His time, mostly because of the Global Reaction after he said this. Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And i think you said that hasnt been checked, but youre going to test it. And then i said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And i think you said youre going to test that too. Sounds interesting. Right. And then i see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do Something Like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning . Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. For that, youre going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So that was thursday. The president swore off the Daily Briefings for an entire weekend after the idea of injectable disinfectants failed to catch on. Tonight in what veteran white house aide david gergen called a form of addiction, the president was back at it, this time in the rose garden. Today with 56,000 dead and 26 million unemployed, the president faced the news media again. He said things are moving along and theres a Tremendous Energy in this country right now. He also said he couldnt imagine why people would ingest disinfectants. Today a parade of ceos came before the microphone, most of whom have learned the name of game by now and thanked the president for his leadership. Hes going deep on blaming china, saying today, quote, we are not happy with china. He said one country is accountable for what happened, and it could have been stopped. And those who have died have, quote, sacrificed for incompetence. He again mentioned, quote, i built the greatest economy in the history of the world. He again mentioned shutting down, quote, causes death also. And he again mentioned the 1917 flu pandemic, which is what he calls the 1918 flu pandemic, and issued his daily reminder of the death toll estimate had he done nothing. He said, quote, weve lost a lot of people while noting u. S. Deaths may be headed now for 70,000. Tonight we widen back out to the real world and find a u. S. Death toll that has passed 56,000 with not yet 2 of our population tested. We know of nearly 1 million confirmed cases of this coronavirus. Thats against the backdrop of more than 3 million cases worldwide. Tonight the Washington Post is reporting trumps intelligence briefing book cited the virus threat on multiple occasions as far back as january and february. One of the reporters on the story spoke to our colleague chris hayes earlier this evening. References to the coronavirus were included in at least a dozen of the president s daily briefs. They were calling attention to the threat of the coronavirus in a way that amounts to a fairly steady drumbeat throughout january and february. He doesnt read the pdb unlike his predecessors. He relies almost exclusively on an oral briefing that he has curtailed to roughly two or three times a week. Across this stretch of time, of course, he is in january and february, the period of time were writing about, he is very dismissive of the threat of this virus. You may recall it was about a month ago that donald trump said this. Ever seen Something Like this coming, but now we know, and we know it can happen and happen again. And if it does, somebodys going to be very well prepared because of what weve learned and how weve done. As we mentioned, the president appeared in the rose garden today to announce a new plan to increase resources for testing. Yet the upshot for all of it is the testing is still going to be the job of the states. The white house says it will be coordinating with governors to support testing plans. Today the administration was asked about its previous statements vowing to boost testing. In early march, you said wed be at 4 million tests by the following week. We just now got there in the last few days. So what have you learned about what went wrong, you know, a month and a half over the last month and a half or two months, and whats going to go right now . Jon, i appreciate the question, but it represents a misunderstanding on your part and, frankly, a lot of people in the publics part about the difference between having a test versus the ability to actually process the test. So when you said 4 million tests seven weeks ago, you were just talking about tests being sent out, not actually being completed . Im a little confused. Jon, i think precisely correct. Those were tests that frankly but for the president s leadership, wed still be waiting on those tests to be done in many cases. I think its very important to know and this you can get from any other country, i think, if theyre being honest. Not only do we have the most testing in the world by far, but we have by far the best testing. Except for percentage of the population. Meanwhile, more states and cities are moving ahead with plans to start reopening their economies and lifting those stayathome restrictions. After weeks of shutdown, about ten states have partially reopened. Texas, which lets not forget is home to 29 million americans, will lift its stayathome order on thursday of this week. Some businesses will be allowed to open back up friday. Miamidade county down in florida will reopen parks, boating faeflt boating facilities, waterways, golf courses starting wednesday. Illinois now facing a Court Challenge to its order to extend the restrictions. A judge has ruled against the governor there, governor pritzker, issuing a restraining over the extension of the states stayathome order through may 30. Pritzker says hell fight to keep his order in place. A number of School Systems remain closed. This afternoon, the president sure seemed to urge governors to consider reopening schools for the remainder of the year. I know that there are some governors that arent necessarily ready to open up their states, but they may be ready to open up their School Systems. Well see, but thats their choice. But the word is safety, okay . Rapid but safety. U. S. Attorney general bill barr has alerted federal prosecutors to be on the lookout for state and local virus restrictions that could be violating the Constitutional Rights and Civil Liberties of his fellow citizens. At the white house, trump offered this explanation of his a. G. s thinking. He wants to see people get back and he wants to see people get back to work. He doesnt want people to be held up when theres no reason for doing it. In some cases, perhaps its too strict. He wants to make sure people have their rights and they maintain their rights. This has been a big study. You know, the fact that people arent allowed to have their freedom causes a tremendous amount of problems, including death. So thats what hes talking about. Here for our leadoff discussion on a monday night, shannon pettypiece, veteran journalist, senior White House Reporter for us at nbc news digital. A. B. Stoddard, associate editor and columnist for real clear politics. And jeremy bash, former chief of staff at both the cia and pentagon, former chief counsel to house intel. Shannon, id like to begin with you and our friend Susan Glasser over at the new yorker has the quote to start us off. I guess the trump pulling back from outrageous, selfpromotional, inaccurate daily pressers story line was wrong. And, shannon, it strikes me, this is equal part groundhog day and charlie brown. Groundhog day in that you and i blindfolded could write a twopage story that Senior Republicans and staffers have prevailed on the president that hes overexposed and hes hurting the party politically, so hes agreed to pull back. Charlie brown comes in when the football gets pulled away from everyone in government and media, and we have what we witnessed today. How was that at all different from something branded a Coronavirus Press conference . Yes. Few surprises in life, i guess, if youre really paying attention. On friday, when he cut the briefing short and didnt take questions, a lot of the Administration Officials were saying, see, now hes listening to his advisers. Weve been telling him for weeks you have to curtail these. These are not helping you in any way. They are, in fact, hurting you. But, you know, one pretty Senior Adviser told me on friday they said, well, you know, it was friday. He was tired. Things might calm down for the weekend. But this aint over until its over. And, you know, they cautioned me against writing a story saying the Daily Briefing was done or he was going to be, you know, shelving things. And one of the big issues here has been all along, you know, when you have one bad habit, you have to replace it with a good one, they usually tell you. For his advisers to have him stop these briefings, they have to find some outlet for him to express himself, get his message out there, vent, and they dont have an alternative to that. These press briefings have become a mini rally in many ways, and you could see over the weekend when the president didnt have briefings, he was going out on twitter and a real string of tweets that, you know, you could argue would be hurt him even more potentially than these briefings. So i dont think it appears the strategy of getting him to, you know, pull back on these maybe we see a few more or some tweaks if they dont go on for two hours, but they seem to be here to stay, i think, until his aides can get him out on the road or get him some sort of alternative to these. Hey, a. B. , what is the president doing to the party and all those republicans who are going to be aligned on a ballot in november . You can look at the polling in the president ial campaign where biden is ahead in almost every single poll nationally, and critically he is ahead in the swing states, even eking out slim leads in ohio and florida, and then just behind trump by five points in texas and utah. So thats terrifying republicans in terms of their hold on the Senate Majority. They are now looking to lose Senate Incumbents in likely maine, probably colorado, almost definitely arizona, likely north carolina, and at this point theyre going to have to start putting out fires in terms of the resources they spend in iowa, in kansas, in montana, in texas, including mitch mcconnell. The Senate Majority leader, every single incumbent republican senator has been outspent by their challengers. This is really a nightmare scenario for them, which is why you saw a Campaign Memo from the Senate Committee telling republican incumbents, do not defend President Trumps coronavirus response. Just Start Talking about china, how much they lied to us, and basically fend for yourself. This has irritated the president , of course, but from the looks, the direct, you know, line from these really goofy briefings, sometimes really disturbing, going off the rails, to the polling that resulted after like two months of them. It was clear that they were really politically destructive to the president and for everyone downballot. And we saw the results today. Hey, jeremy bash, a couple of things about the Washington Post reporting. Are you surprised the coronavirus was in as many president ial Daily Briefings, which i guess have to be performed as skits and cant be handed over in the written version . Were you surprised it was in as many pdbs going back as far as it was . Were you further surprised to hear him express surprise when it got here . I wasnt surprised at all, brian, because there are major geopolitical implications to the coronavirus crisis, and the president received those briefings repeatedly according to this new reporting from the Washington Post in his president ial daily brief, which is of course the foundational document of the intelligence analysts, of the intelligence community. And at any moment leading up to a big security situation, theres going to be a tremendous amount of intelligence flowing to the oval office, principally through the president s daily briefs, and through other briefings. But the president has to be willing to hear it. And this is a president who has time and again denigrated the intelligence community, called them scum, called them nazis, unleashed the Justice Department to investigate them. He has said he wanted to out publicly a whistleblower from the intelligence community. So this is a president who disdains intelligence principally, brian, as we all know, because early on they said that russia saught to support his election, and hes never gotten over that. And youre seeing the consequences now, brian, where a president ignored the intelligence warnings, the repeated warnings from the intelligence community, and as a result the u. S. Government got to a very late start dealing with this crisis when they could have been much more on their front foot in january. Shannon, on the economy and this looming possibility, god forbid for all of us that we have a false start and any kind of a second curve. How many different sets of economic advice is this president getting, and whos winning this argument internally, do you think . Well, we kind of saw two of those Different Cases play out publicly when we had kevin hassett, one of his economic advisers, talking about how this was going to be, you know, great depressionlike numbers we were going to see. Then of course his treasury secretary talking about this huge rebound in the third and the Fourth Quarter, and the president , of course, echoing that, saying the Third Quarter is going to be great. The Fourth Quarter is going to be great. Going in september and october. The way im hearing advisers and strategists talk about this, they know the economy is going to be really bad going into the election. Their hope is that they can see some upward trend so that the Second Quarter numbers are just catastrophic but the Third Quarter looks a little bit better. And they can spin this as the Great American comeback story, as the president turning things around and, you know, just give him a little more time, and youll see, hell bring this economy back to life. Thats the scenario theyre hoping for. But if it goes the fear is that if it stays closed too long, instead of having things kind of get better in the Third Quarter, were going to enter some kind of death spiral where the Second Quarter is horrible and the Third Quarter is even worse. Thats the real nightmare scenario. It might be 15 unemployment in the Third Quarter, but if it was 20 in the Second Quarter, they think they can at least have a selling point to that. Theyre really banking on seeing some upward trend in the months before the election. A lot of folks dont know where that Third QuarterHousehold Spending is going to come from after what weve been through. A. B. , you have some reporting on something near and dear to your heart, and that is how cruel this virus has been to our veterans and military. And as a secondary question, i would ask you how our veterans and active duty military have fared under this commander in chief in the covid19 era. Brian, the situation both in the v. A. Health system for 9 million veterans, half of whom are over the age of 65 with underlying conditions for many of them either related to their age or their service, in these poorly run facilities, tight spaces. With cared for we have learned finally from the v. A. Theyve been rationing personal protective equipment. Not enough masks and gowns. Getting sick themselves. Ten have died among staff. Soldiers home in holyoke, massachusetts, have lost 73. Another facility in new orleans, 53. Veterans are in real peril because of a lack of preparation and then the same dysfunction and denial and dismissal of this virus that the general population as seen. We saw on the uss Theodore Roosevelt the beginning of how this virus is going to put in the same delayed response our active duty troops in harms way from the spread of the virus. Now, four aircraft carriers see positive cases, training recruits are in tight spaces trying to train up to be put into the pipeline, using social distancing and trying to avoid the spread. The Navy Submarines are very vulnerable. And now since my piece was published, the president is demanding 1,000 cadets return to west point so that he can speak to them for a graduation that they really shouldnt be gathering for or getting on airplanes for. Its just been a remarkable betrayal of our troops and our military readiness and our veterans who have given everything for us and are losing their lives in great, great numbers. Jeremy bash, a number of us woke up saturday morning to reports that kim jongun had died. We still dont have a definitive answer, but im going to play for you what the president said today about the leader of north korea. Kim jongun . I cant tell you exactly. Yes, i do have a very good idea, but i cant talk about it now. I do know how hes doing relatively speaking. We will see. Youll probably be hearing in the not too distant future. Jeremy bash, very typically there he wants us to know he knows, but in answering it, gave something of proof of life, but is that enough for the rest of the world to go on and is that the type of answer youd expect from the president . Yeah, i was going to say, brian, at least hes confirmed that the leader of north