We have made truly remarkable progress. We slowed the spread. We flattened the curve. While Anthony Fauci offers a warning to the young. If you get infected you will infect someone else who clearly will infect something else. Health and human secretarial exsalazar and andrew cuomo. John bolton speaks out about President Trump. There is no guiding principle that i was able to discern other than whats good for Donald Trumps reelection. Its a close race to see who could see through him the clearest and try to manipulate him. And the president strikes back. Everyone thought he was crazy because all he wants to do is bomb people. This morning my oneonone with john bolton. I believe america can recover from one term of donald trump. I believe that very, very strongly. Im more worried about a second term. Also mississippi lawmakers take steps to remove the confederate battle emblem. The last of the Southern States to do so. Joining me for insight and analysis are eddie glaude jr. , nbc news capitol hill correspondent kasie hunt and hugh hewitt host on the salem radio network. Welcome to sunday. Its meet the press. From nbc news in washington, the longestrunning show in television history, this is meet the press with chuck todd. Good sunday morning. Throughout his presidency there have been countless this is it moments that opponents of President Trump felt sure would puncture his standing with voters. Charlottesville, immigrant children in cages, impeachment, just to name three. But nothing seemed to move mr. Trum trumps Approval Ratings one way or the other, and hes never been able to tweak, bluster or bluff his way out of. Economic dislocation that come with it is there for all of us to see. Every american is aware of it. Every american is affected by it. Every american has an opinion about it. The past week felt more like april with states and then the whole country setting records for new cases. Cities shutting icu beds. Through it all President Trump has been in denial and President Trump has been the object of avoidance, ridicule and pity around the world. At home, covid has given republicans a permission slip to criticize or ignore the president and provided space for former Administration Officials who like john bolton who i will interview in a moment to criticize a president of their own party. As the number of cases goes up, mr. Trumps political standing goes down, making him now the most dangerous incumbent since george bush lost in 1992. We find ourselves careening toward a catastrophic and President Trump for being among the first to reopen are now backtracking. Abruptly setting new there was widespread noncompliance and that led to issues. If you do need to get out, please wear a mask. On friday the u. S. Set a record for new cases, in 25 states cases have increased by 25 or more over the last two weeks. In nine states cases are up more than 100 . The time for prevention measures was a month ago. Now the wheels are coming off. But on friday at the first Coronavirus Task force briefing in two months the Vice President appeared to deny that reality. We have made truly remarkable progress in moving our nation forward. The nations top Infectious Disease expert dr. Fauci says current efforts to test sick people, isolate them and trace their contacts are not working. We dont extinguish the outbreak, sooner or later, even ones that are doing well are going to be vulnerable to the spread. For months the president has minimized the virus. We have it totally under control. Its one person coming in goes this is going to be gone. Its going to go. Its going to leave. Its going to be gone. This will go away without a vaccine. Six months into the pandemic in the United States, the messages did missing the virus hasnt changed. Were doing well after the plague. Its gone away. This is a localized situation. We slowed the spread. We flattened the curve. We saved lives. But the curve hasnt been flattened. The virus isnt going away and the issues that plagued early testing efforts remain. So i said to my people slow the testing down, please. Did you ask to slow it down . If it did slow down, frankly, i think were way ahead of ourselveses if you want to know the truth. Weve done too good a job. With 25 million tests youre going to find more people. Some would like to see President Trump stop politicizing mask wearing. Until we find a vaccine these are really important. This is not as complicated as a ventilator. Joining me now is the secretary of health and Human Services alex azar. Welcome to meet the press. When are we failing with covid19 when so much of the world is succeeding. We are surging in cases in counties in the southern parts of the United States. Weve gotten reports from our governors that the majority of the positive cases were seeing are age 35 and under. A large number of those are going to be asymptomatic. We have fatality rates and the hospitalization rates are the lee lowest in two months. What are we doing . Were working with local authorities and states. This is a county by county issue so getting in there and getting to the bottom of why the cases and in addition to the traditional Contact Tracing, what were doing now is weve got to test entire a very diffet virus with the asif spreading and get every positive case and get those people isolated. Weve got Hospital Capacity in all of these areas and we have personal protective equipment and well be there to back them up. We now have treatments. We have remdesivir and convalescent plasma. If youve had covid, call your blood bank, American Red Cross and donate plasma to increase our supplies. We have the tools to do this. We just did this in North Carolina, but the window is closing and we have to act and people as individuals have to act responsibly. We need to social distance and we need to wear face coverings if were in places where we cant social distance particularly in these hot zones. Let me ask you this, did we blow it during the first shut down . I thought we were to get our testing up and make sure you had capacity up and one of the big things was Contact Tracing and so it seems pretty obvious what happened here if you are just looking back at a layman. You guys put out guidelines in april about what it would take for a state to open up. No state followed those guidelines at all. Some states followed them okay, pretty closely or came close, but a lot of the states in the south didnt do it at all, and a bunch of them dont have contact tracers. Isnt that why were here . So, chuck, this isnt about opening or not reopening. We have states that are just as committed as the southern state, but arent experiencing this. Weve got to seeing these cases surge in this area, but at its core, we all own as individuals, our individual behavior to make sure that we are practicing appropriate social distancing and wearing facial covering when were not able to and practicing good personal hygiene and protecting our first vulnerable citizens and dr. Birx and dr. Fauci talked about this at a briefing on friday that one of the things about this virus is the asymptomatic, and it is a necessary and not sufficient protection. Weve got to do that, but it cant just be sitting in a Public HealthOffice Making phone calls. Weve got to get into the community. We have to get dust on the boots and find people and test entire communities to get our positive cases. Thats the type of action woev seen in North Carolina and other communities. Mr. Secretary, i still dont understand why we have enough contact tracers. The head of the cdc said we have less than 100,000 nationwide. We should have 300,000, some experts have thought and again, weve been at this five months now. Why dont we have enough physical contract tracers in these Southern States . Well, chuck, these states have to build up their contact tracers and they have to build up getting out into the states and getting out into the local communities if this is a very communitybased effort at this point. Weve surged people into every one of these states. Were working with them on the ground, but its about getting out, working with ngos and working with community, trusted Community Leaders and getting testing done and getting people isolated, but its important to remember we now have many more tools than we had months ago to deal with this. We have therapeutics. We are on the road to vaccines. We have personal protective equipment and again id say any hospital, nursing home that needs anything, be sure your Governors Office knows and well get that into fema ask well make sure were there to support you. I asked the governor of arkansas, republican Asa Hutchinson if his job would be made easier to get his community and get his state to wear masks if the president he didnt have to wear one, and if he would just tweet it and here was his message. A consistent, National Message wearing a mask and social distancing is very important to making sure everybody understands the importance of it. Nothing beats leadership. Mr. Secretary, multiple times with me in our seven minutes so far that youve talked youve brought up masks and social distancing, but without the president of the United States doing this, how is half the country going to listen . Have you directly asked the president to please ask the country to wear a mask . So im the president s secretary of health. Im telling you, practice social distancing where you cant appropriately social distance. We encourage you to wear a facial covering. The Vice President of the United States stood on stage, walked up on stage wearing a mask even though he doesnt need to in the sense that everyone around him is tested and hes in a bubble. The president , we know is a very unique circumstance as leader of the free world and hes tested constantly and those around him are tested constantly and kept at a distance even with that. Were all saying this. The president s guidelines for reopening. The guidelines have said from day one, practice social distancing. If you cant, wear face coverings. Practice appropriate personal hygiene and always please consider your individual circumstances and those of your household members. Protect the most vulnerable. Those over 80. Those over 65 with three or more of the serious conditions and those are the folks we need to protect right now. You just articulated, do as i say, not as i do. The president of the United StatesHolding Indoor rallies twice in the last week, and one in a state seeing the potential of an out of control spread, and you avoided the question whether youve asked the president to wear a mask. When he doesnt do it his people dont listen. Well, chuck, im not going to talk about politics, but weve seen Mass Gatherings over the last several weeks with people rightly expressing First Amendment and political views and this is appropriate, but my message is one of Public Health which is if youre going to participate any type of large gathering i encourage you, consider your individual circumstance, consider the circumstance of those you live with and take appropriate precautions that are appropriate to yourself and your community. Secretary azar, i have to leave it there. I appreciate you coming on and sharing the administrations perspective. Thank you, chuck. During the first peak of the covid crisis andrew kwem owe was one of the faces of the response giving daily televised press briefings as new york became the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States. Now cases and deathses are way down in new york and instead of new yorkers being quarantined when they travel to states like florida, its new york that is doing the quarantining of out of state visitors from places like florida. Joining me now is the governor of new york andrew cuomo. Governor, i want to start with what i just heard from secretary azar and our Contact Tracing problem is in the south, and this was surge, in your opinion, preventable . Yeah. Good to be with you, chuck. First, i dont think this is the second surge. Were worried about a second wave. I think were still in the first wave and this is a continuation of the first wave and it was a failed effort tocountry, and as pointed out, new york a totally different place. Look, if you listen to what the secretary said and if you listen to what the president says at the White House Briefing theyre saying what they said three months ago. Theyre basically in denial about the problem. They dont want to tell the American People the truth and they dont want to have any federal response except supporting the state, supporting the states. So i heard that, and i understood where they were. I didnt need to torture the rhetoric. I knew what they were saying. Youre on your own, you know . Right. Its not a good feeling, but its sort of liberating and in new york we just handled it totally differently, chuck. We handled it on our own. Communication, clear, as you mentioned every day and then we came up with a plan and did the testing and did the isolation, and that makes a difference. You followed the set of guidelines i pointed out. I remember this distinctly, only one time did we hear the white house describe the gating criteria and then that phrase y and in all honestly, how hard will it be hard to stop another resurgence in the state if the rest of the country is struggling the way its struggling. Well, thats our problem. Look, the cdc guideline, first of all are just guidelines and they were very vague and i dont even know what they meant. The troajectory has to be comin down and we put in place our own metrics where we used science and we wouldnt open any region unless they hit certain metrics and then we have a phased reopening and we look at a number of hospital beds and you have the testing up and we do more testing than any state in the United States, chuck. We do more testing per capita than any country in the globe. The testing is the key. You do the isolation, and you have enough ppe and enough icu beds and then you from the testing, you have a rate of transmission that you can monitor and you proceed through the phases if you hit that rate of transmission. This is a virus. It doesnt respond to politics. You cant tweet at it. You have to treat it, and we never did that. Now my fear is we had today five deaths. Now we we offer thoughts and prayers to every death in our state, but five deaths is the the lowest number weve had since this started, chuck. We are in the exact opposite end. We have less than 800 people in hospitals. Lowest number basically since we started. How does that number go up in two ways. Lack of compliance, and im diligent about staying after new yorkers and local governments that have to police it. Right. And second, im now afraid of the spread coming from other states because we are one country and people travel, and im afraid the infection rate in the other states will come back to new york and raise that rate again. All right. If Governor Desantis calls you up this afternoon, and Governor Abbott calls you up this afternoon of texas and florida and said lets set politics aside and i know we mouthed off at you a little bit, whats your recommendation . What should we do here . What would you tell them . Ill tell you, i dont wait for them to call. This is new york. Were proactive. My team has called their teams and said look, can we help . When we were in trouble, chuck, we had states all across the nation who came to help us. We had 30,000 volunteers from across the United States who came to help us. So i called those states and i said any way we can help. Weve gone through it. We have the equipment and we have the staff and we have the testing protocols and we have the Testing Software and we have the tracing program. Did we help . Anything you need, ventilators, et cetera and thats the right thing to do from a Community Point of view and a citizenry point of view. Theres also a parochial interest which is if these states keep going up, well have a National Crisis like we have never seen. They said this was the way to help the economy by reopening and its been the exact opposite. Every time the virus goes up, the stock market goes down and if those if those states continue to increase youll see it go all across the nation. Youll see new york on the rise again and youll see the other states starting to go up even more. Has this you have not released a School Opening plan. I know you have some recommendations out, but im curious now because this is my fear is that this new surge or spike that were seeing in the south is now going to delay every School Districts plans for creating maybe a dual hybrid system of some in person, some remote, universities. Are you now thinking that maybe we might not see everything goes remote now in the fall given were living with this virus until theres a vaccine . Well, first on the first point, yes, i agree with that. You know, every