host: chatting with jeff mason, white house correspondent for reuters and former president of the white house correspondents association. we both know jonathan karl of abc news who has that position now. a lot of changes inside the white house and the briefing room. what have you seen in recent days and weeks and what more can we expect, if anything? guest: that's a good question. veryhing we have seen, a determined attempt by reporters with the leadership of the tion toondence' associai practice social distancing. there was a time when i walked into the briefing room one morning, and there had been new seating assignments made, basically for fewer journalists to be able to sit in the briefing room. that was changed up a few days later to make it an even smaller number, so there were greater numbers of seats in between the reporters, who were sitting there for what have become almost-daily briefings by the president and his team. yesterday, when the president went to virginia, they reduce the size of the normally 13-member press pool of reporters and journalists who travel with him. all

joining us on the phone, jeff mason. good saturday morning. thank you for being with us. steve.leasure, i want to begin with some of the back and forth between the president and the governors of new york and new jersey about the quarantine. explain how this unfolded. nfolded. guest: they certainly did that late in the day. the long-term answer to your question, not putting in place a president dide dabble in the possibility. when he was leaving the white house yesterday he went to virginia, his first outing outside the white house in about two and a half weeks, speaking to reporters on his way to virginia, saying it was something he was looking at and , receiving in generating quite a bit of criticism from those governors. he ended up tweeting last night that there would be

. >> joining us as well is jeff mason, white house correspondent, of course, for reuters. jeff, you've watched the president in a lot of contexts. his anger at a number of questioners, particularly peter alexander, who will be joining us shortstoply, is pretty extraordinary given he's trying to project the calmness, the bipartisan donald trump praising chuck schumer, praising governors cuomo -- he's doing both things at the same time but then lashing out against people asking legitimate questions when he is disagreeing with his own scientists. >> no, they certainly are legitimate questions, andrea. i think it's kind of showing the two sides of president trump. you've got the president who is trying to get out ahead of this crisis after what was certainly a beginning response that many people feel of lackluster and there's a lot of evidence that his own comments. [ inaudible ] he gets flustered now. reporters like peter and myself and others have that sort of slow start -- >> and, jeff mason, we apologize because the skype audio is not working as well as we'd like. we'll wor

let's bring in our panel byron york chief political correspondent of the washington examiner jeff masoneuters who was there today and steve hayes editor of the dispatch. jeff, a lot of questions from the president, but it seemed like it was orchestrated to say we are in this together, the nation is if the going to fight this disease. >> yeah, in many ways i think he did today what he was trying to do wednesday and was unsuccessful at wednesday in saying that we are on top of this. we have -- we are taking action to fix maybe some of the things that didn't go super well at the beginning with regard to testing and i mean even saying that he is prepared to help the airline industry and the cruise ship industry if it comes to that. so definitely saying things that the market wanted to hear and has not heard before today. >> bret: maybe beyond the market, byron, there was this confidence urge or want or the feeling of confidence that the nation was together in fighting this. >> yeah. i think that trump had lost control of the public discussion of this. and i think today he got it back. befor

jeff mason, jonathan lemire, we will all be watching. coming up -- where are the tests? why the u.s. is struggling to get coronavirus test kits out and what needs to be done to break the logjam. that's next. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports." your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ it only takes a second for an everyday item to become dangerous. tide pods child-guard pack helps keep your laundry pacs in a safe place and your child safer. align, press and unzip. tide pods. keep them up. keep them closed. keep them safe. and when you open a new brokerage account, your cash is automatically invested at a great rate. that's why fidelity leads the industry in value while our competition continues to talk. ♪ talk, talk while our competition continues to talk. since you're heading off to dad... i just got a zerowater. but we've always used brita. it's two stage-filter... doesn't compare to zerowater's 5-stage. this meter shows how much stuff, or dissolved