Indecisive and losing his nerve, and millions of lives are on the line because of it. Remember, we are here in this frightening situation because in the two months the u. S. And the white house had to prepare for the virus, the president was concerned about the economy and the stock market and chiefly his own reelection chances. Less than a month ago, he told us the virus was going to quote disappear. Just 17 days ago, his top economic advisers said the virus looks relatively contained. They did not get equipment for medical professionals like masks and gloves and gowns. They ignored explicit warnings about shortages of those things, of ventilators and other medical supplies. They did not do adequate testing. They created a test that didnt work. Stopped other people from pursuing their own, and the result is that the United States has been the international laggard in testing. We are ramping up finally now. All of that combined allowed for what is one of the worst outbreaks in the world in terms of the rate of growth if not the worst. And so now that we have one of the worst outbreaks in the world in absolute terms and rate of growth, in order for stall serious doom and death, we have had to shut down enormous parts of the economy which has obviously caused massive human misery and economic dislocation because we missed our chance to do Something Better earlier. And now, after about a week of that economic dislocation, as we continue to climb up the exponential curve of cases and deaths, the president is listening to voices on the right that say, really, whats a million seniors when youre thinking about the whole economy. Thats slightly caricatured but only slightly because theres a growing chorus of voices on the right saying the benefit of keeping people alive is not worth the cost to the economy. Our ruling class in and their tv mouthpieces whipping up fear in these virus, they can afford a working shut down. Working americans cannot. They will be crushed by it. You know the phrase, the cure is worse than the disease, that is the territory we are hurdling towards. There was a viral medium post making basically that argument and now right wing law professor Richard Epstein circulating the version, that the cost is not worth the benefit. I should note this has been a central conservative right wing idea forever, its the same reason there are arguments for why we dont need clean air regulations, even if tens of thousands of people die of lung disease from additional pollution. Its now its being applied in this extreme case in the midst of a growing pandemic and got to the president. The president tweeting all caps, quote, we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. At the end of the 15day period, we will make a decision as to which way we want to go. He then retweeted multiple requests from random twitter users like steph 93065 to send people back to work. One person in the administration who is consistently and publicly urged more action to stem the spread of the virus, is the director of the National Institute of allergy and infectious diseases, anthony fauci. Now the New York Times reports trump has become frustrated with dr. Faucis blunt approach at the briefing lectern which contradicts things the president just said. And laura ingram tweeted a global recession would be worse for our people than the great recession. Doctors provide medical and cures. Its probably worth pointing out dr. Fauci was not at this evenings White House Press conference, an ominous sign to many about the president and his relationship to scientific advice. Heres the thing, its not a question of if the economic shutdown is absolutely brutal for americans for our fellow citizens, for our economy, of course it is. Its just that those on the right, in the business world, talking to donald trump are just misreading what the choices are right now. There is no option to just let everyone go back out and go back to normal if a pandemic rages across the country and infects 50 of the population and kills a percentage point at the low end of those infected and also melts down all the hospitals. What kind of economy do you think youre going to have under those conditions. Please just think about this for a second. Are people going to be flying . Are they going to be going to disney world . Are they going to be going to restaurants and bars . Are you going to be able to run a business if twothirds of your staff get sick when the virus comes roaring through your workplace, and mounting Horror Stories come out of hospitals every day, and maybe it goes through the places of where people maintain the grid or the Water Treatment system. As the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom orders a country wide lock down for the next three weeks, after resisting the idea, the president of the United States appears to be just considering the opposite, okay. Enough of that. Lets take our chances with the virus. The press reports as the Coronavirus Crisis up ends his presidency, he is losing the case. We find ourselves in the situation we are partly because trump delivered us here. And now all indications are that he is very seriously considering making it much, much, much worse. Joining me now, vice admiral, the u. S. Surgeon general under barack obama, the author of together, the healing power of Human Connection in. Lets start with the argument, the president came out tonight during his now Daily Press Conference where he rambled a lot and touted cures that are around the corner, and hes basically saying look, the cure is worse than the disease. Global recession is going to kill people too. So this is nonsense, you have to stop listening to Public Health experts, they dont understand the economy, we need to get the economy up and running. What do you say to that . Well, i can understand where the sentiment is coming from, where people are saying, maybe we should get back to our lives sooner than we had thought we could, and its because this is incredibly painful what we are going through. We have had to dramatically up end our lives, people are hurting economically, separated from family and friends, and childrens lives are disrupted. This is incredibly painful but when were measuring when the disease is worse than the cure, we have to recognize that we have not even come close to seeing how bad this can get. We are just at the early stages of seeing the number of cases and deaths in the United States, and because we had some stumbles early on where we werent testing people, we werent tracing as many contacts as we should have been and isolating people to protect others, we have seen now the virus spreading unchecked for weeks. Keep in mind the numbers you are seeing today are a reflection of infection that has happened one to two weeks ago. These numbers are going to continue to go up, and that is why you find Public Health experts around the country saying that the measures we are taking now as extreme as they are necessary, and if we want to pull back on them, heres what we need to have in place. We need to have the ability to test broadly. We need to have the ability to trace contacts extensively, not a few hundred contacts but hundreds of thousands of contacts. We need to have Health Care Systems that are shored up and have the capacity to treat a huge surge of patients which is what were starting to see now, and we finally need the ability to protect and isolate the elderly and the vulnerable. We do not have these all in place right now. To pull back on the measures would be premature. Well, play that out a little bit. I mean, because i think theres two cases here. One theres a sort of question about the value of human life and who we care for and care about and what societal decisions we make and how we calculate the tradeoffs. Theres a kernel of truth, the speed limit could be 35 Miles Per Hour everywhere on every highway, and that would almost certainly save lives and we dont have that because theres a trade off between efficiency and life. These are things baked into policy, but spell out what your best sense from the people you talked to is of what a kind of get back to work in a week order would actually end up looking like in a real sense. My understanding is it doesnt even solve the economic problem. Well, no, so if people are told that they can go back to work, but they dont have confidence they will be taken care of if they get sick, if they dont have confidence theyre not going to get sick, people arent going to do it. Youll see infection rates once again surge, so you know, these are hard choices to make but thats why there are three Core Principles that youve got to observe in crises like this. We have seen this play out again in ebola, with zika, with h1n1, these three Core Principles are number one, you have got to lead with science and scientists. Youve got to have people who are versed in science out there messaging and talking directly to the public. Second, youve got to be transparent. This is not always easy. Theres enormous pressure when you walk into the Briefing Room to want to give good news, put a positive spin on what youve got. You dont want to panic. You have to resist the urge and trust people and be transparent with them, and finally, third, youve got to get resources to people on the front lines. Chris, you know what breaks my heart is my friends, my colleague, doctors, nurses, Health Care Workers across this country are going to battle every day on the front lines of the covid19 war without armour. Theyre going without the masks they need, without gloves. They are running out of gowns. They are running out of ventilator. To send soldiers into war without the protective gear they demanding and asking of our Health Care Workers and without being able to tell them when they can expect the protection they need, many doctors are scared. Many nurses are worried they are going to openly contract this infection. This is unacceptable in 2020 in the richest country in the world. The Health Care Workers are saving our lives. Weve got to have their back. Dr. Murthy, thank you as always for sharing your expertise tonight. For more on the economic side of the coronavirus equation, i want to bring in sarah nelson, International President of the flight attendance. And Joseph Stiglitz, author of peace and power. People were talking in apocalyptic turns about what were going to see happen to the economy, unemployment at 25 or 30 , gdp diminished in numbers we have never seen with the great depression. This is what the president said about look, there are going to be repercussions and deaths from that level of economic devastation. Take a listen. We cant turn that off and think its going to be wonderful. There will be tremendous repercussions. There will be tremendous death from that, death. Youre talking about death, probably more death from that than anything that were talking about with respect to the virus. Now i dont necessarily think thats correct about more death, but it is true that this level of economic dislocation has just profound consequences, right, professor stiglitz . Thats right. It will have profound consequences and i think the numbers that have been bandied around, unemployment in excess of 20 , unprecedented decline in gdp are right. But the balance between the potential death 2, 3 million, and the economy, no way that any reasonable person could come to his conclusion. And the point you made earlier is absolutely right. If people were worried about getting the disease by going to work, by going to the store, by going to a restaurant, its not going to happen. Our economy is going to implode, whether we shut things down or not, and its better to do it in an organized way. The alternative is to see the economy go down and deaths soar. Thats really what hes offering. Sarah, you and your members obviously are on the front lines of this. You represent flight attendants and the stats coming out of air travel are just insane. You have been sort of public about how you think about rescue. The federal government is going to have to do something for the Airline Industry or the whole thing will collapse. There will not be any Airline Industry, so how do you think about prioritizing that and conceptually when your members on the front line of this about what can be done in the midst of this . Well, first, chris, when flight attendants are on a plane, we dont have any options. We cant call for help. We cant walk off when we get frustrated. We actually have to handle the problem, and this is the United States of america, and i think its absurd to say we have to choose death or financial ruin when both are hurdling at us and we can take on both, and we can take on both by making sure that we are taking care of the individual people on the front lines so they can take care of themselves. So we have put forward a package that says that instead of thinking about from top down economic recovery here, we need to think about from ground up. We need to make this package be workers centric, and were doing that by saying that it starts with grants from the government to pass through to payroll. The payroll systems are already in place. We dont need the government to be the hr solution for everything. Lets keep the paychecks going, keep people on the job, and able to perform their job, and by the way, flight attendants are still going to work even though its drastically reduced but we have to. And so keep people on the job, connected to their health care because their benefits are connected to their job, and so we can actually take people who are today able to care for themselves and make sure that through this National Emergency they can continue to care for themselves. So that we can focus on the sick and vulnerable and help our medical professionals on the front line and not overload them. Lets make sure everyone who can take care of themselves has the means to do that, and the federal government can do that. We are the workers and we are the taxpayers. Give us our money and help us take care of ourselves so we can focus as a nation on getting rid of the virus, and restarting our economy. So, professor stiglitz, that general conceptual framework is part of the debate were going to get into in the next segment about the rescue package in the senate, which is basically look, if things were going before or try to keep them going now and use the government which has you know, incredible Borrowing Capacity and also the Printing Press now to essentially kind of backstop it all. Keep it all going, have the government kind of backstop it. Does that make sense to you as a general approach to this . A general approach bottom up rather than the top down does make sense. We dont have probably the capacity to distribute 150 million individual checks to different families. We dont have the capacity to increase our Unemployment Insurance program 20 fold, so keeping as many people as possible tied to their employers, you know, like denmark is doing, is a very reasonable way. But on the other hand, i dont like the basic idea of bailouts to the companies. You know, we did that in 2009. The problem was the financial crisis was caused by the companies, by the banks not doing what they should have done. In this case, the companies are partly to blame. We gave them an enormous tax cut in december of 2017. Their profits were record profits and what did they do . They bought back stock. They distributed money to their dividends, high pay for the ceos. But they didnt put any money aside. I think their shareholders should bear the cost, and the ceos should bear the cost. And theres an important distinction between bailing out the shareholders and the bondholders and saving the company. Right. And i think, sarah, you agree with that as well, you have been in touch with the house leadership and a lot of your ideas have ended up in that legislation. Sarah nelson, and Joseph Stiglitz, thank you both for your time tonight. Thanks, chris. Thank you. Coming up, high drama in the capitol tonight as House Democrats unveil a sweeping rescue bill. Mitch mcconnell strains to keep the senate functioning, and Bernie Sanders and adam schiff on where the rescue efforts stand, next. I see whats possible, instead of whats here. Others see cracked concrete, rundown courts. I see a way to bring pride back to communities. Thats why i made project backboard and a site with godaddy. How will you make your mark . Make the world you want. Which of your devices are protected by daily security updates . Daily security updates. Daily . I dont know. The only thing. Im struggling with this. Some providers you have to manually download updates to each device. Comcast business securityedge updates every 10 minutes to help keep your connected devices protected against new ransomware, malware and phishing threats. Every 10 minutes feels pretty good. Get secure, reliable internet and voice for an amazing price. Call today. Comcast business. Beyond fast. Hes been around the world, hes seen it all, its always what you think of, [crowd] surprise right there, all the time, with over 40 fully integrated applications, you wont be able to contain your excitement either. From just a dollar a day per employee, run your entire business with zoho one. The operating system for business. There was a frenetic back and forth on capitol hill as the senate, house, and white house tried to agree to a 1. 8 trillion economic rescue package to mitigate the massive economic damage caused by the attempts to get the coronavirus pandemic under control. So far two versions of the senate bill have failed, primarily because democrats refuse to vote for the Mitch Mcconnell plan. A plan that insists on including what democrats call a 500 billion corporate slush fund that would be available to the treasury secretary to essentially rescue or bail out industries with really little oversight or real disclosure. Democrats also argue the bill does not have enough protections for workers, hospitals and others. All of this is happening in a congress that is not at full capacity, republican senator rand paul of kentucky is among the lawmakers who have tested positive for the virus. Paul was in close contact with senators while he awaited his results. He had been using the senate gym. As a result, two more republican senators, mitt romney, and cory gardner have had to selfquarantine. There are a total of five republican senators in selfquarantine while this plays out. From the latest, im joined first by democratic congressman adam schiff of california. I guess first your understanding of where things stand at this hour, congressman . Well, negotiations are ongoing. It looked like the differences were being narrowed but theres still some very significant disputes and chief among them, that Mitch Mcconnell and donald trump want this big bailout fund that they would control. Donald trump i think today said that he would be the oversight when asked about the lack of oversight in the republican proposal. Thats not going to fly for most americans. We dont want to see abuse of taxpayer dollars through executive compensation or stock buy backs, layoffs that enrich executives. I think the best approach frankly is one in which we avoid layoffs, we incentivize companies by helping to guarantee payroll to keep their employees on. For one thing, it will avoid putting all the pressure from the unemployment system but for another, when this crisis is over, we can recover that much more quickly if people dont need to go job hunting all of a sudden, so that remains a big Sticking Point that essentially half billion dollar slush fund that the president is pushing for. The half trillion dollars, and my understanding is a sort of the debate there is that the language that mcconnell has used in treasure mnuchin, companies have to retain work force that is practical, which is essentially they have to try. Whereas democrats are asking for some actual requirements, right, that a condition of the aid has to be keeping payroll. Is that a fair characterization . That is a very fair characterization, and look, these industries ought to do the right thing here. They are going to need this financial assistance. We want to keep the industries alive, we want to make sure those who work in the Industries Still have a livelihood, and this is a very reasonable condition which is, if youre going to have access to this government funding, then you need to retain your work force and retain their wages, and we will help guarantee your expenditures to maintain that work force that seems to be an eminently fair bargain. You know, i do want to say, chris, if i could with respect to the conversation you just had. It terrifies me to see this president do 180 degrees, first saying theres no problem with the virus, then saying, okay, this is a massive wartime like crisis, and now preparing it, it would appear to say lets go back to business as usual. We need to listen to the health experts, the epidemiologists. We need to do what science dictates here to save american lives, and if this president wants to be a wartime president , he needs to stop vacillating, listening to the experts or simply get out of their way. I wanted to raise a critique that has been offered by a lot of folks in the republican party, and conservatives observing this today, which is that they say the democrats are essentially trying to smuggle in a bunch of preexisting ideological points, extension of the solar tax credit, changing to the funding mechanism of the post office, the funding mechanism is messed up in lots of ways. They say you guys sort of see this opportunity to get a bunch of stuff you wanted anyway, in under the cover of emergency legislation. Whats your response to that . Well, look, i think what theyre really focused on is we want to make sure that we protect only the health of the economy but the health of our democracy, and for that reason, we wanted to make sure that we provide that people can vote by mail, and have early voting. We saw the fiasco in ohio, we dont want that repeated. What donald trump would like, what Mitch Mcconnell would like is a situation where they can create a corporate slush fund that they can do with as they choose, and the voters wont be able to hold him accountable, they wont be able to get to the ballot places without risking their lives. We view the Economic Health and the health of our democracy as interrelated. They view the health of their slush fund and suppressing the vote as interrelated and i think thats part of the conflict. All right. Congressman adam schiff. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you. Now, for more on the situation, i want to bring in democratic president ial candidate senator Bernie Sanders, independent of vermont. Senator, i want to start, i have been watching the broadcast you have been doing sort of laying out your vision for this. And i want to start with an argument about assistance to Large Companies particularly that i have heard and get your response to it which is basically the opposite of what Joseph Stiglitz was saying, look, in 2008, the financial industry and Real Estate Industry crashed themselves and asked for a bailout. There was a real problem of moral hazard. In this case, its not like the companies that are suffering brought this on themselves, its just a virus. We shouldnt be thinking of it as a bailout, shouldnt be thinking of it as a moral hazard in the same way. Whats your feeling about that . My feeling is you cannot simply give 50 billion for the Airline Industry, and of course this crisis is not their making. But you cant just give them that money to do anything they want. If were going to bail out the Airline Industry, if youre going to bail out tourism, if youre going to bail out hotels et cetera, what you have to do is make sure that that money is going to protect working people. And what youre seeing in the United Kingdom in other countries, they are saying to employers, if you retain your workers, even if you furlough them, even if theyre working from home, theyre going to continue to get the paycheck that the government is providing. So bottom line is yes, i do understand that Major Industries through no fault of their own are in trouble. Our job is not to make these industries richer, not to allow them to do stock buybacks, but to protect the workers in those companies. I wanted to get your reaction. One provision that seems a Sticking Point in the latest negotiations is about disclosure. This is really striking. As the legislation is currently written, im quoting the the New York Times here. Mr. Mnuchin, treasury secretary would not have to disclose the recipients of the grants, loans, given out by the treasury until six months after the loans were disbursed. What do you think of that . I know you know what i think about that. I think that that is totally insane and unacceptable. Can you imagine giving the Trump Administration 500 billion and by the way, in the midst of an election to do anything they want with that money, to give the money to any company they want, any state they want, with no transparency at all. That is absolutely wrong. Look, chris, the truth is right now we face at this moment in terms of the pandemic, in terms of the economic melt down, the most serious set of crises that have been facing this country perhaps for a hundred years. And our job right now is to think big, is to act in an unprecedented way both in terms of health care and in terms of the economy. And it is going to cost a lot of money, but not spending that money now will make a bad situation even worse because as you know, there are some people out there talking about by the end of june unemployment being 20, 25, 30 . So right now, our focus has got to be in my view, to make sure that all workers in this country are kept whole, they continue to get their paycheck, to make certain that in addition to that people get a check of 2,000 a month to make certain right now that we move in an unbelievably aggressive way, to make sure that our health care providers, our doctors and nurses are not dying on the job trying to protect us. And that means that trump has got to enforce in a vigorous way the defense production act to make sure that companies now are not producing tshirts and underwear, that is not our major need at the moment, masks, gowns, gloves are the need. Companies have got to do that. Some are voluntarily doing that. They need to be compensated well. Theyve got to transform their production capabilities to deal with the crises that we face right now. The other thing i think, chris, you know, is that while congress and there are going to be people up all night right now working on this 2 trillion bill. People are working really hard. They understand the extent of the tragedy. We have to take a deep breath and how we got to be in a country where so many people are in financial despair right now. What i worry about is that at a time when half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, those paychecks are stopping. There are people out there watching this program who are saying i cant feed my kids tomorrow. How did we get there, how do we have a Health Care System so unprepared among many other things for this epidemic . Final question for you, senator, i know obviously youre running for president of the United States, you have been for a while, its basically you and joe biden the last people in the race, you were asked by a reporter, i think last week, and you said something to the effect of im dealing with a global pandemic, which i found a reasonable reaction given whats going on, but i wonder, how would you characterize the state of the Sanders Campaign at this bizarre, bizarre crisis moment . I think you used the right word, chris, we are in a bizarre moment. You know, you well know, i love to do large rallies. We have had rallies for 10, 20, 25,000 people. Were not doing rallies. We have a strong grass roots movement. Hundreds of thousands of people knocking on doors. Guess what, nobody is knocking on doors right now. What we are doing is transitioning our campaign to a virtual campaign. We had a wonderful town meeting last night with several of the leading members of the congress which i thought was very productive. A large viewing audience. Were kind of moving day by day. All right. Senator Bernie Sanders of vermont, thank you very much for being with me. Appreciate it. Thank you very much, chris. Take care. Still to come, what could actually be promising new data out of italy. And its a new group of the mission of finding and placing personal protective equipment because the federal government just isnt. The founder of project n 95 joins me ahead. Get it. Get it. Get it get it crowd chanting get it get it get it crowd groaning crowd cheering narrator give your town a reason to celebrate because every goodwill item you bring home, brings job training and more to your community. Goodwill. Bring good home. They have businesses to grow customers to care for lives to get home to they use stamps. Com print discounted postage for any letter any package any time right from your computer all the Amazing Services of the post office only cheaper get our special tv offer a 4week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps. Com tv and never go to the post office again i have promised myself in the grim and unsettling times to focus on some sort of hope or silver lining, for example, funny moments like these from italy where local politicians have been absolutely losing it over people violating quarantines. [ speaking in Foreign Language ] go home, play some video games. Italy is 14 days into the nationwide lockdown. And we are seeing some positive signs, their attempt to flatten the curve is working tentatively. Officials announced fewer new cases and deaths in the previous two days, although obviously the toll is unimaginable. Italy has had a brutal time with this virus. Their fatality rate is among the highest in the world. We are seeing the death rates from coronavirus are varying widely from country to country. Italy and spain are very high, and we are on the lower end so far. Now, that is maybe some cause for optimism, and its probably due to the fact the u. S. Population is just considerably younger than the population of italy or spain. Those demographics for those countries have made it so catastrophic there. In a way, i think theres good reason to believe hopefully that we will not see the kind of fatality rates in our country they have seen in those parts of europe, which is another bright spot, i suppose. But heres the thing. If we want to avoid real catastrophe, there are huge pressing concerns we need to address. No single one greater than the immediate shortterm than the shortage of personal protective equipment for Health Care Workers. We will talk about the latest emergency and the society wide attempt to scramble enough together ahead. 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We were so relieved to learn there are treatments for td. Learn more at talkabouttd. Com. Do you have any specific numbers on how many masks the federal government has been able to acquire and how many have gone out the door to hospitals . It is a dynamic and fluid operation. Do you have even a rough number . I cant give you a rough number. Heres a brutal fact, the single most desperate need from states experiencing outbreaks is for more personal protective equipment for front line health workers, as well as ventilator, and the federal government is not stepping up to meet that need or to coordinate the states having that need met. Despite President Trump saying he would use the defense production act which is a 1950 law which requires companies to prioritize material needed for national defense, the president is not using it to order factories to make anything. For example, over the weekend, he said ford and gm are making ventilators which when i heard it seemed unlikely but didnt know, but of course, no, that is not true. They are not making ventilators. It would take them months to start production. Without the president using the defense production act it has instead been left as so many things in this crisis have been left to Civil Society to crowd source things like protective equipment for Health Care Workers. Institutions can make requests and others who have access to medical equipment can pledge theirs and the two can be put together. Joining me to discuss how dire the need is getting met, andrew stroup, one of the founding members of the n 95. How did you start this, and whats the idea behind it . Yeah, i mean, i think where we ended up and the simple question was how can we do something that is impactful and helpful, and so the first thing that we thought about was the front line workers, ultimately, how do we get the needed things into their hands, and that was the personal protective equipment. What we learned was that the simple fact is we just wanted to find a way for us to contribute in some way and seeing an opportunity and a gap where it wasnt being collected from the areas that they needed. How do we source the demand of all the hospitals and all of the requirements needed to get that information, to understand how much of that personal protective equipment they need, and also identify suppliers that would potentially match them with in some way, and the goal here really is to try to connect the dots through some data driven process that ultimately allows them to be able to connect the dots where there may not be able to do so. You know, one of the things i have learned in reporting this and talking to people is just the sheer amount that is needed just because these are essentially disposable items, particularly if youre in Emergency Rooms that are being affected. New york city needs a billion masks or things like that. What are you learning from what the demand is in terms of hospitals and institutions that are going to your web site, and putting in what they need. Yeah, absolutely, you know, what we started this initiative as just people raising their hand to get started to see how it can be helpful. That was 72 hours ago. 72 hours since then, 42 people trying to match and process all of this information, we have had over a thousand Different Health care providers come in and say we need protective equipment, and now were over 80 million asks of that, and were doing our best to match that in some way and some effective means through some vetting process. So where does the supply come from . This seems i cant get my head around what the supply issue is, is it the following, theres a Global Supply choke because supply chains out of china have shut down and demand is just outstripped the ability or is there a coordination problem, a money problem, what is your understanding of what the bottleneck is . Yeah, the thing that we have seen is that the supply chains are inherently complex, as you know, and so every piece of the puzzle, whether its the work were doing with project n 95 to state governments and federal governments to the private industry, all these pieces to play to figure out which one can pull the lever. What were finding is were able to identify the hospital care individuals who need this protective equipment and finding suppliers, both domestically and internationally saying how do we go about vetting them in some way to connect the dots in some form or fashion. What we see here is this is a massive problem thats chaining the demand around how supply chains are operating and were essentially a clearinghouse to do the connections and drive that forward with transparency, and data driven practices. All right. Im wishing you luck, a lot of people are wishing you luck, andrew stroup, thank you so much. Thank you. What happens when a tv run state is forced to cover a global pandemic. Ben smith and the New York Times on the dangerous fallout from the fox News Coverage of covid19 next. These folks dont have time to go to the post office they use stamps. Com all the services of the post office only cheaper get a 4week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps. Com tv and never go to the post office again. Get a 4week trial plus postage and a digital scale can we go get some ice cream . Alright, we gotta stop here first. From smarter atms, to after hours video tellers comcast business is connecting thousands of banks to technology that turns everyday transactions into extraordinary experiences. Hi there. How are you . Do you have any lollipops in there . laughing no, sorry. Were helping all kinds of businesses go beyond customer expectations. How can we help you . Theyre scaring the living hell of people and i see it again, lets bludgeon trump with this new hoax, and there are now more than 6,000 confirmed cases in the United States, weve been telling you, this is happening, sadly, over now, 100 deaths in the u. S. And now those numbers as ive been saying will likely rise, seemingly and dramatically in the next days and weeks. Over the last seven several weeks, fox news, has done this utterly insane aboutface and started by echoing the president s line, downplaying the coronavirus saying it was like a seasonal flu and democrats are weaponizing and hyping and then turned around and started saying, this is deadly serious. The president s got it under control. Also, we dont like china. And a great piece in the New York Times, ben smith writes about how destructive the fox news message has been. Quote, i asked the director of the Harvard GlobalPublic Health institute who appeared on fox news recently whether he believes people will die because of foxs coverage. And yes, he said, some commentators in the right wing media spread a very specific type of information that i think has been very harmful. And joining me is ben smith, media columnist for the New York Times. Describe for me the trajectory of foxs approach to this story and i think were entering phase three but it has had two phases of nothing to see here, this is the democrats, and now lets get serious. I think were entering phase four actually chris, it began with fox to the degree they talked about it saying this is a serious threat, tucker carlson, very serious about it, but even somebody like sean hannity saying were concerned about this. He had fauci early on in february. And what happened was criticism of Donald Trumps response and this got processed at fox the way every story, a lot of stories of cable news in general which is the latest political fight, and all of the coverage was really of the media. Very little of the coverage was of the disease. Im not sure sean was trying to call the disease a hoax. I think he was trying to say this is the latest media attack. But when you watch that channel and you think about republican politics right now, a huge share of what is going on is talking about the media. And not talking about the underlying thing at all. And that was obviously a disastrous mistake. And weve seen it in polling, right, in terms of there is huge partisan splits and how serious people are taking this and how deadly they think it is and there is a big difference, and we may see it play out in terms of behavior, as theyre now kind of really pivoting hard, too, look, this is bad but we cant shut down the whole economy over it. Yes, i think, i mean that, we skipped a couple of phases here. But the next phase here clearly seems to be dont shut down the economy. Maybe keep some of the old people inside. Maybe Lieutenant Governor dan patrick said on fox just now, maybe let some old people die and thats okay, to save the economy. I dont think, i am not sure that message will really sell but theyre clearly trying to figure out how to move, how to start trying to persuade people to come out of quarantine. Well, theres also, i mean as you note, there was also a gap between what the public message was about the seriousness and what the private actions taken by the Murdoch Family for instance and fox news were, which reflected that they did take it seriously, they did view it as quite serious and possibly dangerous. Yes, the thing, i went into the story, what happened there, what is the disaster and how did it come about . And i went and first looked at the ceo of fox news, and she was as of late february, frantically ordering the cafeteria sanitized and stuff like that. She apparently had no control over the actual talent on the network talking about stuff. Everything else was under control. The ceo of fox, Rupert Murdoch, not particularly engaged. And the thing that i just learned today, actually after i published the story and i just wrote a new story about how Rupert Murdoch really knew about it. Hes 89 years old, had Health Problems and had a Birthday Party planned right in that period for his 89th birthday right in that period when things were, when his network was playing it down, and they canceled that Birthday Party because they didnt want to put him at risk. You know, the big question to me about the white house and this particular channel, and this era, is which way the causality goes. We joke, we say its not, sometimes it feels like a statement on tv and, state run tv and sometimes a tvrun state and it is unclear who is taking the marching orders and who is getting them and in this case, what is your sense of that that feedback. Tucker carlson had taken this seriously, he drove to maralago to convince trump to take it seriously, there are other people who have been indifferent. How has the sort of causal arrow of influence been working right now . Its not an arrow or a circle or some kind of painting, i imagine trump as a guy walking down the street just staring at a mirror, you know, and i mean its, its very easy, obviously taking his cues from fox and feeding back to them, you know, he has a lot of power over some of those host, tucker was able to get through to him, basically, on air and in person, but i think, you know, these hosts have a lot of power because they dont really seem to have bosses exercising any kind of judgment at all. I think were now in this phase, a dangerous phase, i think, again, right, the idea of where were headed now, its clear, you know, and this is not just fox. I mean theres a sort of concerted republican quarter shouting out, conservative voice, the wall street journal editorial page being a great example of this and elsewhere, saying you cant listen to these crazy, you know, pointyheaded lefty Public Health people, who want to shut down your economy, like we got to get back to business here, and its going to be a real question, i think you can imagine, a world in which this becomes essentially a cultural issue, in that red america is like, were going to open ufo for business and Rural America isnt. And the virus doesnt care, really, like what kind of politics the different states have. Yes, i think thats exactly right, and it is also notable, its coming out of, the wall street journal editorial page, really started the drumbeat on this, you saw it immediately pick up on a huge way on fox, yeah were all very busy. We are. We are very busy. That is all in for this evening. The 11th hour with Brian Williams starts right now. Good evening once again. 225 days until our next president ial election. And if you were watching the