American economy to a halt, suddenly. There may have been a shock that precipitated it. It still unfolded over an extended period of time where you could see it coming. This happened all at once. You have this huge shock to the system. That has led congress to say that we need to do something of a skill we have not done before. Now, the democrats in congress and republicans in congress and white house are all negotiating. Ofy want to do the same set things. There is an argument about the detail and the scale. For instance, the administration came out with a proposal that would, among other things, would give checks to every family. They wanted to do it with 1200 for each adult and 500 for each child. An just a one off of infusion of cash. Democrats wanted to do something much larger. They were talking about 2000 for each donor, maybe 2500 and doing it repeatedly over the course of however long this recession lasts. There is also a big question about unemployment insurance. You will have this gigantic infusion of people needing unemployment. It is already happening. And so, that is something the democrats have been pushing for. We need to put a large amount of money into the unemployment system and remove some of the bureaucratic areas that existed in ordinary times. There are waiting periods. Things like that that they want to get rid of because there will be literally millions of people who, suddenly in the next week or two, are going to need to get unemployment insurance. There are a lot of people who are not part of that system because their employers, other people who are not eligible under ordinary circumstances. You have to find a way to get them in too because they are losing their hours. They suddenly have no income at all. You can since this is a problem of unprecedented scale. There is a lot of complexities involved if we want to really address it. I dont think there is any serious person who thinks we will be able to stop the recession at this point. But, the question is can we mitigate it to the point where it is not as bad as it might be . Host washington post, putting the blame on congress. And the present. Guest this is something everyone has seen. From the begin, the president has been intent on having talks. He was worried there could be bad effects on the stock market and that has come to pass. It was inevitable. From the beginning, he said it was no big deal. We only have a few cases, it will be fine. We are doing a great job. The reports we have gotten from inside the white house showed he was getting intelligence briefings, raising the alarm as early as january about how bad this was going to be. It is clear that what he wants to hear his performance and the good news and people around him are very reluctant to tell him bad news. You can see that when you watch these daily briefings. You have career professionals, like anthony fell treat anthony fauci, who tell us what is going on trade and then they turned to Vice President pence and tend to make sure every other sentence they say is praise of President Trumps leadership and telling him how great he years he is. That is what he wants to hear. It is becoming obvious that his desire to minimize the political damage and hear the good news and not the bad news has perhaps colored the decisions he has made as this has progressed. Host my guest is paul waldman. We are practicing social distancing as the cdc is recommending. There is this, in terms of 2020 politics, Bernie Sanders believes america misjudged him. Did he misjudge america . In the washington post, you wrote the following about Bernie Sanders. You said senator sanders was not twoavorite among the contenders or even in my top three or four. He has done extraordinary things. He helped reshape the Democratic Party, widen the policy debate in america and inspired millions of followers to a feverish devotion. Speight lacking the charisma charisma ofing the politicians, it is hardly something you could expect from a rumpled, grumpy, 70 something jewish socialist. Guest it is an extreme area compliment. Dating back to the 2016 campaign and now this campaign, sanders has been an outsider, someone who had the same views all along but could not get much of a hearing for them. He was banging on the door. He pushed himself into the center of the american political debate. He fell short because there were some flaws in his theory of how he could become president. He said he could inspire an extraordinary Grassroots Movement that would basically tear down the walls that separated him from the white house. It turned out that he has a following that was passionate and was very large but it was not quite large enough. In the end, what happened to him in 2020 was not that different to what happened to him in 2016. There were more democrats deciding to vote for joe biden. Just as there were more democrats in 2016 who decided to vote for hillary clinton. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary achievement. If you look where the policy debate is now, we never, in american history, had a full and vigorous debate bout the merit of singlepayer health care. We have one now. I think Bernie Sanders deserves a lot of the credit for that. Maybe most of the credit for that, by pushing that into the debate. As it turned out, there were limits on the support singlepayer could get. A lot of people are interested in something may be less threatening and does not change as dramatically, as fast. I have 100 opinions about that. I have to give him credit for the fact that we have that debate at all. There are a lot of ways in which Bernie Sanders has been one of the most important political figures, shaping this moment in our political history. He was not your candidate, you have to give him credit for that. Host how has the coronavirus changed this race . We have not heard from the candidates. They have been doing virtual town halls and virtual fundraisers. No public appearances by either joe biden or senator sanders. Was almostrace decided before things got really bad with the coronavirus. It had become obvious that biden was the almost inevitable nominee, even before they stopped campaigning, it would be necessary for sanders to win almost every primary term that point forward in order to become the nominee. That just wasnt really possible. Thatn that sense, the fact the race got frozen from a political standpoint, and from the standpoint of democratic voters who were hoping to have their opportunity to choose a nominee, it was sort of good that everything had fallen out and so many candidates have left the race. It looked like biden was the inevitable nominee. I think there is a center which the kind of calculations that led people to come to joe bidens candidacy are only reinforced by what is happening now. He was never the person who inspired the most passion. It was always about, for so many voters, i think that biden is the kind of person other people will want to vote for. That is what the electability is all about. It is not about who i like, it is about who other people might like. I spent a lot of time writing about why that is a bad way to decide who your candidate is but that ended up being the grounds on which a lot of people gravitated to joe biden. And now, we are in this moment of economic crisis and Public Health crisis and i think, for biden, he is a somewhat reassuring figure. He has been around for a long time. Ways. Safe in many him, this sortor of reinforces the grounds on which he wanted to be an appealing candidate. He was never saying i will be the guy who gets you the most excited. He was running what i think is a campaign of restoration. Saying if we can just turn back the clock for years, lets get back to when things were calm and we did not have all of this craziness. We will get rid of donald trump and then we will all be able to calm down and maybe republicans will agree with me on a few things and our policies will not be so manic, all the time. At a time when we are in a moment of crisis, that may have more appeal than it did six months ago. Host this is a tweet from will henry who said bernie fell short because socialism is a known, proven loser. Former senator Claire Mccaskill on morning joe with the following in terms of where this race is and where it is heading, saying i think it will quickly turn to how and when does Bernie Sanders unite the Democratic Party. I think the pressure is going to mount, especially in this time of crisis in this country. To uniterats are behind clearly the for the democrats to clearly unite behind the voters preference. For people who watch cspan, those of us who are immersed in the political world, we understand how those pieces fit together. Most americans who dont really spend their time worrying about politics, they dont necessarily have a real firm grasp on that. If you look at the things Bernie Sanders supports, most of them are quite popular. Peoplet to want to have higher minimum wage. A is when you wrap it up into thing called socialism and give it a name, then you can invoke negative association. We have no idea how that will play out in the general had no idea how that will play out in the general election. You can ask what people think of socialism and get an answer in a bowl. You wont know until you get into an election because people dont vote for an idea, they vote for a person. We will know if the public would have rejected socialism and would we know if the public would have rejected socialism is somethingthat we may never know on a president ial level. Att you can send us a tweet cspan to bj cease plan cspan wj. We will go to carla in new york city. Good morning. I just wanted to say thank you to your guest. I just want to say, listening to your previous calls this morning, i dont understand why the Trump Supporters have to tiptoe around the president every time he gets an allegedly inappropriate question from the press when we have a president whom maligned people on a daily basis. I think people need to wake up. He goes to being a concert constant coward when he doesnt like the way the situation reflect on how he is dealing with things. Host this is marion, who is joining us from lakewood, new jersey. Go ahead. Caller i hope you listen to me like you listen to all of the democrats. I am so tired of cspan dont hang up on me. Can you hear me . Host we sure can. Go ahead. Caller listen to these democrats, these ponies, that calling. In. Honies, that call let me tell you this. Obama ran away from the serious problem of Chemical Warfare with his tail between his legs and did nothing. Who to care of it took care of it . Trump. Dear god. Let me get back to trump. As he found out, he stopped people coming in from china that were going out. What did the democrats do . They called him a racist. When he asked for help for the border down in mexico, they said it was a phony crisis. A made up crisis. These democrats make me sick host thank you for the call. Those two different perspectives, paul waldman as you hear from two different viewers. Guest i think the first viewer was making a reference to this thing that happened on friday with peter alexander. He asked president the president in one of these briefings what he would say to heple who were scared and said i would say you are a terrible reporter. One of the things that is highlighted for me is what we expect of a president in times like this. We want them to be good administrators and make good decisions. There are certain moments when the public really needs a kind of emotional support. When we look back at president s in times of crisis. What they did was, when they are successful, they channeled our emotions, gave us the understanding that they understood what we were feeling and some reassurance about what was going to happen in the future. If you think back to Ronald Reagan after the challenger disaster, giving a moving speech in the oval office or barack obama after the newtown massacre, wiping away a tear and talking about how he and michelle were going to hug their children tighter and every American Family was or torched of you bush at ground zero, zero, w. Bush at ground those were moments when the president channeled what we felt and made it feel as though it was going to be all right. I think this is something that President Trump has really struggled to do. That moment in the white house crystallized it. He was given an opportunity when he was asked what do you say to people who are scared. Interpret it as an attack on him and he attacked the reporter back. This is something we are all very used to from President Trump. He says openly when he was criticized, he will attack back twice as hard. In moment of crisis when there is something that American People have a natural hunger for that we want from our leaders and it is beyond the administered of stuff, that, i think is something President Trump is just not capable of doing. It is just not part of his toolbelt that he brings to any kind of moment, especially a moment of crisis like this one. Host those moments, including president Ronald Reagan and on our podcast, weekly. A halfhour conversation that we taped on the phone, she was in boston to talk about leadership in turbulent times. Joining us from quincy, michigan, good morning. Caller hello. Host good morning, brent. Caller hello, do you hear me . Host yes. Caller just a response to your republican caller. I fail to see how [indiscernible] obama did this and some of the ousted that, i just dont get that. That is not my question. Comment, it has a stigma except when we are sending subsidies to oil companies. It is all fine and good then. Airlines, like delta and theyht back stocks reward corporate executives. Bellow baila out from the taxpayers. Money to see how pretty is going to solve this problem. Host thanks for the call. And it is a bailout that could total up to 50 million for the Airline Industry prayed they have about 750,000 employees. Guest the color makes a good point. We have a debate going on all the time about how far the government should go in helping people. Who it should help, what safety nets should look like and what kind of Government Spending is good and bad. But now, we are in this moment of crisis where both democrats and republicans are saying that there is no choice but to have the Government Act and act extremely aggressively. They will argue about how aggressively to act. The democrats, and republicans both want to take every step that that government can to try to basically save the economy and have this huge infusion of cash. But, this is one of the key questions. Who is the money going to go to . How is it going to be distributed . There are lobbyists on capitol trying to make a corner for the industry that people will not notice. The airlines have made huge profits in recent years and are coming for a bailout. There are lots of other industries that want their piece of the pie. It is in a moment of crisis when everybody suddenly becomes a socialist. That is the question all of time, if we are going to agree. O have socialism there is no question, when you think about how this relates to a political question, there is the reality that this Public Health crisis and this recession have the potential to make it impossible for donald trump to get reelected. Democrats are on capitol hill asking for more money than republicans want, to be more aggressive. Even though that could potentially save his presidency. Situation was reversed and barack obama got elected in 2009, during the worst economic crisis since the great depression, republicans were not so eager at that time. The recovery act, 787 billion, the biggest thing anybody could remember and it pales to what we are doing now. That got zero republican votes in the house and three republican votes in the senate. Now, mccright want to be more aggressive than republicans do. Democratst, want to be more aggressive than republicans do. At this moment, whether that constitute socialism and the conversation about that has disappeared. Host in host the senate nationally host the senate will gavel act in at 2 00. Back in at 2 00. Reported as close to two choi in dollars as a close to two choi in dollar stimulus plan. Trillion dollar stimulus plan. Nancy has been patient. Morning. Caller i want to bring up the issues, which we should be doing more of. I heard the president put down the reporter for asking a very logical question in these times. Defense, he does it because that is his personality and he does not like the press. Things thatt probably are true and he is not always truthful, as we know. So, what i want to say is i just listened to a mayor of new york and he is trying to get the military involved to get more supplies, to get ventilators and things we need in this crisis time, which we are hearing is not going to be ending too soon. He repeatedly asked President Trump to help get to his home state. It was one of the main places and areas that has more cases. They need these things. Every place needs them. And he refuses to get them involved. He just does not think of the whole picture. I dont believe he is as smart as he thinks he is. He has no logical reasoning. It is all about what he thinks will get him elected. And that is why he is doing what he is doing now. He is listening to people more than he ever has. Because it is out of his hands and he knows that he is looking like not the president that brought the economy up. He is listening more than ever in this crisis but not enough. That what do i want to say that character that he is the chief and knows more than the people that are trying to conquer this crisis and save lives. I am just are tired of hearing about the parties. I want the issues of what is going on in this crisis right now. Anything he does, like not entering answering that Mental Health question. Host we will leave it there. Paul waldman, your response. Guest one of the things that happens during an ordinary president ial campaign, you can say that and to a certain ree, party andatic Republican Party has a set of things they want to do when they get in the right house. White house. We know republicans will cut taxes and will move to deregulate. Democrats will do the opposite of those things. Individualy of the and the personality traits they bring to the office are still extremely important, despite all that stuff that is built in and the personnel and the thousands of positions throughout the executive branch that are going to be the same whichever democrat or republican gets elected. , may behis now heightened and exaggerated almost that the personality traits that defined this president are coming to the fore. 2016, remember back to republicans had reservations about donald trump and said that stuff will be smooth out. All of those things where he is crass and does not know about the issues, that may make us uncomfortable but in the end, he will have the right people around him and maybe he will become more president ial once the weight of the office makes itself clear. And so, there are things about him, like the tweeting and that we do not like the tweeting that we do not like. But, it will not matter that much. It turns out the person who sits in the office does matter a lot and it does shape the events. We see in more with donald trump because so much of him is really public. You dont have to wonder what he is thinking on any given day or at any given moment. You have to look at his twitter feed, which is sort of an unfiltered expression of his emotions. When you open that up and you see him, even in a moment like this, squabbling with people and insulting people, that gives you a window into what is going on in his head and how he is spending his day and how much he is watching fox news because he retreats what he sees on fox news. Witht may have been true every president to a great degree that the individual and what their personality is like determines what kinds of decisions they make and how evens unfold. We see it more with donald trump because events unfold. We see in more with donald trump. It is an interesting aspect of him as a president , that even though in many ways he is extraordinarily dishonest and we have seen the 12,000 lies he has isd, at the same time, he utterly straightforward about what he is thinking and who he is angry at. You never have to wonder about that. Unlike maybe other crises when there was something going on behind closed doors at the white house and we did not know what john f. Kennedy was thinking or whatever. In the modern age and with this particular president , we know exactly what is going on in his head. For a lot of people, that is not particularly reassuring. Host we are talking with paul waldman, he is a writer for the washington post. He is a Senior Writer for american prospect. This is the headline from inside the post, the strip virtually empty. The headline says it is sparking a crisis for on the go, las vegas. Is this is that have not closed since there construction facing the shock of sending staff home. This tweet from the Bbc Parliament channel, saying he likes the program and adds that our biggest problem is not going away, regardless of how the virus resolves. Responses the same from paul waldman. You have a fan in great britain. Lets get to rich on the republican line, joining us from nutley, new jersey. Caller good morning. Paul, may i call you paul . Guest sure. Caller i hope we can have a little dialogue. You really sound disingenuous. You guys have attacked the president , the questions that during these ask news conferences are really, really terrible questions. You are trying to make him like he dealt dont care about people. That he is this guy who has no feelings. You would never in a million years ask obama that during a press conference when the disease is going around, when obama was in office. The questions that are asked in this room, your room, where they cover him, is he a racist . You have people come on msnbc and cnn and they have signs that say he should be charged with murder. How do you expect this man to react to some of the questions people ask . You write articles and come on here today and are supposed to be talking about the coronavirus epidemic and all you have done is attack this president. In every word that you say this morning. I think it is so very bad that during a time like this, you cannot come together and admit that the man is doing a good job in trying to get what the people need out here. Our government does not have 100,000 respirators. They never have and never will. Ok, the woman that was on pennsylvania who said he was not going to get the equipment, all of that equipment has to be made. He does not have the magic one like obama had, i guess. Paul, i dont understand why you constantly attacked this man. I have read a lot of your articles. You come on the show today and attack, attack, attack like this man has no feelings. This president cares about the American People more than most president s. Including some of the democrats. The democrats are great actors. They come on tv and they know what they are saying and how to say it. He is not a politician. He is not a politician, paul. I am sorry that you are on here today, doing this. This is a time where we are supposed to come together, like he is trying to do with them across in congress, to get something done for this great country. It is just a shame. Paul, you know what i am talking about because you are in the circle. Do you agree that people should be coming on invest in bc bc, cnbc, cnbc msn and cnn and calling him the things that he is being called . Host we will get paul. Guest when he says obama did not get as may tuck questions, of course he did. And he got plenty of criticism. Perceptions that filter our thoughts on these things. When we see a president we dont questions, top tough questions, we think that is what should happen everyday. When we see a president that we do like get asked of questions, we say that was tough questions, we say that was unfair. Obama neverident got any criticism, that is not true it all. Democracy is really messy. At all. Democracy is really messy. We could live in an authoritarian system, like china, which is the target of a lot of criticism. We could have a state run media where everything is going great and the leadership is doing a fantastic job and everything is going to be fine. That is not the system we have. We have a system that is all about people asking tough questions and the president is going to get criticized. There is nobody, probably in the world, who gets criticized as much as the president does, whoever that president is at a particular moment. It only strikes you as unfair when you happen to like that president. And, i do criticized President Trump. I am an opinion writer and i am allowed to have opinions. One thing i criticize him for his that he has to hit back at every criticism he gets, as if this is some sort of schoolyard and yes to show he is top or else he will get beat up. That is tough or else he will get beat up. That is not what it is. He does not have to make a personal attack on everyone who wants to everyone who attacks him. He could choose another way. We have to acknowledge this is the price we have to pay for living in a democracy with freedom of speech. You will hear criticisms of people you favor that you dont like. You will hear people you think are stupid or wrong, they get a chance to make their voice heard too. It is unpleasant sometimes. That is the price we all paper living in a democracy. Thatink that in the end, is the best system for us to live under. Joe biden said his running mate will be a woman. Who is on the shortlist in your mind . Guest it is interesting. In the Democratic Party, it would be almost impossible for joe biden to pick another white guy. The Democratic Party is the party that is diverse. It is the party of women. Women make up most of the Democratic Partys voters. The Democrat Party is the party of color. It would not be acceptable for him to pick, with all due respect to tim kaine, for him to pick a replacement level like tim kaine. So, he came out and set it. You can debate whether it was a good idea to say it now or wait. I dont think it was going to be possible for him to do anything but have a running mate who was either a person of color, a woman, or both. In terms of who it is, there are a lot of good choices out there. We saw a lot of qualified and intelligent and charismatic women who ran for president this year. He could pick from among the women who were in the race. Elizabeth warren and Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris. There are some people outside, people who did not run for president. Governors, there are some people who dont serve the federal government. Even people like stacey abrams, who has become a national figure. A lot of it, with these choices, ends up coming down to personal things. Every four years, when we hear afterward and get the reporting from inside about how these decisions were made, what we find is that there is a rational calculation that goes on about how does this person reinforce my own strengths or weaknesses. We often find that a lot of it comes down to a personal rapport. Did the candidate really like that person when they got together with them . Did they feel like they could Work Together . Things like that. It is hard to know, yet. You could say Kamala Harris would be a good choice for this, this and this reason. There are a lot of good reasons for why she would be a good choice. A lot of it will end up coming down to how comfortable is hiding with that person. There is special considerations for him. One is his age. He is 77. You want to have somebody who is younger and could, if he suffered some kind of health emergency, or decided after four years that he did not want or think he was up to another four years, that person would be the logical choice to be the democratic nominee in 2024. All of those things are going to come into play. In the end, more than anything else, it might be who joe biden personally likes and wants to work with. Host lets get back to the phone calls. Francis in millbury, massachusetts, good morning. Caller good morning, how are you . Host we are good. Caller i have been watching you this morning and i watch you pretty much every sunday morning. I am kind of curious as to what your guest there thinks of this beat down of the president. For 3. 5 years, ive been listening to this conspiracy, that conspiracy, this conspiracy. We never seem to see what is going on on the other. It is always donald trump, donald trump, donald trump. I have read many things from the washington post, the new york times, i read my own paper here. I read the articles this morning. I will not put any names out there. Bert horn from vandal vanderbilt, we went back to the civil war and blamed donald trump, comparing him to the civil war. We have isaiah from the washington post. He writes an article about Big Government being back. The article, he refers to President Trump as a racist. Read another article ,t any rate, from Gary Shilling new yorkjersey consultants. How is the market going to do . But, blaming President Trump for this coronavirus thing. Frame that into a question if you could for our guest and we will get a response. Trump the guy, president put a travel ban on china on january 31. Approximately two weeks after he heard about it. He was called a racist, a xenophobia and all of this other stuff. What is your opinion on this . Guest we will get and host we will get a response. Alwaysthe president is kind of a lead actor in the story that we tell about our political and public life. It is more true now than with any previous president. You can see it going back to the 2016 campaign, when he was just such a sort of overwhelming personality that a lot of the networks stuck a camera in front of his rallies and would broadcast for an hour, what happened at his rallies. They have never done that before and do not do it for other candidates, because it was so shocking and overwhelming. Everything about him and his campaign. We have seen that in his presidency as well, he kind of sucks up all of the attention and all of the oxygen. A lot of that is because that is how he likes it and he makes sure it is. When donald trump sends out a shocking tweet, he knows that it is going to get attention and people are going to write articles about his tweets. I dont think that before this there was ever a case where you would get entire news articles written about somebodys tweet. He is someone who wants the attention and wants to be the focus at the center of all of the events. The flipside is if he makes that happen, which he does, he will be the target of a lot of criticism. To repeat what i said before, you cannot become president of the United States and think you will not get criticized all of the time. That is part of the job. You cannot be surprised. You have to make a decision about how much you will respond to that and when you will let it slide off of you and have thick skin or when you will feel like you have to respond to every criticism with an attack of your own. He has largely chosen that latter path. Some people cheer him on when he does that and they say that is what you should do. You should always hit back. That is what his aides say. ,hen you watch Kellyanne Conway they say he is back. Will gets attacked, he hit back. You can make a different choice paid other president s have made different choices. If that is the choice youre going to make, it is hard to, it is unfair im getting criticized as much as i am. Host Tucker Colson and mark living are part of the media. From clarksville, tennessee, good morning. Caller good morning. I was calling in regards to things that i have not seen anyone consider in regards to the shortage. In hostile situations, they can to sterilizems equipment they use in surgery. Hopefully they can fend off the. Iruses the second thing is you have to the days of diapers, instead of using disposable diapers. I was raised during the time of the tb epidemic. We had to use bleach and clorox for everything. That is my response. T thank you from the call for the call. Paul waldman, response. To look toave to try some things we have done in the past. This is unusual. Every epidemic is different from the one that came before it. That hospitals are experiencing is an incredibly big problem. One of the things it highlights is that it is difficult, especially at the publicpolicy level, with the decisions the government makes, to prepare for things that have not happened yet. There is incentive if you are a member of congress or the president , to do things that are right in front of you and we and get immediate needs maybe a crew immediate political benefits. When somebody says we should be preparing for a pandemic that might hit in a year or five years or maybe never, it is often difficult for a politician to say ok, we will take resources away from Something Else that seems more pressing right now to prepare for that awful thing that could happen. What you end up seeing is that when the awful thing does happen and this is the situation now, we dont have enough masks and ventilators. It is in part because it was difficult to lay in those preparations at a big enough gh in thosei preparations at a big scale. The idea is that it will provide a bridge until the private sector can get ramped up and produce all of this equipment which they are now trying to do. One of the things that has marked this particular pandemic is that every day that we have much, was making things much, much worse. You saw what happened in south korea where they had testing kits and they were aggressive from the outset about testing and managed to find everyone who had it and isolated them and they had very few cases. We spent weeks and weeks without adequate testing while the virus was spreading. We are kind of at that point in the x financial curve where at that point in the exponential curve where it is shooting up. If you dont have the will to do the prevention when it does not seem like it is so urgent, then you are left with the path to cure. The job of part of criticism. Nt to take mike from virginia, good morning. Caller i am nervous. Give me a chance. Host no need to be. We are glad to hear from you, mike. Just two weeks ago, 100,000 people were going to the Turkish Border from northern syria. Awful. It is and to promote an election. For eight years, obama was criticized. For six yearsma of being unamerican. Since january, they were warning to prepare. He did not prepare. He did not take this seriously. Not takingers, i am them seriously. To blame somebody else for his mistakes, it is not reasonable. Host thank you, mike. We will get a response. Guest mike is right. We are talking about how much the president gets to size. President obama had to deal gets criticized. President trump had to deal president obama had to deal with people, particularly President Trump, saying he was not american. It is never going to be completely absent from the calculation at any moment, whether we are talking about the ordinary daytoday or everything up to war and pandemic. That is always going to be in their minds. The question is are they making the right decision and is politics dictating it to a degree that the other positions suffer . Preston trump has been coming out every day President Trump has been coming out every day with members of his task force to talk about what is going on. He does not have to do that but he made the decision. I think he wanted to show the American People that he is on top of it so he is doing these Daily Press Conferences. That is fine. The problem is he comes out and says things that are not true. He says everyone who wants to get a test can get a test. Counts on a new medication as if itt be a therapy will be distributed and cure everyone. It is fine for him to say i will do Daily Press Conferences to show the americans i am on top of this. That is ok. Maybe in some circumstances, we would want that to get the reinsurance that the government reassurance the government is doing what it should. The problem is what happens during the course of the press conferences. Politics is never going to disappear. That is fine. The question is are the decisions being made the right ones . Host our next call is from patterson, new jersey, michael. You are here with paul waldman, an opinion writer for the washington post. Good morning. Caller good morning. Trump, 2020. I believe this shortage and this crisis came from china. This recession is also because of china because we have this crisis because it got over here and it is all over the world. China, the blood of many dead people should be on chinas hands. Host your response . Guest we can look at the decisions the Chinese Government has made, like every government. The fact of the matter is we live in a world where it is very, very difficult to contain any kind of pandemic. From every country in the world to every other country, it is really difficult in the modern world to contain anything like that. Especially a virus like this that can be sort of dormant, where people could be spreading it if they are not symptomatic. Absolutely nothing wrong with looking at the decisions the Chinese Government made in the early days, some of which were radical. Like closing down wuhan, entirely. You could say there are things that they did that did not contain it as much as they should. That is perfectly fine. Though they cost our recession. This could have come up everywhere and it has spread everywhere. Every government has made its own set of decisions. Some of those have been better and some of those have been worse. In italy, they are suffering extraordinary numbers of cases and deaths there. Toir Health System is taxed the breaking point. I am sure a lot of people will look at the decisions the Good Government the Italian Government made and will question them. I think that will be important. Once we come out of this, we should look at what decisions we make, what we could have done differently, not because it is important to affix blame. Because this will not be the last global pandemic. Something else will happen. We dont know how long it will be. Maybe it will be in five years or 10 years, we will face a situation like this again. Maybe, if we are smart and prepare, we will not be in a situation where we are now, where we had to shut down our entire economy, which will cause huge amounts of suffering. But, we did that because collectively decided that the alternative in the number of illnesses and deaths that would be caused was much much worse. If we prepare properly, next time, we can contain the Public Health issue without having to create a recession on top of it. There is all Hope Commission that does the research and examines what we could have done and examines a plan so that the next time a pandemic comes, it will not be as devastating. Host robin, you are next. Caller thank you, cspan. I have a couple of questions. First, i would like to know what affects the coronavirus has on the military abroad. Also, can animals contract the virus and transmit the virus to humans . 535omment is that there are other representatives in the government that share responsibility as well as donald trump. I think he is a pretty good president. I like the way he does his business. I think he invokes the american spirit. I think that is what we need in this country, american spirit. Thank you for letting me speak. Host thank you. We will go to louise on our democrat line in washington, d. C. Caller hello, i appreciate your guests information very much. I do disagree with him on the voting. I think we have time to switch to mail votes. Withnk oregon can help us their expertise in washington, d. C. Many people vote by mail. I am one of them. It works just fine and i think we have time to do it. I think it is urgent that we do it because i think there will be a lot of cantering in the next vote. Host a couple of different points. Your response . A scientistnot so i dont want to speak to how the virus gets transmitted. The military question is a good one. You could imagine that there could be potentially dangerous situations. You have 1000 sailors on about where they are packed in and in , whereuarters a boat they are packed and an enclosed quarters. I am sure that is something they are concerned out. About. Voting, of the mail they have to move to know excuse no excuse absentee voting. Yep to justify it, saying i will be out of town or disabled or whatever it is. More states have been moving toward no excuse absentee voting. That should be universal. Mailhave universal vote by in oregon, where there is almost no polling places and everyone votes by mail. I think there is a lot of reasons why that is potentially a better system for everyone. The question is could we transition to that between now and november or even sooner, when we are talking about primaries that have to take place. A number of states have moved back there primaries by a couple of weeks or a month. We dont know if that will be enough time. Is if we real question wanted or decided today that we want to have everybody in america vote by mail in november, could we put off . It would certainly not be easy. It is important to remember that there are some strengths in having a widely distributed electoral system but there are a lot of weaknesses too. You have 50 different states and thousands of counties and cities that run their own elections. Often times, they do it with volunteers. There are a couple of professionals there. The rest of it is people who come in on election day to work at the polls. That system, in one sense, may be in it less vulnerable to hacking because it is so disturbed it. It makes it difficult to coordinate things. There are a lot of experts right now who are trying to figure out could we make that transition . Could we get more mail voting so people do not have to go to the polls . It is a number of months away. It is possible that by november, things will be settled down and there will not be a concern to have people showing up at the same polling place. Even before, we had extraordinary problems in our election system. It is not adequately funded and it is not secure enough. Every election day, there are people who, especially in poor areas, who have to stand in line for three to four hours to vote. As opposed to wealthy areas where you are in and out in 15 minutes. That was a problem before. It will be maybe worse this year. That is host very quickly we have not seen former by the Vice President biden. We are told there may be daily briefings starting tomorrow. What is next in the short term in termsice president of appearances . Guest he may do some speeches without an audience. We are so used to campaigns being about these very visible events where the candidate goes out and they speak for an arena full of people. It is obviously going to be a few months before people feel comfortable doing that again. Knocking on doors, people dont want to do that either. A lot of that will turn to the internet. For the foreseeable future at least for the next couple of months that is basically where the campaign is going to take place. It will be online ads, may be the candidate giving an address out of his living room and people trying to organize voters on facebook and twitter and instagram. It is going to be a strange and unusual and in many ways Quiet Campaign for the next couple of months. Opinionul waldman is an writer for the washington post. We are separated because of the it is easy to follow the federal response at cspan. Org coronavirus. Interactive maps and charts. Watch briefings and hearings with Public Health officials anytime, unfiltered at cspan. Org coronavirus. Cspans washington journal live everyday with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up, the latest congressional efforts to address the coronavirus pandemic with National Journalists and reporter zach cohen. We speak with chief medical advisor about the u. S. Coronavirus response. Washingtonns journal live at 7 00 eastern this morning. Join the discussion. Tonight, the senate voted against moving forward for the more than 1 trillion Economic Relief bill for the coronavirus pandemic. Senators blocked the measure would have provided direct Cash Payments to individuals, offer relief for small businesses, give targeted lending to affected industries, and provide funding for hospitals and health centers. After the partyline vote, here is reaction from the senate floor, beginning with majority leader mitch mcconnell