Transcripts For MSNBCW All In With Chris Hayes 20200402

You can see the exponential increase overed past month. Cases are now growing by tens of thousands nationwide every day. And even the sunniest voices in the administration that repeatedly played down the threat and looked into the camera to tell americans the risk was low, people like Vice President mike pence, they are now saying that we in the u. S. Are on track similar to the hardest hit countries here is the Vice President , quote, we think italy may be the most comparable area at this point. Italy where despite a National Lockdown hospitals are overwhelmed, doctors many whom do not have sufficient medical equipment are being forced to make decisions about who gets the chance to survive and who does not. It did not have to be like this. We did not have to have the worst outbreak in the world. The failure of this administration and this president to take the virus seriously is part of what got us to this point. State and local governments continue to do what they can in this fight because there continues to be not just an absence of federal leadership but active, destructive incompetent. For example, the president has largely refused to invoke the defense production act which allows him to force businesses to manufacture items in an emergency. He refuses to do so or to standardize this manufacturing and take it over despite large scale shortages of ventilators and personal protective equipment. It turns out the defense production act isnt some break glass in case of emergency kind of thing that they havent dealt with. It has been invoked hundreds of thousands of times in the trump years, but with the pandemic, the president treats it as a break the glass last resort. And without a standardization of manufacturing, right now i cannot stress this enough because ive been talking to people about this day and night the last few days the market there is a market right now to acquire ventilators and other equipment like masks and personal protective equipment that is totally and completely haywire. You have states being forced into bidding wars to get medical equipment and even having to bid against, oh, look, the federal government, which could have just taken control of the entire process from the start to coordinate this and avoid this insane situation. But they have not, and then theres this, the pentagon, get this, the pentagon has not yet delivered any of the 2,000 ventilators. 2,000 ventilators. It offered to the department of health and Human Services two weeks ago because hhs has asked it to wait while the agency determines where the devices should go. Hospitals are desperate for ventilato ventilators. The new york city mayor said we need 400 in the next few days. People need them to live and they are just sitting there. Even when the federal government does do something, when they do seco send ventilators, thousands of ventilators in the stockpile do not work according to the New York Times report. The reason for this . The contract to maintain the governments stockpile lapsed late last summer, and a contracting dispute meant that a new firm did not begin its work until late july when it was essentially too late. And perhaps the best illustration of this incompetent, a trump official was speaking to counter parts in thailand in an effort to get protective gear, right . We need protective gear. Theyre trying to get protective gear from thailand. The official asked the thais for help only to be informed that a u. S. Shipment of the same supplies, the second of two so far was already on its way to bangk bangkok. We were sending them the things we were asking for. The administration has now frozen such aid. Exports by u. S. Companies continue. Roughly 280 Million Masks, 280 Million Masks in u. S. Warehouses were reportedly purchased by foreign buyers on monday alone, and throughout this whole process, the president appears to be distributing that federal aid with an eye on his reelection prospects and not on need. Florida where republican governor ron desantis, a trump ally has finally issued a stay at home order after keeping the beaches open for spring break, has been getting all the emergency supplies the state requested unlike other states. The Washington Post quoted a white house official who offered this explanation for why trump is so attuned to floridas wants. This is an official in the white house, quote, the president knows florida is so important for his reelection. His reelection. One of the biggest problems from the beginning is that the president has not pushed states to institute a shelter in place order. As bill gates wrote in an oped in the Washington Post, quote, because people can travel freely across state lines so can the virus. The countrys leaders need to be clear. Shutdown anywhere means shut down everywhere until the case numbers start to go down across america which could take ten weeks or more. No one can continue business or usual or relax the shutdown. This patchwork approach where every state fends for itself is what is leading to outbreaks around the country and the National Numbers climbing up at an accelerating rate day after day. This chart from dpc Research Shows new cases each day listen to this outside of the hardest hit states, okay, so it does not include new york, new jersey, washington, california where weve had the beginnings of the epicenters. And the data shows that even outside the earliest epicenters there is a rapid escalation of case growth. Thats real worrying. Everyone is going to have to deal with some version of the curve, and so in the absence of federal leadership, governors are going to have to manage the crisis as best they can, and we are going to talk to two of them on the front lines right now. Joining me now for more on what needs to be done, michigan governor gretchen whitmer, her state has seen a recent surge in coronavirus cases with the third highest total number of country. Those are expected to peak to a total higher than the number of beds currently available in that state. Let me start on that note, governor. Do you feel like with do you have enough tests right now . Do you have modeling where you feel fairly confident you have eyes on the virus right now and know where you are and what youre walking into . No, thats the simple answer. The fact of the matter is weve never had enough tests from the getgo, and we still dont, and so the modeling we get, the university of michigan, one of the premier universities on the plant planets are helping us with modeling but without robust testing theres a lot of speculation, and all the best science in the world doesnt replace knowing precisely whats happening through that testing, and thats why its still a critical need here in michigan and across our country. Theres just not enough testing being done yet. Were ramping up, but its not there yet. I just want to underline that because testing in the country is very uneven and in the aggregate has gone up to about 100,000 tests a day, although its plateaued there which is worrying. Youre saying from your perspective in michigan you dont have enough tests right now . No, we never have from the start. We dont have enough ppe. We dont have enough testing. The testing is really crucial because when we get to a place where were talking about ramping up our economy and its not easter sunday, and its not going to be anytime in the very near future, we have to have data. We have to know who has immunity. We have to be able to really assess can we do that, and you have to have the tests in order to be able to make any educated decision in the best interests of the public health. Theres been some unnerving harrowing news out of your state in terms of hospital capacity. This of course, is what new york is facing rite noing right now r if you could illuminate the level of concern about the beds, the icus, the front line medical workers and vent lair tilatorsv. Do you have enough for what youre about to enter to . No we dont have enough. 75 people died in the last 24 hours. This is something that were seeing these numbers continue to climb. Weve been really aggressive in terms of making sure that we have a stay at home order thats been in place a lot longer than a lot of other states. Weve taken aggressive action shutting down bars before other states did, taking kids out of school. These were things that our best medical advisers were saying weve got to do this. We took that action, and yet were seeing covid19 has been spreading here, and part of the challenge with testing and part of the challenge with having front line providers and hospital beds is that covid19 is much more prevalent here in michigan than anyone even can tell right now because of that lack of testing. And so we are already stressed to the limit, and we are on the upslope and will be for a while. I have to say, governor, you sound like someone who feels like theyre fighting a david versus goliath match in terms of your affect and what youre saying. Youre nighting fighting an ene dont have the weapons you need. You feel outmatched in the state of michigan at this point, is that fair . The reason we got aggressive. We know the only real tool we have when theres too little ppe, the only tool we have is trying to mitigate the spread and stay away from one another. Were asking people to make sacrifices. When were able to get our National Stockpile allotment, its nowhere near what we need. Were getting undercut through competition with other states or even with the federal government. Our big three and a number of michigan businesses are ramping up, and thats good. That will be helpful, but its not going to be fast enough to saves the lives that are going to depend on it. Its challenging, and its alarming, and there are sad stories. Each one of these people has a story and a family, and these are tough times. Were going to get through them, but these challenges are made much worse because there hasnt been consistent National Strategy and weve got now a patchwork of policies, and its Like Fighting a fight with one hand tied behind our back. Final question for you, and i will stipulate this is probably not in the top thousand of your concerns right now, but the president the other day said that he advised mike pence not to call you, i think hes referring to, that, you know, he didnt like your tone. He didnt like complaints of yours. Whats your reaction to that . You know what, i dont have time to fight anyone. Im fighting covid19. We cant fight one another right now. We all have to be focused on the enemy, and that is the virus, not one another. I need partners in the federal government, and i have talked to President Trump since those comments, and you know, ive talked to mike pence, and ive talked to the head of fema. We are on the phone all the time and working with our federal partners, but theres just not enough there to help us, and thats precisely why were asking people to come into michigan to volunteer, to help us because we are in a battle right now, and we dont have enough help. All right, governor gretchen whitmer. Were sending you all our best from around the country. Thank you on a very, very busy day for making time. I really, really appreciate it. Joining me now for more on what new jersey is doing to slow the surge of cases there is new jersey Governor Phil Murphy. Governor, i think new jersey is slightly ahead of where fwmichin is, but i imagine a lot of that probably sounds familiar to you in terms of these issues with capacity and acquiring the equipment you need. Does that resonate with you . Is that what youve encountered . Yeah, it largely does, chris, and im a big fan of Governor Whitmers, and yeah, were probably a little bit ahead. Weve got 22,000 plus positive cases. Sadly weve lost 355 of our blessed residents here in the state. But listen, we still need more beds. We need more ventilators. More personal protective equipment. We need to expand our heroic Health Care Work force. This is a war. Theres just no two ways about it, and were doing everything we can to get out ahead of it as best question. Can i ask you, Governor Whitmer said this, ive heard Governor Cuomo talk about this and governor lamont, and ive been asking every governor, have you had the same experience in trying to acquire n95 ventilator masks, other pieces of protective personal equipment or ventilato ventilators, this weird bidding war between states and the federal government and unregulated marketplace and slightly sketchy middlemen that have cropped up has that been your experience in procurement . I think the slightly sketchy middle man is the understatement of the year. The answer is yes, its the wild west, and these are crazy markets and youve got a lot of bad actors, unfortunately, so not only do you have the factual bidding against each other and bidding prices up to crazy levels, youve got some bad actors in here. As ive said many times, theres a special place in hell right now for somebody whos trying to take advantage of these crisis, and some of these sketchy middlemen fit that description. I mean, there are governors who have essentially thought they had a deal only to find like an empty cargo or empty truck. I mean, this is like the way that evens securing this is so remarkable to me that this vital needed thing is being a kind of catch as catch can with strange counter parties on the other side. Thats how states like yourself are provisioning. Amen. Listen, and that gets back to the federal government. Weve gotten ppe from the federal government from a strategic stockpile a number of installments. Were grateful we got 350 more ventilators today which were gra grateful, but our asks remain significant relative to what weve got. Were in a war. Its part of a metro new york story, and Governor Cuomo has said it. Were sort of the canary in the coal mine and no matter how well functioning markets might get, theres no replacing the federal government, and we need them in a big way right now. There were some questions today at the white house about their decision not to open up nationally obamacare enrollment because there are folks right now who dont have health care and Health Insurance and need it. And i think your state is doing that. Are you thinking about the insurance end of this, the payment end, the fact that theres going to be a lot of people who need a lot of care they may not be able to afford. They may not have the insurance for that hospitals are going to be bleeding money. How are you thinking about all of that . Listen, its a very fair question. Weve taken a bunch of aggressive steps on the Insurance Fund to not make people have to burn through copays for testing. We want the same for treatment. By the way, were establishing our own state exchange for the Affordable Care act. Weve sent a lot of money down and gotten very little back over the past number of years, so this is going to be our first year in the Enrollment Period coming up. We want to expand that period. The key thing here is everybodys got to come along with tus. We cant solve this virus if we only solve for part of our state, part of our citizenship, part of our residents. Weve got to make sure this works for everybody and making sure folks feel they can afford it and they can go in without cost as a factor is a huge part of solving this riddle. All right, Governor Phil Murphy of new jersey. I appreciate at the end of a long day you taking time to speak with us and our viewers. Honored to be with you. Joining us now on how we can push back against the coronavirus, a computational biologist at the university of washington. Hes been someone ive been following very, very closely throughout this. Author of the upcoming book calling bs the art of skepticism in a data driven world which will be out this august. Professor, let me i guess first start on this question of a national policy. Bill gates has said basically you need some kind of national policy. In china and italy, there was a regional solution first and a national solution. In the u. S. I dont think the president has the ability to lockdown the country. Is it your view we need 50 states to be doing the same thing at the same time . Absolutely. I think thats one of the points that bill gates stresses strongly in his editorial. Weve got to have consistency across the country. Theres enough movement between states. Were all in this together. We cant be solving it on a patchwork basis. You know, you had a long thread the other day. This is something youve looked at computational modeling of this sort of viral transmission for a long time. As someone who spent years in a sub field devoted to this, what does it how does it strike your ears when someone says no one could have seen this coming . This comes out of nowhere . Weve known for many, many years there was a serious threat of a large scale pandemic. Weve known that this is something we needed to be preparing for. Its something we have been preparing for. There have been, you know, unfortunately not all of the apparatus that was put into place is still there. The thing we couldnt have seen is it was going to be this particular kind of virus coming out of this particular place and spreading this way, but what weve known for a long time is weve been vulnerable to the risk of this kind of pandemic. Your modeling, theres a lot of widedy v divergencdy ver jen. We dont know the future, a lot of unknowns. Im curious, the white house model they tried out yesterday and now have this grim, almost unfathom bli grim benchmark of fatalitie fatalities. How you make sense of that number as someone who deals with comparative modeling in this space. Unfortunately, thats in some ways a best Case Scenario were looking at at this point. There are a couple of Different Things that could happen at this point. You can kind of imagine us going down one of two different time lines. Along one of those time lines we manage to take strong action in the states. The actions are Strong Enough to manage to suppress the virus, and were able to get it down to low levels and start to try to figure out how we can reemerge back into our ordinary lives, get the economy going and so forth. If you go along that best case trajectory, thats the model the white house is presenting to us. On that best case trajectory, 100,000 to 200,000 lives lost, and the thing that we have to recognize is theres also a worst case trajectory, which is where we lose control of the virus, we dont manage to suppress it now. It spreads more or less out of control through the u. S. Population infecting, say, half to twothirds of the u. S. Population. If Something Like that happens, there are other models coming out of for example Imperial College that suggest there wed be looking at losses of life more on the order of 1 to 2 million. But that worstCase Scenario, my understanding is that that is a sort of do nothing business as usual scenario. We do have most of the nation locked down right now, right . I mean, we should anticipate that were on at least the former trajectory now, correct . We hope so. I mean, certainly the measures that we saw today, you know, locking down florida was absolutely essential. There really wasnt a lot of hope without all the states coming onto board in terms of shutdowns, you know, stay home orders and the like. I think theres still an open question about whether were doing enough to make the virus stop spreading and turn the pandemic around. Here in seattle we, i think, you know, are probably doing enough, but we actually still are too early on to be sure that you are omeasures are stringent enough. What was going on in wuhan was substantially more stringent control measures than what were doing now here in the u. S. Let me follow up, final question on that, you know, wuhan obviously theres sort of physical distancing or spatial distancing, social distancing, whatever you want to call it. In wuhan there was intense test and trace and required quarantines. People being removed from their household, being brought to a quarantine space, things like that. Youre saying its an open question whether the virus can be brought under control without that level of vigilance. I certainly would hope we would not have to go to anything like removing people from their families or anything like that, but we might have to certainly increase the stringentness of the stay at home measures. Theres still people out hanging out in groups in the parks here in this area, and maybe consider shutting down more of the businesses that are going on, maybe as we learn more about whats causing this to spread, maybe looking at different ways for food delivery, groeceries, shopping those kinds of things. The good thing is by taking these intensive steps to flatten the curve as we have in the country over the last few days, were buying ourselves time to figure that out without letting things spiral completely out of control. And i commend everyone for doing that. All right, Carl Bergstrom whose work has been essential during this period. Thank you so much for taking some time with us tonight. Thank you very much. Good to talk with you, chris. Take care. Before we head to break, a little bit of good news about a story we brought you last night. I talked to Connecticut Governor ned lamont who warned us about an insurance cliff on april 1st when thousands of people could lose insurance coverage. The governor called us back tonight wanted to let us know that they figured out a solution to that problem. Contract insurers have agreed to a 60day grace period. No insurer in contract may lapse or terminate a covered insurance policy policy because a holder does not pay a premium or interest during this time. A bit of good news we wanted to share on the 1st of april. Hopefully this is a model other states will be able to use going forward. Next, 93 cruise members of an American Nuclear powered Aircraft Carrier test positive for coronavirus. The captains plea to save his sailors lives, and what we know about the evacuation of that ship after this. For coronavirus. For coronavirus. Yes. Its the first word of any new discovery. But when allergies attack, the excitement fades. Allegra helps you say yes with the fastest nondrowsy allergy relief and turning a half hearted yes, into an all in yes. Allegra. Live your life, not your allergies. There are times when our need to connect really matters. To keep customers and employees in the know. To keep business moving. Comcast business is prepared for times like these. Powered by the nations largest gigspeed network. To help give you the speed, reliability, and security you need. Tools to manage your business from any device, anywhere. And a team of experts here for you 24 7. Weve always believed in the power of working together. Thats why, when every connection counts. You can count on us. Extraordinary scene as american sailors were rescued. Off their own ship, as the Navy Announced at least 93 crew members of the u. S. S. Roosevelt tested positive for the coronavirus with hundreds of results still pending. Secretary of the navy said about a quarter of the 4,000 crew members have been tested so far. Tonight the carrier is docked in guam, about half the Nuclear Powered ships crew has been removed, and that emergency evacuation only came after roosevelts captain raised an alarm in a remarkable and brave fourpage letter to his navy superiors laying out reasons for wanting to evacuate the majority of his crew saying we are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset, our sailors. Joining me now is a naval war fair repo fare reporter at defense news. Hes written several articles about the roosevelt and the military response to the coronavirus. First tell me about this ship, david, and how a Nuclear Powered Aircraft Carrier in the pacific first was exposed to the virus . Well, its a very big ship as anybody that can, you know, look at the pictures of the carrier knows. Its a crew of about 5,000 sailors, a little shy of that, maybe about 4,800, and how they got exposed is still kind of a mystery. They were in port in vietnam about 15 days before the first case popped, but its unclear if thats where they picked up the virus or if any number of aircraft that fly on and off an aircraft from shore, bringing supplies, bringing new crew members, any number of ways that the virus could have gotten on board, but i think the most important point is and i think the captain makes it in his letter is that the environment that exists on those ships, sailors in very close quarters. They sleep very close together, they work in very close quarters. You know, their showering facilities are all very close quarters. Its a very conducive environment for a virus. Yeah, its i mean, just based on the numbers, it sounds like it just has torn through that ship, which is not surprising. I mean, like a prison or a nursing home or, you know, a ship like those are all very close quarters. Theyre all contained environments with a lot of reprocessed air. The letter is really quite a document. Explain the context for it in some ways for people that dont know, like how sort of brave it was for this captain to raise the alarm in the way he did. I think theres no doubt about that, chris, right . I think theyve anybody that follows the navy understands that the that what that captain did was really put his career on the line. I think that they that the navy is very much for keeping things inside the lifelines and using the chain to have command like the military, like any branch of the military would be, and the fact that this got out is highly embarrassing to the navy. Theres no question about that, but its certainly a letter that was written to be heard, and i think that certainly the cno and comments today, the chief of naval operations, thats the head officer in the navy, acknowledged that there could have been a communication breakdown between higher headquarters and what was going on on that ship. So it was a remarkably brave letter to put it in such stark terms. You know, youve said it a couple of times now that putting it in the terms that sailors could die if no action is taken. So youve got i mean, this is one of, what are there are 11, i think in the fleet in terms of nuclear Aircraft Carriers and obviously theres a bunch of other ships. There are a bunch of bases around the world where people are in fairly close quarters, not quite as close maybe as an Aircraft Carrier. At the beginning of this, there was this reporting the defense secretary esper warned commanders not to surprise trump on coronavirus, but youve got to think this is a real present threat throughout the entire u. S. Armed forces at this point . Chris, ive written a little bit about this, and i think one of the problems that the military is facing is a problem of its own culture and the higher echelons dont want to micro manage or dictate to lower level commanders to sort of, you know, use what i think somebody referred to as a 5,000 foot screwdriver to try to, you know, finagle how individual commanders run their commands, but i think as the bill gates piece that youve been citing mentions everyones facing a Common Threat here. Theres no unique circumstance. The virus is going to get back to it. And we know if youre in close quarters on a ship sleeping close to each other and somebody has the virus, youre probably going to spread that to the person near you through coughing or any other you know, so its remarkable to me that their instinct to punt to the lower echelons on how you manage your command is actually working against it, at least in this case. Yeah, that is a fascinating institutional insight, thanks. Coming up, while the nation is grappling with the widespread ga impacts of a Global Pandemic, the administration is still finding time to pursuing policy, what theyre doing behind the scenes next. Y, what theyre doing behind the scenes next. [ ] think you need to buy expensive skincare products to see dramatic results . Try olay skin care. Just one jar of microsculpting cream has the hydrating power of 5 jars of a prestige cream, which helps plump skin cells and visibly smooth wrinkles. While new olay retinol24. Provides visibly smoother, brighter skin. For dramatic skincare results, try olay. And now receive 25 off your purchase at olay. Com brand power. Helping you buy better. The Trump Administrations response to the coronavirus has been defined by incompetence and deceit from the beginning. While they claim to be focused on the crisis at hand, they have also been using the last month to pursue ideological and policy vendettas. They are turning away migrants and Asylum Seekers at the southern border. They revoked the reservation status of a native american tribe the president had attacked last year about their plans to build a casino. Theyre suspending the enforcement of a range of health and environmental laws. Yesterday the administration announced they are unilaterally rolling back fuel efficiency standards for cars, the latest audacious move in a huge bruising battle with Public Interest groups and states like california and the automakers themselves, many of whom oppose this, weve covered all this on the show because rolling back fuel economy standards is going to help our doctors and nurses on the front lines get the protection they need, right . Thats going to keep sick peoples lungs healthy when theyre gasping for air. Oh, and dont forget the fact the department of justice is still remains the fact currently in court suing to scrap the entirety of the Affordable Care act, all 2,000 pages, all of its protections, and not only that, the Trump Administration is refusing to open up obamacare enrollment for all the people who could probably really use some Health Insurance right about now in the midst of a Global Pandemic. Today when mike pence was pressed by fox news of all places on what americans without insurance will do during this pandemic, he basically had no answer. But thats because if at least you judge them by their actions, they genuinely do not care. The coronavirus rescue package that was just passed by both houses and signed by the president has a bunch of different components, right . So one of them is a 350 billion Loan Grant Program for Small Businesses, and that might be the hardest policy part of this bill to get right because you can give workers cash or unemployment insurance, right, you can bail out big businesses with all sorts of actions taken by the fed and theyre big, and they have all sorts of ways they can save themselves, but the millions and millions of Small Businesses in america, right, how are they going to be able to make it through . It really depends on this program. Yesterday the government put this Application Form online, just a few pages long, looks fairly simple and straightforward, good on them for that. Here to talk about how this is going to work, msnbc anchor stephanie ruhle. Everybody is wondering what is going to happen to Small Businesses. This is a lot of money, 350 billion. How does the program work . How do you apply if youre the pizzeria owner around the corner from me who i love . Like hes not doesnt have any business, how does he apply . So the paycheck protection program, mark cuban calls this thing free money and has urged every Small Business in america and remember, thats any company with 500 people or less, it is being run out of the sba, and listen, with the idea that if you simply put people on unemployment and dont care for all of these Small Businesses, weve got 30 million Small Businesses in this country, if you dont do something to ensure they stay afloat, then when we get on the other side of this, all of these people on unemployment are not going to have anywhere to go back to work to. Most companies dont have two and three months of liquidity sitting around. So you are entitled to this if and let me just say, its 100 forgivable. Its a Disaster Relief basically loan. You can spend the money on anything related to your business, and you dont have to pay this loan back provided you keep 100 of your payroll. Now, if you already laid people off, you have to hire them back if you want to get the loan forgiven. Heres one of the biggest issues here, its hard to figure out. The sba is running it. Last year the sba had 3,000 employees. There were 58,000 loans granted. Now were talking about 350 billion and tens of millions of businesses who are desperate to get these loans. Now, its being run out of the 1,8 1,800 banks that have existing relationships with the sba. I invite you to call any Small Business owe own, and i dont mean Small Businesses that have three and four tax lawyers and their own accounting firms, i mean the guy who runs the pizzeria, hes calling 15 different banks. They dont have the forms yet. That application you just saw very few people have seen it, and no one has said you cant call a bank, you must call the bank you have an existing relationship with. So much like how are we going to get Unemployment Benefits to the millions of people that are calling and getting busy signals or trying to apply and the websites are crashing, yes, this is a really good idea, and when this money gets to these businesses it could be great, but the question is how when the heck is it getting there . Ill tell you this, with that much money you know there is going to be fraud. You know theres going to be waste. When tarp happened, okay, they only had to give money to a little over 700 businesses, and logistically it was a disaster. How this is going to work out remains to be seen. Right. Yeah, the key thing i think for us to keep reporting on. The concept is sound, i think, the policy architecture, it is one of those devil in the details kind of things. The concept. The president today also had a he had a tweet about like hes going to bring the Restaurant Business back by allowing businesses to expense their business lunches, i think, and then he talked about it again today. Youre rolling your eyes, but the old and very strong and proven this will bring restaurants and everything related back and stronger than ever. Move quickly. They will all be saved. This doesnt seem very likely to me. What is your take on this . This is absolutely insane, okay . 99. 9 of restaurants in this country dont have any corporate business. There were no big businesses that said to the administration if only we were able to deduct our 10,000 closing dinners. If only we could do that, then, man, we would help fuel the restaurant industry. No, this goes straight to the president s sensibility that this aint 1988 at sparks serving steaks to 15 dudes and red wine and then all heading over to scores west, its ridiculous, and as somebody who spent 15 years of her life at those closing dinners working in investment banking, i can promise you this, there is no Business Today thats saying, man, we would be making so much more money. We would be helping our customers if only we could have massive dinners where trumpers were falling from the sky and we can get a tax deduction. Exactly. Yeah, i dont think thats in the top 10,000 priorities for anyone right now. Stephanie ruhle, it is always a pleasure, come back soon. Thank you. Coming up, what happens when we hand the government over to people incapable of doing its core function, managing large risks. Its the central question at the center of author Michael Lewiss pres sent book, the fifth risk, and he joins me next. He. People dont want to talk about it. So i share it. Song by song. The dark and the light. The struggle and the joy with my mental health. Whats your mission . Use godaddy to help make it happen. The xfinity my account app puts you in control with Digital Tools to give you the help you need when you need it. Get fast and easy answers with personalized help 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Change your wifi password to a phrase thats easy to remember. Even troubleshoot your services on your own. Were working to make things a little easier for everyone. Download the xfinity my account app today. The risk of a Global Pandemic that goes across the entire world, kills millions of people, its one of those things we call a tail risk meaning the probability of a rare but devastating event, right, a thing thats not likely to happen on any given day but over enough time might in the future and would be terrible if it did, managing tail risks is one of the central things that governments do. The president is notoriously bad at it. Back in 2018 his white house got rid of the National Security councils pandemic team. Just last year they ignored warnings of their own government, which ran an exercise simulating a pandemic and predicting precisely the problems we face now. Author Michael Lewiss latest book the fifth risk is all about the one risk you fail to imagine. Joining me is the author of that book, Michael Lewis, whos also the host of the podcast against the rules and who today has a fascinating piece in bloomberg entitled a coronavirus fix that passes the smell test. Its great to have you here. Ive been thinking about you a lot as this has played out. Your book is all about a bunch of Civil Servants in the government who think about these kinds of problems all the time and someone running the government who just doesnt care, and im curious what you make of watching all this play out having written this book a year ago . You know, its been its i mean, at the same time its very sad to watch the way hes handled it, it was entirely predictable. Look, i think you go right back to the transition when they walked in. He fired the 7 or 800 people who were meant to go in and get the briefings from the Obama Administration and understand how this enterprise worked, and that never happened, so this transfer of any kind of felt experience, a felt experience of what its like to manage a pandemic, it never happened, and it never happened because he was entirely indifferent, and i think thats a its a really curious psychological trait. I mean, if you or i happened by accident to get elected president , wed both panic and want to know everything we needed to know and worry about all the bad things that might happen, right, all of that, and the idea that you dont prepare at all and that you dont get to know this mechanism, this one tool for dealing with these catastrophic risks, its kind of amazing, and i mean, i think that we can probably talk for hours about what goes on inside the mind of donald trump that enabled him to do that. I mean, tens of thousands of people are going to die in this country because of the lack of his lack of interest in engaging with the tool for protecting people, and this just happened to be the thing that happened, this pandemic, but you could go across the federal government, there are dozens and dozens of really kind of dangerous situations that are being managed that if theyre mismanaged really, really bad things happen, and if any of the other ones would have happened, i assume wed have a similar sort of situation. You know, part of it and i dont want to sigh kol jiez here, but its been striking to me watching this, what is an adaptive trait say new york city real estate, which is being a confident bs artist and saying whatever you need to say and saying, oh, its all going to work out and hoping it does work out and never think of the worstCase Scenario, is literally the opposite of what you want in this case, right . What you want is someone who thinks about the worst Case Scenario. Well, if youve gone through your entire life with the kind of sense the sense that no matter what happens, no matter what the facts are, you can tell a story that is going to put you in a good light. Right. That you can its an unbelievable faith in narrative if you think about it. Its a faith that he has in story telling that trumps the facts, that trumps knowledge, that trumps the truth, that you can go you can come in after the fact and invent whatever story you want and sell that first to yourself, right, but to those around you. That is the precondition for this situation because thats why he was able to ignore the federal government because he in the back of his mind, well, whatever happens, i can tell a story, and you can see it happening, right . You can see it happening, and the story will evolve, and you can bet that six months from now this twomonth period where they completely screwed up their response to this thing is going to be were going to hear a completely different story about what actually happened. Youve got a fascinating piece today as we continue, i dont know if you heard in the beginning of the show governors talking about testing shortage, of an interesting piece of data that might be indicative of where things are popping up before testing. Explain the idea here. So two leading british ent doctors have published, sent a letter to their colleagues saying, look, its not only a symptom of the kroocoronavirus its an early symptom and sometimes is a symptom when there are no other symptoms. So the kind of people that might be Walking Around with it not knowing they have it have this symptom, and its the loss of a sense of smell, and they spent a lot of time talking to doctors around the world. They did their best to grind some stats and i think they came up with like 80 of people who get the coronavirus lose their sense of smell, often early, and its im sorry, 30 to 60 who get the coronavirus have lost their sense of smell. If you have it, if you have the coronavirus, theres a very likely chance this has happened, and in the absence of tests and without the testing, the big problem is you cant analyze where the thing is going. This might be a very crude substitute, both for people to selfdiagnose and isolate, but also, and this is the idea of a former wall street risk manager named peter hancock, its a very good idea. That if you can crowd source this information, you get people to go online and say i cant smell, and that would first get a lot of people off the street who shouldnt be on the street, and it would also give you a kind of map of the a population wide map of the disease, which is what were lacking. The you know, the fact were lacking data in this country is the most amazing thing because we have been in every other aspect of our lives data obsess obsessed, everything from baseball teams to political campaigns depending on the data, and we have a government that has failed to collect the data. The idea is you find a kind of a crude hack to substitute for the failure of the federal government. Michael lewis, whose book the Michael Lewis who whose book is out now, its a great beak. Thank you so much for making time tonight. Thanks, chris. That is all in this evening. The 11th hour with Brian Williams starts now. A barren times square in the city of new york. Under a state of emergency. A lone police car sitting between two city blocks. Well, good evening once again. Day 1,168 of the Trump Administration leaving us 216 days to go until the president ial election. And well start this way. Perhaps it is not said often enough. The last role donald trump inhabited before becoming our