Continue to surge with nearly 10,000 new cases reported in the last 24 hours. Still with no bend in the curve in sight. President trump is calling for a quick end to the most effective tool that currently exists to combat the virus, social distancing. We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. Were not going to let the cure be worse than the problem. At the end of the 15day period, well make a decision as to which way we want to go, where we want to go, the timing and essentially were referring to the timing of the opening. Essentially the opening of our country. You said its likely going to be weeks not months before you suggest easing these guidelines that you put out. Have any of the doctors on your team told you thats the right path to pursue . We spoke to them today and i was telling them that we have two things to look forward dont forget, the doctors, they may see, lets shut down the entire world. Because, again, youre up to 150 countries. Lets shut down the entire world and when we shut it down, that will be wonderful and lets keep it shut for a couple of years. We cant do that. Where is dr. Fauci right now . Why is he not in this briefing . I was just with him for a long time. We have a Task Force Meeting. Does he agree with you about that . He doesnt not agree. He understands its tremendous theres a tremendous cost to our country. You have 160 million jobs in this country now. The most ever by far, by far the most ever. The number of jobs. Almost 160 million. So we cant turn that off and think its going to be wonderful. There will be tremendous repercussions, there will be tremendous death from that, death. Youre talking about death. Probably more death from that than anything that were talking about with respect to the virus. Okay. That 15day period the president is set to decide whether to relax the social distancing guidelines recommended by government experts, it ends next monday. Thats not stopping more and more governors from issuing stayathome orders as hawaii, new mexico, washington state, michigan, wisconsin, oregon, west virginia, massachusetts and indiana join other states in ordering residents to stay inside. And, joe, the numbers dont seem to match what the president is saying about, you know, getting the country open again. Well, i personally and i could be wrong. I think the president is just talking right now. Hes whether hes blowing off steam or hes sending a signal to businesses or his supporters that run big corporations that he wants to get the economy restarted again. Hes getting pressure from inside the white house, from larry kudlow. I know larry. I like larry. But larry is not a doctor. Larry is the guy who said a couple weeks ago along with Kellyanne Conway that the pandemic was contained. These updates are to update people on the reality of this virus, where it is, what the numbers are, where masks are, where supplies are, where testing is. Right. Because people like rand paul walk around capitol hill interacting with everybody not knowing they have the virus. A case in point example in washington, d. C. , in the Republican Party. What more do they need . We need updates. We dont need him riffing and surmising on politics. Thats fine if you think hes politicizing and trying to figure out how to play the odds with this for his own political needs, but it seems like i would rather see dr. Fauci there, and i didnt know i missed him yesterday. I think most people were frustrated. Yesterday, no new information that couldnt have been summed up in 60 seconds, 90 seconds, at the end of that press conference, by somebody else. But its very interesting what you say about rand paul. Because lets think about it, i keep talking about and banging the drum on the importance of nationalizing our effort and throwing absolutely everything we need, everybody we have into testing and expanding testing and of course, youve got an oped this morning by two noble prize winning economists saying if you want to reopen the economy, youve got to test everybody. Thats the only way, if youre going to do what south korea has done, you have to be able to do that. I want to bring in Jonathan Lemire. The white house is not making this a national priority. Theyre not making it a National Effort. Theyve got to figure out how to get along with china to get the masks, to get the other equipment. China is making 120 Million Masks a day. My lord. We need to figure out, as i said throughout this entire process, afterwards, well do our after action reports on donald trump and everybody else. Right now what we need to do is get those masks and help people on the front lines. Jonathan, help me out here. You wrote a very revealing article about the president s state of mind, but i want to go down a list of things i was writing down as i was listening to the president. We have states shutting down. 10,000 new cases in the United States just over the past 24 hours. 10,000 new cases. U. S. Numbers skyrocketing at such a rate that were soon going to go past china as the country with the highest number of infections. Boeing, i read a report that one of their main plants yesterday shutting down. You have, as you know, u. S. Airlines are now talking to the government, theyre talking about shutting the airlines down, shutting down basically a shut down of all u. S. Domestic flights and most international flights. And you have new york city, of course, in a deepening crisis and your story, yesterday, understand your story reveals how hes growing frustrated with social distancing protocols which force the closing of maralago, forced him from getting out of the white house. But the president surely does understand, jonathan, does he not, that the rallies will come later in the summer, the rallies will come later in the fall. But we havent even were still a week, two weeks away from seeing the worst of this in the United States if were lucky. Were not opening up in two weeks. He understands that, right . It defies is advice of every medical expert around him including dr. Fauci. His absence explained it wasnt his turn to be out there. Theyre doing a rotation system. There are reports, including ours, that the president has grown frustrated with some of the attention dr. Fauci has received and some of the criticism that fauci has delivered in various interviews. Thats something to keep an eye ongoing forward. But in terms of their its not just the president. There are those and larry kudlow is one of them. There are people within the administration who believe the Health Experts have gone too far with this in terms of shutting down the economy and that it is delivering a mortal blow to the nations economy and the president s reelection chances. Theres a movement. You heard the president yesterday at the briefing, it lines up with our reporting all day long and our story that moved yesterday afternoon, that he is considering this. That it would not be a nationwide lift. There would be hot spot that is would remain with these restrictions. New york city, california, washington. And a lot of this is going to be up to the individual state governors. Governor cuomo is not going to listen to President Trump on whether or not new york should reopen for business as the president said. But there is consideration here that when this 15 days runs out in about a week or so, they may start to ease restrictions across the United States because the president has been watching and worrying about the state of the economy. Of course, we havent gotten close to the peak of this pandemic in the United States. And i what will be very telling is if the physicians yesterday, dr. Birx was on stage with him yesterday. She distanced herself from this proposal. She didnt endorse it. She didnt rebuke it either. What pressure will fall on hers and others including dr. Fauci to push this forward. To talk back and convince the president from doing this, to this point, the president who is frustrated, cant travel, cant go to rallies, hes turned those briefings into those rallies, that he is unsure of what to do. Hes been up on the phone late at night, dialing around for good news. Hes crashing white house meetings that hes not supposed to attend, forcing aides to redo their agendas and forcing aides to sugar coat their message. The president doesnt want to hear from any sort of subordinate something that didnt line up with his own world view and this includes this pandemic. Such a dangerous moment. Its possible hes not getting, joe, the most Accurate Information he needs and therefore hes foraging forward with his gut which could mean this reopening in just a week or so. He talked about it repeatedly at was one of the worst updates if thats possible. The numbers dont match, joe, with what the president is saying. Theyre not going down. There is absolutely to reason the president should be talking about reopening the country right now. If you look at it from any logical point of view. Another person missing was the Surgeon General. But his words were quite something compared to the president yesterday. This is going to be really bad and everyone should be acting like they have the virus. That was his advice. These people somehow dont make it to the stage anymore or if they do, potentially, if you look at Jonathan Lemires reporting, the president getting frustrated with this with medical information, advice, guidance . The president and congress and we as a society are balancing two things right now. Were balancing a pandemic, the worst Public Health scare, the worst Public Health care crisis weve had since 1918, in over 100 years. Were balancing that with what may soon be the worst economic crisis that weve had since 1929, since the crash in 1929. Those are two extraordinary things that have to be balanced. If you just if you just take just drive around your community from a safe distance from other people today, you will see there are still far too many people who are just not taking this seriously. And with them not taking this seriously that virus is spreading. The pandemic spreading. There was a story in the New York Times this morning about how one party in west port, connecticut, one party, Birthday Party, 40th Birthday Party helped spread the pandemic to south africa and across the globe. People dont understand how quickly this spreads, how easily it spreads. And so, again, i think the president , if let us hope, let us hope the president was just trying to send a signal to the markets that hes on their side, hes growing impatient too. But, mika, i have no doubt the numbers are going to be so bad in the coming weeks, were going the next, at least, two weeks that the president is not going to reopen anything. He understands that. Right now, again, the white house is talking with airlines about cutting off all the domestic flights because they know this is getting worse. Boris johnson was a bit of a skeptic weeks ago. He isnt now. It seems most populist leaders have made fools of themselves. Some people have just been dead wrong. Larry kudlow a couple weeks ago was dead wrong when he said, again, that the coronavirus was contained. That was when, what, maybe we had 50, 100 cases in the United States. We had 10,000 yesterday. Dont listen to larry kudlow on Global Health issues involving the pandemic. Listen to larry on economic matters. Thats fine. You might want to listen, though, to another skeptic in the past who yesterday came face to face with the pandemic and went against all of his political instincts to shut down his country because he saw what happened in italy, what happened in france, what happened in spain was coming to britain and america. Heres Boris Johnson from a press conference yesterday. The coronavirus is the biggest threat this country has faced for decades and this country is not alone. All over the world, were seeing the devastating impact of this invisible killer. To put it simply, if too many people become seriously unwell at one time the nhs will be unable to handle it, meaning more people are likely to die, not just from coronavirus but from other illnesses as well. So its vital to slow the spread of the disease because that is the way we reduce the number of people needing hospital treatment at any one time so we can protect the nhss ability to cope and save more lives and thats why weve been asking people to stay at home during this pandemic. Though huge numbers are complying, and i thank you all, the time has now come for us all to do more. From this evening, i must give the british people a very simple instruction, you must stay at home. If you dont follow the rules, the police will have the powers to enforce them, including through fines and dispersing gatherings. This is a skeptic, but just to point out if youre watching in britain and trying to figure out where the country stands, you got a clear message. It was effectively communicated with empathy and there were no mixed messages, no politics in that, no wavering. It was not weak at all. The leadership from the top here is unfocused, theres no mobilization of nothing and its weak. Its bad. Its going to drive us straight into this. That was an extraordinarily strong display by Boris Johnson and what the president needs to be told more, what his advisers around him need to tell him, theyre obviously not telling him this, is that strength against a pandemic is good politics. Mobilizing the federal government and all the federal government and its resources to bringing the pandemic to a grinding halt is not only good for the Public Health, its good for the economy. And its good for the politician thats doing it. The harsher the restrictions are now, the shorter they will be, the less likely that it will drag on throughout the spring, summer, and fall. But, you know, with Boris Johnson, that was strong. Sometimes i frustrate people because im good with late life conversions in politics and in life as well. Our problem is we dont want a death bed conversion. No. We dont want our president thats really good. Converting to this cause when its too late for too Many Americans who, again, the white house got worried last week, last weekend when they got the report that up to 2 million americans could die from this. I want everybody to listen who is still going out, hanging out, thinking this is some joke. Even the white house believes that up to 2 million americans could die. They saw the report and theyre taking it seriously, at least the health care advisers are taking it seriously and the president certainly took it seriously at the beginning of the week. Right now, speaking of the markets, the asian markets rallied last night because they believe the senate is actually going to come to a deal today. Senate leaders in the Trump Administration appear to be closing in on an agreement for nearly 2 trillion stimulus package to offset the damage caused by this. After a series of meetings last night and a phone call with the president , Chuck Schumer and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin said they are hopeful a deal will be reached by sometime today raising the possibility of a senate vote. Lets bring in Senior Writer at politico, an msnbc political contributor. And former treasury official and morning joe economic analyst, steve rattner. Bring us up to date on what the sticking points are. The sticking points are the 500 billion funds which is used to help distressed businesses which is a very crucial parts of the bill. Democrats has said the administration has too much oversight, too much leeway to disperse the money as it likes. Its a big problem, but about 11 30 last night the president urged republicans to be against this bill and im not sure what to make of that. I cant just like all of us, i cant get inside his head. Until the president fully embraces this bill, its going absolutely nowhere because weve seen this time and time again, and we wrote this morning, if Steve Mnuchin is doing a deal with the senate, hes an independent contractor with kind of good intentions. The president needs to embrace this package to get it through a senate that is hobbled. There are five republicans that either have the coronavirus or are sequestered because theyve been in contact with rand paul who was positive for the coronavirus. I would like to just put some skepticism here and the urgency is really great because Steven Mnuchin set a deadline of monday for this legislation and here we are on tuesday and the president is dumping all over it as it seemingly, according to schumer and mnuchin, is on the brink of some sort of deal. Steve rattner, what is the impact of the president actually trying to undermine this bill . Whats the reaction that were going to see in the markets when they open up this morning . Im not sure the markets are going to believe that the president is really that much of a factor, that successful undermining the bill. Let me go back for a second to what you were talking about earlier. I of course agree that the Public Health situation is dire and a crisis. But i think what youre seeing in and it may well be that the president is playing bad politics rather than good politics. But it may be whats in the president s head and what hes being told and im not at all suggesting that we change course. Its how bad this economy is going to get. Were going to be looking at a Second Quarter gdp number thats probably negative 30 . That would make that one quarter worse 1 1 2 times worse than the Great Recession itself. You had the president of the st. Louis fed say that unemployment could be over 30 in this country. That would be 5 Percentage Points higher than the great depression. Im not advocating we get away from this tightening of social restrictions. Im saying that the Economic Im