[Blitzer:] President Trump has now gone on Twitter to deny reports of ongoing discussions within the White House to fire a critical number of his Cabinet, the Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. That's following a state of criticism over the administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Our national correspondent Kristen Holmes is joining us from the White House right now. Kristen, what do we know about these discussions? What's the latest information you and our colleagues are picking up?
[Kristen Holmes, Cnn National Correspondent:] Well, look, there have been a lot of speculations among White House staffers for quite some time that Azar's head was on the chopping block. You have to remember that President Trump named Vice President Pence to be the head of the task force over Azar. We also know that Azar was butting heads with Seema Verma who is not only another member of the task force but most importantly a very close ally of Vice President Pence. And to note we have not seen Azar in any of these public briefings for weeks now. So this had been a conversation that had been going on. It was confirmed to us last night by a senior official that these White House officials were talking about how to replace Azar. But there's something here I really want to note and that is the timing of all of this. Take this into consideration. We know, as we just said, that the administration has gotten criticism about the handling of the pandemic since the beginning. But really these last few weeks have been arguably some of the worse. We are weeks and weeks into this pandemic and you are still hearing from not only Democratic governors but Republican governors who are begging the administration to get involved so they can get the testing that they need in order to reopen the economy. We know that President Trump called Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia and supported his decision to reopen the economy despite the fact that he did not meet his own task force criteria to actually open the state. And he received so much backlash from that that he actually then had to backtrack with the governor. And of course on Thursday now these comments about injecting or ingesting some sort of disinfectant to clean your body out of coronavirus. There is a lot of blame shifting and finger-pointing going on at the White House right now. And a lot of tension over this coverage. We know President Trump has been watching it non-stop and has been stewing, he's frustrated at what he is saying. He believes that he deserves better rewards, better coverage for his covering of all of this. So that's one thing to know, but it does appear that based on President Trump's tweet that as of tonight and pretty much I would say tonight for sure that Alex Azar is safe, he won't fall victim to that blame shifting or that finger-pointing, I will note that several sources told us overall there wasn't a huge appetite for some sort of massive shakeup during this pandemic response.
[Blitzer:] And it's also interesting, no White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing today and none yesterday, and a very short one, 22 minutes only, on Friday. And the president walked out with the others without answering questions at that briefing in the White House briefing room. Kristen Holmes, thanks very much for that report. Joining us now, one of Secretary Azar's predecessors, the former Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius. Madame Secretary, thanks so much for joining us. As someone who has held this critically important position knows its challenges, what's your reaction to this reporting back and forth that Secretary Azar could soon be replaced even though the president just tweeted he's doing an excellent job?
[Kathleen Sebelius, Former Health And Human Services Secretary:] Well, I find most of what's going on in the White House these days, at a minimum, baffling and, you know, the worst case scenario is terrifying. We know Dr. Rick Bright who was in a critical position as the head of BARDA which is our medical countermeasure department within HHS was removed from his job, leading that very critical agency at a time when we're trying to get to a medical cure and certainly get to a vaccine. BARDA is essential and he was just moved out of the way supposed for this feuding that president's allegations that people should be taking I'm sorry. Chloroquine
[Blitzer:] Hydroxy hydroxychloroquine.
[Sebelius:] Which has not been proven at all to be a successful medication so he's gone. We don't have any idea what's going on with Alex Azar. But what we know is Alex Azar is not the one who stood at the podium and told people that it was probably a good idea that he'd have some medical doctors look at disinfectant inside the body. So that the head of Lysol had to come out and beg people not to ingest Lysol.
[Blitzer:] Yes.
[Sebelius:] A lot of this is the president's doing. He insists on being the chief spokesperson at these briefings. He's taken up about 60 percent of the airtime, according to a "Washington Post" article since the briefings began. And I think if somebody gets fired it's really just an attempt to shift the blame at somebody else's fault. It's always somebody else's fault.
[Blitzer:] Today Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Response coordinator was given the opportunity to provide very detailed, accurate medical information on some of the president's claims. Instead, though, she defended the president. Do these public health experts risk losing their credibility with the public if they are avoiding, if they're trying to be overly cautious and perhaps disagreeing or being at all critical of what the president is saying?
[Sebelius:] Absolutely. I think the American public has gotten to the point where they want to hear from the scientific experts and they want to hear the truth. They don't want a glossy coverup. The president has said from the beginning the testing is perfect, everybody can get a test if they want a test. The public knows that's absolutely not true. Every governor in the country knows that's absolutely not true. Same with protective equipment. We still do not have enough, and now we're in a situation where most governors are feeling themselves in this position to try and to act on their own. The White House put out guidelines for what were the safe steps to reopen. Benchmarks, 14 days of disease declined, looking at appropriate testing, making sure you have surge capacity, and then immediately flipped around and began to tweet about states that should be liberating their population. There is no national strategy. There is no national framework and I think the American public knows very clearly. They believe in governors, they believe that the health experts need to speak up. They want to hear from Tony Fauci about what's happening. And I'm afraid if some of the experts who had brilliant careers begin to be too differential to White House's spin, they will lose all credibility.
[Blitzer:] If you were the secretary of Health and Human Services right now, and you were not really being seen at the briefings, you were not doing media interviews, it was being left to a whole bunch of others, but you were basically invisible, and you're the secretary of Health and Human Services, what would you do?
[Sebelius:] Well, I have not been in that situation. I don't even want to speculate how difficult it must be to be in that situation. I think you work at the pleasure of the president of the United States if you are any Cabinet official. How exactly anybody in this administration works at the pleasure of this president who seems to change his mind on an hourly basis and continue to push missed information to the American public, I don't understand how you could keep a job like that or how you would want to keep a job like that because it's right now risking people's lives. If we don't have a framework, if people don't have enough testing to understand when the disease begins to spread if social distancing comes to an end then we are really in serious trouble. In most states like mine, we are very far away from adequate testing. Our caseload is still on the uptick. We are still seeing big outbreaks in meat packing plants, in prisons, and home care centers. So we know we need more testing. We know we need more protective equipment and we want to follow the science and the data, but we need federal government help to do that.
[Blitzer:] Kathleen Sebelius, not only a former secretary of Health and Human Services, also a former governor of Kansas, we're grateful to you. Thanks so much for joining us.
[Sebelius:] Sure. Good to be with you.
[Blitzer:] Up next, one businessman is facing controversy by marketing UV scanners as a tool businesses could use when employees return to work. Is it safe? We have more information coming into THE SITUATION ROOM. We'll be right back.