BRIAN WILLIAMS, MSNBC HOST: Anne Rimoin with us from Southern California, thank you as always. It will do nothing to stop the criticism of these briefings as being a critique of the media coverage when the President`s quote testing is very much of a media trap starts to get in circulation tonight, beginning with our next broadcast. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts next.
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. President Donald Trump is so concerned primarily overwhelmingly, with how the Coronavirus pandemic affects his day to day political fortunes, that even with hundreds of thousands of cases and tens of thousands of deaths in this country, he is still to this date, overriding scientific experts to try to make it through each new news cycle.
Today, we got the latest example of this extremely dangerous pattern, fixation of the president, constantly putting his own P.R. over science. This story broke yesterday. It didn`t get a lot of attention. It`s a strange story. And it was that the director of a government agency that plays a very big role in vaccine development suddenly left his post. Weird, kind of out of nowhere. I mean, why would this guy, Dr. Rick Bright, suddenly leave in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century to go to some other less important position the government.
Dr. Bright spent his entire career in vaccine development and was previously responsible for preparing the nation for influenza pandemics and coordinating production, acquisition, and delivery of medical countermeasures during a pandemic response. In fact, Congress just tripled his agency`s budget to work on coronavirus projects. So he seems like someone you would want to keep around in his position.
Well, we learned today first reported by New York Times that Dr. Bright says he was sidelined because he pushed back against the President`s constant shilling for an untested malaria drug known as hydroxychloroquine as the magical cure for coronavirus.
Dr. Bright released a lengthy statement through his attorneys today telling his side of the story. And in terms of statements, this is just explosive. It`s a kind of worst-case scenario. I want to read you a large part of what he says to get a sense of what he is claiming happened.
"I believe this transfer -- meaning his transfer away from his position -- was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions and not in drugs, vaccines, and other technologies that lack scientific merit. I`m speaking out because to combat this deadly virus science, not politics, or cronyism has to lead the way."
Dr. Bright says he also resisted efforts to, and I quote him here, "fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections. Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lacked scientific merit.
While I am prepared to look at all options and to think outside the box for effective treatments, I rightly resisted efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public. I insisted these drugs be provided only to hospitalized patients with confirmed COVID-19 while under the supervision of a physician.
These drugs have potentially serious risks associated with them, including increased mortality observed in some recent studies in patients with COVID- 19. Sidelining me in the middle of this pandemic and placing politics and cronyism ahead of science puts lives at risks and stunts national efforts to safely and effectively address this urgent public health crisis."
My God, if that is true. The President was pushing day after day, well, along with his allies on Trump TV pushing this unproven drug, which we don`t know whether it works or not, whether it`s safe or effective or not. It might be it might not be. They were pushing it because they wanted people to think there was some magical cure around the corner.
But Dr. Bright also seems to be implying in that statement, there`s some sort of profit motive for politically connected people promoting the drug. That`s crazy. On the corruption scale from one to 10, that`s an 11. This is happening in the middle of a pandemic, when thousands of people are dying every day.
This is just the latest example of the president putting his own very short-term political interests over the broad health and safety of the American people. Just yesterday, the President`s director of the CDC warned of a second wave of the coronavirus later this year. When also flu season would make it a much harder to fight a totally uncontroversial, scientifically grounded statement.
But not for the president. In his nightly propaganda festival in the briefing room a short time ago, Trump prompted his CDC director to say he was misquoted about the possibility of the virus re-flaring. And then standing next to the President, the CDC director confirmed under questioning he was not misquoted and basically reiterated his previous point.
We`re months into this pandemic and the behavior is not new. I mean, the President has been doing this from the very beginning of the outbreak. Two months ago, two months ago, it seems like another lifetime, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, another unknown public health expert just like Dr. Bright, a serious career government official, works in the CDC, she warned us what was in our future.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NANCY MESSONNIER, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CENTER FOR IMMUNIZATION AND RESPIRATORY DISEASES: Ultimately, we expect we will see community spread in this country. It`s not so much a question as if this will happen anymore, but rather more of question of exactly when this will happen, and how many people in this country will have severe illness.
I understand this whole situation may seem overwhelming, and that disruption to everyday life may be severe. But these are things that people need to start thinking about now. I had a conversation with my family over breakfast this morning. And I told my children that while I didn`t think that they were at risk right now, we as a family need to be preparing for significant disruption of our lives.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Significant disruption of our lives. That was on February 25, almost two months ago, another lifetime ago. And looking back, she absolutely nailed it. She knew exactly what was going to happen. She`s a person in the government whose job is to do that.
Well, today, the Wall Street Journal reports, the President was so furious when he found out about her briefing, he wanted to get rid of her. "A furious Mr. Trump, flying back to Washington from India, called Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and threatened to oust Dr. Messonnier for the sin of correctly predicting the future."
Now, President Trump could have listened to his own health expert and acted quickly but he did not. According to the New York Times, if he had acted quickly, that could have saved tens of thousands of American lives. Yes, that`s the number.
An estimated 90 percent of the cumulative deaths in this country from COVID-19 might have been prevented by putting social distancing policies into effect two weeks earlier, two weeks, but no. Instead, he didn`t like the news cycle and the stock market so Dr. Messonnier was benched.
And literally the next day, the next day the president said this about Coronavirus cases in the U.S. We`re going subs very substantially down not up. Within a couple days, it is going to be down to close to zero. We`re going to hit a million at some time the next few weeks. Oh also, I viewed that this the same as the flu.
And now here we are two months later, we`re heading towards 50,000 dead Americans. Remember South Korea, South Korea, they verified the first case of the Coronavirus in their country on the very same day as us here in the United States and South Korea has 238 total deaths.
We also learned today the cost of this inaction was even greater than we initially realize. Reporting today, it appears the first death of coronavirus came on February 6th. That`s about a month earlier than we previously realized.
President Trump had a chance to stop this disease and to save tens of thousands of American lives. But because he only cares about how the disease impacts his personal image and cable news coverage from one minute to the next and then his reelection, we are suffering from a medical and economic disaster that we`re in the middle of.
Joining me now, the former Acting Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and host the new podcast In The Bubble Andy Slavitt. And Andy, this Dr. Bright statement to me is -- it`s not shocking because it`s not at all surprising in the content of Trump administration. But what -- if what he is saying is true, the danger of the malfeasance here can`t be overstated.
ANDY SLAVITT, FORMER ACTING ADMINISTRATOR, CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES: Chris, this is a really alarming situation. Here`s the analogy I would give you. This is like the Patriots pulling Tom Brady in the fourth quarter with the team down by six, facing elimination. This is a man, Dr. Bright, who has spent his entire career preparing for this moment. He spent his entire career studying influenza and other infectious diseases and how to build a vaccine for these moments. This is a guy you want on the field right now.
So the American public needs to look at this and say, for every possible reason, this man needs to be back -- put back in the game. You saw Dr. Fauci was quite alarmed at this. And unfortunately, this is following the same pattern that we`ve seen with the Justice Department and that you pointed out we`ve seen with other public officials, if they do anything that doesn`t make it -- that doesn`t reflect well on the president, they`re pulled out of the game. But we need Tom Brady in the game.
HAYES: And it`s more than -- it`s more than doesn`t, you know, reflect well on the president. I mean, what Dr. Bright is alleging here is that he stood in the way of a demand from someone in the political apparatus in the administration to make this particular drug, hydroxychloroquine, available on demand to every American.
I mean, that is a -- that is a crazy allegation. I mean, the danger of that -- this has been pushed by Laura Ingraham and Trump T.V., and they`ve been pushing it as miracle cure. And I should say, there were some studies showing the promise, there`s some studies showing danger. We don`t know. We just don`t know. But that`s a wildly reckless thing for the government to be pushing.
SLAVITT: So Chris, there`s two issues. One is why he was fired, and the big -- or I should say, reassigned. And the bigger issue is that is the fact that he was reassigned. Taking your best vaccine developer out of the game when you have a novel virus, when we have no immunity, and we can`t get back to normal life, until we have either herd immunity, which will come with the cost of a lot of lives, or a working vaccine is I can`t just -- I can`t communicate how irresponsible that is.
Now we have -- we have reason after three and a half years to understand why that happened. We have reason after three and a half years to understand that anybody that makes president look bad, that this is what happens to them. There`s no other explanation. You never pull Tom Brady out of the game for any reason, based on merit.
HAYES: Right. There`s also the sort of really abject display today where the President trots out. Dr. Redfield, who`s not been at the briefing I think since March 9th, because he gave I think a fairly innocuous interview for the Washington Post where he warned that a flu season with coronavirus on top of it this fall in winter would be really difficult, will be really difficult probably.
And here`s the president attempting to sort of initiate some kind of Maoist recantation from his CDC director. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He was misquoted, totally misquoted. He said they could come together. They didn`t talk about that. And his whole purpose in making the statement was to get a flu shot.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But that quote of wider spread was accurate, right, sir? That`s the quote from the Washington Post. You were accurately quoted, correct?
ROBERT REDFIELD, DIRECTOR, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: I`m accurately quoted in the Washington Post.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: It`s just anything that -- it`s such a dangerous mindset. It`s such a dangerous mindset in the beginning, which is anything that sounds like it might be bad in the future has to be wiped away, and wishing will not make it so. I just can`t believe that this continues to be the posture.
SLAVITT: Long gone are the days when we were criticizing the president for lying about golfing too much. If only -- and I think there were a number of people at that time, including yourself, many others who were saying this pattern of lying, this pattern of not being straight with the American public, this pattern of protecting yourself at the expense of what`s good for the public is going to cost us.
And now it`s game time. Now it`s for real. And so to be an environment where you have someone who can`t take any criticism, who can`t face a situation where he`s losing without pretending he`s winning, is really problematic.
I have been making a significant effort to be nonpartisan during this crisis because this virus spreads between Republicans and Democrats, and I want everyone to hear the same message. I want everyone to know that this is not about partisanship, that we all have to care about each other and work together. But we also have to hold the president accountable when he does things like this. This is the kind of thing that`s incredibly dangerous. In many respects, it`s singularly disqualifying.
HAYES: Andy Slavitt, as always, thank you so much for taking a little bit of time with us tonight. I really appreciate it. Joining me now is the governor of the state which had the earliest confirmed cases but actually in public health officials in the state who actually violated the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control to start testing and discovered one of the first cases, Washington Governor Jay Inslee.
Governor, let me -- let me start on this timeline question because Washington was very early in this, early in terms of detection and then early inaction. We saw the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner is actually performing autopsies on bodies that they suspect may have been felled by the virus.
Do you -- is there any surveillance like that happening or any sort of idea in your state to be looking towards that to maybe better pinpoint when this started, so that we could get more information about what exactly the exposure the virus has been?
GOV. JAY INSLEE (D-WA): Not to my knowledge. If that`s going on, I haven`t heard about it. We have had the benefit of the some of the best geneticists in the world, who have provided us some retrospective review of what was going on in our state before we even identified the first patient.
And they did by looking at the genetic evolution of this material in the mutation rate. They do believe that it was in our state, at least several weeks, I believe, before we had the first patient who visibly became confirmed. And that was one of the problems of not knowing that it was brewing and breeding, if you will, in our state.
I am glad we jumped on it relatively early. I think it has had a beneficial impact. But this is a tough foe because you don`t know where it is. And I think those early days were a perfect example of that.
HAYES: There`s been some news about your state which has managed to escape the kind of fate that we`ve seen in a place like New York, for instance, or New Jersey. I know that this -- that some farmers markets reopened in Seattle. How have your discussions been with your public health officials in terms of guiding you about what you can and can`t do, what should and shouldn`t be allowed?
INSLEE: Well, our discussions have been intense and they`ve been about hourly. We are -- we are monitoring multiple data sets. We`re looking at multiple models of what we would project to see depending on what action we take. And as you know, it`s quite clear that if we removed all our restrictions right now, we would see a spike back up and probably relatively rapidly, unfortunately, go back on the curve that we were on before we put these social distancing things into place.
And that`s why we were so frustrated when we had the president go out and, you know, say people should ignore the law of several states because it is clear that if that were to help, or to happen, that we would continue to see increase in fatalities.
Now, fortunately, that`s not happening in our state. My order is staying in place at least through May 4th, and it is likely that there will be restrictions beyond that. We are looking at some modest things we can do if there is some parts of our industries to bring back, if they have new protocols of hygiene.
For instance, we`re looking at residential construction. We had -- we stopped residential construction because of the health risk. But we might be able to bring that back on really strong protocols of social distancing and ways to train people to stay safe. So that`s one of the things we`re looking at.
But to show you how acute it is for the governors to really look at this data, we`re getting -- we hope a new model, the fourth tranche of a model from the Institute for Disease modeling, we hope to have that Thursday. And we hope that that`s going to show decrease in a projection of a decrease so that we can do a few modest things in May. Because this is a dial as has been said, not a light switch. But we`ve got to have that two conditions to exist for us to be able to do that.
Number one, we have to reduce the number of infections and fatalities but more importantly, infections to a manageable level so the testing and contact tracing and effective, and I stress effective isolation, can really wrestle this beast to the ground and keep it under control. And we have to have that system in place. So we`re building an army to do that. 1,500 people or more, some National Guardsmen and women, to make sure that both of those conditions exist before we can really reopen our economy fully.
HAYES: Governor Jay Inslee, who has been managing this crisis from the very first moments of it here in the United States. Thank you so much, Governor.
INSLEE: You bet. Thanks, Chris. Wash your hands.
HAYES: Coming up, new reporting on the Trump cronies urging the president to risk American lives to save their bottom line and the desperate pleading for the opposite. That`s next.
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HAYES: You`ve all seen the pictures of these relatively small protests against governors enforcing shoulder distancing measures that are meant to keep us safe right now. These people yelling and holding signs are just the ones we actually see. The interest pushing this behind the scenes look a lot like this, Wisconsin billionaire shipping magnate and Trump mega-donor Liz Uihlein.
She along with a bunch of her fellow wealthy right-wingers are pushing to open up businesses, get profits going again, and whatever happens to workers, well, that`s what`s going to happen. Liz Uihlein has been arguing this from the beginning, in fact, so points for consistency. Writing an e- mail to Illinois lawmakers in mid-March, "The media is overblowing COVID- 19. At what point do we go back to our normal lives? This has been a huge disruption."
The people who know best what it looks like if we just opened up and went back to business as usual are the healthcare workers in the front lines. Yesterday, a group of nurses staged this protest in the White House where they read out the names of some of their fallen colleagues.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MELODY JONES, REGISTERED NURSE: Jody Wilson Griffin from St. Louis, Missouri. Keith Kelly, New York, New York. Noel Sinket, Washington D.C. Araceli Buendia, Miami, Florida, Cynthia Mendoza, Norfolk, Virginia.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Those are of course, a few of the nurses that we have lost in this country due to this virus. I`m joined now by one of the nurses who spoke at that protest yesterday, Erica Jones, a registered nurse at Medstar Washington Hospital Center. Erica, I wonder if you can just talk a little bit about what motivated you to protest amidst all this.
ERICA JONES, REGISTERED NURSE, MEDSTAR WASHINGTON HOSPITAL CENTER: You know, actually I really struggled with coming out and participating in a protest when I`m telling people to stay at home. But I had my own coronavirus scare where I`ve had to isolate away from my family and then you see our nurse colleagues throughout the country are getting sick, and they`re dying because they don`t have the right personal protective equipment to keep them safe.
So, you know, we`re being called every day we`re heroes, but then we`re being left feeling like we`re martyrs on the battlefield with nothing.
HAYES: What do you -- what do you make of where this sort of debate in this country is? You see these very loud and visible protests that have gotten a lot of airtime, but if you look at the polling, you have, you know, crazily large majorities of people saying they`re scared of the virus, they think we should stay home. They think the measures are appropriate. Does that hearten you? What do you think when you -- as you watch this play out?
JONES: You know, as I watch protesters, I think that if they were in the hospitals with us, watching people as this illness progresses, and as they dies, they wouldn`t be out there risking catching the disease. But I`m really heartened by the 70 plus percent of the United States that wants to stay home because I`m glad that they`re understanding the science and the facts that prove that social distancing works and they`re keeping themselves safe and keeping us safe in turn.
HAYES: Do you feel -- I know you were talking about insufficient personal protective equipment. That has been an issue for weeks and months. Do you feel any corner has been turned in terms of your personal experience or those of your colleagues or do you still feel like there`s a scarcity?
JONES: Now, there`s definitely actually more of a scarcity now because we`re using it up and we`re depleting the stockpiles that hospitals might have had. I`m actually right now in the hospital that I work out. They`re starting to tell us, hey, we`re going to collect these respirators and sterilize them and give them back to you. After weeks of telling us we have enough now, we`re reaching a point where we definitely don`t.
And throughout the country, I`m hearing from our colleagues, they`re running out. They`re using bandanas, they`re using cloth face masks which don`t provide hardly any protection.
HAYES: Can you tell me what the emotional experience, if you`re willing to, about -- of yourself and others that you work with just in terms of the morale, in terms of the stress and the burden and the fear and the grief all that you have to sort of go through at every shift?
JONES: Every day, you come into the hospital, you`re preparing for the worst, you`re afraid. You`re afraid that you`re going to be exposed. You`re afraid that you`re bringing this disease back home to your children and your family. You`re afraid that you could be the next nurse or doctor lying in a hospital bed dying from this disease.
And you know that fear ends up breeding anger and we`re angry that we`re not being protected. And we`re angry that people don`t understand what we`re going through. And we`re angry that our colleagues are dying. And you know, hearing your colleague has just died, there`s no grief like that because you`re grieving over the person and then you`re grieving over the potential that you`re going to die.
HAYES: Erica Jones, thank you so much for what you do. And I`m wishing you and your family health and safety throughout all this. Thank you very much.
JONES: Thank you.
HAYES: Ahead, what`s missing from the latest one rescue bill coming out of Congress. Now, Republicans led by Mitch McConnell are laying the groundwork for the same widespread economic pain and devastation that they foist on the country after the last recession.
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HAYES: Do you remember that the last time we had a Republican president, not this one, but the last time that it was a total disaster, that under his leadership thousands of Americans died unnecessarily in the Iraq war. We spent trillions of dollars. We inaugurated the longest war in the republic`s history, and that his term ended with what should have been a once in a generation, once in a century financial cataclysm that thrust the nation toward the edge of a great depression. That was the last Republican
And in response to that, Republicans like Mitch McConnell passed a bunch of bailout, including the famous -- infamous -- Wall Street bailout known as TARP that, along with all the tax cuts to the rich they had done and the spending, blew up debt and deficits.
And then, and then, as soon as there was a Democratic president, Mitch McConnell and Republicans, who had shepherded through all of the tax cuts and the bailouts, they turned around and did everything in their power to impose austerity.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, (R) KENTUCKY: Nobody wants an open-ended recession, but so far the only solution to the economic crisis the Democrats in congress are offering is open-ended spending without any end in sight.
And let`s be clear about something, you cannot end a recession by digging the country into deeper and deeper debt.
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HAYES: Ah, deeper and deeper in debt, deficits. We can`t give you any votes except for maybe, two, three on the Recovery Act, and we`re going to try and impose austerity through a Budget Control Act and blow through the debt ceiling, all that stuff. Remember all that? Well, that led to prolonged misery throughout the nation. All that austerity.
So that`s what happened the last time we had a Republican president.
And now look we are, another Republican president Under this Republican president, tens of thousands of Americans have died, many unnecessarily, due to the botched Coronavirus response. The economy has, wow, once again entered a financial cataclysm for the second time in 12 years, that should be once in a century, that threatens to push us into a Great Depression, and Republicans like Senate Leader McConnell are running the same play again.
So they passed trillions of dollars in rescue money, some of which is very useful and needed, but also includes bailouts for large corporations, including once who gave bonuses or stock buybacks.
And then now McConnell suddenly very worried, very worried about that deficit spending.
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SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, (R) KENTUCKY: I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route. My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money for future generations to send it down to them now so they don`t have to do that. That`s not something I`m going to be in favor of.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: No, no, no, he`s not going to be in favor of every state in the union going belly up? I mean, think about what the finances of every state in the country look like right now -- Alabama, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Kentucky. Let the states go bankrupt, that`s what Mitch McConnell is saying, cut the programs to the bone, cut the pensions.
The second we have a Democratic president, if we get one next year, Mitch McConnell will point to that deficit that he has run up, whose Republican president`s mismanagement has exploded along with with the trillion dollar tax cuts, they will point to the deficit as an excuse to screw over ordinary people -- the firefighters and the public health workers and the teachers who are going to be fired in every one of those states that are going bankrupt, and that will prolong the misery.
In fact, McConnell`s office is already derisively referring to, quote, blue state bailouts to oppose helping the states fighting the virus. But I`ve got to say if Mitch McConnell thinks it is only blue states that are going to be economically and fiscally ravaged by the fight against this virus, he has a very, very rude awakening coming.
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HAYES: Yesterday the senate passed by voice vote a bipartisan Coronavirus rescue bill that leaves a lot of, a lot, of crucial things out. It`s already receiving some criticism from some House Democrats who are expected to vote on it tomorrow, including my next guest.
Joining me now is Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. She`s a Democrat from Michigan.
Congresswoman, the top lines here are $320 billion new dollars for that Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, including 60 billion set aside for businesses dealing with community banks. There`s money for hospitals, for disaster relief fund and for testing. What are your objections here?
REP. RASHIDA TLAIB, (D) MICHIGAN: I mean, I think it`s pretty clear what the objections are. You know, what this is, which they call 3.5 CARES Act is the fact that in the previous bill, they fell short for support for small businesses. And in 14 days, literally all that money was exhausted and here we go again instead of spending it on small businesses, on actual people in the community that were already on survivor mode, they wanted to spend $500 billion of it on a corporation bailout. They should have focused on small businesses in the first place. They should have focused on testing and saving lives in the first place.
You know, our community in Detroit, in Wayne County right now, local communities are literally having firefighters, first responders, their local folks that are doing the testing at clinics getting sick with COVID, sometimes 60 percent of their force is getting COVID right now. And they`re all going to be left behind with no aid, no support.
So this fell short in providing support for local communities that are too important to fail. You know, you see them talking about too big to fail, I`m telling you local governments, local municipalities, local communities they`re the ones who are going to save our lives, they`re the ones that are zero focused on the ground trying to help, not only with testing and tracing, but making sure that people are protected and that they have people to turn to for help. And these are the ones that are going to administer a lot of things we pass on the federal level. And we just cannot leave them behind.
You know, one of the things you should know, Chris, you know, we have close to 34,000 people in Michigan now confirmed to have COVID, lost 2,800 lives, one of which was a 5-year-old beautiful girl Skylar that we lost here in Detroit and one of the things that you hear is her father who is a firefighter, her mother a police officer, first responders.
What you hear from community and her grandmother who broke down talking to me is that they don`t feel like they`re cared for. They feel neglected. And that`s the hard part here is this disconnection that I continue to see in all the bills that come through of making sure that we have reoccurring payments for people.
You know, $1,200 is just not enough. And then not only that, small businesses have told me put money in pockets of people because we know they`re not going to horde it like corporations do, they will actually spend it in our small businesses, in our restaurants, in these local communities and stimulate the economy.
But secondly, people shouldn`t be worried about evictions right now, right. Putting money again in their pockets so they are able to pay for that, because right now, a third -- I think it was one-third of people could not pay their rent this past month and rent is due again in a week. So, imagine the impact that`s happening.
And I`m really alarmed at the fact that McConnell says, hey, we`re going to pass this and leave for a month leaving people behind who are literally losing their lives every single day.
HAYES: So I`m hearing from you the state -- aid to state municipalities, revenue sharing, which -- I mean, in a place like Detroit, obviously, which went through this once before just short while ago with incredible fiscal crisis and fiscal crunch that devastated the city, devastated the city`s work force, the pension programs, all those things, that aid -- and you think there should be reoccurring payments, not just this one-time stimulus check, some kind of monthly payment to people that is there throughout the duration of the crisis?
TLAIB: Yeah, I mean, they`re in survivor mode. They literally lived check by check before this global pandemic. You know, you have McConnell, who is a millionaire, completely disconnected to understand why people are living check by check. That is the reality. It`s low wage jobs, some of whom are called essential workers, but these are the same ones asking McConnell for $15 minimum wage. On the front lines, these are communities that continue to be neglected.
It was not just Detroit. I was just talking to the city of Wayne in Wayne County where, again, firefighter was coughing over the phone while telling us can you do something to make sure that we have better health care? Can you make sure that we can pay our next due amount for pensions? That`s what is happening, because they`re having to divert so much of their resources towards combating COVID right in the local communities that they are going to go bankrupt, they`re going to be left behind.
And I just think they are too critical and too important to fail right now. These are the ones touching the lives of our residents, not congress, not the federal government. We need to be funding them and supporting them, not through loans, but actual direct grants, FEMA reimbursement.
And you should know, moratorium now in Michigan from water shut offs. Even that, they have to swallow up those costs, but water needs to be a human right. We have to be able to wash our hands. And 15 million Americans across the country, Chris, do not -- are literally shut offs and 1 in 20 Americans have shut off notices.
So, we have got to do more to making sure we`re centered on people and bailing out people first, because if we don`t do it, we`re not going to have an economy.
HAYES: All right. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib joining me from Michigan this evening. Thank you so much for your time, Congresswoman.
TLAIB: Thank you for having me.
HAYES: Up next, the one and only Seth Meyers on Late Night and that quarantine life.
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HAYES: So now that we`ve planned out the schedule this spring for this show, All In, we thought we would be doing a lot more live audience shows, which are really liked. A certain energy that comes from those shows that is different from the other shows we do, and talked about expanding them from Friday, to maybe multiple nights a week, and we would do it throughout the election season.
That of course has not happened, like so many things. And the folks who depend on those audiences night after night in this business, particularly the late night talk show hosts, have had to radically adjust their format in just a matter of weeks.
Seth Meyers has been hosting Late Night from the attic of his house, a backdrop that has made for some really awesome television.
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SETH MEYERS, HOST, LATE NIGHT: As you may know, there has been some speculation online about what`s behind my tiny little door back there. And I just want to put one of the rumors to rest. I do not keep my children in there so they won`t interrupt me when I`m filming. For one, that would be very cruel. And two, it`s a shallow closet. You would never fit both of them...
Wait -- who let you out? Oh, not you, too? They`re loose. The boys are loose.
This has been a -- oh, you`re going back?
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HAYES: And Seth Meyers joins me now from that same attic, with maybe the boys in there, I`m hoping they make a guest appearance, Seth.
MEYERS: Now, I`m really worried that your audience would just assume that they are going to come out of there, but I have to assure everybody watching that they are fast asleep. Fast asleep. Right below this room. So keep it down.
HAYES: So this this has been such a bizarre time for everyone, obviously you and I are extremely, extremely lucky to be able to do what we do and have the situations that we have when you talk about grocery workers and health care workers, but everyone no matter what they`re doing is adjusting in ways, and I keep thinking about what you do, which is -- you know, having been on your show a bunch, it feels so -- the audience and the energy of that room feels so connected to what you`re doing. What it has been like to not have that, particularly because that same feeling of like playing rock venues for people I know that are in bands or in theater, like, there`s a lot of people that work in a world that depends on being around a lot of other people in communion that don`t have that right now.
MEYERS: Yeah, and certainly one of the most exciting things about doing comedy for a living is getting that instant feedback from an audience and we are so grateful that, you know, every seat is filled when we do have a show. And it has for sure been one of the hardest parts of this, but, you know, as you said, it`s not harder than what most people are going through so we count ourselves lucky.
But of the many interesting experiences that we are going through doing it without an audience is right up at the top of that list.
HAYES: It is also just a strange thing right now, the kind of Groundhog Day quality, I find, of how easy it is to lose track of like where you are in the week and how similar each day is to the other day. Are you finding that?
MEYERS: Very much so. You know, we are on a schedule, the hiatus this week, and I have no sense at all of what day it is without having the structure of the show, which has been helpful, you know, because then I have to talk to other people, whereas on a hiatus week, it is just two children who couldn`t tell you the day of the week if you paid them.
HAYES: How is the family doing? Obviously, one of the things that I`ve found, a silver lining in all of this, and I had two of my big kids on the show, and one was when my son, David`s, birthday is that -- and again, I`ve been talking to people who have these mixed experiences of this whole thing, the fear of illness, family members who are getting sick, the disruption, the economic anxiety, but also some sense of solidarity or close sense of family, and I`ve been really, that part of it, being around my family much more, you and I both have jobs that make that hard, has been an incredible boon.
MEYERS: Yes, I mean the first month, it was incredible, just being able to have everybody the first month, and the novelty has worn off.
No, they`re fantastic.
I will say, you know, they appeared in one episode of the show, and I had this heartbreaking moment of walking down and watching my 4-year-old FaceTime his grandparents so matter of fact saying, just while he was chewing, I`m on daddy`s show tonight. I hid in the closet and then ran out. And I`m like, oh no, I have put -- I have planted the seed.
HAYES: Well, there`s also something about watching your kids deal with this that is very intense and tender I`m finding, like my, watching them have play dates with their friends, on their, you know, on a screen, you know, with headphones, and wondering what this is doing to them, as children, like what impression is this making? How formative is this moment going to be for them, as they go throughout their life, this moment where they had to be worried about the sickness and they couldn`t hug their friends?
MEYERS: Well, you know, I think we talked about this a little bit. I think your children, it`s certainly, going to have a bigger impact, like for mine, they`re two and four, I don`t think they can really wrap their heads around the negative aspects of this.
Ultimately, I think it will help them wash their hands more, but ultimately, it will be crazy, 10, 20 years from now, to talk back with them about this, and I imagine we`ll mostly be like oh, yeah, that was the time when we just went on more, you know, walks.
HAYES: Right. Family walks.
I`ve also felt, you know, one thing that`s been strange about this moment, you have been -- obviously, do you a lot of political satire on the show, and have, you know, a lot of things that people worried about the president, which at other moments were sort of like humorously trivial, like the time that he sharpened the Sharpie to the hurricane, like all of that stuff, all of those character traits about him that are so satirizable and sort of -- can be enraging but also humorously in that context now are all present in the midst of like an ongoing national nightmare.
MEYERS: Yeah, it was always stunning to me that people ever thought he would only lie about small stuff. I think that it was shocking that he would lie about small stuff and almost a full guarantee that he would lie about bigger stuff if those bigger things -- if the truth of those bigger things would make him look bad. So, you know, we were just constantly watching dress rehearsal for what is now this terrifying show.
HAYES: Wait, the terrifying what?
MEYERS: This terrifying show now of, you know, these lies on full display, when it really mattered.
HAYES: Yes, that is the thing I keep thinking about. I keep thinking back to like the feeling of oh, god, here we go, the roller coaster on election night, 2016, where we have done this thing, it never happened in the history of the country before, which is elect a person to be president, who has no prior government or military experience. This literally has never happened. This is -- we`re going to run this experiment with the whole country, as the variable group, with no control. And now, here we are, and there`s a kind of surreality, a pinching yourself, that I find myself constantly doing.
MEYERS: Yeah. And you know, that is also, you know, doing the content that we do every night, where you think it will move on, and be about different things, but you get stuck in this mud for lack of a better term. It`s impossible to move on, because it is the same every day in that, you know, there are new things he`s, you know, lying about, but he does it with incredible consistency that you don`t want to just move on because you`re tired of talking about it, because it`s still important.
HAYES: Right.
And then you start to feel like you`re trapped in a content Groundhog Day. And yet, the reality, like the reality and the truth are still the reality and the truth, and still need to be said on Tuesday, as they did on Monday.
MEYERS: Yeah. The crazy thing is if you told me in 2016 when he won, you know, this means in like three years, you`re going to be doing a show in an attic, I would have thought, yeah, you`re probably right, I just didn`t think it would be because of this.
HAYES: Yes, there would be some reason that I would be doing it from an attic.
MEYERS: Yeah, but it seems like this is a domino that would lead to that.
HAYES: You can catch Late Night with Seth Meyers, which will be back live next week, weeknights, NBC, 12:35 Eastern, a.m.. Seth, man, thank you so much for taking the time. Enjoy the attic.
MEYERS: All right, be well, guys.
HAYES: Take care.
MEYERS: That is ALL IN for this evening. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END