reporting today on the problem with trump's thin skin and oversized ego. "the new york times," "washington post" and associated press all out with pieces on trump's reliance on the blame game, lies and pettiness to lead the country through the coronavirus pandemic. aalso ahead, one of the reporters going toe-to-toe with trump on the daily coronavirus breef briefings joining us. and we go to a hospital on the front lines in the battle against coronavirus for the ground truth of the nurses and doctors caring for the sickest patients in the country in the coronavirus's epicenter. stay with us. you doing okay?

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a striking statistic from today's "new york times." donald trump has spoken a total

of 18.5 hours in the course of the 28 coronavirus events we've seen so far. if you've watched them all, there are 18.5 hours you'll never get back. those hours put on full display the president's inner thinking and fundamental character, themes picked up in three new pieces of journalism out today started with the associated press's assessment of donald trump's blame game. first, it was the media at fault. then democratic governors came under fire. china, president obama and federal watch dogs have had a turn in the crosshairs. now it's the world health organization that's to blame. president donald trump is falling back on a familiar political strategy as he grapples with the coronavirus pandemic -- deflect, deny and direct blame elsewhere. then there's "the washington post" today which describes the president's governing ethos this way, quote, a refusal to accept criticism, an insatiable need for praise and abiding mistrust

of independent entities and individuals. "the new york times" observes today how trump could be his own worst enemy. quote, mr. trump does not need adversaries for his misstatements. he does that by himself. the president has contradicted himself without acknowledging that he does so. then at the next briefing the message may be different again but always captured on camera and therefore difficult to deny or explain away. it's a devastating portrait painted by four reporters across three news organizations drawing similar conclusions about the limitations of this president and the white house he leads. for this conversation we're happy to be joined by my friend, abc news chief white house correspondent and author of "front row at the trump show", john carl. how are you?

congratulations on the book. >> thank you. it's great to be with you. >> take me through, i pour over the papers and see stories about the white house as soon as they're alerted and i don't know a day where i've seen three pieces by four of the best reporters on the beat. you're all covering an extraordinary time in politics and a very unconventional president but all reaching the same conclusion, basically that he lies, contradicts himself, bel belittles and it's been on stark display. >> and another one, "the wall street journal's" lead editorial on the subject of the president's briefings, they're actually pleading with the president, the conservative page of the "wall street journal," pleading with the president to take a step back from these briefings, to perhaps come out a couple of times a week but to by and large leave the questions and the answers to mike pence and the medical experts. this is a phenomenon and it's a wild one, nicolle, because

donald trump for the first three years of his presidency did not come into the briefing room at all to take questions from reporters. it was almost like he was afraid to walk into the space. then he discovered he had it there. all the cameras readily at his command and he seems like he doesn't want to walk away. >> you and i have worked in both capacities. i worked inside the government, the white house that you covered, and we were colleagues for a brief time when i was offering commentary at abc news and i wonder what it's like, what that relationship is like covering this white house when it's the president himself who lies within a single briefing, who attacks the world health organization, threatens to cut their funding and then unthreatens to do so in the same briefing, when the president fires people by tweet and the staff says, i didn't even know that was happening and sometimes the people he fires are the kinds of sources that reporters

like yourself spend months cultivating. >> the relationship between the president and his press office has been a wild one to watch. sarah sanders for example came under justifiably so a lot of criticism for blatantly -- for saying things that were blatantly untrue at white house briefings. i kind of go into this in the book a bit. sarah sanders, seeven sean spic back in the day, they may have said things that are untrue but they can't compete with donald trump. donald trump, as you know, is effectively the spokesperson, the press secretary, the communications director, the chief of staff. it's all trump. so to aim your ire at his staff for saying things that are not true is really -- is a really misplaced anger. this comes from the top. i recounted a scene where i interviewed him backstage at a

rally and it's probably his most forgotten campaign pledge from 2016. he promised that i will not lie to you. he promised he would tell the truth. this was donald trump in 2016, i promise i will always tell you the truth. i asked him about that backstage at a rally during the midterms and his answer was amazingly candid. he said, well, you know, i try to tell the truth when i can. i tell the truth when i can. reminded me of an old friend in college who told me i would never lie to you unless i really had to. >> it's unbelievable. i guess your larger point there is that it's barely a blip. i've thought for a long time that donald trump benefits and survives politically because of the volume of unpresidential and unbelievable things he says. take me through the arc of the book. what conclusion do you reach on how he continues to bounce back from things that would have buried other politicians?

>> i wrote this book because i had a series of experiences with him actually that go back 26 years. i first interviewed donald trump -- it's a crazy story i recount in the book -- in 1994. this was back when he was a star of the new york tabloids, real estate developer, famous for his divorces. nobody seriously ever thought he would be a political figure. then through the course of him running for president and the buildup to his campaign. so i've had these experiences behind the scenes with him where i have seen how he intereacesac with me as a reporter covering him, the way he courts me, tries to intimidate me, tries to flatter me all sometimes in the same day and then go out and put on this show. these coronavirus briefings show in vivid color the way he has

operated which is somebody who takes on the press, loves to pick the fights but just can't get enough of us either. it's a fascinating dr. jekyll and mr. hyde performance that he puts on. >> i think you correctly diagnosed his obsession with the media but in your view does it benefit the american public, especially those who are afraid of and suffering from coronavirus? >> well, i think there are two ways to look at that in terms of these briefings. the question should the briefings be carried live by the networks and i know abc is not routinely carrying these briefings live anymore. they can certainly watch it on our digital channel. you can see these briefings if you want to see them. as a white house reporter -- >> should they be on tv? >> i think that's a legitimate question and -- >> what do you think? >> i don't think wall-to-wall coverage is necessary on the networks, no. but i think that as a reporter i've got an absolute duty myself

to watch them maybe so you don't have to. i mean, look, the president's there. the leaders, the top medical experts for the federal government are there. pence who's running this task force is there. the american people want to know what the federal government is doing, what the federal government is not doing, what they should be doing in their personal lives and i think we have a responsibility to report it out from the very top of the government. these rallies -- these press briefings -- >> wait, stop right there. oh, my god. i appreciate your candor because a lot of our viewers are really disappointed in the fact that we carry them. i asked kamala harris the same question i asked you and she said basically what you said, you've got to hear what fauci and birx have to say about the state of the pandemic. there's some information that you can't get from 50 governors, and i appreciate your candor but they are to him and a lot of

journalism suggests what you just said, in his mind they are no different from rallies. >> look, he's going a little bit stir crazy because he cannot leave the white house. this is a guy who, even before he was sworn in, after the election but before he was sworn in, was already out there doing a political rally. he feeds -- he needs that energy. he needs the spotlight. he needs to go out and do this. so this is an outlet that has replaced the rally. that said, there is day to day really important information that comes out of this. there's also frequently misinformation, but there is important information and people -- so i think the best way to do this is to cover them and put them in context. if you're going to carry it live -- the problem is they're going, as you know, frequently two hours which is -- >> oh i know. >> i mean, nicolle, on my watch i have one of these things that tells me when i've been sitting too long to get up and move

around and it does it to me during the briefings and i can't. >> i've been a fan of the way you've covered this president but what is it like personally? this week -- i was going to play it but i decided to talk to you and ask you questions instead. he called you really something nasty this week, a horrible person or one of the worst. don't get me like it's my job, it doesn't bother me. do you sweat? do you feel like, oh god, i became the story? what does it feel like when he insults you to your face? >> over the past week we've had a couple of blowups. he said don't be a cutie pie. he's called me a wise guy, a third rate reporter, and then he wagged his finger at me and pronounced that i would never make it. that was just in the course of a week. >> what is wrong with him? >> so i write about a particularly explosive incident in the book from the 2015 campaign where he walked out of

an interview with me and after he was away from the cameras, backstage at a rally again, he started screaming at me in a way that i had really never been -- i had never felt such anger, certainly not from a news figure who i was covering. he called me a bleeping nasty guy and was -- i mean, over the top. he went out and he gave the speech and then he came back to finish the interview, and nicolle, he acted like nothing had happened. i was still shaken from this experience. i continued with the interview because i felt it was my job to do the interview and i believe that intently. it's not about me and him. we don't want to become the story. if i become the story, i have failed. it is not about me. so i was really worried about this. the interview had just started. he walked out about three minutes into this interview that was supposed to be a long interview, and he screams at me and then he comes back like

nothing has happened. at the end of that interview he says to me, do you want to get a picture taken with me? >> oh, my god. >> i'm thinking, no. i mean, that's the last thing i want to do. i was still like furious about what had happened. but okay, fine, i'll take a picture. the picture's in the book. by the way, one of my favorite sections of this book is the photo section. >> it's great. >> i went through and looked over all these things that i had been through. the picture has trump grinning ear to ear, just like the happiest expression on his face, and i look like i am just dying to get out of there, not smiling, upset. but that's the classic thing. he is attacking us sometimes because the fan base loves it. the biggest applause lines at his rallies are not when he's going after democrats, it's when he's going after the press. that's one reason he does it. he does it i think often in these briefings because he wants

to distract from whatever the underlying question is. i was asking about the problems with testing, you know, so it's a variety of reasons. >> we all still want an answer to the problems with testing. john carl, i wish things were different and we could have this conversation any day but it's the occasion of your book, your wonderful and important book. i'm reading it now and i love it and not just for the pictures which are great. "front row at the trump show" by john carl is out now. order it. it will come, no one will touch it. you can sit in your bed and social distancing and read it in one sitting. thank you. >> let's do it again. every time donald trump says no one saw this coming, remember that the opposite is true. how president obama's advisers tried to help the president's incoming team, next. there are ordinary eggs... and the best. which egg tastes more farm-fresh and delicious? only eggland's best. with more vitamins d and e and 25% less saturated fat? only eggland's best. better taste, better nutrition, better eggs.

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deadly and in order for us to deal with that effectively we have to put in place an infrastructure not just here at home but globally that allows us to see it quickly, isolate it quickly, respond to it quickly. >> not hidden in a safe or classified. that was president obama. they saw it coming. they warned the whole country. yet here we are. former national security adviser susan rice said she spent 12 hours over four sessions briefing her successor on the risks our country faced. now that successor, michael flynn, is staring down prison time and the country is suffering through the exact scenario president obama predicted and warned about. it's an unmitigated failure of leadership no matter what the trump administration or its allies in conservative media insist. as rice pointed out on "morning joe," that failure is ongoing. >> we provided a 69-page

playbook, in effect a war plan for the incoming administration to take off the shelf. i don't think they ever took it off the shelf. they probably put it in the trash can given how much regard they had for anything we passed on. rather than leave, rather than step up and say i'm the commander-in-chief, this is a war, we're going to get this done and do it together, he's attacking his political opponents. he's attacking reporters. he's attacking governors. he's denigrating people, and most importantly, he's basically putting all of the responsibility on these governors to do it by themselves rather than coordinate the supply effort, the procurement effort, the distribution effort in an apolitical way. >> joining our conversation, heidi press bella and "new york times" political reporter nick come sory. i know susan rice a little bit. i have never seen her this angry and she corrected something i said on the show. i asked if this was an intelligence failure. she said absolutely not. the intelligence existed.

the intelligence agencies were briefed on what was happening in china. this is a leadership failure. >> a leadership failure that actually has pretty deep roots, nicolle, because it wasn't just that 69-page booklet that susan rice talked about which i believe she said was akin to a pandemic for dummies reference. that was another way 1she described it. it had distilled everything that had been coming into that administration, nicolknicnicoll back to 2006. in my reporting i talked to one of the authors of a huge report that was prepared even before obama came into office that really formed the basis for that office, that pandemic office that trump kept. it was not an ad hoc after thought. it had very deep roots. all of these authors predicted chillingly exactly what we're seeing today, including the bidding wars between governors,

including the shortage of ventilators and the lack of a, quote unquote, czar to try and direct that supply chain. like susan rice says, it's not just a failure of decision-making that should have taken place back in january when alex azar was warning trump and he wanted to talk about vaping instead when al lazar was tryin tell him something disturbing was going on in china. it was controlling that supply chain in terms of ventilators and the worst case in terms of testing kits that will not allow us to go back to normal until that happens. >> nick, there's an arc to all of trump's scandals. with russia it was really investigative journalism like yours, that of your colleagues, at the "washington post," heidi and others, that revealed that even though donald trump said i never talked to any russians, there were countless contacts with the russians. there was the back channel that

jared kushner is said to set up with the hurricane where he drew the pen. emails came out after the fact that there was great stress and strain on the system from our weather scientists. do you have any doubt that when all of the investigative journalism or oversight that congress can do is done that the missteps will be as clear as susan rice seems to feel they were, that basically she warned them and they didn't take the book off the shelf? >> it does seem fairly clear now and i haven't seen a lot of persuasive counter evidence that there wasn't a problem at the leadership level. it's a massive failure that's being documented in real time which is astonishing to me. we're seeing some of these things in the papers every day. it's really interesting though, to take the marshall metaphor a bit further, this is a war, this is more like president lbj in

vietnam with the 5:00 follies. president trump doesn't understand the problem, he hadn't prepared for it properly and he's treating us to a glossy review of our progress which is not accurate, not helping him or the public. >> tell me more about that because i was having this conversation with john carl about the briefings. he's not telling us the truth. they are a glossed over version and he's not helping himself. >> i think the president would benefit with the public and his own voters who are the most at risk by the way, the older voters who are most at risk are also his voters, to have just plain, simple information, truth. stick to the facts. instead, the president kind of used these press conferences as confrontations. he uses every question as a chance to win or lose the exchange. he doesn't stick to a plan to convey information in a careful and impartial way. it's always a battle with him. that has served him well in some instances. it's not serving him well right

now. you can see in the ratings there are people who say he's doing a pretty good job but who aren't going to vote for him in november. >> heidi, it's such an interesting point and this president never takes the direct line between a and b, but it's possible that if the experts went out at noon which he won't do because he likes the bigger tv audience, if he wasn't a part of it which he won't do because multiple reporters have suggested he feels cooped up, that that might benefit the public. we would get a more clear picture of what's going on and it might benefit him too. >> you look at him as a salesman in terms of being a salesman metaphor here. this is not something that you want to oversell in terms of when we're going to open up again. each time he sets up one of these benchmarks and we miss it like re-opening the whole country with a bang over easter, it comes as a huge letdown to those people who actually believe that this is all overblown.

it's really troubling actually looking at the data that just came out today from gallop where 57% -- between 53 and 57% of conservative media viewers believe that this virus is no more deadly than the common flu. that's despite the fact that a number of those conservative media outlets have changed their tone. so this is all going to come as a big surprise. >> heidi, nick, it's wonderful to see your faces. thank you both for spending some time with us. after the break, in a city starved for good news a glimmer of hope in new york today. woman: my reputation was trashed online.

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the so far our efforts are working. they are working better than anyone projected they would work. that's because people are complying with them. >> some home signs of hope from new york today despite a jump many the death toll. overall in new york there's been 160,000 cases of coronavirus. that's more than any other country besides ours. joining us is kathy park. take us there what you're seeing. >> we had to move indoors because we had a severe storm that with coming through the

queens neighborhood. now we are inside. i was out there pretty much all day today. i think the biggest difference that i noticed compared to a couple of weeks ago is line for covid testing was significantly shorter. we saw a trickle of people going in and out of elmhurst hospital throughout the day. today which could be a good sign. it's possibly a turn. a lot of the e.r. physician s have been vocal about going inside. they have been at capacity. that he have had a lot of resources come into new york city. all the hospitals are working together. if they are overwhelmed with

patients. the billy jean tennis center has come online to help patients there. . a lot of help is in place now. you mentioned the death toll continues the climb. governor cuomo said it's an all time high today. nearing 800. he said the social distancing is starting to work. we're starting to see that curve flatten just a bit. hopefully we can continue this trend. he stressed it's not time to let our guard down because we need to continue to follow these policies that are in effect. nicole. >> a message echoed by tony fauci as well. thank you for your reporting spaenand spending time with us. an effort to ensure those we have lost are not forgotten. honoring the victims, next. seeing the break in the clouds before anyone else. together, we'll weather this storm.

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she came in contact with. she said to me, mom, no one is showing up to work. we're short staffed. mom, i have to take my own hand sanitizer because there's none available. there's no gloves available. helping seniors put their grocery in their carts go to the restroom, helping them get the items they needed to get. she didn't discriminate on age. >> remarkable thing. a mother in her grieve finding the strength to tell all of us what a good person her daughter was. leilani jordan was a 27-year-old gro grocery store worker with cerebral palsy. she kept going into work to help elderly people in need until she couldn't breathe anymore. she died last week. we'renortherning shannon

benne bennett. he was recently engaged and his fiancee wanted the world know this is not the end of who he is high pressure his legacy will live on one way or another. thank you for spending some time with us. chuck todd is after this. when considering another treatment, ask about xeljanz xr, a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis or active psoriatic arthritis for whom methotrexate did not work well enough. it can reduce pain, swelling, and significantly improve physical function. xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections like tb; don't start xeljanz if you have an infection. taking a higher than recommended dose of xeljanz for ra can increase risk of death. serious, sometimes fatal infections, cancers including lymphoma, and blood clots have happened. as have tears in the stomach or intestines,

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