>> back home in the great state of rhode island where there are way fewer than six degrees of separation, taylor is from a family of providence police officers. so there's service in her family already, and now taylor's service has genuinely saved lives in new york. with that, that is our broadcast for this monday night as we start a new week. on behalf of all of my colleagues at the networks of nbc news, good night from our temporary field headquarters. thanks to you at home for joining us. happy to have you here this monday night. i'd like you to meet jenniferstejennifer steinberg. she's the head of nursing at the icu, the intensive care unit, at the memorial hermann southwest hospital, which is in houston, texas. >> i remember one of our first covid positive patients, he was

a guy that had gone for spring break in miami, and he came back and he was admitted in the icu for trouble breathing. and his friend, best friend, was outside the unit, wanted to drop him off some toiletries. and i went and talked to the best friend, and he said, i know i can't come in, but can you please give him this and please tell him i love him dearly. so i'm in the covid-19 unit and i talked to his friend, the patient, and explained we can't have any visitors, that he wanted me to tell you that he loved you, and he started to cry. and i started to cry. and we talked for a minute. and he said, can i ask you something? i said sure. he's like, no, never mind. it's a dumb question. and i said, no, no, no. no questions are dumb right now. and he said, well, am i going to be okay? i said well, your vital signs look good, you're five days in, and i said, well, you're talking, and just continue to exercise your lungs. and he cried some more with tears of joy and gratefulness that, you know, i gave him some

hope. and later that day, he was intubated, and i was crushed because i told him he was going to be okay. nine days later, though, he was extubated, and i went and visited him on the floor. now, when i went and saw him in the icu, i had my isolation mask on and gown and gloves. so it's hard to recognize people. but when i went in his room, he recognized me right away, and he said, oh, my god, i've been thinking about you every day. and i said, i felt so bad because i told you you were going to be okay. and he said, look, i am. he was down to one liter of oxygen, and he was able to walk to the bathroom. so it gave me some hope. i called my husband on the way home, and i was crying, and i said, i don't think i can make it. i don't think i can get through this. this is two more months of this,

and i can't do it. and he's like don't look at it like that. just look at it as you did one day. and so that gave me a lot of strength to know that well, i got one day done out of 59 more left to go. so it helps to talk about it even with somebody that doesn't know your world, and it definitely helps to take things one day at a time. and we made it. and we're 30 days in, and we're still managing. i'm talking, up late most nights, talking to the night shift, and if i could see them smiling, then i would be able to go home at night and sleep, praying for them. they're the true heroes of the icu, of the e.r that march in there with there ppe scared to death. but if they could at least smile a little bit, i had some assurance that they would be okay.

the support of the community, i know the community feels helpless, but they fed the nurses every shift, every day. and food helps. yeah, food helps. that's the only thing that helps right now is at least if they don't have to worry about cooking for their kids or cooking at their hotels, if we could just give them a little bit. the community made masks and headbands and devices to hold the masks so their ears weren't raw. there was pain. there was breakdown on noses and ears. there was fear of testing positive. it was horrible watching patients die without family. i've always been a proponent of good death, and watching people die without anybody there is just torture. and i know it's going to hurt a

lot of nurses. we're going to need a lot of coaching and counseling after this is over. and i know it's hard for the families to not be there. i'm just praying that we're done with this soon. >> i'm just praying that we're done with this soon, she says. that is jennifer steenburg who runs nursing at the icu at a large houston hospital. you see this again and again now from frontline health providers talking about what they're going through, talking about stamina among themselves and how they need to support each other and how there's going to be a need for, you know, long-term counseling and support. and as jennifer steenburg said, coaching to help people through this given how hard they are working and the circumstances in which they are working with people who are so sick and so many people dying. i mean this is why people are thanking health workers all over the country, right? this is why people are sending food. you know, she said food helps.

you hear about people sending food to health workers at hard hit hospitals all over the country. it's not like it's a national effort to do that. individual communities all over the country are deciding to do that on their own, and it's happening because people are so grateful. that's why the orders to open everything back up, you know, just assume our doctors and nurses can handle it all. our hospitals, they can handle more. i mean that's -- that's why i think it's so discord ant to have this open it up political movement. hospitals will be fine. health care workers are fine. they can take a lot more. alongside the way americans feel about our health care workers, i mean the vast majority of americans do support health care workers. the vast majority support the continuation of stay-at-home orders to try to limit the spread of the disease, to limit the assault on our health workers and our health system.

i'll tell you this was also nice to see this weekend. this is from the salinas valley in california, people turning out to thank farmworkers, people picking produce, thanking them for their essential work. and as we understand it, this has happened a few times in the central valley in california since the epidemic got so big. but this was salinas, california, this weekend. it's really nice to see. the united states is approaching 1 million cases of coronavirus now, which means that we're about to -- well, i guess now already we've got roughly quadruple the size of epidemic that any other country is dealing with. in terms of the death toll, the american death toll is now over 55,000, approaching 56,000 as we speak. there was a brief shining moment over the past couple of days when the white house seemed like it was maybe going to stop doing these briefings with the president.

i think something about him suggesting the injection of disinfectants from the white house podium last week, i think that got very close to breaking whatever the rickety system is in this government that has produced these daily weird televised screeds from the president. after the "why can't we all just bleach our insides" debacle on thursday night, the white house didn't have the president do more of these briefings over the weekend. and then today's planned briefing initially got canceled before the president apparently decided that he really must keep doing these things. and so we got yet another daily dose of live bizarre performance from the president today, including him trying and failing to read words he couldn't get anywhere near pronouncing, and lots of fanfare about a new testing plan that doesn't actually seem to be a new testing plan. it's just a statement of what the government should have done a few months ago but they didn't. there's still no readily available testing in most of the country. the trump administration's sba

turns out to have allowed dozens of companies to start marketing untested, unproven supposed coronavirus antibody tests even though most of those tests are now proving to be worthless or to have such high error rates, they're wildly irresponsible to use for any clinical decision making, but the fda let them onto the market without testing them. states are still competing with each other on the open market to buy ppe for health workers and other basic supplies. it even turns out that the v.a., the v.a. health system is in that same boat with states and with individual hospitals that are competing against each other for material. and even trying to defend their stash from the federal government, the trump administration that keeps stealing it. the head of the v.a. health system telling "the washington post" that the v.a. had put in an order for 5 million masks for health providers. they placed the order. the 5 million masks were on the way until fema swooped in and

stole those masks and took the order for themselves from the v.a. so that is -- that is still happening even to other parts of the federal government. they're not just stealing from the states anymore. they're now stealing from other parts of the government. will the v.a. try to defend itself against fema? what would that look like? i mean today was the next try for the small business relief loan debacle that ran out of all its money instantly in the first round. today was the second round, but the trump administration's small business administration website that was supposed to facilitate the loan process, today it crashed instantly today, and the crash lasted all day long. and so that's still a catastrophe in terms of america's small businesses. i mean the federal response has been either absent or disastrous or occasionally, in the hands of the president, insane.

from the very, very beginning, i know that i have said this before, but i think like we at least have to check in weekly. we are now months into this. we're now 55,000 american deaths into this. and it is worth noting that things are not getting better. we expect in the news when stuff is exposed as scandalous and failed, particularly when it is government action that has had catastrophic bad consequences, you expect that news coverage is connected to people getting embarrassed, starting to work on it and improving those systems. in the u.s. response to coronavirus when it comes to the federal government, nothing is getting better over time, months into this now. here's one example. turns out the cdc a week and a half ago put out a new list of symptoms that the cdc says could indicate potential coronavirus infection. the initial list from cdc said there were only three symptoms to look for -- fever, cough, shortness of breath. now they have added a bunch more. chills, repeated shaking with chills. muscle pain, headache, sore

throat, the new loss of the sense of taste or the sense of smell. and that list of symptoms has ended up being a really important and utile thing in our country because we are a country where the federal government blew it on testing. so testing has been hard to come by. testing availability has been severely cramped for most of the country for the duration of the crisis thus far. and that cdc list of symptoms has been really important in our environment of scarcity when it comes to testing. lots and lots of places all over the country have basically triaged testing so only people with the cdc defined testing were able to get a test. it's still true in places today. unless you've got the symptoms on the cdc list, you don't qualify for a test. just assume you've got it and hope for the best. but apparently the cdc revised and pretty significantly expanded its list of symptoms that indicate potential coronavirus a week and a half

ago. but nobody knew because cdc never put an announcement out about it. they don't do briefings about coronavirus, so they didn't really have an opportunity to tell anybody. they never told anyone. they just quietly posted the new expanded list of symptoms online. and if anybody had known about it over the past week and a half, that might have made a significant difference all over the country in terms of who was able to get a test. but, you know, oh, well. did we forget to tell you we did that? you know, when we started this epidemic, it was the cdc, it was scientists at the cdc who were giving daily briefings about coronavirus. and, remember, the president shut that down because he decided they were being way too alarmist, and clearly he decided that he wanted to do those things himself. so we don't have daily cdc briefings. all other health crises of these magnitude -- i guess we've never had one of this magnitude, but even ones of significantly less magnitude of this, you expect to

hear from health officials every day. now we hear from the president and whoever else he likes that day because he shut down the cdc briefings. maybe if we were hearing from the cdc, from scientists on a daily basis instead of from the drink the lysol artist at the white house, we would have heard about the cdc's new official list of symptoms, and our epidemic would have had a difference course over the past week and a half. that said, the cdc and osha, the occupational safety and health administration, they did this weekend release new guidelines for meat processing plants. ah, thought you might have seen this full-page ad in a number of newspapers this weekend. the head of tyson foods, one of the meatpacking companies warning that the food supply chain is breaking and talking about how much tyson is doing to protect its workers, so please, please, please, can they keep their plants open? it seems cdc and osha are

finally giving meatpacking plants advice on how to stay open without infecting all of their workers, which they've been doing very efficiently from the start of the epidemic. thousands of meat processing employees have been infected since the start of this epidemic. thousands of them. but it's important to note that even though cdc and osha has now put out guidelines for meat processing plants, it just came out yesterday. why did they wait so long? i don't know. but they did put out these guidelines as of yesterday, and the guidelines are purely voluntary. the trump administration could make these cdc guidelines for meat processing plants -- it could make them mandatory. the department of labor could just tell meatpacking plants these guidelines are required. you have to follow them. but they're not doing that. and so these are just a suggestion, except interestingly in one plant in the whole

country, in missouri, a really innovative lawsuit was filed against smithfield, one of these big companies that runs these big plants. filed by an anonymous long-term employee at that plant. she's just identified in the legal filings as jane doe. and jane doe in her lawsuit against smithfield alleges that people at the plant she works at have worked while sick, without protective equipment. there's a whole host of irresponsible behavior at the plant she is suing to correct. she is not suing for damages. she is just suing to try to force the plant to make the plant safe for its employees. and this case in missouri against smithfield is ongoing, but the federal judge overseeing that case today did rule that henceforth, the plant must comply with guidelines from the cdc and osha. so cdc and osha took until yesterday to come up with guidelines for these plants. the trump administration says those guidelines are just a

suggestion, not mandatory for any other meatpacking plant in the country. but in missouri, thanks to the order of one federal judge, this smithfield plant is mandated to follow those guidelines at at least one of their plants. start somewhere. and god bless you and keep you, mrs. jane doe. thank you for what you've done. smithfield is also the company that operates that huge plant in sioux falls, south dakota, that has produced one of the largest covid outbreaks anywhere in the country. there's now over 1,000 cases in sioux falls, south dakota, associated with that one plant. they still don't have a statewide stay-at-home order in south dakota. there's also nearly 1,000 covid cases in grand island, nebraska. nebraska's another state where they don't have a statewide stay-at-home order. in grand island, nebraska, that outbreak too appears to have originated with a meatpacking plant in town, a jbs beef plant. that's the nucleus of what's becoming a pretty worrying outbreak in nebraska as a state. nebraska had 2,000 confirmed coronavirus cases thursday last

week. as of yesterday, as of sunday, they have over 3,000 cases. that's not a good projection. but, again, no stay-at-home order in nebraska. and a major campaign donor to nebraska governor pete ricketts is back on his idea that he is going to open up the gigantic nebraska crossing mall on interstate 80 just outside omaha by the end of this week. sure, nebraska just went from 2,000 cases on thursday to 3,000 on sunday, and they've got 1,000 cases-plus in one pretty small city associated with a meatpacking plant that the governor wants to reopen. why not get everybody breathing in each other's faces as quickly as possible? when trump labor secretary eugene scalia decided that he would not make the health guidelines for meatpacking plants mandatory, i don't know if he thought that might mean that these outbreaks would stay inside the plants and not turn into big outbreaks in the communities where those workers live. but what we're seeing where we

have big outbreaks in meat processing plants all over the country is that they're turning into big community outbreaks in all of those places. we're seeing that everywhere now. for example, there's a very worrying situation tonight in logansport, indiana. the county there, cass county, announced a new public health emergency in their county because of a really big spike in cases there centered on a local tyson meat processing plant. i mean this is their total cases in cass county, indiana, over time. this is not -- that is not a good trend line. this is the growth in cases in cass county, indiana, day by day. again, not good. not a good trend line. they have closed that tyson plant in cass county, indiana, but today with the case numbers in that one county topping 1,000, the ceo of the local logansport memorial hospital said, quote, our hospital is not

equipped with enough staff or resources to care for numbers like this. and so that county in indiana has put in place a new state of emergency and a stricter stay-at-home order than what is in place statewide. and now here's another one to watch and that we're going to talk a little bit more about tonight. it's been unfolding in greeley, colorado. you might have heard about the particular problem they've got in greeley. you might have heard about the big outbreak they've got at the jbs plant, specifically because at one point in got mentioned at the white house by vice president mike pence. >> i spoke today to the governor of colorado, jared polis, and we've been in contact with senator cory gardner about an outbreak at a particular meatpacking facility in the colorado area. at this time our team is working with the governor and working with the senator to ensure that

we flow testing resources. >> working to flow testing resources. working to ensure that we flow testing resources. that announcement from the white house led to a bunch of sort of relieved local coverage in colorado that testing, universal testing, was coming to all the workers at that meat plant in greeley, colorado. that, everybody thought, was saying everybody is going to be tested at that plant. that has not happened. by the time the plant closed the day after vice president pence said he would flow testing resources to that plant, there were a few dozen positive cases that were associated with the plant. now there are over 100 positive cases associated with the plant but also five employees known to have died, which is a large number of employees to have died if there's only just over 100 positive cases overall. could there be a lot more positive cases at that plant?

nobody knows because despite those words from vice president pence and the white house about flowing testing resources to the plant, despite the plant being given a public health order telling them to test every employee, including repeated surveillance testing for workers who initially tested negative, this plant in greeley, colorado, just didn't do it. they just didn't test people. and now today they've reopened. they partially reopened friday, fully reopened today. there are 6,000 people who work at this plant. it has been reported locally in colorado that the plant did actually start a plan to test everyone. they started by testing their supervisors and managers. the test results reportedly turned out over 40% positive for the plant's supervisors and managers. and upon seeing those results, the plant just decided to stop doing any additional testing because do you really want to know? and as i mentioned, then they just opened up again today. sure, it will be fine.

6,000 people in there. five workers dead already. and they're not doing universal testing despite supposedly being provided with resources to do it and being told to do it. nope. more important that we be open. let's not test. greeley is in weld county, colorado. the republican-dominated weld county board of supervisors today told businesses in the county that even as colorado governor supports -- even those looser guidelines from the governor aren't going to be enforced in weld county. they say those guidelines can't be enforced in weld county and they're going to tell businesses in weld county to do whatever the heck they want. and the gigantic 6,000-worker jbs plant is back open even without testing everyone. and the public health order to test everyone, apparently that was just optional too. colorado has the fourth highest case load west of the mississippi after texas and

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the first confirmed case of coronavirus at the big jbs beef

plant in greeley, colorado, 6,000 employees, was discovered on march 26th. after 50 confirmed cases at the plant, the president of the local union that represents people who work at that plant wrote to jbs management and to the colorado governor demanding that the plant be closed immediately until effective safety procedures could be put in place to stop more people from getting infected there. in her letter, kim car doe va, the union president, wrote that the union, quote, believes there may be significantly more individuals at the plant who are carrying the virus but may either be asymptomatic, not tested, or afraid to come forward. the plant was later ordered to close for eight days, but then they started to reopen on friday and they fully reopened today. ahead of the reopening, the general manager of the plant cited a range of measures jbs was taking to keep the workers healthy. jbs blamed federal, local, and state officials for not coming

through on promises to test all of the workers. but they're not testing all the workers. those assurances and that finger-pointing from the company was last week. over the weekend, a fifth person who works at that plant died. the number of employees testing positive has inched up to now 120. but there may be many more. again, there's 6,000 people who work in this plant. there's 120 confirmed cases at this plant and 5 deaths already among people who work there. we don't have enough testing in this country. from the testing that we do have, we know that a scary high percentage of people who test positive have no symptoms. in some instances, it's more than half of all the people who have it, and we know we are learning from the virus that if you test only symptomatic people, you are likely to miss many, many cases, including asymptomatic people who are nevertheless infectious and can give it to others. today in greeley, colorado, as they fully reopened this plant, many of the plant's 6,000

workers waited in line to be screened for fever or other symptoms before entering the plant because they're still only looking for symptoms. if you show symptoms, then you can get a test. but colleagues of the people who are working there say they worry about possible positive cases among asymptomatic workers getting waved right on through. indeed in the system they've set up, that would be a by-design outcome. that wouldn't even be a screwup. joining us now is kim cordova. thank you so much for being with us tonight. thank you for making time. >> thank you. >> i have been following this from afar, watching the local press in colorado and the national press as there has been some national coverage of it too. but i'm sure you can see this more clearly than i can. can you tell me if i've screwed

anything up or missed anything important in terms of the way i've explained this? >> no, but, you know, a worker had passed away when i originally sent the letter asking for the plant to be closed. and so we already -- our first death was on april 7th. then we had two other deaths on april 10th when the health order was finally issued. >> so april 7th is the first death. two more on april 10th, which is when the plant was ordered shut. another death this weekend. >> yes. >> with five employees of the plant dead, the idea that there are only 120 positive cases among the workers, that ratio just seems wrong. from what we know of this virus -- and, again, it's wily, and we don't know everything about it, but if there's five workers who have already died, there are likely many more positive people in the plant. is that your estimation too working closely with the people who are employed there? >> yes, absolutely.

i mean they haven't offered testing for the regular frontline workers. so we believe there's a lot higher number. the 120 are only those that actually made it to the hospital and were able to test. but there are thousands of workers either with symptoms or asymptomatic that have not had an opportunity for any type of testing. >> do you know anything about what's been locally reported, which is that after vice president pence said that testing resources would be sent to greeley and after there was a local expectation created that there would be universal testing for everybody who worked there, it's been reported locally that the plant did start testing managers and supervisors, and they received a disturbingly high proportion of positive results, more than 40% positive, and that they then decided that they wouldn't expand testing to the rest of the plant. that's how it's been described both in the local press. i've had one source federally

confirm that that's what happened as well. is that your understanding of what happened? >> yes. they started -- you know, they had scheduled testing to happen starting the saturday before easter, starting with their managers. and then on sunday, easter sunday, that monday and tuesday, all workers were advised that they would be testing. once they started testing their supervisors and it became apparent that the numbers were alarmingly high, they abruptly stopped testing without consulting, you know, weld county. and then they just stopped testing. they never tested any of the frontline production workers. >> i look at the footage of folks going into that plant, lining up today to be symptom-screened, to be checked for a temperature or other symptoms so that they can -- if so, they would qualify for testing, but without that, they won't. i'm looking at people wearing

homemade face coverings, looking at the reassurances from the plant management, but looking at the way they've reacted to other public health orders, and i have to tell you i'm really worried about the 6,000 people who work there. and i can't imagine the concern in the community and among their families and co-workers, especially with the expectation that so many people who are going in every day may be positive right now. is there anything that you feel like the rest of the country should know or can do to be supportive of the people who are working there in these very difficult circumstances? >> well, the workers are scared. you know, there was a commitment by not only vice president pence, the health order said that -- required testing before that plant opened. they didn't even close the plant on the day they were ordered to. they continued to run the plant through the 10th all the way through the morning of april 16th. so really there's only been nine days, so not enough days to stop any type of cycle or flatten the

curve. workers were not clearly given guidance on sheltering in, and there was community testing this weekend, and workers are already getting their results that were asymptomatic, and they are positive. and so had there not been in community testing, and it was only for those with symptoms, but some of our jbs workers went down, took their chance. they were asymptomatic, and they've come back positive. and they were scheduled to start working friday and saturday. so we're very concerned that this is going to be another repeat cycle of workers, you know, being forced to come to work, and this is a work-while-sick culture. and you're seeing it all over the country, and we're really worried that, you know, more people are going to get sick, that without the plant-wide testing, workers are very scared. they're also still mourning the deaths of their co-workers and

family members of these workers have passed away from covid too. >> kim cordova, president of the local 7 union representing workers at that plant in greeley, colorado, that has reopened now despite these pretty disturbing circumstances. please keep us apprised of what's happening there. i know this is a very fluid situation in colorado as a whole, but specifically in greeley. please keep us apprised. we'd love to have you back to keep us updated. >> thank you. >> all right. i mentioned that kim cordova is the president of the local union. i should also tell you that nbc news today obtained a statement from that jbs plant. they said that they have taken, quote, aggressive action to voluntarily close the plant. they did that before when it was closed. it's now reopened. quote, assuming the entire workforce was positive and subject to quarantine. but, again, despite a public health order to test everybody in that plant before they reopened and to even test people on a repeated basis once they

tested negative, that plant is up today without people working there having had access to testing. all right. much more to get to tonight. stay with us. an apron is not quitting until you've helped make something better. what does an apron have to do with insurance? for us, especially right now, everything. ♪ it started when fitbit showed her... zombies make her a zombie so she set a bedtime reminder. which led to better sleep more changes ...and the confidence to get here. get sleep insights with fitbit premium

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we've been watching this story and waiting since friday when "the new york times" was first to report that the navy had recommended the reinstatement of kacaptain bret crozier as the commanding officer of the uss theodore roosevelt that had the terrible outbreak of covid-19. we've been waiting since that report that the navy had decided to reinstate him as commanding officer for some kind of announcement that he's actually been reinstated. well, he hasn't. captain crozier, of course, was fired by the trump administration after he sounded the alarm about a burgeoning coronavirus outbreak on board his carrier. that outbreak has since infected more than 950 crew members for that carrier.

one sailor has died. the president's appointed navy secretary, the man who fired crozier, himself was forced to resign over this debacle in disgrace. the entire thing has been an absolute mess every step of the way. of course things can always get worse. following that navy review, which recommended that captain crozier be reinstated as the commanding officer of that ship, the trump administration's defense secretary, mark esper, was expected to announce what was going to happen to captain crozier. that decision has apparently been indefinitely deferred. politico reporting that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, general mark milley, wants a more extensive investigation than what the navy has already done. secretary esper himself is also apparently in no rush to make any sort of decision. navy leaders have already reportedly verbally briefed secretary esper as to why captain crozier should get his job back, but esper is apparently holding out for a written version of that same

information. i don't know. after he reviews that, he apparently plans to meet again with navy leadership to discuss next steps again. it's almost like he's trying to run out the clock on ever having to make a decision at all because who knows how the president will react once you actually decide something. you know what happened to the last navy secretary and the one before that? how about the last defense secretary and the one -- yeah. meanwhile, another u.s. navy vessel, a deployed u.s. navy vessel, a destroyer called the uss kidd, is in trouble now too. as of friday we reported that 18 sailors on board the uss kidd had tested positive for coronavirus. as of today, it's not 18 anymore. it's now 47 sailors on that ship. that ship is currently en route to san diego where the navy hopes to continue offloading infected crew members. a lot of news coming out of the navy these days, none of it good

unfortunately, but a lot of it trying to make things last as long as possible and not invoke presidential ire. that emsoseems healthy. watch this space. even when depressed. overwhelmed by bipolar depression? ask about vraylar. some medications only treat the lows or the highs. vraylar effectively treats depressive, acute manic and mixed episodes of bipolar i. full-spectrum relief of all symptoms, with just one pill, once a day. elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis have an increased risk of death or stroke. call your doctor about unusual changes in behavior or suicidal thoughts. antidepressants can increase these in children and young adults. report fever, stiff muscles, or confusion, which may mean a life-threatening reaction, or uncontrollable muscle movements, which may be permanent. side effects may not appear for several weeks. metabolic changes may occur. movement dysfunction, restlessness, sleepiness, stomach issues are common side effects. when bipolar depression overwhelms,

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i present to you the u.s. air force academy's class of 2020. >> class of 2020, dismissed! >> normally after you throw your hat in the air at graduation, you get to, you know, high-five and hug the classmate next to you, but this is 2020. so social distancing while you celebrate is the best case scenario. you can see the cadets at the air force academy were seated eight feet apart from each other in formation when they had that graduation last week. meanwhile, two other academies, the coast guard academy, the

naval academy decided an in real life graduation was not worth the risk this year. they scrapped plans for graduation this year in lieu of virtual graduations. but that left it an open question as to what the army service academy, what west point would do. west point is about 50 miles outside new york city. it's very close to the red-hot center of the american epidemic. west point had decided that its graduation would be postponed because of coronavirus. cadets were sent home for spring break and told not to come back, told to finish their classes online and, per "the new york times," quote, the pandemic left it unclear whether a graduation ceremony would happen at west point at all. but then presidential drama ensued, naturally. right before the air force academy's graduation, the one we showed you, president trump was asked about the fact that vice president pence was expected to be the air force academy commencement speaker. when president trump was asked about that, quote, mr. trump,

never one to be upstaged, abruptly announced that he, in fact, would be speaking at west point. quote, that was news to everyone, including officials at west point according to three people involved with or briefed on the event. quote, the academy had been looking at the option of a delayed presidential commencement in june but had yet to complete any plans. quote, with mr. trump's preemptive statement, they're now summoning 1,000 cadets scattered all across the country to return to campus in new york, the state that is the center of the outbreak. wrangling the cadets back to new york is half the battle. they also have to test every cadet and quarantine them for 14 days. they also now have to figure out how dorms and mess halls work when you have 1,000 cadets suddenly flooding back to campus and nobody's supposed to be near anyone else. our motto on this show for the administration, basically, or maybe the caption under our show

for this administration is silent movie. watch what the administration does. don't pay too much attention to what the president says. but in this case what the president said, blurting out this unexpected news about what he planned to do at west point, is has consequences. it means very specifically that 1,000 military families will now have a kid dragged back to new york in the middle of a pandemic so that those cadets can be there to decorate chairs for the president's benefit because he has decided he wants to give a speech. seriously. joining us now is annie karni, white house correspondent for "the new york times." she and her colleague eric schmidt broke this story. i'm grateful you're able to be here with us tonight. thanks for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> first let me ask you if i got anything wrong there, if i got anything screwed around the wrong way in terms of my understanding of this story? >> nope. i think you pretty much laid it out. west point joined a long line of

institutions and individuals who have learned of their involvement in the president's plans from hearing their names blurted out in the briefing room. remember the business council he announced, the ceos hadn't agreed to anything that they learned they were on a task force. at this point west point, they were to be clear in discussions, and the president coming to speak on june 23rd was something that was being talked about. so it's not that he made it up completely out of thin air. but nothing had been decided. there was a range of options. west point officials understood that this was a really complicated and potentially dangerous situation to hold this graduation. they still wanted the president to come speak, but it wasn't a done deal. and so the president saying he was, in fact, going to be the graduation speaker got ahead of anything being officially finalized behind closed doors. >> it does seem like it has created this, like, rubik's cube

complication for west point in terms of scrambling to figure out how to do this on the time frame the president has foisted on them. air force cadets were already quarantining at the academy, so there wasn't travel involved for them, for example. with west point cadets already dispersed around the country, it does seem like what the president set in motion here isn't just awkward. it involves a whole new layer of risk. the army times is reporting that cadets are expected to start returning using commercial air transit, using commercial transit sometime in may. it does feel like he has injected a considerable layer of risk and logistical necessity on both the academy and the individual cadets. >> yeah, and that's why nothing had been decided yet, and they were still considering it. the june date was something that they were looking at if it could work. and the president made very clear in private conversations that he was very interested in

continuing forward with this commencement speech and wanted to do it. they just hadn't finalized anything yet. the president loves these military academy backdrops, commencement speeches. all presidents use them to some extent to talk about foreign policy accomplishments in an election year. this is a backdrop that is not beatable for trump. but now a president who's always first and foremost concerned with how things are covered and how they play, it poses kind of this is a wrinkle now because instead of it looking like a commanding show of force, this looks like the president is putting cadets at risk to come and be a backdrop for him. and that is the opposite of what he was hoping to get out of this commencement, which is a show of look how great and strong our military is under my leadership. he doesn't want to anger the military. and we heard and my colleague eric schmidt a lot of reporting

on the west point side and heard some eyebrows being raised and some concerns among alumni of the institution saying that this felt like a rash decision to bring people back for this. >> yeah. alumni of the institution -- and, boy, is that a powerful and impressive alumni network. but also i imagine families and parents of this year's graduating cadets. annie karni, white house correspondent for "the new york times," fascinating reporting. thanks for helping us understand it tonight. >> thanks so much for having me tonight. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us. lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ when youyou spend lessfair, and get way more.

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among the list of things that feel broken right now, the news that good food is going to waste in huge amounts while thousands of americans line up at food banks has been its own kind of upsetting news. in new york today governor cuomo implored his state's dairy producers to stop dumping things like milk and sour cream, saying the state would take that food and ship it to food banks. dairy farmers cheered that news. in idaho, farmer ryan cranny posted this photo on facebook imploring people to please come take the potatoes that he grew and dug up but he couldn't find anywhere to sell. free potatoes, come and get 'em.

a lot of people did so. one local volunteer posted this picture of a truckload of potatoes being delivered to her town. within 48 hours of people coming to get food for their families, that giant pile, this is what was left of it. away 800,000 pounds of potatoes. there's a lot wrong in the world we can't fix but people are really trying every day, every way. that's it for us. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." good evening. >> that new york milk story is a great example of how supply chains get disrupted, so much of that milk supply was destined for new york city public schools, very big consumer of new york state milk. they're all closed down, milk producers don't have contracts to deliver it elsewhere. governor's got to figure out how to get that milk out into the world where it can get to the