Good morning and welcome to a. M. Joy. As the number of confirmed cases in the United States approaches 1 million. As of this morning more than 50,000 americans have now died in the covid19 outbreak. At its current rate the next few days could see the number of american fatalities surpass the death toll during the vietnam war. A war that lasted roughly 20 years from 1955 to the fall of saigon in 1975. The man who avoided service in that war due to bone spurs does not want you to remember this prediction that he made just 59 days ago. And again, when you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, thats a pretty good job weve done. But as alarming as the escalating death toll is, a death toll that far exceeds every other country in the world, around this country governors are grappling with decisions about when to reopen businesses to revive the struggling economy. Well, governors, if youre listening here are a few startling facts. In wisconsin the number of cases spiked on thursday just over two weeks after the Republican Controlled Legislature refused to delay the primary election that included a hotly contested state Supreme Court seat forcing hundreds of thousands of wisconsi wisconsinites to vote in person. And in michigan, theres been a rise in confirmed cases for the past four days as well, just a short time after protesters gathered in public to demand an end to that states lockdown orders. These statistics make it all the more confusing. Governor bryan kemp of georgia would proceed with his plan to reopen his state yesterday. Phase one of that process began with places like hair salons, nail salons and even gyms, bowling alleys and tattoo par r parlors back up and running. On monday other close contact businesses like restaurants and movie theaters will follow suit. Heres what Governor Kemp had to say about that earlier this week. By taking this measured action, we will get georgians back to work safely without undermining the progress that we all have made in this battle against covid19. I will say that, you know, when we have more people moving around were probably going to see our cases continue to go up, but were a lot better prepared for that now than we were over a month ago. I can tell you i dont give a damn about politics right now. He seemed to be taking advice from the man that he treats as his boss, donald trump. Hes been bent to reopen the economy. Hes encouraged supporters to defy lockdown orders that he deemed as too strict in a pandemic. Heres what he had to say about Governor Kemps decision as recently as tuesday. How do you protect the people of South Carolina for example from a potentially bad decision by a governor in georgia. Hes a very capable man. He knows what hes doing. Hes done a good job as governor, georgia. But perhaps given the rising infections in states where citizens did not heed stay at home orders or just because hes donald trump and he just repeats the last thing that he hears, here he is just one day later on wednesday. I toild the governor of georgia, bryan kemp that i disagree strongly with his decision to open certain facilities, which are in violation of the phase one guidelin guidelines. Joining me now is the mayor of atlanta, georgia, and mayor, thank you so much for being here and i want to start just by reading you a little piece a little bit of a piece in the guardian this week that is titled georgias covid19 reopening pits white governor against black mayors. Heres a bit of it georgia is a state where African Americans make up 32 of the population but account for an estimated 5 of known coronavirus deaths. Only 20 of black workers reported being eligible to work from home compared with about 30 of their white counter parts according to the Economic Policy institute. It feels like this governor is not all that concerned about those people who are at risk and what do you make of this idea of reopening close contact businesses like hair salons and tattoo parlors and movie theaters . Something that struck me as i was watching your introduction is the distance that the governor had between the Person Holding the sign and the person who was doing the sign language. Thats a safe distance so we are to stay away from each other. You cant do that when you are cutting someones hair or when you are giving them a massage or a manicure. And what we know in looking at the numbers African Americans are disproportionately impacted by this disease, ive had a good working relationship with our governor so this race transcends economic level, this is a virus that hitting us all and despite the great working relationship ive had with him over the past couple of years i think this is a bad decision. I think it is putting all of us at risk but especially communities of color where you have a beauty and barbershop on every single corner. Its not just about the people in that shop you will infect and impact a community as a whole and that is what concerns me. Yeah, you know, there is this disconnect between you know, what Business Owners are dealing with which is obviously a marked loss of revenue, its very difficult to deal with. They also have to pay rent, they also have payroll and stressors. Between that and the science and the data, so let me play for you first, this is a barbershop owner in your city, in atlanta saying they want to come back open. Take a listen. The south is a lot different from up north. New york has been hit hard. All them places have been hit so hard. We havent been hit hard like that. Weve got empty beds in hospitals now. And if we do our job with the secretary of state and the governor has put the rules and regulations in for us, i think its better now than its ever been. I mean, we clean up after every chair every customer. Were wearing gloves. Hey, our customers are in better shape now coming in than theyve ever been in our country. And that of course that is not a black barbershop so we dont nearly know how barbershops in the black community are going to react differently if they are going to react differently from majority barbershops but the data shows that georgia has one of the lowest testing rates in the entire country. Fewer than 1 of georgians have been tested for coronavirus. And theres also a lot of data that suggests and this is from the New York Times that the infection rate in georgia is is getting worse, not better. Its actually going up. So how do you manage the disconnect when you have this very trumpian governor who wants to reopen for his own reasons and youve got the data source of things getting worse in your state. I stuck my head in there a few weeks ago before everything was shut down. Its a very diverse barbershop and really representative of who we are as a community, but again, this is something we will agree to disagree on. What concerns me when i look at our numbers that i received at 7 00 last night with nearly 23,000 people in the state testing positive and remembering we still arent testing people with mild symptoms and people who are asymptomatic. That was up 26 from seven days ago. Our deaths 899 as of last night. Up 32. 79 from a week ago. 231 deaths in the last week, more than a quarter of all the covid19 deaths that weve had in this state. Wishing the economy to reopen will not make this virus go away. The reason that we do have beds open in our city is because we have been very aggressive in shutting things down and ive said this the past couple of days, joy, simply because we have capacity doesnt mean we should work to fill those beds up. We cannot sacrifice peoples lives and enter into this Public Health experiment for the sake of the economy. Well, can i ask you very quickly before i let you go, ive had a lot of friends from georgia texting me asking and i want to ask you, is it possible that your governor wants to reopen your state because the budget in the state is not in good shape, not in good place because of deep tax cuts and past economic policies and that this is a way, reopening, to push people out of eligibility to collect unemployment . Because technically if you reopen the state these people are no longer unemployed and they cant claim benefits. I think that is a very good question. Our state budget is facing a 4 billion shortfall over the next several years. We also know that one question on unemployment application is are you eligible to work, did you refuse to work and thats a consideration that people are giving. But im hearing people say if i had money in my pocket i would stay at home. Its the reason we launched the Small Business fund in atlanta. Its the reason we have a relief fund to try and give people that option but that is certainly a consideration and i know that he has publicly expressed he is concerned about the state of the economy in georgia. But again, i dont think it should be at the risk of peoples lives. Very quickly before i let you go, we know that a fellow georgian, stacy abrams has been mentioned for a potential short lister for Vice President as joe biden is making his selection. Mad dam mayor,ing are being vetted because your name is popping up as somebody that may be vetted for the Vice President ial running mate. Joy, ive seen and read the same stories that you have. Ive seen my name mentioned but obviously being the mayor of a major city in the middle of a pandemic is more than enough and i had to think about in addition to figure out third grade math again so what ive said is i want the Vice President to put on the ticket whomever gives him the best chance of beating donald trump in november. Do you think that that needs to be a black woman because thats another thing thats being talked about a lot. You know, i think that the Vice President will give whatever consideration needs to be given to this ticket. Hes been through this before. He knows this process way better than any of us know so i wont second guess what he feels is needed to round out his ticket but i do trust that he will make the best decision. Mayor, stay safe, good luck with the third grade math and also were all thinking about your city. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you this morning. Thank you, joy. And joining the discussion now is msnbc contributor and a paying columnist for the Washington Post and legal analyst for msnbc and a professor at the news school. You worked for a time in city government. The considerations that the governor is making are supposed to mainly include the health and keeping his constituents alive, his members of his state alive but i have heard a lot of talk from georgia and the mayor did not dispute it that some of these considerations are strictly financial. That because the state cannot afford necessarily to pay out Unemployment Benefits because theyve tanked their own budget with tax cuts, that the govern nor is trying to keep folks off the rolls. Hes trying to make it so they cant apply. What do you make of that theory . Well, you know, i cant speak for what is motivating the governor of georgia. I think that theres no question that states and cities across this country are feeling an enormous amount of economic pain and were even seeing a growth in hunger as people lose meals. I think the disturbing thing about this is the only reason you would reopen the economy is because of politics. And i say that because the reality is you have so many people clam moring for finding a way, just as mayor said finding a way to make their lives work when government step in with really good Unemployment Benefits, when it doesnt step in with the health care that people need, if it doesnt step in with making sure people have paid sick leave, all the things that enable them to do exactly what they want to do, which is stay safe, stay home, its not that people dont want to, its that they feel enormous amount of pressure about getting back to the ability to support their families. So really what Governor Kemp should be doing is what we see a lot of governors across the country doing is asking why states arent getting more support from the federal government in order to meet the very life needs, necessities of our residents and thats something that i think is a very legitimate question for Governor Kemp because this isnt black and white. This is life and death. But you know, jonathan its side logical. So you have these red state governors who in theory dont believe in federal funding of anything, they also dont believe in taxes, so they have a very low tax base. So theres not a lot of money coming in, and a lot of these states quite frankly are on the dole. They take in more money from the federal government than they give out. There are only two red states or maybe three that give more money to the federal government than they take back and georgia aint one of them. And to put a finer point on it, its money from blue states going in in terms of tax revenue to the federal government that then gets doled out to the red states and i think Governor Cuomo made that point a couple of days ago. The over thing here is the focus on reopening the economy is based on politics. I agree with maya on that point. But imagine where we would be if we didnt have a president of the United States whose sole focus was how the dow industrial average was doing, how wall street was doing, how the stock market was doing, how for the last couple of weeks weve been talking about opening up the economy instead of putting his focus on or at least trying to strike a balance between the Public Health and the economy, you know, i interviewed Governor Whitmer of michigan on thursday and she was under immense pressure with those demonstrations in lansing from people saying reopen the economy and yesterday she announced that shes looking into maybe easing the restrictions, but she said her stay at home order was being pushed in to may. For her, she told me that a National Strategy on testing and on ppe would be something that would save lives, but would also give her and actually all the other governors the room to be able to balance Public Health with the economy and from her perspective and i think from all the governors perspectives perhaps with the exception of maybe Governor Kemp, her overriding concern is a second wave of infections and i think that is what Governor Kemp is risking by doing what hes doing. You showed those maps in the New York Times two days before he reopened the economy yesterday, that the number of infections were the biggest theyve been, you know, compared to the other two maps that were shown on that page of the New York Times that you showed earlier there that were looking at right now. Yeah. Imagine if we had a president who was able to balance Public Health and the economic well being of the nation in those states. Well, or imagine if you had a different governor. I want to play stacy abrams who a lot of people believe should have been governor based on a lot of tricks being played with the voter roles and she wasnt. Here she was on morning joe this week talking about disparities in georgia. Were the 8th largest state in the nation but we have the 14th highest infection rate and the 7th slowest testing rate these businesses reopening are going to force front line workers back to work without having access to a Health Care System to help them if they are in need. You know, this is not a small state. If a huge outbreak on the level that were seeing in places like new york does kick in in georgia, this is going to be devastation and a lot of lives lost disproportionately in the black community. Absolutely and the latino community. I want to say here in new york city we lost a fivemonth old baby, jay natalee who was the daughter of a firefighter and a mom who worked for our department of education. Five months old. Dont tell me that this is just about people over 80 in nursing homes. It is not. The youngest person we know to have died of complications from coronavirus. This is not a game and the more were seeing and learning, i mean stacy abrams is exactly right and were an epicenter in new york and it is now spreading in rural areas around the country and were seeing in places like south korea where they were extremely competent at getting coronavirus under control that theyve seen and been able to track down this call center in south korea where you had 50 of the workers getting sick on the 11th floor of one building. Now, take that to other states that are reopening businesses. Yeah, absolutely and you know, jonathan, rick wilson said it best that the governors that think theyre being obedient to donald trump by saying oh, yes, sir, well reopen our businesses and put our own citizens at risk for you sir to help your reelection, they quickly find out that his loyalty to them doesnt exist. Its only one way. Because he then turns on them and says thats a terrible idea. Right. And we saw that in high relief this week where you showed one day the president says you know, i trust bryan kemp, hes a smart guy and the very next day he trashes him not only saying that he thought that the governor was making a bad decision, but made a point of saying his name over and over and over again as if he as if hes punishing him. Yeah, absolutely. Its hes not going to be loyal back to yall so i dont know why youre putting him in front of your own constituents. Thank you very much. Stay safe, both of you. Thanks. You too. Coming up, donald trump thinks that he can make his disinfectant inhalation device ideas disappear with no streaks or residue. With no streaks or residue i have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. Now, theres skyrizi. 3 out of 4 people achieved 90 clearer skin at 4 months after just 2 doses. Skyrizi may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. Before treatment your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection