Washington Week full episode for April 24, 2020

ROBERT COSTA: Politics and science collide at the White House.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)

I would like you to speak to the medical doctors

to see if there's any way that you can apply light and heat to a cure.

COSTA: The president's statements lead to tensions with medical professionals.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)

Deborah, have you ever heard of that?

DEBORAH BIRX, M.D.

: (From video.)

Not as a treatment.

COSTA: And in the states, unease about the economy as another stimulus bill is signed.

NEW YORK GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO (D): (From video.)

States should declare bankruptcy?

That's how you're going to bring this national economy back, by states declaring

bankruptcy?

You want to see that market fall through the cellar?

Let New York state declare bankruptcy.

COSTA: Plus, growing outrage as some governors push to reopen.

GEORGIA GOVERNOR BRIAN KEMP (R): (From video.)

Today we are announcing plans to

incrementally and safely reopen sectors of our economy.

NIAID DIRECTOR ANTHONY FAUCI: (From video.)

I would tell him not to just turn the switch on and go.

COSTA: Next.

ANNOUNCER: This is Washington Week.

Once again, from Washington, moderator Robert Costa.

COSTA: Good evening.

As the death toll in the United States surges past 50,000

people, President Trump's assertions about how to treat the novel coronavirus

continue to roil his administration, and just hours ago the president took no questions

at the latest briefing following a week of tensions between him and health experts.

Joining me to discuss these issues are reporters who have been on these big stories all

week: Nancy Cordes, chief congressional correspondent for CBS News; Toluse Olorunnipa,

White House reporter for The Washington Post; Jeremy Peters, political correspondent for

The New York Times; and Shannon Pettypiece, senior White House reporter for NBC News

Digital.

Let's start, though, with the news tonight: a short briefing.

It was the curt culmination of a long week of presidential claims that were at odds with

his own health officials.

Here's the backstory: The cracks began to show on Tuesday when Robert Redfield, director

of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Washington Post that a

simultaneous flu and coronavirus outbreak in the fall and winter will actually be even

more difficult than the one we went through, and said calls to liberate states from

stay-at-home orders were, quote, "not helpful."

The president then said Redfield had

been misquoted, but Redfield on Wednesday said he had been correctly quoted as the

president looked on.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)

Dr. Robert Redfield was totally misquoted

in the media on a statement about the fall season and the virus, totally misquoted.

QUESTION: (From video.)

You were accurately quoted, correct?

CDC DIRECTOR ROBERT REDFIELD: (From video.)

I'm accurately quoted in The Washington Post as difficult.

COSTA: Another flareup came later Wednesday when Rick Bright, a senior government

scientist working on a vaccine said he was removed from his post for resisting efforts to

promote hydroxychloroquine, an antimalaria drug that has been used by some doctors to

treat the virus.

The president has been touting that drug for weeks, encouraged by conservative

commentators, but earlier today - Friday - the Food and Drug Administration warned that

people should not take the drug to treat COVID-19 outside of a hospital or formal

clinical trial due to reports of heart issues.

But it was Thursday's news conference that remains the most-debated moment of this week.

The president expressed hope about the power of sunlight to defeat the virus and turned

to a science administrator from the Department of Homeland Security to explore the idea,

and he theorized about what he called "disinfectants."

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)

I would like you to speak to the medical doctors

to see if there's any way that you can apply light and heat to a cure.

Again, I say maybe you can, maybe you can't; I'm not a doctor.

QUESTION: (From video.)

But, sir, you're the president.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)

Deborah, have you ever heard of that, the heat and

the light relative to certain viruses yes, but relative to this virus?

DEBORAH BIRX, M.D.

: (From video.)

Not as a treatment.

I mean, certainly fever -

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)

Yeah.

DEBORAH BIRX, M.D.

: (From video.)

- is a good thing when you have a fever.

It helps your body respond.

But not was - I have not seen heat or light as a -

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)

I think that's a great thing to look at.

When 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?

COSTA: By Friday morning, bleach companies issued a statement warning against improper

use of their products, and later today the president responded.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)

I was asking a sarcastic - in a very sarcastic

question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside.

COSTA: Shannon, you just came back from the White House to join us tonight, and the

reason we wanted to lay that all out is to understand how we got here tonight to this

short briefing, no questions, the president not engaging at least tonight any more about

hydroxychloroquine, about disinfectants.

What explains the president tonight deciding

not to take questions and to continue to push the issues he was pushing on Thursday?

SHANNON PETTYPIECE: Well, for weeks the president's advisors have been telling him to

cool is on these briefings, that they are not helping him politically, and the numbers

really reflect that.

They just continue getting worse and worse for him; when you

look at his approval rating, when you look at the number of Americans who trust him to

get accurate information, they are not good.

So his advisors have been telling him to cut these back, you know, do fewer of them, do -

spend less time out there, and I think this disinfectant/light briefing we had on Thursday

was really the culmination or the case in point of what his advisors are trying to tell him.

They did not want to be spending today talking about whether or not the president told

people to inject themselves with bleach or whether or not light could kill - you could

put a light inside someone's virus to kill it off.

That is not what they wanted to

be talking about today, and instead they spent the entire day trying to clean this up.

It started in the morning with the press secretary accusing the media of misquoting the

president, the president then saying that he was being sarcastic.

Even Deborah Birx went out.

She taped an interview that's going to air tomorrow on Fox.

She came out and said that this was just the president sort of publicly musing and having

a dialogue with scientists, but in front of the entire public.

So the reaction tonight, at least, I'll tell you, is officials are hopeful that the

president is going to cut back on these briefings going forward and finally listen to

their advice.

But listen, you know, nothing's over until it's over.

COSTA: So based on Shannon's reporting, Nancy, we're seeing a political calculation at

the White House to try to pull the president back from some of these statements, but

there is a health cost to when the president does this.

Maryland, the state, it issued

a statement saying please, to its residents, do not use disinfectants on your own body.

And you engaged today at the news conference with Speaker Pelosi, who raised health concerns.

NANCY CORDES: That's right, and you know, what she said is that, obviously, people

should not be injecting Lysol into their lungs, yet another statement we never expected

that anyone would have to make.

But this is - you know, this goes beyond sarcasm, obviously.

This is junk science and it's a problem because this is a time when Americans need facts

from their government more than ever.

And it wasn't just Maryland; it was public-health departments all around the country who

put out statements, who tweeted, telling people not to consider doing this, and the

reason that they felt they had to do that, Robert, is because they were getting so many

questions from citizens.

So you know, you can sort of laugh it off, but this has

real-world implications when you've got millions of people watching these

briefings and wondering whether they should take this advice seriously.

COSTA: Jeremy, you've been tracking conservatives on different - at different news

outlets as they've aligned themselves with the president on hydroxychloroquine and on

other issues.

What does your reporting reveal on that front?

JEREMY PETERS: It's interesting because if you had experienced the story of the

president's remarks yesterday in the briefing through conservative media you either would

not have known that he said it or you would have received a very sanitized version of

those remarks.

Earlier today on Fox News I happened to be listening to the way they

were covering this, and the editing of what the president said would have left you

with the impression that he was taken out of context; that indeed, he could have

been talking about a lifesaving experimental measure to use light to kill the virus.

So I really think when all is said and done, the political divides in this country are

being imposed on the real scientific conversations, medical issues that have to do with

this virus, in a way that is going to reflect very poorly on this country's political

discourse.

You essentially have the culture wars in America colliding with this global

health crisis.

And that's not a good thing.

It's not a good thing for the people who

are sick.

And it's not a good thing for people who are trying to prevent themselves

from getting sick.

I mean, the idea of a medication trying - a debate over

medication entering a political context is really kind of uncharted territory for us.

COSTA: And it's been in uncharted territory, Toluse, since the early 1960s.

You think back to President Kennedy in 1962, making sure through an amendment to the Food

and Drug Safety Act that drugs would be approved by the FDA, the Food and Drug

Administration, that they're both safe and efficacious.

When you report on this culture

inside of the administration, and you see Dr.

Bright, his challenges with the president

and the president's advisors.

You also saw FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn at the White

House today standing next to the president, making a few remarks.

What are you hearing

from your sources about whether health experts - whether it's Commission Hahn or it's

Dr. Birx - feel pressure to go along with the president's beliefs over science?

OLORUNNIPA: Well, they do.

I mean, President Trump said it himself that he's not

a doctor, but he pointed to his brain and he basically said that he has the information

that he needs in order to direct the federal health response to this pandemic.

It's very clear that the president wants to play a central role overruling his doctors,

talking up drugs that have not been vetted, talking about treatments that have not been

vetted that are, on their face, sort of laughable when it comes to things like using

light inside people's bodies, or using disinfectants inside people's bodies to try to get

rid of a virus that very many experts, medical experts, scientific experts

around the world are trying to figure out ways to get rid of this virus.

And the idea that the president, who has no medical expertise, would just sort of come

up with something on the top of his head and it would work, it may convince his

supporters but it does not actually carry much weight in the scientific community and it

does not actually work when it comes to actually trying to get rid of this virus.

So all of these experts are trying to tiptoe around the president.

They're trying to

explain away his comments.

They're trying to figure out ways to work with him, work

with his very unique personality.

But it has been difficult.

We have seen people like

Dr.

Bright getting pushed out of the administration.

We have seen people like Dr. Birx

and Dr. Fauci trying to figure out ways to convince the president, to stay on his good

side, not badmouth him too much, so that they would listen to them when they bring

various recommendations.

But it has been difficult.

The president has put a lot of

pressure on his medical experts.

And that's why we've seen such a disjointed response

from the White House and from the administration.

COSTA: Nancy, to that point, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo of California announced today that

she's going to try to call Dr.

Bright to come testify about his experience.

He wants to

be a whistleblower.

Will House Democrats pursue investigations on all of these issues?

CORDES: Yes.

I asked Pelosi about that in her press conference.

And she said, absolutely.

And here's where the real-world situation creates some logistical challenges.

If we were living in normal times, you can be sure that the House would have already

scheduled a hearing featuring Dr.

Bright.

They would want to haul him before Congress,

and before Anna Eshoo's committee as soon as possible to hear what he has to say.

But at this point, we're in this limbo where we believe that the House will come back to

Washington on May 4th, but that is pending the decisions by not just officials here in

the District of Columbia, but also the Capitol physician and the sergeant-at-arms.

So this is a - you know, this a decision that is being made in concert.

If all of those individuals decide it's not safe for lawmakers to come back to Washington

yet, even though many of them want to, then that date will get pushed off again, and some

of the urgency here will be lost.

As you know, Robert, there was a lot of discussion

over the last couple of weeks about perhaps enabling House members to hold hearings

remotely.

The technology exists to allow them to do that.

But there's been a lot of debate over whether that's a good idea, whether they could do

it securely and safely, and it's been tied to the issue of remote voting which is also

very controversial.

And so that's kind of gotten punted for now, which means it could

be weeks before Dr.

Bright comes and speaks to Congress.

COSTA: But do you think he could come to testify this summer or some time?

CORDES: It sounds like he's very interested in telling his story, and certainly House

Democrats are very eager to hear it.

So I think that, you know, as long as the House is back here in Washington in session, I

think it appears that both sides are eager to make that happen as quickly as possible.

COSTA: Shannon, one final question on this particular issue.

Hydroxychloroquine, the

FDA issued a statement - a warning about it.

You have the president touting a lab study

about sunlight.

It has not been peer reviewed.

I know you said the political divides

are saying: Hey, Mr. President, maybe enough with the news conferences.

But is he going to pull back at all from making statements that are not approved or

supported by the FDA about drugs and about treatments?

PETTYPIECE: Well, I will say it's been about two weeks since he talked about

hydroxychloroquine publicly at one of these briefings.

He raised it in a briefing

about two weeks ago.

He had some coronavirus survivors who came into the Cabinet room.

And a couple of them said that they had taken it.

But that was pretty much it.

And since then, there has been a chip, chip, chip of stories raising - and studies, I

mean - not stories, but actual medical studies - raising questions about this.

The FDA put out a statement cautioning people not to use this outside the medical

setting.

The FDA commissioner was at the briefing tonight.

He talked about a test that

had been approved but made no mention of this new warning from the FDA about

hydroxychloroquine.

It has not been talked about on Fox News very much.

There's been some analysis that shows that conversation dropping off.

So I think

on this front the White House is really trying to distance themselves from that.

But of course, as we saw in the briefing with the light and the disinfectant, I think the

president sometimes just can't help himself from wanting to try and go down the path of a

miracle cure.

He also talked about - this week - about a vaccine coming very soon, which

is it is not.

But again, trying to get into Dr. Trump mindset, and we continue to see that.

COSTA: So the briefing is the big story in Washington for political reporters most days.

But the big story for almost every American is their own situation, the economy, what's

going on with their bank account, their family.

And more than 4 million Americans filed for unemployment last week.

And since mid-March more than 26 million people have been laid off or furloughed.

And The Washington Post noted that jobless figures on this scale have not been seen since

the Great Depression.

Congress responded to this economic pain by passing a $484 billion

aid package this week.

Here's what you need to know.

In short, it includes

300 billion (dollars) for the depleted small business lending program.

It has

75 billion (dollars) for hospitals.

And it includes 25 billion (dollars) for virus testing.

Absent from the deal was the 500 billion (dollars) sought by governors, many of them

facing budget shortfalls - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican,

firmly opposed to that request, sparking fury from some governors.

And as states grapple with these challenges and look to jumpstart their economies, some

governors - like Democrat Andrew Cuomo of New York - are proceeding with caution.

Cuomo was at the White House with the president this week.

NEW YORK GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO (D): (From video.)

Frankly, this is no time to act

stupidly, period.

I get the pressure.

I get the politics.

We can't make a bad

decision and we can't be stupid about it.

This is not going to be over anytime soon.

COSTA: And others, like Republican Brian Kemp of Georgia, are plowing ahead with plans

to reopen restaurants, barber shops, and other businesses.

Governor Kemp's move came after pressure from conservatives, and drew a rebuke from

Atlanta's mayor and health experts, and this from President Trump.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)

I told the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, that I

disagree strongly with his decision to open certain facilities which are in violation of

the phase-one guidelines.

At the same time, he must do what he thinks is right.

I want him to do what he thinks is right, but I disagree with him on what he's doing.

COSTA: Nancy, how much of a hardline is McConnell, the majority leader, taking on this

upcoming negotiation?

Will he yield at some point on aid to states?

We have seen him back away from some of his positions in these previous rounds of talks.

CORDES: I think you're really onto something there, Robert.

You've watched him conduct these negotiations in the past.

And he's a savvy negotiator.

And he knows that if he stakes out a bargaining position in the beginning where it looks

like it's only Democrats who want this state funding, that then he can go ahead and give

it to them and then say: Well, I've given you what you want and now here's what I want.

When the reality is, frankly, that many Republicans, along with Democrats, know that

states are going to need another bailout.

I mean, their revenue is shrinking rapidly,

even as they are spending more to combat this crisis.

And Democratic and Republican

governors alike are beating down the door, telling Congress that they are going to need

these funds.

So I'm not sure that McConnell is going to stick to this position, but clearly as

Congress kind of revs up for the next big negotiation over a CARES II package or phase

four, whatever you want to call it, that is going to be a big part of it, and he's - you

know, he's trying to find a negotiating position that's going to enable him to get the

things he wants in that package at the end of the day.

COSTA: Toluse, you just filed a story for the Post about Governor Kemp and President

Trump.

What is the real story behind the scenes?

He's aligned with the president, yet now at odds with the president.

OLORUNNIPA: Yeah, Governor Kemp really owes a lot of his governorship to President

Trump's endorsement.

He was able to propel himself to the top of the ticket in the

Republican primary back in 2018 thanks to Trump.

But since he took office he's clashed with the president on a number of issues, including

his appointment of Kelly Loeffler as the new senator in Georgia; President Trump wanted

his fierce defender Doug Collins, a representative, to be appointed to that Senate seat.

And now we see them clashing over the opening up of Georgia.

President Trump actually had seemed to be very much in favor of the fact that Georgia was

going to open up very aggressively and very quickly as late as last week and early this

week, but after there was some pushback to Governor Kemp's announcement that spas and

tattoo parlors and bowling alleys would be - would be included, and some of the medical

experts said that that was not in line with what they had recommended - that was actually

in direct contrast to President Trump's own guidelines, which the president at times has

seemed somewhat unfamiliar with - the president decided to publicly rebuke Governor Kemp,

surprising the governor's aides.

This is something that the governor was not expecting

after speaking to President Trump, but he criticized him on Wednesday.

He doubled down

on it on Thursday, saying he was not happy with how Governor Kemp was handling this.

We reported at The Washington Post that President Trump had called Governor Kemp and

asked him to modify his order, take off some of the spas and nail salons, and Governor

Kemp declined; he said that he was going to move forward.

And that clash is

continuing between a top Republican governor and the Republican president.

COSTA: What about the clash, Jeremy, in the activist ranks?

You've covered the Tea Party for years and you just said earlier in the show about this

being a culture war.

We saw thousands at the Wisconsin State Capitol Friday.

Is there

a new Tea Party-type movement emerging on the right to pressure some of these governors?

PETERS: Yeah, I think there absolutely is an element of the conservative base that is

unhappy with these restrictions.

I think, though, the question is, like, what type of

conservatism does that represent, and is that brand of conservatism dead because of the

coronavirus?

And I think - this is something I hear a lot of my sources talking

about - the answer is free-market conservatism right now is on life support.

It's an ideology that Republicans have really no use for and there's almost zero

political will from the people to see those types of policies enacted.

Small-government,

free-market conservatism really has no role in this type of environment.

And so when you see these protesters, yes, you know, you're right, there are thousands in

Michigan, Kentucky there were hundreds, Colorado there were hundreds -

COSTA: But you're right, they've been pretty small.

They've been pretty small.

PETERS: Yeah, by and large they have been pretty small and really fringey.

If you look at the crowds, it's people waving Confederate flags, carrying semiautomatic

weapons, you know.

This is - this is not an outpouring like we saw - like you and I

covered in 2009 and 2010.

I do think, though, there is a difference between that type of uprising and revolt, which

is fairly contained, and the type that you could see slowly bubbling up - I wouldn't

quite call it a revolt, but I would say as people have described it to me that patience

is fraying.

There are people who have been home now for weeks.

Their kids are getting on their nerves.

COSTA: They're getting restless.

They're getting restless.

PETERS: Exactly, there's - and this is -

COSTA: Exactly.

Hey, Jeremy, give me one second here.

I just want to get Shannon

in real quick.

Speaking of all the fight on the right, Shannon, we see the president

pushing ahead on immigration.

Is that going to continue with more executive orders?

We only have a few - about 30 seconds left.

PETTYPIECE: Yeah, I mean, I think that was a way to get the topic back into his comfortable turf.

Right now he had wanted to be talking about things like immigration and he can't because

of coronavirus, so it was a way to get the conversation back on his friendly turf, on a

number-one issue for Republicans, and to also paint this theoretical picture of a future

where there are so many jobs that immigrants are flooding here to get them.

It's part of that hope, spin the thing forward and make people think that things are

going to be better than reality actually indicates they will be.

COSTA: That's all the time we have.

Packing it all into 30 minutes is not easy on

weeks like this, but we - thank you very much to our reporters: Nancy Cordes,

Toluse Olorunnipa, Jeremy Peters, and Shannon Pettypiece.

And thank you for joining us.

We will keep taking you as close to the news as we can.

Our conversation will

continue online on our Extra.

Find it on our social media and our website.

This week's topic: the 2020 campaign.

I'm Robert Costa.

Good night from Washington.