joe biden is not taking any cues from donald trump in any way. yes, there's an idea that i've been thinking about, as well as you, that if donald trump starts doing the campaign rallies again, democrats will be in a tricky position to either set up some sort of counterp-programmig in the form of a rally, or continue things online which, as we talked about, probably won't get the same attention as a traditional trump rally. that said, there are lives at stake. that is something that joe biden talks about over and over again, whether it is personal anecdotes, about people he's met dealing with the coronavirus, or how it is manifesting in families. when you hear president trump talk about it, there's not a lot of the personal anecdotes. it is more about the country's economy reopening. i don't think biden is going to take any cues from trump, but i wouldn't be surprised if trump decided to hold a rally eventually. >> alexi mccammond, thank you. i'll be reading axios am in a little bit. you can sign up for the newsletter at signup.axios.com.

that does it for me on this monday morning. i'm yasmin vossoughian. "mo "morning joe" starts right now. many governors are doing this incredible work, and they're working with us very closely on testing. some governors have gone too far. some of the things that happened are maybe not so appropriate. i want to thank governor cuomo. relationship there, for this whole thing, we're building hospitals. we're working well with the governors. i would say pretty much all of them. a couple of them, no matter what you do, you can't satisfy them. you could find a cure tomorrow, and they'd find a reason to complain. wise guys. >> so he likes the governors when they flatten the curve, but not when they push back on lifting the lockdowns. he likes them when the hospitals stabilize, but not when they ask about long-term planning. as conservative writer

windsormawindsor windsor mann describes it, trump takes credit for everything the governors do well, and blames them for everything he does poorly. >> you've seen it the past several days. first, the president also, when governor cuomo decides, "hey, if the president isn't going to lead, we'll get a consortium of governors to lead." you called it that moment. oh, boy, watch how trump responds. he responded with his mussolini strategy. he said, "i have total power, total authority," whatever he said that no american president has ever said before. then, of course, he realized if he took total authority, then he would have total blame for every death that moved forward after that, in his mind. he shifted it back to the governors. >> right. >> then, after shifting it back to the governors, he decided the next day he was going to actually try to attack the

governors with these really dangerous, "liberate michigan. liberate virginia," tweets, which, of course, fed into people taking military style assault weapons, semiautomatic military style weapons, to statehouses and carry them around. which, boy, talk to david french about the smartness of that. so then, after that, he then responds the next day to the backlash from that by trying to praise all the governors. just so you know, and just so everybody watching knows, that obviously are concerned by those reckless protests, where people were close together, where you did have people bringing military style weapons to statehouses, it just -- again, it's more of the same. it is not only damaging, of course, to the health and the

well-being of millions and millions of senior citizens and other people with underlying health conditions, and healthy americans, as well. it is also damaging to donald trump's political standing. mika, we're going to be looking at a poll that shows about 60% of americans fear easing the lockdown restrictions. a lot more than they do fearing having those restrictions in place to keep americans safe. as you've said, and as i've said, donald trump can blabber all he wants, and people can go around and carry around guns to state capitols all they want, with "don't tread on me" signs, but we're not talking about the british. we're talking about american doctors. we're talking about american scientists. we're talking about the very people you mocked when they told you in january and february that a pandemic was coming. you remember you did that, right? you remember you were saying that this was all a scam? do you remember that?

like boris johnson was saying, "i'm going to live my life." that was you then. this is you now. as we're finally bending the curve, because unlike you, we all, as americans, listened to those doctors. >> mm-hmm. >> mika, 60% of americans say, you know what? i've had moms and grandmoms, dads and granddads, and friends i know die the most hellacious, heinous death possible. we're going to keep listening to the doctors and stop listening to politicians that are freaking out because they're diving in the polls right now. >> ultimately, these numbers show they're holding the person in charge, the president of the united states, accountable. when they look to what's happening in their lives, they look to the top person in charge, which would be president trump. with us this morning, we have white house reporter for the "associated press," jonathan lemi

lemire. msnbc national affairs analyst and co-host of showtime's "the circus," and editor in chief of the "recount," john heilemann. u.s. national editor at the "financial times," ed luce joins us. >> ed luce, i want to go to you with an article i read this morning from the "financial times." i want to get a quote out of it. it's pretty, what's the word, not chilling. that puts a deviousness on donald trump that he doesn't deserve. he is such a day trader. i'll say this, like china, like trump. as part of a global chinese campaign of shifting blame from beijing's response to the covid-19 pandemic, the chinese embassy published a letter, claiming french nurses abandoned their posts and left old people to die of hunger and disease. the chinese are doing just what donald trump is doing.

donald trump is doing just like the communist chinese are doing. they both screwed up monument tally. both of them, in their own ways, are going to be blamed by historians for most of what has happened since december. the chinese at the beginning, and then donald trump with his slow response, especially in january and february. here, you have donald trump blaming the w.h.o. donald trump blaming the governors. donald trump blaming china. donald trump blaming everybody but himself, of course. the chinese are doing the same thing on the global level. i don't think it's going to work for either. >> it's a very good point. because in our minds, we have this binary idea, that either china is to blame or america is to blame. the chinese clearly have that idea, that it is a zero-sum game. clearly, both countries' systems in different ways for different reasons failed spectacularly.

we can, later on, go back and look at which is more to blame. clearly, i think china is, because of the disease originated there and they suppressed information about it. >> yes. >> for a kcritical three weeks r so. the idea that it is one or the other is absurd. there are smaller countries with fewer pretensions that have less to fall back on and are not playing a geopolitical game that have done very well, whose systems have performed very well. i would have included singapore in that group, and maybe we still should. unfortunately, in the last 24 hours, there's been a 20% surge. they've had 1,500 new infections or so. which really underlining the point, both the chinese and the americans should be looking at it, which is even the best performing systems, even after the best early action to contain

this virus, distancing measures, once you start relaxing, it can come back even in those systems, in places like singapore. neither china nor america or the leaders of china or america, i should say, are educating their people, that this isn't a magic button moment, when you suddenly press and the lockdown ends. this is a long haul, a marathon. it requires public education that neither president trump nor xi jinping are even attempting to provide. >> yeah. you know, jonathan lemire, the president of the united states made the terrible mistakes that he made in january. we can talk about, i think, january 22nd, him telling cnbc, and while he was in davos, "it is only one person in china. soon, it'll be down to zero." throughout the entire month of february, while his own officials were freaking out, and everybody inside the white house knew -- in fact, they knew, if

you look at the list of the state department, the cdc, the fda, the department of hhs, the defense department, his intel agencies, they all knew in early january. yet, donald trump wastes all of february. all of february. even after his toothless ban went into effect at the end of january, he wastes all of february saying, "it is going to go away in april. nothing to see here. it is 15 people. soon, it'll be down to zero." end of february, he is talking about how it's a hoax, that the press and the medical community's overreaction to it is a hoax. so you have china wasting all of november and december, lying to us. we know they're lying to us. our medical officials know they're lying to us. then in january, donald trump spends all of january talking about what a great guy president

xi is, and how the chinese are being so transparent and doing everything. the people of the united states would like to thank president xi and the people of china for what a great job you're doing on the virus. nothing to worry about here. donald trump says that in january. then he says in february, "it's going away magically." in february, he said, "it'll go away magically in april when it warms up." jonathan, i checked my calendar yesterday. we're in april. guess what happened in april when he said it was going to magically go away? we just crossed the 40,000 person death toll. 40,000 americans dead. >> this is unspeakable. >> 40,000 americans dead here, our death count as we still go through april. more americans than died fighting in the korean war.

>> joe, there's no need for me to fact-check your math or the calendar. i think a good way to think about this and the president's response is it is pobookended b his last two foreign trips. the one in davos end of january, and the one in india a month later, which i was with him for that. in davos, he, as you said, down played this. it was only one american case of coronavirus that we knew of at that point. it was in washington state. my colleagues and i at the "associated press" last week put out a detailed account of his actions between davos and india. i think i should better say that as, his inactions. outside of that china restriction, which you point out was not a total ban. >> toothless. >> tens of thousands of people were still able to travel between china -- from china to the united states. it wasn't only until his return from india the end of february. that's when, importantly, the

u.s. stock market first took a real blow from the coronavirus concern. that was when the market dropped about 1,000 points or so overnight. he was in india. he was monitoring that frantically. prior to that, aides had come to him repeatedly with warnings. he was too focused on the impeachment crime. la -- trial. later, at the time, we didn't want to insult china and xi jinping, because he wanted, this year, to get a deal and make that part of his are ere-electin campaign. >> something you know about, jonathan, also, is while he was flying back from india, one of his health care officials, which i think was related to -- i forget the justice -- >> deputy attorney general rod rosenste rosenstein. >> how quickly we forget. somebody related to him comes

out and actually says that this is going to be bad. that americans need to be prepared. donald trump becomes enraged and says that she's overreacting, just like he said how many times, at least on two different occasions, that hhs secretary azar was overreacting and being overly dramatic to this coming pandemic. he was more worried about the stock market. he was more worried about wall street than he was worried about keeping main street safe and healthy. >> that's right. it was that health official who first previewed to reporters that the coming virus was going to be worse than people had anticipa anticipated. her message ran contrary to what the president said the entire month of february, including at rallies when he down played it, saying it'd disappear in april. he lashed out at her when he indeed land eed back at joint be andrews the end of february.

it was then that there was a belated effort by this administration to try to get ahead of this. as we documented on the show nearly every day, fell so who l woefully behind on a number of fronts, most particularly testing. we had a combative president over the weekend trying to defend the administration's efforts on tests. they again pushed the governors to pick up the slack. there's still not nearly the wide spread testing needed, most scientists agree, to have a real reopening of economy. yesterday, he said he was going to invoke the defense production act to produce more swabs that could be part of the testing process. he didn't name which company he was going to compel to do that. the white house did not respond to requests afterwards for more clarification. that is something we need to keep an eye on, to see if he follows through. there is a real defensiveness that has dprogrown, in particul in the last week. the president is starting to be concerned about how this could impact his re-election chances

again in november. >> because it is common logic. people know, they can see, they can feel. testing would have prevented deaths and would allow us to reopen safely. we don't have it. the americans can see it. the other number they can see and feel, 40,000 people dead. 40,000. that's not the number of unreported. that number is higher. >> much higher. >> people see it, they feel it, they know people, they've had it. the majority of americans showing how people feel. 52% say they disapprove of president trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. according to the latest nbc news/"wall street journal" poll, the number is up one point from last month. 44% approve. 65% said that trump did not take the coronavirus threat seriously enough at the beginning. 32% believe that he did. 36% say they trust the president's opinion of the coronavirus. that's compared to 66% who say

they trust their state's governor. 60% say they trust dr. anthony fauci. that same poll also shows the apparent democratic nominee, joe biden, up 7 points over the president. 49% to 42%. this is, at this point, joe, what you see here is joe biden is careful with his words. you see some of the latest ads that have been rolled out, which are really strong, which show clearly that joe biden saw this c coming. he was writing about this in "usa today" in january. >> january. >> he was concerned. he saw it coming like a steamroller coming in the direction of the united states. he was concerned. he called on the white house, the president, the administration, to take it seriously. they did not. this is plain and simple. >> this is what i've been saying, donald trump needs to stop doing these nightly press

conferences. not only for the safety and the health of the american people, but also for his own political fortunes. because every night he goes out and damages himself by being a day trader. he shoots from the hip, says whatever he feels like saying at the top. >> he's angry if anyone springs up facts that get in the way of him looking good. >> right. >> i talked earlier about the emperor's clothes falling off every time he gets up there, but it truly is like a child. angry that things aren't going his way. it's not good for him to show that to the american people. >> he is doing something else, too. it is like a guy that is being told by his lawyer, "don't talk. whatever you say is going to be used against you," whether it is a civil or criminal case. "don't talk. make sure you measure every word." donald trump goes out and rambles. he says stupid things.

he says things that are lies. all he does is give joe biden's campaign, he gives democrats, just two and a half hours of material every night to fact-check against all the things that they already have on tape from january and february. you were right about joe biden. joe biden in january was saying that donald trump needed to get more serious about this. in january, he was saying that donald trump needed to let scientists and doctors run this operation and do the talking. in january, he warned what was coming. well, donald trump wasted all of february. as we could look at the recount calendar, you see that even near the end of february, a whole month went by, donald trump was still saying this was magically going to go away and that it was a hoax being drummed up by the media. you know, john heilemann, i'm going to go back to one of my

pet peeves. i have just a few, john. you know that. one of them is this -- >> you have several. you have self-just a few. >> donald trump as political superman. there is nothing that can stop donald trump. there's weeping and gnashing of teeth, putting sackcloth and ashes on people who are walking around aimlessly saying, "how can he get away with this?" he gets away with nothing. there is a reason why he doesn't get to 50%. there's a reason why he lost virginia in '17. there is a reason why all of those women in northern virginia were standing in the rain for hours, saying, "we're not going anywhere. we're voting to send a message to donald trump." in 2018, when everybody was freaking out about his stupid stories about leprosy, or whatever he said was coming in these caravans, and why we're sending u.s. troops shamefully down to the border during the holidays. oh, how can he get away with it?

he didn't. the biggest historical landslide ever in the house of representatives in 2018. now, you look at these numbers. it seems that most americans see what we see. 65% of americans. let me say this again, 65% of americans, almost two out of three americans saying they do not trust what donald trump is telling them. 65% saying that he wasn't ready. he was ill-prepared. he did not take this threat seriously enough. less than one out of three thinks he took the threat seriously enough. those are the really hard core, tin-foil, hat wearing, like, trumpies. then do you trust your governor more, or do you trust the president more? as he is attacking governors,

66% say they trust their governors more. 20% say they trust trump more. look at fauci. "fire fauci," yeah, fat chance. that's awesome. p boy, we should all freak out about that. 8% of americans don't trust fauci. less than one in ten americans. again, this is where media really sends, i think, a twisted and warped view of america. they shouldn't -- those people should not even be there. 8% of the population. and if that, in fact -- people can say, well, it is less than one in ten americans who feel that way. again, i think the way this is being covered right now suggests that donald trump somehow is getting away with all of these lies. somehow is getting away with the shift blaming.

it's just not happening if you look at these polls. >> right. so, you know, joe, the president has not been on a ballot for now three and a half years. the story of the trump administration in those three and a half years, when donald trump's name has never been directly on a ballot anywhere, there have been a lot of elections. there have been congressional elections. there have been midterm elections, all-year elections. recently in wisconsin, we had a democratic primary, and we had an election for the wisconsin supreme court. local elections, bye elections, all kinds of elections. the republican party in those elections the last three and a half years have gotten its clock cleaned systematically. i think everyone in politics understands that though donald trump's name hasn't opinibeen o ballot directly, he's on there because he is the dominant force in the country.

he makes himself a part of the elections, as we saw in the wisconsin supreme court seat the friday before. he said, "they're trying to cancel the election because i endorsed this man very strongly on social media, and his polls went through the roof." he was claiming the polls went up within hours of when trump had endorsed him. >> right. >> you've got -- >> it's a lie. >> -- three and a half years of trump paying a political price, and the republican party paying a political price. look at the polling. again, there's a lot of months between mow and november. this is an unprecedented situation, and there's a lot of politics to play. i think people should understand that this is a very dynamic -- situation is dynamic and in flux. right now, on the basis of the numbers we see, it is clear that, just as the republican party has lost almost every ballot test the last three and a half years, donald trump is losing the battle for public opinion right now on the handling of this virus. you can see it not just in the direct approval numbers and his

overall approval number, the approval number on how he is handling the virus, but you see the fact that, right now, it's also the case that, in the most recent poll, 2/3 of the country thinks the greater risk is to reopen the economy too soon, opposed to the third of the country that thinks the greater risk is to keep the lockdown orders in place and risk the economy. trump is in a rush to reopen. the country doesn't want to reopen. 2/3 of the country says that's the risky course. trump is losing that argument, too. i think you're right. again, lots to play for here, but trump is losing right now. the party has lost with him at its head a lot the last three and a half years. >> what's remarkable is those very same people that, in january and february, werep parroting donald trump, saying this was a hoax, the press coverage was a hoax, they didn't need to drum it up, the same

people are now pushing again to try to reopen things before the overwhelming majority of americans are ready to reopen things. what is it? it's not going to reopen. businesses aren't going to reopen. i talked to a dear friend of mine who owns self-restaurants. very conservative guy. he was warning dpogovernor desantis. he's like, "man, you can't open yet. you open restaurants in miami, one person gets sick, nobody is coming to my restaurant in the panhandle for six months." we've got to do this the right way. we've got to follow what the doctors say. we've got to follow what the scientists say. this small business owner, like every small business owner i've spoken with says the same thin,. "when we reopen, we have to reopen it correctly.

if we don't reopen it correctly, things are going to be even worse and we're going to be driven out of business." ed luce, one person who understands that, who got a near deathbed conversion, boris johnson. reported in your fine newspaper, "the financial times." poor boris johnson is saying, "wait, hold on, baby. let's not open the government quite yet, the businesses quite yet. let's take it slowly and be smart with how we reopen london and great britain." >> he had to very nearly meet his maker to learn that. thank god he didn't meet his maker. he was later to say, you know, highly professional national health service saved his life, many of whom were immigrants, by the way. he has had a road to damascus, a very dramatic one, and he's become hypercautious and, i

guess, extra studious about what is going to be needed. the key thing though here is, you know, we have this idea that this is a sort of on/off process. it's not. it's a long journey. we're not on lockdown to then go back to normal. we're on lockdown to buy time. that's essentially what this is all about. it's about buying time. buying time to research, to be able to get a vaccine, to get better equipped, to get these swabs and reagents that trump keeps saying are coming, but governors keep telling us they can't find. to get the ventilators, to get the personnel trained, to get -- and this is really important and there hasn't been much attention on it -- to get the contact traces. this is a skilled job, and there aren't many of them. if we're lifting the lockdown, have testing, and monitor, we

have to have traces ramped up. i didn't see any of that in the guidelines that president trump published last week, about lifting the lockdown. this phased lifting of the lockdown. i didn't see any of the actual plans laid out by the white house as to how we were going to get from a to b to c to d. ready to go back to c, if necessary. how we were going to have the resources and coordination that this requires. it was really a list of aspirations rather than a plan that the white house brought out. i hope boris johnson has a plan. so far, he's more on the aspirational side, i fear. >> ed luce, thank you very much. still ahead on "morning joe," the mayor of new york city, bill de blasio, is our guest. shake shack had $100 million cash on hand, yet walked away

with a nice krchunk of chain fr the government's bailout of the small businesses. the chain is giving the money pack as millio back as millions of americans face the prospect of going broke. we'll see the latest in washington when we come back. ♪

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target, small businesses, as well as -- as well-off companies and wealthy benefitted from the program. one such example of this, shake shack, which just returned 10 million dollars, originally collected through ppp, after facing widespread criticism. good thing they returned it. it was the right thing. >> right thing to do. >> joining us, capitol hill correspondent and host of "kasie d.c." on msnbc, kasie hunt. and economic analyst steve rattner. >> kasie hunt, we've heard the horror stories. we've heard about all the money that the richest people in america have made in tax benefits, tax incentives, off of these last deals. we are now hearing the stories about how steruth's steakhouse

shake shack and corporations are making tons of money. i know you've heard this, too. every small business owner i talk to are saying they're not getting the help they need. it is so widespread. i've yet to talk to one small business owner, and i've talked to a lot, or talked to somebody who talked to a small business owner who said, "boy, this really helped me out." mainly, they're getting a lot of noes from their banks. >> this is a network, right, joe, that small businesses in, i'm sure, your community, here in washington, d.c. i interact with, a lot of them know each other. we have a couple small restaurants we're loyal to here. we talked to the people who own them. in those conversations, people are incredibly frustrated with how this program has played out. many of them were in line before the doors were even open. they were sending their forms and applications in as soon as they possibly could. then it seemed to feel almost random to them. they either didn't hear anything

back, or they're still waiting. they've been told they're approved but they haven't seen any money yet. it feels, to them, very, very random. one small business owner i spoke to whoen b banked with wells fa for example, there was a feeling that wells fargo, the people keeping the most money at the bank was getting paid first. wells fargo was making the decision. i heard from a couple folks who said they were able to access loans, who were good examples of smaller companies in communities this program was designed for. the commonality in those instances was they felt like they had somebody at the bank that they worked with who was really busting their butt to help them. there was somebody in there who was, you nknow, knocking at the door of the small business administration hour after hour after hour. that seems to be the difference here. if you have somebody at a bank who is on your side, it is easier to get the money. if you don't, it's been harder.

that's one of the things congress is beginning going to in the next bill. $60 billion set aside for people specifically in underserved, minority communities. >> i know people who actually have been loyal to banks for decades. i actually put in a lot of deposits for their small businesses that said they're leaving their bank. they're leaving local banks. others are leaving their national chain banks. it is bizarre. you're exactly right. i've heard the same thing, if you know somebody inside the bank that can lobby for you, you're in good shape. if you don't, you're out of luck. kasie, let me ask you about the new deal that may be coming down the road between the white house and congress. where do those talks stand right now between speaker pelosi and the treasury secretary? >> reporter: i was texting with some sources. they're telling me it is not final yet, but we are under the impression, and folks have been telling us through the weekend,

this is basically imminent. they were expecting a deal late last night, perhaps at some point this morning. this is the result of nancy pelosi and chuck schumer drawing a line in the sand and saying, "we're not just sending more money to the small business program without some new rules." republicans have accused them of holding up money for small businesses. there's nobody that says they don't want to put more money in the program. everybody agrees that this is something that, you know, they may not even have enough billions. they may not be able to send enough billions into this program, the way they'd like to. right now, it sounds like they're going back and forth on final details around testing. like i said, there will be money set aside for these more -- the smaller, underserved, minority and women-owned businesses, to try to get money past just the big chains. what is left out, i think, joe, is critical, and that is the aid for state and local government. that has been a big sticking

point throughout these negotiations. it was one of the things democrats are demanding. it sounds like there's emerging piano pa bipartisan agreement they need to send mup oney to states. it is for firefighters, police salaries, teachers, people on the front line right now. you have dpov knogovernors in b parties thiparty saying we need the help. >> steve rattner, pull back. the economy is at a dead stop. where are we headed here? >> the economy is at a dead stop, mika. where we're headed is into a very, very deep recession. almost certainly going to be substantially deeper than the great financial crisis was 10, 12 years ago. we're going to have massive unemployment. unemployment up over 15% for sure. probably already is in the

double digits. maybe 20% or more. it's going to go on for a long time. this chart you're looking at here shows that, essentially, based on the workers who already filed for unemployment insurance, we have lost as many jobs, about 22 million, as we've created in the entire decade after the financial crisis ended. it's not going to be one -- some people think it is going to be one of these things where the economy immediately snaps back as soon as we come out of this. kind of like the munchins coming out at "wizard of oz" after the wi house comes down. they're going to be slow to rehire and cutting capital expenditure budgets. nobody believes industries like travel will come snapping back, industries like restaurants will come snapping back. we're looking at a prolonged period of unemployment. the chart you saw flash by was basically that economists have been gradually making

unemployment projections more and more conservative, cautious, whatever you want to call it. we're almost certainly looking at double digit unemployment on election day of this year. political implications of that will be interesting. it just almost always takes longer to get out of one of these holes than when you get into it. by the way, the programs that we are talking about, including ppp, which is a good program for all of its flaws, at least well-intentioned. i'll put it that way. we haven't yet even started to talk about programs to actually restore the economy to health, like perhaps an infrastructure bill, thing s like that. basically, ways of getting people back to work, opposed to simply trying to cover their perils. the last thing, programs put in place, ppp, designed to cover eight weeks of payroll for the small businesses, or like the addition to unemployment insurance, which would cover four months of additional benefits for people, these programs do cover a short period of time, eight weeks, four

months, periods of time that end well before anybody thinks the unemployment in this country -- unemployment problem in the country will be opver. you see long-term unemployment. the gray line at top, close to -- >> we lost rattner's audio there. whoa, pretty blogloomy forecast ahead. kasie hunt -- >> it is a gloomy forecast. what are you expecting today? >> reporter: well, joe, i mean, i think that what rattner just laid out there shows you the kind of pressure that everyone is understand heing here in washington. it is so hard to get your head around it. there may come a point where there isn't much left for washington to do. i mean, we've already spent $2.2 trillion, and i think, you know, the subtext of conversations

that i'm having with members and staffers, as they haggle over these small things, is this kind of looming, bigger question of, "what if we get to a point where what we're doing doesn't work anymore?" i hate to be doomsday about it, but this is a crisis on an order of magnitude we could never -- perhaps we could argue, it could have been anticipated, but that we certainly didn't expect. one thing that i know we've -- we're almost harping on this, but one of the last sticking points in the negotiation, i'm told this morning, is how to spend the money on testing. whether private companies should be more involved or whether the federal government should take more responsibility. i just think that the idea that we're going to go back to any form of normal, that we're going to start, you know, taking the correct turn on those lines on rattner's charts, if we can't test everybody immediately, quickly, and trace the contacts right away, all of this is a

pipe dream. i think that's why you had lawmakers, angus king got really angry at mike pence on a phone call over the weekend, saying, "what are you guys doing about this?" until we solve this piece, it is unclear -- and no matter how much money we give the small businesses, it won't make any difference. >> kasie hunt, thank you so much. great show last night. you got squeezed down because of the president, but you put it into context very well. >> thank you. coming up, the state of florida has a lot of people, but not a whole lot of testing. we're going to get an update on those numbers amid the governor's new order to get the beaches back open. "morning joe" is back in a moment. give me your hand! i can save you... lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need!

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florida residents returned to the beaches on friday after governor ron desantis gave the green light to reopen parts of the coast. people could be seen along the jacksonville coast. some less than 6 feet apart, swimming, surfing, and tanning. on friday, florida's department of health announced more than 1,400 additional infections with an additional 516 coronavirus cases reported on saturday, bringing the state total to 25,269. the total number of fatalities reached 740. now, desantis told local leaders friday that they were free to reopen beaches as long as social distancing guidelines were enforced. according to the guidelines, coolers, chairs, blankets,

towels, and grills are not permitted. surfing, swimming are allowed, but not sunbathing. i think that makes sense. >> let me -- >> oh, let's -- >> i want to talk to john heilemann first. john, you're a california guy. >> yeah. >> we know that a big part of california culture, a big part of florida culture, is walking on the beach. you know, i've got no problem with beaches being open if people walk. again, not congregate. people need to get out of their houses. it is just like the public parks. not so sure it is the wise move to close it down. you could open up public parks, let people get out, get fresh air, exercise, walk with their families and friends, as long as they socially distance. i know that #florida morons was going around this weekend when

he reopened some of the beaches. if social distancing is respected, that's actually good for people to get out and walk. good for their health. good to build up their lungs. good for a lot of different reasons. >> yeah. look, i agree with that. i think the problem for governor desantis, as you know, joe, is that florida is a very big state that was very, very late to the party. if you think about other big states, places like new york, places like california, that you mentioned, they were on the band wagon very early. they were leaders. i shouldn't say they were on the band wagon. they were late to understanding we needed the draconian stay at home orders. you were allowed, including in los angeles, for instance, where eric garcetti has been tough on the stay at home thing as any mayor in the country, you're still allowed to walk in los

angeles. you can ride your bike. there's things you're allowed to do in los angeles. i don't think anybody, in principle, has a problem with that. the problem they have is the notion that florida was so lax about it for so long. the fact that desantis is doing this right now seems to indicate that he is going to, having been late to move towards social distancing, he's now going to be early to try to open up the state. this is kind of a leading indicator that he is going to try to reopen the state, having just barely shut it down. he'll try to reopen it ahead of when would be safe. >> let's bring in right now state attorney for palm beach county, dave aronberg. a lot to talk about, dave. i think the biggest problem right now in the state of florida is the fact that, obviously, we've got a lot of senior citizens who are dying in nursing homes. you can go to every county and disproportionately, areas that are hit are the seniors. we should be concerned about

younger floridians going out, seeing their parents and grandparents, and their grandparents getting sick or dying. that leads to testing. help us out. you keep me updated pretty regularly on how things are going in the state of florida. let's talk about testing. what's the latest there? >> joe, we've had about 258,000 tests in the state. that's not people tested. that's the number of tests. some people are tested multiple times. our state is 21.5 million people. we're not where we need to be. we have not flattened the curve, and we have not achieved what the president's own task force says needs to happen before you reopen. which is a 14-day downward trajectory of cases. you have people probably waiting in line at hard rock stadium, as they do, waiting for drive-through testing, only to get to the front of the line and be told the tests are gone. they only have 400 per day. it is a frustrating experience.

after enough complaints, the state late last week increased the number of tests at the location to 700 from 400. also, i looked at statistics statewide. the last three days, the state has increased the number of overall tests. that's a step in the right direction. but we risk undoing our progress if you reopen our beaches and other facilities too soon. >> let's talk about governor desantis. again, in many ways, he just hasn't seemed to have taken this pandemic seriously, from the very beginning. even though he has so many senior citizens, a lot of whom are dying in florida. why has he designated wwe as an essential activity? i know the connections between donald trump and wwe are very close, but seriously? making wwe a, quote, essential

activity, just smacks of such partisan hackery. i'm even caught off guard by it. >> governor desantis ran as a disciple of president trump. it is no surprise he's taking his cues from the white house. i have to say, in full disclosure, i've been a pro chestling f wrestling fan. i think willie geist has been one in the day. perhaps having the shows in a closed arena, no fans, a skeleton production crew, testing amongst the performers, may not be a threat to the public. but it wreaks of politics. it makes you think it is being allowed because of politics. he allowed large religious gatherings despite the stay at home order. mcmahon, who runs the wwe, sits on president trump's economic committee to reopen the country.

president trump is in the wwe hall of fame. linda mcmahon, the wife of vince, served in president trump's cap nbinet, and head ofe small business administration, until she left to run president trump's super pac. the timing of governor desantis' decision seems suspect. his announcement that pro wrestling was an essential activity came on the day the super pac announced it was spending $18.5 million in florida. is it a coincidence or politics? a lot of us think it's the latter. >> of course, there were reports, mika, that gyms, donald trump announced gyms should reopen the day after he spoke to the owner of equinox. this is a guy that, again, he may think that he is being shrewd by talking to these business owners and then talking about reopening these areas, but he is being too clever by half.

all their money, all the political contributions they're going to throw his way will be worthless if people start going back into gyms and get sick. >> for sure. >> i don't think they'll go back to the gyms. i don't think they'll go to wrestling matches. i don't think any of this is going to work. >> beaches and parks are a bigger conversation, which we can have. sta state attorney for palm beach county, dave aronberg, thank you very much. remember this line from the president in the middle of a briefing last month on the deadly pandemic? >> one thing secretary of state pompeo is extremely busy. if you have any question, can you do that? i'd like him to go back to the state department, or as they call it, the deep state department. >> we're going to talk to pulitzer prize-winning journalist david rhode about his new book, "in deep." plus, governor andrew cuomo

says the state may be finally passed the plateau. mayor de blasio joins us at the top of the hour. that's ahead on "morning joe." things on your mind. staying connected shouldn't be one of them. that's why we're offering contactless delivery and set-up on all devices. and for those experiencing financial hardship due to this crisis, we'll work with you to keep your service up and running. hi! because at at&t, we're always committed to keeping you connected.

the whole situation is -- the testing has been amazing, actually, what they've been able to produce in such a short period of time. you had mentioned 4 million tests before. >> by the end of the week, hopefully. >> next week. >> the following week. >> what number will it be? >> up to 4 million tests available in the united states by the end of next week. >> a million tests are in the field. by the end of the week, another 4 million tests will be distributed. >> i was watching. they have a million tests out now. over the next few days, they'll have 4 million tests out. frankly, the testing has been going very smooth. >> a month ago, we had done 80,000 coronavirus tests in america. this weekend, we cleared more than 4 million. >> hard to watch.

45 days, for 4 million tests. that's for 320 million americans. this is not a milestone. >> again -- >> this is not something to be proud of. >> what they don't understand is video of them lying about testing is forever. >> forever. >> that video, jonathan lemire, they have lied about testing time and again. i know you've talked to white house officials all the time. i've spoken with white house officials a lot, for t. for the first time in three and a half years, once the pandemic hit. my message is the same, "testing, testing, testing." this is a health care crisis. testing, testing, testing. i'm always guaranteed that next week, you'll love what's announced on tuesday. you'll love what's announced on wednesday. you're going to love what we're saying about testing. all those clips were all

guarantees, and all of those guarantees ended up being lies. now, we can talk about how the white house, and especially donald trump, lies to us, seemingly every day about testing. but can you give us some insight into why they're lying, why this is so difficult for them? i'm sure if they can wave a magic wand, they'd test. why have they failed so fi miserably on testing, when everybody across the world has said, "if you want to reopen the economy, testing, testing, testing." everybody that's come on our show said that. testing isn't the be all, end all. people are still going to die, even with testing. but we can test. we can trace. we can treat. we can reopen segments of the society. instead of just flying blind and risking the lives of senior citizens and people with

underlying -- and also, of course, our health care workers. why has it been so hard? why have they lied so much? why can't they still get it right as we move through the second half of april? >> there are still so many unfulfilled promises on testing, joe. you played a bunch of them. there are a few things at play. first, the initial cdc test developed back in january. while cdc was working on that, they did not allow the private sector to make their own tests. cdc thought they could handle it on their own. not only was it a mistake, but that test failed. the u.s. was behind other countries in terms of testing capabilities. once the test came online, the production was slow to ramp up. they have not put the resources necessary to do it. now, what we're seeing, and there's a lot of reporting over the weekend about this from the "new york times" and other places, about the development of these antibody tests, which also

will, of course, be important for the nation to safely begin to reopen. now, they're taking the opposite approach. instead of limiting it to the cdc, they're letting everyone do it. opening the market to do it. according to the reporting, a lot of the tests that have come online are faulty. they're not working. they're not reliable. that's not going to instill the confidence needed in workers and employers to go back out there and reenter society. the president, as we've discussed, is so anxious to begin this process. he was pushed off easter, now targeting may 1st to open parts of the country. he said some states might slowly start doing that this week. a lot is, as we wrote this weekend for the "associated press," is him and his campaign growing increasingly worried about how the battleground states map looks this november. unemployment rates are so high in states like michigan, they're growing in states like florida. internal polling on the trump campaign has him down nearly

double digits in michigan, a state that, as two trump advisers say, the white house isn't ready to write-off, is growing pessimistic about the president's chances of keeping florida because of his close ties to governor desantis. we discussed last block that he's taken criticism here. florida is put in play. they're less confident than they were. of course, there was the worrisome result for republicans in the supreme court race last week in wisconsin. there's growing signs here. though the campaign is saying to the president, "hey, slow down, tap the brakes. a loss in american lives won't be forgiven by voters in november." the president is still trying to push open the economy. >> we're at a matter of life and death. >> mika, again, there are people in the media, in trump's media, the apologists for trump, the propagandists for trump, who are pushing to reopen the economy. let me just say, i'm usually talking to donald because i know he watches the show. hi, donald. how you doing? the press conferences, donald,

really bad for you. look at your numbers and ratings and make it go down. you should stay at home and watch old boxing matches. i watched ali and frazier i this past weekend with jack, to show him the fight of the century. he loved it. time better spent. let your scientists do stuff. mika, the thing is, as he was saying, this is -- like, it's bad for donald trump to keep going out there talking. it's bad for donald trump to attack swing state governors. look at this poll. who do you think is working? who do you trust? 66% of americans say their governors. only 36% say donald trump. when donald trump says, for instance, quote, liberate michigan, well, you know, that is to piss off people in the media.

that's just to piss off liberals. predictably, it is so easy to get them angry, and he loves that. what he doesn't realize is that 8%, that 8% that wants to fire fauci, a lot will put dpguns around their neck, go to the statehouses and protest like they did in michigan. it drives down his numbers even more. okay. we're going to own the libs, and we're going to own the media, but while doing that, we're going to hurt donald trump n, t person we're trying to help political politically. this is the definition to cut off your nose to spite your face. this doesn't work, donald. >> a lot of other people -- >> let yourself -- >> -- are worried about dying. >> do what joe biden said. you don't have to admit it was joe biden who said it. do what he said the end of january. let your scientists and doctors speak, and you stay off stage.

you'll get the benefit of that. if they do what's right, you'll get the benefit of that. >> well, yeah, the governors have spoken. both democrat and republican governors have some of the hardest hit areas in the country. yesterday, they pushed back against the administration's claims that states have the adequate supplies and testing capacity to reopen. >> that's a lie. people know it's a lie. >> i think this is probably the number one problem in america, and has been from the beginning of this crisis, the lack of testing. i've repeatedly made this argument to the leaders in washington on behalf of the rest of the governors in america. i can tell ya, i've talked to governors on both sides of the aisle nearly every single day. the administration, i think, is trying to ramp up testing. they are doing some things with respect to private labs. to try to push this off, to say the governors have plenty of testing, and they should just get to work on testing, somehow,

we aren't doing our job, is absolutely false. >> the president and vice president have been saying over the past few days that the u.s. has enough testing capacity for states to begin opening back up, if you feel you're ready to go into phase one. is that the case in virginia? do you have enough tests to do the tests you need to do? >> jake, that's just delusional, to be making statements like that. we have been fighting every day for ppe, and we have got some supplies now coming in. we have been fighting for testing. it's not a straight forward test. we don't even have enough swabs, believe it or not. >> our big problem today -- i could probably double, maybe triple testing in ohio virtually overnight, if the fda would prioritize companies that are putting a slightly different formula together for the extraction reagent kit. if the fda would do that, we

have a shortage, worldwide shortage of the materials that go into this. so we really need help. anybody in the fda is watching, this would really take our capacity up. literally, chuck, overnight. that's what we need to get moving in ohio. >> similar to ohio, i think part of the story in michigan is we have the capacity to double or triple the number of tests we are doing, but we need some of these supplies. the reagents and the swabs are absolutely essential. you can't process all these tests if you can't take the sample and protect it. and move forward through testing. while our capabilities are there, these important supplies are not. >> all right. joining the conversation, we have washington anchor for bbc world news america katty kay. and donny deutsche is with us, as well. >> donny, let's follow up on what i've been talking about today. you have -- sorry. i'm distracted.

let me see donny again. >> no, don't. >> i want to see. >> it's not. we're not there yet. having fun with his bad outfits. >> if you can't make fun of how donny looks, what is that? >> i belief that is donny on the cover of a magazine. >> i don't know. >> okay. >> what? >> donny, i've been talking about, again, it's part of this bigger theme, like liberals freak out and say, "oh, donald trump is getting away with everything. what are we going to do?" like we've been hearing it for three years. he gets away with nothing. the voters pummel him. they pummelled him in 2017 in virginia. they pummelled him in kentucky in 2019. they pummelled him in historic manner in 2018, in a landslide of historic -- literally historic proportions. he gets away with nothing. now, he's going out lying for two, two and a half hours a day.

i'll just say it again, i've said it enough, that those rallies shouldn't be held on tv. all these doing -- if i were a supporter of his, i would say, those rallies shouldn't be held on tv. they are damaging his brand. you look at the numbers. donald trump doesn't take the threat serious -- or did donald trump take the threat seriously enough? 65% of americans, almost 2 out of 3 americans say he did not. only 32%, less than 1/3, say he did. who do you trust, the governors or donald trump? we showed two republican governors and two democratic governors. they're all doing a great job in their state. they all have huge approval ratings in their state. donald trump is lying about them. lying about the fwgovernors. 66% of americans say they trust their governors. 36% say they trust donald trump. here's an example of, like, what

this guy is doing. of course, yes, it is enraging the liberals. it is enraging the media. people say that's the same thing. even while he's, quote, owning the libs, quote, owning the press, it's just like he's just handing one vote after another vote after another vote to joe biden. he's doing it in the swing states. like he insults the michigan governor, won't even call her by her name. talks about that lady. her numbers skyrocket. in wisconsin, republicans force people to decide between their health and democracy. we had a shocking result in wisconsin. voted for a liberal judge. that's like the last thing. like, if you had a chain of things that swing voters would do, the last thing they'd do is vote for a liberal judge. they did, even in kenosha. like florida, the swing state of florida, think about the senior

citizens whose votes he is losing every day. isn't this a great example of donald trump not being the political genius that people on the left are afraid that he is? i think he's just hurting himself right now. >> he's behaving like a political moron. it is interesting. 11 swing states right now. he's trailing 49-42. it's not just national. it is interesting, you can lie to people 10,000 times maybe about a phone call, a trial, about this. you can't lie to people about their own health, about their grandmother's health, brother's health, daughter's health. that's catching up to him. the gallup poll, he's dropped from 49% to 43%. that's his biggest, sharp drop in an entire presidency, 6 points. other world leaders, angela merkel is at 49%. just about every world leader, and every leader throughout history -- go back to george w.

bush and his 89% during 9/11. during these times, you get an extra 10%, 20% extra bump, on the, "hey, we have to be together and work as one." he is going the opposite direction because people aren't stupid. it is interesting, you know. if i got hired, somebody said, "hey, work on biden's campaign," i go, you don't need me. all you need to do is -- joe, you've run it 20 times on the show -- the calendar. guy cecil came on last week and showed a great ad from priorities usa. just tell the truth. that donald trump lied to you when it came to your health. that donald trump cared more about his re-election and opening the economy and put his head in the sand. i don't know how donald trump recovers. on the flip side, what do you have with joe biden, as you said earlier in the show? go back to "usa today" in january. you have comfort. you have an empathetic person who says, "i care about you."

the most simple, primal stance this man stands for. donald trump will not recover from this. every presidency is one thing. it's obamacare. it's ronald reagan ending the cold war. donald trump, in this one thing, is how he rmishandled the coronavirus. it's lives, 40,000 right now. i believe this will be his waterloo in spades. >> the thing is, it didn't have to be this way. i even said on this show, mika, a month ago or so, maybe even more, "let's not talk about the past. let's talk about the future." we can sort out the past in november. let's talk about getting the testing right. let's talk about getting the ppes right. let's talk about getting care to the hospitals and the states right. yet, he's just still refusing to do that. >> we're paying that price. >> it's those press conferences every day that, just every day, he buries himself a bit more

every afternoon that he holds one of the press conferences. >> people see they are paying a price for his incompetence. in a moment, we'll talk to katty kay about her piece on the daunting reality of getting the united states back to normal, and how tough that will be. first, new york state appears to have passed its coronavirus peak. governor andrew cuomo announced yesterday that hospitalizations continue to fall, as he reported the lowest death toll in more than two weeks, at just over 500. the state's total now towers at more than 13,000 dead. roughly the same size as entire towns upstate. cuomo cautioned that the downward trend continues to be a big if, as long as new yorkers stick to the guidelines. joining us, the mayor of new york city, mr. bill de blasio. thank you, mr. mayor, for joining us.

let's start there, with sticking to the guidelines. if you could, please, talk about the challenges of asking new yorkers, people who live in new york city, to stick to the guidelines for months to come. >> yeah. mika, it's amazing that new yorkers have done what they've done. we really have to stop and sort of take stock of this. look, here's the most densely populated place in the country. this is the last place you'd think that social distancing and shelter in place would work. yet, new yorkers have taken to it. they've listened. they've followed through. they've helped each other through it. with the fact we're seeing some improvement is directly related to what everyday people have done. they really need to be recognized. the president, of course, loves to credit himself. i would like to credit everyday americans and everyday new yorkers who are doing this hard work of figuring out a new way of life, with no warning. they had to do it. that they're doing it. we see real progress. now, i caution the numbers you

just went over. we're still losing way too many people every day. there are far too many people in the icus. we're far from out of the woods. any discussion of a quote, unquote, restart, has to take into account we may have to make sure our people are healthy and we've beaten this disease, which is far from certain. new yorkers are doing their job. we should be very careful at all levels of government, and the federal government especially needs to get the memo, this thing ain't over. if you pretend it is over, it'll boomerang back and make it worse, actually. >> mr. mayor, katty kay has a question for you. >> mayor, thank you for joining us. you had hard words for the president over the weekend, asking if the white house just wanted new york to drop dead. do you get the sense from washington, a little bit like we've had throughout the history of this virus, that, somehow, it is somebody else's problem? for a while, it was china's problem. then it was a problem in italy

but not in my backyard. do you think new york is almost being ring fenced, as well? new york has this big problem. they can deal with it. it's not our problem. >> yeah, i think that's exactly what you're seeing. first of all, we all know, it is not just a new york problem. this is a problem all over our country. if it is not handled right, it will get worse in all kinds of states. this is a red state and blue state problem. it's bigger cities, but it is not just bigger cities. we see, obviously, in small towns of america, this problem, too. i think you're right. in the mind of donald trump, it becomes easier to say, "let me compartmentalize this away." here's the truth, first of all, 8.6 million americans living here who have walked through hell and are still fighting an extraordinary battle. they need their federal government to stand with them. that analogy i made the other day, reminiscent of the 1970s, where gerald ford turned his back on new york city.

i don't think donald trump wants to be in the company in history of gerald ford. or another great example, herbert hoover, who he acts like a lot. hoover literally ignored the totality of the great depression and let people suffer. you see too much of that with trump. right now, here is the nation's largest city. one of the great engines of the american economy. i'm asking for help to get back on her feet. right now, i want to give you a sobering figure. we are going to spend this year $3.5 billion to save lives and protect the health of new yorkers that we were never going to have to spend in a normal year. this crisis is so bad, we have to save lives. there's no other choice but to protect people. federal government is not saying, "we're going to make you whole for that extraordinary effort." my budget, i just announced, we've lost over $7 billion in revenue. right now, donald trump is not doing anything to help my city back on its feet. how am i going to pay for basic

services? how am i going to pay for first responders? how will i have a restart of my economy if my city is going broke? i know it is happening all over the country. you're hearing mayors, republican and democrat, i've talked to them, saying, "we're not going to be able to make it if we don't get help from the federal government, because we've just seen a hit on our budgets, a hit on our cities, a hit on our peopleune unestimable." senator cassidy said yesterday there needs to be aid for city and states, to get them back into the economy. anything short, you won't have the recovery. donald trump is silent, not seeming to care. >> we have new york's own donny deutsch with us. he has a question for you. >> mayor, keep up the good work. here is what i'm still not getting, and this is the million

dollar question that nobody seems to have an answer to. times square, there is a clip, and nobody is there. i walked on fifth avenue yesterday. there's nobody there. i still don't understand what the moderate step is, what the first step is, without testing, without a kwax sevaccine. i don't see how we get from a to b, whether a week from now or five weeks. june 1st, july 15th, what is the first step back for new york or anybody else? i can't see what it looks like. >> right. donny, that's because you're exactly right. the absence of testing from day one never allowed us to fight this war the right way. if we had testing in the beginning, we could have done an intensive containment strategy and may have been able to beat back this virus in many places. first, we have to drive down these numbers. when you're still losing hundreds of people a day, hundreds are dying a day, when

your icus are still full, it's not turning the corner. we have to keep driving that down with the social distancing, the shelter in place, all the things weir doi s we're doing. to be able to come back, you need testing to be, in our city, probably hundreds of thousands of tests a day. you need temperature checks going into workplaces. >> that's right. >> you need all sorts of things to make sure anyone who is sick is immediately isolated and quarantined. we can get there, but we can't do it without widespread testing. the federal government can't get a handle on that. you're right. weeks, months until we have the tools to start back to normal. >> donny deutsch, of course, wants to make sure everybody's temperature is taken before they go into tanning salons across the greater new york area. >> no. >> we have now -- >> joe, i feel blessed. i still can get you to come out and attack me, even in these times. that's when i know everything will be okay. >> this is true. >> you still have that ability to just bust my chops.

that makes me warm and fuzzy. >> in the words of -- immortal words of the reverend al green, everything is gonna be all right. let's go to jonathan lemire. mr. mayor, your favorite former new york daily news reporter who, i'm sure, is going to ask a question about your brooklyn gym. go ahead, jonathan. >> not today, mr. mayor. but it is about your home borough of brooklyn. a nursing home in cobble hill, brooklyn. it was reported over the weekend they've lost 55 residents. 55 residents at this nursing home have died to the coronavirus. that nursing home is just down the block from my family's apartment. my children had done some volunteer work there, have gotten to know some of the residents. my questions to you are this, how could this happen? is the city investigating it? more broadly, what steps are the city, and perhaps the state, doing to prevent something like this from happening again? >> it's horrifying, jonathan. it just shows you how intense,

how horrible this experience has been, how much this virus overtook us, particularly in the worst weeks. there's two different responsibilities here. the state of new york regulates, monitors nursing homes. they set the policies and the approach. the city of new york has been providing a lot of the supplies, the personal protective equipment, and whatever support we can, to help people there. our hospital system, obviously, is the -- that's been the line of defense. folks in the nursing homes who needed help, we'd get to the hospitals, that we've been trying to keep alive through this crisis, to get them help. something really has not worked out the right way, obviously. people in nursing homes have been so vulnerable and, somehow, have not gotten to the hospital when they needed to. there's something wrong. we'll have -- we have to figure it out now, and we have to figure it out afterwards, what we're going to do going forward. it is horrible. it is horrifying. it kind of reminds you that this crisis has taken us places you

could not have imagined in modern america. so many people have been vulnerable. it is also a warning of you cannot pretend that this ferocious disease is simply going to walk away at one point, or you flick a switch and it's gone. you have to recognize how dangerous it is. that's why that way back that donny was talking about, it has to be done the right way, or the disease can reassert and you'll see more tragedies like that. >> all right. mayor bill de blasio, thank you very much. donny deutsch, thank you, as well, on many levels. >> donny, thank you. you're great. we love you. >> tistill ahead -- >> tell-all t all the people yo zooming with, and i don't want to give names, that we're very good friends and we love having you on. >> love you, buddy. still ahead -- >> by the way, mika, do you really want to know what zoom chats donny is going into right

now? >> i don't. >> seriously. >> he's fine. good to have him on. >> spraying the -- >> okay. >> -- laptop. >> europe hit a grim, new milestone over the weekend, surpassing 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus. we'll get an inside look at italy's ongoing battle to fla l flatten the curve. hey allergy muddlers... achoo! ...do your sneezes turn heads? try zyrtec... ...it starts working hard at hour one... and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day.

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we're just inside the biggest hospital, the epicenter of thisan extremely wealthy, sophisticated hospital, and they say they're overwhelmed. doctors and nurses are working 8, 10-hour shifts. they can't leave this room because their ppes, protective clothing, has been contaminated. they can't waste that protective gear, which is precious around here. have you ever seen anything like this before? >> no. and i hope i never see it again.

>> that was footage from a recent vice news tonight episode on vice tv, with a rare look inside italy's fight to control covid-19. >> jo joining us is the emmy-award winning vice news correspondent, who embedded with the medical teams in italy's lombardy region for the report. also joining us is the council of foreign relations and author of "the world, a brief introduction." richard haass. >> we'll get to that in a minute, richard. we've been talking the first hour and a half of this show about how donald trump, and all the things that he's saying at the press conferences, and all the things he said from the beginning of this crisis, are going to cause him damage in a way he can't recover from. i've had a lot of people asking me, well, give us an example.

here's something joe biden put out this past weekend. just look, there's a great -- this is exhibit number one on how the lies are just hurting him. he needs to stop and just let his medical officials do the talking. here is the clip. >> he failed to act. now, trump and his allies are launching negative attacks against joe biden, to hide the truth. here are the facts. joe biden warned the nation in january that trump had left us unprepared for a pandemic. then biden told trump he should insist on having american health experts on the ground in china. >> i would be on the phone with china and making it clear, we are going to need to be in your country. you have to be open. you have to be clear. we have to know what's going on. >> but trump rolled over for the chinese. he took their word for it. >> the president tweeted, china has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus. the united states greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency.

>> china, i spoke with president xi, and they're working very, very hard. i think it's going to all work out fine. >> trump praised the chinese 15 times in january and february, as the coronavirus spread across the world. >> it's a tough situation. i think they're doing a very good job. >> are you concerned about the potential impact on the global economy? >> i think that china will do a very good job. >> trump never got a cdc team on the ground in china. the travel ban he brags about, trump let in 40,000 travelers from china into america after he signed it. not exactly airtight. look around. 22 million americans are out of work, and we have more officially reported cases and deaths than any other country. donald trump left this country unprepared and unprotected for the worst public health and economic crisis in our lifetime. now, we're paying the price. all the negative ads in the world can't change the truth.

>> of course, you have to do a fact-check on that, richard. it was put out a couple days ago. over 30,000 dead then. now, over 40,000 americans dead. that's an example. the more donald trump talks, the more he hurts himself. he should be quiet, let his scientists do the work on the coronavirus, and manage it the best he can. facts are stubborn things. the facts not only for donald trump, but especially china, are ugly. in both cases, china and donald trump chose to not be transparent. in both cases, it blew up in both of their faces, especially, i'll just say, with china in november and december. >> what's interesting, joe, is it is quite possible both countries and both leaderships will come out of the crisis worse for ware. neither has performed in any way the way he or she should. what's also interesting about this, china is an authoritarian

system. we're a democratic system. both of us performed terribly. when you look around the world, you say, germany has done okay. south korea did okay. what this tells me is that what's critical here is not the nature of the system, it's the nature of the leadership. angela merkel has clearly done well. president moon in south korea clearly has done well. people who took this seriously early, who have squared with their own people, who insisted on social distancing, who got testing squared away right. those steps taken early and taken with great discipline, those are the leaderships that have done well. again, the critical factor turns out to be much more the individual rather than the nature of the system. neither china nor america has done well for itself. >> richard, we talked about an article in your publication several months ago, well before this happened, about how president xi was becoming more autocratic. how he was becoming the singular

figure in china, in a way that nobody really had since chairman mao. there were concerns then that it could cause a real problem. well, it has caused a real problem. they covered up. they wouldn't share information with scientists in the west. they even made an example of the first doctor who tried to warn the world about it. he ended up dying. now, if you read the "financial times" this morning, like donald trump, they're trying to blame other people. they have up on their embassy website that french doctors and nurses are abandoning old and sick people in france. it's despicable. >> and it won't work. china's image is going to take a hit. i think xi jinping has put a lot of his credibility, a lot of his political future on the line. china's mimage around the world the region and the world, are

clearly going to suffer. look, when you're in power, you get benefit for things, even if you're not responsible for them, and you get blame. in this case, the blame or the responsibility are war reranted. i think china will get their share. the markets shouldn't have been open. china was slow to respond. it covered things up. it allowed millions to have people to leave wuhan who should have been locked down. china bears enormous responsibility. they can't be blamed for our own lack of preparations here. they can't be blame ding the world health organization. no leader and no organization at the center of the crisis has covered himself with credit. >> china, the world health organization, donald trump, all failed miserably. you look at china. you can find those places. you look at donald trump. mika, saying at the end of january saying china was doing a

great job. saying this would magically go away. it was only 15 people and soon to be down to zero. boy, it's been a colossal failure, all the way from pay ji beijing to washington, d.c. now isabel, your look inside an italian hospital where you embedded yourself for this vice special. tell us what you found and, also, what warnings you see that could apply to the u.s. if the u.s. isn't able to flatten the curve. >> yes. i mean, italy was the first western country to see this massive coronavirus outbreak. we've seen 23,000 people die of coronavirus in italy. that is the official number. we expect the unofficial number is a lot higher because italy doesn't count people dying in nursing homes and at home, sadly. what we saw on the ground is a country that is still in severe suffering and tragedy.

we went inside the icus we're seeing now. we saw first responder. we saw first on the front lines, people dealing with the sheer amount of funerals and bodies that are coming up from all this. you know, several weeks -- >> oh, she froze. katty kay, this is, again, you know, we can learn so much from what we see in a lot of the other countries. specifically, italy. isobel's look inside the hospital with profound suffering that she was able to see firsthand. for me, it seems to be such a disconnect, when president trump talks about reopening america, which everybody wants, everybody wants, everybody needs, but, again, without the proper facilities and testing in place, we're going to end up in a very bad place again. that's not me. that's scientists. >> yeah. the example we have, right, of

other countries. in some ways, the united states is fortunate to be able to look at the experiences of other countries and hopefully learn and say what worked and what didn't work. i remember at the beginning of all of this, we thought we would never be like italy. now, we have doctors in some places having to make the same choices. isobel, is it your understanding that italy, which is now starting to think about easing restrictions, is seeing things easier in hospitals? i know you were at the accept t epicenter of this. is it just as bad today in the hospitals? are they having to make those awful decisions? >> it is horrific. i was surprised at how horrific it was. as you said, things have gotten better. the daily death toll has decreased. but across the board, this is coming with a warning that, you know, if they do release the lockdown measures, all of a sudden, then they will see a massive second, if not third

wave. really what they're trying to-and-a-hato navigate is how to go about doing that. >> isobel of vice news, thank you so much. you can see isobel's full report on vice news' youtube page. thank you so much. great work. >> richard, let's take several steps back and talk about our relationship with china. obviously, i'm just going to say it, the pain, the suffering, the death, the economic chaos that china has let loose on the world is going to shape the world we live in for the next decade at least. it is fundamentallyaltered history. you can make the same case about donald trump's failures in january, february, and march. even his so-called ban let 40,000 people in from china. after the so-called ban. we're going to share the global stage with china for the next

40, 50 years. we just are. we're going to be the indispensable powers. how do we move beyond this? how do we build a constructive relationship with china, when people in congress, and working class americans, obviously, have a reason to be enraged at chinese leadership. >> joe, you raised what might be the fundamental question facing u.s. foreign policy for the next couple of decades. as you suggest, this will be the defining relationship of this era of history. if it goes well, we'll be able to tackle regional and global challenges. if it goes poorly, the yieunite states, china, and the world will suffer. it is hard to remember how hard this will be to get this right. this crisis will make it that much more difficult. all sorts of people on the hill now want to sanction china for

what it's done. the challenge is going to be, how do we deal with global challenges like the pandemic, like climate change, proliferation in places like north korea -- that hasn't gone away, though we're not focusing on it -- iran, how do we set rules for cyberspace? essentially every big issue, we need to figure out a way to get china to work with us. at the same time, we understand. look how fundamental differences are over taiwan, the south china sea? if there was a test for foreign policy, how do you push back where you have to, and how do you preserve areas for some cooperation where you want to? that's the way to think about it. i think the next secretary of state, because mike pompeo is clearly not doing it, the next secretary of state is going to have to make this relationship his or her priority. >> of course, china is a communist dictatorship. we understand that. that does not change the reality that the united states and china

are going to be sharing the world stage together. we can only pray that the chinese government, president xi, have learned that a lack of transparency actually ends up not just damaging his country, but ends up damaging the global economy. we have got to figure out a way forward with this relationship. first, you know what, after this is over, everybody is going to have to come to the table and be a hell of a lot more transparent, whether we're talking about china, the world health organization, or, yes, the trump administration. >> all right. richard haass, thank you so much. still ahead, is it possible that skepticism about a deep state slowed president trump's coronavirus response? our next guest is investigating the spread of conspiracy theories in the trump era. that's next on "morning joe." ♪

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now, the tables have turned. investigate the investigators, i guess. these were crooked people. these are bad people. these are very dangerous people. you know what they are though? they're scr they're scum, human scum. >> this is -- >> that is -- >> this is actually -- talk about a window into someone's soul. >> filthy. >> the president, of course, is

defending, in this clip, americans who lied to the fbi. >> yeah. >> public servants who were caught lying to the and with one or two of them they admitted they lied to the fbi and they pled but in president trump's eyes, it's the criminals who were the ones that were being picked on and it's our law enforcement officers, it's the fbi agents. it's the people that protect you and your family, not only from crooked politicians but also from gangs, from islamic terrorism, from home grown terrorism, alt right terrorism. they're heros. they go out every day and they risk their lives on the front line and a lot of the people

that donald trump was calling human scum, they have spent their entire lives on the front line protecting your family and my family. how revealing that even during the middle of the pandemic he calls our men and women in uniform, he calls the men and women, our law enforcement officers that try to protect this country day in and day out, quote, human scum because his lackeys decided on their own to abuse the trust that the american people gave them and instead lie to fbi agents. >> that sums it up. >> if you want a window into donald trump's soul, once again, he gave us a window into his soul and it's break. >> poll numbers are showing a response to this. joining us now is two-time

pulitzer winning prize journalist. he is out now with a new book entitled in deep, the fbi, the cia and the truth about america's deep state. >> thank you for being with us. talk about what has been unleashed over the past 3.5 years which of course has been out there. i mean, you can go all the way back to timothy mcvey and go back to the so-called malitia movements. what has been unleashed. >> you're right. this has been around a long time and to be fair i started this book because there was a poll that came out in 2018 and it showed that 70% of americans believed there was a secret group of government officials and military officials manipulating policy in washington. and there is a long history of abuse by the fbi and the cia but

it has been compaexasperated in area. so i wrote this book. and how do we control presidents? how powerful should a president be. >> jonathan is with us and has a question. john thab. >> so it's documented. and a number of other attempts to, he believe, undermine him. talk to us if you will about how that distrust may have played a role in the governments response to this pandemic. were there positions not filled that should have been? information that was presented to him that he did not believe? talk to us about how that may have played out and it may have cost some americans their lives. >> president trump, throughout

his career has been disdainful on expert opinion and this played out in the coronavirus, there's been great reporting about him down playing warnings he was getting from medical experts. the most famous one would be dr. anthony fauci. there was a famous one where he referred to the state department as the deep state department and was immediately attacked online. and then, you know, in some of the protests over the last few days there's been a fire fauci chant. so i don't know exactly -- i can't prove the number of cases or infections or how this happened but there's a dangerous dynamic of the president being very skeptical of the government officials around him. it may have very likely slowed his response to coronavirus and

it's this price of conspiracy theories and brutal winner take all politics we're engaged in at this moment in american history. >> we heard about the fire fauci tweets. the president retweets it. you would think this is really catching on and then you see a poll that 60% of americans trust what he says. only 8% do not. it is a small percentage but sadly it's a small percentage of people off the mainstream political grid that this president actually listens to. >> it seems like the vast majority of people in fairfax county are actually listening to the authorities and to the civil servants, but, david, do you think that going forward, is there almost a broader skepticism of government generally and government departments that going to make

it hard for us to come out of this? if you look at the countries that handled the success for you and you look at germany and iceland and south korea, there doesn't seem to be the same expertise. how do we get out of this if the cdc isn't fully empowered and the nih isn't fully empowered. if they're not fully empowered and believed in by the white house and the exec you tiff is it going to make it harder for us to get out of this? >> it is. this is a broad problem. there's people on the left that fear the government as well. they use the term the military industrial complex and fear generals and defense contractors putting us in endless wars on. on the right this will continue after donald trump is no longer in office.

it's creating and exacerbating our fear of government and it's a very clear political tactic he uses from the moment that he entered politics. was barrack obama born in the united states? and at the same time he hides information about himself and that's what concerns me the most is there's a growing lack of tra transparency by the trump administration and we don't know what's happening in the white house and that's fuelling public distrust and facts matter. basic facts. what do we do? coronavirus shows how important that is. >> all right. the new book is in deep. the fbi, the cia and the truth about america's deep state. david rhode, thank you for coming on this morning. still ahead, president trump is pushing to reopen the u.s. economy next month but a group of experts in economics, public

health, and technology say there's a lot to be done before that safely happens. we'll take a look at that new road map. those experts are laying it out. plus new questions this morning about how the coronavirus originated after a lab in wuhan denies any link to the first outbreak. nbc's kier simmons joins us with the new reporting. we're back in two minutes. so strong. you power through chronic migraine, 15 or more headache or migraine days a month. one tough mother. you're bad enough for botox®. botox® has been preventing headaches and migraines before they even start for almost 10 years, and is the #1 prescribed branded chronic migraine treatment. botox® is for adults with chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting 4 hours or more. effects of botox® may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. alert your doctor right away, as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness

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many governors are doing this incredible work and they're working with us closely on testing. some governors have gone too far. some of the things that happened are maybe not so appropriate. i want to thank governor cuomo, the relationship there for the whole thing. we're building hospitals. we're working very well with the governors. pretty much almost all of them. a couple of them no matter what

you do you'll never satisfy them. you could find the cure tomorrow and they'll never be satisfied. they'll find a reason to complain. wise guys. >> so he likes the governors when they flatten the curve but not when they push back on lifting the lock downs. he likes them when the presidents stabilize but not when they ask about long-term planning. as conservative writer windsor mann describes it, trump's plan is to take credit for what the governors do well and to blame them for everything that he does poorly. >> you can see that and you have seen it over the past several days when first, the president also, when governor cuomo decides hey if the president isn't going to lead we're going to get governors to leave you really called it that moment and said oh, boy, now watch how donald truch -- trump responds. he came out and said i have total power and total authority.

whatever he said that no other president ever said before and then he realized if he took total authority then he would have total blame for every death that moved forward after that. in his mind. so he shifted it back to the governors. >> right. >> and then after shifting it back to the governors, he decided the next day he was going to actually try to attack the governors. these lib rat michigan and lead to people taking military style weapons to state houses and carrying them around and boy, talk to david french about the smartness of that and then after that he then responds by trying to praise all the governors but just so you know and just so

everybody watching knows that obviously you're concerned by the reckless protests where people were close together and you had people bringing military style weapons to state houses, it's more of the same. it's damaging to the health and wellbeing of millions and millions of senior citizens and other people with underlying health conditions and healthy americans as well. it's also damaging to his standings. they fear easing lock down restrictions a lot more than they do fearing having those restrictions in place to keep americans safe because as you have said and as i have said, donald trump can blather all he wants and people can go around

and carry around guns at state capitals all they want, but we're not talking about the british. we're talking about american doctors. and american scientists. we're talking about the very people that you mocked when they told you in january and february that the pandemic was coming. you remember you did that, right? you were saying this was all a scam. do you remember that? boris johnson was saying i have to go on and live my life. that was you then. and this is you now. as we're finally bending the curve because unlike you we all as americans listen to those doctors and 60% of americans say, you know what, i've had moms and grand moms and dads and grandads and friends that i know die the most heinous death imaginable. i tell you what we're going to

do is keep listening to the doctors and stop listening to politicians freaking out because they're diving in the polls right now. >> they're holding the person in charge, the president of the united states accountable and when they look to what's happening in their lives, they look to the top person in charge which would be president trump. with us this morning we have white house reporter for the associated press. msnbc national affairs analyst and co-host of show time's the circus and editor in chief of the recount and u.s. national editor at the financial times join us. >> so ed, i want to go to you quickly with an article that i read from your publication this morning. and i'm just going to get a quote out of it because it's pretty -- oh, what's the word? not chilling. that puts a deviousness on donald trump that he doesn't deserve because he is such a day trader.

i'll just say this. like china, like trump, as part of a global chinese campaign of shifting blame from beijing's response to the covid-19 pandemic, the chinese embassy published a letter claiming that french nurses abandoned their posts and left old people to die of hunger and disease. the chinese are doing just what donald trump is doing. donald trump is doing like the chinese are doing. they both screwed up monumentally. both are going to be blamed by historians for most of what has happened since december. the chinese that are beginning and then donald trump with his slow response especially in january and february. but here you have donald trump blaming the who and donald trump blaming the governors and donald trump blaming china and donald trump blaming everybody but himself of course and the chinese are doing the same thing

on the global level. i don't think it's going to work for either. >> that's a very good point. in our mind we have this binary idea and the chinese have that idea that it's a zero sum game. clearly, both countries systems in different ways for different reasons have failed spectacularly. we can later on go back and look. they suppressed information about it for a critical three weeks or so but the idea that it's one or another is observed. there are smaller countries with fewer pretensions that have less to fall back on and not playing a geopolitical game that have done well and whose systems have done well. i would have included singapore

in that group and maybe we still should wut unfortuna-- but unfo it's been a 20% surge. they have had 1,500 new infections or so which really underlines the point both the chinese and the americans should be looking at. which is even the best performing systems even after the best early action to contain this virus and distancing measures, once you start relaxing it can come back even in the systems in places like singapore and neither china or america or the leaders of china or america are educating their people. this isn't a magic number and it's a long haul and a marathon and it requires public information that neither president trump or xi jingping

are even attempting to provide. >> you know, the president of the united states made the terrible mistakes that he made in january. we could argue about i think january 22nd him telling cnbc and while he was in davos it's only one person from china and soon it's going to be down to zero. throughout the entire month of february while his own officials were freaking out and everybody inside the white house knew, in fact, they knew if you look at the list of the state department , the cdc, they all new in early january, and donald trump wastes all of february, all of february, even after his ban went into effect at the end of january, wastes all of february saying it's going to go away in april, nothing to see here, it's 15 people, soon it's going to be down to zero and the end of february he's talking about how it's a hoax.

that the medical communities overreaction to it is a hoax. and so you have china wasting november and december lying to us and we know that they're lying to us. our medical officials know they're lying to us and then in january donald trump spends all of january talking about what a great guy president xi is and how the chinese are being so transparent and doing everything. the people of the united states would like to thank president xi and the people of china for what a great job that you're doing on the virus. nothing to worry about here and donald trump says that in january. and then he says in february, it's going away magically and he said it will go away magically when it warms up. i checked my calendar yesterday. we're in april.

and guess what happened in april when he said it was going to magically go away? we just crossed the 40,000 person death total. 40,000 americans dead. >> i think a good way to think about this is that it's a bookended by his last two foreign trips. the one that you mentioned in davos near the end of january and then one he took to india a month later which i was with him for that: in davos, he as you said, down played this. there was only one american case of coronavirus that we knew of at that point and my colleagues and i last week got a detailed

account of his actions between davos and india and i think i should better say that as his inactions because outside of that china restriction that you point out was not a total ban. tens of thousands of people were still able to travel between china -- from china to the united states. and it wasn't only until his return from india at the end of february and that's when, importantly -- that's when the u.s. stock market first took a real blow from the coronavirus concern. he was in india and he was monitoring that frantically. prior to that aids had come to him repeatedly with warnings and he was too focused on impeachment trial and then later as we reported at the time didn't want to indeed insult china and xi jing ping because he wanted this year to make a china trade deal part of what could get that done and make it part of his re-election pitch. >> and jonathan, really quickly

also, something that you know about johnen thnathan, while he flying back from india one of his health care officials that i think was related to -- i forget the justice department general name rod rosenstein. how quickly we forget. somebody related to him comes out and says this is going to be bad. americans need to be prepared. and donald trump becomes enraged and says that xi is overreacting just like he said how many times, at least on two different occasions that hhs secretary azar was overreactling. and he was more worried about

wall street than keeping main street safe and healthy. >> that's right. he first previewed to reporters that the coming virus was going to be worse than people anticipated. her message ran contrary to what the president said the entire month of february including in a number of rallies where he down played it and said it would disappear at some point during april and he lashed out at her when he indeed landed back at joint base andrews at the end of february and it was only then that there was a belated effort by this administration to try to get ahead of this and as we documented every day on the show fell so woefully behind on a number of fronts, most particularly testing. we had a very combative president trying to defend the administration's efforts on tests. trying to again push the governors to pick up the slack.

he was going to produce more swabs that could be part of the testing process and he didn't name which company he was going to compel to do that and the white house didn't respond for more clarification. that's something that we need to keep an eye on to see if he follows through but there's a real defensiveness that's grown in particular in the last week as the president is starting to really be concerned about how this could impact his re-election chances again in november. coming up, a tale of two washingtons. washington state and washington d.c. a new documentary explores the stark contrast on how the proplaces responded to the outbreak in very different ways. it's a fascinating book and it's straight ahead on morning joe. did you know prilosec otc can stop frequent heartburn

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news wall street journal poll the number is up one point since last month. 44% say they approve. 65% said that trump did not take the coronavirus threat serious enough in the beginning. 36% say they post his opinion of the coronavirus compared to 66% that say they trust the state's governor. you see the latest adds that are strong that show clearly that joe biden say this coming. he was writing about this in usa

today in january. >> in january. he saw it coming in the direction of the united states. he called on the white house, the president, the administration to take it seriously. they did not. >> donald trump needs to stop doing these nightly press conferences. not only for the safety and the health of the american people but also for his own political fortunes because every night he goes out and damaging himself by his being a day trader and just shoots from the hip and says whatever. >> you see him get angry if anyone brings up facts that get in the way of him looking good and it's -- i talked earlier about the emperor's clothes falling off. it's not good for him to show

that to the american people. >> he's doing something else too. it's like a guy being told by his lawyer, don't talk. whatever you say it's going to be used against you. so just don't talk. make sure that you measure every word because what happens is donald trump goes out and he rambles. he says stupid things. he says things that are lies and all he does is he gives joe biden's campaign, he gives democrats just 2.5 hours of material every night so fact check against all the things that they already have from january and february and you were right about joe biden. joe biden was saying in january you need to get more serious about this. in january he was saying that donald trump needed to let scientists and doctors do the operation and do the talking. in january he warned what was

coming. well, donald trump wasted all of february and as we can look at the recount calendar you see that even near the end of february, a whole month went by, donald trump was still saying that this was magically going to go away and that it was a hoax being drummed up by the media. >> coming up, three key issues missing from president trump's guidance on reopening the country. dr. lena winn explains next on morning joe. there will be parties again soon,

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at the moment if the choice is not having ppe or having ppe we're all going to have it. >> that was a look at the front line documentary coronavirus pandemic. joining us is the correspondent

for that. and also joining us is the public health professor at george washington university. it's good to have you both. >> great to have both of you on. we're so excited to have you on. like three plane crashes over the past 20 years. i'd love the ask you about but we'll skip that for now and instead, let's talk about just fascinating, you're fascinating look at a tale of two washingtons. tell us about it. >> well, when the pandemic first arrived on our shores, of course it happened here. i'm sitting in seattle this morning. the state of washington. it's the midpart of january. it was one case. and there's usually a thousand. they find this person and how do

they contain the story and how do they do the contract tracing? what lied ahead. what was beneath the surface? the response was very good and the reparations were good and were it not for a little better testing and capeability at the out dp outset they might have been able to contain it sooner. a lot of why it began here in washington is because folks here in washington were really looking. they knew this was on its way and they were prepared. >> let's go. she has a question for you. >> miles, what you're talking about there is that contract tracing which seems to have been so critical in the countries that have managed this well. are you getting an indication that during this -- basically this time we are buying with lock down the armies of contract traces that america will be needed right around the country are being built up? i have seen some examples of

doing some of it. massachusetts is doing. >> they ramped up testing as quickly as they could despite obstacles that made it difficult at the outset. today they could do 3,000 tests a day. but that still pales by comparison to consider the demand and the need and it's not so much the capability of the labs and the people that process the tests but it's the materials. the reagents and the supplies. and that's where the national need comes in. this is where if you mobilize american industry and start producing the supplies to make these tests we can begin to start to really identify the full scope of the problem and try to put a wing around these

cases. >> all right. you have a piece in the washington post. it's basically on the three key issues missing from trump's guidance on reopening the country. number one, clearly as testing most people understand that without testing you don't have a road map. especially for the asymptomatic carriers. number two, you talk about securing the governments role for federal assistance to secure tests. ventilators and ppe. right now the state establish a -- the states are doing it. why is the federal coordination, i guess, using the dpa, why is that the only way forward? >> it doesn't make sense for there to be 50 different strategies when there needs to be a nationally coordinated effort. we heard about how they're bidding against each other for swabs and reagents to process these tests or how masks are in such short supply that there's a

competition between the federal government and individual localities and then there's the issue too of establishing a public health infrastructure. what she was saying earlier, we need potentially hundreds of thousands of new public health workers who can identify individuals who test positive, find the contacts and quarantine and isolate those individuals. i mean, we're talking about hiring maybe up to 300,000 new people within a matter of weeks and we can't have 50 different states each with their own protocols, each trying to recruit their own employees and then training them and deploying them. that makes no sense. and we're going to see more deaths as a result. >> from a public health perspective is the failure to revoke the defense production act and do this on a national

level making it harder to reopen? less safe? >> it's making it harder to reopen and extending the time line. we have to stop looking at the number of cases as a weather forecast because everything happening now is not inevitable. it's not like oh there's a hurricane that's going to hit us at a certain time. actually our actions right now make a big difference on the trajectory of the disease and when we can reopen. the longer it takes to build the capabilities the longer it's going to take to reopen the economy and when that occurs i hope that we're not going to see a second surge of deaths which could occur if we end up reopening too soon before these capabilities are all set up. you were the first to explain to people that these social distancing guidelines are real.

this is not a snow day. this is not where kids go on spring break and hang out and this was serious and if you don't take it seriously people will die and that was proved to be correct. so i want to ask you now how should families be looking at this? they can't really depend on president trump to understand what the temperature is of the problem. should families be back and really staying in completely and how long should they be considering their life being like this? from your estimate? what you think from a science perspective. >> you're right. we have to follow the data and the science here and what we know is that social distancing is working. that the only way at this point for us to reduce the rate of traps mission is to stop the person to person contact and that is what has been working and flattening the curve. that's what has been working to reduce the burden on our health care system and that's what has been working to save lives. families should continue to stay

as their unit. their household unit and try to stay away from others as much as possible. there's people that have to go get groceries but as much as we can we should honor the sacrifices of all of the individuals that have already done so much to miss school and miss work and continue to hunker down and this is extremely hard but again we are saving lives and protecting our own communities. >> miles, we have covered your career closely for a long time. we're big fans. we have seen you follow the airline industry. it's an industry that hasn't had a fatal crash in 11 years. we have seen you follow nasa and we have been ahead in that race ever since. science, something you have reported on so much.

when it comes to nobel prizes there's not a close second to the united states so how did we fail so miserably in the greatest scientific and medical challenge of our time? >> it's an important question, isn't it, joe? the intersection of science and politics is a pretty ugly place these days and it's been that way for decades. and they move on for political gains. looking at science through a political prism has great consequences. people concerned about climate change for a long time have been saying this for a long time but that's a crisis that's a little harder for people to see the consequences of although that's changing. but in this case, in the case of a pandemic, injecting politics in the middle of it and discounting the data and what science are saying has real consequences, lives are lost and

it's time to put the politics aside and truly look at the -- at what the experts are telling us. they're not lying. they're not lying to us. you also look at the friction between science and economics. that seems to be his achilles heel when it comes to reopening the economy. he's listening to people like larry kudlow at times instead of dr. fauci. of course, ultimately he seems to get to the right decision on some of his health care decisions but still, that friction has been underlying so much chaos in the white house's delivery of their message. >> it isn't time to be playing small political game when you're dealing with a global pandemic.

and we do that at great pearl. what i have seen is a political infrastructure listening to the science and the data and has done the best they can. other states have done that as well. but until we have a cohesive national approach to what is after all every person on the planet we're not going to get out of this. it premieres tomorrow night on pbs's front line. thank you so much and dr. lena wen thank you as well. great to see you. up next, keir simmons has new reporting and new questions about the source of the coronavirus pandemic as a laboratory in china finally breaks it's science. but first, we want to put some

faces to the tragic numbers of coronavirus deaths and tell you their stories. one was a world champion track and field star at the top of her game and we're not talking about a 20-year-old. 84-year-old mary roman of connecticut spent her golden years constantly breaking records at the national senior games. also known as the senior olympics earning over 300 medals throughout the past two decades. she was still hoaning her technique when she contracted the coronavirus. overcame polio as a child and died on march 23rd. arnold obey enjoyed running marathons. in fact he ran 38 of them in a row starting in 1980. he even ran a marathon after suffering a stroke. he was on vacation with his family in san juan puerto rico

when he started feeling ill. four days later he died from complications of the coronavirus. he's survived by his wife and three daughters and four grandchildren. >> steve ravitz said throughout life we're called upon to make a difference. he was 73 and the president of the supermarkets of cherry hill. a company that operates many grocery store chains in south jersey. they started out as small family bisby his father ravitz transformed them into a power house with the help of his son and he always remembered to give back. he champions better training, pay and career development for his employees. sent meals to war torn cosivo and started the foundation that donated $5 million to charities throughout south jersey. he died on april 7th from the coronavirus. we'll be right back. i don't add up the years.

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inc . >> the confusion and controversy surrounding the origins. just today accusing the trump administration of politcizi politcizing coronavirus but just to put the politics aside at the moment and it isn't easy to do in the current climate. we have been trying to look at exactly where the virus might have come from and the allegations that it could have escaped from a lab in wuhan china. one of the things that we discovered are pages of informational reports and these are just a few of them that have been removed from the internet since the coronavirus emerged. >> this morning, new questions about the source of the coronavirus pandemic as a laboratory finally breaks it's science. the institute telling chinese state television the facility was not the source of the

outbreak. >> i can tell you for sure that none of our students, retirees or any of our staff has been infected. >> for weeks the trump administration has been raising questions about whether the virus accidentally emerged from a laboratory and not a food market as they claimed. >> we're doing investigations also. >> the secretary of defense telling savannah -- >> i find it hard to trust much of what comes out of the chinese communist party. >> wuhan is home to a number of organizations studying coronavirus which can be found in bats. this video posted by chinese state media last year showing a wuhan cdc scientist collecting samples from bats from experiments. that laboratory less than 400 yards from the market where the coronavirus began. in february a chinese university study reported incidents of a wuhan cdc scientist exposed to

viral infection from bats. that study has been removed from the university website. the author claiming he lacked evidence. close by the wuhan institute of urology among the first to receive patient samples of the cyrus last december and worked with other chinese labs to map the genetic sequence but multiple pages from its website have also been deleted including one that describes the work of a world renowned scientist known to many as bat woman studying cross species infection such as sars coronavirus. i swear on my life it has nothing to do with our laboratory she told chinese media in february. a respected scientist from texas that visited wuhan many times telling us i can say with certainty that there are world class scientists working at the wuhan institute and they're on par with labs globally.

most agree it wasn't manufactured in a lab. >> but there's a possibility that it resulted from safety lapses at a lab. i'd like to see a more international approach and a more international investigation. >> and current and former u.s. intelligence officials tell nbc news that the u.s. intelligence community is investigating, guys, whether some kind of a virus did escape from a lab in wuhan. in the end, we may never know the answer. we did ask, by the way, the chinese ambassador to washington and the wuhan institute to give us a statement even about the missing pages but we haven't heard back. >> well, of course, the suspicions that are raised by them actually stripping those pages out of studies and especially the one that talk about a lab facility that's only

400 yards away from the wuhan market where it's believed this entire virus started? >> yeah. some of the confusion about this is there are actually multiple labs in wuhan so the cdc is that close to the market. and it is raising eyebrows around the world that this would emerge where so much work is being done looking at coronavirus. what they're trying to do is help the world deal with the potential for coronaviruss and now the accusations are around. one of the questions i think is whether china is going to be open. whether they're going to be transparent and even if we don't know the answer to some of these questions, i think that will be one of the lingering issues is once again, has china really been full and frank with the international community.

>> thank you so much for being with us. we greatly appreciate it. an important report and mika, they haven't been transparent up to now and we all know they haven't been transparent up to now. they lied to the united states. they lied lied to the united st. they lied to donald trump. donald trump was gullible enough to believe and repeat those lies because he wanted a trade deal with china more than he wanted to take care of this virus, obviously, and, of course, he was still defending them into february. but again, for china itself, their role in the world depends on whether they're going to turn the page and be transparent on how this began. we're going to figure it out anyway. so what good does it do for china to keep lying? to keep destroying documents? to keep being, you know, secretive about this pandemic that's forever changed the course of history. not just in america, not just in

china. >> for the world. >> across the globe. we're going to find out anyway, so hopefully they will be more cooperative. hopefully we can move forward together and figure out how this began and how we avoid the next pandemic from breaking out. but right now, china is not doing what it needs to do to move forward in a positive way. up next, a road map to reopening the country. what experts are saying must be done before the u.s. can safely get the economy going again. keep it right here on "morning joe." you're in this alone. we're automatically refunding our customers a portion of their personal auto premiums. we're also offering flexible payment options for those who've been financially affected by the crisis. we look forward to returning to something that feels a little closer to life as we knew it, but until then you can see how we're here to help at libertymutual.com/covid-19. [ piano playing ]

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testing. joining us now, professor at harvard university and director of harvard center for ethics, danielle allen. she is one of the authors of the newly released report entitled "road map to pandemic resilience." it's the nation's first comprehensive operational guide for mobilizing and reopening the u.s. economy amid the crisis. so we all agree about the testing. do you have any idea, given what you've looked at, how long it would take to get there at the pace that the u.s. is going now, which is sort of state by state as opposed to a national mobilization to get testing under way? mass testing? >> sure. the goal is to reopen and stay open. and to do that, we have to have a target of 5 million tests by june. we're currently on a pace of about a million tests a week. we have 5 million tests a day. so the fact is that states are working hard to ramp up testing but it's hard to get the level

we need without some kind of centralized coordination. so at the end of the day, we really need the federal government. either white house or congress. either could do it to step up the pandemic testing board and activate that supply chain and scale up. >> so that nationalized -- that government coordination is the only way to ramp up the testing? there's no way -- because i only ask this because the president appears to refuse to do that. he says it must be done locally, that he can't stand on a street corner or do testing in parking lots at walmarts, that it's important. it's handled by the local governments. is there any way to get to the number we need so we can safely reopen without having to shut down again? >> it's absolutely the case tests can and should be administered locally. we need to activate all three levels.

the local level, state level and federal government specifically to activate the supply chain. all we need the federal government to do is to coordinate across different elements of the supply chain as well as to invest in innovation pathway. commerce can do those, too. it doesn't have to be the white house. i hope the white house would. congress can do it. so we have lots of resources within our federal system to make this happen. and it's really important that every part plays its role. and at the end of the day, yes, we do want local, municipal leaders and county public health officials figuring out how to build out testing, tracing and isolated programs in their communities. it will have a different shape everywhere as they should. it's important the people who are administering that are really trusted by the communities in which they're working. that really does require local administration. so what we really need the government to help with is the innovation pathway for the testing. >> excellent.

katty kay has been writing about the difficulty of reopening and she has a question. >> danielle, i read the report and i read the aei report and center for american progress report. they have some differences but they all have certain similarities as well. they have the testing, but beyond the testing, there are other steps, aren't there? there's the contact tracing and more testing and the whole issue of quarantine and how you do that. how much progress is being made on those latest steps? there's rightly a lot of focus on ramping up the testing but also these other steps that have to take place, aren't there? and how much progress are we making on those? >> that's terrific. we are making good progress. so on tracing specifically, you see in massachusetts, in washington, both take the lead by really trying to develop significant personnel ramp-ups. australia set a good example. they've been ramping up in that regard. johns hopkins has recommended adding 100,000 contract tracing

personnel to national structure centers for deployment to hot spots around the country. and congress is working on the legislation, i believe, to the domestic tracers in that way. so we can really build out manual contact tracing personnel. there's a terrific example in eastern texas where the city and public health officials have come together and redeployed firemen and police and restaurant inspectors and so forth to achieve the contact tracing personnel they need for their region. the truth is we have the people to do this. we have incredible unemployment. so we're making progress. supported isolation is key. quarantine is for when you don't know if you have it and isolation for people who are covid positive. many are asymptomatic. that's where we really need isolation and supported isolation. people have to be able to stay off of work for a few weeks. they can't lose their job by taking themselves out to keep the rest of us safe. so that's going to work on

support. >> all right. danielle allen, thank you so much. we greatly appreciate it. we talked about polls and how the president's polling has dropped since he started these daily press conferences. we talked about him losing 49% to 42% in the overall poll. but if you dig down deeper into that nbc news/"wall street journal" poll, even in the key swing states of arizona, colorado, florida, maine, michigan, minnesota, nevada, new hampshire, north carolina, pennsylvania and wisconsin, he's losing 49% to 43%. for the president publicly, less is more. and that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's monday, april 20th. here are the facts this hour. this morning. parts of