[Don Lemon, Cnn Tonight:] Welcome, everyone. I'm Don Lemon. A big news night. Our breaking news on the coronavirus, there are now more than 964,000 cases in this country, almost a million. Total getting closer and closer to a million cases. More than 54,000 people have died, that as states across the country are being are beginning various stages of reopening this week even though a model used by the White House suggests that it is not safe for any state to reopen its economy before May 1. And as some mayors are grappling with the decision of their own governors, and there are mix messages tonight on just how badly the American economy will be by all of this, the White House Economic Advisor, Kevin Hassett, saying today we could see an unemployment rate comparable to the great depression.
[Kevin Hassett, White House Economic Advisor:] This is the biggest negative shock that our economy, I think, has ever seen. We're going to be looking at an unemployment rate that approaches rates that we saw during the Great Depression. During the Great Recession, remember that was a financial crisis around 2008 that we lost 8.7 million jobs in the whole thing. Right now we're losing that many jobs about every 10 days.
[Lemon:] And that is coming from the top White House Economic Advisor. The Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, painting a rosier picture.
[Steve Mnuchin, Treasury Secretary:] I think as we begin to reopen the economy in May and June you're going to see the economy really bounce back in July, August, September. And we are putting an unprecedented amount of fiscal relief into the economy.
[Lemon:] So listen, I think everyone knows. Everyone feels this way. It would be great of the economy to bounce back that quickly after a whole lot of economic pain for a whole lot of people, but the fact is reopening even for states that are starting already, it's going to happen slowly. It's not going to be like flipping a switch. And in the face of all that with more than 54,000 Americans dead, with each day bringing us closer to a million cases in this country, Dr. Deborah Birx, the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Task Force, is trying to clean up a mess of the president's own making. Yes, someone is talking to me. Thank you, Director. Now, I've said before I respect Dr. Birx for her work on HIVAIDS, but what she said to Jake Tapper today was, frankly, ridiculous.
[Jake Tapper, Cnn:] There was an odd moment on Thursday when President Trump mused aloud about whether injecting UV light or disinfectant into the human body is a way to treat coronavirus. Could be something that you look into. You were sitting right there as you know. Take a listen.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body what you can do either through the skin or in some other way. Then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets in the lungs.
[Tapper:] Dr. Birx, I just want to give you the opportunity right now. What should the American people know about disinfectants and the human body?
[Birx:] Well first, that was a dialogue he was having between the DHA scientists and himself for information that he had received and he was discussing. We have made it clear and when he turned to me I made it clear, and he understood that it was not as a treatment, and I think that kind of dialogue will happen.
[Lemon:] And that kind of dialogue should not be happening at a press briefing in front of the American people, and you would think that the President of the United States wouldn't be dense enough not to understand that you can inject something into a persons body like that and would be smart enough to know that you shouldn't have that conversation in front of the American people. You should be having that behind closed doors if you're going to have it at all, if you are not smart enough to understand what he had just said what he was just suggesting. And for Dr. Birx to try to brush off the president's claim the dialog when he asked whether a powerful light or a disinfectant could be ingested into the human body as a treatment it's just really beyond belief. I mean, I just I've been watching this. It's beyond belief. This is twilight zone stuff. It's very clear what the president said. He was not asked a question about it, like he said for about a reporter. He wasn't even talking to a reporter. Some people are taking what president said seriously. Maryland governor, Larry Hogan, a Republican, saying today that his state's hotline gotten hundreds of calls from residents asking whether ingesting disinfectant could be a treatment for the virus. The Illinois governor, J. B. Pritzker, saying his state is also getting a lot of calls. Let me just repeat I can't believe I have to do this. Ingesting disinfectant is not a treatment for the coronavirus or anything. Do not do it. Don't even think about doing it. Serious stuff. Just listen to how the president tried to cover up this outrageous and dangerous nonsense the very next day.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] I was asking a sarcastic in a very sarcastic question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside. But it does kill it, and it would kill it on the hands. And that would make things much better. That was done in the form of a sarcastic question to the reporters.
[Lemon:] Sarcasm sarcastic questions to the reporters. We all heard what the president said. There wasn't a slightest bit of sarcasm. By the way, this is no time for sarcasm of any kind. Not while Americans are dying. And think about it. Why would he be sarcastic about the information he was being given? If you really think about it, what reason would there be to be sarcastic about the information that was being given? There is none. He's lying. Because he didn't understand it. He's just dumb. And then there is this. The president asking about the effects of heat and light on the virus.
[Trump:] Deborah, have you heard ever of that? The heat and the light? Relative to certain viruses, yes, but relative to this virus?
[Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator:] That is a treatment. I mean, certainly fever
[Trump:] Yes.
[Birx:] is a good thing. When you have a fever, it helps your body respond. But not as I've not seen heat or light
[Trump:] I think that's a great thing to look at.
[Lemon:] Dr. Birx saying that they're that heat and light are not a treatment for the virus. The official White House transcript originally quoted Dr. Birx as saying that that is a treatment. The transcript was later revised to accurately reflect what she actually said, that heat and light are not a treatment. And all of this is really, really, really important. It's not a gotcha to call the president on his question about possibly ingesting disinfectant. That's not a gotcha. Stable genius? He said it on live TV in a task force briefing, with millions of Americans listening. But what is the president's reaction to all of this? Not saying, "I misunderstood." Not saying, "Well, maybe I should have done it," "It was an error. You took me" I don't know. Just didn't take responsibility. Not making sure that Americans would try to ingest disinfectant that could be deadly no, none of that. He shut down the briefings, last night and tonight. Claiming they're you know, these are his words, "Not worth the time and effort." Though they just, moments ago, added a task force briefing to the schedule tomorrow. Not sure if he's going to take the stage or take questions. But, you know, he can't never met a camera he didn't like. So we'll see. But we'll see if he takes questions. His aides still have been his aides have been urging him for weeks to stop doing daily briefings, believing he was just making matters worse. So now the president is taking his ranting straight to Twitter. The fact is, we're better off without the President's bragging and his misinformation. I have been saying this for weeks and weeks and weeks now, let the experts do the talking. He's not an epidemiologist, he's not a virologist, he's not a doctor, he's not an expert on anything. It would be a lot better for everybody if we could hear the facts directly from the smart people in the room, the experts. But the president is just taking his ball and his bat and he is going home now because he thinks questions about his own dangerous ramblings and not smart ramblings are his word, "hostile". Those questions are not hostile, this is about people's lives. The President insists on making it all about him. He was at it again just today falsely claiming that he hasn't left the White House in many months. He has, including several rallies last month and a weekend at Mar-A-Lago. Remember his dinner with the President of Brazil and remember how several of the Brazilians later tested positive for the virus. President Trump claiming a New York Times story about his schedule was inaccurate. Inaccurate railing about whether or not he was having a hamburger and diet coke in his bedroom and quoting people that know him saying he is the hardest working President in history. Me, me, me me. Not to mention an epic rant about, quote "noble prizes for Russia." Reporting that he thinks that reporters should be given back, its "Nobel" not,"Nobal", but maybe it is, whatever, there's a whole lot there, I'll just keep moving on. And then trying to use sarcasm, again, as an excuse. An excuse for something absolutely no one else is obsessing about in the middle of the pandemic that has killed more than a that has killed more than a 54,000 Americans. Doesn't even know the difference between noble and Nobel and reporters don't really get Nobel prizes. Stable genius? How much longer is this going to go on? Kristen Holmes is at the White House. Hi Kristen, good evening to you. Thank you so much for joining us. So, Kristen, the President seems to have one person most on his mind and of course that is himself. We see him fuming on Twitter, they have just announced that there will be a coronavirus task force briefing tomorrow at 5:00 pm, will the President be there and will he make another dangerous and irresponsible pronouncement, that seems to be the question.
[Kristen Holmes, Cnn National Correspondent:] Well, Don, it seems that he will be there, this was on his schedule not the Vice President's and it says it is a briefing. And I just want to go over what you said because I think this is really important to note, aides and allies for weeks have been telling President Trump that they are concerned about these briefings they believe that he should stop doing them or limit to times where there is just some positive news. Maybe it's new numbers, maybe it's the ventilators announcing the DPA to get those delivered across the country. But yet even though we heard that was likely going to happen, seeing him less, we're already seeing briefing after two days on Monday. So we'll of course be watching to see what happens there and I want to note one other thing you said about letting the experts do the talking because that was very close to something Dr. Birx said today, or at least it was related. She said that she was worried that some of the critical information that was in that presentation on Thursday got lost in all of the conversation about his side comments and I think that it is important to note, being that it was given in a medical briefing, and as you said, those ponderings, those musings, those were not medical grade. So people are watching this to learn information about what it is they need to do and the messaging then changes from this study that they were presenting to companies, to health care clinics, to poison control saying, please do not ingest disinfectants we are getting calls about this, this is incredibly dangerous. So that's why that message shifts because it is done in a medical setting. Now we have heard from officials that they are going it try to shift the messaging out of the White House, really getting President Trump away from the medical part of it and moving it more into the economic part of it. Trying to get some positivity in there, maybe bring in people who benefited from the stimulus checks or the small business loans, since he is a businessman and not a doctor. But again, even after all of this, even after saying that we believe President Trump will do less briefings, it's already been announced that there's one Monday. just two days after we heard that from officials.
[Lemon:] All right, Kristin Holmes, thank you so much. I appreciate you reporting from the White House for us this Sunday evening. I want to bring in now Dr. Jonathan Reiner, the Co-director of the Cardio Catheterization Program at George Washington University Hospital. Doctor, always a pleasure to have you. Thank you for joining us on this evening.
[Dr. Jonathan Reiner, Co-director Cardio Catheterization George Washington University:] My pleasure.
[Lemon:] Yes. Listen, a recent model of the White House relies that they rely on at the White House, had a death toll of 66,000 by August, but it's only April and there are sadly over 54,000 deaths already. Are you expecting the death toll to climb, especially with the restrictions starting to ease in some states?
[Reiner:] Yeah, you're referring to the IHME model from the University of Washington, which the last update, about a week ago, predicted 67,000 deaths in the United States on April 4. You know, that model uses sort of a symmetrical curve, so meaning the uptick in deaths in the United States is mirrored by the downtrend on the backend, but it doesn't have to be that way. But, China instituted incredibly austere quarantine and isolation procedures that are really only available in an authoritarian regime. A better model might be what happened in Italy, and in Italy the downtrend in deaths was much more gradual. You know, when you look at these models they come along with something called a confidence interval, which is basically the range that the true answer should be in. So, while the most recent point estimate for the number of deaths was about 67,000, the upper limit, of what they call the 95 percent confidence interval was 128,000, meaning it could be as high as 128,000. Right now, we're seeing mortality that has sort of plateaued at about 2,000 deaths per day. On Tuesday we'll see us pass the number of soldiers who died in Vietnam, so I think that it's likely that we'll go past 67,000 maybe as early as 10 days from now.
[Lemon:] Listen, all states want to reopen, you know, but but
[Reiner:] Yes.
[Lemon:] we're already seeing huge differences in how they do it and how fast they do it. If you look at a state like Georgia, where a hair salon is now open, or a state like Tennessee where restaurants can welcome customers 50 percent capacity, that starts on Wednesday. Would you advise people to run out and do either of those things?
[Reiner:] No, of course not. And what's unclear is whether people are going to do that. There's a lot of trepidation in the community about being in large crowds. So, even though Georgia may allow restaurants to open this week, I'm not sure how many people are going to, you know, go out for dinner. Think about theaters and other, you know, large venues, who wants to sit in a in a crowd now. So, although states may open up the opportunity to do this, I'm not sure how many people are going to do that. But it's it's way too early to do that. There are really only a handful of states that are really approaching the legitimate thresholds to consider opening up their businesses. Georgia is not one of them.
[Lemon:] Dr. Reiner, always a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
[Reiner:] My pleasure. Sure.
[Lemon:] Governors across in states in across the country beginning to loosen restrictions and open some business, but mayors, they aren't really all on board. Some Minnesota businesses can begin reopening tomorrow. I'm going to ask the Mayor of Minneapolis what he things. That's next.