Difficult and troubling weeks in our nations history. Nearly 6,000 american lives have been lost to the coronavirus. 10 million are out of work. And nearly all of us are being told to just stay at home. And the situation keeps getting worse. Thursday marked the first time we saw 1,000 deaths reported in a single day. There are over 245,000 cases across our country. Worldwide, the numbers are now over a million. Double double what it was just one week ago. Health experts still say the best way to protect yourself is to stay at home and keep your distance. But if you do go out in the public, the white house is now expected to recommend wearing face masks. But whether its with masks or the recommendation to completely stay at home, the president is refusing to make these rules mandatory. Dr. Anthony fauci said that even with nearly 40 states under full lockdown, the orders should be across the board. This week also brought us some of the absolute worst Economic News we have ever seen. Weve got more this morning. The march jobs report showed a loss of more than 700,000 jobs. The first month of job losses in almost a decade. And, remember, it is bangward looking. Doesnt even include what weve seen in the last few weeks. Weve seen the Unemployment Rate jump 4. 4 , but many experts say the 10 million jobless claims filed in the last two weeks are a better measure of where the economy really stands. And the april jobs report, thats expected to be far, far worse. Nevertheless, help appears to be on the way. On thursday, treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin said the stimulus checks would start landing in peoples accounts in just two weeks. And the Program Designed to loan 350 billion to Small Business, it went online at midnight, but there are still many, many questions and issues about how fast and how effective these programs are going to be. I can tell you, i spent the last 24 hours speaking to the largest sba lending banks. None of which none felt confident they had enough information to get these loans processed in any immediate fashion. Were going to get more on that in a minute. First, to new york where nbcs ron allen is standing by. Youve been watching how the medical community there is holding up. Give us an upare date today. We just heard a very passionate, emotional plea for more help from nurses and doctors here at mt. Sinai and across the city who are on the front lines saying they just dont have what they need to treat their patients. They are afraid for their own lives. They call what theyre doing a daily suicide mission. They say every day it gets worse despite what youre hearing about equipment being on the way. They say everyone is scared, and they demanded that the president , federal government use the defense production act to get more equipment here before its too late. Heres some of what one nurse had to say. Dont do it where we are sick, when we are dying. We dont want to be in body bags. I dont want to be your body bag. I want you to take this seriously. I want you to give us the equipment we need to provide safe, quality care for our patients. Reporter they described the situation where they are given one mask per day and told to put it in a brown paper bag when theyre not using it. They want more masks. They want more protective equipment, more ventilators. We understand the city is down to six days left before they run out of ventilators. And most importantly, also importantly, what the folks here want, they dont want retaliation. They are fearful of coming out and speaking out about what the conditions are in the hospital. They say some of their colleagues have been reprimanded. They are afraid of that, but theyre speaking out anyway because the situation is so desperate. Stephanie . Ron, thank you so much and, please, stay safe where you are. I want to turn to the Bailout Program for Small Businesses which has been online for about nine hours. Nbcs Geoff Bennett is at the white house. Weve got to walk through this because you were in the White House Briefing room when Steve Mnuchin very clearly said everybody out there who is a Small Business, go online, call banks. He wasnt even telling the absolute truth in that you cant call just any old bank. Has the white house responded since last night when they misspoke saying all the banks have all the information they need when they didnt get that information until after the press briefing. Youre right about that, steph. And the white house message right now is the same at last night. This program is up and running. And we should explain, this program is a key part of the 2 trillion stimulus package that President Trump signed into law last week. Aimed at cushioning the blow of disruptions tied to the coronavirus. So heres whats in this plan. The government has asked banks to begin disbursing roughly 350 billion in forgivable loans starting today. Its for businesses that have less than 500 employees. The money that they get can be used for payroll, for benefits, utilities, mortgages, and the loans can be forgiven if theyre used for designated expenses. Thats the plan. But heres the deal and you know this because youve been doing all of the reporting on this. Youve got massive global institutions to regional banks and small lenders all saying they had to wait too long for guidance from the sba, from the Small Business administration and treasury on exactly how to administer the program. And as you rightly point out, the banks just last night got 31 pages of guidance laying out how this program will operate. Jpmorgan chase, the biggest u. S. Bank, was the first lender to say publicly that they might not be able to start accepting applications today as they hope because they didnt have enough time to get everything in place. Still, treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin last night told me and other reporters in the briefing, the program is going to be up and running today but even the timing of this has banks worried because its a friday. People want to get this done before the weekend, obviously. So banks are bracing themselves for an avalanche of applications and requests. Steph . Youre darn right they are. Its important to note theres no bad actors here from congress to the treasury to the sba to all of these lending banks. Theyre trying to get this done, but this is a really heavy lift. I want to bring in karen mills, former head of the Small Business administration under president obama. Lonnie chen worked on pandemic planning with the department of health and Human Services under george w. Bush and Austan Goolsby under president obama. Im so glad youre here. You ran the sba. The sba last year was responsible for giving out 28 billion worth of loans over the course of a year. Theyve still got that budget this year. But now, in a week, they are charged with executing 350 billion on a whole new program, a whole new plan on loans that are forgivable. How on earth are they going to get this thing done . Well, as you said, stephanie, this is a huge, heavy lift. This is 10x our record year in the last crisis. And what we know is that its day one. So the good news is that the bill passed and the money is there. The bad news, as you said, the guidance only came out last night and the banks are not ready. And banks dont move that quickly. So what we really need to have happen is they need to get the money up and running. The ones i talked to last night are have some systems working, but they are not ready to hand out the money yet. So what they are doing is taking applications. They are taking a queue of applications. They know what to tell Small Businesses they need. The problem is the queue is enormous because, as you know, all these Small Businesses, 30 million Small Businesses, are not functioning. So we need more pipeline. We need the square and paypal. I even heard from angies list. They said we have so many Small Businesses. We know they exist. We can prove that they are valid Small Businesses. How can we get hooked up either to this program or maybe to the Treasury Stabilization Fund and try to get this money out . Everybody knows that the clock is ticking. You know, these Small Businesses only have two, three, four weeks of cash in their pockets. Theyve already laid off, as weve seen in the unemployment numbers. And were going to ask them to hire these people back, then put them on the payroll, then get these loans, pay them and then get loans forgiven. Okay. That all sounds well and good, Austan Goolsby and lots of people want to step in and help, but is that actually going to happen . Based on our own reporting two nights ago, brian moynihan, the ceo of bank of america with Steve Mnuchin was going through line by line of this thing and explaining to him how this thing technically works. If they are doing that less than 48 hours ago, do you really think were going to get ourselves to a place where were working in paypal, fintech and angies list . Im very nervous about that. It was 10 00, 11 00 last night theyre still working on the language of what the rules are. So i dont think its realistic that you would think the banks are actually going to be able to get the money out. And, a, to not be able to get this money out before may 1, when a whole bunch of bills are going to come due, threatens to have mass bankruptcies of Small Businesses in the country. But on top of that, weve got this major credibility gap thats developing, and its a terrible its terrible that we have that. So when the president , they announced there would be 27 million tests by the end of march. And they announced testing in walmart parking lots. And google was going to have a website up that you could check your symptoms and it would tell you where to go. If we extend that kind of bumbling, were trying to get it to work out, but its not quite working out as we said. If that extends into the economic sphere, we could transform what we hoped would be a short slowdown into something deeply worse and a lot darker. Lonnie, that lack of credibility is exactly why bank ceos have declined the white houses invitation to go and stand with the president in one of these rose garden ceremonies like other ceos have done and said, america, weve got the job done. I spoke to a Bank Executive last night that said we cant say that to the american people. We dont know if we can do it. My question to you, lonnie, how concerned are you about fraud . This is 350 billion that mark cuban has dubbed free money, a giveaway that Small Businesses need to get in line for and theres many that need it. But how concerned are you that small private equity firms, hedge funds, rich people with a whole lot of llcs are going to use some really crafty accountants and tax specialists to get their mitts on this thing . Look, i think, stephanie, the challenge here is you are trying to balance between getting the money out the door as quickly as possible so it can have an impact. Youre trying to balance that with making sure its going to the right people. And to your point, the challenge is the way the program is structured, those kinds of security guarantees, those kinds of things to avoid fraud, you arent going to see that on the front end here because the money is going to go out the door. Once the money is out the door, its out the door. To your point, in fact, the program is crafted as loosely as possible so that as many different entities can get access to this as possible. Its not just certain Small Businesses. Its basically any Small Business less than 500 employees. The rules and regulations are on it. In terms of what its used for, thats supposedly limited. But in terms of the security and antifraud mechanisms on the front side, there really arent any, and thats by design. The challenge to austans point is how do you get that money into the economy and get it into the economy in a useful way. Its almost like a deal the money first, ask the questions later kind of program. Karen, 350 billion is a big number. But to lahnees point, the rules are really loose and people are going to be flooding to get into this thing. The chamber of commerce did a poll that found 1 in 4 Small Businesses are 60 days away from having to close permanently. 11 will go out of business in a month. If the right businesses that need this the most cant get in quickly enough, whats the fate of american Small Business going to look like in a month from now . You know, if we could, i think we should try to prioritize the smaller businesses, the ones that need it the most. And, you know, as was just mentioned, they are the people who have the least sophistication. Right now, i just want to say a shout out to all of the on the ground business advisers and sba folks who are trying to help those smallest people. One of the things that worries me is the banks have of fraud that they only want to serve their own customers. So last night one Small Business owner emails me and says, my bank is not doing it. And i called 30 banks and they say im only doing my own customers. So thats one of the reasons why i believe we need some more avenues to get this money out. And i do think we can move forward with some of the big providers of capital and Payment Services like a stripe, like a square and have another conduit because they have the smallest businesses. They have those little businesses who only have a 6,000 loan. Weve got to make sure theyre covered. And banks may not be the first way to do that. All right. Thank you all. And i reiterate that. For all of those people at the sba, the treasury and everyone in those banks trying to get this done, everyone has the best of intentions. I appreciate all of your time and expertise. Were going to leave it there. When we come back, senator marco rubio will be here. He chairs the senate Small Business committee. Im going to ask him about this ppp program. Hes the one who championed it, fought to get it into the c. A. R. E. S. Act, and this program might be the one that does save millions and millions of businesses, if they can get it done. Plus ill be speaking to one doctor who will take us inside the front lines of an area with a surge of new cases of coronavirus. As we hear from more of those heroes in their own words. We have never been in a situation like this. We are fighting a war. And its microscopic. Our icu floors and inpatient units have been filling up. A lot of sick people. A lot of sick people on vents. We see death a lot, but not at this rate, and we dont see it come this indiscriminately. And they have all the things going wrong. They just become critical so quickly. Its getting worse. This war is going to take weeks, if not months. Its not clear to us when the peak is going to be and how bad its going to be. I have anxiety from the unknown. We, too, are very apprehensive of what were going to encounter in the field. Before i go home every shift, the one thing i think about is, what are my chances of actually getting infected . Am i going to get sick . Are you going to be fine . People are going to get sick. Is life going to be okay . We are stressed. We are scared. Our biggest fear is were not going to have enough equipment. Running out of room and vents and ppes. Were basically being given the minimum protections of what we would have been afforded had we not faced any of these problems. We feel like we are in a fight with both hands tied behind our back. Were at a huge disadvantage, and thats not on us. Its on everybody else in leadership in this country. We need help from the public. Stay home. Bend that curve. Get that down, and thats going to help us. We want you to be scared enough to be prepared, to be participating in helping us flatten the curve. Please stay home. Please be our ally. Please keep your social distances. Six feet apart. If you dont have to go out to get essentials, dont go out. And hand wash. Hand wash. Hand wash. Hand wash. I guarantee that at the end of this pandemic, every Single Person will know someone who has lost their lives from this disease. Do it for them. The 1 hyaluronic acid moisturizer delivers 2x the hydration for supple, bouncy skin. Neutrogena®. Yoall this grass. All this mulch. All these projects to do. You need a tractor that can do it all right. You need the 1 selling subcompact tractor in the u. S. The versatile kubota bx series. [female vo] restaurants are facing a crisis. And theyre counting on your takeout and delivery orders to make it through. Grubhub. Together we can help save the restaurants we love. 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. Illinois seeking a sharp spike in Coronavirus Infections with more than 700 new cases and 16 deaths in the last 24 hours, including chicagos first Police Officer to die from the virus. Joining us now, dr. Gates, a pulmonary and Critical Care specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in chicago. Doctor thank you for all that youre doctor. You say that beyond caring for patients, there is an enormous amount of anxiety in your hospital in anticipation for whats to come. Explain. Yes, so we know that were preparing for a peak in about a week and a half now, around right after easter. And though we think that weve prepared as much as we possibly can, we have anxiety about whats to come. How many patients will we actually need to take care of . Will we have the ventilators and the space to take care of those patients appropriately . We are watching whats happening in new york, which creates a sense of sadness and anxiety. And we are just kind of waiting and hoping that we have done the preparations to take care of our patients. How do you navigate working in the hospital and treating others while trying to protect yourself and your family . So its a very interesting way that we find ourselves dealing with it. We come to work and we do what we need to do at work. We do what we need to do to take care of our patients. We wear the appropriate ppe. We take our time. We check each other to make sure that we have everything that we need to be safe at work. And then we thats how we take care of ourselves and each other at work. And then everyone has different ways of managing their families. We are, you know, at the forefront of everything, concerned about making our families sick. And ive been social distanced from my father and my sister for the last three weeks. My immediate family, my husband and my child, we cant see each other before i take a shower before leaving after leaving the hospital. We cant touch each other. If i have a contact with a covid patient, theres a plan for me to quarantine myself away from the home. So these are discussions that we are having because they are real discussions that we have to have a plan for. Do you have the equipment that you need to properly fight this and be safe . We currently have the equipment that we need. We are told and we see that we have the equipment. So when we enter the hospital, we are all in masks. Surgical masks at this point. When youre on the covid unit you have the appropriate masks, n95. If youre doing anything directly with the patient that would expose you. So currently, we have the appropriate ppe that we need. All right. Doctor, thank you so much. Im glad you are safe today, and i appreciate all that you are doing right now. Thank you. And Going Forward. Thank you. Up next hes one of the senators who fought to make it happen. Ill be speaking with florida senator marco rubio on how hes planning to protect all those Small Businesses with a paycheck protection Program Going in place, online live today. And also his own states decision to put a lockdown in place. Liberty biberty cut. Well dub it. Liberty mutual customizes your Car Insurance so you only pay for what you need. Only pay for what you need. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. I am totally blind. And non24 can make me show up too early. Or too late. Or make me feel like im not really there. Talk to your doctor, and call 8442342424. bobby youre concerned that its going to cost you money. Ouble, ben to this day, i only paid what i had to pay for the device. When i go back, everything is covered. Theres so much youre missing by not having hearing aids. vo well find you a hearing aid that fits your lifestyle and your budget at one of our 1,500 locations. Call 1800miracle to start your 30day riskfree trial and schedule your free hearing evaluation at your locally owned miracle ear today. Welcome back. Im stephanie ruhle. Weve just learned that bank of america, one of the largest small lenders to businesses has opened their paycheck protection portal making it the first major bank to start accepting applications for Small Business loans. They have over 1. 6 million Small Business customers. But this morning, many other banks, large and small, are concerned they are not prepared for the number of requests theyre about to get. I want to bring in someone who fought hard to make sure this Small Business relief was part of congress 2 trillion relief package and is still fighting for Small Businesses in his home state of florida. Republican senator and chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business, senator marco rubio. He joins me now. Senator, why was this so important to you . Thank you for having me. I dont think i need to convince anyone, and i certainly didnt in congress, that Small Business is so important for our economy. Represents like 90 of our ferms and we all know someone in this sector. It wasnt a heavy lift. It was a lot of work to put it all together given the climate and time constraints, and it was important because over half the people in this country work somewhere. When you look at the people we cover in this, independent contractors, 1099 people in the gig economy and the c3 not for profit sector, way over half the people in this country work for one of the eligible entities here, one of the eligible businesses or not for profits that are eligible for this. So, yeah, anything that covers half the employees in this country is a big deal. Lets talk about who is eligible because the 350 billion is first come, first serve. And the original language for this bill said anyone applying needs to show that they have had a 50 loss in revenue right now compared to what they had last year. So that absolutely applies to all the kind of businesses youre talking about. Construction, hair salons, restaurants. But that language was changed to now essentially say anybody who has the expectation that this is going to hurt their business, that change has now opened the door for insurance companies, hedge funds, law firms, all other sorts of businesses to come in for a land grab. Yeah, so the language change, ill tell you why. When we wrote that originally, it was a different time. When we started this project, 50 billion. And as that week went omore and more closures, we started to realize virtually no business in america would be unimpacted by it, and the result is that language came out also because we wanted to make it easy. If we asked the business, go and pull your oneyear revenue, youre adding days and hours and making it more complicated. Its one of the reasons the banks were complaining. The original forms from the sba asked for all that and made it more complicated. I agree with your view that there is the opportunity here for some people to try to come in who arent a dry cleaner down the street or the bakery around the corner or the small restaurant which is who were trying to help. Those regulations are still due out. Theyre not out yet about what happens this is complicated. The more you open this up, the more you realize the complexity of ownership out there. What happens to a truly Small Business who happens to have one of five owners that is 20 shareholder in the company or whatever that is an Investment Fund that may be capitalized a year ago. Thats something weve been encouraging is for investment to flow toward Small Business. I can tell you the design of this was not to help fund managers, was not to help this is not a wall street package. By the same token, however, there are some entities that may have some Minority Stake held by some Investment Fund and there may be some exceptions depending on the size of that. That hasnt been determined but i agree with your point. I dont want to read headlines that the wellfinanced, well capitalized companies, because of their Ownership Structure were able to suck up all the money and we ran out of money and now cant help the Small Business down the street. Do you feel confident that you are going to create that language to prevent that from happening . Because i can promise you right now, there are tax specialists and accountants working with those hedge funds, those private equity funds to figure that out. And when they, do its going to be like park avenue going to the soup kitchen because they left the door unlocked. Yeah, let me tell you something. Im confident were working with people who write that language. But i can tell you they are hearing from members of congress on both sides of the aisle who represent parts of the country that have a lot of these funds that are trying to get in. So, you know, i cant tell you what the final outcome is going to be, frankly, because im not writing the regulations. We write the legislation. They write the implementing regulations. Im confident theyre hearing from a lot of people across the spent rum on this deal. And you are 100 right. There are a bunch of specialists, to say the least, that are out there now coming up with language and suggestions. I will not tell you this is going to be perfect. Neither the rollout nor its implementation is going to be perfect because this is a brandnew a huge piece of legislation, brandnew. Never been done before. All being pushed out there. The bill is only a week old. And so i can tell you the alternative would have been catastrophic. We had to do something. I know you are not in charge of the regulation or the implementation, but how concerned are you because the sba is a small slowmoving body, and these Small Businesses do not have two months of liquidity. If they dont get in this program, if they dont get the machine they need in the weeks to come, theyll shut down and well have a wave of bankruptcies across this country like weve never seen. Yeah, im very concerned about that. And we spent the last 36 hours working with secretary mnuchin because the original guidance that went out to the banks, you put up before i came on, a story that appeared yesterday. Thats was all based on letters from bankers saying this is not simplified. This is complicated. Early yesterday morning, late the night before, i sent them what some of the banks were telling me they were going to have to ask people. It was not at all the intent here. Its interesting to be on the phone talking to some, you know, figure in an administration or in an agency and they are telling you their interpretation of the legislative intent and you are telling them, i am the legislative intent. I wrote this language and know what we meant by it. I think that got fixed. Secretary mnuchin deserves a lot of credit. He got involved and fixed it. The new guidance that went out live last night is much is very simple. And its very at this point, heres what banks have to do. They have to ask for the same information they would ask of any business that opens an account with them. And they have to verify payroll. For millions of these businesses theyre going to the bank theyre using for their Small Business banking. Theyve already been verified. And the bank may be doing their payroll. If not, has insight and can look directly into their operating account. That was the design, and i think thats now reflected. Obviously, we have to make sure that reaches every level of the sba so when some banker picks up the phone and calls washington, they get that sort of guidance, not someone who is confused. This is going to be an ongoing challenge. No doubt about it. But as of 8 45, 8 50 this morning, already 700 of these done. Im proud to say the community banks, the midlevel banks in the community were the first ones out of the gate. I believe the large banks will be going live here if they havent done so already. Once this 350 billion is spent, secretary mnuchin alluded to the fact there would be more money behind it. Hes not necessarily in a position to grant that, but congress is. Are you going to have more money after this . I think it wouldnt be hard to do. I think there would be support for it, especially if the program is working. Obviously, the challenge is going to be, well have to do it through unanimous consent and since the house and senate are going to have to come into session with one person who opens it up. A second makes a motion to pass this and it happens. Were not going to be able to reconvene in the next four or five weeks as congress, i believe, to get this done. I think much of the country will still be under restrictions up until that point. But if the program is working well and people are being helped by it and the issue becomes theres not enough money, were running out of money to fund demand, then i feel like theres going to be tremendous support for it and i cant imagine anyone trying to block it. Its possible, but i dont. I think the issue is whether we can procedurally do it without one person who is trying to make a name for themselves standing up and trying to block it. Can we talk about your state of florida, one of the last states not all the states have participated. One of the most recent to issue this stayathome order. What in the world is going on down there . You have a whole lot of Senior Citizens and last i checked, theyre pretty high risk. Yeah, so let me say one thing. I think for all practical purposes, we were in a stayathome order. Virtually every county in the state, had restrictions in place. Perhaps with the exception of senator come on now. Stop it. You and no, im serious. Okay, sir, hold on. Those handful of counties dont have but fine, wait. Those handful of counties dont have walls around them. You and i both saw pictures of partiers on beaches jamming on it. Right . Theyre not bound by those counties. They can get all over the state. Come on. Yeah, that was two or three weeks ago. Those are not recent images. And all of the counties that those video s reflect have closd beaches or the cities themselves. What im trying to say is just because you didnt have a stayathome order doesnt mean people werent staying at home. There were orders and virtually all of southeast florida had these orders, duval county, Central Florida had these orders. About a week and a half ago, all the tampa bay region had these orders. That said, i think the governor made the right decision to implement that statewide because it creates a level of uniformity and but the governor has his preference is to defer to the local level. He did that during the hurricane response and it worked very well. Thats always the preference. Local officials are on the front lines and you want to give them both resources but also provide m them the opportunity what to do at the local level. I think he made the right decision at this point yesterday with regards to it. So you support how hes handled it . You dont think he should have done it two weeks ago, three weeks ago . You know, honestly, ive been i think that we will have plenty of time to look back when this is all done and see all the mistakes that were made, all the errors that were committed at every level, starting at the cdc, congressional oversight, maybe we should have started on the relief bill a week earlier in congress. Right now, though, we cant stop to do that. We have to focus on the emergency thats at hand right now. And then when this is over, and we hope it will be over sooner rather than later, its going to take some time, i think well have plenty of time to look at our response and figure out what was done right and what was done wrong. Thats going to happen. Accountability needs to happen. The problem is every second we spend right now on the finger pointing at each other is a second were not spending on dealing with whats before us now. We cant change the past. We can learn from it but can only influence the future. So thats why i am trying to all across the board, sort of figure out right now what we can do. Look, when this is all said and done, well have to have oversight over how the anxiety have implemented this. Why did we have to spend 36 hours arguing about legislative intent . I want to focus on getting the Program Running and then well have time for that. That will have to happen. We have to learn from it, but we cant stop right now to do it because we have a lot of work to do. Well then, with all due respect, sir, youre not immune to finger pointing yourself. Earlier this week you called out people that share my job and i do have to share your tweet in its entirety, not its entirety because i cant get to all of it. You wrote, some in our media cant contain their glee and delight in reporting that the u. S. Has more coronavirus cases than china. Beyond being grotesque, its bad journalism. I need to ask you this because i am a journalist. Were not just some personalities. You called out journalism. And i need to understand why on earth you did this. Well, because there are some journalists that were doing exactly what i said. And i posted some of their tweets. Editorial cartoonist is considered a journalist. A columnist for gq is considered a journalist. A magazine thats distributed at least online is considered journalism and every one of those and others had headlines about how were number one. They got that trending last friday. Thats why i used the word some. Often i read reports about how some republicans are doing this or some members of congress are doing that. I dont know what other word to describe who is doing something and who isnt. And i dont know what other word to use to describe these but if you were criticizing people for wasting go ahead. Im sorry. Sir, just a moment ago you said we shouldnt be wasting any time pointing fingers or criticizing and thats exactly what you did in that tweet. Yeah, but the difference is this is an ongoing deal here with what were dealing with right now. Thats a chinese propaganda effort to put out that theyve handled this perfectly and we have not. And that is a National Security and National Interest of the United States does not stop. Now when the orders were not in place for the governor to do that, i didnt say people couldnt criticize the decision not to implement an order. But now that decision has been made. And in the case of that reporting, maybe its diminished in the last few days, but there were many days out there where people were taking the chinese number of 80,000something infections and saying look how great they did it and look how bad were doing it. And thats not only wrong. Thats a National Security issue. We know that that is a propaganda influence effort theyre undertaking along with putin in russia and the iranians. The National Influence of this country does not stop even in the midst of this crisis. All right then. Senator, this is the perfect time for all of us to do everything we can to Work Together to face this disastrous crisis. I really appreciate you joining me this morning. I know its a really busy time. Senator marco rubio from florida. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Coming up information is everything. So is the truth. And it matters. But only if you hear it. Especially now. Have you tried thinkorswim . This is totally customizable. 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And that is that unless you have an immune system thats compromised and you are holder and other Underlying Health issues, you are not going to die, 99 from this virus, correct . Hospitals around the country, they are now being stretched dangerously thin. Protective medical supplies we are getting reports are running low in areas. One big concern is more people, younger people, are being impacted. But was that changing tone too little, too late . Between march 9th and march 31st, Many Americans kept going on about their normal lives and a number of confirmed cases across the country rose by more than 185,000. Joining me to discuss, kara swisher, cofounder of ricude. I am so happy to be not happy. Im relieved to be talking about this with you because all week long youve been discussing it. You and i both share moms who watch fox news. And you called fox news out and youve gotten a major response in the oped that you wrote calling them out for their coronavirus coverage. Tell us more about it. Yeah, i wasnt writing about fox per se, it was my mom and the information she was getting. Shes in florida right now and thankfully they had the shutdown there finally. Early in the in march, she in february, she had a lot of information that just was terrible, including that it was just like the flu and that she could go out and that there was no problem and that it was a democratic talking point to score political points. It was all kinds of really bad information. And i realized it was a lot of stuff that was being said on fox news. She was just parrotting it. A lot of people who have elderly parents have this issue. And so it was so i wrote about it. And it was me and my brother who is a doctor on the front lines in San Francisco in hospitals were trying to get her good information. And it took a while to get her to stay inside and to do stuff. So i just wrote about that and then, you know, sean hannity on fox, his head blew off because i pointed out the obvious. They are news consumers of fox and let these people down. My mom is a big fan. Shell keep watching it. Everyone can watch whatever they want, but i would like them to have Good Health Information across the network. And there was good information, Tucker Carlson certainly was sounding the alarm, but that was very few and far between at the network. Dylan, what is your reaction to what weve seen from fox news and others . It wasnt long ago Rush Limbaugh said this thing is the common cold. Right. Well, first of all, i want to say, karas article or column got right to the crux of this issue which is that you have the primary source of misinformation about this Health Crisis at least up until recently coming from a news outlet thats target audience is the most Vulnerable Group of people to that disease, or to that pandemic. And its sort of this perfect storm where you have this entire community that over several years predating trump but certainly with with trumps presidency has been taught not to trust the mainstream media. And so you get to this sort of crazy, perfect storm where all of a sudden, the very people who are most vulnerable to this disease are simultaneously being given the worst information about it and on top of that, have built up this ballwork against trusting anything else. Obviously that has changed recently. And as kara said, it should be a low bar to expect factual information about a health pandemic. I want to add one point about Tucker Carlson has been a source of accurate news and has been calling for greater steps to be taken. Thats fine. Its there have been so many times where fox news will take the misinformation on one side and they will point to someone else on the network and say this guy is saying Something Else and we value the diversity of opinions. When youre talking about facts, its not enough to have some hosts saying one thing and other hosts saying another thing. Its the networks responsibility to have a holistic, blanket approach to how they deal with that information. And, this really shouldnt be politicized. Its a Public Health issue. This wasnt just back in march when we had less than 1,000 cases. I want to share a clip of a california congressman, devin nunes said this week the schools were just canceled out here in california which is way overkill. Its possible kids could have went back to school in two weeks to four weeks. They canceled the rest of the schools. Kara, how are americans supposed to stay at home and social distance when their own lawmakers are questioning this . For Senior Citizens, many of whom think, ive seen it all, ive done it, ive been there. When their own lawmakers are saying this, how do they process it . Well, you know, everybody was slow to this at the very beginning. One of the things thats important is to have as much information as possible. I dont know what to tell you about devin nunes. I think its a National Menace on so many levels. He continued to say this, he said people should continue to go out. I dont know why hes doing this. Its completely wrong information and as has been born out. My mom doesnt think much of him, so its fine. Theyre putting this information out, allowing him to say this which is the wrong information, the Health Information to give. I dont know what to say about him. Theres a lot of good information out there. And fox has changed. My mom has a much better sense of it. Shes going to continue watching. We can argue all you want at thanksgiving dinner table about political stuff, but again, when it comes to Health Information, they should be putting out great information for people and not debating whether things like whether you should stay in or not. Thankfully, there were other things i said in early march in an interview, the head of the stanford medical school, but it was hard going to get her to do it. Its a responsibility on the lowest bar which is Good Health Insurance during a pandemic. We can do mistakes were made pandemicstyle later, i think marco rubio is right. But we cant make mistakes Going Forward in terms of this. Everybody has to have the best and most accurate data and information and give it out to the public wherever they get their information. For our stubborn moms in new jersey and across the country, we got to get everybody the most accurate information. Its a Public Health emergency. Thank you for joining me. I want to move on, new this morning, there are stunning reports of doctors and nurses, are you ready for this, who are being fired or punished for speaking out about the shortages they are facing in crucial supplies like masks and ventilators as the coronavirus pandemic intensifies. That is the focus of my next guests latest piece, a columnist with the new york times, and a reporter for p propublic. Fired for speaking out about their own safety . Its appalling. Doctors and nurses and other hospital staff are superheroes and they are deeply anxious about going into covid wards without adequate ppe. When they speak out about this, partly to protect themselves and their colleagues, but also, frankly, partly to protect patients, then there have been crackdowns in many places. In seattle i interviewed a doctor, an er doctors, who was fired for raising concerns. In texas, an anesthesiologist was suspended initially when he when he wore a mask in a hallway. In chicago, a nurse who was fired for bringing her ppe and here in new york an er doctor was sent home after she showed up with her own ppe because she felt that the hospital ppe was inadequate. Since ive wrote that article, ive had an outpouring from other doctors and nurses saying the same thing has happened to me in mississippi, in New Hampshire and so on and so on. You know, we can do better. Isaac, i got to give you the floor because you have new reporting about er doctors and nurses on the front lines who arent just getting punished, they are getting their pay and benefits cut not for speaking out, theyre just doing their jobs. Thats right. The way this works is, actually, when you go to the emergency room, the doctor isnt actually an employee of the hospital. They work for it used to be they worked for a doctors practice that would contract with the hospital. What happened was a few years ago, private equity came in and started buying all of these doctors and practices. And now these companies are losing a lot of money because even though youre seeing reports about ers that are overflowing with covid patients, there are a lot of other places where volumes are down because elective procedures are being canceled and people arent coming to the er with other things. Those Staffing Companies are losing money. Theyre cutting hours. What happens when you cut hours for doctors is for the doctor, thats a pay cut, essentially, because youre getting paid the same rate but working fewer hours. For the hospital, that means you have less staff, less coverage in the hospital during a pandemic. Were going to keep covering this. We need to talk about our doctors and nurses. We need to make sure theyre getting paid. We need to make sure theyre getting benefits. We need to make sure theyre safe. Thank you both for your reporting. We got to leave it there because this wraps up a very busy hour. Im stephanie ruhle. Im going to leave it there. When we come back, my dear friend and colleague Ayman Mohyeldin will be picking up coverage on this very Important News day. News day right. You need the 1 selling subcompact tractor in the u. S. The versatile kubota bx series. You should be mad your neighbor always wants to hang out. And you should be mad your smart fridge is unnecessarily complicated. Make ice. Making ice. But youre not mad because you have e trade which isnt complicated. Their tools make trading quicker and simpler so you can take on the markets with confidence. Dont get mad get e trade and start Trading Commission free today. 450degree oven, to box, to you, know that from our its our policy that your pizza is never touched once it comes out of the oven. And were taking extra steps, like no contact delivery, to ensure it. 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. 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