A lot to talk about in the next hour. The Johns Hopkins sobering numbers across the years across the world now, 670,000 confirmed cases, approaching 31,000 deaths around the world. Here in the u. S. , close to 125,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States. We want to get your phone calls. Again, if you are recently unemployed, tell us your situation. That number is 202 7488000. The headline from cnbc, the u. S. Economy has come to a. Ndstill host yesterday on fox news, this conversation with Vice President pence on when the u. S. Economy will reopen. [video clip] re is a risk. If he doesnt open it soon enough, there is another risk. What are you specifically looking at and basing your decision on and then formulating a recommendation to the president on. Right question. Short answer, we are following the data. The president secured with massive commercial labs around the country we are literally doing tens of thousands of tests today and we have gotten a great deal more understanding about, about where people have contracted the coronavirus, who has recovered, who is the most at risk, and the regions of the country most impacted. While the president has said he would like to open the country up in weeks not months, we are going to be bringing that data forward to the advice of not the best Health Care Experts in the country, but the best in the world are working on the task force and ultimately the president will make a decision that he thinks is in the best interest of all the american people. The full interview is available at cnbc. Com. Joining us on the phone is jeff basin, White House Reporter for reuters. Thank you for being with us. Want to begin with some of the backandforth yesterday with the president , the governors of new york and new jersey in terms of a quarantine. The administration seem to back away late in the day. Explain how this unfolded. Guest they certainly did that late in the day. The longterm answer to your question, not putting in place a president dide dabble in the possibility. When he was leaving the white house yesterday he went to virginia, his first outing outside the white house in about two and a half weeks, speaking to reporters on his way to virginia, saying it was something he was looking at and , receiving in generating quite a bit of criticism from those governors. He ended up tweeting last night that there would be a travel warning. But that a quarantine itself was not necessary. Bottom line, does the president himself have that authority . Guest thats a terrific question. There was back and forth about that, some believed that he did but others on the state level who believed he did not. It raises a broader question, honestly, about what the federal government and president can do on things like this. Some of it was referred to in the clip that you just played over when the president will reopen the economy. Last week he said prominently that he would like to do so by easter, but it is worth noting as we studied the debate and watch what he decides that the guidelines of the federal government, these 15 days that Vice President pratt right Vice President pence and others have in talking about, those are just recommendations. Its really a local level discussion where they have been discussing keeping places, businesses closed. That is not to undermine or downplay what the president can do, but i think it is important to note that a lot of those aings are recommendations at federal, local, and state level. Host is that another example of the met mixed messages coming from the white house . Absolutely. The president has wanted to take thatt and has been saying the task force is doing a terrific job, but there is a lot of criticism about his response specifically from the beginning. He did downplay this at the very beginning of the outbreak. A came around to showing great deal of seriousness about the problem, but then sort of went back to downplaying it early last week by comparing it again to just the seasonal flu. At the end of the week, to the question the Vice President was , saying theng decision to reopen the economy would be based first on lives, safety, and then economic health. He himself has gone back and forth publicly in his own response to this and there have been. Mixed messages. Talking with the White House Correspondent for reuters and former president for the White House Correspondents association. Jonathan karl has that position with a lot ofling changes inside the white house in the Briefing Rooms. What have you seen in recent days, recent weeks, what can we expect more, if anything . Guest we have seen a determined attempt by the reporters to practice social distancing. There was a time when i walked into the Briefing Room one morning and there had been new seating assignments made basically for fewer journalists to be able to sit in the Briefing Room. That was changed up a few days later to make it an even smaller number, so that there were greater numbers of seats in between the reporters who were sitting there and to have become almost in what had become almost daily briefings. They reduced the size and virginia of the normal 13 member press pool of reporters and journalists that travel with them. These are all temporary measures. They are measures to increase social distancing and to protect reporters as well as the staff. And the president himself. Mason, his work is available at reuters. Com. Thank you so much for being with us. Want to share this headline with you from the New York Times co. Testing blunders costing the a month. Th a vital largescale testing did not happen because of technical flaws, business as usual bureaucracy, lack of leadership. T multiple levels that according to interviews with 50 current and former Public Health officials, lost months when the worlds richest Country Armed with some of the best specialist squander their best chance of containing the spread of the virus here in the u. S. We want to focus on the impact it is having on your finances. Victor joins us from silver spring, maryland. Good morning. Guest good morning. I have been buying into the stock market and while others freak out, i have been buying in. I did this in 2001 and 2009. I know im going to come out of this ahead in the long run. But i would like to take a couple of minutes here to salute the truckers out there. Wen i cant sleep, i call w l in cincinnati and they have a show called the American Trucking network with Steve Sommers and riding the wave with son of the truckers i have spoken with personally on the ande, he hauls woodchips horsefeathers, propane to various places. There are others. , spaceman. Grunt my handle on there is known as blind man. Alex, good morning. Caller good morning. Im actually not really affected by this economically at all. Reason for this is that i am actually an essential employee. Thettle over a week ago website fortune. Com posted a short article with about 14 points of who is considered an essential employee, according to the United States government. Couple of the usual suspects are on there. People Like Health Care workers, police, fire department, people who work at grocery stores. Some media companies. I imagine you guys are such. Ered the last bullet point at the bottom, number 14, department of defense contractors. Im not going to mention which company i work for, for security reasons, but i actually wound up being under one of those categories of working for the inartment of defense manufacturing, working for a company that produces military equipment. The militaryart of industrial. Its ironic to me in a sense, i go into work every day and i even come off work just now, taking overtime hours, keeping of production. Its kind of ironic that the department of defense contractors are still going into work producing military equipment for who knows what we will use it for in the future, but we keep in touch, myself and. Ther employees core veterans we keep in touch with colleagues who are still serving in the u. S. Armed forces and because of everything going on there, like in the navy and army and such, they are all getting, contracting the virus in stuff, shutting down. They are not really Running Missions or doing anything along those lines. The actual armed forces is shutdown by the virus, but the militaryindustrial complex roles on. Thank you for the call. An example of how quickly this is spreading in nursing homes, hogan, mountlarry airy, maryland, with 66 residents it tested positive, the governor saying it took three weeks for the National Capital region to go from zero , three days for the region to go to 1000 to 2000 in washington, d. C. , maryland, and virginia, adding the is is a rapidly evolving emergency surrounding the. Ions capital we have a new primetime edition. The washington journal we hope that you tune in, phone in with your questions or comments for Governor Hogan on tuesday night, 8 00 p. M. Evening edition. Jamie is joining us, recently unemployed from hialeah, florida. Good morning. Good morning, sir. Thank you for letting me speak. I will give you a perfect example of smalltown america. Hialeah, florida, i happen to fall into the first category. I got recently hurt on the job, im ok because i got a steady check it coming in for right now, i dont have to worry about how im going to feed my family, but the people next to me they will only get a mere 2500 check and they have to worry about what they are going to do from then on. But the people across, stiffing them, hes got a Small Business and hes got everything, hes up to his neck on credit. Hes got a Small Business with three little trucks. So, now hes going to go and get out of his credit to be able to buy inventory, to be able to sell the inventory and get his money back. Who is going to regulate the Small Business owner . Change it out to his employees, sure, 600, but no one is talking about how much money the Small Business owner is able to get. Im not worried about big business. They are going to keep getting what they are getting. Im not worried about the small guy. Hes not getting nothing. The Small Business guy, we are letting them get ahead. No ones talking about regulating. I keep hearing about free money in america. Keep on going, guys. Host we appreciate that. Steve, next, roberts will, maryland, good morning. Caller appreciate you taking my call, steve. I have been watching you in the evenings there. I like the show in the evenings. Im a kind of semi retired truck driver. I think we need to prioritize where we are giving this money that they are putting out. We have got to have the front my workers, the hospital workers, the Truck Drivers hauling and prioritizing food, keeping the shelves filled up. The unemployment, we need to beef up the unemployment. They spent about double the amount of money they needed to. If you are going to give a bunch to businesses and say it will trickle down, thats just stupid, because that dont work. Fewbig arrogant tax cut a years ago, why dont they repeal that . That will at least pay for the money they are spending now. They are already talking about another 2 trillion three months from now. I think our priorities are wrong and we need to start putting first things first. Especially the frontend. I will close with this, all the people that are sick, you know, it and areng for hoping for a steve speedy recovery. Host we have this statement lines,ell, along those this is the headline from nbc news nbc news reporting copper the top backing away from comments that he was considering norman from pennsylvania, good morning to you. Caller good morning. I called in on the unemployment thing and i have a contractor, so we do get laid off. I have all the information that i need to work on my claim. Was on thet never system dont have. They cannot get that because the system is so down and out. My claim, which took a long time, it is open, this is the first week that we are allowed to sign up. The Computer System that opened at6 00 and it has crashed 6 05. I cannot imagine people that never did this before, what they are going through, not knowing what to do. You can watch what digital daily on seven of easter. Now a life Coronavirus Briefing from new york. Good to see your smiling faces. Some of your not smiling faces. James,ight, record commissioner, to my left, the secry,