senator sure, willie geist here. >> hi, willie. >> good to have you on. i think most people agree, you need to perform your job of oversight but what small business owners in upstate new york are not hearing. they want their checks. as you pointed out yet, small banks, mid-size banks couldn't even get on to the website. they couldn't get through, let alone get the money and approvals from sba. >> right. >> what do you say to the small business owners who missed the boat on the first round of money and now their banks can't even logon to the website to get them? they can't go on like this. >> well, we got to have the sba straighten it out quickly. i have businesses who have been approved and they're going to go out of business. two things have to happen. tr they've got to straighten out the problem right away. they've got to tell the banks, no more big boycs. no more chains. what i talk about hearings, you need pressure on this administration, you need it because they're not doing it now. why is it 30 days after the first covid law was passed are the compu

. >> we're playing it off willie geist. >> my best friend, willie geist sent this to me. my best friend but he sent it to me. and -- >> i just wanted to show my san francisco mug but continue. >> it all came from everyone working from home. vianey is working from home so always has her mug. everyone has been sending you their mugs. whthing. they're letting us into their homes. let's let them into ours. we will start next sunday showing everyone their mugs. to share coffee, they're like our family. >> exactly. it. >> send me a message. >> we hope everyone does. thanks to you all for making us a part of your morning. we will see you back here next weekend, the first weekend of may. have a great sunday. >> socially distancing must continue. our economic shutdown cannot. >> some states reopening their economies. >> we are going to have to see our cases continue to go up, but we are a lot better prepared for that now than we were over a month ago. >> this as millions more file for unemployment. >> we can't hide in fear of the rest of our lives! >> and as the u.s. death toll pa

i'm willie geist working remotely again this morning hoping you and your family are connecting, if not physically gathering on this holiday. >>> pope francis is something he's never done before -- performing a solitary easter mass inside a virtually empty st. peter's basilica. live streamed into homes of millions of americans. >>> here are the latest headlines. the u.s. has now surpassed italy as the country with the most total deaths from coronavirus. more than 20,000 people have died of covid-19, and more than 500,000 americans have contracted the virus. >>> for the first time in history, all 50 states are under a major disaster declaration this morning. on saturday president trump declared wyoming a disaster area. that is the last state to receive the designation. >>> and some good news for americans awaiting a t federal government. the first round of economic impact payments were deposited directly into bank accounts saturday. the irs says it is issuing the money as quickly as it can. >>> much more on those stories. plus, we will talk to dr. natalie azar, after spending two weeks i

. >> madame speaker, willie geist has a question. >> good morning, speaker pelosi. thank you for being with us. the lion's share of the money of this $484 billion goes to small businesses and that is good news. $322 billion to the ppp, $60 billion for small business loan grants. these small businesses as you know well from hearing stories in your own district fighting for their lives many of them were disappointed that they didn't get money in the first round, but hear comes the second round. are you confident that the ppp system has been tuned fine tune the point where a company who applies for $30,000 bucks to cover their payroll is not seeing the money but national business chains are getting $20 million? has that been sorted out for this round? >> well, by having a set aside for very small businesses, we are making it easier for them to participate. just so you know, what it says, that what seemed like a good idea at the time when secretary mnuchin said we'll just go through the banks so that it doesn't have to go through an sba process which takes longer, the b

. >> senator stabenow, it is willie geist. > hi, willie. >> the president has been all over the place, as you know well. he sent out that tweet a week ago to liberate michigan, in support of the small handful of protesters who were near the capitol in lansing, michigan. on the other hand, in georgia, he told governor kemp, "i totally disagree with your decision to open the economy." hard to know exactly where he stands. knowing full well it's the governor's decision, governor whitmer went to end the stay at home order in michigan. what are you hearing from constituents, who say, "my small business is about to go understand. i can't survive two, three, four more months." with public health, where do you find the balance? >> this is so important. it is one of the key questions, right? by the way, i want to liberate michigan from covid-19. that's what we're all focused on. it is very difficult. we want people to be able to go back to work and businesses to succeed and so on. at the same time, if we don't get our arms around this a

we depend on the fact that democracy is not a spectator sport, that we have to participate. >> willie geistus and has a question. willie. >> good morning, secretary albright, good to see you this morning. i'm curious of your larger view of all of this, as someone who served as secretary of state and ambassador to the u.n. as well and looking particularly at the behavior of china, the way it is sort of covered up its statistics, the way it was not transparent or forthcoming as the president suggestied it was the way it is silenced doctors. what's the culpability in your view of china in the pandemic around the world? >> i do think that china is going to have to answer for the things that it -- exactly the ones you've described of being secretive, no transparency. they ultimately are responsible for a major aspect of the problem. however, and this is the part about looking out at the whole world, we need to figure out, and this is the state craft of diplomacy, is how to tell it like it is, cooperate where you can, and compete where you must. and china is a rising power, we need to deal with t

. >> it's willie geist.as we watched the churchill clip, that was around the time in 1941 that he's writing these letters to dfdr, trying to recruit the united states into the war in europe. it took pearl harbor to get the u.s. there. when we talk about fdr and churchill in that time, there's obviously some mythology. there's some romance around the fireside chats, around churchill's speeches during the blitz. embedded in many of those speeches though, michael, is reality. which is not what we hear from the president every day. >> right. >> there is flowery language. there is optimism. there is hope. they always said, "this is not easy. this is going to be hard. we have to dig in." >> after pearl harbor, people remember fdr as this great war president. he didn't look that way the beginning of 1942. a lot of people thought of him as the president who had made all sorts of mistakes that had led to the bombing of all those ships at pearl harbor. so the result was, he didn't begin by going on the radio and sayin

it is willie geist. good to see you as always. >> hey, willie. how are you?the front lines of this fight and coming back and telling us about it. i want to ask you a question that was a hypothetical i asked question to vice president biden because he is not currently sitting in office, which is what he would say to somebody who is watching what is happening in the country right now and saying, i'm losing my job, my small business has closed, i'm having trouble putting food on the table. for you it is not hypothetical, i'm sure it is real as you walk around staten island. you have people who say, "congressman, i get it, this thing is bad but my livelihood is going down the drain, i have to get help and open my business." what do you say to your constituents that might put that question to you? >> well, a few things. first of all we feel your frustration when you -- it looks like people are just kicking the can down the road. you announce something and then a month later it hasn't changed and you are starting to feel that deep economic pain. it is the responsib

it's willie geist. by our dairy farmers. a quarter of a million eggs being smashed by farmers just because they have excess. they don't know where to send them. they don't have a place to send them. we are where we are. how do we change this? how do we reroute all that food, all that perishable food that as we just saw would be so valuable in food pantries across the country and is sitting rotting in our farms? >> it's, for someone who has worked in the food scarcity and food security environment for 20 years, i have to tell you it's just absolutely heartbreaking to see pictures of those folks on the foot line at that pantry in new york and at the same time pictures of all this food standing there going unused. it is something that the usda and the department of ag can begin to mandate. remember, we have a defense production act. we have trucks. we have drivers. we can do contactless pick-up and drop-off. it is simply a matter of the ag department getting their act together and prioritizing that pickup.

. >> jeremy, it's willie geist. so glad you're on this morning., as mika mentioned, there was this pandemic playbook left by the obama white house, and you are one of the authors of that playbook. so if we can look back to something that was ignored by the trump white house, at what would have happened under your playbook, the first time, as we learned yesterday, the intelligence agencies in november suspected there was going to be an outbreak in china. december, the 31st, when wuhan reported its first case. under your playbook, which you left for the trump white house, what would have happened at those stages? >> well, you begin to focus on exactly the things that we're struggling to resolve now. one of the things the playbook specifically called out was the risk of a novel respiratory virus. that was considered a tier-one risk in that playbook. specifically called out viruses like sars and other coronaviruses as potential risks. so those sort of viruses, once there is evidence that they have significant transmission potential and are transmittin

we've got willie geist with us, a guy who knows a little bit about nashville. , willie. >> hey, brad. you're right that no community rallies like nashville. even just a couple of weeks ago after the tornado and now having to do it again, i'd point out the great dolly parton donated yesterday a million dollars to vanderbilt university medical center to help get closer to a cure, a vaccine for corona. you all snap into action so quickly. what are you hearing from town with other artists that you're close with because you are a family, about what they're doing and trying to get out there right now? >> well, there's a lot of people doing great stuff. one of the main concerns, really, is the music community as it is hit. band members, people that work, you know, within the studio industry, within the touring industry especially. there's a lot of fear there because we don't know when we're going to be on the road again. as willie nelson, who is famous for never stopping touring, and, meanwhile, here we are. we're all -- all the buses are parked, the trucks are parked.

biden, willie geist. s morning. >> hi, willie. >> you talked about peoples fears, mr. vice president, and you have talked about the dignity of work in this country over the course of your career. the fears are not just of getting sick as you pointed out, they're of getting sick, of losing their livelihoods, of being able to go to their job, making the rent this month, getting the help they need for their kids and their families. there are a lot of people in this country listening to president trump right now and saying to themselves, well, if he wants to start to open parts of the economy and maybe get me back to work and food back on my table, well, that's good news. what would you say to some of those people? many of them perhaps are thinking about voting for you, who want to get back to work right now? >> i would say we're not -- we should not send you back to work until it is safe to send you back to work. this is a false choice. the way you revive the economy is you defeat the disease. you defeat the

racht, it is willie geist. preciate you being on this morning. >> morning, willie. >> as we look ahead as where this might go from here, i think you and other doctors said we're sort of at the beginning of this. as we understand the president to be looking around the country, considering places he might be able to reopen the economy because there aren't large incidents of covid-19, what would you say to the president, what would you say to the country about what comes next in terms of rural areas, and whether or not they are, in fact, insulated from this? >> so the rural areas are a unique environment, as you know. the population density is much lower, but the service levels are much lower, as well. given the nature of the environment. i think one of the concerns of emergency medical services is a significant amount of virus or illness in a rural community will overstress those emergency medical and hospital resources very, very rapidly. so they depend on the suburb and the urban environment to move those patien

. >> senator murphy, it's willie geist. good to see you this morning.now that you're cosponsoring legislation for transparency in the supply chain, the medical supply chain. and i'm curious as i listen to some of the news yesterday the president using the defense production act to reopen meat processing plants because there's a projected meat shortage in this country. we know that those processing plants have been hot beds of coronavirus. why he's been unwilling, then, to use the defense production act for things like getting medical supplies where they need to go, ramping up testing, having a national program, he's willing to use it in certain cases but not on these big questions that might actually expedite testing and help us get our arms around it. high do you suspewhy do you sus it? >> today 47 of us in the senate -- 46 of us in the senate are offering legislation for him to use the production act to ramp up the number of swabs, masks that we're making in the united states. your question say good one. why has the president not done this? he's done

>> doctor, it is willie geist. thank you for coming on.tle bit about testing and why it is critical, just to know how big the problem is, to understand the scope of the problem before you can begin to treat the problem? >> well, i have to say, to develop large-scale testing that will serve all americans in a relatively short period of time, from the beginning of the pandemic until now, is a formidable challenge on the best of circumstances. what we have done here at the cleveland clinic, we have developed an ability to test in-house. by doing so, we have been able to provide our patients with timely information about whether they are infected or not. our turnaround time is eight hours. although i have to say, our ability to test is finite, just are like everything else. currently, we're doing about 1,300 tests a adday at the cleveland clinic. it is certainly -- >> you're doing 1,300 -- >> please go ahead. >> so i understand what you're doing at your hospital. you're doing what you can there. on a national level though, because there has be

i'm willie geist. working remotely this morning just as so many of you are these days. president trump is warning of what he calls the toughest week ahead in our country's coronavirus crisis. new overnight numbers tell us why. the death toll in the united states rose by more than 1,300 in the past 24 hours, with more than 300,000 people infected. 113,000 of those are in new york state alone. new york governor andrew cuomo reports new york city's peak is about a week away, by expert estimates. and the president now sending more than 1,000 medical military personnel to help out the city's strained hospitals. >>> and tonight a rare televised address from queen elizabeth, only the fourth of her long reign. her majesty will reportedly tell the united kingdom hopefully some day they will say, quote, brits of this generation were a. we'll have more on that and talk to cck todd. >>> our sunday spotlight on this palm sunday as the holy week begins with empty synagogues and churches but the faithful intent on celebrating. >>> the extraordinary teachers who are getting creative to

i'm willie geist. while public health officials and most of the country's governors are urging patients with stay-at-home orders that are working slowly to get coronavirus under control, some americans, president trump among them, are growing wrestless about opening the country for business. >>> first, the latest overnight headlines. >>> this morning there are 728,000 confirmed coronavirus cases with more than 38,000 deaths from the disease. last week at this time, the death toll was nearly half that at just over 20,000. in new york the state hit hardest by this pandemic, governor andrew cuomo reports the state's daily toll of coronavirus deaths hit its lowest point in more than two weeks. meanwhile, the united states and canada say the border between the two countries will remain closed for another 30 daysstar- citizen say more than $27 million has been raised in support of health care workers on the front lines. we'll have much more on those stories just ahead. >>> and later in our "sunday spotlight"

. >> secretary kerry, it's willie geist. good to see you in this morning.nd you've had to deal with china in a complicated relationship. i'm wondering about your view the way china has managed this from its first case on december 31st forward silencing doctors, suppressing information, not being forthcoming or transparent with the way they told the world about this and the president of our country has rightly pointed out that if we'd known sooner we could have done more. how do you handle china right now and how damaging is their behavior over the last three months to our relationship with them? >> well, it's been damaging. and other things are damaging about the relationship with china in terms of a general move towards trying to tee up china and a new cold war and many forces trying to push -- push apart the capacity to be able to build a stronger relationship. that's dangerous. china made mistakes. china and some of them willful. china was not forthcoming. china was not transparent. and china picked out the u.s. team that was on the glund president obama

>> senator warner, it's willie geist. you anticipated my next question.ll businesses who couldn't get a piece of the ppp in the first round but saw big national restaurant chains getting millions of dollars. publicly traded companies getting millions of dollars. in this new stimulystetimulus b the problem been rectified? will it goes to the businesses who need it as an existential reason? if they can't survive this month if they don't get the money? >> that's our intent. that's what took us an extra week to get negotiated. at the end of the day it was a bipartisan agreement, let me be clear, but we needed to correct some of the problems in the initial ppp. there's $60 billion set aside for very small businesses, for minority owned businesses, for folks who didn't get access the first time. matter of fact, i was just doing some spanish radio and in the hispanic community, a lot of businesses have prided themselves on the fact they've saved money to start their business and didn't go get a loan and now they are getting criticized because they didn't have a

i'm willie geist. this morning parts of america are slowly beginning to reopen after weeks of being shut down by a global pandemic. public health officials, including members of the white house task force, are warning about the risks of sending people out into the world too soon. so, when is the right time? we'll get to that question in a moment. >>> first, the latest headlines. the coronavirus death toll in the u.s. has risen to more than 53,000. the number of cases is inching closer to 1 million. there are 938,000 in this country. >>> the world health organization caused somenn satu reporting there is no evidence that people who had coronavirus would be immune from getting it again. that, of course, would be a major public health setback. the w.h.o. later clarified a bit saying, it does believe people who are infected will develop some level of antibody protection but it's too soon to know for sure. >>> during a webcast on saturday, dr. fauci said the u.s. should be testing twice as many people as it

you can see the whole thing on joanna's instagram page and willie geist will revisit his sunday sitdownith chip and joanna. you don't want to miss that. bring a lot of smiles to faces. >> count on the hour. april 11, 2020. we want to begin this half an hour with a check of headlines. the worldwide death toll from coronavirus has surpassed 100,000 with the united states accounting for 2,000 of those deaths in the last 24 hours alone. that is the highest total here yet. but there is some good news. intensive care admissions are down in new york state and in california. though officials are still warning americans to stay vigilant. meanwhile, the president is mulling over when and where to ease social distancing restrictions so that americans can get back to business. >> organizers of the popnt for time ever in an effort to stop the spread of coronavirus. burning man, which draws 80,000 festival-goers and generates $60 million in revenue to nevada each year was set to begin in late august. organizers say they will offer an online alternative called the multiburst. details are still being w

willie geist here. we saw some breathtaking numbers from the white house nationally, projections of deaths in this country and a best case scenario. let's take that down to the state level in florida. you say you're prepared, you say you're ready. what are you expecting in terms of numbers? are you expecting scenes like we're seeing in new york city hospitals right now? how are you looking at this? >> well, willie, if you're talking to me, i'll speak for dr. katz. >> take it, dr. campbell. >> i'm sorry, go ahead. >> all of -- >> all of the facilities are increasing -- >> go, dr. dave. go, dr. dave. >> down here in florida. >> go ahead. everybody listen to me really quickly. i'm going to be traffic cop here. dr. katz, you go first and then we'll have dr. dave respond. what are you expecting, dr. katz? >> again, i think we're in the very early innings down here in south florida. we've taken some measures down here, the governor has put some things in place in south florida that, as you mentioned, he's not

i think willie geist has been one in the day. having the shows in a closed arena, no fans, a skeleton production crew, testing amongst the performers, may not be a threat to the public. but it wreaks of politics. it makes you think it is being allowed because of politics. he allowed large religious gatherings despite the stay at home order. mcmahon, who runs the wwe, sits on president trump's economic committee to reopen the country. president trump is in the wwe hall of fame. linda mcmahon, the wife of vince, served in president trump's cap nbinet, and head ofe small business administration, until she left to run president trump's super pac. the timing of governor desantis' decision seems suspect. his announcement that pro wrestling was an essential activity came on the day the super pac announced it was spending $18.5 million in florida. is it a coincidence or politics? a lot of us think it's the latter. >> of course, there were reports, mika, that gyms, donald trump announced gyms should reopen the day after he spoke to the ow

. >> this is willie geist. good to see you. i want to ask a fundamental question. are has this been so signatureed difficult? i think a lot of americans look at our medical system, we have the best doctors, the best hospitals in the world, a wealthy and powerful government. so why has we as a country, not a question of politics, but why has a country have we been so slow to ramp up testing? i know we weren't prepared, but when we knew we needed it, why hasn't has it taken it so long? >> i'm glad you asked that because i'm a medical doctor and i led the effort in west africa against the ebola fight. and the reality is we have an outstanding health care system for those people with acute conditions that have access. but we do not have the world's best public health system. that is why we spend $4 trillion on health care every year and have outcomes that are middling compared to other industrial nations in terms of public health and population health. so we can make changes right now that would make us more effective at getting america back to work safely and quickly.