Cooperation. Are the feds helping or inflaming tensions . Chicago mayor Laurie Lightfoot joins me to discuss next of. Hello, im jake tapper in washington where the state of our union sick and tired and facing a consequential choice. Today marks exactly 100 days until the next president ial election and the nation is deeply mired in crisis. There are currently more than 4. 1 million coronavirus cases in the u. S. And more than 146,000 americans dead. More than a dozen states hit daily records this week and the nations daily death toll topped 1,000 multiple times. All this as millions of americans are facing an increasingly urgent economic emergency as the extra 600 in Unemployment Benefits runs out this week. And the Senate Majority leader mcconnell said more relief is two to three weeks away, quote, hopefully. This morning we get fresh insight of cnn as to how voters think about the election in three key battleground states that could decide the winner. Florida, arizona, michigan. In all three former Vice President joe biden is leading 51 to 46 in florida. 49 to 45 in arizona and 52 to 40 in michigan. These are polls of registered voters, not likely voter and the margin of error is 3. 8 . This morning well talk to leaders faces the crisis from different perspectives. Two members of the president s administration, the chair of the republican Governors Association, a leading member of congress and a potential Vice President ial biden running mate and the mayor of one of mick americas largest cities. Lets start with the man leading the u. S. Testing effort, admiral brett giroir, also a medical doctor. Thank you for joaning us. Mick mulvaney wrote an opinion piece recently on coronavirus saying, quote, i know it isnt popular to talk about but we have a testing problem in this country. My son was tested recently. We had to wait five to seven days for results. My daughter wanted to get tested but was told she didnt qualify and thats inexcusable at this point in the pandemic, unquote. Thats obviously the president s own former chief of staff. Everyone agrees testing has improved but not where it needs to be. Why not . Why is it not where it needs to be, sir . Thank you for having me on and let me assure you that we are not going to stop our efforts until testing is exactly where we want it to be with rapid turnaround times. We have done over 54 million tests, 770,000 a day. Thats not a 140 pistons increase, thats a 140 fold increase. In terms of turnaround, you are a numbers guy and want to make sure this is clear. One quarter of the tests in this country are done as point of care, a 15minute turnaround. Another quarter done at local hospitals and laboratories generally within 24 hours. The delays that most people talk about at the large commercial labs that perform about half the testing in the country. Now, the data are the average turnaround is 4. 27 days. I follow that morning and evening. We are trying to bring that down. Just this week pulling authorized in both of the large labs, quest and lab corp. We are adding surge testing to a number of cities where there are outbreaks. We are surging point of care to every single nursing home and finally well continue to invest and you will see a large investment being announced later on today to improve the supply chain so we are all working to improve testing. This is an unprecedented demand. Im sorry nick had that experience. We are all working to improve that. Are you happy where testing is right now . Im never going to be happy until we have this under control and were going to continue to push every single day to improve the testing, the type of testing that we have in the rapidity of turnaround. Where we see the growth is in point of care. Well have about 50 million tests available in august, about 65 million in september hold on a sec, sir. Im having audio problems. While im fixing the audio let me ask you, the Harvard Institute of Global Health said that the u. S. Should be conducting 3 million to 5 million tests per day. Were doing as you noted less than 800,000. Experts note that the Trump Administration has not fully activated all of the labs available. Including hospital labs, commercial nonclinical labs, academic labs, veterinary labs. I know that you are saying that things have improved a lot and they have but you concede theyre not where they need to be. Why is the Trump Administration not doing everything it can to get testing where it needs to be . So every one of those example that is you said we are absolutely doing so im not quite sure why youre saying we are not doing this them. I had an over 500 University President s and talking to governors for at least a month, maybe two months, about activating the university labs. We have the regulatory milieu to do that. We can do surveillance testing in a cms lab with tests that are valid in a pulled way and thats what universities across the country are doing. We have several veterinary labs, i believe five right now that got sertd if i case for human testing so everything you talked about we have been doing for at least six or eight weeks and in terms of the number of tests available, look, we are able to achieve almost all the goals right now. I know people throw out numbers, 300,000 tests and then say we need 900,000 and then 3 million. I work with people across the country. We want to improve the testing but we have enough testing if we use them in the right way to achieve the goals we need to achieve. Harvard is saying for months you need millions of tests a day and five veterinary labs okayed for this is not the same thing for every lab in the United States able to do this up and running and turning around the tests so that week can find out where the virus is, identify it and isolate it. Heres a question. When i say you havent done everything you can, this is what i mean. Has the Trump Administration forced federal labs to hire more workers, buy more equipment . Has President Trump invoked the defense production act to get every commercial lab up to speed . Has the Trump Administration invoked the defense production act to get Contact Tracing up to speed . Millions of unemployed americans could be at labs and doing Contact Tracing. In man Manhattan Project like effort . Thats what we have been doing led by the Vice President of the United States meeting multiple times a week and literally 24 7 since this started. We invoked the defense production act numerous times, invested in multiple different technologies. Every day i have a working group looking at how to invest. Thats something we do and will see more investments coming later today. We improved the outcomes of testing like point of care testing to improof that to get every 15 minutes. Really everything that youre talking about there was a third point that you mentioned, i hope you repeat it bausz i forgot that third point you mentioned but on the investment drk. Contact tracing. Yeah thanks. So look. We sent 10. 25 billion to the states to support their state plans. We have outlined all the requirements to putt in the state plan. We assess them, adjudicate them. They have plenty enough money to do that. Of the 10. 25 billion, theres been 50 million drawn down from the states. So there is money there for them to do it. We have sent Coronavirus Response assistance teams that will also help with that to 26 jurisdictions in the last 2 weeks, another 6 this week. And we have cdc personnel in every single state so we are supplies the technical assistance, the money is there. The state plans have to meet requirements. I think we are checking the boxes that you just said. So i will talk about Contact Tracing in a second because its a good point you just raised. But heres the thing. With all due respect, its july, almost august. Were months into this pandemic and we are still hearing about testing problems. In california where the virus is unrelenting for months we have seen week long turnaround times, hours long tests for access to tests. Officials in oregon said they have woefully insufficient support from the Trump Administration. President trump said anyone that wants a test can get a trump. When will it be true that anyone that wants a test gets one with a quick turnaround so as to be effective . What is true now is anyone who needs a test can get a test. We are not in a situation and i want to be really clear, whether its Mick Mulvaney or anywhere else, i feel like going somewhere so i need a test. We are in the middle of a serious pandemic to control and starting to control all those hotspots states. You look at the data, the percent positivity flattened or decreased. We have a large increase in the numbers of people wearing masks, closed indoor bars at the local areas. But let me be clear. We have to prioritize our testing. As i told you in august well have 50 million tests available. With pooling well have more hahn that but not 300 million tests a day. Everyone who needs a test were prioritizing that and theyll get it. The twoweek turnaround, i told you the data. 4. 27 days for half of those tests that are done in the commercial labs. Im highly confident that turnaround will decrease this week with the steps like surge testing, point of care testing, nursing home testing. Again, we are in the middle of a crisis. It is a pandemic. And were working with every tool that we have, every authority we have. The president knows theres a way that we can open up safely and sensibly based on the data and thats what were doing. Nobodys calling for a 300 million tests a day. Harvard is calling for 3. 5 million again, i have talked to dr. Jah, modelers all over the place and throw up numbers with very little data support for it and change tenfold over a period of time. Harvard is saying this sir, it is a strawman to say 300 million tests a day or harvard is changing the tests. They have been pretty consistent for three or four months. Listen. Let me ask you a question. Okay. The Trump Administration has invoked the defense production act. True. They have done so with swabs, to get masks, ventilators, accurate. Has the Trump Administration, the president , invoked the dpa to get labs up to speed, lab hiring and equipment . You dont need to do the dpa to do that for federal labs. There seems to be this reluctance to push the president to do what he needs to do to get the testing up to speed. I know that he is under the misguided impression that more testing is bad and makes him look bad. Which as you know is completely false. And im wondering if you and others are just afraid to do this because you dont want to upset him. Afraid to ask him to do what he needs to do to invoke the dpa to force the federal labs to get up to speed to where we need to be so that we can isolate the virus as you know. When you say people who need a test can get a test, theres a huge percentage of people who have the coronavirus who are asymptomatic and they quote unquote dont need to be tested according to the standard but it needs to be much more widespread the testing to see people who are carriers who dont have symptoms. Thats the point. Are you afraid to bring this up to President Trump because it will upset him . So, jake, theres about six Different Things that you said in there and let me unpack it a little bit. Everyone of the administration understands the importance of testing. Nobody in the task force is afraid to bring up anything to the Vice President or the Vice President. Every time i met with the president he is listening to the data, assesses that, he understands it. I meet with the Vice President almost every single day. No one is trying to stop testing in this country. No one has ever told me to do that. We want more, better, quicker. So let me just put that to rest right there. Secondly, we look for every opportunity to invoke the dpa. Now, the dpa isnt a magic tool. It doesnt violate the rules of physics. You cant create something out of nothing. Most companies do not need dpa on them because theyre highly motivated to stop the pandemic. Number two, they have the private Capital Investment in order to expand their operations. So if that is happening, we still its not enough. Of course its enough. Tell me one thing we should be doing with any of these private labs that were doing or theyre not doing on their own. I talk to hundreds of people every week, the rockefeller foundation, smart people. We have a National Implementation for testing that we will be getting together this week. I talk to acla, universities, private will behospitals, you n. If theres a stone to be turned you tell me what it is but from my Vantage Point i just told you. Get federal labs to hire more people and get more equipment to increase turnaround times. Invoke the dpa so commercial labs all over the country, ones you are not using, five veterinary labs is not impressive to me. No, no, no. No, no, no. I said they have the certification to officially test human patients. There are a lot of labs who are doing surveillance testing that dont need the certification and maybe ill nuance this a little bit. Surveillance testing is no one thinks testing is up to speed where it needs to be. And yet you have spent this interview talking about how great and perfect everything is. This is the weakest part of the response to this virus is testing. I started out by saying that we are never going to be happy with testing until we get turnaround times within 24 hours and i would be happy with point of care testing everywhere. We are not there yet. We are doing everything we can to do that. What can we do . We can test everybody in a hospital within 24 hours so they can get the new treatments we developed. We are point of care testing in Nursing Homes or prioritizing because thats where 50 of the mortality are. Were supplying the Public Health laboratories. I call the ceos of the big labs. Their pooling certified last week. Look. I said we need to continually improve our ecosystem. We started from zero. There was not a swab in the stockpile, not a testing strategy in the stockpile. Thats multiple administrations. We have increased it 140 fold and i will do everything i can every day to improve that. If you have a specific suggestion, were happy to talk about it. Theres no barrier here. The president wants this. The Vice President wants this. Everyone on the task force. I just have two im told i have to end this interview because we have other guests but two yes or no questions for you because i think it i want your answers on it. Coming to Contract Tracing and the states not drawing down money thats there, does the cdc need to improve the guidance to states as to how to do that . Yes or no . No. I think that the contact okay. The guidance is pretty clear but more literally more important than Contact Tracing is to wear a mask. Right . We have to assume that everyone whos on the street could be positive. And if youre positive and you wear a mask you will not transmit it to others. Absolutely. Would have loved to talk to you about the hairdressers, hot with covid. 139 clients both wore masks. Right. Wearing masks, nobody got covid. Not a single transmission of covid and why its much more important than anything we do. Absolutely. Last question, sir. Yes, sir. Should schools no matter what even if they have a Positivity Rate in that community of more than 5 , even if the virus is spreading in that community, should schools open in the fall . We have always been clear that the presumption needs to be that we want our kids in school for all the reasons you know. Right. But if the positivity if the Positivity Rate is high and the virus is spreading in that community, should it open, yes or no . There is no one size that fits all. Obviously. If the virus is high in the community and spreading you have to temper your opening or do alternative strategies. I think thats been clear. One size does not fit all. I was in massachusetts yesterday. Okay. 1. 7 positivity. Whole different idea than a 25 positivity. Admiral giroir, please come back. We would love to talk to you more about this. So many other issues to discuss and i thank you for your time today. Thank you, jake. With a virus surging in dozens of states there are new warning signs for u. S. Economy and weeks could be weeks away from a plan to implement. Who will lose that extra 600 in the unemployment checks this week . Yesterday secretary mnuchin described a plan to pay 70 of the previous wages. In certain cases people were paid more to stay home than they were to work and i think thats something that the American Public understands. We wont use taxpayer money to pay people more to stay home. Joining me now the president s top economic adviser at the white house larry kudlow, good to see you as always. Many of us making this point for months. You cant reopen the economy without the virus contained. You, President Trump, others pushed for the economy to reopen and we did and the cases skyrocketed. Isnt it clear that the country reopened too quickly wiping away the progress made prolonging harm to the economy . Well, jake, i dont know. Its an elizabeth olten of generalizations there. First of all, i dont think the economy is going south. I think its going north and i think that theres a bunch of indicators. Let me just focus on that. I know something about that. Youre in a housing boom right now. Youre in a re