a lot of things going on. we had a lot of people that refused to allow the country to be successful. they wasted a lot of time on russia, russia, russia, that turned out to be a total hoax. then they did ukraine, ukraine, and that was a total hoax. then they impeached the president of the united states for absolutely no reason, and we even had 197-0 vote by the republicans. >> president trump's reason for not refilling what he claims was an inherited empty national stockpile for emergencies. >> he was president for 3 1/2 years. >> he has a lot of things going on, that was his answer. incidentally, poly the fact rates trump blaming the obama administration for lack of national emergency supplies as mostly false. that interview took place in the honeywell factory that makes n95 masks, which the president toured. >> where's his mask? >> without wearing a mask himself and no one around him

was allowed to wear them either. maybe they chose on their own. i doubt it. despite company protocols and a sign saying that everyone is required to wear a mask. and, also playing in the background, live and let die, that song. terrific. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is wednesday, may 6th. along with joe, willie and me we have white house reporter for "the associated press," jonathan lemire. and former white house adviser for health policy, professor and advice provost for the university of pennsylvania, dr. ezekiel emmanuel. he's an nbc news and msnbc medical contributor. and, joe, the u.s. death toll from coronavirus is now topping 71,000 as president trump continues his push to reopen the country. nbc news has learned that over the coming weeks, the white

house plans to wind down the coronavirus task force. a move that comes as the virus continues to spread rampantly in parts of the country. >> because the president can't speak at the task force anymore without being heard. i mean, it's -- it's all because he's being hurt politically at this press conference if he can't talk for hours, he doesn't want dr. fauci or dr. birx to talk and educate americans. >> and there's more bad news coming in places like new york city, chicago, new hot spots are countereri countering the progress. we'll get to all of what that in a moment, but this virus is not getting better. >> it's getting better in those hot spots, unfortunately it's getting worse across the country. and just think about it, if you want to know how erratic this president is, his thinking, how he's -- he's acting in a way

that shows he's out of touch where he alt, think about t with reality, he's going around and not wearing a mask when everybody's supposed to be wearing a masks, that's a small thing. but think about the fact that he sets out guidelines. >> yeah. >> that the doctors help put together. and then he immediately tries to get people to break his own guidelines. and he's talking about stopping the coronavirus task force at a time when deaths go over 70,000. think about this. we've just gone over 70,000 deaths in america. 70,000 deaths. you know, a week ago we hadn't got to 60,000 deaths. 10,000 more people have died in one week. again, in the past week more

people have died than died on 9/11, died in our iraq war, died in the afghanistan war over 19 years all combined, just in the past seven days. that's from 60,000 to 70,000. think about before that. we went from 50,000 deaths to 60,000 deaths in five days. and the cdc writes the white house a draft a few days ago, they get it this weekend, using trump administration numbers. using trump administration numbers. they warned the president, they warned the white house. where have we heard this before? the white house gets a warning. they warned the white house that the number of daily deaths are going to double between now and june the 1st.

and the white house dismisses it, just like they dismissed the warning back in late january from white house officials that this could end up killing 500,000 americans and yet what happened the next month? the president went out, he'd go to rallies, tell people it was a hoax. well, let me -- let me just tell you, the president can talk to david muir, he can try to blame the democrats, but what he can't do, what he can't do is excuse what he's done over the past several months when he should have known better. and what he's doing right now. >> it's stunning. >> i saw the new york daily news conservati they wrote that the president is not well. reading from her piece, she said if this were your child, you'd intervene as quickly as you could. and you would.

getting them the help they clearly needed. likewise, if your friend were acting this way, you might suggest they go see a therapist to work through some of their anger issues. >> absolutely. >> if this were your coworker you'd probably i think -- i think that's actually gracious, you would alert someone in human resources. and what if this were the president of the united states acting this erratically? not other these behaviors the norm for president trump, but they seem to have worsened at the most precarious and critical time that our country's faced since world war ii. as we face a global pandemic that's killed over 70,000 americans. less than two weeks after unimaginably suggesting infecting disinfectants might kill off the coronavirus, the past few days have seen donald

trump sprierl oiral out of cont. they continue to write, he's proven himself utterly incapable of staying focused on the biggest crisis a president can face. what's he done instead? he's spread unfounded conspiracy theories about the origins of the coronavirus, about former president barack basically, and about an msnbc cable news host. how much lower can you go than that if you're worried about me? what else has he done? s.e. cupp says he's made statements that can only be described as delusional, like comparing himself to be a bra h abraham lincoln. getting a letter of apology from joe biden, and spewing nonscience about his favorite

drug. it's his obsession, hydroxychloroquine. attacking two female reporters for doing their jobs, lamenting that they don't behave like donna reed, the act stress synonymous with the kitchen dwelling 1950s housewife that she played on television more than 60 years ago. he attacked another female cable news host calling her a third-rate lapdog. and in the middle of the night, just couple days ago, at 12:45 a.m. he went on a 234-word rant on twitter complaining about an ad released by a republican anti-trump group whose leaders include george conway, husband of staffer kellyanne, in which donald trump used words like deranged, loser of a husband, and moon face to

describe him. yes, donald trump talking about somebody else's weight. isn't that ironic? don't you think? s.e. cupp concludes with saying it's frightening commentary on the slow normalization of this completely ill normal behavior that we can greet the president of the united states with mere shrugs and the only concerns from his inner circles seem not to be about the middental instability itself, but the political ramifications of it being exposed in daily press briefings. s.e. cupp. >> she did a good job with that, why this normalization of the president's behavior is now making people unsafe. really well done. >> if somebody were doing this in realtime, even not in a pandemic, if they were your child, if they were --

>> anyone. >> -- your parent, if they were your grandparent, if they were a ceo at your company, if they were a coworker, if they were a football coach for your children, if they were -- you would be worried and you would take action. and, yet, the republicans just sit quietly by. now we're up to 70,000 deaths, the president's disbanding the coronavirus task force, and he's actually pressuring governors and business owners to actually not follow his own guidelines. and now he's freaking out about an ad that republicans did, a baptist, a christian who's voted republican his entire life, ben howell who helped put this ad together with some people, a bunch of republicans concerned about how donald trump is

handling this pandemic. and this is what's -- what's freaking him out so much. let's play -- let's play this ad that's made the president of the united states get worse. >> it was morning in america. today more than 60,000 americans have died from a deadly virus donald trump ignored. with the economy in shambles, more than 26 million americans are out of work. the worst economy in decades. trump bailed out wall street, but not main street. this afternoon, millions of americans will apply for unemployment. with their savings run out, mr. giving up hope. millions worry that a loved one won't survive covid-19. there's mourning in america. and under the leadership of donald trump, our country is weaker and sicker and poorer. and now americans are asking if we have another four years like

this, will there even be an america? >> paid for by the lincoln project which is responsible for the content of this advertising. >> willie, a lot to digest from from s.e. cupp and also that ad. fact checked true. everything that i saw there. but the president is getting -- we've been saying it for three years now. the president is getting worse. >> i'd like to also point out there will be an america, whenever president trump leaves office, that's the note in that one ad. look, yesterday we saw a president who was ready to turn the page, who realizes that this pandemic that's killed 71,000 people and infected more than a million americans is getting in the way of his presidency. as he says, i created the greatest economy in the history of the country, fact check not true, that he wants to move on. he wasn't wear the mask, that's a signal that it's okay not to wear the mask.

they're going to to meeting for the task force, that's slowly going to go away because they feel like they've crossed the threshold. he said outloud yesterday, there will be more death but with or without a vaccine, it's going to pass. he says it's just going to pass. and dr. emanuel, we know why president trump wants to move past this. it's hurting him politically. it's obviously cratering the economy, he thinks it's going to hurt his chance to be re-elected. but when he does all these things and when he says all these things and when he talks about that it's going to pass, he is, of course, defying not just doctors like you, public health experts like you, but the people on his task force who are advising him. and so then it becomes up to dr. fauci to go and do an interview at night and politely contradict everything the president has said during the day. but obviously, yesterday really crystalli crystallized, the president ready to turn the page despite the medicine, despite the public

health. >> yeah, i think the real worry certainly in the public health community is that we're going to have wave two, wave three and you're going to have a premature loosening and also an unregulated loosening of the public health measures that we've put in place, no large gatherings, physical distancing, the wearing of the mask that have made a difference. we have a plateau. the unfortunate fact is that plateau is not really going down at an accelerated rate that you would hope, you would expect with the number of new infections. you can see from the map you put up, there are place where's it's getting to be a real serious concern. minnesota, nebraska, part of the heartland of the president. i'm not a -- i'm not the political brother, as i like to say, but did i study political science. any president who had 20% unemployment, 33 million people who are out of work, we would be

writing that person off. just think of herbert hoover during the depression was a blowout election. and i think that has to be really worrying the president a lot. on the other hand, ignoring the public health is not going to get the economy going. we have a lot of polls and we also have a lot of empirical data on behaviors that show that people are afraid to go out because of the health concerns. you can open up all the stores, but if people are afraid, they're not going to go to the stores. and it's hard to see how we're going to assuage people unless we have good enforcement of the public health measures, you have some therapy, preventative medication or vaccine. and those are simply going to take time. there's no way of rushing -- i mean, we're doing everything we can to rush them. everyone keeps saying if we get a vaccine in 12 to 18 months, that's going to be record time by a lot. and, yet, you know, we have to wait that long. that doesn't mean the economy is frozen. we can do certain things and

lots of experts like me have said, you know, let's protect the very vulnerable, those with comorbidities and the elderly and we can slowly open up some parts of the economy. but you have to do it in an organized way. i think the president is trying to get past that. >> well, but you can't get past that. you could add testing to that vaccine, clearly. but with testing i don't know one person especially on the science or on the political level that says using the dpa, the defense protection act, to streamline testing would not help testing get to the american people faster. everyone believes it would, and that president refuses to use all of his power to get to testing. you have to ask to republicans, when is it not okay that he's negligent? that he doesn't do enough? when is it not okay? this move to disband the task

force and reopen the united states as the virus continues to spread rampantly in parts of the country. "the new york times" is out with a new piece detailing how new hot spots are countering the progress made in places like new york city, chicago, and new orleans. the times made this chart showing the curve in the new york metro area compared to the rest of the country. new york is trending downward while the rest of the country is trending upward. for example, dallas county yesterday reported its third straight day of record cases on the same day the governor of texas announced a new wave of openings. salons, barber shops on friday. gyms and manufacturing plants in less than two weeks. the times notes the following: the country is still in the firm grip of a pandemic with little hope of release. for every indication of improvement in controlling the virus, new outbreaks have emerged elsewhere leaving the nation stuck in the steady,

unrelenting march of deaths and infections. it is rampaging through nursing homes, meat packing plants, and prisons, killing the medically vulnerable and poor. and new outbreaks keep emerging in grocery stores, wall marts or factories, and here is the president yesterday discussing the sacrifices he's willing to make. >> yes, will some people be affected? yes. will some people be affected badly? yes. but we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon. >> do you believe that's the reality that we're facing that lives will be lost to reopen the country? >> it's possible there will be some because you won't be locked into an apartment or a house or whatever it is. but at the same time, we're going to practice social distancing, we're going to be washing hands, we're going to be

doing a lot of things that we've learned to do over the last period of time. and we have to get our country back. i'm viewing our great citizens of this country to a certain extent and to a large extent as warriors. they're warriors. we can't keep our country closed. we have to open our country. >> jonathan lemire, clearly in the white house and for anybody who is worried about the impact of this pandemic, the economy needing to reopen is clearly urgent. i mean, this is an economic catastrophe, that is clear. nobody denies that. but, without testing and without using all the powers of the presidency to get there, history is anyone in the white house telling this president history will remember him as a president who did not do enough? >> it's an economic catastrophe, one that could be overshadowed by the public health catastrophe if the nation reopens too

quickly, again, mika. and what we're seeing from this president and this white house is an effortly to almost seemingly will this pandemic out of existence to try to move forward, but not do so safely without the widespread testing. there are voices who are some business leaders, some influential allies of the president who are urging him to slow down. but right now those voices are being ignored. you mentioned that "new york times" study. my colleagues in the associated press did a similar one looking at the data that suggested that if you were to remove the drop in cases in the new york city metro area, remove that from the overall numbers, you'll see the rest of the nation is still rising and there are hot spots growing in places that will not be as well equipped to handle so many sick patients like a new york city with all of its hospitals who were able to do so. there's also of course the concern of some flare-ups in some of the big cities as the weather gets better and more people are willing to venture outside and, perhaps, be a

little careless with some of their social distancing. we saw the president yesterday refuse to wear a mask. you know, as part of his effort to project confidence, you know, at that arizona mask factory it should be noted. but also we need to be clear about something. he can project these images that will be on cable and newspapers of him not wearing a mask, not being six feet apart from some of the senior aides. but those in the white house exist in a bubble of reality. they're being tested every day. if you're in the white house and having contact with the president, you're having those 15-minute tests to make sure you do not have the coronavirus. of course, the rest of the nation still can't get those. the rest of the nation isn't able to have that sense of confidence when they try to make those tentative steps back into the workplace. and right now, you heard the president in that interview, you heard him sort of state plainly that he understands there will be more people getting sick, there will be more people dying. right now this white house is focused on the economics, the economic crisis of this and they

want to move forward. they're terrified of the jobs numbers coming out later this week. they're concerned about the unemployment rate. they feel like they need to try to push past this, including making promises about a vaccine that the public health experts say i 12 to 18 months away. the president has taken to saying without proof it could be out by the end of the year. >> the white house wants to move on, but as jonathan points out, the american public isn't quite ready. a majority of americans say they are concerned their states will begin lifting stay at home restrictions too soon, according to a new monmouth university poll. 63% of americans say states are moving to reopen too quickly during the coronavirus pandemic. 29% say states are not moving quickly enough. 56% say preventing more people from getting sick should be the more important factor in lifting restrictions while 33% say it should be preventing an economic downturn. 49% of independents, 80% of

democrats say health concerns should be the presiding factor in deciding when to reopen. and a majority of americans say they do not support states opening some businesses, according to a new "washington post" university of maryland poll that we first told you about yesterday. here are those numbers. 82% say movie theaters should not reopen. 78% say gyms should replain closed. 74% believe nail salons and dinein restaurants should not open their doors. 70% want gun stores to remain closed. and 69% say barber shops and hair salons should not reopen. dr. emanuel, you have the evidence from the american people, not just democrats, not just progressives, but americans that they are concerned that going back too quickly means that more people will get sick. there are obviously everything that's in the background is about the economy, the terrible unemployment numbers, we'll get another one tomorrow around this time. you have the economic growth slowing, the second quarter

numbers will be terrible. everyone knows that. everyone wants to get back to work. but it appears, even if the president isn't, the american people are listening to the doctors on this. >> yeah. is it it is remarkable and a lot of studies have shown that american people began physical distancing and staying at home well before the shelter in place orders were put in place in most states. and even if states that didn't put them in place, americans began physical distancing, began reducing their travel and interaction with people. so the american public has been listening to this and responding. i would note that the opening of things like hair salons, barber shops, gyms, goes against the president's own opening plan. phase one does not include opening those kind of facilities and yet we can see in texas with governor abbott and other places that they're rushing to open the kind of businesses that even the

president's own plan says should be open later only after you have a decline. and, by the way, that plan has certain metrics. one of the most important metrics is you have to have a decline in the number of cases for 14 days, and that clearly waernt e wasn wasn't the case in georgia, not the case in texas. and around the country in most cases is not going to be the case. so we have this disconnect between what public health requires and the economy. and i would say to those governors who -- and the president who keep saying we've got reopen the economy, you can reopen businesses, but unless you have demand, unless customers are coming, unless the american public is willing to shop, you're not going to have much economic activity and you're going to compromise the public health benefits of keeping people at home and physical distancing just with a few people going out. that contradiction isn't going to make it harder to recover and make it much more likely we're going to have a second, very

severe wave coming either at the end of the summer or in the fall. and i think that's what public health officials are worried about. >> wow. zeke emanuel, thank you very much. a fundamental problem focused purely on the leadership over this. thank you, zeke. still ahead on "morning joe," the mayor of new york city dill de blasio is our guest. but first, wall street rallies even as the death toll mounts. is the white house focused on one over the other? nbc's stephanie ruhle joins us next with more on that. plus, julewe julia ainslie r report of cyber campaigns targeting hospitals and medical institutions. we'll be right back. and medica institutions. we'll be right back. how about no

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economists are predicting 16% unemployment for the month of april, 22 million, perhaps, jobs lost in april. do you think those numbers are about right, kevin? >> yeah, i'm a little bit above those. my guess right now is that it's going to be north of 16%, maybe as high as 19 or 20%. >> wow. >> so we are looking at probably the worst unemployment rate since the great depression. >> wow. >> that was white house economic adviser kevin hassett on unemployment rate projections for this friday's jobs report. but despite these massive unemployment numbers, this morning's wall street -- this morning wall street is set for a third straight day in positive territory. joe questioned the market gains on twitter writing, quote, the bizarre machinations on wall street are dizzying day to day,

but it's sitting at 24,000 makes no sense to me. 18,000 maybe? too many questions lingering about infections, death counts, reopenings, and failed leadership. nbc's stephanie ruhle says the wall street gains are not only bizarre, they are worrisome and she joins us now. why should we worry that the markets are doing so well? why isn't that good news? >> it is good news that the markets are doing well. it's good news for investors. but where it's worrisome is this idea that the markets represent the economy. and we can say all day long, oh, we know that they don't. but the president absolutely loves the green markets. and what happens when he uses green on the screen as a green light signal that the economy is a-ok when the truth is the real economy at this moment couldn't be farther from the truth. willie said it just before the bre break, you've got 30 million people going on unemployment.

we know the unemployment number this week will be in the double digits. and while, yes, this white house wants to push to reopen, just reopening doesn't say we're going to get back to normal. and, look, with those markets doing well and america reopening, we're doing a-ok. the reason that's a huge risk is what if this becomes our government's reason to say we can turn off the spigot to help out because the numbers of this virus are increasing across the country and in place where's you don't have the medical support and facilities like you do in place where's it was already hit. so if we misconstrue these positive economic numbers from the market and say we're doing fine, it's going to put us in an even worse situation. >> steph, you've been all over this ppp story, the paycheck protection program that's supposed to get billions and billions of dollars to small businesses to let them ride out however long this goes on and hopefully keep their employees and save their businesses.

is that money now even with that big second wave that was passed through congress, is it getting into the small businesses? is it doing the job it was intended to do? >> it's getting to those small businesses, so that's okay. it's a band-aid. but this is a giant, gaping bullet hole. think about those small businesses that are now opening, right? they're only going to get payroll for two months and they're going to need significantly more money than that. earlier this week, the ceo of sales force said ppp, we'll take it, that's good. that's just phase one. businesses in america are going to need significantly more money from the government in order to reopen. think about all that we're going to need, willie. think about the images of how are you going to reconfigure offices? what are the people you're going to need to hire do all the temperature taking? think about the thin margins across so many businesses. who's going to pay for that? the government is going to need to step in. so, yes, ppp is getting into

more of those hands, but it's pocket change compared to the real dollars they're really going to need. >> nbc stephanie ruhle, thank you very much. and, by the way, tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on nbc news now, stephanie is going to break down all of your questions that you can send in. she's hosting how small businesses have been affected by the crisis. and then tomorrow and friday at 9:00 eastern right here on msnbc, she will dive into the latest unemployment numbers and what they might mean for small businesses in a struggling economy. willie. >> steph, thanks a lot. meanwhile, law enforcement officials in the u.s. and uk say that, quote, malicious cybercampaigns are targeting hospitals and medical institutions. two u.s. officials say hackers working for foreign governments like china ar looking for patient data as well as research on a possible vaccine. let's bring in nbc news

correspondent julia ainslie. i want to talk about your excellent reporting on cyberattacks in a moment, but first can we talk about baby mary. welcome back to work. >> oh, yea! >> thank you. it's candy under these circumstances -- see all of you again in person. -- asleep right now and my -- monitor watcher as we film -- >> okay, you know what? we want to hear all about mary, we're having a little trouble with your mic right now, julia. but we're just going to live in this photograph. she's absolutely adorable. we're going to fix julia's microphone and we'll talk a lot more about mary wells and cyberattacks when we come back on "morning joe." s and cyberattacks when we come back on "morning joe." of an outdoor grill indoors, and because it's a ninja foodi, it can do even more, like transform into an air fryer. the ninja foodi grill, the grill that sears, sizzles, and air fry crisps.

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so, i think that as far as the fantastic force mike pence and the task force have done a great job. but we're now looking at a little bit of a different form. and that form is safety and opening. and we'll -- we'll have a different group probably set up for that. >> are you saying mission accomplished? >> no, not at all. mission accomplished is when it's over. >> are you getting the advice that you need -- >> i'm getting great advice. we have great people. we have great people. we have great doctors. we have great medical people, laboratory people. >> joining us now, infectious diseases physician and medical

director of special pathogens, the unit at boston university school of medicine. she's an nbc news and an msnbc contributor. thank you so much for being on this morning. given that the president's talking about the coronavirus task force winding down, big picture, doctor, is the virus winding down? >> mika, it clearly is not, as you've covered only just this morning that you might be seeing some of the urban he centers actually thankfully seeing some stabilization of disease, but now that disease is shifting to prairie states. you're seeing larger increasing numbers in exactly the areas that you and i have talked about, the rural areas that already have a potentially not as much resilience in their health care systems. and we're really at this pinnacle right now where even the hospitals like mine, i'm on clinical service right now, hospitals across the country are still looking at rolling shortages in many personal

protective equipment and hand sanitizers and that needs to be a national strategy for supply chains. but then even looking ahead, you know, as you're thinking about vaccines, it's not just discovering an effective vaccine, but having a strategy about distribution, production. you need a national strategy on all of those aspects as well. it's nowhere near over, and it worries me that we don't have the cdc doing briefings. it worries me that we don't have nih doing briefings on the one forum on which we could hear that national strategy is now getting closed down as well. >> on top of it, there's this total confusion on reopening with the president sending mixed messages by the day, clearly wants the country to reopen. some say that he's more worried about the political side of this, but scientifically the reopening strategies are confusing and worrisome to most medical experts. and then the issue of reopening could be easily simplified by testing. shouldn't there be a national

strategy on testing? >> exactly. and a strategy that actually takes the results from the testing that we're collecting to better forecast what's coming up. i mean, the testing has -- has benefits for the individual patient but by putting out widespread testing, aside from just what ambassador birx has talked about, just looking at people who come in with flu-like symptoms and using that as an indicator, testing gives us a more accurate idea of where the disease is moving next. so we need that. i think we've fallen into this dichotomy that has to be either the dichotomy of health rather than looking at what it is, it's an opportunity and challenge to solve how we can get health care or workers back to work and still give them the human right of keeping them safe. and that's what a national strategy would do. that's what test would do. that's what contact tracing would do. why aren't we doing the hard

work to get us there to open safely? we should be asking for both. >> doctor, it's willie geist. great to see you this morning. let me take the other side of this because there's a not insignificant portion of this country who's looking at this and saying, well, all those early projections that we heard, the screaming headlines about a million or two million deaths or even 240,000 deaths that dr. birx and fauci talked about, the field hospital in central park wasn't necessarily needed, the worst case scenarios were not borne out and those people are saying, people are hyping the numbers, i just want to get back to work, it's not as bad as everyone has been saying. what's your response to that? >> well, you know, i look at at what cost we brought those numbers down. we basically shut down the country. we stopped going outside. those numbers reduced because we

put in the sacrifices. and now it's almost saying that halfway -- you know, not even halfway through where you've heard the doctors talk about, we don't have a vaccine yet, we won't have one for 12 months we're basically throwing in the towel and saying without having all the infrastructure into place, let's just go back to where we were in february. i think that when you look at hospitals, including my own, i'm on service right now like i mentioned, it's a surprise when a patient comes in that doesn't have covid, you know. it's still high numbers of patients that are coming in that have this. and so it really needs to be an understanding at the public level, and it doesn't help that the public is getting mixed messages about why we had the isolation orders in place in the first place. and that's really why you need a unified public health message out there, which i don't feel we have yet. >> all right. infectious disease physician and associate professor at boston university medical school, thank

you very much. please come back. we appreciate your sound expertise. all right. we're going to bring in nbc news correspondent julia ainslie by phone because we think her baby is messing up the total mic system. they always take -- they always take precedent, it's fine. this is the beginning of a long road for you, julia. mary wells is adorable, but now let's go to your top notch reporting here. you're looking at u.s. and uk officials concerned about cyberattacks on hospitals and research facilities and they're looking at china. tell us about it. >> that's right, mika. so yesterday the united states and the uk law enforcement agencies sent out an advisory not just to hospitals, but to all medical institutions, including those who are doing medical research to tell them to password protect their computers and devices with passwords that would be unusual for hackers to think of because they are seeing increased activity from people who are trying to take advantage

of this time. now, two sources that i've spoken to say that a lot of this has fingerprints of china on it. what that means is that china often will exploit times like this because they try to gather as much information that they can, especially as more patients are going to hospitals and giving their information, and then they're also trying to steal biotech. we know that there was an incident last december where two chinese nationals were arrested trying to steal cancer cells. one even had a vile al in his socks. these are the things we've seen happen before. it's important that the medical institutions heed these warnings, because this comes down to a race for a vaccine. and if china or other countries are able to advance and get to a vaccine faster by stealing information that countries like the united states and united kingdom are advancing, they may be able to get to a vaccine faster and have a leg up

economically. it is wild how many unforeseen consequences this virus is having and who is trying to take advantage of this moment. >> jonathan lemire. >> julia, first of all, congratulations and welcome back. beyond china, what sort of other -- who else could be looking to do this? who else could be looking to sort of steal information or even just wreak havoc with these medical facilities at such a precarious time? is it other foreign actors? potential terror groups? radical groups here at home? >> jonathan, it's interesting. it's highly profitable, no matter who you are, if you can get this information, it is worth a lot of money. whether that be mass data on patients or proprietary medical biotech information. and so people could be individual actors looking for the highest bidder with this kind of information. but, as you look closely at

these advisories, they very carefully without saying specific countries keep pointing back to the fact that this information would be in the interest of governments to eventually have and to have that information end up in their hands. so we can think of a number of countries who would be trying to economic compete with the united states, with the united kingdom to best the coronavirus and get their economy up and running before us. >> amazing. nbc's julia ainslie, welcome back. thank you very much. and coming up, you have to think her name is floating among the biden team as a potential vice-presidential running matte. congresswoman val demings joins the conversation straight ahead on "morning joe." plus, the president's son-in-law jared has played a large role in the administration's coronavirus response, but there's new reporting that he has largely

relied on inexperienced volunteers. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. i just love hitting the open road and telling people

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supreme court justice ruth bader ginsberg was hospitalized yesterday with an infection caused by a gall stone. the supreme court made the announcement that the 87-year-old justice underwent nonsurgical treatment for a benign gallbladder condition as johns hopkins hospital and will stay there for a day or two. ginsberg plans to join court arguments via the phone on wednesday and has already taken part in the telephone arguments on monday and tuesday as well. ginsberg has beat cancer four times already and made her most recent hospital stint in november when she suffered from chills and a fever. willie. >> certainly hope she's doing well. jonathan lemire, let's talk more about this idea of the task force, the kriecoronavirus task

force that we've all come to know in the last month. winding down, now, president trump says we've moved from this mitigation stage of coronavirus to how do we safely reopen the economy? of course that's his view, that's not the doctors' views, that's not any public health official's view that we've moved on from mitigation as we've seen numbers spike across the city even as they wind down in some big cities. what does it mean that the task force is winding down in the white house press secretary said yesterday the president will still be talking to the doctors, we'll still be driven by data, just not going to have these meetings as often. >> this is representative of the white house's focus right now, willie. right now they're zeroing in on the economy and less so on some of the public health risk, despite, you of course, we know the issues with that. vice president confirmed yesterday that the coronavirus task force which has not been briefing publicly now for a week or two, but they've still been meeting behind the scenes with less regularity, that that would continue for a few more weeks.

but by the end of this month or early june, they would disband these formal vice president-led meetings. though dr. fauci and birx would be in the building consulting with the vice president and president, but it would be less of a focus. i should mention dr. fauci is expected to testify on capitol hill next week which i suspect a lot of lawmakers would like to ask him a lot of questions. >> jonathan, dr. rick bright, a name that's been in the headlines for the next couple of weeken weeks, he filed a complaint yesterday, he was the director of the office that filed a complaint where he said he was run out of his job because he was trying to tamp down talk of the president's favored treatment for coronavirus. >> dr. bright will also be testifying on capitol hill next week, willie, and his complaint really fo

really focuses on two things. a warn that the anti-malarial drug that the president was pushing was not going to be effective, safeguards were not being put in place. the administration wanted to flood new york with these drugs and he was concerned that it wasn't the best possible treatment. we've also heard the president suddenly cut the number of times he's talked about this particular medication. also, he said that he went to secretary azar, health of human services, some months ago before the virus really came to america's shores and tried to warn him about how bad it would get. and secretary azar, according to this complaint, ignored him. so add this to yet another warning sign that this administration appeared to have missed in the early days of this pandemic. >> all right. up next, the mayor of new york city bill de blasio is standing by. he joins the conversation straight ahead. plus, two lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle, senators james langford and dick durbin will both be our guests. "morning joe" will be back in two minutes. r guests. "morning joe" will be back in two minutes.

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yes, will some people be affected? yes if t yes. will some people be affected badly? yes. we have to get our country open and open soon. >> do you believe that's the reality we're facing, that lives will be lost to reopen the country? >> it's possible there will be some because you won't be locked into an apartment or house or whatever it is. but at the same time we're going to practice social distancing, we're going to be washing hands, we're going to be doing a lot of the things that we've learned do over the last period of time. and we have to get our country back. i'm viewing our great citizens of this country to a certain extent and to a large extent as warriors. they're warriors. we can't keep our country clo closed. we have to open our country. >> he's saying we have to open our country, again, the death

toll over 70,000. one week ago we weren't even at 60,000. >> oh, my god. >> five days before that, we were at 50,000. the president this past weekend got a report from the cdc using trump administration numbers and he immediately dismissed this trump administration-generated document that said the deaths in the united states of america were going to double. the daily deaths were going to double by june the 1st, double from where they are right now. so far from meeting the white house guidelines that the president and dr. fauci and dr. birx and jared kushner and everybody put out a couple of weeks ago, this president is -- is running blindly forward. he's in a full-blown panic because he sees that this week's political polls, the first week

in may, which are just -- they're just not relevant to where the president's going to be in n, he sees polls this week, today, looking badly for him. he sees that his campaign manager who has spent millions and millions of dollars has gotten rich off of that. >> yeah. >> he sees stories that are out there meant to distract him, that brad has gotten really, really rich off of all of the campaign money that donald trump has raised. >> right. >> and he's looking at the polls and things are getting worse for him everywhere. and so he's just looking at this moment in time, he's just looking at today at his political calculations instead of worrying about how americans are doing healthwise, how the economy is doing, how small business owners will do if he rushes too quickly to open things up. you know, yesterday, mika, one

of the more villelying things david's having were he was asking the president how bad it was going to get as we move closer to depression numbers. the president, all he could do was talk about himself and say it is what it is. even the democrats can't blame me for that. again, he doesn't sit and think about the small business owner who struggles. he doesn't sit and think about the parent who was watching their parent die. >> yeah. >> we had a dear friend of ours who's been on this show whose mother died yesterday isolated and alone in boston of the coronavirus. and he couldn't be there to say good-bye to his mom. this is, by the way, a conservative who -- >> right. >> -- who works for people who

are huge supporters of donald trump. as we've said from the beginning, this virus is not a republican virus or a democratic virus, and it's not about red state or blue state america. but this president just can't engage, mika, and he's acting more reckless than ever. >> joining us now, the mayor of new york city, bill de blasio. mayor, thank you very much for joining us this morning. we're talking about leadership, but at this point give us an update on where new york city stands in fighting this virus and how workers on the front lines are faring. >> mika, what a story of heroism, these health care workers, first responders who have fought through this for the last two months. and you know what? there was a point in the beginning of april where it looked like our hospital system was on the verge of being overwhelmed by the number of cases. but they bent but they never

broke, you know. they had to deal with an extraordinary surge of coronavirus cases, but they held the line. and there's an amazing story here of resilience. and to the point that both of you were just making, you know, this should be something that the nation looks to and says, look at these heroic people and this heroic city and how do we all help ourselves forward? but the president now every time he opens his mouth, it's not about the people who have done the heroic work or about the families that are suffering right now, it is always just about him or some new effort to divide us. who talks about red states and blue states in the middle of a pandemic? it's just an unbelievable reality when, in fact, in a patriotic way of thinking, you look to the places that have done heroic things on behalf of the whole nation. and i certainly think the people of this city have done that.

they've fought back this disease. by the way, the restraint, the discipline new yorkers have shown staying indoors, social distancing, face coverings, this is not a place where that is easy to do and yet people have done it to a remarkable degree. so i wish our president would celebrate the herouxism ism of american people and talk about how to get cities, states back on our feet the right way and talk about the people, not about himself. >> mayor de blasio, willie gaft. as you pointed out in your press briefing yesterday, there were encouraging numbers on those benchmark statistics that you've been pointing out for a couple months. there was one disturbing number. in new york state we learned that 1700 more unreported deaths were now reported from inside nursing homes. i know they all weren't in new

york city, but many of them were. do you think the order that was issued by the governor to allow patients with coronavirus to leave hospitals and to go back into their nursing homes was a bad idea? >> willie, the whole question is always where can a senior citizen get the best support and care? sometimes that say hospital and sometimes it is a place where they are known and can be supported by people who have a relationship with them. i don't think it's black and white. i think we're all trying to figure out how to work together to support the nursing homes better. but i'll tell you, i think this whole crisis has put a point on the fact that going forward nursing hom nursing homes are going to need a lot more support. we're not done with this disease. this is what may be the first of several waves. and our seniors in our nursing homes are vulnerable.

i think the whole approach to health care now has to be reevaluated, because what we've seen in this crisis is how vulnerable the entire country was, particularly seniors. but here's a country we didn't really as a nation have a plan for how to address nursing homes. but even more foundationally, we didn't have the supplies, we didn't have the equipment, we didn't have the personnel we needed where we needed it. this is a real wakeup call, and it speaks to why we need oouns universal health care. which if they had it would have been one of the ways to beat back this disease. universal health care and universal testing would have been the ways to stop this thing. and other countries that did more of either or both did a hell of a lot better. so i'm hoping while we try to fight through this moment that there's going to be real reflection on bigger changes we'll need thin this count to sp these things in the future. >> i'm sure there will be some conversations. but you say improving conditions

for seniors in nursing homes, would it be a good idea to no longer send people who have tested positive for coronavirus or are suspected to have krie coronavirus, would it be a good idea to not send them back into their nursing homes where they would expose other people? >> if the better care is in the hospital, that should be the go-to option. but there's going to be times where the nursing home is the place that could better care, if it's set up that way. a lot of these are for-profit organizations. i think there's going to be a lot of questions about whether they put their residents first or whether they put profit first. but i'm -- i don't like what's happening in the nursing homes. i want to see change. but i think in terms of each individual, it's a case by case you got to figure out what's right for each senior. >> so, mayor, i know you've worked hard with the governor wand health experts and there is an understanding about how this virus spreads and how it works. given that that understanding

has been established, when and how will new york city reopen? >> so, mika, the only way we reopen is if we have actual evidence that things have changed profoundly. now, there's been great progress in the last few weeks. i'm really hopeful that we've turned the corner. but we publish every day health care indicators to show the people of this city exactly where we're going. they've been good, they have not been everything we need yet to take the next big steps in reopening. now, the other piece that's obvious is if we're going to reopen, we have to be able to provide basic services in this city. right now, that will not be possible without federal help. we have been thrown back on our heels. so many lives lost, so much disruption to everything in this city, and on top of that, you know, my job is to provide police services, fire services, sanitation, health care, all the things that we've been doing in

this crisis, we are running out of money. and the federal government is the only place we can get the support. there's discussion of a new stimulus, but right in the middle of that last night president trump says, well, it should include relief for wealthy people. he starts talking about the capital gains tax, not struggling firefighters and emts and paramedics and health care workers. he once again is defaulting to how can he take care of his rich friends. this stimulus has to happen and it has to be about supporting working people and it has to be about getting cities and states back on our feet. because if we don't have those resources, we can't provide basic services, we can't recover. it's as simple as that. you can't restart if you can't run your city or you can't run your state. >> mayor bill de blasio, thank you very much for joining us here on "morning joe." >> thank you. and let's bring in the conversation msnbc contributor mike barnicle. co-host of show time's the issue

is cuss and ed dittor and chief john heilemann. >> i want to bring you in, jon, on something that's been breaking the past few weeks. there's a poll out that showed steve bullock, the democrat there, in a comfortable lead over his republican incumbent opponent. you go down the list, and a lot of people are talking about this list, bullock at 46, steve daines 39, even though donald trump is winning that state by five points in the same poll. in arizona, markle -kelly is ah there. in colorado, john hickenlooper

well ahead of cory gardner, a wave, a huge wave likely coming in colorado that will swreeep ay cory gardner. we talked about montana, steve bullock. a great politician, a great governor. he's sort of the great northwest's version of joe manchin. he's been a governor there two times. he's won running against the tide and he wins, he just wins elections. north carolina tom tillis's numbers, the republican come bent are just dreadful. we saw poles this past week that shows georgia's tight. far tighter than it swhub lindsey graham. and even kentucky where people say mitch mcconnell is one of the least popular politicians in america but he always ends up winning, i'm not quite as sure they're feeling as confident this year as six years ago. this senate map suddenly is

starting to look blue. >> right. and i think that's exactly right, joe. and if you're looking for a reason why donald trump seems to be panicked right now and why he seems to be panicked in a particular way, which is to risk a potential public health nightmare in the weeks and months to come in order to try a kind of desperate -- i mean, you can only describe it as kind of a hail mary pass to sort of say we've got reopen this economy, regardless of what the costs are, in terms of human life, regardless. yesterday basically what he was saying was a bunch of people are going to die, i'm going to treat the american people as if they are warriors, forget about the time when i said i was a war-time president, i'm going to treat them as warriors and i'm going to send them out there to fight this battle ill-equipped. i don't care. we have to get the economy open. it's the only thing he's thinking about right now because he understands how central that

economy is to his re-election prospects. what's driving that for him to make these moves? it's seeing not -- we've talked about it now for the last several weeks, but these numbers, these senate numbers are in some ways more troubling for trump than even his own head to head numbers with joe biden, which are very bad. and trending in the wrong direction. a lot of these, many people thought, you know, the senate is going to be a really steep uphill climb for democrats, stand still is, let's be clear. but it's overwhelmingly obvious now, if you look at the polling you just went through, that the senate is in real jeopardy for republicans. and there are two factors driving it. one factor is that joe biden is at the top of the ticket. one of the reasons why joe biden whatever his weaknesses were, one of the reasons why joe biden when you have the argument about joe biden versus bernie sanders at the end of the nomination fight, why joe biden was preferable was because he was so much more palatable to down

ballot democrats especially if red and purple states and you heard that from down ballot democrats in purple states. and the other is donald trump approval ratings, particularly the approval ratings and the public opinion reflection of what people think about his handling of this pandemic. those are the things that are driving these senate races and they are incred -- they are incredibly worrying for the president, they must be incredibly worrying for the president, and they're causing him to act in ways that i think are -- are courting utter disaster for the country. >> he's looking at 30-second ads that a christian conserve activity is runni conservist is running against him. he's looking at his campaign manager and claiming that brad pascal is getting extraordinarily wealthy off of him, making all of this money despite the fact that they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising or raised

that. they're doing unbelievably well raising money. but none of it is getting to where it needs to go to move those numbers. and, mika, these senators, these republican senators who are in trouble, they understand that -- that, you know, we went from 60,000 to 70,000 deaths in less than a week and donald trump is trying to rush their governors to reopen their government. and they understand that while it feels good for donald trump to do this the first week of may, this is going to cause another health care crisis which is going to cause a doubling of this economic crisis which is going to be a disaster for their states. and, yes, even a disaster for them politically. donald trump has made every move that's been wrong politically, economically, and most importantly medically. >> for sure. >> even he talks about that

china ban, 430,000 people got from china to america since the beginning of the pandemic and even 40,000 people, because his ban, so-called ban from china was so weak and toothless. 40,000 people got from china to america even after that ban was implemented. his predictions have been wrong since the beginning. on february the 22nd he said it was one person in china, soon it would be zero. then in february he was still saying it was 11 people, it would be down to zero. then it was 15 people, it would be down to zero. i mean, then he said to a group of african american leaders it was going to go away magically. it would just go away magically when the weather got warm. he continued to tell people when the weather got warm in april it would go away. of course we found out more people ended up dying from this pandemic than he predictsed would magically go away in april than died in a ten-year hot war in vietnam.

in a ten-year hot war in vietnam. and, mika, he still is making mistakes. >> right. >> every day. he won't listen to his doctors and so many politicians in his own party now fear there will be more deaths. there will be more economic chaos, and it will land at their footsteps. >> there's an obsession to reopen the economy without the same obsession to actually make it safe to do so. >> without following the white house guidelines. >> yamiche -- well, let alone that, how about doing everything you can to make reopening safe, which would be, wait for it, wait for it, we've all heard the word, testing. yamiche, is anyone explaining these senators even why not have a blanket, robust push to get this president nationalized test something if he wants to reopen the economy, he needs to back it up with the best way forward to do it safely. if he uses the defense production act to do so,

everybody across the board that we have asked again and again and again about this, whether it's senators or scientists or experts at the top of their game, experts working in the white house for this president fighting the coronavirus all agree that testing would get to america quicker in a streamlined uniform way if he invoked the dpa. so why not do that? is anyone telling him, given that he wants to open the economy asap? >> well, we've heard from local leaders and from state leaders over and over again from the beginning of this pandemic to the middle of this pandemic that testing is the key to first getting in front of the virus, then dealing with the virus, and now reopening the economy. but the president has continued to make it clear that he does not want to use the defense production act to beef up testing. he sees this as something that he doesn't want to be tied too closely to his administration. he said that very clearly in saying that he wants testing to

be a local issue now and that he wants governors to be the ones who essentially take the blame if testing is not as accessible as they want it to be. but the president just doesn't want to do that. i think this moment has always called for a leader who has credibility and compassion and empathy. and what we're seeing now is the president saying very clearly, look, people could die, but we need to reopen the economy. i think that was one of the most remarkable things that happened yesterday in that interview with david mere. he said isn't this this baling american lives with opening the economy? the president said, yes, we're going to lose americans by doing this. president has made his bed. he's saying, look, the sec what economy is most important here. he says there are people are going to die if the economy doesn't open back up. but you have americans who are scared for their lives. even when the economies are opening up slowly and we're seeing this phasing in, americans still don't trust the president overall when it comes

to gathering in large groups. i don't think anyone's running out of their homes, whether that be republicans or democrats, because the president is saying everything's going to be okay, let's reopen the economy. it's really going to take the credibility of leaders, of dr. fauci and others to convince americans to really say, okay, now you can gather at sports, now you can gather at concerts. one big telling thing that's on the prep presidesident's agenda he's meeting with the governor of iowa. there are meat packing plants in water loo where the mayor is saying it's too early to reopen, workers lives are at risk. but the president's sitting down with the governor and they're collectively talking about the fact that the economy needs to open back up even as thee workers continue to face really perilous conditions. >> thank you so much. willie. >> yeah, mike barnicle, the quote from the president yamiche is referring to to abc yesterday was, quote, there will be more death. he's prepared to accept more death, but it's time to on the economy for all the people who

are hurting in their lives because of their jobs, their small businesses. but what we saw yesterday, mike, i think was a president who fully and outwardly turned the page. he didn't wear the mask into the n95 plant in arizona, a signal that it was safe to not wear the mask. he talked from the white house about winding down the task force. we don't need to meet every day anymore. this has been his instinct all along, see the liberate treats twee tweets, let people get back to work in michigan and other states. but yesterday he came out and said it's time to turn the page, it's time to move on, we have to get the country back to work. >> yeah, willie, because the page that he's looking at now that we're all looking at, americans, is scary. the president doesn't like the present page that we're looking at and the president is afraid of facts. he doesn't like facts because the facts are really scary and threatening to him. right now it's been more than a month in this country since we

have had fewer than 1,000 deaths per day nationwide. we're averaging 25,000 new cases a day -- with the virus. so those are two facts that the president doesn't like to hear. the other facts we've been talking about numbers for most of the morning, poll numbers and whatever and joe has referenced several polls that are critically important to the president, i have five states here with numbers that are truly horrifying. the president of the united states and his political future. the percentage of people in these states -- unemployment. michigan, 19.8% people have filed for unemployment. pennsylvania, 16%. florida, 9%. north carolina, 12.7%. wisconsin, 12% file for unemployment benefits. good luck. >> all right. still ahead on "morning joe," florida, florida, florida.

it is a critical battleground in presidential politics. and we'll talk to one of the state's rising stars, congresswoman val demings. the latest on the 2020 campaign and her efforts to deal with the pandemic. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. no uh uh, no way come on, no no n-n-n-no-no only discover has no annual fee on any card. why accept it frompt an incompyour allergy pills?e else. n-n-n-no-no flonase sensimist. nothing stronger. nothing gentler. nothing lasts longer. flonase sensimist. 24 hour non-drowsy allergy relief

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we've ensured a ventilator for every patient who needs one. nobody who's needed a ventilator has been without a ventilator. it's an incredible achievement. and we now have thousands and thousands of ventilators and other countries are asking us for help and we're helping other countries. allies and some that aren't necessarily allies. but they're in big trouble. and we're helping other countries now with ventilators. same thing with masks about the we have millions and millions of masks, that was something four weeks ago was difficult and now we have millions of masks coming in and already here.

>> that was president trump six days ago boasting about his administration's success in responding to the coronavirus pandemic. but as he boasted and bragged, the president's own health and emergency management officials were privately warning the states we're still experiencing shortages of masks, gowns, and other medical gear, according to a recording of an interagency meeting between fema and hhs officials across the country conducted by conference call, which was obtained by "politico." official also expressed concern that governors moving to reopen their economies while cases were still prevalent threatened to plunge the nation into a new and potentially deadlier chapter of the outbreak. the numbers of deaths definitely will be high. the director of the cdcs influenza division reportedly

said at the start of the may 1st conference call. moments later, another official reportedly warned of the risk facing the country. if, at the end of stay-at-home orders you were to lift everything and go back to normal business and not have any community mitigation, you would expect to see in the second week in may we begin to increase again in ventilator uses, the official said. which means cases increase and by early june, we surpass the number of ventilators we currently have. "politico" said it obtained audio recordings of three conference call meetings held between april 24th and may 1st led by hhs and fema officials and designed to keep a wide range of federal agencies apprised of the government's coronavirus response. nbc news has not obtained or verified the recordings. joining us now, member of the house homeland security and judiciary intelligence committees democratic

congresswoman val demings of florida. congresswoman demings, thank you so much for being on the show. given the president's pronouncements and bragging about -- >> thank you. >> -- what has been done, what is the reality in your district as it pertains to the front lines having what they need? >> well, let me just say this, mika. i have not been able to endure or bear the president's daily briefings anymore because the words coming out of his mouth have been unbelievable and i believe they risk lives all over this country. no one, the president or the governor here in florida, should be taking a victory lap when people are continuing to lose their lives because of covid-19. in florida, we have over 36,000 people who have contracted the

virus. we have over 1500 deaths. and so i would just like to hear the president and my governor and others who think that it's okay to go back to business as normal, talk to those families who've lost their loved ones, look, nobody wants to get the economy started again more than i do. i hear from small business owners and others every day about their fears, about their businesses. we have over 1 million people here in the state of florida who filed for unemployment and can't access the system that the governor knew had multiple problems last year. he knew that. but the primary responsibility for me as a member of congress and for our governor and our president is the health, safety, and well-being of the american people. the health, safety, and well-being of floridians. and we should not be willing to jeopardize that over anything. >> so what could the president

be doing that he is clearly not doing, in your mind, that could help get to a place where we could reopen more safely? >> why don't we start with listening to the medical experts, listening to the doctors, listening to our scientists, listening to those who are responsible for developing a vaccine. not spreading false information that has not been proven about a potential medications or vaccines that have not been tested. that might would be a good place for the leader to start. what about fully implementing the defense production act to make sure that those who are on the front lines, not just our doctors and our medical personnel, but our first responders have the proper equipment that they need every

day to protect and save lives. and so that would be, i believe, a good start. you know, our governor has taken a victory lap and celebrated the fact that the deaths or the number of cases in florida predicted that the actual cases have been lower than what was predicted. well, the reason those cases are lower is because floridians took the warnings seriously. and in the lack of -- in the absence of strategic, effective leadership, floridians decided to shelter in place and the lack of -- as a result of the lack of leadership, local governments took responsibility in their own hands and issued stay-at-home orders. on march 1st, the surgeon general of florida declared a public health emergency. it wasn't until april 3rd that the governor issued a stay-at-home order.

so, we want to get there, but we're not there. and we have nothing to celebrate as we continue to see numbers in florida go up and numbers around this country go up. >> willie. >> congresswoman demings, good to have you with us this morning. i think a lot about your district because of those theme parks, universal, orlando, seaworld, disney world, and those tens of thousands of employees who need those jobs, they're sitting empty right now. what do you say to them as they start to wonder, hey, couldn't we inch our way toward opening up? maybe not a theme park, but people at restaurants, couldn't we sit six feet apart? couldn't we have 25% capacity like governor desantis has implemented at this point? how do you balance when you talk yo your constituents the need for public health on the one hand, but also people's need to get back to work and support their families? >> willie, i appreciate that question. as you know, all of the theme parks are in my district.

disney alone employs over 77,000 individuals. there's no doubt people are hurting, there's no doubt our theme parks, they've been closed, had their doors closed since march 15th. just think about that. the number of people they employ, the number of people that go through their gates every day. but i have been very pleased that the theme parks, while they are hurting, while the employees are hurting, have really shown what i believe has been -- they've taken great responsibility to make sure that they do not reopen until we are ready to do so. as you know, the governor has relaxed our stay-at-home orders and started to reopen this week. but the theme parks have chosen not to do that. they do not want to reopen their

gates until they feel that people visiting their parks will be safe, until they feel that their employees will be safe. and, look, their employees have been -- have done an extraordinary job too. they're ready to get back to work. they're worried about their families. they're worried about their rent, their mortgages, their children. but they also want to do what they need to do to keep their families safe. and obey those orders that are in place. and so we are thankful. and, like i said earlier, no one wants to get back to business as usual. i don't know if we'll ever really get back to business as usual. but we do appreciate the level of cooperation that we are receiving here on the ground. >> i know your focus, congresswoman, rightly is on the people in your district. but there are a lot of people, it's one of the worst kept secrets in politics right now is that joe biden is considering you as his choice to be a vice-presidential running mate,

to be the nominee to be vice president. you come from a very important state and very important district, more specifically the i-4 corridor there in orlando. you have a great personal story, a great track record as the police chief in orlando. if you were asked to be vice president, what would you say? >> well, joe -- or excuse me, willie, i have dedicated my tloif publ life to public service. having served as a social worker, career law enforcement officer, police chief, and now a member of congress, i chose tough jobs. we're dealing with a tough time right now. we're in the middle of a crisis. i've dealt with crisis before. and as i look at the condition of our country right now and the absolute lack of leadership, you know, at the very least we ought to be able to have a leader that we can trust. we ought to be able to have a leader that when they're taking

the podium and giving direction, that we can believe that what is coming out of their mouths is true. we don't have that right now. and if asked, i would be honored to serve alongside joe biden and do everything within my power to get this country back on track not just here in the nation, but around the world. >> congresswoman val demings, thank you very much for being on the show this morning. please come back. thank you. and still ahead. >> thank you. we're going to talk to -- thank you -- as the u.s. continues to struggles with the race and wealth disparities amid the coronavirus pandemic. we'll be right back. ities amid the coronavirus pandemic. we'll be right back.

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new reports offer a glimpse into the early setbacks by the trump administration for securing critical medical supplies to battle the coronavirus pandemic. according to the "washington post," jared kushner who spearheaded relief efforts relied on two dozen volunteers from consulting and private equity firms who had little expertise in the tasks they were assigned. according to administration officials and others familiar with the arrangement. the post says numerous government officials complained that the volunteers exacerbated chronic problems in obtaining supplies for hospitals and other needs. according to the report, one of the volunteers who left the response team filed a complaint anonymously to the house oversight committee last month expressing concerns that the team was falling short on obtaining vital medical supplies

for hospitals nationwide. the document alleges that the team responsible for ppe had little success, in part, because none of the team members had significant experience in health care, procurement, or supply chain operations while others were poorly matched with their assigned jobs. according to the complaint and two senior administration officials, none of the volunteers had relationships with manufacturers or a clear understanding of customs requirements or fda rules. meanwhile, the "new york times" reports many of the volunteers were told to prioritize tips from political allies and associates of president trump tracked on a spreadsheet called vip update according to documents and emails obtained by the paper. the team's problems underscore a broader pattern of missteps and missed opportunities that has plagued the trump administration as it struggles to cope with the pandemic.

kushner has since defended the team's efforts in a statement referring to the volunteers as true patriots. john heilemann, we're talking about kushner talking to people who are inappropriate for the jobs that he's giving them, but isn't the bigger issue that jared kushner is completely inexperienced as it pertains to dealing with pandemics and he's the most inappropriate for this job? >> right. inappropriate and -- >> on so many levels. >> -- guilty of all the same sins -- yes, inappropriate -- not qualified, let's just start there. someone -- what he, like the people that he brought on to this task force, again, i agree this is an all hands on deck moment, anyone who wants to volunteer to try to help, i think we should be -- we should -- they should be commended for trying to help. on the other hand there are was an essential challenge. the supply chain, you've talked about it, talked about it just today, but the failures in the nationalizing the supply chains

and the president taking control of it. to the extent that there was a national effort here, the president puts his son-in-law in charge of it who knows nothing about procurement, supply chains or medical equipment, he recruits a bunch of volunteers who know nothing about supply chains, procurement or medical equipment. they get in there and what do they call back on in they do the reflexive falling back on kronism and corruption. they go, they start favoring people who are donors. they start favoring goch nors w governors who have been supportive. the preferences and priorities given to people who have taken part in trump rallies, people that the president have been long time allies or the vice president long time allies. those people being able to have a privileged access to fema to get their requests streamlined -- not streamlined but short listed, to be able to get -- to cut the line to get up to the front. so you've got -- they're chasing -- people who don't know what they're doing are chasing

tips produced by the president's allies because those people are on the vip list, and then you've got on the other side you have people who have priority in terms of trying to acquire what scarce resources there are because, again, they're political or financial or both allies of the president. it's exactly the combination that has characterized this administration from day one, incompetence plus cronyism equals failure. that is -- it is a microcosm of the 70s professionals that have bedeviled the administration from the very beginning. >> this is a perfect story for our friend who is the host of vice tv's new show, seat at the table wednesday nights, that's tonight, at 10 clock. congratulations first on the show. great to see you. your book was titled "winners take all ". boy, is this a within inners take all story if i've ever heard it. jared kushner marries into the trump family, president trump is elected president, jared kushner

the son-in-law is elevated to a senior adviser having no particular expertise in many of the areas he oversees. and now here we see him with a group of volunteers handing out crony ppe, effectively and things that these cities need to get supplies out around the country to friends of the president. >> you know, i was thinking as i was reading this story this morning and steam was coming out of various parts of my body that there's a language we all use in this pandemic and in times like this, right? this is unprecedented. or we are all in this together. and what that story and frankly the larger phenomenon of the way the pandemic has unfolded has revealed is this is not unprecedent and we are not all in this together. when you say this is unpress dente unprecedented, it's a story from the past. the story you're taking us

through is a story of ole gark i can that's been a forcetor decades. and this is what you get. you have private equity people being brought in to solve problems when that is the very class of people that has pushed for an economy in which half of americans don't have $400 for an emergency expense which becomes really relevant right now in which there's so little financial stability for people that a crisis like this has knocked 30 million people in unemployment so quickly, which companies have the freedom to just get rid of people so quickly, in which bailouts are structured for the rich and powerful. who did that? the very people, the kinds of people, the kinds of institutions that jared kushner's bringing in to solve the problem. the arsonists returning as firefighters. but, second, the other side of the distribution, this notion of being all in it together, when it is a crisis that is, frankly,

in many communities a black playing plague. that's killing people in part because of lack of access and they don't have access to the health system. a crisis in which people without solid employment solid employment prospects who can be fired and not just cost a job but cost health care, this is a crisis that's not breaking us from the past but doubling down on the perverted power equations that defined american life the last several decades. i will say hopefully this is l. hopefully because of that, maybe the only moment in my life thus far there might be enough political imagination in the wake of this to actually transform these things fundamentally. >> well, you anticipated my next question was, what do we learn from this? if we go back to the crises you'rer fromming to, financial crisis, katrina, 9/11, we're in

the middle of a crisis and say something has to be different. something has to change so this doesn't happen again. what do you think we learn from this as we look out over the horizon? >> it's interesting, so one of the things we did -- you know i got my tv start right here with you on "morning joe." 95% of the people who watched and tweeted were like you should get a haircut. 5% were like, you should get your own show. >> one of those. >> i did the 5%. on the show this week -- thank you. on the show this week, we actually dig right into that question, how do we go beyond this? we're all in this, but there has to be a beyond. one of the fundamental questions to me is what's going to be our relationship to government, the idea of government after this? we kind of look at it at three levels this week. there's a priy moerdial obsessin

going back to the founders, freedom even genocide, freedom obsessed to the point we're afraid of the government coming for us that we're blind to other types of threats, whether it's a virus, malfeasance, climate change, what you have. and there's also more recent 40-year version on this which is more like reagan on government problem. there's a hard version on the right, small militariry version of it but it's affected many people in the left in this passive sensible in government but i would never go work there. i believe in government but i kind of like don't like my taxes too high or i use a trust in the cayman islands. and then the most recent trump era twist in this which is the war in government becomes a self-pro filli self-fulfilling prophecy, you undermine government, undermine

government and it becomes true government sucks because you made it suck by telling everybody it sucks. and i think the most important thing that could come out of this is realizing the government is not the biggest threat to our liberty. it can be a threat to our liberty but we're threatened by many, many things. and what the government does is protect us from a lot of the other oppressions that wee in america are often quite blind to. >> mike barnicle has a question. mike? >> you know, i have a little more than a question listening to you and going around where i live near boston nearly every day. it is truly tragic that at this moment in our history confronted with this crisis, this enormous life-threatening crisis literally, that we are led by donald trump. so one of the resorts seeking comfort that i use is i go to history, and i just read and read and read and read. i bumped into a 1932 convention

speech, an acceptance speech given by franklin delano roosevelt as he accepted the nomination to run for president in 1932. i would just like to read a couple of lines and ask for your reaction. out of every crisis, every tribulation, every disaster, mankind rises with shshare of greater knowledge of higher decency of purer purpose. i pledge you, i pledge myself a new deal for the american people. this is more than a political campaign. this is a cause to arms. give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade, to restore american to its own people. and my question to you, annan, is do you think this is the same country today as the country you thought it was a decade or two decades ago?

>> that's a beautiful passage. and it is so important to read history in this moment. not everything can be mined from what happened yesterday. so thank you for sharing that. i think what scares me so much is -- and we've talked about it around the metaphorical table of this show over years, is we have become so tribal that we take pleasure in each other's pain. and i wonder if 9/11 were to happen today, heaven forbid, i don't think it would go down the same way. i think it would immediately on day two become a partisan fight. i say this only with some slight exaggeration, if los angeles were to be the subject of a north korean nuclear attack, i can see it being a partisan issue by day two today. i think there's something so fundamentally broken. we don't disagree anymore.

we discus each other as americans. i am studying for a project i'm working on, russian tweets and what were they doing to us when we read these tweets? and a lot of these tweets trying to turn people who disagree with each other -- which is fine and normal -- into people are disgusted with each other. can't stand the idea of each other. but i have a hope that has risen from the carnage. a lot of people from your generation roughly would come up to me the last couple of years when i was doing book events around the country and calling for big, systemic change. and these older folks would say to me in a prepandemic moment, anand, this is great, whabl you're saying, these are the changes we need but honestly, this is not going to happen absent a war and crisis.

and they're riext you don't get women's suffrage without world war ii and you don't get civil rights without world war ii and black supremacy fighting in europe. these crises are awful, awful, awful, and they open things up. the silver lining of this time may be, if we choose it, this might be one of the only moments in the lifetime of many of us where there's actually a political space for a reset. actually the place for people to think new things. people for someone like joe biden to say i haven't been for medicare for all but it doesn't make sense to tie health care to jobs anymore and i'm big enough to rethink something. this should be a moment we're all big enough to rethink fundamental things about the kind of america we want to be part of. >> well put, anand, thank you very much. his new show "seat at the table" airs wednesday nights on vice tv. congratulations, anand.

we look forward to it still ahead -- president trump is willing to pay the price for reopening the economy, even if the cost is american lives. we'll have his latest remarks. plus, former vice president joe biden will be receiving a new endorsement this morning. that announcement is coming up on "morning joe." and before we go to break, today at noon co-author of "earn it: daniella pierre-bravo, speaks with the founder and author of girls who code on know your values on instagram instagram live. head over at 12:00 noon. we're back in two minutes at a packed hour. stay with us. [squawks] only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ confident financial plans,

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and a team of experts - here for you 24/7. we've always believed in the power of working together. that's why, when every connection counts... you can count on us. what did you do when you became president to restock those cupboards you say were bare? >> i'll be honest, i had a lot of things going on. we had a lot of people who

refused to allow the country to be successful. they wasted a lot of time on russia, russia, russia. that turned out to be a total hoax. then they did ukraine, ukraine, and that was a total hoax. then they impeached the president of the united states for absolutely no reason and we even had a 197-0 vote by the republicans. >> president trump's reason for not refilling what he claims was an inherited empty national stockpile for emergencies. >> he was president, by the way, for 3 1/2 years. he a lot of things going on. that was his answer. incidentally, politifact rates trump blaming the obama administration for lack of national emergency supplies as mostly false. that interview took place in the honeywell factory that makes n95 masks, which the president toured. >> where is his mask? >> without wearing a mask himself and no one around him was allowed to wear them either. maybe they chose on their own. i doubt it.

despite company protocols, and a sign saying that everyone is required to wear a mask. and also playing in the background, "live and let die," that song. terrific. good morning, and welcome to new jersey. along with joe, willie and me we have white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire and former white house adviser for health policy, professor and weisz provost of global initiatives from university of pennsylvania, dr. ezekiel emanuel. nbc news and msnbc senior medical contributor. good to have you all on board. joe, the u.s. death toll from coronavirus is now topping 71,000 as president trump continues his push to reopen the country. nbc news has learned over the coming weeks the white house plans to wind down the coronavirus task force, a move that comes as the virus

continues to spread rampantly. >> because the president can't speak of the task force anymore without being hurt. i mean, it's -- it's all because he's being hurt politically at this press conference. if he can't talk for hours, he doesn't want dr. fauci or dr. birx to talk and educate america. >> and there's more bad news coming in places like new york city and chicago, new hot spots and new orleans. we'll get to all of that in a moment. but this virus is not getting better. >> it's getting better in those hot spots. unfortunately, it's getting worse across the country. just think about it, if you want to know how erratic this president is, his thinking, how he's acting in a way that shows

ease unward from reality -- of course, he's going around not wearing a mask when everybody is supposed to be wearing masks, that's a small thing. but think about the fact that he sets out guidelines that the doctors help put together, and then he immediately tries to get people to break his own guidelines, and he's talking about stopping the coronavirus task force at a time when deaths go over 70,000. think about this. we've just gone over 70,000 deaths in america, 70,000 deaths. a week ago we hadn't got to 60,000 deaths. 10,000 more people died in one week. again, in the past week, more people have died than died on 9/11, died in the iraq war, died

in the afghanistan war over 19 years, all combined, just in the past seven days. that's from 60,000 to 70,000. think about before that, we got from 50,000 deaths to 60,000 deaths in five days. and the cdc writes the white house a draft a few days ago. they get it this weekend. using trump administration numbers, using trump administration numbers, they warned the president, they warned the white house. where have we heard this before? the white house gets a warning. they warned the white house that the number of daily deaths are going to double between now and june 1. and the white house dismisses it. just like they dismiss the

warning back in late january from white house officials that this could end up killing 500,000 americans and yet what happened the next month? the president went out, he would go rallies, tell people it was a hoax. well, let me just tell you, the president can talk to david muir, he can try to blame the democrats, but what he can't do -- what he can't do is excuse what he's done over the past several months when he should have known better. what he's doing right now, i saw in "the new york daily news," reading from a piece, the president is not well. if this were your child, you would intervene as quickly as you could, and you would. >> wow.

>> getting them the help they clearly needed. likewise, if a friend was acting this way, you might suggest they go to a therapist to work through some anger issues. if this were a co-worker, i think that's actually gracious, you would alert someone in human resources. and what if this were the president of the united states acting this erratically? not only are these behaviors the norm for president trump, but they seem to have worsened at the moment precarious and critical time that our country faced since world war ii. as we face a global pandemic that's killed over 70,000 americans. less than two weeks after unimaginably suggesting, infecting disinfectants might kill off the coronavirus. the past two days have seen donald trump spiral out of

control. as the article continues, he's proven himself utterly incapable of staying focused on the biggest crisis a president could face. what he's done instead? he spread unfounded conspiracy theories about the origins of the coronavirus. about former president president obama and about an msnbc cable news host. how much lower can you go than that if you're worried about me? what else has he done? he's made statements that can only be described as delusional. like comparing himself to abraham lincoln. inventing a nonexistent letter of apology from joe biden. and spewing nonscience about his favorite drug. it's his obsession, hydroxychloroquine. attacking two female reporters

for doing their jobs, lamenting that they don't behave like donna reed, the actress synonymous with the gender role abiding kitchen-dwelling 1950s housewife she played on television more than 60 years ago. he attacked another female cable news host calling her a third rate lapdog. and in the middle of the night, just a couple days ago, at 12:45 a.m., he went on a 234-word rant on twitter complaining about an ad released by a republican anti-trump group whose leaders include george conway, of course, husband of stafford kellyanne, in which donald trump used words like deranged, loser of a husband and moonface to describe him. yes, donald trump talking about somebody else's weight.

isn't that ironic, don't you think, as alana morissette might ask? that's me, not s.e. cup. the completely normal behavior that we can greet the undeniable deterioration of the president of the united states with mere shrugs and the only concerns from his inner circles seem not to be about the mental instability itself, but the political ramifications of it being exposed in daily press briefings. s.e. cup, new york daily news. >> she really did a good job of crystalizing why this normalcy of the president's behavior is making us unsafe. really well done. >> if someone was doing this in realtime, even not in a pandemic, if they were your child -- >> anyone.

>> your parent or grandparent or ceo at your company, if they were a co-worker, if they were a football coach for your children, baseball, you would be worried and you would take action. and yet the republicans just sit quietly by. now we're up to 70,000 deaths. the president's disbanding the coronavirus task force and he's actually pressuring governors and business owners to actually not follow his own guidelines. now he's freaking out about an ad that republicans did, a baptist, a christian who's voted republican his entire life, ben howe, who helped put this ad together with some people, bunch of republicans concerned about how donald trump is handling this pandemic. and this is what is freaking him

out so much. let's play this ad that has made the president of the united states get worse. >> this morning in america, today more than 60,000 americans have died from a deadly virus donald trump ignored. with the economy in shambles, more than 26 million americans are out of work. the worst economy in decades. trump bailed out wall street, but not main street. this afternoon millions of americans will apply for unemployment, and with their savings run out, many are giving up hope. millions worry that a loved one won't survive covid-19. there's mourning in america. and under the leadership of donald trump, our country is weaker and sicker and poorer. and now americans are asking if we have another four years like this, will there even be an america?

>> paid for by the lincoln project, which is responsible for the content of this advertising. >> willie, a lot to digest there from s.e.cupp and that ad fact checked through, everything i saw there. but the president is getting -- we've been saying it three years now, the president is getting worse. >> i like to also point out there will be an america whenever president trump leaves office. so that's the upnote in that one ad. yes, look, yesterday we saw a president who was ready to turn the page, who realizes that this pandemic that's killed 71,000 people, infected more than 1 million americans, is getting in the way of his presidency. as he says, i created the greatest economy in the history of the country, fact check not true, that he wants to move on. he will not wear a mask. that's a signal. he will stop the task force,

slowly will go abay becauway be feels they crossed a threshold. and he said yesterday, there are going to be more deaths and without a vaccine, $juit's just to pass. doctor, we know why president trump wants to move past this. it's hurting him politically. it's cratering the economy. he feel it's will hurt his chance to be re-elected. but when he does all of these things and says all of these things and talks about it is going to pass, he is defying not just doctors like you, public health experts like you, but people on his task force advising him. then it becomes dr. fauci to go and do an interview at night and politely contradict everything the president has said during the day. obviously, yesterday crystalized the president ready to turn the page despite the medicine, despite the public health. >> yeah, i think the real worry certainly in the public health

community is that we're going to have wave two, wave three. you're going to have a premature loosening and unregulated loosening of the public health measures we've put in place, no large gatherings, physical distancing, wearing of the masks that have made a difference. we have a plateau. the unfortunate fact is the plateau is not going down at an accelerated rate you would hope, you would expect if there weren't new infections. you can see from the math you put up, there are places it's getting to be a serious concern. minnesota, nebraska, part of the heartland of the president. i'm not a little brother, as i like to say, but i did study political science. any president who had 20% unemployment, 33 million people who are out of work, we would be writing that person off. just think of herbert hoover during the depression was a

employout electio blowout election and that i think that has to be worrying the president a lot. >> still ahead on "morning joe" -- >> i'm actually comfortable with the fact men marry men, women marry women and heterosexuals are the right to all of the same rights and i don't see a distinction beyond that. >> yesterday joe biden became the highest ranking official to back marriage equality. just ahead a leading human rice group is set to return the favor when it comes to biden's presidential campaign. it's an endorsement you will see first on "morning joe." you'll be right back. ♪ i just love hitting the open road and telling people

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states will begin lifting stay-at-home restrictions too soon. this according to a new monmouth poll. 63% states are moving to reopen too quickly during the coronavirus pandemic. 29% say states are not moving quickly enough. 56% say preventing more people from getting sick should be the more important factor lifting restrictions, while 33% say it should be preventing an economic onturn. 49% of independents, 80% of democrats say the health concerns should be the presiding factor when saying when to reopen, 54% say the economy should matter more. and the majority say they do not support states opening some businesses according to "the washington post"/university of maryland poll we first told you about yesterday. here are those numbers, 80%, movie theaters should not reopen. 78% say gyms should remain closed. 47% believe nail salons and dine-in restaurants should not open their doors, 70% want gun

stores to remain closed and 69% say barbershops and hair salons should not reopen. so dr. emanuel, you have the evidence from the american people, not just democrats, not just progressives, but americans, that they're concerned going back too quickly means more people will get sick. there are obviously everything in the background is about the economy. the terrible unemployment numbers, we will get one another tomorrow around this time. you have the economic growth slowing. the second quarter numbers will be terrible. everyone knows that. everyone wants to get back to work. but it appears, even if the president isn't, the american people are listening to the doctors on this. >> yes, it is remarkable. a lot of studies have shown that the american people began physical distancing, began staying at home well before the shelter-in-place orders were put in place in most states.

even states that didn't put them in place, americans began physical distancing in interaction with people. the american public has been listening to this and responding. i would note that the opening of things like hair salons, barbershops, gyms, goes against the president's own opening plan. phase one does not include opening those kinds of facilities and yet we can see in texas with governor abbott and other places they're rushing to open the kind of businesses that even the president's own plan says should be opened later, only after you have a decline. by the way, that plan had certain metrics, one of the most he more than metrics is they have to have a decline in the number of cases for 14 days. and that clearly wasn't the case in georgia, not the case in texas and around the country in most places is not going to be the case. so we have this disconnect between what public requires and the economy. and i would say to those

governors who -- and the president, who keep saying we have to reopen the economy, you can reopen businesses but unless you have demand, unless customers are coming, unless the american public is willing to shop, you're not going to have much economic activity and you're not going to compromise the public health benefits of keeping people at home and physical distancing just with a few people going out. that contradiction is going to make it harder to recover and much more likely we're going have a second severe wave coming in the summer or fall. i think that's what public health officials are worried about. coming up on "morning joe" -- the second-ranking democrat in the u.s. senate, minority whip dick durbin joins the conversation. but, first, one of his colleagues, james lankford of oklahoma, will talk about the response to the pandemic next on "morning joe." - [spokeswoman] meet the ninja foodi grill.

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welcome back to "morning joe," as we look at a live picture of a rainy wap toll building in washington, and where we find the republican senator from oklahoma, james lankford. senator, good to see you. i want to ask you about your state, ready to start phase one

opening friday. do you feel the governor is going the right way to slowly begin to open the economy? >> yes, it's a slow beginning. social distancing is encouraging, telling people if they're high risk not to get out, this is not the time to engage and not try to quote/unquote open nonessential businesses. the problem is when nonessential business when you're labeled that way is very difficult because if you own that business or you work at that business, it's essential to you. they're trying to be able to find ways to be able to get reopened. they don't have break rooms opened in workplaces, trying to do extra cleanings, so doing the things they need to do to start slowly reengaging this process. >> what is the responsible reopening of the economy, not just in your state but the country look like to you, senator? obviously there are a lot of public health experts that worry about getting people open in a hurry and into tight spaces and

doing things president trump wants to do, get people back to work. everyone wants that to happen, but they worry about the pace it may be starting to happen. now in your mind are you weighing the balance between public health and getting people back to work? >> i would say first off, this is a difficult decision for everyone across the globe right now. hong kong is reopening at this point. many parts of europe are reopening right now and they're trying to slowly work their way through this process. this is not just a united states issue. this is a global issue as every country and region around the world is trying to figure out how to strike that balance. main thing is nmaintain social distancing and handwashing. right now i took my mask off to go live. i'm more than six feet away from the cameraman. i will put the mask back on as soon as we're done. so to protect yourself and other people before you go home. and to help people continue high risk not engaged in the economy

because it's especially difficult for them. >> senator, the president has discussed a lot about reopening the economy. obviously the economy is going to be struggling for quite some time. nobody argues it would be great to reopen the economy. but one way to get there more safely is to have national uniformed mass testing available. do you think the president should use the defense production act to get it there, get testing in place quicker? >> yes, i think we pushed as many ways as we can to get testing. i think the big question now is rapid testing. in the beginning it was trying to get any test out there. that test may take 24, 36, 48 hours to get decisions back. sometimes longer than that depending on the part of the country you live in. we need rapid tests 5 to 15 minutes, so any hospital can get a rapid turnaround. the key is not just some

testing, it's fast testing to be able to determine how you engage. you can't go to the hospital now without getting some kind of testing. if you're getting testing 48 hours before, that's very different than when you walk through the door, we're going to test you immediately to be able to determine what's happening right now in your system rather than what's happening two days from your system. >> do you think the president, do you think the defense production act would be the best way to get there? >> i think whatever it takes to get there. i don't know if there's a certain way to get there. abbott labs, lots of folks are dialing up, doing a lot of manufacturing at this point. that's a good thing. we are seeing people do a lot of overtime to do production. whatever we can do to help press this, we should press it. >> willie? >> senator, we know oklahomans, like many americans, are having trouble getting either the ppp loans they applied for or even uninsured claims they have filed

over the last six weeks. how focused are you and is it any better to get that money into the hands, massive sum of money that passed through the united states congress, to get small businesses the loenans th need? >> it's actually been a chaotic start on it. we saw the law pass and seven days later it's implemented in addition wide in lending institutions. incredibly pass dial-up. my state alone has come in with ten protection programs and tens of thousands have took advantage in my state. it's very helpful to be able to stabilize small business, nonprofits, to at least allow them to be able to keep their people from having to go to unemployment. that was the feature of the paycheck protection program. we actually helped design this thing, it was to try to help guard our unemployment system because we knew there's no way the states have enough capacity to be able to have enough room to be able to get the people

through this system. we can do paycheck protection program. people wouldn't have to go to unemployment, but we've seen the 30 million plus go into unemployment anyway from a lot of businesses all over the country, but we've also seen literally about 4.5 million businesses also take advantage of the paycheck protection program. so bumpy and all, there are a lot of people getting access to those dollars right now. >> senator mike barnicle has a question. mike? >> senator lankford, it's been more than a month since the united states has had fewer than 1,000 deaths per day due to the virus. and the virus grows at a daily rate of in between 2% and 4% nationwide. and yet there has been disturbing anecdotal evidence, some found in polls that have been taken, that show an increasing number of people don't believe the virus is a threat as many other people believe it to be that way.

what is your sense of people in oklahoma what they think about the press of a virus that has not hit your state as hard as some other states? >> yes. so my state's right around the 300 death total. we have a population of about 4 million people. so we've not seen as many deaths in our state. we maintain social distancing. we've been pretty aggressive on those areas and we're starting to recover a little bit fast tore try er to try to reengage with the economy. the challenge is you know people with the flu or personally had the flu. with the coronavirus, you don't know as many people if you have it if you're in an area like us so you don't know the direct effect. so we're very dependent on the news to actually carry the story on that and it's difficult for the news to carry the human interest story bays they'ecause trying to maintain the social distancing message out.

you may say to one person, you have no symptoms and another person may spend weeks and weeks on a respirator and it may take their life, no matter what they due to try to maintain it. so we need to say, you may be carrying the virus at some point and you have to guard other people but if you get it, you have to be able to treat this consistency. the challenge we have is every week or so there's a new set of symptoms comes out. as we found out, this virus does not present itself the same way to every person every time, so it's a unique medical challenge as well to diagnose and see it in the person. initially it was short nness of breath and cough and now we know a lot of other symptoms may show. >> senator, who in the white house working on this do you turn to for accurate information that allows you to give guidance on this for your state? >> obviously cdc, dr. fauci, dr. birx, get a chance to turn to the basic data that everyone turns to.

the entire country is having to make their own decisions, mayors, governors and such for what's happening in their area but everyone is asking the question, what does the cdc say? where are they? what have they proposed at this point? and try to be able to make decisions. my state, like every other state, is looking at the cdc with the clear guidelines and also an eye to the rest of the world, what are they trying to do in different parts of the world as they experiment with this as well. >> senator james lankford, thank you very very much. up next, a senator from the other side of the aisle. number two ranking senate democrat dick durbin joins us. keep it right here on "morning joe." lactaid is 100% real milk, just without the lactose.

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to be unsuccessful, which means death. which means death. the house, they should be ashamed of themselves, and frankly, the democrats should be ashamed. they don't want us to succeed. they want us to fail so they can win an election, which they're not going to win. >> joining us now, the second ranking member of the senate, member of the judiciary whip, senator dick durbin from illinois. senator, what do we even say about what we just heard from the president? i don't even know how to fashion a question around that. he's impossible. i don't know if he actually wants this situation to go into a positive direction. but do you feel that fauci and others should be able to testify before those committees? >> of course, the president always responds whatever the issue, it's all about him. it's all about trump haters.

i know dr. fauci and i have known him for over 20 years. he's a total professional. he's respected not just in the united states but around the world. he's going to appear before a committee, whether it's in the house or the senate, take his oath and sit down and tell the truth as he knows it. i have no question about his character or integrity. the fact that the president does not want him to appear before the house of representatives because of a democratic majority or speaker pelosi speaks more to the president in his own view of himself than it does to dr. fauci's credentials. >> so you were called back to washington, obviously putting yourself and your colleagues, who were all called back to washington, at risk. so obviously to deal with this national catastrophe, the coronavirus, correct? >> no, and that's the disgusting part of this thing. listen, i was elected to this post. there are things i can do and should do as senator in that position that others can't do. and when called on, i need to be

here. but i should be here for the things that count. here we are in the third day, hundreds of peopling teaming around the u.s. capitol because mitch mcconnell is calling it n you should be talking about the coronavirus. not at all. we should be considering the storage of testing equipment. we should be talking about the profiteering going on when whether it comes to protective equipment. we should talk about hazard pay for workers risking their lives every day, contact workers available in days to come to track it, we're doing none of it. none of it. it's all about senator mcconnell calling us on a hear for his favorite judge in kentucky that he wants to promote to the next highest level. >> senator durbin, what is your objection to the judge has been put up? he's a favorite, obviously, of

mitch mcconnell. i guess you don't like his politics for one thing, but why wouldn't he make a good judge? >> president trump has nominated a lot of people to serve in the federal judiciary. it's a lifetime appointment. it's very important. nine have been found unqualified to serve by the american bar association. this judge, justin walker in the state of kentucky, was found unqualified to serve as a trial judge. i was shocked last night, the american bar association came out and announced that he was qualified to serve at the next level, the second highest court of the land, d.c. court of appeals, but this judge in kentucky with barely six months under his belt, is being promoted to the second highest court in the land primarily because he's the political choice of mitch mcconnell to be on the supreme court. >> so, senator, let me ask you bigger picture then about the reason you think you should be in washington, the question of coronavirus and what to do about

it. your governor in the state of illinois, governor pritzker, announced yesterday phased reopening of the state, very slowly, of course, as senator lankford was talking about in the state of oklahoma. what's the smartest way to go about this? how soon should the people of illinois be going back into their places of work? should they be going to summer camp? should they be going to school in the fall? how are you looking at this? >> willie, i don't know the answer to that. to find that answer, i'll do the same thing governor pritzker's going and that is turn to medical experts, researchers and scientists. let them establish the standards that can tell them when it is safer to start taking more efforts or opening more of the economy than we do today. but we're not going to be listening to the political -- the political experts or those who are marching in the streets. it's more important for us to listen to those who are medical experts. i think the american people feel the same way. despite what the president says, this conflicting message on one hand, be careful, don't open

things and then he applauds the governors opening them more quickly than others. the american people said overwhelmingly when asked, we're going to follow the medical advice. we trust it. this president brags about being so smart and being such a great person to decide drugs and treatments and so forth, and when it comes right down to it, the american people don't accept him as a mentor or role model. >> senator, last week president trump took executive action to ortd meat processing plants to stay open. amid concerns of the coronavirus. the unions were worried about this. is he jeopardizing the lives of the workers in these plants? >> isn't it interesting that the president would not take his authority under the law to order the companies to start producing protective equipment for health care workers but turn and said he's going to mandate the opening of meat processing

plants? i know a little bit about this, maybe a little more than some. i worked for 12 months in a packing house in east st. louis when i was going to college and it hasn't changed a lot over the years. it's dirty, dangerous, hot work, shoulder to shoulder and we found some 5,000 meatpacking employees have come down with this virus. they're the hot spots in downstate illinois and almost 20 have died that we counted most recently. now the president wants to mandate their opening. luckily the companies i have talked to, meat processing companies, thought better about it. they want to make sure these employees are safe and they can go back to work at a time when it won't jeopardize their health. we're going to hold them to it. i think that has to be the standard and i'm working with united food commercial workers, the union for most of these, to make certain they live up to that promise. >> senator, there are many who believe that in order to get rapid testing in place, the president should use the defense

production act to stream line the process and get the testing quicker to the people. and that his not doing so at this pointp amounts to negligence. is that going too far? >> no, i don't think it is. i will be very frank with you. we cannot safely reopen this economy without dramatic increases in testing. that is just key to it. and we're still lagging behind many places in the world who have responded more quickly and more effectively. we've got to have more testing. this president has the authority to make that happen and yet he's not using it. he's just using the political pulpit to call for people to start reopening the economy. we need to have the means to make sure that when we do it, we do it safely and testing is key to that. >> senator dick durbin, thank you very, very much. up next, we will reveal the new endorsement for former vice president joe biden. but, first, payroll company adp just released its

unemployment estimate ahead of friday's jobs report. the company predicts the u.s. loss a staggering 20.2 million jobs last month. the highest ever reported by the company. we know more than 30 million americans have applied for unemployment applied for benefits since mid march. we get the numbers tomorrow. the official jobless report on friday. we're back in a moment. t on friday we're back in a moment inspiratn to installation. like way more vanities perfect for you. nice. way more unique fixtures and tiles. pairing. ♪ nice. way more top brands in sinks and faucets. way more ways to rule your renovation. nice! on any budget, with free shipping. wayfair. way more than furniture.

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i just think that as more and more americans come to understand what this is all about is a super-proposition -- who do you love? who do you love? and will you be loyal to the person you love? that's what people are finding out. what all marriages at the loot are about, whether they're marriages of lesbians or gaymen

or heterosexuals. i am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, are entitled to the same exact civil liberties, and quite frankly, i don't see much of a distinction beyond that. today marks the eight-year anniversary since joe biden made the comments when set in motion the obama administration's support of marriage. alfonso, you all have an announcement, endorsement. who are you endorsing for president of the nuns united states? >> good more, mika. the human rights campaign is announcing today we are

endorsing joe biden to be the next president of the united states. joe biden will be the president who fights for lgbtq people, he fights for marginalized communities no matter the political cost. eight years ago joe biden stood up for our communities in support of marriage equality. he solidified a pro-equality majority, and he continues to stand with us. he supported marriage equality at a time when both his and president obama's reelection were on the line. he made this decision when few people at the time saw it as the right political decision, but he knew it was the right moral decision, so we are proud to endorse him today to be the next president of the united states. >> alfonso, people forget that was only eight years ago, but that was a bold position even for a democratic vice president

to take. he was out in front of president obama himself. what more would you like to see from joe biden? what is top of list of your agenda as we move through this campaign? >> well, we have a piece of legislation called the equality act. the equality act would effectively protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people from discrimination. they are at risk from being filed from their jobs simply because of who they are, and we currently have no federal law that explicitly protects people. joe biden has said publicly and to us directly that the equality act will be a priority in his administration a in addition we know that transgenders of our community are suffering high ratings of violence, last year alone 26 transgender people of color were murdered, were killed

in this country. this year alone we have at least ten transgender people and gender non-conforming people who have been killed. vice president biden has made a commitment to address these issues to make sure we are at the front lines of addressing violence that's affecting marginalized communities, including members of the transgender community. of course, this goes without saying, but the trump administration is looking to roll back our rights. they have banned tran gender troops from the military. the trump administration has effectively said if you're a federal contractor, you should be allow to do fire a gay, lesbian, transgender or queer person. the trump administration has said it wants to change the rules so if they want to foster or adopt a child, an agency should be allowed to

discriminate, should be allowed to discriminate against single women, discriminate against religious minorities. so we have in joe biden someone who is a fighter for equality, someone who will protect marginalized communities, and we know that, willie, that the majority of voters support equality. we have 57 million pro-equality voters in this country, voters who prioritize lgbtq issues at the ballot box. they are key to at the vice president becoming president of the united states. i'm joining joe biden tonight in an endorsement at 6:30. before you go, alfonsalfons biden came on the show to address concerns about accusations against him by tara reade, the human rights campaign of course is about equality for all people.

does anything about her accusations concern you in any way? >> well, i think, mika, it is absolutely critical that we listen to survivors who have for too long had their voices unilaterally dismissed. survivors should be heard, survivors should be listened to and taken serious lid. when they allegations come forward, we must give them a full evaluation, but in the meantime we also must mobilize to defeat donald trump and mike pence. we cannot afford for donald trump to win another election. another four years is not tenable for people like me, for lgbt people across this country no marginalized communities who every sing the day are wonders whether or not they can be fired from their job. lgbtq kid who is considering suicide or another trans black

woman who is worried by walking outside of her apartment. this election is we are looking to make sure we elect 'person who will protect marginalized communities. >> alfonso david, thank you very, very much. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there. eye stephanie ruhle. it is wednesday, may 6th. here are the facts this hour. the number of coronavirus cases in america has now spiked to more than 1.2 million people. put another way, if all those people were brought together, they would make up the tenth largest city in our country. more than 72,000 people have died. we are seeing wildly different approaches to this pandemic. in new york where cases are going down, they closed the

subways overnight for