Worldwide, the confirmed cases at 260,000. That is our starting point on this sunday morning. The ap has this headline, the week america changed. How has your life changed over the last week to 10 days and what you expect moving forward . Numbers,the phone 202 7488000 in the eastern and pacific time zones. Central and mountain, 202 7488001. Medical professionals, you can call in on 202 7488002. Send us a tweet or send us a text message at 202 7488002 at 202 7488003. Be sure to tell us your first name and where you are texting from. The number of coronavirus cases continues to increase world wide in the Associated Press has a headline thought would be a good jumping off point of this sunday morning. It has been a week that has changed all of our lives directly or indirectly, one way or the other. The week that america changed, we want to hear from you and tell us how your life has changed. From the ap, there is this that from the Associated Press. Our phone lines are divided regionally and we want your from medical professionals. With the antistreets of midtown manhattan, negotiations are expected to resume again in congress at 11 a. M. The senate will convene for a rare sunday session at 2 00 with an expected vote at 3 00. Lets hear from the Senate Republican leader, Mitch Mcconnell. This was yesterday on capitol hill. [video clip] as i told you earlier, we are making progress on a bipartisan basis. We discussed some other changes that we think may make sense. We are still on the same with a vote tomorrow, a procedural vote tomorrow, to be on the floor on monday. With a hopefully very significant bipartisan package to help rescue the economy and to get greater funding. That from Mitch Mcconnell with the senate coming back at 2 00 today in the procedural vote taking leisa 3 00. The hill. Com has a summary on what to expect when the day proceeds. Looking at a stimulus package spilling into sunday, thats the story at the hill. Com. Here are the details. Host that from the hell. Com. Mike pence and his wife, karen pence, have been tested for the coronavirus and the tests came up negative after conversation with one of the staffers from the Vice President s office had tested positive for the virus. So, with all of that, we want to hear from you. The week america changed, how has it affected you in your lives . First you go to brian in illinois. Good morning. Caller high, good morning. , good morning. Im very concerned about my mother and motherinlaw. They both suffer from some Underlying Health issues and this could be deadly for both of them. The reason i called was this with ourdemic, along Economic Issues that were going on prior to this all point to the catastrophe, the catastrophic failure of our relationship with communist china. Its insane but our country has e economically to disallow to just allow Critical Industries to flow to china and now we cant get the medical equipment and pharmaceuticals that we need quickly enough because it is all sourced from china, which is the source of the viral pandemic. Done over the last 30 years has been insane and we need to examine this political failure. I mean, this viral problem could have occurred anyway, but not at the scale and speed that it has occurred because of our headlong ofh to him make money off four people in china. Poor people in china. Thats the headline here, that the u. S. Is too reliant on overseas medical suppliers in china. Good morning, how has this week changed you in your lives . Caller i am one of those endangered species that has and a suppressed immune system with two heart attacks in the last six years. I lost my husband six years ago. He was 66 years old. Host im so sorry, alan. Caller ellen. Caller i have self quarantined myself. I spent money over the last two takenon getting myself care of, you know, and trying to find toilet paper, meat, even with the stores that im grateful for that have set up shopping hours for the seedier ,itizens Senior Citizens its still difficult to find certain things that we need to take care of ourselves. Biggestvagal things is im in ex post a worker. My husband was a postal worker. One thing that hit me last week was i maybe dragging it in the house when i go out to get my mail. It took me the whole week to try to find some lysol spray to spray the mailman comes in. For the callou from indiana. From Johns Hopkins university, a look at the total cases worldwide. More than 307,000, the number continues to go up from the john hopkins website on covid19. From the senate floor this last Chuck Schumer and Mitch Mcconnell are working on negotiations for a stimulus package expected to exceed 1 trillion. This from Chuck Schumer of new york. [video clip] the senate is here. We are all eager to come to a bipartisan agreement as soon as humanly possible. There are still a number of priorities that democrats continue to fight for in the package that is now being assembled. Havemade clear, democrats two primary goals, broadly defined in the next phase of cologne coronavirus legislation. One, to address the impending Public Health crisis headon, with a massive infusion of resources to our hospitals, or medical facilities, our other Public Health infrastructure. The second priority is to put workers first. In fact, our proposal that we laid out as early as monday is entitled workers first. Democrats want to do as much as possible to prepare our health care system. We want to give americans for most immediately affected by the economic slowdown ample relief so that they can weather the storm over the long haul. Host more today from the senate when they gavel back in. As we said earlier the procedural vote is at 3 00, to set upcreate some shouldve deadline with negotiations continuing between Democratic Leaders and nancy pelosi. That will take place at 11 a. M. Eastern time time. At text message from bill in elizabeth a new jersey. Host send us your comments and again, the week that america changed. We want to find out how all of this has changed you in your lives. Larry, minnesota, good morning. Caller howdy. Host how are you, larry . Caller doing fine, doing fine. Something bracing like this one through 411 would in 1971. Its a combination of pneumonia and malaria. A realer thing is i get charge out of everybody screaming for a bailout. Well maybe the farmers just wont turn the wheel. You know what that will mean in six months. So, before you really think everybody else should be getting for this or that, maybe you got to start thinking about Something Else. Host erin, you are next. How are you doing . Im doing ok. Im a senior at risk in i only go out when i have to go to the Grocery Store or the doctor. That people are not observing the six foot distance. I have to put my hand up and say please, six feet to people. Because i think that is important. Florida my daughter in and they were at the beach in they said the beach was full of people. Im near the beach in california. On,nt know whats going but im surprised by all the cars on the road. Where are these people going, i like. Are they supposed to be home . Would call everyone or email, whatever they are supposed to do. Statehouse, senators, congressmen, they should let their wishes be known. Toont want my tax dollars go to the airlines. I think the airlines in the corporations can take care of themselves. Host dave has this text message from ohio. From the Associated Press. Lets go next to jake in california. Caller first, my wife was laid off. Shes in the hotel industry. Host they havent hit really hard, havent they. Caller yes, yes, she is a massage therapist at an upscale here in ventura county. Obviously thats a profession that puts you in close contact with a lot of people. m working mostly from home i am able to do that, but i do have to get out on the road occasionally. But we are trying to limit that. Remind peopleto that so many of our Health Care Workers are foreign nationals. My personal doctors from india. Was from the philippines. I pharmacist is from egypt. These people are on the front line of this Health Care Crisis they are foreign nationals that came to this country and our caring for and putting themselves at risk caring for americans. I just wish some of this xena use the worde racist but there is so much of this going on in the country that some of this, i wish we would take a deep breath, we are all in this together. Its not just an american or u. S. Problem, its a problem for the whole world. Host good luck to you and your wife. Everyone is dealing with this one way or the other and we appreciate your comments. This is from our friend bill king. Host next as a caller from kentucky. Clarence, good morning to you. Its pretty bad whats going on. They say this could go on to the summer and if it does, i heard them say on the news this morning that the Dow Jones Stock exchange lost 1 trillion in one day. 12 said we have lost trillion since february. If this goes on for that long to , we will be in big trouble. We dont have time anymore to be politically correct and let these countries only us around. Stern withbe more our enemies than we have ever been. If it is going to costs us this send the bill to china. If they dont want to pay it, russia did that to us in the first and Second World War, where we give them all kinds of money in this lend lease and they just refused to pay it. They want to act that way, we going to do the same. Host think you for the call from kentucky. Maureen dowd on the dr. Who has become the face of the pandemic. , dr. God the dr. Is in anthony fauci, regular at the Daily Briefing at the white been, 79 years old and has in the post since 1984 since the Reagan Administration and has dealt with everything from aids to ebola to h1n1 and now, of course, the biggest Health Crisis we have faced in modern times, the coronavirus issue. Charles is on the phone in marion, indiana. How has all of this changed you in your life . Caller i want to ask a question. Is the president going to be giving individuals like me a check . Be sure to turn on your volume when you call in. If you make if you make less than 99,000 the, you will get something. Beingic details are still worked out. There will be more this afternoon when the senate convenes at 2 00. Expect to hear from Mitch Schumer asnd chuck well as the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi. The exact number is tbd. We will be talking to Stephen Denis at Bloomberg News to get the latest. George is on the phone from kenosha, wisconsin. According to you, george. Host guest caller hello, cspan. Since this coronavirus has ripped the world and now the United States and they are all ,alking about the living end now the dying, who is going to help to pay the pain pay the families for the funerals that come up on them very quickly . Im sure a lot of the people planning for those funerals. Something should be done. They talk about all the living and the vaccines. Well, lets help the, the dying in the families of the dying. Thank you. Host thank you for the call. Economist, the economy of pandemics. Magazine, and indepth special report on the virus in an impact on all americans, keeping your family sane at home in a test for our shared humanity. Deborah joins us next from pennsylvania. Good morning. High, thank you. I heard the man from illinois and that is what prompted me to call. Im also a retired registered nurse and i knew that this was coming. When we had the aids epidemic, sars and all of that, but im retired now. I have so many things to say but im trying to jot down a few things here. First of all, who we vote for for president and for politics is important. It is important, people, wake up. Number two, i hope the trumpeters are awake with are awake with this incompetent administration. When i see these people, these uneducated people that rally and carry on, they dont even know they are not educated, they dont know whats going on in the world. The man calls and says to be stern, be stern. We are globally connected now. I agree with the man from illinois. The white male power structure situation. In this im sorry, i will woman. It is criminal that our medical people have to go through right now. I have friends and family that are doctors and therapists. In the industry now. Its absolutely criminal. Host deborah, thank you for the call. If you are just tuning in, listening on cspan radio or on and to our viewers on the Bbc Parliament channel, we are asking about how all of this changed you in your lives. This is the front page of the new york times. From across europe, mexico, canada, is virtually empty as the country in many parts of the world comes to a literal standstill. The headline from the new york times, a race to deliver critical supplies. Frombany, new york, Governor Andrew Cuomo [video clip] you look at any World Health Organization or what any arehe other countries saying, you have to expect that at the end of the day 40 to 80 of the population is going to be infected. The only question is how fast is 40 rate the race to that 80 and can you slow the rate so that your Hospital System can deal with it . Are talking about here. If you look at 40 80 , that point 8tween seven million and 15 million new yorkers will be affected at the end of the day. We are just trying to postpone the end of the day. That from andrew cuomo in albany, new york. This is a headline from daily beast. Young people who think they are immune, half of the cases in new york are under 50 and of the 10,350 six cases, 54 . Under the age of 50 that from the daily beast. Amos miss is joining us from texas. Good morning. Caller yes, good morning. God bless the woman calling from pennsylvania. They knew about this back in december that it was in china. What did we hear from the president . Not coming to america. Stop. G to stop is telling people not to buy masks. Today the medical staff says to buy masks. They knew that this was coming. Hey had briefings they were saying about the stocks to buy stocks. Criminal. Does it seem like this . All through this presidency the , he wasng he has done unprepared for this. [indiscernible] go, i will have to let you you were breaking up. We were able to get part of what you were saying. Sunday review, this simple headline. One nation under quarantine. Spokane, washington, good morning. Caller good morning. And we haveowner able to stay open thus far, but obviously that cannot go on indefinitely. They have obviously been debt devastated. One question i have is about the checks in the money they are sending to people. I question the timing of that. If you give people at the 1000, 3000 right now, they will just sit home and buy things from china from amazon. I dont see how that helps the restaurants, the bars, or anything else. Thank you. Lets go next to jennifer in quito harbor, michigan. Good morning. Caller yes, i have a perspective on whats going on from the airline and trucking business from my brothers. At the seattle airport they are the designated airlines. The staff is always there, the mechanics are always there. Since they haul a lot of cargo into alaska, they are available thereat needs might be for emergencies and transporting cargo or whatever is needed. Even their inspectors, which is what my brother is, is available. And then with my brother thats a trucker, they have had some problems with rest areas being closed. They dont have the limits on the time that they can drive right down, since there are so many needs for them to get to the area with the cargo and that that they have. And the other thing that probably a lot of people thought of, my friends husband died, you cant have funerals right now. Or memorials. Home. Sits at the funeral probably a lot of people didnt think of that. Thats just one thing that has you know, changed because of the limit on the number of people that can be in the rooms. So, we dont think of all the things that affect him peoples affect peoples lives. Host if you are a medical 202 sional, call us at 7488002 him. 202 7488002 this from governor gavin newsom. [video clip] people are saying its time to step up like with defense production. Him a healthy conversations already happening here in the state of california. , who runs out to kr boom energy in the state of california. Many factors here in the state wellknown to california in the green energy space. They said what do you need, we are ready to go. We said why dont we test this. You produce these remarkable fuel cells that are powerful. You have got all kinds of technical capacity. We have all of these old that we have been storing for years that have to be repurposed. The manufacturers said that to repurposed to hundred of them is going to take a month. We challenge them to do more and do better. They sent a photo today, not making this up, of 24 specific ventilators they got done in a few hours. They said to come down and certify these, inspect them and that if these things are certified, give us the rest, we are ready to go to task. We are already repurposed sing in this country. Already repurposed sing in the state of california. Elon musk said the same. Said that he is on it for not just tesla but first a sex. He is not just looking, i dont want to speak out of school on the ventilator side, but he is also looking with his remarkable andcity on 3d printing other things that he can provide. You are already seeing this manifest certainly in the state of california and i have got to imagine that is replicated in other parts of the country. I just i hope folks know that. Lets governor gavin newsom as he updates with happening across that state, the largest and the country with an essential lockdown for residents. Keeping track of all the numbers worldwide in this sweet, italy orted 6500 67 new cases 6567 new cases. Him him hi host annette is next in alabama. Caller good morning. First, stop blaming President Trump. It makes people sound so ignorant. Its a waste of time. This is serious, act like it. O one saw this coming the people that call into set they saw it coming, no you didnt. 535 members in the house, none of them saw it coming. Not even president obama or democratic governors. Its a waste of time. Right now we need to stand together. Stop continuing to carry the hatred for trump his supporters. One other thing, with the country shutdown, employment , how willy nothing this government continue to spend money if taxes are not going to washington to continue to fund the country . I believe thats what pays Social Security and disability. I happened to think about that today. The work, no taxes. Host with a 23 chilean dollar debt and growing. Joining us on the phone is stephen dennis. He works for Bloomberg News. Thank you for being with us. Tell us what we can expect. High, steve. Its a very unusual sunday session in the senate today and very serious business, as you know, all of your callers are talking about. All of the senators are talking about what would be an historic nearly 2 trillion package being cobbled together, written behind closed doors and negotiated. This morning we expect the top leaders in congress, nancy pelosi, House Minority leader , majority leader Mitch Mcconnell, majority leader all meetumer will today, this morning, to sort of go over whats in the package. Thereis no deal yes, but is a lot of bipartisan talk of major progress yesterday on the package. Of know, its really in sort four or five big buckets right now that are really the biggest rescue package for the economy ever. More than 2008 and 2009 combined. What are the sticking points . Is there a sense that this will be resolved before the market opens tomorrow morning . Know, i think that, you both parties really want to have an announcement in to assure the markets and people who are worried about their paychecks or ther businesses that government is going to be sending out checks asap. The original plan that the Senate Republicans put out did not have a lot there for Unemployment Insurance, state and local governments. There wasnt a lot of a health care surge. Democrats want more on almost fronts and it looks like they are going to get more on some of those fronts. One of the things that we heard yesterday was that it looked like the Unemployment Insurance plus was going to be on the order of 600 a week. Someone who files unemployment would get an extra 600 a week in their unemployment check. One of the big things that is sort of innovative in this plan is the 350 billion fund for Small Businesses. This is going to be in loans that would, the idea is it would go out quickly between banks and credit unions, etc. The Small Businesses would go in say hey, i have a Coronavirus Crisis, with payroll to meet my expenses and pay my rent. You get millions of dollars through this fund for your small and if youry quickly dont end up firing a lot of your workers, you pay them instead of putting them on the unemployment line, the loan would be turned into a grant. So, this is not just going to keep you in debt forever. This is intended to be turned into grants, provided you dont fire your employees. That was put together by a. Ipartisan group they seem to have agreed on that last night. And theyof the pieces have asked for 100 billion to deal with the crisis. They have balancedbudget requirements, unlike the federal government. That was something that was in flux yesterday. Theres also talk about how to deal with the aid it to individuals. These are the checks the goat everybody. 1200 was the original package. One of the things we heard yesterday is they are no longer going to reduce the amount on the lower end with the original bill. It was going to instead be 1200. At least thats what we were told yesterday. We are still waiting to see the text. We should expect to see the test before the senate votes this afternoon. Theyre coming in at 2 00. They are supposed to vote it 3 00 on a procedural vote. I think the expectation is that senators will have at least a little bit of time to process the initial texts that come out today. Host as we have seen a must couple of days, a can take just one senator to block things, like rand paul in kentucky. Is that a possibility or is or a sense that this is urgent and even those who are worried about the price tag will not block it . In the past rand paul guest in the past rand paul has time for to trade votes. Instead of enforcing multiple days of inaction is the death toll mounts, for example, he may trade thatto possibility for getting votes on things like offsetting this with spending cuts in the future. Its what he wanted and he got a vote on that last week in the package. He only had three senators who backed him on that amendment. It would be a futile gesture to have another vote to have 2 trillion in spending cuts to pay for this. Is it possible he could get the vote . I think its probably likely that he gets that vote. And loses again. The other thing here is the house of representatives has not and in town. They have been sort of negotiating through the Senate Democrats. Once this text comes out there will be a lot of people who are unhappy that their particular ask is not in it and that is sort of another key moment. Parties,to have both not just the leadership, but the rank and file on board. The worst situation would be to have a repeat of the tarp fiasco. Rom 2008 people who have watched congress a lot, watched cspan a lot, they may remember the moment where the leadership, john boehner and nancy pelosi were on board, but a lot of House Republican rankandfile members were not. The housewent down on floor and the dow dropped 777 points in 20 minutes. They dont want a repeat of that. This is very sort of serious business. All of thesehat folks all lived through that and dont want to see it happen again. Covers theen denis senate for Bloomberg News. Its going to be a busy and consequential day. We appreciate your time. Thank you. Host this from steven in midtown, manhattan magazine has a sobering number for at least one covid19 patient. Nearly 35are bill of thousand dollars. The story is Available Online at time. Com, outlining her story in facing, while most people infected will not need to recovertalized and can at home, according to the World Health Organization those that need to go to the icu can likely expect bills regardless of the insurance they have as the u. S. Government works on another stimulus package, future relief is likely to help ease the theomic problems caused by viral pandemic, the gaps remain. This new announcement from the Kaiser Family foundation estimated the average costs of the treatment for someone with employer insurance without complications could be about 9,763 of covid19,ce tag at time. Com. Back to your phone calls, tell us how your life has changed. A week that america changed, suzy, los angeles, good morning. Caller good morning, how are you . Host fine, how are you . Caller good. Under shelter, obviously, at home, not going anywhere. Adjust. Ne thing to actually, two things i find interesting. I am one of millions who have incurred Credit Card Debt and remain exposed to exorbitant Interest Rates. Im a realtor whose financial existence depends upon my commission. I am, like all americans in most and most consumers, deeply concerned about the plight of our economy. During this time a Public Health crisis and Economic Uncertainty, no one, not the current administration, not congress, not media sources, has addressed Interest Rates that remained quid pro quo and business as usual among Credit Card Companies that continue to profit. Trump and our congress should immediately invoke measures that require all Credit Card Companies to eliminate all Interest Rates imposed upon credit card holders for a minimum of one year. They should also pass legislation that will significantly reduce Interest Rates indefinitely thereafter. Otherwise, i predict that Credit Card Companies will just bear the brunt of credit card holders who will default on their debt, throwing us further into Economic Uncertainty and who knows if we will recover. People are living off of their credit cards now and incurring dramatic Interest Rates. Not only that, sir, but i have uncovered that the wall street journal markets report on Insider Trading by American Express executives shows that on jewelry the 28th, 2020, stephen swear he traded 6 million, 6,000,400 and 41,000 worth of American Express, hes the chairman. Buckminster, with 2,777,000 plus. Jeffrey campbell, chief financial officer, ginny were 28 2020. Ofy continue to profit off the credit card holders. Host based on what Financial Experts are saying, they are recommending that you contact your Credit Card Company because in many cases they will waive the penalties and interest penalties for a certain time. You might want to check with your Credit Card Company individually to see if they will do that. Often they will, but thank you for the call. This from new york, cbs again, new york city, about half the cases in the u. S. Are in the new york area. They have essential lockdowns at ross the tristate region. Marion is joining us from eugene, oregon. You are a medical professional. What is your job . Caller im a registered nurse. Host good for you. Caller i want to remind people to be kind during this time, not only to each other the to yourself. Take a moment to be grateful for what we have around us. We have homes in food. It may not last forever but it is for the moment. You have it. Just take a breath. You at your kids before head to sleep. Give them a hug, give them a kiss. Just be ok with your next labor yelling over the fast. The fence. Say high. Host are you working right now . What is it like an eugene . Before it is the calm the storm. Im working, im on my lunch. Host you are working right now . Caller yeah, i got lunch today, its a good day. But the hospitals are not busy yet. So, were kind of expecting that people will start to trickle in here and there. The really sick ones. People are staying home if they are not sick. Or if they are not really sick and in distress, which is good, if you can stay home, you should. If you cant, you should come to the hospital and we will take care of you. Are truly on the front lines. To you and your doctors, thank you for what you are doing, we appreciate it. Caller thank you, have a wonderful day. Host thank you for the call. This isnew york times, a photograph from mexico and the borders between u. S. , mexico, and canada, essentially shut down at except for essential personnel and trade. From the new york times, there is this host next up is pamela, joining us from irvine, kentucky. How has all of this changed you come your life, and the lives of your family members. Pamela, good morning. Host good morning. Thank you caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. How is everything going to affect guidelines around food stamps, people on hud . Specifically, what you looking at . Are you receiving food stamps at the moment . Caller i get 16 a month. Host what do you think you are iing to new need . Caller dont know. Sometimes i dont get to buy food because i have to pay the bills. Sounds like you are going to qualify for these checks that are being sent to americans. Could be the first in what could be a couple of direct payments to americans. With that help you . Caller absolutely. Thanks for the call. Katie is next. Good morning. Caller good morning. Yeah, hello. Im a waitress in annapolis, maryland. Or i was until last monday. I make my living being a waitress. Its how i pay my rent and all of my bills. I was supposed to work monday night and just a call, you know, that i shouldnt come in and that basically my job is over until question mark. Host so, what are you going to do . That is the question, i have been worried sick. Let me say quickly i love you, cspan. I love you so much, you are always a ray of sunshine in dark times. Otherwise, im worried sick. My rent is due, my Car Insurance is to. I have contacted my landlords and asked them if they could give me some leniency. I havent heard back from them yet. I called my Car Insurance. They will not give me leniency. I heard you talking earlier about the credit cards. Hopefully i will get some there. Luckily i do have a kind owner who hasestaurant offered me and other employees temporary small loans to get the bills paid. He seems to be under the impression that the 1200 check is coming and is coming soon. I have been doing as Much Research as i can and as far as i can tell that is just a probable ring and there is no actual date for that. Host we are going to know more on that. My sense is that the first check would be sent sometime in early april based on the reporting. The details have not yet been announced. There has to be a vote on it in there could be subsequent checks, based on this report from the hill. Com. We did an interview with your governor, larry hogan, for cspan radio and one of the issues he brought up is that if you are having issues, to contact his office and see if the state of maryland, this goes for other states as well, can assist you. Caller i missed that. I will definitely call him. Scary. Just been really owner has offered, he said he would give me a 1200 loan and i could pay him back with that check. Still, that is only very, like someone else called in to say that they were going to spend the stuff on krapp from china. Well, il a lot of other people, i havent heard that many people like me, but every restaurant shut down. Thats going to be a very temporary fix. My rent and all those other things will still keep coming and until they open the restaurant backup, which we dont know when that will be, i dont know when when going to do. Host its tough. Caller a lot of sleepless nights this week. Good luck to you. So many bars, waiters, waitresses, feeling the effect. We appreciate your call. Thank you for the tip on hogans office. Host and i think that goes for other states as well. That if youdicated reach out to your Credit Card Company or your landlord in these uncertain times, they will give you a break. Thank you for telling the story. This is from inside of time magazine, a special report on. Ovid19 mike ryan with a reminder on why social distancing is so important at this time. [video clip] , taking pressure off the health care system. They dont fundamentally deal with the problem of disease transmission. If you want to get back to what countries like korea, japan, or china are doing, singapore, hong kong, and others, you want to get back to that, you have to get back to the hardcore public for quarantine isolation. In some senses we need to slow down the virus and then suppress the virus. That takes different combinations of different measures. Social and physical distancing measures are very hard, socially and economically. We need to use whatever time those measures are in place to put in place the Public Health architecture that can then go after the virus. Measures may change things. Avoiding large groups as cities and states are literally under lockdown. Some headlines, this from the new york times, hospitals sterilizings face masks to you several times. This from inside host lets go to jonathan in glencoe, new york. Good morning. Caller there are things we can do to mitigate this in the future. People will not be affected in the same way. If all workers have guaranteed twoweek Vacation Time and of all Small Businesses were required to Carry Business interruption insurance, we would still face an economic hit. We would still be quarantined, but we would not have so many people panicking over the loss of a paycheck. For businesses right now, we require businesses to carry Fire Insurance or unemployment requiree, but we dont them to Carry Business interruption insurance. I think the attitude is that if business goes under, no big deal, it is their own fault. The problem is that in situations like this, where so many businesses are affected all at once, it poses a Systemic Risk to the economy. Host jonathan, thanks caller host one of the reasons go ahead. Caller we havent adequately prepared for it. Host thank you for the call. Thetorilla joins us from villages in florida. Go ahead, victoria. Im a psychologist and im a positive thinking psychologist. Host [laughter] we could use some of that. Are of theparents greatest generation. My mother dropped out from high makel to selling accurate uniforms for soldiers and had to work as a cleaning lady even though she was highly intelligent. My father as a teenager had to survive for five years in the concentration camp. As a teenager. I am in full their strength of and imr and endurance grateful for the americans keeping the country going and the manufacturers who are producing our products, the truckers, the cleaning crews, the warehouse workers, the supermarket people that are keeping this country going. And i think we have got to be grateful for those people who, yes, they are bluecollar workers. My parents were bluecollar workers. I am so blessed that these people are stepping up to the plate and working while other people are home wondering if their facebook is working or not. Host are your parents still alive . No, they caller passed away years ago. Host dont you wish you could talk to them now and ask them about their experiences during the Great Depression . Being a positive psychologist im historian, too. I did talk to my father great deal about it in my mother did, too. They brought us up to be independent human beings. They were tough on us but we becamewe became independent, selfsufficient. We knew how to save our money. Know that hard bek and you have to just looking for the best in everything, look to be grateful for the people who are working, rate full for the people who supply our needs. I think we need to be very grateful for that in our lives. I take solace in looking at nature. And the birds and everybody else and the flowers are blooming. We will endure. We will move forward. We must be positive and pull together like the greatest generation pulled together. Host we will leave it there. Thank you for calling from the villages in florida. On our podcast, a conversation from boston. A new book, turbulent times. We talk about where we are in our history, leading back to fdr through President Trump. It is a 30 minute podcast available wherever you download your favorite podcasts. [video clip] crisis provides an opportunity for true leadership to emerge because then a person can mobilize. We have separate institutions in this country and it is hard to all move together but a crisis creates that opportunity. The president has to have the qualities that are able to mobilize people in that time of crisis and it can also be great failure. Thinking about James Buchanan in the 1850s, the crisis was already therebetween slavery and antislavery. The two sides of the north and the south were beginning to split apart. There was Harpers Ferry and the Supreme Court decision in dred scott. The sameame in, crisis, even worse, and he is able to deal with it. Think of Herbert Hoover in the 1920s after the stock market crashed. Hes ideology could not let go until too late, of the idea that the problem had to be solved by local and State Governments and private charity so that the federal government should not be involved. He got around to doing some acts before the inauguration of fdr but he is considered one of our president who did not live up to the opportunity of a crisis. Host you can check out the conversation on our podcast weekly, download the free cspan radio app and check out all of our programming on the web at cspan. Org. Coming up in just a moment, American Enterprise institutes yuval levin is going to be joining us to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of washingtons response to the coronavirus outbreak and Washington Post opinion writer paul waldman will be joining us. Newsmakers follows the washington journal at 10 00 eastern time and this week, a conversation with the president of the f of the afl. [video clip] was the president lying or misinformed . Does it matter . It was wrong. We told the American People wrong. It hurt us. It put us back. You still have people out there that believe that this is a hoax. Imagine that. People still believe this is a hoax because he said it. It doesnt matter whether he lied or he was misinformed. It hurt the American Public and it should never have happened. We deserve better than that. Mr. Trump talked about the pain and suffering rippling through the American Economy. Do you believe you may have to reopen contracts throughout this country to potentially give a break to some of the employers facing pressure right now . We will partner with anybody. We have always done our share of what is necessary. We wont let them get a bailout and give the ceo more exuberant salaries to do stock buybacks and give bonuses to management while they lay off workers and cut wages. We wont do that. We partnered with them where we or we thought we did one time and that is exactly what happened. It wont happen again. It will be fair and it will be mutual. That is what will happen because that is what americans do. We come together and do what has to be done to get through any crisis or any challenge. I have faith that the American Worker when given the right tools and the right opportunity can face any challenge any time and prevail. Is ourichard trumka guest on the newsmakers program. He is the president of the aflcio. You can watch it following washington journal at 10 00 a. M. Eastern time. Yuval levin is joining us from his home in maryland. He is with the American Enterprise institute. Thanks for being with us. Guest thank you very much for having me. I hope you and your family are doing well. Host we are, and to you too. Time fromate your your home. Let me begin with asking about the president , his performance so far in this pandemic. How is he doing . Guest dan to that question you have to acknowledge this is a very difficult situation that no president would find easy and the federal government was always going to have to go through some mobilization, being overwhelmed by a crisis and rising to it. The question is how are they doing at that and obviously there are weaknesses to the response we have seen from the white house and i think above all there has been a certain kind of dysfunction where there has been an unwillingness to confront some of the top or realities of this crisis, or at least to acknowledge them publicly. In a lot of ways the federal government has mobilized and certainly the country has, where people are willing to put their lives on hold in order to respond to a Public Health crisis. Unwillingnessome to confront basic realities at the top and still now we are seeing the system overwhelmed in such a way that people are not inking strategically about what the next step has to be, how we gradually return to normal has to be the question that policymakers are dealing with. Understandably we are seeing policymakers trying to confront the minute by minute pressures they are facing, so things like the failure of testing early on has made it very difficult to come back and try to get on top of this problem that this is a challenge that would be a massive problem for any president. It is not a function of just this particular white house. Is a packageponse well in excess of 1 trillion, perhaps totaling close to 2 trillion, the largest package in american history. This is a crisis, an emergency. We also have a 23 trillion debt. Guest there needs to be a massive response, given the Economic Cost of the social distancing and the shutdown of our Service Sector that we are going through. The question is, is that response geared to enabling the next phase . Ultimately we are trying to find a way to live relatively safely with this virus for some time until there is a vaccine, until we have a better grasp of its characteristics and are able to handle it. The question policymakers have to ask themselves is having taken a hard pause and needing to do that for some time, how do we gradually resume our natural life anyway a way that is sustainable . That means the kind of package congress is looking at needs to look at enabling this pause to be sustainable to helping people keep their place in our society, upping employers retain their workforce so people are not fired or lose their jobs. Helping the economy hold on for a matter of what will be weeks and then gradually enabling people to return to the economic and social life. The package that congress is passing that looks to be passing earlier in the week does some of this but i think it is also somewhat confused between that and a traditional stimulus. This is not a situation for traditional stimulus where the goal is to spur economic demand. There is nowhere for that demand to goal right nowhere for that demand to go right now. Be helpingeds to employers hang on and then gradually enabling a resumption. A hard pause and a soft return is how we have to think about this. Then yous the goal, have to give a pretty mixed picture, a pretty mixed grade to the packages that have been passed so far but there will be more to come. Host let me ask you about a caller we had in our first have, katie works in maryland and she is now out of a job as restaurants across the country are shut down. She is a waitress, dependent on that to pay her rent, her Car Insurance, her automobile payments each month. What does she do, and people like her in the short term . Guest unfortunately a lot of people in our country are going to find themselves in this situation, at least temporarily while everything is closing down. First of all there is some help she can find by going to her State Government. Maryland has been distinctly helpful. Governor hogan and the State Government stick government have been helping people deal with creditors to make sure you dont find people being kicked out of their homes or coming under Credit Card Debt. They will also be some help from the package that is likely to pass in the coming weeks but i think it is on people like her that the federal support needs to be focused. The United Kingdom has enacted a package of responses that includes what they call job retention. In return for employers not firing their workforce, the government is taking over paying 80 of the salaries of that workforce during the Public Health emergency. At significant cost, the National Government is helping sustain payrolls. That support is provided through employers rather than around them, having lost your job. That would be expensive but what we are doing is expensive too and i think we have to think about how to take on the problem we face in ways that allow people to hang on. At the same time, this period has to be weeks and not months. We have to be finding ways, Public Health and economic ways to start returning gradually, carefully to our National Life and start allowing people to work again, allowing schools to open again. That has to be done in a way that helps us gain control of the Public Health situation. That means it cant be done for a few more weeks. Hospitals are going to be going through a very difficult period in the next few weeks but once that begins to decline, the goal has got to be to return to normality and i think at this point, the discussion in washington is not focused enough on that as the goal. Ust yuval levin is joining from his home in maryland. We will get to your phone calls and you can send a text message at 202 7488003. I want to share with you this headline from the Washington Post to go to my earlier question on the president and his response. U. S. Intelligence reports from january and february warning about a likely pandemic. This from shane harris, and a team of Washington Post reporters. Quote, u. S. Intelligence agencies were issuing ominous classified warnings in january and february about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the threat of the pathogen slowed the spread of the pathogen. The intelligence reports did not predict when the virus might land on u. S. Shores or recommend particular steps as Public Health officials should take. The spread of the that in china and warned chinese officials seem to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak. A virus that showed the characteristics of globally circling globally circling pandemic. Despite the constant flow of reporting, trump continued publicly and privately playing down the threat of the virus posed to americans. Lawmakers too did not grapple with the virus in earnest until this month as officials scramble to keep citizens in their homes and hospitals bracing for a surge in patients suffering from covid19. This reporting, blaming both congress and the president. Guest i think there was certainly an enormous degree of avoidance early on, a sense that this will pass, that this wont happen. At some levels there have been passed warnings about these kinds of challenges. I worked in the Bush White House and we confronted the possibility of avian flu at that time which thankfully did not happen but there were a lot of preparations made in that period and it was taken seriously. Tended President Trump to rely on hoping this would not happen. There is no question that when this began there was going to be some period of being overwhelmed and needing to mobilize. We dont keep in reserve thousands of icu beds or the kind of response that would be needed but once it was clear that this would be coming, there was a need to begin the oval is asian and there is no question the United States began several weeks too late. There is no question other tes in the west the question in assessing the governments response is has that mobilization and response happened in a effective way and the country has shown a willingness and ability to disconnect, to move to a kind of social distancing situation where schools were closed, workplaces were closed but while that is happening, our government needs to milk needs to be mobilizing in a massive way, it needs to be building Surge Capacity in Hospital Systems, needs to be leapfrogging the testing question and moving to a different approach to testing where we use blood tests to get a sense of who has antigens to this virus, who has been exposed to it. Let us where our response things to be right net that is where our response needs to be right now. Host you write that the Trump Administration has never been prepared for this type of disaster, saying the staffing structure around the president has always been too flat and chaotic. You wrote, the problem is not that our government was not fully prepared for the swift global spread of this virus or even that it made serious mistakes as a result. The problem is that upper reaches appear to be overwhelmed by choice. Guest this has been a problem from the beginning in the trump the timestion, that when we most need our president to function well, times like this, times of crisis, the administration has to prepare for those moments by building a staffing structure that is capable of bearing the burden of an emergency, moving information in an effective way, formula and questions for president ial decisions in a clear way. That has always been a problem in the trump white house. The staffing structure is very flat. There is not a clear hierarchy or chain of command. The chain of command that does exist has never been trusted by the people within it. They have always been people who have gone around trying to reach the president. There has been a tendency to ignore president directives, something we saw in the mueller president ere when the orders something his senior staff thinks is unreasonable, they just ignore it. That could be a good thing if they are averting trouble but in a moment like this where decisions have to be made under intense pressure, they are not ready. They have not built a functional decisionmaking system and we are paying a price for that now. Host let me share you a moment share with you a moment that has been getting a lot of press, the Daily Briefing on friday with Peter Alexander and this from the president. [video clip] i am not being overly optimistic. I sure think we ought to give it a try. There has been some interesting things happening, very good things. Lets see what happens. We have nothing to lose. What do you have to lose . What do you say to americans who are scared though . Millions who are scared right now. What do you say to americans who are watching you right now . I say you are a terrible reporter. That is what i say. That is a very nasty question. That gives a very bad signal that you are putting out. The American People are looking for answers and they are looking for hope and you are doing sensationalism, the same with nbc and comcast. That is really bad reporting. You want to get back to reporting instead of sensationalism. Lets see if it works. It mightnt it might and it might not. Who knows . I have been right a lot. Host that was the president and nbc reporter jason alexander. That was on drugs being discussed to potentially treat the pandemic. Your thoughts . Guest there is no defending what happened. There are two things happening that should not be going on. One is the president talking about a set of malaria drugs that may or may not be effective. He could certainly talk about enabling the fda to try this. What he is basically saying is people with symptoms should take these drugs and i think the president in particular, because the power of that office and the bully pulpit he has needs to be very careful about what he is telling people to do in this situation, to know what the risks may be. Layught he was offered a up question, an easy question from a reporter, what do you say to people who are scared . The president has a responsibility to speak to the country, to give people a sense that people are taking action, but the government understands the problem and is doing something about it, and rather than offer some reassuring answer, the president says that is an intelligent question. It shows you in part the ways in which the pressure is getting to this president. No president would find this easy but you have to recognize the responsibility you have in that office in a moment like this. Put aside concerns about your own image, put aside concerns about partisan politics in a moment like this and try to speak to the country as its leader and offer some reassurance and offer a sense that responsible action is being taken. In that particular incident for instance, the president clearly failed to do that. Host lets get to your phone calls. Carol in texas. Caller good morning. Thank you so much for everything you are doing and everything that everyone in the country is doing. My question is, i am on disability but it is a small check. A few months of the year, i worked seasonally at a ski resort. Is there anybody thinking about People Like Us . All i want tof stress what you said the beginning you said at the beginning which is thank you to those in the country who are taking extraordinary risks and burdens to help keep going. Is paying a price in different ways and we should recognize that. To the situation you are describing, there is some help that will be coming from the legislation begin considered in congress and i think is very likely to pass that will offer some direct support, some cash help to american families. That, in terms of Seasonal Work, it. Is a real challenge the question is how long are we going to be in a situation of a complete shutdown like this. Some kinds of Seasonal Work will be possible as we go forward into summer and beyond but obviously the challenge of Seasonal Work in this period is going to be very difficult to do anything about it. Even help that is offered through the employer system if we were to do Something Like what the british are doing, we have confronted Serious Problems for people who are Seasonal Workers and are not on the payroll at this point. That is a concern that will have to be taken up in further legislative action that is going to keep coming through the course of this crisis. I wish you the best and i think the problem you face is certainly one that legislators at the federal and state level are going to need to think about more as they take further steps. Host next up is ryan from california. Good morning. Are you with us . We will try one more time for ryan. Go ahead. Caller i have a comment. There is an article has not been read about a professor. He helps the minister of health in italy. Quote,aying, this is a the way we code debts in this country is very generous in the sense that all people who died in hospitals with coronavirus are deemed to have died of coronavirus. On reevaluation by the National Institute of health, only 12 of deaths have shown a direct casualty from coronavirus while 88 of patients could have died of other things. They had too many other ways to die because they were old. We are not talking about the age rate at which people are dying. The death rate is a big thing. We are over exaggerating it. We are destroying our economy because of false numbers. It is as low as the flu or lower because the flu in america has killed more people this week, just last week then corona has in the last four months. Fakehis is fake mood news and is a hoax of the media and you are perpetuating it. You personally need to be held accountable. Host with all due respect, how do you tell that to the more than 26,000 americans who are dealing with this virus, to the people across europe, those who have died . Guest what about the people caller what about the people who die of Car Accidents or the flu . You are not even putting it in the context of what i said. Dieof these people, do they of older age or is it the coronavirus . In italy, that is what they are saying. You are fear mongering. Anyone could have a cold, anyone could have the flu, anyone could die of anything at any given moment. Host why is congress now about to pass up to 2 trillion in relief . Why is the president holding Daily Briefings . Why is there a Coronavirus Task force if this is a hoax . Caller it is not because of the death rate because the death rate is lower than what is being talked about. The media is perpetuating host stop. We are not perpetuating anything. Im going to hang up on you. Guest i completely disagree with your caller and it is important to see that this is not the flu. First of all, this is a novel virus that human beings have not encountered before which means there is no immunity to it, it means we are vulnerable in a distinctly different way. The pace at which we have seen the rise of infections in the United States, there were about 2000 people who were known to be infected. The pace of what we are seeing is absolutely different. The notion that the fatality rate is what it would have been without this is absolutely false. Yes older people are dying but we need to be protective of older people. They have been subjected to a novel virus that is causing them in normas Health Problems and it is increasing the fatality rate dramatically. What we are seeing in hospitals in italy and unfortunately we will begin to see it here is the overwhelming intensive care units overwhelming of intensive care units in ways they are not equipped to handle and we are now trying to build capacity to handle. It is going to be in the normas challenge and it is it is normas an in enormous challenge. We are not being lied to. Us taking it seriously. Host what is the message in your book and how do you apply that to what we are dealing with right now . Guest the book of course is written before this crisis began but it is a book about the condition of our institutions, corethe ways in which institutions of American Life have trouble keeping their integrity and Holding Together in the last several decades and i do think there were a lot of ways in which we see that reflected now. On the one hand we are living through a National Mobilization that is compelling people to rise to this challenge and i think our country is rising to the challenge of some very in some very impressive ways. In times of mobilization, we see it is possible for institutions to assert themselves and for people to take them seriously but we also see, having lived through a decay of those institutions for a long time, and this is related to that last caller, having lived through a loss of confidence in our institutions, a wave of cynicism that has left us unable to trust what we are told by anyone who calls themselves an expert. It becomes very difficult for us to rise to a challenge like this. Our first reaction is to say they are lying to us, they are only in it for themselves. A lot of our National Institutions have got to take on the challenge of persuading people again that they exist for us, that they are here for the country. In an emergency like this and a crisis like this, it becomes easier to see and understand and we can certainly hope that one small Silver Lining of this very dark cloud we are living through now is that we might walk away with a little bit more confidence in the authority and expertise of some of our institutions if they handle this well and take themselves seriously. The fact that we have seen a collapse of public trust over decades is certainly one of the problems we are dealing with now, one of the reasons it is difficult for our country to respond to this problem. What do you date the decline of trust in our institutions to . Was it watergate, the assassination of president kennedy . Guest i think it is that period. The United States came out of the Second World War and the Great Depression as a very cohesive country with a lot of confidence in the institutions. Enormous levels of trust. That began to decline by the 1960s. You see a gradual decline in trust for getting through the late 60s and early 70s. A real collapse of trust in this century after 2000, and especially after the financial crisis, a sense that the system is rigged against us, the rise of politics in which people say, people like President Trump and Bernie Sanders will say the entire system is rigged against you and present themselves as outsiders even when he is president , President Trump sees himself as an outsider to the system. We see a building accelerating collapse of trust and in order to change that, our institutions have the responsibility to persuade the public they are worthy of that trust and in many ways that requires reform. Reforms in congress, reforms of our party system, of the way the executive branch operates. The reforms of institutions throughout our society, outside of politics. This is a time to take on those kinds of reforms and as we come out of this crisis in the coming months, that is one of the challenges we will have to take on. Host the book is titled a time to build, our guest yuval levin joining us from his home in maryland. Robert is next from pennsylvania. Caller good morning. I thank you very much for taking michael. I am watching your program for taking my call. I am watching your program and i keep hearing the same thing from the people. They are out of work. They have no money. They cant pay their mortgage. They cant pay their life insurance. They cant pay their house bills. Etc. Etc. The American People have had to bite the bullet, tighten their about a full how of these Companies Getting our money have to put all of that on hold until after this crisis is over . Host thank you robert. We will get a response. Guest this is a period of intense response to emergency and people have to find ways to make it through it but there is a rule here, this is a Public Health emergency, this is one of the things we expect of our whornment, even those of us believe the role of government should be limited as i do. We have to acknowledge that in a time of National Emergency, there is a role for National Action and this is generally a moment of emergency and this is a role for the federal government to help us get through this period in ways that enable us to return to Economic Activity and something dont something closer to normalcy. We are going to be living with this virus for a long time and we are going to have to find ways to do that. There will be changes in our lives that dont just go away when we get back to work. This is a moment that requires a kind of mobilization that legislators and the executive branch at the federal level and state level are going to have to think about how to help the public and help the economy get through the emergency so that we can get back to greater normality and our usual kind of politics. In a time like this, the fact that people are facing the kinds of problems they do requires sacrifice from everyone, from creditors who need to be willing to wait through this period. It requires much more action from Public Officials and government and requires all of us to be able to make the sacrifices required to make it through. We need to be helping each other. It is a moment where we have to see each other as part of a larger whole. We are all americans and we are all in this together and that is the only way we will make it through. Host our guest has also written a piece that is Available Online at nytimes. Com. How did americans lose faith in everything . Our institutions have lost the capacity and have become platforms for approval platforms for performance instead. Lenore in ohio, thank you for waiting. Caller good morning. I hope everyone is well. Is with the mixed messaging coming from the white that is coming from the administration downward. State, federal, i have been in the military. Symptoms. Ing to show i am tearing up my house looking for my thermometer. I went to the store and there are no thermometers. I am calling the numbers that are posted and publicized but not getting responses. Issue is the a celebration is the acceleration has exacerbated the situation. In alln who has worked forms of government, now that i need my government, they are not there. Who do we believe . Are we to believe the sending messages coming out of the white house . I am here on the ground and seeing things differently the sunny messages coming out of the white house . I am here on the ground and seeing things differently. There is a place for government in our lives and right now i need my government and what am i to do . Host thank you for the call from ohio. Guest i think there is certainly a role for government response in a National Emergency like this and it is important that that mobilization is now the focus of the administration and i agree there have been some mixed messages on that front. There is no clear sense coming from the white house. The attitude that they want the public to take, the basic approach, the confidence of what is coming in the next few months, what are they working on and how are they mobilizing . There has been a tremendous mobilization at the state level in some places and there has been enormous mobilization at the level of Civil Society in American Life. Find ways to reach, to get in contact with the health care system. By phone first, dont just go to the emergency room but find a way to get in touch with someone and tell them your symptoms and they will give you some direction of what to do and where to go. Host bob in texas, good morning. Caller good morning. Caller was astute and a very good call but i am calling to disagree with both you and your guest. I read your guests article yesterday online and i just want you to consider something. The caller from california just a few minutes ago may have been seconds,ut after a few you lost your patience with him. I want to go to the Peter Alexander situation because the president has to deal with people like the gentleman from california. He has to deal with very hostile reporters, Peter Alexander being one, jim acosta and others trying to make a name of trying to grandstand and showboat. Said that the president was sending a message from the pulpit that was wrong or inappropriate to have americans take the drugs, and he shouldnt be doing that. For some of us, we were viewing the president as being very optimistic and encouraging, even though he kept saying over and over it may not work. , dont you feel the president has always been under a significant and undue amount of pressure from inappropriate questioning and stuff . Russians could be posed to him different. What do you think . Host thank you for the call. Guest i think every president can say that. Every president is always under pressure, especially true of republican president s and there is no question that dealing with that can be a huge challenge. Nobody forced him to run for president. This is what the job is. For moments like this, the president has to rise to the challenge. The question he was asked is what do you say to americans who are afraid . That is the question that in a moment like this our president should be able to answer without jumping down the throat of the reporter. It makes sense to be critical of him for it. It is not the end of the world, it is not the worst thing going on but it does suggest the president needs to think about the image he puts before the country in a time like this. What do you say to americans who are afraid . At the same time that he is also working to address the practical concrete challenges we face in a responsible way, you cant just give americans medical advice when you dont know if it is true or false. You are the president of the United States. There has to be a different way to say what he is saying. Ultimately what he is doing is having the fda look into the possibility that these drugs can work and that is an important thing to do because they could but that is all you can say with the position he is in. It is dangerous to go beyond that. What we saw in that flash of anger in response to the question about what he would say to people who are afraid suggests, the president is under enormous stress in this situation but it is not unreasonable for us as americans to ask that he handle it better. Host the house and senate are working on a bipartisan stimulus package to help the economy. According to the new york times, the Airline Industry is asking for up to 50 billion. Here is the final breakdown, of course to be determined. Payments to individuals, especially those year,g under 100,000 a 250 billion dollars beginning april 6 and another 250 billion beginning may 18. Based on the contours of what you have been able to read the last couple of days, will this be enough . Guest nobody thinks this is the last phase of action. When you talk to people on capitol hill, the sense is this is the action being taken now but there will be more needed. Would offerticism i is that this has to be directed and Public Policy in general has to be directed to finding ways to gradually resume Economic Activity and other activity in our National Life. We have taken a hard pause that is necessary and central to allow the Health System to handle the wave that is going to phase in over the next couple of weeks. After those next few weeks, it needs to be the priority of Public HealthPublic Officials to start enabling people to return to their lives. The goal has to be to helping people keep their place, keep their jobs, keep their position, keep their equipment, keep their location, help Companies Pay the rent, help people pay the mortgage. If thes of stimulus, as economy is just contracting in a normal way, we have to think about it in terms of a hard pause, getting people through this period when our economy is on hold in a very dramatic and unusual way. There is some confusion in this bill between the need to help people hang on and the need to stimulate Economic Activity any more traditional sense. It would be wise to think much more concretely about getting through this period of pause and then gradually mobilizing and getting back to Economic Activity. That requires some Financial Support and also requires a different way of thinking about the Public Health challenge, a way of getting ahead of the testing challenge, a heavy emphasis on treatment so this becomes less of a burden on the Health System and that way of helping people protect themselves when they go back out into the world because this virus is not going to be gone when they go back to work and school. That is going to happen within a matter of weeks i think. A vaccine is going to take longer than that. We have to think about ways of helping people returned with some competence and in ways that are careful with some confidence and in ways that are careful. The Public Policy response is not there yet. Host this is the headline from yahoo news. U. S. Airlines Warning Congress that it would take draconian steps if Congress Fails to help. A reminder that the senate is in session at 2 00 this afternoon. Live coverage on cspan2. We will continue to follow the proceedings as this continues to unfold. A meeting scheduled for 11 00 this morning between Speaker Pelosi and Senate Democrat and republican leaders. We will go to rick in ohio. Caller good morning. I would like to say i appreciate washington journal for people to be able to call in and voice their opinions. I dont even know where to start. Early on, when the viruses were breaking out in china, we sell reports, everyone Wearing Masks in china. Going around spraying these disinfectants in the cities. Also, we know that the air quality in china is poor. They are prepared with masks, with ventilators and we dont have that generally speaking in the United States of america. I dont know the quality in italy or iran. Two, i am retired, i spend way too much time watching the news and living between cnn and fox. I cant believe that the differences are so large between the reporting. Cnnerday i saw dr. On mentioning she doesnt know why she didnt know where the 15 days came from. It is not hard to find that. You google the incubation period of the virus and it is one to 14 days. Why was she saying she did not know why the quarantine was 15 days . On the bill,ing she insisted that including the bill would be the relief of pregnant women, children and older black men out of prison, including in this bill. That is hanging things up and yet they blame the republicans for bailing out ceos and high dollar figures. The president clearly said he does not want that to happen. Host im going to stop you there to get to give our guest a chance to respond. Thank you very much. Guest there are a lot of important points within that comment. First of all on the Public Health side of this, we are going to have to think differently as people begin returning to work and school, about how we talk to the public about the Public Health requirements, keeping yourself protected. We heard a lot at the beginning of this epidemic that masks dont work or at least they should only be left for healthcare workers. The fact is, simple facemasks can help a lot in restricting the transmission of a virus like this and when people start going back to work, you will find a lot of people in our city Wearing Masks and that is appropriate. Were going to need some guidance from the real experts in Public Health and what needs to happen, we are going to see some things on our streets that are unusual in america. You see more often in places with very low air quality, that probably will be happening as we start to go back. To the broader point about legislation, there is no question that we are finding a lot of people in both parties trying to use these very large pieces of legislation to advance some priorities they have had. Some of them are better connected to the Coronavirus Crisis than others but there was a certain degree of opportunism in this from both sides and i think politicians have to restrain themselves from doing that and focusing on the real goal, which is helping the country find a way back to normality in a way that is safe and keeps our Health System functioning. That the National Review was written by our guest, yuval levins washingtons response to the virus, you write the following, we want a government a government that is overwhelmed by a problem at first but will quickly mobilize, learn from mistakes and in relatively little time, work itself toward massive and effective action. Are we getting to that point . Guest it is important to see that that is what we should want in a sense that our government has been overwhelmed at first. It is not in itself hard to understand. This is a very unusual situation. It is a crisis and emergency and the government doesnt just keep on reserve all the resources it would need to respond. The question is, over time does it mobilize and the answer to that is mixed. We are beginning to get over the challenge of the failure of the testing regime early on. We are now getting to a place for the numbers of people being tested are much larger but there is a need now for further mobilization, for building capacity in intensive care units and our Hospital System, for building capacity for the economic recovery we are going to need and for enabling people to return to normal life in a safeway and that mobilization is not going very well. We have to acknowledge that we need to respond much more massively and effectively than we have so far. I approached this with some understanding of the problem that people are facing, some sympathy for the problems that policymakers are confronting because this is an this is an enormous challenge. Ody around the world we have to be able to get our arms around the scope of this problem and begin to mobilize. That is how the United States answers crises. First we do the fumble around but eventually, a successful response looks like a massive mobilization across various sectors of our National Life. We are seeing that in some places and not in others and our government needs to get its act together in a number of important ways. Host we are talking with yuval levin with the american is to price is the with the American Enterprise institute. He is also vacant ridding editor to National Review and served in the george w. Bush white house as a member of his to mastic policy staff. Patrick is next in chicago. Good morning. Caller good morning to you and your guest. After observing this president for the past three years, one thing i have realized is that this president looks at how things affect him, if it affects him positively, he goes out on the mountaintop and spills it out. If it affects him negatively, he wants to keep it under wraps. The problem that i saw with Peter Alexander confrontation, the thing he took offense to was when mr. Alexander was stating the facts of the amount of people who have died, the amount of people who have the infection. It wasnt so much how to respond the American People. Since it started, he said it was going to go away. He always does this thing with his hand, waving like it is going to go through. It is always denial. When we start investigating this, we will look at how south korea responded and how america responded because south korea wanted to know, the government wanted to know how to solve the problem. This president thinks he can wish as a child that the problem will go away. , the guestnt is spoke about our confidence in government and i believe our confidence in government will be lessened because of what happened in midweek. Midweek when the present when the senator from North Carolina who knew about it in january, all of this crop about china didnt tell them, they knew about it. What they did was they all kept it under wraps and when it comes out how long we have known about this and nobody did anything, i believe this is going to erode confidence in government. Host let me ask you about senator burr of North Carolina. He is in his final term which expires in two years. Getting a lot of attention and criticism. Important to find out what happened but it seems to me that if he walked out of Intelligence Briefings and sold his stocks, and especially if at the same time he was not toivering a clear warning his constituents about what he was hearing about what was ofing, that is a form misbehavior that has to be taken seriously and has to be acted on and we have to find out what happened and what the timing was. It does seem troubling. I would say to your callers earlier point, it is important to see, that the desire to deny this reality and wave it away on the part of the president also others and we see it around the world, the first reaction to seeing what happened in china was basically to say thank god its not happening here and try to move on, rather than take on the serious possibility that it could happen here. The scale of what we are seeing here is unprecedented. It is not like anything we have dealt with in our lifetimes. It is very hard to contemplate the possibility when you are watching this happen in china. Just a few weeks later we would be looking at such a massive National Emergency. Two weeks ago up some but it told you schools would be closed across the country, that almost no one will be going to work in our major cities, it would have been hard to believe. Ais a massive price of massive crisis that has come on us very quickly. Our highest elected officials need to take seriously these kinds of problems to consider the bad news and a desire to avoid that has been a major problem in the administration. Host we will go to kevin next in new york. Steve andod morning good morning professor levin. You are doing a great job cspan. I believe in the media spotlighting an unprecedented situation. I do have a question for the professor. With the end of the coronavirus nowhere in sight in states like connecticut, indiana and georgia delaying the primaries, what does the professor think of the federal government having an emergency president election in november using the method of voting by mail that the state of oregon has used for years and the state of oregon has a turnout rate, a Participation Rate in their elections of over 95 . In november, at. East increase the turnout interest is not to the of parties in power to have an election by mail however i think in these circumstances it might be considered. Host thanks for the call. I want to point out in todays new york times, that is the subject of a fullpage editorial. It is time to protect the 2020 election. Another issue that lawmakers and states need to deal with. Guest it is then enormous it is an enormous in normas challenge. We dont have the infrastructure for voting by mail in most states. It would be difficult between now and november for people to get to a place where they trust that system. Oregon has made it work and it can work in oregon but the fact that it has been put into effect wouldere means we basically be experimenting in a president ial election with a brandnew system of voting and i dont think that is the way to go. The way we have to think about this is how to enable people to safely use the systems that already exist, that we know can be trusted, that we know are functional. That may mean voting hours based on peoples last names to keep the polling places from getting overcrowded. A paid day off for everyone on election day so people have more of a chance to vote at different times of day instead of just Early Morning and late evening. These are the things we have to be thinking about now because it is very important to protect the integrity of the president ial elections. There are other kinds of challenges like this. The senses is going to have enormous trouble because of that the census is going to have enormous because of the coronavirus. People are sent out, doortodoor to find people who have not responded to the survey by mail or online, that is going to be a huge problem in these next few months. The census has got to happen. It is necessary for the way our political system operates and we need to be thinking about ways of making it possible, given the constraints we are going to be under. We are not going to be in this kind of locked down the summer or november but we are still going to be living with this virus and we are still going to be uneasy and nervous about Public Health and it is important to be thinking about those problems now and finding ways to make this doable while there is time to think it through. York. We will go to new ed is next. Caller good morning. Host go ahead. Caller hello . Host you are on the air. Caller i hear the professor. He has been talking about unprecedented situation, which it is. The one thing i can say is that we have thousands and thousands of planes flying in from all Different Countries every day, every hour, every minute. He hasnt talked about that and the unprecedented part of it is the disease obviously came from china to the u. S. In all different ways and i kind of remember back in january, President Trump tied tried to do something about that and he was halted because he is in a phobic and all that other stuff he is xenophobic and all that other stuff. I feel for the guy. He has been saying since day 13 and a half years ago we need to control our borders, always. The good thing that comes out of this is maybe the United States will bring all of these businesses back that are in china that we need in the United States for survival. Host thanks for the call. Guest i think the president did impose a travel ban first on china and then more broadly early in this process. The United States did that earlier than most in the west. In this situation that was a good move i think. It is important to see that it probably helped us, buying us some time that we are now trying to use to build some capacity in our Health System. Now is basically on hold. There is very Little International air travel at this point. They were almost no transpacific flights happening now. Very few transatlantic flights. That certainly needed to be part of the response we are seeing. I thicket is important to reese i think it is important to restate that we have to have some sympathy and understanding for decisionmakers in this situation. This is very difficult. At the same time, this is a moment when we really need them. This is why they make the big box. They make the big need peopln these offices. This is why we have to have a system of government that can mobilize an emergency. Yes, absolutely, what they are dealing with is difficult but it is also their responsibility. We have to be willing to criticize them at the same time we recognize that there is no way to do this perfectly and the job they have is extremely challenging. Host the book is called a time to build, from camel he family and community, how institutions can revive the american dream. For you, personally and your family, how are you dealing with all of this . Guest like everybody else. We are trying to keep social distancing. We are doing our best to handle the situation. Everybody is healthy, thank god. That puts us in a betty better place than many americans. I want to wish you and all of your viewers the best in this situation. I hope people are dealing with it and getting through it well. Host our viewers can follow your work at the American Enterprise website. We thank you for being with us. Guest thank you for very thank you very much. Are inhe cities tour, we san antonio, texas. Aat is coming up, also conversation with paul waldman as washington journal continues on this sunday morning. We are back in a moment from the cities tour on cspan2s book tv and cspan3s american tv. We are at the entrance. This is a part of the National Historical park. Part of the american story we tell here is the Spanish Colonial history of this area, of this part of the world. What is wonderful is that a lot their parishl this home, who come to church here on a regular basis. They can trace their ancestry to the colonial period. Built people who actually these mission buildings, who built these churches. So, these missions are about the city star of the city of san antonio. Start of the city of san antonio. Monday night, on the commune communicators, gordon smith on how they are responding to the coronavirus outbreak. He is joined by jonathan. Andhat are the precautions different steps that your members are taking right now, whether it is internally or from home, as he mentioned at the association, or whether it is changes they are making in programming and such . Thehat is interesting is broadcasters are also people that live in their local communities and they are trying to be good citizens. Members at abc, cbs, nbc or ding they are hee warnings coming from the white house about ways we can participate in reducing the spread of the virus. They are pooling resources. They are pooling crews that go out and sharing in ways that you normally dont expect competitors to be doing. Certainly in ways that are lawful and actually very important right now. Host watched atwatch the communicators 8 00 a. M. Eastern eight a clock p. M. Eastern, monday night, on cspan two. Host paul waldman is a Senior Writer for the american prospect. Thank you for being with us on cspan. Guest my pleasure. Host Congress Scrambles to work on a stimulus field, now approaching close to 2 trillion, which is an unprecedented amount for congress. Your thoughts on what will transpire over the next couple of hours and days . Guest it is unprecedented but this is an unprecedented situation. We have never had a situation entiree ground the American Economy to a halt, suddenly. There may have been a shock that precipitated it. It still unfolded over an extended period of time where you could see it coming. This happened all at once. You have this huge shock to the system. That has led congress to say that we need to do something of a skill we have not done before. Now, the democrats in congress and republicans in congress and white house are all negotiating. Ofy want to do the same set things. There is an argument about the detail and the scale. For instance, the administration came out with a proposal that would, among other things, would give checks to every family. They wanted to do it with 1200 for each adult and 500 for each child. An just a one off of infusion of cash. Democrats wanted to do something much larger. They were talking about 2000 for each donor, maybe 2500 and doing it repeatedly over the course of however long this recession lasts. There is also a big question about Unemployment Insurance. You will have this gigantic infusion of people needing unemployment. It is already happening. And so, that is something the democrats have been pushing for. We need to put a large amount of money into the unemployment system and remove some of the bureaucratic areas that existed in ordinary times. There are waiting periods. Things like that that they want to get rid of because there will be literally millions of people who, suddenly in the next week or two, are going to need to get Unemployment Insurance. There are a lot of people who are not part of that system because their employers, other people who are not eligible under ordinary circumstances. You have to find a way to get them in too because they are losing their hours. They suddenly have no income at all. You can since this is a problem of unprecedented scale. There is a lot of complexities involved if we want to really address it. I dont think there is any serious person who thinks we will be able to stop the recession at this point. But, the question is can we mitigate it to the point where it is not as bad as it might be . Host Washington Post, putting the blame on congress. And the present. Guest this is something everyone has seen. From the begin, the president has been intent on having talks. He was worried there could be bad effects on the stock market and that has come to pass. It was inevitable. From the beginning, he said it was no big deal. We only have a few cases, it will be fine. We are doing a great job. The reports we have gotten from inside the white house showed he was getting Intelligence Briefings, raising the alarm as early as january about how bad this was going to be. It is clear that what he wants to hear his performance and the good news and people around him are very reluctant to tell him bad news. You can see that when you watch these Daily Briefings. You have career professionals, like anthony fell treat anthony fauci, who tell us what is going on trade and then they turned to Vice President pence and tend to make sure every other sentence they say is praise of President Trumps leadership and telling him how great he years he is. That is what he wants to hear. It is becoming obvious that his desire to minimize the political damage and hear the good news and not the bad news has perhaps colored the decisions he has made as this has progressed. Host my guest is paul waldman. We are practicing social distancing as the cdc is recommending. There is this, in terms of 2020 politics, Bernie Sanders believes america misjudged him. Did he misjudge america . In the Washington Post, you wrote the following about Bernie Sanders. You said senator sanders was not twoavorite among the contenders or even in my top three or four. He has done extraordinary things. He helped reshape the Democratic Party, widen the policy debate in america and inspired millions of followers to a feverish devotion. Speight lacking the charisma charisma ofing the politicians, it is hardly something you could expect from a rumpled, grumpy, 70 something jewish socialist. Guest it is an extreme area compliment. Dating back to the 2016 campaign and now this campaign, sanders has been an outsider, someone who had the same views all along but could not get much of a hearing for them. He was banging on the door. He pushed himself into the center of the american political debate. He fell short because there were some flaws in his theory of how he could become president. He said he could inspire an extraordinary Grassroots Movement that would basically tear down the walls that separated him from the white house. It turned out that he has a following that was passionate and was very large but it was not quite large enough. In the end, what happened to him in 2020 was not that different to what happened to him in 2016. There were more democrats deciding to vote for joe biden. Just as there were more democrats in 2016 who decided to vote for hillary clinton. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary achievement. If you look where the policy debate is now, we never, in american history, had a full and vigorous debate bout the merit of singlepayer health care. We have one now. I think Bernie Sanders deserves a lot of the credit for that. Maybe most of the credit for that, by pushing that into the debate. As it turned out, there were limits on the support singlepayer could get. A lot of people are interested in something may be less threatening and does not change as dramatically, as fast. I have 100 opinions about that. I have to give him credit for the fact that we have that debate at all. There are a lot of ways in which Bernie Sanders has been one of the most important political figures, shaping this moment in our political history. He was not your candidate, you have to give him credit for that. Host how has the coronavirus changed this race . We have not heard from the candidates. They have been doing virtual town halls and virtual fundraisers. No public appearances by either joe biden or senator sanders. Was almostrace decided before things got really bad with the coronavirus. It had become obvious that biden was the almost inevitable nominee, even before they stopped campaigning, it would be necessary for sanders to win almost every primary term that point forward in order to become the nominee. That just wasnt really possible. Thatn that sense, the fact the race got frozen from a political standpoint, and from the standpoint of democratic voters who were hoping to have their opportunity to choose a nominee, it was sort of good that everything had fallen out and so many candidates have left the race. It looked like biden was the inevitable nominee. I think there is a center which the kind of calculations that led people to come to joe bidens candidacy are only reinforced by what is happening now. He was never the person who inspired the most passion. It was always about, for so many voters, i think that biden is the kind of person other people will want to vote for. That is what the electability is all about. It is not about who i like, it is about who other people might like. I spent a lot of time writing about why that is a bad way to decide who your candidate is but that ended up being the grounds on which a lot of people gravitated to joe biden. And now, we are in this moment of economic crisis and Public Health crisis and i think, for biden, he is a somewhat reassuring figure. He has been around for a long time. Ways. Safe in many him, this sortor of reinforces the grounds on which he wanted to be an appealing candidate. He was never saying i will be the guy who gets you the most excited. He was running what i think is a campaign of restoration. Saying if we can just turn back the clock for years, lets get back to when things were calm and we did not have all of this craziness. We will get rid of donald trump and then we will all be able to calm down and maybe republicans will agree with me on a few things and our policies will not be so manic, all the time. At a time when we are in a moment of crisis, that may have more appeal than it did six months ago. Host this is a tweet from will henry who said bernie fell short because socialism is a known, proven loser. Former senator Claire Mccaskill on morning joe with the following in terms of where this race is and where it is heading, saying i think it will quickly turn to how and when does Bernie Sanders unite the Democratic Party. I think the pressure is going to mount, especially in this time of crisis in this country. To uniterats are behind clearly the for the democrats to clearly unite behind the voters preference. For people who watch cspan, those of us who are immersed in the political world, we understand how those pieces fit together. Most americans who dont really spend their time worrying about politics, they dont necessarily have a real firm grasp on that. If you look at the things Bernie Sanders supports, most of them are quite popular. Peoplet to want to have higher minimum wage. A is when you wrap it up into thing called socialism and give it a name, then you can invoke negative association. We have no idea how that will play out in the general had no idea how that will play out in the general election. You can ask what people think of socialism and get an answer in a bowl. You wont know until you get into an election because people dont vote for an idea, they vote for a person. We will know if the public would have rejected socialism and would we know if the public would have rejected socialism is somethingthat we may never know on a president ial level. Att you can send us a tweet cspan to bj cease plan cspan wj. We will go to carla in new york city. Good morning. I just wanted to say thank you to your guest. I just want to say, listening to your previous calls this morning, i dont understand why the Trump Supporters have to tiptoe around the president every time he gets an allegedly inappropriate question from the press when we have a president whom maligned people on a daily basis. I think people need to wake up. He goes to being a concert constant coward when he doesnt like the way the situation reflect on how he is dealing with things. Host this is marion, who is joining us from lakewood, new jersey. Go ahead. Caller i hope you listen to me like you listen to all of the democrats. I am so tired of cspan dont hang up on me. Can you hear me . Host we sure can. Go ahead. Caller listen to these democrats, these ponies, that calling. In. Honies, that call let me tell you this. Obama ran away from the serious problem of Chemical Warfare with his tail between his legs and did nothing. Who to care of it took care of it . Trump. Dear god. Let me get back to trump. As he found out, he stopped people coming in from china that were going out. What did the democrats do . They called him a racist. When he asked for help for the border down in mexico, they said it was a phony crisis. A made up crisis. These democrats make me sick host thank you for the call. Those two different perspectives, paul waldman as you hear from two different viewers. Guest i think the first viewer was making a reference to this thing that happened on friday with Peter Alexander. He asked president the president in one of these briefings what he would say to heple who were scared and said i would say you are a terrible reporter. One of the things that is highlighted for me is what we expect of a president in times like this. We want them to be good administrators and make good decisions. There are certain moments when the public really needs a kind of emotional support. When we look back at president s in times of crisis. What they did was, when they are successful, they channeled our emotions, gave us the understanding that they understood what we were feeling and some reassurance about what was going to happen in the future. If you think back to Ronald Reagan after the challenger disaster, giving a moving speech in the oval office or barack obama after the newtown massacre, wiping away a tear and talking about how he and michelle were going to hug their children tighter and every American Family was or torched of you bush at ground zero, zero, w. Bush at ground those were moments when the president channeled what we felt and made it feel as though it was going to be all right. I think this is something that President Trump has really struggled to do. That moment in the white house crystallized it. He was given an opportunity when he was asked what do you say to people who are scared. Interpret it as an attack on him and he attacked the reporter back. This is something we are all very used to from President Trump. He says openly when he was criticized, he will attack back twice as hard. In moment of crisis when there is something that American People have a natural hunger for that we want from our leaders and it is beyond the administered of stuff, that, i think is something President Trump is just not capable of doing. It is just not part of his toolbelt that he brings to any kind of moment, especially a moment of crisis like this one. Host those moments, including president Ronald Reagan and on our podcast, weekly. A halfhour conversation that we taped on the phone, she was in boston to talk about leadership in turbulent times. Joining us from quincy, michigan, good morning. Caller hello. Host good morning, brent. Caller hello, do you hear me . Host yes. Caller just a response to your republican caller. I fail to see how [indiscernible] obama did this and some of the ousted that, i just dont get that. That is not my question. Comment, it has a stigma except when we are sending subsidies to oil companies. It is all fine and good then. Airlines, like delta and theyht back stocks reward corporate executives. Bellow baila out from the taxpayers. Money to see how pretty is going to solve this problem. Host thanks for the call. And it is a bailout that could total up to 50 million for the Airline Industry prayed they have about 750,000 employees. Guest the color makes a good point. We have a debate going on all the time about how far the government should go in helping people. Who it should help, what safety nets should look like and what kind of Government Spending is good and bad. But now, we are in this moment of crisis where both democrats and republicans are saying that there is no choice but to have the Government Act and act extremely aggressively. They will argue about how aggressively to act. The democrats, and republicans both want to take every step that that government can to try to basically save the economy and have this huge infusion of cash. But, this is one of the key questions. Who is the money going to go to . How is it going to be distributed . There are lobbyists on capitol trying to make a corner for the industry that people will not notice. The airlines have made huge profits in recent years and are coming for a bailout. There are lots of other industries that want their piece of the pie. It is in a moment of crisis when everybody suddenly becomes a socialist. That is the question all of time, if we are going to agree. O have socialism there is no question, when you think about how this relates to a political question, there is the reality that this Public Health crisis and this recession have the potential to make it impossible for donald trump to get reelected. Democrats are on capitol hill asking for more money than republicans want, to be more aggressive. Even though that could potentially save his presidency. Situation was reversed and barack obama got elected in 2009, during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, republicans were not so eager at that time. The recovery act, 787 billion, the biggest thing anybody could remember and it pales to what we are doing now. That got zero republican votes in the house and three republican votes in the senate. Now, mccright want to be more aggressive than republicans do. Democratst, want to be more aggressive than republicans do. At this moment, whether that constitute socialism and the conversation about that has disappeared. Host in host the senate nationally host the senate will gavel act in at 2 00. Back in at 2 00. Reported as close to two choi in dollars as a close to two choi in dollar stimulus plan. Trillion dollar stimulus plan. Nancy has been patient. Morning. Caller i want to bring up the issues, which we should be doing more of. I heard the president put down the reporter for asking a very logical question in these times. Defense, he does it because that is his personality and he does not like the press. Things thatt probably are true and he is not always truthful, as we know. So, what i want to say is i just listened to a mayor of new york and he is trying to get the military involved to get more supplies, to get ventilators and things we need in this crisis time, which we are hearing is not going to be ending too soon. He repeatedly asked President Trump to help get to his home state. It was one of the main places and areas that has more cases. They need these things. Every place needs them. And he refuses to get them involved. He just does not think of the whole picture. I dont believe he is as smart as he thinks he is. He has no logical reasoning. It is all about what he thinks will get him elected. And that is why he is doing what he is doing now. He is listening to people more than he ever has. Because it is out of his hands and he knows that he is looking like not the president that brought the economy up. He is listening more than ever in this crisis but not enough. That what do i want to say that character that he is the chief and knows more than the people that are trying to conquer this crisis and save lives. I am just are tired of hearing about the parties. I want the issues of what is going on in this crisis right now. Anything he does, like not entering answering that Mental Health question. Host we will leave it there. Paul waldman, your response. Guest one of the things that happens during an ordinary president ial campaign, you can say that and to a certain ree, party andatic Republican Party has a set of things they want to do when they get in the right house. White house. We know republicans will cut taxes and will move to deregulate. Democrats will do the opposite of those things. Individualy of the and the personality traits they bring to the office are still extremely important, despite all that stuff that is built in and the personnel and the thousands of positions throughout the executive branch that are going to be the same whichever democrat or republican gets elected. , may behis now heightened and exaggerated almost that the personality traits that defined this president are coming to the fore. 2016, remember back to republicans had reservations about donald trump and said that stuff will be smooth out. All of those things where he is crass and does not know about the issues, that may make us uncomfortable but in the end, he will have the right people around him and maybe he will become more president ial once the weight of the office makes itself clear. And so, there are things about him, like the tweeting and that we do not like the tweeting that we do not like. But, it will not matter that much. It turns out the person who sits in the office does matter a lot and it does shape the events. We see in more with donald trump because so much of him is really public. You dont have to wonder what he is thinking on any given day or at any given moment. You have to look at his twitter feed, which is sort of an unfiltered expression of his emotions. When you open that up and you see him, even in a moment like this, squabbling with people and insulting people, that gives you a window into what is going on in his head and how he is spending his day and how much he is watching fox news because he retreats what he sees on fox news. Witht may have been true every president to a great degree that the individual and what their personality is like determines what kinds of decisions they make and how evens unfold. We see it more with donald trump because events unfold. We see in more with donald trump. It is an interesting aspect of him as a president , that even though in many ways he is extraordinarily dishonest and we have seen the 12,000 lies he has isd, at the same time, he utterly straightforward about what he is thinking and who he is angry at. You never have to wonder about that. Unlike maybe other crises when there was something going on behind closed doors at the white house and we did not know what john f. Kennedy was thinking or whatever. In the modern age and with this particular president , we know exactly what is going on in his head. For a lot of people, that is not particularly reassuring. Host we are talking with paul waldman, he is a writer for the Washington Post. He is a Senior Writer for american prospect. This is the headline from inside the post, the strip virtually empty. The headline says it is sparking a crisis for on the go, las vegas. Is this is that have not closed since there construction facing the shock of sending staff home. This tweet from the Bbc Parliament channel, saying he likes the program and adds that our biggest problem is not going away, regardless of how the virus resolves. Responses the same from paul waldman. You have a fan in great britain. Lets get to rich on the republican line, joining us from nutley, new jersey. Caller good morning. Paul, may i call you paul . Guest sure. Caller i hope we can have a little dialogue. You really sound disingenuous. You guys have attacked the president , the questions that during these ask news conferences are really, really terrible questions. You are trying to make him like he dealt dont care about people. That he is this guy who has no feelings. You would never in a million years ask obama that during a press conference when the disease is going around, when obama was in office. The questions that are asked in this room, your room, where they cover him, is he a racist . You have people come on msnbc and cnn and they have signs that say he should be charged with murder. How do you expect this man to react to some of the questions people ask . You write articles and come on here today and are supposed to be talking about the coronavirus epidemic and all you have done is attack this president. In every word that you say this morning. I think it is so very bad that during a time like this, you cannot come together and admit that the man is doing a good job in trying to get what the people need out here. Our government does not have 100,000 respirators. They never have and never will. Ok, the woman that was on pennsylvania who said he was not going to get the equipment, all of that equipment has to be made. He does not have the magic one like obama had, i guess. Paul, i dont understand why you constantly attacked this man. I have read a lot of your articles. You come on the show today and attack, attack, attack like this man has no feelings. This president cares about the American People more than most president s. Including some of the democrats. The democrats are great actors. They come on tv and they know what they are saying and how to say it. He is not a politician. He is not a politician, paul. I am sorry that you are on here today, doing this. This is a time where we are supposed to come together, like he is trying to do with them across in congress, to get something done for this great country. It is just a shame. Paul, you know what i am talking about because you are in the circle. Do you agree that people should be coming on invest in bc bc, cnbc, cnbc msn and cnn and calling him the things that he is being called . Host we will get paul. Guest when he says obama did not get as may tuck questions, of course he did. And he got plenty of criticism. Perceptions that filter our thoughts on these things. When we see a president we dont questions, top tough questions, we think that is what should happen everyday. When we see a president that we do like get asked of questions, we say that was tough questions, we say that was unfair. Obama neverident got any criticism, that is not true it all. Democracy is really messy. At all. Democracy is really messy. We could live in an authoritarian system, like china, which is the target of a lot of criticism. We could have a state run media where everything is going great and the leadership is doing a fantastic job and everything is going to be fine. That is not the system we have. We have a system that is all about people asking tough questions and the president is going to get criticized. There is nobody, probably in the world, who gets criticized as much as the president does, whoever that president is at a particular moment. It only strikes you as unfair when you happen to like that president. And, i do criticized President Trump. I am an opinion writer and i am allowed to have opinions. One thing i criticize him for his that he has to hit back at every criticism he gets, as if this is some sort of schoolyard and yes to show he is top or else he will get beat up. That is tough or else he will get beat up. That is not what it is. He does not have to make a personal attack on everyone who wants to everyone who attacks him. He could choose another way. We have to acknowledge this is the price we have to pay for living in a democracy with freedom of speech. You will hear criticisms of people you favor that you dont like. You will hear people you think are stupid or wrong, they get a chance to make their voice heard too. It is unpleasant sometimes. That is the price we all paper living in a democracy. Thatink that in the end, is the best system for us to live under. Joe biden said his running mate will be a woman. Who is on the shortlist in your mind . Guest it is interesting. In the Democratic Party, it would be almost impossible for joe biden to pick another white guy. The Democratic Party is the party that is diverse. It is the party of women. Women make up most of the Democratic Partys voters. The Democrat Party is the party of color. It would not be acceptable for him to pick, with all due respect to tim kaine, for him to pick a replacement level like tim kaine. So, he came out and set it. You can debate whether it was a good idea to say it now or wait. I dont think it was going to be possible for him to do anything but have a running mate who was either a person of color, a woman, or both. In terms of who it is, there are a lot of good choices out there. We saw a lot of qualified and intelligent and charismatic women who ran for president this year. He could pick from among the women who were in the race. Elizabeth warren and Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris. There are some people outside, people who did not run for president. Governors, there are some people who dont serve the federal government. Even people like stacey abrams, who has become a national figure. A lot of it, with these choices, ends up coming down to personal things. Every four years, when we hear afterward and get the reporting from inside about how these decisions were made, what we find is that there is a rational calculation that goes on about how does this person reinforce my own strengths or weaknesses. We often find that a lot of it comes down to a personal rapport. Did the candidate really like that person when they got together with them . Did they feel like they could Work Together . Things like that. It is hard to know, yet. You could say Kamala Harris would be a good choice for this, this and this reason. There are a lot of good reasons for why she would be a good choice. A lot of it will end up coming down to how comfortable is hiding with that person. There is special considerations for him. One is his age. He is 77. You want to have somebody who is younger and could, if he suffered some kind of health emergency, or decided after four years that he did not want or think he was up to another four years, that person would be the logical choice to be the democratic nominee in 2024. All of those things are going to come into play. In the end, more than anything else, it might be who joe biden personally likes and wants to work with. Host lets get back to the phone calls. Francis in millbury, massachusetts, good morning. Caller good morning, how are you . Host we are good. Caller i have been watching you this morning and i watch you pretty much every sunday morning. I am kind of curious as to what your guest there thinks of this beat down of the president. For 3. 5 years, ive been listening to this conspiracy, that conspiracy, this conspiracy. We never seem to see what is going on on the other. It is always donald trump, donald trump, donald trump. I have read many things from the Washington Post, the new york times, i read my own paper here. I read the articles this morning. I will not put any names out there. Bert horn from vandal vanderbilt, we went back to the civil war and blamed donald trump, comparing him to the civil war. We have isaiah from the Washington Post. He writes an article about Big Government being back. The article, he refers to President Trump as a racist. Read another article ,t any rate, from Gary Shilling new yorkjersey consultants. How is the market going to do . But, blaming President Trump for this coronavirus thing. Frame that into a question if you could for our guest and we will get a response. Trump the guy, president put a travel ban on china on january 31. Approximately two weeks after he heard about it. He was called a racist, a xenophobia and all of this other stuff. What is your opinion on this . Guest we will get and host we will get a response. Alwaysthe president is kind of a lead actor in the story that we tell about our political and public life. It is more true now than with any previous president. You can see it going back to the 2016 campaign, when he was just such a sort of overwhelming personality that a lot of the networks stuck a camera in front of his rallies and would broadcast for an hour, what happened at his rallies. They have never done that before and do not do it for other candidates, because it was so shocking and overwhelming. Everything about him and his campaign. We have seen that in his presidency as well, he kind of sucks up all of the attention and all of the oxygen. A lot of that is because that is how he likes it and he makes sure it is. When donald trump sends out a shocking tweet, he knows that it is going to get attention and people are going to write articles about his tweets. I dont think that before this there was ever a case where you would get entire news articles written about somebodys tweet. He is someone who wants the attention and wants to be the focus at the center of all of the events. The flipside is if he makes that happen, which he does, he will be the target of a lot of criticism. To repeat what i said before, you cannot become president of the United States and think you will not get criticized all of the time. That is part of the job. You cannot be surprised. You have to make a decision about how much you will respond to that and when you will let it slide off of you and have thick skin or when you will feel like you have to respond to every criticism with an attack of your own. He has largely chosen that latter path. Some people cheer him on when he does that and they say that is what you should do. You should always hit back. That is what his aides say. ,hen you watch Kellyanne Conway they say he is back. Will gets attacked, he hit back. You can make a different choice paid other president s have made different choices. If that is the choice youre going to make, it is hard to, it is unfair im getting criticized as much as i am. Host Tucker Colson and mark living are part of the media. From clarksville, tennessee, good morning. Caller good morning. I was calling in regards to things that i have not seen anyone consider in regards to the shortage. In hostile situations, they can to sterilizems equipment they use in surgery. Hopefully they can fend off the. Iruses the second thing is you have to the days of diapers, instead of using disposable diapers. I was raised during the time of the tb epidemic. We had to use bleach and clorox for everything. That is my response. T thank you from the call for the call. Paul waldman, response. To look toave to try some things we have done in the past. This is unusual. Every epidemic is different from the one that came before it. That hospitals are experiencing is an incredibly big problem. One of the things it highlights is that it is difficult, especially at the publicpolicy level, with the decisions the government makes, to prepare for things that have not happened yet. There is incentive if you are a member of congress or the president , to do things that are right in front of you and we and get immediate needs maybe a crew immediate political benefits. When somebody says we should be preparing for a pandemic that might hit in a year or five years or maybe never, it is often difficult for a politician to say ok, we will take resources away from Something Else that seems more pressing right now to prepare for that awful thing that could happen. What you end up seeing is that when the awful thing does happen and this is the situation now, we dont have enough masks and ventilators. It is in part because it was difficult to lay in those preparations at a big enough gh in thosei preparations at a big scale. The idea is that it will provide a bridge until the private sector can get ramped up and produce all of this equipment which they are now trying to do. One of the things that has marked this particular pandemic is that every day that we have much, was making things much, much worse. You saw what happened in south korea where they had testing kits and they were aggressive from the outset about testing and managed to find everyone who had it and isolated them and they had very few cases. We spent weeks and weeks without adequate testing while the virus was spreading. We are kind of at that point in the x financial curve where at that point in the exponential curve where it is shooting up. If you dont have the will to do the prevention when it does not seem like it is so urgent, then you are left with the path to cure. The job of part of criticism. Nt to take mike from virginia, good morning. Caller i am nervous. Give me a chance. Host no need to be. We are glad to hear from you, mike. Just two weeks ago, 100,000 people were going to the Turkish Border from northern syria. Awful. It is and to promote an election. For eight years, obama was criticized. For six yearsma of being unamerican. Since january, they were warning to prepare. He did not prepare. He did not take this seriously. Not takingers, i am them seriously. To blame somebody else for his mistakes, it is not reasonable. Host thank you, mike. We will get a response. Guest mike is right. We are talking about how much the president gets to size. President obama had to deal gets criticized. President trump had to deal president obama had to deal with people, particularly President Trump, saying he was not american. It is never going to be completely absent from the calculation at any moment, whether we are talking about the ordinary daytoday or everything up to war and pandemic. That is always going to be in their minds. The question is are they making the right decision and is politics dictating it to a degree that the other positions suffer . Preston trump has been coming out every day President Trump has been coming out every day with members of his task force to talk about what is going on. He does not have to do that but he made the decision. I think he wanted to show the American People that he is on top of it so he is doing these Daily Press Conferences. That is fine. The problem is he comes out and says things that are not true. He says everyone who wants to get a test can get a test. Counts on a new medication as if itt be a therapy will be distributed and cure everyone. It is fine for him to say i will do Daily Press Conferences to show the americans i am on top of this. That is ok. Maybe in some circumstances, we would want that to get the reinsurance that the government reassurance the government is doing what it should. The problem is what happens during the course of the press conferences. Politics is never going to disappear. That is fine. The question is are the decisions being made the right ones . Host our next call is from patterson, new jersey, michael. You are here with paul waldman, an opinion writer for the Washington Post. Good morning. Caller good morning. Trump, 2020. I believe this shortage and this crisis came from china. This recession is also because of china because we have this crisis because it got over here and it is all over the world. China, the blood of many dead people should be on chinas hands. Host your response . Guest we can look at the decisions the Chinese Government has made, like every government. The fact of the matter is we live in a world where it is very, very difficult to contain any kind of pandemic. From every country in the world to every other country, it is really difficult in the modern world to contain anything like that. Especially a virus like this that can be sort of dormant, where people could be spreading it if they are not symptomatic. Absolutely nothing wrong with looking at the decisions the Chinese Government made in the early days, some of which were radical. Like closing down wuhan, entirely. You could say there are things that they did that did not contain it as much as they should. That is perfectly fine. Though they cost our recession. This could have come up everywhere and it has spread everywhere. Every government has made its own set of decisions. Some of those have been better and some of those have been worse. In italy, they are suffering extraordinary numbers of cases and deaths there. Toir Health System is taxed the breaking point. I am sure a lot of people will look at the decisions the Good Government the Italian Government made and will question them. I think that will be important. Once we come out of this, we should look at what decisions we make, what we could have done differently, not because it is important to affix blame. Because this will not be the last global pandemic. Something else will happen. We dont know how long it will be. Maybe it will be in five years or 10 years, we will face a situation like this again. Maybe, if we are smart and prepare, we will not be in a situation where we are now, where we had to shut down our entire economy, which will cause huge amounts of suffering. But, we did that because collectively decided that the alternative in the number of illnesses and deaths that would be caused was much much worse. If we prepare properly, next time, we can contain the Public Health issue without having to create a recession on top of it. There is all Hope Commission that does the research and examines what we could have done and examines a plan so that the next time a pandemic comes, it will not be as devastating. Host robin, you are next. Caller thank you, cspan. I have a couple of questions. First, i would like to know what affects the coronavirus has on the military abroad. Also, can animals contract the virus and transmit the virus to humans . 535omment is that there are other representatives in the government that share responsibility as well as donald trump. I think he is a pretty good president. I like the way he does his business. I think he invokes the american spirit. I think that is what we need in this country, american spirit. Thank you for letting me speak. Host thank you. We will go to louise on our democrat line in washington, d. C. Caller hello, i appreciate your guests information very much. I do disagree with him on the voting. I think we have time to switch to mail votes. Withnk oregon can help us their expertise in washington, d. C. Many people vote by mail. I am one of them. It works just fine and i think we have time to do it. I think it is urgent that we do it because i think there will be a lot of cantering in the next vote. Host a couple of different points. Your response . A scientistnot so i dont want to speak to how the virus gets transmitted. The military question is a good one. You could imagine that there could be potentially dangerous situations. You have 1000 sailors on about where they are packed in and in , whereuarters a boat they are packed and an enclosed quarters. I am sure that is something they are concerned out. About. Voting, of the mail they have to move to know excuse no excuse absentee voting. Yep to justify it, saying i will be out of town or disabled or whatever it is. More states have been moving toward no excuse absentee voting. That should be universal. Mailhave universal vote by in oregon, where there is almost no polling places and everyone votes by mail. I think there is a lot of reasons why that is potentially a better system for everyone. The question is could we transition to that between now and november or even sooner, when we are talking about primaries that have to take place. A number of states have moved back there primaries by a couple of weeks or a month. We dont know if that will be enough time. Is if we real question wanted or decided today that we want to have everybody in america vote by mail in november, could we put off . It would certainly not be easy. It is important to remember that there are some strengths in having a widely distributed electoral system but there are a lot of weaknesses too. You have 50 different states and thousands of counties and cities that run their own elections. Often times, they do it with volunteers. There are a couple of professionals there. The rest of it is people who come in on election day to work at the polls. That system, in one sense, may be in it less vulnerable to hacking because it is so disturbed it. It makes it difficult to coordinate things. There are a lot of experts right now who are trying to figure out could we make that transition . Could we get more mail voting so people do not have to go to the polls . It is a number of months away. It is possible that by november, things will be settled down and there will not be a concern to have people showing up at the same polling place. Even before, we had extraordinary problems in our election system. It is not adequately funded and it is not secure enough. Every election day, there are people who, especially in poor areas, who have to stand in line for three to four hours to vote. As opposed to wealthy areas where you are in and out in 15 minutes. That was a problem before. It will be maybe worse this year. That is host very quickly we have not seen former by the Vice President biden. We are told there may be Daily Briefings starting tomorrow. What is next in the short term in termsice president of appearances . Guest he may do some speeches without an audience. We are so used to campaigns being about these very visible events where the candidate goes out and they speak for an arena full of people. It is obviously going to be a few months before people feel comfortable doing that again. Knocking on doors, people dont want to do that either. A lot of that will turn to the internet. For the foreseeable future at least for the next couple of months that is basically where the campaign is going to take place. It will be online ads, may be the candidate giving an address out of his living room and people trying to organize voters on facebook and twitter and instagram. It is going to be a strange and unusual and in many ways Quiet Campaign for the next couple of months. Opinionul waldman is an writer for the Washington Post. We are separated because of the wash the social distancing. We thank you for your perspective on this sunday morning. In live view of the u. S. Capitol. The Senate Republican leader Mitch Mcconnell is expected to be arriving shortly. The senate will be in session at 2 00 eastern time, a procedural vote scheduled for 3 00 and negotiations negotiations ting continuing with nancy pelosi. Can continue to follow the debate live on cspan2 and on the web at cspan. Org. Were back tomorrow morning with cspans washington journal at 7 00 eastern time and a primetime addition of the washington journal tomorrow night it 00 eastern. Newsmakers is next with 8 00 eastern. Newsmakers is next with richard trumka. Have a great and healthy week ahead. It is easy to follow the federal response to the coronavirus outbreak at cspan. Org coronavirus. Check the spread through the u. S. Into the world with interactive maps and charts. Watch hearings with public specialists any time at cspan. Org coronavirus. When the Senate George adjournedew saturday negotiations were ongoing. According to Mitch Mcconnell there will be a procedural vote to move the bill forward, which could set up a vote for final passage as early as monday. Watch live Senate Coverage today starting at 2 00 eastern with the vote scattered scheduled for 3 00. Joining us from the headquarters of the aflcio in wagt