Years. I got elected as a rich person. It cost me billions of dollars to be president and i am so happy i did it. Who cares. Who cares. All right. That is the president of the United States talking about his net worth during this national crisis. Good morning and welcome to morning joe. It is monday, march 23rd. So, mika, its interesting, you and i had a different reaction to yesterday. Yep. We also i mean obviously weve been very concerned from the very beginning, weve expressed our concerns about the president and starting in january, the intel agencies warning him that a pandemic was coming, that could really be deadly. Also, very concerned about the president saying at rallies that the press was whipping this up into a frenzy and to a hoax level. Been concerned about people with cable news shows talking about how this was just the press was trying to get donald trump through this. A lot of things to be very concerned about, the president saying if you want to test you can get a test just weeks ago and still that not happening. That said, and maybe im doing this the wrong way, you can let me know, you can let me know, you know, we have our low expectations on what i call the ground noise, the president talking about how much hes worth, the president talking about mitt romney or reacting in a way that really is inappropriate when he finds out that mitt romney is isolated. But that said, sorting through that ground noise and looking at the signal, yesterday, i saw actually the president trying to be bipartisan towards the governors of the two most affected states. I saw mike pence come up and talk about what i believe is most important still, other than everybody socially distancing and that is the testing. We have to be able to map where this disease is. We have to i mean, there were some positives that came out yesterday. I thought friday and saturdays press conferences were ill just say it absolutely frightening and the president , of course, went on tangents and cant stay on script. He devolves into self pity. And that is a very bad look for a commander in chief in the time of a crisis. Also, for the life of me, i dont understand why hes not using all the powers that hes using to really coordinate a National Response, like fdr coordinated a National Response in world war ii. Hes Still Holding back. Hes still deferring to governors. Its almost like he wants to blame governors if things go badly. Now, harry truman says the buck stops here and in a pandemic, the buck doesnt stop with the governor. The buck stops with the white house. This was the mistake george w. Bush made during katrina. And those of us that were on the ground in louisiana and mississippi know that federal government wasnt there because they were waiting for the state to come in and save the day. The state didnt have the resources or the leadership to do it. The pandemic starts at the top still looks like donald trump doesnt understand that. But youve looked at it completely different than i did. I didnt see much difference between yesterdays update and any of the others. In fact, i thought it was a lot worse. You know, theres no National Mobilization. Theres no triggering of the National Defense mobilization act. We still dont have tests. We dont know where we are. The entire country is flying blind. Flying completely blind as to whether or not theyve had it, had it or are going to get it. Thats where we are right now still. And the president talking about his salary, making snarky comments about mitt romney, this is a man who does not have the mentality to lead us through this crisis. Lets dive right in to the latest as to what we know with coronavirus spreading. State and local leaders pleading for help, laid off workers in need of immediate relief. Washington providing little assurance to weary americans over the weekend. The president rejected calls yesterday to use war time powers to address shortages of face masks, ventilators and other critical equipment. The senate also failed to advance a sweeping stimulus bill aimed at boosting American Workers and the faultering economy. That news sent stock futures tumbling once again. Mitch mcconnell tried to set another vote for 9 45 this morning, 15 minutes after the bell hoping tanking markets would put pressure on democrats but Chuck Schumer said no to that idea. The vote is scheduled for noon. The work of the senate was also complicated after senator rand paul announced yesterday morning that he has tested positive for coronavirus after reportedly having gone to the senate gym earlier that morning and attending a gop senate lunch friday. Okay. Lets ask this question really quickly because i think most americans are asking this, if you are tested for the coronavirus you suspect if you were tested to see if you have a pandemic or not, while youre awaiting the results of the test you go to a senate gym, you go some reports were from colleagues that he went swimming at the senate swimming pool, and then on friday again, sat in at a senate lunch on friday, thats as reckless as you get. It goes against every guideline that every public professional has given. Rand pauls has now put the entire United States senate actually in a horrible position. Were all doing it. Americans are being asked to do this. Everyone is trying to stay six to eight feet apart and wiping everything down and trying to stop the spread. Everyone is trying their best and yet rand paul thinks he can walk around and go to the gym and have lunch with people and i mean did he even tell them he had been tested . Not a good example. But we need our senate, we need our congress, we need washington to function from some level. Rand paul is now in quarantine, as are senators mitt romney and mike lee. After having come in close contact with paul who has the virus. Meanwhile as the number of cases spiked over the weekend, now at nearly 35,000, more states and cities are announcing variations of lockdown orders. Louisiana joins the mix with a statewide stay at home mandate to take effect at 5 00 p. M. Ohios starts at midnight and delaware is tomorrow at 8 00 a. M. Lets bring in White House Reporter for the Associated Press john thnathan lemire. What are the plans moving forward in this white house . These briefings are not heartening to worried americans about exactly when were going to contain this thing, have a handle on it or have enough supplies to deal with it. Every press briefing keeps putting off anything theyre announcing, even warships, theyre on the way. So lets go down the list, jonathan, and lets start first of all with some areas like, for instance, our concern, i think most americans concerns are making sure that american citizens can get tests, making sure that hospital providers, doctors and nurses, can get the masks and gloves and the protective equipment that they need, and that sick americans, whose very life depends on being a ventilator, can get the ventilators we need. From yesterdays press conference and the press conferences over the past several days, what can you tell us about progress on all three of those fronts and what the president and the white house is doing to move that forward . So lets start with the idea of the testing. As you said the Vice President suggests that americans will be caught up, the backlog of tests, much better position in the middle of this week. That is apparently some progress. Well have to see if they follow through. A different story with the masks and ventilators. The head of fema was on several sunday talk shows yesterday pressed by anchors as to when these medical workers will receive the masks they need and he couldnt give a straight answer. He couldnt let them know. He said were working from this stockpile or stockpile. Were asking the private sector. Let me ask you this, jonathan, and i think every american needs to be able to go to a website, maybe its coronavirus. Gov, go to a website and get straight answers how many masks hospitals have, how many masks are in production, and when theyre going to be delivered to hospitals because the real frustration here is, that well hear the same thing over and over again, i really dont need mike pence giving me just generalizations about how the American People are great and theyre i know the American People are great. We dont need that we dont need to be told that in a pandemic. We dont need to be told in a pandemic that churches are great. We know that churches are great. Jesus has got that. All right. We need to know about masks, we need to know about testing, we need to know about gloves, we need to know about ventilators. So i havent gotten a straight answer and im looking for it on tests, on masks,ed on ventilat. I hear the president talk about people who make liquor, says that every day, we get that, people that own distilleries are going to make enough Hand Sanitizer to last half a day in the United States. Awesome. But is there any place where we can go to see what the federal government is doing and who theyre coordinating with to see the numbers of masks and protective gear that are being made for our doctors and nurses and technicians who will save americans lives over the next three weeks . Is there a place where we can go to get that number . The answer is no. And its caused great frustration from those at the front lines. The mayors and governors across the nation. Yesterday as i said the fema head couldnt say how many masks are being shipped. The president has been reluctant to fully invoke the defense production act. He said it was because we dont nationalize business in the United States. He pointed to venezuela and said look, you saw how socialism works there. We dont want to do that here. Which, of course, is also because theres a political calculation to this, hes been painting democrats as socialists for months and plans to again when the general election heat up. So that is whats held him back to a degree, even though governor after governor has urged him to do so. We heard Governor Cuomo plead with the president , fully enact dpa, we need masks and vent laters. It crosses party lines. The republican governor of texas did the same. So well get to the ventilators in a second. I want to go back and ask why donald trump, why jared kushner, why somebody in this government, cannot give us straight talk, straight numbers, straight information about how many masks are in production . What do they expect the states, the hospitals, the nurses, the doctors, to need over the next three weeks when maybe up to a million americans are going to be infected . Maybe its 500,000. We dont know. Do you because these briefings are frustrating. I know a lot of people are starting a lot of journalists are saying, we need to just stop the briefings. Thats really going to be very hard to do for a lot of different reasons. Regardless of how bad the president can be at times during those briefings, americans are also getting information. But why cant they come forward and tell us this . Have you gotten an answer from the white house, why cant they tell us why cant we go to a site and see how many masks are being made, how many gloves are being made, what the need is, what the goal is, where we are, how long it will take in the process. All they say is 3m is making masks and well get some in a month. Talking about 500,000 masks thats a lot, but is it the 35 million well need by the end of the crisis . Not even close. Have you gotten an answer as to why they continue to wallow in generalities, instead of doing what any business would do, instead of doing what any leader would do, and that is, have the goal, have the number in production, have the different points of contact who are making the masks, why arent they doing any of that . What any leader would do . There is no straight answer. There are no details. The white house is still struggling to catch up to the scope and severity of this crisis. Theyre playing catchup. So let me ask you this, and im dead serious here, i think they are, i think theyre struggling to catch up, but im having to tell people every day who think that this president is intentionally dragging his feet by not using all the powers he can use, somehow hes still not taking this seriously enough. He talks about giving cruise lines that arent even based in america because they want to dodge taxes, he keeps talking about giving cruise lines tax dollars. He keeps talking about all of these bizarre i i thats just him. Yes, yes, hes unfit, temperamentally to be president , i get it, but the question is, is he trying his best . What do i tell people when they keep saying, hes still not taking it seriously and hes still just not doing what is required to save millions of americans lives . Would invoking the defense production act increase speed and focus on getting these products to the people . It absolutely would and governors and mayors across the nation are asking him to do so. Theres a suggestion by some that he is not wanting to fully lean into this because he wants to point the finger elsewhere if the efforts fail. If he doesnt fully enact it we see him repeatedly shift the onus to the states to come up with these items that they need. We also know this, part of whats hampering the issue, joe, why there arent the details, partially why that he cant the administration hasnt been able to level with the American Public is that his advisors are sometimes afraid to level with him. The president is looking through this still with a glass with rosy glasses believing this will be over sooner than later, dismissing Science Health experts, sometimes in meetings, when aides come and suggest hey this is dire and were trying to present to you a realistic sense of how long this can take and how bad it will get he doesnt want to hear it. He is someone who his whole life has asserted his own sense of reality. He creates his own truth. That doesnt work in this situation. And it may have worked with page six and some of the gossip pages and worked to a degree during the campaign. It is not going to work here. That is what alarms so many people in washington and across the nation. I will point to his tweet last night, late last night, he tweeted, we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. At the end of the 15 day period well make a decision which way to go, which lines up with what were starting to hear around him, the belief that he feels these draconian measures to restrict the economy may do more harm than good even though that flies in the face of the Health Experts and hes going to be looking to push to a return it to a normal society far sooner than any Health Expert or doctor would want. I mean see, that wont work. Ed luce, it wont work because the virus doesnt care what donald trump thinks. A pandemic doesnt care what a nations gdp is. It only cares about who it can infect next. Its staggering to me, donald trump, after getting it wrong time and time again over the past several months by the way, ill say here, im cheering for him to get this right. Ive got a lot of reasons. Ive got as lot of family members who desperately need him to get this right. Yeah. But after being wrong so many times about this virus, being wrong about the testing, being wrong about the protective gear, it seems that hes still not leaning all the way in to this and acting he loves saying hes a war time president , hes acting like this is just another day. What what can you do you have any idea why hes not using the full powers of his presidency . No. I mean i think he has this weirdly romantic notion that he can exalt the private sector to do this somehow in an ad hoc, uncoordinated way. I think there is confusion within the white house about who is in charge. Jared kushner has apparently ripped up the original pandemic plan and has handed it to fema, but fema has absolutely no experience in ordering and securing the flow of medical equipment and medical supplies. And the governors, as youve been hearing from jonathan, the governors are in a dog eat dog situation where theyre essentially scrambling on the open market to get their share of very scarce sources of supply. I dont know, i dont have any special insight into why President Trump thinks this is a good way of ramping up production quickly because its not working. Production isnt being ramped up quickly. This applies to test kits as well still. Youre hearing very credible anecdotal stories from all over america, people who would in other countries be getting tests, being turned down for getting tests. I dont know why President Trump doesnt realize that its still very bad. You know, the South Koreans, the South Koreans knew at the same time we knew, Steve Rattner, that they had a pandemic coming. The same day they had their first case and we had our first case, within a week, they had a test. That was in, what, late january i think. Here we are at the end of march, and were still so far behind on testing and, steve, you know, i understand we need the testing primarily so we can find out who is sick, who is not sick, who needs to be isolated, who doesnt need to be isolated, but theres another part of this. You need to know whether you have the coronavirus because 80 of americans are going to go through that without a lot of serious conditions and when theyre through that, theyre going to be healthy and immune from the virus in the future so they can go on with their lives. They can go back to work. They can relieve those who are trying to keep businesses afloat. They can start reviving this economy again, but they cant do that if they dont take the test and they dont know. I saw Peggy Noonans tweet last night that shes taken a test and had symptoms for weeks and still doesnt know whether she has the coronavirus or not. Its really just remarkable how inevident the inevident epts the United States of america still is compared to other countries. We all know that the administration has been way behind the curve from the very beginning and that does start at the top with donald trump in the sense that he went through this period of essentially denying it existed, saying it was just a few cases, saying it was going to go away