i'm andrea mitchell in washington. continuing our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, the president at this hour is meeting with florida governor ron desantis in the oval office, a republican ally. we will bring updates as soon as we get them. here are the facts at this hour. president trump said coronavirus testing will not be a problem at all, even has his new white house blueprints fall short of health expert's recommendations for widespread testing to safely resume activities across the country. and the white house says the federal government will only be a supplier of last resort. "the washington post" is reporting that the intelligence community delivered early warnings about the coronavirus outbreak in china to the president in early january and february in his daily briefing but he apparently ignored those warning while continuing for months to downplay the threat to the u.s. on the first day that the

small business administration was supposed to reopen its pipeline for hundreds of billions of dollars in loans to the system, the system crashed according to widespread complaints from the american bankers association and businesses across the country. and 14 governors are lifting some state restrictions despite none meeting the white house phase one guidelines for having a deit klining infection rate for at least two weeks? hard-hit spaces including new jersey and louisiana say they're not relaxing their shutdown rules at this time. joining me now nbc white house correspondent and weekend "today" co-host, kristen welker. white house correspondent yamiche alcindor, and former white house health policy director and nobel prize laureate paul romer, who also searched as chief economist at the world bank. as well as jeremy bash, former chief of staff to secretary pan

etta and at the pentagon and cia as well. you have been tracking the reporter pool at the oval office, noting this is for a republican ally, unlike the visitor last week, andrew cuomo from new york, a democrat. >> that's right. we did not see this same type of question-and-answer session with andrew cuomo. of course, he's a democrat and this is a republican from a key state he won back in 2016 that he sees as critical to his re-election. they're right now taking questions from reporters. i can tell you president trump praised governor desantis at the top of this saying he's doing a great job. and they're getting questions right now on the issue of testing the pool or asking president trump and dr. birx about why the u.s. is behind south korea when it comes to per capita tests. dr. birx pushed back against

that characterization saying that it's not accurate. the president saying that essentially reporters owe dr. birx an apology but reporters there seem to be standing their kroupd a ground and insisting the data probably released shows otherwise. the bottom line, andrea, the keep to reopening is testing, testing, testing. florida is set to start the process of reopening on friday. the governor there saying that they are going to take baby steps to do so. and, of course, all of this does come on the heels of this announcement that you talked about at the top of the show, andrea. the president saying that essentially they're going to ramp up their cooperation with states and the private sector to get states more of the materials, key things like swabs they need to increase testing to at least 2% per state per month. but medical experts say even those numbers will fall below what is needed in order to

reopen large swaths of the country safely, andrea. >> and the vice president in the rose garden yesterday, last night when they had that on again/off again/on again news conference with the president and the task force and business leaders praising the president notably, the vice president was pressed on the lack of testing. and here's one of his key exchanges. >> the fact in march we said we would get 4 million tests by the following week, we just now got there the last few days. so what have you learned about what went wrong? >> john, appreciate the question but it represents a misunderstanding on your part, and, frankly, a lot of people in the public's part about having a test versus ability to actually process the test. >> when you said 4 million tests seven weeks ago, you were just talking about tests being sent out, not actually being completed? i'm a little confused. >> john, i think i'm precisely

correct. >> dr. patel, what's the difference between having a test as a promise and being able to process a test and get results from the test? >> i think that's the point, andrea. when people hear getting a test there's an assumption, that's usual cli usually correct, that includes getting test, processing and getting results. and what you see is the governor parsing these words. what that means is the government agreement to provide key infrastructure and we are not seeing it today. >> the government in the oval office saying he wants testing programs for people who fly on airlines. as we try to open the economy, paul romer, you look at the fact we should be spending $100 billion on the national testing program. tell us what you think needs to be done as the economy reopens. >> yes, well, the basic

economics here, the basic numbers are that losing something like $500 billion every month because of the depression the economy has entered because of this pandemic. if we can spend $100 billion or a year to avoid a loss of $500 billion a month, we'd be way ahead. and we just need to be realistic about the size of the stakes here. now, why is testing so important? have you looked at the coronavirus one, over a month it spread to about 8,000 people. coronavirus 2 over five months spread over millions of people. the difference is kcoronavirus is much more infectious in the early stages before people have symptoms. you can't tell who's infecting other people just by looking at them, just by testing for

symptoms. so to stop people from dyeing and stop this pandemic, we need to test people who look healthy and find the ones that are infectious, isolate them so they don't keep spreading the disease. >> and jeremy bash, when we talk about whether or not china is to blame for the lies that it told, the way it suppressed information, there's important reporting from "the washington post" today that more than a dozen reports in the president's daily brief in early january and february went to the white house, went to the president, warning about what was happening in china, warning about the global effects economically and public health effects and this was back -- basically ignored. it was during a time the president was downplaying all of the warnings coming, downplaying warnings we didn't know were going directly to him. and in fact it's called the president's daily brief for a reason, it's supposed to be read daily whether it's president obama reading it on an ipad or

other presidents reading it literally in the paperwork in front of intelligence briefers. this president has been taking it sort of verbally 0eonly a couple times a week and clearly did not heed these warnings. >> i think it's clear, andrea, they have been warning about this crisis all the way since the beginning of the crisis in early january this year. in late january the president actually thanked jinping of xi. said everything would work out well. in mid-february, what did he do? fire the career navy admiral serving as national director of intelligence and the president pushed out the longtime deputy, a key professional intelligence officer as well as several others in the intelligence community. in march the president continued to downplay the warnings from the intelligence community and health leaders and held a rally.

so it's clear the president has been disdainful of intelligence since the beginlining of his administration but now we see athe greatest consequences of this disdain and ignoring of intelligence warning hes. ings. >> it also undercuts the preside president's scapegoating of china for it. china was at fault but u.s. intelligence were warning about it but this is one case there was not an intelligence failure as arguably there was before 9/11. this was a real warning in realtime and was ignored by the president and his advisers. with all of the push for reopening the economy, which is urgent and understandable, the reporting from a new poll, yamiche, from "the washington post" today and also the university of maryland, shows that most of the american people are strongly in favor of obeying the restrictions, 66% feeling it

was appropriate. only 17% feeling the restrictions were too restrictive. 16% saying that they're not restrictive enough. so there's a widespread support for continuing to play it safe. >> that's right, andrea. americans are looking at the future, looking at their own lives and are worried about the idea that the economy could be opened too quickly. that's why you see in that poll most people think it is but president trump is being very clear he's aligning himself with pest who protest these stay-at-home orders. another important thing to note is president sees his future as tied to the economy. he's saying there might be growth into the summer and even closer to the november election when, in fact, there are some experts saying that's probably not going to be the case. but i have heard from white house source hes who backed up the president's claim that they think they're going to growth in the third or fourth quarters of this year.

the other thing to note is president trump in really pushing towards those stay-at-home orders and looking at reopening states, you have the attorney general william barr directing federal prosecutors to look at states and see which ones are you violating the constitution and going too far with those stay-at-home orders? yesterday i posed the question to the president would you be in favor of the federal government suing states if you think they need to reopen and they're not, the president said it would depend on the state and the circumstances. you have there president trump at least saying he's open to the fact the federal government my actually sue states to get them to reopen. >> which is in direct contradiction to all of the add viegs of his public health officials. deborah birx, we should point out, is sitting in the oval office right now during this whole q&a with the florida governor. the president is also very much trying to take credit for the economy and trying to get back on the offense politically, especially about the economy.

this is part of what he had to say about the economy in the rose garden just yesterday. >> look, i built -- they were just telling me inside and it's fact -- i built the greatest economy with the help of 325 million people, i built the greatest economy in the history of the world. and one day because of something that should have never been allowed to happen, we had to close our country, we had to close our economy. i built it. >> paul romer, as an economist, a world class economist, obviously, nobel laureate, talk to us about the economy and how it might bounce back, how the president is talking about how the second quarter's been a disaster. it was a hard stop. what are you seeing ahead in the third and fourth quarters in terms of a recovery and how it may play for the president? >> i think for everybody's benefit, we need to let bygones

be bygones and just figure out what's the way forward, what's the way out of this mess? the key thing here is that it's fear of a very dangerous disease that's depressing the economy. i was doing some renovations in my house. the workers stopped coming to my house. i didn't want them to come anymore because i didn't want them to make me sick. they didn't want to catch the disease from me or from each other. we're not going to start doing work on my house again because some official says it's okay. we're going to go to work -- if we do go back to work at a time when everybody feels safe. so we have to move as fast as we can towards a situation where we've done such a good job of controlling the virus that people feel safe again. and to illustrate how tests could help with this, we got a very detailed report of how the virus entered into nursing homes and spread because you couldn't tell -- there were no symptoms

but people were spreading it. the health care workers were spreading it. and then lots of people died in these nursing homes. there's more than a million people who are in nursing homes right now. we should test every single one of them, find out who's infectious, make sure they're carefully quarantined from staff and from the other residents to stop the death in the nursing homes. then we need to test all of the health care workers, not just in nursing homes but in hospitals. there's a new report out that 7% of the health care workers were infected with coronavirus, and some hospitals on the east coast in the early stages of this pandemic. so we need to test every day, everybody who's in hospitals until we get that infectious rate for health care workers down to zero. so it's going to take millions and millions of tests implemented right away to start to make people feel safe. >> and dr. fauci was doing an interview with david rubinstein

this morning for the economic club in washington and said that the vaccine is still, you know, was a year and a half away. it's still more than a year away. but even when you get a safe vaccine, safe for humans through testing like the oxford experience and others that may be in this horserace to get a vaccine, it may take a good while to scale up and make sure it's not just first world economies, the rich countries, that get the vaccine if you're going to stop a goble pandemic. jimmy bash, i wanted to ask you about some controversial comments from the attorney general, because he has been arguing that there may be federal lawsuits, having not coincidentally, perhaps, the assistant u.s. attorney in detroit, and michigan, key battleground state where the president has been battling with the governor for restrictions. look at states where the governments may be too

contradictive. that is completely contradictory to the arguments being made in the white house guidelines, that not a single state opening up has met the guidelines for phase one. >> this is just the are politicalization of law enforcement of the legal system to i guess advance the president's view that states and communities should be coerced into opening, they should be forced into sending people to work, to opening day cares and schools so that, i guess, the infection can spread but at least there will be some economic upside. it's so shortsighted as your other guests have been pointing out because, of course, the moment the reinfection rates or those infection rates go up again, we're going to have to close down. and the second time it closed down, people are going to be very gunshy about opening again. so i don't really understand the attorney general's strategy other than perhaps because he wants the president to say that

a boy, way to go, in the same way the president has done the bidding in other context. >> apparently it was after recommendations from ed meese, a former reagan attorney general, and it is appealing to certain part of the base clearly, but they're talking about using the civil rights division, that the constitutional rights of people are being violated by the governor's warnings, which, again, is contradictory to the president belatedly conceding he's not in charge, the governors are in charge. and the fact they have to do testing. the government is only a last resort. kristen, as the meeting continues, what are you reading from the pool notes? >> yes, you mentioned the fact president trump will work with the airline industry to try to make sure people are tested before they get on to airplanes but he's also just announcing he's going to sign an executive

order that will deal with the meat supply and concerns about the food chain. of course, this comes on the heels of tyson expressing concerns about a break in the food supply chains. no details specifically on when he's going to sign that executive order but clearly trying to take some type of action to prevent any type of significant break there, andrea. this has been on the minds of people all across the country and, of course, farmers as well. we will look to see if he can provide any more details about that. >> one of the other things, kristen, that's really politically important to know about for florida is that florida has been one of the slowest states to respond to unemployment compensation claims, something like nearly half the people who have tried to apply have not been able to apply. there's a real breakdown in the system there. there's some allegations it started before this governor when rick scott was governor because the state was trying to save money in the budget.

but there's a lot of back log on people getting the help that they're supposed to get under the law. >> that's right. when you look at a state like florida, that certainly is one of the issues that the florida governor is dealing with, and that he's being pressed on. and we know that that comes against the backdrop of the president, of course, and congress passing that new aid for small businesses and the president is going to be holding an event about that a little bit later on today in the rose garden, but a number of small businesses saying they've been having trouble getting on the website. so the administration trying to deal with some of those glitches at the federal level as, of course, you mentioned florida's governor dealing with the unemployment issues there at the state level, andrea. >> and jeremy bash, before we get the tape from the oval office, i just want to ask you about a rather confusing, ambiguous statement from the

president yesterday about kim jong-un. for more than a week there have been concerns. he didn't show up april 15th, founders day, his grandfather's birthday, in north korea. a lot of mixed reports whether he had surgery, is deathly ill or not ill at all. tell us what your take is so far on the state of intelligence on the hardest intelligence target of all, which is, of course, north korea. >> that's right, andrea. and it's a hard target to try to gain any insights into north korea. it's incredibly an opaque regime. the president from the podium confirmed kim jong-un is alive but he did not provide any other details. so we will have to wait and see what the health reports show about the dictator's state but i think the president wants him to be well because, of course, the president put a lot of stock in that relationship, andrea. >> jeremy, thank you. and thanks to everyone and stand by because we're going to go to

new york to albany to governor cuomo, who has his daily briefing and bring you the president later. >> the university of new york, upstate medical school and hospital. i had a chance to say hello to the nurses and doctors who work there, to wave from a social distance. and i wanted to say thank you for all they've done here. they sent a team down to new york city. it's just been an extraordinary experience. so with the good, bad and ugly, and we know this, the good is beautiful. let me talk to you about some of the facts that we're dealing with today. facts are our friend, right? people want to make decisions, they want to know the facts without spin, without opinion. and that's what we do, giving them. total hospitalization rate is

down a tick, which is good news. the change in hospitalization on a rolling total is down, number of intubations is down. number of covid hospitalizations per day, these are new people who are normally diagnosed with covid, it's under 1,000, which is good news. it's still a significant number of people, 900 people. after all of this, we still have 900 new infections yesterday. on a three-day rolling average. but overall you see the numbers are coming down. so that's good news. this is the worst news. every day i think maybe today is the day the nightmare will be open but it's not. 335 people passed away yesterday from this virus in this state.

that's 335 families. you see this number is basically reducing but not at a tremendous rate. the only thing tremendous is the number of new yorkers who still pass away. everyone is talking about reopening. i get it. you can't sustain being closed. the economy can't sustain it. individual families can't sustain it. we can't sustain it on a personal level. our children can't sustain it. but we have to -- when we talk about reopening, this should not be a political discussion. it shouldn't be a philosophical discussion. it shouldn't be because people are protesting or some people want it, some people don't want it. it is a factual discussion on reopening. so let's demystify it a little bit. in this environment it's

becoming rhetorical rather than factual. we want to reopen, we want to do it without infecting more people or overwhelming the hospital system. we're at upstate medical today. our great fear was the number of people infected would overwhelm the hospital capacity. so that's the balance, reopen but don't increase the number of infected people and don't overwhelm the hospital system. well then design that system in reopening, right? you can factually, with data, design a system that is just that. and that's what governor is supposed to do. governor is not about spouting political or fill sof call opinions. government is about running services, designing programs that actually work for the people to address the problem.

and in this situation, we can actually measure, we have data. we have facts. so measure what is happening in society and calibrate your reopening to those measures. so we're adopting a set of rules, a set of guidelines. we studied reopening plans all around the country. we have spoken to every expert on the globe who's been through this before, and we've come up with factual data points to guide us on reopening. first point, don't overwhelm the hospital system. if the hospital system in an area exceeds 70% capacity, which leaves you -- you only have 30% left, or the rate of

transmission of the virus hits 1.1, those are danger signs. we know that. remember hospital capacity, if you're 70% in your hospitals is a two-week lag on this virus. if you have hit 70%, you can expect the number to go up for the next two weeks as people who just got infected actually get ill and some of them come into the hospitals. so 70% is a safe metric to use for your hospital capacity. if the transmission right hits 1.1, that's what they call outbreak. that means it's going to spread much, much faster. you wouldn't start reopening unless you had a transmission rate between 1.1 -- really below 1. but if it hits 1.1, that means

you're in trouble. so those are the two main data points. if you look at the state -- and this state is different than most states. this state has new york city, one of the most dense urban areas on the globe, and then we have upstate new york. if you look at our infection rate in upstate new york, it's very different than the rate of downstate new york. if you look at the rate upstate new york, it's comparable to many states in the midwest and the west. we hear the discussion every day, well, some states are reopening because they don't have that bad a problem. some of the places in upstate have a problem that's comparable to states in the midwest or the west. much, much different than new york city. okay. then let's come up with data points, factual points of what we have to do to reopen so everyone has the same opening

template that we're dealing with. and we have to be smart about this. again, i know it's emotion, and i know people are feeling emotional, but emotions can't drive a reopening process, right? we are talking about infection rates. we're talking about hospital capacity. separate the emotion from the logic. and we have to act as our logical selves here. that's what smart means. be smart about it. don't be emotional. don't be political. don't get pushed politically into a situation. protesters in front of the capital, we better reopen. no, i'm not going to do that. that's not how we make decisions. the first point is cdc set guidelines as to reopening for states. we think those cdc guidelines make sense, which you have to have a 14-day decline in the

number of hospitalizations before you go forward. second, identify industries that you can start reopening that will bring people back to work, get the economy going, but you know you can do the appropriate precaution yous and social distancing. so in phase one we're talking about the construction and manufacturing industry, right? those are two industries that employ a lot of people, but we believe you can put the right precautions in place and learn the lessons from where we have been. and saying to the businesses, this is not just the government, saying to the businesses, tell us how you're going to incorporate the lessons you just learned? how do you incorporate social distancing? how do you incorporate social distancing? how do you incorporate ppe? how do you have the right monitors? are you going to take temperatures of everybody who

walks in? that's for businesses to decide also. spraut point, make sure you don't have what we call attractive nuisances. not really right use of the term. attractive nuisances is a legal term. but an attractive nuisance in this context, you open up a facility or attraction that can bring people from outside the region to you. you have all of this pent-up demand in the whole tri-state region. make sure you don't open up something that will bring hundreds of people from the outside in. what business precautions will those individual businesses take? watch the health care capacity. your health care system cannot go over 70% capacity. again, there's a two-week lag. if you're at 70%, bells should go off. don't go over 70% in your icu

beds. many of the people who come in with covid need an icu bed because it's a respiratory illness. as a matter of fact, almost at the heat of this, almost every bed in the hospital turned into an icu bed. that's why we needed the ventilators. because these people who got seriously ill with covid needed that level of care. remember you have a flu season coming up in the fall. the number of hospitalizations normally goes up in the flu season. so anticipate that. stockpile the equipment. we learned a lot of painful lessons here. one you is you have to have the ppe, you have to have the masks, you have to have the gowns. there's an international demand on it. so make sure we have a stockpile of pe. we have to have testing. how many tests? dr. birx recommends 30 for 1,000

people. different people, different records have different numerical percentages but i think we start with that. do we have enough testing sites? how long does it take to turn around a test? and are we advertising to people, this is where you go and this is what you do to get a test if you think you may be infected. the whole thing with keeping that infection rate down is find a person early who's infected, let them know it and then trace and then isolate. do we have a tracing system in place? mayor bloomberg is helping us organize this. it's never been done before. nobody ever heard of tracing to this extent. but tracing is -- once a person says they're positive, you trace their contacts back. you notify people. you test people. that's a whole different operation. the current recommendation is you need at least 30 tracers per

100,000 people. so we have to have that in place. you have to have isolation facilities in place. isolation facilities are when someone gets sick, you know they're positive, and they don't want to go home to quarantine because if they go home, they can infect their family, which is what's happening now with a lot of these new cases. so we have to have a facility where somebody who is positive can quarantine for the two weeks without going home. we have to identify them now. we have to coordinate regionally the schools, transportation network, testing tracing, this all has to be coordinated on a multi county effort. we have to reimagine telemedicine, reimagine tele-education. we have to have a regional control room that is monitoring all of these indicators and gives us the danger sign if we get over 70% capacity, if the

infection rate pops up. we have to have sun central source that's monitoring all of these dials that hits the danger button so you can actually slow down the reopening. and then we have to protect and respect the central workers, which i will talk about in a moment. on businesses they have to have social distancing, continued testing, ongoing monitoring protocols. that's all part of the new normal. and businesses are going to have to do that if they want to reopen. they're going to have to adopt the federal and the state guidelines on this issue. today we're announcing an advisory board that is made up of statewide business leaders, academic leaders, civic leaders, who are advising us on just this and they have been for weeks and months. i want to thank them very much. manufacturing construction as the first phase of businesses, 46,000 jobs in a place like central new york. so it's a major employer.

and these are businesses that can adapt to the new normal in terms of their employees, in terms of the places of business and in terms of the processes they put in place. on the health care capacity, again, we just led this, we cannot be in a situation where 70% capacity is exceeded. you need at least that 30% buffer on hospital beds, and you need 30% of your icu beds available if that number starts to tick up. in terms of testing, we have to have the testing regimen in place and we have to prioritize the people who get tested. symptomatic people, individuals who came in contact with a symptomatic person, and front looip a frontline and fennel workers. they do have a higher rate of infection because they're putting themselves in harm's way and we want to make sure they

have the testing so we have an early alert system. you have to have the right number of sites. testing won't work if it's impossible to get. testing won't work if it's too hard to get. so you have to have the right number of sites before the area that you're dealing with. the advertising is very important. it has to be available but people have to know it's available. and they have to know what the symptoms are that would have them go get tested. because, again, this is about people understanding it and people buying into it. this is not governor orders. this is people get it, they know the facts, they know what they're supposed to do and they do it because they have been -- we've communicated successfully the circumstances and the facts. but you need that testing, and you need it to trace the contacts, otherwise you see that infection rate increase.

on the tracing, the estimate is 30 tracers for every 100,000 people. so that's a data point. that's what it means to have tracing in place. and then isolation facilities is a proportionate number of people who test positive who say i can't go home or i don't want to go home. i don't want to infect my family. i don't want to infect my significant other. i have enough issues without having to explain how i infected my significant other with covid. that's a valid point. so isolation facilities available for those people. and then the regional control room where you're monitoring all of those metrics, you're monitoring hospital capacity, the rate of infection, the ppe burn rate, how businesses are complying and it has an emergency switch that we can

throw if any one of those indicators are problematic. because, remember, we have gone through hell and back over the past 60 or so days. what we've done has been tremendous, really tremendous. and what people have done, what the american people have done, what new yorkers have done, has been to save lives literally. but we have to remain vigilant. this is not over. i know as much as we want it to be over, it's not over. and we have to respect what we accomplished here. when they started this, the projections for this state were 120,000 new yorkers would be infected and hospitalized. only 20,000 were infected and hospitalized. how could they be so wrong? they weren't wrong. we changed reality. the differential in the variants

is what we did, it's the closedown, it's wearing masks. it's all of that. we reduced the rate. we so-called flattened the curve, flattened the curve. well, that meant 1000,000 new yorkers did not get seriously ill and go in and overwhelm the hospital system and they did not pass away so we literally saved lives. we can't now negate everything that we accomplished. we have to do the opposite. we have to take this experience and learn and grow from the xperience and experience and we have to build back better than before. as a society and as a community, we need better systems. this exposed a lot of issues, fundamental issues. we have to do a better job on tele-education, remote learning.

sounds great but you have to have all of the equipment, people have to be trained and teachers have to be trained. we jumped into it. we have to do a better job. we have to do a better job on telemedicine. not everybody has to show up at the doctor's office. you can do a better job. we have to do a better job on our basic public health system. i mean, when you look back, the virus was in china last november and december. last november and december. why didn't someone suspect well maybe the virus gets on a plane last november, december and lands in the united states the next day? everybody talks about global interconnection and how fast. everybody knows there's a virus in china last november, december. china says don't worry, we're taking care of it. but all you need is one person to get on a plane.

as it happened, one person got on a plane and went from china to europe and then it went from europe to new york. flights from china basically go to the west coast. flights from europe basically go to the east coast. we got it through europe. but where was the whole international health community? where was the whole national host of experts, the w.h.o., the nih, the cdc? the old alphabet soup of agencies? where was everyone? where were the intelligence community with the briefings saying this is in china and they have something called an airplane and you can get on an airplane and you can come to the united states? governors don't do global pandemics, right? but there's a whole international, national health community 20 do that. where were all of the experts?

where was "the new york times"? where was "the wall street journal"? where were all of the bugler blowers to say be careful, there's a virus in china that may be in the united states? that's november, december. we're sitting here january, february, still debating how serious this is. and,ing agai and, again, it's not a state responsibility, but in this system, who was supposed to blow the bugle and didn't? because i would bank this happens again and is the same thing going to happen again? i hope not. so we have to figure these things out. we also have to remember that as a society and as a community, we're about government and we're about systems, but even more, we're about values. what makes us who we are are our

values. and that's my last point, which is point number 12, protect and respect the essential workers. i had two nightmares when this started. one that i would put out directives on what we need to do and 19 million new yorkers would say i haven't been convinced, i'm not going to do this. because this is how directives were, we have to close down every business. you have to stay in your home. i mean, the most disruptive government policies put in place -- i can't even remember the last time. i can't even see in the history books the last time government was no disruptive to individual life. no businesses, everybody stays home. no schools. what happens in new yorkers said, we're not doing that?

we're not doing that. it's too much. it's an overreaction. it's political. everything is political nowadays, right? so easy to say, that's just political. that was a fear. because if new yorkers did that governmentally had no availability to enforce 19 million people staying in their homes. that's why the communication was so important. give them the facts, give them the facts, give them the facts so they understand why. that worked. second nightmare was what if the essential workers don't show up? you have to have food. you have to have transportation. the lights have to be on. somebody has to pick up the garbage. the hospitals have to run. what if the essential worker said, i'm not showing up? you communicated so effectively the fear of the virus that the essential workers say, yeah, if

everybody's staying home, i'm staying home too. it could have happened. i went through the hiv virus when hiv started. people were petrified. nobody knew what it was. nobody knew how it lived, how it was transferred, how long it lived. people were petrified. nobody wanted to go near it. what happens if the essential workers here said i'm not going to show up to run the bus? you don't pay me enough to put my life in danger. i'm not doing it. they showed up. they show the up. i just finished communicating how dangerous this was to convince 19 million people to stay home and close schools and close businesses, and the essential workers still showed up. that is a value. they didn't show up for a

paycheck. they didn't show up because government asked them to show up. they didn't show up because their employers said i need you to show up. they showed up out of their values and out of their honor and out of their dignity. that's why they showed up. my grandfather, people know my father in this state. my grandfather, little italian immigrant, andres cuomo, named for him, no education, ditch digger. came here, classic immigrant story. winds up having a little grocery store in south jamaican queens, poor community. during the depression, he almost lost the store. and he loved to tell this story. why did he almost lose the store? well, it was the depression and the finances. no. because he gave away food during the depression.

because he wouldn't let anyone be hungry, so a family would come in. nobody had money with the depression. and he would give them food. and he was giving away so much food that he had problems paying his builds. -- his bills. gave him a lot of stress. wound up having a heart attack as a young person. but no one told him to do that. that was just his values. and i would ask him about it afterwards, i said grandfather, why would you -- he said what am i going to do, let them go hungry? i'm going to let somebody go hungry? that was unimaginable to him. he was an essential worker. nobody called him an essential worker, but he was an essential worker. and that's what people are doing dale in and day out here. the person who delivers the groceries, the person who's

driving the bus, the person who's driving the subway, the nurses, the doctors, this orderlies, all of these people who are showing up every day. not because of the check. they can stay home too and file for unemployment. no, they're doing it out of their sense of honor and their sense of dignity and their sense of pride. this is their mission. this is their role. they're new yorkers. they're americans and they're going to show up. the police officers, the firefighters. everyone's petrified, you want to be a police officer? you're going to pull people over in a car? you're going to go into a house for a domestic disturbance, wrestle with somebody in the house, you don't know who it is. that's what they do. that's their job. that's why i wanted to thank the health care workers. everybody thanks the health care workers but it's not just the health care workers. it's all of the people who have been out there all this time making sure everyone else could stay home.

they have higher infection rates. they're getting paid a minimal amount of money. they have families at home too that are suffering. but they're getting up every day and they're doing their job. so as we talk about reopening, protect and respect the essential workers. pe ne they need testing. they need equipment. they're putting their lives on the line. protect and respect the essential workers. public transportation, we've kept running because they needed to get to work. that's why public transportation continued. we talked early on about closing down public transportation. they said forget it. that's how the nurses are getting to work. that's how the orderlies are getting to work. nobody will be in the hospital. nobody will be there to deliver the food.

nobody will be in the power plant to keep the lights on. nobody will be at the telecommunications department. public transportation is vital for them. well, the national public publi transportation is safe and disinfected. the "new york daily news" ran a story today on the public transportation in new york city. their front page is a picture of a subway car filled with homeless people and their belongings. respect the essential workers. that is disgusting what is happening on those subway cars. it's disrespectful to the essential workers who need to ride the subway system, upstate new york, need to ride the buses

to get to work. they deserve better and they will have better. we have to have a public transportation system that is clean where the trains are disinfected. you have homeless people on trains. it's not even safe for the homeless people to be on trains. no face masks. you have this whole outbreak. we're concerned about homeless people so we let them stay on the trains without protection in this epidemic of the covid virus? no. we have to do better than that, and we will. and we will learn from this and we'll be better from this because we are new york tough, and tough means not just tough -- tough is easy. it's smart and it's disciplined and unified and it's loving. that's who we are. that's what we are, and that's why we got through this as well as we have thus far together

because of our values, because of our respect, our dignity, our mutuality, our love for one another, our willing to sacrifice and because we're fortunate where we have many, many heroes in our midst. not just because they have medals on their uniforms, but because they have honor in their souls and they have strength in their character, and they have dignity and pride in themselves and because they show up every day, every day to make sure everyone is protected. and they have to be at the top of the list. they're going to be at the top of the list in the next iteration of whatever this is. they're going to be at the top of the list at the golden gate. but they deserve our respect and

protection here and they're going to get it. questions. >> governor, this week you introduced a lot of folks to the concept of an attractive nuisance. in central new york we have syracuse nationals car show, which i know you're a fan. the state fair last time around drew 1.3 million people, our lakeside towns -- >> and, of course, you've been listening to new york governor andrew cuomo in keir cues giving the latest on the outbreak in his state. back with us now nbc news white house correspondent kristen welker. the president made a couple of headlines. first of all, the airlines, a testing scheme, and criticism of the democrats coming back because the house physician said it was not safe.

here in the district, infection rates are going up. he said they're enjoying their vacations. >> reporter: president trump not missing the chabs to take aim at democrats. the house deciding they'll not return to washington next week with the stay-at-home order in places through may 15th, president trump saying they want to be on vacation. house democrats citing safety as the reason they don't want to return. this comes after the president meeting with the republican governor of florida, a key republican ally in a swing state he wants to win, so not missing a chance of politics into what was dominated by the crisis of coronavirus. you're absolutely right, president trump saying he's going to sign an executive order later on today that will deal

with liability problems in the food chain specifically the meat supply. that comes on the heels of tyson saying there could be a break in the food supply chain. that set off alarm bells earlier this week. other headlines, president trump, as you say, saying that the administration is working with airlines to try to get a process in place to test people before they get on to planes. another headline, you've been talking about the report out in "the washington post" that president trump got intelligence briefings in january and february alerting him to the severity of the coronavirus crisis. president trump saying he'd have to check, but he did shut down much of travel from china, andrea. >> kristen welker, thank you very much. that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." before we go, the best of the

best saluting the best among us. [ cheers and applause ]. >> that us with the scene over manhattan as the air force thunderbirds and famed navy blue angels roared across the sky all in tribute to the medical workers, the first responders on the front lines of the pandemic which has now killed nearly 60,000 americans. the teams will do a similar flyover over the philadelphia area as they move down through new jersey. please stay home, stay safe, stay healthy. remember to follow our show online on facebook and twitter@mitchellreports. chuck todd and katy tur will pick up our coverage after this pick up our coverage after this very brief break.d

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good afternoon. i'm chuck todd. here are the facts as we know them at this hour. president trump has just responded to a "washington post" report on receiving more than a dozen classified intelligence briefings in january and february warning about the coronavirus. when asked if he was, quote, getting warnings in the pdb, the president said today, i would have to check the dates. majority leader steny hoyer confirmed that the house of representatives will not be returning to washington next week following a consultation with the house physician. but the senate republican leader mitch mcconnell says the senate will