oval office since the lockdowns began. connecticut governor ned lamont announced today all in-person classes will be canceled in his state for the remainder of the academic year following similar closures in new york and new jersey. and as we continue to cover this unprecedented crisis in modern life, we're aiming to bring you all the angles about the fight to save lives, find a cure and rebuild our economy so we can adjust to this new way of life that the virus has forced us to face. and to do that i'm joined by my co-anchor in the field again. katy tur. she's in asbury park, new jersey, a place that, if it ever gets bustling again, it will be a sign that normalcy has returned or a new normal. and is it a place that can survive in a new normal before a vaccine? katy, that seems to be the -- that seems to be where we're stuck at, i guess right now, as a country. we sort of know we're living in this purgatory. we're not quite sure where we're headed because the federal government, frankly, is wobbly. it kind of -- do they want to fully -- do we want to focus on testing? if they act paralyzed at times. and all local leaders are left to do the best that they can and respond to the public as best they can. >> scattered individual decisions about what is best for their local economies and for their constituents and for their residents and what to do. and it is very frustrating for a lot of people because they don't have a good idea of when things are going to get back to whatever the new normal is. what does that new normal look like? it's not terrible to be out here today. it's a beautiful day. nice to be in the sun but this is not what asbury park usually looks like. the beach is open. there's no statewide mandate that beaches are closed here in new jersey. over the weekend when it was nice, there were people on the beach. they were maintaining a social distance by all accounts. but the boardwalks in new jersey are all closed. there's 130 miles of beaches. many of them are lined with boardwalks. the reason the boardwalks are closed. if you've ever been down the shore you know how packed it gets. 30,000 visitors here alone can flood here on a nice day. and it's not just the beach here. this entire area is now a tourist attraction. there are kids games, arcades, new boutique hotels that have popped up. a lot of money has been invested in the revival of this area over the past five to ten years. and there's a really big worry that if they lose out on this season, what's going to happen next? is that investment still going to come? are people going to flock here as they had been? look at this. this is the stone pony. if you know bruce springsteen, you know the stone pony. we'll talk to the owner a little bit later about what she expects, or the ceo/gm, what she expects for this concert venue. they have nothing on the schedule because they're not sure what's going to happen. my favorite band's lead singer was supposed to be playing here over the summer, but they have had to cancel. it's a big unknown, and it's not just these places that are right on the shore. it's the stores and shops and delis and diners that support the shore. i was talking to one local business owner. 60 years in business about what is going on with his business and what he expects. here's what he said. how much do you rely on the summer months? >> a lot. about 60% of our business, three, four months. from like may until september. >> what are you expecting this summer to be like? >> no idea. you hear some people said the beach is going to open. some aren't. we have no idea what's going to happen. >> so it's frank's deli. they've been in business 60 years. 60% of their business relies on the summer months. a lot of these local economies are just waiting. they are waiting for the three months of the summer when all of their money is made or the majority of their money is made. workers come in from all over the state. teachers who have regular jobs come in and supplement their incomes here and right now it's a really big open question about what it is going to look like if they even can reopen eventually. and phil murphy has said he'll have to address the beaches pretty soon because people are asking a lot of questions. >> then there comes the, who do you help and of these industries and, again, this gets back to, we're watching all this public shaming of companies trying to get some of these small business loans. and if the lawmakers are being forced to politically decide who is more relevant or deserving to get money, i worry about communities that rely on tourism being last in line. they are just going to be last in line because they're just going to be viewed as somehow luxury jobs when the people that have these jobs, these aren't luxuries. these are feeding everyday. so i do worry about us pitting different industries and different jobs as if some job is more essential than the other. how do you rescue an economy collectively that way. that's going to be one of the challenges we face here. it's a beautiful day there. the asbury park chamber of commerce would normally be very happy about something like that. let's move to a few news headlines. a disruption in the meat supply chain has forced one of the most famous fast food restaurants to have to take its signature item off the menu at some locations. wendy's, whose catch phrase in the '80s was, "where's the beef" is no longer selling hamburgers at some restaurants. nearly one-fifth of their stores are out of beef according to a financial services analyst. this morning, wendy's issued a statement saying they're facing production challenges and that some of their menu items may be in short supply in this current environment. it's a problem likely to affect more than just wendy's. they are just the first ones to essentially where we're seeing this problem. laura barrett is live for us in pennsylvania. that state leads the nation with the highest amount of meat packing and processing plants impacted by the coronavirus. and we've been covering all of these meat packing issues around the country. and whether it's hot spots for the disease or at the same time, causing the disruptions in the food supplies, this is a sort of huge problem that, frankly, is too much under the radar. >> it's under the radar, chuck, because we're not getting the full bits of information, unfortunately. the cdc report listed 22 plants in pennsylvania are affected by coronavirus with nearly 900 positive cases. but i want to show you a list of what we know about which cases were affected. here in pennsylvania, smithfield plant, jbs beef, empire poultry, cargill and cti food group. of course, this is only five. we're missing about 17 plants here and, obviously, those numbers don't add up to 900 cases because the state isn't reporting which plants have been affected by coronavirus. we asked them for a list. they refused. we asked them to at least tell us what counties these plants are in. we don't have that information from the state. and that could be dangerous, especially as pennsylvania is looking ahead to reopen on friday with people interacting and potentially spreading the virus further. i spoke with the union rep here of the ufc, wendell young. he's the reason we have the numbers for those five plants because he's been working with the companies and informing his members and told us about those numbers. when i spoke to him this morning, he became increasingly frustrated about the lack of worker safety guidelines in place, especially now that the president has mandated that plants like these stay open. take a listen. >> not only have most americans not seen the inside, but most wouldn't want to work in one. these are really difficult places to work. it's hard work, and it's actually part of what makes them more dangerous when it comes to covid-19. nothing in that directive about worker safety. there was nothing about reporting. there was nothing in the directive about a strategy around testing to keep workers safe. if you want to keep the food supply safe, you should keep the workers safe. that's where you should start so they can come to work and do the job they've done for americans all along and what americans want. >> chuck, there are about 1,500 workers at the plant behind me. a bulk of them are immigrants. that's where a lot of immigrants are employed at plants like this. a lot of them don't live in communities immediately surrounding the plants. they could commute as far as up to an hour or even across state lines to get to their job. so as we talk about northwest, north central pennsylvania opening up on friday, that could pose further risk to spreading the virus even further going forward. chuck? >> yeah, feels like we're flying so blind when it comes to these meat processing plants. i understand in some ways why the president might be more concerned on what the disruption of the food supply would mean for society, but we're flying way too blind here. maura barrett with some important reporting. thank you. katy, to you. >> chuck, prince george's county in maryland has been one of the hardest -- it's one of the nation's wealthiest black communities. it's also among the hardest hit for coronavirus in the washington, d.c., area. of the nearly 8,000 confirmed cases of covid-19 there, close to 3,000 of those are african-americans. let's go to nbc's geoff bennett in pg county with the latest. what's going on there? >> katy, to put context around this, we reported extensively about how this coronavirus pandemic is disproportionately hitting communities of color. that's the case in new york, in philadelphia, in new orleans, in chicago, milwaukee, detroit, oakland. navajo nation which we don't often talk about has the third highest infected rate in the country. new york, new jersey and navajo nation. to talk about what's happening here, prince george's county is a case study in how this pandemic is hitting marginalized, historically marginalized groups across socio economic lines. prince george's is -- has the highest number of wealthy african-americans. it's among the richest black enclaves in the country. about a ten-minute drive from washington, d.c., and yet pg county has the highest infected rate in this region and has among the highest death toll. earlier today i spoke with the county executive. i asked her that question, why? why is that the case? here's some of what she told me. >> so we have a good number of essential workers in prince george's county. we're also proximate to washington, d.c. so we house the federal workforce here. 70% of our resident goes out of prince george's county to work every day. most of them work in the government and are these essential workers. so that also was one of the circumstances that caused the increase. so we have the highest number of infections in the state right here in prince george's county. those are some of the reasons. >> a large number of frontline workers, essential workers. there are many folks here in prince george's who have the underlying conditions for whom this virus is particularly deadly. one of the things the county executive did was about a month ago, she mandated that people wear face coverings in grocery stores, in pharmacies, retail shops to protect those essential workers who live here who have to interact with the public who cannot stay home with their families. who cannot social distance. the thing that she needs, and this is the case for minority communities around the country is that they need that federal data. they need that caseload data that's broken out by race in the same way the federal government does that for age and gender because as one public health expert put it to me, without that you have these communities flying color blind. they can't pinpoint the problem to properly address it, guys. >> that is such a good point, geoff. let's just linger a minute on the masks. it's an issue i've been talking about. wearing a mask is not to protect people from yeou. when you are walking into a grocery store, wear a mask so that you can protect the workers who have to be in that store who are helping keep the shelves stocked so you can go get food at the grocery store. it stops 99% from the particles leaving your mouth. and if we all do that, we'll all be a lot better off. chuck, back to you. >> thank you, katy. president trump has said a vaccine for covid-19 will be developed by the end of the year. public health experts are pushing back on that even as the administration eyes 14 potential vaccines to pinpoint. joining me is the founding dean of the national school of tropical medicine at baylor college, dr. peter hotez. he's the co-director of the center for vaccine development at texas children's hospital and also worked on the vaccine for sars. dr. hotez, i don't want to present you as somebody who is an alarmist about how much -- but you do seem to be concerned that we may be presenting false hope, i guess. what is your concern about all this public talk about a fast vaccine? >> here's where we're at. i'm actually pretty confident we will eventually have a covid-19 vaccine. the theory behind it is not very complicated. you induce an immune response against the spike protein that binds with the host receptor. if you've ever seen a picture of the covid-19 picture or cartoon, you recognize the doughnut stuffed with rna and all around it are these spikes that bind to the receptor. if you make an immune response to the spike proteins you can most likely block the infection. and there's at least a dozen, we're hearing 14, probably going to be at least 20 vaccines that go into clinical trials in the united states. several in china. several in europe and the uk and all of them pretty much involve around a immune making response. that's technically not very difficult. what's the best way to do it, we don't know. we're trying a vaccine approach. you've heard about rna, all of those are going into clinical trials to give us multiple shots on goal. and then you enter a bottleneck, and the bottleneck is, despite any and all of the studies you might have done on laboratory animals and other studies in the test tube, you still have to show that those vaccines, both work in people, as well as they do in animals, and also are safe. and that's what takes time. and that's where a lot of vaccines drop out. so you'll see maybe up to 90% of those vaccines kind of disappear because they're not giving an adequate immune response or they are giving some kind of safety flair. that's the part you really can't rush. you have to take time to collect the data. do things sequentially to analyze the data and that we're probably looking some time over 2021. and even then, that would be a record period of time. so i'm a little concerned about all of the language being used. it's not only coming from the white house by calling it "operation warp speed" but also from the pharma companies. we need to dial it down and not rush anything that's either unsafe or not working. >> and is the likelihood that the first vaccine would be something that might be effective for three months or might be effective for six months or is sort of -- or 80% effective, not 100% effective or not even 90. is that the likelihood this is a progression and that it's going to -- it will probably be a succession of vaccines that one improves on the other? >> i think that's a fair statement. what we're probably looking at is, first of all, probably going to be several vaccines out there. maybe some are going to work better for older individuals. some with underlying co-morbid conditions such as diabetes. others for health care providers. and then even after one or two or three vaccines are licensed, they may not be the best vaccines because history tells us, as we looked at the history of many vaccines, whether it's some influenza or meningitis or hpv or rhodavirus. we're learning it's all along a continuum. we're learning the whole time. the first vaccines that are rolled out are often not the ones we wind up with several years down the line. >> what's the hardest part of understanding covid-19? what's throwing you the most as a scientist? on one end you just said figuring out this vaccine. the puzzle isn't going to be that hard, but -- there's obviously a part of this virus that's just throwing everybody for a loop here. what the most mysterious part of it in your mind? >> the most mysterious part is clearly all of the asymptomatic transmission. the -- how so many people, up to 50%, can have this virus and not develop symptoms. we really don't understand that, and why they are so contagious. we know there's a lot of virus replication in the upper airw airways. you have the two-sided face of this virus, of the sars 2 covid virus. a big group of people walking around and wanting to go on the beach and seemingly fine. and you have another group that's getting very sick and going into the intensive care unit and trying to sort out which group belongs to which and that's what makes it so dangerous because, unlike the previous coronavirus infections if you got it, you are really feeling sick and you went right into the hospital. but here you've got at least half the people who are out and about in the community spreading it around. and that makes it tough. >> dr. peter hotez, out of baylor university, it's always great to get your perspective and expertise for viewers. i know i've looked forward to it. thank you, sir. >> thank you so much. coming up -- italy, one of the hardest hit countries by the pandemic, is now in its phase two of reopening. we're in rome with a firsthand look at just day two of the city's new normal. plus, when will the united states' most populous city reopen for snbs we'business? we'll be able to ask the mayor, bill de blasio, himself. you're watching msnbc. so you only pay for what you need! 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>> yeah, katy, it really is a pretty remarkable story. the first thing you have to say is new zealand cracked down hard and cracked down fast. it was one of the most severe lockdowns in the world. virtually everything closed except for supermarkets and pharmacies. and they certainly closed their borders. secondly, they traced and they tracked and tested. nu new zealand has one of the highest testing rates. the third thing you'd have to say is that they trusted their prime minister. she's just 39. jacinda ardern but remarkably high approval rating. and people simply believed in what she and her medical experts were doing. so the result is that in a country of 5 million people, which is pretty small, they only have 20 deaths and 10 of those were in a single residential home. it's one of the lowest death rates in the world. next door is australia. much bigger country. 25 million people. only 94 deaths so far. so in both australia and new zealand, really a remarkable success story, katy. >> that is just genuinely remarkable, and it goes to show you when you act fast, you act early and you make it strict like they made it, they were able to come to the other side of it pretty quickly. bill neely, thank you for that. chuck, back to you. >> yes, i think the new zealand/australia story is one that i hope means you have somebody ideologically on the left and on the right and they are just worried about a public health crisis. wouldn't that be great if we could start acting that way. let's go to italy, one of the hardest hit countries in europe is now in phase two of its reopening. cafes and restaurants will allow customers to pick up takeout. still, no one is dining in. matt bradley joins us from rome. so, matt, you have been in italy from beginning of this pandemic, the start of their spike. now they are on this side. so there's no better person to go to to show us how much have things changed? and do you see much difference of what phase two looks like in italy right now? >> oh, yeah, chuck, the difference is really obvious. like you said, we've been here for eight weeks. we've been locked down with the rest of italy. right now i'm in the beautiful piazza. everybody is walking around, enjoying them. it just feels buoyant, almost dream-like. but one thing that hasn't opened, the restaurants. as you mentioned, we're seeing -- you can get takeout, but that's not really the same. it's not what makes italy italy. we were here at the beginning. it's catering to tourists. there are no tourists. this city is still not really back to life. there are a lot of people on the streets, relatively speaking, from a few days ago. even if they're allowed to open, allowed to do takeout, they don't want to because they can't recoup the losses from bringing in their employees. 14% of this economy comes from tourism. and especially here in central rome. that's really difficult for business owners when this guy who owns this restaurant we spoke to him awhile ago, right when the lockdown started, he said he didn't know if he was going to be able to survive if this lockdown lasted for several months. he thought he might have to shut down but just this morning we spoke with another small bistro owner in rome here. and this is what he had to say. >> we don't have any solution right now. we try to come in here. we do something, but we can't do anything alone. >> so as you can see, a lot of these restaurant owners, they are very angry because this lockdown, this lifting of the lockdown was in name only. for the most part, they were opening parks, major industries. but they weren't really allowing people to get back to business. it's a parallel conversation to the one going on in the states and really throughout the world because here in italy, even though they are lifting the lockdown, this is one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. for business owners trying to make money, this is not really that much of a relief. chuck? >> no, and it's the one difference, you're right, parallel. the one difference, doesn't sound like italy is prioritizing the smaller businesses. in some ways you have -- that is the difference between our federal system, that's for sure, where states get to make these decisions. matt bradley in rome, thank you. katy, back to you. >> chuck, we have some bracing news out of new york city. more than a dozen children have been hospitalized with an unknown syndrome that could be linked to coronavirus. we're going to talk with our dr. jon torres about how the virus can affect children coming up next right here on msnbc. i've always been fascinated by what's next. and still going for my best, even though i live with a higher risk of stroke due to afib not caused by a heart valve problem. so if there's a better treatment than warfarin... i want that too. eliquis. eliquis is proven to reduce stroke risk better than warfarin. plus has significantly less major bleeding than warfarin. eliquis is fda-approved and has both. what's next? 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"the new york times" reports that 15 children have been hospitalized in new york city with a mysterious syndrome that may be linked to the coronavirus. msnbc and nbc news medical correspondent dr. john torres has this report. >> reporter: julia daly had been a healthy 12-year-old until severe stomach pain sent her to the hospital. >> felt like things were breaking apart really quickly and that everything was terrible. >> reporter: julia tested positive for covid-19 which doctors believe triggered a rare and serious complication, cardiac arrest. >> her heart was barely pumping. it was barely functioning. >> reporter: across the country, doctors in coronavirus hot spots are reporting an increasing number of kids with severe inflammation affecting the heart and other organs. in this long island hospital there have been 17 cases in the last week. >> we just admitted another two last night. six in my intensive care unit right now. >> reporter: today, the world's top experts identifying a new syndrome in kids linked to covid-19. inflammation that can send the body into a state of shock and cause organ failure. parents should watch for symptoms like fever with a rash, red eyes or abdominal pain which was julia daly's main symptom. she is expected to make a full recovery and has this message about social distancing. >> we have to wait it out and be cautious. try to stay alive. >> dr. john torres joins us now. dr. torres, as somebody who woke up this morning with a 1-year-old who was covered in a rash, i freaked out because i read about this syndrome, and i didn't know what sort of rash that doctors were talking about. can you elaborate on some of the symptoms so parents don't wake up and start to worry unnecessarily? >> there's a lot of parents right now concerned when they hear about this. first and foremost, realize this is a very rare syndrome. they've seen it in about 100, maybe a few more patients. they are doing these studies to find out how many there are because in new york city they're saying 15 since the pandemic started. they are advising doctors to take a look at it. but those symptoms are fever. sustained fevers of four or more days is what we're looking for. the rash is usually more of a splotchy rash, not a bumpy rash. and it can be on the chest, the back, the belly or arms and legs. it can be just about anywhere on top of that they might have red eyes. they aren't get anything of that eye discharge with pink eye but the eyes can be red and then abdominal pain which is what julia daly complained of. that's one of her only complaints before she went in the hospital and had this problem. as a parent, i understand how concerning it can be. but realize this is something that's very, very rare. doesn't happen very often. we're seeing more numbers because we're simply seeing more people having coronavirus across the globe. >> and what are the outcomes normally when kid comes down with this and they're hospitalized? >> so the outcomes can be anywhere from this recovering completely like julia right now. according to her doctors, once they got her through that cardiac arrest, they brought her heart back. she was on four medications. now three. and they expect to come off of that. should be having a very normal life once it gets to that point. unfortunately, as you can tell from her case, it could be possibly fatal as well. so the spectrum is along the whole lines of anywhere from mild to having complete recovery all the way to not. and so it's really hard to tell. the numbers have been so small. this is such a new virus, it's hard to get an understanding what's going on. one thing we've been seeing are these symptoms people are having that are unusual that turn out to be more than we thought they would be. again, that's a numbers game. we're seeing more people with coronavirus, seeing more people with these rare symptoms and rare syndromes. what they are calling it is pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome which describes it perfectly. the immune system on the child goes into overdrive. it causes them to go into shock which results in organ failure, which can result in these other issues. and so they are trying to get a good understanding what's going on. a better handle on the whole thing. and by doing that, that's why they're doing some of these studies, katy. >> dr. torres, how many of these little yellow flags are out there on sort of coronavirus call them side effects, call them later impacts. i don't know what you'd call them but sort of where you hear stories it's like, boy, i didn't have many symptoms but now i've got this issue or i thought i was through it but now i have that issue. you had some that the parent, and this could be just a parent grieving but the parent of that doctor that committed suicide said after she recovered from the virus her brain was scrambled. how many of these sort of excess side effects are we tracking right now to find out if they are indeed related to corona? >> well, they are out there. and we're hearing about them on what we call an anecdotal basis. we're hearing from parents, family members this is happening and it's getting to a certain level. then health authorities are saying this is something we need to look at. there's no tracking system in the u.s. or worldwide for these things. that's one of the reasons this expert panel met over the weekend. we want to track this and get a better understanding. the nih is taking a good look specifically with children because we know they can be asymptomatic and still have coronavirus. we want to find out how many of them are getting it, what their side effects may be if they are spreading it, and if they are having serious consequences to get a better handle on this. with the flu, the pediatric deaths get reported to the cdc. pediatric deaths with coronavirus are not getting reported to the cdc. hopefully that changes so we get a better handle of what's going on with that age group. that's the one age group i want to make sure we have an understanding of what's going on there. >> dr. john torres, thank you so much. it's such a scary time, and i encourage anyone who has any questions to call their doctor, their pediatrician and get them on a teleconference if they can just to put their mind at ease at the very least. dr. john torres, thank you very much. chuck? >> you bet. >> that's for sure. coming up with an uncertain future ahead for everyone, college students are trying to envision what their next semester may look like as some universities are left struggling to pay their bills. how many schools could be forced to close? that's next. you're watching msnbc. when you shop with wayfair, you spend less and get way more. so you can bring your vision to life and save in more ways than one. for small prices, you can build big dreams, spend less, get way more. shop everything home at wayfair.com and i live in san francisco, california. i have been a sales and sales management professional my whole career. typical day during a work week is i'm working but first always going for a run or going to the gym. i love reading. i love cooking healthy. it's super important to me. i was noticing that i was just having some memory loss. it was really bothering me. so i tried prevagen and it started to work for me. i wish i had taken prevagen five or ten years ago. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. for washing away the germs. thank you for keeping us healthy. thank you for taking care of my baby's formula. thank you for keeping my lamby clean. for helping our protective equipment protect us. thank you for taking care of the dishes so that we can take care of each other. thank you for warm cookies. appliances are being used more than ever. thank you to our dedicated team for making, delivering, and servicing #goodthings. brushing only reaches 25% of your mouth.r dedicated team listerine® cleans virtually 100%. helping to prevent gum disease and bad breath. never settle for 25%. always go for 100. bring out the bold™ our bargain detergent couldn't keep up. with us... turns out it's mostly water. so, we switched back to tide. one wash, stains are gone. daughter: slurping don't pay for water. pay for clean. it's got to be tide. college students and incoming freshmen aren't sure what school is going to look like in the fall? will students on be online? twill just be freshmen who live on campuses? some warn they may not be able to survive financially, particularly if they give them a first semester without going on campus. sam brock has the latest for us. >> reporter: in the age of coronavirus, most colleges have been forced to close campuses and turn to online learning. but that could have a chilling reality on classrooms this fall. >> we are seeing colleges that are having to close as a result of this crisis. they are in situations where they were already fragile. >> reporter: some students are dropping out. and others like granger are suing. he's finishing up his freshman year at drexel university in philadelphia. >> why are you filing a lawsuit? >> i feel we shouldn't have to pay full price for an online education. >> reporter: according to its website, drexel costs more than $50,000 a year. now he's demanding the school give him the 40% discount online students receive. >> i've got two classes where the professor is not using a live lecture format. they are just uploading a recorded video that i watch on my own time. >> reporter: in a statement to nbc news, drexel had no comment on the lawsuit but said in part, students continue to have access to drexel's broad spectrum of academic offerings and support. adding that its top priority is the health and safety of the members of its community. if rickenbaker's lawsuit is certified as class action, it could include the university's 24,000 students. and that is just the tip of the iceberg. around two dozen colleges and universities are facing similar lawsuits, including schools in the uc system. >> there are so many people who are losing jobs and this money could really, you know, pay for rent, food. >> reporter: the university of california also did not comment on its lawsuit but says it's provided more than $300 million in prorated housing and dining refunds systemwide for students who chose to leave campus housing. some schools are offering refunds and deferrals, like wesleyan in connecticut, whose president remains optimistic. >> what are the odds that, come the fall, you think your students will be on campus? >> i think they are better than even. i think that the trajectory of testing and our ability to trace and isolate are going in the right direction. >> reporter: the university of arizona already announcing students will be back this fall. >> i want to be the place that's going to test every student and is always going to be able to deliver the best care. >> reporter: colleges and universities holding out hope students can safely return to campus life because, for some schools, their survival may depend on it. >> look, university presidents have -- our thanks to sam brock for that report. university presidents have a -- you want to talk about a balancing act. on one hand, the financial incentive to open up campus is huge because the financial impact of not opening campus, perhaps in the long term for some universities, could be economically cataclysmic. at the same time no certainty that bringing on people from around the country into a college campus into a confined space of even 20 acres is a good idea either. so i -- the university presidents, after some of these local mayors, have some tough, tough decisions to make, katy. >> those big halls filled with students are normally packed with students. so socially distancing in the classroom on a college campus is going to be difficult, let alone a dorm. and then just the liability, chuck, of what happens if somebody gets sick or somebody passes away while they are at school? it's such a huge risk. we've been talking all hour and we'll continue to talk about what summer is going to look like, not just for the jersey shore, where i am now, but what summer will look like for the entire country. tourism is such a big industry across the united states. beaches here, as we said at the top of the hour, are not closed statewide, but the boardwalks are. over the weekend when the weather was nice, there are people that came to asbury park to enjoy the sun, even though the water was cold. to get an idea of what expectations, what the expectations are, let's go to the deputy mayor of asbury park, amy quinn. thank you for being here. what are you expecting? >> so we're really taking guidance from the governor. i assume some sort of reduced capacity. what that number is going to be, i don't know for our businesses, for our boardwalk. asbury is a town not full of big chain stores. full of really mom and pops. so we're really nervous about them opening back up and be able to make it through the season and continue on. memorial day, to labor day, as anyone who knows the jersey shore, knows that when you bank the most amount of money to get you through january, february, march. so we're hoping our retail, our restaurants, our galleries, the stone pony, all of them can reduce capacity but still function. >> how do you do that? do you limit the number of people who can park? >> no, we're not limiting the number of people who can park. there are certainly discussions about closing streets so people can walk. they aren't subject just to the sidewalk. we closed down the boardwalk but not the beach because the beach is so much bigger. and reduced capacity in terms of like maybe we don't let the beaches get as crowded as they've gotten over the years. >> does that mean somebody when they're taking the beach fees -- >> we'd keep track of the number. figure out how many people to keep on safely and only allow that many people on. as people come off, we let more people on. really, we'll be taking our guidance from the governor. >> so many people in the state come here to work over the summer to supplement their income. teachers especially. what is the concern about coming from them about what's going to happen for their incomes this summer? >> so, you know, unfortunately, i don't know what's going to happen for their income. you'll have caroline from the pony on. a lot of her staff are teachers that work the summer stage. whether the summer stage is going to be built and happen. i don't think any of us know at this point. what we want to ensure is the residents are safe. people coming to visit are safe. we're in a little bit of this stance telling people to stay home so you can come back. and that's certainly not anything i have been telling people to do in the six or seven years i've been on. it's always, come to asbury. enjoy our restaurants. hit our retail. watch our shows. go to our galleries. but this is a different time, and we're really just asking fe people to stay home so you can come back. >> are you worried about investment? >> we're worried about development. asbury has been doing very well with development. so if it slows, i don't think it's not going to be the end of asbury. >> it's made a real comeback. our number one priority we're r- our number one priority are the residents in asbury park. the second priority is the businesses. and bringing retail back, which was already struggling because of big corporations like amazon, but bringing retail, galleries, music, all the things that make asburies y s a buasbury back int they can succeed, i think that's our number one priority. >> deputy mayor of asbury park, amy quinn. what happens here will be a model for the rest of the country or, you know, an indicator of how the rest of the country can reopen. as many 530,000 people on this boardwalk on a busy day. >> thank you for having us. >> thank you for having us. >> by the way, kudos to the deputy mayor there for being the first one to say, katy, greetings from asbury park. it was an important phrase we needed to hear uttered. >> she would be the one to say it. >> i know, i know. >> absolutely. i had to tease you there. coming up, the nation's top infectious disease expert, dr. anthony fauci is issuing a warning about reopening the country too quickly. his new data suggests the u.s. death toll could surpass 100,000 by the end of the summer. those details are next. you're watching msnbc. adversity came to town and said, "show me what you're made of." so we showed it our people, sourcing and distributing more fresh food than anyone... our drivers helping grocers restock their shelves. how we're helping restaurants open pop-up markets. and encouraging all americans to take out to give back. adversity came to town. so we looked it in the eye. and it won't be us... that blinks first. woke-up-like-this migraine medicine. the 3:40 mid-shift migraine medicine. introducing ubrelvy™. it's the migraine medicine for anytime, anywhere a migraine attacks without worrying if it's too late or where you happen to be. one dose of ubrelvy™ can quickly stop a migraine in its tracks within two hours. many had pain relief in one hour. do not take with strong cyp3a4 inhibitors. few people had side effects, most common were nausea and tiredness. ask your provider about ubrelvy™ or access doctors from home with telemedicine. migraines can strike anytime, anywhere. ubrelvy™. the anytime, anywhere migraine medicine. ♪ you just call on me brother ♪ if you need a hand ♪ we all need somebody to lean on. ♪ ♪ i just might have a problem that you'd understand. ♪ ♪ we all need somebody to lean on. ♪ the coronavirus model often cited by the white house now projects that 135,000 people will die of covid-19 in the united states by august. this model, from the institute for health metrics and evaluation at the university of washington is nearly doubling its previous prediction, though you could argue it's back to one of its original predictions. experts are tying the sharp increase to the relaxed social distancing measures as states reopen across the country. one of the things about these models is, on one hand, they're static. on the other hand, they're hard to read because the data going into them is not always static. but dr. anthony fauci, the top public health expert on the white house coronavirus task force has warned against a rush to reopen and he did so again during an interview last night on cnn. >> it's the balance of something that's a very difficult choice, like how many deaths and how much suffer ing are you willing to accept to get back to what you want to be some form of normality sooner rather than later? you know, it's something that people feel very differently about it. you know, myself, coming from the vantage point that i come and seeing the danger in it, i have to, i feel i have a moral obligation to give the kind of information that i'm giving. >> you know, katy, hearing dr. fauci there, it does -- and it goes to what we said at the top. it feels as if the federal government, on one hand, is acting as if it's paralyzed to the moment, because it has decided the testing situation belongs to the states and some of these issues -- and yet, you could tell there are members of that task force, and i think that's why so many things are making its way into the press are concerned about the 51 different protocols that we are going to go by, which is obviously creating more and more concern inside that task force. and i guess the question is whether the president and the vice president are hearing it. >> reporter: there's a lack of consistent messaging, chuck. and when you talk to health experts, and you've talked to them, as well. public policy experts. they say the number one priority should be a consistent message. you tell everybody the same thing, so they know what they need to do. they know what the stakes are, they know what the risks are. and then they can move forward. getting a patchwork of messaging is not a good idea when it comes to having to attack a public health crisis all as one. so, chuck, coming up in the next hour, we want to talk about whether or not people are comfortable going out once these states reopen. we've got new polling showing that it's not going to be that easy. people are not that comfortable. also, we're going to talk to new york city mayor bill de blasio. stay with us. with us unpredictable crohn's symptoms following you? 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its single highest daily death total so far. the u.s. senate is in session and holding a confirmation hearing for congressman john ratcliffe. he's president trump's pick to be the director of national intelligence. ratcliffe is a staunch ally of the president, told the senate intelligence committee that he would remain independent, even when facing pressure from the oval office. some good news out of montana this afternoon. frankly, it's good news wherever we see a state saying this and we haven't seen it much. montana documented no new cases of covid-19 today. there are currently 456 confirmed cases among montana's 1 million residents. new york city mayor bill de blasio announced today that new hospitalizations in his city have dropped below 100 per day, but the percentage of new yorkers who have tested positive is on the rise. the mayor is going to join us in a few moments about both of those stats and then some. my co-anchor in the field, katy tur, she was agreeing us from asbury park, new jersey. katy. >> reporter: let me start this hour by saying, greetings from asbury park and not mess it up like i did last hour. >> well done. >> reporter: chuck, we are here because we want to take a look at what the summer season is going to look like across the country. and we thought the jersey shore is right down the road from new york, it's easy for us to get there. let's see what's happening there. and you can see people walking around, but it's not busy here, partly because the summer season obviously hasn't started. but the new jersey beaches, there's 130 miles of coastline and beaches are open, but the boardwalks and all of these beaches are lined with boardwalks are all closed, and that's because these boardwalks see so many visitors on a nice day. asbury park alone, 30,000 visitors on a boardwalk. you can't socially distance. new jersey's governor, phil murphy, says he's going to have some guidance on the beaches and summers coming up soon. there are a lot of open questions, because so much of this state's economy relies on tourism and hospitality. and that relies on a bustling summer season. they've taken hits here before, after hurricane sandy, things got pretty bad all up and down the beaches, people were really worried about beaches, but nothing like what we are experiencing now and all of the unknowns that are out there. this is a place that's not run on big chain restaurants or chain hotels. this is all mom and pop. it's all individuals and this summer season supplements their income or it is their income, frankly, for the year. so these questions are open and they're extremely important for a lot of people in this state. >> thank you, katy. good start to the second hour. let's move to our top guest for this hour. the president says he is worried about sending federal aid to states hit hard by the coronavirus, because that will lead to what he is calling a democratic bailout. that is from an interview with the "new york post." the president adds, it's unfair to ask republicans to bail out democratic states that have been mismanaged over a long period of time. joining me now is new york city mayor, bill de blasio. mr. mayor, look, we're all grown-ups here. we know there's going to be a lot of politics practiced in the negotiating between aid for states and cities and all of that. but do you have your own plan of how to defang the politics out of this. because my fear is that, so the right is going to hit you for pensions and unfilled this, and the left might get angry for states that rely too much on oil and gas industry and we could just devolve into food fights all the way down everybody's budget. how do you avoid that? >> chuck, it's a great question. i think, look, we should think like americans, right? we should actually think about the fact this whole country has gone through this crisis together. and the stimulus we need is to get everyone back on their feet, regardless of who they are, where they are, what their political affiliation is. the president said, look, texas, everything's fine. 100 mayors in texas, republican and democrats both called for stimulus aid because their cities are reeling right now, both from the health care crisis and the economic crisis. the president said that the midwest is fine. no, it's not fine. we see what's happening in iowa with the meat packing plants and how that's having a bigger impact on the community. this is an american problem. so i think the answer is, for all of us to talk about, we're all in this together, this stimulus needs to reach every part of the country in common where the problem is, and according to how bad the problem is. and on top of that, to recognize who's lives and jobs are on the line when we're talking about a stimulus that keeps public services going, that means firefighters, emts, paramedics, police officers, health care workers. those are the heroes of this crisis, but their jobs are actually going to be in jeopardy if we don't have a stimulus that reaches everywhere that's been hit by this. >> you know, mayor de blasio, i'm convinced this conversation changes in a couple of months when we start to see the financial forecast in states that rely on tourism dollars to fund their state governments or sales tax dollars, things like that. but let me ask you a larger philosophical question. former new jersey governor, chris christie, seemed to say, imply yesterday in an interview that maybe we as americans, we're going to have to get used to death for a while in order to reopen the -- let me read you a quote of exactly what he said. he said, we sent our young men during world war ii out to the pacific knowing that many of them would not come home alive and we decided to make that sacrifice because what we were standing up for was the american way of life in the very same way now we have to stand up for the american way of life. it's his justification of how you open up an economy in this unsure health environment. is that where we're headed. we just have to get used to a higher death toll for a while? >> i don't know what governor christie is thinking when he says that. reminds me of what we heard from the lieutenant governor of texas, seeming to almost explain away that people were going to die and treating that like a cost of doing business. i think that's unconscionable. we need to save every life we can save. that's what everyone is being celebrated, the paramedics, the emts, they're being celebrated because they went out and saved lives no matter what. so i think the goal should be to have the strongest national health care system to make our system better and more universal to save every life, that is consistent with our values. it does not have to be inconsistent with an economic recovery. and i get very worried when i hear folks putting the almighty dollar on a pedestal above saving hsave saving human life. i don't think that's consistent with what the vast majority of americans believe. >> i don't envy any of your decisions on life versus livelihood on this. somebody's life, there's no doubt about that. let me send it over to katy tur. katie, next question. >> mayor de blasio, what happens if states don't get the help from the federal government, the funding that they need? >> katy, this is the great irony. you know, we're trying to come out of a shutdown and move towards a restart and a recovery. if we don't get help from the federal government, we're going to be in a perpetual state of some kind of shutdown. that's the reality. right now, we only can provide basic services if we have a budget that's whole. my city has already lost $7.4 billion. that's the projection today. that number is going to get worse over time, for the very reason chuck said. so many of the things we depend on for revenue aren't going to be there in the months and years ahead. so if we have a massive hole in our budget skband we can't pay basic services and we have to look at things like furloughs and layoffs, it's going to stop us from having a vibrant economy and being part of the recovery. it's going to be a different way that we remain shut down. this is what's so strange to me. the federal government gave $58 billion to the airline industry without even thinking about it. but cities and states around the country that are core to america's life and economy might get left out? it makes no sense. the president literally said about his hometown in an interview with the "new york post" that he wasn't for envisioning a bailout for new york city. how on earth do you leave the nation's largest city and one of the drivers of the american economy out of the equation anymore you would leave any other hard-hit part of america o out. it's not what any president should say or do. and it shocks me. any president before, republican or democrat, would have said, we're all in this together and we're going to take care of the places hardest hit, just like after a hurricane or tornado or anything, this president is literally saying, some places are less worthy than others. if he does that, all of america will be held back, because we won't have the recovery we need. >> does that mean you're laying off cops, you're laying off firefighters and teachers? >> if i'm already missing $7.4 billion, i can't raise that money here. as you heard, the economy here will take a long time to recover. if it doesn't come from the federal government, then we have no choice but to cut expenses radically. and that leads to things like furloughs and layoffs. and what does it mean? the very people who are the heroes, the first responders, who have been lauded as the heroes are the people whose jobs would be on the line. >> very quickly, mr. mayor, how concerned are you that the major businesses may in the mid-to-long-term pull out of new york city, because you start to look at this, particularly if we don't have a vaccine, i don't know how you can safely move people in new york city for the next 6 to 12, 18 months or how concerned are you that's going to lead to companies just leaving the city permanently? >> chuck, i don't see that, honestly. i think there'll be a time or transition as we all work our way back to normal. overwhelmingly the last few weeks, news has been good here in new york city, consistent decline in this disease. there's still work to do, as you indicated up top. there's still work to do, but we're moving in the right direction. i think the vast majority of people here and businesses here are going to stay and be committed to this place. this heroic place. what new yorkers have done in this fight has been absolutely heroic for the whole world to see. i think people are inspired by it. and there is confidence that we're going to come back strong and in some ways, even stronger, addressing some of these disparities that needed to be addressed a long time ago. so i'm hearing a lot of confidence from the business community. they want to be here. this is one of the great economic capitals of the earth and will continue to be. >> and a whole bunch of us want to go back out to eat again in new york city and enjoy what is so much fun about that signature, amazing, there's no way to get a bad meal in new york city and we look forward to be able to say and utter that again. >> we welcome you back. >> mayor bill de blasio, thank you very much. the president is in arizona visiting a pop-up factory from the industrial conglomerate honeywell where they're producing some n-95 masks. our own vaughn hillyard joins us now from phoenix. vaughn, first of all, tell me about the factory, tell me about the tour. what are you seeing? does this feel like a campaign event or not? >> chuck, the president plans to give remarks. he's going to be over at that honeywell pop-up plant where they began operations just this last friday and planning to hire several hundred. they say they're going to be able to produce several million n-95 masks. of course, the president is expected to fly over us any minute now. he's flying out here with republican senator martha mcsally, but the last time he was out here, church, was february 19th. and i want to read you a quote of what he said at the time. he said, quote, i think it's going to work out fine. i think when we get into april and the warmer weather that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus. so let's see what happens, but i think it's going to work out fine. he was talking about the spread of covid-19 there at the end of february. well, today he's going to be flying into phoenix and it's 103 degrees and we are into may and it's important to note, with the backdrop that he is flying into is the state of orz just this morning announced that yesterday was the single highest death toll day the state of arizona has recorded this year from covid-19 deaths, 33 deses. the single highest death toll day, chuck. and this is under the orders of doug ducey, who over the last month has been deliberate and methodical in his opening of arizona businesses, but just yesterday he announced that monday dine-in services will begin again and then retail operations will begin again in the stake. >> vaughn hillyard on the ground for us in arizona. vaughn, thanks very much. as businesses begin to reopen across the country, the question -- one of the other questions that remains, will people show up? recent polling suggests they might not, that the majority of americanses are opposed to states opening up, restaurants and perhaps the biggest reason for this, the public's last of faith in the consistency of the federal government's response. bottom line is, they don't know if they've got all the information they need to know to decide for themselves to go out. joining me now to break down this data is our own steve kornacki. so steve, it does look like, you know, this is sort of a reverse field of dreams, if you open it, will they come? right now, unclear. >> very much. and we're going to find out, obviously, from experiences on the ground, some new poll numbers. we can take you through about attitudes towards the president, towards the federal government, towards states that are beginning this reopening process. this, the monmouth poll out in the last few minutes here, this had been trump's approval rating in monmouth poll as the pandemic took hold. you can see now, trump's approval rating now in its new polling, down a few points. disapproval down 54/31 right there. also, there's the question of who folks think is doing a good job and isn't when it comes to this response. governors are doing very well here. federal health agencies. the american public itself, a 51/33 mark. then you get the news media, that's about even. trump is sitting there, 42/51, very similar to his approval rating and congress comes in a touch lower than that. in terms of the federal government's response here, a plurality in this "washington post" poll. they say the federal government has not gone far enough in terms of its response to the virus, 45% are saying that. and this is what you're getting at. should states be -- allow these things to reopen? and you can see here, movie theaters, gyms, nail salons, restaurants, gun stores, barbershops, retail shops, all of these are basically a third or less, down to 18%. golf courses, a little bit more mixed, 41 to 59%. so again, the vast majority say they don't want these things reopening. one question i do think to keep in mind, when you look at this data is again, what's happening on the ground in these states is, they're partially reopening with social distancing limits and sanitary requirements. so i do wonder if you let off -- if you read off all of those sort of requirements to people, would the attitude change at all? but the knee-jerk response here is overwhelmingly, don't open, don't open, those sorts of things. and that is where it is as these states start to reopen, chuck. >> you know, steve, i think what an economist would say to you is after looking at all of this, and going, good luck getting your v-shaped recovery with that. that is the reminder there of why we won't likely get a v-shape ed recovery, because to many people are concerned about where things are. steve kornacki, thank you. katy? >> it's all about confidence, chuck. and in that vein, we're going to take a deeper look at how this pandemic has affected the hotel industry. dire new projections. plus, i'm in front of the stone pony, as you can see. we're going to talk to the gm about what she expects for the summer season. will they be holding any concerts here? first, though, how south korea is already proving that in the midst of a pandemic, they can still play ball. around here, nobody ever does it. i didn't do it. so when i heard they added ultra oxi to the cleaning power of tide, it was just what we needed. dad? i didn't do it. #1 stain and odor fighter, #1 trusted. it's got to be tide. you get way 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socially distant first pitch, as a 9-year-old boy walked towards the catcher inside of a giant clear balloon. starting the new krn aftew seas five-week delay. games are being played without any fans present. instead, pictures of fans will fill the seats, like there. it looks like a nintendo game, doesn't it? there will be cheerleaders inside the stadium, though. well, katy, i don't know how i feel about sports without fans. i've been going back and forth about it myself. i know my son is desperate to talk about, boy, how are the nats looking on the field and all of this. and i think he would be the first one to send his picture into nats park to say, go put my picture on our season ticket seats, but i don't know what it does to the athletes. i think a lot of athletes feed off the energy of a crowd, both negative and positive energy. it's -- look -- it's good for moral for us to have something else on television and i get that and i think there's something to be said about the country, but i guess i hope that all of these leagues open up with special tournaments, do things like that, don't try to recreate a regular season without fans. do something interesting, new, different, and entertaining, but don't try to replace. >> yeah, you know, i agree with what you're saying. and it's even hard for some of the announcers to tell when a home run has been hit, because you usually can tell that by the reaction of the crowd in the stadium. but, listen, i would be happy to see anybody start playing again, frankly. i would let you put my photo in the stands in boston. that's how much i would like to see baseball again. and i don't like the red sox, no offense to anyone red sox fans out there, just, sorry i'm not a fan. i'd watch sock puppets play baseball right now, so i'm happy to watch south korea play ball. i'm happy they're getting back out on the field. >> they're better than sock puppets. >> it would be nice to have a little distraction. something else to watch on television. i think a lot of us have run through the gamut of what netflix has to offer right now. i think going back to old great british baking episodes when you already know the outcome, it's getting a little tiresome. we would also like to see, chuck, some music played from somewhere other than the artist's homes, although it is interesting to -- i thought mick jagger's curtains were really nice. that's what i thought when i saw mick jagger play the other day during one of those concert series. but let's talk about where we are right now. and we would be remiss if we didn't talk about the stone pony and have the gm here of the stow pony, caroline o'toole. you guys had a banging summer season lined up. you were opening on memorial day wi with atray and astacio band, which i wanted to come down and see. >> i know, i know. >> first of all, welcome to asbury park. be sure to tell chuck that the deputy mayor stole my line. but yeah, we had four shows starting to kick off our summer. tray would have been sold out for two nights. we have the job kick murphys coming. we were looking at the biggest summer season we were ever going to have. so it's really disheartening and, um, you know, it's a place that you just never thought you'd be in. >> so what are you going to do? >> well, i was glad when the deputy mayor did say that maybe there's a way to reimage capacity, that it works on the inside. maybe there's a way to use our beautiful summer stage area somehow. i mean, it's really, you have to think outside the box a little bit. because you can't have a building with no income coming in for months. no matter if it's the stone pony or one of our other venues downtown, it just doesn't work. >> you guys are an institution. what does it mean for your business if you aren't able to reopen this summer? >> well, our brand will always still be our brand. so at least we will always have that. we have such a vast history. some of it was good, some of it was in bad times. and unfortunately, this just will become one of the bad times, you know? concerts are the last thing that's supposed to come back. but the live music experience may not be essential, but it is irreplaceable. >> have you considered having concerts and broadcasting them on the internet? would that be something feasible? >> it's really not a model that makes sense, only because, you know, other venues do it. you can easily, you know, look at youtube and look at all the concerts that you want and that sort of thing. >> but you've got relationships with some interesting people. >> yeah. >> wink, wink, nod, nod. where's bruce? >> some of them we would never turn down, that's for sure. we're very lucky in the relationship that we have with bruce, because there's not a lot of venues, like community venues like the stone pony that have a relationship with someone like that. and it's not that the stone pony made bruce famous or anyone else, it's, they made our building famous. >> can i ask you about the people that work for you, that come down during the summer. a lot of teachers, right? >> yeah zplp what a. >> what are they doing? >> right now, they're concentrating on their job at hand. i check in with them all the time. we have zoom meetings on fridays and they're concerned about their kids. >> well, this supplements their income. teachers don't make a ton of money. >> yeah. and i'm -- they're a good group. a lot of them have been here the 17 years that i have been. but and another reason why they're just outstanding is their main concern right now are their kids. and we haven't really gotten beyond that, because there's nothing more important than that right now. >> caroline o'toole, what a bummer for this summer season. i want sounded like it was going to be great. >> i know it's a real bummer about tray. i know that. >> it's a bigger bummer than that. but personally for me, that is a bummer. caroline, thank you so much for being here. chuck? that's the word i've got. bummer. >> yeah. it is, you know, my only hope i have for sort of the smaller vacation communities and like asbury park is that i do think the driving vacation will make a co comeback over the next five years. so in the next five years, i think things are going to be better for the shore. the question is, when does five years get here? it can't get here soon enough. >> the question is, who survives this summer. >> right. exactly, exactly. this will come back and it will come back strong. the question, who's left. anyway, we've got a little breaking news, and not the good kind. the united states has just crossed another grim milestone. more than 70,000 americans have died of the coronavirus. the exact number, as reported moments ago by the nbc news medical unit are tracking a 17,419, and it's likely that number undercounts the overall death toll, because many communities have not fully been able to know of deaths that took place at homes and didn't take place in hospitals. we'll have more on 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colleague, peter alexander, joins he now from the white house. he sent a lot of material to back up his claims here. but what it really does is give a, peter, it's just sort of one sort of view inside these decisions where it's not clear where the science stops and the politics begins. >> yeah, that's exactly right. the allegation here, effectively, is that it was politics before science. this is that new complaint, 88 pages on behalf of rick bright, as you noted, who headed up the federal agency involved in developing a vaccine for covid-19. bright says he was pushed out of that position last month after he pushed back of the administration eeps effort to try to green light broad use of hydroxychloroquine. that's the anti-malaria drug that the president has praised as a possible coronavirus treatment. this complaint, and we are still going through it as we speak right now says that hhs, health and human services political leadership retaliated against dr. bright for his objections and his resistance to funding what he described as potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections, and by the administration itself. basically, as you noted, the government was putting politics before science. bright says the drug lacks scientific merit, even though the administration was promoting it as a panacea. he also says in late december, back then, when he tried to raise red flags internally about the threat posed by the virus, talking about the need for a vaccine and drug development, that he was first met with indifference and then hostility from hhs leaders. he says, expressing these concerns that he made public were protected. that they could not be grounds for removals because he was a whistle-blower. as a reminder, chuck. the day after bright's ouster or his forced removal, i guess, the fda warned americans against the use of hydroxychloroquine for covid-19 outside a hospital or a clinical trial, noting basically the heaareart rhythm risk probl. he was demoted to a lesser job at the national institute of health. >> peter, i want to thank you, i know it's a piece of breaking news and you're in the middle of chasing it, so i totally get if this is sort of not fully cooked, but "the times" is reporting that there's some news that's leaking out of the task force that members are being told the task force itself may get disbanded. considering where we are in our death toll, our number of new cases, all of this, that seems to be an odd time to disband the white house coronavirus task force. how much truth is there to this or is this going to be moving from one task force to the jared kushner task force? >> well, for total transparency, we are still reporting this out, but according to one white house official at this time, we know that whether or not it's being disbanded, we know that it has been sort of minimums ized. we haven't been having these daily briefings. it happened after the task force completed those daily meetings. the president traveling today, earlier said that there may be more task force briefings, but said it wasn't clear whether he would be participating in them or his press secretary, kayleigh mcenany would be doing it. she briefed reporters last week for the first time. but i think the reason this is important, chuck, is it does sort of demonstrate the white house's desire to emphasize economic recovery over the health issues that still exist here, even as we saw these new models, the white house pushes back against them again today, but those models, even by the modelers themselves at johns hopkins, they say, what they do illustrate is that premature rolling back or premature sort of loosening of social distancing will cause to significantly higher number of deaths and of cases, chuck. >> peter alexander, thank you. and katie, to just build on something peter was just reporting on there. i have to tell you that that second statement from the white house, pushing back on the hopkins model only seems to reinforce the notion that there's clearly disagreement in the task force about where we're headed. there is no doubt there is real concern about the health consequences here and that just is. and it's no doubt that the decision has been made that the focus is now on economic reopening. >> we've seen that on all the reporting. and i would just emphasize this, chuck. when it comes to the president's re-election, it has always been about how the economy is doing, and that is because when you talk to his voters -- and i made a point of doing this at the last rallies i went to during the primaries, asking voters why they were still voting for donald trump, what they liked about his presidency. and every single one of them mentioned the economy, chuck. and they mentioned their stocks, they mentioned their 401(k)s. so his re-election is closely tied to the economy, to how well people are doing to jobs. and it looks like he knows that. coming up, let's talk more about the economy and talk more about what this pandemic is doing to the travel industry, from airlines to hotels, we're going to talk to the owner of hotel tides here in asbury park, coming up in just a second. you're watching msnbc. adversity came to town and said, "show me what you're made of." so we showed it our people, sourcing and distributing more fresh food than anyone... we showed it our drivers helping grocers restock their shelves. we showed it how we're donating millions of meals to those in need. we showed it how we helped thousands of restaurants convert to takeout and pop up markets. and how we're encouraging all americans to take out to give back. adversity came to town. so we looked it right in the eye. and it won't be us... ...that blinks first. managingaudrey's on it.s? eating right... ... and staying active? on it! audrey thinks she's doing all she can to manage her type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but is her treatment doing enough to lower her heart risk? maybe not. jardiance can 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our money. we're able to invest through the same exact platform. i really liked that they didn't have any hidden or extra fees. ♪ sofi has brought me peace of mind. truly thank you for helping me prepare for whatever the future has in store. ♪ in spite of the president's executive order to keep meat processing plants open, hog farms are now struggling as coronavirus wreaks havoc on the supply chain. and we've been telling you a little bit about this, that with the lack of the ability to process, that it's going to block things up. pork processing capacity has shrunk by about 25% across the united states. and since january, prices have fallen 50%. joining me now from a pig farm in winthrop, iowa, is nbc news correspondent dasha burns. and dasha, we'd heart about this issue, but the euthanizing of pigs is now a likely result of the inability to get these meat processing plants up and running. >> reporter: yeah, chuck, that's right. i mean, look, these pigs here, they are fully grown and they should be headed off to a processing plant any day now. in fact, 80% of the pigs on this farm go to a tyson plant in waterloo. we were actually there yesterday, reporting on that side of the story. that plant had become a hot spot for covid-19 and is now closed. that means these pigs, they don't have anywhere to go. so today i spent some time with trish and aaron cook. they have been running this farm for 25 years, and they tell me they are facing some bleak options when it comes to the fate of these pigs. take a listen. >> well, in the short-term, we'll try to do the best we can. we'll maybe feed them a less-dense diet and try to slow them up a little, if possible. but that only buys you a little bit of time. that can buy us a week or two, but ultimately, they're going to have to come out. and so if that means we're hoping to avoid euthanizing them, but it's definitely one of our biggest fears at this point. >> and chuck, this farm produces 600 new piglets each week. that means the pigs here, they're going to have to move eventually. trish tells me that hog farming is kind of like turning on a spigot, and once that water starts flowing, there's no stopping it. and at this point, they're dealing with an overflowing bathtub. they just hope that they're not going to have to use that final last resort option of euthanasia, chuck. >> dasha burns with the more complete story of the supply chain issues that have resulted from what is clearly a problem at meat processing plants around the country. dasha, thank you. katy, over to you. >> reporter: chuck, americans are staying home and it is crippling the travel and hospitality industries. air travel has dropped by 95% and 80% of all hotel rooms across the country are empty. a new report from cnbc predicts that americans may not start traveling again at pre-virus levels for two years. joining me now to get to the bottom of this is ryan jiminez, general manager of hotel tides here in asbury park. ryan, thank you for being with us. >> thank you, katy. >> 98% of your staff has been furloughed. >> yes, absolutely. >> can you currently take bookings for the summer? >> unfortunately, we cannot. the city has mandated that we're unable to, but i can't say that the phone has been ringing anyway. >> so when do you expect to reopen and potentially see customers? >> my hope is that we're able to open up in june with restrictions. and i'm praying that we're able to reopen come july, and that we're able to be in full swing by that point. >> reporter: what sort of restrictions? >> there's going to be plenty of restrictions that i'm assuming that are going to happen with regard to capacity. allowing 50% capacity is going to allow us to not have that one-day turnover, so we'll have more time to concentrate on cleaning and disinfecting the rooms. so we're going to be running at 50%. >> are you concerned about consumer confidence? there are all sorts of polls out there saying that people are just not comfortable right now going into a restaurant or traveling. are you concerned that even if you are able to open, that people won't necessarily want to show up? >> i am very concerned about that. i'm also hoping that -- we have been operating for about ten years now. and we have a very loyal customer base, so i'm really counting on that and hoping that my customers will come through for me. but we're also concerned about our staff safety and the safety of our customers, as well. so, there's no forcing hands. there's just hoping, at this point. >> were you able to get any small business loans? any help from the federal government? >> we were able to secure some. i can't say what those are at this point in time and we're hoping that those are going to be helpful for us. >> and you going to be using that to re-hire employees? >> our employees have been furloughed. they're willing and able to come back to work and excited about coming back to work. certainly, i'll allow that up to their discretion if they want to come back, if they feel safe about doing so. >> it's all about building trust. if someone wants to come stay in a hotel room, they want to know it's not just clean, but disinfected. how do you do that? >> we'll have a tremendous amount of signage and that will point to social distancing, as well as hand washing, et cetera. but we're going to be active in more frequently cleaning the common areas, as well. wipe douing down banisters and doorknobs and the lobby bathrooms and utilizing disinfectant spray, more so than we ever had. and as i said, without having that day turnover, that allows us more time to disinfect those rooms, as well. >> are you writing off this summer season potentially as a loss and looking forward to 2021? >> no. no, i'm very hopeful that this is all going to change and i'm very positive that, you know, we're new jersey. we're new jersey strong. and i think that we're going to get through this. you know, the world wants to reopen right now, and we want to reopen right now. we just want everyone to be safe. >> ryan jiminez of hotel tides. ryan, thank you very much for coming on. >> thank you so much. it was a pleasure. >> appreciate your time. >> good luck. >> thank you. >> chuck, over to you. >> thank you. it is giving tuesday. and for americans who are deaf or hard of hearing, communicating is more than just sign language, facial expressions and lip reading are pretty important, as well. that's hard to do if everyone is wearing a mask, as they should. up next, we'll introduce you to a kentucky college student who has found a way to innovate and a way to help those americans communicate while still being socially responsible. how about no no uh uh, no way come on, no no n-n-n-no-no only discover has no annual fee on any card. i do motivational speakingld. n-n-n-no-no in addition to the substitute teaching. i honestly feel that that's my calling-- to give back to younger people. i think most adults will start realizing that they don't recall things as quickly as they used to or they don't remember things as vividly as they once did. i've been taking prevagen for about three years now. people say to me periodically, "man, you've got a memory like an elephant." it's really, really helped me tremendously. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. and look, it feels like i'm just i'm sewasting time.nfo on options trading, that's why td ameritrade designed a first-of-its-kind, personalized education center. their award-winning content is tailored to fit your investing goals and interests. and it learns with you, so as you become smarter, so do its recommendations. so it's like my streaming service. well except now, you're binge learning. for a limited time, get up to $800 when you open and fund an account. call 866-300-9417 or visit tdameritrade.com/learn. ♪ soon, people will be walking back through your door.. soon, life will move forward. we'll welcome back old colleagues, get to know new ones some things may change, but we'll still be here, right here, so you can work on the business of getting your business back. at paycom, our focus will always be you and we'll see you soon. when taking a break from everyday life is critical to everyone's health, there is one thing we can all do together: complete the 2020 census. your responses are critical to plan for the next 10 years of health care, infrastructure, and education. let's make a difference, together, by taking a few minutes to go online to 2020census.gov. it's for the well-being of your community and will help shape america's future. ♪ today is giving tuesday. now, a day to rally support behind the coronavirus response and the outbreak. nbc news and msnbc are the signature media partners behind giving tuesday now. and in that spirit, we have the inspiring story of a college student from kentucky who is making masks for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. wlex's claire cobski has more. >> reporter: 21-year-old ashley lawrence is learning a new skill. >> you want the needle to go like in here. >> my mom really likes to craft and she's really good at just picking stuff up and just doing it. so i came down one morning, and i was like, what if we made a mask? >> these aren't just any masks. they're for the deaf and hard of hearin hearing. >> it is -- that's part of the grammar. so i don't know if you have seen virginia moore on andy bashir's things at 5:00, but she's very emotive, and if half of that is carbon because you're wearing a mask, half of what you're saying is being missed. so even if it's not physically talking, just using asl, then you need to have that kind of access. >> reporter: ashley is studying education for the deaf and hard of hearing, so this is a bit of a passion project. >> i felt like there was a huge population that was being looked over because they were -- we're all panicking right now, and a lot of people are just not being thought of. so i felt like that was very important that even in a time like this, people need to have that communication. >> wlex's claire copski. for more information, you can go to nbc news.com. and chuck, you can't see it, but i definitely am smiling underneath this mask. >> you know, i had a hard time the other day, i gave sort of a nonverbal smiling thank you to somebody and i realized, boy, i hope my eyes said it. and i was like, i need to verbalize my thank you, that's for sure. anyway. a family in arizona is bringing some joy to their neighborhood. and breaking up those hours of home schooling. they created the kind cart. it's a cart that kids can wheel through their neighborhood and after a few days, they pass it on to another family. check it out. and they get a chance to paint it. we're told the cart has visited five houses already and will continue on its way through the neighborhood. and i want to throw a good shout-out to the kind card. it was inspired by the children's museum of phoenix and its 10-foot-tall robot that the kids can paint at the museum. i've been to this museum, i've used it. we've done it for our own sort of, i believe it was immediate the midterms that we were out there in arizona and we loved our friends at the children's museum and they shared this story with us and we thought we would share it with you. love the kind cart idea. i may see if some of the younger kids in my neighborhood can maybe fire that up. that is it for us, so farewell from asbury park on behalf of katy tur. nicole wallace and brian williams who loves to give greetings from asbury park himself will pick things up after a quick break. renovate y, from inspiration to installation. like way more vanities perfect for you. nice. way more unique fixtures and tiles. pairing. ♪ nice. way more top brands in sinks and faucets. way more ways to rule your renovation. nice! on any budget, with free shipping. wayfair. way more than furniture. with hepatitis c... ...i ...best for my family.my... in only 8 weeks with mavyret... ...i was cured. i faced 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...because i am cured. talk to your doctor about mavyret. so chantix can help you quit slow turkey. along with support, chantix is proven to help you quit. with chantix you can keep smoking at first and ease into quitting so when the day arrives, you'll be more ready to kiss cigarettes goodbye. when you try to quit smoking, with or without chantix, you may have nicotine withdrawal symptoms. stop chantix and get help right away if you have changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, depressed mood, suicidal thoughts or actions, seizures, new or worse heart or blood vessel problems, sleepwalking, or life-threatening allergic and skin reactions. decrease alcohol use. use caution driving or operating machinery. tell your doctor if you've had mental health problems. the most common side effect is nausea. talk to your doctor about chantix. good day. brian williams with you. nicole wallace will be here momentarily. 3:00 p.m. in the east, 12:00 noon out west. here are the facts as we know them at this hour. our country now has roughly 1.2 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus. the death toll has passed north of the 70,000 mark. just a reminder, of course. the actual number of confirmed cases is likely far higher, as just over 2% of our population has by now been tested. the president is about to land in artist for his first cross-country trip away from the white house since the start of the pandemic. during his short time on the ground in phoenix, he's going to be holding a roundtable on native american issues. he's also going to visit a honeywell plant that is now producing those much-needed n-95 masks. no word on whether or not he'll be wearing one. two people familiar with the matter tell nbc news that the coronavirus task force is in the early stages of winding down. nbc news is told the meetings in the situationroom have been shorter and they no longer meet every day. however, dr. anthony fauci, dr. deborah birx are still expected to be at the white house on a daily basis. and the news breaking in the last half hour, the doctor who was ousted last month from his job leading our country's effort to find a vaccine has filed a whistle-blower complaint. dr. rick bright says he was removed as head of the biomedical authority for resisting the trump administration's efforts to expand the use of the anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine to fight the coronavirus. dr. bright is expected to make a statement via teleconference this hour, and as we wait for that, i'm joined now by my colleague, nicole wallace, host of "deadline white house." let's back up one item. whose idea do you think it was at this time to potentially disband the coronavirus task force? >> you know, i was wondering the same thing when i saw that story cross the proverbial wire, just a little bit ago and it was akin -- you know, i keep coming back to post-9/11 america, where even though we were urged to, and with an american spirit, we went back about our lives and tried not to be afraid. we did so with the tsa at our airports, with a coded color system of alerts. with a real knowledge that everything had changed. the idea of disbanding this task force within 12 hours of receiving the news that we are still on our way toward a peak, that we're about to quadruple the number of infections in this country, that as we walk up to june 1st, the daily death rate will double. it's a terrible signal, but it's terrifying that the government plans to start doing less to protect us. and this whistle-blower complaint, the last time you and i sort of sat next to each other and tried to understand and cover a whistle-blower complaint, it was the one that resulted in donald trump's impeachment and i've been reading through the notes from our colleagues who have read through the complaint itself and it's a veritable potpourri of all of donald trump's alleged sins over the three years of his presidency. it's a refusal to listen to science, it's the direction of contracts to people close to jared kushner. dr. bright says in the complaint that he felt pressure to rush access and some of this scientific research to lobbyists and people with connections. and it is all of the things that make not just donald trump's detractors, but the people in congress that were reluctant to talk about all the things that have gone on, it will be fascinating to see how this whistle-blower complaint lands. and people who know more about it are joining us now. our correspondent, peter alexander. white house correspondent, and co-anchor of white house today, ashley parker, and dr. ann r rimoin, a professor of ep deemology at the ucla fielding school of public health. peter alexander, take us through. you've been spending -- you've spent more time with this whistle-blower complaint than i have. what jumps out at you? >> it's going to take a little more time. it's approaching 90 pages. we're still reading through it right now. but it's written on behalf of dr. rick bright. he, as you note, is this federal scientist who headed up the agency involved in developing a vaccine for coronavirus. he says he was forced out of his position last month after he pushed back against the administration's efforts to sort of green light the wide use of hydroxychloroquine. you've heard that name before. it's the anti-malaria drug that the president has repeatedly praised as a possible coronavirus treatment. you'll remember, the fda put out a warning about it just a couple of weeks ago. frankly, the day after bright was pushed out. the complaint says that hhs, health and human services political leadership retaliated against bright for his objections and resistance to funding potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections and by the administration itself. brian and nicole, you guys sort of hit this on the head. the allegation fundamentally here is that this administration was putting politics before science. among the details here is that bright was pressured to steer lucrative contracts to clients of well-connected -- of a well-connected lobbyist. that's among the details we are learning here. the president, when he was pressed on this at the time, a couple of weeks ago, said he didn't know bright. hhs, health and human services, has not responded to our efforts to reach out to them. we contacted them a short time ago here, but the bottom line is, it's another example of at least in the eyes of the president and this administration's critics and as it turns out, career officials within it, that the focus was often on politics and not on what was in the best interests of american's health. >> you know, ashley parker, this has played out largely as dr. bright alleges it has. there is so much in the public record. there's donald trump standing at the podium in the white house briefing room, talking about high drydroxychloroquine saying do you have to lose? within minutes, the head of the american medical association came out and said, your life. it would seem the corroboration already exists for what much of dr. bright alleges. but i want to read something that has really gotten under president trump's skin and has seem to have resulted in turning the entire intelligence agency into making him right. but here is what he writes. in late december 2019, dr. bright and other public health officials began taking note -- this is december 2019. began taking note when a respiratory virus broke out in wuhan, china. unlike secretary azar, dr. bright and other public health officials were fully aware of the emerging threat of covid-19. and by early january 2020, it was clear to dr. bright almost immediately that the virus was highly contagious, spreading rapidly, and could have a high mortality rate. dr. bright and his staff recognized the urgent need to obtain genetic sequencing information about the virus to acquire viruses and clinic specimens from people infected with the virus and to share with laboratories and companies. it's just another piece of smoking gun evidence that people that worked for donald trump, whether or not they couldn't get on his radar or not, were trying to sound the alarm about this deadly pandemic. >> well, as you and i have discussed previously, nicole, to your first point, the president often says the quiet part aloud. not just that he was standing there at the lectern, pushing hydroxychloroqui hydroxychloroquine, but you can look back to his public comments at a moment where the complaint says, "the washington post" reported, the national intelligence officials were giving him warnings in his daily briefing, and you have the president saying, i don't think this is a big issue. i think pieces are going to go from 15 to 0. i think this may disappear like a miracle. so you have a public record of that, as well. and oftentimes, it does take a lot of work to get something to rise to the level where the president appreciates it and acts on it. and that's why you had this weird world in which sometimes people, lawmakers, for instance, on other issues, they know the president watches cable news almost nonstop. so if they're trying to get something on his radar, they may try to go get booked on one of the shows that he watches to get a message to him. they may try to send a tweet that gets his attention. and so i think it is fair to say, based on previous reporting, that this administration, driven by the president at the top, was slow to recognize this crisis. >> mm-hmm. >> ann rimoin, both of these stories we're covering, the rumored end of the white house task force and this whistle-blower complaint fly in the face of rigor and expertise that american taxpayers, at a scary time, should be able to expect and demand from their federal government. and i'm speaking to you in a state that has, what, 56,000 cases of covid-19, in a state where the politicians have been struggling mightily to contain thi this. >> correct. correct. i would say, you know, this is -- this is very important to have scientists who understand what is happening be advising. and i think that the idea that this would be disbanded at this point is very ill founded and surprising to everybody the idea that we didn't move fast enough at the beginning is probably because we didn't have such a strong team in place. i think that there will be incredible backlash from the scientific community, from the general population, if we see the lack of scientific rigor involved in decision making and so, i -- you know, i think there's still a longer story ahead before anything happens in terms of disbanding or any kind of discussion of not having a strong scientific backing for decision making. >> ashley parker, your colleague, phillip bump, has some great reporting on the number of hours that anthony fauci and deborah birx have logged, standing silently while the president says, among them, to the american people, that maybe we should look at injecting bleach into people's bodies. as a comparison point, i believe, in some of the reporting about the resistance to having officials testify in front of the house, i guess they're able to go to the senate, but not the house, were there any substantiative explanations for winding down this task force? was it a decision like the reporting suggested, that maybe there were better uses of their time? or was it a concession that it was no longer the kind of backdrop for donald trump to stand in front of and play head of coronavirus task force, that it had served its purpose. what is the explanation being given for winding down the task force? >> well, this is a breaking story, so to be up-front, we don't have all of the answers to that yet. but a place to start is, we had heard concerns all along that this was not the best use, frankly, of either the president's time or of these public health officials' time. there was a moment where the doctors actually decided to break off and do their own sort of mini task force, in addition to all of these other task forces, because that was the place they felt like, not in the main one, not in jared kushner's shadowed task force, but in one just with six other doctors, they felt like they could have the data-driven, scientific discussions they needed to have. so they themselves, for instance, recognized that there were perhaps better uses for their time, although i don't think that is why this task force is potentially being wound down. one of the key things was, it started off as a task force meeting privately and briefing the public to get information, public health information out to the people who needed it. at a certain point, very early on, the president took that over. he took over those briefings and the task force we reported, a lot of their time was devoted to sort of the pr side and the optics side of the coronavirus response. and then, you take that and the president received internal polling and public polling that showed that him standing there in that formal, hallowed setting of the white house briefing room, behind the podium, and basically holding deconstructed. campaign rallies was hurting him politically. so when there was a move for him to stop doing that, you take away a portion of what the task force had become. and some of it feels like a natural evolution. although, i'm certainly not arguing that there does not need to be an internal group solving a crisis that we are very much in the middle of with no end in sight. >> ashley, this is the part in the program where i feel like it's my role to say, we are covering the facts as they present themselves, but note to viewers, this is not normal. peter alexander, i want to bring you back in on the whistle-blower complaint. it seems to have as an undercurrent, if the headline is displacing science with the president's political objectives, as ashley is discussing with the mere existence of the task force, as a strong undercurrent, it has an obligation of corruption or at least the appearance of such. let me read some more of the president's connections to some of the drugs that he was pushing from that podium at those task force briefings. bright's legal team says in the complaint that he felt pressure to rush access to chloroquine treatment after president trump had a conversation about it with oracle chairman larry ellison. nbc news first reported this connection on april 23rd. larry ellison sits on the white house quick comic-con recovery task force and is one of the president's top supporters in the tech industry. as "the new york times" reported, mr. trump's first expressed interest in hydroxychloroquine a few weeks ago, telling associates that mr. ellison, a billionaire and a founder of oracle had discussed it with him. i mean, he seems to be tying a lot of the direction he got as a scientist as it pertained to drug treatments that were unproven to political and financial ties of the president's supporters. >> you're exactly right, nicole. and the takeaway here is you have this dr. rick bright, a federal scientist, who was saying that he wanted to focus where he believed the real value, time, and money should be on, on drugs that he believed could make a significant difference, not unproven ones that he viewed as dangerous,hyd at the same time the president was having meetings, some of them with to become news commentators briefing the president on this very topic here. to the conversation you were having earlier about the disbanding or the shrinking, minimizing, as it were, of the white house coronavirus task force, we are getting some new reporting even as we speak right now that according to senior administration official, the effort is focused on taking it away sort of from the white house and taking it back to the, quote, agency level, where they can deal with this issue more broadly. we are reaching out to some of the doctors on the task force, but i'm also hearing from some of our colleagues and there have been some meetings at the white house that have been for limited number of reporters given social distancing, but they're saying the vice president mike pence within the last hour told some reporters that we are, quote, not out of the woods yet, expressing some real concerns about particular series of cities, including chicago and des moines, iowa, among those cities where there are concerns about the potential for numbers to keep rising here. but pence was touting the fact that in that conversation that we have, as he said, flattened the curve. in spite of the optimism you heard from both the vice president and the president, the data reveals, as we have seen, that while new york city may be on the backside of that mountain, nationwide, the numbers are still going up. speaking to dr. scott gottlieb, the former fda commissioner yesterday, he said to me, there are still at least 20 states where the number of cases are going up right now. so while new york, which was often viewed as epicenter, may be in a better place now, there are pa whole heck of a lot of americans, even as their states reopen at this time, that have some serious, tough days ahead of them. >> indeed. thank you for stressing that and our thanks to peter alexander, to ashley parker, and dr. ann rimoin, who's going to be staying with us. a quick break. when we come back, we're going to continue to talk about dr. bright's whistle-blower complaint with the former director of the cia, john brennan. (soft music) - [female vo] restaurants are facing a crisis. and they're counting on your takeout and delivery orders to make it through. grubhub. together we can help save the restaurants we love. swithout even on yoleaving your house. just keep your phone and switch to xfinity mobile. you can get it by ordering a free sim card online. once you activate, you'll only have to pay for the data you need- saving you up to $400 a year. there are no term contracts, no activation fees, and no credit check on the first two lines. get a $50 prepaid card when you switch. it's the most reliable wireless network. and it could save you hundreds. xfinity mobile. i wanted to show you pictures just into us. this is sky harbor airport in phoenix and perhaps we can rerack the scene we saw just a moment ago. air force one landed, taxied to a halt. the president came down the air stairs and again, what's become a shocking image to people in the states that are still very much indoors is the president came down, no mask, shaking hands with the contingent waiting to welcome him to phoenix, into the limousine. he's got at least two events, but not a long day. certainly no rallies before flying back to washington tonight. we are continuing to follow breaking news out of washington at this hour, where dr. rick bright, the former head of the federal office working on a coronavirus vaccine has filed a formal whistle-blower complaint with the inspector general of the department of health and human services after he was abruptly removed from the job last month. dr. bright says he was fired for questioning the use of hydroxychloroquine, the drug president trump promoted from the podium in the briefing room as a treatment for the coronavirus. at this hour, the doctor and his lawyers are going to be talking to journalists in a kind of telenews conference. and when that happens, we will turn around appropriate portions of it. we are joined right now by john brennan, a 25-year veteran of the central intelligence agency, who served as director of the cia during the obama administration from 2013 to 2017. also happens to be an msnbc contributor. director brennan, i want to start by taking you back a little bit to one of the last stories we were concentrating on over the weekend into monday, and that's china. the clear effort to divert blame to china, but there was discussion of the intelligence community all along. wouldn't our intelligence community have known the certainty that they brief the president, what they knew, what they were picking up, if health care professionals in our government knew of an emerging illness, surely our intelligence community had good eyes on the situation. correct? >> hi, brian. well, i'm sure that the intelligence community was focused on what was evolving inside of china when the word first came out that there was this novel strain of the coronavirus that was starting to rear its ugly head. and so what the cia and other intelligence communities would be doing would be to see how accurately the chinese government was reporting what was going on. and also to try to get some insight about what the facts were in terms of in the wuhan province, how prevalent was that virus and what the chinese government was doing to try to address it. so i think in the early days, the intelligence community would have been reporting to donald trump and others what they knew about it, as well as what they were doing to try to find out more. >> whistle-blowers happen in democratic and republican administrations, of course. they have happened since the codifying legislation made it a process. you're a former agency head. i'm sure that you lived in fear of someone coming into your office and saying, boss, we have a whistle-blower. but i'm also quite sure you would defend the codified, enshrined rights to protect whistle-blowers in our system. >> i ernl wouldn't have lived in fear of it, because the whistle-blower system is designed to encourage individuals who believe they have identified corruption or malfeasance within the government to have a mechanism to come forward to report that and to make sure that the committees of jurisdiction in the congress are aware of this and that things can be done. so what dr. bright was doing within the department of health and human services was appropriately bringing it to the inspector general's attention. and now it needs to be looked at very carefully. because i think all americans want to make sure that their public servants are not abusing their authorities. and so i'm very much hoping that the whistle-blower system is going to remain strong, despite the efforts of the trump administration to rye to squash it. >> director brennan, i know nicole has a lot of questions for you. we're going to dip into this teleconference dr. bright is holding flanked by his lawyers and see what's being said right now. >> we are hyperfocused on a single mission to save lives, by protecting both our national security and the health and safety of people around the world. i've spent my entire career studying, preparing for, and leading pandemic preparedness response. i've learned and i've served in various roles in government, in industry, and global organization before joining barta in 2010 to lead our nation's effort to develop tools to respond to a pandemic. >> it was my job to ensure that our country had life-saving tools to be as prepared as possible for a pandemic like covid-19. and today, my team at barta has formed over 40 industry partnerships to accelerate the availability of tests and treatments and vaccines to address this pandemic. the past few years, however, have been beyond challenging. time after time, i was pressured to ignore or dismiss expert and scientific recommendations. and instead to award lucrative contracts based on political connections. in other words, i was pressured to let politics and cronyism drive decisions over the opinions of the best scientists we have in government. and ultimately, i was removed from my position because of my continued insistence that the government invest funds allocated by congress, hard-earned taxpayer dollars to address the covid-19, and invest them into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, instead of funding projects that were vetted by cronies or politically connected companies. most recently, i witness ed government leadership rushing blindly into a potentially dangerous situation by bringing in a non-fda-aproved chloroquine from pakistan and india, from facilities who had never been approved by the fda. their eagerness to push blindly forward without sufficient data to put this drug into the hands of americans was alarming to me and my fellow scientists. i could not in good conscience ignore the scientific recommendations to limit access to those drugs under the direct care of a doctor and instead allow political ambition and timelines to override scientific judgment. and that was just one of the many improper things that i pushed back on with senior leadership within hhs. we are in an extraordinarily difficult global crisis and the worst might still be ahead of us. there are many scientific questions yet to be answered. we need strong leadership. americans need to have all the facts. they need to know the truth about this pandemic. they need to be able to trust that their government and the information they hear from politicians is based on scientific merit. the american people are strong and resilient. we can handle the truth. with accurate and consistent information, americans can be empowered to help find soluti solutions. we need to reestablish trust in our government and in each other, by working together, we can end this outbreak. we cannot afford to silence and dismiss scientists in our country and to strain or sever our ties from scientists around the world. there has never been a time in our life where their voice has been needed more. and our scientists need strong leadership, too. leaders that provide them with clear and consistent guidance and communication. leaders who trust their professional scientific

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