>> there's a crazy man with a sk scalpel in er, demanding to see a quack. >> supposing you bring the light into the body, through the skin or some other way. >> slow down, sir. you're going to give yourself skin failure. >> i see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. >> our one chance is transcendental. >> is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? >> i'll need a golf cart motor with 1,000 volts, stat. >> it sounds interesting to me. >> dr. nick, we owe you an apology. consider the charges dropped. >> all right! >> dr. nick meets president trump, unfortunately, in a doozy of a briefing yesterday. >> well, i don't know if you saw

it. there's a meme going around. >> crazy. >> coronavirus, spray a little windex on it. you actually have lysol, i think. lysol has already sent the message out to people, please do not ingest any of our products. it may kill you. >> don't put them under your skin, as the president -- all right. good morning. >> that really was -- willie, that really was, i mean -- >> it's hard to put into words. >> it was a new level. the president talking about things that you actually would expect to see from dr. nick on "the suimpsons." it would be funny if it weren't so tragic. coming up on 50,000 americans who have been dying. a president who has been telling us it's going to go away, along with people on fox news, who have been telling us it's a hoax. sean hannity on march the 9th saying that this was just the media's latest hoax to get at donald trump.

>> actually, if you map out everything that the president said, downplaying this, you will see sean hannity and others on fox parroting him. >> right. >> like little parrots. literally using his words and trying to sort of amplify his false message. >> it really -- i mean, what's so frightening is there are people out. we saw the picture of the icu nurse yesterday, going out silently protesting, people that are out in the streets. >> incredible picture. >> still ignoring doctors' advice. still ignoring the smartest minds, scientists' advice, on how to protect themselves. here we are, 50,000 dead into this pandemic, and the president is more unmoored yesterday than he has been yet. >> yeah. he's been up there riffing at 5:30 in the evening every day since, what, early march

sometime? he's been getting up there. now, the riffs have gone into bizarre, dangerous musing about miracle cures, about injecting disinfectant, about somehow, quote, getting uv light into the body, whatever that means. >> good lord. >> i reached out to a few doctors last night, and i had to start with an apology for insulting their intelligence. i said, "is there anything to this"? they either rolled their eyes or said, "of course there's nothing to this." not only is there nothing to this, but if people inject disinfectant into their bodies, as the president suggested yesterday, some of them will die. as you said, lysol, we've crossed beyoyond the onion. lysol put out a statement last night, telling people not to put their products into their bodies. the president was musing, but said, "i'm throwing out ideas here, don't hold me to this," but musing puts the products into people's bodies.

>> think about the president's musings though, as you said. he mused about this. >> no, he actually made a guy from homeland security and his entire office work all day on a presentation about this. he is wasting the government's time during a deadly pandemic. >> right. you know -- >> for his musings. >> before this, he mused about using a malaria drug. >> fox amplified it. >> he spent so much time -- yeah, and fox news amplified it over and over again. >> of course. >> scam doctors came on and amplified it over and over and over again. of course, we find out the va and others are concerned that, actually, more people may have died from it than were actually helped from it. before that, he was musing about how this was just something that, you know -- it's one person coming in from china, he said on february the 22nd. soon after that, he said at a rally, "it's 11 people coming

in. soon, it'll be down to zero." then, i think in michigan it was, he said, "it's 5 people. soon, it'll be down to nothing. we have it completely under control. there's nothing to worry about it." >> meanwhile, biden is begging americans to take this seriously. >> the same time, joe biden said he was afraid donald trump was not prepared for a coming pandemic at the end of january. while donald trump was saying all of this. two days ago, mika, something that really frightens me for the health of our senior citizens and those with underlying health conditions. earlier this week, the president also musing first that this might not come back in the fall, and then saying he didn't think it was going to come back in the fall. again, these musings keep getting more and more dangerous for the lives of senior citizens and people with underlying health conditions, for our doctors, for our nurses. i've got to say, also, for those

who are unemployed right now, who can ill-afford a second dip in the economy. >> exactly. >> which will happen if we reopen too quickly. >> so along with joe, willie, and me, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle. washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay. co-host of showtime's "the circus" and editor in chief of "the recount," john heilemann. let's show you how this all played out, as the president undermined his top medical experts on stage. once again, they're being forced to push back hard against president trump's latest suggestions for treating the coronavirus. one of which included, stay with me here, injecting people with disinfectant. the president's ideas, which were prejected by experts in th briefing room with him, came after a homeland security official presented research that

found disinfectants, heat and humidity, killed the virus on surfaces and in the air. >> so supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and i think you said that has not opinion checked but you're going to check it. i said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do, either through the skin or in some other way, and i think you said you're going to test that, too. sounds interesting. then the disinfectant knocks it out in a minute, one minute. is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. interesting to check that. you'll have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.

a lot of people have been talking about summer. maybe this is one of the reasons. i once mentioned that maybe it does go away with heat and light. people didn't like that statement very much. the fake news didn't like it at all. i just threw it out as a suggestion. it seems like that's the case. >> it would be irresponsible for us to say that we feel that the summer is just going to totally kill the virus, and that it's a free-for-all, and people ignore the guidance. that is not the case. >> the president mentioned the idea about cleaner, bleach. there's no scenario that that could be injected into a person, is there? i mean -- >> no. i'm here to talk about the findings we have in the study. we don't do that within our lab, at our labs. >> i would like you to speak to the medical doctors, to see if there is any way you can apply light and heat to cure. you know, if you can. maybe you can, maybe you can't.

i say, maybe you can, maybe you can't. i'm not a doctor. i'm a person that has a good you-know-what. deborah, you ever heard of that, the heat and the light relative to -- certain viruses, yes, but relative to this virus? >> not as a treatment. certainly, fever is a good thing when you have a fever. it helps your body respond. i've not seen heat or light. >> i think it is a great thing to look at. okay. >> respectfully, sir, you're the president, and people tuning into these briefings, they want to get information and guidance and want to know what to do. >> hey. >> they're not looking for -- >> i'm the president, and you're fake news. you know what i'll say to you? i'll say nicely, i know you well, because i know the guy, i see what he writes, he's a total faker. are you ready? are you ready? it's just a suggestion from a brilliant lab by a very, very smart, perhaps brilliant man. he's talking about sun. he's talking about heat.

you see the numbers. that's it. that's all i have. i'm just here to present talent. i'm here to present ideas. because we want ideas to get rid of this thing. if heat is good, and if sunlight is good, that's a great thing as far as i'm concerned. >> i guess if you could collapse the past collthree and a half y of madness into one clip -- >> that'd be it. >> -- that might be the clip. >> that's when fox news or sean hannity went crazy on you, couldn't bring himself to start with that. >> he's been doing it for years. he's got this strange obsession. i hope, for his sake, he gets past it. >> they had to fill time with something beyond that ridiculous claim by the president, that he wasted everybody's time with. you saw dr. birx. ron fournier had the greatest tweet, watch her soul slowly die. she was so disgusted with him. >> so much respect for dr. birx

and dr. fauci. they're hanging in there, trying to save lives. willie, i knew growing up that, with my children, that if i would use scrubbing bubbles to clean the bathtub before -- >> don't eat them. >> -- they got in there. i would not spray it in my children's mouth or my own mouth, if i had a fever or disease. this is so beyond madness. you have an american president saying such things about putting disinfectant in the body, putting light in the body. it is so beyond parody. >> yeah. >> if you wrote this for, let's say, "veep," nobody would believe it. again, not funny because by probably the end of this month, more people will have died from this coronavirus, that donald trump said would go away. said it was a hoax. the media's coverage of it was a

hoax. sean hannity said the media's coverage of it was a hoax. more people will be dead of this so-call so-called hoax the media was pushing, according to sean hannity and donald trump, than died in the vietnam war, over the next week. we'll probably go beyond 57,000. again, the fact that we're near the end of april, after losing trillions of dollars. >> 50,000 lives. >> after more lives have been lost here that be wen were losth iraq wars, the afghanistan war, september 11th, the revolutionary war, the war of -- i could stack them up. donald trump is now at the point of talking about putting disinfectants inside your body and putting lights ib side

peop inside people's bodies, to the embarrassment of those aides sitting on the sidelines, listening to this horror show unfold before their eyes. >> as we sit here, and i listen to you lay it out, i cannot believe we're having this conversation. it's not only embarrassing and dangerous, but as you say, it's a monumental waste of time. a few hours before the president got up there, we learned that 4.5 million more meamericans lo their jobs in the last week. we don't have a national testing program. we don't have all the things that medical experts, public health experts say we need to get through this. and the president is talking about injecting disinfectant sbo into americans' bodies to cure coronavirus. somehow getting light inside their bodies. i was thinking about dr. birx as you played that. she spent her life fighting infectious diseases, leading the

fight against hiv around the world, spending her life in these serious conversations. she has to actually entertain the idea of the most powerful man in the world, in front of the tv cameras, turning and saying, "what do you think about this?" she has to say, "well, it's not as a treatment. we can't treat people by injecting disinfectant and light into their bodies." she had to say it publicly. another expert, health policy expert who has been on the show, vin gupta said, quote, this notion of injecting or ingesting any cleansing product into the body is irresponsible, and it is dangerous. it is a common method that people utilize when they want to kill themselves. that's a quote, john heilemann, from dr. vin gupta, a leading public health expert and emergency room doctor treating coronavirus patient himself. i don't have a question, john,

but what are your thoughts of what you saw up there yesterday? >> well, you've hit the high notes, or the low notes. it is beyond -- you know, there is a surreal quality to it. it's not even like an episode of "veep" anymore. it really is talking about cartoon parodies at this point. "the simpsons" you played i think was right. here's the serious thing, a very basic thing, right? think about how completely divorced from reality the president is. i want to go back to the beginning of the week. sitting here on friday. on monday, the president of the united states stood up and said, as he was talking about the overall death toll from this pandemic, he said that, you know, it looks like when all is said and done, we're probably going to be at 50,000, maybe 60,000 when all is said and done, when it is all over. 50,000, 60,000. that's what he said monday. it's friday, and we're at 50,000. the president apatieparently dot

know even the basic reality of how many americans have died. you could never have said on monday, knowing we were already in the 40,000s of deaths, that you thought the total number from the pandemic would be 50,000, maybe 60,000. we're going to pass the 50,000 threshold today. i mean, short of a miracle, we're going to pass the 60,000 threshold sometime next week. the president is utterly divorced from all of these realities. then you get to the delusion. and i do think, willie, to your point, it has been an ongoing question throughout, since donald trump has started taking the podium for a couple hours a day, 90 minutes a day, now over a month he's opinion doibeen do. joe scarborough has asked this question, why do the networks take these ramblings of the president, these insane, misinformation-filled ramblings? maybe there's a system we should

devise collectively as a news media. not to deny the president, but not take them live. have a chance to fact-check them and vet them. the argument for that is triply strong. we're not just giving him a platform to advance his political fortunes, but whether it's with hydroxychloroquine, and now with these notions of ingesting disinfectants, the president's misinformation is actively endangering the lives of americans who are watching him on television. americans who follow the president's musings, who follow his instructions, who follow the things he is saying, are at risk of killing themselves. i think that, genuinely, we have to have a serious conversation about, if the president is going to be saying things like this, not just lying, but lying in a way that could kill americans, people have to really have a serious conversation about whether it is responsible to continue to allow the broadcast of these things, when the president is on the podium live.

>> so as they say, light is the best disinfectant. in this case, it might be. let's go through this again. the research said uv light on non-porous surfaces could kill the virus. yet, here, the president is suggesting putting light through the skin. >> so supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light. and i think you said that hasn't been checked, but you're going to check it. then i said, supposing you bring the light into the body, which you can do, through the skin or some other way. i think you said you're going to test that, too. sounds interesting. >> we'll get the right folks. >> the president didn't stop there. watch as he tried to bring in dr. birx on this idea. >> i would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if

there's any way you can apply light and heat to cure. you know? if you could. maybe you can, maybe you can't. i say, maybe you can, maybe you can't. i'm not a doctor. i'm like a person that has a good you know what. >> sir, you're the president. >> deborah, have you ever heard of that, the heat and the light relativesigh viruses, yes, but this one? >> not as a treatment. certainly, fever is a good thing when you have a fever. it helps your body respond. but not as -- i've not seen heat or light. >> i think it is a great thing to look at. >> again, here's a woman who spent her entire life, as willie said, fighting disease, fighting infections, going across the world, doing tireless work, like dr. fauci, on hiv. >> saving lives. >> spending her entire life in

medicine and science, saving lives. she's having to answer a question about whether americans should put disinfectants inside their bodies and light inside their bodies to kill a virus that has become a pandemic. again, it bears repeating, in january, the president of the united states said, "oh, it's nothing to worry about. it's one person coming from china." end of february, he said, "it's 15 people. soon, it'll be down to zero. nothing to worry about." in march, still telling leaders, "just relax. stay calm." >> amplified by his friends. >> "there's nothing to worry about." yes, amplified by sean hannity on fox news. >> same words, as if they came from sean himself opposed to the president. >> he's always read talk points. >> you wonder what the breaking point is in terms of whether or not people inside the white house see this president as

mentally and morally fit. it's worth asking. the research also showed how disinfectant could kill the virus on surfaces. watch dr. birx's body language as the president raised the possibility of injecting cleanser inside the body. >> then i see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. one minute. is there a way we can do something like that? by injection inside or almost a cloon i cleaning. it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. interesting to check that. that, you'll have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. >> the press then turned to the homeland security official who presented the research, to make sure they didn't miss anything about the use of disinfectant. >> the president mentioned the idea about cleaners, a bleach.

there's no scenario that that could be injected into a person, is there? >> no. i'm here to talk about the findings we have in the study. we don't do that within that lab, our lab. >> okay. then the president's theory about summer weather possibly killing the virus. >> again, just remind everybody, the president had been saying for months this was magically going to go away in april. when it got warmer, it would magically go away. of course, again, we see that in the month of april, he said, "it could just magically go away pause it g because it gets warmer." more people have died in the month of april from the coronavirus. sean hannity said the media was using it as a hoax to attack the president politically. more people died in the month of april, when the president said it could magically go away because of the heat, than died

in 9/11, the first iraq war, americans who died in the second iraq war, americans who died in the 19-year war in afghanistan. of course, many more americans have died than died on september 11th. in fact, you could compare the combat deaths in the korean war, the entire korean war. more americans have died of this virus that, a few months ago, sean hannity was calling a hoax, saying that the media's coverage of it was a hoax. he said that on march the 9th. more people have died in this month of april, when the president said it'd magically go away, than died in all of the korean war. yes, most likely by the end of this week, more americans will have died of this pandemic, which the president said was going to magically go away, when it got warm in april. it could magically go away when

it gets warm. most likely by the end of this next week, than died in the entire vietnam war. >> this concept of the summer weather killing the virus, that, too, got a real-time fact check. >> a lot of people have been talking about summer. maybe this is one of the reasons. i once mentioned that maybe it does go away with heat and light. people didn't like that statement very much. the fake news didn't like it at all. i just threw it out as a suggestion. it seems like that's the case. >> it would be irresponsible for us to say that we feel that the summer is just going to totally kill the virus, and it's a free-for-all, and people ignore the guidance. that is not the case. >> mike barnicle, we have john heilemann, who has always said that so much of what donald trump says is either projection or confession. it's so funny, actually, that he's accusing others of fake news. the same time, they're asking if he should really tell americans

that they should put disinfectant inside their body. you know, it bears repeating. in february, february 27th, the president said this pandemic, that's killed 50,000 people, was just one person coming in from china. he said he had it completely under control. he said there was nothing to worry about. that's january 22nd. february, throughout february, he said there was nothing to worry about. even near the end of february, he was saying that it was 14, 15 people. soon, it would be down to zero people. he said he had done a great job, and there was nothing to worry about. in march, when republican senators started being concerned, his quote, "just stay calm. we have it under control. everything is going to be fine." he kept musing about april, how it would warm up and this would go away. he told a group of african-american leaders in march that it would just magically go away.

here we are. again, he said several weeks ago, "we don't have to go back over the president's past statements. let's talk about the future. let's encourage him to do the right things in the future. here we are, the end of april, and donald trump is talking about putting disinfectants and lights inside of bodies. he's opinibeen corrected time a again this week by his doctors, who are saying, yes, it is going to come back in the fall, after the president says it is not going to come back in the fall. he pushes scam drug fixes that his doctors have to correct him on. now, they're having to correct him on this latest madness. you really do wonder, what's going through the minds of republican senators and republican members of congress and republicans who serve with

this president? yes, weir in t're in the middlet he called a war, and we have a president who is wandering off aimlessly on this pandemic battlefield, endangering so many american lives. >> well, joe, in a rational, political world, of which we are not part, we're no longer a part of that, there is no longer a rational political world around us, i'll tell you what might be on their minds. the 25th amendment. yesterday, the president of the united states actually posed a threat to public safety, to the public safety of the citizens of this country. those are the musings of a man who has spent a whole lot of his lifetime in a tanning bed. he's been exposed to ultraviolet rays to make it look like he has a tan all the time. those were the irrational rants of a man who, somewhere out there in the country, god forbid, some inherent of him, someone who follows him cloely

a closely and adores him, will take a sip of clorox bleach today to ward off the virus, and they will die. to your point you raised earlier, you have dr. pirks sta dr. birx standing there. i pose this question to the country. how would you feel if dr. birx and dr. fauci both resigned under protest, that the president is acting like someone who is mad, someone who has done temporarily insane, who is deranged, who feels corners, who will say anything to get out of anything at a particular moment in time? not long-term, not leadership, not looking down the road, but get out of something like right now. how would you feel if they resigned? >> that would be terrible news for the country, of course. they've hung in this long. let's hope they continue to. here's some reaction from around the world. headlines, newspapers. dangerous, bizarre, insane, horror. those are some of the headlines from the papers in the uk on

president trump's suggesting yesterday that, again, injections of disinfectants like bleach and uv light into the body may treat coronavirus. he's throwing out ideas, he says. australia's top doctor called it quite toxic. "new zealand herald" said it was potentially fatal. to be 100% clear, those are not things anyone should be doing. katty kay, it is embarrassing these things have to be said out loud. i'll repeat what we said at the top of the show. lysol, a british company, had to put out a statement, refute win what the president said. lysol put out a statement, under no circumstances should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body. there wasn't a crazy tide pod meme going around, and teenagers are eating it. they're saying it because the most powerful man in the world offered it as a suggestion, just

bringing ideas to the table, at the podium in the preefing ro i at the white house yesterday. >> yeah. we've already had a couple die from taking hydroxychloroquine under the wrong circumstances, after the president stood there at the podium. lysol, understandably, is saying, "look, we want to make sure this doesn't bite us, and people are going to take the president of the united states seriously." i think what philip bump said from the "washington post," in the briefing is exactly the right question. why are you standing up there, giving the country rumors? people are looking to you in these briefings for advice and help that really works, for things we know are proven and that we can take home with us. there is an awful lot of confusion and fear out there. when i couldn't add this kind of rumor to it, it adds to that. we've already seen the erosion of america's leadership when it comes to this coronavirus. there is almost nothing the rest of the world is looking to america for guidance on at the moment. the number of deaths, the number

of cases, the lack of testing, the lack of ventilators, the lack of preparation, a system that just doesn't work to cope with this, a public health system that doesn't work to cope with this, the riles between the states and the white house over who has authority, who doesn't have authority. it's been a shambles. the country that has led the world the last 70 years is certainly not leading the world at the moment. when the president stands there and says this kind of thing, he's also hurting himself politically here. you look at the ap poll from yesterday. only half of republicans have trust in what the president is saying when it comes to covid. 22% of republicans say they have little or no trust in what mr. trump is saying about the covid-19 infection. i'm not quite sure how he thinks he is helping himself when he riffs like this. throwing out ideas that, as you've been saying all morning, it is bonkers, right? drinking or injecting

disinfectant. anybody can tell you that. >> you look at those numbers, you look at the poll numbers, for those that are listening on the radio right now, it's 47%. only 47% of republicans have confidence in what the president is saying. mika, even in his own party, he doesn't even have a majority of support from people who believe what he's saying. it's just a plurality. >> every day, these briefings, i will say, amid the controversy as no whether or not they should be shown, as to their value of having truthful information, it's a great debate, but every day, the briefings reveal something new about this president. people are able to see it for themselves pause thbecause this their mortality. he doesn't get that, and it happens every day. you see these numbers. let's bring in senior white house reporter for nbc news, shannon pettypiece. what happened? from your perspective, covering this for nbc news digital, how

do you even put into words a press preefbriefing like that? >> reporter: well, i can't tell you what was exactly going through the president's head when he decided to publicly have this riff. i can tell you that this is part of a bigger theme and strategy that we have seen from the very beginning of this from the president, to try and give an overly rosy picture of what is going on. he also said yesterday that a vaccine was coming very soon. the day before, he talked about fourth of july, having a big crowd on the national mall. john pointed out that early on monday, he was saying there'd be 50,000 deaths. now, we're already at that number. he was suggesting that would be the total. why does he keep giving an overly rosy view? i'm told there is a broader political strategy here. his political advisers and republican strategists feel the election will be decided by how people feel things are going. not necessarily where we are at, but how things are going. so if there is a perception that

there's some cure in the works, that things are going to get better. maybe they don't have a job but they will soon. maybe there's not a cure now, but the government is looking into something. maybe it's light. maybe it's disinfectant. the president can't talk about hydroxychloroquine anymore because we've seen data that raises questions. it seems he is reaching for something to help continue this perception that things are getting better. that there is hope. all of that coming, as you pointed out, amid a week we have 50,000 people dead. instead of trying to lead the country in some sort of national mourning, you know, trying to comport people who are scared, who have lost a loved one, he continues the strategy of trying to make people think better than they are, in hopes it'll help his poll numbers and his re-election in november. seems to be the strategy from what i'm hearing from his advisers. >> shannon from the white house,

we appreciate it. john heilemann, that strategy, as we've been saying here from the certainly not doing the president any favors, is a losing strategy. as we said yesterday in an instagram liven discussion, this virus can't be scammed. this virus can't be bullied or run over. when the president lies about vaccines being right around the corner, as he keeps doing. senior citizens, republicans, people who would vote for him normally find out that's not true. when he lies about these drugs that he's been talking about, says that, you know, "hey, i don't know anything but, look, what do you have to lose?" we find out from studies that, you know, people have died because of that. the v.a. very concerned about it. they find out that's not true. when he says it'll go away

magically in april, when it gets warm. he heard it just goes away. telling african-american leaders in march even, "it is going to magically go away. don't worry about it." they find out that's not true. when the president says, "we've got one perp coson coming in fr china, and soon it'll be zero." then "we have 14 or 15, and soon it'll be zero." the lies, maybe it's the first time in his life this has happened, the lies always catch up to him. you look at the press conference yesterday, and you realize why he is starting to lose handily in swing states like michigan, pennsylvania, and florida. >> yeah. i mean, i think, first of all, the two realities, joe, you're eluding to, if you take them -- just separate them out quickly, one is, as you said, the virus

is totally immune to donald trump's playbook. the tools in his tool kit that have worked for him throughout much of his life to one dedprgr or another. the flattery, the brow mebeatin the intimidation, the bullying, the spinning, all of that stuff, the virus opportunity cardoesn'. the virus proceeds like the shark in "jaws." it is a killing machine. it is incred mkrecredibly effic ruthless and has no ears. it is moving through the water in the way it is. the second thing is that, on the fround wi ground with humans, voters of america, some quadrants of them in the past have been movable by donald trump. he's had a large core of support, somewhere in the low 40s for three and a half years. it's opinibeen a bedrock of his

poor. support. if you look at florida, we know there are a small amount of battleground states, but two are florida and michigan. if a democrat wins florida alone, the race is probably over. florida and michigan together, the race is definitely over. you've got two states being affected in a profound way by this virus. people who are voters in those key states are seeing people dying all around them. old, elderly people, senior citizens in florida are in a panic. they're seeing donald trump's puppet fwgovernor making terrib decisions on the basis of public health. people will die because of the decisions made by ron desantis in florida. no way you can spin out of that. when voters see people in their communities, neighborhoods, cohorts dying around them. they're not going to be persuaded by donald trump's, yo.

the same for michigan, the governor, who donald trump wanted to fight with, is at an approval rating of 70%. donald trump's rating is 40%. he's getting in a fight with gretchen whitmer. why is he losing the fight? not because he is a worse politician, though i think that is true, but people in michigan see donald trump failed on this. those are things that all the briefing room antics of donald trump, and all the things that worked for him in the past when the stakes weren't so high, they're not going to work now. we're starting to see the numbers move in the battleground states in a way that will be very hard, i think, for donald trump to turn around come november. >> he's exposed. that's the great irony here. i don't think the network should be running the press conferences, but they are. all he is doing is exposing his ignorance. all he's doing is exposing his

inability to lead in the greatest crisis this country has faced, likely since world war ii. it would be so simple. again, we've said it here, time and time again. it would be so simple for him. listen to your doctors. let your doctors give americans advice. balance what they're saying medically. have americans follow that with economists. troy try to get medical guidelines that can be followed. he put out guidelines and stepped on them every day with one unhinged press conference after another. this shouldn't be hard, but he keeps damaging his political standing every day. >> yeah. joe, you know, the virus is apolitical. it has no politics to it.

donald trump's larger problems might be the fact he has an empathy absence. he has none. he doesn't understand what's going on to real people's lives out in the country. he would not know really what to say in a genuine manner to someone who has been laid off or furloughed two, three, four weeks, and knows the job might not come back. he would not know what to say to someone whose business was closed down, small business was closed down a month ago. he or she probably knows instinctively that that business that they spent years trying to build and develop will not come back. will not survive this. he doesn't understand what it means to have the economic gun at your head. he just doesn't. he has lived a life of lies. john spelled it out entirely. a bravado of not paying people, of distorting and dividing in order to win the day.

as you pointed out millions of times, he's a day trader in everything. he's a day trader in politics. he's a day trader in emotion. he can tell you pretty convincingly when he is with you, you know, that you're the greatest. he'll look you right in the eye and flatter you and mean none of it. >> yeah. >> now, he's cornered. now, he's really cornered. i think he's just panicked. >> well, i think he's panicked, mika. again, the way out of that corner is pretty simple. prepare for the worst. right? listen to your doctors. do everything you can do to protect senior citizens. he's doing just the opposite. do everything you can to protect vets in v.a. hospitals. he is doing the opposite. these recommendations are insanity. mike said that he lacks sympathy. of course he lacks sympathy. it is even more pace ic basic t. when he is talking about

injecting disinfectants, sticking lights in bodies, he lacks the most basic common sense. an expression we use in places where i grew up, he doesn't even have sense. >> this president is trouble. >> he is trouble. >> driving us into more trouble. >> what we heard through the years is, it's pad enoubad enou the president hasn't had an external threat. that external threat came to us from china, in the most dramatic way. the president has proven, sentence january, that not only is he ill-equipped, but he is going through this year of magical thinking, starting in january, where he's just wished and hoped this pandemic away. unfortunately, all of his wishes and all of his hopes and all of his delusional thinking, all of his magical thinking is not stopping americans from dying. now -- >> that's right.

>> -- we have 50,000 americans dead because of what china did, and then because of what our government failed to prepare for. >> he's on -- he's at the podium undermining and demoralizing his top doctors in real time. i don't know how they don't. i pray they stay in there. >> one other thing, mika, we talked about the past, the failures of the past. let's talk about the future really quickly. two days ago, the president was guaranteeing americans this pandemic would be gone by the fall. said it may not even come back at all by the fall. dr. fauci said it'd come back by the fall. this is part two of this. >> yeah. >> he needs to prepare for the fall. he can't change what he's done in the past. he can't change what he did yesterday. we, as a country, have to prepare for what's ahead of us now. the president talking about injecting disinfectants, talking

about lights in bodies, that's not going to do it. still ahead on "morning joe" -- >> willie. >> just -- >> we said it time and again. the 1918 pandemic was even worse in the fall than it was in the spring. yet, the president guaranteeing it is going to magically go away two days ago. yesterday, talking about disinfectants and light inside the body. >> yeah. again, what i said at the top of the show i'll say again. every moment we spend on this deeply unserious, embarrassing conversation about injecting light and go disinfectant into your body is a moment we're not working on testing. we're not working on the fall. dr. fauci, despite the president's wishful thinking, and basically every other public health expert you talk to, says it is coming back in the fall. by the way, the director of the cdc says, watch out for next winter. it's not like this is going to disappe disappear, as the president said. it is going to be with us. what are we doing every moment of every day to fight it?

what are we toing evedoing ever of every day to stop it from being as bad in the fall as it is now? if you're tying your doctors in knots with some weird, crazy idea you have about injecting light into people's bodies, you're wasting their time. you're putting the country at risk. get serious. still ahead on "morning joe," more mixed messaging from the white house. as dr. anthony fauci says one thing about testing, and president trump says something completely different. "morning joe" is back in a moment. ♪ we can be heros ♪ just for one day ♪ in nearly 100 years serving the military community, we've seen you go through tough times and every time, you've shown us, you're much tougher

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so much happened yesterday during that briefing. there was so much to cover. so many layers of disinformation and undermining of the top scientists of the president's. there was a lot to cover. we often try and sort of stay away from our colleagues in the business, but fox news has several puppets for this president constantly going on the air, constantly repeating whats verbatim. going to find quack people to

put on the air to back up the president's unproved claims. yesterday, it might have been too much. it might have been too much to say that you should inject your body with disinfectant to try to get rid of the virus. maybe watching the president undermine dr. birx and make her feel nauseous in real time, as he tries to get her to sort of back up ridiculous claims about disinfectants and light. she nervously tried to say, "well, a fever has heat, and perhaps a fever could push away a virus," trying to somehow not back up what he is saying, but say something that might make him feel better. this is a terrible position everyone is on. there are folks on fox news we usually stay away from, who just take these ideas and run with them. it makes trump happy. because they speak for him. because they speak on a daily basis and get their message straight. sean hannity, this is on march

9th, "they're scaring the living hell out of people. i see this, like, oh, let's bludgeon trump again with this new hoax." these people are working for trump behind the scenes. we try to stay away from it. we hope that fox news will do their best. that there are other hosts on the network that really step up and do the right thing. we hope that prevails. we hope that good ness prevails and we hope the ability to be objective prevails, and try to put the facts first. we repeatedly see it not happening on certain shows. last night, sean hannity went after joe at the top of his show for quite a long time. perhaps it was too tough to take the president's ridiculous ideas and make them into a reality for his viewers, and put viewers at risk. perhaps it was even too much for sean hannity. he had to find some soil of foil to go after. it's got to stop at some point. i mean, really, it's best put

together by, believe it or not, the "daily show," which put together this montage of these fox hosts and their friends in the white house, pushing the president's ideas verbatim. take a look. >> tonight, the sky is falling. we are all doomed. the end is near. the apocalypse is eminent, and you'll all die. that's what the media mob woud d like you to think. >> i'm dead right on this. the coronavirus is the common cold, folks. the hype of this thing as a pandemic, as the andromemous strain, as, oh, my god, if you get it, you're dead. >> this is one of the cases that the more i learn about coronavirus, the less concerned i am. there's hyperbole. >> the left-wing media playing up fears of the coronavirus. >> the sky is falling because we have a few dozen cases of coronavirus on a cruise ship? i am far more concerned with stepping on a used heroin needle

than getting the coronavirus. maybe that's just me. >> it's a virus, like the flu. all the talk about coronavirus being so much more deadly doesn't reflect reality. >> this virus should be compared to the flu, cause at worst, at worst, worst-case scenario, it could be the flu. >> far more deadly, lethal threat is not the coronavirus, it's the ordinary old flu. >> flu is here. >> nobody has died yet in the united states as far as we know from this disease. >> that's right. >> the facts are actually pretty reassuring. you never know watching all this stuff. >> you wanna know how i really feel about the coronavirus? if i get it, i'll beat it. i'm not afraid of the coronavirus. no one else should be that afraid either. >> it is very, very difficult to contract this virus. >> it is milder than we thought. the fatality rate is going to ct is not as scary. >> it's the safest time to fly. terminals are pretty much dead. the planes, remember back in the

day when you had a seat next to you possibly empty, you could stretch out? it is like that on every flight now. >> if you're healthy, you and your family, it is a great time to just go to a local restaurant, likely you can get in easily. >> republican congressman matt gaetz wore a gas mask on capitol hill. >> when a reporter asked james inhofe what precautions he was taking, he extended his arm with confidence, "wanna shake hands?" >> i expect the president will continue to shake hands. i'll continue to do it. >> we have contained this. we have contained this. i won't say it airtight, but pretty close to airtight. >> it is being contained. do you not think it is being contained? >> zero people in the united states of america have died from the coronavirus. zero. >> this is a flu. this is like a flu. it's going to disappear. one day, it is like a miracle, it'll disappear. i felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.

i took it very seriously. >> this program has always taken the coronavirus seriously.

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we absolutely need to significantly ramp up not only the number of tests but the capacity to actually perform them. i am not overconfident right now at all that we have what it takes to do that. we're getting better and better at it as the weeks go by, but we are not in a situation where we say we're exactly where we want to be with regard to testing. >> as you know, and as i've said many times, we're very add vava in testing. other countries are calling us to find out what we're doing. we've done more testing than every other nation combined. that's a big statement. >> do you agree with dr. fauci we're just not there yet? >> no, i don't agree with him on

that. i think we're doing a great job on testing. if he said that, i don't agree with it. >> welcome back to "morning joe." it is friday, april 24th. that's our president. still with us, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle. washington anchor for bbc world news america katty kay. and joining the correspondent, white house correspondent for the "new york times," peter baker. pulitzer prize-winning columnist and associated editor of the "washington post" and msnbc political analyst, eugene robinson. so the president's statements last night has made him a mockery around the world. an international joke. medical experts are once again forced to push back hard against his latest, crazy suggestions for treating the coronavirus. one of which included injecting people with disinfectant. the president's idea, all of them, all of the ideas, were rejected by the experts in the

briefing room with him. it came after a homeland security official had to spend the day creating research and presented the research at the podium, that found disinfectants, heat and humidity, killed the virus on surfaces and in the air. yes. here is how much of it played out. >> so supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light. and been checked but you'll test it. suppose bringing the light inside the body, which you can do through the skin or some other way, and i think you said you're going to test that, too. sounds interesting. >> we'll get the right folks. >> i see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. is there a way we can do something like that? by injection inside or almost a

cleaning. you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. interesting to check that. you'll have to use medical doctors with that. sounds interesting to me. a lot of people have been talking about summer. maybe this is one of the reasons. i once mentioned that maybe it does go away with heat and light. people didn't like that statement very much. the fake news didn't like it at all. i just threw it out as a suggestion. it seems like that's the case. >> it would be irresponsible for us to say that we feel that the summer is just going to totally kill the virus, and it's a free-for-all, and people ignore the guidance. that is not the case. >> the president mentioned the idea about cleaners like bleach. there's no scenario that that could be injected into a person, is there? >> no. i'm here to talk about the findings we have in the study. we don't do that within that lab, at our labs. >> i would like you to speak to

the medical doctors to see if there's any way you can apply light and heat to cure. you know? if you could, and maybe you can, maybe you can't. again, i say, maybe you can, maybe you can't. i'm not a doctor. i'm a person that has a good you know what. >> sir, you're the president. >> deborah, have you ever heard of that? the heat and the light relative to certain viruses, yes, but relative to this virus? >> not as a treatment. i mean, certainly fever is a good thing when you have a fever. it helps your body respond. but not -- i've not seen heat or light. >> i think it is a great thing to look at. you know, okay. >> respectfully, sir, you're the president. people tuning into these briefings, they want to get information and guidance and want to know what to do. they're not looking for a rumor. >> i'm the president, and you're fake news. you know what i'll say to you? i'll say very nicely, i know you well because i know the guy i

see. i see what he writes. he is a total faker. are you ready? are you ready? it's just a suggestion. from a brilliant lab by a very, very smart, perhaps brilliant man. he's talking about sun. he's talking about heat. you see the numbers. that's it. that's all i have. i'm just here to present talent. i'm here to present ideas. we want ideas to get rid of this thing. is heat is good and sunlight is good, that's a great thing as far as i'm concerned. >> to be clear, bill brian, the under secretary from homeland security that you saw standing at the podium, was not talking about heat and light in terms of injecting it somehow into the body. he was talking about heat and light being effective on surfaces, perhaps, to kill the virus. on the heels of president trump's comments about disinfectants, the company that makes lysol, believe it or not, had to issue this statement. this is because of what the president suggested yesterday about injecting disinfectant. this company wrote, quote, due

to recent speculation and social media activity, the makers of lysol and dettol has been asked whether internal administration of disinfectants may be appropriate for investigation or use as a treatment for coronavirus. we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body throughingestion, or any other route. they should be used as intended and in line with usage guidelines. please read the label and safety information. i apologize to the smart audience by insulting your intelligence by reading that. lysol felt compel ld, aftled, at the president said, to put out that statement. peter baker, you've followed the president as close as anyone else. we've all been in the class where you pray the teacher

doesn't call on you. dr. birx was eventually asked to int entertain the idea of the disinfectant or using heat and light to fight the coronavirus. doctors now tied up into the idea of injecting disinfectants into people to fight the coronavirus. >> we have a president that's not a doctor, but obviously decides to play one on television from time to time. he's done this repeatedly, where he's thrown out random ideas or random thoughts without any basis. it's the kind you don't see presidents do. presidents do not, you know, sort of prescribe treatments to the general public. millions watching the briefings, knowing it is not a responsible thing to do. some people, a few people would be too many, might take it seriously and might try it on their own, which is why lysol

maker made that statement. it's hard to understand, three years into his presidency, why he has yet to learn the lesson that presidents are supposed to be disciplined in what they say. what they say has consequenced. that what they say is listened to by a lot of people, in a way that could cause actions that he clearly wouldn't want to happen. yet, he's done this throughout this ordeal, throughout this crisis. you're right, dr. birx, the look on her face, i think, told the whole story. >> less americans are turning to president trump to get accurate information about the coronavirus pandemic. according to the latest "associated press" norc poll, 20% of americans say they regularly receive information from the president about the coronavirus. 50% say they turn to state or local government. 54% say they to not trust the information provided by trump about the pandemic. 23% do.

52% trust the information they get from state or local leaders. the number of republicans who say they trust the information they hear from the president is also below 50%. six in ten americans say trump does not listen enough to health experts. 35% believe he listens to the right amount. 3% say he listens too much. mike barnicle, i mean, this is perhaps a really good lesson for those who parrot the president word for word. people aren't buying it. i do think, watching these briefings in real time, and the level of not only disinformation, but now kind of disturbing concepts being put to the podium by the president. i think people see in real time, number one, a president wasting the american people's time. a president, even worse. wasting the time of the people on the front lines, the top

scientists who are being tasked with trying to lead america through this. a president who could not get testing going and refuses to use the defense production act to enforce on a national level a uniform, magss production of tests. people see that's not happening. they look to him for answers. they see repeatedly that he refuses to take responsibility for testing and move it forward more quickly. as a result, as dr. olsterholm said on the show yesterday, we're in the second inning of a nine-inning game. we're not close to being through this. the president is saying perhaps it'll go away and we can reopen. georgia reopens, then he starts screaming about how georgia shouldn't have reopened. they see him going back and forth in real time, back and forth. truth, not truth. what's true? they now know, by watching him themselves, for hours every day, if they can still feel like it,

that they're not getting a good source of information from the president of the united states. they're seeing him undermine people and waste the time of people who are trying to save americans' lives. we're headed in the wrong direction. i wonder, mike, if the president is actually his own worst enemy when it comes the losing in the polls. >> yeah. well, mika, it is the second inning of this bout against the virus. the home team, united states of america, is down about 15-0 in the second inning. >> yeah. >> we don't have exactly a lot of great pitching on the mound. you use the word "dangerous" a couple minutes ago. >> yes. >> yesterday, i think, was the time that the president jumped the line into being really dangerous to public safety in his utterances from the podium. peter baker, we're going to lean on you quite a bit this morning, because you are one of the few people who are truly expert in

the inner workings of the white house, from covering it. let me ask you this. yesterday's statements were totally irresponsible, irrational. is there any sense, peter, that you pick up among the white house staff that the president of the united states is somehow off kilter? are they worried? is anyone worried about his pe ha behavior, his language, the fact he shows up in the oval office mid-morning, late-morning? i don't think he's been surrounded by anyone in the white house who has uttered the phrase, "mr. president, you're wrong." is there any sense that, "whoa, we have to do something here"? >> this is a white house at this point that has shown time and time again that, you know, dissenting voices are not valued, right? not only do we not want somebody to speak out against what the president might be saying, that there is, in fact, a cost to doing so, whether you are the head doctor at an nih facility,

who says, "hydroxychloroquine might not necessarily be the best treatment at this point, given there are not enough stud studies." there you are an inspector general who says, "this isn't the way to handle foreign leader calls." even the captain of an aircraft carrier. the navy secretary that he had appointed clearly thought it's what the president would have wanted, for an aircraft carrier who sent a letter asking for help because his crew was stricken with the virus. people who speak up have learned in this white house that there is a danger to doing so. so you see this careful minute by people like dr. birx and dr. few c faw dhee a fauci and others, trying to keep the president on a straight and narrow in a factual way without getting his ire up. without putting themselves at risk of being removed from the room. they recognize, i think, that

this is a president who doesn't have a solid command of science and is just sort of throwing ideas out there. you know, very ad hoc, as it was last night. they try, i think, to walk this very fine line. it's a really, really hard one, i think, for them to do. african-americ from time to time, they see themselves on the outs. there was a message the president re-tweeted about, "time to fire fauci." this is a difficult time for those in the white house. >> we've seen officials dispute the president on the stage, and outside of the white house, as well. they're pushing back against what the president is saying diplomatically. gene robinson, you're writing this morning there are no shortcuts in the fight against coronavirus. it's a painful reality. a lot of people are coming to terms with it, as doctors fauci and birx tell us it'll come back

in the fall. as the director of the cdc says, the winter will be bad, when you have the confluence of coronavirus with the flu. that's the painful reality a lot of doctors, families, people in this country are coming to terms with. i think that's probably why the president, in his way, is trying to project some miracle. he's trying to say, "well, maybe it's hydroxychloroquine that will save the day and get us through this," and deliver on what he called the miracle. it'll miraculously go away. now, his latest miracle cure he's musing about, which we should point out is dangerous and incorrect, is you can ingest disinfectant or get uv light into the body. this is part of his idea there will be a miracle that will wipe out what we're confronted with right now. >> it is not going to be a miracle. it's a long slog. we talked about the second inning of a nine-inning game. maybe we're in the second

inning. maybe we're not there yet. this is -- look, the president's performance yesterday was dangerous and imbicilic. you talk about him not being a doctor, having little command of the science. my goodness, injecting disinfectant into the human body, just the notion -- how would that occur to a grown man, who managed to survive this long in the world and do fairly well for himself and become president of the united states. that he'd even entertain that idea is just stunning. you know, the column i wrote today was really about -- more ab patience than anything else. we have to be patient. this is a step by step process.

if we look for some sort of miracle, that it'll just go away, we can go about our business, that is going to kill a lot of people. a lot of people are going to die. it is going to come back. it is going to come back worse. we have to be patient and disciplined. donald trump, unfortunately, to our disaster, is anything but patient. >> yeah. to your point, gene, these are the headlines from uk papers. we could go around the world. dangerous, bizarre, insane, horror. those are the headlines in response to president trump's really unhinged press conference, briefing, whatever you want to call it yesterday. it was really difficult to watch, especially when he put his top scientists in that terrible position. the president yesterday also

said that researchers are close to producing a vaccine for covid-19. >> a lot of trials are going on. we have a lot of great, brilliant minds working on this. both from the standpoint of a vaccine and therapeutics. we must be careful in all conditions, but we will get this done. we're very close to a vaccine. unfortunately, we're not very close to testing. because when the testing starts, it takes a period of time. we'll get it done. >> okay. joining us now, "morning joe" chief medical correspondent dr. dave campbell. dr. dave, let's go with the facts we know. where are we in cases? how long before a vaccine? >> well, the numbers for the cases we see, way over 800,000. we'll hit 1 million before we know it. 50,000 dead. we'll be at 80,000 recovered.

the time to a vaccine is clearly 12 to 18 months. it takes a long time to get there. we can't speed up the biological processes, the fda steps to get to safety and effectiveness. it's important to remember with a vaccine that that will be given to people who are generally healthy. so the safety is paramount when you're going to give a therapeutic, or a vaccine, or a preventative substance, to somebody who is healthy. >> okay. so it takes a little pbit longe than the president was inferring to get a vaccine going, which, of course, means this will last longer than the president was inferring in general. again, the second inning of a nine-inning game. i want to ask you about antibody tests. there was some study with new york that they're looking at. governor cuomo is looking at. is that any republicason for ho? >> it is. what we're learning now from this study in new york city, new

york state, plus a few in california now, is that the number of people who have been infected is much higher than the public health officials have thought. 10% -- or ten times higher in new york city. much more in california. as we move forward, we can now see that more people have been infected that didn't know it. >> yeah. >> perhaps that means the significant fatality rate is lower for certain individuals. my point though is very clear, as we see this spread increasing, i worry more and more about older people and people that have underlying held conditions, who are still dying. i'm optimistic but ever more concerned about nursing homes, older people, and older people with underlying health conditions. these giant numbers we see out of new york city and california are reflecting people, often,

who didn't know they were sick. those are going to be people who are not the older people, not the people with underlying health conditions, who take a beating from covid-19. >> dr. dave campbell, thank you very much. i want to go to katty kay now about the reaction to what happened yesterday on the world stage. i read some headlines earlier. just the shock that even the international press has at how to put into words the, i mean, overall craziness of the president, telling people to inject indisfdisinfectant into bodies and -- i mean, it is even hard to repeat. you know, the president, katty, has had problems on the world stage in the past. his meetings have been questioned. there have been gaffes. there have been missteps. there's been protocol that hasn't been followed.

usually -- we even have the video of the world leaders huddled in a circle, laughing at him. but this really is new level stuff here. this is the thing that trump hates the most, and that's being laughed at. there are echoes of ruckus laughter around the world after what he said at the briefing yesterday. it does impact our place in the world. that's for sure, especially if you're a mockery. >> yeah. you read some of the headlines. those are repeated in other countries, too, where there's kind of disbelief. this is a president for whom a lot of foreigners have got used to him saying things they found bizarre or kind of fairly outrageous. certainly not normal from an american president. it is not like people don't know what president trump can say. this really -- i think because we're all in this.

the whole world is in this, so we all know a lot about what is going on. everybody is familiar with how long it is going to take to produce a vaccine. what the different therapies might be. nobody saw this one coming, right? nobody saw, well, actually, try injecting disinfectant into yourself. that might work. it did take it to a new level. on that -- just on that vaccine conversation that you were having with the doctor there, mika, there is some good news coming out of the uk. the university of oxford yesterday started human trials. these are the first human trials on a vaccine for covid. they say that perhaps in the fall, it could be ready for production. that's the fastest timeline i've yet heard of any of the groups around the world that are working on a vaccine. of course, then it would be a idea of how long it'd take to get into production. the scary scenarios are that you produce just a few, then we get into "hunger games" area. some people have a vaccine, but other people don't. what are the social and ethical

implications of that? >> willie? >> add in on testing, the president, we heard in the clip, says again and again the united states has done more testing than the rest of the world combined. that's flatly untrue. not close to true. if we were doing well on testing, governor larry hogan of maryland, republican, wouldn't have to rely on his connections and his wife's connections in south korea, to make a few phone calls to get 500,000 tests into his state. that's where we are on testing. peter baker, you're writing about the cold calculations governors have to make. today is the day in georgia that governor kemp said some businesses can reopen. just a few minutes ago, the mayor of atlanta came out publicly in a national television interview and said, "stay home." contradicting the governor. saying, "there is no bowling match or pedicure that's worth going out right now. they're not essential. those things can wait." what are some of the governors, and it is not just georgia, south carolina, tennessee, colorado, all over the place, texas, as well, talking about

reopening now. what is the calculation they'll have to make? >> look, until we have that vaccine we were just talking about, until we have a cure, something other than disinfectants pumped into your body, that means any time you relax these social distancing restrictions, stay at home orders, you're going to risk additional deaths. the question is how many? how many is acceptable in order to get an economy going again? look, you know, there's costs on both sides. there's a cost to having 26 million people lose their jobs in five weeks. how can these governors reopen without triggering the kind of wave of disease and death we've seen over the last six, seven weeks? 50,000 people we're at right now. within a week, we'll be at the same total that the vietnam war cost us in a decade of fighting. these governors have to decide how do you decide to reopen business, reopen schools on some

level, whatever precautions you might do, however you might stage it, in a way that minimizes that additional death toll you're going to end up having to take. it's a macabre kind of calculation. few people run for office and kpp to ha expect to decide, the scale of life and livelihood. it is not an enviable position on any part. >> looking at the pictures, all the wires and mamachines, effor of the front line workers to provide the careful p fuful bal life for those patients. thinking of the president talking about injecting disinfectants. it is insulting and painful. peter baker, thank you for your reporting. michigan is doing something other states are not doing. testing people who don't have symptoms but are required to work outside their home. we'll talk to the state's senior

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the house passed a $484 billion spending package yesterday, providing more money for small businesses, hospitals, and testing. the new legislation would restart a small business loan program that dried up and allocate more money for health care providers and testing. many lawmakers wore masks on the house floor during the vote and spoke through face coverings as they delivered their remarks. trump is expected to sign the bill into law. joining us now is democratic senator debbie stabenow of michigan, member of the finance and budget committees. great to have you on. i first want to --

>> thank you. >> -- ask about what's going on in our state. the choices you're making locally to test certain people. can you tell us about that? >> absolutely. mika, it is always great to be with you. thank you for everything you guys are doing. >> thank you. >> in michigan, we have been all hands on deck to get as much information as possible about how to keep people safe and save lives. that means testing. you know, our governor has been very aggressive moving forward on this, as well as the mayor of detroit. while we've lost now about 3,000, close to 3,000, really blessed souls in michigan, and we stay very focused on what that means, we're now expanding out to do testing of all people who are working directly with the public. the governor announced that any essential worker would now be tested. that means folks in grocery stores, as well as health professionals and others. there are drive-through testing

sites across the state. we've seen partnering now with our major pharmacy chains, walgreens, ccvs, rite aid. it is great. the mayor didn't have 500 people sitting home under quarantine, not knowing if they had the virus. instead, he can, every day, tell the officers. he's also gone into nursing homes and is testing every single resident of every nursing home. so far, they're finding about 26% of the people in nursing homes have the virus, which is very alarming. at least we know. you can't address this unless you have information, as you know. >> katty kay? >> congresswoman, i just wanted to ask you about the stimulus package that's been passed, and specifically about the white

house and the democrats, trying to get some money to states. what -- explain to viewers what that actually means, when we're saying the states are running out of money and they need some help from the federal government. what does it mean in terms of people's livelihoodlivelihoods, salaries, being able to pay for their rent and food and bills and things. it has real-life implications. >> absolutely. somebody who is working for the public right now and has a public salary is as valued as someone with a vie vprivate sal. in a political world, there is a difference. our republican colleagues say, let states go bankrupt, where they're rushing to help private businesses. which we support, as well. let me step back and say a huge area of success and victory for us in the last package, as democrats, was $25 billion for testing. to help our states and local

communities. our committee did a report, laying out everything about ourselves versus other countries. you can find it on our website. we're not testing, by the way, more than other countries. the piece that didn't happen, as you know, was state and local government. what does that mean? it means that the police officers that are going into work in detroit every day, that the mayor's testing, may not have a job. the republicans, the administration, doesn't believe we should be supporting police, fire, people on the front lines, working in public health departments, people in health centers and mental health centers. that we shouldn't be supporting the states who have taken money out of other parts of their budget to rush into this. that was the responsible thing to do. so they take it from education. they take it from higher education. they take it from every other public function. we have a crisis. a crisis in our country.

they are being responsible. how are they rewarded? instead of having resources come to them, to help them meet their needs, we have the leader of the united states senate, republican leaders saying they should consider bankruptcy. that's as stoutounding when youk about that. it also goes to a basic philosophy of republicans that we have seen for years now. the public sector isn't valued. somehow anything done in the public sector, law enforcement, public health, education, so on, does not have value. it's something you should attack. it's government. i think it pervades everything we're seeing, even with the white house. not doing a national strategy on testing. not having the defense production act be fully engaged in, so we have the materials to do testing. it's not the labs we need. it's the materials, most of which are made overseas. so the lack of willingness to understand that we have a

country, you know -- it's not the detroit strategy or michigan strategy versus ohio, any more it's the beijing strategy versus the shanghai strategy. china has a strategy. the u.s. doesn't have one because folks in charge don't believe in governing and having a national effort to work together, to be able to tackle this and solve this crisis. >> senator stabenow, it is willie geist. good to see you this morning. >> hi, willie. >> the president has been all over the place, as you know well. he sent out that tweet a week ago to liberate michigan, in support of the small handful of protesters who were near the capitol in lansing, michigan. on the other hand, in georgia, he told governor kemp, "i totally disagree with your decision to open the economy." hard to know exactly where he stands. knowing full well it's the governor's decision, governor whitmer went to end the stay at home order in michigan. what are you hearing from

constituents, who say, "my small business is about to go understand. i can't survive two, three, four more months." with public health, where do you find the balance? >> this is so important. it is one of the key questions, right? by the way, i want to liberate michigan from covid-19. that's what we're all focused on. it is very difficult. we want people to be able to go back to work and businesses to succeed and so on. at the same time, if we don't get our arms around this and do it the right way, we're not going to be able to get the economy going again. people are afraid. they're angry. this is worse, i think, than any other kind of cry sus, because of the inknown. we've had a lot of crises. we've had economic crises. you could also define it. this is the hardest part. so it's a constant effort. i support the governor in her efforts to focus on the medical professionals first, on those

giving medical information. it's got to be the toughest job in the world right now, to thread that needle. i know she's anxious. she has a group of top business leaders in the state that are advising her about how we, in a responsible way, reopen. which, of course, is going to happen. but, as i said, we're about 3,000 lives lost already in michigan. i don't want it to be 4,000 or 5,000 or 6,000. if this isn't done right, that's exactly what will happen. >> all right. senator debbie stabenow, thank you so much for coming on the show. it's great to see you. really appreciate it. >> thank you. there's a critical question underlying this worldwide pandemic. who will recover first, and what it will mean for the global economy in years to come. also, what we can learn medically. joining us now is global strategy adviser and author of the book "the future is asian."

thank you for coming back on the show. good to have you. who is going to recover first, do we know? are we able to track this, to get data that is conclusive? >> good to see you again, mika. despite the circumstances. let's remember that prior to the pandemic, we were moving into a world that you could say was sort of tri-polar. north american system, in a way. because of the trade war, and various other factors, america's largest trading partners are canca canada and mexico. asia, 60% of the trade is internal. we have seen in terms of the economic forecast, some of the surveys that have been done for business leaders and economists, that china is already begun to recover. you can see the consumer markets again, not tlhriving as they wee before, but people are consuming again. japan can turn the corner, and korea. where you have the heavily populous countries where

infection is low, people can participate in economic activity again. you'll see a rebound. asia is taking its own path, which is different. i can also imagine because of the technology at stake, in terms of the tracing apps asian countries used domestically, they'll partner with each other to do the immunity certificat n certifications, so people can start traveling internationally, across borders, and go drive the tourism industries and so fort. we have a tri-pow lar worlar wa don't know what the recovery will be like. with it be a w-curve, slow one? europe suffering from the global financial crisis of a decade ago. uphill battle there. asia had momentum but it's been set back. there's a lot of tail winds pushing asia toward a strong

recovery. >> mike barnicle? >> so, basically, my ear just heard you describe a series of winners and losers in this battle of life and death when it comes to the virus. so what about the united states going forward? a country that, for the past three years, has done everything it could blitical icalpoliticale itself or alienate natural allies in europe, as you menged, and around the world. what happens to the united states in this joint effort that ought to be a joint effort, in competing, or fighting, to clear us of the virus and compete in the rest of the world? >> i think you're asking the right question, but i do want to hesitate around the notion of winners and losers. the way i would look at it, there are those states that learn from the past, learn from mistakes, learn from others, and those that don't. let's be optimistic in the sense of saying that there is always

an opportunity to learn from mistakes one has made. when it comes to the science diplomacy, there is hope the vaccine trials and learning around how the contact tracing apps work, how to do social distancing in an efficient way, to do widespread testing in a rapid way, we can adopt the lessons in the united states and see what other countries are doing. most of all, i'm sure you'd agree, it's not to open that up too quickly. there's opportunity in that. when it comes to the geopolitical relationships, the pandemic has been a seismic event. as you well know, and as all of us know, there are trends that republic have been under way in terms of alienated allies, which goes back further than the pandemic and the trade war. as far back as the post 9/11 response, in terms of the invasions of afghanistan and iraq, right? we have 20 years worth of foreign policy stumbles that alienated many allies in the

trump administration. it's not helped things through its demands for more burden sharing from allies. we have tight investment in trade and military with. it's been said we demand to station troops and have them pay for them to be there. there's volatility in the foreign policies. i'm not going to say the geopolitical circumstances with our allies have hurt our ability to cooperate and learn in a pandemic. that'd be unfair. we have taiwan, south korea, very actively, despite the struggles they've gone through, especially south korea, actively trying to support the united states and other countries with the provision of medical supplies and equipment. the united states obviously still has strong relationships, even if the military dynamics are clearly volatile right now. >> global strategist, khanna. thank you very much for being on with us today.

coming up, for weeks, president trump pushed an unproven anti-malaria drug to treat coronavirus. now, we're learning just how far some of his senior administration officials were willing to bend the rules to back up the president's claims. it's detailed in a new piece entitled "internal documents reveal team trump's chloroquine master plan." we'll talk to the "vanity fair" writer behind that story, next on "morning joe."

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mr. president, on the subject of medical research, why have you stopped promoting hydroxychloroquine as a cure? >> we'll see what happens. we've had a lot of very good results. we had some results that perhaps aren't so good. i don't know. i just read about one. i also read many times good. i haven't at all. it's a great thing for malaria, lupus, and other things. we'll see whats the. i guess, deborah, they have many studies going on on that. we'll be able to learn. >> yeah. the president was really pushing hydroxychloroquine for a while there, like a lot. what do you have to lose? it's showing real hope. of course, fox news repeated those claims and tried to back it up with doctors, as well. the president backed off of that and kind of stayed away from it. so, too, did fox news. that was president trump rejecting the premise that he's

backed off pushing this drug as a treatment for the coronavirus. joining us now is catherine edman, the author of "bottle of lies," the inside story of the generic drug boom. and a generic drug boom" and a contributor to "vanity fair" which she has an exclusive this morning entitled "really want to flood new york and new jersey, internal documents reveal team trump's chloroquine master plan." you talk about a lot of things. on march 24, there was an internal consensus statement for the federal's top interagency working group, clinicians, scientists, experts who study this for their life, who actually know what they are talking about, and they concluded that this drug really should only be used in trials, that there is safety and efficacy, it was not supported by enough data, and that the

drug carried potential risks. that's a pretty strong statement. and yet, white house officials, you say, pushed ahead with a massive behind-the-scenes pressure campaign. the government's top health officials, to deliver huge amounts of chloroquine drugs to just about anybody who wanted them. i want to go backwards. we will go into the details of what you discovered. incredible new exclusive information. but why? did you ever get a sense as you were looking through all of this as to why the president was pushing this idea that is clearly unproven and not ready to go? >> you know, i think that, first of all, good morning, and thanks for having me on. good to be with you. i think the why has yet to be fully understood. there has been some reporting about a profit motive. we have reported that he wanted a win at the podium to say that there was this good news, this

game changer cure. but what is clear is that the white house had an idea that they were going to flood the zone with these unproven drugs and get them into the hands of essentially anyone who wanted them, and this really alarmed career health officials in the administration who understood that these drugs are completely unproven for the treatment of covid-19. they carry absolute dangers. there is risks of retaliate ris as. a battle was centered in the administration, which was are we going to contain these drugs in sort of rigorous clinical trials, carefully monitored in hospital settings where physicians with do adverse event

monitoring, or are we going to push these unproven drugs into pharmacies and make them available to patients with doctors prescribing them? the documents that "vanity fair" obtained shows, you know, we want to flood new york and new jersey with treatment courses. let's ignore the emergency use authorization passed by the fda which restricts the chloroquine drugs in the national stockpile to hospital settings. in one email, we have a top official saying the e-way matters not and the idea was to push these into pharmacies so patients could get them. that meant that those patients were not going to be carefully monitored by physicians in hospital settings. >> i also understand that patients who actually have conditions that this drug is appropriate for can't get them

because there has been a run on all of this stuff. it's caused a number of problems. gene robinson, actually, you wrote about this saying hydroxychloroquine is the one word that really could like sum up this presidency. i suggest that word today could be lysol, but i will let you have the next question for katherine. >> yeah, today's word would be lysol, i would think. and by the way, we had that poll earlier that thoed 23 million people do listen to president trump on the virus. so anybody who is listening now, please do not dose yourself with hydroxychloroquine. please do not inject yourself with lysol . please don't. just as a public service. but, katherine, the officials who saw that this was crazy the way this drug was being pushed, did they try to stop it? and what sort of reaction did they get from the white house?

>> well, they did try to stop it. so initially, you know, when this plan was formed and the idea was to push this drug into fo pharmacies, and we obtained documents, for example, from the fda's chief counsel saying, you know, the president wants to announce this plan from the podium. we've really got to push to set this up. and the officials who pushed back wanted to create a rule restricting the chloroquine drugs that were being amassed in the stockpile to hospital setting, and that was the battle. was this going to be sort of contained within the hospitals, or was this going to be a sort of free-for-all with, you know, patients who felt symptomatic getting prescribed it at their pharmacies with no follow-up to this potentially dangerous drug?

so the pushback came around that emergency rule. it was established that it would be limited to hospitals, and then the trump administration officials kept pushing against that rule. so even after that rule was passed, we have documents which show we want to flood new york and new jersey with treatment courses. we want to distribute to pharmacies. the battle over hydroxychloroquine culminated with the removal of dr. rick bright from the barda agency within hhs. he issued a statement saying that he felt he was removed because of this battle. >> willie? >> hey, katherine, willie geist. i want to ask you about where this idea came from to president trump. he doesn't typically peruse the

"new england journal of medicine" in his free time looking for treatments to problems. so we know rudy gobert wrudegy s ear. fox news hosts visited the white house or called him to talk about it as they pushed it on their air. where did the idea come from for donald trump to raise this? >> you know, there has been some reporting around this, you know, a couple of bloggers and online things that sort of filtered up to the president. we also know that larry ellison, who is the oracle founder, was talking about this to him. ellison offered to donate an app which could track patient symptoms, you know, patients who were using these experimental drugs. so somehow, and i think it's not exactly clear yet, but will become clear, you know, the hydroxychloroquine idea coalesced with the idea of using

this app to monitor symptoms and that the hydroxychloroquine was going to be pushed out very widely, and i think that is the piece that our story in "vanity fair" really adds to, was the idea for this very wide and largely uncontrolled distribution of this unproven and potentially dangerous drug. >> "vanity fair's" katherine eban. thank you for your exclusive reporting this morning in "vanity fair." coming up, more on yesterday's white house briefing, full of misinformation, to say the least. president trump appeared to propose injecting disinfectant for coronavirus. anything with a logical brain hitting back, calling his words dangerous and irresponsible. we will show you how the president's suggestions were

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>> hi, doctor. >> thank you very much. >> dr. nick, this malpractice committee received a few complaints against you. >> i'm just here to present talent. i am here to present ideas. >> there is a crazy man with a skap pull in the e.r.

he is demanding to see a quack. >> i said suppose you brought the light inside the body, either through the skin or in some other way. >> slow down, sir. you are going to give yourself skin failure. >> i say the disinfectant knocks it out in a minute. >> our one chance is -- >> is there a way to do something like that? by injection inside or almost a cleaning? >> i need a golf cart motor with a 1,000 volt capacitor. >> you have to use medical doctors. but it sounds interesting to me. >> dr. nick, we owe you an apology. consider the charges dropped. >> all right! >> dr. nick meets president trump, unfortunately, a doozy of a briefing yesterday. >> i don't know if you saw it there. there is a meme going around,

coronavirus, spray a little windex on it. you actually have lysol, i think. lysol has sent the message out to people, put the statement out, please do not injectiinges products, it will kill you. >> all right. good morning. >> willie, that really was -- i mean, it was a new level. the president talking about things that you actually would expect to see from dr. nick on "the simpsons." it would be funny if it weren't so tragic that here we are coming up on 50,000 americans who have been dying, a president who has been telling us it was going to go away along with people on fox news who have been telling us that it was a hoax. sean hannity on march the 9th saying this was just the media's latest hoax to get at donald trump. >> if you map out everything that the president says downplaying this, you will see

sean hannity and others on fox par atting h pair outing him, trying to amplify his false message. >> really, i mean, but it would so -- what's so frightening is there there are people out -- we saw the picture of the icu nurse yesterday going out silently protesting people that are out in the streets still ignoring doctors' advice, still ignoring the smartest minds, scientists' advice on how to protect themselves. here we are 50,000 dead into this pandemic and the president is more un-moored yesterday than he has been yet. >> yeah, he has been up there riffing at 5:30 in the evening every day since, what, march? early march sometimes he has been getting up there. and now the riffs have gone into

bizarre, dangerous musing about mirac miracle cures, about injecting disinfectant, quote, getting uv light into the body, whatever that means. i reached out to a few doctors last night. i had to start with an apology for insulting their intelligence. i said, is there anything to this? they either rolled their eyes and said there is nothing to this. not only is there nothing to this. if people inject disinfectant into their bodies as the president said yesterday, some will die. lysol, we crossed beyond the onion at this point. lysol had to put out a statement last night telling people not to put their products in their bodies because the president of the united states was musing but said, hey, i'm just throwing out ideas up here. don't hold me to this. musing about doing just that, putting those products into people's bodies. >> think about the president's musings though, as you said. he mused about this.

>> no, he made a guy from homeland security and his entire office work all day on a presentation about this. he is wasting the government's time during a deadly pandemic. >> right. but, you know -- >> for his musings. >> before this he mused about using a malaria drug. he spent so much time -- and then fox news amplified it over and over and over again, scam doctors came over, came on, and amplified it over and over and over again. of course, we find out the v.a. and others are concerned that actually more people may have died from it than were actually helped from it. before that, he was musing about how this was just something that, you know, it's one person coming in from china he said on february the 22nd. soon after that, he said at a rally it's 11 people coming in. soon we will be down to zero. then i think in michigan it was he said it's 15 people, soon it

will be down nothing. we have it completely under control. there is nothing to worry about. and then this, at the same time, joe biden said he was afraid that donald trump was not prepared for a coming pandemic at the end of january. well, donald trump was saying all of this, and of course two days ago, something that really frightens me for the health of our senior citizens and those with underlying health conditions, earlier this week the president also musing first that this might not come back in the fall, and then saying he didn't think it was going to come back in the fall. again these musings keep getting more and more dangerous for the lives of senior citizens and people with underlying health conditions, for our doctors, for our nurses, and i got to say also for those who are unemployed right now who can ill afford a second dip in the

economy, which will happen if we reopen too quickly. >> so along with joe, willie, and me we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, and national ms national affairs analyst co-host of the circus. let's show you how this all played out as the president undermined his top medical experts on stage, once again they are being forced to push back hard against president trump's latest suggestions for treating the coronavirus. one of which included, stay with me here, injecting people with disinfectant. the president's ideas, which were rejected by experts in the briefing room with him, came after a homeland security official presented research that found disinfectants, heat and

humidity, killed the virus on surfaces and in the air. >> so, supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous -- whether it's ultra violet or very powerful light, and i think you said that has -- you are going to test it? then i said supposing it brought the light inside the body, which you can do through the skin or in some other way, and i think you said you are going to test that, too? sounds interesting. right. and then i see the disinfectant knocks it out in a minute. one minute. and there is a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. it will be interesting to check that. so that you are going to have to use medical doctors. but it sounds interesting to me. a lot of people have been suggest about summer. maybe this is one of the

reasons. i once mentioned that maybe it does go away with heat and light, and people didn't like that statement very much. the fake news didn't like it at all. and i just threw it out as a suggestion. but it seems like that's the case. >> it would be irresponsible for us to say that we feel that the summer is just going to totally kill the virus and if it's a free for all and people ignore the guidelines. that's not the case. >> the president mentioned the idea of a cleaner, a bleach. there is no scenario that that could be injected into a person, is there? >> no. i am here to talk about the findings in the study. we don't that in our labs. >> i would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if there is any way that you apply light and heat to cure. you know? if you could. and maybe you can. maybe you can't. i say maybe you can, maybe you can't, i am not a doctor. i am like a person that has a

good you know what. have you ever heard of that, the heat and the light relative to -- >> certain viruses, yes, but relative to this virus? >> not as a treatment. certainly fever is a good thing when you have a fever. it helps your body respond. but not as -- i have not seen heat or light -- >> i think that's a great thing to look at. i mean, you know, okay? >> respectfully, the sir, you are the president and people tuning into the briefings want to get information and guidance and want to know what to do. they are not looking for rumors >> i am the president and you are fake news. i will say nicely, i know you well, i know you well, i know the guy, he is a total faker. are you ready? are you ready? are you ready? it's just a suggestion from a brilliant lab by a very, very smart perhaps brilliant man. he is talking about sun. he is talking about heat. and you see the numbers. so that's it. that's all i have. i am just here to present the

talent. i am here to present ideas because we want ideas to get rid of this thing. if sheet is good and if sunlight is good, that's a great thing as far as i am concerned. >> i guess if you could collapse the past three and a half years of madness into one clip -- >> that would be it. >> that might be the clip. >> that's why fox news or sean hannity went crazy on you last night. probably couldn't bring himself to start with that because it's -- >> he has been doing it for years. he's got this strange obsession. i hope for his sake he gets past it. >> they had to fill time with something beyond that ridiculous claim by the president. you saw dr. birx. the greatest tweet, watch her soul slowly die. she was so disgusted with him. >> dr. birx and dr. fauci, they are hanging in there to try to save lives. i knew growing up that with --

with my children, that i would use scrubbing bubbles to clean the bathtub before -- >> don't eat them. >> but i would not spray it in my children's mouth or my own mouth if i had a fever or a disease. this is so beyond madness that you have an american president saying such things about putting disinfectant in the body or putting light in the body. it is so beyond parody that if you wrote this for, let's say, veep, nobody would believe it. again, not funny because by probably the end of this month, more people will have died from this coronavirus that donald trump said was going to go away, said was a hoax, that the media's coverage was a hoax. sean hannity said the media's coverage of it was a hoax. more people will be dead of this

so-called hoax that the media was pushing, according to sean hannity, and donald trump, than died in the vietnam war over the next week, will probably go beyond 57,000. and then the fact that when you're near the end of april, after losing trillions of dollars -- >> 50,000 lives. >> after more lives have been lost here than were lost in both iraq wars in the 20-year afghanistan war, september 11th, the revolutionary war -- i could stack them up. donald trump is now at the point of talking about putting disinfectants in your body and putting lights inside people's bodies to the embarrassment of

those aides sitting on the sidelines listening to this horror show unfold before their eyes. >> coming up, the president's pseudoscience was just as shocking around the world as it was here at home. some of the reaction from overseas to the president's unhinged prescription for coronavirus. we'll be right back with much more "morning joe." we live in uncertain times. however, there is one thing you can be certain of. the men and women of the united states postal service. we're here to deliver cards and packages from loved ones and also deliver the peace of mind of knowing that essentials like prescriptions are on their way. every day, all across america, we deliver for you. and we always will.

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dangerous, bizarre, insame, horror. those are some of the headlines from the paper in the u.k. on president trump suggesting yesterday that, again, injections of disinfectants like bleach and uv light into the body may treat coronavirus. he is just throwing out ideas, he says. australia's top doctor called the president's suggestion quite toxic, and the new zealand herald framed his comments on

disinfectants as, quote, potentially fatal, saying to be 100% clear, those are not things anyone should be doing. it's embarrassing that these things have to be said outloud. i will repeat what we said at the top of the show, lysol, owned by a british company. they had to put out a statement refuting what the president said. lysol actually had to put out a statement in which it said, under no circumstances should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body. they weren't saying that because there is some crazy tide pod meme going around and teenagers are eating it. they are saying it because the most powerful man in the world offered it as a suggestion to, just throwing out ideas, bringing ideas to the table at the podium in the briefing room at the white house yesterday. >> yeah, because we have already had a couple die from taking hydroxychloroquine under the wrong circumstances after the president stood there at the podium. lysol, understandably, is saying we want to make sure this does

not come back to bite us and people will take the president of the united states seriously. i think what philip bump said from "the washington post" in that briefing is exactly the right question. mr. tpresident, where why are yu standing there giving the country rumors? people are looking to you in these briefings for advice and help th help, for things that are proven and we can take home with us. there is confusion and fear out there. when you add this kind of rumor to it, it adds to that. we have already seeing the erosion of america's leadership when it comes to this coronavirus. there is almost nothing that the rest of the world is looking to america for guidance on at the moment. the number of deaths, the number of cases, the lack of testing, the lack of ventilators, the lack of preparation, a system that doesn't work to cope with this, a public health system that doesn't work to work with this, who has authority, who doesn't have authority. it's been a shambles.

the country that has led the world for the last 70 years is certainly not leading the world at the moment. but when the president stands there and says this kind of thing, he is also hurting himself politically. you look at that ap poll from yesterday. only half of republicans have trust in what the president is saying when it comes to covid. 22% of republicans say they have little or no trust in what mr. trump is saying about the covid-19 infection. so i'm not sure how he thinks he is helping himself when he riffs like this, throwing out ideas that, you know, we have been saying all morning, it's bonkers, right? drinking or injecting disinfectant. anybody could tell you that. >> i mean, you look at those numbers, you look at the poll numbers for those that are listening on the radio right now, it's 47%. only 47% of republicans have confidence in what the president is saying. mika, even in his own party he

doesn't have the majority of support for people who believe what he is saying. it's just a plurality. >> well, every day these briefings, i will say, amid the controversy as to whether or not they should be shown in terms of their value for having truthful information, that's a great debate. but every day these briefings reveal something new about this president that people are able to see for themselves because this impacts their mortality. he doesn't get that. and it happens every day. and you see these numbers. let's bring in senior white house reporter for mbs news, shannon petty. shannon, what happened? from your perspective covering this for nbc news digital, how do you even put into words a press briefing like that? >> well, i can't tell you what was exactly going through the president's head when he decided to publicly have this riff. but i can tell you that this is part of a bigger theme and strategy that we have seen from

the very beginning of this from the president to try to give an overly rosy picture of what is going on. he also said yesterday that a vaccine was coming very soon. the kay befoday before he talke fourth of july having a big crowd on the national mall. early on monday he was saying there would be 50,000 deaths. now we are already at that number. he was suggesting that could be the total. why does he keep giving an overly rosy view? i am told there is a broader political strategy here. his political advisors and republican strategists feel the election will be decided by how people feel things are going, not necessarily where we are at, but how things are going. so if there is a perception that there is some cure in the works, that things are going to get better, maybe they don't have a job, but they will have a job soon. maybe there is not a cure now, but the government is looking into something. maybe it's light. maybe it's disinfectant. the president can't talk about hydroxychloroquine anymore because we have seen real data out there that raises questions.

so it seems like he is reaching for something to help continue this perception that things are getting better, that there is hope. but really all of that coming, as you pointed out, amid a week where we have now 50,000 people dead. instead of trying to lead the country in some national mourning, trying to comfort people who are scared, who have lost a loved one, he continues the strategy of trying to make people think things are better than they actually are in hopes that that will help his poll numbers, and that will eventually help his re-election in november seems to be the strategy based on what i'm hearing from his advisors. >> shannon at the white house, thank you so much. coming up, the economic protections passed by congress will likely expire long before the suffering has subsided. we'll look at what and who might be left behind straight ahead on "morning joe." hind straight ahen "morning joe."

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we absolutely need to significantly ramp up not only the number of tests, but the capacity to actually perform them. i am not overly confident right now at all that we have what it takes to do that. we are getting better and better at it as the weeks go by, but we are not in a situation where we say we're exactly where we want to be with regard to testing.

>> as you know, and as i have said many times, we are very advanced in testing. other countries are calling us to find out what are we doing. we have done more testing than every other nation combined, and that's a big statement. >> dr. fauci said we are just not there yet? >> i don't agree. we are doing a great job on testing. if he said that, i don't agree with it. >> joining us now president and ceo of the robert wood johnson foundation, dr. richard besser, former acting director of the cdc and was appointed by new jersey governor phil murphy to a multi-state board that's coordinating the region's reopening. i will ask you the same question that was asked of fauci. are we where we need to be with testing and how long is it going to take to get there? >> yeah, i mean, that's the critical question. if we switch from an approach where everyone is on lockdown in their homes to one where we're trying to identify people who are sick quickly, getting them

into isolation, figuring out who they have had contact with and getting those people into isolation, we are nowhere near ready to do that. most states are only testing people who are severely ill to figure out do they need to be hospitalized and do they have covid. if you really want to do this right, you need to be able to test people with even the mildest symptoms because most people who get this infection will do well, but even those people who do well have the possibility of spreading this to others. and we are not ready to identify and continue with that strategy. we also, you know, there is also challenges in terms of who is getting tested. this is communities of colors, black americans and latinos in a major way. we don't have any idea of the testing rates in these communities. >> dr. besser, willie geist. you were the acting cdc director 2009 during the outbreak of

swine flu. you had these briefings every day. what lessons did you learn during that swine flu outbreak that you believe could be applied today perhaps to the trump administration, they could learn from what you all went through then? >> yeah, willie, that's a terrific question. i think one of the critical success factors back then was trust. and the way we engendered trust was having a daily briefing from the top public health officials in the country. what allowed us to do was talk about what we were learning, why we were changing guidance when we were changing guidance. it's critically important. in a pandemic, in a new emerging infection, what you don't know greatly out weighs when you do know. as you learn and change your guidance, if you are not having that direct line of sight to the science, people will wonder, what's going on here? who is in charge? why are you waffling and flipping? the cdc and state and local public health are learning a ton, but we are not hearing from

them every day. we are hearing from political leaders, and that is a real problem. >> dr. besser, i'm just curious what you thought of the president's sort of talking about this light and disinfectant being shot into the body, and then his top scientists having to sort of deal with that. are you at all concerned that the framework at the top in the white house is not best set up to win against this virus with a president who comes up with ideas like that? and what did you think of that idea? >> you know, mika, i think it's extremely dangerous when hypotheses, when ideas, when things that you may want someone to consider are put forward in that fashion. there is so much misinformation out there on the internet. you want to make sure that anything that's raised at a national level has been vetted,

has been tested, and you know that it's something you want people to do. i worry when i see headlines that say the president suggests using disinfectant because some people will read that and say, oh, if it's being suggested, maybe i'll try it. the headlines should all be that people should not use disinfectant. if people do that, lives will be lost. scientific ideas need to come forward from scientists, and then have political leaders, when you are looking to make a policy decision, say we're doing this because here is what our top scientists have said. >> mike barnicle? >> doctor, one of the things the virus has done is breed fear and anxiety among certain elements of the population in this country and other countries around the world. you are trained as a pediatrician. what do you say to pregnant women right now?

what do you say to parent of youngsters, infants 3 to 5 years of age, people 7, 8, 9, 10 years of age, and their exposure to the virus? what do you say? >> it's natural that people are worried, that they are concerned. when you can give people things to do to reduce their risk, that helps. when it comes to talking to children, it depends very much on the age of the child. so very young children you want to shield them as much as possible from news. as children get older, they are as parents, as caregivers, you want to reassure them that you are taking care of them and looking out for their health. pre-teen and teen children, give them things to do, ways to engage, things they mayable able to do even remotely in their communities so their sense of control and action, that can be very helpful. this is going to pay a big toll on children's education, on

their learning, on their development, and we need to stay focused on doing those things that can help to reduce the impact at that level. >> but is it factual to claim, as some have claimed, that children are unlikely to catch the virus? >> well, you know, there is a lot that we need to learn about children. one of the key questions is how important are children in terms of transmission. for flu we know that children are a critically important way that virus spreads through communities, it spreads to elderly people. we don't have the same information around children in this outbreak, and that will be very relevant when you think about opening schools and how big a risk factor that is. in terms of children not getting infected, no, you know, what it is known is that children are at much lower risk of having severe disease and fatal disease. it doesn't mean that some

children won't have severe disease, unfortunately, or die, but the risk of that happening is much, much lower. this idea of risk is one that's really challenging to convey because it doesn't mean that it's not going to happen, but we're doing all of these activities because of the great risk to the elderly and those with certain underlying conditions. and if we all take action, that's what we can do. we can reduce the risk to those who are really in trouble with this. >> dr. besser, as we talk about the communities who are vulnerable, senior citizens, people with underlying conditions often left out of the conversation are people with disability. i know you have been thinking and write being that recently, that there are massive populations of people with disabilities who are vulnerable right now. oorps we had a nearly $500 billion bill pass through congress to address the problem in front of us. what can you say about how people with disabilities in this country are having their needs addressed either through

government or through private groups? >> well, i think if you look at the legislation that has been passed, you would have to conclude that as a society we don't put the same value on people with disabilities. 60 million people in this country with disabilities. more than that. but if you look at some of the unmet needs, family and medical leave. a lot of home health workers who care for people with disabilities are not in the work force now, yet family and medical leave policies don't allow people to stay home and help care for people with disabilities. that's something that has to change. people with disabilities need to be able to have long, long stockpiles of medications and medical equipment, yet while medicare is allowing 90-day prescriptions, hasnthat hasn't expanded to medicaid and chip and the other programs. those are critically important. and when you look at the decision-making that health care systems are making as they are planning of how to ration scarce

resources, people with disabilities, their lives are not valued in the same way, and that's just wrong. we need to change that. we need to look at these bills and make sure that the needs of people with disabilities are being met, that information is being conveyed to people in ways that everybody can get that information and protect their lives. >> dr. richard besser, thank you so much for coming on. we would love to have you back again soon. up next, who is monitoring the money? nearly $3 trillion are being allocated to deal with the pandemic. is there enough oversight on capitol hill? that's a debate taking shape right now. we'll discuss it ahead on "morning joe." it's best we stay apart for a bit,

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senator elizabeth warren revealed yesterday that her eldest brother, don reed herring, died from the coronavirus earlier this week. warren announced her brother's passing in a tweet writing in part, quote, my oldest brother died from coronavirus on thursday evening. he joined the air force at 19 and spent his career in the military, including five and a half years off and on in combat in vietnam. he was charming and funny, a

natural leader. in two follow-up tweets, warren said her brother was special because of his smile, and thanked the doctors and nurses who cared for him. "the boston globe" reports that herring died in norman, oklahoma, about three weeks after he tested positive for covid-19. in february, he was hospitalized for pneumonia, but by mid-april he was moved to intensive care. herring was 86 years old. congresswoman maxine waters announced yesterday that her sister is fighting for her life after falling sick with the coronavirus. waters said she was dedicating the $484 billion coronavirus aid bill to her sister. which brings us to that house vote yesterday. it was also to establish a select committee to oversee the federal government's response to the coronavirus and to monitor president trump's implementation

of nearly $3 trillion in relief measures. speak speaker nancy pelosi said it will be focused on ensuring tax money goes to workers, paychecks an benefits. the measure was passed on a party line vote of 212-182 with republicans unanimously slamming the effort as an attempt to make president trump look bad ahead of the november election. they said the panel was unnecessary, pointing to the existing multiple house committees that already have jurisdiction to monitor the law. let's bring in former white house press secretary for president obama robert gibbs and former senior advisor for the house oversight and government reform committee kurt bardella. he is a "morning joe" contributor. the need for oversight, it seems that there might be one, some might argue, and that some of the republicans and the

president really want to chip away at the ability to cross-check where this money is going. >> well, mika, we are talking about trillions of taxpayer dollars, and all i can think about is what what republicans said during the stimulus time and the bailout that president obama presided over. robert will remember this well. senator grassley saying at the time that when taxpayers receive billions of dollars are being distributed, they need, quote, independent oversight. when my former boss said inspectors general can't be effective if they are looking for ways and abuse can cost them their job. republicans were all about oversight, protecting taxpayer money, checking and balancing the executive branch when they were in power when president obama was in office, when he was presiding over billions of dollars being dispersed out there. jim jordan yesterday railed against this select committee being formed to oversee the

coronavirus fund, and all i could think about when he was complaining about this oversight, jor him being worried about the benghazi committee being selected, oversight during the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign. i don't remember jim jordan or mark meadows or any of these republicans now who aren't doing anything having any issue with using poll tinitics and their oversight power to derail barack obama. again, robert knows this firsthand having experienced it from the podium. >> hey, robert, it's willie. you spent a lot of time at that podium, white house press secretary, also worked for a major corporation in communications. we actually had, because of something that was said it that briefing room yesterday, a major corporation, the one that makes lysol, had to put out a statement last night telling people not to inject lysol into their own bodies because of something the president of the united states said. you can address that if you want to. but the larger question is about

communications in a moment of crisis. how important it is to stay out in front of the american public every day and to provide the truth. >> well, i think if you take what curt said and what dr. besser said, we need transparency in what's going on and we need communications that's built off of science and know how. it can't be open mic night at trump university's medical school in the briefing room, and it shouldn't be. what the president said yesterday was dangerous. it's really only a matter of time until we read a story where somebody has tried this and hurt themselves or worse, they die. and i think, you know, this idea that this is some osort of political strategy, had hope and optimism, there are countless leaders in our history, go back to churchill and roosevelt in world war ii, even in really dire times they found a way to be truthful and hopeful. quite frankly, if you are hopeful without any rationality, people are going to lose confidence in you like they have

with this president and like you saw in the ap poll numbers. people simply don't trust the president at a moment in which he is the focal, in terms of spokes people, and they have to be able to trust what he says. >>. >> robert, could i pick up on that? it almost seems like there is a strategy from this administration to put out as many theories and counter theories as possible to increase levels of confusion with the hope that perhaps the president can say, look, here is one strategy that i advocated and it did work. are they banking on the idea that in november, as we heard earlier in the program, if they can just say things are going to get better if they can say, well, there are plans being made to investigate therapies or vaccines or counter therapies, even if it is disinfectant, that somehow that will make people feel confident or feel something is happening and that might be enough to make them vote for the president? >> i think that seems to be what

they're banking on. i think they also spend a lot of time in these briefings rewrite away has previously been said. from a communications perspective, again the dangerous thing is if you continue to throw this kind of information out, if i keep telling you that the sky is purple and every morning you walk outside and the sky is blue, eventually you are going to lose a lot of faith in my ability to predict the color of the sky. and these things are -- the stakes in this are much greater, much more enormous, and i think we have to have confidence in what we hear from that podium. that's why -- and i have said this from the beginning -- get the doctors out in front. have anthony fauci, have dr. birx, people like dr. besser leading these briefings. less predictions, less happy talk, and be truthful and upfront with the american people about what we're facing and giving us hope that there is a real plan, confidence that there is a real plan because there is one. right now they don't feel that confidence because they don't see that plan.

>> kurt bardella, are there key areas that need oversight in these packages more than others and what would they be? >> i think that when you look at how many is being distributed d businesses, small businesses and large businesses, there's a lot of concern right now that money isn't getting to where it's supposed to go. that the money promised to small businesses and people who are relying on that to keep their payroll and their employees isn't really getting there. when you have a president who fires inspector generals, who replaces them with cronies who work in the white house counsel's office during impeachment, when you have a president who every single time congress erects some sort of oversight, some sort of independent verification that money is being spent appropriately and he knocks that down and says outright he's going to ignore it. he says he's not going to abide by that or cooperate. you have to question, if money is being spent the way it should, why are you trying to hide from that process? what are you doing with this

money? we have a president who hasn't revealed by the way his tax returns, his financial state. we don't know how he's profiting or how his businesses are profiting from this. it raises a lot of questions, and at the end of all of this once we get through the urgency of corona, there's going to be a thorough review of how this money was spent and where it went. >> robert gibbs and kurt bardella, thanks for coming on. still ahead, a look at one nonprofit working to make a differenceby helping those on the front lines and small businesses at the same time. actor jeffrey wright joins us to discuss his new initiative. keep it right here on "morning joe." and we are here, actively supporting you and your community. every day, we're providing trusted information from top health experts...sharing tools to help protect families from fraud... and creating resources to support family caregivers everywhere.

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our people are strong. our job is to keep your business connected . it's what we've always done. it's what we'll always do. ♪ our next guest is perhaps best known for his role in hbo's "west world," but new yorkers know him as a brooklynite. jeffrey wright joins us. he started an initiative to feed that borough's health care workers and first responders by supporting local restaurants. created by the help of family and friends, here now is the premiere of brooklyn for life's relief video. here's a first look at a portion of it. >> brooklyn for life. >> brooklyn for life. >> from the front lines of this fight are our health care workers from places like -- >> brooklyn hospital. >> interfaith medical center!

>> brooklyn for life! >> brooklyn for life. >> and our first responders like those in -- >> engine 39. >> station 40. >> like them i'm brooklyn for life. >> brooklyn for life! >> jeffrey wright, this is awesome. tell us what your goal is. >> well, our goal is to keep as many of these small business mom and pop restaurants in brooklyn vital and serving meals to local hospitals and ems stations for as long as it takes. we have a rotation of about 42 restaurants now. we're serving seven medical facilities in brooklyn. we're serving all ten ems stations so i think yesterday we

surpassed the 50,000 meal mark since march 27th, averaging about 2,500 meals per day. so our goal as set on the gofundme page is to raise a million dollars. we've raised a little over $200,000 on that page. we've also raised an additional 180 or so outside of the page due to direct donations to our 501c3. our goal is to keep going and keep the ovens lit in the local restaurants and keep the support going for our local frontline folks. >> willie? >> jeffry, it's willie geist. good for you for doing this. brooklyn for life, there's a gofundme page. people can see how they can help and offer support for this program. it seems to me, obviously, this is a great idea to help the health care workers but you're also incorporating local restaurants into this as well. we've all walked by those closed restaurants that have been our favorite local spots for so many years and worry about their futures. so how are you getting the

restaurants involved in this process as well? >> well, it really started very simply. we started with two restaurants. one called brooklyn moon owned by a very good friend of mine, michael thompson. another graziella's. i've probably and my kids have eaten thousands of dollars in vito's pizza and we wanted to make sure that when this all is said and done that it's still there and also that michael is still there. brooklyn moon has been in the neighborhood for 25 years. it's a local mainstraymainstay. local moon wasn't as oriented to delivery as grazielle's was. he is now more delivery oriented. this was after the lockdown. i reached out to him and said how did we do today? he said i got five orders which is not sustainable. so i caught word that vito had

been asking customers to call in and buy some pizzas on behalf of local brooklyn hospital staff which is just across the way from where i live. got together with him. we got together with a representative of the hospital. got the senior vp for external affairs. he said we'll take 200 meals a day, if you can, and we'll see where it goes. so we started with two restaurants and from there, they told friends. friends told friends. i looked out for other guys whose food i like in the neighborhood, and we just spiraled from there. but it's kind of a bit of -- it's a mutually beneficial relationship. represents the restaurants. benefits our health care staff and first responders. and it benefits the larger community. that's who is raising these funds. >> all right. jeffrey wright, thank you so much. renowned actor and brooklynite.

it's brooklyn for life. which has raised over $213,000 and counting via its gofundme page. for more information visit brooklynforlife.com. thank you so much. before we go, we'll do some final thoughts. i would say as we go into the weekend, be careful as you bring in information. the president last night proposed an idea that literally could be deadly. he has pushed unproven drugs. so be careful who you listen to. listen to the doctors and to the scientists who are running this from the white house and from major institutions around the country. be careful who you watch. willie geist, i'll send it to you and you can take it to katty. you have some folks that are pushing only the president's ideas. and some of those ideas, as we've seen, can be deadly. >> yep, you've got companies telling people not to drink

lys lysol. i do want to say jeffrey wright, we are all trying to figure out what to do, how can we help? we see all the suffering. you can do what you can do in your own neighborhood. good for him and for a lot of people for looking out their front windows and trying to help the hospital workers. and at the same time trying to help the economy and the restaurants in their community. so if we all do that, maybe we can get through this, katty. >> yeah, look, i think people are smart. they are not going to go back to business if it's not safe. they'll not reopen the economy before the doctors tell them to. all of the evidence says they're listening to the doctors. the president can stand there and tell people to inject themselves with disinfectant, but american voters and listeners know what they need to do. and i take courage from the fact that they are listening to the science. they're not listening to -- they don't need happy talk if it's not real. >> that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now.

♪ hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's friday, april 24th. and here are the facts this hour. at noon today, the president of the united states is expected to sign a nearly half trillion-dollar relief package into law. it will include roughly $380 billion to help small businesses with the rest of the money going to hospitals and very important testing. this comes on a day when we will hit a milestone in the u.s. deaths from the coronavirus. that number is going to pass 50,000. with the pace of new fatalities, president trump said his administration may extend social distancing guidelines into early summer or even later. current guidelines are set to expire next thursday. despite all of that, the