signup.axios.com. that does it for me on this m thursday morning. i'm yasmin vossoughian. "morning joe" starts right now. with 4% of the world population and 30% of the outbreak, what would you have done different ly facing this crisis? >> take new york and new jersey, very hard hit, and we were very, very low. in terms of morbidity and in terms of -- you look at the death relatively speaking, we're at the lowest level, along with germany. germany, us, could have been smaller countries, too, perhaps. we're in that category, along with germany, as the lowest. i think that's a great honor. >> yeah. >> that's not correct. >> no, that's a lie. >> according to data from johns hopkins university, the u.s. ranks tenth highest in per capita death rates out of 140

countries. that's 130 out of 140 countries. he is completely upside down. >> what you're saying is we're 130th instead of first? >> correct. >> what you're also saying is, i'm confused here, willie, i think somebody -- this is the second time he's done this.'s he looks at the johns hopkins charts. can we put this s houp? >> yeah. >> what they're showing here is the ten worst, if we can put up the johns hopkins chart. >>e jo there it is. >> it shows, actually, yeah, we're sitting at the ninth worst in the world. >> or number one, however you want to look at it. i mean, weird. >> yeah. >> i'm not sure where the president gets that information. itha appears to be complete disinformation once again from the president of the united

states. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is thursday, may 21st. along with joe, willie, and me, we have white house reporter for the ite "associated press," jonn lemire. host of msnbc's "politics nation" and president of the national action network, ti reverend al sharpton. former chief of staff to the d. dccc and the director for strat relations for hillary clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, adri adrienne elrod. great to have you. >> this iseat the second time donald trump has taken 131 and said america was tied for first place. are wed missing something? >> it appears that math is not the president's strong suit, joe. no, you're not missing anythings this is just more of the rerentless sort of spin from the white house. this glass half full. the distortion of numbers and

statistics from the president, trying to defend the job he hash done, managing this pandemic. you were right, this is not theh first time we've heard him do this, where he seized upon data and interpreted it in a te different way to try to sell what his administration has done, and trying to ignore the numbers that, of course, most of us care most about. which is, well more than 90,000 americans have died at this point. of course, that's a number that is still rising and will do so, hopefully not, but will recognize dramatically if there are subsequent waves of this, which many health experts predict. the president is focused on his poll numbers. that's what led yesterday to his outcry against michigan and nevada, denouncing mail-in voting. which, of course, he had -- >> he lied, of course. >> it wasn't a fox news segment, which often does inspire the

president's out of nowhere outbursts. this was more polling that he saw. his team still sees him down in just about every battleground state. not bat down by a lot, but consistently now. they know if the election was held right now, joe biden would win it., the president, in part for that reason, is off to michigan today, one of the battleground states. although, one his campaign feels the worst about. of those trio in the midwest, pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, michigan is the one that his advisers have all but ruled out. >> of course, the president who keeps hurting his case for re-election every day. yesterday, threatened to defund michigan. >> right. >> because michigan did exactly what texas did, exactly what georgia, a lot of other states did. it is interesting he only brought up michigan and nevada, where he fears he is going to lose. absentee ballot applications are open in the state of texas, but

voter fraud -- again, it is bizarre, and americans see through this. it is one of the reasons he is losing so badly in so many p polls. willie, other than the president being really confused or just lying through his teeth about where the united states stands per capita in the world on deatn rates, and the fact we have 4.3% of the world's population and, yet, 30% of the world's deaths as we move toward 100,000, he was asked yesterday what he would do different in this pandemic. he said, nothing. this is a guy who said it was only one person coming in from china on january the 22nd. this was a guy warned by navarro a couple days later that 500,000 people in america could die if we didn't do something. yet, three, four weeks roll on, and he's saying still, it's 11 people. soon it'll be down to zero. this is a guy in march that told republican senators, "don't s, worry.

stay calm.y. you have nothing to worry about." it was asked by the reporters, "are you worried?" he goes, "no, i'm not worried a all." of course, now,d at we're seeine what would have happened if the ptd a president and governor would have moved faster, the lives that could have been saved. the president was asked, "would you do anything different?" he said, "nothing." reminds me of his, "i don't take responsibility for this at all" statement from a month ago. >> i was thinking of that line.t he later said, "i give myself a ten out of ten on performance." he is unable to show what he believes is any weakness in reflecting on the way he's th conducted himself and handled d this crisis. what a strange framing, to say it is a great honor.a first of all, to be completely wrong on the facts, as you laid out with the graphic. even if he were correct, we're going to hit 100,000 people dead from coronavirus sometime next week. a greate honor?

isn't that an odd way to talk about a pandemic and crisis that'snd killed 100,000 people,s 500,000 or more than that in this country right now. a great honor? he says, i wearin these numberss like a badge of honor, couple f days ago. jared kushner said, "this is a great success story, the way this administration has handled this." president trump said, "we have prevailed on testing. we did the job. j it is time to turn the corner." as you say, this all fits into hisll concerns about re-electio which we see in another poll yesterday. he's worriedn an he is goingot e in november, so he is trying tor create an alternate reality, where everything is just fine. f and he's done a great job handling this pandemic. >> yup, there's that.up he loves numbers. we'll look at the numbers. joe biden has a double digit lead nationally over president d trump in a new quinnipiac university poll. biden is up 11 points in a general election matchup against

trump 50% to 39%. biden leads trump across all age groups, including a ten-point lead among voters 65 and older. african-american voters, biden leads trump by 78 points. the president leads among men overall, 48% to 41%. biden has a 28-point lead among women voters. joe biden doing quite well, joe, i think at a time when he's not able to get out and campaign. he is working from his pabaseme bunker, which republicans may make fun of but, quite frankly, he is able to be steady and, you know, put out a message every day about how he has been warning this president about this pandemic since january. that he has been spot on, understanding the magnitude of this crisis. and i think, you know, when people are in this human catastrophe, watching it unfold before their eyes, i think they prefer a steady hand. >> well, steady hand.

he's actually following the rules. >> right. >> he is actually following the advice of donald trump's own medical advisers. donald trump's not. >> cdc. >> he refuses to wear a mask. he refuses to follow the white house guidelines he's laid out himself. >> yeah. >> so, yeah, iut think american certainly at a time of pandemic, they do want a steady hand. you know, you have bob dylan in the basement. you have joe biden in the basement campaign. i think it'll work out pretty well for both of them. willie, it's early. we're in may. but as heilemann says, elections in recent cycles have often been determined in april and may, the way things are set up. you know, certain candidates, especially on the negative side, that go down, a lot of that

happens in spring. you certainly saw that with mitt romney in '12. you saw a lot of that with wi hillary clinton in 2016. even though it is early, even though we were seeing some polls a week out that showed donald trump losing by 10, 11 points, if you're running the trump campaign, one of the things you have to be very concerned about is not where they are today but that the president's performance just keeps getting worse every day. he gets more out of control, unmoored, every single day with wild conspiracy theories. this really sad, sad obsession with barack obama. this -- the lies about michigan, attacking michigan again. a state that jonathan lemire mi reports the trump campaign is

concerned they're about to lose and not get back. he was at it again yesterday. it's not so much that he's down 11 points today. it's that he just keeps getting more erratic by the day. there's nothing that brad can do to control him. i know that is just driving brad crazy. >> well, and think how joe biden has opened up an 11-point lead. by doing almost nothing. by doing virtual towel han hallm his living room. he hasn't had a chance to go out to the swing states.he think about what president trump is running on. he thought he was going to haveh a solid economy to run on, which he did about four months ago. now, that has collapsed. we'll get more unemployment numbers telling that story at 8:30 this morning eastern time. so he's running on attacks against president obama. he's esidencouraging the senate getting some help to open hearings about hunter biden and

burisma. he can't run on his record handling the pandemic, so he's going down the rabbit rails. in the q poll, 47% say joe biden ishonest, compared to 31% for trump. 61% says joe biden cares for average americans. 42% say it for president trump. americans believe the former er vice president would do a better job than president trump handling the coronavirus, 55% to 39%. biden leads in health care, 57% to 37%. a statistical tie on the economy, 47% to 48% there for biden. reverend sharpton, these numbers, and the larger number showing biden with 11-point lead

in the poll, tells the story of why president trump is doing things like attacking mail-in voting in the state of michigan, in the state of nevada, and threatening to withhold federal funding to the places. by the way, michigan a place that has historic flooding right now and probably doesn't need ab threat of not getting federal money. >> it showed the consistent insensitivity of this president, which is why the polls reflect p how people are viewing that. when you have a state that 24 hours after they are hit with this dam burst that is literally flooding out places, and when you have a state where you have armed protesters trying to intimidate state legislatures in lansing, and you come and attack the state, saying, "i am thinking about withdrawing federal funds," i mean, this is no way to campaign for anythingp other than for your opponent.

what he did yesterday was really made joe biden's best commercial. all joe biden has to show is probably by next week, upwards of 100,000 families that are mourning the loss of a loved one that they can't fawn runeralfun the way, because you can't it shows people suffering. what would you do differently? "i wouldn't do anything differently." go back and forth, showing him say, "i wouldn't do anything dn differently. we didn't do anything wrong," while showing the graphics of what's happened to america. that would be a biden campaign e ad. he doesn't have to come out of the basement in order to put that ad e out. >> and we should mention, pierre was announced as joining the he biden campaign as a senior adviser. itor appears donald trump provis proof every day that joe biden

understands the coronavirus better than he does. how bad is that for donald trump? i mean, even the sound bite we rolled in, americans, i would think, understand that he's jusr got it wrong. >> yeah. it was a disaster for donald trump, mika. we see this play out every single day on television, when donald trump literally steps in it. you know, this is not something -- this is not a self-manufactured crisis that trump is doing here. this is actually people's lives on the line. i think that is one of the reasons why you're seeing these poll numbers trend the way that they are. you can track that to the fact that people trust joe biden. they know he has steady lead leadership we need right now in the country. n to the point willie made, he is not even doing that.ng he's doing a lot, but he is not out there every day, trying to be the counterpoint to donald trump. he is in his basement doing a lot of local media interviews. he is raising money. he is doing a lot of virtual

town halls to key constituencies. that is exactlyy why -- how he should be handling this right now. i want to say something really quickly about mail-in voting that, of course, donald trump is trying to suppress. here's the bottom line, and i hope the viewers understand it. mail-in voting is very easy to do. it is very important that governors in states allow people, especially with this pandemic, to be able to have the option to vote by mail. what donald trump is doing, he knows that he cannot win this election by simply turning out i his base. he has to suppress everybody re else. this is a suppression tactic that is not going to work because, to the point that people have been making, he is not legally allowed to withhold federal funding ford mail-in ballots. he is trying to scare people, making them think voting is difficult. it is kind of bizarrevo he isti doing it in michigan because he needs some of his voters to turn out, voting my mail, voting

absentee. this is a tactic he is v using suppress the vote because he knows that's the only way that he's got a shot at winning this election at this stage of the game, five and a half or six months out. >> this is how jon favreau framed it. let's frame this the right way, donald trump has threatened to h harm the citizens of nevada and michigan because their elected officials are making it easier a for them to vote. it is also a flailing, in light of the fact that he has botched the response to the coronavirus so badly in so many people's minds, it almost shows that thes only way to win, joe, is to try to cheat, to try to suppress the mail-in ballot voting system, which trump use himself. so do members of the military. >> exactly. the thing is -- >> pretty basic. >> -- again -- >> not hard. >> -- he can try to cheat. it's not going to work. these states decide, individuald supervisors of elections decide

how they're going to run things. states decide how they're going to run esthings. there are a lot ofe go states t voted for donald trump that aree doing the same thing michigan is doing. same thing is happeninghi in th state of texas. a federal judge said it was perfectly fine for that to happen, for people who are r afraid of this pandemic. they could get absentee ballot a requests that way. so -- but, again, it's one conspiracy theory after another. yesterday, it was the mail-in ballot conspiracy theory. he's doing other conspiracy theories. he does obamagate. we hear about the masking. wasn't this funny, willie? we've been hearing -- it's sorta of a joe mccarthy moment. they said, "we have the list of all the people who asked to unmask general flynn's name, and joe biden is on that list." oh, my god. joe biden is on that list.

we must get to the bottom of this. then, after all the sound and all the fury, signifying nothing, what do we find out yesterday? that no one unmasked general flynn's name. because general flynn's name was not masked. again, it's one conspiracy theory after another. >> all over the place. >> the continued attacks on anybody that he doesn't like. again, people go, "oh, donald trump can get away with everything." no, actually, he's getting away with nothing. the crazier he acts, the worse he's doing in the polls. >> yeah. he was counting on going into his campaign for re-election with 4% unemployment, something like that. today, we'll learn that 40

million americans have lost their jobs in the last couple months. he doesn't have an economy to run on.nt it is not eentirely his fault. the economy shut down, for good reason here, andomy that's the reason he wants to open it back up.th he's looking around andnt sayin "what do i run on? i if i don't have the economy, ifv i'm not doing a good job of od handling this pandemic, if pa people are still getting sick and dying, what do i run on?" jonathan lemire, actually, you guys at the "ap" are writing about this this morning, that he is falling back, trying to, on the g 2016 playbook. it is a little harder for him th run as an outsider this time around, considering he's lived in the white house now for almost four years. but he's trying to reach back for conspiratorial stories, about barack obama and to previously hillary clinton. it's what he has when he doesn't have an economy. >> that's right, willie. there is sort of the desperation to the play. that's where the president is right now. my colleague and i have a brand-new story out this morning that, once again, the president

is trying to run as the outsider. of course, that's far more difficult when you are the income be incumbent. he is trying to tap into the anti-government, anti-washington populus anger he successfully did ride in 2016. remember the protests that we saw at some state capitols a few weeks back? liberate michigan. liberate virginia. that was the president's rallying cry on his twitter feed. even though these protests were relatively small and, frankly, widely condemned for potentially spreading the coronavirus. they weren't keeping social ee distancing. >> on all sides. >> that's right.st by republicans andan democrats. a lot of the people there, the majority of folks at these events, appeared to be trump friendly, wearing trump campaign gear, the make america great again hats, so on. the president seized upon that as one sign that it was his people, in his phrasing, and according to our reporting, who

voted for him in 2016 and are anxious to get the economy running again. that's why he seized upon that. he used to break and defy his hi own federal regulation on health guidance. we know he is not wearing agu mask. we know he took the anti-malaria drug, though experts believe it doesn't do any good as a preventive for fighting covid. he undermines the government in many way. firing the inspector general. threatening to withhold federal funds to the states that need them, as we discussed about michigan. he is continuing to playusse int playbook and try to suggest thad he is the outsider. what is going on now isn't his fault. the biden campaign response has been mpsimple.ns you are the president. what has happened happened under your watch. they're convinced this play for the president won't be nearly a successful this time around as it was in 2016. >> well, i mean, i think the two most important numbers coming rs out of the quinnipiac poll

which, again, right now, i think, is an outlier, but you look at the wide divergence on c health care. biden way ahead on health care, which he will be way ahead on health care on. donald trump keeps promising to get rid of the affordable care a act. as has been the case since it was passed, republicans have absolutely no alternative to that. donald trump has no working alternative to abolishing health care. abolishing obamacare. so trump is losing by 20 points. okay. let's say this is three, four e, points up.po fine. he's down 16 points. response to coronavirus, the same thing. he's getting absolutely pounded in his response to the worst crisis this country has faced ha since world war ii. i'd say it's three or four points off, it's still a double digit loss.

yet, adrienne, you look at the numbers, and you look at the president's performance, and yor look at the fact that we're moving towards 100,000 people dying, after he said it was jus one person coming in from china. after he excoriated people in his own administration who were warning him about this and accused them of panicking. after he refused, when the hhs e asked him to ban travel from europe, refused to because it might spook the markets. didn't do it another month, month and a half, and new york city paid a, horrific price foc that failure. he's now still saying, as we approach 100,000 deaths, and all these veterans are dying and all these seniors are dying, he's saying, "i would have done nothing different." that's not going to help him moving forward, is it? >> no, it's not. n you know, he's doing this in front of the eyes of all of thel

american people. we're seeing this play out. we remember when he said this was not goingr wh to been a big. you know, maybe a couple folks will die, and we'll move on. the coronavirus won't exist in i the united states after aru few weeks. we have this. we remember seeing this. we can he can't go back and say he didn't say this.'t g he can't deny that he tried to downplay this pandemic. then you couple that with the fact we watched him handle this crisis every single step of the way. to the point jonathan lemire was making, he thought he was going to go into the election with a 4% unemployment rate. that is certainly not the case now. again, that is, to borrow a term from my friend robbie who ran hillary clinton's campaign, it is captainllar obvious what he doing right now, which is trying to turn out his base, suppress our base, and try to do what he can to salvage what's left of

his disastrous presidency. >> it's just not going to work. you're right, he doesn't have 4% unemployment. reverend al, he does have 3% with black voters in this latest quinnipiac poll. of course, we've been hearing ve for some time from the trump camp that they expect to get 15%, maybe even 20% of the black vote. of course, as we've been saying for some time, attacking barack obama every day, coming up withn conspiracy theories, making things up, creating this nebulous obamagate conspiracy, you, at times, think that there must be a democratic operative that is a spy inside the trump campaign. you think there has to be a mole in there. because the last thing that la donald trump would want to do,

if he wanted to expand his base among the black vote, would be to vilify barack obama every single day. the last thing he would want to do would be to have his administration figuring out how to cut social security and medicare in the middle of a pandemic. but they're trying to figure out how to do that. how, if people get benefits from this coronavirus, it will actually -- the money will be drained from their social security and medicare accounts d later in life. it's just -- none of this makes any political sense at all, ns which i guess suggests -- tells us exactly why donald trump's d political fortunes keep getting worse by the day. he gets more and more out of control with his wild conspiracy theories, his attacks on barack obama, his attacks on the state of michigan, his attacks on the state of nevada, his attacks on the very people he should be

trying to draw closer to him. >> it's a strange thing about black voters. they are very similar to other voters. you do for those that do for you and address your issues. when you look at the fact that even under the best economic circumstances of the last threet and a half years, blacks were still doubly unemployed, and the president never addressed that, never said, "here's a plan for that." when you look in the pandemic, t where it has gotten even worse, he has given some verbal statement, "oh, i'm concerned," when it was raised at a press conference. only when he was questioned, n "i'm concerned blacks are dying or being found positive with the virus at a higher rate than whites." that's the last word from him.t no plan for that. when we raised black-owned businesses and other minority-owned businesses weren't getting nearly what they should out of the stimulus im package, no plan for that.

what would he think black voters are trying to do? i'm surprised he's at 3%. if that wasn't bad enough for him, to attack barack obama, because he is upset that barack is everything he would have wanted to be in life, that he , can't stand that a man who happens also to be black, has hit every mark that he could not make and didn't have a rich father to finance it, it just drives him crazy. >> the affordable care act, extremely popular with the american people. barack obama, popular with the american people. donald trump, not popular with the american people. those attacks -- >> they're scared. >> the attacks, again, undermine everything a politician is supposed to do. he should be trying to expand his base right now. mika, he's not doing that. one other thing black voters k see, they understand that this pandemic has hit them

disproportionately. >> yeah. >> black americans have paid a disproportionate price for this pandemic. it has been a nightmare in so many black communities across america, just like it has been for so many seniors of all races. when they hear donald trump saying he would do nothing differently, when they hear donald trump saying, you look at the number of all the black people who have died, all the white people who have died, the asians who have died -- >> doing nothing. >> we're ranked 131 out of 140 countries, according to johns hopkins. he says it is as badge of hono those numbers, as willie said earlier today. you know, they hear that. that has an impact on them. that has an impact on the way they vote. i've been saying it every day, i don't understand his behavior, why it is getting more out of control by the day, unless he

has simply no control over himself. everything he is doingnt is driving his poll numbers down. still ahead on "morning joe," last month, president trump denied reports that he he yelled at his campaign manager. we'll see if that holds true today after the president sees the ad we're about to show you. we'll talk to one of the strategists behind it, rick wilson, straight ahead on "morning joe."

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the lincoln project, a group of conservatives who are critical of president trump, is out with a new ad, taking aim at trump campaign chief brad parscale. take a look. >> meet brad parscale. from dead broke to the man trump can't win without. brad was getting rich. how rich? really rich. don't tell donald. he'd wonder how brad can afford so much. a $2.4 million waterfront house in ft. lauderdale.

two florida condos worth almost $1 million each. he even has his very own yacht. a gorgeous ferrari. a sleek range rover. brad brags about using private jets. oh my, brad is a star. why not? brad is worth every dollar. just ask him. >> wow. >> that's funny. >> willie, we've been trying to get goldman sachs to hire us for years. we've been barking up the wrong tree. >> brad is doing great. >> wow, wow. >> yeah. >> brad parscale is a guy, for people who don't know, running the 2020 re-election campaign. few years ago, was doing website design in san antonio for trump properties. according to the "huffington post" and others, has accumulated all those assets while running the campaign. donald trump does not like this kind of stuff. i suspect that's why the lincoln

project is putting it on the air, so donald trump will see this. jonathan lemire, he doesn't like being eclipsed by anyone. he doesn't like, perhaps, as being seen as taken advantage of by brad parscale, using the trump name to accumulate and amass all this wealth. the reports a couple weeks ago, that donald trump denied but were true, as reported from people in the room, was that donald trump was screaming at brad parscale about his campaign numbers being so low. brad parscale flew in, sat in the white house with president trump, and gave him new numbers that showed a better story for the president. >> people close to the president say two things, more than just about anything else, infuriates donald trump. one is when an aide, someone close to him gets more attention than the president himself. secondly, perhaps more importantly, when he feels like someone else is making money off of his name. he has long been sensitive to

that, when he feels like other people are profiting off their association with him. in part, he feels the money, perhaps, should be doishould be going to him. brad parscale seems to be the latest person in the president's cross-hairs for that alleged sin. to be fair, yes, the president has pushed back against reports that he is unhappy with parscale. brad is very close to jared kushner, so he's got some protection there within the west wing. but the reports are true. we wrote on this, as well. the president snapped at parscale a few weeks ago during the presentation, when parscaade president acknowledged, "mahey, you're losing this race right now." that meeting, they also tried to get him to stop the daily press briefings. what is true, the president has complained to people close to him that parscale, for two years

now, was bragging to him he was assembling this death star like campaign. raising a lot of money. that's true. creating a big digital operation. that's true, as well. but was sort of an invincible force right now. there was no way he could lose. the democrats, joe biden, would be outgunned. that, of course, has not turned out that way. the pandemic is not brad parscale's fault. but the president has been se e seething that his team wasn't ready for this. they weren't ready for the unknown. they weren't ready to adapt on the fly in case things got bad. he's certainly agitating to get out and have more rallies, which he so desperately misses. he's having a hard time right now. he is having a hard time portraying himself, you know, as this outsider, while trying to suggest that joe biden was the constant washington insider. during this pandemic, government experience, managerial experience is exactly what you need. we'll see how he reacts to the ex campaign ad about parscale, but it pushes all the buttons. >> donald trump is running the country. donald trump is running

america's response to this pandemic. a response that most americans think, if you look at every poll, is a failed response. >> oh, yeah. >> this whole idea that he can run against himself is, again, just -- it makes no sense. it's not going to help with voters. you know, he's running against the very trump white house guidelines that he put out. he talks about taking a drug that the trump administration warned americans not to take, unless they were in the hospital. he talks about injecting disinfectants into americans' bodies. the next day, the trump administration had to warn people against doing that. he said the pandemic wouldn't come back in the fall, most likely. his own administration had to

warn americans that it was going to come back in the fall in some form. and so he can't run against himself. i mean, he can try, but this outsider thing doesn't work. he's on the inside. until he figures that out, and figures out how to build upon the 42% that he has, which he just hasn't figured out how to do over the past three and a half years, that's why every election since 2017 seems to be a disaster for donald trump. he's in bad shape. adrienne elrod, listen, okay, i understand the commercial, and i'm sure donald trump is going to be upset about that. poor brad. what can poor brad do with a president that has responded this badly? it's not brad's fault that donald trump said it was only one person coming in from china and it would go away. it's not brad's fault that, you know, his own administration was saying in late january, 500,000

people could die. the same time, joe biden was saying, we aren't ready for this pandemic. donald trump is not ready for the pandemic. donald trump, a month later, is still saying it's 14, 15 people coming in. soon, it'll go away. he can't help that. it seems to me, though, the bigger problem as far as spending depose goes is not wha has put in his pocket. it's the hundreds of millions of dollars they have spent on digital ads and other advertising and other campaign infrastructure. the more money they spend, the worse they get in the polls, the worse the poll numbers are. >> yeah. >> that seems to me to be a real reason to panic. >> it is like a disaster for any campaign manager to have to deal with. the fact you're spending millions and millions of dollars to try to persuade independent and moderate voters to go your way. you're trying to pervade your base to stick with you.

then it is faltering. that's nothing that you ever wish on a campaign manager. obviously, i'm working on a totally different side than brad parscale. couple things, joe. first of all, i think any time a campaign manager is making a lot of money off of a campaign, that's never a good sign. that shows where the person's priorities are. you know, i will say that, again, to mention robby mook, he was really cheap. none of us made any money on hillary clinton's campaign. that was a good thing because our priorities were in the right place. we were focused on being on the campaign for the right reasons. so there's that. secondly, you know, when it comes back to this, donald trump trying to paint himself as an outsider, you know, tactic that lemire wrote about, i look at everything at this stage of the game, five and a half months out, through the lens of, how does this play to persuade voters? how do these tactics attract, or

do they attract the 3% to 4% of the lelectorate that will make p this election? it doesn't work. donald trump is a creature of washington. he's been in washington for a while. he's used the system, the levers of government, to pad his own pocket. he's been corrupt at every step of the way. the american people see that. certainly, most importantly, that 3% to 4% of the electorate that is ultimately going to decide this election. so that's why i can't really understand this populous tone sometimes. again, he is not playing it -- or he is playing it to his base, but he is not doing anything to attract the voters he needs to attract to get over the 35% to 36% of the electorate that is strongly with him, so he can actually try to get re-elected. >> adrienne elrod, thank you for coming on this morning. see you soon. coming up, we talked on tuesday about the chances of getting sick aboard a plane, getting the virus. most americans don't fly to work, they take buses and mass transit.

so what is the risk there? "morning joe" is back in a moment. effortless is the lincoln way. so as you head back out on the road, we'll be doing what we do best. providing some calm amidst the chaos. with virtual, real-time tours of our vehicles as well as remote purchasing. for a little help, on and off the road. now when you buy or lease a new lincoln, we'll make up to 3 payments on your behalf. now when you buy or lease a new lincoln, ♪ ♪ y'all know what this is ♪ good lovin', no questions ♪ ♪ reach out and you'll touch me ♪ ♪ bad habits, don't judge me ♪ just don't waste my time ♪ ♪ good lovin', no questions, baby ♪ ♪ reach out and you'll touch me ♪ ♪ bad habits, don't judge me ♪ just don't waste my time ♪

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joining us now, epidemiologist and professor at boston's college's school of nursing, doctor, good to have you back on the show. i'm going to ask you questions that i think people want to know, because i want to know, about public transportation, for example. if you need to go to work, you

use public transportation, a bus or a subway. you wipe your seat down. you wipe your hands. you wear a mask. are you safe? >> yeah, of course these are all ways that individuals can protect themselves. i think people need to understand that, in close spaces, spaces that are enclosed, inside, carry a greater risk of transmission than spaces that are outdoor, have fresh air moving through them. so, of course, you can protect yourself by wearing a mask. you can protect yourself by wiping down your seat and, of course, using hand sanitizer or washing your hands after you get off the bus, if possible. those are all ways you can protect yourself on the commute. >> isn't the issue keeping your hands clean? is there a difference between using hand sanitizer as opposed to, like, a bleach wipe, which i would think would be stronger? how much does that matter?

>> right. so, i mean, it is important to note you can simply wash your hands with warm water and soap, as has been said before, for 20 seconds. that will be just as effective as

how should people reopen? >> we can measure how effective or ineffective the lockdown was. there's always going to be the two-week lag to the infection numbers. then a further lag to the death numbers. one possibility is that we're not actually at the point yet of seeing the effects of reopening in these contexts. i think another thing to consider is whether or not people are actually using the protective measures we've been suggesting. are people, when they are going

to stores or the mall, are they wearing masks? are they making sure to wash their hands? there are ways to protect yourself, even as we open up. i think the important thing also to note is, are we testing enough? are we actually knowing? do we actually know how many new cases have occurred in these contexts? without sufficient testing program in each of the states, we actually may not even know whether or not there is an increase in the burden of coronavirus after opening up. so there are a number of different pieces that would go into my interpretation of how severe the cases are after opening up. >> well, doctor, you've just brought us into our next guest. why don't you stay for this conversation? because he says that until a vaccine is developed, the simplest and safest path to recovery is testing everyone in the u.s. once every two weeks. we can't do that right now. joining us now, professor at new

york university and a 2018 nobel laureate in economics. someone has a big dog. i love it. i wonder if that is a german shepherd. >> sorry. it's a lab. >> it's okay. i love it. that's fine. don't even worry about it. we want to hear -- >> it's the new world. >> it is. as you heard the doctor talk about testing, that is really the key to the economy, having a successful reopening. can you explain to us that? >> well, the key to reducing the number of people who get infected each day, or each week, is to isolate people who are currently infected. to keep them from interacting. the problem is, we don't know who is infected. we're trying to isolate everybody. that imposes huge costs on the 98% or 99% of the population that aren't infectious. if we could just use tests to

figure out who is infected, isolate them for a few weeks, then we could suppress this virus more effectively, and we wouldn't have to bear the kind of costs that we're suffering right now. the only thing that's holding us back is that we have not invested enough in doing the kind of testing that we know how to do. >> so i would think, but you can confirm or correct me, that using the defense production act to do a mass mobilization of nationalized testing as soon as possible would be the fastest way then, if we're using your deduction, to reopen the economy? >> that would certainly help. you know, there are existing manufacturers who could produce more of the equipment that's used in labs right now. but we have this huge, untapped resource in the united states, which are the laboratories on our university campuses.

every state has a university system with very good researchers, with very sophisticated equipment, for reading rna and dna sequences. those labs could be mobilized by governors, if they understood and agreed they don't have to listen to the fda. the governors and the state university laboratories can move ahead, figure out better ways, faster ways to do the testing, and they don't have to wait for direction from washington to do this. >> willie? >> paul, it's willie geist. you say $100 billion would allow us to test every american. obviously, that's a big number, but we're talking about trillions and trillions of dollars. $3 trillion already in stimulus. $3 trillion in this new proposal from democrats. do you believe, number one, that every american needs to be tested, because most people don't think you have to test every american? number two, why have we been so slow on this problem, which every public health expert says is the key to getting our arms

around this, which is testing in this country? >> yeah. first, i suppose, i think we need capacity to test 23 million people a day. right now, we're at 400,000, so way below where we need to be. suppose we got just 1 million tests per day. you wouldn't just do out and test everybody, just pick people at random for testing. there are a bunch of places where we know the prevalence is higher. start by testing where prevalence is high. test in nursing homes. test the staff in hospitals. test the transit workers. test the major league baseball players who want to go back and play. there's lots of places you could use tests. my point was that even if you're testing just at random, you get about 100 times as much value from a test as it costs you. so if you can use the tests in a more sophisticated, targeted way, they're worth more than 100 times the cost. even at 100 times the cost, 100

to 1 payback, it is a good rate of return. there aren't many places you can spend that kind of money. we should do more investment in e testing, then use them first on the high proiority areas, and then everybody can owe, have i been tested recently? people around me tested recently? be assured they're safe. >> beyond frustrating. doctor, what are you hearing from front line workers in terms of how they're handling this crisis, where they are with supplies, and testing for themselves? >> yeah, i think that's a very important point. are we actually testing our front line workers, who are going to be the most exposed to this virus? i'm still hearing reports of shortages in ppe across the country. i'm not sure we fixed our ppe supply chain quite yet. i'm still hearing that front line workers are needing tests in many places. how is it that we're going to

ensure the tests? i want to follow up on the last point of who to test. i think this comes back to this idea that we need to also be having a sufficient tracing program. we need to be able to not only detect cases, but then also trace all of the contacts of those cases. that requires dedicated testing, and it is a really significant public health program that needs to be invested in at this point in the epidemic. >> doctor and professor, go walk your dog, thank you both for being on the show this morning. to really frame that, you heard from an economist and a health expert, that it is testing. we're so behind. 400,000 a day. we need 23 million a day to reopen the economy. we all want the economy reopened. we need the testing and tracing. we'll be back in one minute. so you only pay for what you need!

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meet brad parscale. from dead broke to the man trump can't live without. brad was getting rich. how rich? really rich. don't tell donald. he'd wonder how brad can afford so much. a $2.4 million waterfront house in ft. lauderdale. two florida condos worth almost $1 million each. he even has his very own yacht. a gorgeous ferrari. a sleek range rover. brad brags about using private jets. oh my, brad is a star. why not? brad is worth every dollar. just ask him. >> oh, my gosh. >> wow. >> so funny. long-time republican media consultant and adviser to the lincoln project, rick wilson. he is the author of the book, "everything trump touches dies." that's sort of -- okay.

also with us, host of msnbc's "politics nation" and president of the national action network, reverend al sharpton. co-host of "the circus" and "recount," john heilemann. also, state department's elise jordan. great to have you all. >> rick, let's go to you quickly first. >> yes, joe. >> you were behind that ad. and, yes, it's going to -- obviously, donald trump doesn't like the fact that brad has been making so much money off of him. reportedly threatened to sue him earlier. at the same time, you know, b d brad, he is not -- he is not holding a really good hand. donald trump's conspiracy theories that he is spewing out every day, going after barack obama every day, it is hurting him with the black voters. even yesterday, he attacked

michigan again, saying he was going to cut funding for michigan again for doing the same exact thing that republican states, like georgia, west virginia, nebraska, texas even, for people over 65 are doing. it is what mcdaniel was doing at the rnc. >> romney. >> sending out absentee ballot applications -- >> sure. >> -- with, you know, stamped envelopes to return it to the right places. i mean, the reports are from the "washington post." this caught brad off guard. they were very concerned that he is attacking michigan again. who works -- >> sure. >> who can make chicken salad out of that? >> there's not enough mayonnaise in the universe, joe, to make chicken salad out of that. here's the thing, you know, brad

has -- everything counts in large amounts, and brad has had hundreds of millions of dollars to try to move donald trump's numbers. he can't. this is because -- this is like trying to sell bad dog food with good advertising. the food tastes bad, so dogs don't eat it. donald trump is an unpopular one. brad doesn't care, win or lose, what happens to donald trump. he is doing very well for himself. we found out a couple days ago, not only is brad cashing in on the campaign and the money that hard-working americans are sending to donald trump because they think he is going to use it to get re-elected, but brad is getting ppp payments for his companies. the struggling parscale enterprises who are raking in tens of millions of dollars from donald trump did not need additional millions of dollars from taxpayers, at least in my opinion. >> yeah. john heilemann, as disturbing as

it may be to donald trump, that brad is making all of this money off of him, i would be far more disturbed if i were a candidate, that hundreds of millions of dollars were being spent, record amounts of money being spent for online advertising, to influence voters. the polls are going in the opposite direction. just bleeding support and bleeding money at the same time. nothing seems to be sticking that they're throwing against the wall. >> yeah. you know, joe, i first want to say to my friend, rick wilson, turns out the lincoln project can play it round and play it flat. you guys had that "mourning in america" ad, which was artful and went to a core issue to the american electorate, and was the ad you can run nationally. you can run in a battleground state.

brilliant, strong ad. this ad is just pure mischief making, rick, and i aflapplaud for it. i'm sure there is no money behind this ad to put it on the air anywhere, but it'll get a lot of cable coverage and make donald trump crazy. so it is great you guys are playing it, like, on the avenue and on the boulevard, on the side streets and the main drag. you guys have some versatility over there, turns out. joe, i'd say, you know, look, this will make trump crazy. there's never been a candidate who is not driven crazy by the notion that his consultants are profiteering. as rick knows, this is not the first consultant who profiteered off a presidential candidate or senatorial candidate or gubernatorial candidate. it is a hazard in rick's business. donald trump is acutely neurotic about it, and he hates this thing. i know we talked about it last hour, but hates the idea of people making money off his name. so i imagine there's going to be a fair in number of small explosions or large explosions going off in the west wing. maybe in michigan today, when

donald trump gets there. you're right. i mean, the key issue is, donald trump has no one but himself to blame for the fact that his campaign is spending all this money on digital advertising and other kinds of advertising, and it is not moving the needle. it is not moving the needle because it is impossible, to rick's point about dogs and dog food, donald trump is a tough candidate to sell. his record is bad. that is not -- even if brad parscale was a straight shooter and a genius, neither of which he is, if he was, he still couldn't move donald trump's numbers. the reality is just so hard for him. >> well, and, mika, he keeps attacking the state of michigan. he kept attacking michigan's governor, calling her "that lady." gretchen whitmer with approval ratings at the time in the 70s. they're still very high, much higher than donald trump's approval ratings. mika, much higher than donald

trump's approval ratings. so the question is, what is any campaign manager to do? we have new numbers out yesterday that showed just how badly donald trump is doing nationally. >> joe biden has a double digit lead nationally over president trump in a new quinnipiac university poll. biden is up 11 points in a general election matchup against trump. 50% to 39%. biden leads trump across all age groups, including a ten-point lead among voters 65 and older. among african-american voters, biden leads trump by 78 points. the president leads among men overall 48% to th41%. biden has a 28-point lead among women voters. when it comes to presidential qualities, well, 47% say bide season honest, compared to 34% who say trump is. who are sthey?

51% say biden has good leadership skills. 40% say that of trump. biden cares about average americans, 61% for biden and 42% for trump. 55% to 39%, saying the former vice president would do better at handling the crisis than the current president. statistical tie on the economy, 48% to 47%. joe, it is creaming him. on every level, this pandemic has revealed trump to be shallow, pabasic, and, in some cases, uneducated as to what the american people need at this point. it's been kind of -- i mean, talk about taking the mask off. he should wear a mask, by the way. >> yeah. >> not to spread germs. >> seems to me, the problem is that even when the white house was warning him in january of what was coming, he ignored it. peter navarro warned him.

he ignored it. he continued ignoring it in february. got really angry when people in the administration tried to warn him about a coming pandemic. even in march, he was dismissing it. april, he started talking about disinfectants. i think most americans would forgive him for missing the boat in january and february. i really do. i do think march, april, and may are the months that are going to be the most damning when we go into the fall. even now, instead of minding this pandemic that's moving toward 100,000 deaths, he's spinning wild conspiracy theories and attacking the state of michigan again. this is a state, as jonathan lemire and others have reported, that the trump team is close to writing off, thinking, "we're just not going to get michigan." here he is again yesterday,

attacking michigan, saying that he was going to not fund them. i mean, that's not the way to go. you know, willie, you look at all of these numbers, and there's some people last night that were saying that it may have oversampled democrats. if it did, even by three or four points, let's say for argument's sake, it did oversample democrats, and they don't turn out in a way that quinnipiac pollsters think they will. he's still so far behind on health care and still so far behind on the handling of the pandemic that, to me, those are the two most important parts of this poll. those are going to be the two issues that will matter the most to voters come this fall. he is so far behind, that even if you give him three or four points, he's still losing in a landslide on the two issues that will be most important to voters as they go to the voting booth. >> yeah. he was asked yesterday, now with

the death numbers approaching 100,000 americans, what he would have done differently as he looks back on it. he said, quote, nothing. he went on to say, "we've done amazingly well," and then turned to dr. birx to have her support the theory of the case. the problem with his theory of the case is there is no one in this country whose life has not been touched in some way by the pandemic. whether it's their personal health, the health of someone they know, school being closed, their business being shuttered, the loss of their own job or the loss of a job in their household. everyone can look out their front door or around their house and know things have not gone, quote, amazingly well. elise jordan, as much as president trump would like to change the subject and make it about mail-in voting in the state of michigan or state of nevada, or about the unmasking of michael flynn, which has joe said in our last hour, actually didn't take place, according to the fbi. he was never masked in those fbi reports about his conversations with ambassador kislyak. the president is trying to

change the conversation away from something that, as that quinnipiac poll shows, americans know quite clearly is not going amazingly well. >> no, you can't change the conversation from coronavirus because it is impacting each and every one of us daily, every minute by minute. people are still living in fear over catching this virus, over the pandemic, over protecting their families. so donald trump can talk about taking hydroxychloroquine. he can talk about the use of disinfectant. he can keep trying to change the conversation, but it's not going to matter as long as everyone is still so impacted on the day-to-day. i agree with joe, that he could have gotten somewhat of a pass, i think, in that this is such a huge catastrophe and so unseen. how, you know, any president, even the best president, even the most thoughtful and

organized president would be able to, you know -- would be faced with significant challenges. so his voters might have excused some of it, just as the tragedy of events. but as this goes on and on and on, and you watch how donald trump just really can't show empathy, it really erodes any sense that this could be discounted as just a really bad set of cards. >> rev, it didn't have to be this way. you look at the bump that georgia h.w. bush got during the iraq war. that george w. bush got after 9/11. jimmy carter even got initially after the iranian hostage crisis. americans like to rally around their president in times of cris crises. there have been so many opportunities that have come and

gone, that he has failed to capture the moment. what would -- i know, at this point, it seems ridiculous to even suggest that we could live in an alternate universe, where the president actually could control some of his worst impulses, but you've known donald trump a long time. i've known donald trump for a long time. what in the world, if he would listen to you, for the sake of america, what advice would you give him on where to go from here? how to turn things around? how to make things better, not only fn americor americans, but himself. >> the problem is that i do not believe that he has in him the sensitivity and the ability to

really understand what the average american, of all races, all economic backgrounds, are going through. people are literally afraid for their health. they are literally afraid that they will not make it economically, in terms of their employment or their businesses. and in the mid dle of this, you have a president that says, "i wouldn't do anything different," even though it's been documented by his own advisers that he was warned two months before he really made muchovements. he is waving the red flag at the americans who are suffering. "no, i wouldn't do anything different. no, i'd do it the same way." then he is asking them to return him to office. he has a campaign manager that's driving around in a ferrari while we're wondering whether or not our businesses are going to be able to be reopened, or when we can go back to work. this kind of in-your-face insensitivity, i think, is something that will not go away

labor day or post labor day, as we look in most campaigns. we're looking at the most painful and the most impactful crisis that america has ever faced. i think they're underestimating it. it is in the a bad spring. it is not a bad summer. this has been a pandemic, mr. president. everybody lost loved ones. everybody's economic stability has been shaken. it's not going to be something that people just go, oh, that was just a bad experience. it has reshaped america. america will not be the same. >> that's right. >> we're never going back to r normal. >> that's right. >> something i said at the beginning of the crisis, winston churchill received high marks, not only at the time, at the beguning of world war ii, the battle of britain, but also still, because he spoke honestly to the british people. he told them how difficult the road was ahead of them.

told them that their very lives were at stake. told members of parliament, when he was trying to get them on board, on an early vote, that they would all possibly be dying, choking in their own blood on the ground, if the nazis were victorious. he laid it out very bluntly, very starkly. told them what the challenges were, and then said, "all right, now, let's get to work." that's what donald trump needed to do from the beginning. that's what we suggested he did from the very beginning. tell americans the truth. tell them how bad this could get. forget the magical thinking. things aren't going to get magically better this summer for the economy. they're not going to get magically better in the fall. this is going to be a long, hard fight, but we are americans. we can get through this. we will get through this. it is going to be tough.

that was the message he should have given. that's the message we suggested that he give. it is something that he was just incapable of doing. now, so he finds himself in a position where he's desperately trying to contrast himself with joe biden. a lot of his allies, donald, have tried to push this obamagate conspiracy theory. we heard grenell talk about the unmasking of general flynn, and "i have a list for the people who asked for the unmasking." lindsey graham said, "we have to have hearings on the unmasking." joe biden was one of the people who asked to unmask general flynn's name. it was the crisis to end all crises, until it wasn't. we found out that general flynn's name was not unmasked. because it was never masked. so that is going to go up -- i

mean, people are going to care more about their health care and the response to the pandemic than a made-up conspiracy theory. he is making up a lot of conspiracy theories right now. but it goes back to the 2016 election. i mean, you try to make campaigns about contrasts. one of hillary clinton's problems, as we said in 2016, was shef was attacking donald trump for being dishonest and untrustworthy. her numbers in the category were just as low as his, after being attacked for 30 years. a lot of other areas, there just wasn't a contrast. i want to ask john heilemann and rick wilson this, about another contrast. the trump campaign has desperately been trying to put joe biden in some corner, suggesting that he gets easily confused and at a lot of his als are doing the same thing. but there's no real contrast

there. here's an updated clip from comedy central. by the way, yes, you're going to laugh at some of this stuff. i'm sure you are. but, seriously, this is another line of attack that makes absolutely no sense. as we have been saying for quite some time, every time they go after joe biden, suggesting he's out of touch, all they're doing are reminding americans how unmoored donald seems to be at times. take a look at this clip. >> he doesn't have command of the subject matter. >> and then i see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in maine. >> can't string a coherent sentence together. >> more than -- we've held our great numbers, everything we've done. >> stumbles all over his sentences. starts rattling off. >> they can do as they want. they can do what they have to do. they know what they have to do.

>> we've already seen how his mental faculties are declining. >> you know, they had a debate. it was really a rough time in our country. >> he's just not articulate enough to be the leader of the free world. >> we want to win the war with as few -- if you look at it, just deaths as possible. >> day after day, it is embarrassing to watch him. >> we have the, i call it the super duper missile. >> lies with ease. >> anybody that wants a test can get a test. >> some of his appearances lately have been down right disturbing. >> i happen to be taking it. i happen to be taking it. >> hydroxychloroquine? >> i'm taking it, hydroxychloroquine. >> this type of agitated behavior is part of an increasing, disturbing pattern. >> why don't you act in a little more positive? it is always, try to get you. get you. you know you're a fake, a loud mouth. that is a question you should ask china. >> he's where a lot of us will be in late middle age, and it's

sad. >> oh, he's old and creepy. >> professionals did the model. i was jeffer involv i was never involved. >> the creepy things he is doing to people on camera. >> you see how creepy he is with women. >> backstage before a show, everyone is getting dressed and ready. i'm allowed to go in because i'm the pageant and, therefore, i'm inspecting it. standing there with no clothes. is everybody okay? incredibly looking women. >> handsy history. >> if ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps i'd be dating her. >> very creepy. can't make this up. >> when yurou're a star, they l you do it. you can do anything. grab them by the [ bleep ]. >> john heilemann, what do you think? >> well, sadly, mika, i wasn't actually able to look at the video of that, but i heard the

audio. most of the images are unfortunately seared on my mind. i've seen all the tape before. you know, joe likes to quote me, confession or projection. confession or projection, you know? >> right. >> most of those things vindicate the notion of projection. i think there's, you know, there's that kind of psychological point, the fact that trump's campaign is the insansuation of his mind. the campaign is projecting, in the way trump likes to project. the relevant question is the thing joe mentioned, which is, these are the lines of attack. they want to attack biden as old, infirm, and out of it, and creepy. they like all those things. don junior now is out in social media, suggesting joe biden is a pedophile. then we see the video of trump and know how he's been in the past for underage women, some of the comments he made, including the one there about his daughter. all of the things they accuse biden of are things trump is

manifestly guilty of. it undercuts the punch, for sure. ls also, we've talked a lot in the past few days how trump's weakness with senior citizens could be the death blow to his campaign. right now, donald trump doesn't win senior citizens, he can't win re-election. he is back by, seven, eight, ten points to biden. every time he attacks biden as old and out of it, there is a senior citizen somewhere who has been adversity affected by this coronavirus, who is already mad at trump for his mishandling of the crisis, who says, wait a minute, joe biden doesn't seem that out of it. what are you doing there? there's a whole bunch of problems with the kind of attacks they're leveling against biden. the projection problem. the hypocrisy problem. the fact he is guilty of the same things problem. and the fact the attacks are likely to have a negative impact on one of the key voting demographics they need to win, or it is game over for donald trump. >> so three-hour show, no script, sometimes people say

things. i just want to circle back. you said his likings of young women, right? >> the pageant, talking about the young women. i did not mean anything more than that. >> okay, okay. young women, not underage women. we certainly don't want anybody -- >> correct. >> -- to get that impression, whatsoever. rick wilson, a serious note again, you see the comedy central tape. you see the joking around that, yao know, comedy central is doing it, and i'm sure they get a lot of laughs. but the first campaign i ran, i had a guy saying to me -- and i'll never forget -- he said, "joe, campaigns are always about contrast. young versus old. >> always. >> energetic versus whatever. if you are a challenger, it

needs to be a contrast. if you are an incumbent, it needs to be strong and steady versus untested and reckless. >> right. >> so i ask this seriously, as i have been a month or two, what upside is there in donald trump's campaign team saying that biden is too old and too adled, when they know it'll bring up all the questions, all the video clips of donald trump looking the same way? >> of course. >> this is what mika was saying in 2016 about hillary clinton attacking donald trump for sexual harassment. because, you know, mika was saying, all she was going to do was draw attention to bill clinton's history, which would, of course, hurt her, too. we have the trump campaign, in a sense, doing the same thing the clinton campaign did four years ago. >> i think there's two things going on here, joe. first is, they're communicating

a base only message on the fox side of their channel. that's what they're doing, trying to get their base revved up on that. however, it spreads and inevitably gets out there into the wild. you're absolutely right, this is going to draw attention to donald trump. look, my video editors have hours and hours of donald trump doing what i call the mumbles, the clown act. he wanders off script, gets off the prompter and is all over the board. this is something that he is an attractive nuisance, frankly. there will be a lot of folks who go ahead and cut ads based on donald trump wandering off script and saying the most bizarre things, and telling his weird snake stories, doing all this other stuff. it is not going to, in the end, we're down to the fact that people have a clear, set impression of joe biden from a long, public acquaintance with him. they know biden can be goofy sometimes, but they don't look at it as donald trump's

behavior, which is malicious and either feels like dementia or something creeping up on him, that has gone off the rails with donald trump. you can see a difference, even since 2016, in his presentation, in his affect, in the way he behaves and speaks on air. it is shaky, and it is scary. right now, in a situation where this country is facing great depression part two, and a pandemic, you want somebody in the leadership position who is not going to wander off script, who is not going to dbabble to himself, and say things and pretend they're real words. >> ealy, gliselise, getting awa medical diagnosis for a minute, let's talk about what donald trump is doing in the quinnipiac poll, where he is down ten points among senior voters. he won that group by double

digits in 2016 over hillary clinton. probably doesn't help to be talking about, asptwo candidates, neither a spring chicken, to talk about how older people are dottering. donald trump has plenty of tape on himself doing the same. it strikes me as a strange campaign strategy, to go after somebody in that age group. >> donald trump doesn't have room for error when it comes to older voters. if he wants to continue to belittle that age group, he can have at it and try to, you know, make up the gap elsewhere. it's quite unlikely that he would. i want to go back to something, the debate over donald trump and his affinity for underage women. he is well documented, going into the backstage of miss teen usa, and plenty of the contestants are on the record, talking about how he loved to go back there and catch them while they were undressing. so he is well -- it is factually

accurate to say he is completely a creep when it comes to underage women. >> yeah. in that video, the way he was handling that woman, i mean, some would consider that some sort of assault. it is just incredible. it is incredible. >> again, the bigger -- >> people just give a pass to this. >> the bigger point though is that the trump campaign is trying to draw a contrast where there is not one. unfortunately for them, there is just as much tape, or more tape, on donald trump. as rick wilson says, not only his team, but a lot of people have hours and hours of tape that they can roll out against donald trump. this isn't the contrast that helps them win. >> nope. >> they're going to need to find another contrast. still ahead on "morning joe," what could be a dangerous trend. people from coronavirus hot spots traveling to lower-risk areas that have already reopened. plus, dr. anthony fauci

tries to calm concerns that a shotty vaccine could hit the market after the trump administration brands the development process operation warp speed. dr. zeke emanuel joins the conversation. you're watching "morning joe." >> by the way, before we go to break, i have to say, there was good news. there is good news coming out about vaccines. >> potentially. >> potentially good news. a lot of scientists, a lot of researchers are hopeful that we may get this vaccine faster than traditional timelines. let's hope for the sake of america and the world that's true. >> we'll be right back. >> we'll be right back. more ways to renovate your home, from inspiration 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.

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we've always believed in the power of working together. that's why, when every connection counts... you can count on us. maryland and virginia's reopening this past weekend was met with a huge influx of out of state commuters to the area, desperate to escape shutdowns. a university of maryland analysis found that nearly

860,000 commuters traveled to parts of virginia and maryland as a result of those states reopening from the coronavirus on friday. this is an 18% jump in travel from previous weekends, totaling to more than 5 million trips to the areas between friday and sunday. the biggest jump in visitors in maryland were in beach counties, with boating and outdoor recreation, while virginia saw the biggest increases along state borders. these findings from the university of maryland follow a trend similar to georgia's reopening at the end of april, when the state saw 13% increase in cross-state travel. joining us now, former white house adviser for health policy, professor and vice provos for global initiatives at the university of ezekiel emmanuel. good to have you on. if people are practicing social

distancing when they do travel to open states, is it a concern? >> if you're going outside, and you are socially distance and had wearing a face mask, it should not be a concern. we've had low rates of transmission in outdoor settings. on the other hand, if you're crowding beaches, then going into a restaurant, doing other things, that is obviously the moment when you can spread. what we know is that spread is most common when you're inside for a while, breathing air, and the ventilation is not up to snuff. that, i think, is the big worry. it is not just that people go to beaches. they then go to restaurants or go into stores, and they linger. that is the worry. >> right. >> i think this kind of -- >> let me interrupt for a second, if you don't mind. let me underline that for a second. it seems every couple days on

twitter, somebody finds a telephoto lens of people walking on a beach that makes everybody look like they're crammed together. what mika and i have been arguing is it is actually good for people to get outside. it is good to get to parks. if they're going to the beach, going with their families, going with people that have already had the disease, that have the antibodies, actually, getting outside and walking, as you said, is a positive thing. going to parks and walking is positive. going to beaches and walking. even walking down streets where they're social distancing is good for people's health. i'm thinking it probably helps th them, their lungs. if you're social distancing and you're outside, there's very little evidence that that is going to cause you any reason to worry about this pandemic. >> joe, you're half a doctor.

i agree with you, which is -- and i've been advocating since mid-march that we should not lock down state parks. we should actually -- you have to regulate the number of people on beaches so that they don't crowd, but being outside is very good. it is good for mental health. it is also, as you point out, few cases of transmission documented outside. i think it is something we ought to be encouraging, not discouraging. i will just admit, last night, my partner and i went for about an hour walk in rock creek park in washington, d.c. saturday, we went for a 28-mile bike ride. those are good things. it is, as you point out, important to get outside, important to stretch your legs for exercise, but also important mentally, not to be cooped up in the house the whole time. you do have to adhere to the physical distancing and the masks. those are important things. but getting outside is also important. i've actually tried to encourage washington, d.c., to close some

streets. i think it encourages people to use and walk outside. >> yup. let's talk -- >> we should also -- >> let's talk really quickly about the possibility of eating outside at restaurants. a lot of restaurants are taking away half the tables. again, you're outside. you have social distancing. if people are wearing masks, for give us your latest on airplanes, if you had to fly from new york to la, a question willie asked yesterday, would you do that, secondly? third, could you touch on how sticky this virus is? at the beginning, we heard, "oh, it can live on stainless steel for three days. it can live on plastic three days." it lives on surfaces. what are we actually learning?

i haven't heard of anybody getting the coronavirus because they went to a drugstore or because they went to a grocery store and picked up, you know, some steak and took it home. what do we know right now about that? >> so really good set of questions. the first and most important thing to remember is that getting infected, getting transmission is you need to see high amount of virus over a prolonged period of time. that happens indoors, not out doors. it also happens when people could have or snee cough or sneeze near you. it brings up the coronavirus if they're infected. those are the scenarios we've seen transmission. people singing, projecting a lot of air. or family gatherings over four, five hours indoors, or parties or conferences where the same people are together for four,

five hours, rebreathing the air and the ventilation isn't good. restaurants outdoors, i think we're really beginning to understand, having people outdoors, having tables spread out so they're 6 feet away, having wait staff wear masks and gloves, those are probably very, very safe and probably the places you do want to open up first. >> that is good news. >> not places where people are sitting indoors. that's one reason the summer may turn out to be very good for us. the transmission of the virus may go down a little bit. we don't know. we'll be spending a lot more time out of doors. we can distance, and that will be a good way to reduce transmission, opposed to being in march, when it was still cold outside indoors, where transmission can happen. planes are complicated. we don't know for sure about coronavirus on planes. we do know about flu on planes. we know that planes have very good ventilation systems. but if you're sitting within two rows of someone who has the flu,

it significantly increases your likelihood of getting the flu. because even with a good ventilation system, that person is breathing near you. that person might be coughing and sneezing near you. that's what the concern is about flying for a prolonged period of time. not that the ventilation isn't good. the ventilation is better than your house ventilation. but you're stuck near someone for a prolonged period of time. that, again, is the scenario in which viral transmission happens. if you really, really have to fly, los angeles to new york, new york to dallas, you've got to wear a mask, got to have gloves. i'd really think about how really, really important that event is. >> doctor, it is willie. good to see you this morning. you were signaling signs of hope for the summer. let's look ahead to the fall, as well. i think we parents, students, principals, teachers are all trying to figure out what exactly to do come august and

september, when students are expected to go back. looking for signs of hope for the fall, including notre dame announcing it'll hold in-person classes on a modified schedule, going until thanksgiving and home until january. on the -- it's may, and we're talking about september, but how are you looking at the possibility of public school students going back into schools in this country? >> first, let me say, we have a forthcoming article in the "atlantic" where we're advocating opening up summer camps because they can be outdoors and you can have children. if we do that, we can learn a lot about how to reduce transmission, how easy it is to get kids to wash their hands, to wear face masks, and it'll be important for thinking about opening up schools. in addition, for the fall, we can look at other countries that

have done this, like denmark, like germany, and look at their experience. denmark did it. they reduced the number of kids per class so that they could physically distance. they basically doubled the number of classes. they put up tents outside so that you would be outside with better ventilation, but also able to reduce that class compression. you have to stagger the times kids go in, stagger pick-up times. you might have to do alternating classes. for young kids who are learning, it is essential and school has a lot of benefits. i think we need to begin planning now to open schools. let me say two things. it is not risk-free. some kids inevitably will get covid. the real worry, however, is not the kids, it's adults, the teachers, the school administrators, and the parents if they, god forbid, bring the covid home.

kids, we know, on the covid, yes, we are worried about this multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children. there are several hundred kids now who have that. but we need to put the whole covid situation in context. i was looking at the data from new york recently. there have been 16,000 deaths from covid in new york. ten in children under 18. ten. yes, it can be deadly in kids, but it is very, very rare. i think the balance is there are lots of benefits to socialization in school , to education in school. we have to be thinking about how we can do it safely. how we disinfect classrooms. how we have the physical distancing and the social distancing. we serve meals to kids. those are big logistical and financial challenges, but they're things we can do. i think, for the children, things we must do.

>> well, that's some promising speculation on that. let's hope it is born out. obviously, kids want to go back. we want our kids to go back. even summer camps, too, all our kids are dying to go to summer camp. i want to ask about the vaccine, doctor. the study done with moderna, obviously early in the process. they've tested nit in a small group of people and shows promising signs. several phases left to go. they have said if it does pass through these other trials, through these other phases of study, it could be available early next year, which, as you know much better than i do, would be an extraordinary pace to develop a vaccine. some scientists, some public health officials have said, let's wait and see. it is nice to have a little optimism about this now, but there's a long way to go between now and a vaccine that is approved, number one, and can be widely distributed. how are you looking at this new vaccine news this week? >> willie, you're exactly right. we've had a bunch of news. moderna on monday.

yesterday, johnson & johnson announcing that they've done well with their vaccine. guinea pigs have done well with a vaccine. it is unusual to have these announcements, and the main reason is people want a signal that it does appear, at least in principle, that we can get a vaccine and that that vaccine, in principle, can raise antibodies that protect human beings from the coronavirus. that does take away an uncertainty. lots of people were worried that, you know, it's not so easy to create a vaccine against coronavirus. so this does say, it looks possible, and it does look like the body will respond with antibodies. whether that leads to protection from infection and, importantly, whether we can get older people who generally don't respond that well to vaccine, to actually respond with antibodies and protect themselves is a big question. the other really big question,

two other big questions. one is, as you announced, the production of enough vaccine and the distribution and administration of that is no trivial it is one thing to produce a vaccine, then you have to do what is called fill and finish. put it in bottles, make sure it is sterile, send it out, and then you have to get it to all of the people. one of the worrisome things we've seen from this coronavirus situation is that, in fact, immunizations with other vaccines have gone down 63% in new york city for other immunizations for children. that's terrible. think about how we're going to administer to people if we're physically distancing, and that's going to be a challenge. i know that the annual flu vaccine at the university of pennsylvania, we have long lines of people and they go through very quickly, you know. you stand in line for about two or three minutes and get it, but it is very, very -- we might need an army of people to go

house to house to house to administer such a vaccine. so that's very, very important. as you say, it is good to have hope but we also need to be realistic that there's a lot to do between, say, june 1st and the time we're going to get it, which earliest will be next year. that would be record speed by any measure, but i know that people are really looking carefully at this because we want to make sure it is safe. we are going to be giving this vaccine to hundreds of millions of well people, and the last thing you want to do is make them sick. >> dr. zeke emanuel. that is for sure. thank you very, very much for okay.. we want to bring in now democratic senator tammy baldwin it wisconsin. last week the wisconsin supreme court overturned the governor's stay-at-home order. so, senator, first of all how are things going in your state? >> well, we now have a patchwork of regulations and rules in

cities and counties across the state, and that caused a little bit of chaos. it has also prevented us from reopening in an orderly way and following the best practices, the gating criteria that's out there of two weeks of declining rates in new cases and having sufficient ppe for people to restart businesses but also protect their workers and their customers. this was so disappointing to see this pandemic politicized. this was a lawsuit that went before our supreme court, brought by the republican leadership of the state legislature to question a public health ruling that was keeping wisconsinites safe. it was so disappointing to see

our state supreme court play politics rather than focus on the public health. >> so explain the patchwork now that you are working with. where are the biggest inconsistencies and sources of confusion for residents of your state? >> yeah, well, it is hard to even figure out. in one county, the county placed a stay-at-home order to -- through memorial day, but different jurisdictions within that county did not. so you see a lot of travel from place to place to find, you know, entertainment or places to go out, and that's really unsafe right now. you know, again, this shouldn't be politicized. this should be about our public health. and, you know, it should be done by the book as far as we know in terms of protecting ourselves

from this coronavirus. you know, the idea was bring the case load down enough so that we can then trace -- contact trace for every new case that is identified, do sufficient testing so that we can early on find if there's a community spread, an outbreak, and this ruling by our supreme court has sped up the process so that it is not -- we are not at that place yet where we can test adequately and trace adequately. we were building towards that, but they -- the supreme court just struck down a public health order. >> senator tammy baldwin, thank you very much. again, as the economist we had earlier on the show said, that testing would help us with reopening safely. we have much more ahead including new jersey governor phil murphy who will be our guest as his state slowly begins

to reopen. "morning joe" is coming right back. >> industry leaders and experts say expanding voting by mail for november could require making commitments in the next if few weeks. congress must act now to fund such voting and states need to do whatever it takes to make it happen because people should not have to choose between their health and participating in democracy. heir health and participating in democracy. i just love hitting the open road and telling people

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mr. president, with 4% of the world's population and 30% of the outbreak, what would you have done differently facing this crisis? >> well, nothing. if you take new york and new jersey, which were very hard hit, we were very, very low. and in terms of morbidity and in

terms of -- you look at the death relatively speaking, we're at the lowest level along with germany. germany, us, there could have been some smaller countries too perhaps. so we're in that category along with germany as the lowest, and i think that's a great honor. >> yeah. >> so that's not correct. >> no, that's a lie. >> according to data from johns hopkins university, the u.s. actually ranks tenth highest in per capita death rates out of 140 countries. that's 130 out of 140 countries. he's completely upside down. >> okay. so what you're saying is we're 130th instead of 1st? >> correct. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is thursday, may 21st. along with joe, willie and me we have white house reporter for "the associated press", jonathan lemire. host of msnbc's "politics

nation" and president of the national action network, reverend al sharpton. a former director of strategic communications for hillary clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, adrian elrod. great to have you here. >> jonathan lemire, can you help clear up the charts? is there something i'm missing there because it is the second time donald trump has taken 131 and said america was tied for first place. are we missing something? >> it appears that math is not the president's strong suit, joe. no, you're not missing anything. this is just more of the relentless sort of spin from the white house, this glass half full. the distortion of numbers and statistics from the president, trying to defend the job he has done managing this pandemic. you were right. this is not the first time we've heard him do this, where he has seized upon data and interpreted

it a different way to try to sell what his administration has done and trying to ignore the numbers that, of course, most of us care most about, which is more than 90,000 -- well more than 90,000 americans have died at this point. of course, that is a number that is still rising and then it will do so -- hopefully not, but potential dramatically if there are, indeed, subsequent waves of this which many health experts predict. the president's focus though is on other numbers. those numbers, his poll numbers. that's what led yesterday to his outcry against michigan and nevada, denouncing mail-in voting. >> yes. >> which, of course, he had the facts wrong on most of that. >> but he lied, of course. >> instead that's where that came from. it wasn't a "fox news" segment, which often does inspire some of the president's out-of-nowhere outbursts. this was polling that he saw. his team still sees him down in just about every battleground state. not down by a lot, but

consistently down. they know if the election was held joe biden would win it. the president in part for that reason is off to michigan, one of the very battleground states although one his campaign feels the worst about. of the trio in the midwest, pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, michigan is the one that his advisers have all but ruled out. >> and, of course, a president who keeps hurting his case for reelection every day. yesterday he threatened to defund michigan. >> right. >> because michigan did exactly what texas did, exactly what georgia, exactly what a lot of other states did. it is interesting though he only brought up michigan and nevada where he fears he is going to lose. i guess absentee ballot applications are okay in the state of texas, but it is voter fraud -- again, it is bizarre and americans see through this. it is one of the reasons he's losing so badly in so many polls. but, willie, other than the president being really confused or just lying through his teeth

about where the united states stands per capita in the world on death rates and the fact that, you know, we have 4.3% of the world's population and yet 30% of the world's deaths as we move towards 100,000, he was asked yesterday what he would do different in this pandemic and he said "nothing." this is a guy who said there was only one person coming in from china on january 22nd. this is a guy who was warn by navarro a couple of days later half a million people in america could die if we didn't do something, and yet three, four weeks roll on and he is saying still it is 11 people, soon it will be down to zero. this is a guy in march that told republican senators, don't worry, stay calm, you got nothing to worry about. he was asked by reporters, are you worried? he goes, no, i'm not worried at all. of course now we're seeing what would have happened if the president and governors had

moved faster, all of the lives that could have been saved, but the president is asked, "would you do anything different" and he said, "nothing." that reminds me of his "i don't take any responsibility for this at all" statement from about a month ago. >> yes, i was just thinking of that same line, "i take no responsibility at all." he later said, "i give myself a ten out of ten on performance." he is unable to show what he believes any weakness in reflecting on the way he's conducted himself and handled this crisis. what a strange framing to say, "it is a great honor." it is a great honor, first of all, to be completely wrong on the facts as you guys just laid out with that graphic. even if he were correct we are going to hit 100,000 people dead from coronavirus sometime next week. great honor? isn't that an odd way to talk about a pandemic and a crisis that killed 100,000 people, has a million and a half cases or more than that in this country right now? a great honor? it goes in. he says, "i wear these numbers

like a badge of honor" a couple of days ago. >> wow. >> jared kushner famously said, "this is a great success story the way this administration has handled this." president trump said, "we have prevailed on testing, we did the job, it is time to turn the corner." as you say, this fits into his concerns about reelection which we see in another poll yesterday, he's worried that he is going to lose in november so he's trying to create an alternate reality where everything is just fine and he's done a great job handling this pandemic. >> yeah, there's that. he loves numbers. so we'll look at the numbers. joe biden has a double digit lead nationally over president trump in a new quinnipiac university poll. biden is up 11 points in a general election matchup against trump, 50% to 39%. biden leads trump across all age groups including a ten point lead among voters 65 and older. among african-american voters, biden leads trump by 78 points.

the president leads among men overall, 48% to 41%. biden has a 28 point lead among women voters. joe biden doing quite well, joe, i think at a time when he's not even able to get out there and campaign. >> yeah. >> he's working from his basement bunker, which republicans may make fun of but, quite frankly, he is able to be steady and, you know, put out a message every day about how he has been warning this president about this pandemic since january, that he has been spot on, understanding the magnitude of this crisis. i think, you know, when people are in this human catastrophe, watching it unfold before their eyes -- >> right. >> -- i think they prefer a steady hand. >> well, you say a steady hand, it is just he is following -- >> someone who is not -- >> he is actually following the rules. >> right. >> he is actually following the advice of donald trump's own medical advisers. donald trump's not.

he doesn't -- >> the cdc. >> he refuses to wear a mask. he refuses to follow the white house guidelines. >> yeah. >> that he laid out himself. so, yeah, i think americans certainly in a time of pandemic, they do want a steady hand and, you know, you have bob dylan in the basement tapes, you have joe biden in the basement campaign. i think it is going to work out pretty well for both of them. >> coming up, breaking news on the economy. we're getting new numbers on jobless claims, and we'll bring those to you straight ahead. plus the governor of new jersey, phil murphy, joins the conversation. "morning joe" is back in a moment.

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sfwlfrmts welcome back the morning joe. we have been talking about new poll numbers on the presidential race. according to the quinnipiac poll, 47% of americans say former vice president joe biden is honest compared to 34% who

say president trump is. 51% say biden has good leadership skills. 40% say that of president trump. 61% say joe biden cares about average americans. 42% say that of president trump. more americans believe the former vice president would do a better job than president trump handling the coronavirus by a margin of 16 points, 55% to 39%. joe biden also leads in health care, 57% to 37%. and a statistical tie on the economy. reverend sharpton, these numbers and the larger number that shows joe biden with an 11 point lead in this poll and winning almost every demographic group tell the story of why president trump is doing things like attacking mail-in voting in the state of michigan, in the state of nevada, and threatening to withhold federal funding to those places. by the way, michigan a place that has historic flooding right

now and probably doesn't need a threat of not getting federal money. >> it shows the consistent insensitivity of this president, which is why the polls reflect how people are viewing that. when you have a state that 24 hours after they are hit with this dam burst that is literally flooding out places and when you have a state where you have armed protesters trying to intimidate the state legislature in lansing and you come and attack the state saying, i am thinking about withdrawing federal funds, i mean this is no way to campaign for anything other than for your opponent. what he did yesterday was really made joe biden's best commercial. all joe biden has to show is upwards probably by next week of 100,000 families that are mourning the loss of a loved one that they can't even funeralize, by the way, because you can't

have people congregate over ten. they can't even have funerals. show these people that are suffering, and what would you do differently? frame, i wouldn't do anything differently. keep going back and forward showing him repetitively saying, i wouldn't do anything differently, we didn't do anything wrong, while we show the graphics of what has happened to america. that would be a biden campaign ad and he doesn't have to come out of the basement in order to put that ad out. >> and we should mention careen jeanpiere is joining the biden campaign as a senior adviser. adrian elrod, it appears donald trump provides proof every day that joe biden understands the coronavirus better than he does. how bad is that for donald trump? i mean even the sound bite that we rolled in, americans i would think understand that he's just got it wrong. >> yeah. i mean look at the disaster for

donald trump, mika, and we see it play out every single day on television when donald trump literally steps in it. you know, this is not something -- this is not some sort of self-manufactured crisis trump is doing here. this is actually people's lives on the line. i think that is one of the reasons why you are seeing the poll numbers trend the way they are. you can track that, of course, with the fact that people trust joe biden, they know that he has the steady leadership we need right now in this country. to the point willie just made, he is not even doing that. i mean he is doing a lot but he is not out there every day trying to be the counterpoint to donald trump. he is in his basement doing a lot of local media interviews. he is, you know, raising money. he is doing a lot of virtual town halls with key con st constituencies. i want to say something about mail-in voting that, of course, donald trump is trying to suppress. look, here is the bottom line,

and i hope the viewers understand this. mail-in voting is very easy to do and it is very important that governors in states allow people, especially with this pandemic, to be able to have the option to vote by mail. what donald trump is doing, he knows that he cannot win this election by simply turning out his base. he has to suppress everybody else. this is a suppression tactic. >> yeah. >> that is not going to work because to the point that people have been making -- he is not legally allowed to withhold federal funding for mail-in ballots. he is trying to do this to scare people to make them think that voting is difficult. by the way, i think it is bizarre he is doing it in michigan because he actually needs some of his voters to turn out voting by mail, voting absentee, but it is a tactic he is using to suppress the vote because he knows it is the only way he has a shot at winning this election at this stage of the game. coming up on "morning joe," a pair of u.s. senators, one republican and one democrat,

teaming up to help support struggling businesses. we'll talk to todd young and michael bennet about their bipartisan plan. it is just ahead on "morning joe."

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i think they're number two and three. we are way ahead of everybody. but when you do that, you have more cases. so a lot of times the fake news media will say, you know, there are a lot of cases in the united states. well, if we didn't do testing at a level that nobody has ever dreamt possible, you wouldn't have very many cases. >> reporter: -- per capita basis, obviously the united states is larger than these european countries. how does our testing compare per capita? >> deborah, you want to do that? >> our testing now, we're almost up to 4%. some of the european countries are 4% to 5%. >> when you say per capita, there's many per capita. per capita relative to what? you could look at just about any category and we're really at the top, meaning positive on a per capita basis, too. they've done a great job. >> by the way. >> oh, god. >> per capita means per capita. it is like per person. it is latin.

sort of like per head. so, you know, per capita means per capita. i did want to say this though. the united states has failed on testing from early in the process, but dr. birx is right. we are making progress and we are now, i think, probably -- >> as best we can, yes. >> -- fourth or fifth in the world per capita. so that is good news. the progress continues. unfortunately, a lot of the testing has not been as accurate as we would like, but, listen, that's going to happen when you have to out of necessity lessen certain regulatory guidelines to get tests out to the market as quickly as possible. >> well, i know, but it is also i guess in many ways very frustrating to hear the president's almost illiterate analysis of where we stand on this, especially given all of the advances in public health

made by amazing institutions in this country where we are, number one, would be in advances in public health except the leadership in this crisis and the president's analysis by the day doesn't reflect that. your column in "the washington post" which is entitled "i believe in american exceptionalism and that's what makes this crisis so hard to accept" really resonates, joe. >> well, i do believe in american exceptionalism. i think that if you don't believe in american exceptionalism you must have your own ideologies or your own personal prejudices that don't allow you to see the facts that are right in front of you, especially when it comes to science and math and our universities and our health care system, the doctors that are considered the best in the world. of course, we all know the united states military might and economic prowess. they remain unrivalled across

the globe. america's culture influence and soft power remains enormous, and that's really -- even with the most inward-looking president in over a century sitting in the oval office. it also should surprise no one a country born in the age of enlightenment would thrive so mightily in science, medicine and technology. think about it. from ben franklin's experiments with electricity to steve jobs' creation of the iphone, american inventors have fashioned brave new worlds, then they wipe cleaned the boundaries of those ages before imagining new ones and creating new ones in the blink of an eye, whether it was american visionaries who were flying across the windy shores of kitty hawk in north carolina or air force pilots who were learning how to guide space ships under the surface of the moon. think about this. immigrants traveling to our

shores have been so pivotal in shaping american exceptionalism. inventing the telephone, the television and the internet technology that now defines our daily existence. you know, it was also an immigrant from germany who visited fdr's white house and push that war-time president to launch the manhattan project. in so doing, albert einstein and a lot of other immigrants fleeing nazi germany helped america and its allies win the second world war. our country's pioneering spirit has also extended to medicine, whether it is through the creation of lifesaving vaccines one after another through the years, the development of blood transfusions are miraculous breakthroughs in the field of organ transplants and one survey after another. american doctors are viewed as the best in the world and our universities remain unrivalled.

did you know since 1950, approximately half of all nobel prizes awarded in the science fields have gone to americans. almost half. with the united states possessing such dominance in the fields of science and medicine and technology, how can that same country with just 4.3% of the world's population be responsible for almost 30% of the coronavirus deaths that have been reported across the globe? now, donald trump's conspiracy theories or his followers who are conspiracy theorists would like to blame the deep state, would like to blame hapless bureaucrats for being asleep at the switch when the pandemic hit. but, man, the record is really clear here, and it shows it was the president himself who repeatedly ignored all signs of a gathering storm.

after all, it was the centers for disease control and prevention who learn about the outbreak in wuhan, china, on the last day of 2019 and immediately began developing reports for the department of health and human services, within weeks. trump's white house had received similar warning from the pentagon, from the state department, from the national security council, from donald trump's intelligence community, from donald trump's hhs department, from donald trump's food and drug administration and from donald trump's own staffers who put together the president's daily briefings. by the end of january trade advisor peter navarro had seen enough to warn of a coming pandemic that he said could kill 500,000 americans, but donald trump was dismissing the disease as one person coming in from china at the same time. so how could two people see the

same warning and come up with such dramatically different conclusions? joe biden came up with a dramatically different conclusion at the same time and it was a heck of a lot closer to peter navarro's than it was donald trump's. another month would pass after navarro's grim warning and after joe biden's grim warning, and donald trump would still be assuring americans that the pandemic would magcally ically away. as late as march trump declared he was not worried about the pandemic, and his defenders on some cable news shows were actually telling their viewers that the threat from covid-19 was nothing more than the latest hoax meant to bring down their hero. now, by april the president of the same country that is home to m.i.t., stanford, johns hopkins university, harvard, cal tech. >> wow. >> the university of chicago,

yale, and so many other american universities that lead the world in research, this same president publicly asked white house doctors to look into whether injecting disinfect anants of bodies of sick people could cure them from the virus. you know the most damning element of his response may well be his stubborn refusal to marshal the resources of the u.s. government in the face of a once-in-a-century challenge, to create a manhattan project for this challenge. to create a manhattan project for our time! to create a manhattan project for the veterans and the seniors who have given so much to this country and who were dying alone in nursing homes, in strrva hospitals, and in retirement communities across florida,

arizona and the country. instead, this befuddled former reality tv host continues to spend his time spinning wild conspiracy theories, attacking the state of michigan, attacking the state of nevada and continuing his sad obsession -- and it is so sad -- with former president barack obama. the u.s. death toll is now rising toward 100,000 lost souls. peter navarro was on to something at the end of january. and despite the fact that we're approaching that bleak, bleak number, the only thing exceptional about this american president's management of the crisis has been his gross negligence. he has allowed so many people to die in a country that remains home to the best and the

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we've got breaking economic news now. the labor department just released its weekly report on unemployment claims. we're told more than 2.4 million americans filed for jobless benefits last week. that brings the total number of requests over the last nine weeks to almost 39 million. willie. >> yeah, this has become a dreaded time of the week, 8:30 eastern time on thursday over the last nine weeks, as you guys said. nearly 40 million of our fellow americans claiming for unemployment, and this is a fact, joe, that the president cannot talk his way out of. the loss of jobs, of course, not entirely his fault, but he wants to look past this and talk about president obama. he wants to look past this and talk about mail voting. but the fact of the matter is this crisis, this pandemic is at the center of almost everyone's

life in this country. >> yeah, and, you know, willie, the thing is we've been saying all along, this is a health crisis, and when the health crisis is taken care of the economic crisis will be taken care of and donald trump's political crisis will be taken care of, but he hasn't been able to stick to his own guidelines. the thing is we're at a point now with steady leadership that he could listen to people like zeke emanuel, he could have listened to other doctors, you could listen to dr. fauci, he could listen to dr. birx, he could go by his own guidelines and, yeah, start opening up parts of this economy. california under gavin newsom is already 75% opened up, but, you know, i was really heartened by what zeke said earlier that -- you know, what we've been saying here, open the parks, open the beaches. just have guidelines people need to follow. do it, and even eating outside at restaurants if the stables

are spaced apart and social distancing is followed and people are wearing masks, as even the white house is recommending strongly, then we can start marching forward together as a country. >> well, speaking of opening the beaches, joining us now democratic governor phil murphy of new jersey. governor, good morning. good to have you with us again today. obviously this memorial day weekend a big day, a big weekend for anybody who lives in new jersey. as someone who grew up there, i can tell you putting the cooler in the car and driving down the parkway to the shore, this is when the summer starts. you are going to open some of your beaches. explain the decision to open them and how cpacly thoexactly beaches will look because on a typical memorial day weekend they would be packed. >> good to be back with you, willie and team. i'm going to put aside for a minute mother nature doesn't look like she's going to cooperate in terms of good weather this morning, so i think honestly the attendance would be

lower than it probably would be, but we made the decision based on the data. joe just sort of said this. we believe that public health creates economic health, not the other way around, and that we don't want to jump the gun but we've had really -- other than we had a staggering loss of life, now over 10,700 blessed souls in new jersey. the other data, which is more prescriptive, more predictive has gotten better for the past several weeks. so we started a few weeks ago, we opened county and state parks. we have taken a whole other number of steps, things like nonessential construction, curb side pickup at nonessential retail, elective surgery, a whole series of steps. you rightfully put out, beaches are a big one. we think we can take it because the data is allowing us to. we clearly have more latitude outside than inside, and the two big levers that the local mayors and counties, that have been fabulous to work with, are pulling are both capacity

constraints, which is what we've done with the parks, and then social distancing, enforcing that. strong recommendation to wear masks as well. with that we believe we can responsibly take this step and we'll continue to take them as the data dictates and allows us to. >> governor, you mentioned more than 10,000 people have died in the state of new jersey during this crisis. an unacceptably huge, devastating huge chunk of those have come in long-term care facilities, veterans homes, nursing homes. on march 31st the new jersey health commissioner placed a rule the long-term care facilities had to readmit covid patients from the hospital, they couldn't ask them or test them or ask about the covid diagnosis, whether they still had it. was it a mistake? are you looking at overturning it the way governor cuomo did in new york? >> the tragedy within the tragedy, you said it, is in long-term care facilities.

it is not just in new jersey but it is in the country, but it certainly is in new jersey. a big percentage of the lost lives come from there, including, as you said, from our veterans' homes. it has been an incredibly uneven performance by the operators. we started long before march 31st, started -- the department of health started on this with directives for long term care. we put the national guard in. the va is in these homes. the attorney general is actually doing an investigation. we hired a national firm not just to tell us when this is over what we could have done differently, we want them to tell us now what we can do differently or could have done differently. they're actually working on that right now. i don't want to jump the gun. i would hope in the next couple of weeks we are going to go live with steps not just on what we should do going forward, but what we should have done. i will wait until then to make any statements about what may or may not have been done that was either aggressive or not sufficiently in front of this. no state was prepared.

no long-term care facility infrastructure as an industry matter was prepared. as i said, the performance was incredibly uneven, but we are looking at it every which way. >> yes, and certainly operators do deserve some of the blame for the way they protected their residents, but you had a pretty explicit case of let's let some of these people back from the hospital into the homes based on a health commissioner's order and then outbreaks in those homes. as you look at it, as governor cuomo has finally said that that was a mistake, do you believe that that order was a mistake just based on the data and the evidence and what happened once some of those patients went back into the long-term facilities? >> yeah, i think, willie, one of the points that needs to be made even at every step of the way, there's been a strong directive toward cohorting patients, and that's been part of our mantra, our health commissioner's leadership from day one. but, again, we've had an outside

independent team looking at long-term care now going on a month, and they're going to hold up a mirror to what we've done and what we should do as an industry going forward. i want to wait to see what they come back with. >> and do you have any -- just a gut feeling? i know you want to wait for that, but about whether or not it is a good idea to send patients who have had covid, who tested positive for covid and put them back into the group settings? >> i think if they're cohorted, willie, it is a different -- that's a different reality than just throwing people into the mix. cohorting was something that was part of our health commissioner's directives from day one. that seems to me -- you have another issue here, by the way, we haven't talked about. you have heroic staff going in and out every day. >> yes. >> early on it is pretty clear that you had some asymptomatic carriers who did not realize it and unwittingly passed it on across generations, which is another reality we've been

dealing with and trying to make sure we've managed that through aggressive testing and cohorting of staff as well. >> so, governor, we've been talking about the here and now. obviously you are worried about memorial day weekend. you are worried about when you can get restaurants beyond just take-out and get some of the places opened up. but obviously you and your staff are looking over the horizon as well towards schools come september. how are you looking at that right now? because there are an awful lot of parents and students who will be going through this summer wondering, when do we go back or do we go back at all. >> yeah, i would say the following. we have a small if not a large army looking at this right now. we are planning on going back. that's going to be our base case, but we have to do it in a responsible way. we have to do it, you know, the basic social distancing realities, face coverage, but we have also got to do it with respect to teachers and

administrators in this whole notion of cross generational spread of the virus. i said yesterday we will give guidance to parents and kids and educators and staff i hope by early to mid-june. there's a lot of uneasiness around this, understandably right now. we want to make sure we get this right. as we have said all along, indoor stuff is a lot harder than outdoor. you will see outdoor dining, for instance, in new jersey before you will see it inside. schools obviously have a big element of their reality, physical presence is inside but we want to get it right. we're preparing on the path that that's what we will do. we will give guidance at some point over the next few weeks. >> just a quick follow up, governor. a couple of clarifications here. first of all, you talk about cohorting when willie asks whether it was proper for the state to order long-term care

facilities to take seniors back in without covid-19 screening, as it pertains to this issue, what do you mean by cohorting? >> cohorting patients -- again, this is an industry in new jersey and in every american state with a huge number of operators. so this is not like hospitals where you have got a very finite number of -- in our case 71 systems. you have hundreds and hundreds of these operators, so you've got to look at the performance of each one of these operators. i mean cohorting based on symptoms and/or actual positive tests, and that includes both for residents by at the end of willie's questions as i answered, it also includes staff. we lost far too many lives of folks that work in these facilities as well. as i said at the beginning, you had unwitting carrying of the virus by asymptomatic staff

members early on, and that was a challenge that, i hope god willing, we've dealt with sufficiently. >> one final question. again, i haven't heard the answer. i think you may have said you are going to wait for a study to come out. but let me just circle back and ask one more time, clearly yes or no. do you think the previously health care order was a mistake to send seniors back into these long-term facilities? >> joe, again, i do want to -- we're not bashful about getting nothing but the facts in terms of how this was handled. as i said, we've got -- we hired a third party to come in, not just to help us figure out what has happened but help us plus up in the here and now. this is going to depend -- so i'm going to put that aside for a second. if patients were properly cohorted according to the directives from our health commissioner, and that was executed properly, the answer is

yis -- you would have to say the answer is yes, that was okay. if they were not cohorted and it was not executed at the center level, at the long-term facility itself, then clearly that's a big problem. that's concerning. >> governor phil murphy. thank you very much for being on with us this morning. coming up at 9:00 a.m., another governor. california's gavin newsom will be stephanie ruhle's guest. still ahead this hour on "morning joe," we just report the latest unemployment claims. coming up, we'll talk to two senators about their plan to help small businesses keep their employees. democrat michael bennet and republican todd young, next on "morning joe." how about no

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stopped operating. that's according to a facebook survey. and while congress passed the paycheck protection program in march, allocating $669 billion so far, those funds were meant to cover just eight weeks of expenses. this is clearly going a lot longer. our next guests have drafted a bipartisan bill to support small and midsized businesses for the rest of the year. joining us now, democratic senator michael bennet of colorado and republican senator todd young of indiana. >> thank you for being with us. more importantly, thank you for working together across party lines to fight for small businesses. they are the backbone of this country economically, and the more great work you, do the better it is for them. the better it is for all of us. let me start with something that was said earlier this morning. senator bennet, and that came

from zeke emmanuel who has been very conservative. a very conservative doctor when it comes to his guidelines for how we handle this pandemic. zeke said, hey, americans need to get out to the parks. they need to walk on beaches. safely, obviously, social distancing, and eating outside restaurants if the tables are separated and they have masks on. you know, this should not cause a problem because there's not a lot of incidents of people catching this disease outside. isn't that great news, and doesn't that send a message that if you're hearing that from zeke eman yawl who is very conservative when it comes to this, that we really should start moving forward and getting small businesses going again in a safe and responsible manner that follow the white house guidelines. >> i completely agree with dr.

emmanuel. that's what colorado is doing. we're being guided by the data. if things spike again, we're going to have to close down again. i think the objective that all of us should have is to restart the economy and to keep it open. and that's why we need the testing in place. that's why we need the contact tracing in place. and that's why we've got to get the bill that todd young and i have introduced in place because so many small businesses, especially our hardest hit businesses, our restaurants and others that have been confounded by these stay-at-home orders and are still being affected by these stay-at-home orders through no fault of their own, most of them -- or only 1 in 5, i think, have the cash to last for three months. senator young and i have a bipartisan proposal that i think will keep the vast majority of our small businesses in business through this pandemic and get us out on the other end. >> senator young, thank you so much for being with us today.

thank you for your work, for small businesses. i know indiana is getting out there. they're getting back to work. talk about this bill and how it's going to help keep small businesses open through this pandemic. >> [ inaudible ]. >> all right. we're going to work on his audio. senator bennet, can you answer that question and we'll get todd when the sound comes back. go ahead. >> sure. he can probably do a better job than i will do, but it does two things basically. one, it takes the ppp program that you mentioned, which is an eight-week program and says we should extend that to 16 weeks, which we need to do. but second, it creates a loan for -- it's not a grant but a loan for small businesses to cover their working capital for

the next six months of the year. so they can stay open until the economy begins to reopen and recover. and then people have seven years to pay back these loans. if we don't provide something like this, what we're going to see is millions of small businesses in this country close and never reopen again. and as mika said, they are the backbone of our economy. >> senator young, i think we have your audio now. tell us about this bill and why it's so important that republicans and democrats come together to pass it for small businesses. >> yeah, sorry about those audio challenges. the bill is so simple, it speaks for itself. so the paycheck protection program, which was broadly bipartisan, provided a short-term bridge to the other side of this pandemic. it was all of our hopes that we could contain the virus, we could get folks back to work as we open up the economy in fairly short order. what we've done in this

legislation is extended that program for a number of weeks so that more people can benefit from it and then come up with a program as my colleague senator bennet said for six months of payroll, for benefits, for fixed costs, for the hardest hit businesses. we want to make sure only the businesses that absolutely require these forgivable loans have access to them. but they need access to them. otherwise we're going to have small businesses and medium businesses that aren't solvent for the longer term. >> sounds great. willie? >> senator young, it's willie geist. good to have you on. we know you're the senator from indiana because you have a chevrolshelf full of basketballs over your shoulder. let's talk about how this money gets into the pockets of people. there were problems early on with ppp in terms of people not being able to access that money quickly. how quickly once you have this bill passed, assuming you do, does the money get into the

hands of the small business owners who don't have much time to spare here? >> well, we intend to work through existing financial institutions, which is why, though there were some hiccups and friction points with the paycheck protection program, why, you know, compared to other government programs, the money got out there in a number of weeks. we think we can pick up right where paycheck protection left off and get it out there in very short order. so that's one of the reasons we chose the approach we did and the restart program so that people can work through their financial institutions. we also want to make sure that those businesses, those employers that employ over 500 people have access to these funds. we stood up a program, the main street program, for those employers and it's still being developed. it hasn't been rolled out yet and so this will be a simpler, during a down economy. >> so senator bennet, what's the

prospect of this passing? have you talked to leader mcconnell about it? >> i think having -- you know, to my knowledge, this is the only bipartisan bill that's been introduced on this subject so i think the prospects are pretty good. i haven't talked to senator mcconnell about it. we have, in my view, we need to do more. we need to support our state and local government so that we don't compound the recession that bier in right now but with massive layoffs of police and firefighters and teachers. this would be an important part of the next bill. and i think hopefully people are going to hear what i think todd young and i are going to hear over this recess which is, you guys haven't done enough. we need to do more. and when we come back, i hope we work in a bipartisan way to do it. one other aspect of this bill that neither of us has mentioned that is really important is because we make the firms that are eligible are firms that have lost revenue. we ensure that firms that don't need the help don't get the help. only the hardest hit businesses,

which is a lot of businesses in my state and todd young's state, will have access to it. and i think that's another improvement over the prior program. and ought to be a reason to get bipartisan support. >> boy, that is so important. i have so many former constituents who have restaurants, family restaurants, senator young, that didn't get it in that first round that have small family businesses. really quickly, we've got to close. we're coming up on a hard break. but talk about how important it is that this money gets into the right hands. >> well, look, i'm hearing from real business owners who spent their lives building up their business. i'm hearing from their employees. bowman construction in munsy, indiana, stan's food service in south bend. real people with real families to sustain. our legislation, the restart act, can help keep these businesses alive until consumer demand picks up again. >> all right.

thank you so much, senator young. greatly appreciate your being here. senator bennet, as always, thank you as well. good luck on this bill. we thank you all for working together. it's so important right now. >> all right, everybody. thank you so much for joining us today. and that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it is thursday, may 21st, and here are the facts at this hour. we begin with breaking news on jobs. this morning, we learned that another 2.4 million americans filed for unemployment last week. that brings the total to roug y ly 39 million americans out of work in the past nine weeks. of course, the economic crisis was sparked