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Don Lemon Tonight

Governors Want To Reopen Economy; CDC Says Rushing Things Is Bad Idea; Mayor London Breed (D) Of San Francisco Is Interviewed About Early Action She Made In The State To Control Spread Of Virus; President Trump Criticized By Media; Fact Check: A List Of False Claims From President Trump's Coronavirus Briefing; President Trump Touts Hydroxychloroquine As Heart Risk Concerns Mount For Unproven Coronavirus Treatment. Aired 11p-12a ET

Aired April 13, 2020 - 23:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[23:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: This is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon.

Eleven p.m. on the East Coast. Here's a latest on the coronavirus pandemic.

Tonight, there are more than 1.9 million cases worldwide. With more than 119,000 deaths, over 23,000 of those deaths are happening right here in the United States.

As of today, all 50 states are reporting at least one coronavirus death. And tonight, the number of coronavirus cases in this country is over 581,000. That as there are signs that the curve is flattening. And governors on the east and west coast are working to put together their own plans for how to reopen.

CNN's Jason Carroll has the news on that.

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Tonight, states across the country banding together to come up with their own coordinated plans to reopen the country in the region. Governors from California, Washington and Oregon announce their plan to work together on an approach to reopen their economy.

This after governors from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Delaware and Pennsylvania announce they're forming a working group to do the same.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): Because remember the federal government could have said I want to close down the economy. They didn't. They said we're going to leave it to the states. Now all of a sudden when it's time to open the economy, now it's back to the federal government as a responsibility.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CARROLL: Texas Governor Greg Abbott says later this week he will release a strategy for what he says will eventually be a slow reopening of businesses there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): This is not a rush the gate everybody is able to suddenly reopen all at once.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: This as President Trump insists he will be the one to decide when the country reopens despite never issuing a nationwide lock down and leaving that up to states.

For the first time in history every state is under a disaster declaration at the same time. The national death toll numbers are staggering, and yet, in New York the epicenter of the pandemic, there are indications the number of infected is leveling off.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Here's the good news. The curve continues to flatten.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: Across the country the number of hospitalizations is down. The U.S. surgeon general says it appears the nations hotspots places such as New York, New Jersey and Detroit, and New Orleans are all showing some signs of improvement.

Dr. Jerome Adams tweeting this morning "in the midst of tragedy there is hope. Social distancing and mitigation is working. There is a light at the end of this dark tunnel."

Health officials say reopening will likely have to happen section by section.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT REDFIELD, DIRECTOR, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: This pandemic has affected different parts of the country differently. We're looking at a data carefully county by county by county. And we will be assessing that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: Still this morning Los Angeles County health officials reported seeing its highest number of COVI death in a 48- hour period. Thirty-one people died. The U.S. military says a sailor on board the USS Theodore Roosevelt has died from COVID-19. Today, more than 2,900 service members have tested positive for the virus.

In southern states ravaged by tornadoes over the weekend, social distancing a challenge. People in Alabama and Mississippi relied on community shelters. And then there's the economic impact. Disney announce it will furlough 43,000 Walt Disney employees starting April 19. And one of the nation's largest pork processing plants now closed until further notice.

This after 238 employees at Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, South Dakota tested positive for the coronavirus. That number of infected accounts for half of the state's total.

And when it comes to reopening in New York, Governor Cuomo says that he knows people want to get back to their normal, he knows they want to get to work. But he says when it comes to New York State it's not just simply going to be just like flicking a switch. He says when it does happen it will not be an instant return to normal. Don.

LEMON: All right. Jason Carroll, thank you so much. I want to bring in Dr. Michael Osterholm. He is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and the author of the book "Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs." Doctor, thank you so much. I appreciate you joining us.

The debate over opening the country back up is obviously necessary. But we still have an urgent and ongoing public health crisis right now. Where are we tonight with the number of deaths and the flattening of the curve?

[23:05:05]

MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH AND POLICIES: Well, first of all we have to understand we're really just at the very beginning of this entire situation. And that's sometimes hard to hear. But it also should be the very reason why what we do for planning takes into account not just next week or month but for the next 16 or 18 months.

Some of the most conservative estimates if you look at that entire 18- month period we can easily have between 800,000 and 1.6 million deaths. We have had 23,000 to date. That's tragic. Each one of those is a loved one. But think about how much more we may have to go.

So, part of the challenge we have is that you laid, Don, just in that opening comment is what is our plan to either not shut down the country but at the same time not let these cases just go unabated.

LEMON: Right.

OSTERHOLM: And we don't really have a good plan for that. And that's the challenge we have.

LEMON: Let's talk about the tests. What about the tests and the vaccines that will need to really be able to reopen? What's the status on those?

OSTERHOLM: Well, first of all, let me just say -- and I know this is not going to be popular. We have over promised dramatically on testing and contact tracing. You'll hear a lot of talking head say this is very important. The articles will come out. Let me just remind everyone. Our best guess and it's more than just a

guess it's some educated calculation, that even by this fall we will be only able to test about three million people a week or about 4 percent of the country's population every month.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: By the fall?

OSTERHOLM: So that's just -- by the fall. That's the capability we will have, so let's just deal with it. You know, I was actually on the show with you almost six weeks ago and I said at that time testing was going to be a disaster. We wouldn't have the reagents. We have all this hype and promise.

But even think about this, we don't know what these tests really mean. You take the antibody test right now. If you look at a test that's highly sensitive 95 percent of the time it can pick up the actual antibody there and it's highly specific, meaning there's not a lot of false positive.

In a population of about 5 percent background, if you test a million people and you have 5 percent of the population, you'll have basically 270 -- excuse me -- 470,000 people who have test positive. But you also have 470,000 people who have false positive tests.

So, the challenge we have is testing is not just its availability but how does this work within our system. And we don't really have a clue yet to how to do that.

LEMON: Wow. You know, there are places in this country, you know, which have peaked and are receding right now. And you know, there are places that, you know, there are current hotspots. And then there are places that you're looking at that are yet to be hard hit. So how do we know? I mean, there's no -- there's no nationwide system. No -- not -- you know, they're different. Everything is different. So how do we really, really know?

You're saying it's going to be fall until we, you know, you know, until we get to the testing where you say that we're going to get. How do we really know when we're going to get to normal?

OSTERHOLM: Well, that's --

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Or if -- what the new normal is.

OSTERHOLM: Well, even -- there is good news though. The public health system -- which has been left out in many of the discussion. Have you seen CDC as a prominent member of this discussion nationally? They should be.

LEMON: No, they haven't.

OSTERHOLM: They actually have with state health department set up a whole series of different surveillance mechanisms looking for influenza-like illness at doctor's office been able to actually survey what's going on in the community.

And we can tell fairly well actually before these cases start to really ramp up that they're starting to ramp up with some of this kind of work that we do. And we don't hear enough about that. There's a lot that can be done.

So, I don't want people to come away thinking we can't do anything. We can do a lot. It's just that we have been so focused on this testing issue and contact tracing which has, I think, really gotten us off the ball.

You know, Don, right now if I could, I would take all these thousands and thousands of healthcare workers who have been furloughed losing their jobs and help bring them in around nursing homes around the entire country today and help bubble those locations from the virus.

Do you know how much we would actually stop transmission in so many communities today? If we would just take the respirators that we're throwing away right now. And instead of doing that we would decontaminate them; we would reuse them again. That would help us tremendously with healthcare worker.

There's many practical things we can do. We're just not doing. Why? Because we don't have a national plan. And that's what, I think, of all the things you hear from these governors right now all trying to reopen. They're all doing it on their own.

Wouldn't it be great if we have a set of circumstances, had a set of measures that would say, this is the on-ramp, this is the off-ramp. This is how we're going to get that ramp up with having to shut down, this is how we're going to get off.

Then we'd all know and even you and I wouldn't be having this discussion. We would be rather looking at the data and say where are we at tonight instead of wondering will we ever know?

LEMON: What do you think about these governors, the coordination between these governors who are -- you just, you talk about them. Them grouping together to organize to do this regionally. Is that a good approach?

[23:09:59]

OSTERHOLM: I think it's great. I think -- I think the governors on a whole have demonstrated incredible leadership. They have had to deal with it on the ground. You know, the boots on the ground where the deaths are occurring the illnesses are, I think on a whole they've done very well. But I think we can do a lot more to offer them support.

They're not trained public health people. They didn't get into this to be infectious disease experts. But, so, therefore, I think we need to offer them more. But I really think our hats should be off to two groups. Basically, the healthcare workers of this country and in many cases the governors of this country they have really done remarkable work.

LEMON: One quick question.

OSTERHOLM: Yes.

LEMON: So, summer is coming up, right?

OSTERHOLM: Yes.

LEMON: And it's easier to stay home when it's winter. Right? You're inside, it's cool, whatever. People are going to wonder what happens next? The summer is coming up. People get cough and fever. The pool, the beach. You want to get outside. You want to do. Now what? What happens, doctor? Are we going to have --

(CROSSTALK)

OSTERHOLM: Well, that's for --

LEMON: Are we going to have a normal summer or somewhat normal summer? Are people going to be able to go to the beach, are they going to be able to go to the pool in their backyard or public? Or what? Public beach. What?

OSTERHOLM: Well, you know, it's just like the issue we talk about but there's no new normal. So, when you're out on the lake in Minnesota in the summertime, and all of a sudden you get a storm warning that says that 25 miles away there's a bad storm coming. You get off the lake. But you enjoyed it until that time.

We need to have similar mechanisms to warn the country when cases in your area are starting to show that increase and you better try to slow them down. And that's if we can have that kind of system in place and work it with all the other areas around us, you know what, we can do a lot to let people live their lives, make money, have a job. See your family.

And actually, also be very in tuned with if we start to see this increase in cases in your neighborhood, we're going to do something to try to shut that down. So, we can do better. We can do much better. We just have to start thinking about how to do it just like you're doing now.

LEMON: Boy. It's going to be interesting to see what happens next. Thank you, doctor. I really appreciate it.

OSTERHOLM: Thank you, Don.

LEMON: Good information. See you soon.

The CDC says social distancing is working in San Francisco. So, let's bring in now the Mayor, London Breed. Thank you so much, mayor. Good to see, and thank you for joining us.

MAYOR LONDON BREED (D), SAN FRANCISCO, CA: Of course. Thank you. LEMON: So, you declared a state of emergency in San Francisco on February 25th before there was a single confirmed case of coronavirus. That ban gatherings of 1,000 people or more. Then three weeks later when you had fewer than 50 confirmed cases you shut the city down. Businesses closed, city wide, shelter in place. You took a lot of heat then. What did you see happening and why did you do it?

BREED: Well, we in San Francisco we've been in situations where we have had to rely on our public health experts in the past with a lack of support from the federal government. Just think about the 1980s during the AIDS crisis when our public health department here in San Francisco led the way when we were virtually ignored by the federal government.

We knew we had to keep an eye on the situation. We had to rely on facts, we had to rely on data. We had to be prepared for what we knew was going to come. It wasn't as if it wasn't going to come to San Francisco or the United States. We had to be prepared.

And so, relying on the people who were paying very close attention to this. We operated our emergency operation center right away in January just to keep an eye on the things to understand what could potentially happen.

And what I felt was most important, every step of the way is that we informed the residents of San Francisco exactly what is going on, every step of the way. And we wanted people to be prepared for what I thought would happen as a result of the coronavirus here in our city. And it was really about protecting and saving the residents of the city.

LEMON: Yes. I was watching the briefing today. And I thought about you and your city when -- and I'm paraphrasing the answer to the question that the president was asked about it, and he said, why would I do a shut down when there were no deaths or there were few deaths and there were no cases here.

And I thought about you, and I said, well, San Francisco did it. And look how it paid off for them. It paid off well. And they had the foresight. I mean, listen, San Francisco's case curve is flattening. The CDC says that social distancing is working. So, what do you think of the idea of opening things back up again? Are

you worried about it spreading again?

BREED: I think we need to be careful. Because the fact is, we may feel good about the fact that it appears that it's flattening. But as soon as we let up, all of a sudden, we can see that surge and become something completely different. People start to get comfortable; people are tired of being endorsed. They're like, wait a minute, we're flattening the curve. We're seeing some changes. We can go out and we can do what we have done in the past.

[23:15:02]

But it doesn't work like that. It just takes one super-spread or it takes one situation out of control that could create a bigger problem than what we're dealing with now. So, I don't think we can get comfortable until we get over this hump.

We got to be very careful even when we decide that we're going to reopen the city or reopen the state or what have you. We have to be very careful about what that actually means as it relates to businesses, as it relates to gatherings and everything that we do.

LEMON: I appreciate your time, Mayor London Breed. We'll see you soon. Thank you so much. Be safe. Thank you.

There's no question that we're in the middle of a public health crisis with more than 580,000 case of coronavirus, 23,000 deaths. So, what exactly happened today at the White House? That's next.

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LEMON: This is a public health crisis. The number of crisis cases in the U.S. soaring past 582,000. Over 23,000 people have died.

[23:20:05]

Let's discuss the government's response with CNN White House Correspondent JOHN Harwood, CNN Chief Legal Analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, and Chief Washington Correspondent for Politico, Ryan Lizza.

Tough job today, Ryan, by the way. Good evening, gentlemen. Good to see all of you.

John, what does the White House need to be focusing on right now and what's actually happening at these task force briefings?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, what happened today was we saw exactly what consumes Donald Trump most of all. It's not the protection of his constituents, it's the protection of his sense of self.

He is right now trapped in a terrible reality of the economic devastation, illness and death on his watch. He is watching on television harsh reviews of his performance. Reading in the New York Times a dissection of all the ways in which he was slow and behind the curve on this crisis.

Watching Dr. Fauci go on Jake Tapper's show on Sunday and suggest that the slowness of that response had cost lives. And that was very hard for him to take.

And so, he came into the briefing today with a sense of anger that he was being criticized. He went after Kaitlan, he went after Paula Reid of CBS. He mounted this furious defense of himself and that same impulse is what drove him in the latter part of the briefing this outrageous assertion of the authority.

That was him watching today when governors saying Trump is not going to get the job done so we're going move ahead together as regional blocks to try to figure out how to reopen the economy. And so, Donald Trump comes in the briefing room and says no, I'm powerful. I'm the one with total authority. That is not based on legal analysis from the White House counsel or

sense of philosophy. It's him asserting his power. And he sort of, gave away the game later where when he was questioned on that saying well, the governors will go along with it.

And when Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio was on with Anderson this evening he sort of tiptoed around what Trump was saying and said, well, the buck stops with me but of course I'll listen to the president he's got a big bully pulpit.

LEMON: Yes.

HARWOOD: That was the president trying to cope with stuff that was very painful to him today.

LEMON: Well, let's talk to Ryan about that. Because, Ryan, you asked the president about his authority over governors. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYAN LIZZA, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Just to clarify your understanding of your authority, vis-a-vis, governors. Just be very specific. For instance, if a governor issued a stay-at-home order.

(CROSSTALK)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You say my authority? The president's authority. Because it's not me. This is when somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that's the way it's got to be.

LIZZA: Total? The authority is total?

TRUMP: It's total. It's total.

LIZZA: Your authority is total?

TRUMP: And the governors know that.

LIZZA: So, if --

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: The governors know that. Now you have a couple of band -- excuse me. You have --

(CROSSTALK)

LIZZA: Could you rescind that order?

TRUMP: You have a couple of bands of Democrat governors but they will agree to it.

LIZZA: When was --

TRUMP: They will agree to it. The authority of the President of the United States having to do with the subject we're talking about is total.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Ryan, total authority?

LIZZA: Yes. That was the word. He did add that caveat in that last statement with respect to the current situation. But, you know, it sounded so jarring in the moment him talking about his total authority.

But frankly, the more you think about it, it was sort of an empty statement. I think he even recognizes that his authority is not total. Right? So, you know, it was alarming to watch the president, to see the president stand up there and say that. But there was, you know, there's something empty about the statement. Right?

We all know the authority is not total and as things went on and he got very defensive about that statement and then, you know, other people were involved in the conversation like Vice President Pence. It became clear that the White House doesn't actually think that. Right? That it's just this bizarre rhetoric. But more or less it is jarring to sit there and the president is asserting total authority, you know, like it's North Korea.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Why --

LEMON: Go ahead, Jeffrey.

TOOBIN: Why can't we just take him at his word? I mean, it's ignorance.

(CROSSTALK)

LIZZA: Well, because he doesn't know (Inaudible) the truth.

TOOBIN: Well, but the thing is, he's lying. But he may actually believe it. It's total ignorance of how the law works. It's ignorance of the Constitution under article second -- of the Constitution. That is not one of his powers.

[23:24:55]

He, -- the states have the powers to open and close the businesses in their state. He doesn't have that authority. And it just seems appropriate to simply point out that this ego mania, this lying, this ignorance about how this country is supposed to work, is what we saw today.

LEMON: But Jeffrey --

(CROSSTALK)

LIZZA: I mean, what sort of gave --

LEMON: Go ahead. LIZZA: No, I was just going to say what sort of gave him anyways, you

know, I was sitting there asking these questions and then saw Vice President Pence standing there, you know, silently. And thought well, this is a great opportunity to ask the vice president, to you know -- we always see Vice President Pence standing next to Trump. Assume that he agrees with him.

And you know, I sort of brought him into the conversation and said, you know, do you have the same view of executive authority that the president did? And if you listen closely to what Pence said, he was very clear that he was walking this line between being sort of obedient to the president and making sure he didn't criticize him or contradict him.

But at the same time the way he talked about it made it very clear that he absolutely did not believe that Trump had total authority. He talked about plenary authority and having a relationship with the governors. And you know, it became very clear that that's not actually --

LEMON: Listen.

LIZZA: -- their view. And Trump is just sort of making it up on the fly.

LEMON: I know. I've got to run though. But to Jeffrey's point though, I mean, Pence does not call the shot. It's Donald Trump who is calling the shots. And I think Jeffrey is right. He probably actually believes that and does not understand or hasn't read part of the Constitution that well, it wouldn't be there because it doesn't say that.

Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate it.

LIZZA: Thanks, Don.

LEMON: In the midst of this crisis we need the facts to protect ourselves and our loved ones. We're going to dig into those facts next.

[23:30:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: The fact is there are more than half a million cases of coronavirus in this country. More than 23,000 Americans have died. But we are starting to see signs that the curve may be flattening. Those are facts.

Let's bring in CNN's resident fact-checker Daniel Dale to break down what we heard from the president in tonight's coronavirus briefing. Daniel, good evening. The president said that this is about the travel restrictions he placed on China. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Here's what happened. When on January 31st, I instituted a ban, Joe Biden went crazy. He said, you don't need the ban -- he didn't go crazy like he is. He didn't even know what the hell the ban was. But he -- so, he didn't go crazy. But he did say -- he did call me xenophobic. Wait a minute. He called me xenophobic. He called me a racist because -- he has since apologized and he said I did the right thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Give us the truth.

DANIEL DALE, CNN REPORTER AND RESIDENT FACT-CHECKER: Biden has not apologized for calling Trump xenophobic or for anything about the travel ban. This is a bit convoluted. But on the day that the Trump administration announced the China restrictions, not a ban, on January 31st, Biden had an event in Iowa just after that and he said that this is the time for the response to be led by science, not by Trump's record of fearmongering and xenophobia.

The Trump campaign interpreted that as Biden criticizing the travel restriction himself as xenophobic. The Biden campaign says Biden himself didn't even know about the restrictions at the time he used that rhetoric and wasn't referring to the restrictions obviously.

Whether you buy that or not, you know, the Trump campaign can make an argument well, he was obviously referring to restrictions. There was no apology at any point.

LEMON: Daniel, coronavirus testing is still a massive problem. The president was asked about that today, as well. Here is what he's had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

D. TRUMP: We rebuilt the whole industry because we inherited nothing. What we inherited from the previous administration was totally broken which somebody should eventually say. Not only were the cupboards bare as I say, but we inherited broken testing. Now, we have great testing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: So, what is the fact-check here?

DALE: Don, the national stockpile was not empty. But I will focus on the testing claim. It simply doesn't make sense that the Trump administration supposedly inherited broken, flawed, obsolete tests as he keeps saying. This is a new virus that was identified this year. The flawed tests were developed by the CDC under Trump's leadership this year in 2020, this entire flaw (ph).

LEMON: The president also claims that governors requested too many supplies. He said today that we don't hear about ventilators anymore. But that's not true.

DALE: That's not true. In fact, we had Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan on ABC yesterday, a day ago, saying that it's "not quite accurate" that we're all just happy and we got what we need. He specifically identified ventilators as one of the things the state is still in great need of.

We also had New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy saying that they're still trying to keep ahead of the hospital bed capacity issue and they are still in need of equipment. So the idea that the governors have given up demanding stuff, needing stuff is not based in fact.

LEMON: All right. Daniel Dale, thank you very much. Appreciate your time. There are new concerns about the safety of using hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus. We're going to tell you what you need to know.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[23:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: President Trump is continuing to push an unproven treatment for the coronavirus even as concerns mount about the risks the drug may pose to people with corona -- excuse me, with cardiovascular disease. So here's what he said about hydroxychloroquine at tonight's briefing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

D. TRUMP: Furthermore, over the last seven days, my administration has deployed roughly 28 million doses of hydroxychloroquine from our national stockpile. We have millions of doses that we bought and many people are using it all over the country. Just recently, a friend of mine told me he got better because of the use of that drug. So, who knows? You combine it with Z-Pak, you combine it with zinc, depending on your doctor's recommendation, and having some very good results.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: So here to discuss, CNN Medical Analyst, Dr. Celine Gounder and Meg Kelly of The Washington Post's Fact Checker. Thank you so much to both of you. I appreciate your time.

[23:40:00]

LEMON: So Dr. Gounder, the president cites anecdotal story. But a study in Brazil was ended early because eleven patients died using the related drug, Chloroquine, which the president has also touted. Doesn't that show why it's important to study these drugs very carefully before rushing them out?

CELINE GOUNDER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, that's right, Don. The initial French study that had many of us hoping that maybe this would be a potential treatment where they looked at combination of hydroxychloroquine and the azithromycin, that study has now been retracted.

And that small study in Brazil involving 81 patients, 11 out of 81 patients, so more than 10 percent, died from fatal cardiac arrhythmias as a result of this combination of medications. These medications are known to cause cardiac arrhythmias. And so it's really not surprising that we're seeing a high rate of complications, especially in patients who have already underlying medical issues, including coronary artery disease and other cardiovascular disease.

LEMON: Yeah. Meg, The Washington Post gave the president four pinocchios for his comments on the drugs. A lot of hype came from a discredited study by a French researcher. So, please, if you will, walk us through how this idea even got to the president.

MEG KELLY, VIDEO EDITOR, THE WASHINGTON POST'S FACT CHECKER: Sure. So it really started in January. There were a few tweets that came out in China, travelled to Nigeria. We saw the biggest bump happened through toward the end of February in France following that study. That is really when it came over to the U.S. In early March, we saw it starts to trickle up on some social media circles.

And then, you know, in the middle of March -- excuse me, sort of March 7 or so, a couple of investors in New York tweeted a paper that used a lot of the same data from the study, the French study. That paper was then re-tweeted and "tweeted" by Elon Musk. It showed up in Fox News after that by far, particularly pundits. A few days after that it sort of made its way to Trump's talking point.

LEMON: Interesting. And then, there you go. It's been touted and spread around in this sort of conservative echo chamber and the president keeps repeating it. Listen, Dr. Gounder, let's go and talk about the science of all this because researchers in New York are going to release preliminary results from hydroxychloroquine study next week. You say that you find the study uncomfortable. Why do you find it uncomfortable?

GOUNDER: I find it uncomfortable that we are, in fact, many medical centers using hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, it's part of the algorithms, the sort of if this, then this that we are incorporating into treatment.

And the reason it's uncomfortable is that, you know, except for patients in the ICU where we have them on continuous monitors, for the most part, most patients are not on cardiac monitors, and we're really trying to minimize the number of times we go into a patient's room to see them, to examine them in part to conserve personal protective equipment and in part to reduce staff exposure.

That means that things that we would normally do like checking an EKG every day while they are on these medications were not able to do for those safety reasons. And so these kinds of cardiac arrhythmias could also be missed right now. So it's uncomfortable to me that this is also being incorporated into standard practice right now when we still don't have the data.

LEMON: Dr. Gounder, I want to ask you about these disturbing photos from a Detroit hospital. They showed bodies being stored in vacant rooms. Can these photos help shine a light on just how bad this virus is hitting parts of the country for people who might not be seeing the magnitude of it where they live? GOUNDER: Well, Don, you know, Detroit has been hit especially hard.

And it's interesting I was actually on the phone this morning with an old friend of mine from college who is a surgeon in Michigan. He has been helping run his hospital's response to this.

You know, the Detroit area has been hit very hard, in particular the African American community and nursing homes. Those are both the two most vulnerable groups that have we have seen in Detroit.

And a lot of this is related to the fact that these are people, in the case of African Americans, who maybe working in frontline, essential work service types of jobs, so they don't have the option to social distance and they may not have the access to good quality care, health insurance to begin with. Many of them unfortunately have underlying health conditions.

As we know, you know, from the Seattle experience and elsewhere, nursing homes are really just fodder for this kind of spread. You know, once you have one case of COVID, it runs through these facilities.

LEMON: Yeah.

GOUNDER: So, unfortunately, Detroit has really been hit hard on both fronts.

[23:45:00]

LEMON: Yeah. I wish we had more time. Thank you, Dr. GOunder. Thank you, Meg. If you want to see more of Meg's work at fact-checking, go to The Washington Post. I appreciate both of you. Thanks so much. President Trump is threatening to defund the World Health Organization. We're going to dig into how they handled the coronavirus crisis so far and what he is saying about it.

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LEMON: There are more than 582,000 cases of coronavirus in this country. That number is going up during our show tonight.

[23:50:02]

LEMON: There are more than 1.9 million cases worldwide. Why the president is threatening to defund the World Health Organization in the midst of this crisis. CNN's Nic Robertson has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's going to be a virus that stalks the human race for quite a long time to come.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR (voice-over): When the World Health Organization, the WHO, speaks, we listen, right? The question is, should we?

D. TRUMP: They seem to be very China centric. ROBERTSON (voice-over): President Trump thinks not. He is considering defunding them.

D. TRUMP: We give them the majority of the money that they get.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): January 22nd, Wuhan, one day from any form of lockdown, China is in crisis mode. The WHO Praises China. Yet, as we now know for the previous two months, China has been silencing its doctors, stonewalling its people, and lying by omission about the disease.

In January at least the WHO seems unwilling to question China's truthfulness, raising concerns it could have done more to stop the pandemic before it got going. Dr. Peter Drobac is a U.K. based global health expert.

PETER DROBAC, GLOBAL HEALTH EXPERT, OXFORD SAID BUSINESS SCHOOL: If there was evidence early on that China was not sharing or was covering

up information about a new virus and about this outbreak and trying not to share that with the world, then certainly it would have been appropriate for WHO to call them out on that.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): The WHO's senior official Margaret Harris says the WHO was doing all it could.

MARGARET HARRIS, SENIOR OFFICIAL, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: By the 4th of January, we notified the world via social media and by the fifth we put out a formal notification in what's called our "Disease Outbreak News."

ROBERTSON (voice-over): But that was a long way short of the level of alarm public health officials say the world needed to hear. It would take another month to get to that point.

On January 14, China is still telling the WHO they have not seen human-to-human transmission. That day, the WHO echoes China's message. Also, that day, the WHO reports Thailand gets its first imported case of COVID-19.

Two days later, January 16th, the WHO reports that Japan has its first imported case. The same day, the WHO reports a third country affected, too. And tweets, considering global travel patterns, additional cases in other countries are likely.

But it isn't until January 19th the WHO actually acknowledged what had become obvious to many experts, human-to-human transfer was happening.

DROBAC: It is clear that early on China repressed some information and really didn't share information in ways that might have allowed this outbreak to take hold in ways that became very dangerous.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): China's epidemic has got traction and is on the way to becoming a pandemic. Still, January 22nd, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is still praising China. The next day, WHO experts fail to flag the looming threat. HARRIS: Independent scientists with expertise are brought together. They come to Dr. Tedros and they said we don't have a consensus at that point on the 23rd.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): It would be a week later, the end of January, before they announce what to the world already seemed obvious in the broader health community.

TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS, DIRECTOR GENERAL, WHO: I am declaring a public health emergency of international concern.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): The next day, President Trump calls for a travel ban on China. The WHO director general criticizes Trump. Tensions begin building.

DROBAC: The more that we go on casting blame back and forth, instead of working together, you know, this is really at our -- at our peril. China has the greatest collection of clinical expertise in fighting COVID-19 as anyone in the world. We should be learning from them right now.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): A point the WHO is keen to flag. That even while denying human-to-human transfer in January, China was providing vital genome data that WHO passes to the world to help make test kits.

Two months later, the WHO would declare the pandemic. The WHO's track record in previous crises is checkered, widespread criticism for the handling of Ebola, better on SARS when it stood up to China.

DROBAC: If you go back to the SARS epidemic of 2003 to 2005, WHO had quite a -- at least a more muscular posture, including in calling out China early and pushing them to provide more transparency and more information. They didn't have any more power at the time, but they simply used the kind of bully pulpit that they had.

[23:55:04]

D. TRUMP: I closed the borders despite him and that was a hard decision to make at the time.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): By late March, Trump's China travel ban has become a central plank of his defense of his own heavily criticized handling of the pandemic. The WHO becomes a scapegoat.

D. TRUMP: They got to do better than that.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Most countries, including Trump's friend Boris Johnson's government, are standing by the WHO and so, too, most experts.

DROBAC: If this breaks out in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, in countries that have, you know, fewer ventilators in an entire country than one New York City hospital does, then we need WHO and international support there to help them get prepared. And if so WHO is weakened or paralyzed now fighting these political fights between the U.S. and China, that could really hurt us in the months to come.

ROBERTSON (on camera): Most experts agree that the WHO does actually need reforming. Given extra powers, not disbanded for another organization. And when David Navarro says that the battle against COVID-19 is far from done, he is correct. But the global consensus seems to be that the WHO really needs to be part of that fight, Don.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Nic Robertson, thank you so much. And thank you for watching, everyone. Our coverage continues.

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