Transcripts For MSNBCW The 11th Hour With Brian Williams 202

MSNBCW The 11th Hour With Brian Williams July 3, 2020

Post reports Vice President pences trip to arizona this week had to be postponed from tuesday to wednesday after several secret Service Agents either tested positive for coronavirus or had shown symptoms of being infected. Were going to speak to one of the reporters from this breaking story just ahead. But despite all of this, President Trump, who is about to headline a july 4th event at mt. Rushmore, where the governor has specifically said social distancing will not be required, continues to put forward a very different reality across this country. The crisis is being handled. Something to think about, china was way early, and theyre getting under control just now. And europe was way early, and theyre getting under control. We are likewise getting under control. Some areas that were very hardhit are now doing very well. Some were doing very well, and we thought they may be gone, and they flare up, and were putting out the fires. But other places were long before us, and theyre now its life. Its got a life. And were putting out that life because thats a bad life that were talking about. Now were opening it up, and its opening up far faster than anybody thought even possible. Im not going to use profanity on this show, so let me say that that is nowhere near the assessment of the nations leading Infectious Disease expert, who happens to serve on the administrations Coronavirus Task force. Days after dr. Anthony fauci said the United States may soon see as many as 100,000 new cases a day remember, we had 56,000 today he offered yet another stark warning in an interview today with bbc radio. In an attempt to socall reopen or open the government and get it back to some form of normality, were seeing very disturbing spikes in different individual states. What weve seen over the last several days is a spike in cases that are well beyond the worst spikes that weve seen. That is not good news. Weve got to get that under control or we risk an even greater outbreak in the United States. We never got things down to baseline where so many countries in europe and the uk and other countries did. They closed down to the tune of about 97 lockdown. In the United States, even in the most strict lockdown, only about 50 of the country locked down. That allowed the perpetuation of the outbreak. All right. Thats fauci. Another task force member, the point person on testing, seemed to break with trumps optimistic view of the pandemic as well at a hearing today with the house coronavirus subcommittee. Will it disappear miraculously . We will only gain control over covid19 by disciplined Public Health measures and eventually a vaccine. I often hear that the increase is the positive cases is due to increased testing. Does that account for the increase that were seeing in those states . We do believe this is a real increase in cases because of the percent positivities are going up. At least 39 states are now dealing with escalating cases, and florida and texas are once again coronavirus epicenters with hospitalizations in texas now well past 7,000. Governor greg abbott, a republican who for weeks has strongly opposed efforts to require masks, changed course. Covid19 is not going away. In fact, its getting worse. Today i am issuing a Face Covering requirement for all counties with more than 20 covid cases. Then theres florida, which set a new record with more than 10,000 cases in a single day. Another task force member, dr. Deborah birx, is now pleading with people there to take precautions and to get tested. If youve participated in a large gathering in the last four weeks, we ask all of you to come forward and be tested because of the level of asymptomatic spread. So were asking for everyone under 40 that if you were in a gathering, please go and get tested. Please wear a mask. Please do all of the hygiene issues. And please stay away from those who have comorbidities. Nearly 130,000 americans have lost their life to this virus, and its not over. Its not close to over. According to the centers for disease control, there will likely be, quote, between 140,000 and 160,000 total reported covid19 deaths by july 25th. Thats three weeks from now. As we mentioned, in the thick of this crisis, the president travels to south dakota tomorrow for an Independence Day celebration at mt. Rushmore. About 7,500 people have expressed an interest in being there. Medical experts and some local officials worry that that event could lead to an outbreak of covid infections. South dakotas governor says there wont be any social distancing, and maskwearing will be up to the attendees. While there, the president is likely to continue talking up the economy as he did today. The Labor Department this morning said that nearly 5 million americans returned to work last month as the Unemployment Rate fell to 11. 1 . That data was compiled before the recent spike in cases and before states began to stop or scale back reopening plans. And another 1. 4 million americans did file firsttime unemployment claims last week. Thats the 15th straight week that initial jobless claims remained above 1 million. And with all of this, the white house still has not laid to rest the questions about allegations that russia offered payments to talibanlinked militants in afghanistan to kill american and coalition troops. The nations top intelligence officials were on capitol hill today to brief the socalled gang of eight. That is the eight members of the house and the senate. The leaders of both the house and the senate, both parties, plus the leaders of the house and Senate Intelligence committees. Thats the gang of eight. Trump has said that he wasnt briefed about the allegations because the intelligence wasnt verified. His former National Security adviser says he doesnt buy that explanation. I think hes trying to avoid responsibility. The president has trouble owning decisions. So when a decision gets made that doesnt go quite the way people hope, suddenly it wasnt his decision. Its hard for me to believe that somebody didnt tell him about it. The biggest problem is not what is said or not said in the oral briefs. Its that i didnt see in 17 months any evidence the president read the pdb itself. Here for our leadoff discussion on a thursday night, two Pulitzer Prize winners from the washington post, ashley parker, White House Reporter for the washington post. Carol leonnig, Investigative Reporter for the washington post. Carol is also the coauthor along with her post colleague phil rucker of the bestselling book a very stable genius and with us, dr. Vin gupta. Hes an e. R. Doctor specializing in all kinds of illnesses but also an affiliate assistant professor with the university of washingtons department of Health Metric Sciences and hes a pulmonologist. So he knows a lot about these things. Vin, im sort of fascinated because the president put out there that other places were ahead of this and as a result, theyre doing better. But, in fact, when you look at the measurements when theyre put out, and anybody can look at the graphs of sevenday rolling averages, you can adjust it for when we started and when our first case was and who was ahead of us. Theres no metric that looks like america is doing better than anybody else except kind of maybe brazil. Thanks, ali. I think the most important metric, ali, is what are the number of tests per confirmed case. That is the metric that we rarely talk about. The president never wants to talk about, for good reason, because we dont perform well on that metric. We do 14 tests per confirmed case meaning we dont have to look very far. Its just 14 individuals, you find a confirmed case. Countries that have gotten this right taiwan, South Carolina, new zealand, you know what they test . They test anywhere up to 70 people per confirmed case to 270 in the case of new zealand per confirmed case. Thats when you know you have adequate testing, that its widely distributed, that theres no restrictions on somebody like me, an icu doc thats caring for these patients, to have to be symptomatic i have to be symptomatic my respiratory therapist has to be symptomatic before they can get a test. In new zealand, thats not the case. So we still have narrow testing, very narrow testing. When we talk about now schools opening up, when we talk about universities opening up, we have to think about testing. Now universities and schools are thinking about, well, lets do a thermal scan. Then were good to go. Thats wrong. We need our mayors and our county officials to say without onsite testing, up to a weekly cadence, we cannot open universities and School Districts safely. And because we dont have widespread testing, people are looking for offramps and theyre looking in the wrong direction. Ashley parker, its kind of fascinating because the president continues to deliver metrics that dont sort of tell us the real story. And the best he can seem to do is not be directly at odds with dr. Fauci and dr. Birx and others on the Coronavirus Task force. But hes not really theres no part of the catastrophe that were all facing that the white house has a meaningful plan for. Well, youll also notice that the president is barely talking about the coronavirus anymore, right . He stopped attending those briefings. Those briefings have been cut back significantly even from the people who are now doing them, and the president , as we saw today, would rather trumpet bits of good news on the economy when hes able to do so. But the challenge there is Public Health experts even in his own administration have both publicly and privately articulated is that for the economy to truly reopen, the president has and the administration have to come up with an allofgovernment plan to borrow their phrase that phrase, a wholeofgovernment plan that involves ample testing, amping ppe, Contact Tracing and get the virus under control. Until he does that, he may get some good jobs reports here and there, but the economy cannot open. It certainly cannot safely reopen, and the thing he cares most about, that is he reacting to all the time, his election chances in november are also imperiled until he gets this virus under control. And what is that doing, carol, because the president has said in the last few days that hes got internal polling thats very different from the polling that anybody will see on fake news that shows him in a very strong position. But theres a lot of discussion about what is going through the president s mind, how this is affecting his thinking because apparently the internal polling hes seeing isnt good. No. In fact, you know, hes been really furious according to great reporting by my colleagues at the washington post, furious, in fact, questioning whether or not this polling is accurate, why he has to pay for polling that is so off the charts and unfair. He doesnt think it could be possibly true. In his in his in fairness to him, however, id say that, you know, as his Campaign Manager wrote recently, brad parscale, president bushs numbers werent too good right around the reelect, right before, and he was able to squeak through and win and win quite handily. So theres that. But i would say that the most important thing to remember about donald trump is perception is so more important than reality, and for him the perception of how hes doing, the perception of him feeling confident is much more important than these boring details of governing and actually doing what ashley is describing, that allofgovernment approach. Thats nuts and bolts, not of interest to him, and its certainly not sort of prime time the way he wants to project that confidence, that control, that dominance. Hes much more likely to talk about his dominance over protesters pulling down statues. Unfortunately yeah, part of the issue here, of course, are these secret Service Members and the fact that herman cain, who was at his tulsa rally, has has contracted coronavirus. Hes been hospitalized. We dont know whether he got it at that rally or not, but the president continues to not want to, like ashley says, talk about it, but ignore it. But sort of fly in the face of it. Hes off to mt. Rushmore. We know there are secret Service Agents that were preparing for the arizona trip that have either tested positive or displayed symptoms of coronavirus. What do we know about this . Youve been covering this today. So we were able to confirm today my colleague josh dawsey and i that multiple agents, up to eight to ten agents who were preparing for the advance for the Vice President s trip to arizona at first he was going to go to yuma and tucson. Then because of the spike of covid, he changed it to phoenix, a less large event. But even despite those changes, the secret service sort of pleaded with pences office to put off the trip for a day because they did not have well enough agents to be onsite to work with him. So thats what happened. They put off the trip, and it was because agents and others preparing for the advance were not well. They brought in relievers, pinchhitters, and youve got to wonder about those agents who are driving from wherever, texas and other places to get to south dakota. Are they going to turn up sick too . Its not easy for people to leave their home, make all these advance plans, sit in indoor rooms with multiple strangers to secure these sites, and theyre doing it because the president and the Vice President want them to. Dr. Gupta, weve got again, in the absence of a National Strategy about this or Even National direction about a mask because the president doesnt want to wear one in public. He said he wore one the other day, and it made him look like the lone ranger, so that was okay. But weve got all sorts of inconsistencies across the country. In texas, weve got the governor doing a 180 and saying everybodys got to wear a mask. In South Carolina, even though theyve got increased cases there, the governor is saying, we cant enforce how people wear masks, so were just not going to do it. In south dakota, youve got a governor saying that were about to celebrate the fourth of july and americas independence and freedom, and so we want that celebration to look like that and hence there will not even be a call for social distancing let alone masks. But if you have a mask or you can pick one up there, well let you wear it. How does this make sense to a Public Health official like you . It doesnt make sense, ali. It makes you wonder what happened to any shred of common humanity. When is enough enough . When is there empathy . Listening to carol speak about the secret Service Agents, the pinchhitters having to come in, wheres the empathy . Wheres the common humanity to bridge our political divides . When is it okay to lose an election for the greater good . It makes no sense. The south dakota governor is saying, were going to go ahead with a rally in an outdoor environment with no social distancing, no masking. Its essentially presumably just to create favor with the president because thats what the president wants to hear. Governor desantis has all but given up any imprimatur of leadership, effective leadership in florida. He is acting irresponsibly. He deployed the National Guard in florida to quell protests, but he has not done so to bolster icu capabilities and hospital capabilities statewide. That should tell you where his priorities lie. Common sense things are not being done in florida. Governor abbott decided to do a mask order that he should have done weeks ago. Now hes saying hes doing it just to save face presumably. These are this is ineffectual leadership. This is failed leadership. And, ali, thats the simplest explanation for why youre seeing different approaches that are less effective versus approaches that have been more effective. Mayor de blasio said, you know what, Indoor Dining is not going to be okay because we have evidence thats the type of super spreader event we have to avoid. Theres great examples of leadership and very poor examples of leadership. Ashley parker, the president s been busy on social media today. Heres a couple of examples of what hes tweeted out. Mailin ballots will lead to massive electoral fraud and a rigged 2020 election. Another one said if i didnt demand the National Guard troops go into minneapolis after watching how poorly the liberal democrat government handling things, you wouldnt have a minneapolis now. Another one says the last thing we will be doing is defunding or eliminating our many and various Police Departments or putting an end to our great second amendment. Hes focused on something. Its not the coronavirus, but hes focused on something. He sure is. The president in 2016 ran as a law and order candidate, and that was effective for him. Hes clearly trying to do that again. Weve been told by people close to him that he said that he thinks the public will ultimately reward him for cracking down on what he views as lawlessness in the streets, for cracking down on the people who are protesting monuments and statues named after confederate generals. But the president s gut is often rate. The thing thats missing here is the country in the wake of George Floyds death has shifted so quickly, if you look at Public Opinion polling, on these issues, on what they believe about systematic racism, on what they believe about policing and police brutality, and what they believe about these monuments and these statues. And this is an instance where the president s tough law and order approach seems very out of line with what the country wants, not just on Racial Justice but

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