Transcripts For MSNBCW All In With Chris Hayes 20200519

Rescue fund and what is done about oversight when all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. The coronavirus pandemic is along with Climate Change a global challenge, right . Weve already seen in the months of this how little the virus cares about things like boarders, how its altered daily life around the globe developed and developing countries alike, the global south, the global north, any solution to the virus to problems caused by the virus will have to be global. Vaccination, treatment, best practices, all of that. Today we learned President Donald Trump declined an invitation to address the World Health Organization while president xi accepted joining angela miracle and macron. I mean, every world lead ser facing some variation of the same challenge, and there is probably a lot to learn from the exchange between countries, particularly from germany to name one example thats successfully contained the virus and minimized fatalitiefataliti. The president refused counsel and advice of his own government, never mind others ones. Back on april 16th, the Trump Administration announced guidelines to reopen the economy in three phases. We keep coming back to this document because its the most orphan document in america. The president unveiled it. They posted it on the white house website. Theyre still there. You can go read them and theyre sensible. But President Trump got so im patient and could not wait for states to meet his own guidelines, the one he introduced from his cdc he started beating up on governors and beraiding them and urging states the very first day tweeting about liberate this state and that. On april 20th, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp announced he was opening up the state starting with essential services which also happened to include massage studios and bowling alleys. Governor kemp was out front. He kind of branded himself as a first reopener, not abiding by the cdc guidelines but things have not gone great for him. I mean, they havent been catastrophic, either, we should explain. First, kemp got hung out to dry because he thought he was listening to the president by opening early, right . The president is tweeting liberate michigan, liberate virginia. Brian kemp is like im with you and the president cuts him off at the knees saying he disagrees with kemps decembision. Since then, georgia appears to be cooking the books to show the data was better than it really is or at least making a bunch of errors that have that cumulative effect. Here is the chart. Look at how the new confirmed cases appear to go down on a nice smooth slope. Getting better. Look closely and you realize the dates are not in the right order. Here is may 7th before april 26th. Thats not the way that chart should work. That type of screwup that has been an error in that direction has happened at least three times. The Governors Office says they were not trying to be misleading but i dont know, maybe as a result of these over optimistic messages, some georgians seem to be embracing the reopening and sort of thinking the risk isnt there anymore, its gone basically. The Washington Post is a great piece about people shopping at a mall in atlanta. Outside urban outfitters, jennifer was having a glass of wine as her daughter shopped inside. This feels great, i love it she said explaining she assumed she and everyone around her was healthy. I think people would not be out if they were exposed to anyone with coronavirus. I am sympathetic to the feeling of greatness and temptation of just like having a normal day and having a glass of wine at a place. That does sound awesome. There is no relationship between how good that feels and what the risk is and its not this individuals job to assess the risk. There are other states like georgia that are quick to reopen their state again at the kind of president s behest if his own guidelines say not to. Starting today ron desantis allowed restaurants and restale sto tail stores and gyms to reach 50 capacity. Not fully back but starting. Palm beach county is identified as a coronavirus hot spot in a Homeland Security document. And then there is Texas Governor greg abbott that announced today daycares can open immediately, which again, thats a vital thing for getting people back to work but it happens just days after the state reported a Record Number of coronavirus deaths in one day. So here is where things kind of stand right now as we look to this and think about our own future, all of us across the country and world. We know very clear things about the virus at this point, right . If you change absolutely nothing in your society and behavior and the way things happen, you continue life as usual, the virus will ravaged you and run. We know this. We saw it in outbreaks around the world. Weve been seeing it here in meat packing plants across the country and veterans homes and Nursing Homes, right . That much we do know. What we legitimately dont really know, though, is what happens now with the virus . Like, what does it do with some modified version of normal . And the big question is with modified physical distancing and masks wearing and some policies in place that can we keep the virus suppressed even if we do not implement some kind of Aggressive Program of testing and tracing and Contact Tracing and quarantine and all that stuff. Most virologists i talked to think no, probably not that well see the virus come back. Well see outbreaks in places. Whats unnerving about georgia, texas and florida and man, that does look appealing i have to say. Normal life in the sunshine and spring is they are taking on a very high level of risk with a very uncertain future. And here is the other thing, it may work out. I mean, we honestly dont know. I hope i literally hope it does. But if there are two things that we have learned in this era, two lessons we cannot unlearn or forget, one, you can elevate the risk of highly unlikely events, highly unlikely lly catastrophd get away with it for awhile until you dont. All these actions to reopen aggressively, right, in violation often of what the cdc says, they are high risk. But not only are republicans and the white house and state capitols ignoring the cdc guidelines, they are openly going out and attacking the cdc. Here is peter thnavarro in me the press. Early on the cdc had the most trusted brand around the world in this space really let the country down with the testing because not only did they keep the testing within the bureaucracy, they had a bad test and that did set us back. That is a fascinating clip because hes correct. The cdc screwed up enormously. Donald trumps cdc. The trump like its not a foreign saddle ligt satellite. Its in the Trump Administration. We do not know what the new normal looks like but there is a chance of something bad happening, 1 in 100 and increase it to 1 in 10. Thats dangerous but there is a likelihood you can avoid the 1 in 10 chance. We have managed to get by almost four years without something catastrophic at this scale, right . This incalculable scale. There are ka stas fcatastrophes Hurricane Maria but we escaped three and a half years but it doesnt mean the risk was there the whole time and look where we are now. So the other thing weve learned, right, which we absolutely cannot forget when the head of a government sends a signal that they quote like the numbers where they are that they think theyre going down when they peg their own political fortune in what they perceive as an economic fortune to the virus not being that bad and going away, right, that has tangible effects for the way that actors within the government behave. The real risk right now that maybe showed up in the good faith error in georgia, right . We dont know. Was it intentional or not was that when you have governors sending the message to the people in their bureaucracies open for business, governors that do not want to hear about another outbreak, right . Thats contrary to the message. That is dangerous. That is a dangerous message to send to people. Im joined by politzer prize winning science journalist and analyst laurie garrett. I wanted to start on that point because its something you have written about and thought about, ways in which governments, heads of state send messages formally and informally about the virus and the dangers of sending the message like were open for business, this is behind us, lets look on the bright side. I dont want to hear any debbie downers about this and what that could do to actual policy. Yeah, well, you know, this weekend i had the rude awakening of riding my bike around brooklyn, i of course, wearing my mask and gloves and seeing a city that was starting to really say we dont want to go on lockdown anymore. It was like mardi gras. Kids out in the streets in huge numbers. No masks. Getting drunk. And there was a giant party scene and i had the opposite reaction as you were just describing about seeing opening. I felt fearful and i think that one of the things were seeing is that the talk about opening up seems to negotiate mentioning masks. Do you open and wear a mask . Do you throw the mask away . Similarly, do you keep washing your hands all the time or do you say to heck with it, its over . The virus is not all over. In fact, if you look at National Data right now and you take out of the data set new york city, the immediate tristate area, detroit and new orleans, what youre left with is a graph that looks like this. Straight up skyrocketing, no slowdown whatsoever. This downward curve they keep showing is really the downward curve of new york and since new york is such a huge percentage of the total number of national cases, it skews the data. So there i mean, i guess the response to that when we think about texas, florida and georgia, the big question is where is that curve going . Is that there has been a lot more testing, right . In places where cases are going up were seeing percentages driven down in places like texas and florida that are the cause of some concern. I wonder youre skeptical of that maybe as a met trick. You sound concerned about the trajectory of this virus outside the places that have been hot spots and in places like texas, georgia, florida, et cetera. I am concerned. Demonstrators to protest against lockdowns across state lines went as much as 200 miles to attend without masks in tight conditions. These protests and now were starting to see the ability to actually track which viral subtypes individuals are infected with and do the epidemiologist tracing if john was in, say, dallas, protesting and drove back to lafayette, louisiana, we can tell if john becomes infected did he get a strain thats in circulation in lafayette and picked up in dallas and brought home with him. All this kind of work can be done, if there is a will to pay for the science and fund this kind of this is Contact Tracing and its another way of doing Contact Tracing by tracking the genome circumstances. Its like a fingerprint of the virus itself and what fingerprint is in me may not reflect whats in brooklyn. Maybe this is the fingerprint of miami and i just got off a plane from florida. So one of the things that strikes me about this moment when you talk about brooklyn and the scenes of people out in the street is that a, i think its maintaining the sort of social sense were engaged in this struggle for a long term is a hard thing to do but the danger of that binary thing, this is fairly universal like phew, thats over were out of lockdown. If we do that, were screwed. Thats the dangerous thing. We can get some version of normal if we carry with us these behavioral things but if we say that was a long ten weeks or that was a long two months, were back. Thats the most dangerous thing. Well, look at china. I mean, they did the most extensive lockdown on the planet. They declared victory and now theyve got three outbreaks and theyve put another, you know, 11 Million People in testing and many millions more back in lockdown, and i think every single country is starting to realize this is coming in waves. You got to build up a system and an infrastructure that can see each wave as its arriving, do the proper Contact Tracing to figure out who needs to be in quarantine or lockdown so you dont have to do the entire society. You target it. You do smart testing. Smart targeting, and you wait it out and then when that seizes spreading, you can go back to normal for awhile but you got to know theres going to be another round and another round and another round. We are in for a very long haul and just last week, the chief scientist in charge of the whole epidemic response at World Health Organization said something that ive been saying for now three months, which is that theres a very high probability this virus will end up goin ing endemic meaning it l be a permanent future in the human landscape like hiv and if we get to that stage, we must adapt all behavior accordingly. We cant, i dont think, follow the swedish model. Sweden said well never go to full scale lockdown. Well do a wimpy, small scale, voluntarily, you decide for yourself what lockdown youre prepared to carry out. Right. And then, you know, well keep our economy going. They have the highest death rate per capita in the world. I mean, second only to belgium. And theyre the highest in scandinavia and shame of northern europe. I guess they decided those dead people were not important. This is the sort of awful message, right, about the valley of life by the decisions that get made at a policy level and the awful consequences of it although the idea of it is really bumming me out on this monday. Thats why you have a politzer for reporting on the actual dangers the world faces. Thank you so much. Thank you, chris. For more on where we are on this crisis, im joined by former new York City Health commissioner, the director of the center for health and human rights at harvard university. You ran, doctor, a large one of the most agust and important Public Health organizations in the country in the new york Citys Department of health and i wonder how youre looking at this, these risk assessments and how policy makers send messages to people about this, about risk, about being clear eyed about it so that it gets through. Well, one of the basic messages is of course, to give consistent messaging and thats been a catastrophe in the united states. There are so many people saying Different Things and now were seeing the same thing happen with the conversation about reopening. There was a quote from a georgia resident that really struck with me. We have covered and you have written about, you had an op ed in the inequities and sort of effects of this disease particularly among african americans, among people have comorbidities among the poor. I saw this quote and it was hunting me. There was a worry if you highlight these disparities that are real to highlight and talk about, some people get the message its not coming from me. There is a georgia resident in the Washington Post. When you see where the cases are coming from and demographics, im not worried. What do you think about that quote . Does it say about what message people are receiving . Well, it speaks to the long legacy of racializing risk rather than talking about the peoples circumstances that place them at risk. When you talk about who they are, how they are classified. So youll have the same thing happening with the meat packing can kath f catastrophe with escalated rates of covid and the people that work there are latino, not on the conditions they work or their homes or the ways in which they have to commute to work. So this is theres a long legacy of this and it very dangerous because it is really true that our society is segregated but this virus doesnt recognize race. It recognizes opportunity and in our society those opportunities for infection are unequally distributed. I guess the thing that always sticks with me about this is we think about sort of Going Forward is, the nursing home situation just stands out to me so much as something that i didnt think our society would abide. I mean, i understand like the desperate power and the legacy of sort of racialized risk and people thinking well that thing happens to those people over there and over there but, you know, Nursing Homes have been just hammered by this. I mean, tens of thousands of deaths in Nursing Homes and there doesnt seem to be a kind of collective national out cry that says this is fund mentally unacceptable. Youre right. The risk of Nursing Homes for people that work in them as well as people who are residents in them has been very high. Some estimates are 25 to 50 of deaths are occurring in that sector, and the issue is how poorly regulated the Nursing Homes have been, how under staffed and under paid the workers are. So when you have a situation where for example, one of the aids who is having an intimate relationship with the residents in terms of assisting them with daily activities, you know, has to work two jobs in order to pay her bills. Then you have a situation where there is risk. Now, i cant explain the fact that death of the elderly is considered sort of inevitable. These were preventable deaths and it says something terrible about our society if we think its okay that people die preventable deaths because they are old. I could not agree more. Dr. Mary bassett who is a wealth of knowledge. We spoke back during the ebola situation in new york city on the street outside the hospital. Thank you, doctor, appreciate it. Thank you, thanks, chris. Ahead, does political gravity exist during a pandemic and can the biden strategy stay relatively quiet and be effective . The data is telling us after this. Doctor bob, what should i take for back pain . Before you take anything, i recommend applying topical relievers first. Salonpas lidocaine patch blocks pain receptors for effective, nonaddictive relief. Salonpas lidocaine. Patch, rollon or cream. Hisamitsu. And ask your doctor about biktarvy. Biktarvy is a complete, onepill, onceaday treatment used for hiv in certain adults. Its not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights hiv to help you get to and stay undetectable. Thats when the amount of virus is so low it cannot be measured by a lab test. Research shows people who take hiv treatment every day and get to and stay undetectable can no longer transmit hiv through sex. Serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. 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Not just today, or this month, but always. Its timcan it helpemorial daykeep me asleep . Eep number 360 smart bed. Absolutely, it senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. Save 1,000 on the sleep number 360 special Edition Smart bed. Plus, free premium delivery when you add an adjustable base. 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 try and never go to the post office again nearly 10,000 more americans will die. 90,000 death the and growing. Millions more will file for unemployment. Small businesses are dying. Were not testing enough. Its still spreading. Here is what else is coming this week he will lie to you over and over. He will tweet instead of lead. He will blame others for failures. Welcome to this week and the next and the next until you do something about it. Thats the latest ad from the anti trump super pac which resides what is expected to happen in america as the pandemic continues and the reality of the situation where we find ourselves is the most brutal argument against donald trump politically. There have been a ton of articles how desperate trump and the white house are to change that bedrock reality with just increasingly insane attacks and wild gambits to get attention, but the political gravity right now in the country, the incumbent president is running for reelection in the midst of the worst cataclysm in generations. The question of the election is a referendum on the president and more than that and in the end the circumstances are what matter. You dig into the question. Democratic strategists and pollster and you and i had this conversation and i think we agree on something. The thing we agree on is there is a high floor for the president s support. Youre not going to ever see a world in which hes at 25 approval, which i agree with. But i also do think, i tend to think that the reality real did does matter for an incokucumben president and this will matter and youre in the camp its essentially entirely detached. Do you still feel that way . [ laughter ] yes, chris. I think for any ordinary president be it bush or obama, its not detached. But, you know, if you look at the polling out last week, cnn did a poll that came out in the last week, donald trump is at 46 . You add 46 , looks familiar with a lot of americans and look back at you know where he was last spring in 2019, april 2019 and cnns polling. He was at 45 , chris. So it is detached from reality. You know, his base is locked in and thats why i think theres been a somewhat, you know, battle back and forth inside the Democratic Party about do you go o after Trump Supporters or not . Its wasting time. That 45, 46, 47 is locked in. Hes going to get that no matter what happens, hes going to get that. So here is some, i think, i mean, i dont quite agree at 45, 46 but i will say this, a huge part of that is locked in but there is one place that i thought this data was interesting. So it seems to me that its a little reckless politically to go around saying to Senior Citizens who are most at risk from this virus in terms of mortality, youre warriors, get out there, suck it up. That seems like a message thats not a great political message if youre advising a candidate, i dont think you would tell and there does seem to be some data suggesting this is having anfecanfec effect. If you look at 538 ran the numbers. His margin 2016 for 65 was plus 13 . Hes down to like, hes under water with those groups now in a bunch of polls. Do you think thats basically, do you think thats real . Well, is it a bump or long term . You know, the dynamics of this race have yet to unfold. We are really to a certain extent in the early stages. Heck, the candidates arent even out and about campaigning and what i do know is that donald trump and republicans will throw everything they can at joe biden. I think if you had the republicans hand right now, you know the way you win this is if you make biden not a soft place for these voters in the land, and look, hillary in 2016 had a problem with her unfavorables were as high as donald trump and if you look at the polling right now, biden is just barely above water in his favorable to unfavorable beginning to shrink so look for them to come at i mean, all the stuff we think is crazy throwing at biden, look for them to throw more at biden because they understand they got to make him not an acceptable place for these voters for some of the voters of the land. So there is this thing i go back and forth on from a pure political tactic question which is like is it better basically, if you run against donald trump, is it better hes the lead story on the news or that you are . And ive gone back and forth on this idea he dominates attention and thats a super power and a huge part of the politics of this era but then the other is a lot of times he dominates, not like the majority of people dont like it. Thats why hes a 45 Approval Rating guy because 55 are like i dont like that. You know, youre a jerk. So this question about biden, like, if you are advising the Biden Campaign is your advice like its a good day if joe biden isnt the news and donald trump is or is it a bad day that you need to get out there and be more present . Look, chris, i think this is tough because one of the things in politics that goes back a long time is if your opponent is shooting themselves in the foot, dont get in the way. Step back. The problem is donald trump is shooting himself in the foot for a couple years now and his numbers dont move. I think part of the problem with 2016 was he did suck up all the air. He did suck up all the air and all the time and attention and i think ultimately, if youre the democrat you have to make a case for yourself. I dont think were going to win this, again, by just being against donald trump. I think we have to be for something. We have to make that case for yourself and if we have time, i want to make one quick point about the obama thing, if we have time. Hes crazy like a fox. Right . If racial aversion and angst about a changing america is in fact the driving division and angst and that case, barack obama although he did win back to back majorities, if thats your predicate running against barack obama is a better antagonist for you than running against joe biden. Thats very interesting. Cornell, thank you, as always. Well talk again soon. Thank you. Ahead, why did the president fire a state Department Inspector general while nobody was watching . The president s methodical purge of oversight officials and mike pompeo wanted this man fired after this. We find ourselves in challenging times and if youre taking skyrizi for moderate to Severe Plaque Psoriasis Financial Assistance may be available to help you afford your medication. Skyrizi may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. Before treatment your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms such as fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or coughs. Or if you plan to or recently received a vaccine. If you cant afford your medicine, abbvie may be able to help. Who has the highest percentage of its vehiclesto longevity, still on the road today . Subaru. When it comes to best overall value, who does intellichoice rank number one . Subaru. 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On saturday, october 20th, 1973 president Richard Nixon ordered the attorney general eric Elliott Richardson to fire the prosecutor investigating the watergate break in. Richardson refused to do so and resigned in protest so then did his Deputy Attorney who also resigned. That episode known as the saturday night massacre result in a public outcry that led to nixons resignation the following year. Jimmy carter signed a bill putting in place Inspector General across the federal government as an important check on fraud and corruption. In the beginning in 1978 when it was passed, it was an experiment. There were 12 igs but the idea is four years after watergate to help restore confidence for the public in government because confidence in the government was at an alltime low. Those post watergate reforms were put in place to restrain corrupt executive branch to refind some trust in the government and integrity and accountability and this month, donald trump actually bragged about what he learned from nixon back then. One of those moments where he kind of said the quiet part out loud. I learned a lot from Richard Nixon, dont fire people. I learned a lot. I study history. Of course, there was one difference, one big difference. Number one, he may have been guilty and number two he had tapes all over the place. All right. He was definitely guilty. Trump did not actually learn from Richard Nixon dont fire people, no, no. He learned something more important, make sure to space out the firing of people. Starting the beginning of april, trump has been firing the very people meant to hold his administration accountable, the inspectors general. His own saturday night massacre only the firings come on friday night after everyone checked out for the weekend. On friday, april 3rd, trump fired the Inspector General of the intelligence community. That was Michael Atkinson because he handle theed complaint and found it to have merit. He got rid of the defense departments ig overseeing Coronavirus Relief spending investigations. On friday, may 1st, he said he was replacing the health and Human Services Inspector General who had just exposed shortages of testing and personal protective equipment at hospitals. Then this past friday night, trump fired state Department Inspector general steve for pompeo. The office of the Inspector General opened an investigation into pompeo before pompeo asked that linick be fired with bipartisan support over decades on nixon 2. 0. Perhaps the most clearly lawless yesterday. Well talk about them after this. Youre on it. Exercising often and eating healthy . Yup, on it there too. You may think youre doing all you can to manage type 2 diabetes and heart disease. 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President informed House Speaker nancy pelosi on friday he was firing the state Department Inspector general steve linick and pompeo is saying he was the one that asked trump to fire linick because he wasnt performing a function in a way he tried to get him to, which is an interesting thing to say about that general who is supposed to be indepersonal dnd directed a political appointee to runn errands and chair of Th Foreign Affairs Committee Told the Washington Post the Inspector Generals office was investigating at my request trumps phony decoloration, of an emergency to send weapons to saudi arabia. This as a way of getting around congressional obstacles. The president today acted like he didnt know why linick was fired. He said pompeo told him to get rid of him so he did. Democrats arent buying it. They have an open investigation into an illegal act of retaliation. Joining me to talk about this, david graham staff writer at the latlantic. You make the case, david, that the i. G. S are an Important Institution and this is extremely grave what is going on here. Whats your case . Weve seen the erosion of judicial controls and legislative controls. Administration has stone walled congress and said congress doesnt have the right to do things, request documents and instructed the impeachment investigation and said the courts cannot adjudicate because its congress case. The last line of defense here is the Inspector General and make reports to the legislature and you see sort impunity, as well, leading no controls beyond the voter. So what is the i was sort of looking for statutory language trying to get right with the law here. What is the law here say . Can you just say like i dont like this Inspector General because hes investigating stuff that i would like to remain secret, i am firing him . Does the law let you do that . Its a little unclear. You have an amend mment passed 2008. The president has to inform congress 30 days prior of the reason but that doesnt Mean Congress can say no and vote it down. It means they have a chance to object and raise a fuss. Weve seen occasional Inspector General firings in the past but nothing like this and we dont know whether Congress Might respond more aggressively what that would look like but the record of Senate Republicans does not imply a lot of action. Yeah, theres like, you know, sort of everyone playing a type and romney came out with a strong statement appearing to condemn it and Susan Collins about her concern as Susan Collins is one to do. Notably absent, i havent seen anything from Chuck Grassley who has been sort of his brand in washington for years has been the kind of defender of inspectors general and of whistleblowers and sort of Government Accountability and i know hes looked hes been looked at by sort of people on the left and right who were in that space as a real, like, defender of that and seems to have completely just advocated on this. Well, grassly did say the president s explanation was insufficient but stopped short of criticism or action if theed a menstruation doesnt offer a fuller explanation. You see him pulling a punch there. This was the president giving his explanation today for why he did this, why he got rid of linick which i thought was a weirdly honest moment of him. Take a listen. I dont know him. Never heard of him but they asked me to terminate him. I have the absolute right as president to terminate. Ive said who appointed him . They said president obama. I said look, ill terminate him. I dont know whats going on other than that but youd have to ask mike pompeo but they asked me to do it and i did it. I have the right to terminate the Inspector Generals. I mean, its just amazing. He said the secretary of state asked me to fire the guy investigating me so i did. Right. This is classic. You know, the law says that the heads of the agencies cant fire the inspectors general, only the president can and trump said he wanted out. Hes admitting no interest in it, of course. Its naked partisanship. He knows this is an obama guy thats good enough for him, hes happy to fire them. Yeah, the point about the law being they cant fire them directly for precisely that reason if you outsource it so that the guy says the president can you fire him for me, the president says sure, i dont know who he is but okay you have runaround the spirit if not the letter of the law you dont want people to have firing power over the people going to independently hold them to account. Right. And i think the law is written that way with the assumption that a president is going to have different prerogatives than a cabinet secretary being investigated and prefer to have a clean administration. This president doesnt operate in that way at all. He welcomes the scandal. Thats so true. Thats exactly it. The i. G. Is there and starts investigation to some corrupt scandal that the cabinet head done. The president is like okay, great, good for that. I can cauterize this wound and get rid of this person. Thats not the way it works in this administration. David graham, thank you for making time for us tonight. Thank you. Up next, businesses are in dire need of financial releaf. Congress proved the use of 500 billion in aid money. Here is the thing, why why is it two months later, hardly any of that money has been used . I dont get it. That story next. For People Living with hiv, keep being you. And ask your doctor about biktarvy. 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Dont bring that mess around here, evan whoo dont do it. Dont you dare. I dont think so [ sighs ] its okay, big fella. Were gonna get through this together. [ baseball bat cracks ] nice rip, robbie. Raaah when you bundle home and Auto Insurance through progressive, you get more than just a big discount. Im gonna need you to leave. You get relentless protection. [ baseball bat cracks ] so its been two months since congress voted on that big Coronavirus Relief bill which had a whole bunch of different parts to it. Almost none of the 500 billion in that bill that was allocated for Large Businesses has been spent. Okay . Just under 38 billion have actually been distributed according to a report out today from the Congressional Oversight Commission which is tasked with overseeing the cares act. That is just 7. 5 of the funds allocated. And back in march, there were industries that we were told would collapse without this money, so how is it possible that 7 has been spent . Joining me now is one of the oversight commissioners who released that report today. So first, describe this pool of money, this is different, weve got a lot of attention that has been paid to the Payroll Protection Program for Small Businesses and the idea was they would get money from the federal government to retain their employees at 80 pay and the loan would be forgiven if they kept them and they hired them back, right . This pool of money, the 500 billion were talking about here, what is that for . What is that pool of money . The purpose was to stabilize the economy, so obviously that is not a very clear expectation of what the treasury and fed should do with the money but as you noted, none of, or very little of the money has been sent so far but critically the mere announcement on april 9th that the treasury and fed planned to spend about 200 billion of those dollars had an enormous effect on the markets. So if you look at the data since that date, the stock market is up significantly, its now back to where it was in early march, and the cost of borrowing for big corporations has gone way down. So it is easy for them to finance themselves. So in that sense, as the report notes, the program is working for big corporations who it is not working for so far, is medium sized corporations and city and state governments that were supposed to be able to borrow from the fed. This is such a fascinating thing. There was a moment in march where you start to see these reverberations through the various parts of the Financial System that starts to get scary and you have the stock market going down and start moving into credit markets and the credit markets go wobbly and all sorts of indicators of financial distress, and youve got the cares ak and the fed basically saying we will backstop you, and not let this thing go down and that does change the psychology of the markets and does seem to stabilize them, right. Exactly right. But what we now is a situation, if you look at the data, where it seems like were setting up for a recovery that is going to be as fast and painless as possible for the rich and big corporations, and as slow and painful as possible for everyone else. You talked about the ppe. Contrast the feds actions with the ppe. If youre a Small Business owner, you have to hope and pray you that get your ppp loan, the money may run out. After you get the money, you have to follow all sorts of directions what you can do with the money in order for it to stay a grant instead of a loan. And look at the folks who have been fired. If youre requiring unemployment insurance, you got to go file a claim, you may take weeks and months to get that, that money. Meanwhile, the fed and the treasury can just announce that theyre prepared to spend trillions of dollars to put that money into the financial markets, and it immediately creates a safety net for big corporations and the holders of financial assets. So is the idea here that the Largest Corporation that is going to use the money, because credit markets which is how they borrow money, because they stabilized and because the cost of credit is low, you can borrow quite cheaply, but basically like theyre all doing it right, they can borrow what they need, and the entire universe of Small Businesses is now left to sort of like struggle through this period and hope for ppp and jump through a bunch of hoops and that is sort of where we are in the rescue effort. Thats basically right. And so you can obviously see what the implications of that are. You can see after we emerge from this crisis, that big businesses, that have access to the capital markets, are going to emerge in very good shape. And small and mediumsized businesses are going to be in wreckage. And that creates an enormous opportunity for these big businesses to expand, to scoop up more market share, and thats not a good outcome for competitive economy, thats not a good outcome for consumers in terms of presenting them with choices. And so im deeply concerned about this disparity, between the fast and generous and no Strings Attached relief that we provide to big corporations, with the slow and spotty and stingy support that were providing to everybody else. Another question for you, i saw this piece in bloomberg, and ive been hearing about the fed using these facilities, and using authority under the cares act to sort of help oil companies, oil and fossil fuel companies, this is a stealth bailout. And this is Diamond Offshore drilling headed drilling toward bankruptcy, took advantage of a part of the bill and has bonuses for nine executives. That is a pretty sweet deal. They got 9. 7 in relief money . And turned around and said, can we give a mill each to the skufbls as we go out the door in bankruptcy . Yeah, its crazy. And on top of that, one of the things that the fed did is between april 9th when it first announced what it called the main Street Lending facility, it then announced some changes to that facility on april 30th and all of the major changes that they made on that date just so happened to line up with the top requests of the oil and gas industry. And if it doesnt take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened because the Energy Secretary went on tv right after that and said we told the fed to make these changes, and they agreed to go along with them, and if you look at the data from that day, some of the biggest movers in the Corporate Fund index were oil and gas companies, that stood to benefit from the changes that the fed had made. So i think theyre getting support from basically every different angle in this bill. All right. One of the few people on the case on this, thank you so much for sharing your expertise tonight. Thank you. That is all in for this evening. The Rachel Maddow show starts right now. Good evening, rachel. Thanks, my friend. Much appreciated. Happy to have you here. Happy monday. One week from today is memorial day. Weekdays, versus weekends is a distinction thats kind of losing its difference right now, i