Potentially much worse. And the dysfunction and political impulses of this administration threaten to exacerbate this crisis even more. Right now, President Trump is downplaying warnings from scientists inside his administration and yesterday he claimed dr. Fauci was playing all sides of the reopening debate. Today, hes claiming that the testimony from dr. Rick bright, a top vaccine expert, is simply not legitimate. Our window of opportunity is closing. If we fail to improve our response now based on science, i fear the pandemic will get worse and be prolonged. There will be likely a resurgence of covid19 this fall, and it will be greatly compounded by the challenges of seasonal influenza. Without better planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history. Hes nothing more than a really disgruntled, unhappy person. I watched him, and he looked like an angry, disgruntled employee who, frankly, according to some people, didnt do a very good job. We should note, according to dr. Brights lawyers, the government watchdog says theyd, quote, found a substantial likelihood of wrong doing at hhs based on a complaint he filed with the Inspector General. This is not just one he said versus another he said. This is an Inspector General saying strongly that there was something here. The white house says it strongly disagrees with brights allegations. Now, as the president breaks with experts inside his administration, he is cheering on movements in this country eager to roll back local restrictions, notably, though, in states that will be key to his reelection like wisconsin, pennsylvania, and michigan, a state he visited today, just a few days after tweeting that the great people of pennsylvania want their freedom now and they are fully aware of thwhat that entails. The white house is now effectively pulling a 180 on its Pandemic Response messaging, apparently. Theyve gone from saying that this pandemic caught everyone off guard to now suggesting they were prepared from the start. As if 85,000 deaths and 36 million jobs lost is somehow all going to plan . What our administration did under the leadership of President Trump was do an entire 2018 pandemic preparedness report. Beyond that, we did a whole exercise on pandemic preparedness in august of last year, and had an entire after action report put together. In other words, the obama biden paper packet was superceded by President Trumps style pandemic preparedness response. It was much better, which was much more complete and which was a lot tougher. And after telling the cdc to basically water down its reopening guidance, drafts of which did end up leaking out, moments ago the agency finally posted recommendations for communities, schools, workplaces and events. Were going to dive into that in a moment so that you get all of it. But weve got every corner of the story covered. Joining me now from capitol hill is nbcs garrett haake. Dasha is in pennsylvania, one of our county to county project counties that has seen some clashes over reopening and robert costa, National Political reporter for the Washington Post and also an msnbc political analyst. Lets start geographically and move up pennsylvania avenue. So garrett, i want to start with you and the rick bright testimony that got things started today. And apparently, at least, motivated the white house to say, hey, thats not true. We had plans. And then we heard from secretary the hhs secretary disputing a lot of rick brights testimony. Whatever one wants to make of the bright testimony and the whistleblower complaint, it got the white houses attention. Reporter it got the white houses attention before the bright testimony even started with the president preemptively tweeting, essentially trying to discredit bright, arguably drawing more attention to him in the first place. I think the bright comments that perhaps were most likely to get under the white houses skin are the ones we have all seen play out in realtime and the keyword from him was planning, all the elements where the administration did not have a plan on things like nationwide testing, where we still dont have a nationwide testing program, to the production and distribution of ppe, which we all, as americans, saw play out in realtime with governors from all over the country scouring the globe to get ppp. That was one of the more damning parts of dr. Brights testimony. And then one that we havent seen played out yet but i think we have to pay enormous attention to because it is dr. Brights specific area of expertise and thats vaccine creation and distribution. He expressed a lot of concern that the models arent there to make 300 million doses of vaccines and distribute them around the country to the people who need them most in a timely fashion. So weve seen his concerns play out with our own eyes in realtime on two out of those three things, and hes raising a red flag about thing three, vaccine distribution, that i think we would all be wise to continue to monitor really closely. And then i want to play a clip here, and shannon, it may or may not be related to the plan that Kayleigh Mcenany was talking about, but heres congresswoman susan brooks asking dr. Bright about various plans that he participated in. Take a listen. The window is closing to address this pandemic because we still do not have a standard, centralized coordinated plan to take our nation through this response. That was not the byte. Let me see right now. I think weve got the byte i was looking for, specifically. Susan brooks and dr. Bright. Do we have that now, control room . All right, let me read it to you. Read to you. She asked this. The white house put forth, in september of 2018, shannon, a National Biodefense plan. Did you participate in that National Biodefense plan . He said he did. Many of us did. Then he added, those plans have been in place. Its disappointing they were not pulled out in january of this year and followed. They were not put on the table with a strong leader, indicating these are our plans, everyone fall in line. Do we now know what plans Kayleigh Mcenany is talking about . Is it these various exercises and afteraction reports that the times reported on last fall . Reporter well, i mean, this is what i can tell you about plans at this point, chuck. There were a number of different plans throughout the government. We dont know exactly which one Kayleigh Mcenany was talking about. We havent been able to get any clarity from that from white house officials or from people in the press office here. But yes, i mean, to the point, there were plans in the government, but the problem was, was anyone following those plans . You know, theres people in the government whose entire job is to prepare for this. You know, sadly, some people would say the white house got rid of some of those people. But you know, i think even when the administration presents plans like mcenany said they will do tomorrow, the question remains, all right, so you had these plans in place, did you follow them . And if so, why was there such a shortage of ppe . Why are we just now getting this Marshall Project for a vaccine really up and running . These questions remain, despite what various plans might have been going around the government into this pandemic. Robert costa, this issue of testing and Contact Tracing, it is something that many on capitol hill believe is needed, bipartisan belief. Many Business Leaders believe it. The president is not convinced. He seems to be skeptical. Again, today, hes in pennsylvania, and he says, oh, testings overrated. You know, the more we test, the more cases we have. He doesnt seem to get he doesnt seem to understand why thats necessary or is there some other reason . Heres heres how the white house is seeing this. They know that businesses, to reopen, are asking the white house, through their different advocacy groups, to have testing at a certain level in all of these states so they can bring workers back without being sued. And so in response to that, many congressional republicans, including leader mcconnell, have privately told them, look, were going to push for Liability Protections in this next round of legislation, so if we dont have the testing capacity, were going to still be able to try to get you reopened. At the same time, many of these businesses, they want to have that liability shield, but they still need a longterm testing strategy, because you may be protected from lawsuits to some extent but if you dont have a test and the swabs and the Contact Tracing plans, federally, for september, october, later this year, then you dont really have a longterm strategy for survival as a business. Robert, is his allergy to owning the testing issue simply because hes getting bad press over testing . It comes back to what dr. Bright was testifying about today. Listen closely to the testimony, and you hear him talking about peter navarro, the white house trade advisor, who was warning, in his series of memos earlier this year, about the need to expand testing across the country, about this coming pandemic, and he was working closely with dr. Bright, but the white house, in terms of its action, theyre very defensive about the action they took on china and flights. But when it comes to testing, every governor, almost to a t that i have interviewed in recent weeks, has said testing was not there when they needed it and thats why theyve been turning to all these Different Companies and foreign countries. As we said at the top, the president himself seems to be more focused on reopening states particularly states that matter to him in his bid for 270 electoral votes. Heres what he said i want to go over to dasha burns in Beaver County, pennsylvania. Heres what the president said yesterday about states and about what he thought was politically happening here on these reopenings. Take a listen. They want to get their states open. Some governors and some, perhaps, partisans, maybe for election reasons, dont want to have their states opened, and then some shouldnt open them quite yet, you know, theyre not ready. They went through a lot and theyre not quite ready. But no, were opening our country. People want it open. Dasha burns, youve been in Beaver County in western pennsylvania, it was a big, important county to Donald Trumps path to carrying pennsylvania in 2016. It is the only county in western pennsylvania not allowed to open by the democratic governor, so it does seem as if its become a political hot potato there. Reporter yeah, chuck, i mean, President Trump stepped into a pretty divided state today. The governor, somewhat cautious in reopening the state. Other people are none too pleased about that, especially here in beaver where they really feel they feel left behind by the governor, and theyre behind President Trump, and he really added fuel to the fire today in what has already been a pretty big clash. Were going to see a big protest in the capital tomorrow, and people here are also going to be protesting at the courthouse locally, but one thing that struck me out of some of the images coming out of other states like wisconsin, as ive been traveling across the country, talking to people about this reopening issue, the most common argument i hear from local officials that want their counties reopened is that, look, residents are going to know what to do. Theyre going to know how to keep themselves and their communities safe. Well, first of all, ive heard from a lot of residents that they do want a little bit more guidance from authorities as to how to do that. But also, i think what we saw out of wisconsin, when they lifted that stayathome order and you saw those bars packed wall to wall with people celebrating, i wonder if those images wont become sort of a counterargument to that, chuck. And dasha, how much are you hearing, the belief that somehow politics is behind the inability of beaver to be reopened and we know that Beaver County has had an outbreak at a Senior Living center, which is what why that lone county, the governor wasnt ready to let them open. Reporter yeah, chuck, i got to tell you. People are pretty unhappy with this democratic governor and theyre telling me that this might not be so good for joe biden and the democrats, but really, these Small Businesses on this main strip here, they are sort of caught in the cross fire right now between local and state governments, so the government says beaver stays in this red, restricted phase, but the county commissioners came out and said, listen, if these businesses, if you all want to move from that red phase into the yellow phase of reopening like the rest of the counties in this area, we are not going youre not going to see any consequences from us. The governor, though, had some pretty harsh words about that. He said counties that are bucking his orders might see funding withheld and businesses reopening prematurely could see sanctions so that leaves all these folks, the people ive been talking to all day, pretty confused and scared, chuck. They feel like theyll see terrible consequences to their livelihoods if they cant reopen but also bad consequences if they do choose to reopen too early, chuck. And robert costa, i want to put up these poll numbers an Anthony Fauci right now. This is from cbs ugov. 83 of democrats trust him. 51 of republicans, a majority, bare majority, but 49 of republicans say no. Has fauci been benched by the president . Is that your understanding . Well, the president s not a baseball manager, but he certainly sidelined, politically, dr. Fauci. Youve seen the white house in terms of its Communications Message no longer have these coronavirus briefings. Theyre news briefings dominated by the president. His exchanges with reporters. Dr. Fauci, though, still has a strong voice, testifying before the senate this week, but you dont see the white house rallying behind dr. Fauci as a team member. You see him cast aside in the way they describe him. Hes a nonpartisan official. Hes not part of the trump team, but those close to dr. Fauci say hes very comfortable not being part of a partisan team. Hes there to serve the country. And shannon pettypiece, about debra birx, we havent seen her publicly in a while. What is it does seem as if the scientists in general are not being put up front as much. Reporter right. Yeah, theyve moved away from this daily coronavirus briefing, which was really the only time reporters had an opportunity to, you know, ask these principal scientists questions, real, scientific questions. They did, on monday, have admiral gerard talk about testing, so that was a technical, scientific front there, but its absolutely true. We have not had an opportunity to really get an update and question these scientists. To the point of whether theres a growing disconnect as bob was talking about between the white house and fauci, i talked to Kayleigh Mcenany, the press secretary today, about this disconnect, potentially, between the president and fauci, and she took that as an opportunity to try and prevent the appearance of any daylight between them and make it appear like both of them are on the same page, so for whatever that is worth, she did not come out and try and attack fauci, but tried to find some Common Ground between the two of them. And garrett haake, i want to save the final question for you, because tomorrow, were going to have a vote on the house bill. And i saw a report today about peter king, a republican from new york city, whos i think he said hes likely to vote with the democrats on this. Are we going to see a lot of house republicans, you know, more than 10 or 12, are we going to see some breaks in there and does that apply pressure to Mitch Mcconnell . Reporter i doubt you will see significant breaks here beyond some of the usual suspects on this house bill. I think nancy pelosi had a press conference this afternoon, i asked her about the next phases of this. She acknowledged that the republicans will come to the table on this, that theyre calling this a partisan bill, but even Mitch Mcconnell knows Something Else has to be done. There will be another relief bill. Its just a question of when. So, democrats are laying a marker with this vote tomorrow but i think the broader expectation is theres going to be a long way to go in negotiations before theres anything that attracts serious republican support in the house. And we know earlier today the white house is already signaling, you know, theyre okay with some state aid, aid to states here, so it does look like youre starting to see, at least, the creaking of movement when it comes to negotiating. Garrett haake, shannon, dasha, robert, thanks for getting us started. Up ahead, the cdcs reopening guidelines. Theyre finally out. They appear to be watered down from the originally leaked guidance the white house decided to shelve. Were going to talk to a former Surgeon General about them. A sitting u. S. Senator forced to turn over a cell phone. The latest on the fbi investigation into richard burr plus the other lawmakers facing new scrutiny. Facing new scrutiny this is my body of proof. Proof i can fight moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. Proof i can fight psoriatic arthritis. With humira. Proof of less joint pain. And clearer skin in psa. Humira targets and blocks a source of inflammation that contributes to joint pain and irreversible damage. Humira can lower your ability to fight infections. Serious and sometimes fatal infections, including tuberculosis, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. Tell your doctor if youve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common and if youve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone t