clinton back in 2016. that is an encouraging sign for democrats. and this sign of the times, what's happening today, joe biden is doing a tele town hall with the states voting tomorrow. bernie sanders is doing a virtual rally. >> mike allen, live in d.c., thanks for the update. >> thank you for your coverage. >> we'll be reading axios a.m. in a little bit. sign up at signup.axios.com. that does it for us. "morning joe" starts right now. would you prefer a 14-day, just sort of national shutdown to slow this thing? >> i would prefer as much as we possibly could. i think we should really be overly aggressive and get criticized for overreacting. >> should more americans be prepared to be hunkering down at their house? >> i think americans should be prepared that they're going to have to hunker down a significantly more than we as a country are doing. >> the top infectious diseases doctor in the country, dr. anthony fauci, with that warning yesterday on "meet the press." good morning. welcome to "morning joe." we begin this morning where we will most likely begin for some time to come. the many fast-moving developments with the coronavirus, changing public life as we know it. here's where things stand right now. the u.s. is under a national state of emergency, and the cdc has now updated its guidance, urging against any gatherings of 50 people or more in the next eight weeks. stock futures are once again sliding despite emergency action from the federal reserve, slashing interest rates to zero. the senate is now poised to take up a sweeping bill, passed by the house, that includes free testing, extended sick leave, and $1 billion in food aid. meanwhile, several states and cities across the nation have shut down restaurants and bars to sit-in guests. california, illinois, and new york city among them. the city of new york also announced last night that it is closing schools, nightclubs, movie theaters, and other entertainment venues. the state of new york is now considering whether to join two other states, georgia and louisiana, in postponing their primary elections. the governor of california has called on more than 5 million senior citizens in his state, and those with underlying health conditions, to isolate themselves. this as the number of confirmed cases continues to surge. now closing in on 3 rksz,500. florida saw a huge spike this weekend, and west virginia remains the only state without a confirmed case. and this was the result of the trump administration's hastily arranged airport screenings for travelers from europe. scores of people crammed together -- >> that is a nightmare. >> -- in the types of crowds we've been told to avoid. that brings us to europe. the uk and ireland were added to the president's travel ban over the weekend. italy, spain, and france recorded their highest death tolls for a single day. france, 29. spain, 97. italy, a staggering 368 deaths. italy also recorded its most number of new cases in a day, 3,590. spain and france have now joined italy in banning people from leaving their homes for non-essential purposes. with us, we have white house reporter for the "associated press," jonathan lemire. washington anchor for bbc world news america. and associated editor for the "washington post" david ignat s ignatius. editor from the "times" also joins us. >> there continues to be a disconnect, david ig ignatius. actually, let me go to jonathan lemire, white house reporter. there is a disconnect between what we're hearing from the scientists and what the president of the united states is saying. from the beginning, the president was saying it was only a handful of people, 14, maybe 15, who would be down to zero in a week. the cdc was expressing real concern at the same time. the president talked about the coronavirus going away in april magically when things got warmer. he said it was going to go away magically and disappear, while his scientists were again warning americans. yesterday, the president of the united states was saying it is all under control, while his scientists are all saying the same thing, it is going to get worse. we don't know how bad it is going to get. you even had some irresponsible members of congress, remarkably enough, republicans, of course. i have to say that, sadly as a former member, saying, oh, go out to your restaurants. >> good lord. >> devin nunes said, go out to pubs. that is the worst actual advice i've heard since a monologue was put on a certain network, suggesting that this was all a great hoax to take down the president of the united states. so you have the cdc doctors, scientists, experts from across the world saying one thing, and then you have the president of the united states completely disconnected from his own staff, saying quite another. what's going on inside of the white house? talk about the battle, actually, for the heart and soul, not of the country, but of this administration. >> life has changed in america, and the president doesn't want to admit it, joe. that's where we are right now. he has -- it is one thing for a commander in chief, for the executive of the united states, to preach calm, to be reassuring. that's okay. that's part of the job. but it is very different right now for the president, who seems to have, at least publicly, his head in the sand as to what is happening. friday, after declaring the national security, which was a step that was needed, he was urged to do by members of both parties, including some of his closest advisers, he reluctantly got there because he was afraid it'd send a bad signal to the markets, acknowledging the severity of the crisis. when he did it, the markets responded well friday. he took a victory lap on twitter about it. over the weekend, he appeared in the briefing room twice. once saturday and once sunday. saturday, wearing a campaign hat, suggesting this is all going to be over soon. that americans, again, stay calm. that's the right thing to stay. but to not acknowledge the severity of the crisis is very different. within the whoite house, we've had a couple of different factions. there is a growing sense of top advisers, including vice president pence, fauci, and others, to be more candid about where things are going. acknowledge to the american people that things are going to get worse before they get better. others, including jared kushner and stephen miller, are focused more on propping up the markets, to downplay the severity of the incident, the spread of the virus. even though, of course, we are seeing cases tick up day after day. the president and vice president urged americans not to make runs on grocery stores, just buy for the week ahead. and last night, the cdc, against the backdrop of the democratic debate, suggests that americans should, for the next eight weeks, should avoid gatherings of 50 or more. >> right. but -- >> it is changing american life. >> it will change american life, but there's not a scientist, there's not a doctor. i mean, i'm reading conservatives who have apologized for donald trump for three and a half years, when there was nothing left to defend, who are actually saying, this is serious. listen to the scientists. i mean, i'm seeing it on blog posts from pro-trump people. i'm seeing it everywhere. yet, the president of the united states, david ignatius, is still saying, we have this completely under control. it's going to be okay. things are going to disappear. da david, here's the impact of it, okay? you can have dr. fauci and every other great scientist going out, telling people the truth. but you have -- i'm still getting emails from friends of mine who support donald trump. they're saying how the president says this is overblown. i can still go about my daily life. you see pictures from disney world last night, just shocking pictures from disney world, with thousands and thousands of people crammed together. >> i thought it was closed. >> packed like sardines on main street in disney world. you sit there thinking, i mean, just how many people there had the coronavirus and don't know about it. how many were they spread to? how many seniors are now going to die in the state of florida and across the nation because people that would go last night say, the president says it is not a big deal. the president says it is not a big deal, then he gets his scientists telling us how serious this is going to be. people just listen to the president. he's still responsible for this chaos going on. why can't he listen to his own scientists? >> you know, joe, that's part of the mystery of donald trump. he lacks the self-confidence, the self-knowledge, the wisdom, perhaps, to listen to those who really are experts. i find it a little chilling just to watch all of those experts, the key people we're depending on, crammed up on a podium behind the president, because he wants that show. they're all -- there's not much social distance there. i wish they'd give each other a little more space. i don't want anybody too near dr. fauci. this period we're living in, i don't think any of us have lived through anything quite like this, is giving us a lesson in what leadership is in the absence of it. when i look and read my history, i see washington in the early years of the revolutionary war face terrible adversity. nothing went right. one failure after another. yet, he kept the confidence of the troops and the country. same thing with lincoln. lincoln searched for a general who could win. defeats early in the 1icivil wa sense of despair, desire to abandon the effort. same with franklin roosevelt during world war ii. roosevelt was a steady, calm president. he trusted his generals and scientists. he conveyed that, that sense that he was the nation's father, if you will. he was going to help everybody get to where they needed. hate to be partisan, but to quote what, i think, joe biden said last night in the debate, this is bigger than any of us. that's the one thing that doesn't come through when donald trump speaks, is the sense of humili humility, which is at the core of real leadership always. >> it is. ed, you look at the disaster that the testing rollout was. again, i have to say, joe biden easily had his best debate last night, talking about testing, how we'd handled testing. the president has been disastrous on testing. we're going to talk about the airpo airports yesterday in a second. no pre-planning for that either. it was disastrous across the united states. again, confining thousands of people in tight areas which, obviously, will spread the pandemic, as well. there you have, again, the president at the center of all of this, still not seeming to take any of this seriously. again, having his people make the right moves now, but the president's own words still giving deniers a reason to say, what devin nunes said yesterday. go to the pubs. stop being a baby. hang out wherever you go. what the president doesn't even, ed, is that spooks the markets. this isn't about me. right? they think this is about the media, like trumpists? this isn't about me. when the president speaks that way -- i know the president. i know his failings. i know what he's incapable of. it's the markets, ed, that when they hear the president of the united states speak that way, saying we have it all under control, when he has no idea what the next three months are going to look like, the markets crash. it is exactly what they did overnight. >> so the president was clearly delighted by the fed's move yesterday to slash interest rates to zero, have $700 billion of quantity of easing, ease that bazooka. what he said shortly after the fed did that was, we have tremendous power and control over this virus. it negated what the fed did. it indicated that the leadership was not aware of this scale and duration of this problem. something that the fed, by its actions, had just signalled it did grasp. again, very strong mixed signals there being reflected by the market reaction this morning in europe and asia. all down. dow futures sharply down. i think, you know, the thing i always relate to, and i'm sure we all do in our own way, is that that united airlines pilot, you know, who says, just a slight delay, ten minutes, we should be off and taxiing, and then half an hour later, saying, actually, it was a maintenance problem. it'll be a couple of hours. then four hours later, saying, sorry, the flight is canceled. if you give bad news early, people trust you. >> right. >> donald trump keeps talking happy talk. >> yeah. >> he keeps getting contradicted by the people working for him. >> and by the reality. >> you know, the thing is, mika, it's something we've been say g i ing, literally saying, for three weeks. >> longer. >> give them the worst news. prepare everybody. prepare the markets. tell them how bad it is going to be. >> get in front of it. >> get in front of it, then the markets will prepare for that. they'll move on that. if you do a good job, you beat expectations, and you're awarded for it down the road. ed, just like you said, he continues to talk happy talk, and there's a string of quotes that are going to follow him for the rest of his political life, saying there's only 14 people and it'll be down to zero soon. this is going to disappear magically in april when it warms up. >> everyone gets a test. >> anybody that wants a test gets a test. it goes on. >> no tests here. >> once again, this weekend, he talked about demoting the fed chairman. the fed chairman decides to reduce interest rates down to zero. i had complained last week that they were reduced half a point, and the markets crash because they saw that as panic. he needed to leave, the fed needed to leave something in their arsenal for when things really got bad. because things, as dr. fauci said, are still going to get worse. we have nothing left in our arsenal when you do what the fed did yesterday and reduce rates to zero. there's not much left in the arsenal for when things really get bad three, four weeks from now. >> that is true. if you sort of keep with the analogy of keeping your power to drive, look, when front lines are being overrun, you don't want to keep the powder dry. you want to keep the powder. what the fed signalled is they'll do whatever it takes. there are things beyond going into negative interest rates. they can keep lending to small businesses, keeping credit going through the economy. what jay powell emphasized strongly yesterday is that this is a matter for fiscal policy. this has got to be congress. it's got to be strong public support for businesses that are failing, for payrolls that can't be met, for health care workers to have child care so they can continue to do the health care work. this is a fiscal question now. so i think the fed has done whatever it takes. said, now, it's your turn. that's going to require very strong sort of political signaling from trump, and he's going to have to talk to pelosi at some point. >> yes, he is. >> he's got to overcome his inhibitions on that score. >> to say the least. now, listen, as the u.s. extended its ban on travel from europe to include the united kingdom and ireland, u.s. airports faced avovercrowding, long lines, and hours of delays, as travelers returning from europe had to undergo screenings for the coronavirus. scenes from chicago's o'hare airport, jam-packed terminals, people standing shoulder to shoulder, as officials scrambled to set up the enhanced entry screenings announced by the trump administration. >> how could they have been so ill-prepared? >> this is beyond. look at this. >> donald trump knew this was coming. he could have called out the national guard if he had to. could have done anything. >> look at this. >> once again, so ill-prepared. look how close everybody is. jam-packed in there. >> using the bathrooms. stuck for hours. this is a disaster. >> once again, the president is ill-prepared for a crisis. >> so, according to the "washington post," officials acknowledged that 40,000 passengers returning from europe over the weekend had created chaotic conditions and strained airports, with many travelers reportedly wondering why the health checks put in place were not stricter and did not generally include temperature checks. acting tre ining director of ho security, chad wolf, said the department was aware of the long lines and asked travelers for their patience. >> why didn't they prepare for this? they knew this was coming. >> patience? illinois governor jb pritzker blasted the trump administration, asking the president to, quote, do something now. here's what the governor had to say on "meet the press." >> i got a call at about 11:00 last night, after that tweet from a white house staffer who yelled at me about the tweet. that is what i got. we're on our own out here. i wish we had leadership from washington. we're not getting it. >> so there is a health care crisis, actually, katy, in chicago o'hare. there are health care crises at all these airports where people are jam-packed in for three, four, five hours at a time. >> 40,000. >> 40,000 people. health care crisis. the white house is ill-prepared about this, though it was the president who set up the policy. they had to know this was coming. these people are forced to do exactly what dr. fauci and the entire scientistic and medical team has been saying now for weeks. the white house has a staffer call, yelling about a tweet to a governor whose own people had to be exposed to the pandemic, standing in those contained spaces, jam-packed for four hours? white house is worried about a tweet. >> i look at the photographs, and i literally am sitting here feeling my anxiety levels rise, thinking how would you cope, being that close to somebody? the chinese tried to shut down their early whistleblower, and it caused them a huge amount of problems. it caused people to die because they wouldn't recognize the problem. two things we have learned from the chinese experience. transparency is much better. the governor of illinois was right to complain about this. this is a huge health problem he has sitting on his doorstep, and the white house tried to shut him down. the other thing we learned from china, you take massive amounts of screening and do it super efficiently. you got on a bus in china. you entered a building in china. you walked down the street. your temperature was being taken every time you entered a supermarket. your temperature was taken, and it was done in an instant. here, they set up this policy where they knew they were going to have thousands of panicked people coming back from europe. where was the screening? what was the fast, efficient temperature testing, so you didn't have those people standing within centimeters of each other, within inches of each other? not within three feet but inches of each other, knowing that was going to cause a problem. we have seen some of this before, where the white house announces what looks like a kind of, you know, stephen miller type policy. very big, very bold. then there is no follow-up. there is no expertise. there is no bank of talent behind that, to get the systems in place, to make sure it works properly. >> joe, just -- >> david ignatius, we look like a failed country in those moments. not a failed country, but it looks like washington, d.c. has failed. we have failed leadership in washington d.c.. our leaders don't know how to perform the most basic of functions. again, this is a policy that donald trump set up himself at a press conference last week. this is the result. these people coming back are a result of donald trump saying they needed to return to the united states and would be screened beforehand. i'm fine with that. dr. fauci said it was a good idea. seems like a good idea to me. but there was no preparation for it whatsoever. what happened was, we're having screenings to stop people from being exposed to those with coronavirus, and here we have 40,000 people jammed together. obviously, they're people coming from the most affected continent in the world. obviously, there were people that had coronavirus there. it takes several days to show symptoms. obviously, passing that along to other people. so the president, in effect, has caused the spread of coronavirus by being ill-prepared here. who knows what the ramifications are going to be. he knew this was coming and still did nothing about it. >> joe, your hearts go out to the people when you look at those photographs, standing there hour after hour. >> stuck. >> knowing the risks. what can they do about it? they're just caught, as you say, in somebody else's poor judgment. when we think about what led to those scenes in the parairports there was a rushed attempt, as we understand it, by the time of the president's thursday night speech, to get the elements of this policy together. to get the travel ban announcement. the european countries didn't even know this was coming. you know, in a sense, how could you prepare o'hare airport when the countries from which the people were leaving at no tie i either? it was a, let's prepare a television announcement spectacular, and it had the opposite of the desired effect. one thing that i just feel, i know we all do, is our hearts go out to the people who are caught in this. each of us can think what it'd be like to be standing in that line, just knowing your risk of terrible disease was going up minute by minute. there's nothing you can do about it. that -- those are the people we ought to be thinking, how can we help them out of this mess? >> joe, to underscore the dangers of some of the misinformation, at the same time as the illinois governor put out the tweet, crying out for help from the white house, governor of oklahoma put out a tweet wit saying, this is what americans should be doing. then he declared a state of emergency in oklahoma. in terms of the president, the contrast, as we talked about, the president getting up in the briefing room and spouting happy talk, as david said, followed by the vice president and drach. fauci, giving more sober analysis, providing information to americans who were nervously watching, while the president, according to our reporting and others, part of what is forming this response, fueling all his rhetoric on this, which hasn't been as serious as it should be, is concerns about the markets and how that, of course, impacts his re-election. it is all about his campaign going this fall. he does not want -- he told aides around him, he does not want this to be overblown, in his words. it negatively impacts his chances this november. >> and the stupidity and the recklessness of political leaders to say, go out to restaurants. go out to pubs, as devin nunes said. you had the governor of oklahoma saying that. then the next day, having to declare an emergency. yeah, the governor of south carolina last week saying he wasn't going to close anything. in fact, he was going to go to the st. patrick's day parade himself. then he had to announce yesterday that he was closing schools in south carolina. i mean, what is it? what is it about these republican leaders, that they think that -- they think you can shoot a virus? they think your ar-15 is going to help a virus. they think some, like, macho display is somehow going to beat the virus? no, you can't. see, let me help you out here. you can't bully a virus, okay? you've got to out think it. you can't be stupid. taking your family out to a restaurant when the top scientists in the world are telling you to stay home and protect them. then the next day, you're made a fool of. you have to call a national emergency, so you've admitted you put your family at risk. everybody around your family at risk. in south carolina, the governor trying to act like a big shot. oh, we're not listening to the world health organization. we're going to -- people, keep going out eating, go to the pubs. i'll be going to the st. patrick's day parade myself. and then he's forced to declare an emergency. it's really -- the recklessness is unbelievable. i know people were giving really dangerous, reckless monologues on tv, but that was last week. those were cable news people. you don't aspire to be us. you're a governor of a state, and you're responsible for the health and well-being of senior citizens whose very lives are on the line. you have got to do better. your calling is higher. you've got to do more. you can't play for the cheap seats. be an idiot and hold up an ar-15 and wave it around and say, i'd like to see somebody come take this. like a member of congress did in his own room. i don't even want to get into that. like, find other ways to symbolize your fake masculinity, all right? when it comes to this virus, think about your mother, think about your father, think about your grand fathfather, your grandmother. i see these cases in south florida that are exploding. it is going to be senior citizens. in florida. senior citizens in arizona. senior citizens across america who are going to pay the disproportionate cost, just like the senior citizens in washington state. they're going to pay the disproportionate cost for your stupidity. you are literally, with your actions, killing senior citizens. pull back. be responsible. listen to the scientists. show some leadership. >> because we actually are all in this together. >> we're in this together. >> we're stuck with each other. still ahead on "morning joe," new york governor andrew cuomo and new york city mayor bill de blasio will be our guests. plus, former house intelligence committee council daniel goldman revealed he has tested positive for the coronavirus. he'll join the conversation via skype to explain why he believes the trump administration is shockingly unprepared to handle the pandemic. "morning joe" is moments away. >> there's a lot of concerns with the economy here because people are scared to go out. but i will just say, one of the things you can do, if you're healthy, you and your family, it is a great time to just go out, go to a local restaurant. likely you can get in easily. let's not hurt the working people in this country that are relying on wages and tips to keep their small businesses going. >> sympathetic. >> don't run to the grocery store and buy, you know, $4,000 of food. >> cleaning off the shelves. >> go to your local pub. - [spokeswoman] meet the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. and i don't count the wrinkles. but what i do count on is boost high protein. and now, introducing new boost women... with key nutrients to help support thyroid, bone, hair and skin health. all with great taste. new, boost women. designed just for you. new, boost women. >> tech: don't wait for a chip like this to crack your whole windshield. with safelite's exclusive resin, you get a strong repair that you can trust. plus, with most insurance a safelite repair is no cost to you. >> customer: really?! >> singers: safelite repair, safelite replace. who stood up. who stood strong. who demanded to be seen. to be heard. to be counted. learning about their courage and grit... ...inspires us to pass it on... ...to the women who are next. ♪ find your family's connection to this moment in history. at ancestry. it's our most dangerous addiction. so we took our worst vice, and turned it into the dna for a better system. we created bionic and put the word out with godaddy. what will you change? make the world you want. thank you very much, everybody. ♪ come on, come on, touch me, babe ♪ ♪ can't you see that i am not afraid ♪ ♪ what was that promise that you made ♪ ♪ why won't you tell me what she said ♪ ♪ what was that promise that you made ♪ ♪ now i'm gonna love ya till the heavens stop the rain ♪ ♪ i'm gonna love you till the stars fall from the sky ♪ ♪ you and i >> okay, i like that. that's good. we have no symptoms whatsoever. >> wash your hands as often as you can. >> if you're around someone sick, keep away from them. ♪ touch me babe ♪ can't you see that i am not afraid ♪ ♪ what was that promise that you made ♪ >> we're finding very little problem, very little problem. now, you treat this like the flu. ♪ what was that promise that you made ♪ >> it's going to disappear. one day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear. this is their new hoax. anybody that needs a test gets a test. it will go away. just stay calm. some of the doctors say it will wash through, it will flow through. interesting term. ♪ you and i >> what was that promise that you made indeed? the federal reserve announced yesterday -- >> that microphone -- >> so gross. >> seriously, they need to come with people in the hazmat suits and take it away. >> it was really disturbing, especially since he had been exposed -- the president, himself, had been exposed to at least two people. >> at least. >> who have been diagnosed with coronavirus. anyhow, announcing yesterday it is cutting interest rates, the fed, to zero, and will buy at least $700 billion in government and mortgage-related bonds. in a drastic effort to curb coronavirus concerns. joining us now, former treasury official and "morning joe" economic analyst steve rattner. and senior business correspondent and msnbc anchor stephanie ruhle. good to have you both this morning. >> stephanie, we've talked about this before. the fed makes a move. this is the second time they've done it, and the markets respond not the way donald trump thinks they're going to respond, but they respond quite differently. in fact, by crashing. they had to stop overnight trading, futures trading. of course, in australia, their markets crashed by almost 10%. looks like it is going to be another tough monday. >> without a doubt. remember, like the last rate cut, this was an emergency cut. they didn't wait for the scheduled he ed meeting, and it coordinated cut. you saw the fed do this with central banks around the world. what does that tell us? this is majorly serious. whether you're talking about the president or other politicians who are still kind of downplaying this, the federal reserve just put the wrld orld notice. that the economic impact, the spread of coronavirus and the precautionary measures we need to take, ie, lock it down, are going to be crippling for businesses. by cutting rates to zero -- >> but help me out here, stephanie. help me out here. we cut it to zero, and i'm sure jay powell is making the right move. you don't keep the powder dry when the loynn line is being ov. maybe rich people say, i'll get a house at a lower rate, another car at a lower rate. if you run a restaurant, if you have a shop in a mall, if you have any business, you can lower the interest rates as low as you want. the consumer -- like you always say, we're a consumer-driven economy. they're not going to look at lower interest rates and say, hey, you know what, i'm going to go out with my family over this weekend and we're going to go to yellowstone. no, they're going to be at home. >> okay. yes, that's true. in a normal time, when rates get cut, and you see people go out, spend, borrow, buy a house, they're not going to do that here. you can't forget, what this does is make it easier for banks to lend. it makes it easier for businesses, big and small, to borrow. and any srt of consumer-facing business right now, they'll see their revenues tank. the cost of operating their business stayed the same. so they do need to borrow right now, and lowering rate it is a positive for them. it is not just for rich people. now, does itlouisi inglosing sh their job? no, you have to turn to congress for that. >> steve, we keep having these rate drops. at the end of the day, isn't it congress, isn't it the president? he has to get together with nancy, and aren't they the ones who really have to address this crisis, by taking care of people who are out of work, who have to stay home because their kids aren't going to school, who own that small business? they're not going to be able to make payroll for not only the next two weeks but the next two, three months. that's where the relief needs to be directed, right? >> absolutely right. first, i'd say stephanie is also right. the fed should have done what it did. it did scare the markets because they had a meeting coming this wednesday. why are they going on sunday? it is not just lending rates. it is also liquidity in the markets. the treasury marg ikets and rep markets were seizing up. to your point, we need stimulus. look, there's almost no doubt in my mind, absent some extraordinary event, we are going to be in a very, very significant recession. will it be as bad as 2008? i don't think so. i hope not. as bad as the early '90s that elected bill clinton? very possibly, even probably at this point. business has essentially stopped functioning. you can't solve of that with $8 billion packages out of congress. it was important stuff they did, but it is a drop in the bucket. you need a major league stimulus out of congress. you need $500 billion, something like that, to try to get money out there, try to get the economy going again. i talked to a senior senator last night. senior democratic senator last night. said, at moment, there is no appetite in congress to do that. it is viewed as a bailout. i couldn't under the logic of why we shouldn't be doing it. congress needs to act in a major way now. one last point, trump has proposed a payroll tax holiday. that is a terrible idea. it would essentially not benefit the right people in the right ways. we ned somethi need something like a rebate. not hard to dre siesign or do. we need leadership from the white house and action from congress. >> you talk about how lowering interest rates make it easier to borrow. what about the businesses already extended? a lot of people have credit lines extended. i talked to people with global companies. i've talked to small business owners. business owners, large and small, have credit lines that they're running up against. that they are not going to be able to pay it off. are banks going to allow them to borrow more money? >> fundamentally, before this happened, our economy was in better shape than it was in 2008. we don't have the sis mystemic problems. things look cleaner. what happened now, it is almost like a national disaster, 9/11, or significantly worse than that. banks are willing to borrow. fundamentally, they feel pretty good about these businesses. what we are facing, and steve just said it, is a complete economic shutdown. it is as though the medical advice we're getting is to put our lives on pause, and it puts the economy on pause. that's where congress has to figure out, how do we account for that? is it a national holiday? is it simply writing a check to people to get them through this time? it's something we haven't faced before. >> in terms of business, joe, there's things you can do to help business, short of saying businesses don't have money. there are things the government can do to provide credit support, probably through the banking system, particularly for small business so they can start to lend again to some of the businesses without worrying the banks themselves will necessarily take the hit. there are targeted aid programs, particularly toward small businesses, we can put in place. big businesses, you'll see big bankruptcies. you'll see companies in the oil industry going bankrupt. likely see companies in the travel and airline business going bankrupt. i personally don't see a case for the government providing aid at the moment to them because it is not an existential crisis for the country. we have a process to reorganize them. you'll see a lot of carnage and wreckage. i don't believe that the policymakers in washington -- steven mnuchin said yesterday he didn't think we were in a recession. it is the most ridiculous comment i've heard an official say, except for all the ones you've shown on your various tapes. we are in one, and we need to deep with it. >> also, these industries that will want to be bailed out, with the exception of the airline industry, you can make the argument it is a necessary business, cruise, travel and leisure, are essential businesses. there's a lot of jobs, but are they essential businesses that need government intervention? a cruise ship left miami this weekend, and miami hotels were having pool parties. if they are not acting in the most responsible way, do they deserve a bailout? you know they're going to be asking for government support. >> no. no, they don't. >> wow. >> thank you, stephanie. we greatat greatl lly appreciat >> good point. >> this is an economic crisis like in other in our lifetime. it is certainly not 9/11. after 9/11, there was recovery. 2008, obviously, was a terrible economic crisis. we did get through that in a couple of years. but in this case -- >> this is different. >> -- business is stopping. >> yeah. >> consumerism is stopping. people are going to be staying home. it's certainly -- expect a big announcement, i'd say, from the white house this week. i think you're going to see the united states move in the way that italy, spain, france, most other -- >> there's no choice. >> the way most other western industrialized powers are doing. if you don't, there will be a crisis that will cripple the economy for years to come. we're going to have to endure the short-term pain. small business owners who operate on the margins. entrepreneurs who operate on the margins, who are fighting to survive and make payroll every two weeks, they're going to get hammered. it is going to be ugly. they've got to get relief from washington, d.c. i will say, one of the things bernie sanders said last night, you know what? we're infusing the system with trillions of dollars for banks. that's fantastic. we've got to help our small business owners, too, that are going to be left out to dry. when the tide goes out, they're going to be the ones, the small business owners, who are the backbone of this economy, are going to be the ones suffering the most. congress needs to do something. the president needs to do something. not just worry about friends that he eats with at mar-a-lago. he needs to worry about small business owners who are going to get hurt in this disaster. >> have to make life and death decisions. you have the low-working income mom who has to make a decision, whether to take care of the kids at home not in school, or continue to try to work where it may not be safe. this is going to get worse, and there are new guidelines that are going to be coming out. i would expect, if you look at the science and where the data is going, they will be deserve. hospitals around the country are bracing for an expected surge in coronavirus patients lik s by eg triage tents outside of emergency rooms. >> what you've been talking about for weeks. >> outside emergency rooms, hopefully separated. adding extra beds in break rooms. even recommending plans to cancel non-emergency surgeries. hospital executives quoted by the "washington post" say the burden on the health care system in the u.s. could be crippling if the virus were to spread as fast as it has in china and italy. the latest data on a key measure of how prepared the u.s. is for the outbreak shows the united states at 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants. compared to 3.2 in italy and 4.3 in china. we're not ready. the department of veterans affairs reportedly is preparing to absorb the surge of coronavirus cases in the case private hospitals around the country can't cope, by offering backup beds, since the va has a surplus. in an open letter to president trump, published in the "new york times," new york state's governor andrew cuomo urged the federal government to mobilize the u.s. military. this is what i was talking about. to help create hospital beds, asking, in part, quote, can we slow the spread of the disaster to a rate that our state health care systems can handle? the answer increasingly looks like no. what we're talking about though here is, joe, military hospitals set up outside of hospitals. so we can separate these patients, which is not being done. joining us now, "morning joe" chief medical correspondent dr. dave campbell. and infectious diseases physician. i want to get an overview, in terms of preparedness, again, the lack of testing, which i guess they say 1.9 million tests, which is not even close, coming soon. we are flying blind, are we not? >> yeah. i think that, i couldn't know, we're seeing hundreds of cases in many of the major cities in the united states. that's not really getting the bigger picture yet. as you said, despite the fact these test kits are out there, which you're finding in a lot of state laboratories, is that human resources, other technical availability of infrastructure and machines is kind of limiting this flow. even commercial laboratories are moving toward getting super busy with the testing. so we don't yet have a sense of how big this crisis. >> you know, dr. dave, we keep talking about senior citizens who are so at risk and act as if younger people are not at risk. but i remember the whistleblower in china, the first person who got in trouble for warning about the spread of the coronavirus there, fairly young doctor died. young health care providers in china died. young health care providers in italy are dying. are we understating the threat to younger people as this virus spreads across america? >> joe, first, my prayers go out to the victims. we are not understating the risk. the problem is, in young people in china, for example, there were three doctors 20 to 30 years of age who died. the message that young people in the united states have is that because their risk of death is low, they can relatively ignore this problem. they're not recognizing that by becoming infected, which they can, they become vectors. they becompasskocome passengert the virus to older family members and others. young people realize, yes, they can become very sick, but it's rare, but perhaps more importantly, they can pass this disease to their loved ones. they can become infected even before they are symptomatic. >> you know, jonathan lemire, the idea that somehow young people are infallible when it comes to this disease, obviously, we're learning day by day that that's not the case. tommy vetore tweeted yesterday that a good friend of his who was really healthy, athlete in college, served in the united states military got the coronavirus and started experiencing violent symptoms. this is not just a disease for the elderly, though it is, of course, the elderly who take the brunt of the disease's impact. >> certainly, you would hope these younger people would get the message and start staying home. i mean, instagram over the weekend was pretty dire in terms of people still going out to the bars and clubs. exposing themselves and potentially putting others at risk. doctor, my question for you is this. i mean, schools are out pretty much everywhere now. people are home. parents are home. we know the impact of this virus on the elderly. let's say you're a person, 30s, 40s, 50s, seasonably good health, and you start to feel sick. you have a cough, a fever. how important is it to be tested? should you be going to the doctor? should you be going to the emergency room? should you be trying to do it over the phone instead? what steps would you give someone who is concerned, they don't have underlying health issues, think they're reasonably okay, but they're afraid they're getting sick. what should they do? >> i want to start by saying we are seeing young people get sick enough to at least be hospitalized. there's still a concern for everyone, that you don't want to get this disease if you can avoid it. not just for the sake of others but your own sake. those who get sick, the main thing is, what people are not realizing is that in major u.s. cities, we're seeing hundreds of cases. what that's hiding is that, on top of that, you have double, triple that number of people who are suspects, who are coming in with similar symptoms, who may have another respiratory virus, and that is overwhelming the system already. it is stretching hospitals across the country. for people who are in relatively good health, the main thing you can do is call your provider before actually going to seek care. they'll advise you whether you should stay at home or come in for testing. the other aspect of this is when should you actually go to the emergency room? the good rule of thumb is what you'd do for any other disease. if influenza, what would drive you to the emergency room? fever not breaking, shortness of breath, confusing, chest pain, anything that seems alarming brings you to the emergency room. short of that, contacting your medical provider by the phone is probably the best strategy right now. >> dr. dave, the u.s. surgeon general urging hospitals to cancel elective surgeries. what's the reasoning behind that, and why are people still going to regular ers and mixing with the general hospital population, when they have symptoms? >> mika, that's two questions, but they are both related. the surgeon general announced on saturday, in follow-up to the american college of surgeons, that we should halt elective surgery starting now in the united states. that also includes things like colonoscopies and routine tests. the reason is that using up the resources, which includes people, equipment, and space, is what happens when you have an elective operation. the risk of having the spread of the disease through the hospital, operations are not pretty. when there is a lot of air flow and a lot of manipulation of the airway, everybody that's in an operating room realizes, there's a lot of spray in an operating room. so we also use a lot of gowns and gloves and masks. if a hospital worker, doctor, anesthesiologist, nurse, gets sick, they'll be taken out of the pool of available people. we're going to use up a lot of equipment, and that person who got sick might be in the hospital. that's the space problem. people, equipment, and space. >> dr. dave campbell and dr. bhadelia, thank you, both. we'll be hearing from you both soon. >> greatly appreciate you being here. so, ed, what do you expect over the course of the next few days, not only here but across europe and the world? >> so i think we are going to start to see more and more pressure for something we haven't really been hearing much talk of. which is global action. coordinated action through the g-20, through the united nations security counsel. the world must hang together, otherwise, it this assuredly hang separately. this is going to be a very difficult bullet for president trump to bite. i don't know whether he will bite it. but as we've seen, this virus is indiscriminate, affects the south, north, east, west. the need for cross-border cooperation, for sharing science, sharing research on vaccines, for sharing resources, respirators, ventilators, the components, active ingredients of important drugs, is going to become, i think, a very compelling need on all our parts. it is a little disturbing to see president trump, you know, attempt to poach german scientists. that's not the kind of signal, i think, we want to be seeing at the moment. >> no, i don't think so. there's a -- david ignatius, tl there is an article in "politico" that talks about the incompetence pandemic. it is interesting that we find ourselves in a position, facing the worst pandemic this globe probably since 1918/1919. we'll have to see how it plays out. yet, we have leaders that are so desperately overmatched with the times they are. populous leaders of the united states, britain, across europe, who know how to enrage their oppone opponents. in the united states, we call it, quote, owning the libs. know how to do that. they just don't know how to work the levers of government. they don't know how to work with people who aren't in their party. they don't know how to bring together a bipartisan consensus in a time of crisis. we are, in effect, at war. there is just an incompetence pandemic, as "politico" says, on both sides of the atlantic. >> incompetence pandemic is a scary, new addition to our vocabula vocabulary. part of what concerns me is that it's not just at the very top. we watched the footage of president trump. the mistakes made by the cdc in this whole process, of trying to get rapid testing out to the public, so that coronavirus could be tested and we'd have a better sense of the map of this pandemic, that also is worrying. i guess what i'd say, joe, is that in wartime, and this does now feel like a war, people discover virtues and strengths they at no tididn't know they h. when i talk to my dad who is 99, god bless him, trying to keep him healthy, he always says the same thing about world war ii. we didn't know what we could do until we were out there. we suddenly, you know, had responsibilities, frightening events around us, and we hadn't anticipated. we found new strengths. i think that's going to happen in the country. already see it. one more thing. every time i go to the store, i still want to buy things, i'm always struck by the supermarket clerks who are still there working. they're dealing with 1,000 people a day. you know, heaven knows what they're carrying with them. they're on the job because that's their job, to serve the public. if we could all take that basic idea, we'd be better off. >> david and ed, thank you both for being on this morning. up next, we'll talk live to someone who has tested positive for the coronavirus. former federal prosecutor and house impeachment attorney daniel goldman joins us via skype to discuss all he had to do to get tested. as the number of cases surge in new york, governor andrew cuomo and mayor bill de blasio will be our guests. 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(vo) get set up right with a live bookkeeper with intuit quickbooks. if you remember sars, that affected gdp, travel-related effects. have you been briefed by the cdc? >> i have. >> are there words about a pandemic at this point? >> no, not at all. we have it totally under control. it is one person coming in from china. we have it under control. it's going to be just fine. >> just so hard to watch. >> again, this is -- he repeats. we have it totally under control. he said that january the 22nd. after that, he said, we have 14, 15 cases in the united states. pretty soon, that's going to be down to zero. he said, when april comes, it is going to get warm, and it is going to magically disappear. he said, you're going to see it disappear like magic. this continues. again, every time he said this -- and i know he watches our show -- so, mr. president, you're spooking the markets. you're hurting yourself. >> you're hurting us, hurting americans. >> you're undermining your position when you say this. you spook the markets because you reveal that you really don't know what's going on. jonathan lemire, he said the same thing last night. he had a press conference last night, and he got up there and said, it's completely under control. we've got it under control. walked off. then he had dr. fauci and everybody else up there, all of his scientists, all of his doctors, all of his health care experts, saying, no, in fact, this is not under control. this is going to get much worse. >> in a crisis, both the markets and citizens require consistency from their public officials. that's not what we're getting right now. the president is so out of step with the rest of his administration. he is consistently downplaying the severity of this, in an effort not to spook the markets. he's had the opposite effect. in his personal behavior, this week, we know last weekend at mar-a-lago he was exposed to two people who tested positive for the coronavirus. he stood next to at least one of them for a photograph. for most of the week, he refused to get tested. he would not do so. in fact, the white house doctor late, i believe, thursday night, put out a letter saying he didn't need to. only to have the president the next day finally acknowledge that he did, and the white house really saying that he tested negative. the white house is taking steps, finally, to show they are taking this seriously. everyone coming in and out of the building, as of today, are getting their temperature taken. reporters and staffers alike. there is some sense from the administration, and dr. fauci has been the face of this, and the vice president, to his credit, has been out there every day, too, answering questions. they're taking this seriously. the president himself though, still not. the last two days, as he popped into the briefing room for surprise appearances during the coronavirus task force briefings, both times, he spoke for a few minutes, struck an optimistic tone, said we'll get through this, and both times, walked off without taking any questions. >> mika, the markets crashed overnight. the futures crashed. they had to stop trading because it got to its 5%, negative 5%. the trading stopped in australia. the markets crashed by almost 10%. it looks like it is going to be another dark monday for people. there are billions and billions of dollars that are going to be lost. the president needs, we'll say it again, he just needs to be realistic. he needs to tell the truth to the american people. the markets will respect him more for it. all of those people that are still going out because the president says it's okay to go out, they'll actually stay at home, protect themselves, protect their families, and in this case, most importantly, protect senior citizens who will be exposed to illnesses through third parties, if they continue listening to the president and going out. >> here's where things stand right now. the u.s. is under a national state of emergency. the cdc has now updated its guidance, urging against any gatherings of 50 people or more for the next eight weeks. as joe mentioned, stock futures are crashing once again, despite emergency action from the federal reserve. slashing interest rates to zero. the senate is poised to take up a sweeping bill, passed by the house, that includes free testing, extended sick leave, and $1 billion in food aid. meanwhile, several states and cities around the nation have shut down restaurants and bars to sit-in guests, and doing delivery only. california, illinois, and new york city among them. the city of new york also announced last night that it is closing schools. also closing, nightclubs, movie theaters, and other entertainment venues. mgm says it is suspending all operations in las vegas casinos and hotels until further notice. georgia and louisiana postponed their primary elections. new york state is considering the same. the governor of california has called on more than 5 million senior citizens in his state, and those with underlying health conditions, to isolate themselves. this as the number of confirmed cases continues to surge. closing in on 3,600. west virginia is the only state without a confirmed case. as florida saw a huge spike this weekend, a reporter from the "orlando sentinel," tweeted these photos from disney world yesterday. what in the world? what are you thinking? people packed into magic kingdom for a final time last night before the park closed over the coronavirus. it's closed today. >> we were looking -- >> this is yesterday. >> last night, we were looking at pictures from airports of people who had no other choice. these people, all of those people packed paid a lot of money to get in there. my god. it's -- okay. >> this is why messaging needs to be clear and based on the science, and it needs to be from the president. a lot of reasons there. also this. take a look at this. all these people crammed together, tens of thousands. the result of the trump administration's hastily arranged airport screenings for travelers from europe. scores of people crammed together in the types of crowds we've been told to avoid. by the way, what happens if they screen in a way that makes them need to be separated? where are they put? how did this work? doesn't seem like it worked very well. that brings us to europe. the uk and ireland were added to the president's travel ban over the weekend. italy, spain, and france recorded their highest death tolls for a single day. france, 29. spain, 97. and italy, a staggering 368 deaths. italy also recorded its most number of new cases in a day, 3,590 new cases in one 24-hour period. spain and france have now joined italy in banning people from leaving their homes for non-essential purposes. joining us now via skype is daniel goldman. he has been on the show many times as a former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. most recently, was the democratic counsel for the health intelligence committee. this morning, he joins us in a very different role, having tested positive for coronavirus. dan, i guess, first question, of course, how are you feeling? how are you doing? thank you so much for sharing with us this morning. >> well, thanks for having me on. i'm feeling a lot better. it was about three days of what felt like a kind of medium-strength flu. fever, a headache, a cough. i think there's some mystery that the coronavirus is this plague, that if you get it, you automatically are, you know, on a ventilator and locked down. obviously, the concern is with vulnerable people, that does happen. but with people sort of my age, demographic and health, i think my experience is probably relatively typical. i'm on the mend, i'm not quite 100%. my wife, unfortunately, now has pretty serious symptoms, as well, like i had. we're hunkered down, just weathering it out. thanking our lucky stars that our health is what it is, and we can fight this thing. >> so, dan, just tell us the process and how you got tested and then diagnosed. was that, you know, pretty immediate? and is your wife tested, the people around you? how is that working? >> it was very difficult. it was very frustrating. it -- i went public with it sort of in real time, not because i knew i had coronavirus, but because there's a lot of misperceptions out there that tests were readily available to anyone who wants them. that was simply not the case. i had symptoms. i had not been in contact with anyone that i knew to be positive for coronavirus. basically, that meant i could not get tested. so i got tested for the flu, which has similar symptoms, and was negative. i got a full viral panel to see if it was anything else. that was negative. once that came back, i was told by the new york presbyterian hospital that i had to go home and self-quarantine because my symptoms were not bad enough to be admitted into the hospital. unless you're admitted, you don't get a test. the crazy thing, mika, is they sent me home, but because i had no known contact with anyone with coronavirus, they told me that i needed to self-quarantine, but that the rest of my family should go on acting as if they are normal. anyone i had come into contact with could continue to go around and live their lives normally. i finally just wouldn't take no for an answer. i drove at 5:0 in t0 in the mor to connecticut to get a test that came back positive over the weekend. now, my wife, who obviously came into contact with a known coronavirus positive, that's me, she and my three kids got tested this weekend. it still takes, you know, two, three days to get the tests back. that's where we are right now. >> waiting for results on your wife and your children. dan, back up, then we'll move forward on how the regs st of y family is figuring this out. you're walking around in er getting the flu tests? where did you get the initial tests? because you have coronavirus. clearly, you're walking around with it in medical facilities? >> i went to the emergency room with the symptoms, and already having got a negative flu test. they put me in a one room, secluded. they basically told me they could do nothing for me, no matter whether i had it or not. then they stuck me in the hallway bed with a mask on for about six hours, to wait for my viral panel. it is a way to get a chest x-ray. i was in the hallway with people coming by. i had a mask on, but it's an incredibly unsanitary -- and the testing situation, i don't blame the hospital. they were overloaded and overrun with people. they don't have the tests that they need. the medical professionals i dealt with at the hospital were incredibly frustrated that they did not have the number of tests they would use. they had to ration them in this way. that is the fundamental problem. anything you want to hear, and that's my frustration. donald trump can keep saying that, anybody who wants a test can get it. i am living proof that is not the case. that is the biggest problem we have. the result is, the laundry list of things you just listed that needs to be shut down because we don't have enough tests to actually see if people have it. we have to take these incredibly draconian measures to keep people away from each other. >> you did your best, i'm sure, to self-isolate when you thought you might have it. but you're lying in the hallway for six hours. because they couldn't just give you a test, and you could have found out six hours ago, before that, that you had the coronavirus, and then you could have gone home and acted accordingly. again, everybody is sort of whistling past the graveyard. let me ask you, you're in new york, can't get the test, you're in the hospital for hour after hour. you said you ended up at 5:00 a.m. driving up to connecticut and getting the test. why could you get the test in connecticut but couldn't get the test in new york? >> there was a curb-side clinic in connecticut. i think it's grenich docs ct. hats off to then. they got, somehow, enough tests where they didn't have to ration them in the same way. i called them on thursday of last week. goit got an appointment 6:00 a.m. on friday horning. i went to do it. this is after being rebuffed by urgent care facilities in new york, hospitals in new york, because i didn't meet the criteria the new york department of health had said, given the number of tests they have, which is insufficient. >> we have a doctor friend who actually thought he had the coronavirus and went through the same thing as you did. ended up that a close friend of his did test positive ultimately. he had to go home for five days. ended up he had the regular flu. he had to go home and self-isolate for five days. his entire office had to shut down. all his workers, of course, had to go home and not work for the five days. all because we didn't have these tests which, as joe biden said last night, we could have gotten if the president had just agreed to get the tests from the world health organization. let me ask you, daniel, do you have any idea how you picked up the coronavirus? >> i traveled to london last weekend. friday, march 6th, i got my first symptoms, the day i returned, tuesday, march 10th. you know, i will say this, i did not take as seriously the coronavirus as i probably should have. i probably should not have made that trip. but it felt to me like it's the flu. e everybody can get it. i'm relatively healthy. you know, when i see photos that you just showed, of mass people at disney world, i'm a person who will, you know, explain that i didn't take it seriously enough, but everybody really needs to take this seriously. anybody can get it anywhere. whenever we hear about the limited number of cases, we just don't know. there's way insufficient testing to know how many people have it. there are -- i wouldn't say millions, but there are thousands and thousands of people walking around america right now who have coronavirus and who don't know it. the idea that you would go and mingle with large groups of people is really silly at this point. >> yeah. daniel, we're thinking about you. >> absolutely. >> and your wife and entire family. our thoughts and prayers are with you. certainly, we are hoping for a speedy recoffvery. >> thank you. >> thank you so much. >> good to see you guys again. >> let's bring in professor at princeton university. chief white house correspondent for the "new york times," peter baker. and correspondent for pbs news hour. and katty kay is still with us, as well. >> peter baker, there are all these clips. there are all these clips of the president in january going, oh, we just have one person from china here. it is nothing. we have it completely under control. then, of course, the president says it is 14 or 15 people. pretty soon it'll be down to zero. then the president says it'll go away in april. then he says it'll go away magically, just like that. the president even on friday, in this press conference that was meant to reassure the markets, is still talking li ining like completely under control. last night in his press conference, or late yesterday afternoon, he says it is under control. >> it is going to pass through. >> we have it under control. it is going to just pass right through. then it was left to dr. fauci and the other health and medical profession professionals, scientists behind him, after the president waltzed off the podium, to say, no, actually, we don't have this under control. things are going to get much worse. can you take us inside the white house and talk about the -- is there frustration by the fact that this president is still encouraging people, by his words, to go to disney world, still encouraging people to go out to pubs, still encouraging people to cram into small, confined spaces, by saying, we've got it under control, no need to worry? >> i think they have struggled from the beginning, obviously, to find that balance between reassurance and keeping the public calm and providing realistic and helpful information, right? this president, who normally is a commanding figure, who normally dominates a stage, who normally controls the conversation, has been kind of a bystander, while federal agencies and governors and ministers and people of faith and sports commissioners and you name it, have been making decisions about american life without guidance from the top. without the president sort of setting a direction and saying, okay, here's what i am telling americans they should think and do at this point, given the information we have. instead, as you say, he has tried to reassure people. the first thing he talked about yesterday, of course, was the federal reserve's decision to cut the rate to zero. we've already seen this morning, at least with the implied future of the markets. the markets didn't take that as a reassurance that everybody had perhaps hoped it would. in fact, the issue is the facts on the ground problem, not, you know, a federal rates problem. the issue at the moment is that american businesses are shutting down for the foreseeable future. more money from the fed can only do so much until people feel faith that the health care system is going to handle the problem. that's where the president's challenge has been and one that he has yet to find, i think, the right formula for. >> so, yamiche, you had an exchange with the president on friday that made a lot of news. first is kristen welker's question that set up your follow-up question. let's take a look. >> dr. fauci said earlier this week that the lag in testing was, in fact, a failing. do you take responsibility for that? and when can you guarantee that every single american who needs a test will be able to have a test? what's the date of that? >> yeah. no, i don't take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances. we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time. wasn't meant for this kind of an event, with the kind of numbers we're talking about. >> you said that you don't take responsibility, but you did disbdi disband the white house pandemic office. the officials left the administration abruptly. what responsibility do you take to that? and the officials that worked in the office said that the white house lost valuable time because that office wasn't disbanded. what do you make of that? >> well, i think it is a nasty question. what we've done is -- and tony has said numerous times that we saved thousands of lives because of the quick closing. when you say me, i didn't do it. we have a group of people. >> your administration. >> i could -- my administration, but i could perhaps ask tony about that. i don't know anything about it. >> you know, you wonders what's wrong with him. a lot of people, yamiche, think he is blatantly racist and sexist when he says things like, nas that is a nasty question. he always seems to have a problem with you. it is incredible and worth pointing out. but to your point and your very good question, he did shut down that office. he announced it a while back himself. we were left flat-footed, without the proper scientists in charge, correct? >> that's right. the white house, under president obama, had this office that was to deal specifically with pandemics. they were going to be monitoring the entire world, to look out for things like polio outbreaks or sars. the trump administration, in 2018, disbanded that office. officials left the administration abruptly. those people were not replaced. then the president continued the go on as if it was okay. this happened under john bolton, his national security adviser. the president is now saying he had no idea why that happened, and didn't have any idea or any responsibility for that happening. of course, again, this was his administration. mika, what this moment really calls for is credibility and leadership and compassion. unfortunately, a lot of people think president trump isn't showing that. you have compassion in the fact that there are people that are so scared, that are crying, that want to go visit their neighbors and can't do that. you have a president who starts his last press conference talking about the fed cutting rates. you have a president who is saying everything is under control. we're going to get through this. his top health officials are saying, look, we do not have this under control. we don't know when this is going to peak. we're worried that people are going out there and not taking this as seriously as they need to. then you have local governments saying we need direction from the white house. we need to know, should we be closing bars? should we be closing schools? the president has not yet told them. the leadership vacuum is leaving state officials to do whatever they can. to get back to the original point, what you have here is a president who is really left flat-footed and was struggling to deal with the coronavirus outbreak, and really find the compassion and credibility ne needed in this moment. >> he couldn't do it. it is interesting, joe biden last night, his first words were that his thoughts and his prayers went out to those who were suffering from the coronavirus. and who lost their life from the coronavirus. those are words for the president of the united states. still hasn't uttered because he is incapable of thinking about, i guess, if you judge him by his own words and actions -- >> 100%. >> -- about how this is impacting him politically. you look at the president's performance. there was another thing from friday, other than the horrid response to yamiche, i guess predictable response to yamiche, that really stuck out. that's when the president turned harry truman's words, the buck stops here, on its head. basically said, i'm not responsible for anything. of course, the whole world knows donald trump is responsible for our lack of testing. responsible for the national crisis that we're in right now. without this testing, we're not able to track who has coronavirus and who doesn't. that, obviously, allows the spread of it and prevents scientists and math matism math from doing the spread. looks like we're headed in the direction of italy. what is remarkable, donald trump could have accepted the testing kits from the world health organization. they tried to give him testing kits. he refused. here we are still. we just had daniel goldman on. he knew he had the coronavirus, had traveled back from london, could not get the coronavirus test, was lying in a hospital hallway for six hours because he couldn't get the test. these are the nightmares. these sound like stories from the 1918 pandemic. here we are, a century later in 2020, and donald trump is still fumbling around on this crisis. still telling people he's in complete control. still telling people there's nothing to worry about. still telling people that he bears no responsibility for all of the failures of the past three to four weeks. >> joe, as i was thinking about that press conference on friday, it just reminded me of the, you know, stories around nero, fiddling while parts of rome was burning. instead of fiddling or listening to music, donald trump is watching television. what we do know is this, is that the office of the presidency reveals the character of whomever occupies that space. what we're seeing over and over again are these character defects. what struck me, and what has struck me about donald trump's response, and all the things you said i agree with completely, is he has no sense of compassion, as yamiche said, or empathy for the most vulnerable among us. he can't talk about the folks working in the gig economy. all the millions of folks who don't have health care. because he has been, in some ways, trying to dismantle the obamacare. part of what we're seeing is not only the selfishness of donald trump, not only his capacity to kind of skip over the facts of the matter. he seems to not have compassion and empathy for those who are the least of these. because he just simply comes into view. it's tragic for the leader of this country. >> as yamiche pointed out, friday in the press conference, he and his administration had been cutting the very agencies that would be able to respond to this pandemic right now, and respond most quickly. they've been gutted, some offices shut down. others had their budget slashes. >> the president cut our ability to response. joining us, robinson meyer, here with the reporting that america isn't testing for the most alarming coronavirus cases. robinson, we just heard a pretty stark case from daniel goldman, who had clear symptoms and was turned away. does it get worse than that? we understand, like a lot of people, you're joining us via skype in order to social distance. explain to us what you mean about the starkest cases here. >> yeah, absolutely. in this case, daniel goldman's experience was very indicative. i'm so glad he preceded me on the show. thank you for having me, by the way. in many states right now, it is exactly the kind of set of rules around who can get a covid test, a coronavirus test that he experien experienced. if you've been out of the country recently, even if you traveled do memesticdomesticall get a test. if you know someone who has a lab-confirmsed case of covid, yu can get a test. if you don't know someone who had another positive, it is often very, very difficult to get a test. what that means is that we're not looking, we're not seeing the kind of coronavirus cases that are the most alarming. if coronavirus is spreading in a city or in a state amongst strangers for the first time, then we won't be able to test for it, basically, until it shows up in an older person or someone who lives in a nursing home, someone who needs to be hospitalized. at which point, usually under the rules, they'll be able to get a test. >> robinson, it is jonathan lemire. question for you is simply this, we heard the president on friday say that they're ramping up the test kits that are going to be available. he said there would soon be 5 million. he quickly dismissed that, saying we're not going to need that much. first, i want to get your take. don't we need far more than 5 million? but does there come a point, and we heard this from public officials here in new york city, that if this becomes so widespread, it is less important to be tested. it is all about the treatment. can you walk us through when that line, when we cross that line? >> yeah, exactly. there are really two kind of places to hit here. first of all, the more tests we have, the better. in many parts of the country right now, we're really not testing enough people to understand how widespread the disease is. right now, for instance, in washington, d.c., among both the public and the private labs, we've tested 120 people for the coronavirus. we assume this is widespread for many reasons in d.c., but we really don't know. the second one is, yes, there gets to be a point where the hospitals will be probably, essenti essentially, in places where the disease is quite widespread, filling up with folks who have trademark covid symptoms. at that point, it becomes less important to test everyone because we will kind of assume most people have it. that is the point that new york city has reached. we don't -- until we get more tests, we can't really know that on a city-by-city basis. also, hospitals can't prepare for that influx if they don't know how widespread the disease is. and there is a point where we do need still many tests in those places. health care workers, if they have flu or cold symptoms, need to know whether they, themselves, are positive for the coronavirus and need to stop working and self-quarantine, or whether they have the flu and cold, at which point they can take precautions and keep treating patients. >> the "atlantic" magazine's robinson meyer, thank you so much for your reporting. >> really is unbelievable. k katty kay, we live in a country that has a $21 trillion gdp. this past year, we had a federal budget that donald trump signed for $4.5 trillion. the biggest budget in u.s. history. the most spending by the federal government in u.s. history. yet, we've heard all morning, and we've known for some time now, we're having to ration pandemic tests. in the middle of a pandemic that is sweeping across europe, sweeping across the world. we're rationing tests despite the fact we're a $21 trillion economy. >> yeah. on several levels, this pandemic has revealed a real weakness in the united states. you don't have the number of beds, even that italy has. we don't have the number of respirators that other countries have. we have done nothing like the amount of testing that italy, south korea, japan, china have done on their citizens. i think for donald trump, it is almost as sort of existential point, that he finds it so hard to think that donald trump's america could learn anything from other countries. when the world health organization, a global body, those global bodies that he hates, comes along and says, here's our testing. you are going to need this. his instinct is, in donald trump's america, i can do it best and don't need help from other countries. i think it'll prove to be a real failing in america's ability to deal with this. it could be what means we end up looking like italy, where you need a pass to be out in the streets at the moment. police will stop you and check your paperwork to see if you have a valid reason for being in the streets. doctors are making decisions about whether someone is over 70, they'll just have to die because they don't have the ventilators. all of the projections are that we are 10 to 12 days away from that. i think if the president, earlier on, had been able to say, we need help. we don't have everything right. this is not perfect. we are not necessarily the best when it comes to this, then a little bit more humility in learning from other countries may have stopped america getting to this point. at the moment, we're heading the way of italy. >> and, katty, i mean, you talk about italy having more beds per citizen than we do. it really is shocking. we spend more money on health care per citizen than any country in the world and, jyet, we don't have the vaccines, of course, and won't for some time, but we don't even have testing or the hospital beds. italy has more hospital beds per person than does, of course, the united states. it's really frightening. peter baker, what are the chances the united states are going to follow the path of france and spain and italy and other industrialized powers, basically shut the country down a couple weeks and tell citizens to self-quarantine? >> great question. it looks like we are a week or so behind, as katty said, and those things are already starting to happen in piecemeal fashion, rather than a national fashion. we're a bigger country, obviously. not every place in europe has done exactly what spain and france and italy have done. just as america physically might not require a national similar rule across the board. but it is hard to know at this point. at this point, every single day, so much changes in our understanding. it was just a week ago, right, that the president was at mar-a-lago with the president of brazil. they had a party for his son's girlfriend. everything seemed fine. within days, you begin to see one result after another. the sports leagues shutting down, businesses shutting down, churches and places of worship, and so on. i think, predicting ahead, it is hard to do at this point, but it feels we're heading that direction. one of the key moments will come today when the president gets on the phone with the other leaders of the g-7. the question is, is there a coordinated response? is there something the international community can do together? and will the united states play a lead role in that, as we have traditionally in the past? up until now, of course, president trump's interactions with other countries has been to shut the borders. maybe it was helpful, in terms of limiting the travel flow of some people infected, but it hasn't produced a universal or global or, you know, comprehensive response. that's the -- that's on the table today for the conference call. we'll see how that goes. >> peter, do you know, is the president, the white house, is congress doing anything to get us moving in the direction where we increase the number of hospital beds, we make sure we have a sufficient amount of ventilators? i know we're talking about the va, but do you have any information about the united states trying to expand its capacity? >> i think one of the things the national emergency that the president declared on friday does is to trigger some of that response that is planned over the years. you ciofsee fema, obviously, ane military have the capacity to set up field hospitals that are contingency plans that have been set up over the years. how advanced they were, i'm not sure. military told members not to travel. it's a precursor in the steps you have laid out usually for the more aggressive response that could be just a few days away. you know the apparatus of government is starting to move in that direction. the apparatus of the state, in effect. the question is how ready they really are. one thing to have this in theory, on paper. now, they're going to be tested in reality. can they put into place the kind of things people have been talking about for years? might be necessary. something we've never seenpeter thank you for your reporting. thanks for being on. ahead on "morning joe," the president announces a plan for google to help the government respond. >> that's great. >> to the coronavirus. >> he said they had a website up, right? getting the website up. >> couldn't even get that right. >> but google, he said google is going to take care of everything. >> we'll explain. >> are they not going to help us? >> not what he said. >> google. >> they're going to try. >> he said -- >> he made this announcement that wasn't true. >> google was going to help. >> in the middle of a crisis, he has riffing. also, we booked nbc's hans nichols. he was delayed, as the white house took the temperature of everyone entering the grounds. hans describes that, and the other measures, under way now, next on "morning joe." >> hans always runs a little hot. i like liberty mutual. they get that no two people are alike and customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. what do you think? i don't see it. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. 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(vo) call 1-800-miracle to start your 30-day risk-free trial and schedule your free hearing evaluation at your locally owned miracle ear today. since you're heading off to dad... i just got a zerowater. but we've always used brita. it's two stage-filter... doesn't compare to zerowater's 5-stage. this meter shows how much stuff, or dissolved solids, gets left behind. our tap water is 220. brita? 110... seriously? but zerowater- let me guess. zero? yup, that's how i know it is the purest-tasting water. i need to find the receipt for that. oh yeah, you do. stays at choicehotels.com and earn a free night. because when your business is making the most of it, our business is you. book direct at choicehotels.com there's a very contagious, there's a very contagious virus. it is incredible. but it is something that we have tremendous control of. >> let's go to the white house and nbc news correspondent hans nichols. the president saying we have control over this situation, hans. are there any in the white house that are concerned about the extremely mixed messaging? >> there are always concerns about the way the president handles any sort of crisis because the president is likely to just get out in front or behind and get on a different page than the officials. i'll just give you one example of that as it relates to this particular crisis. remember on friday, even the president changed his opinion in the briefing on whether or not he'd get tested. first, he said, there's no need. then he came out and said, probably likely, most likely, we'd be taking the test. just before midnight, there is an official memo from the white house physician saying that there's no test indicated for the president. then it turned out the president came to the briefing on saturday and said, actually, no, i did take the test. i did it last night. that memo was already out of date. later on, on saturday, they indicated the president actually tested negative for it. but it gives you an indication, and peter was talking about how, just a week ago, there was a party at mar-a-lago. it gives you an indication of just the velocity with which this crisis is moving and the changing response. late last night, there was a statement from the national security adviser's twitter feed that there's not going to be a national quarantine. they wanted to shoot down rumors of any national lockdown, italy style. we have a briefing at 10:30 today they say they'll have additional guidelines. then the vice president said there might be a second briefing. they are trying to react to this in real time. as we all know, this is moving very quickly. the president has clearly been contradicted by his own staff and by his own doctor on what his own plans are. if there is confusion at that level, it makes you wonder where else it will be. you guys mentioned, i was delayed coming in. they are now testing reporters before -- and all officials walking through the northwest gates here, putting that temperature meter on the forehead. making sure that we all have a low temperature. >> nbc's hans nichols, thank you very much. >> thank you, hans. >> president trump announced on friday that the administration has put together a plan to have drive-through testing available with the help of google. here's the president on friday addressing that plan. >> we've been in discussions with pharmacies and retailers to make drive-through tests available in the critical locations identified by public health professionals. the goal is for individuals to be able to drive up and be swabbed without having to leave your car. i want to thank google. google is helping to develop a website. it is going to be very quickly done. unlike websites of the past. to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby, convenient location. we have many, many locations behind this, by the way. google has 1 rk,700 engineers working on this right now. they've made tremendous progress. our overriding goal is to stop the spread of the virus and to help all americans who have been impacted by this. again, we don't want everybody taking this test. it is totally unnecessary. this will pass. this will pass through, and we're going to be even stronger for it. >> this will pass through. >> oh, my lord. >> it'll go away. so the president of the united states in a press conference on friday, meant to calm fears, said google is helping develop a website to facilitate testing. talked about the thousands of google engineering who were doing that. >> he was reading it. several people involved in the proposed plan said the administration was actually overstating the scope of it. on multiple fronts. one state health official said the announcement surprised all of us. and it was bizarre. pointing out that many of the 6,000 public health service officers are deployed elsewhere and could not be readily shifted. >> so that was a lie. >> opposite to what the president was saying. >> it's a lie, okay? >> and shortly after the news conference, a google communications account tweeted that the plan to build the website is nowhere near close, and that they are in the early stages of development. >> also lying. >> i mean, this is incredible. >> co-founder and editor at large. she's an msnbc contributor. kara swisher, fill us in. >> google can build this, and he was speaking before anything had happened. that was the problem. he acted like it was complete, and it certainly wasn't. the 1,700 engineers were googlers who signed up to help in a dcrisis. this has happened before at google. it was a small thing they were doing with california, actually, to try to get people to figure out what sites they can go to get tested. it certainly wasn't anywhere near completion, or even at the beginning of this kind of process of development. >> kara, i'm just -- this is the president reading off of a paper. >> right. >> that supposedly is prepared by people in the white house. >> and they made it up. >> this is absolutely not the care. it's possible -- i see you're saying it is possible. >> sure. >> that's great. a lot of things are possible. but in the time of a crisis, the president is announcing something at a major tech company being involved, and that is not happening. >> i think there were discussions. i think jared kushner was having discussions with people from a division of google. it is not really google. it is a division of alphabet. so they were talking about this idea, and it is, again, a great idea. they'd be able to screen people quickly, to get to the right place. again, google could probably make this really quickly. they do this every day. they do this kind of computing. this is a difficult thing to make, but they can do it. they have the staff to do so. certainly have the will to do so. so it was an idea that was still in the early stages. i think the issue -- now, google said they're going to do it. they're going to try to roll it out. the stuff they've gotten up there is pretty crude, that they've put up there, and it is certainly not what is being described. again, it's a great idea. it can be done quickly. it just wasn't checked with google or alphabet, actually, before it happened. >> yeah. >> i don't know what to say. it just was like early.early. just the way the drive-up stuff was early. there's no ability to do that for the most part. so again, a good idea, but needs to be deployed just like at the airports. a good idea, needs to be deployed. that's really the problem here. >> all right. we've got the governor of new york. kara swisher, thank you very much. we have to move on to that. just incredible, though. like you can't say anything around the president because he might just riff it at a press conference like blurt it out before it's true or before it even comes together as a possibility. >> it really is unbelievable. let's bring in governor cuomo. thank you for being with us. you certainly have been on the forefront of governors across america responsible, pushing for, asking for help from the federal government, and also understanding you're going to have to take matter into your own hands because it's sort of like katrina, i was on the ground in katrina for the first two weeks before the federal government did anything. anybody waiting for the government to respond to katrina kept waiting. it seems like we're at the same place, here, 15 years later, but this time it's not a hurricane. it's a pandemic. >> you're 100% right, joe. i said that this is the hurricane katrina version of a public health situation. and we are taking matters into our own hands, frankly. we are doing drive-throughs. we didn't wait for the federal government, and we're doing everything we can do. but, but you and i were both in the federal government. we understand the capacity. there has been no country that has handled this, joe, without a national response. and we have been behind on it from day one. i'm not giving up. there are things we need the federal government to do. you look at today, the news, all these patchwork acts by these different states. it makes no sense for me to take an action. i close bars and then people drive to new jersey or connecticut, my neighboring states. you need a federalized response. especially on the looming crisis. and the looming crisis is that curve that everybody talks about is not a curve. it is a wave. and the wave is going to break on the hospital system. there is no projection that says our hospital system can handle this. we need the army corps of engineers in here now. retrofitting old buildings, dormitories, et cetera, for more hospital capacity. that's what china did, that's what south korea did, that's what italy didn't do, and i have one of the largest state governments in the nation, but i can't build hospital beds in thee weeks. i need the army corps of engineers. >> well, and also, governor, don't you need these people separated from the rest of the hospital population? you have an op-ed out this morning which is a call to president trump to mobilize the military to help fight coronavirus. i mean, military hospitals being set up around the country would do a lot to stop the clusters. inside the medical community and among the people on the front lines of helping the sick. >> that is exactly right. and look, they say life has options. we don't have any options. we know the health care system will become overwhelmed. that's how people die. i only have 3,000 intensive care unit beds in the state of new york. about 80% are already occupied. so i only have about 600 beds available. i already have 60 people in those beds. this is a disaster waiting to happen. we know it. the only alternative is to build, develop more beds, retrofit. you're not going to build anything new. get some of the people out of the hospitals into those new medical facilities. and do the best we can. it's still not going to be good, but just to be wasting day after day after day, this is nonsensical, and it cannot happen without federal resources, period. >> now, you know, you talked about how we were both in the federal government before. a guy who was speaker of the house, i think it's safe to say, had an up and down relationship with, was newt gingrich. of course, i haven't agreed with much of what he said over the past three years since donald trump has been elected president of the united states, but it's interesting that finding newt gingrich is writing an up ed saying i'm in italy, the coronavirus is deadly serious and america better wake up. i'm finding more and more republicans who have blindly defended the president are waking up to the reality that we can't bluff, we can't bs our way out of this pandemic. are you finding that as well in new york? are you finding that republicans are more willing to work with you despite the fact that the president is still sending reckless mixed signals? >> yeah, i think what's happening, joe, is first of all, people are frightened. they're truly frightened. they're frightened for themselves, frightened for their families. and that overrides partisan loyalty, right. it's about them now. it's not about loyalty to their political party. secondly, it's unavoidable on the facts. people know what's coming. you look at that projection, dr. fauci puts up that curve every day. you know that curve is going to crash, and we can't handle it. and also, i think people, the president is trying to show leadership, and he's trying to show leadership by calming people. and that is a responsibility of leadership. but you don't calm people unless you tell them the truth. you're not going to deceive people. you're not going to say it's all going to be fine, take two aspirin and call me in the morning. so they know it's not working. and it's actually making things worse. and when the federal government then is not doing its role and you have these broadcasts of every city, every state doing all these different things, people see pandemonium. and it is frightening. you put pandemonium on top of a pandemic, it is a bad situation. >> yeah. katty kay is with us in washington. she has a question for you. >> governor, you have seen the pictures from europe of countries like italy and spain on near total lockdown. do you think we're going to get to that stage here in the united states? do you think you're going to get to that stage in new york city? in rome at the moment, you cannot go out in the streets unless you have a special pass that lets you go out in the streets. police will stop you and check your paperwork. is that where a state like new york is heading? >> yeah, i hope not, and i don't believe so. and i don't even believe you could do that in this society. but i'm going to be announcing more actions today. i closed the schools yesterday. making sure there's child care for health care workers because, again, this all comes back to hospital capacity. some of these states have closed schools that made no capacity for child care and now you see health care workers and nurses not showing up. so closing the schools, closing bars, closing restaurants, closing mass gatherings. we'll be doing more of that because right now, the numbers are continuing to spike. so you have to ratchet down on the density control if you're going to get those numbers anywhere near where you can manage them in the hospital system. but for me, my priority is turning to the hospital system. because that's where we're going to have a major crisis, and it's weeks away. >> governor andrew cuomo, thank you very much. appreciate it. appreciate your leadership. >> coming up, the mayor of new york city, bill de blasio, is standing by. he joins us straight ahead. "morning joe" is back in two minutes. ng now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. ♪ no matter when you retire, ensure you still have income every month of your retirement, guaranteed. see how lincoln can help. yes. this moving thing never gets any easier. well, xfinity makes moving super easy. i can transfer my internet and tv service in about a minute. wow, that is easy. almost as easy as having those guys help you move. we are those guys. that's you? the truck adds 10 pounds. in the arms. ok. -yep. transfer your service online in a few easy steps. now that's simple, easy, awesome. xfinity makes moving easy with two-hour appointment windows, even on nights and weekends. go to xfinity.com/moving to get started. ask not what your country can do for you. ask what you can do for your country. >> mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall. >> i can hear you. the rest of the world hears you. >> yeah, no, i don't take responsibility at all. >> god. okay. some select moments in presidential history for you there. >> don't take responsibility. >> welcome back to "morning joe." >> you know, you watch the democratic debate last night, which we haven't talked about. >> we need to get to that. joe biden committed to choosing a woman for vice president, also for supreme court. kind of exciting. >> we'll get to that. one thing that joe biden was talking about and i'm sure bernie sanders agrees as well, we could have gotten the test kits from the world health organization. this entire crisis would look completely different if we had done that. we may not have even had to declare a national emergency if we had taken the world health organization test kits. our scientists, our mathematicians are the smartest, the best and the brightest among us, could have begun mapping out where the coronavirus was. and i think we probably -- it could have remained an epidemic in the united states and not a pandemic. i don't know. maybe we'll never know, but we do know this, that we're in the crisis we're in right now, and it's reached the level that it's reached because you still have people like dannian goldman who was on our show earlier today, who had coronavirus, they didn't have a test they could give him, so he was lying in the hall. with the coronavirus, in a hall of a hospital, for six hours. >> exposing health care workers. >> because they didn't have a test. i don't know who you think this is on if you support donald trump. i don't know who you're going to blame this on. but you know what, they didn't call barack obama and say, hey, man, would you like the world health organization test kits? no, you see, you should check your calendar. barack obama hasn't been president for about three and a half years now. they asked donald trump. and donald trump was the one who said no, we don't want the test kits from the world health organization. if we had them, then we would know right now whether you and your loved ones had coronavirus. again, a lot of senior citizens who were in seattle, who were in arizona, who were in the state of florida, the sunshine state, wouldn't be concerned right now about whether they have it or not. they would know. we're actually whistling in the dark now because of decisions donald trump made. so when he says the responsibility is not with me. it's because of this or that or the other, or look behind the tree at somebody over there or it's barack obama. no, no. he was the one. donald trump was the one. his administration said we don't want coronavirus test kits from the world health organization. and that has made all the difference. >> so still with us, we have white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire. washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay, and professor at princeton university, eddie glaude jr. joining the conversation, the host of msnbc's politics nation and president of the national action network, reverend al sharpton, and the mayor of new york city, bill de blasio. >> i have to say, reverend al's show yesterday was really great. >> amazing. >> it's always great, but man, he spoke truth to power yesterday, mika. >> mr. mayor, i would like to start with you. as joe pointed out, we have all been pointing out, we're behind the eight ball on testing. are we looking at the science, just listening to the data and understanding how this virus spreads and surges and spikes, especially in congested areas, are we going to be in the same situation as it pertained to separate medical facilities to treat these cases? are we going to have clusters of people exposing health care workers across the country because there aren't military hospitals being set up? >> mika, that's what i fear. right now, we need a national solution. this should be a reality where the united states is put on a war footing, where the federal government mobilizes all the resources necessary, and it begins with testing. i agree with you, testing to make sure health care workers are safe, to focus on our most vulnerable individuals, to make sure we can protect them. ultimately, i would love to see a broader testing approach as was done in south korea as a strategic tool to help eventually end this epidemic. but right now, here's what i'm most concerned about, exactly where you were going, the hospitals. we're going to have to set up emergency icus in hospitals not only all over new york city, all over america. we're going to need the united states military to come in with their substantial logistical and medical capacity. we're going to need the supply chain nationalized in some form right now. there's no effort to make sure that ventilators, surgical masks, even down to hand sanitizer, all these products should be put on a 24/7 production cycle. whatever factories anywhere can make them should be cranking them out. they should be distributed for federal priority as you would in a war. >> i know there's some effort with ventilators, although the white house will not release and top health officials will not release numbers. that worries me at this point since we're getting such mixed messages and mixed information during these daily briefings. but we have been talking about separate medical units for weeks and weeks and weeks. and let's just be clear here. this is not being done right now. so as these numbers spike, we're going to have this virus spread across the medical community. there's no way to contain it inside a hospital, is there? >> and mika, no, it's very dangerous. in fact, the thing we have to make sure is our health care workers are safe, so that they can take care of everyone else, obviously, and we're going to lose -- look, some health care workers will be infected. we have to quickly make sure they're treated so they can come back to action. but here's what we're saying about exactly what you're talkitalk talking about, ventilators. we need real numbers, testing capacity, real numbers. and how about the fact that the united states to the best of my knowledge, the united states military right now is still engaged in building the border walls. take them off that and put them on coronavirus, for god's sakes. knngs that is option right now should be canceled and there should be a full national mobilization to protect people. if we don't have the medical facilities, the ventilators and supplies, you're going to be losing thousands and thousands of lives that could have been saved. >> mr. mayor, you decided yesterday to close down new york city schools. you tried to keep them open as long as you could, but why did you make the final decision that you made? >> joe, it's sheerly continuing to analyze with our health officials the trajectory of this disease. and the role that social interaction plays in the disease. we also needed to figure out if there was some way to come up with alternatives for our kids to give them some kind of distance learning to make sure that the kids particularly of health care workers, transit workers, and first responders, if they needed a physical location, they could do that. i spoke to dr. fauci last night and said what do you think is the next most important thing to do after closing schools. he said bars, restaurants, cafes. get them to take out and pick-up basis. we ordered that last night. we'll have to do a lot more to try to constantly reduce the spread while simultaneously building up that medical and logistical capacity real quick. again, we have a few weeks to get on a full war footing or we're just going to have our hospitals in a situation where they can't save lives that could have been saved otherwise. >> you know, one of the things, joe, i think in adding to what the mayor said, is there must be a coordinated effort with those stakeholders in the communities around the country. one of the things i think that i commend mayor de blasio on is he dealt with the social reality that in many cities, including new york, we're still dealing with the tale of two cities. so when you're dealing with testing and you're dealing with how we're going to remedy these situations, that's much different in underserved communities than others. which is why you need the military intervention to equalize how the testing is going to be and how those stakeholders in the community can work along to make sure that happens. i think mr. mayor, you and i talked right before you made the announcement about your convening community leaders and others so we make sure that those who are outside of where there are a lat of health facilities and hospitals can be served because we don't know whether there's a low count in some areas or not because they're not where it's easy for them to be counted. >> the tests are only available for the privileged, and let's face it, that's health care in america right now. you have some emergency surgery you need, you have the red carpet if you happen to have money and a lot of people wait a long time. same with testing. clearly right now, the testing is not being distributed sufficiently, according to pure medical priority and there's nowhere near the supply. so of course, privileged people are going to have first dibs in a lot of cases. you're exactly right. the more you create a massive testing supply, the more you bring in the military and other forces that create that equalization, the better off we are in living up to our values and insuring everyone is saved across the board regardless of zip code. >> a quick follow-up. that alsoworks in how you close the schools, which is one of the reasons some of us were reluctant to see you do that, because in some areas schools are child care, a free breakfast and free lunch, and there are other calculations to what is going to happen now to the children. i'm concerned that they go to school, but i'm also concerned now, are they going to be in the streets? what's going to happen with police and young youth interaction. all of these things must be considered and factored in. >> i would say that's for most kids. most kids in our city cools, that's a million plus kids, two meals a day were crucial. the safe, positive environment was crucial. that's why i was exceedingly hesitant to close. and now, at least i know we have some alternatives for them now, but it's still, we have to be clear that closing schools, you put a lot of teenagers particularly out there without the kind of supervision you would like. maybe in this case we're going to see more and more of their parents and other older adults home because there's less and less work. that might balance the ekwashz. >> those that can be home. >> a lot of people have no choice but to work, but workplaces are reducing all the time. we have to be clear, to every reaction, equal and opposite reaction. we're providing meals all week at the schools, pick-up meals, breakfast and lunch. we're going to have to create feeding stations of some type going forward. we're doing home deliveries for seniors. closing down senior center programming but using senior centers as kitchens in effect, dispensaries to get meals out to seniors at their home. there's a lot of pieces we have to alter. look, the great depression and the new deal are very instructive here. i'm not saying bread lines, but let's be clear. we're getting close to a reality where the government has to insure that the food supply, that it is not only available but it's equitably distributed. we're going to have to get into a heavy intervention in people's economic lives because a whole lot of people are losing their livelihood by the hour and they need a continuity of economic support or their families are going to collapse in other ways. >> two questions. first on the schools and i'm a new york city school parent. they're closed until at least april 20th but you left open the possibility of being closed until the end of the school year. why out of step with what other schools are doing? >> we're looking at the trajectory right now. look, i would love nothing more than to reopen on april 20, which is right after our spring break, but i fear this crisis is going to start to crescendo through april, may, before it ever gets better. so the classic it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. i think that's a hard atmosphere to reopen schools in. if we are lucky, if all things break in our favor, it's possible. but i wanted to, you know, get people acclimated to a new reality, that this is very well going to take us through the school year and maybe beyond because it's not just the sheer track of the disease. it's all the other dislocation we have to deal with. >> a second question. you also announced restaurants and bars are closing. >> except for take-out and pick-up. >> over the weekend, it was clear new yorkers were not social distancing, but what kind of steps do you take to provide relief. st. patrick's day is tomorrow. they're going to be closed. a lot of places bank on that day to carry a lot of profits going forward. how can you help them out? >> and the workers. >> of course. the city is getting grants and loans and things for small businesses. but that's a small piece. that's where we need a massive federal relief program. the stimulus bill which we pray will be voted on, is a helpful step. i have talked to senator schumer about this, who is public about the fact there needs to be another stimulus immediately after, and let's use the new deal. the one crisis that is going to mirror -- we have the historical playbook, and this, if you want to know what this whole thing is going to play out as, one part the great recession we went through a few years ago, one part the great depression, one part the 1918 flu epidemic. those are the three models we can use to tell us what to do, and it's going to take massive direct relief to americans right down to the fact, we have to replace paychecks. we have to re-create economic capacity because people are going to be without -- if you don't have money, you can't pay the rent, you can't buy food, you can't buy medicine. we have to understand this is a pure war footing. right down to rationing if you need it, but anything short of national leadership, and forget the president, very bluntly, because he obviously does not know how to do this. he should empower the anthony faucis of the world and the military leadership who do know how to do things to take over the situation and create a national model where all resources are distributed to where the need is greatest. our brothers and sisters in washington state, they're going through the hardest problem in many ways. they should get all the ventilators and material they need. but no one is creating in washington that kind of prioritization of resources nor are they guaranteeing the resources are produced so they're readily available to be distributed where the need is greatest. >> well, you know, eddie, the thing to always remember is that we don't know what the future is going to look like. and we don't know, this could be like past pandemics. it could be like the great recession. but it's actions we take that determine how things are going to end up. i always kept a sign up in my congressional office. a best way to predict the future is to shape the future. we just have to be aggressive enough not only in new york city but across the country. and eddie, i just wonder how we can be that aggressive to make sure, as dr. fauci said, like, the greatest thing that they could ever say is that we overreacted, because that means we took the steps necessary to avoid this looking like 1918, 1919. but how do we do that when we have a president who constantly says this is going to magically go away, pass right through. there's nothing to worry about. we're in complete control. >> that's a very difficult question, but i think it involves a couple things. one, we need to put donald trump aside for the moment. we need to put our partisanship aside for the moment and politics aside for the moment and think about the national will, the health of the country itself, and begin to engage in a kind of intelligent response to the issues in front of us, to the crisis in front of us. that intelligent response -- >> but eddie, you saw those pictures from disney world last night. people were crammed in to disney world last night. people were crammed into bars. a lot of those people, a lot of my friends emailing me that support donald trump saying oh, your media people are still overblowing it. i'm still seeing tweets by national figures who are trying to kiss up to donald trump saying oh, come on. this is no worse than the common cold. more people have died from the flu than have died from this. donald trump is still sending out the dog whistles, i guess you would call it, that this is all a plot to take him down. >> you know, and i get this on my twitter feed all the time, that whenever we liken this to hurricane katrina and its threat to the presidency that we want people to die in order to get trump out of the office and the like. look, we have to figure out a way to inundate the american public with the information we need to understand the level of the seriousness of the crisis we need. it seems to me, we need to have ticker tapes underneath giving us the relevant information every five minutes on the hour, we need to have updates with regards to the crisis. but i do want to say this, that in the middle of this moment, the contradictions of american society the folks who are living in the most precarious circumstances, the underbelly of america, will be revealed. it seems to me in this moment, we have to talk about health care, infrastructure, and the like, but how do we emphasize the most vulnerable in this moment? i'm thinking about contract workers, i'm thinking about the service economy, who will be affected by the workers in the service economy will be affected by your order yesterday. i'm thinking about folks in the gig economy, about folks in the shadows. all the homeless people around new york city. how do you emphasize, how do we respond to them in this moment? >> franklin delano roosevelt in that moment in history created something literally unheard of, the federal government funded work directly. you had millions of people who got a job because the federal government created whole new types of work creating national parks, roads, bridges, whatever it was. that had never been done, not even close, a year or two earlier, it was unheard of. it was radical, it was even unthinkable. that kind of audacity is needed here, but the problem is, with a virus, it's not like you can create work and congregate people, so it's bluntly about money. it's about putting money in people's hands to keep the economy solvent, to keep people's lives together. so those gig workers who are more and more of our economy, they need direct relief. there's nothing wrong with it. they need a check from the federal government to keep them going. or else you're going to see a new kind of dislocation. it is going to be very much about the tale of two cities, to begin with, if we don't get it right, but even a lot of folks who at that moment would consider themselves middle class or working class or stable, their lives are going to collapse if there's not money flowing directly into their hands. the only place that can come from is the federal government, or else you're going to see this. if they don't have money, they won't be able to pay the rent, won't be able to afford food, they won't be able to afford medicine, so let's remember. you can take this virus and then amplify a health care crisis if people can't get to the other health care they need. there's plenty of other conditions and challenges that people have with their health right now. if they can't get basic medicines, you're talking about a much greater health care crisis. if we don't put money in people's hands, we're going to literally undermine the very fabric of this society. >> mayor bill de blasio, thank you very much. we hope to have you back on soon to keep us posted on what's going on. and still ahead on "morning joe," coronavirus was the lead topic at last night's democratic debate. what joe biden and bernie sanders said they would do if this crisis happened on their watch. we'll be right back. you wouldn't accept an incomplete job from anyone else. so why accept it from your allergy pills? flonase relieves your worst symptoms which most pills don't. get all-in-one allergy relief for 24 hours, with flonase. the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. ♪ ♪ i got that vibe, got that vibe ♪ ♪ got that vibe, 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advantage of the test kits they have available to us, even though the president says a million or more are coming. let's just get all the tests we can done as quickly as we can. secondly, i would make sure that every state in the union had at least ten places where they had drive-through testing arrangements. i would also at this point deal with the need to begin to plan for the need for additional hospital beds. we have that capacity in the department of defense as well as with the fema. and they can set up 100-bed, 500-bed hospitals and tents quickly. we have to deal with the economic fallout quickly. that means making sure that people who lose their job, can't get a paycheck, can't pay their mortgage are able to pay it and pay it now and do it now. small businesses be able to borrow interest-free loans. >> first thing we have got to do, whether or not i'm president, is to shut this president up right now, because he's undermining the doctors and the scientists who are trying to help the american people. it's unacceptable for him to be blabbering with unfactual information, which is confusing the general public. this is an unprecedented moment in american history. now, i obviously believe in medicare for all. i will fight for that as president. but right now, in this emergency, i want every person in this country to understand that when you get sick, you go to the doctor. when you get sick, if you have the virus, that will be paid for. do not worry about the cost right now because we're in the middle of a national emergency. second of all, we have to make sure that our hospitals have the ventilators they need, have the ic units they need. right now, we have a lack of medical personnel. and i worry very much that if there is a peak, whether we have the capability of dealing with hundreds of thousands of people who may be in hospitals. so we need unprecedented action right now to deal with the unprecedented crisis. and bottom line from an economic point of view, what we have got to say to the american people, if you lose your job, you will be made whole. >> with all due respect to medicare for all, you have a single-payer system in italy. it doesn't work there. it has nothing to do with medicare for all. that would not solve the problem at all. you can take care of that right now by making sure that no one has to pay for treatment, period, because of the crisis. no one has to pay for whatever drugs are needed, period, because of the crisis. no one has to pay for hospitalization because of the crisis. period. that is a national emergency, and that's how it's handled. it is not working in italy right now, and they have a single-payer system. >> that was a bit of a surreal debate last night. went on about an hour too long, in my humble opinion. but at the same time, i thought, rev, both candidates turned in good performances. >> i would agree they both put in pretty good performances. there were no knockouts. though i think biden might have won on points. what i really feel is that bernie sanders had an opportunity to really push a forward moving agenda forward for progressives rather than looking like two men arguing about a world series game 50 years ago that they disagreed on. it got too much into that minutia. the other thing i was surprised bernie missed at is when joe biden committed to putting a black woman on the supreme court and a woman as a running mate, and bernie sanders kind of equivocated on would he do a woman and never made a commitment to blacks at all. here's where he's been weak in terms of getting black voter support. he never mentioned what he would do in terms of appointing a black or assembling a black at all, which is shocking giving his record and giving nina turner and dr. cornel west have been out there for him. it was a missed opportunity, especially in the backdrop of the moral outrage of the president that had come out earlier in the day gloating about how the fed had gone down and not even given some empathy to people that were suffering because their loved ones died because of coronavirus or they had been diagnosed as that. they had the opportunity to come as those that were moral and centered and had human feelings. >> yeah, it really was. there were some missed opportunities there. i thought you're right, the defining moment of that debate last night was when joe biden said he would pick a woman as vice presidential candidate, and bernie sanders demured, did not commit to it. but katty, at some point, it just seemed so disconnected from the realities that every american is facing. when bernie sanders said, oh, you said this in 1995 on the senate floor. you voted this way in 1996. and joe biden would come back and say, yeah, you voted this way in 1997. well, then you said this in -- it was bernie sanders versus the joe biden of the 1990s. and it seemed oddly out of place with the very real crisis we're facing in 2020. >> yeah, in some ways the debate was good. there was no audience, which i think helped it. it was more serious. can we do -- i agree with you, let's make them one hour, two hours. that was just way too long. but that thing of looking backwards, i feel a missed opportunity was for one of those men to punch forward and say, this coronavirus could very well still be with us next winter. do you want donald trump still to be running it? that's your choice. this is urgent. and it's going to carry on being urgent. you make the choice about whether you want the missteps we have had or whether you want my plan coming forward in november. but look at november. that's the choice. it's still going to be with us. >> right, and eddie, i found time and time again on the campaign trail, people don't care about the past. they don't even care about your past. they don't even care about your bio. they care about the future. they want to know what you're going to do for them in the future. all of this obsession over what was said back in the 1990s is just not -- it's not having any impact on voters. >> you know, joe, i think you're absolutely right. i think the sanders campaign made a tactical mistake. they thought they had to contrast sanders from biden. they had to make that contrast hard. i think people know the difference between the two. whether you believe what biden was saying about his role with the paris accord, whether you believe his position with regards to bankruptcy bill. all that, they know the difference. what bernie sanders needed to do last night was to show that biden's response to the crisis we currently face is too small. he had to convince american voters to take the risk on him. he didn't do that. so biden held serve. as a result, i don't think anything changed as a result of last night's debate. >> i think, mika, we shouldn't overstate just how surreal the scene was last night. there was no audience. the podiums were six feet apart. the two men didn't shake hands. they tapped elbows at the beginning. it's because the coronavirus is all that anyone is talking about right now, the backdrop to everything. i don't think either man necessarily put forward a huge sort of plan. i think both, of course, send off a more reassuring presence than donald trump, but it's not clear as others have been saying that they put forth a real vision as to how their administration could handle it going forward. i also just wonder how much this debate even breaks through. joe biden has a pretty commanding lead in delegates right now. this is not something that people really talk about. people talk about the virus and how it's affecting their day-to-day lives. therefore, biden provided the one breakout moment if you will by pledging to take a female vice president and also name an african-american woman to the supreme court. that's the moment people are going to talk about. therefore, that's a victory for him and not the real -- bernie sanders at this point is such an underdog in this race, he needed to be the one to sort of have a commanding victory, create the headlines, and i don't think that happened. >> rev, final question. we were saying, you and i both said after last week when some people were trying to push bernie sanders out of the race, just give him time. be patient. let's make sure the party doesn't tear apart. but i have to ask, if joe biden runs up another massive victory tomorrow, and distances himself even more from bernie sanders, isn't it time in the middle of a pandemic with donald trump behaving as recklessly as he is, isn't it time for the democratic party to come together? and just to have one single voice against donald trump? >> given the crisis that we're in now, we are in a different place than we were a week or two ago when you and i discussed this here on the air. i think that it is really a challenge to bernie sanders that if the next round goes the way it's projected, will he stand up and say given these times we need to be united? this may disappoint some of our followers but i have to be as big as the moment we're in. we're in a different moment. and i think that real leadership is making tough decisions in tough times, even when it may be against your own ambitions. and i think i lay that at his door. democratic party shouldn't do it. no one should force it. i think bernie needs to have a meeting with bernie if the next few primaries go the same way. if they're different, he has a different calculation. but if it goes that way, he needs to have a meeting with bernie and decide whether i'm going to be bigger than my own ambitions and that of those around me. >> yeah. >> all right, coming up, hospitals struggle to prepare for an expected surge in patients. with talk of possibly having to ration beds and ventilators. we'll talk to a doctor on the front lines of this crisis straight ahead. >> and as we go to break, we have full coverage of this critical story at knowyourvalue.com, all about the coronavirus. what public health workers are telling their children. also, coming together at a time of crisis. a five-point plan for pharmaceutical companies from the chairman and ceo of pfizer. and a call to action for the kyv community. send us your ideas, how to get teens to get with the program on social distancing. email us your ideas at knowyourvalue@nbcuni.com. ancestry...gave us context. this...whole world ...of people ...adventurous people... and survivors. it was interesting to think about their lives... their successes... and...their hardships. i think that's part of what i want my kids to know. they come from people who... were brave. and took risks. big risks. no pressure. [short laugh] bring your family history to life, like never before. get started for free at ancestry.com the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. the business of road trips... ...adventure... ...and reconnecting. modernized comfort inn's and suites have been refreshed because our business is you. get the lowest price guaranteed on all choice hotels when you book direct at choicehotels.com. where you can find games, news and highlights. all in one place, right on your tv. the new xfinity sports zone. use your voice to search every stat and score. follow the teams you love. and get notifications when the game's about to start, with the xfinity sports zone, everybody wins. now that's simple, easy, awesome. say "xfinity sports zone" into your voice remote today. i had symptoms. i had not been in contact with anyone who i knew to be positive for coronavirus. and that basically, that meant i could not get tested. so i got tested for the flu and was negative. i got a full viral panel to see if it was anything else. that was negative. once that came back, i was told by the new york presbyterian hospital i had to go home and self-quarantine because my symptoms were not bad enough to be admitted into the hospital. i finally just wouldn't take no for an answer, and i drove at 5:00 in the morning to connecticut to get a test that came back positive. >> that was daniel goldman earlier on "morning joe," discussing with us his experience before testing positive for the coronavirus. joining us now, dr. omar latif, the ceo of rush university medical center, a large hospital in chicago, which is on the front lines of battling the coronavirus. doctor, thank you for being on our show. how is your hospital in terms of being prepared for this? do you have everything you need? >> thank you for having me. i think our hospital has been working very diligently over the last two weeks in terms of preparing, learning from lessons in other countries in the world and other health care systems. we developed a unique approach of trying to flip our hospital so that we have a forward triage area where we can really isolate patients with suspected infections. put them in a special area in our hospital, both in the emergency room and then a unique area of the hospital that we're walling off to the rest of the system that can take care of just coronavirus patients. so to the extent that i can tell you that we recognize the importance of isolation, insuring that we have the right number of beds, insuring that we're working with the city and state, which have been amazing, to get the number of supplies we need. we feel right now that we're prepared, but we're only prepared for numbers we're currently seeing, and we are anxious as the rest of the country is, for the potential to overwhelm the system. >> doctor, would it be a relief to you if the government was setting up military hospitals, specific coronavirus care centers? >> i think in the end, having the right number of beds and the right number of icu beds available for patients in this country will be related to the number of people that continue to get infected. so it will absolutely be a relief if we get to numbers that overwhelm our system. where i am cautiously optimistic is the ability of the united states of america to clamp down and contain and mitigate the increasing volume or the surge of infection numbers we're seeing. to the extent that that's possible, our health care system is remarkable in this country, and we will be able to adapt to an extent. but certainly, if our numbers continue to increase and we don't contain and as a society we don't mitigate the course of this spread, we won't have enough beds and we will need extra beds. >> katty kay. >> dr. lateef, what's the timeframe for you for understanding whether your optimism that we can mitigate those new infections is borne out. are you looking, if we speak to you in four, five days time and the numbers are still going up, will you say we have lost control of that moment when we could have brought the numbers down? >> i think at the end of the day, no one will critique us as a nation if we overprepare. we're hearing this from national experts, local experts. i think that time is today. i think the time today is to prepare regardless of where the numbers may be. to use predictive analytics and the knowledge from what's happened to other countries and say the numbers are going to overwhelm the system, so let us prepare our health care system locally, nationally, to take larger numbers and create the number of beds to offset this increase. so i would say the time is actually now, regardless of what the numbers are going to be to prepare for the worst case scenario. history will look back on this and say if we have too many beds, so what. if we didn't have enough beds, people could actually die. >> doctor, how are we making sure that people in underserved areas of chicago, underserved areas around the domain you work, are actually served and tested and included in what you're trying to achieve there? >> so, rush university medical center is open to our community. we believe -- we serve the west side of chicago. we have many initiatives that include community activities. our doors are open to those people that come in, to everybody in our community. we built a forward triage area just to care for people. and anybody who comes in is going to be treated the same way. we believe strongly in equity in care. and that will flow through in the way we do our daily business along with our coronavirus approach. >> doctor, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. good luck, as we all work through this together. up next, while the president insists his administration has tremendous control, "the washington post" reports the administration's struggle to mitigate the coronavirus outbreak has been marked by infighting and blame shifting, misinformation and missteps. and a slow recognition of danger. we'll dig into what's driving the white house response next. and this news, as we go to break, the pentagon informed congressional lawmakers on friday that there are currently no coronavirus tests available for troops in afghanistan. coalition troops have no access to tests, but if they have symptoms or believe they are at risk, they are able to report to sick call and receive on-base medical care, which includes a screening and a medical diagnosis. if they are suspected of carrying coronavirus, doctors on the base will send samples to testing facilities in germany. ♪ if you have moderate to severe psoriasis... or psoriatic arthritis, little things, can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream... ...it's a pill that treats differently. for psoriasis, 75% clearer skin is achievable... ...with reduced redness, thickness, and scaliness of plaques. for psoriatic arthritis, ...otezla is proven.... to reduce joint swelling, tenderness, and pain. and the otezla prescribing information has no requirement for routine lab monitoring. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. otezla is associated with an... increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts.... ...or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. tell your doctor about your medicines and if you're pregnant or planning to be. otezla. show more of you. adds to the legendary capability of the strongest, most advanced silverados ever. with best in class camera technology and larger, more functional beds than any competitor. the only truck that can compare to a silverado is another silverado. truck month is the right time to get behind the wheel of the chevy silverado. now, get 0% financing for 72 months plus $500 dollars cash allowance on all silverado 1500 crew cab pickups. find new roads at your local chevy dealer. the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps. the business of hard work... ...hustle... ...and high fives. modernized comfort inn's and suites have been refreshed because our business is you. get the lowest price guaranteed on all choice hotels when you book direct at choicehotels.com. hyour shoe's untied.. ♪ ensure he's well taken care of, even as you build your own plans for retirement. see how lincoln can help. get 'em while they're hot. applebee's 25 cent boneless wings are back in your choice of three sauces. applebee's 25 cent boneless wings where you can find games, news and highlights. all in one place, right on your tv. the new xfinity sports zone. use your voice to search every stat and score. follow the teams you love. and get notifications when the game's about to start, with the xfinity sports zone, everybody wins. now that's simple, easy, awesome. say "xfinity sports zone" into your voice remote today. you're telling me about these people, because i know knog about these people. >> i don't know anything about david duke or what you're talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. >> i know nothing about wikileaks. i don't know anything about it. you say we did it. i don't know anything about it. >> it's fascinating now little donald trump claims to know when it comes to things like retweeting anti-immigrant hate videos or his own administration's dismantling of the nsc's pandemic unit. >> every one of those "i don't know anything about" comments are all disproven by video, which shows that he does know about david duke. he does no about the klan. >> and he did dismantle the pandemic unit. "the washington post" is out with new reporting on the administration's struggle to mitigate the coronavirus outbreak. a response marred by infighting and blame shifting and missteps and a slow recognition of danger. the report describes warring factions which have wrestled for control internally and for approval from a president who has been preoccupied with the beating his image is taking. joining us now is one of the co-authors of that piece, white house reporter for "the washington post" and an msnbc contributor, ashley parker. she joins us by phone, part of social distancing for a lot of reasons. ashley, what we've been seeing in a lot of the reporting is that jared kushner is being brought in to help coordinate some of this. what is his expertise, and what do you know about the infighting in the white house that perhaps could be leading to misinformation? >> sure. so jared kushner, he was actually asked by vice president pence's chief of staff to help because they needed to focus the full resources of the white house on this issue because it's worth noting jared kushner has absolutely zero expertise in infectious disease and very little experience in marshalling the full force of the federal bureaucracy behind the cause. so he came in, even some of the people who were often critics of him, did give him some credit and say he cold called a lot of these ceos. he was the reason they were able to arrange that rose garden press conference. but there's also a lot of frustrations. what they rolled out on friday was half baked. it wasn't ready. that google website they boasted about, google said it's not going to be ready -- it's just in testing. they're only doing sort of a trial run in the bay area. when you heard them talk about it at the press conference, it sounded like they had ready to go google maps pandemic. that was another challenge. they said there would be testing places all over, but a lot of these companies, these walmarts and local officials, they saw that they don't really have the direction of when or where or how exactly this is going to work. so there are some steps forward, but they are halting and stutter steps. and part of that is because the white house is incredibly behind on the testing. they are scrambling to -- from those earlier missteps and you have all of these power centers. hhs and cdc. you have one outgoing acting chief of staff, one incoming chief of staff, you have jared kushner. you have larry kudlow, mnuchin negotiating on the hill and the people we talked to said it reminded them of the early days of this administration where people are appearing in the oval office, a half dozen or more sort of competing in front of the president, performing, as it were, and he's making a decision based on a gut or a whim or his news. >> wow. okay. really appreciate it. "the washington post's" ashley parker. thank you very much. we'll be looking at your reporting. joining us now, former white house director of communications, founder of investment firm skybridge, anthony scaramucci. >> we can talk about what's going on inside the white house. you know a lot of the players in there right now. let's talk about what's happening on wall street. obviously, the president got what he finally wanted from the fed which is reducing the interest rates about as low as you can reduce them. and yet we still have a run. australia last night lost about 10% of their market value. asia also routed. europe routed. and it looks like that's going to be happening to the united states markets as well. wall street set up for a very grim open. why do you think the fed cut the dramatic fed action yesterday is having no impact on the markets this morning? >> i think, joe, good morning, but i think the fed has had a major impact on the markets. this would be way worse if they didn't make that dramatic sunday night cut, and why is that? because you literally have set a pause button on the global economy for 3 to 6 months. and as you know, many people in the united states and globally are living paycheck to paycheck or if you're in a small business, you're living revenue day to revenue day, and a result of which, when you step back and analyze the economy. forget about the market for a second, there are many businesses and many families that won't be able to sustain that. the next thing that the market knows and people are starting to figure this out now is that donald trump is the buyers. at the end of the day he's affected and replicated through the executive branch, and he's destroyed the crisis management elements of the executive branch that we need right now. not only here in the united states but globally. so the real tragedy of all of this, if the federal reserve can only do so much to help the markets, you're going to need fiscal stimulus here and literally handing out free money to people to help them afford their rent, help them pay their waiters and waitresses in their closed restaurants. and again, it's a national strategy born from one person but you have remember to, the president's staff is afraid of him. and so they don't like dealing with them and they're trying to make something that's very insane, which is president trump, sound sane. and so this is the danger that we're dealing with right now. but the market does know, joe, that donald trump is actually the virus and he's replicated throughout the executive branch, and as more or less decapitated their ability to handle this crisis. >> you've become obviously a very sharp critic of the president. but you were his communications director. if you were in that role now, what would you be advising this west wing on communications strategy, the crisis is here, the virus is here. how would you counsel them to communicating -- not just the markets but to the american people. >> it's very simple. the first thing is have a group intervention with the president and explain to him what he is doing in terms of telling people we've got it under control and this litany of 18 or 20,000 lies at this point. they've got to isolate him. he almost needs to go into a verbal communication quarantine to help out the rest of the nation. second step you have to do is listen to dr. fauci. we likely need a 14 to 21-day quarantine of all nonessential services in the united states. if you listen to any of the people that really understand this problem, directionally, we'll probably save the excess capacity issues we're going to have in the hospital. so, to me, step one, quarantine the president. get him off of twitter. get him away from a television camera and then, step two, bring people in like dr. fauci to explain what's going on and take immediate and aggressive action here. you have to overcompensate for the mistakes that have been made, but we need to do it immediately. >> do you think pence will run, given his forward looking voice? do you think he's going to run afoul with donald trump? >> i think that's the big problem. they all know that the president is the only star in the donald trump musical. the spotlight is only on one person. when anybody else takes that spotlight and vice president pence is doing a very good job, in terms of communicating, working super hard. the president won't like that. he did that to rex tillerson. somebody like rex tillerson's prestige, president trump's self-hatred would force him to throw someone in the volcano. mike pence could end up in the president's volcano as well. >> anthony scaramuccscaramucci, for being on. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage now. it's monday, march 16th. and there's a lot happening this morning. daily life in america is grinding to a halt as local officials, schools and businesses pull every lever they can to slow the spread of the coronavirus. as of this morning, there are more than 3,500 cases across the country. that is double what it was on friday. at least 67 people have died and cases have now been reported in nearly every state, even alaska. the cdc is urging people to cancel any event that would include more than 50 people for the next eight weeks. that includes church services, weddings, conferences, any big group event. it's on there. restaurants, bars and movie theaters have also been ordered to be closed in several parts of the united states. in public schools, and at least 33 states, have been shut down. impacting more than 32 million students. some officials suggesting they might not go back to school this academic year. even with all of this
i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room". we're following two breaking stories right now. the justice department civil rights investigation ordered after the police shooting of michael brown finds that the ferguson, missouri police department and knewmu nais pal court practiced in discrimination against african-american ss. investigators also found out racist jokes circulated by police and court officials. we're also following a bitter war of words between allies. president obama firing back after israel's prime minister delivers a blistering attack on a proposed nuclear deal with iran. netanyahu warning congress that if the deal is pursued it will pave iran faster to getting nuclear weapons. the president launched his own blistering attack saying the israeli leader is offering nothing new and no viable alternatives for preventing an iranian bomb. ed royce is standing by live with our correspondent, analysts and our guests. let's goo to the white house, our correspondent michelle kosinski with the very latest. >> so in this impassioned speech that drew thunderous applause from the congress benjamin netanyahu first lay lays out that america is great, iran is back, calling it a dark and murderous regime. then he rips to shreds this still being worked out nuclear deal with iran. the problem is this administration says his logic doesn't work. he still has presented no viable alternative. >> thank you, america. thank you for everything you've done for israel. >> before this very eager u.s. congress, prime minister benjamin netanyahu proceeded to absolutely blast the prospect of a nuclear deal with iran that he called the enemy. >> that deal will not prevent iran from developing nuclear weapon s weapons. that's why this deal is so bad. it doesn't block iran's path to the bomb. it paves iran's path to the bomb. >> what he objects to in this deal being worked out by the u.s. and its allies with the end of the month deadline it would not require iran that demolish any nuclear facilities, thousands of setrycentrifuges, allow a year of breakout time would possibly only have a ten-year time frame and netanyahu says more inspections of facilities would only be able to document iran's potential progress towards a weapon but wouldn't be able to stop it. >> the world should demand that iran do three things. first, stop its aggression against its neighbors in the middle east. second, stop supporting terrorism around the world. and third, stop threatening to annihilate my country, israel the one and only jewish state. >> well eshgs got a huge reception here. the white house, not impressed. president obama didn't even watch the speech but he did use nearly 15 minutes responding to it. >> the prime minister didn't offer any viable alternatives. the alternative that he offers is no deal in which case iran will immediately begin once again pursuing its nuclear program, accelerate its nuclear program, without us having any insight into what they're doing. and without constraint. >> in the last few days we've seen administration officials pretty much preempt everything netanyahu said today and make arguments gens it that if you add more demands onto iran trying to have it dismantle its capacity, adding sanctions or making the time frame indefinite would be tantamount to no deal and the u.s. in stark opposition to israel feels that no deal would be way worse than this deal. that said though the president has already said that it is likelier than not at this point that iran will reject this deal as it stands. >> no doubt. they're furious at the prime minister at the white house. official, thank you. the israeli prime minister received numerous standing ovations from congress, but his speech was boycotted by dozens of democrats. for the impact of the fallout, let's go to dana bash. dana, how did it go p? >> reporter: well, you saw in michelle's piece the overwhelming ovations that the prime minister got to a lot of lines in his speech. remember, this is a republican majority on both sides so most of those people with the rousing applause were republicans. even democrats who did go many of them went to be polite and were not happy with what they heard. look at nancy pelosi. she was openly agitated and annoyed at what she heard. and afterwards she said in a statement that she was nearly in tears because of the lecture that she believed that the prime minister gave the u.s. listen to what she told reporters. >> i was near tears because i love israel very much. i value the importance of the relationship between the united states and israel. the united states of america has as one of its pillars of its national security and foreign policy to stop proetliferation of weapon fz mass destruction. that's what we do and what the president is doing in negotiations. and if the deal isn't good enough, we won't accept it. i don't think we needed any lectures on that. >> reporter: she was speaking for a lot of democrats. basically say, who does the prime minister think he is coming into our house and giving us a lecture about nuclear capabilities and dealing with iran? on the flip side a lot of republicans here were thanking their lucky stars that he gave that speech because they are very concerned, and they say it very clearly that the white house is looking for a deal for a legacy issue for the president, for politics and they're worried that they are going to give in too much in a way that the prime minister laid out today that could hurt not just israel its neighbor but even as far as the united states. wolf? >> as you say, nancy pelosi called the speech an insult to the intelligence of the united states. powerful words from her. quickly dana i understand after all the storm of last week, the fury republicans folded on their attempt to hold up fupding of the homeland security unless it was linked to immigration reform. it finally passed. tell us what happened. >> republicans ran out of cards to play. it's just as simple as that. republican leaders saw this coming last week which is why they tried to end it. but they needed to -- conservatives in their caucus blew that up on the floor and it was very clear even to them that this is the end of the road. democrats were not going to negotiate on giving it all to try to stop the president's immigration plan. so they were able to get this through the house and in sort of a symbolic move even the house speaker who isn't required to vote really traditionally doesn't vote went to the house floor and voted for this to make it very clear that he believes this is the right thing to do fund homeland security and move on to the next fight chshgswhich is just around the corner. >> it's funded through the end of september, right? >> right. with the new spending bill which means new priorities new programs, the exact kind of things that the department's secretary has been asking congress on for a very long time to help keep americans safe. >> boehner doesn't have to worry about any immediate rebellion from some of his toe party supporters? >> not immediate. but he certainly was embarrassed on friday, and there absolutely were discussed going on about how and whether this group of conservatives could hurt him more than just embarrassing him. actually try to take him down. they don't have the votes to do that so they pulled back decided to let this go. they'll see how things play out and wait to see if other more broad coalition of republicans get as annoyed with the speaker and his leadership. then they feel they may have a chance to get him out. but right now they just don't. >> in the meantime funding has been approved for the rest of this fiscal year. dana, thanks very much. bringing in right now the chairman of the house foreign affairs committee, ed royce of california. congressman thanks for joining us. do you think speaker has to worry about the tenure? maybe 50 republicans are not very happy with this. >> but in the meantime the thing to look at is in the courts, the republican position is winning. in the courts the president's executive order has been challenged and a federal judge has sided with the position that he's overextended. so i think from that standpoint funding the homeland security department and moving on we fully understand why the speaker has taken that position. >> let's talk about the prime minister's speech. you were there. you applauded, stood up. you liked what you heard clearly from the prime minister. the white house said he offered nothing new or no alternative to what secretary kerry is trying to achieve in geneva. >> look from the standpoint of the prime minister of israel, he views this a little differently probably than the president of the united states. for him, it's an issue of the survival of israel because israel right now has 100,000 missiles on its border that iran put there in the hands of hezbollah. >> 100,000? >> 100,000. >> rockets? >> no. i mean missiles and rockets. >> are we talking about gaza? >> this is in lebanon. you have an additional inventory in gaza. so these missiles and rockets have flooded in there. these are the intelligence estimates. so in this kind of a situation, you can imagine if you're an israeli looking at the duplicity that iran has been involved in in the past it's been in the dna over there in terms of their violation of other agreements, you're saying, where's the verification in this agreement? and the iaea is backing this up. >> international atomic energy agency. >> exactly. they've asked 12 questions, and only part of 1 of those have been answered in terms of the thousands of -- thousands of pages of documents about they have about the development of a bomb. >> did he offer an alternative to what the president is trying to achieve? >> as i understand the alternative it's what i and elliot rankle, the ranking member on my committee tried to do in the last session. we offered up a bill that would really lead to no other option except for iran to either negotiate on this agreement or face an implosion of their economy. because our sanctions bill which passed 400-20 which was bipartisan, was held over in the senate because the president of the united states said no do not allow it. >> white house officials said you wouldn't get the support of the europeans, russians, chinese to enforce those kind of tougher sanctions. >> the reality is that because they need access to the international financial system and because of the amount of influence the united states has in that if we say to a country, as we did once to north korea, you cannot be part of the international financial system we will not participate in that, you can impose those type fz sanctions. now, it's uncomfortable on people, but when you're talking about a country that's developing a nuclear bomb you know, there you have a case for where you have to use this. >> in the case of north korea, didn't prevent them from getting a bomb. >> because the state department stepped in and lifted the sanctions. that's what was so frustrating to the treasury department who put them in place. it was treasury who helped us develop stuart levy helped develop this concept. this is what should have been done. this is the alternative. and the president blocked it. it's unfortunate. >> i want you to stand by. we have more to talk about, including nancy pelosi calling netanyahu's speech an insult to the united states kond session toward u.s. knowledge of what's going on. much more with the chairman ever the house foreign affairs committee when we come back. what the cloud enables is computing to empower cancer researchers. it used to take two weeks to sequence and analyze a genome; with the microsoft cloud we can analyze 100 per day. whatever i can do to help compute a cure for cancer, that's what i'd like to do. meet the world's newest energy superpower. surprised? in fact, america is now the world's number one natural gas producer... and we could soon become number one in oil. because hydraulic fracturing technology is safely recovering lots more oil and natural gas. supporting millions of new jobs. billions in tax revenue... and a new century of american energy security. the new energy superpower? it's red, white and blue. log on to learn more. condescension. while attention is focused on the deal with iran and netanyahu's efforts to stop it iran's influence is growing in iraq. ed royce is standing by. let's go to our pentagon correspondent barbara starr. she has more on this part of the story. >> wolf this is now a case of eunian-backed shia group working to try and take back a sunni town from isis control and another move that the u.s. is watching of iran indeed exerting its influence. a dramatic effort to stop a suicide bomber near tikrit part of what iraqi forces here are battling in an effort to take back the city. the u.s. is on the sidelines. iraqi prime minister abawdy di did not ask americans for help but front and center iran. >> they have a big interest in the outcome of things in iraq. they very much consistently wanted a shia friendly government that they can influence in baghdad. >> the iranian news agency reporting, the commander of iran's elite, is in iraq overseeing the tikrit operation. iran providing weapons to fight isis. raising questions, if the u.s. is countering tehran's growing influence inside or out. >> absolute knowledge of what their intent is is not always there, but yearclearly we have good intelligence services and good overhead imagery and those type fz things. so the activity in tikrit was no surprise. >> but what does worry the u.s. wolf, is, if those iraqi forces backed by iran the shia forces go into tikrit really heavy in a very violent manner and alienate the unison sunnis in the town it may be difficult to break that sunni link with isis and that is going to cause huge problems in trying to defeat isis across iraq. it is something that has seriously caught the pentagon's attention. >> deeply concerning development. barbara thank you. we're back with the chairman ed royce of california. how involved is iran in iraq right now? >> well obviously with the quds forces on the ground in iraq and especially with the general in charge of quds forces who in the past was found to be involved in the effort to carry out an assassination attempt against the ambassador from saudi arabia to the united states. >> here in washington. >> here in washington. >> you're sure na sewell lammany directly ordered that assassination attempt? >> i'm sure he as general of quds forces would have some knowledge of the activities that quds forces have been involved in. this is not one isolated case. look at the quds' force involvement in syria, in yemen, look at their involvement in lebanon with hezbollah. this is a very dangerous development to have iran continue to spread its influence, especially with the recent overthrow of the government in yemen, which was an ally of the united states and is now -- >> correct me if i'm wrong, do you still want this proposed authorization for the -- use of military force not only to be authorized to go against isis but also potentially against iran? >> no, i do not think that we would be able to wolf get legislation through. >> you don't think you have the support in congress? >> we wouldn't bl able to do that and i don't know if it's beneficial to our end goal in terms of getting a bipartisan initiative behind the effort to push back isis. but there is no doubt that this problem of iran's undermining governments around the region and continuing to take control of various territories is a very problematic thing. so you really have the islamists running the caliphate in isis and then you have this other group of islamists with the islamic revolution in iran. they are competing against each other, but, on the other hand they both have very hostile designs, as they say, against the little satan, iz leelsraelisrael, and the great satan, the united states. >> let me wrap up with nancy pelosi. she angrily reacted to netanyahu's speech. she said in a statement it was an insult to the intelligence of the united states. she also called it condescension toward our knowledge of the threat posed by iran. your reaction to nancy pelosi, the leader of the democrats, minority leader in the house about netten hughes's speech. >> my thought on all of this has been that, rather than to ruffle feathers here we should be focused on the issue of iran's attempt to obtain a nuclear weapon. and an honest discussion about that subject was frankly advanced by hearing from the prime minister of israel. without his being here i'm not sure the american public would understand all much the ramifications of iran's efforts or the fact that this agreement will expire after ten years. and at that point, we are going to treat iran as though it's benevolence and it will be on the cusp of having the capability of breaking out with maybe 160,000 centrifuges? that is what the ayatollah has called for. i mean, at that point he could take those icbms, not part of the agreement which they are developing and he would have the capability of putting atomic warheads on those icbms. and this is the very real question of why we want stronger leverage on iran in this negotiation in order to get a verifiedy ediable agreement. >> ed royce, thank you very much. up next, we're breaking news. a scathing new report finds a practice of discrimination in ferguson, missouri. we have racist jokes cops were sending each other allegedly and the newly released audio of the man who would become known as the terrorist jihadi john. a lot of news we're following right here in "the situation room." when it comes to good nutrition...i'm no expert. that would be my daughter -- hi dad. she's a dietitian. and back when i wasn't eating right, she got me drinking boost. it's got a great taste and it helps give me the nutrition i was missing. helping me stay more like me. 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i moved our old security system out here to see if it could monitor the front yard. why don't you switch to xfinity home? i get live video monitoring and 24/7 professional monitoring that i can arm and disarm from anywhere. hear ye! the awkward teenage one has arrived!!!! don't be old fashioned. xfinity customers add xfinity home for $29.95 a month for 12 months. plus for a limited time, get a free security camera call 1800 xfinity or visit comcast.com/xfinityhome. >> breaking today a scathing new report from the u.s. justice department regarding the ferguson, missouri police department and city court for a practice of discrimination against african-americans. let's bring in evan perez with the details. evan, you broke the story earlier. tell us what happened. >> well, wolf this is as you said a scathing report against the ferguson police department and the city's municipal court system. the justice department says it found some really striking statistics when it went into the books of the city of ferguson. i'll give you a couple of them. 85% of vehicles stopped were of african-americans, 93% of arrests made by the police department were of african-americans during the time the justice department studied. and 88% of the times that the ferguson police department used force to make an arrest it was against african-americans. wolf, this is a report that basically underscores what we heard from people on the streets in ferguson who were very upset because they said that this is a department that did not respect them, did not protect them. and obviously this all came about because of the shooting of michael brown by a police officer from the ferguson police department. >> they also uncovered some racist e-mails. tell us about that. >> well yes. they found some e-mails being traded by officials at the police department and the court system. i'll just read one of them to you wolf in which someone sent an e-mail saying that president obama wouldn't be president very likely for very long because, quote, what black man holds a steady job for years? this is again, part of the pattern and practice the justice department found. we expect they'll make a formal announcement tomorrow as well as an announcement that darrin wilson, the officer who shot and killed michael brown, will not be charged with federal civil rights charges. >> evan, stand by. i want to get more insight. joining us our cnn legal analyst geoffrey jeffrey toobin john fuentes and cornell brooks. don lemon is joining us also. he's been on this story, of course, since last summer. cornell, your reaction to what the justice department has concluded. does it go from your perspective far enough? >> it goes quite far. i mean what we have here is, as expected, a wholescale indictment of the ferguson police department. the ferguson police department according to this report comes off as a full-service department of bias. in other words, from traffic citations to municipal fines to arrests arrests without probable cause the use of excessive force. the question might be asked, in what manner did the ferguson police department interact with the african-american citizens that did not show bias and bigotry? >> jeffrey, what happens next from a legal perspective? >> the justice department will announce their findings officially tomorrow. then the question becomes, do ne they file a lawsuit against the city of ferguson to have a judge impose changes, or do they negotiate with ferguson and reach what's known as a consent decree? that's what usually happens in these cases where ferguson agrees to clean up its act, changing its training practices, perhaps leadership. then the justice department monitors to see whether the changes actually stick. >> how do you stop tom, this kind of alleged racist behavior in a police department and a municipal court? >> first, you fire the people who are responsible if not even prosecute them especially if you're talking about the municipal court official whoz were putting people in jail because they weren't paying traffic fines. that kind of issue that just should not be tolerated. as far as the officers the officers have to be defendable in a future action. if something happens they're involved in a shooting or other violent action and someone brings a lawsuit, they can't have this kind of material that comes up that the city and the city's insurance company and law firms cannot defend against which proves racist intent on their part. they can't tolerate it. they have to take action against those who did it. >> don you spent a lot of time in ferguson as all of our viewers remember. what will be the impact -- i assume they're trying to improve the relationship between the local police department and the community. >> they are, but who knows if it will work. listen, i know you guys are characterizing it as racist. it is racist. but beyond that i think this is more serious. the people who took oaths to uphold the law have broken the law. it says this review concludes that racial bias and a focus on generating revenue over public safety have a profound effect on ferguson police and court practices andrew teenly violate the constitution and federal law. it's saying the police department broke the law. this is serious. in every instance in this report you see 85% to 90% of people who were most likely to have issues against them african-american people in lockup for more than two days african-american people stopped for summons or other things african-american. the numbers -- as bill clinton said during the last democratic convention, do the math. this report does the math. everything else is subjective that we've been hearing, this person is discriminating against me this person is doing that. this report shows numbers and the numbers don't lie. i'm so glad that jeffrey toobin earlier brought up the fact that they were closing budget gaps off the backs of poor and minority people. >> cornell what needs to be done, speaking more broadly, in order to make sure these fences can be mended, if you will that there's a better relationship -- i think one ever the problems is there's only a tiny number of african-americans in that police force in ferguson. i think originally when the story broke there may have been 60 police officers 2 maybe african-american, even though the majority of the community is african-american. >> wolf enhanced community relations have to be predicated on reform. relationships have to be built on reform. the ferguson police department has to be rebuilt from the bottom up. i mean don is absolutely right. we have evidence that the police department has broken federal laws. they've violated the constitution in every conceivable manner in terms of their relationships with the african-american community. but i believe beyond that we know in the state of missouri that the ferguson police department is not the only such police department not the only such city government that depends on municipal funds. so the governor the legislature of the state of missouri has to go well beyond the ferguson police department to look at this problem more broadly as a matter of state law and state reform. >> what's going to happen, evan to the ferguson police chief? >> well, wolf he had an agreement with officials involved down there to resign. this is some months ago. and according to him, what he's told people down there, after we reported that agreement he decided that he was going to change his mind and stick around because he wanted to see the end of this process. and now we have the end of this process. the justice department eric holder, the attorney general, has called for regime change in that police department. this report by the justice department really portrays a department that's rotten to the core. so the question is is this the time that he finally decides he can go? >> jeffrey, the concern is it's not just ferguson. it's all over the place. >> and just to add to what don said, one of the big civil rights issues of the next ten years is this business of municipalities who need money who don't want to raise taxes who are arresting people for minor offenses, often minorities and saying, you've got to pay $100 $200 or we're going to lock you up. this is a revenue generating technique for cities across the country, not just missouri. and it falls heavily on african-americans, a major issue and the justice department should be looking into it not just in ferguson but all over the country. >> i know it's a huge problem. guys, thank you very much. cornell, thanks to you especially i know you'll be in selma this weekend for the historic events. we'll check back with you next week and get your report on how it all went down. hard to believe that after all of these years stuff like this is still going on in the united states. please be sure to join don tonight 10:00 p.m. eastern. he'll have a lot more on this story. coming up what newly released tapes reveal about the radicalization of the man we now know as a terrorist, jihadi john. and as a prominent russian dissenter is raised to rest the model his girlfriend and witness to his killing, has now left the country. and an early morning mode. and a partly sunny mode. and an outside...to clear inside mode. transitions ® signature ™ adaptive lenses... ...now have chromea7 ™ technology... ...making them more responsive than ever to changing light. so life can look more vivid & vibrant. why settle for a lens with just one mode? 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>> this audiotape is stardtling because you hear a different sounding voice complaining about being threatened and harassed. tonight we have new insights into how the man who would become isis' best-known killer dealt with interrogator. analysts believe in the beheading videos isis appears to have digitally manipulated jihadi john's voice. in the isis beheading videos the militant known as jihadi john has a deep menacing voice. >> obama, you have started this. it's only right we continue to strike the necks of your people. >> reporter: but is this the same man? >> what do you think of the jews? what do you think of their religion? look, they're a religion. >> reporter: an audio recording of the man we believe is 26-year-old mohammed emwazi was just released by an activist group for suspected radicals which claims it worked with emwazi. cnn cannot independently verify the audio sefrmt t excerpts. the guardian newspaper believe emwazi is this man. cage said they recorded him in 2009 talking about being interrogating by britain's domestic intelligence service. emwazi said he was asked about the deadly 2005 terror attack in london where more than 50 people died? >> he goes what do you think of 7/7? i said man, what innocent people have died, man what do you think? this is xremextremism. okay, what do you think of the war in afghanistan? what do i think? innocent people are being killed. he said, what did you think of 9/11? i said this is a wrong thing. >> do you really believe he thought that was wrong or did he say what he wanted the interrogators to hear? >> if you'd be the stupidest radical alive to admit to having extremist views to a law enforcement official. he wanted to get out of that situation. >> reporter: emwazi claims his interrogator thought he was trying to go to somalia to train with a terror group. >> trying to put words in my mouth saying no you're doing this this this and this, we're keeping a close eye on you. >> cage says it was those interrogations that sent emwazi on the path to jihad. >> i think cage is trying to make a point and attack the british government when it's really up to mr. embazi who made his decisions to go to syria. >> on the allegations from emwazi and cage that british intelligence threatened emwazi in that interrogation and harassed him the british home office told us it would not comment. u.s. intelligence officials also are not commenting on this audiotape. >> now there are reports about how his parents are responding? >> that's right. british media sites are reporting the kuwaiti government claiming that emwazi's mother recognized her son's voice from the first beheading video. the daily telegraph said his father denounces his son as a, quote, dog, animal and terrorist. the father says according to the newspaper says the son begged his parent for forgiveness before he joined isis. a lot of us are talking about this guy. that family has been thrown into complete turmoil. >> thanks very much brian. coming up we'll hear much more on the extraordinary war of words here in washington as president obama fires back at the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu. up next we go to moscow for the latest on the unsolved murder of a prominent critic of vladimir putin. the real question that needs to be asked is "what is it that we can do that is impactful?" what the cloud enables is computing to empower cancer researchers. it used to take two weeks to sequence and analyze a genome; with the microsoft cloud we can analyze 100 per day. whatever i can do to help compute a cure for cancer, that's what i'd like to do. shopping online is as easy as it gets. wouldn't it be great if hiring plumbers, carpenters and even piano tuners were just as simple? 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>> reporter: wolf thanks very much. absolutely staggering scenes we've been seeing in moscow as thousands of people turn out for the funeral of boris nemstov, there was a memorial service, the actual burial as well. we haven't seen opposition protests or crowds sympathetic to in this country turn out for years. so truly astonishing: slained critic boris nemtsov carried to his final resting place. earlier, family and friends gathered to pay their respects. an opposition figure who worked closely with nemtsov says that he believes he was killed out of revenge for his views. >> it's clearly a very sad day for russians. it's a very sad day for boris' family. and i'm personally extremely saddened by what has happened. i knew him in the 1990s. i admired him and i hope an investigation will determine who is responsible for this outrage. >> do you believe the killers will be brought to justice? >> i hope so. >> reporter: the 23-year-old model girlfriend of nemtsov was crossing the bridge with him when he was gunned down. she's fled russia to her ukrainian home. the kremlin denies any involvement in the killing. the investigation proceeds with divers searching the waters beneath the bridge for the murder weapon. investigators say all scenarios are being considered and that quote, eyewitnesss are being questioned. cctv footage is already being analyzed. evidence has been collected. a number of tests were carried out. meanwhile, at the scene of the crime, now lies a bank of flowers and mementoes in the honor of a life and voice lost. as that investigation continues, wolf the kremlin is vowing to get to the bottom of the crime and bring those responsible to just justice. russia has a patchy record of solving these political killings and there's widespread criticism that the perpetrators of this assassination are going to be brought to justice here. >> and the russians have allowed the girlfriend to flee? she's in kiev? >> yes. she's in the russian capital. she's been kept at close guard while in moscow while police investigated and questioned her further. she gave an interview to a local television station by skype within the past 24 hours basically saying she didn't see that much. boris was shot in the back. she couldn't see the killer or describe the vehicle that was the getaway car. the police have decided to let her go and she's gone back to her own country. >> she's back in kiev. matthew chance reporting from moscow thank you. coming up a proposed iran nuclear deal. president obama accuses him of offering something new and labeling it all theater. and use of force, jail sentences, racist e-mails, the u.s. justice department finds repeated discriminations against african-americans by the ferguson missouri police department and municipal court. so...you're sayin' you'll give me my credit score for free... right! now you're gonna ask for my credit card - - so you can charge me on the down low two weeks later look, credit karma - are you talking to websites again? this website says 'free credit scores'. oh. credit karma! yeah, it's really free. look, you don't even have to put in your credit card information. what?! credit karma. really free credit scores. really. free. i could talk to you all day. happening now, angry allies. the president isn't even trying to hide his fury after the israel prime minister stood before the congress and blasted the obama administration's attempt to strike a nuclear deal with iran. and will the bitter dispute between the u.s. and israeli leadership help or hurt the negotiations. evidence of racism. the u.s. justice department is about to reveal a bombshell finding against the ferguson missouri police department months after violence clashes in the streets. and e-mail up roar. did hillary clinton break the law or endanger national security by using her private account to e-mail sensitive information while she was serving as secretary of state? we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." we're following major breaking stories tonight. new evidence from the justice department of racial bias by the police in ferguson, missouri the city that reignited the issue of police tactics and violence. cnn has learned details of a federal investigation finding a pattern of racism against african-americans. also breaking president obama is dismissing fierce criticism by the israeli prime minister saying there was nothing new in the speech about the dangers of a nuclear deal with iran. if you thought the relations have sunk to a new low, they are even worse right now. we're covering all of the breaking news with our correspondents and analysts in the united states and around the world. first, let's get the very latest from cnn's global affairs correspondent elise labott. elise? >> it wasn't long before prime minister netanyahu began a blistering critique that has the white house fuming. he made a grand entrance usually reserved for american presidents. and then the israeli prime minister delivered a blistering assault on president obama's iran policy and his attempt to strike a nuclear deal with iran. >> we've been told that no deal is better than a bad deal. well this is a bad deal. it's a very bad deal. we're better off without it. >> reporter: tonight, president obama is firing back. >> prime minister netanyahu has not offered any kind of viable alternative that would achieve the same verifiable mechanism to prevent iran from getting a nuclear weapon. >> reporter: there were a series of standing ovations but some icy glares as netanyahu painted a picture of the regime reaching throughout the middle east with what he calls iran's tentacles of terror. >> iran is busy gobbling up the nation. >> reporter: with secretary of state john kerry meeting with the iran foreign minister to hammer out the very deal he was criticizing, the prime minister called it weak negotiators. >> one, leading iran with a vast nuclear program and, two, lifting the restrictions on that program in about a decade. that's why this deal is so bad. it doesn't block iran's path to the bomb. it paves iran's path to the bomb. >> reporter: netanyahu portrayed the white house as iran working with the u.s. to defeat isis. >> the enemy of your enemy is your enemy. >> reporter: president obama says he has no illusions about the iranian regime but he's focused on the more serious iranian threat. >> it's not whether iran engages in destabilizing activities. everybody agrees with that. the central question is how can we stop them from getting a nuclear weapon? >> and the prime minister warned the deal on the table would spark a nuclear tchlinder box. >> elise, thank you. let's go to our chief national security correspondent jim sciutto. he's joining us live from switzerland and is covering secretary of state john kerry's nuclear negotiations with the iranians. did the prime minister's speech jim, have any impact as far as you can tell on these talks? >> reporter: the short answer is no and you could see that in the blistering schedule and pace of negotiations that continued today. three two-hour long meetings five in the past 24 hours and we took with note, the final meeting today started about a half hour after the prime minister spoke and ended about a half hour later. so if asked if there was any effect or if the secretary of state watched or listened to the speech they said no he was too busy conducting the talks here. that's the singular message that the president has disregarded the prime minister's advice and given his instructions to the secretary of state to continue the negotiations aggressively to try to find a deal. >> where does the deal now stand, jim? >> reporter: hard to tell you, wolf. as for all of the effort they are making today and the iranian foreign minister told us today that there's a seriousness of purpose of reaching an agreement. but when you look at the outstanding issues a couple of them in public hasn't fessed up and they haven't done it. two, iran is a very different schedule of sanctions relief than the u.s. does. they wanted immediately a start of a deal and the u.s. wanted to meet up over time to confirm that iran is continuing to comply and that's before you get to the very difficult array of restrictions that would be put on iran's program limiting the r & d that iran can do on more advanced centrifuges, accounting for the enriched uranium for conversion to fuel that can only be used in research or power react react reactors not for weapons. when you group that all together you look at three weeks to a framework deal that's the deadline. they have their work cut out for them in coming to that agreement. >> she certainly do. jim shut heciutto thank you. the prime minister's speech greatly undermined the relationship between israel and the united states, a direct quote. indicate bolduan is joining us live. three weeks from today, the israelis go to the polls. >> reporter: you're absolutely right and that's something that you need to remember when you talk about what was the reaction here in israel to the prime minister's speech. all of the networks covered it. everyone watched with great interest to hear what the prime minister had to say, especially how it was received. the reaction we saw is split. generally speaking almost everyone said the prime minister gave a good speech in terms of delivery. he's well known for doing just that. but beyond that wolf, that is where the divide is on opinion, especially when it comes to what impact the speech will have on the key issue of the iran nuclear negotiations. listen to this. >> i'm very proud of our prime minister who came and said exactly what we feel. it is a bad deal. >> there is no doubt that prime minister netanyahu knows how to make good speeches. but let's face the truth. the speech we heard earlier this evening, as impressive as it may be did not prevent the iranian nuclear program. it will also have no impact on the agreement that is being formed nor on the schedule. >> reporter: now, that right there there is isaac herzog. you heard a lot of folks talking about they believe that it's maybe not the sole motivation for the speech but it was a large part of that speech being motivated as an attempt to woo voters back here at home to have support for benjamin netanyahu. that's what the commentators are saying that they are looking forward to seeing what the survey for voters is to see where they stand and how the message was received back here in israel. wolf? >> we'll see if he gets a bump in the polls, the prime minister, because going into this speech it was very very close and there was a lot of speculation. he may not get himself re-elected. might get a little bump. they are really concerned, aren't they kate about u.s./israeli relations? they are worried that the prime minister may have hurt that relationship. >> reporter: absolutely. when you look at the headlines in all of the papers you saw the headline coming from the house minority or nancy pelosi and what she said and her reaction to the speech and said it insulted the intelligence of the american people especially the headline coming from president obama and saying that there was nothing new coming out of the prime minister's speech. how this was received in america, not just within the halls of congress because many noted how many standing ovations he received in the house chamber but what damage it does, if any long lasting damage it has on the united states and israel. that's something that you just don't know right now. that's going to be an important question. they are going to hear from israeli voters and israeli voters over the next days wolf. >> thanks very much kate bolduchlbold bolduan in jerusalem. some democrats were visibly disturbed about the fierce criticism of the president's -- nancy pelosi said she was almost in tears and many boycotted the speech altogether. dana bash is getting more reaction. dana? >> reporter: that's right. we've been reporting so much on the fact that so many democrats boycotted the speech from the leader of one of this country's biggest allies but it turns out that the leader of the democratic party in the house that actually went her reaction spoke more volumes than the empty chairs because she was so visibly agitated and annoyed when she was listening to the prime minister you see there, she even looked around at her colleagues like are you kidding me when they stood up to applause. afterwards she said that she was near tears because she felt that he was insulting the intelligence of the american people. and then she spoke to us afterwards. >> these tears are because i love israel very much. i value the importance of the relationship between israel and the united states. the united states of america has, as one of the pillars of its national security and its foreign policy to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. and that's what we do. and that's what the president is doing in the negotiations. and if the deal isn't good enough, we won't accept it. i don't think we needed any lectures on that. >> she's not alone in feeling that way, that the prime minister was out of line, effectively, coming into their house and giving them a lecture. now, on the flip side of course you did see all of those applause because many of those republicans, a lot of those republicans think that he did the right thing. that's why he was invited in the first place, because they think the democratic president is going down the wrong path with these talks and they needed wanted america's closest ally in the middle east to explain why that was so important to do. >> dana the senate majority leader mitch mcconnell made a move to stop this iran deal. what are you hearing? >> reporter: almost immediately after the speech was over, the senate majority went to the senate floor and made clear that he as soon as next week is going to allow a bill to come out, this -- it's a bipartisan bill -- to have congress' imprint on any deal that does go down by the end of the month with iran and the allies. right now congress doesn't really have an official role but this is effectively putting congress in the mix saying that this bill would say that congress would debate it and would either decide to vote it -- to approve it or even potentially to vote it down. there is bipartisan support for this. there is probably going to be a freeze on that legislation until after the deal is done if it does get done at the end of the month, but after that it is possible that the congress could tie the president's hands in a bipartisan way. >> we'll see what happens, dana thank you. let's get more insight. joining us democratic congress man adam smith, the ranking democrat on the house armed services committee. congressman, thanks very much for joining us. we know about 50 of your democratic colleagues decided to boycott the speech. you didn't attend. tell us why you decided not to listen to the prime minister. >> well i listened to him but i decided not to attend because i have back problems and sitting for long periods of time is not good for me. but i sat in a very comfortable chair in my office and watched the speech. so i did watch the speech i just didn't go for health reasons, basically. >> so you didn't want to make a statement, like your colleagues that decided to boycott, you didn't go for other reasons. what is your reaction? >> the most important thing is the strong relationship between the u.s. and israel. and both the speakers, unfathomable decision to invite netanyahu here without telling the president is clearly a partisan move all of that gets into the fact that we have a very strong relationship between america and israel that we need to fight to protect. i think the prime minister mr. netanyahu, is wrong about several of the key aspects and what is being negotiated but we'll know that once the deal gets there. i mean if the deal gets there, as president obama has pointed out, iran's hard liners are very reluctant to cut any deal with us and it's quite likely that iran will walk away from the table. so i think the prime minister prejudged what is in the agreement and we all need to wait and see and then we can decide whether or not it's a good agreement. >> where do you specifically disagree with the prime minister? >> well specifically when he says that all sanctions will be lifted from iran well it's not true. we have sanctions on iran for a virt variety of reasons, but also as a state sponsor of terror and for a variety of other actions that they have taken. those sanctions are not going to be lifted. we are not in any way offering to lift all sanctions on iran now or ten years from now. so to say that well gosh if we do this we lift all sanctions, we lose our leverage that is just flat wrong. second i don't think anyone has decided that after ten years everything is fine. we don't know what the timeline is for this agreement but we will continue after that timeline expires to insist on inspectors. there's key facts that he's not correct on at this point. and like i said let's wait and see what the agreement is and if it's a bad greemagreement, i'll be the first to object it. >> we'll see if there is an agreement at all. even if there's an agreement accepted there, the ayatollah may decide he doesn't like it and it ends it right there. congressman, stand by. we're going to continue the breaking news coverage right after this. most of the products we all buy are transported on container ships. before a truck delivers it to your store, a container ship delivered it to that truck. here in san diego, we're building the first one ever to run on natural gas. ships this big running this clean will be much better for the environment. we're proud to be a part of that. your eyes depend on a unique set of nutrients. that's why there's ocuvite. ocuvite helps replenish key eye nutrients. ocuvite has a unique formula that's just not found in any leading multivitamin. help protect your eye health with ocuvite. we're back with democratic congressman adam smith and we're talking about the breaking news president obama firing back at the israeli prime minister after prime minister netanyahu blasted the administration's efforts to strike a nuclear deal with iran. based on everything you know congressman, you're the ranking member of the armed services committee, can the u.s. really trust iran to implement this kind of a deal? >> well look we cannot trust iran. that's obvious and that's clear. there has to be inspectors there has to be -- in the words of ronald reagan trust but verify and that can check and make sure that they are complying with the agreement. absolutely. there's no way we should trust iran on this. the other interesting thing is what's plan b? we walk away from negotiations. i agree with prime minister netanyahu. the best choice would be to discontinue the program and if they want to have a peaceful nuclear power, have their uranium enriched by another country and shipped to them. that would be the best choice. iran refuses to do that. so then the question is do we simply walk away from the negotiations and if we walk away from the negotiations what do our partners do? what does russia and china and europe do? did they stick to the sanctions regime with iran or does it begin to unravel and what does iran do? if iran knows there's no way out from under the sanctions, isn't that an incentive to just go ahead and build the bomb if they've got nothing to lose? i think this is a difficult situation and if we can get an agreement that limits iran's nuclear program to the point where we can be confident they will not develop a weapon it may not be perfect but i think that is certainly something we should pursue. and again, we'll see what the actual text of the agreement is. but that goal i think, is worth pursing. >> if there is an agreement. that's a key if as we all know. nancy pelosi issued a very tough statement saying that the netanyahu speech in her words, was an insult to the intelligence of the united states. she said she was saddened by the condensention used towards the u.s. >> i wouldn't use those words. we have a strong relationship between israel and the united states and netanyahu basically said we're negotiating like a bunch of idiots and, yeah that's a tough blow to take. this is an existential threat to israel. benjamin netanyahu has every reason to be concerned. again, i disagree with them and i don't believe the united states would negotiate a bad deal and accept a bad deal and we're prejudging it all. let's see what the deal is and determine whether or not it makes sense. the hope that somehow iran walks away completely from their nuclear development program on even a peaceful enrichment for energy purposes iran has said that's a nonstarter. if we insist on that, the negotiations breakdown, our partners walk away and, like i said arguably, the sanctions regime breaks down. that undercuts the sanctions regime. >> adam smith is a ranking member of the armed services committee. thank you for joining us. >> thanks wolf. appreciate the chance. >> thank you. just ahead, the infamous nsa may be returning home edward snowden. and we're getting a report about the ferguson missouri police force. we'll find out what federal officials will do with the evidence. why do i cook? 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>> i don't buy this. one of the most prolific likers leakers of our time you're entitled to a jury of your peers. i don't understand why he gets to flee overseas and then talk to the department of justice about what he wants from his trial. come home son, and spend your 30 years in jail. he's cooked. >> what do you think, david ignatius? >> we have plea negotiations all the time between people investigated and this is a plea negotiation. it's been going on informally for a year or so. i think it must be very difficult to be he had kward snowden living in themoscow and i can't help to think that snowden wants out. >> what do you think, mr. speaker? he could spend the rest of his life in moscow. it might be chilly there in the winter but it's presumably better than jail? >> look i think we can find a way to get him home and get the rest of the documents that he has not yet leaked i think it's worth doing. but i think he'll have to face jail time and i think it will be fairly lengthy. >> what do you think? >> i'm not an expert but i think more than ten years. >> more than ten. >> that would be my guess. >> some people say 30 or 40. >> i wouldn't guess about the length and i'm sure the recommendation that the prosecutor is making is going to be part of this bargain. a lot of americans think that snowden did the country a service in these leaks and that's going to be a tough issue for the justice department. >> let's move on and talk about david petraeus. he pled guilty to removing and retaining classified information as part of a plea deal a misdemeanor, if you will. they are going to recommend no jail time for him, i think a $40,000 fine. the classified information included war strategy notes from national security meetings. some are already saying there's a double standard here. one standard for him a four-star general, another for other who is violated classified information. >> i don't buy that for a heartbeat. look find me something that the general told people that reached the public domain and damaged national security. this is not the story of a leak or a trial. this is the story of an american tragedy. he's a legendary general, he designed counter insurgency policy for iraq. i think the penalty matches the crime. we should see redemption in this case. this guy is an american hero and made a tragic mistake. >> he acknowledges the information was violated now with his girlfriend. what do you think, mr. speaker? >> listen i don't know all what he did but i think it sets a bad precedence. >> what sets a bad precedence? >> only having this kind of a fine. you look at what libby went through, what we did to a lot of other people. again, on the other hand general petraeus has dedicated his entire life to the country and has done a remarkable job 365 days a year for a long time. >> so one standard david, for war heroes and another for lesser officials? is that what i'm hearing here? >> you can't have a double standard. the leverage that general petraeus had in this negotiation through his lawyers is that bringing him to trial, bringing him before a jury would have been a nightmare for the prosecution. you almost were certain to lose. i think the a the end of the day they got him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. the fact he had to be in some way accused of the like. >> mr. speaker, the president says he heard nothing new in prime minister netanyahu's speech today, just a rehash of something that he said before. >> well, that could be true. the president's ability to ignore information is amazing. what he should have heard was a very sobering end to the speech where prime minister netanyahu said people need to understand if necessary, israel will go alone. i think the prime minister came here because he generally believes israel's very survival is at stake. he has enormous fear of the iranians and believes this administration is about to cut a very bad deal. his first goal is to defeat it in the congress but his second goal, i suspect, is to take steps to defeat -- >> i heard that david. at the very end of the speech sort of vailed threat. i heard that same sort of veiled threat that israel would use military force. >> i heard that too. i think after the speech the obama administration and netanyahu are on a collision course even more than before. i wrote today that this is a zero sum game. either one wins or another wins. that's not a good situation. >> thanks guys very very much. more breaking news ahead. a damning report on the ferguson police department. systematic discrimination against african-americans and we're also learning disturbing details from our own sources. if you have moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis like me and you're talking to your rheumatologist about a biologic... this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain and protect my joints from further damage. this is humira giving me new perspective. doctors have been prescribing humira for ten years. humira works for many adults. it targets and helps to block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers including lymphoma have happened, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. talk to your doctor and visit humira.com this is humira at work if a denture were to be put under a microscope we can see all the bacteria that still exists. polident's unique micro clean formula works in just 3 minutes, killing 99.99% of odor causing bacteria. for a cleaner, fresher brighter denture every day. you're driving along, having a perfectly nice day, when out of nowhere a pick-up truck slams into your brand new car. one second it wasn't there and the next second... boom! you've had your first accident. now you have to make your first claim. so you talk to your insurance company and... boom! you're blindsided for a second time. they won't give you enough money to replace your brand new car. don't those people know you're already shaken up? 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>> wolf we expect this report will be made public tomorrow. the justice department met with officials from ferguson this afternoon to tell them what they are about to publish and really this portrays a department that has deep deep problems. i'll give you a few statistics from the report that is going to be revealed tomorrow. 85% of the vehicle stops from 2012 to 2014 the justice department took a look at their books. 85% were of african-americans. 93% of arrests were of african-americans. 90% of citations were of african-americans. again, going back to michael brown and the incident there, the killing of michael brown by a police officer, 88% of use of force the ferguson department use of force was against african-americans. you can see that what people were protesting there was something that there was a problem with the police department. >> the city itself ferguson about 67% african-american. the police force was about 60 police officers, only two of them african-american. the rest white. daryl parks, you represent the michael brown family. what's their reaction? >> well certainly it is finally they get some sense of justice for what happened to michael. and think about it wolf when michael was killed back in august you knew nothing about the background of this department. now we know a lot more about what was going on in that department especially when you think about how race played such a big role in he path turn the practices of this department as well as the extensive use of force issue, which certainly is something that we claim as it relates to michael brown's death from his death in august. >> so jeffrey, where do we go from here? the report comes out tomorrow. then what? >> the justice department will go to the ferguson officeholders and say, look, let's make a deal an arrangement, a settlement known as a consent decree where you will change your practices, your training, your policies perhaps your leadership. and then we will put in monitors who will make sure that you keep to the deal. alternatively, if ferguson doesn't go for that the justice department will go to court and have a judge force those changes, they'll argue, on ferguson. so those are the two options. >> antonio french you're active in the community, obviously. what changes would you like to see? does this report based on what we know right now, from your perspective, go far enough? >> i think this report confirms what a lot of us already knew which is that ferguson along with other municipalities around ferguson engages in that activity that wedges a divide between the community and police department. what i do want to see is not just a reform of the ferguson police department but reforming how we police in the missouri area. at least a dozen municipalities engage in identical or worse behavior. >> i'm sure this is going on elsewhere around the country as well. >> the biggest problem, wolf if you hire police officers that are racist once they are on the department it's too late. the only thing you can hope for there is that the punishment when they behave as a racist is severe enough to discourage them from doing it and even in spite of what they think, do the right thing on the street. if you're hiring bad police officers from the very beginning, it's the hiring the training, internal discipline. it's all of those things. what this report is finding is systemic mismanagement by the police department and city official sdpls officials. >> and policies too. ferguson is not alone in this. using arrests to make money for the municipality, that is a huge issue, not just in ferguson all over the country, where individuals, often african-americans are being essentially forced to subsidize the rest of the state. >> daryl parks, you represent the michael brown family. what do you think, what is going to be the impact of this? >> well it's a big impact. i think for all of the people who have been in ferguson fighting for justice and fighting for some type of action to take place, this is a big step in that direction, wolf. for the racial bias that has taken place there, for the excessive use of force issues the poll teas and procedure issues that have existed there, now it gets a positive movement on behalf of the department of justice which his family welcomes. >> antonio french what do you think should happen to the ferguson police chief, thomas jackson? >> i said six months ago that i thought mr. jackson should resign and now i think he should just be fired. some of the facts laid out in this report clearly shows a pattern of mismanagement and this city cannot heal as long as he's in that position. >> what do you think, daryl? >> without question i think that certainly there should be some changes in the leadership of this department. that's up to the city to do but clearly this report clearly calls out for major change in the police department. >> tom fuentes, they have to get more african-americans on that force, too. they can't almost have just a white police force in a community that's 67% african-american. >> not only for the diversity and the hiring but character profile, not hire racist or brutal cops or crooked cops and that starts right at the beginning before you train them, before you go through any part of their career you have to hire the right people in the first place. >> evan the attorney general wanted this report out before he leaves. he's about to step down. he's leaving in the next few days right? >> right. he promised justice for michael brown and, sadly, for his family you know they are not going to get what they thought they wanted which is charges against the officer, darren wilson. they are going to have to settle for this which is reform of the police department. you know it goes beyond ferguson though. i've been down there and you can see how the small towns up and down that road and they all basically impose a tax on black motorists as they go up and down that road. so it's not just ferguson. >> we're going to stay on top of the story. just ahead, the white house re reacting to hillary clinton's e-mail scandal. did she put security at risk by using a personal account during her four years as secretary of state? when it comes to good nutrition...i'm no expert. that would be my daughter -- hi dad. she's a dietitian. and back when i wasn't eating right, she got me drinking boost. it's got a great taste and it helps give me the nutrition i was missing. helping me stay more like me. 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[ female announcer ] stay strong, stay active with boost. denver international is one of the busiest airports in the country. we operate just like a city and that takes a lot of energy. we use natural gas throughout the airport - for heating the entire terminal generating electricity on-site and fueling hundreds of vehicles. we're very focused on reducing our environmental impact. and natural gas is a big part of that commitment. rma. checking your credit score is for chumps. i have great credit. how do you know? duh. you know those change, right? tattoos don't change. try credit karma. it's free and you can see what your score is right now. aren't you a little bit curious? i just got my free credit score! credit karma. really free credit scores. really free. i have got to update my ink. what's that thing? i moved our old security system out here to see if it could monitor the front yard. why don't you switch to xfinity home? i get live video monitoring and 24/7 professional monitoring that i can arm and disarm from anywhere. hear ye! the awkward teenage one has arrived!!!! don't be old fashioned. xfinity customers add xfinity home for $29.95 a month for 12 months. plus for a limited time, get a free security camera call 1800 xfinity or visit comcast.com/xfinityhome. there's growing fall out from revelations that hillary clinton reliedy edied on a personal e-mail account while secretary of the state. clinton and the white house are insisting she did nothing wrong. our senior political correspondent is working the story. explain what's going on here. >> wolf over the years there's been a lot of wiggle room when talking about law in this area. she may not have broken the law but she violated the spirit of it. >> reporter: it's the most iconic image of her while secretary of state. checking her e-mail on a trip to libya, her private e-mail. hillary clinton relied solely on a personal account. >> did you e-mail it to us? >> reporter: it's raising questions about whether she skirted the federal records act. the white house says clinton followed the rules. >> the policy as a general matter allows individuals to use their personal e-mail address as long as those e-mails are maintained and sent to the state department which if you ask secretary clinton's team that's what they completed in the last month or two. >> reporter: in 2014 clinton and her team turned over tens of thousands of her e-mails to the state department. political opponents are hammering her. jeb bush tweeted transparency matters. he released thousands of e-mails from his time as governor of florida. like clinton, he used a personal e-mail address and he was able to choose which e-mails to release. a clinton spokesman said the letter and spirit of the rules permitted state department officials to use non-government e-mail as long as appropriate records were reserved. experts say there may be no way to identify it. >> when you delete that and go to your trash box, it's gone. there's no more recovering it. all that information is destroyed. >> we're not talking about classified e-mails. these were not classified that secretary clinton was typing out on her personal e-mail account. at the same time there's a big security issue here. you wouldn't want to breach a unclassified e-mails either. >> gloria give us a perspective how big of a deal is this? >> i think we don't really know yet. we don't know all the details. this is less a question of whether secretary of state clinton violated any specific laws when she violated them if she did and all the rest of it. i think what this is really about is answering the question why. why did they decide to do this? was it to protect her? was it to be evasive? was it more convenient? we just don't know the answer to that question. once they answer the question maybe it will make sense. >> how are republicans acting? >> they are jumping on it. the interesting reaction are from her fellow democrats. those in congress desperate to keep it in democratic hands in 2016 are very concerned. they're not unaware of the clinton baggage of not wanting to put things forward of not being transparent. because she's so well known and the clinton name is known that way, they're worried this is like mitt romney 47% in that. people already had in their mind a narrative of mitt romney a certain way, it's the same for hillary clinton. this will feed the idea she's hiding something and they live by different standards and rules. they're worried about it. >> a lot of experts have said if these were private e-mail accounts that didn't necessarily have the security from hacking, cyber warfare. she's doing official state department business. >> from hacking and encryption. a clinton aids told me she was using this e-mail before she became secretary of state and she just continued to use it. >> she knew the job. >> you do change jobs. i lot of people might have issue with that argument. she need a reboot. she needs to show she's not pressing right up against the edge of these boundaries. >> she hasn't booted yet. >> that part of the problem. >> you're right. here is a for instance that i think is important to focus on. there was a 2009 regulation that she would have been falling under at this time. if you're using private e-mail to do government business then it needs to go on the state department recordkeeping system. here is the catch. there's no time line on when you need to do that. technically, you could wait 80 years before you do it. >> she went to compliance. that's the spirit of the law. >> how are all these e-mails, they say they turned over 55,000 pages. >> 55,000 pages. >> at cnn that would be one day of e-mails. she turned over 55,000 pages of e-mails. who curated those e-mails? >> and to that point, just talking raw politics i've talked to some democrats who are big hillary supporters and they're concern is their frfgs is they didn't know the answers because her campaign hasn't started yet. she has a small official team around her. she doesn't have the apparatus to help dig into this. >> i was talking to her for jeb bush. i don't know that it changes anybody's minds. there's the group that wants answers. >> remember, you can follow us on twitter. tweet me at wolf blitzer. you can tweet the show. join us tomorrow right here in "the situation room." you can watch us live or dvr the show so you won't miss a moment. i'll be back in an hour filling in for anderson. until then thanks very much for watching. breaking news. reports of junegunshots fired near the national security agency. president obama firing back at israeli prime minister netanyahu. who's right on the deal with iran? the justice department delivering a scathing report on the ferguson police department charging a pattern of racism and putting out internal e-mails with racist jokes about the president in them. we'll show you. let's go outfront.
time. you know, stephanie, this has all been very compressed, how rapidly they identified him as the suspect. now it's going to take a harder time because it's going to be a lot of interviews and looking at social media. the other question is, what caused him to become radicalized? why did he do this? and that's partly going to be social media and contacts, partly also going to be looking at his overseas travel. he's from afghanistan. he was born there. he went back there many times. while he was there, he also visited pakistan. he got married there. so they want to know whether he had any contact. he was -- the family was from an area which is also an area where there's a strong taliban influence. so did that play some role in his radicalization? all open questions at this point. >> lt, thanks, piete. i want to stay on the foreign travel and the significance of it. let's brying in shawn henry, former assistant director of the fbi. as pete told us, we know rahami traveled to pakistan and afghanistan. that's where he and his wife are from. do we know if he could have been directed by any sort of foreign organization, possibly a terror group? >> that's the big question right now, stephanie. that's what the fbi will be looking at. coordination with pakistani intelligence, the fbi has a legal attache over there, and in karachi, and they'll be coordinating to look to see who he may have visited with while he was there, if the pakistanis have picked up any intelligence, signals intelligence, if they had anybody on their radar who may have seen in ctact with hami. that's the big question. i think they'll also be looking at his wife. reports that she just recently returned from the united states back to pakistan, where is she going? who is she in contact with? they have a wealth of information now that they can exploit, now that they have identified him, he's in custody. executing search warrants at his residence. they'll look for where the bomb was made and look for additional signatures on those ieds to see if they are consistent with any of the type of training that is provided by groups operating either out of pakistan or afghanistan. so there's a lot of information, but that international connection is going to be clear. one other thing i think we should add, think about here, is when did he become radicalized? when he came back from his trips to pakistan, how did his demeanor change? did he associate with new people once he came here? that's going to be another critical piece. >> so he wasn't on a watch list. he came back. if he were going through a screening, and we know he had a secondary screening, is it just a matter of answering questions? if he had been radicalized, do you think he would have told authorities, yep, i'm really mad now? >> that's a great point. so seconda aear aeary screening inhanced security. additional tiechs of explosives. and specific questions about why he had traveled back and forth, who he had been with, how long he was there. obviously, if somebody is radicalized and coming back, they're not going to sit down and say i'm going back to the united states to commit a terrorist act. so we've got to look at the coordination between dhs and other authorities here, the fbi and others, to see if there were any other red flags. were there any other indications he may have been in touch with terrorist organizations and what type of additional security protocols may have been implemented or should have beeniment lmented in this case. >> even if he was on a watch list, he's a u.s. citizen. it's not like it was an immigration issue. he could have bought the contents he used in the bombs. what really would we have gotten? >> that's exactly right. the components for the bomb are readily available. the instructions to manufacture those ieds readily available. he didn't necessarily have to be over in pakistan. although that's one of the areas they want to look at to see where he got that type of training. you've got u.s. citizens with the ability to travel freely back and forth. again, what are the indicators? if he was over there for an extended period of time, did he meet with people there? should it have raised red dplags for dhs and upon his return to the united states for the fbi to be further engaged at a higher level of scrutiny to insure that he's not going to launch acts here. i think the community piece is really important. as difficult as this is for law enforcement to track people going back and forth, they're able to do that legally, but when they come back, are they engaged in different type of activities here, changing in their demeanor. the world we live in today requires a greater level of cooperation from the private sector, citizens, relatives, family members, coworkers, et cetera, to bring to law enforcement's scrutiny if somebody is acting differently, making statements, etcelt raw. >> all right, shaun, thanks for joining me. >> two people who were pretty critical in scrutinizing what happened this weekend, the presidential candidates. they're now talking tough on terror. they were all day yesterday around the capture of ahmad rahami was unfolding. take a look. >> if you choose donald trump, these problems are going to go away. >> it's wrong to put a loose cannon in charge who could start another war. >> she is not the right person to solve a problem that largely her and obomb gave us. >> we know that donald trump's comments have been used online for recruitment of terrorists. >> and there you have it. nbc's kristen welker joins me now from washington. this fight against terrorism is clearly front and center, basically because of what happened over the weekend. how did each candidate, besides pointing the finger at one another, how did that handle it? >> it was a tale of two responses to the terror attack. on the one hand, you had donald trump talking tough. you heard him there, essentially saying the suspikt shouldn't get medical care. of course, that's something that a lot of folks would argue is unconstitutional. he also called for racial profiling, and he did point the finger at president obama and secretary clinton. he said these terror attacks are the result of their foreign policy. secretary clinton answering that by really touting her experience as secretary of state. slamming donald trump. she says his divisive rhetoric is becoming a tool to recruit more terrorists, and steph, she also underscored the fact that donald trump hasn't laid out or said what his plan is specifically to fight isis. she then reiterated her plan, which includes an intelligence surge. now, secretary clinton getting a little bit of good news in the polls this morning, steph. she's up among likely volters in our latest nbc news/survey monkey poll 50% to 45%. this is the first time we have looked at likely voters. if you look at registered voters, she's up 49% to 43%. likely going to be a big focus at next week's debate. >> it sounds like she has good news. president obama is going to spend one to two days every week in october campaigning for her. >> it sort of underscores the urgency he feels and that democrats feel more broadly. he's going to be targeting some of these key battleground states. ohio, north carolina, iowa, florida, pennsylvania. that's where you're going to see president obama over the weekend, steph, he gave this really impassioned speech to the cbc. he said if you don't dern out to vote, i will consider it a personal insult to me and my legacy. that's the kind of heated rhetoric you're going to hear. >> we know who president obama is voting for, but today, there are reports out that george h.w. bush is voting for clinton. what is the bush camp saying about this? >> this is coming from cath clean kennedy dotownsend, who sd she met with george h.w. bush, and he told her he's going to vote for hillary clinton. the bush camp is saying hold on, keep your powder dry. we're not responding to that yet, but i can tell you, steph, that i have been kind of tracking that possibility for quite some time and talking to officials, they say there was some anticipation or expectation that that might happen, but bottom line, we have not confirmed that report that first came out in politico. but we certainly are trying to, and i anticipate the official word is going to come from his office and his staff. >> we do need to note that kathleen kennedy townsend is of course a democrat. >> indeed, yes she is. she's the daughter of the late robert kennedy. >> thanks, kristen. i want to stay on politics, not just today, all day. we're going to have that coverage of the first presidential debate next monday, september 26th, live from hofstra university. beginning at 9:00 a.m. eastern. do not miss our live telecast of the debate, moderated by nbc's lester holt at 9:00 p.m. eastern, followed by late night coverage with our whole post-debate team. >> up next, did ahmad rahami act alone? a member of the senate intelligence committee joins us. what we know about the alleged bomber and his travel to afghanistan and the middle east. 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[ clock ticking ] welcome back. you're watching msnbc. time now for your morning primer. everything you need to know to get your day started. we're going to begin with president obama's final speech at the u.n. general assembly. the president is expected to speak at the top of the hour. we're going to bring tatd to you live. >> the united nations has suspected all aid to syria after an air strike near aleppo destroyed 18 humanitarian trucks, killing a total of 12 people. the attack came hours after syria's military said the cease-fire had failed. you got to see this one. oklahoma police have released a shocking new video of a white police officer shooting an unarmed black man. police found terrance crutcher's car stalled in the road -- i'm sorry, now we're showing the right video. stalled in the road. i want you to see this. crutcher approached the officers, but according to police, he refused to follow their commands. he is seen, you can see this here, walking back to his car with his hands held in the air, when one officer deploys his taser and another fires her weapon, which then killed crutcher. that officer has been placed on routine administrative leave. >> and we're showing you this a moment ago, vardifferent story. kmart expected to announce that it's going to close 64 more stores. remember, this comes after kmart's parent company, sears holdings, closed 80 stores over the summer. most of them k marts. >> in sports, hope hallie jackson is watching. the eagles defeated the bears last night. 29-14. rookie quarterback carson wentz struggled but was still good enough to follow his defense to victory. fly, eagles, fly. now, nothing has linked suspected bomber ahmad rahami to any kind of terrorist organization, but he did make multiple trips to the middle east and yet he failed to show up on any sort of terror watch list. we want to know why. joining me now, maine independent senator, angus king, who sits on the intelligence committee. good morning, senator. help us understand, where does the investigation stand now? >> i think what they're doing now is on multiple fronts. number one, trying to see whether there were any associates involved in this bombing. at the moment, it doesn't appear that's the case, but clearly, that's an important thing to consider. the next thing is what were the connections that he made when he was overseas? a couple years ago, he spent almost a year in pakistan, and the third question for me is, does the fact that he did those travels, should that have raised flags to the point where he got something more than a cursory e re-examination when he re-entered the country? that's one of the things we're going to reassess. we're going to meet later this week with director comey of the fbi. that's going to be one of my questions. should we beef up the procedures to examine and re-examine people who are coming back into the country after traveling to some of these troublesome areas of the world. >> if he had been put on a watch list, the behavior over the weekend wouldn't necessarily have been stopped. he was a u.s. citizen. the materials he bought, he could have bought anyway. and he could have easily gone to new york city or south jersey. >> well, that's right. i mean, i'm not saying this would be a fool-proof system, but you have to always try to learn from something. and having a more thorough looking at or review of somebody after this kind of travel might prevent a problem in the future. it might not have prevented this one. that's the problem. there's actually a term for it. hve, home-grown violent extremist. this is one of the toughest cases for law enforcement because there's not a plot. there's not a big number of association and communications back and forth and buying of materials that would raise flags. this is the toughest case. and i think, by the way, we altto point out out incredibly powerful and efficient law enforcement was in this case to find one guy in 10 million or 12 million people in the new york area inside 36 hours was really an amazing feat of law enforcement and community involvement. >> lindsey graham tweeted yesterday, rahami held -- tweeted that rahami should be held as an enemy combatant for further intelligence gathering. meaning no miranda rights, can't get a lawyer. do you agree with that? >> i like lindsey graham. he's a really smart guy, a former judge advocate general in the air force. i'm uncomfortable with his suggestion, however, because this guy is an american citizen on american soil. and you have this constitution, you know, that says no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. so to slap a label on him in this kind of situation and say none of those things apply, i have some troubles with. i don't think -- and by the way, there are hundreds of terrorists who have gone through our criminal justice system who are now in jail. it's not like the criminal justice system as we have it in this country doesn't work. and i'm going to discuss that with lindsey, but i have some constitutional problems with it. if you put a label, say enemy combatant, therefore waive the constitutional protections, again, particularly for somebody that's in this country, i think raises some serious questions. >> you mentioned just before that he could be an hve, sort of this home-grown not part of a terrorist cell, acting as a lone wolf. what's more dangerous? >> well, i think these lone wolves are more dangerous in the sense that they're the hardest to predict, prevent, and intercept. because there isn't a trail of communications with a broad and traveled history and those kind of things. the samg thing in orlando, the same thing in san bernardino. this is the nightmare scenario. on the other hand, the fbi has been amazingly effective in stopping these plots. there are cases pending all over the country. when i say plots, they might not even be plots. they may be one or two people. the problem is you can be 99.9% effective and you still have the kind of thing that happened in new york over the weekend. in terms of danger, the lone wolf is the most difficult to predict and prevent. >> over the weekend, tim kaine had said he thinks we're making massive improvements in combatting isis. would you agree based on what you just said? >> there are different levels. i think in terms of what's going on in syria and iraq, where isis originally set up shop, that's absolutely correct. they have been forced back time and again. they have lost 25%, 30%, 40% of the land they supposedly controlled. their revenues have been cut dramatically, they're on the defensive everywhere. their last two sort of strongholds of mosul and raqqah are at least the beginnings of an assault, that could happen any time. so yes, on the ground in that region, they're on their heels. as far as worldwide, they're now, i think, trying to reach out to places like brussels and paris and here, if possible, to sort of make up for the fact that they're losing terrorist face, if you will, in the middle east. but there's no question that their leadership has been decimated and they're going nowhere on the ground in the middle east. but that doesn't mean that some guy in kansas city can't read something online and be radicalized by videos and that kind of thing and go out to a local mall and do some real damage. i mean, that's the danger. it's not that isis is directing people. but the question is, are they inspiring people to act? and that's where working with local law enforcement and frankly the local muslim community to provide tips because they're the people that might be most likely to see this kind of activity, to help us prevent something like this. >> all right, senator. thank you so much for joining me this morning, senator king. >> coming up, we're going to hear from that hero bar owner whose call to police led to rahami's capture. there are two billion people who don't have access to basic banking, but that is changing. at temenos, with the microsoft cloud, we can enable a banker to travel to the most remote locations with nothing but a phone and a tablet. everywhere where there's a phone, you have a bank. now a person is able to start a business, and employ somebody for the first time. the microsoft cloud helped us to bring banking to ten million people in just two years. it's transforming our world. ♪ ♪ take on any road with intuitive all-wheel drive. the nissan rogue, murano and pathfinder. now get 0% apr for 72 months, plus $500 bonus cash. 80% but up to 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let's do more. add one a day women's 50+ complete multivitamin. with vitamin d and calcium to help support bone health. one a day. ♪ share the joy of real cream... ...with reddi-wip. ahmad rahami is hospitalized, recovering from the gun shot she received when he was captured. he faced five charges of attempted murder of a police officer. he still has not been charged in connection with the bombs authorities say he placed in both new york and new jersey. morgan is live outside university hospital in newark, new jersey, where he is being treated. what do you know about his condition? >> it's remarkable just how quickly this story has unfolded in the past 24 hours. this time yesterday, we just learned his name. now the same suspect is inside this university hospital in newark, new jersey, behind me. y he had surgery yesterday but he's here alongside officer peter hammer, the officer who had a bullet graze his head as he was sitting in a patrol car when rahami fled on foot. he's expected to be released later today. also, officer angel padilla was released when he was shot in the stomach. when rahami leaves from the hospital, he's facing charges by the county prosecutor for attempted murder of both of those police officers, and we have also heard from the u.s. attorneyoffs both new york and new jersey who say they expect him to face federal terrorism charges in the coming days, stephanie. >> thanks, morgan. >> joining us from right outside the hospitals. now i want to bring back aman mohyeldin. you had a chance to speak to the bar owner, the hero who called police. what did he tell you? >> in fact, he was very surprised when we spoke to him yesterday. he owns a grocery store right across the street he owns this bar. when he arrived to grocery store, he saw the man with nothing but a bottle of water sitting on the bench outside. he walked in and didn't think about it, but then it started to rain and he saw the man walk across the street and enter the doorway of the bar. here's what he told us next. >> he didn't, like, have any kind of expression that somebody saw him. like, okay, i'll move to the other side. you know. just moved to the other side. it was 9:00. when i come back, i came back to my store and said this guy looks so similar to a guy i just watched on the tv. >> that was when he approached him and saw him sleeping inside the doorway. he said to him, get up. there's some broken glass here. it's not safe for you. he didn't think anything of it. when he went back to the store, he started to think about it, talks to his colleague and looked up the picture of the guy people had been asking for, ahmad khan rahami and he called the police and they took it from there. >> that guy is a hero. th thanks so much. coming up, president obama will be giving his final speech to the u.n. in a few minutes. as soon as it begins, we will take you there. plus, donald trump jr. talking about syrian refugees, comparing them, get your head around this, to skittles. candy. we're going to discuss that with a senior adviser to the trump campaign. he's going to join me to discuss this very controversial tweet. so you can see our confusion. ge is an industrial company that actually builds world-changing machines. machines that can also communicate digitally. like robots. did you build that robot? 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[laughs] ah... ahem... show me the caax. start your used car search at the all-new carfax.com. ugh. heartburn. sorry ma'am. no burning here. try new alka-seltzer heartburn relief gummies. they don't taste chalky and work fast. mmmm. incredible. can i try? she doesn't have heartburn. new alka-seltzer heartburn relief gummies. enjoy the relief. in the wake of this weekend's bombings, donald trump and hillary clinton are clashing over who is best equipped to fight terror. joining me now, trump senior adviser jack kingston, a former congressman from georgia. good morning. >> good morning, stephanie. >> i want to get right into it. hillary clinton said yesterday donald trump has made a mistake by going after muslims in general, not terrorists. here's what she said. >> we know that donald trump's comments have been used online for recruitment of terrorists. the kinds of rhetoric and language that mr. trump has used is giving aid and comfort to our adversaries. >> how do you respond to that? >> well, stephanie, two points. number one, i was on the defense appropriations committee for over a decade. i sat in a lot of classified hearings. never heard that. never ever between the intelligence community or the defense community heard anybody say you know what's really recruiting terrorists? rhetoric. >> when were you on that committee? because it's really in the last couple of years, inspire magazine, and these websites. >> i was on there post-9/11, until 2015. so i would say my information is pretty doggone up to date, but let me ask you this. and this is point nothing two and a real important point. under hillary clinton and barack obama's watch, you might say, we have had ft. hood, san bernardino, we have had the boston marathon massacre. we had chattanooga. none of those were tied into donald trump. this was all pre-donald trump. and yet, we have had something like 60 domestic terrorist attacks since 2014. and where was donald trump? he was in the private sector. there wasn't his rhetoric going on. this is silliness. this is hillary clinton trying to point the finger away from the fact that they left iraq without a statement of forces agreement with the iranians. they left a huge vacuum which created isis, which is now in 18 different countries. they allowed the terrorist groups like al qaeda to regroup and form isis. and now, she was ridiculing him a month ago when heed about extreme vetting, but yesterday, she's talking about we need more vetting of immigrants when they come in here. >> hold on a second, congressman. donald trump isn't just going after hillary clinton. he said very clearly that the police know who the bad guys are but they're not going after them because they fear profiling. as a person in the state of georgia who has governed there, do you believe that your police officers, law enforcement, knows there are criminals but aren't going after them? >> i think that what he is referring to is sanctuary cities where they know there are people out there who have broken laws. he's probably referring to the fact that the department of homeland security just last -- just recently allowed 858 immigrants who were slated for -- marked for deportation, they made them american citizens instead. he's talking about, and i think it's something that we all need to pay better attention to, the fact that the fbi and local law enforcement can work together a little bit better than they are working. so you know, i think that's a legitimate discussion, and i don't see anything partisan about it. >> ahmad rahami was a naturalized citizen. this immigration stuff wouldn't have impacted him. >> no, but you know, one of the things that as part of donald trump's immigration package is to talk about how to you deal with radicalization. how do you deal with it. he talked about let's set up a commission to figure out how you stop somebody from being radicalized. perhaps, as we know and you were interviewing the senator earlier on this show, about his trips going back and forth to afghanistan. were those red flags? were they sufficient to trigger a more investigation, a closer look? i am not sure, but what donald trump is saying, we need to do something about radicalization and setting up a commission to study it, i haven't heard hillary clinton talk about that. i haven't heard barack obama talk about that. i haven't heard homeland security talk about that. i think it's a great idea, because as you point out, earlier also, here is somebody who may be a lone wolf, although this is pretty elaborate. how do you learn to make these bombs and sneak bombs in four different places if you are alone? but what more can we learn about it? donald trump is calling for that. >> we're also talking about refugees here at the general assembly in new york city. i have to ask you about the tweet donald trump jr. put out, comparing syrian refugees to skittles candies. treats that children eat. is that a good comparison? >> actually, stephanie, i think that what he was doing is making an illustration. i don't think he was comparing to refugees to candy at all. he was making an illustration. hillary clinton's plan is to bring in 620,000 refugees. syrian refrefugees. >> people living under attack, and he put out a tweet -- >> because -- >> candies. >> well, number one, remember, the destabilization in syria and the middle east has the fingerprint of the hillary clinton/barack obama foreign policy, so that's one problem in itself that we need to also discuss. >> but congressman, i'm not talking about policies. i'm talking ability being a human and compassion. is that proeappropriate? >> the intelligence community has said in 620,000 or whatever number you have, there is going to be a percentage of bad actors in there. what we need to do is say, you know, we're going to be humanitarian because the united states historically has always been no matter who is the president, but the reality is we need to make sure as much as possible who's coming in to america and what are their views on america. are they coming here to attack us or destroy us? you know, we want to have the innocent come in here. my uncle, for example, was a hungarian refugee chased out of his home by hitler. our doors are open for people like that. he became a very productive american citizen, had a great career here. >> i'm sure he wouldn't want to be referred to as a poisonous candy. >> he wasn't. that's an illustration. that's where we get off base in this debate. if it's not skittles, you could use potato chips, anything you want. the reality is what he's saying in a group of refugees, there could be a percentage of bad ones and we need to do everything that's possible to find out who those bad ones are and make sure that they don't come in. that's all. it's a simple thing. and that's one of the problems when you're attacked for a statement like that. how can we move on to have a decent and serious dialogue? >> well, i appreciate having a serious dialogue with you this morning. thanks so much. >> stephanie, thank you. coming up, president obama will arrive for his final speech to the u.n. in just a few minutes. as soon as it begins, we'll take you there. next, senator lindsay graham pushing for ahmad rahami to be charged as an enemy combatant. what would that mean? ♪ ♪ take on any road with intuitive all-wheel drive. the nissan rogue, murano and pathfinder. now get 0% apr for 72 months plus $500 bonus cash. is it a professor who never stops being a student? is it a caregiver determined to take care of her own? or is it a lifetime of work that blazes the path to your passions? your personal success takes a financial partner who values it as much as you do. learn more at tiaa.org juso own them,people every business is different. but every one of those businesses will need legal help as they age and grow. whether it be help starting your business, vendor contracts or employment agreements. legalzoom's network of attorneys can help you every step of the way so you can focus on what you do. we'll handle the legal stuff that comes up along the way. legalzoom. legal help is here. perfect driving record. until one of you clips a food truck. then your rates go through the roof. perfect. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won't raise your rates due to your first accident. liberty mutual insurance. mapping the oceans. where we explore. protecting biodiversity. everywhere we work. defeating malaria. improving energy efficiency. developing more clean burning natural gas. my job? my job at exxonmobil? turninalgae into biofuels. reducing energy poverty in the developing world. making cars go further with less. fueling the global economy. and you thought we just made the gas. ♪ energy lives here. hospitalization. and he will probably even have room service, knowing the way our country is. and on top of all of that, he will be represented by an outstanding lawyer. >> that, of course, is donald trump commenting on what will happen next to suspected bomber ahmad rahami. ari melber joins nee now. donald trump is not the only one talking about how rahami is going to be treated. lindsey graham put out a treat where he wants rahami treated as an enemy combatant. what does that mean? >> you treat him as a foreign fighter and he wouldn't have the same procedural rights before going into interrogation and other procedures. this is something we hear about from time to time in these terror cases. >> all right, when we have done this time to time, when we have treated people as enemy combatants, what has it done for us? how successful has that been? >> a great question because sometimes because of the language itself, enemy, it sounds tougher or stronger. when you look at this, you had about eight of these done where you took people and tried to put them into the system. four of those convictions were overturned. that's a very poor success rate. by contrast, over 500 people have been prosecuted effectively without having it overturned for terrorism in the domestic criminal system. >> 5.2 million bucks, that's the bail. is that big, small? how unusual is this? to me, that sounds like a huge number? >> huge, and that's a bail that says there's no way we're going to let this person get out in any easy capacity. then we go to the next big questions here. multiple correspondents told you today how quickly this has happened. what happened neck won't be as quick automatically. all of the different authorities state and federal looking at what this man is accused of suspected of doing and figuring out how to charge him. more likely, we'll see more charges, federal charges, potentially weapons of mass destruction or terror charges in addition to what has happened which are the local charges around attempted murder of the officers. >> we know the local bombings have people here in new york and new jersey on high alert and across the country. when we return, we're going to talk about how these bombings are going to affect people at the ballot box in less than two months. before i had the shooting, burning, pins-and-needles of diabetic nerve pain, these feet played shortstop in high school, learned the horn from my dad and played gigs from new york to miami. but i couldn't bear my diabetic nerve pain any longer. so i talked to my doctor and he prescribed lyrica. nerve damage from diabetes causes diabetic nerve pain. lyrica is fda approved to treat this pain, from moderate to even severe diabetic nerve pain. lyrica may cause serious allergic reactions or suicidal thoughts or actions. tell your doctor right away if you have these, w or worsening depression, or unusual changes in mood or behavior. or swelling, trouble breathing, rash, hives, blisters, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling or blurry vision. common side effects are dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain and swelling of hands, legs, and feet. don't drink alcohol while taking lyrica. don't drive or use machinery until you know how lyrica affects you. those who have had a drug or alcohol problem may be more likely to misuse lyrica. now i have less diabetic nerve pain. and these feet would like to keep the beat going. ask your doctor about lyrica. i we worked with pg&eof to save energy because wenie. wanted to help the school. they would put these signs on the door to let the teacher know you didn't cut off the light. the teachers, they would call us the energy patrol. so they would be like, here they come, turn off your lights! those three young ladies were teaching the whole school about energy efficiency. we actually saved $50,000. and that's just one school, two semesters, three girls. together, we're building a better california. we know that a lot of the rhetoric we've heard from donald trump has been seized on by terrorists, in particular, isis. >> let's ask hillary clinton how many people who subscribe to radical islamic views and support the oppression of non-believers would you call deplorable or ir redeemable? >> it's fair to say the gloves are off. the investigation intensifies into the suspected new york bomber. hillary clinton has a slight advantage on national security and terrorism. these were taken before the events took place this weekend. does either candidate have a real advantage on this issue? >> we've seen the polls all over the place on this throughout this campaign and who americans trust more on this issue and we'll certainly see some changes as it's brought once again to the forefront of this campaign with what happened in new york over the weekend. and what you really see with this is just the sharply divergent tones that cuts to the heart of this race. donald trump out there for a tough crackdown, racial profiling, extreme vetting of immigrants and hillary clinton trying to sell herself as a seasoned expert and knows how to take the right approach, the approach that's going to really enhance the security of the american people as a whole. it is at the center of their differences as candidates and in their campaigns. >> is it not like comparing apples and oranges? we look at hillary clinton, her policies. there's nothing you could look at with donald trump. >> this is exactly the point. i mean, that's a lot of what donald trump, he says he has a plan and doesn't want to give the game plan to the terrorists. one thing he has called for is extreme vetting, people who come back from countries like afghanistan, some type of ideological screen for these people. he came in legally to this country. he wouldn't have been stopped. he bought whatever he used to make these weapons legally. these are common place items. so what we can do to deal with these attacks is something not just hillary clinton and donald trump are grappling with but the security services. >> over the next two months, how tricky for hillary clinton, if we get more attacks, it's on president obama's watch. obama is out there for the month of october, one to two times a week, campaigning for her. she's got to walk a really fine line here. >> a really fine line. and president obama is really going to do this unpresentceden push for her. but if we see large scale attacks, people in a time of fear and worry want to see someone and donald trump's rhetoric about being tough about cracking down, regardless if he actually has a plan in place that can actually do that may resonate with some of the voters that she needs to keep on board particularly in the battleground states where people already feel economic anxiety as well. this is a potential concern for her. she's got to go out and make the case that her experience as secretary of state, her experience of actually putting in plans in dealing with these type of issues is what america needs now to grapple with this incredibly complex threat that we haven't really seen before and this war since 9/11 and other incidents something with this lone wolf, with how people become radicalized and how they're carrying out these attacks is isn't something we haven't recently confronted with in recent decades. >> how about this political report? former president george h.w. bush is voting for hillary clinton. they have not commented on this but if it is true, does this have an impact in any way? >> i think it does have a little bit of an impact and once again, shows how unsatisfied the republican establishment is with donald trump. we saw jeb bush on the emmys a couple of nights ago really sort of bringing the bush name back into the forefront and people look at this stuff. he's a very respected figure. it's another little cautionary flip of who is this guy? he can't even attract the support of the true establishment figures in this party and that level of concern is still there. of course it's going to play a bit of a part. >> donald trump was really mean to his son. >> i think there was bad blood on both sides. i remember the clashes. i'm sure you do. >> i would want my mom on my team. thank you. all day coverage on monday, of course, the first presidential debate. starting at 9:00 a.m. eastern. all day coverage and then live telecast of the debate moderated by nbc's lester holt at 9:00 p.m. eastern followed by our post-debate team breaking it down. this network of portals will shorten the distance packages have to travel, and save jet shoppers money. unbelievable work! where does that one go? 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and that speech while the eu watched, while europe watched, while the world watched, simply churchillian. we are fighting for our land, we are fighting for our lives, we are fighting for our future. >> yeah, the churchillian-ness of this will be reinforced by the fact he gets a standing ovation from the european parliament at a time he is saying, "now you have to admit us." i don't believe it is going to be possible not to admit ukraine. it might take time, it will obviously take time. this is something europe has not seriously considered before. now i think it is going to happen. i think with zelenskyy himself in that bunker as david was putting so well, not knowing, you know, whether his kids will be killed. >> right. >> he has kept his kids there with him in kyiv. his wife has said i know he's number one target, i'm number two target. you cannot watch that and not react deeply, viscerally to what
actually that have been close to vladimir putin for 20 years who understand, david, have seen what happens when other oligarchs cross putin, they get their money taken from them an thrown in jail. some are actually putting out carefully worded statements calling for peace. i just -- in history, and i have read a lot of history, through the years i can't think of another war that was brought on by a single person with -- with his leaders opposing it, with military people concerned about it, soldiers on the field asking, "why are we here." we are seeing this day in and day out. this is not a comforting thing. it makes it all the more frightening how isolated this -- i've got to say this madman is. >> well, i think that's the
of russian tanks and artillery approaching kyiv. photos show developments of ground forces and attack helicopter units in southern belarus. >> we have much to get to. let's keep the pictures up for a second. david ignatius, it is extraordinarily frustrating for americans and people across the west to see this, a slow-moving train of death to kyiv when, of course, everybody in this country understands you can't do anything in ukraine without launching -- or most understand without starting world war iii. at the same time we're watching in slow motion a humanitarian crisis develop that we could literally take care of in 15 minutes by scrambling jets and wipe this entire convoy off the face of the earth. we can't do that, but the question is why can't the ukrainians with the migs they're getting from the eu, why can't
we have seen this kind of thing before. when i was coming of age countries, cities were being liberated. we have seen in recent times the chinese government crackdown on hong kong. that was strange. as perry linked the scholar said, we're seeing a thriving city murdered before our eyes. here ukraine -- the putin forces are attempting to subjugate ukraine. the ukrainian are trying not to have it. they've put a lie to the idea that the ukrainians aren't a real country, they're just russians with a peculiar accent and really belong in the russian fold. ukrainians themselves don't think so including russian speakers. one reason it is terrifying is that putin is being humiliated right now. things are going badly for him, so how will he react? his pride is at stake. maybe his power in pos cow is at stake and he will throw at these people everything he has. >> so, david ignatius, jay, from
in polish side of politics in recent years, they're not very split on this, orbahn is a putin admirer. he is sort of on the tucker carlson or donald trump part of politics. >> again, i hate to keep going back to this, but if you talk to pols about russia, david ig ignatius, they will go back to the massacre. dr. brzezinski would still bring it up. it is still a part of their identity, what the soviets did to them. they won't forget it. orban may forget it. they will never forget it and never align with russia. >> mika, i was in poland a few weeks ago and i just heard the
translator listened to his president deliver that message from a bunker. the churchill comparisons are exhausted perhaps at this point, but the president of ukraine addressing the country and the world and europe from a bunker while his country is under attack was an extraordinary, extraordinary war-time moment. he said we're fighting for survival but more than that we are fighting for freedom. we have a desire to see our children alive. i think that's fair, you said. now, david ignatius, turning the page and pushing it forward he said, you have seen who we are, we have shown you who we are. now we want to officially be part of your union, receiving a standing ovation from the european parliament. what does the european parliament do from here? do they admit ukraine to the eu? how could they say no after what he just said. >> it was an electric moment. as ed said earlier, there's a bottom-up movement. that's what has been decisive. the europeans were strongly
i worry he gets bogged down in build back better and other legislative initiatives and goals and this and that. i think he needs to step up into the global sense of what is going on and explain it to the american people. david ignatius, i've heard from some insiders that he is being advised, go big or go home. >> so it is part of joe biden's story that people have underestimated him in every campaign, and he is going to have to find that gear that he has tonight where he becomes somebody powerful. as i have watched him over the years, there's something joe biden does better than almost any politician, which is to empathize with people who are suffering. >> yes. >> people who have suffered loss the way he did when he lost his first wife and his children, when he lost his son. and when he goes into that gear and reaches out and expresses the human emotion that we feel