fellow at the center for global development serving as the director of foreign disaster assistance for usaid and has served as an environs or on the advisory board to the world health organization. thank you for being with us. >> my pleasure. >> i want to begin with the who and the funding that has been blocked by the trump administration. what impact from your standpoint is it having on the organization and efforts to combat this pandemic? >> i think it's important to understand that what the u.s. supports the who to do is nothing that can be easily substituted to other organizations. the who is not like a nonprofit international rescue committee that is implementing programs. they are providing technical advice to health around the world, setting strategy and in partnership with those. in the developing world. role ins an integral advising for help -- crises like this one. they will not turn to an ngo for that. when the world health organization is not getting the money it needs from the united states government, it will have an effect on every developing country in the world that will be

she said, the education and leadership training through usaid prepared me for this very moment. we are always looking for opportunities to partner with the private sector, one of the most powerful force multipliers of our nation. we want to help these countries help themselves. in nigeria, we are partnering to reach more than one million xttizens per day with te messages on social distancing, safe hygiene practices and other measures. it's not just american government helping. czechample, in the republic a u.s. firm headquartered outside chicago voluntarily turned over part of its production facility to make face masks for czech first responders, senior services and others. conference equipment so that the government can work remotely and ensure continuity of operations. no other country gives so much. ♪ eveninght, a special edition of "washington journal" on the federal response to the coronavirus crisis. join us at 8:00 p.m. eastern, with cardinal timothy dolan of the archdiocese of new york on the effect of the pandemic on religious life and the roman catholic church response

stopping shipments of our own stockpiles from usaid to other countries?er we have we committed to we commit. but we need a lot to

>> no, no truth whatsoever. >> is there any truth to stopping stockpiles of usaid to other countries? >> no truth whatsoever. whatever we have, whatever we've exited to, we commit. but we also need a lot for ourselves so we're very focused on that until we get over this. so, obviously we're not going to be shipping too much. we do have excess of certain things and we don't have enough of others. >> leyla, cnn has new reporting on this? >> exactly. the trump administration is not going to be sending out ppe to its allies anymore. this is coming to us from a congressional source that says late last friday, they were notified that the coronavirus task force, which is led by vice president pence, decided to stop shipment overseas of the ppe to keep that in the u.s. and don, we were just talking about it. we ourselves are bringing in things from overseas, from mexico, honduras, china, today russia. i also thought this was interesting that cnn obtained a list of 25 items that the state department gave to diplomats to request of their host countries. >> laila saeyla santiago, thank much. i a

stopping shipments of our own stockpiles from usaid to other countries? >> whatever we have we committed to we commit. but we need a lot to ourselves. we're very focused on that until we get over this. obviously we'll not ship too much. we have excess of certain things and don't have enough of others. i just had a great talk with doug mcmillan from walmart and i gave him a very, very big order for gowns, for protective gear for the doctors, for the nurses, for everything and he's actually very excited about it. he is biggest purchaser of this kind of thing, of anything probably in the world and and he is very excited about it. i said what size? almost unlimited. when you look at these hospital, the amount that they order, you almost say how could they possibly use so much whether it is masks or the protective gear but we supplying a tremendous amount and we just ordered a lot from walmart and he is taking this on personally. i said let it go, let it be shipped not to a warehouse, directly to the site of the hospital or wherever they need it because we sav

stopping shipment of our own stockpile through usaid to other countries? >> whatever we committed to, we

and then are you frustrated that usaid allowed a lot of that aid to go out the door in the 1st place you know they have right now not because we're we're in very good shape we'll be speaking with mike pence about this a little while. you look at the hospitals you look at what's going on i spoke to yesterday i spoke with the governor of louisiana and say do you think we need that extra 1000 beds that were in the process of building we are really in good shape you're not hearing people in needing ventilators much in fact we're going to start helping other countries with ventilators we're going to end up having a lot of ventilators for future should something happen for hospitals ideally to keep and have but no i think we're in very very good shape we have calls 'd with governors all the time and the governors in very good shape now we have help we have sent billions and billions and billions of dollars between ventilators equipment protective equipment masks we have $500000000.00 masks coming $500000000.00 from one group $500.00 it'll be $300000000.20 over a short period of time now i

localized it's going to be happening all over the country and i want to merica to understand that usaid is now the country that's the hardest hit no doubt about the outing and some pretty big mistakes were made while the clock was ticking here's a list that some of the experts made about what went wrong mistake number one back in january the u.s. centers for disease control refused tests from germany and thus lost crucial time even now not everyone has access to tests it's hard to track who is infected we know that it is an underestimation. mistake number 2 the us government miscalculated thought it had proper supplies and resources right up to the last minute we had tremendous numbers of ventilators but there's never been an instance like this where no matter what you have it's not enough mistake number 3 us states have been left to manage the crisis on their own support from the federal government has been weak we have a state emergency management agency but if he were right why would we ever need a federal emergency management agency it's because individual states can't possibly do w

stopping shipment of our own stockpile through usaid to other countries? >> whatever we committed to, we commit. but we also need a lot for ourselves. so we're very focused on that until we get over this. obviously we're not going to be shipping too much. we do have excess of certain things. and we don't have enough of others. i just had a great talk today with the -- doug mcmillon from walmart, and i gave him a very big order for gowns, for protective gear for the doctors, for the nurses, for everything. and he's actually very excited about it. he is the biggest purchaser of this kind of thing, i mean, of anything probably in the world. and he is very excited about it. and he said what size? i said it's almost unlimited. when you look at these hospitals, the amount that they order, you almost say how could they possibly use so much, whether it's masks or the protective gear. but we are supplying a tremendous amount, and we just ordered a lot from walmart. and he's taking this on personally. and i said let it be shipped not to a warehouse, directly to the

out to give a talk to the bus on mcgovern's new economic plans and he starts talking and he quotes usaid boy i've heard a lot of bull before but this takes the cake. we eventually threw gordon off the bus. we just gave up. there was another moment which tested all of us and was very illustrative of what was happening an early proponent of what has been called every citizen has a certain account they start out in life with. it is more common today nixon had a version of it in 1969. the sink came out it was all knew it was called liberal at the time. it wasn't clear how much it would cost. about a month in suit ensued of almost ruthless examination of this proposal. no one had ever gone into an issue like that. after the election i wish i could remember which journalism school did it there was more ink spilled exposing the deficiencies of mcgovern's economic proposal than have been expended on watergate at that time. >> all of that got into tim's book. it wasn't written about. you can say things off of the record. it would not be quoted. if a reporter returns to another reporter in the whi

let's bring in -- he used to run foreign disaster assistance for usaid. good to have you on "prime time." >> welcome back. >> good to be seen. let me ask you the president's disposition towards testing, we're good on testing. enough with the testing. people think it's not even the best thing. what do you make of that? >> the study that came out of new york today showing that within the city as many as one in five people may have had the virus already. that shows we're nowhere close. that's a higher figure than the official count. it suggests the official testing count for the state is it off by about factor of ten. we're not testing anywhere near where we need to be testing. >> when the president says i disagree with fauci. we're great on testing. is there any defense that justifies it? >> there's no defense. testing numbers have been flat for weeks now. even as case counts go up. if the case counts are going up and testing volume is not. we have a problem. >> he'll say if i do are to say it's deficient, okay. it's because of you, all the people who came

but he said i want to win and that is my mission at usaid the national endowment of democracy not so much to nation build with the jeffersonian democratic society but in the basic government so that is not a total failure corrupt. >> it's a good challenge. >> i was shocked at how little advantage the state department personnel system if you think about the american army mostly what they are brilliant at is taking the bell curve so they look for young women who have the skills and they recruit her and train her. and promote not just by what she has done well but on the potential and broader challenges going forwards. had brilliant american and diplomats but nobody ever teaches them to swim i cringe every time somebody argues for whole of government for anything in the united states because we have a government design not to do that. and instead of trying to make us culturally better than we are to build a better mousetrap entrepreneurialism. and that's what build on that. >> and then to pull the troops out if we had stayed there building the largest embassy in the world. and we had wo

we should briefly describe who he was, usaid contractor in cuba and with those communication services and arrested by the cubans and convicted of espionage in cuba and was being held in prison in cuba was also a horrific circumstances. >> and then was there on behalf of the jewish community and was given technology. in reality, he was giving technology to cuban dissidents so they communicate. so he allowed them to communicate within cuba and other places. so basically he was in communications with the jewish community and as a result those demonstrations on behalf of the community to put pressure on obama. so originally gross said it is convicted and this is what he was sent down to do. that you did not sufficiently warned me of all of the dangers of what happened to me when i went down there, ultimaty he gets a substantial settlement from the american government. at some point in time gross becomes a very powerful force of the jewish community to focus on the anti- cuban community and then he demonstrated how he had to go to the hospital and then obama insisted on his return claims t

shannon: live from america's news quote as donald trump ordered usaid for italy to fight the coronavirusat order coming as the global death toll exceeds 100,000 people. new york trails, only italy in the number of deaths, more than half are clustered in the tri-state metro area around new york city. governor cuomo deaths spiked in one day but he remains cautiously optimistic that hospital admissions are decreasing. >> we are cautiously optimistic that we are slowing the infection rate. that is what numbers say and data suggest to us. >> tens of millions of eligible americans will have their coronavirus aid payments by the middle of next week, senior treasury official telling fox news some taxpayers are already seeing that money in their bank accounts. shannon: time for night court, traditional holiday sources off the table churches nationwide are getting creative with their easter celebration, social distancing, they may hit some legal roadblocks. >> any individual that will participate in a mass gathering of any type, we are going to record license plates provided to local health depart

>> there were labs all throughout the world who worked with the usaid on this. one of them was the virology institute lab right in wuhan. that was, in fact, the lab that identified this virus very quickly. so some of the researchers in the program say that although it was shut down, that is a silver lining. the lab they trained themselves was able to identify this. >> you have spoken with people involved in this program. they say closing it was incredibly shortsighted. why do they say that? >> so the purpose of the program is, as the title suggests, it's called predict. it's to predict future pandemics. so the little bit of funding that's left, $2 million out of $200 million, that's being used to address this current -- this -- this current pandemic. to try to squelch it. but it's not working toward identifying the next pathogen. the next one that will jump over into humans and containing it. so a lot of researchers who are involved in it say you need to continue funding this kind of research so you can prevent these kinds of things on the front end, rather than

personal protective equipment for medical professionals because we have an entire state department, usaid working with other countries, allies, to provide them with medical supplies, but because of this pandemic, the trump administration is now pivoting, led by vice president pence, to try to bring some of those supplies back. it's a bit of a sensitive situation because when you talk to your sources in the white house -- i spoke to a white house official this morning, a lot of these allies are counting on the united states for help and don't want the united states to turn a total blind eye. >> we have seen, bob costa, quite the evolution in what the president has said about this virus. take a listen. >> you treat this like a flu. i might ask one of the doctors to come up and explain it. you want to wash your hands a lot. >> i've had many friends, business people, people with great actually common sense. they said why don't we ride it out. a lot of people have said don't do anything, just ride it out and think of it as the flu, but it's not the flu. it's vicious. >> so mr. costa, he starts

fellow at the center for global development serving as the director of foreign disaster assistance for usaid and has served as an environs or on the advisory board to the world health organization. thank you for being with us. >> my pleasure. >> i want to begin with the who and the funding that has been blocked by the trump administration. what impact from your standpoint is it having on the organization and efforts to combat this

the federal stockpile of medical equipment, i'm not sure if you saw the story in ""politico"" about usaid having issues sending supplies to other countries while we -- it was ostensibly sending people to go to other countries to look for supplies and the confusion there. the mayor of chicago said that she is skeptical of the federal government being completely honest with her about the stockpile. do you think when we speak with president trump and other folks at the white house and federal government, do you think they're being completely honest and truthful with you about the stockpile? >> i don't know what they have in the stockpile. i only know what i read. and look, i was in the federal government. i don't even know is there one stockpile, are there multiple stockpiles? i don't know. do i think the federal government has enough in the collective stockpiles, enough in their possession to meet the need? i don't know. but i pray that they do because that is the only option. i cannot buy a ventilator for a million dollars -- maybe for a million dollars, i could buy a ventilator. but you c

today as having 26 of the residents die but an article that appeared in "the new york times" today usaid says that the director of that facility, the sapphire center, told his local state representative, that the death toll there is actually higher than that, it is not 26, it's 29, the times also spoke to two workers of that facility, who spoke with the times on the condition of anonymity, because they didn't want to lose their jobs, those workers told the jobs that they believe the real death toll in that one facility in queens is more like 60 residents who have died. which just knocks you back on your heels to think that. but again, new york state reported 26 deaths from that facility today. two workers there telling "the new york times" they believe it is more like 60. and it is its own problem. not just something to lament, literally something to fix, it is something that needs to be fixed, that we don't know the real count at that facility, or in other facilities around the country. we need to know, we need to know, because those places need help, and they need targeted resources. i

for more on reopening back here in the united states, i'm joined by jeremy, former director of usaid'soreign disaster assist anow a senior policy fellow at the center for global development. you're pushing for an apollo program for public health. what does that mean? >> that means for us to be able to fight this disease with something other than lockdowns and other than physical distancing measures, we need to be able to suppress the disease in a way consistent with having an open economy. and that means widespread testing, widespread contact tracing. much more ready innoceniness in hospital system and much more protection for vulnerable places like elder care facilities, prisons and shelters. all of that requires a significant investment, a huge amount of -- a huge amount of action and building systems and tools we don't currently have. that's what we need in order to reopen safely and we don't have it yet. >> that's what we need. that's what's ideal. we don't have it as you just said it, but some states are already beginning the reopening process. they have assessed that the economic

been successful in ebola through fighting and a whole of government the ach where we use military usaid an c.d.c. so we were told couldn't -- distance or bring d to. ebola and to covid-19 is need to do with a much greater basis. challenge is we have the great leadership by president of south africa. e learned from the mistakes with v.i.v. aids and been force. others are waoefrbg governance reins.ruption that said we have neglected w.h.o. china put a lot of should have ervants in w.h.o. and other u.n. organizations. it is time for us to think in people jobs.f our at the same time we need to work a.u. and sometimes it s a feckless organization but what african countries and east asian are waiting for assistance. by the time you get the funds it will be too late. and a we live de in a world where we now have africans who study at yale and other places and they are and come back e and bring this to us. so we are not immune. so many things we could do with the whole of governor approach using the capability of our military, aid and c.d.c. and i not in conclusion my distinguished senior anne

had to come in in a massive way and usaid tomilitary from stop the outbreak, we then invested in a majorration to build a brand-new emergency response capacity there. 2018, when ebola popped up in the eastern congo, the u.s. did not have to do that. the who was able to deploy hundreds of their own personnel into an active war zone to file -- fight the ebola outbreak, successfully that meant less burden on the u.s. government. we have a real interest in continuing to support and invest in these organizations. they do important work that, otherwise, would fall on the plate of the u.s. government. the secretary appeared on laura ingraham's channel, defending the president's decision. here is what he said. [video clip] >> there is an ongoing pandemic. we do not have the transparency we need in china. it is the world health organization's responsibility to achieve that transparency. they are not doing it. they need to be held accountable. the other countries around the world are beginning to recognize their failures as well. >> this is an opportunity for the united states to take a leadership

. >> we've always had usaid people, cdc people. in egypt, we had a naval laboratory that had been there since world war ii. there's always been a strong health component of american diplomacy. we have the global health initiative, but smaller programs too. our job was to coordinate this and there wasn't a post i was in either as ambassador or in any other role that didn't have a strong relationship with the health ministry. this is pretty much standard procedure for u.s. embassies, and now it seems like something that has happened in outer space. it has always been a huge component and we've made huge progress, particularly on child mortality in the last 20 years. the embassy leads this, but we've always done this sort of thing and very well, frankly. >> ambassador, just to bring you in here, harry, director general of the whole foreign service at the state department, executive secretary, as well. what is the coordination mechanism look like -- or should look like across embassies in a crisis of this sort? >> thank you, ted. first

it seems our conversations in congress cost the political spectrum and in usaid and so forth with regard to what is reform versus what is understood by people in the region are two different things. and when the class occurs between the two different definitions they can make things a lot worse. >> i'm going to ask -- >> could i -- in terms of what role does, can the united states play, i think it's very important to understand that any kind of intervention, i think those spaces should be treated but the way they are treated is very important because anti-western-ism is so much ingrained in clinical islam or fundamentalist interpretation, or even a month secularist. any kind of intervention by the u.s., by european union are by european countries is going to be deemed as problematic. that's why those kinds of interventions in terms of creating those spaces should be done very carefully. because it's going to undermine -- you are going to basically make the issue very toxic. whatever that person says or does after that point onward is going to be a problem. >> what happened in the case of

reformed absolute monarchy, sometimes it seems that our conversations in congress cross the spectrum and usaid versus what is in the region are two different things and when the clash occurs between the two different definitions it can actually make things a lot worse. >> i'm going to ask one more-- >> can i-- >> yes. >> in terms of what role does, you know, does-- can the united states play, i think it's very important to understand that any kind of intervention, i mean, i think you know, those safe spaces should be created, but i think the white air created is very important because anti-westernism is so much ingrained in political islam or fundamentalists interpretation or even among seculars, any kind of intervention by the u.s., by european union or other european countries, is going to be deemed as, you know, as problematic. and that's why, you know, those kinds of interventions in terms of creating those spaces should be done really very carefully because it's going to undermine. you know, you're going to basically, you know, make the issue very toxic. you know, whatever that pers perso

. >> guest: i was doing an internship in the early 90s in washington dc, interning at usaid today and staying with relatives in the area and i was on the sports desk. so we didn't leave work until the baseball games on the west coast were over so it was usually quite late at night by then and i was driving to and from my own collapse house where i was staying in usa today headquarters and i had my car which had new york plates because i was from new york although i was driving in dc and i was driving home one evening after work probably early the next morning and i hear these sirens blaring in the police pulled me over and order me out of the car and push me to the ground face away from the car and all the rest and said i fit the description of someone they were after without state plates. >> what were you thinking? >> i was terrified. i remember getting back into the car after i left because they seemed to be gone as quickly as they came after they realized i wasn't the right person and sitting in my car shaking i remember i had a standard and i couldn't get it out of gear, my hand w