it's 4:00 in the east as donald trump clings for may 1st target for reopening parts of the country, his top scientist tony fauci said, quote, we're not there yet and adds the may 1st is quote a bit overly optimistic, dr. fauci's warning ahead of president trump's warning last night he'll speak to 50 governors to authorize the states. >> the governors are going to be opening up their states. they're going to declare when. they'll know when. some can open very, very shortly if not almost immediately. we'll give a date. but the date's going to be in

the very near future. so we'll get it open. individual states, governors will be held accountable. it will be very, very close, even before the date of may 1st. so, that will be for some states. >> incomprehensible, donald trump is holding governors accountable one day after claiming he, and he alone, had total authority to reopen the country. trump's delack ration itself exists in an alternative reality. the washington post, quote, within the white house, one senior administration official said, trump has been so insistent on the reopening that some officials worry only a narrow window exists to provide information to change his mind or to ensure the effort to

reopen doesn't significantly add to the country's rising number of infections. on the blame game, quote, a scramble is you should way inside the white house to determine how to stagger a reopening of the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic while also protecting president trump from any political fallout. stemming the spread of coronavirus, the post reporting is buttress by trump's untimely attack on the w.h.o. >> today, i'm instructing my administration to halt funding of the world health organization, the w.h.o. willingly took china insurances at face value and defending the actions of the government even praising china for its so-called

transparency. our countries are now experiencing -- look, all over the world, tremendous death and economic devastation because those tasked with protecting us by truthful and transparent failed to do so. >> trump also trusted china but that announcement right there cutting funding to the world health organization, that invited recriminations from around the globe, pouring in from medical experts, public health organizations and even u.s. allies. the american medical association warned in a statement, quote, halting funding to the world health organization is a dangerous step in the wrong direction that will not make defeating covid-19 easier. and quote, it's my belief that the world health organization must be supported as it's absolutely critical to the world's efforts to win the war

against covid-19. a and we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. phil rucker and calaise m mccaskimcka -- claire mccaskill. phil rucker, it's been a remarkable, remarkable 12 hours, 120 hours to 20 hours on this white house beat, talk about this white house sort of ping-ponging incomprehensible ways at time on their posture of reopening and saying he has the authority to do it and then saying 12 hours later he'll defer to the governors, blaming the world health organization after first blaming states and others. where is this white house now? it seems to be in a bit of free fall message wise. >> the president's public

display. privately our reporting shows he's been adamant about that may 1st timetable and they've not been able to move him at all and there's a collective thinking inside the white house right now that that decision has been made by the president. he wants the country to begin to reopen on may 1st. the efforts in the next 15 days before may 1st is to try to build public support around that timetable so the president is not out there all alone and he has some political protection. that's why you see business leaders being added to this long list of ceos who are going to be consulted. b, to stagger this, some of these rural states start to reopen where the risk might be lower and then have other states follow suit and of course, as you noted rightfully, this is a choice for the governors to make. the president wants to make this decision and he'll probably

announce something to the country but it's really the governors who are going to decide and the mayors, too, whether to change the orders that exist in their states right now. >> phil rucker, i'm going to put you on a spot. tony fauci said yesterday, we're not there yet when asked about may 1st and he added that a may 1st is quote, a bit overly optimistic. what are their plans to overrule tony fauci. >> part of what they're trying to do is shift the blame away for the president, the president can declare things are starting to reopen but if there's any mistake that's made or second resurgence of the disease or an outbreak where people are going back to work, there's a governor to blame. public health officials have come out and say they support what the president is doing. but he's adamant about this may

1st timetable despite what tony fauci and what other medical experts and scientists are warning and the big problem right now is testing, you know, yes, testing has improved over the last couple of weeks but we're still not at the pace where enough americans are being tested of this disease to give local and states leaders the confidence to give the greenlight for businesses, for schools, for churches and for other gathering places in their state to reopen. >> ben rhodes, i'm at a loss, it's that-bleep-crazy that governors are going to take the blame for something that fauci advised against. governors are going to call tony fauci, hey, should i open my state? will we be okay? i'm guessing if tony fauci thinks, quote, we're not there yet, he'll say no. this seems unsophisticated and craven and it will lead to

endangering more americans. >> yeah, nicolle, the common thread here, you should listen to the public health experts. frankly in february, when president trump said this was totally under control lot of governors and mayors made tough measures to move to social distancing before the president gave guidance and they probably saved many lives by listening to public health experts and not president trump when we moved to social distancing. around the country, citizens, mayors, governors are going to make the decision on when to go back to work. may 1st is an arbitrary date, not because that it's the suggest that people should go back out. in the same way by the way when he said easter could be the day for people to go back to church.

we need to listen to the experts. unfortunately the president of the united states is not listening to them. >> and i want to get to the w.h.o. but i want to get claire in on this, the science and health exe perts are the new deep states actors that believe the intelligence assessments about russia's attack on our 2016 election were part of some deep state conspiracy. he's positioning. conservative media softening the ground to make this a right/left, experts are aligned with the left and wanting to keep the government closed. nobody wants the economy -- nobody wants things closed. people don't want to open it up at the expense of costing human lives, and trump is placing the political concerns ahead of others. what do you make of the fact that he has jammed this through his one-trick pony political frame of if you're for science, if you're health, if you're for

experts, you're part of deep state conspiracy that's against me. >> well, it's completely in line on how he's governed. in a crisis. the experts, you need the most, the people who have been around, by definition, like tony fauci have been in jobs across multiple administrations. that's the resource that donald trump has as president of the united states. every turn in this crisis, we see he prides -- nicolle, if you open up too soon and there's a re-emergence of this virus we'll have to shut down again and the economic impact will be even worse. >> right. >> in the same way we didn't move to social distancing quick enough. no public health expert in the world suggest that a pandemic is a time to cut off funding of the

world health organization. it's just the president who's putting his political interest ahead of this crisis. >> claire, i have this worry all the time that because of the way trump is, and the reporting that obviously is the life blood of this program reporting from phil rucker and his colleagues and other news organizations, we have to cover -- you know, just things that you never would ever say about our past presidents. inside the white house there's a scramble to open up the country against basically the public health experts hop low -- just how low is the bar of this presidency? >> you know, it's interesting nicolle. i think americans right now,

while everyone wants to go back to work and everyone wants to go back to school, mostly what americans want to be is be safe and have a strong leader that can show the way through this crisis. clearly we have anything but that. we have a massively insecured man who's focused on one thing -- that's his re-election. he's in a boxed canyon. he always thought his re-election depended on the strength of the economy, right? and now, the economy is -- so he's manically trying to get the economy back and he's doing that without thinking about the fact that the governors and the mayors, where most of the country's economic activity are, are in fact are going to depend on scientists. they're not going to go along with him. he might get some red states, rural governors.

that's not the engine of our economy. if you look at the places that have been hit the hardest, that's where so much of our economic activity comes from and that's where you have democratic governors, county executives and mayors. i just want to pray for fauci right now. i want him to stay strong. because he'll end up having tremendous pressure on him. can you imagine what they're going to do to him? stay strong, tony fauci. >> phil, the briefing he sought to rewrite his own history in terms of believing china and blame the world health organization for believing china, he forgot that tapes like this one exists. here he is being asked in january directly if he thought china could be trusted. watch. >> have you been briefed by the cdc -- >> i have. >> words about a pandemic.

>> no, not at all and we have it totally under control. one person coming in from china. we have it under control. it's going to be just fine. >> president xi, there's just some talk in china that maybe the transparency isn't everything that it's going to be, do you trust we'll know everything we need to know from china. >> i do. i have a great relationship with president xi, we just signed probably the biggest deal ever ma made. >> phil rucker, i just want to try to follow his logic. he's cutting off funding for the world health organization because they believed china. what is he cutting off himself. >> he's been sort all over the map as it relates to china and this virus. at the time with that taping, the president was downplaying

the threat of coronavirus, said it would never reach the united states and then his own chief of staff, part of a media and democratic hoax to tear down the president. setting that aside what he's trying to do here is find a scapegoat and basically say to the american people don't blame me and my administration and the federal government for acting too slowly that's resulted in all of these deaths look across the pacific ocean and blame china. i think we'll hear more and more of that in the days to come. the president talked about the world health organization's alleged china bias. and i think he's going to hold that china as the boogeyman, americans who are so discomforted about this pandemic someone else to blame. >> senator chris murphy tweeted

this shg, wrote this the w.h.o. produced 1.4 million tests by the end of february. we took none of them, because trump decided to produce his own test, then botched the development and rollout. it wasn't the w.h.o. that put us in this position, it was our own president. >> in isolation, we're the leader of the world, we used to be the leader of the world, the notion that we took our football and go home at this moment, what you do at this moment if you don't like everything that the w.h.o. is doing, you get in there and lead. you influence. you show -- it's a little bit like the paris treaty, you don't abandon it. you make it better. you do what you must do as a leader of the strongest free nation in the world. what this president has done, he's diminished our standing so much and maybe this decision

could take money away from w.h.o., by the way, he can't even do which is appropriated. because it's a moment where the entire world is watching him behave like an adolescent and it's disgusting. >> so, ben, not just the world health organization, donald trump has also sought to blame the obama administration saying you guys left him bad coronavirus tests, even though coronavirus didn't exist then. >> we left him an office in the white house. he shut it down. he left him a playbook, how do you deal with pandemic? he ignored that playbook. we did an exercise for his incoming cabinet team about how to respond to a pandemic, he fired almost all of those people. the fact of the matter is, when we had an ebola outbreak the

w.h.o. was slow, guess what, the united states was the strongest powerful country in the world and we led, we made the w.h.o. work better and the w.h.o. was absolutely indispensable to getting life-saving equipment and healthcare workers to infected. the w.h.o. is the health infrastructure fighting this pandemic and a lot of countries that don't have the resources to do it themselves. we're putting ourselves at risk of cutting this funding. if the disease is raging in one part of the world it's going to come back. our economic chain, factories in countries where we rely on parts for the life blood of our economy. donald trump is hurting not just the rest of the world but american health security by doing this just so he has someone to blame. it's outrageous.

>> ben rhodes, claire mcccaskil and phil rucker. thank you. when we come back -- does the president's desire to reopen the country at the end of the month make sense to a health expert? the white house empathy gap exposed again. two more reports in the washington post, we'll bring you extraordinary details. and party unity, another influential democrat who wants opposed him lined up behind joe biden today. all of those stories coming up. nice. way more unique fixtures and tiles. pairing. ♪ nice. way more top brands in sinks and faucets. way more ways to rule your renovation. nice!

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we don't have all the answers with the antibody because the things that we don't know is that in general, with viruss that we deal with all the

time, when you develop an antibody after infection it almost invariably means you're protected. we don't absolutely know that for sure, yet. the other thing that we don't know is the durability of protection. are you protected for a month or two or three? a half a year or a year? we need to get experienced to know that. >> dr. anthony fauci taking us through some of the known unknowns surrounding the future of the fight against coronavirus in this country. those uncertainties are extending the time line for where we are now, researchers at the harvard school of public health say social distancing measures may have to last until 2022 unless a vaccine becomes available. at the moment, # 1% of americans support keeping social distancing in place despite the economic consequences and it's easy to see why we're still in a very critical period. yesterday was the deadliest for the u.s., close to 2,000 new

deaths according to covid tracking project. new york city revised its count yesterday, factoring in those who likely died from the disease without getting tested and the death toll in the city has passed 10,000. despite all that, multiple reports today suggest that the president is consumed with plans to reopen the country and soon. the washington post reports a team of governor officials drafted a plan that would allow reopening within weeks. quo quote, president trump wants a final plan on reopening the country ready within days so he can issue suggestions for some states to reopen may 1, officials said. >> and doctor, i saw that number 2022 and i gasped out loud. 2022, we're going to be fighting this until 2022?

>> we likely will, on the other hand it's not like we're all going to be living like we are right now, hunkered down and not going outside. this refers to an important article -- paper written by a friend and colleague of mine at harvard school of public health. and the model indicates and it's a model based on certain assumptions that we may see peaks of this virus in the winter around january and february each year for the next few years, so what that means is, we have to figure out to adjust to an ebb and flow of this virus, long periods potentially where can we can go back to work, not completely normal life, but some semblance of normalcy but then we have to be prepared at multiple levels, at the workplace level, community level, government

level to reimplement social distancing as the need arises. it's going to be a orchestrated dance that has to happen over the next few years and an incredible amount of planning the modeling, the business community and the government and this is -- this is not going to be simple for us. it's doable but it's going to take a high level commission and group of individuals to figure out the details of it and also, and we can talk about this, how we all do the testing in those intermediary periods between social distance zblg well, let's talk about that. because new york revised their numbers up to include deaths from likely covid cases because it was so clear i guess to the people who treated those patients that that was the cause of their deaths, we still don't

have enough tests to know what our real numbers are, how are we even having a conversation about opening the country back when we still don't know where the disease is? the dynamic of flying blind has never been addressed? >> well, two issues, flying blind but it's also we have to look at what the models are currently telling us and this is coming out of the institute for health metrics and evaluation, it's showing that the peak is happening right now in places like new york, new jersey, tristate area, with connecticut, it will lag a bit behind in places like texas may 1st. remember, it's like -- i used the metaphor the eye of hurricane, just because you're seeing the eye of the hurricane things are starting to plateauing there's whole lot of other weather coming. i don't think we can really

afford to relax social distancing now in new york at least for a few more weeks. maybe a compromised solution is to work with the white house and say, let's start a pilot program in one or two states where we think the risk is pretty low and let's see what an aggressive program of fully comprehensive diagnostic testing looks like, antibody testing, figuring out which group can go back to work, active testing for the virus infection, doing the contact tracing. they'll learn how complicated this is. they'll give everyone some time to make longer-term plans and work out some of the complexities that this is going to involve. i'd say maybe one or two states where we think the risk is low. do that pilot program. collect a lot of information. troubleshooting. as the rest of the country tails

off, maybe we'll be able to make a realistic scenario. >> obviously dr. tony fauci is a public servant and his number one clint is we the american people, he has to factor in the president of the united states, do you think if his other client would be working for that may 1st opening? >> you know, tony, who's a friend, like big brother to me for decades, he's worked with every u.s. president for i think reagan, since 1980, he knows how to work with the white house, he knows how to work with big personalities. so if anybody can do it's dr. fauci. but clearly, we're not in a position at may 1 to open up the entire country and i don't think the governors are going to let it happen, either, unless we

have everything geared up right now, at least in a few states where we know we can manage it. i think we can get there. i think a few months from now, the country is going to look very different. but i think it was even dr. fauci said on one of programs or at the white house briefing, we can't turn the switch on. it's not going to work that way. >> dr. peter hotez, we're lucky to turn to you with all of these questions. and when does this if new normal look different? we're grateful for you for spending some time with us. >> thank you for having me. after the break -- donald trump's well-cataloged obsession on everything. might be delaying help for those who need it. most.

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name on building, hotels, a fake university, you name it, now this. the washington post was first report that the 1200 coronavirus relief checks being sent in the mail will also has his name displayed on to. quote, the treasury department has ordered president trump's name be printed on stimulus checks. the internal revenue service is rushing to send to tens of millions of americans, a process that could slow their delivery by a few days, senior irs officials said, while some people receiving the checks may not care, or observe, whose name appears on them the decision is another sign of trump's efforts to cast his response to the pandemic in political terms. it will be featured in the memo portion of the check. wow. joining our conversation is

kimberly atkins and national political reporter for the washington post, robert costa. your newspaper is spilling over with scoops today. the most stunning thing i read when it popped up. take me through the delay in these checks and the unconventional decision to put trump's name on the stimulus checks? >> it was a great scoop by my colleague who covers the federal government and also a part of the pattern, you see it in the post reporting day after day, president trump personalizing the federal response to this pandemic. at every turn. he's talking about, the stock pile in personal terms. he's kissing good bye of one navy ship. you see president trump putting himself at the center, whether it's the news briefings. embracing a stimulus package that a decade ago, many tea

party republicans would have abhor and fought against, now president trump the leader of the republican base said i'm going to put my name on it, claim it, to try to position himself for re-election having trying to maybe run on the economy. >> you know, bob costa, we have had this conversations over the three years, oh, you might want to do that but there are people who are literally going to food banks for the first time in their lives. are there any suggestion anybody who said anything like that to the president? >> in fact, the treasury secretary steve mnuchin going back to 2016 campaign has been seen as someone who enables president trump to put him at the center of any economic debate. pay attention to what's happening today, president trump having this running series of conference calls with business

leaders, not setting up a task force on the economy, now talking with ceo s. and conservatives this is back to 26th floor of trump tower donald trump. this is a president who's running things on the phone. on the fly. >> kimberly, what could go wrong? >> well, listen, another point aside from all of the points that bob just made is the point that it's an election year and what this pandemic has done has taken donald trump off of the campaign trail. so in addition to speaking for more than an hour every day in a way that he used to speak at his rallies during these white house press briefings, he's looking to claim credit any place that he can and that's seemingly what this is about. the president as you correctly noted has nothing to do with the disbursement of funds from the u.s. treasury. he never had. he can't sign the checks.

it's his name being printed on them that has absolutely no value added to the check except for the political value it gives the president right now -- it dpooifgs him something to brag about, as he assigns mrams to other things. as you noted at the beginning of the show. so this is very political. recall in the past when stimulus checks went out during the bush administration, the white house sought to put in the note telling taxpayers that this is their money they're getting back and then the treasury department said, no, that would appear political and it's purposeful that you have civil servants issuing checks from the treasury so it appears nonpolitical. >> you know, kim, my question to you, all three of us, the last three years, are we normalizing

him too much, it's a normal instinct to get credit for doing something good. it's not normal to rewrite history every single day to lie about what you did, to attack media. to call reporters nasty. to rewrite the history of your own failures that cost american lives. le it's in absence of any sort of leadership or responsibility being taken. >> to jump in. >> sorry. >> go ahead. kim and then bob. go ahead. >> i mean, just think in the last week we have seen the president of the united states stand at the white house and negate the tenth amendment and

claim absolute authority. none of this is normal. none of this is anything we have ever seen before. in some ways you may think putting a name in the memo line in a check isn't a big deal. but it's a big deal -- this isn't a stimulus check. this is a check that's keeping americans having food and a roof over their heads. i'm with you, it's not a normal moment. but nothing seems normal right now. >> bob? >> i would never interrupt my good friend, kim atkins. but to build on her reporting right there, when you look at president trump and putting his name on a check for the department of the rememberry, it's important to note the obvious -- it's not his money. this is u.s. taxpayer money. and for him to put his name there it's -- it's insinuating hit critics say both in the republican and democratic

parties that he's giving his money. to your point, nicolle, to not normalizing you got to give context. i went to historian jon meachem here for context. he said president trump is trying to cast himself as a generous monarch, he ee's bestog on the american people large's. >> exactly right. you have some amazing reporting in the washington post today about the same time the president was downplaying the pandemic the white house was seeking to get masks for the white house staff. do you want to say something about that real quick? >> it's an important story and the accountability, not only a journalistic story not only about january, february and march 2020, it's going to be a story this summer. they said when speaker pelosi

select committee starts looking into different things this summer and fall, these kind of stories will pop up in congress as republicans and democrats look for answers about what exactly did this administration do not only to prepare for the pandemic but in terms of its own conduct. >> a really important story. i suggest everyone hop online and read the whole thing. thank you for spending some time with us. after the break, lessons learned from 2016 and putting aside differences, how democrats are coalescing their guy joe biden ahead of a very important election. when you shop with wayfair,

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one thing i appreciate about joe biden is he'll always tell you where he stands. when you disagree, he'll listen. and not just listen, but really hear you. and treat you with respect no matter where you're coming from. joe biden is a selfless public servant. he's committed to the fight for social and racial and economic justice. joe biden will lead a government that works for the american people. >> that's the third major endorsement in three days for joe biden. senator elizabeth warren putting her support behind biden, another signal of unity inside the democratic party. bernie sanders stressing the importance of that party unity by telling the ap, quote, it would be irresponsible for his

loyalists not to support joe biden warning that progressives who it is on their hands in the months ahead would simply enable president donald trump's re-election. >> the warren endorsement is interesting in that it came after bernie sanders, i think a lot of people forget that window after she got out, whether she'd put the finger on the scale for bernie or biden. better than late than never, another sign of unity. >> it was smart to have sanders go first and i know that biden and warren coordinated on the timing of her endorsement. if warren went first, sanders' supporters would have found that offputti

offputting. i think allowing sanders to be the first big one, then obama and then warren. warren's full em brags of i don't agree with joe on everything, like, we're making it permissible for her supporters and sanders' supporters to be for show. the gold standard is he's good man, he's somebody who will listen to us and he's not trump. not the tolerance for people who aren't willing to get onboard as there was in 2016. >> i wonder how much of this is happening at the grassroots level and is among party elites. most democratic voters that i come in contact with are so desperate to see trump out of office, when those waves after south carolina started flocking to joe biden in states he never

even campaigned in, they said, yeah, we think he's the person to beat trump. then there's very choreograph maneuvers around sanders' supporters. >> well, i'd tell you i think about these same issues because i remember four years ago yesterday i was sitting on in the audience of the sanders/clinton debate in brooklyn. and i remember how contentious that was not only between them on the stage but even the spect