mitchell reports" starts right now. and good day. i'm andrea mitchell in washington, continuing our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. here are the facts at this hour. the u.s. death toll is now expected to pass that terrible milestone today. 100,000 americans dyeing from covid-19. this as large groups of people were gathering over the holiday weekend, cramming to the at beaches and bars, including at the lake of the ozarks in missouri, most not wearing masks and apparently not concerned about the risks to themselves or to others. we'll talk to the mayor of st. louis about her new quarantine advisory in response to the weekend activity. governor cuomo rang the bell at the new york stock exchange today, celebrating the reopening of the trading floor for the first time since the march shutdown, although trading was never interrupted. new restrictions though now include mandatory temperature checks, masks and reducing the number of people allowed on the floor to about 25% or

approximately 80 traders at one time. and president trump is raising a ruckus over north carolina's planned republican convention in august, threatening the democratic governor of north carolina of moving the convention to another state. some suggest to his own doral resort in florida, although the president denies that. the vice president is saying that florida, texas or georgia, all battleground states, of course, will be considered new sites. we will talk to a couple of health experts about how a gathering of thousands of people can even be held safely by august. and joining me from two critical areas struggling with this virus, nbc's dasha burns in jackson, mississippi, and nbc's ali vitali in northern washington. we're talking about the state of mississippi that has more poverty than any state in the country. it ranks 50th in poverty and a large minority community, especially in the delta area.

tell me how mississippi is bearing the brunt of all of this. >> yes, andrea, mississippi is the example of the tens across the country that not only medical factors determine outcomes but social factors that determine who lives and who dies in this pandemic and it is minority communities and low-income community that's bear the brunt of this burden. in mississippi, african-americans make up more than 50% of the covid-19 deaths in the state, while being just 30% of the population. jackson, the capital, is 80% black. it is in heinz county, which has the highest number of cases in the state, as they're about 900 as of yesterday. cases in this state are rising. they just recorded their highest weekly case count. and all of the while, andrea, the state is continuing to reopen more. more restrictions are lifted.

the mayor of jackson is concerned about his community. take a listen to what he told me earlier today. >> this is a majority black city. and so as we know, it has disproportionately affected black and brown communities. the communities that are most underserved are those that deserve it the most. and what we find in cities like jackson, the most densely populated city, the two communities are interconnected. >> now, he says he's been trying to mitigate this locally. they've kept in place some restrictions that were lifted by the state but he says his hands are basically tied because all of the surrounding areas are following state guidelines. he likened it to being on an island surrounded by water. you're just going to get wet, andrea. >> ali vitali, thank you so much

down in mississippi. obviously, those are really concerning numbers from there. and here in washington, officials in st. louis, by the way, have also announced a travel advisory urging self-quarantines today after jam-packed pool parties at the lake of the ozarks. but first i want to go to ali vitali here in washington. i apologize for jumping over you, ali. i know you're in northeast washington. the mayor was briefed today. we had a spike on saturday. now two days down, so she's saying this is day 13. they have not reached that 14 days much declining curves so they can think about reopening to phase one. where are we? >> andrea, they've been real sticklers here in d.c. for wanting to see 14 consecutive days of declining cases. you are right the math had gotten a little murky on this. over the weekend there was a spike in cases that set the clock back not to zero but it 11. again, that's not math that

makes a ton of sense to me but that's where we're at right now. the mayor is saying in a press conference earlier if we still see declining cases, tomorrow she will make that ultimate decision on whether or not friday is going to be the first day of phase one reopening here in d.c. but key too that is going to be testing. i will step out of the way so you can see what's happening behind me here. which are people are showing up in their cars, windows stay up the whole time and they're getting tested. you do have to make appointments but this is something you can show up without a doctor's note, you don't have to have symptoms. it's important when you talk about expanding testing so states as they're reopening, residents know what's going on inside their own bodies, if they're healthy enough to start coming back into society. all of that comes against the backdrop of dr. der borah birx just a few days ago naming d.c. and virginia where there are still a spread of the virus,

even though cases are declining in the district. that's confusing for residents. i live here. i get being stir crazy. as i was talking to people in the line waiting to get tested, we're talking about the push and pull. the need to come back because of the economic toll but at the same time the woman reminded me the death toll is so staggering, it's a reminder for all of us as we start reopening, we still need to take precautions. social distancing, masks, being good neighbors to everyone else in our community. andrea? >> ali, let me just say as tip o'neill once said, all politics is local. the other thing that the mayor said that struck me was no july 4th parades. our neighborhood parade right here in palisades is the highlight of our year in our community. and no palisades july 4th parade? can't we catch up by then? just saying. >> it's tough, andrea. i think d.c., they are taking

this cautiously. everyone wants to be back out but they want to do it safely. it's so important. >> as she said, we're not cooking the books here, which was asked about virginia, which was throwing a little shade on the neighbors across the river in virginia. thank you so much, ali vitali out there. beautiful day here in d.c. meanwhile, we're now going to st. louis, where officials have announced a travel advisory urging self-quarantines today after jam-packed pool parties at the lake of the ozarks resort and other places over the holiday weekend. few, if any people, were wearing masks or practicing social distancing. hardly. madam mayor, thank you so much for joining us. were you as concerned as we outsiders were by seeing those pictures? how isolated was that? >> you know, andrea, we're very concerned about seeing those pictures. obviously very risky behavior on the part of a number of people who i'm sure were just trying to have a good time but have to

stop and think about the potential impact not just at the lake of the ozarks because this is an area where people from across the state and from all over the midwest go to. so those folks who were there having some fun over the weekend, they presumably have gone home to their own communities now. many of which would be in st. louis. and so that is one of the things that's very concerning about this. and we are asking those folks if they participated in an event like that at the lake of the ozarks over the weekend, please, stay home for the next 14 days. quarantine yourself. do it for yourself. do it for your grandma. do it for your neighbors and co-workers. because that's very risky behavior. >> how difficult is it for a public leader such as yourself to model good behavior when perhaps the governor in your own state has opened too quickly and

the president of the united states is saying get out there? how likely is it people will self-quarantine if they behave that way on a holiday weekend? >> well, i think it's one of those things that you call on people maybe once in a while when you were partying at the lake of the ozarks, you weren't thinking this through. when you got back home, certainly one of the things i'm asking my staff today is was anybody at the lake of ozarks over the weekend, or did you engage in any behavior that was high-risk behavior? and if so, don't come to work. so it is -- we have to model behavior. i have right here on my desk masks i wear often. of course, i have a collection of masks. i'm here by myself in this office right now so i'm not wearing it but generally i am wearing a mask every time i walk out of my office door or even have a meeting with someone here in the office. it's very important i think that we model the behavior that we want to see. you know, frankly, it's not very

much trouble to wear this mask. it's a matter of remembering it so have one in your purse, maybe one somewhere else. wear a mask. stay six feet apart. do this for yourself. do this for your friends, your neighbors and your family. >> as andrew cuomo said stowed, t today, the governor, wearing a mask is cool. trying to make it cool with the public service announcements in new york state for wearing a mask is cool. what else do you want to hear from your governor? >> our governor, governor parson. of course, missouri is a state that is varied. in the city of st. louis and st. louis county here we have almost 60% of the cases in the state. i hope our governor will continue to have at least the six feet away and recommendation to wear a mask. we in the city of st. louis are requiring all of our businesses,

which are partially open right now f now, for all of their employees to wear a mask. that's part of what they agree to to partly reopen and crack the door open to the economy. we've been under an eight-week stay-at-home order here, but we know we have to start operating again. but we have to do it with social distancing and we have to do it with masks and all of the common sense things like washing your hands, et cetera. we want to hear that from the governor as well. he has done that to some extent. >> thank you very much for taking the time for us today, mayor krewdson, from the great state of missouri, as my grandfather used to say. >> oh, yeah. >> thank you very much. dr. vita patel is a former

policy director in the obama administration. pick it up there, if you will. wearing a mask, not wearing a mask, how is it for modeling behavior for the interest of public health? >> it's a great point, andrea. it's not that difficult. and certainly being able to model it makes sure we do it as much as possible and unconsciously prevents you from touching your face and doing other things to spread the disease. it encourages signals, including a lot of things like keeping distance, which is critical. the mask, distance, hygiene together can help decrease the transmission of the virus. >> do you expect another spike of cases in hot spots around the country, perhaps five days, a week, two weeks after this past holiday weekend from the behaviors we just saw? >> certainly it's pretty concerning not just the

behaviors we saw but the fact also just generally in parts of the midwest and in the south, where they were not initially as affected at the rates we saw at the coasts, i certainly think we're monitoring those areas closely and do expect to see slight upticks. that also comes, andrea, with the fact we are seeing more testing as you mentioned in earlier reporting. it he woet n't be surprising to seize those cases increasing likely over the next several weeks because of how long it takes a virus to go from person to person. in general we're hoping the weather will do something to decrease the transmission of this virus but that's still to be determined. >> the head of the omb, former chief of staff, acting chief of staff mick mulvaney, had this to say about the number of flu cases. i wanted to see if you could fact check this. i will play it for you now. >> i think we lost respective on

this a little bit, joe, and overreacting a little bit. keep in mind 2 1/2 years ago something shy of 100,000 people died of the ordinary flu. that's not to say covid is the ordinary flu. that's not my point. but just a few years ago 100,000 people died and the country didn't shut down. it's time to deal with this in the proper perspective, and that is models to get back to work safely. >> first of all, the comparison to the, quote, ordinary flu. second of all, the number of 100,000. one can become numb to numbers. "the new york times" did a wonderful service by showing a thousand people's names and brief biographies would look like over the weekend on the sunday paper. but 100,000 for the flu a few years ago? >> sure. and maybe just to give it more of a fact check, as you mentioned, one of the highest years of cases we had in

influenza over the past decade was 2017 to 2018, where over a 12-month period of reporting had about 61,000 deaths. certainly very tragic and very important, but keep in mind that the 100,000 deaths that we know of as of today -- and i believe we with will see more, obviously, within about a three-month period. and at its peak in covid, we had almost 20,000 deaths in one week compared to the peak in influenza over the last several decades, where we had about 1,600 deaths in one week. just imagine obviously apples and oranges, different statistics to get to those numbers, different infectivity of the viruses that are very different, and the fact we had a surge in kind of the stress on the health care system of such high impact in one week, speaks to why comparing the two can be tempting but it's blatantly false. >> let me just point out he is the former omb, head former

acting chief of staff and current envoy to ireland. but clearly not an expert on either the flu or influenza. thank you very much, dr. kavita patel. thank you for being with us. up next -- president trump threatening to move the republican national convention from north carolina, blaming the state's governor, the democratic governor, for not reopening quickly enough. does the president have another agenda 1234. and the confrontation in new york's central park going viral after a white woman calls the police on an african-american man who apparently had just asked her to leash her dog. stay with us. you're watching andrea mitchell on msnbc. l on msnbc 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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memorial day tweeting a barrage, insults attacks and conspiracy theories about his political rivals. his latest target, the democratic governor of north carolina, roy cooper, with the president threatening to move the republican convention from the state if there's still covid-19 restrictions. the president going after a state that reported its highest number of new cases over the weekend and where hospitalization rates are indeed rising. on monday the vice president also putting pressure on governor cooper. >> we look forward to working with governor cooper getting a swift response and if needs be,ing if needs be, moving the national convention to a state that is farther along on reopening and can say with confidence we can gather there.

>> joining me now is nbc news white house correspondent and weekend "today" co-anchor peter alexander and white house reporter for the ap, jonathan lemire. welcome to you both. peter, first to you, do you think the president is serious on this with north carolina? i don't know if you can tell from the tweet posture. there's talk he might have florida. he's denying he's trying to get something to doral, his property. the vice president also talked about georgia and other states, texas, other battleground states. what do you think is going on there? >> it would be a dramatic shift if the president looked to move this elsewhere. he and his allies in the campaign said they're focused on charlotte charlotte, who intends to host the convention in late august. but this is part of the pattern where the president attacks specifically states with democratic governors. remember, the liberate tweets we saw about places like michigan,

wisconsin and virginia now doing the same with the state governed by the democrat roy cooper there. even as that state is following the trump administration's own guidelines in these efforts to slowly reopen. now i believe much of that state in what's described as phase two of the president is what is making a political event, convention, into a political issue and in fact trying to give him a scapegoat here saying if they can't ultimately hold it there, it's the democratic governor's fault, not anything we ourselves did. andrea? >> that raises the whole question, peter and jonathan, to you as to whether you can even hold a convention, nonvirtual convention in august, any place where thousands of people are gathered together, they will be in restaurants, they will be entertaining, they will be in tight quarters. what can be a tighter space than the floor of one of the national conventions? >> that's right, andrea, we've all been at these conventions. you're packed in there. not just the arena floor but

throughout the cities, thousands upon thousands ascend for four, five days. the democrats moved their convention from jug to auguly t and set with milwaukee. they seem perhaps virtually online and perhaps television. but the president wants something, perhaps scaled down but some sort of physical gathering. he made it clear over the weekend with these tweets. and indeed he's suggesting if north carolina is not ready, he will move it. right now north carolina has guidelines where they won't allow gatherings of more than ten people. that obviously won't work for a convention. we saw the governor of georgia, governor kemp, put out an open letter to the rnc we will happily take the convention if north carolina is not going to do it. the head of the rnc was on tv

this morning applying pressure on north carolina to get a swift resolution to this. i do think that the president is dead set on having some sort of event, some sort of celebration. and he would be willing to move it. and i should note, north carolina is a battleground state in itself. it's one where the trump campaign feels better about than some of others where the polls show the president down to joe biden but moving it there will be a risk in itself if he pulls from a state he needs electoral votes. >> absolutely. and i want to show you both a split-screen image of wearing a mask and not wearing a mask. the president and his apparent challenger, joe biden. joe biden coming out for the first time in two months and only about ten minutes, to a not previously announced location lay a wreath at a war memorial there in new castle, delaware. very sad week for their family. his son, their son, of course,

iraq war veteran died five years ago this saturday. and the president mocking him overnight on twitter. retweeting a fox news tweet for wearing a mask. peter? >> andrea, you're exactly right. recognize on the left of your screen you see the former vice president, who is following the recommend recommended guidelines on the guy on the right side of the screen, president trump and his administration. the guidelines are in situations like that that you are surrounded by individuals in public, they recommend you wear these masks. that is what vice president biden is doing. it's also what president trump as you noted on twitter amplified, posting what brit hume of fox news apparently put up this picture that was basically making fun of joe biden for wearing his aviator sunglasses but also that black mask on his face there. this has been part of an escalating feud between the two men in recent days. over the weekend the biden campaign posted a digital ad

effectively taking on donald trump for playing golf, even as the death toll in this country nears 100,000. donald trump basically said this was not a mortal sin and blamed the fake news media for suggesting as much. you remember in 2014 and multiple times since then president trump was very critical of barack obama for playing golf at all during the course of his presidency. but the ground rules have changed. he's now president and he's going on the attack in spite of his past positions on this very issue. >> indeed. and also going on the attack against mail-in voting, which has been done successfully, jonathan, in a number of states. presumably given the risks, potential risks during the pandemic and aftermath for elderly in particular voting, he's already voted himself mail-in, in florida. and there is no solid evidence

mail-in voting in states that have it. >> andrea, you make a great point, the president himself would be voting absentee by mail. as a florida resident, he will be in washingtonle. he has said so. he has without evidence criticize the the efforts of several states to expand access to voting during this pandemic, particularly mail-in voting. we know about michigan. he turned his sights on california over the weekend. i think we are seeing here, it's a replay of what he did in 2016. he alleged with no evidence whatsoever there was widespread voter fraud then. there's no sense of it here. he seems like he's trying to plant the seeds of doubt again, concerned about his ee leelectol future. >> and putting pressure on the votes themselves. jonathan lemire and peter alexander, thank you very much. we look forward to your reporting on "nightly news"

tonight. coming up -- are meat processors doing enough to protect workers in plants with raging infection rates? we will talk to sharon duke close, joining us next from iowa, right next to the tyson facility. happen every day. people are surprising themselves the moment they realize they can du more with less asthma. thanks to dupixent, the add-on treatment for specific types of moderate-to-severe asthma.

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workers around the country continue to get sick from covid-19. more than 11,000 cases and counting all tied to producers tysons, smithfield, jbs. a fifth person that worked at the tyson plant in waterloo has died. doctor sharon duclos sounded the alarm last month as the state was moving to reopen. >> i think about what would the person say to me who just died from this? what would the families say to me who just died from this? how would they advocate helping other people not go through what they just went through? for the other businesses, churches, restaurants, think about your community and think about your actions and think about how you can best serve the greater good. greater good. >> we thought it was a good time number of positive cases that we had. the sad part about it is our positive cases that we are seeing are really affecting our long-term care facilities. so a large portion of people in long-term care facilities really just want comfort care so are are not having to go to the hospital, so we're just caring for them there. >> so people are avoiding going to the hospital for fear of further infection, and not getting the help they need for other medical problems? >> that is the sad part about it, as this goes on, people who have those chronic diseases like

diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, it's hard to convince them to say, we have to continue to care for you if you're having symptoms, you have to come in. you just can't -- you can do a lot virtually over a computer. but you can't do everything. and so them trying to convince them to come in before it's too late, before they're behind the eight ball for another reason. so we are definitely seeing that. >> how are your teams doing with p ppe, testing? and also with emotional strains doing this over such a long period of time now. >> correct. concerning our ppe, i think we're like everyone else. we continue to struggle to make sure we have enough ppe. we definitely don't have enough to use it like it was intended. so we're having to use our masks

a lot longer, trying to get any kind of -- like a vest or something that you can wear, gowns. we're really struggling to get gowns. we have great face shields, it's been great in the community as far as getting the donations. we were able to get the donations from m.i.t. for the face shields, which have been wonderful. in that regard, it's been great. the long haul, and i think that's what i'm seeing with our employees, when you finally realize, you know, again, this is not a sprint. this is a marathon. and you realize your only defenses that can truly make a difference as far as helping not only the person in that room but in your community, it is doing the social distancing. again, i go back to you look at what happened at tyson when you

didn't social distance and you look at the other businesses that have done a much better job with social distancing. and you look what happened with that outbreak. and so wearing the masks, the handwashing, six foot apart, that is just so important. many and that is what's going to get us through this, that we can help people who are definitely at risk if they get this virus. many they're going to get severely sick from it or die from this virus, until we have a better answer. >> dr. sharon duclos, thank you so much. thank you for everything you and all of your hospital staff, all of you are doing. thank you for joining me today. we really appreciate it. coming up next -- a viral video prompting an apology after an incident of alleged racial bias in central park. next, what happened and why it

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racial bias is getting a lot of attention today after a white woman called the new york city police to tell them that an african-american man was threatening her and her dog after an exchange that started when the man simply, apparently, asked the woman to leash her dog in central park, in an area where dogs are supposed to be leashed. nbc's morgan radford has been

listening to all of this. morgan? >> that's right, andrea, this took place in a part of central park called the ramble, where dogs are supposed to be kept on a leash. this apparently began where a dog was unleashed and escalated and this white woman calling 911 and saying a black man was threateninger her. so our sister station wnbc spoke exclusively with the man woman and man behind the camera. >> please don't come close to me. >> sir, i'm asking you to stop recording. >> reporter: nbc news does not have the full video, its context unknown. but christian cooper, who describes himself as an avid bird watcher tells sister station wnbc he was in the park when he asked amy cooper, no relations, to put her dog on a leash. >> if the habitat is destroyed, we won't be able there to see birds, enjoy the plants. >> reporter: cooper said she

refused and he then offered her dog a treat. >> at some point she decided oh, i'm going to play the race card, i guess. >> reporter: and that's when he says he began recording the incident. >> please shut your phone off. >> don't come close to me. >> shut your phone off. >> reporter: whethn he refused stop taping her, it shows amy grabbing her dog's collar and dialing 911. >> please call the cops. >> please, tell them whatever you like. >> there's an african-american man, he is recording me and threatening myself and my dog 6789 i'm sorry, i can't hear you. i'm being threatened by a man in the ramble. please call the cops immediately! i'm in central park. >> reporter: overnight amy cooper apologizing, also speaking exclusively to wnbc. >> it was unacceptable. >> reporter: saying she overreacted and regrets calling the police. >> when i think about the

police, i think of them as a protection agency. unfortunately, this has caused me to realize there are so many people in this country who don't have that luxury. >> reporter: her employer franklin tempton put her on administrative leave tweeting, we take these matters very seriously and we do not condone racism of any kind. andrea, that video has already been viewed more than 2,500 times. when the gentleman who filmed the video spoke to our station wnbc, he said he immediately stopped filming as soon as the dog was put back on the leash. but he said ultimately, this was about intimidation and he did not want to be complicit in any behavior in the age of ahmaud arbery would leave black men who looked like him harm or even worse all based on assumption. andrea? >> wow. it would seem as this could be a case of bird watching while black. really disturbing. thank you for bringing us this story.

we fully appreciate that. coming up -- one of the first coronavirus hot spots is reopening today. we're live in new rochelle, new york, coming up next. plus, how has coronavirus changed america? david brooks argues its robbed our sense of personal safety. that and more when we return on "andrea mitchell reports" after. r body to unblock your system naturally. and it doesn't cause bloating, cramping, gas, or sudden urgency. miralax. look for the pink cap. some companies still have hr stuck between employeesentering data.a. changing data. more and more sensitive, personal data. and it doesn't just drag hr down. it drags the entire business down -- with inefficiency, errors and waste. it's ridiculous. so ridiculous. with paycom, employees enter and manage their own data in a single, easy to use software. visit paycom.com, and schedule your demo today.

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one of the country's first coronavirus hot spots, suburb of new york city, is reopening today. my hometown, new rochelle, new york, has been in lockdown since march 12th. governor andrew kwnl saying the county has met the criteria to begin phase one of reopening for new rochelle. and nbc's ron allen joins us now from main street. ron, how are people reacting today? >> welcome home, andrea. it is a beautiful spring day here and we are seeing something we've not seen in a long time over here. if you look in this direction, there are open doors. shops are open.

this is a furniture store on main street and, like many, they are trying to figure out social distancing and how to open to the public fully. a little further down there a curtain store, hardware store. they're eligible for retail pickup on the curb. the other things open are construction, which you can probably hear in the background, and manufacturing. as you know, it's been a long road back for new rochelle. they were at the center of this pandemic two months ago. they were one of the first zones to have a containment zone when there was an outbreak traced to a synagogue in the middle of town. i remember reaching out here a couple months ago when there was a private school closed and it escalated from there. remember, the local attorney who was the first person diagnosed with covid out here,ing he recently spoke to savannah guthrie about his experience. he said he never knew and still doesn't know how he caught the illness. here's what he said. >> i'm a lawyer. i sit at a desk all day. i think at the time we were focusing on individuals who

maybe had traveled internationally, something i had not done. i had certainly not been to china. after we entered the emergency room, i have absolutely no recollection of anything that transpired until i woke up from the up from the coma. it's as if three weeks of my life had completely disappeared and i was asleep for all of it. >> so the signs you see up here about online shopping are soon going to disappear soon, everyone hopes. this is the hardware store. they're open and they'll be doing curbside for the foreseeable future. phase one lasts about two weeks. if they keep their metrics, the numbers of deaths, outbreak of new cases, hospitalizations, so on and so forth, all those metrics if they hit them, they'll get to phase two. that's a big phase because it opens up a lot more small businesses. it's really things that are much more of the life of a community. here it's a busy day. it's a beautiful day. people are somewhat anxious as well because they've seen spikes in other places where there have been reopenings but everybody is

glad to be on the road to recovery. andrea? >> ron allen, thanks so much for being there. and as some parts of the country, like new rochelle, do reopen, questions remain about our new normal. how has the pandemic changed the way we live, and how will those changes continue into the future? will they become permanent? it's "new york times" column david brooks writes we've had threats before but we've never had them smack in the middle of a crisis of confidence. a crisis of authority plus social and spiritual crises all at once. in that sense, this is the first invasion of america. this is the first time that a menace has crossed our borders, up ended the daily lives of every american and rocked our anxious sense of safety. joining me is "new york times" climpt david brooks. david, great to see you. he's also the author of "the second mountain," his latest book "the quest for a moral life" which comes out in paperbook today. it climbed to number one on "the

new york times" best-seller list. you talk about this as the first invasion. let me just challenge you to play devil's advocate. what about 9/11. didn't that change our sense of safety and our sense of security from the wars that were always overseas? and it did change our daily lives in the new protections against terrorism. >> we've had incursions before. the war of 1812. the british invaded and took over washington, d.c. but this is a bigger event. 9/11, people came together. it affected 3,000 people but didn't up end daily life for the entire country all at once. you saw a surge in patriotism, a surge in volunteering. that lasts about nine months and after nine months we were all back to normal. i don't think it's going to be back to that. we take for granted that we're relatively protethed. we have two oceans on either side of our country. historically we've been immune to most invasions, most plagues.

now we're not immune anymore and all the things that grew out of our sense of safety, our individualism, looseness, creativity, all of that gets shifted in moments like this. if you look at countries that have had a lot of plagues, pandemics, they're much more socially cohesive, much better at following rules. i think we're going to shift more like that. this is going to have a permanent mark on american life. >> and as you point out in your column, this is happening at a time when we are more divided than ever. i don't think that before, during or after 9/11 we ever had our politics as divided as angry and hostile. and without the moral leadership that one would expect in the sense of the president is now fighting his own administration's guidelines with his attacks on governors who are following the cdc and demands that they reopen against all other advice. >> yeah, a great political

scientist said every 60 years or so we have a great social crisis. 1960s, woodstock and civil rights, and he said he predicted that around now we'd have our next big crisis. i think he was right. he wrote this in 1991. if you look at social trust, look at donald trump who say sower of social distrust and hatred and division, we're in the middle of a rejiggering of power and authority in this country. and in comes the pandemic. it's like a hurricane that sweeps in the middle of an earthquake and exposes all the divides in our country and all the inequities. to me, the key word it plants in our minds is the word precari s precariousne precariousness. we're vulnerable. and at moments of vulnerable, we have to go to the staircts te, n government more and we have to build systems that protect people from vulnerability. and so i sort of shift probably

you would say to the left but a different kind of left. a left that emphasizes the security of life out of this and, to me, a lot of the changes that it will bring about are overdue. >> and in a way, it's also the first time we've had this kind of crisis where there's been such a concentrated distrust and attack against science. we've always been the country that can produce and being attacked just as climate change is being attacked. we've never had that before. >> right. and what you get in moments of distrust is you get a lot of conspiracy theories and then distrust of expertise, distrust of authority. and so as this thing started three months ago, i was really thinking, will we get broken by this or will we be made by this? you can say society is so polarized, so divided there's no way we can hang together when

you have a president who is raining down hatred and abuse and dishonesty, frankly, from the top. no way we can hang together. my impression so far is we're doing okay. the country did hold together in those early days. people have showed up for each other. there's a lot of polarization on the surface. but if you look at how americans actually are behaving toward social distancing, you don't see that big of a difference between red and blue. i'm feeling a little more solidarity. there's been a rise of social trust over the last couple of weeks. a rise in faith and government and i'm feeling way more hopeful than i expected i would about three months ago given where we were before. >> agree. and david brooks, it's great to have you here. congratulations on the paperback edition. and that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." thanks for being with us. follow the show online, on facebook and twitte twitter @mitchellreports. stay safe out there. chuck todd and katy tur pick up

our coverage after a break. brek

good afternoon. i'm chuck todd. here are the facts as we know them this hour. new york governor andrew cuomo announced 73 people died in his state in the last 24 hours. why was that notable? it's the lowest daily level announced in at least a month and a half. march 22nd, we believe is the last time it was that low. cuomo s