The bathroom. Senator sanders would anyone like to tell mayor bloomberg to screw himself . Very good. And who ordered the pastrami . The chicken breast . The caviar . A jar of mayonnaise . This salad with a comb in it . Senator klobuchar. Lastly, anyone who knows they shouldnt be here . Thank you. Goodbye. Okay, then. Lets begin. That was fun. Good morning and welcome to we need a little levity, right . Welcome to morning joe. It is thursday, february 27th. An with joe, willie and me we have the president of council on Foreign Relations and author of forthcoming book the world of bree introduction Richard Haass. I like that. Also with us, historian, author of the soul of america and rogers professor of the presidency at Vanderbilt University jon meacham, nbc news and msnbc contradicter and author of look at you two the last words of jesus from the cross is out today. Very good to you have both. Thats the great news. Great to have you on. Decided to go with a lesserknown subject. Those footnotes. His presidency controversial, but consequential. Wise. Oh, lord. The last words . The last words. I was down the street here at saint thomas Episcopal Church, did the threehour service, you do a a little sermon, last towards from the cross, formed an amazing, what a medieval scholar called the final sermon, where you can see the entire story of the christian saga unfolding on what he said from, father forgive them, they know not what they do to it is finished. Well dig into that more in a minute. First the big news of the morning. The cdc announced yesterday a new case of the coronavirus has been confirmed in Northern California, and it is believed to be the first instance of what the agency calls Community Spread, meaning the patient didnt have any relevant travel history, or exposure to another known patient. So far there have been at least two other persontoperson transmission cases in the u. S. That both involved spouses of people who had traveled to china. That Development Comes as President Trump held a News Conference in the Briefing Room yesterday alongside Top AdministrationHealth Officials in the briefing the president accurately described the risk to americans as low, but still said hes assembling a task force, which will be led by Vice President mike pence. We have a total of 15 people, and theyre in the process of recovering with some already having fully recovered. Were at that it very low level, and we want to keep it that way. So were at the low level. As they get better we take them off the list so that were going to be pretty soon at only five people, and we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. And, again, when you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to 0, thats a pretty good job weve done. Mr. President , as weve been briefed, while the threat to the American Public remains low of the spread of the coronavirus, you have directed this team to take all steps necessary to continue to ensure the health and wellbeing of the American People, and the people of this country can be confident that under your leadership we will continue to bring the full resources of the federal government in coordination with our state and local partners to see to the health and wellbeing and to the Effective Response to the coronavirus here in the United States of america. And just in the course of last couple of minutes you have disputed some of what officials working in your administration behind you have said about the risk of coronavirus and its spread. Could you trust your Health Officials to give you good information . I dont think ive said they could it could be worse and i said it could be worse too i dont think its inevitable. I think were doing a really good job in terms of maintaining border, letting people in and checking people and also one of the reasons im here today. Getting the word out. So well can theyll no. A source familiar with the governments efforts tell nbc news there is internal tension within the administration on how to contain public concern about the spread of the virus. A rift that dates back to last months decision to implement travel restrictions and mandatory quarantines. Allies of the president say that he wants to make sure his team is initiating the appropriate responses at the right times without creating mass panic. The report says that trump has largely hinged his frustration on the center for Disease Control after they announced an outbreak was all but inevitable, yet experts of past epidemics claim that trumps decision to downsize the White House Security staff and eliminate jobs addressing global pandemics is likely to hinder the governments response to the virus. Here is the president s response to a question yesterday about those budget and staff cuts. System called for enormous cuts to the cdc, nih and w. H. O. You talked a lot today about how the professionals are excellent, critical and necessary. Does this experience give you pause about nompl. Because we can get money. Its a question i asked the doctors before. Some of the people we cut havent been used for many, many years. Fe we ever need them we can get them really quickly and rather than spending the money, im a business person. I dont like having thousands of people around when you dont need them. Oh, boy. That decision kearns me a lot. And talking about a sizable budget to get this moving. So, willie, its interesting that, i watched the press conference. First of all, was very glad he had a press conference. In the Briefing Room. Very important. Robert gibbs said at noon that he needed to do. The president in the Briefing Room with his team behind him sends a very clear message that he is on alert. Now, listen, people might say its because he cares more about the stock market than the coronavirus. I dont really care why hes in there. Its important hes in there. What robert gibbs says. Once again today is the necessary time to be in the white house Briefing Room. Please bring out the Public Health experts and walk the nation through the response what comes next and what americans need to prepare for. We need to hear it, please. For the most part its what the president did. Brought his team together. Had experts come up and lay out the possibility and, of course, were grading on a lower scale and, of course, we had to listen to poor mike pence bow and scrape and talk about how great donald trump was every three seconds, but, again, all that aside, the president came out, got the message out. Yes, he was being overly optimistic, but there were several times, i believe during that press conference, where he said, yes it could get worse and his Health Official said, thats what we need to prepare communities for, and this is what communities need to do. So, you know i know i know a lot of people were slamming the president for what he did. They were bet you are off this morning because he did what he did than had he not gone out at all. The unease that was spreading. I thought, there are a couple of little side barbs that he threw out there. He brought the wall on passing, and also asked about india. How great was your trip to india . Set up perfectly. I dont really want to talk about that. Lets talk about the virus. Grading on the trump scale, lower scale, i was actually pleased and comforted that the president of the United States brought the entire Health Care Team out, and they talked to americans about this very important situation. The president obviously earned everyones skepticism when he first starts talking hes told so many lies, protected his own interests before the interests of the countries and did what president s do. Not get in the nittygritty of the science of the whole thing but try to ease the country as a sense of panic begins to xet se around the world. He said the risk was very low and cdc officials came in said, no. We dont know where this is headed Richard Haass. We have to be careful saying the risk is low, he did his job, the scientists did theirs. The president didnt want people to go out and talk about how serious, might hurt the markets and hence hurt his potential for reelection t reelection. Thats obviously there. We dont know what the risk is. The numbers of those that have the disease are probably far larger than publicly known, in part because lots of people are asymptomatic. The good news from that, the fatality rate is probably lower than the published rate. I think he made one important move. Establishing one person in charge of this. You need a whole of government effort. One person senior to the cabinet ho coordinate the cabinet and link the foreign and domestic aspects of that. Appointing the Vice President was the right thing to do. But it was a sobering press conference in the sense while the president was leaning towards the, lets not overreact, the danger is actually underreaction. What dr. Fauci said sobering. At best, at best, a year to a year and a half before we have a vaccine. Right. Meantime, not just this first wave, but there could be other waves of the virus. By the time we have the vaccine the waves of the virus might be different than the vaccine created would be applicable to. One of those things that will play out over a lot of time. Its a serious virus. Its beginning to show up in the United States and around the world. I think we have to work from the assumption its going to spread and what fauci said i liked. A public concern. And people who run corporations, large corporations, are sending the message out today to all employees. We are severely limiting travel. Sure. Getting on planes only if you have to do that. Multiplied many times over, and it is going to have quite an impact on the economy, but at the same time, well hopefully limit the spread of this virus, but youre right. We dont know. I think the test for this presidency is going to be, something weve talked a lot about on this show, in terms of voids in staffing at the state department. Often weve talked about first of all what exactly that looks like, when you have someone basically purging, not filling jobs basically weakening that institution and leaning towards the president s tendencies which is to be a strongman. If you dont have people underneath you and people questioning you and dont have jobs filled there is a weakness. If he has gotten rid of too many scientists, if he has gotten rid of too many people at the centers for Disease Control, if we dont have the right people in place, what he said, the last sound bite we ran. Well just get them back. Thats not so easy, and it will be very interesting to see exactly who they can gather together. Right. Beyond who they put onstage yesterday to really deal with this. If im going in and i have to have brain surgery, i dont care whether somebody likes morning joe or not. Right. I want the best brain surgeon. The purge that republicans are talking about donald trump going through throughout the government right now, jon, weve really heard about over the past week, that purge looks at an official and said, not, is that the official who will best make sure. Right. That people in wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, North Carolina and florida and the rest of the country do not die from this virus . Or is this a person whos going to be like mike pence and kowtow to the president every three sentences . And when this im hoping this is a wakeup call for the administration and for the president that in a lot of positions, loyalty to him doesnt have to come first. Especially if its about science. If its about infection disease, if its about safety. Yeah. The push and pull in our history has been between political appointees and a more professionalized Civil Service out of a progressive instinct you actually want government to be an instrument, a competent instrument, and seems to me that my greatest anxiety, aside from the impact of the virus itself, is, were living in an age of xenophobia. Uhhuh. And it is not impossible to imagine a scenario where blame is cast. Hmm. Thats right. On some country or group of people if this becomes worse. Happening in asia. What about tom cotton . Didnt tom go to harvard . I think so. I think tom is a harvard guy. Very welleducated. Tom cotton a couple of days ago spouting a Conspiracy Theory that the chinese made this virus up. There you go n. In a lab. You have rush limbaugh, president ial freedom winner. Hard to say its the most reckless thing hes done but saying this is just a conspiracy and made up to hurt donald trump, he said something yesterday, i cant even keep up with it, but every day is a new dangerous Conspiracy Theory. I mean, this is this is serious stuff, folks. Dont worry about your ratings for one week. Dont try to dont try to spool up some of whoevers wearing tinfoil hats in your audience, but thats whats happening. Still, these conspiracy theories are still saying things that are going to be extraordinarily dangerous for this country. We need to all come together. The other thing thats dangerous here is resource allocations. Talking about the scientific talent. The other is money. This is an administration that cut money for the centers for Disease Control, for it National Institutes of health. Dramatically slashed u. S. Support for the World Health Organization and for aid around the world. A perfect example of penny wise and pound foolish. Because we havent invested in the infrastructure domestically and internationally on dealing with pandemics like this, we are far more vulnerable than we needed to be or want to be. This is the thing, willie. When you start when you have donald trump spending the money that he spends and cutting the taxes that hes cutting and then he gets to these parts of the budget and i know its not him. Its just people mindlessly going, take 10 off of this, and 10 off of that and it has to do with health. It has to do with food safety. It has to do with research and development for alzheimers or for diabetes or for making, you know, americans, i mean talking about diabetes, the incidence of diabetes is higher in red state america than it is blue state america. A lot of this research hes slashing are hurting the very people that he would prefer to protect. Yeah. And those cuts all come home to roost eventually and impact people regardless of political preference. Right after the press conference the cdc announced a new case of coronavirus from Northern California reportedly from someone who hadnt traveled to any of the affected countries raising a new question how thats being transmitted. Lets go to the white house and Geoff Bennett lets talk about the decision to appoint the Vice President mike pence as the point person, at least. What will be the chain of command as the white house looks at this pending prices . Reporter look, any news coming out of that News Conference that was it. All day white house officials and sources tell us President Trump was not going to name a czar. Alex azar, health and Human Services secretary, had it all under control. Even as republicans on the other side of pennsylvania avenue, some had made the point azar already runs one of the biggest Government Agencies and that his sort of response effort needed a point person who would report directly to President Trump, and so thats precisely what President Trump announced yesterday. Apparently blindsiding azar himself. Azar had been on the hill in some zb committee hear some subcommittee members and had said there would be no czar. That Vice President pence will report back to trump. Pence has a lot of experience handling interagency work given his experience as a past governor of indiana although Public Health experts said he was roundly criticized for on hiv outbreak in 2015 in his home state of indiana. Pence at the time refused to accept really the hard science on needle exchanges and how that would be beneficial from a Public Health standpoint. I think the next part of this, though, is fully funding the response effort. You saw earlier in the week the white house requested 2. 5 billion that was criticized by democrats and republicans. Richard shelby, Senate Appropriations chair, thought the white house was lowballing it. Dr. Anthony fauci at the nih said that 2. 5 billion would be in effect a down payment and Chuck Schumer wrote his own bill 8. 5 billion to handle that and President Trump said, fine. What they want to gish us, well fully accept that. Im told about 1 billion of that will go to Vaccine Development and stockpiling equipment like masks and that sort of thing and the government also has to fix and deploy the governmentdesigned test for coronavirus, which i think would go in large part to getting the numbers of detections up to a point where the it might be more accurate to go t