confident you can surpass 5 million tests per day. is that -- >> we're going to be there very soon. if you look at the numbers, it could be we're getting very close. >> testing yesterday, you said we will very soon be testing 5 million people. >> somebody came out with the study of 5 million people. do i think we will? i think we will. i never said it. >> all right. president trump contradicting dr. fauci and himself. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." thursday, april 30th. >> on the 5 million a day, the guy that runs testing said there was no way this was ever going to happen on this planet or any other planet. >> ever. >> he said that in the morning to "time" magazine. then in the afternoon, donald trump, who seems to be a little more confused lately, and contradicting his own people, it's truly disturbing. i'm starting to get really concerned, even more concerned

about how quickly he gets confused. >> yeah. flat out confused. >> his testing chief said it was impossible the same day president trump said we were getting there soon. >> is he not able to process information? along with joe, willie, and me, we have white house for the "associated press," jonathan lemire, and professor at princeton university, eddie. with the u.s. death toll from the coronavirus mounting, president trump is rejecting the notion of a new normal and is insisting the virus will be eradicated, with or without a vaccine. >> which no medical professional is saying that. >> i don't know how that works. >> dr. fauci isn't saying that. dr. birx isn't saying that. no one is saying that but president trump thm. donald trump said in february it was one person coming from china, and soon it'd be zero.

11 to zero. 15 to zero. of course, now, we've crossed the 60,000 dead threshold. >> as we just said, amid increasing pressure to ramp up testing, president trump is backtracking, after saying on tuesday that the united states would soon be conducting 5 million coronavirus tests per day. plus, dr. anthony fauci says an experimental coronavirus drug is showing promising results in a new, large study. unfortunately, the president doesn't seem to be focused on the deadly pandemic, this human catastrophe. >> 60,000 dead. that's not his obsession. >> and the health care workers on the front lines, people suffering to such a great extent, something we've never seen in our lifetime. >> it is a tragedy. >> but he seems to be melting down at his slipping poll numbers. there is new reporting from multiple news outlets that president trump lashed out his

campaign manager after he was given polls that showed that he was trailing joe biden very badly in several key states. trump was briefed in a series of phone calls last week by his political advisers, including his campaign manager, brad parscal. committee chair mcdaniel and son-in-law jared kushner. the aides showed the president his re-election campaign's latest internal polls, which showed him trailing joe biden in several key states. multiple sources familiar with the briefing confirmed to nbc news. one source described trump as being in a, quote, horrific mood, as parscal walked him through the polling. on friday, two days after being shown the polls, trump berated his campaign manager, insisting the data was wrong, and blamed parscal for the fact he was down in the polls. the tense exchange was first

reported by cnn and the "washington post." the "associated press" reports that trump repeatedly told campaign officials during the heated calls, quote, i'm not blanking losing to joe biden. >> actually, you are. in just about every important state. >> according to five people with knowledge of the conversation, trump had planned to run his 2020 campaign on the strength of the economy and has now been warned by aides that his re-election depends on how quickly he can reverse the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus. >> all right. anyway -- >> he's upset. >> -- he's in a complete meltdown. a complete meltdown, willie, threatening at one point, i think, to sue his campaign manager. >> yes. >> parscal. >> who, of course, many people claimed that parscal used his position to enrich himself. it is causing concerns.

maybe he is more focused on getting more rich than helping donald trump. the numbers are horrific in the swing states. they're even bad in texas. they're bad in north carolina. they're bad all across the united states. donald trump, of course, is not going to blame himself because of how badly he is doing in these afternoon briefings. because he stumbles over words. sometimes he seems to fall asleep in the middle of meetings. he seems to be, you know -- people have been talking about his cognitive decline for some time and how it may impact us in a crisis. now, of course, worries that a cognitive decline are starting to catch up with him. we're starting to pay. but, my gosh, americans are noticing, and the poll numbers are just collapsing. >> they are collapsing. the reason the president blew up, as reported by jonathan lemire, who we'll talk to in a second, nbc news, as well, is because his campaign team brought him a dose of reality.

they said, "if the election were held today, you'd lose, sir, the electoral college. you are losing these battleground states." that set him off. he didn't want to hear that. reportedly, parscal came to the white house this week and brought rosier poll ss so the president wouldn't be upset. the latest "usa today"/suffolk university poll has trump trailing biden by ten points nationally. the yougov has him trailing six, as well as the emerson poll. the key battleground sets set off the president. the latest fox news poll showing president trump trailing joe biden by eight points in pennsylvania and in michigan, and by three in florida. in new hampshire, the president trails by eight points. in north carolina, down by five points. in texas, he trails by one point. in texas, he is down a point. in his home state of new york,

president trump trails by 36 points. this as his latest approval rating sits at 44%. jonathan lemire, as you report in your story in the "associated press," this team, this campaign team implored the president to stop holding the daily briefings. they know what's clear to most people, which is that they are not helping his poll standing. he replied by saying, "but my tv ratings, the ratings are huge. i need to keep going out there." >> right. senior campaign officials came to the white house, spoke to the president on a series of calls to impart two pieces of news. one, they believe they're seeing in the polls his daily coronavirus task force briefings were hurting him, particularly among seniors. and they wanted to show him the latest wave of battleground state polls which, as you say, willie, they told him, if the election were held that day, he'd lose. he snapped back, according to our reporting. he grew very angry. he insisted that the briefings were a success, that people

wanted to see him and watch those, though two days later, he did curtail them in the wake of his comments suggesting that people should be injecting disinfecta disinfectants. temporarily, those have gone away. but he did, he defied his team there. he told them he didn't believe the polls, which is something he repeated to routers in an oval office interview conducted late yesterday. he believes he is still winning florida. he believes he is still winning in the upper midwest. he pointed to polls in 2016 that were incorrect. he thinks that is happening again. those in his senior staff told him a course correction here is needed and needed quickly, or this election could slip away. i think for the president, also, it was a frustration coming to the surface. just a few months ago, he thought he was going to be running for re-election, making the central argument that he had overseen a robust acadeeconomy, he was the right person to continue that from the fall and

beyond. now, that has gone away, as the bad economic stats pile up by the day. the president is in a state of disbelief, according to our reporting, that he is losing to joe biden, a candidate he perceives as weak. until recently, he was having trouble fundraising. and someone who he declared over and over, he would not lose to, though he mixed in more profanity than i'm allowed to at this hour in the morning. >> but the meltdown, it is interesting that he is melting down over bad poll numbers that are not the result of the economy so much as they are a result of his daily briefings. we've obviously been saying for weeks now that the president's daily briefings for hurting him, and that if he wanted to help himself and help america, he should stop. he couldn't stop. his vanity wouldn't allow him to stop. he didn't listen. he didn't listen to anybody. now, jonathan, these polls are devastating for him.

down eight in pennsylvania. down eight in michigan. down in florida. down by double digits to seniors in florida. down five points in north carolina. poll just out has him down in the state of texas. new hampshire, once a swing state, down by eight points. despite the fact that in new hampshire there, as well as all these other states, the governors are doing extraordinarily well. their approval ratings are high because they're being responsible. donald trump can't seem to focus. he can't seem to remember one day what he said the next. he puts out guidelines, then he forgets about those guidelines. he comes out and takes a completely different position the next day. then he seems to forget that position, and he goes to another position the next day. is there an understanding inside the white house, even among

people who have been sycophants for his entire presidency, that donald trump is in trouble? that, yes, he is melting down, but politically, he is in trouble because he's just savaged his already bad reputation with these daily briefings. >> the president himself, of course, won't acknowledge that, joe, but the team around him, they do. they recognize that he has -- he is bleeding here. the last month or two since the very beginning stages of this pandemic, certainly questions swirled about his handling of it and the early warning signs he missed, he is taking a beating there. he has hurt himself day after day with these briefings, which are now done away with. the team around him are trying to give him different venues to talk. we've seen more events elsewhere in the white house, where he is talking to the media. he is still addressing the public, but there is less of the back and forth jousting. they also have him getting back on the road. though we're a long way from safely having a campaign rally, even though the president is

pushing for them. he is going to start traveling again. he has a trip to arizona lined up next week, which they hope will send a signal, first of all, to the country, that things are, quote, returning back to normal. they want to project that confidence. it is also a way for him to get out of the white house. they know how frustrated he's been cooped up, and they want to employ him in some of the battleground states. the choice of the first state, arizona, is telling. that is now a legit battleground state. there are worries about places like arizona and georgia, beyond even the usual litany of the swing states that are going to decide an election. you're right, joe, things right now, for this president, are looking dire in florida, and they're looking bad in the upper midwest, particularly in michigan. i talked to someone in the last day or so that are close to the president, and they've all but written off trying to play in michigan. his path to re-election is shrinking, and his team believes he needs to change his approach,

focus on the economy immediately. the risk with that, of course, too much focus on the economy, not enough on public health, more americans die. not only, of course, would that be far more significantly a national tragedy, but it would be devastating for his re-election chances. >> well, what's also devastating for his re-election chances, willie, is the fact that he keeps getting it wrong every day. i mean, again, this is a president on february 22nd who said this virus is one person coming in from china. it is going to be gone. we'll be fine. end of february, he is talking about it is 11 people, and it'll be down to zero. 15 people, it'll be down to zero. in march, he is talking about how it'll magically go away in april, comparing it to the flu. here we are in april. he, last week, had to be corrected by his own medical people by saying this was going to go away in the summer and probably not come back in the fall. dr. fauci had to correct him there. then he started talking about the injection of disinfectants. dr. fauci had to direct him there. talking about people implanting

lights. poor dr. birx had to sit and listen to that. god help us all, what she had to go through. so, again, people have been concerned about a cognitive decline and have written about it for years. maybe this is not a cognitive decline. maybe he has other serious issues. but people are picking that up. you look at these swing states especially, in this time of crisis. people are closely paying attention to donald trump -- i can't believe i'm saying this -- for the first time, and understanding just how ill-equipped he is for the presidency and how much he puts their lives at rick rissk. look at all these polls. let's take the new hampshire poll. in new hampshire, donald trump getting beaten by joe biden by eight points. govern the governor in the p 70s, 80s when it comes to his approval rating. say the same thing about governor whitmer in michigan.

she's doing extraordinarily well. the president is not. it is very clear, those who are taking this pandemic seriouslyr republicans, democrats, and independents alike. those who are not are paying the price, and donald trump is paying the worst price. he continues to say it is going to magically go away. >> and he is totally misread the country. the country is taking this seriously. we showed those polls again questioned that showed 85%, 90% of americans, not democrats, of americans say without testing, we don't think we should send our kids back to school. i'm not sure i should go back to work. i don't want to so it in the restaurant. the american people are smart and listening to the doctors. the president is tweeting, "liberate the states," because he saw small rallies in the states and thought that's where the country was. he was wrong. his poll numbers show that. eddie, i want to play a sound bite yesterday. jared kushner, of course, the president's son-in-law, senior

adviser, talking about the federal government and the white house handling of a pandemic that now has killed 61,000 americans. and in during which we have 1 million cases of coronavirus. listen. >> sure. so the pandemic office, that was an nsc situation, but there is a lot of different parts to the government that are responsible for that. all of those have been functioning. again, we're on the other side of the medical aspect of this, and i think that we've achieved all the different milestones that are needed. so the government, federal government, rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story. and i think that that's really, you know, what needs to be told. in terms of the national strategy that you mentioned with governor newsom, look, we've been very busy doing. we released the strategy document earlier this week. it was an eight-step plan. seven of the steps have been completed. so you can accelerate to the levels that needed to be done. a lot of the work is the up front work. we've done more tests than any

other country in the world, so we have to be doing a lot of things right. >> eddie, jared kushner. let me repeat, the federal government rose to the challenge. this is a great success story. take politics out of it. let's say you think you've got an raw deal from the press and they're not covering this fairly. just on its own, looking at the numbers, looking at the human toll of this pandemic, can you imagine saying that this is a, quote, great success story? >> well, i can imagine them saying it. i can't imagine myself saying it, or someone who is reasonable or concerned about the health of the american people. it seems to me that this administration, particularly jared kushner, and, of course, president trump, they live in a post-fact world. what they're really concerned about is their desire, their own, shall we say, understanding of the world. that is, in some ways, in alignment with their desires, their whims, their wishes. you know, it'd be wonderful, willie, if we had a president who wasn't talking about his political life. who was, instead, concerned

about the health of the american people. the fact that 61,000 are dead. he could easily say, "my political future is irrelevant. what i'm concerned about is america is healthy again, that we're safe." instead, we have selfish interests driving, motivating his decision making. as his political life, as his political reality becomes more troubled, i'm troubled about his decision making. he will goin mabegin making mor more decisions driven by his own political panic. these folks will spin. they will try to tell a story that fits their own desire. what we know is americans face a pandemic where more than it shall how can we put it? we've crossed the number of deaths in vietnam in this short period of time. this is consistent with what we've seen the last three and a half years. >> well, at a briefing last week, president trump once again went after joe biden, calling him a sleepy guy in the basement. a reference to the former vice

president using a set in his -- in a room in his house to talk to the media while observing coronavirus restrictions. >> i can't tell you what's going to happen. we have a sleepy guy in the basement of a house that the press is giving a free pass to, who doesn't want to do debates because of covid. lots of things are happening, right? and i watched a couple of interviews, and i see, oh, i look forward to this. but they're keeping him sheltered because of the coronavirus. >> we showed a clip of donald trump nodding off. looked like he was nodding off. >> he was actually sleeping. >> in a coronavirus meeting. so, you know, as we've said before, everything with donald trump, well, it's either confession -- go to sleep, donald. >> oh, my. >> go to sleep. wake up. there's mike. he's talking about you. it is either confession, or it

is projection. >> defeat the corona virus. surgical gowns. we have no contingency plan. administer sefay -- that's one million -- used the defense protection act and the defense production act. hydroxy chloroquine and hydro -- hydroxychloroquine. remdesiv remdesivir. i thank them for their unwaving and unwavering devotion. pride and selflessness. the bravery of our truck drivers. transfusing it into six patients. very, very powerful. sick patients -- i am confident that by counting

and continuing. taking action to disbend and suspend. the internate -- the internet made it so big. show you the data. the highest level of activists. if you take a look at -- since 1917, which was the spanish flu. 1917, the pandemic. like nobody has seen since 1917. opening up america, we had the word agun. we can probably add the word again. i know words. i have the best words. in 1870, president ulysses s. grant. the beautiful space capsule. the infantry badge. our nation, as a solve earn cow soverign country. your demotion, prowess.

you can gain momentum. heroin alone, if you look at the epidemic. the federal government is conducting an aggressive investigation. and to delegitimatize. as bad as it is, it meant something. by an anonymous, anonylous. americas of all walks of life rose up. assistant secretary and surgeon general adams. heart, lung, and liver transplants. advising lawmarkers. china's supply chain. this russia thing with trump. i hope they now do go ago and l the oranges, the oranges of the investigation, the beginnings. every car out there, even the expensive ones. we had radio for europe.

the nazis, invasion of normandy, and the liberation of europe. a brilliant star shown in the east. wise men traveled far. whole state to be a sanctuary for criminals. to shield and shelter criminals. the members of our armed forces. and you understand that very well. and the internate. think about this. rich traditions of this. expectations in the house. for the midtown and mid turn year. wave all applicable state taxes despite the obstacles. central command response. president franklin delino roosevelt. he voted for obama. by a sleaze bag lawyer.

that's what the united nations is all about. won't be tolerated. merry christmas, everybody. we have to say it. we just had another -- ever foistered upon the american people. then they announced there was no -- seek real, bipartisan solutions. made a pivotable, really, and i mean, this wastivi pivotal. reauthorized the 9-elective-11 victims. it ran the ramparts. these historic accomplishments. our embassies in kenya and tanzania. it's great to be back in missuria. ghani. jerusalem. thanks the minneapolis police. venezuelans. venezuela is. working to improve the

government. god bless the united states. thank you very much. thank you. ♪ the name game >> if you don't mind, i'll make a quick statement. man i also have great respect for. justice anthony -- you know who i'm talking about. we appreciate it, tim apple. lockheed. douglas macarthur. mike pounds. just a whole group of great people. as you know, i've got the secretary general, stolehe im. we can't make mistakes. go ahead, ken. >> chuck canterbury from south carolina. >> thank you very much. ♪ oh, i'm the type of guy who will never settle down ♪

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around, around ♪ still ahead on "morning joe," what dr. anthony fauci is saying about an experimental drug that could potentially help change the fight against coronavirus. plus, senator tim kaine will be our guest. he is pushing for more relief for state and local governments to help prevent layoffs of critical personnel. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. 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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as the u.s. death toll surpassed 60,000 yesterday, the president seemed to revert to his old line of thinking, that the virus will just disappear. this claim has been refuted time and time again by the administration's own top experts. who say the virus will come back in the fall and will likely be worse if it coincides with the

flu season. here is dr. anthony fauci on tuesday, and the president contradicting him yesterday. >> it's not going to disappear from the planet, which means as we get into next season, in my mind, it's inevitable that we will have a return of the virus, or maybe it never even went away. when it does, how we handle it will determine our fate. if by that time we have put into place all of the countermeasures that you need to address this, we should do reasonably well. if we don't do that successfully, we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter. >> without a vaccine, sir, why do you think the virus will just be gone? >> it is going to go. it is going to leave. it is going to be gone. it is going to be eradicated. and it might take longer. it might be in smaller sections.

it'll be -- it won't be what we had. we also learned a lot. if you have a flare up in a certain area, if you have a -- i call them burning embers, boom, we put it out. we know how to put it out now. we put it out. now, we're equipped. >> what might the new normal look like in two, three years from now? say, restaurant workers, hotel workers, might they be required to wear masks, that sort of thing? >> no. i see the new normal being what it was three months ago. i think we want to go back to where it was. i mean, when i look at a baseball game, i want people right next to each other. i don't want four seats in between every person, so that the stadium becomes 25% of its original size. no, i want to see the nfl with a packed house. i don't want to see nfl with three seats in between people. no, i want to go back to where it was. that's where we're going to be.

hopefully in the not-too-distant future, we'll have massive rallies, and people will be sitting next to each other. i can't imagine a rally where you have every fourth seat full. every six seats are empty for everyone. that wouldn't look too good. >> joining us now from the white house, nbc news correspondent carol lee. carol, good morning. good to see you. so the president indicated yesterday that those rallies that he just talked about there may be happening very soon, as in next week. he talked about a trip to arizona. this as those white house guidelines for social distancing expire today, i should point out. the president said yesterday he doesn't see a reason to extend those. what more can you tell us about his plans beginning as early as next week? >> reporter: well, willie, we know he is not going to be doing big rallies any time soon. i think that was one of the things we heard from the president and some of his aides yesterday that was more of how they want things to be, rather

than how things are going to be. what we know is the president is going to travel to arizona and ohio. these are going to be small events. they're similar to what we have seen vice president mike pence do when he's traveled outside of washington in the last few weeks. although, we don't expect the president is going to do medical-focused events. again, it is all in the vein of the white house trying to shift attention away from the medical aspect of this, the pandemic, and focus on the economy. so he'll be in arizona likely with doing some sort of event that is either geared towards showing that the virus is going to be waning and will go away sometime in the near future, that there will be a recovery, of some sort of economic-focused event. he's been wanting to do this for some time. they've been talking about how to make this happen because the president, frankly, travels with a very large footprint. in this time, that's not necessarily what the white house

has been advising people to do. >> carol, you also are doing some reporting on that meeting last week in which president trump is reported to have screamed at his campaign manager, brad parscale, over the phone, when parscale brought him the battleground polls. not necessarily the ones we showed, but their own, internal polling. he can write-off public polling, as he often does when it is inconvenient for him, but this is internal campaign polling, during which parscale said, "you would lose the election if it were held today." what more can you tell us about that meeting? >> reporter: well, there were multiple discussions about this that we know of. they were very tense. the president, we were told, was in a horrific mood when he was shown these polls. typically, you know, his advisers will show him more positive polls, then maybe try to work in some of the more damaging polling. that didn't happen here. i think there was almost a sort of intervention, to basically

say, "look, something has to change." i think that the president, at least as we have seen this week, has kind of agreed to the changes in how he's presenting whatever he wants to say publicly, the types of events that he is doing. today, he'll do an event with seniors. joe was talking earlier about how the president's public polling has dropped with seniors in florida. that's a real concern. you're going to see him doing an event later this afternoon that's focused on seniors. there are alarm bells going off inside the white house and inside the campaign about this. they're very concerned. >> nbc's carol lee at the white house. carol, thanks so much. joe, obviously, the president not focused on the pandemic. he's overnight, middle of the night, tweeting about tv shows. he is thinking about his polling in battle ground states. screaming at his campaign team. it'd be nice if he put that much effort into a, let's say,

national testing program. >> is he okay? >> again, it seems we've heard throughout his spit about the times that he is melting down, the times he seems out of control. it is happening now, jonathan lemire, in the middle of a pandemic. this is a president who seems singularly focused on politics. singularly focused on getting re-elected. let me ask you, when he sees these new polls rolling in that we talked about this morning, down by eight in new hampshire, even down in a poll by one in texas, as you said, concerns about arizona, concerns about georgia, is there anybody inside the white house that can go to him and just say, "you've got to stop lying about this pandemic. you've got to stop saying it is going to go away"? all he is doing is giving joe biden's team clips where they can start in january, in

february, in march, and now april, where the president keeps saying it is going to go away. it is going to go away. it is going to go away. while fauci is saying, "it's not going away." yesterday, we crossed the threshold of more people killed by this pandemic that he said was one person coming in from china, than died in vietnam. >> the president's record of bad predictions, misinformation, and outright lies about this pandemic is going to be hard to explain away. as you say, joe, we're already seeing the campaign ads be cut from the biden camp about this. to answer your question, what we had last week in the white house, between parscale, kushner, and mcdaniel, trying to push the president to change tactics, that's about as close as it is going to come in the west wing for people to tell the truth to this president and say, "you need to snap out of this." there's very few, as we

discussed objediscuss ed on the show for months, quote, dprougrown-ups in the ro who will say, "president, you're wrong." chief of staff meadows said -- >> let me ask you, was it jared who got him to stop doing the rallies? i call them rallies. they were actually press conferences, disguised as press conferences. did jared get him to stop doing the briefings? who convinced him to do the things we were saying three weeks ago? we were telling him two, three weeks ago, stop doing those press conferences. it is killing you politically. who finally convinced him to stop? >> it was more the outside voices. his congressional allies and his business friends in new york that he consults with on the phone every night. kushner, as we saw yesterday from the clip you played earlier, he's been one of the more -- in terms of white house

aides, iing rosier pictures. on "fox and friends" yesterday, he was saying it is a success story. it is a hard sell to make when 60,000 americans have died. he believes the federal government has pulled this off and things are about to get back to normal. in fact, he said elsewhere on that clip, he thought may would be a transition month for the country. june would be a return to normal. in his words, by july, we'd be rocking again, which is a hard, hard claim to square with the sort of clear-eyed view of dr. fauci and others, who have said, first of all, not only has the pandemic gnnot waned yet, but there will be another, potentially deadlier wave this fall. the president's focus are emai s remains the economy. in his mind, the election and economy are intertwined. he believes his best chance of being re-elected is the push forward with the measures to reopen the country again, even

against the koucounsel of his medical experts and public health experts. that's why he is forging forward. he wants to go on the road again. next week, he's starting in arizona to the mask factory. he believes this is the best way to turn the slide in these battleground polls. >> it hasn't worked for him in the past. he says things off track like he did on march the 6th, when he said, "if you're a american and you want a test, you can get a test." eddie glaude, doesn't matter how many seniors he's doing, as long as his allies in the media -- and i saw another one yesterday said, "you know, the death of an 80-year-old is not as tragic as the death of a 30-year-old." that's the trump supporter mindset out there among a lot of trump's biggest supporters. forget about passing moral judgment on somebody who is basically talking about u

euthanasia. forget about that. talk about the political impact of senior citizens who supported donald trump, who are now hearing all of his allies saying, or a lot of his allies saying, the death of a senior citizen is just not as tragic as the death of somebody who is younger. it is not going to help in the polls. >> not at all, joe. in some ways, those sorts of utterances -- not in some ways, but they are, clearly, an assessment to the value of older folks, right? they're declaring who they value, what they value, right? let's be clear, the 61,000 deaths, they're not ababstract, right? they're real people. my best friend lost his mother-in-law. his wife, wilna, had to say good-bye to her mother by facetifac facetime, as her mother was behind a mask, right? this is real. this is visceral. what we hear over and over again

from the white house and from donald trump is they really don't value the lives of everyday, ordinary folk, or particularly older no eer folk. what they value is his political interest. what he values is, right, the almighty dollar. this is the substance of his response to the virus. i was thinking, joe, as you were talking, as -- and that mashup was frightening. >> it is frightening. >> as i was watching, ignorance allied with power, james baldwin said, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. here we have ignorance allied with power. in the face of a opinion dpande crisis that we haven't seen at this scale since world war ii. so this is where we are. so to hear his allies say what they say, it reveals their hearts. it reveals their character. it's not going to play out politically very well at all. >> eddie, thank you so much. coming up, it's being called

operation warp speed. the white house is trying to fast track a coronavirus vaccine, even though health experts have said it'll likely take 12 to 18 months. that was supposedly fast. that new reporting is next on "morning joe."

remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in

diminishing the time to recover. if you look at the time to recovery being shorter in the remdesivir arm, it was 11 days compared to 15 days. although a 31% improvement doesn't seem like a knockout 100%, it is a very important prof of concept. because what it is proving is that a drug can block this virus. >> boy, that's great news. >> yeah, really is. it's exciting. dr. anthony fauci sounding very optimistic about an experimental drug called remdesivir that could block the coronavirus. the results haven't been pun li published yet in medical journals, but fauci says the data is so promising, that there is a, quote, ethical obligation to immediately let the placebo group know, so they can have access. let's bring in "morning joe" chief medical correspondent dr. dave campbell.

along with health care editor for bloomberg, drew armstrong. he is here with his reporting on the trump administration's effort dubbed "operation warp speed," to fast-track the development of a coronavirus vaccine. >> dr. dave, before we start talking about some good news that came out yesterday, we keep hearing this back and forth between donald trump and dr. fauci. donald trump continues to say that the virus is going to go away. he has always said magically go away. now, he's saying he doesn't think it can come back. it probably won't come back in the fall. might not come back in the fall. some variance of that. dr. fauci is consistent, saying, "it is going to come back in the fall. it is going to come back in the fall." let me ask you, based on everything that you've read, is there any evidence that this virus is going to magically go away this summer and not come back in the fall? >> no. in fact, dr. fauci mentions that he's not sure it will even go

away. if you look at the numbers even today, joe, here we are, plateaued. we're going to be may. it is going to be june. to expect the virus to go away and stay gone, as has been mentioned really by only one person in the world, is not consistent with everybody else in the world and what they're saying. >> let's talk about the breakthrough yesterday. you actually have a drug that has the ability, as dr. fauci said, to shorten the days that somebody has this disease, this terrible disease, from 15 days to 11 days. there's also a drop in mortality rates from 11% to 8%. explain to us how while this is only a 30% drop in some cases, it is still a huge breakthrough because it shows that this virus can be -- the growth of this virus in somebody can be

stunted. >> this is exceedingly important, partly because of that four-day shortened hospital stay, but perhaps in the long run, more importantly, it's that proof of concept that this particular antiviral drug, which blocks an enzyme that's needed for replication of the virus, actually does something against covid-19. so now, as time goes on, the scientists can begin the layering of additional drugs on, like they did with hiv back in the '80s and '90s, to go from having a disease hiv that was uniformly fatal, to one that is now controllable. so that's the exciting part to me. i think we'll see over time that remdesivir became a very important first building block on many, joe. >> willie? >> drew, it is willie geist. you're writing this morning about operation warp speed, this

public/private partnership with the federal government to race to the vaccine. we've heard it is not until we have the vaccine we'll be able to fully control coronavirus. we heard a year, a year and a half. as you report this morning, the goal of operation warp speed is to get 300 million doses of the vaccine available by january. how do they expect to get there that fast? >> well, i think one of the important things to remember with this is that we have a tremendous amount of vaccine manufacturing and research capability in this country already. this program that we reported on yesterday, it essentially has a goal of trying to cram down some of the timelines and do as much at one time as you poss ibly ca. usually, you do lab research, then animals, then in people, then the manufacturing. they're going to try to do as much of that as they can at a single time. it'll create waste. the hope is it creates speed.

doesn't necessarily mean all the science is going to work. if it does, we could accelerate the timeline substantially. >> drew, we've seen the federal government struggle, perhaps be unwilling to get things like a national testing program together, to get ppe into hospitals, to get ventilators where they need to go. that's happened very slowly. why do they think this initiative will go differently and faster than some of their others? >> yeah. i think that's a fair criticism. it is a question i think we've heard from some other people, about why wasn't something done similar to this earlier? i think there are resources that the federal government has and that there's resources that the private sector has that probably can be leveraged here. pfizer, johnson & johnson, to name two companies working on vaccines, poet haboth have the manufacturing capabilities to produce hundreds of millions of doses rapidly. j&j wants a billion by the end

of 2021. to change some of the clinical trial protoprotocols, to speed s up, it seems you can shave time off of this. it seems they're going to be relying on a lot of the entities that are working very, very hard on this and have shown some promising early work already. so this won't be entirely a federal government effort, to be clear. there's a lot of private sector involvement here. >> health care editor for bloomberg, drew armstrong. thank you very, very much. dr. dave campbell, thank you, as well. coming up on "morning joe," more on the grim, internal polling that is showing president trump his numbers are really bad. he is lashing out at his own re-election campaign for those numbers. >> he is actually saying -- just reading this, simmering frustrations that parscale was -- his campaign manager was making so much money off the campaign.

donald trump thinks he made a ton of money off of the campaign. maybe he's thinking he was more focused on getting rich than helping donald trump win the election. >> you can't change the numbers. plus, what the white house briefings might look like if the president didn't focus on attacking the press or touting unproven treatments. we have that knew piece ahead on "morning joe." ♪

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it's not going to disappear from the planet. as we get to next season, in my mind, it is inevitable that we will have a return of the virus, or maybe it never even went away. when i does, how we handle it will determine our fate. if, by that time, we have put into place all of the

countermeasures that you need to address this, we should do reasonably well. if we don't do that successfully, we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter. >> without a vaccine, sir, why do you think the virus will just be gone? >> it's going to go. it's going to leave. it's going to be gone. it is going to be eradicated. and it might take longer. it might be in smaller sections. it'll be -- it won't be what we had. we also learned a lot. again, if you have a flare-up in a certain area, if you have a -- i call them burning embers, boom, we put it out. we know how to put it out now. but we put it out. now, we're equipped. >> welcome back to "morning joe." it is thursday, april 30th. wow. with joe, willie, and me, we have white house reporter for the "associated press," jonathan lemire. msnbc contributor mike barnicle. and nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of

"kasie d.c." on msnbc on sunday nights, kasie hunt joins us. >> the clip coming in, every time i see it, it is all the more remarkable. >> yeah. >> not just because of how ignorant the president is when he says those things, ignorant of science, ignorant of medicine, ignorant of the very things that his medical advisers have been telling him every day throughout this pandemic, but also just oblivious to what has put him in this position politically that he is in, that is causing him to meltdown. also has put america in the position where over 60,000 americans are dead. he said last week it'd be 50,000 or 60,000. we're already -- we blew through both of those stops. you look at the history of this. donald trump said on february 22nd that it was just one person coming in from china, and it was going to go away. at the end of february, a month

after joe biden warned this pandemic was going to get worse. that donald trump was ill-equipped. he had america ill-prepared for this pandemic. a month after that warning from joe biden in the "usa today" op-ed, donald trump still saying, "it is only 11 people. soon, it'll be down to zero. it's only 15 people. soon, it'll be down to sow rzer" he talked to a group of african-american leaders in the white house, said, "it'll magically go away." kept talking when it got warm in april, it was just going to go away. his medical advisers warned him throughout the entire process that he was wrong. health officials warned that he was endangering the lives of americans. that he wasn't preparing the way that he should prepare. now, here we have donald trump, after more people died of a pandemic that he said was going to go away in april magically, more people died than died in combat deaths in vietnam.

of this pandemic, he said it'd magically go away. willie, i repeat the past because the past is still prologue for this president who just won't tell the american people the truth about this pandemic. he said, "it's going to go. it's going to leave. it won't be what it was when it comes back," despite the fact that health officials have warned him in the past week or two that it could actually be worse in the fall and the winter if it hits during flu season. now, we pray to god that's not the case. i have personal reasons in my family. mika has personal reasons in her family. we pray that there will be medication. >> oh, yeah. >> that will make things better. i pray for a cure every night, for the sake of my children, for the sake of mika's mom, for the sake of loved ones. but donald trump just telling us

it is going to magically go away in the fall only causes more consternation for families like us, but more importantly, consternation for senior citizens who know if they catch it, their lives are on the line. >> and as you say that, wishful thinking is not ancient history. that was yesterday. the clip we played where he said, "it is going away. it'll be eradicated." when he called on comments like that in the past, his response is, "someday, it'll go away." i guess that's true, someday, it'll go away. what the american people want to hear more of is the segment we did. we dedicated it to operation warp speed. imagine if he were out front from the beginning, talking about these initiatives led by the federal government with private partnerships, to race to the vaccine. or this drug, remdesivir, which might be helpful, as dr. fauci said.

or talking about a public/private partnership, showing the government is taking this seriously. not up in the middle of the night tweeting about cable news. that's where his head is. the people he feels are wronging him, the people he feels are giving them a bad deal. it is all reflected in the polls. the problem with his posture, that it is going to go away, is americans do not agree with him. again, i'm not talking about cable news. i'm not talking about progress i have progressives or democrats. i'm talking about the polling yesterday that showed 90%, although they want to go back to work, of course, they know that without testing, it's not safe to go back. the president eegs wi's wishfulg is ringing hollow with the american people. >> it's basic. our kids get it. >> what is making him angry? the truth. what's making him angry when he watches news? >> common sense. >> when people actually tell the truth about what he has said in the past. when they bring up the quotes of what came out of his head.

the false guarantees that he made. the false assurances that put many of his supporters in a position where they didn't believe that this virus was real. that had his propaganda, even in march, saying this was the new media hoax meant to bludgeon him. he hates the fact that he is having to pay the consequences of the mistakes he's made. these are mistakes that he continues to make. you know, he said, "oh, i said it was going to go away." it is going to go away at some point. mike barnicle, there is no evidence it is going away in the fall. in fact, i haven't heard a medical expert say it is going away in the fall. if you look back at what donald trump has said in the past, that it is magically going away in april, when he said we only have 11 people, 15 people in february with it, and soon it'll be down to zero, that's what he was

talking about when he said it was going to go away. now, again, mike, you covered vietnam. you saw the tragedy firsthand, the act of war from '65 to '75. the day donald trump graduated from his law school after five deferments. this is not a pandemic that went away. it's killed more people than died in the vietnam war. donald trump still is making the same mistakes, saying it is magically going to go away in the fall. i'll be honest with you, i just don't get it. it is bad medicine, and it is bad politics. >> well, joe, here in massachusetts, governor charlie baker, a republican, yesterday announced the highest single day death toll for coronavirus

victims, 252. massachusetts has been hit very hard by the virus. all you can think of, at least all i can think of when i hear donald trump on the clips that we play, and we talk about him, obviously, a lot, is the jack nicholson character in "a few good men," when he looks into the camera in the courtroom and says, "you can't handle the truth." i think that's where we are with donald trump. he can't handle the truth. he has created his own lost empire. he just rambles around from one press conference to another, as willie pointed out. he said yesterday, not in march, not in february, yesterday, "this will soon be over." we're now, according to jared kushner n a transition month. the american people know there are three things on their minds. the virus, the economy, and donald trump. trump is losing in all three categories. he is losing in his combat against the virus. he is losing in terms of

handling the economy as a result of the virus. he is losing because he's donald trump. people get that this is more about him than this is about them. he seems to be more concerned about his immediate political future than he does their day-to-day. >> well, here is the truth, the death toll from the coronavirus has surpassed 60,000 americans. that's why americans can see what is happening. the president doesn't seem to be focused though on what is happening on this deadly pandemic. as much as melting down on his slipping poll numbers. there is reporting from multiple news outlets that president trump lashed out at his campaign manager after he was given polls that showed him trailing joe biden in several key states. trump was briefed in a series of phone calls last week by his political advisers, including

his campaign manager, brad parscale. republican national committee chair, mcdaniel, and son-in-law, jared kushner. the aides showed the president the re-election campaign latest polls, showing him trailing joe biden in several key states. multiple sources familiar with the briefing confirm to nbc news. one source described trump as being in a, quote, horrific mood, as parscale walked him through the numbers. on friday, two days after being shown the polls, trump berated his campaign manager, insisting that the data was wrong and blamed parscale for the fact that he was losing in the polls. the tense exchange was first reported by cnn and the "washington post." the "associated press" reports that trump repeatedly told campaign officials during the heated calls, quote, i'm not blanking losing to joe biden. >> yes, you are. >> according to five people -- >> in fact, you're losing in a lot of states.

>> -- with knowledge of the situation. with this pandemic gripping the nation, to have a president so focused on this, is he okay? >> his focus, mika, at the beginning was the economy, which is why he was so slow, many people around him believe, to act. because he only was spurred to really put a plan into place once the markets started to tumble the end of february. right now, yes, his focus is largely on his re-election. he faces voters again in about six months. people around him certainly have reached a point where they are deeply concerned. they're concerned about his performance day after day in the coronavirus task forge briefings. they're concerned about his focus on twitter. they're concerned that this crisis could, indeed, get worse. medical experts, public health team, as we've been playing,

have all predicted, in one voice, that the virus is going to make a comeback this fall. the president simply doesn't want to hear it. his push now is to try to encourage these states to start reopening their economies, of course. let's underscore this, the decision largely lies with the governors. but encouragement from the white house would push people back to work, push people back, potentially, to school, so on. of course, the president doesn't want to deal with the reality of these poll numbers. he's long dismissed them. he is prone to believe good poll numbers and not believe bad ones. that's what happened again last week when he snapped at his senior staff, even threatened to sue brad parscale for spending two years, we're told -- >> my gosh. >> two years creating an invincible re-election campaign, only to have it now trailing to

who the president believe it is an interior candidate in joe biden. the president denied a lot of the accounts last week in tweets. we have multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of what happened in there. so do other news outlets. this is an attempt by his senior staff to try to get the president to change course before it's too late. >> that'd be a fascinating kasie hunt, let's look at the polls that caused the president to blow up. "usa today" and suffolk university poll shows trump trailing joe biden by eight points. yougov, trailing by six points. the emerson college poll has trump down six nationally, as well. looking at the battleground states, the fox news poll shows president trump trailing joe biden by eight points in pennsylvania and in michigan, and by three points in florida. in new hampshire, president trump trails by eight. in north carolina, down five. in the state of texas, the

president in a statistical tie with joe biden. in texas. >> wow. >> in the president's home state of new york, trump trails by 36 points. kasie, these are the public polls. the internal polls are what brad parscale and the campaign team presented last week, according to jonathan's reporting, nbc's reporting, and a bunch of other outlets. showed donald trump these polls. his reaction was not to be concerned and to wonder about what they had to do to change direction, but was to scream and threaten a lawsuit to his campaign manager, brad par sksc. >> reporter: which seems to be the opposite of what brad parscale and his campaign were trying to achieve. in a single given poll, they would be right or wrong in the end of this. every campaign is looking at trend lines, both in their internal numbers and their -- the public numbers we just walked through. the trend lines right now for this president show that he needs to do something to turn it

around. his advise errs felt the situat was so serious, they needed to risk a confrontation with a boss they know to be volatile in this way. they did it anyway. this was the result. you can see, you know, from all of the public-facing events that happened, it culminated in the president talking about, you know, injecting disinfectant in this incredibly, you know, irresponsible and dangerous set of statements that he made that could potentially endanger folks' lives, as the governors in the states that had to deal with the fallout have said publicly. this has gotten to the point where, you know, the senate, national senate, republican senatorial committee is telling vulnerable senators that the best way to go forward with their own campaigns, as they try to deal with the fallout, help their constituents, and get re-elected, is not to defend the president. the advice is turn and attack china for the origins of the virus. fine, we can talk about the

value of that separately. the ultimate point is that there is no ground to stand on for these republicans when it comes to what the president is saying and doing and how he is handling this virus. this is something, you know, that is a huge challenge for all of them. there's still no evidence. i mean, mitch mcconnell was on tv saying we're not where we need to be on testing. i don't think for anyone who is looking at this, how do they fix these political problems, fix the economic problems, and political problems, if we don't fix the medical problems? it is a broken record, but that's the reality. >> mitch mcconnell worrying about testing, says we're not where we need to be. the republican senatorial committee is saying, "save yourself. don't defend trump." look at the numbers. trump getting crushed in pennsylvania. trump getting crushed in michigan. trump getting crushed in new hampshire. three swing states. trump losing by five points in north carolina. even down in a roll yesterday in texas. getting crushed among seniors in

the state of florida. kasie, that obviously is translating, as well, to republican incumbents getting crushed in arizona in public polling. getting crushed in -- approval ratings. susan collins in maine, crushing for her up there right now. she could have a crushing loss. is there a growing understanding among the republicans that you are speaking to on the hill, that donald trump could be leading them into a political blood bath this fall? >> reporter: i think they're all acutely aware that this scenario is terrible for their own political futures. right now, it is on a track that is getting worse and not better. you know, they're in the same bind they've been all along, right? republicans, for the most part, are still with the president.

but when you start to look at the way people are engaged, in a way they weren't before, you know, trump was relying on making this about his core supporters going to the polls. he was energizing them. he wasn't going to focus on the rest of the country. when we are facing a polarized electora electorate, talking about culture war stylish she issues day, it may have been a strategy that would work. what is shifting aggressively are the numbers among independents, in particular, are really concerning. the senior numbers we've talked about, many of these people, in theory, could be part of the president's base. if you're looking at -- if the nurps we' numbers we're seeing out of florida with seniors hold, it is incredibly difficult to see how he wins the state of florida. if the state of florida is off the map, it is very hard to see how he gets re-elected. so, you know, the hemorrhaging in all of the other places in very, very challenging for any

republican who is trying to get elected in a place where their race is competitive. we were not previously talking about a realistic chance the senate was going to flip hands this cycle. two years, kind of a different deal. but for this situation right now, the idea you could have chuck schumer being the majority leader instead of the minority leader is not unrealistic. i think you can see the fear in how mitch mcconnell acts every day. >> joe, i want to circle back to the meetings and the phone calls that the campaign team with the president had while he was in the white house last week. over the course of three days, they began on wednesday. on wednesday, according to outlets, including nbc, is when brad parscale, the campaign manager, presented the polls and said, "we think you should dial back the coronavirus briefings." that's wednesday. what'd the president do on thursday? >> yeah. >> that's the day he personally went to the podium and suggested and mused to his doctors,

wondered aloud about injecting disinf dis disinfectant and sunlight into the human body. making their point for them. >> unbelievable. >> at this point, it is a fair question, what is going on here? >> yeah. it has to be disturbing to people who are around him, especially -- >> can you imagine being brad parsca parscale? >> especially disturbing to republicans, whose political future depends on him. they've sold their political souls to donald trump. >> ask the governor of georgia how that went for him. >> he got thrown under the bus after donald trump called him the night before saying, "hey, open up your state." mike pence called him the night before and said, "open up your state." he said he'd open the state, then he was thrown under the bus. mitt romney seems to be the only person who is actually -- republican that is in washington, d.c., who is speaking the truth. of course, you have governors like mike dewine in ohio who has been bold. >> poll numbers up.

>> great leadership. his poll numbers are being rewarded. charlie baker in massachusetts, another republican, his poll numbers being rewarded. larry hogan in maryland, his poll numbers being rewarded. you get rewarded for protecting people's lives. this is donald trump's biggest problem right now. you know, donald trump is a one-trick pony. he thinks that he can only win by starting a culture war somewhere, whether it's watching an nfl game and talking about the american flag, or whether it's abortion, or whether it's guns. he has to try to cleing and hol to something that will divide americans along cultural lines, tribal lines. the problem here is, he made the mistake of seeing protests that represented the viewpoint of 10% of americans.

another way to put that, it didn't represent the viewpoint of 90% of americans. when you have, as willie keeps saying, when you have polls that show 90% of americans don't want to rush back into restaurants, 85% of americans don't want to go back to work. >> they don't want to get the virus. >> they don't want their kids to go back to school. why? dr. fauci, dr. birx, and their doctors -- >> we don't have testing. >> -- their doctors they've known for 25, 30 years, family doctors, their marcus welby's, if you're old enough to remember who that is, they're saying, "hold on. calm down. this is dangerous. let's just -- don't listen to politicians. listen to medical professionals. save yourself, seniors. save your children." telling pa ining parents to sav children, protect their grandparents. you can't make a cultural --

donald, i don't know how many times i have to tell you this. let me try it one more time. >> don't, it's not worth it. >> you can't make a cultural war out of a pandemic. all right? i will say it again. i've said it on this show repeatedly, this is a medical crisis. when you take care of the medical crisis, then the economic crisis will resolve itself. what you have done is you've taken a medical crisis and seen this economic crisis grow, which you actually threatened to make worse by pushing governors to rush back too quickly, before your own guidelines that you just put out last week. now, you've turned it into -- wait for it. wait for it -- because you didn't listen to anybody around you, you sicertainly didn't lisn to what we were talking about on this show, you turned it into a

political crisis for yourself. i assume you only care about your political standing. let me help you out here. what's pest fbest for you polit, best for the country economically, is best for americans and their health, listen to dr. fauci. follow what dr. fauci says. everything will fall in line. i don't know how many times i have to say it. i'm getting kind of tired of saying it. it's the truth. t what all t it's what all the people around you want to do, but you're just not listening, all right? talking about injecting disinfectants the day after your campaign tries to intervene, that just suggests that you're not well right now. all right? take a step back. maybe try mindfulness. i don't know if you ever tried mindfulness. i know you're not a big prayer. you said you have no reason to pray to fwgod and ask for forgiveness. i understand that.

if you're not a guy that believes in the power of prayer, try mindfulness. maybe that will help you out. hey, i got it, how about this? just listen to dr. fauci. >> there you go. >> we'll be right back. one of them. that's why we're offering contactless delivery and set-up on all devices. and for those experiencing financial hardship due to this crisis, we'll work with you to keep your service up and running. hi! because at at&t, we're always committed to keeping you connected. in these challenging times, we need each other more than ever. we may be apart, but we're not alone. use aarp community connections to find or create a mutual aid group near you. stay connected and help those in need. that's ensure max protein, with high protein and 1 gram sugar. it's a sit-up, banana! bend at the waist!

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a blank check to the states and local governments to spend any way they choose to. i'd be in favor of allowing the states to use the bankruptcy route. it saves some cities, and there's no good reason for it not to be available. my guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now, so they don't have to do that. that's not something i'm going to be in favor of. >> senator mitch mcconnell, you are bailing out new york, when every year you take out more

from the federal pot, $37 million more than you put in? who is bailing out who? senator scott, florida, you're going to bail us out? you take out $30 billion more every year than you pay in. how dare they. >> it's a good question. >> it is a great question. >> i have this question for our next guest. joining us now, democratic senator tim kaine of virginia. he's a member of the armed services and foreign relations committee. senator kaine, how dare they. >> i mean, come on. >> mika, you forgot to mention the most important thing. i was a mayor and a governor, and you're right, it's pure evil. it is pure evil. when we did the c.a.r.e.s. package, we put money out there for businesses so they could keep their payrolls in tact and

not fire people. we did aid to hospitals so they wouldn't have to fire people. but what's happening now is mcconnell is saying, "hey, let states and localities go bankrupt." most states are doing their budgets right now. most localities are doing their pujt budgets right now. they're having to contemplate play-offs and furloughs of fire, police, emt, first responders. definitely not a good time to do that, but you shouldn't do it in the middle of a health emergency. that's the mcconnell /gop plan. we're fighting to get money to state and local governments so they don't have to lay off first responders. >> usually, leaders try and think of the best possible option, in this case, for their states. is there any best -- any reason why allowing them to go bankrupt would be the best possible option? >> no. it's an evil option.

even the way senator mcconnell tried to explain it is, we want them to go bankrupt so they can get out of pension obligations, to hard-working people who chipped in to pensions over the course of their careers. let's make it worse. let's have states go bankrupt, so we can hurt a lot of retirees. wow. that is very, very grim. the worst thing we could do right now is let state and local governments lay off a lot of first responders and hurt a lot of retirees. we were able to get funds in the c.a.r.e.s. package for state and local governments. gop didn't want us to. democrats stayed at the table until we got in. that's what we have to fight for now. last week, we did more for businesses and hospitals. the next step should be more for individuals and state and local governments. >> senator kaine, willie geist. good to see you. you served in the armed services and have been concerned about the military and veterans. boy, is coronavirus just wiping

out some of our older veterans communities, in care homes like one in massachusetts, where there are now 82 people who died, 82 veterans have died. some in maine, new jersey. i'm sure you're seeing it in your state of virginia. >> yes. >> how do we put a better focus on the military, and particularly, our older veterans being ravaged by coronavirus? what more can be done from your seat? >> two things. veterans and inactive. veterans side, the veterans hospitals are short of the protective equipment to protect the workers. we did put significant money in the c.a.r.e.s. bill into the va system. next week, we have to demand, how are you using the dollars to keep veterans safe? with active duty, you look at a situation like the "roosevelt." it took over a month to test everyone on the roosevelt, even after there were hundreds of cases of coronavirus. the military, to this day, still doesn't have their own metric

about who should be tested. when i asked why, they said, "well, we're facing supply shortages." i said, "that's no excuse not to have a measure." you can say, "we can't reach it due to shortages." if you don't have a measure about what you should do about testing, no wonder you have a problem. t dod is like the administration, there is no national standard for testing, even in now the fourth month of this pandemic. >> kasie hunt has a question for you, senator. >> hi, kasie. >> senator, good to see you this morning. the senate majority leader mitch mcconnell is planning to bring you and your colleagues back to the capitol on monday to start working again. but not necessarily on voting on coronavirus-related packages. it seems like he wants to move judicial nominations. your colleague in maryland, chris van hollen, wrote to him and said, "you're endangering the lives and health of our

constituents who work in the capitol. not necessarily expressing concern about his own safety, but rather the dozens, if not hundreds of people that will have to come into the come mekk complex to help it work. should the senate be coming back next week to do judicial nominations, and do you share those concerns? >> we shouldn't be coming back to do judicial nominations. kasie, as you know, d.c., maryland, virginia, are still under work-from-home orders. likely we'll go into early june. so i'm not going to ask my staff to violate those orders to come in. i will come in. i'm a u.s. senator. i'll try to do my work just me, with staff supporting me via telecommute. i'm not going to order them to violate the safety rules that the governors and mayors have laid down. and the thing that's ironic is senator mcconnell wants us to come back, but the committees, the republican committees are generally blocking hearings about coronavirus.

they want to do judges. they won't do hearings to exercise oversight over the administration's coronavirus response. they're going to block action on coronavirus to try to get judges done and endanger the lives of the capital police, security, grounds crew, everybody else, forcing them to violate the local work-from-home orders. it makes absolutely no sense. i'll be there, but i'm going to have my staff supporting me from home because i'm not going to order them to violate rules that are designed to protect their own health. >> mike barnicle? >> senator kaine, as you know -- >> hey, mike. >> -- the president of the united states is the commander in chief. from a second lieutenant all the way up to the commander in chief, you are responsible for the safety of your troops. a couple of weeks ago, the superintendent at west point ordered all of the west point cadets home for safety reasons,

in order to care for them. to make sure they were out of a petri dish at west point and the coronavirus threat. the president of the united states, donald trump, has just ordered all of these troops from various parts of this country to return to west point so he can have an audience for a commencement address he is scheduled to deliver. what are your thoughts on that? >> mike, you couldn't imagine anything more completely contrary to the military ethos. i'm an armed services member. i got a kid in the military. they have a motto, officers eat last. you take care of your troops before you take care of the folks at the top. this president is, this is about me, and who care about you. that's why he is calling folks back. he wants an audience. he's glad to risk their health to get the audience he wants. it is completely contrary to the way we train officers in military. >> all right. senator tim kaine, thank you so

much for coming on the show this morning. >> glad to. >> great to see you. coming up, there's a lot of bad information out there, and it's not just coming from the white house podium. how disinformation about coronavirus is cloudyi icollidin with fake news about the 2020 election. as we go to break, a look at the new issue of "time" magazine, "from open to nope." this week's cover story explores the road to ending the lockdown after the coronavirus. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. i just love hitting the open road and telling people

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youtube has removed two videos of california doctors, whose calls to ease coronavirus lockdowns have become the newest ammunition used by some media and fringe activists in their callings to end government measures to slow the spread of coronavirus. the doctors downplayed the risk of the virus, and asserted stay at home measures were unnecessary. they also promoted a conspiracy theory that doctors were falsely acontribu contributing unrelated deaths to covid-19. facebook hasn't removed the videos, and dozens of others remain on youtube, some in full, some sliced into segments, racking up hundreds of thousands of views. one video on facebook has been viewed more than 9 million time ace loa s alone. facebook declined to comment about this. joining us, ben gupta, a

pulmonologist who treated critically ill coronavirus patients in washington state. he is also an nbc news contributor. joini ining us also, fbi former agent and contributor, watts. we don't usually talk about random doctors in bakersfield, california, except for their conspiracy theories and disinformation picked up a huge following on youtube. who are these men, and why are people listening to them? >> well, unfortunately, right now, these two men are taking advantage of an environment where contrarian views to public health experts, like dr. fauci, dr. birx, others, are going to have an environment. they'll have an audience. people want, we all want, willie, to normalize life. anybody willing to get the air cover, the justification that people are craving from a scientific standpoint, people

are going to listen to that. so instead of -- anybody's suspicions should have been raised when instead of saying, we have a study where urgent care physicians aren'tepidemiol. the normal route is, i'll public my study in a medical journal, or attempt to publish it, like every other epidemiologist or physician trying to do this work across the country. there is no other person of any serious regard that doesn't go through the normal channels. the fact they then hosted a news conference and have solicited publicity, instead of the common course, tells you everything you need to know. they were looking to make a headline. they were looking to make a splash. people think for secondary gain. certainly not for the gain of public health. that's the issue at play here. they were spreading misinformation because their science wasn't science. it was junk science. it wasn't the proper way to conduct a study they were

claiming that -- their findings were based on faulty science. they didn't conduct it properly. >> but they are, dr. gupta, medical doctors. they're not talk show hosts or cable news hosts. how did they come to their conclusions? i only ask you to pick through it because, as i said, so many people now have picked up their clips and shared them and listened to it and believe what they're reporting out. >> good question. we should drill down on this, willie. they -- essentially what they did, anybody that took up their services a s in urgent care cli across bakerfield, they offered an antibody test for coronavirus. it wasn't a random sampling of individuals in a geographic area, which is what you need to do. you need to do a random sampling of individuals across the major urban area to know, okay, what is the true point prevalence of covid-19? they basically said, anybody that comes into our doors, self-selected population, we'll test you. there is bias.

a lot of bias introduced into this quote, unquote, study design. it wasn't a study as a result. there is no scientific rigor behind who they're enrolling into this prevalence survey. number two, as you know, willie, the antibody tests have loads of problems with them. a similar study done scientifically out of stanford was criticized because the study itself was known to be -- the antibody test was prone to false positive rates. so right now, we have two problems. the methodology employed by these doctors in bakersfield. there was no methodology. there was no epide deedemiology. right now, the antibody tests on the market have problems. this is the reason there's a lot of concern. their conclusions are not what they state them to be. we should be really careful and overgeneralizing. especially because a lot of people seized on their results

and said, "well, docs like myself and others are causing alarm." we're saying social distancing needs to occur for a certain period of time based on our flawed data. we're actually doing things, and we're messaging on studies with scientific rig or behind them. that's the concern here. >> youtube has taken down the videos from the two doctors. they do remain on facebook though, where they're being shared widely. clint watts, let's look overseas where you always have an eye, at disinformation spread by russia. disinformation being spread by iran. disinformation being spread by china where, of course, this virus originated, where information was suppressed, where doctors were silenced. the chinese trying to sell this now as an american problem. what more can you tell us about the information pushed out from the bloodstream from abroad? >> thanks, willie. what we see now is what i call the axis of disinformation.

russia, china, and iran, they opportunistically use each other's content, themes and the narratives, to amplify it and make claims against the united states. there is a global information war going on about the source of the coronavirus, where it started from. china is trying to rewrite history. this virus came from china. they're trying to essentially put blame back on the united states or offer alternative explanations. russia is there amplifying that, as well as iran. which you also see this scary trend, as we head into election 2020. russia is piggy backing on the narrative that the election is rigged and there is voter fraud. why do we see this? because we see it in our own population, discussions about primaries being canceled, votes not being tabulated the way they normally do. will we move to mail-in balloting? all of this ambiguity is a ripe opportunity for a country like russia, which wants to subvert our democracy and push us down in terms of our elected officials and institutions.

i think the third thing to really look at is mobilizations. we have american-made mobilizations, protests going on. we've seen white supremacy pick up based on race-based conspiracies. if you're a foreign adversary that really wants to to twrie to hurt the united states right now. one you can amplify those sorts of protest it. we see that coming out of the russia landscape, but across the board you want to show that the u.s. is unstable and that you have strong divides inside the country. for all three of these countries, iran, china and russia, it is a great time to strike at the u.s. while we're in turmoil over the covid-19 pandemic and the resulting response. >> the news last week claimed about china using disinformation, lying, predisprg lies, amplifying lies about extreme lockdowns in the united states, obviously deeply

disturbing because unlike russia they've been making plays over the last 20 years to join the respected community of nations. the fact weise will have to be sharing the world stage with china, using this information to sew chaos in the midst of a pandemic that started in china, is about a damning a list of facts as there can be. what can you tell us about china's deplorable behavior right now in the middle of this pandemic to panic americans? >> so what is interesting about china is they have the science to amplify russia's art. what we've seen over the period of march and april as we have talked about this covid-19 disinformati disinformation pandemic that's gone along with the real pandemic is how china has stepped up its game. it has been aggressive and derogatory towards the united states. they're trying to rewrite history to point fingers at the

united states which is a falsehood. they are using global means, reports came out last week chinese agents were creating chaos and amplifying in the united states. this shows an aggression by china that is more emblematic than russia. in china, they'll over take russia because they have the science, the capability, the data and the ways to enter into the social media space that russia really can't because they don't have that internal to their own country. >> dr. gupta, we have been talking a lot about disinformation. let's look at what we do know. big picture, what are the potentials of the drugs we are hearing about, remdesivir, and the potential for a vaccine? where do we stand in the overall 20,000 feet fight against this virus? >> thanks, mika. so there's optimism on

remdesivir. what dr. fauci said yesterday is we need more studies, but initial results suggest that if you are critically ill and you get remdesivir you have a faster time to recovery, which is great. almost 30% faster. in practice that was four days, so it is not a ton of time but that's really encouraging. i'm outside an icu where i'm caring for patients getting this drug. so that's hope inspiring. so let's see what happens. we need larger studies though because there's a study out of china published on the same day that called into question whether remdesivir had any clinical benefit, but there's method logical concerns with that study. long story short, we need more information. remdesivir though if it is effective is the magic bullet maybe we need to loosen social distancing laws across the country because we have a fail safe. if we don't have a lot of critical care beds and we get this wrong, at least we have a treatment there to save people's

lives. >> all right. dr. gupta and clint, both. still ahead, we will get the latest read on the economy when the labor department releases the report on jobless claims this morning. plus, we will talk to one of the public health leaders calling on congress to provide more funding for contact tracing. nbc news confirms reports that the president lashed out at his campaign over internal polling that shows him to be losing to joe biden in several key swing states. we will have more on that and the latest public polling that shows the same thing, the president losing to joe biden. "morning joe" is back in a moment. a moment ♪

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it is inevitable that we will have a return of the virus or maybe it never even went away. >> it is going to leave. it is going to be gone. it is going to be eradicated. if you want to get to pre-coronavirus that might not ever happen in the sense of the fact that the threat is there. >> i see the new normal being what it was three months ago. i think we want to go back to where it was. >> are you saying you are confident you can surpass 5 million tests per day? >> we're going to be there very soon. if you look at the numbers, it could be that we're getting very close. >> you said that we will very soon be testing 5 million people. >> i don't know where -- somebody came out with a study

of 5 million people. do i think we will? i think we will, but i never said it. >> all right. president trump contradicting dr. fauci and himself. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is thursday, april 30th. >> did say on the 5 million a day, the guy that runs testing said there was no way this was ever going to happen on this planet or any other planet. >> ever. >> he said that in the morning to "time magazine". in the afternoon donald trump, who seems to be a little more confused lately and contradicting his own people, it is really disturbing. i am starting to get really concerned, even more concerned about how quickly he gets confused. >> yes, flat-out confused. >> his testing chief said it was impossible the same day donald trump said we were getting there very soon. that's what we're dealing with. >> i wonder if he's not able to process information. along with joe, willie and me we have white house reporter for the associated press jonathan

lemire and professor at princeton university eddy glogg jr. with the u.s. death toll from the coronavirus mounting, president trump is rejecting the notion of a new normal and is insisting the virus will be eradicated with or without a vaccine. >> which no medical professional is saying that. dr. fauci is not saying that. dr. birx is not saying that. no one is saying that. this is the same donald trump that said in february this is one person coming in from china, soon it would be down to zero. he said in february it was 11, down to zero. 15, down to zero. of course, now we have crossed the 60,000 dead threshold. >> as we said, amid increasing pressure to ramp up testing president trump is backtracking after saying on tuesday that the united states would soon be

conducting 5 million coronavirus tests per day. but dr. anthony fauci said an experimental coronavirus drug is showing promising result in a new large study, but unfortunately the president doesn't seem to be focused on the deadly pandemic, this human catastrophe, as much as -- >> 60,000 dead and that's not his obsession. >> and the health care workers on the front lines, people suffering to such a great extent, something we have never seen in our lifetime. >> it is such a tragedy. >> but he seems to be melting down at his slipping poll numbers. there is new reporting from multiple news outlets that president trump lashed out at his campaign manager after he was given polls that showed that he was trailing joe biden very badly in several key states. trump was briefed in a series of phone calls last week by his political advisers, including his campaign manager brad parscale, republican national

committee chair ronna mcdaniel and son-in-law jared kushner. the aides showed the president his reelection campaign's latest internal polls which showed him traili trailing joe biden in several key states. multiple sources familiar with the briefing confirmed to nbc news. one source described trump as being in a, quote, horrific mood as parscale walked him through the polling. on friday, two days after being shown the polls, trump berated his campaign manager, insisting that the data was wrong and blamed parscale for the fact that he was down in the polls. the tense exchange was first reported by cnn and "the washington post". the associated press reports that trump repeatedly told campaign officials during the heated calls, quote, i'm not blanking losing to joe biden. >> yes, actually you are in just about every important state. >> according to five people with

knowledge of the conversation, trump has planned to run his 2020 campaign on the strength of the economy and has now been warned by aides that his reelection depends on how quickly he can reverse the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus. >> all right. so anyway -- >> he's upset. >> -- he's in a complete meltdown, a complete meltdown though, willie, threatening at one point -- i think he was threatening to sue his campaign manager who -- >> parscale. >> -- of course a lot of people have claimed parscale used his position to enrich himself. it is causing a lot of concerns. maybe they think he is more focused on getting rich than actually helping donald trump. but the numbers -- and we are going to show the polls in a second, man. the numbers are horrific in the swing states. they're even bad in texas. they're bad in north carolina. they're bad all across the united states and donald trump, of course, is not going to blame

himself because of how badly he's doing in these afternoon briefings because he stumbled over words. sometimes he seems to fall asleep in the middle of meetings. he seems to be -- you know, people have been talking about his cognitive decline for sometime and how it may impact us in a crisis. now, of course, worries that a cognitive decline are starting to catch up with him and we're starting to pay. but, my gosh, americans are noticing and the poll numbers are just collapsing. >> they are collapsing. the reason the president blew up as reported by jonathan lemire who we will talk to in a second, nbc news as well, is because his campaign team brought him a dose of reality. they said, if the election were held today, you would lose, sir, the electoral college, you are losing these battle ground states. that set him off, he didn't want to hear that. reportedly parscale when he came to the white house he brought with him rosier polls so the president wouldn't be upset. let's look at some of the latest

polling that caused the president to explode. the latest u.s. today suffolk university poll has trump trailing joe biden by ten points. nationally, the latest emerson college poll has trump down six as well. turning to the key battleground states, which is what set off the president, the latest fox poll shows trump trailing biden by eight points in florida and michigan. in north carolina he's down by five points. in texas he trails by one point. in text as he is down a point. in his home state of new york he trails by 36 points. this as his latest approval rating sits at 44%. jonathan lemire, as you report in your story in the associated press, this team, this campaign team kblord timplored the presi stop holding the daily briefing,

which they're not helping the poll standing. but he replied, but my tv rating, the ratings are huge. i need to keep going out there. >> right. the campaign officials came to the house, spoke to the president on a series of calls to impart two pieces of news. one is they believe they're seeing in the polls his daily coronavirus task force briefings are hurting him, particularly among seniors, and they wanted to show him the latest wave of battleground state polls which, as you say, willie, they told him if the election were held that day he would lose. he snapped back, our reporting. he grew very angry. he insisted the briefings were a success, people wanted to see him, watch those, although two days later he did curtail them in the wake of his comments about suggesting that people should be injecting disinfect ants. so at least temporarily those have gone away. but he did, he defied his team there. he told them he didn't believe

the polls, which is something he repeated to reuters in an oval office interview conducted late yesterday. he said he believes he is still winning florida. he believes he is still winning in the upper midwest. he points to polls in 2016 that were incorrect. he thinks that is happening again. but those in his senior staff told him a course correction here is needed and needed quickly or this election could slip away. i think for the president also it was a frustration coming to the surface that just a few months ago he thought he was going to be running for reelection, making the central argument that he had overseen a robust economy and that he was the right person to see that going, to continue that from the fall and beyond. now that has gone away as the bad economic stats pileup by the day. the president is in a state of disbelief according to our reporting that he is losing to joe biden, a candidate he perceives as weak, up until recently was having trouble fundraising, and someone who has

declared over and over he would not lose to though he mixed in more profanity than i am allowed to at this hour in the morning. >> well, the meltdown. it is interesting that he's melting down over bad poll numbers that are not the result of the economy so much as they are a result of his daily briefings. we've obviously been saying for weeks now that the president's daily briefings were hurting him and that if he wanted to help himself and help america, he should stop. he couldn't stop. his vanity wouldn't allow him to stop. he didn't listen. he didn't listen to anybody. so now, jonathan, the polls are devastating for him, down eight in pennsylvania. down eight in michigan. down in florida. down by double digits to seniors in florida. down five points in north carolina. poll just out has him down in the state of texas, new hampshire, once a swing state,

down by eight points in new hampshire despite the fact that in new hampshire, there as well as all of the other states, the governors are doing extraordinarily well. their approval ratings are high because they're being responsible. donald trump can't seem to focus. he can't seem to remember one day what he said the next. he puts out guidelines and then he forgets about the guidelines and he comes out and takes a completely different position the next day. then he seems to forget that position and he goes to another position the next day. is there an understanding inside the white house, even among people who have been sycophants his entire presidency that donald trump is in trouble? that, yes, he is melting down but that politically he is in trouble because he's just savaged his already bad reputation with these daily

briefings? >> the president himself, of course, won't acknowledge that, joe, but the team around him, they do. they recognize that he has -- he's bleeding here. the last month or two since the beginning stages of this pandemic, certainly as questions swirled about his handling of it and the early warning signs that he missed, he has taken a beating there. he has hurt himself day after day with the briefings which are now they've done away with. the team around him are trying to give him give venues to talk. we have seen different events elsewhere in the house where he is addressing the public but with less of the back-and-forth jousting. they have him getting back on the road, though we are a long way from safely having a campaign rally even though the president is pushing for them. he is going to start traveling again. he has a trip to arizona lined up next week which they hope will send a signal to the country that things are, quote, returning back to normal. they want to project that confidence. it is also a way for him get out of the white house. they know how frustrated he's

been being cooped up and they want to deploy him for an official visit in the battleground states. the choice of that first state, arizona, is telling. that's a legit battleground place. there are worries about places like arizona, georgia, beyond the usual lit annie of the swing states that will decide an election. you are right, joe, things for this president are looking dire in florida and in the upper midwest, particularly in michigan. i talked to someone in the last day or so where they say they've all but written off michigan. his path to reelection is shrinking and his team believes he needs to change the approach an focus on the economy. the rift with that, too much focus on economy, not enough on melt, more americans die. not only would it be a national tragedy but devastating for reelection chances. >> still ahead on "morning joe,"

while most americans are hunkered down president trump is eyeing a trip to arizona. we will go to the white house nor the latest on the president's travel plans. you are watching "morning joe." we will be right back. ight backl strength, stability, and online tools you need. and now it's no different. because helping you through this crisis is what we're made for.

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you can count on us. get the connectivity your business needs. call today. comcast business. what might the new normal look like in two, three years from now? say restaurant workers, hotel workers, might they be required to wear masks, that sort of thing? what would the new normal be? >> no, i see the new normal being what it was three months ago. i think we want to go back to where it was. i mean when i look at a baseball game i want to see people right next to each other. i don't want to see four seats in between every person so that the stadium becomes 25% of its original size. no, i want to see the nfl with a packed house. i don't want to see the nfl with three seats in between people. no. i want to go back to where it was. that's where we're going to be. >> hopefully in the not too distant future we will have some massive rallies and people will

be sitting next to each other. i can't imagine a rally where you have every fourth seat full, every six seats are empty for everyone that you have full. that wouldn't look too good. >> joining us from the white house, nbc news correspondent carol lee. good morning. good to see you. so the president indicated yesterday that the rallies he just talked about there may be happening very soon, as in next week. he talked about a trip to arizona. this as those white house guidelines for social distancing expire today, i should point out, and the president said yesterday he doesn't see a reason to extend those. what more can you tell us about his plans beginning as early as next week? >> reporter: well, willie, we know he's not going to be doing big rallies any time soon. i think it was one of the things we heard from the president and some of his aides yesterday. that was more of how they want things to be rather than how things are going to be. what we know is that the president's going to travel to

arizona and ohio, and these are going to be small events. they're similar to what we've seen vice president mike pence do when he's traveled outside of washington in the last few weeks, although we don't expect that the president is going to do medical-focused events. again, this is all in the vein of the white house trying to shift attention away from the medical aspect of this, the pandemic, and focus on the economy. so he will be in arizona likely with doing some sort of event that is either geared towards showing that the virus is going to be waning and will go away sometime in the near future, that there will be a recovery or some sort of economic focused event. so those -- and he has been wanting to do this for sometime and they've been talking about how to make this happen because the president, frankly, travels with a very large footprint, and in this time that's not necessarily what the white house has been advising people to do. >> carol, you are also doing

some reporting on that meeting last week in which president trump is reported to have screamed at his campaign manager, brad parscale, over the phone when parscale brought him the battleground polls. not necessarily the ones we showed, but their own internal polling. >> yes. >> he can write off public polling as he often does when it is inconvenient for him, but it is internal campaign polling during which parscale said, you would lose the election if it were held today. what more can you tell us about that meeting? >> well, there were multiple discussions about this that we know of, and they were very tense. the president, we were told, was in a horrific mood when he was shown these polls. typically, you know, his advisors will show him more positive polls and then maybe work, try to work in some of the more damaging polling. that didn't happen here. i think there was almost a sort of intervention to basically say like, look, something has to change. i think that the president at

least as we've seen this week has agreed to some of the changes in how he's presenting whatever he wants to say publicly, the types of events that he is doing. today he is going to do an event with seniors, and joe was talking earlier about how the president's polling, public polling has dropped with seniors in florida. that's a real concern. so you are going to see him do an event later this afternoon focused on seniors, but there are alarm bells going off inside the white house and inside the campaign about this. they're very concerned. >> all right. nbc's carol lee at the white house. carol, thanks so much. coming up on "morning joe," we know how the president handles the white house task force briefings, but imagine if the experts were running things. dr. lena wynn envisions that next on "morning joe." every financial plan needs a cfp® professional --

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the data shows that remdesivir has a clearcut significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery. if you look at the time to recovery being shorter in the remdesivir arm, it was 11 days compared to 15 days. although a 31% improvement doesn't seem like a knockout

100%, it is a very important proof of concept. because it was it has proven is that a drug can block this virus. >> dr. anthony fauci sounding very optimistic about an experimental drug called remdesivir that could block the coronavirus. the results haven't been published yet in medical journals, but dr. fauci says the data is so promising that there is, quote, an ethical obligation to immediately let the placebo group know so they can have access. joining us emergency physician and public health professor at george washington university, dr. lena win. she previously served as baltimore's health commissioner. help latest piece in "the washington post" imagines what trump's briefings would look like if they focused on the facts. we will get to that in a moment, but first remdesivir. how hopeful is the news on this

drug? >> look, we should be cautiously optimistic, mika. the great thing about this study is that this is the first of its kind. this is the first randomized controlled trial that compares placebo to a treatment. until now we have not had a treatment that has shown this type of promise. so having something that is a potential proof of concept is really important because we can now build upon what we know about this drug's mechanism of action and have some type of hope for treating individuals who are really ill. i think we should still be cautious though because this is not a cure. this is certainly not a panacea. it is not meant to prevent covid-19 and there's a lot of research that needs to be done about who will benefit from this medication and what the treatment really is for. so cautiously optimistic. >> cautiously optimistic and if everything were to go perfectly. i know that's saying a lot.

but between now and the time this drug is being used to treat it, how long would that be if all -- if all results came out perfectly well? >> well, it looks like the federal drug administration will be approving this medication for emergency use, which i think will be important because, again, we don't have anything else on the market and this is a medication that's, at least according to this most recent study, looks like it is most effective for hospitalized patients with severe covid-19 who likely don't have any other options. and if it decreases their length of stay in the hospital, which means that they could recover and actually leave the hospital faster, then that is a big step in the right direction. but, again, it may only be beneficial for these patients. it may not be beneficial for patients with less severe illness. so we need to study this a lot more but it is a very good first step. >> hey, doctor wen. willie geist. good to see you again this morning. i want to ask you about testing,

something you have emphasized and every public health official has emphasized as key to getting our arms around this pandemic. you have nuance take i think is interested, and dr. fauci reflected this too, which is that the testing problem may not be as monumental as some are making. in other words you don't necessarily need to test 330 million americans, that it can actually be done, that the right people who need to be tested can be tested. could you flesh that out a little bit and explain? >> it is a great question, willie. i think the key about testing is that we need to be doing much more testing than we currently have the ability to and much more than the white house is outlining in their plan. so we have to be testing every individual who has symptoms to know whether their symptoms are actually covid-19 or not. i think that should be clear. another is we need to be testing individuals who are in the high risk categories, people who work in health care professions, people who live in nursing homes, et cetera.

then we also have to be doing surveillance testing because we know that this is a disease that is transmitted by asymptomatic people. we have to test enough of the population of the individuals who don't have symptoms to understand we are getting a grasp of what is the true spread in our community. but all of that said, testing alone is not tough. it is necessary but not sufficient because you also have to be then following up the testing with contract tracing and identifying each of these individuals who test positive and who their contacts are that they could be exposing. so we do need to have available potentially up to millions of tests every day so that we can get a grasp of what is happening in our communities and then give people the reassurance that they're okay to go back to work or go back to cool. >> mike barnacle. >> dr. wen, i would like to follow up on something you just referenced, contact tracing. how expensive is it to do? how difficult is it to do?

how beneficial would it be like based upon your experience as health commissioner in baltimore? could you talk about the degree of difficulty and the benefits of it? >> so contact tracing is the bread and butter of public health. it is what local and state public health officials do every single day for illnesses. in baltimore, for example, we traced outbreaks of tuberculosis and legionnaires disease and measles and these other illnesses. so we know how to do this. we have people trained to do this. it is labor and time intensive because you have to be calling each person who tests positive, gain their trust -- which is really important, especially in the communities like baltimore and around the country that have a long history of distrust between the government and medical institutions and the people. then you have to identify each person they came into contact with, which could be hundreds of

individuals if somebody went on a public base or was in a public space and then call each of those people. it is something you can easily train people to do, but it does take time and a lot of energy. so this is something that is absolutely essentially in boxing in covid-19 as it is for other illnesses, other infectious illnesses too, because ideally you get to the point that you can find each person who tests positive, identify all of their contacts, and then you don't need a societal lockdown. you can focus on the individual-level strategy. >> leana, i want to talk about your piece that looks at what would it look like if the scientists actually led the way on these briefings. what would it look like and would we be in a better place with this virus? >> mika, we would absolutely be in a better place if every day we received evidence-based, science-based information that's

focused on the fax. lo facts. i've been watching these briefings basically every time they've been held. i've watched how there is misleading information, inaccurate information that's put out that the scientists have to twist themselves into knots trying to explain while not offending the president and looking like they're undermining the president. the entire news cycle is dominated by that distraction. instead, imagine what the briefings would look like if every day the scientists from the cdc began with the numbers. where are the out breaks happening, where are the hot spots going to be, what are we learning about different interventions around the country. then there could be an update about the latest science and research because there are new study it coming out about covid-19 every day. the trials, for example, about remdesivir that we talked about, but also new research showing last week even that young people, previously healthy young people are getting strokes because this is a virus that doesn't just affect the respiratory system, it is affecting the nervous system and

the kidneys. people should understand about that. imagine too if the best scientists and doctors in the world who are working for the u.s. federal government, if these individuals are saying, and here is how you can protect yourself, here is what businesses can be doing to protect employees. if you have to go out, here is how you can stay safe. i mean the cdc has all of these guidelines. that's what they do every day, and i hope we can begin to move towards that type of briefing based on science and evidence that actually helps people understand how we can stay safe in this time of a pandemic. >> dr. leana wen. thank you very much. always great to have you on. we will see you again soon. up next, breaking news on the economic crisis with the first of two key reports over the next two days. the jobs report, tomorrow. first, the jobless claims. keep it right here on "morning joe." ning joe.

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visit xfinity.com/prepare. ♪ we're back with breaking news. the labor department says another 3.8 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week, bringing the total over the last six weeks to more than 30 million. >> willie, those numbers are just absolutely brutal.

>> yes, and they're a little higher than the projection, which was about 3.5 million. 3.84 million of our neighbors and friends, fellow americans filed for unemployment. as mika said, that number now just over the last six weeks is more than 30 million people. there are 328 million people in this country. you can do the math on that. you are pushing 10% of americans in the last six weeks who have lost their jobs. let's talk more about this with senior fellow at university of virginia miller center, chris liu. he served as deputy secretary of labor in the obama administration. also with us long-time investment banker, peter solomon. he has advised numerous companies on all corners of the retail sector as well as serving as director of more than ten public companies. let me start with you on these numbers, chris, 3.84 million. these are people, not statistics. this is happening in our country right now, a lot of people hurting.

do you see this slowing down any time soon? >> you know, i think we will see the numbers elevated for the foreseeable future. to put it in context, even the 3.8 million figure, which is lower than what we have seen in previous weeks, is still six times higher than what we saw in the great recession. these 30 million people out of work essentially wipes out all of the jobs created since the great recession and several million more on top of that. i think the problem is that these numbers even underrepresent the severity of the problem. we continue to hear people not being able to navigate the state unemployment systems. we continue to hear people not getting benefits. in florida now, six weeks after the crisis have started, less than 50% of the people who applied have even gotten money. the problem is even in the states that will start to open up, they're going to be operating under necessary health restrictions, and the challenge is can businesses operate with those restrictions.

can a restaurant open when tables have to be six feet apart, when you have to have -- when you have to practice social distancing? you can only occupy 25% of capacity. a lot of restaurants might say, you know what, we're not going to open and that trickles down to the workers at the restaurant as well. >> chris, you can put it together with the gdp number we got yesterday that the economy contracted in the first quarter by nearly 5%. projections for the second quarter expect much, much higher than that. maybe 30% to 40% contraction there. i guess the question is as the new legislation passes through congress and we get phase three and phase four to come, can the government really do anything to stop the bleeding on this? i mean it can manage two weeks of payroll for a small business and get you that far, but this is a longer term problem than perhaps most people are ready to tackle. >> i didn't, it sure is. i think it speaks to the importance of having additional relief going to the system. you know, the enhanced unemployment benefits passed

earlier only go to the end of july. this crisis will not be ending in the end of july. we continue to hear problems with the ppp, small business program, and then this ongoing battle right now about funding for state and local governments. if that money doesn't go, you are going to see another wave of lay-offs of police and firefighters and teachers. so this is first and foremost a public health crisis and it is incumbent upon people in washington to provide that economic relief, not stimulus, so we can continue to flatten the curve. once we get out of that, that's when we can really start talking about what stimulus we need to get the economy back up and running. >> all right. peter solomon, i'm especially interested in retail which has seen the bottom fall out. it was already struggling because of online sales. where do you see this going? >> well, you have retail and service industry is 70% of the american economy. when you shut stores, when you shut restaurants, you are

affecting in retail alone we think that one in five workers is involved in the retail system in the united states. that's 30 million jobs. so you've got to get stores open. you do have to get stores open. you do have to get people back to work, and it is a really interesting dilemma for public officials as well as for retailers and restaurant owners and everybody else. how do you do that? what's the system? will the goods be there, for example? it is a huge -- not only health care issue, but it is a huge management issue. the government has made decisions about essential and nonessential stores. that's affected a lot of retailers. looking at sephora, that's a nonessential store for example. it will be a problem i think until stores are reopened. >> but when stores reopen it is not going to be the same, at least for, let's say, 18 months

but i would suggest longer. i mean unless there's a vaccine or a situation in which this virus can be behind us, stores will open where people have to still social distance. so if the goods are there, how do they move? >> well, the goods are -- a lot of people, of course, have curbside pickup. that will be a new fact of life. a lot of people are accustomed now to picking up your goods. people will go to stores. they obviously -- if they have a vaccine, they will feel a lot better than going to a store, worrying about what is going to happen. but you have to have stores where the employees have masks. most retailers are going to have to insist on their employees having masks. one of the questions is will the employees actually put them on. then the question is do you require customers to have masks. that's a big issue. if i were an employee of a store i would like every customer to have a mask. are you going to be able to do

that, to enforce that? no. in florida, we look around now and see half of the customers going into publix without masks. these are important issues. the first issue is we have to get the stores reopened. you must get the stores reopened or you will continue to have huge unemployment. >> obviously. joe, you know, when you reopen those stores, the problem is, yes, some people can do curbside pickup if they're ordering food. but a lot of stores that are still out there and not competing with online sales have goods for people to look at, to touch. >> right. >> to look, to make decisions on, to feel them. that's how women shop for clothes. we don't just look at them, we touch them, we feel them. >> right. >> this is all going to be radically changed. >> peter, i wanted to ask you about neiman marcus. we heard the news this past week they might be declaring bankruptcy. how significant of a moment is that for you in the history, the modern history of american

retail? >> well, for me it is a significant one since i knew all of the marcuses and dick marcus was my classmate and friend. it is a significant issue. it is not that significant in american retailing. the department store sector of american retailing has dropped from 65% in the mid '50s to less than 3% today. there are fewer people employed in department stores today than there were employed in the mid 1980s. neiman marcus's decline is not an issue of merchandising. it is an issue of bad corporate finance. it has done two consecutive leverage buyouts in the last ten years. you cannot run a retailer with huge amounts of debt because retailers are leveraged up to begin with with leases. so retailers will survive who don't have debt. so the answer to your question, it is too bad -- >> peter solomon --

>> -- come back -- i think it will come back in another form. >> pete -- i'm sorry, peter. i didn't mean to interrupt you. i have a little delay here. appreciate your insights this morning, peter solomon. chris lu, thank you as well. coming up next, one part of the pandemic that doesn't get enough attention is the food crisis. farmers have been forced to let crops rock while the demand at food banks skyrockets. we will talk about the failure in the food supply chain next. keep it on "morning joe." rinvoq a once-daily pill... ...can dramatically improve symptoms... rinvoq helps tame pain, stiffness, swelling. and for some-rinvoq can even significantly reduce ra fatigue. that's rinvoq relief. with ra, your overactive immune system... ...attacks your joints. rinvoq regulates it to help stop the attack. rinvoq can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious infections and blood clots,

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the coronavirus pandemic has also set off another crisis, a food crisis. food banks are being flooded right now and the supply is not keeping up with the demand as people line up at community kitchens across the nation. u.s. farmers have been forced to let food rot in their fields. it is a stark example of how the u.s. department of agriculture has failed to connect growers and packers with food banks and

grocers. "morning joe" visited a new york church that runs a citywide food pantry and spoke to their leaders about their work and struggle to keep up with demand. >> my name is pastor mark. we're here at evangel church and we're running a food pantry. normally on a saturday, we would feed between 400 and 500 families. what's happened since this all started is we've been feeding between 400 and 600 families a day. the need is unimaginable. >> i don't know what i would do. they are price gouging everything. you cannot make it through with your -- with what they're giving you in stimulus at this time. the food stamps, the stores are gouging the prices so high, make it two weerkss maybe. >> we started this pantry five or six years ago. it's always been on our hearts but there's so many people in

need and so many people that weren't in need before. the volunteers have been amazing. we have people from our own church. people from other local churches. the national guard here helping us. we're seeing so many people that normally we'd never see on the pantry line in the past because they've lost their jobs. they haven't gotten paychecks or people are asking for deliveries because they're afraid to go out or they're elderly, at risk or van elderly person at home. we had to turn our entire building upside down in a couple of days which has been quite the undertaking. >> we've been able to deliver to almost 2,000 families all around new york city. even some out of long island. south bronx, upper manhattan, astoria, queens. i can also show you the map of those that are still requesting to be delivered. the requests come in faster than we're able to fill them. we need help driving. we need help getting more food in the building because we're going through close to 60 pallets of food.

they've been amazing but i'm just having difficulty making sure we have enough food to feed all these people because our need has gone up tenfold and our food supply is struggling to keep up with it. >> joining us now, the host of msnbc's original five part series, "what's eating america," tv personality and chef, andrew zimmer. where do we stand right now in terms of the food supply? i feel like this is going to be the next area of suffering for america as we're already there with so many americans needing these food pantries. but in terms of the food supply and availability of food products, where are we headed? >> well, there's so many different sides to this story, mika. and it keeps getting crazier and crazier in my opinion. because all of this was so easily predictable. there is ineptitude and a

failure of leadership from the ag, from the usda, from washington and from the white house. there is a massive failure of leadership here. there is a corruption issue. there is a worker abuse issue. and quite frankly, all of this was predictable and solvable. there is technically enough food in america. the crops rotting in the fields that we've seen, that graphic that people are looking at now from "the new york times" about the milk and the eggs and plowed vegetables, could have been -- was anticipated. it simply, and i know this seems very cavalier, it's a matter of rerouting the distribution away from where that food was going, restaurants, schools and getting it to food pantries like you just saw, where you saw pallets of canned goods but not a lot of fresh vegetables and refrigerated goods. it is a massive shifting that

has to do with trucking and where the food actually gets. this is -- people are now shopping at grocery stores and using delivery systems and food pantries and community resource kitchens and we're just not getting the food to them. and then on the flip side you have the food factory coronavirus hot spot issue that is a hotbed of abuse, and one that, frankly, with the president voiding the cdc requirements and making them recommendations while at the same time forcing workers to work side by side under adverse conditions, in fact, conditions that will increase transmission of the virus, is going to cause an even greater problem. what it all comes down to is that it's, in a sense, less about the food, more about protecting the people or in the case of distribution, managing the people correctly. a complete failure of leadership. >> hey, andrew.

it's willie geist. the numbers are staggering if you look at it. 3.7 million gallons of milk being dumped every day by our dairy farmers. a quarter of a million eggs being smashed by farmers just because they have excess. they don't know where to send them. they don't have a place to send them. we are where we are. how do we change this? how do we reroute all that food, all that perishable food that as we just saw would be so valuable in food pantries across the country and is sitting rotting in our farms? >> it's, for someone who has worked in the food scarcity and food security environment for 20 years, i have to tell you it's just absolutely heartbreaking to see pictures of those folks on the foot line at that pantry in new york and at the same time pictures of all this food standing there going unused. it is something that the usda and the department of ag can begin to mandate. remember, we have a defense

production act. we have trucks. we have drivers. we can do contactless pick-up and drop-off. it is simply a matter of the ag department getting their act together and prioritizing that pickup. now i do have to say, cows give milk every day. chickens lay eggs every day. these are -- those foods will, in a sense, be there tomorrow. vegetables, obviously, on a cycle now as the weather is warming, are growing in regions creeping north. so people shouldn't be in panic mode yet or rushing to their grocer and trying to buy every perishable item that they can. the emphasis should be on making sure that washington is connecting these farms and fields to the places where the people are actually picking up

food, like food banks and community resource kitchens and grocery stores. this is all -- all the food you're seeing going to waste is the food that would have been going to the largest customers, schools and restaurants and other big places that have been shut down. big cafeterias at corporations, things like that. the big buyers, the fast food chains. >> andrew zimmer, thank you for coming on. we hope to see you again soon. and we want to tell you more of the stories of the people who have lost their lives to the coronavirus. ann einhorn overcame so many great challenges throughout her life. when she was 14, her family was sent to auschwitz where her parents and siblings were killed. einhorn was spared. when she was sent to the on-site hospital where it was suspected she was the subject of medical experiments. after the camps were liberated,

einhorn moved to hungary and italy and emigrated to the bronx with her first husband where they have a daughter, susan. einhorn was 96 when she died on april 13th from a suspected covid-19 infection. she'll be remembered fondly by her family for her independence, strength, intelligence and matza balls. james dupree carriere died at the age of 80 from complications from the coronavirus. a lawyer, public servant, father, husband and professor. carri ere dedicated his life to helping others and caring for his family. the rest of his days were spent in the hospital accompanied by his wife margaret who also tested positive but was asymptomatic. he was in good spirits, able to facetime his family and well enough even to request a glass of wine. carriere died on march 17th.

shoshana davis was 35. loved traveling the world with her family. dav davis' last big family trip was in milan in december. in march she tested positive for covid-19 and after managing her symptoms at her new jersey home, she woke up one morning struggling to breathe. she was rushed to the hospital and died later that day. she leaves behind her husband adam who also tested positive for the virus and their 3-year-old daughter sienna. and that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it is thursday, april 30th. the last day of what has been probably the worst month for the american economy ever. but even now, there is some reason for desperately needed hope. here are the facts at this hour. we start with a big number we just got from the labor

department. 3.8 million more americans filing for unemployment. that brings the total number to more than 30 million americans over the last six weeks alone. that is the economic toll from the virus. and then there's the toll on our nation's health. more than 1,045,000 cases have been reported. that's about one-third of the cases around the world. over 61,000 americans have died. in fact, florida, illinois, north carolina and south carolina all saw their deadliest days of this pandemic just this week. despite all of that, white house guidelines on social distancing and other mitigation efforts officially expire today. and the president will not be extending it. instead governors, they are taking the wheel. nearly a dozen states have already lifted restrictions allowing businesses to reopen. today, six states, florida, texas, nevada, alabama, arizona and idaho all