happy to have you here. happy monday. one week from today is memorial day. weekdays versus weekends is a distinction that's kind of losing it its difference right now, i know. holidays versus non-holiday workdays is also a divide that is getting a little bit fuzzy. but even still, even in this new weird reality that we are living in where it's hard to tell the days from one another, memorial day is still a big deal. it's one of the most important days on the american calendar. it's when we remember americans who have given their lives fighting for this country. it is always a big deal.

this year it will be even more somber than usual with over 90,000 americans killed over the past 2 1/2 months by the coronavirus, with over 1.5 million americans infected with the virus. but memorial day this year, again, one week from today, is also going to be more notable than normal this year because memorial day this year is also the day by which vice president pence said this whole thing, this whole epidemic, was going to be over, done and dusted in the united states. vice president pence is, of course, not just the vice president. he's the head of the white house coronavirus task force. even as he went to the mayo clinic and talked to coronavirus patients while not wearing a mask, even when he caused all the senior political leadership of the state of iowa to have to go into quarantine after he visited with them with no mask and no gloves literally hours after one of his top staffers tested positive, despite all of

the stuff he has done in public, vice president pence nevertheless gets credited with being less [ whistle ] than the president when it comes to the epidemic. but i think this should be constantly revised because for one thing, here he is announcing on the geraldo rivera radio show that by memorial day this year, by a week from today, this would be done. it should be all wrapped up by this time next week. >> i think honestly if you look at the trends today, that i think by memorial day weekend, we will largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us. >> well, from your lips to god's ears. >> your lips to god's ears, mr. vice president. i think honestly if you look at the trends, i think by memorial day weekend, we will largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us. wouldn't that be awesome if this thing was going to be over next

week? this thing is not going to be over next week. i mean as ridiculous as that is, though, coming from the vice president while he is running the coronavirus task force for the white house, that thinking and that specificity about when it's going to be over by turns out to be kind of an important piece of the puzzle in terms of us figuring out, us understanding why our national response to the epidemic has been so terrible over time. i mean, look, here's a really simple way to look at what's going on with us as a country right now. this is total deaths from coronavirus in our country over time in the united states. the red line there is the deaths just in the tri-state area, so that's no, new jersey, connecticut. new york was the epicenter. the tri-state area got walloped, it dominated in deaths for the initial weeks of the epidemic. so that's the red line there.

you see its shape sort of flattening out. the blue line there is the deaths from coronavirus in the rest of the country, which surpassed the tri-state area about a week ago and is still just climbing on up. so what -- this is a very simple idea, right? but what this is showing is that the first worst-hit areas in the country are finally starting to get better. but the rest of the country now is not only catching up to how bad those first three states were, the rest of the country is now getting inexorably worse. it's even easier to see when you don't look at deaths but instead look at total cases. the red line is the tri-state area, new york, new jersey, and connecticut. and the other line, the blue line, is the whole rest of the country other than those three states. you see the tri-state area flattening out as they start to get a handle on their epidemic. and the rest of the country is just a ramp straight up. this is what's going on in our country right now. one epidemic is finally

flattening and waning. that's in the first hardest-hit part of the country. and the rest of the country is going great guns, not letting up at all. that's not the kind of graph, that's not the kind of growth you would want or expect to see in a country where people are being told to open up, it's all behind us, everything's fine. here's another look at the same situation. this is the list of where the outbreak is worst now, which is something that "the new york times" has been tracking on a daily basis. this is new cases per capita over the past two weeks. this is the same portrait of the same country, just painted a different way. number five, where the outbreak is worst now, new cases over the last two weeks, worst is pine bluff, arkansas. number four is st. cloud, minnesota. number three is amarillo texas. number two, sioux city, iowa. the number one worst place in the country in terms of where the outbreak is the worst right now is gallup, new mexico. that's where the epidemic is worst right now in terms of the

case numbers piling up over the past two weeks. it's a whole swath of the country. that's not one place where it's bad and everybody else is all right. that's the whole country, right? you could also just look at where the case numbers are growing the fastest right now, and it's a similar portrait. the top five there is arizona, texas, north carolina, north carolina, and then texas again. if the epidemic is bad and worsening the fastest in all of these heartland places, right, growing this fast in all of these heartland and southern towns, why is there all this political pressure that now is the time to open up, particularly in republican-controlled states? well, it doesn't come from nowhere. it comes from a very specific place in washington. it comes from a specific kind of magical thinking that we've had out of the trump white house, which is traceable to a very specific decision that they made. and that is what has brought us to this weird place where vice president pence is fantasizing

out loud on the radio with geraldo rivera that by this time next week, this whole thing will be in the rearview mirror. we'll be looking back on all this and laughing, right? this is what's brought us to the point where the president has been saying it's all just going to go away right away like magic, and we don't even need a vaccine because by the time we have a vaccine, it will be all gone by then. why are the president and the vice president saying those things? why are they telling everybody to open up in the country as if our curves are the opposite of what they actually are? this has sort of been hiding in plain sight. "the washington post" reported this out at the beginning of this month, and we are now seeing it come to fruition as the deadlines set by the white house from their magical thinking that they've been working on for the past month have now started to come to pass. this is from "the washington post" just a couple of weeks ago. quote, the epidemiological models under review in the white house situation room in late march were bracing. in a best-case scenario, it showed the novel coronavirus was

likely to kill more than 100,000 americans. president trump was apprehensive about so much carnage on his watch yet also impatient to reopen the economy, and he wanted data to justify doing so. so the white house considered its own analysis. a small team led by kevin hassett, former chairman of trump's council on economic advisers, with no background in infectious diseases, quietly built an econo mettic model to guide. white house aides interpreted the analysis as pre-diktsing that the daily death count would peak in mid-april before dropping off substantially and that there would be far fewer fatalities than nationally seen. this model was embraced inside the west wing by the president's son-in-law, jared kushner, and other powerful aides helping to oversee the government's pandemic response. the model affirmed their own skepticism about the severity of the virus and bolstered their case to shift the focus to the economy, which they firmly believed would determine whether

trump wins a second term. by the end of april, though, with more americans dying in that one month than in all of the vietnam war, it became clear that the kevin hassett econometric model was too good to be true. a former senior administration official briefed on the data described it as, quote, a catastrophic miss. the president's course, however, would not be changed. trump and kushner nevertheless began to declare a great victory against the virus while urging america to start reopening businesses and schools. they didn't like the real models, and so they invented their own model inside the trump white house about a month ago. and that model from a white house economist with no background whatsoever in health, let alone infectious disease, told them that this thing was soon to be done. it was going to be over. what did they call this? they called this an econometric

model created by kevin hassett, this economist with no background in infectious diseases. that was "the washington post" on may 2nd. two days later, white house officials gave this model a name. quote, white house officials have been relying on models including a, quote, cubic model prepared by trump adviser and economist kevin hassett and the council of economic advisers. what is this cubic model that's telling them we should get the whole country open right away because this thing is going away magically on its own and soon? it will be in our rearview mirror by the time we get to memorial day. what is this cubic model? nobody really knows, but "the washington post" did get multiple white house sources to tell them what that model said. quote, the model shows deaths dropping precipitously in may and essentially going to zero by may 15th. zero deaths by may 15th. may 15th was this past friday, three days ago. american deaths from coronavirus

did not go to zero by may 15th. why are they calling this a cubic model? why did the white house decide this was the model they were going to follow? that seems obvious. what is a cubic model? where did they get this? nobody really knows. a cubic function is a mathematical concept that has nothing to do with how viruses work or contagion works. it is a sort of a math way to put a meaningless line over a bunch of numbers on a graph that makes the numbers look like they'll drop to zero or less than zero right after they peak. you can do that. you can draw a line like that on any amount of data on an excel spreadsheet without having any understanding of infectious diseases or contagion whatsoever. and i'm sure it's very comforting if you decide to believe if that line is a real thing. but that line isn't a real thing. it's just a thing you can put on a graph. kevin hassett and the council of economic advisers eventually

tweeted out this sharpie -- look at this. this isn't somebody else drawing on it. this is actually what they tweeted out. this sharpie looking thing to defend how rigorous their model was. but this is their model created by an economist that the white house used to base decisions on reopening around the country. but it is literally just a thing they made up about what they hoped might happen with the epidemic that has nothing to do with real epidemiology. it said the deaths would be zero by may 15th, and so they cranked to get the whole country open, to take advantage of the fact that deaths would be zero. jason fuhrman was chairman of the economic council under president obama. he said in response to this from the trump white house, quote, this might be the lowest point in the 74-year history of the council of economic advisers. the stakes on the epidemiological questions are so

high that this utterly superficial and misleading modeling has no place whatsoever in any discussion of the government's response. he continued, quote, faux expertise is even worse than ignorance. to the degree that this crowded out input from genuine experts and confused other participants into thinking that the council of economic advisers or other economists had any sort of real or valid model of the epidemic, it is really and truly terrible. but here we are in the world in created to some degree by policies pushed by a white house that decided to believe this model that they invented out of whole cloth. here we are three days after the white house's imaginary model made by their economist friend said that u.s. deaths would be at zero. and of course u.s. deaths are not at zero. we have the biggest coronavirus epidemic in the world. u.s. deaths continue their

inexorable climb over 90,000 at this point. the only question right now in terms of the milestones here is whether we're going to hit 100,000 dead americans by the beginning of next month, or are we going to hit it sooner? but policy in the united states, policy from the white house, policy aped and praised particularly by republican governors around the country, was created at the white house on the basis of that deaths will go to zero fantasy. and it really did lead the head of the government's task force to say on the radio that this would be done and over by this time next week. it really has driven the presidential led national imperative to open back up. the deaths are about to go to zero. anybody who says otherwise is just a democrat. and so we're opening up all over the country. and, you know, this isn't a national story because these

deaths happen in local places and governors are being responsible for what their policies are going to be state by state to a certain degree. but as we open up, as the imperative to open up is led from the white house every day, every day all over the country there are stories like this one. as texas reopens, coronavirus cases are increasing while testing misses benchmarks. minnesota's case numbers and deaths rise as stay-at-home order ends. this from arkansas. with 130 new covid-19 cases reported on thursday, arkansas saw one of its biggest jumps in confirmed cases since the virus reached the state in march. arkansas businesses began to reopen under lighter covid-19 restrictions last week. it is understandable to want this thing to be over, but just proclaiming it so doesn't get you there. and, you know, there's obviously still a lot going on every day. some of it still harder to

believe than is comfortable for this far into this epidemic. today a reuters investigation showed that the cdc's national numbers on coronavirus cases in jails and prison, those cdc numbers are dramatically, dramatically wrong, dramatically way too low. cdc official numbers on infections in meatpacking plants also appear to be dramatically wrong, dramatically low. and cdc numbers on testing in this country appear to be dramatically wrong. the cdc has now started posting national numbers on testing that happen to vary wildly and radically and in unpredictable ways from the numbers you can get from the 50 states. the cdc has got bad numbers on meatpacking plants, on jails and prisons, on testing overall. that's bad. the cdc is the public health gold standard in our country. they used to be the gold standard for public health worldwide. but if all their numbers writ

large and writ small are garbage, that is going to be bad not only for now in terms of making good decisions but for the long run in terms of how this thing is handled and who is held accountable. today also the president announced somewhat blithely with a sort of gleam in his eye that he is taking personally this unproven malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, as well as zinc. he says he's taking it because a doctor wrote him a letter, and the doctor who wrote him a letter told him it really works. and so the president is taking that now. at least he says he is, and the white house today is affirming that the president really is taking that now, even after multiple studies were stopped because of danger to patients taking it and no provable benefit to patients taking it. even after the fda, the actual fda formally cautioned, quote, against use of hydroxychloroquine for covid-19 outside of the hospital setting or a clinical trial due to the

risk of heart rhythm problems. don't we know from the president's relatively meager personal health history that he's got some heart issues? so now he's just taking drugs that are off label and unproven for coronavirus that he says he doesn't have despite the fact that one of its known complications is heart trouble? and the white house medical office is like, yeah, he said he wanted to, so. and the president is kind of advertising this as his approach to this public health crisis now. we also got intriguing news, worrying news today that a number of sailors on board the u "uss theodore roosevelt," sailors who had tested positive and then recovered it. they all initially tested positive and then tested negative at least twice, a number of those sailors, more than a dozen of them have now tested positive again even though they tested negative twice before. positive and then negative,

making it seem like they'd had it and they'd cleared it. and now they've got it again. that raises a whole bunch of different worrying questions about, you know, the testing for one. is the testing showing false positives or false negatives? but if the testing is all right, then there's also the worrying prospect that this might mean that people who got coronavirus once before might be reinfectible so they could get it again despite all the hopes that we have that at least being infected with it once might render you somewhat immune to being able to get it again. so there's a lot going on. we're going to get some expert advice on some of these questions and worries in just a moment. but big picture, the more we understand about what's going on in our country, i know it sucks to hear it. forgive me, but things really aren't getting better. we do have the worst epidemic in the world. and, yeah, the tri-state area that got it initially, they have started to bend that curve down,

and there are a few isolated states that have started to bend that curve down. but by and large, writ large, big picture, outside of that tri-state area, the country's epidemic is getting worse, and it's getting worse not on the coasts, it's getting worse not in the biggest cities in the country. it's getting worse all over the heartland of america, and that's real. a couple of weeks ago we showed you this photo, which we received from the daughter of this woman. her name is tin aye. she worked for 12 years at the jbs beef plant in greeley, colorado. ms. aye is 60 years old. her family says she felt ill at work. she went to the on site clinic at jbs. they told her she was fine to stay at work. she tried to do so. but ultimately she had to go home and she ended up checking herself into the hospital. she ended up on a ventilator. yesterday ms. aye became the

eighth worker from jbs in greeley to die from coronavirus. her daughter gave birth to ms. aye's first grandson just as tin went into the hospital. she was never able to spend time with her first grandson before she died. her son is a lance corporal in the united states marine corps. he is deployed right now in the pacific. he was not able to come home and see his mother before she died. the greeley, colorado, beef plant where ms. aye apparently contracted the virus that has now killed her and where these seven additional workers have now died, you might remember that that is the plant that promised that they would test all of their workers before they reopened. they shut down amid signs that they had a major outbreak. vice president pence talked about them from the white house. they said they were going to get testing for all of their team members before they reopened the plant. then something happened with the jbs plant in greeley, colorado, and they went back on those

promises and decided to reopen without testing everyone. well, tonight we can report that what they're doing at jbs is that they are screening their workers now for symptoms. they're giving their workers instructions that they shouldn't work if they don't feel well, and it's true. nobody should be going to work if they don't feel well. but that also shouldn't count as screening workers for coronavirus before they go into that plant. given the hundreds and thousands of cases we've had in meatpacking plants, screening workers at those plants for fever before they go in isn't going to help keep the virus out of those plants. you can have coronavirus and be infectious to others with zero symptoms including zero fever. but even that place where they've had all of those workers killed, they're screening for symptoms and otherwise come on in. we can also report tonight that according to two sources, the huge smithfield meatpacking plant in sioux falls, south

dakota, they've also made testing available to their workers. they've encouraged their workers to get tested, but workers at the smithfield plant in sioux falls south dakota, where more than 1,000 cases are attributable to that outbreak there as of weeks ago, we can report tonight that workers at that smithfield plant in sioux falls, now that the plant is reopened, they're being told to report to work and get on the line and start working inside that plant while they wait for their test results. so they're being encouraged to be tested, right? they're getting tested, but before they know if they're positive or not, they're going into the plant and starting to work. and the result there we have on authority from two sources is that workers at that plant in sioux falls are getting positive test results while they're at work already, and only then are they being sent home. like i said, there's over 1,300 positive cases associated with workers at that plant already.

they're telling people to go in and get swabbed and get tested and then get on the line and go to work. the science is getting further from our national response over time. the science and our policy responses both when it comes to individual workplaces and when it comes to our national policies, the science and what we're doing are divorcing further every day. the chasm is getting wider. as the epidemic gets worse, you would at least hope that the scientific foundation of our actions would become more solid. instead, it is becoming thinner and thinner and weaker and dumber with each passing day. we're going to take that on here directly next.

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in our new coronavirus world, a temperature check may soon be the way you're allowed to get on an airplane in the united states. "the wall street journal" reporting that tsa may start temperature screenings in u.s. airports before people are allowed to board flights, which is something. but in terms of the science of this, since people can still be positive and infectious to others without having a fever, without having any symptoms, is that actually a good idea in u.s. airports? but it's not just something that is maybe starting at airports. being screened for fever is now also how you get put back on the factory line or not at some of the big meatpacking plants in

this country, including one with a huge outbreak and now eight workers dead in greeley, colorado. in sioux falls, south dakota, the union tells us they have had 1,300 positive tests among workers at that plant so far, the smithfield south dakota meatpacking plant -- excuse me, sioux falls, south dakota, meatpacking plant. at that plant they are testing asymptomatic workers, but the union says workers without symptoms are sent to work while they're waiting for their test results, which means that some of them are going into work awaiting their positive test result, potentially spreading the virus without knowing it inside a plant where we know it's almost uncontrollable. initially relying on symptoms as a way to find this virus might have made sense before we really understood more about the virus' dynamics. but now that we know that huge numbers of people can be positive and infectious with no fever and no symptoms, why are we still doing that?

why would we be starting to do that on a broader scale now? and what about places are are finding outbreaks of the virus but officials are not reporting it, so the public doesn't know? in arizona, for example, they're not reporting where nursing home outbreaks are in arizona because the governor says it would be bad for business to report where outbreaks are in individual nursing homes. bad for business? how good is it for business for nobody to know? in iowa, they're not reporting outbreaks at any workplaces, including meatpacking plants, until 10% or more of the workforce there is infected. isn't that backwards? why would you do that? why would you wait for the problem to get that big before you told anyone instead of trying to get on it when it was still potentially a manageable problem? the longer we coexist with this virus, the more we learn. and sometimes the more we reali realize what we don't know. how can we make the best use of

the lessons we have learned? are there simple steps we can take to make big gains? is our policy keeping pace with what we are learning about the virus, or is my perception correct that actually the science and our policy is diverging more even now than it was in the early days? joining us now is dr. amish adalja. thank you so much for talking to us tonight. i really appreciate you being here. >> sure. thanks for having me. >> first let me just ask you if anything that i have said thus far strikes you as wrong or backwards or if i'm already asking dumb questions. >> no, i definitely think the points you made about not notifying which nursing homes have outbreaks, which workplaces have outbreaks, that's the exact opposite of what you want to do. you want full transparency. you want the public to be completely informed so they can take the best action. that's definitely something we need to emphasize.

the other points you made about fever screening being not that panace panacea, that is something i completely agree with. >> in terms of the fever screening, i feel like when we saw initial reports that walmart and other large companies were going to start fever screening for their employees, it seemed like the first, initial sense that a big organization with a lot of equity for this crisis was at least starting to take seriously the possibility their employees were going to be bringing it into the workplace. now that we've learned so much more about asymptomatic transmission and just the number of people who can be -- the proportion of people who can be positive while asymptomatic, it's made me rethink whether or not those were good moves initially. it's made me worry that maybe fever screening is a kind of security feeder that makes people feel more confident than they should as if it were a real screening when it's really not. >> that is definitely true about fever screening because there are many people that don't have

fevers. people can take tylenol and ibuprofen and that can suppress the fever. there are airports around the country even in a non-pandemic time that have done fever screening and haven't gotten much value. you really have to -- if you're going to be screening people, you really have to think about all the other symptoms? not just do you have a fever? sore throat, cough, muscle aches and pains, shortness of breath. all of those types of things are what you have to use when you're screening. the question about asymptomatic transmission is one that's still very controversial. we still don't quite understand what the context is when asymptomatic transmission occurs. we know it happens in households, but we don't quite understand how common it is. we know it does occur and it's scientific questions we need to answer about asymptomatic transmission when we start thinking about how do you screen people going back to work in meatpacking plants, hospitals, other places like that.

>> does it make sense from a medical perspective, scientific perspective, for people who work in high-risk environments like a meatpacking plant to be tested and then to be told to go to work on the line while they're awaiting their test results? >> no. we know meatpacking plants are a place where it's a congregate setting setting. it's indoor. so we want to make sure those places are safe. if you're giving a test, you probably should have that person stay away from the plant until you get the result back and then let them work. that's the only way the testing actually makes sense because of what might happen in a place where you can't social distance. >> dr. adalja, let me ask you one last question about something i find concerning and intriguing in the news over the past few days. it's this news that first it was five, then it was eight. now it's apparently 13 sailors from the "uss theodore roosevelt" who tested positive,

who were believed to have recovered. all of these sailors reportedly had at least two negative tests after initially having had a positive test. but now these sailors have tested positive again. looking at that, do you think that is probably an artifact of the testing not being that great, and so maybe we had false negatives or false positives, or is this potentially a window into the prospect that people can be re-infected after they've cleared the virus and recovered from an initial infection? >> my best analysis of this is probably a testing artifact. we know that people can toggle between positive and negative when they're near the limit of detection. we know people can cough up or have remnants of the virus that can be detected by the test. so i would want to know a lot more about these cases. but there's no strong evidence that you can be re-infected in a short period of time after infection. we've seen this in south korea where they actually were able to try to cultivate the virus and they couldn't actually grow it. so it may just be non-infectious, and it may be

the test posititoggling between positive and negative. >> doctor, thank you for helping us put some facts on those news stories today. i feel like the scientific basis of a lot of what we are talking about and deciding as a country right now is getting really wobbly. thanks. >> thank you. >> much more news ahead. stay with us. h us give me your hand! i can save you... lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ treating cancer isn't just what we do, it's all we do. and now, we're able to treat more patients

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one early sign that something might be off about mike pompeo's use of government resources was just about a year into the trump administration when he was still director of the cia, "the washington post" and then cnn reported that mr. pompeo's wife for some reason had set up what amounted to her own office in the director's suite at cia headquarters as well as a support staff of cia employees to assist her. to be clear, mike pompeo's wife

did not work for the cia. she was just wife of the cia director, but that apparently got her her own cia office and her own support staff of cia employees. then after director pompeo left the cia and moved on to become secretary of state, he very quickly managed to tick off a bunch of people there at his new job as well when the middle of a u.s. government shutdown that was forcing many state department employees to work without pay, mr. pompeo brought his wife on a taxpayer-funded eight-day trip across the middle east. state department sources told cnn that at each of the stops on that trip, mrs. pompeo had her own staff and her own security personnel, a taxpayer-funded entourage for the secretary's spouse. the entourage was at one point tasked with taking mrs. pompeo to a local market to go shopping with her. but it wasn't just international trips. secretary of state and his wife made frequent trips to their home state of kansas last year

using state department funds and aircraft as mr. pompeo reportedly considered a u.s. senate run in kansas. the state department does have a lot of far flung responsibilities, not a lot of them are in kansas. the top democrat on the senate foreign affairs committee formally called for an investigation into whether secretary pompeo was violating the hatch act, which says you can't use your official taxpayer-funded government position to, you know, run a stealth senate campaign for yourself. but it has just kept evolving over time. who can forget, for example, the whistle-blower who came forward to allege that the pompeos were using their taxpayer-funded diplomatic security agents to pick up their dog from the groomer and to go collect their chinese food for dinner. cnn reported, quote, prompted agents to lament that they are at times viewed as uber eats with guns. not to mention the full-time security deal for mrs. pompeo

which agents were allegedly told to keep secret. immediately after president trump fired the state department's inspector general late on friday night, right after we got off the air, we learned two things in rapid success. one is that mike pompeo had personally asked trump to fire the inspector general for the state department and, two, we learned that that inspector general was in the midst of investigating mike pompeo over some of these allegations of misusing government funds and resources and personnel for his own personal and family needs. the chair of the house foreign affairs committee and the top democrat on the senate foreign affairs committee said explicitly this weekend that it's their understanding that secretary pompeo asked for this inspector general to be fired because the inspector general was investigating him personally. that guy's investigating me? all right. well, that guy's got to be fired. that's just about as bad as it gets in terms of bad governance, right? no. no, it's just scratching the

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salonpas. it's good medicine. hisamitsu. when the state department inspector general was abruptly fired late on friday night, the fourth inspector general to be fired in six weeks, we already knew that he had reportedly been investigating allegations that secretary of state mike pompeo had been doing things like making state department staffers walk his dog and pick up his dry cleaning and get his chinese food for dinner. that's an investigation we knew about already. this morning we woke to news of another potentially more concerning investigation that that same i.g. had reportedly been working on as well. "the washington post" was first to report that at the time of his firing, the state department inspector general steve linick had almost finished an investigation into whether pompeo had illegally approved billions of dollars in arms sales to saudi arabia. the saudi arms sale was pushed through by pompeo last year over

the bipartisan objections of congress. he used a somewhat dubious emergency declaration in order to do it. republicans and democrats in congress wanted to block that arms sale because of, among other things, the saudi regime being implicated in the murder of a u.s.-based journalist named jamal khashoggi. so congress wanted to block it. they didn't want to sell the saudis billions of dollars worth of weapons. but this emergency declaration was invoked by pompeo to say, well, congress, you can't block it even if you want to. i'm going to go ahead with it without even notifying you. so the i.g. was reportedly looking into that as well, and we don't know if that investigation into the saudi arms sales was the reason that inspector general got unceremoniously fired late on friday night. but we did learn today that secretary of state pompeo refused to sit for an interview as part of that i.g. investigation and secretary of state pompeo did admit in an interview today that, yes, he's the one who told president trump to fire that inspector general. he says he was unaware that the

i.g. was investigating him, but how plausible is that? and if this new angle on the billions of dollars in saudi arms sales, if that did play a role in his firing, what does that mean that congress might do next here? joining us is connecticut senator chris murphy. it's great to see you. thank you very much for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> first of all, let me ask you if i have explained that in a way that comports with your understanding or if i've left anything important out in terms of what we know about the firing of this i.g.? >> yeah, listen, i mean mike pompeo using taxpayer-funded assistants to pick up his dry cleaning probably is fairly middling in the hierarchy of trump administration scandals. but it speaks to this broader ethos inside the state department where they just don't believe that the rules apply to

them. and the other lef ratirevelatio you described speaks to that trend line. this was last year when the state department decided to declare an emergency so that they could sell weapons to the saudis that didn't have to go through a congressional approval process. the problem was there was no emergency. they claimed that it was general iranian threats, but the iranians are always threatening the united states and our interests, and so there was no particular emergency that required them to go around congress. it was just that the weapon sales were becoming increasingly hard to defend, especially when they were being used to bomb innocent yemenis and cause more space to be created inside that country for really bad groups like al qaeda and isis. so at the time we wondered whether the real reason that they were declaring this emergency was simply to avoid embarrassment. of course that's not allowed by the statutes that they are subject to for arms sales, and now it is possible that the

inspector general was maybe going to come to that same conclusion, and it might have been part of the reason that he is no longer the inspector general. >> we have seen this state department inspector general fired under these circumstances. it is remarkable to have the secretary of state saying, yeah, i'm the one who told the president to get him out of there. we've also seen the defense department inspector general, the intelligence community inspector general, the hhs inspector general all fired, all sort of friday night news dumps trying to keep it out of the news cycle, and in pretty quick succession. is the president, with this series of firings -- is he violating not just the spirit but the letter of the law in terms of how these things are supposed to be handled? isn't he at least supposed to notify congress of why he's doing it if he does want to fire some of these folks? >> well, not only is he required to notify congress why he's doing it. he's required to give 30 days' notice so that there can be action taken by congress to protect some of these inspectors

general. listen, you know, democracies don't tend to hang around as long as ours has, and it's because, you know, it's completely natural for human beings to try to accumulate as much power as possible. and so over the years as the bureaucracy around presidents have gotten bigger and bigger we've developed additional checks and one of them is inspectors general. congress can't see everything that's happening in multi-billion dollars departments like the state department, and so as much as trump has taken, you know, an assault on the constitutional checks on his power, he is now also taking these pot shots at the statutory checks on his power like inspectors general. and i just don't have the ability to see wrongdoing given how big and how cumbersome and complicated the state department is without an inspector general there. that's why this is so worrying. the eyes of congress just are not good enough to see what's happening inside the

administration without independent i.g.s. >> we have seen a few, a small number of your republican colleagues in the senate, express some discomfort with what the president has done here and specifically with firing this state department i.g., mr. linick. do you think that the concern is bipartisan enough in the republican-controlled senate that we might see him testifying in the senate about his work and the circumstances of his firing? do you think that the republican-controlled senate will do anything to try to stop what the president's been doing here and also to get to the bottom of what this firing might have been trying to cover up? >> no. no, they won't. listen, there are fantastic republicans in the senate at expressing alarm and concern. occasionally they even send a letter in which they put on the record their alarm and concern. what they're really bad at is actually doing anything to stop this president. listen, ultimately this is all about an election in november.

if you really care about stopping the president from removing the checks on his power, then you have to put in charge of the senate people who are going to actually do something about it, not just occasionally send out a statement or send a letter. i reserve the right to be monumentally surprised by my republican colleagues, but i literally have been part of this script about a thousand times in the last three years, and i think once again they're going to let the president get away with murder. >> connecticut senator chris murphy, foreign relations committee. sir, it's always a pleasure to have you here. thanks very much for being with us. >> thanks. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us. it's time for the memorial day sale on the sleep number 360 smart bed. can it help keep me asleep? absolutely, it senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable.

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"nascar is back, and xfinity is bringing you the best seat in the house." one quick programming for you tonight. you need to stay right where you are. among the guests joining lawrence o'donnell in the next hour here on msnbc is senator amy klobuchar of minnesota. that is coming right up. that's going to do it for us tonight. wile see you again tomorrow. now it is time for "the last world" with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. you can keep going and discuss anything else you'd like to recommend in this next hour of tv. so amy klobuchar is here. i guess i'll -- i mean what's there to say about the vice presidency? what should i ask her about that, if anything, at this point? >> well, i still believe that the only real question -- the most important question you'd ask somebody who is being considered for vice president

is, are you qualified and ready to take over the presidency of the united states on zero notice? and if you can get her to say something other than yes and elaborate on the triple -- you'll have hit at least a triple. >> okay. i'll see if i can trip her up on that one. let's see. >> all right. [ laughter ] >> i'll give it a try. thank you, rachel. >> thanks, lawrence. >> thank you. well, the schoolteacher turned statesman in northern ireland john hume once summarized irish history to me in one sentence where he said the irish never forget and the english never remember. we have a story tonight about the irish never forgetting. charitable contributions are pouring in from ireland to help native american tribes suffering in the coronavirus pandemic and one reason that money is coming from ireland is pay back.