Countries, we are behind and the waters are rising. That the the reality right now. In the beginning, President Trump viewed this as a political issue. He told us early on he didnt want to take infected americans off a cruise ship because he didnt want the numbers to go up, which may partially explain why we are so behind on testing. Hes come out day after day in the last week to offer big, bold promises that then prove to not be true. The google site that would help you figure out if you need to be tested and where, what happened . The drive up test in target and walmart parking lots, where are those . Today he said were making mace masks, were making ventilators. We dont know if thats through. While the president s tone is probably the least important issue we face, his response to the most natural answer to Peter Alexander tells you evening you need to know about how the president is viewing this crisis. Americans are scared, 200 dead, 14,000 sick, millions, as you witnessed, who are scared right now. What do you say to americans watching you now who are scared . I say that youre a terrible reporter. Thats what i say. I think thats a very nasty question and i think its a very bad signal that youre putting out to the American People. The American People are looking for answers and theyre looking for hope. And youre doing sensational ism and the same with nbc ex comcast. I dont call it comcast, concast. Let me tell you something, thats really bad reporting and you ought to get back to reporting instead of sensational list m. L lets see if it works. No, it doesnt work. While he was doing that, we learned of larry cosure coming the illness. California is on lockdown. Illinois is on lockdown. New york state is on lockdown. New york city is undisputedly now the epicenter of this pandemic, here in the u. S. , this week, this week. The number of confirmed cases has grown from 464 on monday when we started this week to over 5,000 by this afternoon. Now, thats partly explained by a massive increase in testing in new york city metro area. Today mayor bill de blasio said onethird of all coronavirus cases in the trocountry are in york city. 1200 people in the state have been hospitalized, all but a few in the new york city metro area which means, we are starting to get very close to seeing the edges or the beginnings of the edges of our hospital capacity. In the last few hours the wall street journal and New York Times public pieces about the strain the virus is putting on the citys hospitals and unless extremely dramatic action, overwhelming federal force and coordination are brought to bear this problem, this is what new york might be facing, sky news got ok seaccess to a hospital ae scene inside is just devastating. This is the main hospital in lom lombardy. Its one of the most advanced hospitals but the most hardhit of all the hospitals in italy, the town is the center of the epidemic here. This is not a ward, its a waiting room. People are on gourn knurn knees meetings rooms, everywhere. Staff want people to see what is happening and lock nations down or face this. Italy had the worst death it will today two weeks after the country went into lockdown. Andy, former acting administration for medicare and Medicaid Services and comprehensive congressional proportional for a covid19 response. Andy, ive been talking to you and following you on twitter. Youre talking to Health Experts across the country, doctors, Public Health officials, hospitals, what is the latest youre hearing as of today . Well, the first thing is that we all know this is very difficult to accept and understand exactly whats happening. Chris, you were on this a few weeks ago raising the alarm bell, but for many people this felt like something very, very far away and what people have to understand is that the numbers you showed today in a couple weeks time will sadly look like the good ol days. The number of people all of these numbers are expected to double every three days and it doesnt take a long time for thousands to turn into tens of thousands and tens of thousands to turn to hundreds of thousands into millions and in densely populated cities in places where people are not respecting the fact that they need to be staying in, its going to create an on slot that will be impossible to handle and were about a dozen days behind italy, so any scene you see of a town in northern italy, you can pretty much expect something very close to that here in the u. S. This is a virus that none of us have immunity for. I dont care how good of shape youre in or how young you are and its a virus that spreads invisibly in the air. You can walk into a room that your grandmother walks into 20 minutes later and you could have possibly infected her. So you have to take seriously what we call the stayhome idea, which is if you have a lot of peoples lives in your hands, you dont know it but you do and thats where we are. This current phase is like we are in the midst of the battle and havent gotten there and use another metaphor, there is a weird feeling invoked by an italian physician, the moment between the lightning and thunder. There is a moment in italy where we knew it was coming and preparing or a day or two and they were prepared and nobody was there and it hit. Thats where we are right now and the only way we can get through this is lockdown and social distancing, right . Thats basically what we have. Thats the tool we currently have is mass mitigation, dramatically reducing human interaction, is that right . We blew it on containment where you are able to Contract Trace people and it got into the community and we didnt plan well enough sadly and look, we have to navigate from where we are, not from where we wish we were but from where we are today, absolutely this is more in our hands by staying home. Everybody has to do their part. The federal government needs to step up and operate much more like a machine thats supporting us. The governors are doing a great job. The mayors are all working but no one really can do it alone, and i think this is a huge role to play. Im 53 years old. I never lived through the greatest generation, the sacrifices people made during world war ii, and if my sacrifice is to stay home and spend time with my family, probably more of a sacrifice for them than me, this is and i dont mean to make light of the fact people are feeling Economic Hardship and anxiety but were all feeling it together. It a sacrifice we can make together and save a lot of lives. This will be over. The question is how many people and lives can we save . The will be over is the hard part for us. I spent all waking hours thinking about this and talking to people and talking to experts about it and i oscillate between doomsday and pinpricks of optimism and south korea is an optimistic case, they took a different approach with mass testing and singapore and taiwan. Epidemiologist tend towards a world view that is prepare for the worst and hope for the best, naturally and correctly in their line of work, but that maybe it wont be as bad as theyre projecting, right . This idea of half of california infected or a peak in august, i mean, that those are at the ex trtreme ends if we take the steps now, can we see light at the end of the tunnel in the next month or two . Does italy tell us about that . Yeah, look, i think, you know, i was quoted as saying we should be closer to panic than calm and what i mean by that is if you havent gone through that initial sleepless night that you just talked about, then youre not really getting whats going on. But after you do that, you start to come back. There is no reason to live in this panic phase and even though weve done a number of things wrong and you documented them at the top of the episode, there are strengths we have as a country that i think are going to make this look better than what an epidemiologist will see on a piece of paper. For example, every innovator, genius, Technology Person i know right now, this is a focussing moment for them. People are talking about different ways to invent different things, different therapies and i have no doubt that while we have weaknesses as a country, we have strengths and theyre unique strengths and so i wouldnt be surprised if things start appearing, these gym glimmers months out. If i were the president , i wouldnt lead a News Conference based on some hope someone told me about and i think what we should expect from him, he wants to be a wartime general, a wartime president , i should say, is decisive focus, sober worst case senatcenarie Case Scenario planning and if we were too pessimistic, that will be the most wonderful thing in the world. Plan for the worst, hope for the best and lets all hope that i look ridiculously panicked and over selling things in two months from now. I will as will you, will welcome any Video Montage of that. Thanks, chris. Joining me now, two people that know what were dealing with. Michael steele, former rnc chairman. Michelle, you wrote a great column in the New York Times where you said look i, get some impulse to say lets not talk about politics now we have a crisis but politics matter and holding the federal government and Trump Administration and donald trump accountable for the failures matters, why did you write that column . Because i think youre starting to hear not just from right wing hacks from some reasonable people says now is not the time to write backwards and point fingers and i understand the impulse. I think the problem is the political failure is not just the past, its on going. Its going on in the fact that the president gives these press conferences every day where he kind of lies and spreads misinformation and spreads false hopes like the fda approved drugs the fda has not approved. He basically tells people they shouldnt be as alarmed as in fact, they should. You see that reverberating throughout the country and just republicans telling pollsters theyre not that worried and not changing habits in the same way democrats are and then the other thing is just he has so far inexplicably he has invoked the defense production act which a number of congressman called on him to invoke this act from the korean war that allows the president to direct manufacturers to manufacture things for public safety, you know, we have this critical shortage of ventilators, masks, icu beds. He invoked it but wont use it. He wants it to be there in case there is a worstCase Scenario as if its not unfolding in front of us. It important for people to be vocal in criticism because that the the only thing this president responds to. He doesnt respond to calls for public sacrifice or to calls for the public good. He responds to kind of feeling aggrieved because hes getting a bad rap. To michelles point about this actual apriestble danger this causes with people taking this seriously and the whip saw effect of sort of these kind of big its like a sales job where like now i got your attention and what can i do to get you in the car and the car is a lemon. This is a line great from a bloomberg piece that said a hospital ship that cant get sail, a drug that cant get it, donald trump repeatedly over stated his governments accomplishments as he tries to calm americans and fight the spread of the coronavirus. What do you make of it . I think its a little bit less about calming americans and more about how the presidencys himself in this narrative. That was, i think, testified to today by the president s reaction to the press in the room with him. How personally he took it and just how angry he got because he was asked how will you console the American People . Would you say to them to make them less nervous and less concerned . And his response was thats an attack. Youre a bad reporter. So this idea, i think, to michelles point that this presidencys this virus, this n contagion, this epidemic is the root problem here and then you have the position with some republicans who are trying to sort of deal with the reality but also try to stay on the president s good side. He has two people standing behind him, watching dr. Fauci today, his head to his hand. Those are related and this is why its so important to focus on this. The president said i dont want my numbers to go up. The numbers will go down. Heage early, i dont want a lot of cases. The way to do that, dont test. I dont know how those connect but it does matter what the leader of a country says to the people underneath them. That message was sent and every single step of this revolved around the president s ego and narcissim as opposed to what is going on in the country. Well, you know, one of the people i talked to when i was writing my column is a john hopkins professor who teaches a class called policy failures and this is obviously going to go on the syllabus and one thing he said in these historic policy failures, only a certain number of decisions make it onto the president s desk, any president. So you always have to have a bureaucracy that is both confident and thats another way in which this president has already failed the country and rooting out professionals and replacing them, not replacing them at all or with hacks and you have people make their decisions based on the signals they get from the top. And so the person at the top is saying this not urgent, this is not a priority and i dont want to hear any bad news. If somebody like there was a cdc official who basically came out a few weeks ago and told us prepare for significant disruption in your life and the president was reportedly furious. There is a professional cost in telling the truth, in preparing the country. Yeah. And so of course, people respond Extraordinary People act anyway but respond to that. It struck me today as i watched the president and he seized on the possibility of this malaria drug being used for treatment and its not completely crazy. There is some initial and small and early results that maybe give it promise and god, i hope hospitals are running Clinical Trials and it works out. But its, you know, a power of positive thinking, selling other people and, believing and selling other people on your own b. S. Is a trait in a real else state developer but literally the worst trait in Public Health. It is you couldnt find a bigger personality and world view mismatch than that. Absolutely. In fact, i tweeted to that effect yesterday when the president had made another one of his statements of trying to, you know, make the American People feel good. Like, youre not trying to close the deal on my apartment. You know, this is about, you know, how do we solve this problem . Why dont we have the necessary equipment in place and the testing in place and these are fundamental issues that wont go away and i think the president doesnt really appreciate that they wont go away because the country is waiting for you to take the action and necessary steps to do something about it. Governors right now, chris, as you know with Governor Cuomo in new york and Governor Hogan in maryland are leading. For the president to look at them and go, well, you know, were not a supply shop. You guys are supposed to be doing this anyway, that the not how this works. You know, yes, they have to lead in their states but theyre also looking to the federal response to aid and assist and to make their efforts work to the betterment of the people and thats the piece of this again, that is a big part thats missing. Michelle goldberg and michael steele, thank you so much. Coming up, calls for the resignation of two republican senators that face accusations they used Information Private briefings about the pandemic for their own financial gain before things hit the fan. That story next. Ial gain before things hit the fan that story next. We would walk on the sidewalk all around the wind blows we would only hold on to let go blow a kiss into the sun we need someone to lean on blow a kiss into the sun all we needed somebody to lean on all we need is someone to lean on ladies, my friends and i are having a debate. I have a back rash. Alright. Whoa, mara. I laugh like this. [ laughs obnoxiously ] its just not my scene. I couldnt help but over do you like insurance . I love insurance. Did you know you can save money bundling home and auto with progressive, and renters can bundle, too . I know, right . [ laughs ] [ singing continues ] whyd you stop . I was listening. [ microphone feedback ] whyd you stop . I was listening. You work hard for your money. Stretched days for it. Juggled life for it. Took charge for it. So care for it. Look after it. Invest with the expertise of j. P. Morgan, either with an advisor or online, through chase. After all, its yours. Chase. Make more of whats yours. Trust us. Us kids are ready to take things into our own hands. Dont think so . Hold my pouch. And sometimes, you can find yourself heading in a new direction. But when youre with fidelity, a partner who makes sure every step is clear, theres nothing to stop you from moving forward. Tonight, calls across the political spectrum for the resignation of senators richard burr of North Carolina and kelly of georgia. They are facing strong acre s s accusations they themselves filed that one of the first things they did after they found out just how bad the coronavirus would be during closed door Senate Briefings was sell a huge amount of stock right before the market tanked. Both senators deny doing anything unethical. Im joined by Derrick Ellis revealing that senator burr dumped up to 1. 7 million in stock. Also with me tim mack and p. R. s washington investigative correspondent recovered audio of burr raising concern about it in february. Derrick, let me start with you and take me through basically these two senators and what they did and why they look suspicious. Sure, well the first thing is there is a timeline here, right . The senators when they make stock trades or trades are made on they are behalf, they have to file reports with the senate what those were. In this case, after that january 24th briefing for all senators about the coronavirus, in the weeks after days and weeks after that, weve had a couple different senators file reports of stock sales. In the case of senator burr, the reason that we wrote about his activity