#RolandMartinUnfiltered - 3.13 Trump declares coronavirus national emergency; La. postpones primary; Gillum found "inebriated"

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

3.13.20 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Trump declares national emergency over Coronavirus; COVID-19 prompts schools across the country to close; Louisiana postpones primary over Coronavirus fears; Andrew Gillum found "inebriated" in a Miami hotel; Nathaniel Woods' sister confronts Alabama governor over controversial execution. #RolandMartinUnfiltered partner: AFSCME AFSCME is the nation's largest and fastest growing public services employees union with more than 1.6 million active and retired members. Visit https://www.afscme.org to learn how we make America happen. #RolandMartinUnfiltered is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Să facem o pătrunjelă. Hey, folks, today is Friday, March 13th, 2020. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, Donald Trump declares a national state of emergency as a result of the coronavirus. Details exactly what is going to be done when it comes to this virus. Also, we talk about testing. How do we then move forward with testing all across this country?

Can we contain the virus? We'll hear from the experts who discuss that. Also, when it comes to testing, we'll talk to a black expert whose company is actually developing one of those tests. Also, of course, retired General Russell Honore will be with us as well. He'll give us some guidelines on how we move forward with this national emergency. Folks, it's a jam-packed show. It's time to bring the funk.

I'm Roland Martin on the filter. Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the mess, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the find And when it breaks, he's right on time And it's rolling Best belief he's knowing Putting it down from sports to news to politics

With entertainment just for kicks He's rolling Yeah, it's Uncle Roro, yo. Yeah, yeah. It's Rollin' Martin. Yeah, yeah. Rollin' with Rollin' now. Yeah, yeah.

He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's Rollin Martin. Now. Martin. Today, the Rose Garden Donald Trump declared a national emergency as the nation continues to battle the coronavirus. Now, in, of course, that announcement, he detailed exactly what is being done when it comes to travel restrictions and also when it comes to development of testing, where it's going to take place as well. Many schools and organizations and businesses continue to shutter their doors and halt business in Virginia. The governor there has shut down all K-12 schools all the way through March 27th. Universities are also going to remote education, basically teaching their classes all through their website.

And again, so in this announcement today, first of all, you see some of the announcements here in Ohio. K-12 schools also closed down for three weeks. As I said, Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia, that was, of course, in Ohio. Governor Mike DeWine, an official, excuse me, in Louisiana. Schools will be closed through March, excuse me, through April 13th because of the coronavirus concerns. In the announcement today, many say it was a do-over after that terrible Oval Office address Trump gave a couple days ago. This is what he had to say. Beautiful day in the Rose Garden. Appreciate everybody being here. Today, I'd like to provide an update to the American people on several decisive new actions we're taking in our very vigilant effort to combat and ultimately defeat the Corona virus. made tremendous progress. When you compare what we've done to other areas of the world, it's pretty incredible.

A lot of that had to do with the early designation and the closing of the borders. Then as you know, Europe was just designated as the hotspot right now, and we closed that border a while ago. So that was luckier through talent or through luck. Call it whatever you want. But through a very collective action and shared sacrifice, national determination, we will overcome the threat of the virus. I also announced Wednesday night, following the advice of our medical professionals, who are doing a tremendous job. We appreciate it very much that we're suspending the entry of foreign nationals who have been to Europe in the last 14 days from entering the United States. of residents and our families, any of the families returning from Europe will be subject to extra screening as well as self-isolation for a period of 14 days. As the World Health

Organization confirmed today, many of the things that what we said were 100 percent correct, including our designation before them of Europe. Like our earlier very aggressive actions with China, this measure will save countless lives. I appreciate a number of the folks behind me, a number of the people behind me said that that saved a lot of lives, that early designation. But it is only the beginning of what we're really doing, and now we're in a different phase. We had some very old and obsolete rules

that we had to live with. I'm sorry, I had to see that bullshit the first time. I can't listen to him lie again the second time. Now, here's the deal. He was asked during this news conference, specifically when it came to him coming into contact with somebody who was now tested positive for the coronavirus. And so here we go to my iPad. Here's the question

and answer. Should Americans feel safe or should Americans at all be traveling to states such as Washington state, New York and other hotspots within this country? And a follow up on Brazil. You're asking people who come back from Europe, Americans who are coming back from Europe, to self-quarantine for a couple weeks. You were in a picture with somebody who now has coronavirus from Brazil at Mar-a-Lago. How is that different? Well, I'll tell you, first of all, I'm not coming back from someplace. But you were exposed. We, there was somebody that they say has it. I have no idea who he is, but I take pictures and it

lasts for literally seconds. I don't know the gentleman that we're talking about. I have no idea who he is. I haven't seen the picture. I said there's a picture of somebody, but I take sometimes hundreds of pictures a day. And that night I was taking hundreds of pictures, so I just don't know. Now, I did sit with the president for probably two hours, but he's tested negative. So that's good. With regard to domestic travel, should Americans feel safe or should Americans. All right, folks, the phone lines right now is retired General Russell Honore. Many of us, of course, remember him for leadership skills during Hurricane Katrina. General, how you doing? I'm doing great, sir.

All right. I'm sorry. I could not listen to that news conference a second time. It was very frustrating to me, looking at how the Trump administration, frankly, blew off the coronavirus for an entire month. He kept, did not want to be bothered with it, kept focusing on the stock market, saying, hey, we'll be down to zero cases, and now we're more than 1,000 cases, to listen to them complain about South Korea.

They're testing 10,000 people a day. We haven't even tested 1,000 cases. To listen to them complain about South Korea, they're testing 10,000 people a day. We haven't even tested 10,000 people. As somebody who is an expert in this area, just your assessment up to date on how this administration has fared when it comes to trying to deal with the coronavirus. Metaphorically, I would say this, Roland. They keep roaring up that river called denial

for over a month. And then when they started taking action, the audio and the video don't match. They're saying test kits available, and they are not. We tell people to keep social distances, and we see the president of the United States shaking hands on television.

We see them exchanging and touching each other. The audio and the video don't match. What they say they're doing with testing is not laying out in the field. I do believe that testing will get solved in the coming days and weeks. But in retrospect, it should have been done a month ago. But we can't live in the past. That'll be solved in November. Right now, people need to take care of themselves. They need to believe that they're in danger, practicing social distance, washing your hands. Don't get enamored with that fancy soap you're trying to buy

and the disinfectant. Get you a bar of soap, get you some hot water and wash your hands. Carry your bar of soap in a sandwich bag. If you go someplace you don't have soap, take your bar of soap out and wash the hell out of your hands. And if you're sick and you're sneezing, stay away from people. Stay home. Because that testing will do.

We got a lot of people walking sick right now, and they don't know they have the virus. And they're passing it on to others. We don't have the capacity to take care of 100,000 people in the emergency room. That's about what we have. We don't have enough ventilators and respirators for first responders and for nurses and doctors treating people. We have to up the production of respirators and ventilators. They didn't talk about that.

They only talked about what they wanted to talk about to make people feel good, but it was good enough, New Orleans, to drive the stock market back up. Well, see, and that really, I think, is really what the focus was, because that's all Donald Trump really has been focused on and cares about.

And there are people out there, and let me be real clear, this is not a question of, oh, are you always critical about Donald Trump? If they actually performed properly, you know, I'm not gonna sit here and be Vice President Mike Pence, who's just gonna suck up to Trump the entire time. The bottom line is this here. You had individuals who did not want to test people because they did not want the numbers to

go up. They also, he sat there and said at the news conference that they've cleared the way. There were all of these problems when it came to rules and regulations, when it came to testing, that the rules he's talking about didn't even exist. They're just making the stuff up. And Dr. Fauci, I mean, you heard him even say, yeah, we made some mistakes early on. But then Trump says, look, I'm not sitting here accepting any blame whatsoever because that's just how he is. The thing that really jumps out here is that here it is, March 13th, and you're having this news conference in the Rose Garden

with private sector laboratories and businesses. This is literally what should have been done in the middle of February or the first of February. And so as somebody who came into Katrina after folks were screwing it up, I mean, when you're behind the eight ball, man, you got to do a whole lot to catch up. That's really where we are right now. Yes, Roland.

And that $40 billion in the hand of the governors and in the hand of small business, what I did not hear him say is that about 60 percent of America's worth of small businesses like yours, they are the ones that hiring Americans, they are the ones that have to meet payroll every two weeks. How are you going to take care of the workers who can't go to work? I think a plan could be devised. And we've used this after disasters with FEMA. People could call in and say, I can't work. I'm at home. They fill it out on a computer or they call their number in. And in 24 hours, they could have $1,500 in there. And we're going to have to do that. Yep. We're

going to have to figure out a way to get work. Tax cut is not going to help working people. Because if you're not working, you ain't paying tax. That's stupid. They're missing the ball all over the plate. I think Nancy Pelosi, Senator Pelosi had a plan to ensure working poor people could get income.

I'm not worried about the airline pilot who comes home and go off on his yacht. He'll figure it out. No crying on the yacht. Or the executive off Wall Street who lost money on the stock exchange sitting in his G5. I'm worried about the working poor, and a way to do it, Roland,

and I hope they're listening, is using the FEMA disaster personal assistance where they put money in people's account within 24 hours. Well, we certainly hope that is the case. At that news conference today, he said that, well, Dems are not really cooperating and they're not agreeing to what we want them to agree to. It's because, again, he wants to focus on big business, all about the stock market,

whereas Pelosi and the Democrats say, what about the regular, ordinary, average Americans? So we certainly will see what happens next. Russell Honore, glad to have you on the show. Look forward to having you back. Yes, sir, anytime. And people, let's take care of each other, wash our hands, and look out for our old folks. Chuck you in on them.

Yes, sir, I appreciate it. Thanks a bunch. Right now, folks, I want to go to somebody who worked in national security, Malcolm Nance. Malcolm, glad to have you on Rollerbund Unfiltered. How you doing? I am very honored to have followed General Honoré. He is amazing.

Absolutely, absolutely. I was watching a report, Malcolm, on Ali Velshi on MSNBC earlier, and he had Ken Delaney in on, who was saying that there is a particular unit in the intelligence community that tracks pandemics. They saw this early on. They knew the Chinese were lying early on. They funneled that information up to the White House, but it was ignored. That to me

is something that is critically important that you have a particular unit whose sole job is to track things along those these lines. This administration just ignored them and acted as if this was not actually a pandemic that was brewing, and they just waited and waited. Well, you have to understand their baseline of understanding of anything that happens is always within the context of Barack Obama's White House. So, of course, as we know, in 2018, they dismantled the Global Pandemic Support Unit. That's the organization on the National Security Council staff, which had representatives in the old executive office building whose job it was to predict, identify, and track global pandemics when they broke out because the Obama administration had to deal with swine flu, H1N1,

and with the Ebola crisis. So, of course, it's always better to be prepared at the national security level for this. Additionally, the Trump administration cut 80% of the Center for Disease Control's global pandemic response, which means everything that would have been in place to identify and pass more accurate information up and work with the Chinese to get this was gone. We literally disarmed ourselves. So what you're speaking of, this intelligence organization, is really an organization that's based on the United States Army's Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, USAMRID.

It's called the National Center for Medical Intelligence. Right. Army, they are the tracking unit for all sorts of terrible things that are out there, including, you know, the development of biological weapons and Ebola outbreaks and smallpox outbreaks around the world. Because as you know, we have service members deployed all over the world. They feed in to the National Security Council through the Pentagon and to the Army's Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases, USAMRID, which is their big sword for attacking, defending and researching. It's the Army CDC and getting that intelligence up to the National Security Council so that the White House can consume it. These reports are not political. They are passed up with due accord. They don't pull any punches. They send the intelligence up.

It's up to the National Security Council and the consumers in the White House to read these reports and take them seriously. And to be quite honest, as we can tell by the sort of xenophobic, semi-racist way the White House tends to respond to things, they saw it as a Chinese problem that they didn't have to deal with. And, of course, now that all those experts were gone from the National Security Council, the Obama, I'm sorry, the Trump administration was listening to itself. Here's, of course, at today's news conference, Yamiche Alcindor, the PBS, specifically asked Trump about the disbanding of this pandemic unit in the National Security Council. And this is the question and the answer. Yes.

My first question is, you said that you don't take responsibility, but you did disband the White House pandemic office, and the officials that were working in that office left this administration abruptly. So what responsibility do you take to that? And the officials that worked in that office said that you – that the White House lost valuable time because that office wasn't disbanded.

What do you make of that? SECRETARY POMPEO, Well, I just think it's a nasty question because what we've done is, and Tony has said numerous times that we've saved thousands of lives because of the quick closing. And when you say me, I didn't do it. We have a group of people. I could ask perhaps by administration, but I could perhaps ask Tony about that because I don't know anything about it. I mean, you say we did that.

What? I don't know anything about it. You don't know about the reorganization that happened at the national security council? It's the administration. Perhaps they do that. Let people go. You used to be with a different newspaper than you are now. Things like that happen. But this was an organization. We're doing a great job. Let me tell you, these

professionals behind me and these great, incredible doctors and business people, the best in the world, and I can say that, whether it's retailers or labs or anything you want to say, these are the best in the world. We're doing a great job. We have 40 people right now, 40. Compare that with other countries that have many, many times that amount. And one of the reasons we have 40 and others have. And again, that number is going up, just so you understand. And a number of cases, which are very small, relatively speaking, it's going up. But we've done a great job because we acted quickly. We acted early. And there's nothing we could have done that was better than closing our borders to highly infected areas. Again, you're sitting here listening to him talk about closing the borders. The reality is Mexico has fewer than 10 cases. The United States has more than a thousand. In fact, Mexico is looking at closing their borders to keep Americans out. What's also quite interesting is that he said, I don't know

anything about that. Yet Senator Sherrod Brown released a letter, Malcolm. Henry, go to my iPad, please. This is a letter dated May 18th, 2018, where Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio asked him specifically about this. It says here, National Security Council, I am concerned by Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer's departure from the NSC, elimination of his global health security office, and reassignment of the office's team members. Global health security is a national security priority. Maintaining the NSC's global health security office is key to this prioritization. Donald Trump is a liar. He's lying. He knew about it. He was informed about it two years ago.

And I'm going to call it for what it is. He was nasty to Yamiche. He's always nasty to black women who are reporters who cover the White House or black women in Congress. But the fact of the matter is he is lying. And then they say, oh, well, the administration. It's your administration. This is a man who accepts no responsibility for anything. It's always, yo, it's somebody else.

You can't blame me. Well, that's somebody else. They can't blame me. Well, that's absolutely right. And let me tell you, Rear Admiral Ziemer was his appointee to that organization. And then when the National Security Council, you know, along with, you know, crazy guys like Seb Gorka and,

you know, John Bolton came in, they eliminated this office. And the only reason they eliminated it, they say that they reorganized it and moved it around. No, they eliminated this office. And the only reason they eliminated it, they say that they reorganized it and moved it around. No, they zeroed it out and then cut the CDC's budget 80%. Because they have a xenophobic way of looking at Ebola. They think of it as a disease of black people that comes from people who are consuming monkeys. That's as may be. But the point is, it is a global disease. It can become a pandemic. And as we saw, could reach

to the United States through our health care providers. The same thing with SARS and H1N1, Middle East respiratory disease, which came from Saudi Arabia. You don't hear them, you know, haranguing about that. Donald Trump, we all know, flat on his face, is a liar. He takes no responsibility for anything. But it's the responsibility of the intelligence community and the health care community to inform him. But we saw what he did right out of the box. He denied it ever happened. He said for almost five weeks that this was a hoax

and that it was a trick that was being played by the news media against him in order to discredit his administration. That is not the case. You know, I don't want to see Donald Trump fail in this circumstance because American citizens will die and are dying from this global pandemic. But for him to brag about 40 people, you know, who have died and, you know, that we have the lowest rate of infection, we don't even know the number because he failed in his fundamental job as president of the United States to respond accurately. And this is why people don't have a great memory of the swine flu three months after the Obama administration responded.

And it did not affect the American population the way that this is going to affect each and every one of us. Malcolm, look, as somebody who worked in intelligence, you had to deal with these things worldwide. Where do we go in the next 30, 60, 90 days? I was reading one particular report from some experts on the West Coast, university professors. They're saying, look, this is going to be America's way of life for the next 12 to 18 months. They say, this is not going to be, hey, everything is fine. It's going to blow away in the next eight or nine weeks. We better be prepared for this to be a year, 18 months long. Agree, disagreeagree? I absolutely agree. You know,

when I was in the military, I was involved in a program related to biological weapons and terrorism. And, you know, USAMRA, the U.S. Army Research Center for Infectious Diseases, had the point for educating and developing the responses for the Department of Defense for a massive outbreak of, you know, a biological vector into the United States. And their plans were aggressive from day one. I mean, mobilizing the National Guard, you know, seizing industry in order to create, you know, the testing kits,

putting a national and then global effort into developing a vaccine. We don't even see this administration meeting with the World Health Organization. Donald Trump actually expressed disdain for the head of the World Health Organization, essentially because that gentleman was a Tunisian and did not want the United States to accept their testing program, which is being used the world around so that he could develop one in the United States through the CDC, which turned out to be a failure. You know, it had something like a 90% false positives rate

or something along that line. So we need to understand that for the next, certainly the next 90 days, you will have a very hard time seeing your neighbors because we're not doing like South Korea, where they came out and blitzed this, tested almost everyone through drive-in testings, got a good handle on who was there, created a bubble of social isolation so that the population didn't have to be quarantined. We're leaning more towards Italy now, where entire cities will forbid you to go out. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. You'll still be able to be around your family, but you will have to keep your distance from neighbors. And our way of life is going to change. This is a true, national, natural disaster that, I'm sorry, has been

exacerbated by the utter incompetence of Donald Trump and his leading advisors. Folks, Malcolm Nance is the author of the book the plot to betray America how team Trump embraced our enemies compromised our security and how we can fix it Malcolm we certainly appreciate it thanks a lot yeah it's happening now huh yes sir yes it is thanks a lot all right folks again if you look at there 145,000 confirmed coronavirus cases internationally. 5,408 folks have died. 70,920 have recovered. You see, we have not even ramped up to having maximum testing in the United States,

yet you heard the news conference there. They're working with private labs and public companies to actually do that. Joining us right now is Dr. Tshaka Cunningham, a molecular biologist who's also who studied virology as well. Dr. Cunningham, how are you doing? Great. Great to be with you, Roland. So your company, what sort of testing is your company involved in? Our company actually does genetic testing mostly in the mental health arena right now. We're developing genetic diagnostics to look at things like predisposition for PTSD and other mental health

disorders. But as a scientist, and I'm speaking on behalf of myself right now just as a citizen scientist, I'm just looking for ways to be helpful. I mean, I've had a number of my colleagues call me and ask me, you know, what they could do with regard to testing. So, you know, I've got, you know, lines out to all the folks I know. Our group is trying to do our best to help to see what we can do in the context of the expertise we have to add to the capabilities of testing in our general area. And I think it's got to be sort of this all hands on deck situation because there are these shortages. I'm not really in the business of the blame game. I mean, you know, I think there were missteps on a lot of different parts from China,

especially at the early going in other places. But we're at the situation where to really stave off more of a crisis, we need to really get our arms around this as a country. So I think it was, you know, Mr. Nance said, you know, even if I don't agree with President Trump, I'm rooting for that administration to do something better here. I think we've got to really follow some basic kind of quarantine like procedures. I think that's what's what's coming down the pipe from different states that have like ours here in Virginia declared a state of emergency. And, you know, really make sure that we keep that distance from folks and, you know, avoid large gatherings. And, you know, seeing the extremity of everything and the urgency of it is really important. I mean, people need to take care of one another.

As the general said, it's like really make sure that we're washing our hands, that we're using hand sanitizer, that we're really limiting our contact in large groups. And that's what we can do right now. Speaking of that, we have seen cities and states, some are limiting groups to 250, some 500, some 1,000. What's the number? I mean, that's like a range. Like what's, I'm just trying to understand

how you even get to that number. I mean, I think it's, you know, it's a bit of guesswork there. I mean, I'm not an epidemiologist. I'm a molecular biologist. I'm the kind of person that can actually pull apart a virus, right? So I can take a virus apart at the molecular level, design a test for it, et cetera, and try to design some treatments. I think what this whole thing has shown me, I mean, to answer your question, I don't know how they arrive at that number per se.

Honestly, I think the safe number is, you know, as few as possible right now, right? It's like just try to kind of keep yourself, you know, as few as possible right now, right? It's like, just try to kind of keep yourself, you know, as isolated as you can, unfortunately, for the time being to sort of let it pass in terms of not having it spread from person to person. One of the real dangerous things about this virus is that you can have asymptomatic carriers, that is people that don't appear to be that sick, that can pass it on, right? And it seems that you've got about 2% of the people that get it that are dying from it. Now, it doesn't seem like a lot, but it's just scary because we've got millions and millions of people getting it. That means a lot of folks are going to die.

So I think, you know, Dr. Fauci and others who reported on it have said that it's about 10 times more lethal than the flu. So that's something to consider. But that said, 98% of people are going to recover, right? So it's like you just, if you can just sort of keep it so that folks aren't spreading it as fast, you really want to just keep that risk of spread down. That's why you're going to have these quarantine measures that have to be followed. Okay. So on that point, it's a perfect example. So when I was in Chicago for the NBA All-Star Game, so this had to be February 15th, I get into an Uber, and this driver had some kind of scent.

It was an awful scent. And it immediately kicked in my allergies. I'm talking about immediate. I'm talking about when I say immediate, literally within the first two minutes, throat is scratchy, it's i mean it just immediately hit me so i come back and so i'm dealing with allergies and i got a course you know i got congestion pretty much that goes away and still have a slight cough left part of the

problem though for people out here is that like you can't tell what's what now one of the things they said is that what you should do is you should hold your breath for 10 seconds. And if you don't cough in that 10 seconds, you probably you're not having the lung issues tied to coronavirus. And so how do we tell people out there? Because we're also in the middle of allergy season. So how do we deal with, OK, allergies? Is it the flu? Is it coronavirus? What the hell? Yeah, it's going to be hard to tell. I mean, again, coronavirus looks symptomatologically wise a lot like a common cold. And I think what you're going to have to do, and again, that's the need for social distancing, right, to sort of stand six feet away from people, washing your hands frequently, sanitizing

your hands, trying not to touch your face. I mean, I think they say we on average touch our face about 100 times a day, right? Try not to do that. Okay, okay. Let's stop right there. Try to limit your contact. So does that unpack that? Okay. Why can't we touch our face? Just explain to people why. What happens is, is like viruses are invisible, right? Like to the naked eye. They're about, this virus is between 80 and 160 nanometers. That naked eye can't see it. I can see it on an electron microscope, like in my lab, but that naked eye can't see it. So when someone coughs, it's in these microscopic nanoscopic droplets,

right, that you see, right? So what happens is these droplets get on surfaces, they can be on clothes, et cetera. So if you're touching doorknobs and if you're doing all of this stuff, then when you start touching your face, like your nose, your eyes, your mucus membranes, that's just giving the virus entry point, right? So that's when we say, if you stop doing that, you're reducing the amount of times that you're putting yourself at risk of putting the virus in an area that it can enter your body. Your skin is a nice, natural barrier, right? But your muucous membranes and, you know, your nasal passages are where viruses like to enter. So you really want to wash your hands

to reduce the chance of you spreading that virus into those vulnerable areas. See, and that's so weird because I think if the average person, if you probably set a camera up and just tape yourself for five minutes, it might be shocking to see how many times you actually touch your face. I've touched my face about five times since we were talking, right? But my hands have been cleaned about six times since I came in my house. I'm like really, you know, hypochondriac with it

like that. I mean, I use a lot of sanitizer. I wash my hands as soon as I enter my home. And it's like, you know, I wash them for at least 20 seconds. You know, they say sing the happy birthday song. I mean, I'm very thorough with that. So and I use a lot of lotion so they don't get dry. So I think what you really want to do is just just do these basic precautions. I mean, hand washing right now. Everyone's asking, what can you do? I think right now we don't have a drug. We don't have a vaccine. That's some months off. And so right now, everyone's going to have to practice these sort of quarantine procedures

and also just really wash your hands and clean your hands with 60 percent or higher alcohol, hand sanitizer and make sure you use good soap and water. That's the best you can do. All right. Dr. Tshaka Cunningham, we really appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right, folks.

At the news conference today, Kristen Welker, of course, we so appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right, folks, at the news conference today, Kristen Welker, of course, MSNBC, she had a question for Donald Trump that he still has yet to actually answer, and he blew it off. So here's what she asked. Thank you so much, Mr. President. Dr. Fauci said earlier this week

that the lag in testing was, in fact, a failing. Do you take responsibility for that? And when can you guarantee that every single American who needs a test will be able to have a test? What's the date of that? Yeah, no, I don't take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. It wasn't meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we're talking about. And what we've done is redesigned it very quickly

with the help of the people behind me. And we're now in very, very strong shape. I think we'll be announcing, as I said, Sunday night. And this will start very quickly. And we will have the ability to do in the millions over a very, very quick period of time. So, no. And what we have done, and we are going to be leaving a very indelible print for the future in case something like this happens again. But it was a – and that's not the fault of anybody. And, frankly, the old system worked very well for smaller numbers, much smaller numbers, but not for these kind of numbers. Tony, maybe you'd like to say something. Yes, please.

By Sunday night, will every American be able to get a test? So just to reiterate what I said to many of you multiple times, it's the distance of a system. The system was not designed for what it was designed for. It worked very well. The CDC designed a good system. If you want to get the kind of blanket testing and availability that anybody can get it, or you could even do surveillance

to find out what the penetrance is, you have to embrace the private sector. And this is exactly what you're seeing, because you can't do it without it. So when I said that, I meant the system was not designed for what we need. Now, looking forward, the system will take care of it.

MS. And, Mr. President, with respect, you've been — SECRETARY KERRY, And interestingly, if you go back — please — if you go back to the swine flu, it was nothing like this. They didn't do testing like this. And actually, they lost approximately 14,000 people, and they didn't do the testing. They started thinking about testing when it was far too late. What we've done, and one of the reasons I think people are respecting what we've done, we've done it very early, we've gotten it very early, and we've also kept a lot of people out. Mr. President, the last administration said that they had tested a million people at this point. We'll ask them how they did with the swine flu. It was a disaster.

But with respect, you've been place they had a very big failure with swine flu a very big failure president I want to ask you about the your all right folks is good our panel to my left Brittany Lute Lee Lewis she's a political commentator also joining us is after Julianne Malvo economist president emeritus Bennett College and dr. Wilmer Leon, host, inside the issues on Sirius XM Radio. All right, folks, here's what's interesting. So Trump talked about, you know,

when he was sitting here going on, we've done this, we've done that. So Valerie Jarrett, of course, senior advisor to President Barack Obama, sent this tweet out responding to his tweet. Here we go to my iPad. It said, if the Barack Obama administration made testing harder,

how do we manage to test one million people within the first month of the H1N1 outbreak? Why don't you dismantle the White House office Barack Obama created in NSC Post, Ebola? Why don't you cut funding to CDC? I mean, Brittany, those are critical issues that are important. And what you see is you see Donald Trump trying to, again, oh, Brittany, those are critical issues that are important, and what you see is, you see Donald Trump trying to, again,

oh, Obama, Obama, Obama, everything is like, we have this old testing, it wasn't like, well, okay, we came in, had to change everything all around, when he's lying. He is lying, and I mean, this is Donald Trump's thing, right, he's a celebrity at the end of the day, he's not a politician, he's not a professor. He's not someone that even essentially believes in science. So I don't know how we can expect him to handle this crisis and take it seriously.

I mean, the second that he put his VP in charge of everything, I said, OK, we're doomed, essentially. And then even with some of the reporters that were asking him questions today, it was very clear that he's avoiding all types of responsibility. Well, as I sat here and listened to that news conference, it was... You're sitting here going, dude, can you just read what's in front of you? Can you just not ad-lib and start making shit up? Which is what he was sitting here doing. And then you can always tell, oh, this is great, this is wonderful, this is big, it's the best.

And then at one point, he was like, you know, uh, you know, America, we're ranked number one. I'm going, dude, this is not March Madness. This is not like a seeding where we have four number one seeds. And see, and that's the deal. He wants to, what he does is, and this is what people need to understand. For eight years, all the right did

was attack Obama weak, weak, weak. America's bending down to everyone else. Weak, weak, weak. So his answer to everything, to everything is strength, strength, strength, weak, weak. So his answer to everything, to everything is strength, strength, strength, strong, strong. That's what he does. And that's all they hear. See, America, we're strong again. That's all that was. Well, that goes back, I think it was Bill Clinton said it's better to be wrong and strong than weak and right. I think that was Bill Clinton that said that.

In looking at the Wednesday night press conference and in looking at this foolishness, first of all, we got more disinformation and wrong information than we got actual information. And to Brittany's point, when you look at who Donald Trump has put in charge of managing this, I counted, I think we have at least five still living surgeon generals. They all should have been standing there behind the president with the current surgeon general leading the pack, not Mike Pence, who, to Brittany's point, when he was what, the governor of Indiana, we know what happened with the HIV rate in Indiana when he was there, went up through

the roof because he doesn't believe in science. But Julian, if you're going to call for a, if you're going to stand there and call it for a national emergency, actually, I don't want to see CEOs or even scientists behind you. You know who I want to actually see behind you? Congressional leadership. I want to see Senate and House leaders. That's where a president leads.

A president says, look, this is a national emergency. I want the leadership of this country. Now, you have your experts there. You have your CEOs there. You can bring them up to say, hey, this is what private and public companies are doing. This is what leverage. You can do all of that. No, but that's what you do.

If you want to send the signal that we're all in this together, well, then what you don't do is you don't stand there and trash Democrats in the House like he did by saying, oh, well, it's some stuff that they agreed to. It's something they haven't agreed to. Something that they agreed to, but they didn't have... It's something they haven't agreed to. Something they've agreed to, but they haven't agreed to. He was making that up as well. And that's the fundamental problem. And I dare say, if you're Nancy Pelosi, the reason I'm not gonna stand there with you

is I know you're gonna lie. Well, you know, Roland, both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders showed us what presidential leadership was. Both of them gave really great speeches that really laid out, this is what I would do, this is a template. Biden even generously said, and you can borrow it if you want to. But we know that we've known about this coronavirus since November, December. They have chosen to ignore it.

This man, not only does he lie, I mean, that's the nicest thing that we can say about him is that he lies, like a rug, like a rat, all that. But what we really need to say is that he's taken the people on a trip. And it's a contrast between what Biden and Bernie

have said and what he says. Now, Fossey, the... Dr. Fossey. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, CDC, he's been really quite blunt. He turned it in, toned it down a little bit today. But he's been, this was a failure. It was simply a failure.

And still we have not been able to catch. How does Korea catch people drive-by testing while we can't do general testing? So we really have a situation where, you know, I'm so worried as an educator, graduations are being canceled, weddings and funerals. First of all, all of that. First of all, in Texas, they're now limiting the size, 250 people,

can't hold 250 people. And so now you have church services. I was watching just Wednesday night, now they're limited in size, 250 people, can't hold 250 people. And so now you have church services. I was watching just Wednesday night, Pastor Jenkins at First Baptist Glen Arden. I mean, look, they routinely have more than 2,000 people sitting there. They've canceled all of their events. And so what people need to understand,

this has gone beyond sporting events and large gatherings. When you start saying you're canceling events at 250 people, you now even have... Look, I'm on the board of NABJ. We had a regional conference coming up that was going to have 110 people. We had to cancel that. And we were actually going to allow it to move forward.

But then other people were kind of like, yo, what are y'all doing? What are y'all doing? So the pressure was there. So we had to postpone that as well. So what's now about to happen is you're not even going to have gatherings of 50 and 60 people you're about to have an entire nation again for the next four to six to eight weeks that is essentially would be self-quarantining themselves because everything is getting canceled you're not having conferences folks are not not going to be going to church they're not going to be going to church. They're not going to be going to meetings. Everything, if there is a situation

where you got more than, frankly, five folks gathered, they ain't getting together out of fear of somebody sneezing or coughing or touching them. Yep. It's scary. And, you know, I think I fear most for the poor and working-class people in this country at the end of the day, because you're thinking about people

that live off of tipped wages. You're talking about those in, you know, DJs. You're talking about people who are, you know, cleaners who may not have the money to support themselves moving forward. And it's scary to me in which they're saying, well, the system isn't built to handle something like this. And they're really looking at the private sector. And it's very scary when we need to almost depend on the private sector to determine what the livelihood of these individuals is going to be moving forward. You know, the gig... But the opportunity is here, though,

for us to have direct... You heard what General Honoré said. He said it is not that hard. Where you have... If FEMA is set up, where they can simply go online or make a call, and then in 24 hours, $1,500 is in your account or is being mailed to you. And so we're seeing the Federal Reserve

find $1.5 trillion when it comes to propping up these companies. Trump has floated out this payroll tax cut, all these different things. No, this is where you have to have direct infusion to people who are being impacted by this. But what you have... Julianne, go ahead. What is going on here

is that there's so many people in the gig economy. You're an Uber driver. Nobody is taking Ubers. And so you don't have any money. You can't show through payroll tax, et cetera, that you're missing money. So this is an elitist look at how we're going to deal with this. When the Fed says we're going to throw $1.5 billion in there, that's putting money into the system that's going to affect the top. And the question is, what's going to affect the bottom? And then we look at the sisters and brothers who are single moms and dads

who you close a school, but they have a job. How does that work out? And there's no conversation about that. You look at the young people who are getting two meals a day from school. Now the schools are closed. How are we going to deal with that? These are issues.

There has been no creativity. I applaud Nancy Pelosi, my homegirl, San Francisco, but I applaud her, but at the same time, I'm struck by the way that this coronavirus lets us know so much more

about the cracks in our foundation and the flaws in our infrastructure. But, Wilmer, here's a piece here, and I think that what we have to recognize is that when you hear Trump try to say, well, all this beforehand, here's the reality. We've never had this type of thing beforehand. In the sense that you've never had something

where, first of all, you were late with testing, so you frankly don't know. I mean, the most basic thing, then of course you heard the doctor sit up there, which you know, I don't want to sit here and really put her on blast, but for her to stand here and talk about HIV AIDS and

what happened there and how, oh, it took four years for us to do this, 11 years of treatment. Okay, why is that also? Because the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, wouldn't even use the word. He wouldn't even use the phrase. And so I'm sitting there watching it going,

uh, hello, there's a reason why you were slow to do that because same thing. You had individuals who had an ideological issue with gay people who did not want to confront was a health crisis did not contain it to bath houses or whatever you want to do that was happening in san francisco and allow that to turn into yes an international pandemic because of the games you're playing. And we see the exact same thing happening here with an administration who put their head in the sand, who did not want to know what the numbers were

because, oh, no, I don't want this to affect my re-election. And so people are going to die because you are more concerned about your re-election. Absolutely. General Honoré is concerned about the American people. He always has been. His performance during Katrina proved that. What we see here is a president and an administration that is concerned about the elite.

The payroll tax cut, that won't do anything for the average worker. And we have an economist here who can vouch for this. The tax cut is going to help business. It's a tax cut for businesses. It is not going to put any money in the pockets of the American worker. And also the Obama administration tried the same thing and it didn't work under President Obama. So what we see here time and time again, it's not an accident that private sector companies are standing behind the president and really Congress is not there because this is an opportunity for them to get contracts. This is an opportunity for them eventually to make a whole lot of money. This is Nero fiddling while Rome burned, even though fiddles weren't invented when Nero...

Yeah, they were. Yeah, they were. That was the loot. But anyway, this is a horrific display of what a president who focuses primarily on benefiting the elite, this is what happens. This is becoming a class issue. Yep. As average American citizens are going to find themselves, to your point, not getting their tips, not being able to go to work, not being able to afford their health care.

Having to pay more for child care. I mean, I'm really concerned about the child piece of it. Now, let me do this here. I'm going to break this thing down. Of course, political leaders have announced their deal has been struck. This is Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier today. Good afternoon. Over the last several weeks, our nation has been faced with a grave and accelerating challenge, one that tests our compassion, ingenuity, and resolve the coronavirus crisis. Sadly and prayerfully, we have learned of the tragic deaths of at least 41 Americans from this public health emergency so far. The American people expect and deserve

a coordinated, science-based, and whole-of-government response to keep them and their loved ones safe, a response that puts families first to stimulate the economy. To put families first, last week, the House passed a strong, bipartisan, $8.3 billion emergency funding package of entirely new funds. We made a well-funded, evidence-based investment in public health, in developing treatments and the vaccine available to all, in prevention,

preparedness, and response measures, in helping state, local, tribal, and territorial hospitals and health systems, and in supporting impacted small businesses with SBA loans, and helping families by extending telemedicine services no matter where they live. Democrats' swift action to pass this emergency funding was essential to our nation's long overdue response. Next, Senate Democratic Leader Schumer and I last weekend called for further action to put families first. Today, we are

passing a bill that does just that, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which is focused directly on providing support for America's families who must be our first priority. The three most important parts of this bill are testing, testing, testing. This legislation facilitates free coronavirus testing for everyone who needs a test, including the uninsured. We can only defeat this outbreak if we have an accurate determination of its scale and scope so that we can pursue the precise science-based response that is necessary. To put families first, our legislation secures paid leave with two weeks of paid sick leave and family and medical leave for those affected by the virus.

And for those who lose their jobs, we are strengthening unemployment insurance, a critical step to protect workers' economic security. Putting families first, our legislation protects our children, and particularly the tens of millions of little children who rely on the free or reduced-price lunch they receive at school for their food security. As schools are being closed, these children will be deprived of their meals. Our bill takes aggressive action to strengthen food security initiatives, including student meals, as well as SNAP, seniors meals, and food banks. As we develop our next steps, we will continue to listen to and

benefit from the expertise of scientists, health care professionals, public health officials, and community leaders so that we can craft the most effective evidence-based response. Our nation, our great nation, has faced crises before and every time, thanks to the courage and optimism, patriotism, and perseverance of the American people, we have prevailed. Now, working together, we will once again prevail and we will come out stronger than before. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you. As I said, so Politico has this story up on their site right now at 6.12 p.m. You can go to it,

Henry. Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she clinched a deal with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on large-scale Coronavirus response package meant to provide paid leave for workers expand food aid and support widespread testing for the illness at no cost to patients Of course, we just played you that wasn't the news conference was from earlier And so now we actually have this here the thing Julian was interesting. When you look at this thing from an economic standpoint, it's always amazing what people say we can't find money for. But now all of a sudden, Fed is $1.5 trillion injection. Initially, it was an $8.3 billion allocation from Congress. The declaring of a state of emergency, national emergency, is going to free up some $40 billion. Again, again, you know, this is where, uh,

for all those people who talk... All those damn MAGA right-wing people who hate government... Yes. This is why you have government. Precisely. I mean, I think when you look at, first of all, the efficacy of public health and the fact that basically this man came in

and slashed public health, we know that basically this man came in and slashed public health. We know that when we have epidemics and pandemics, public health is what stops it. You can't do this in the private sector. You can't say, go get your doctor to give you a test when you, you know, when other people in your neighborhood, in your community, in your house.

But the private sector also can't say, yo, they ain't paying for this. This is the power of government. When the government says, testing is going to be free, do you understand? And big business goes,

-"Yes, Mr. President, we do." -"We understand." So, you know, as you say, this is a repudiation of the individualism of the Republican Party and of this man himself. It suggests that we are a community. As General Honore said, of the individualism of the Republican Party and of this man himself. It suggests that we are a community, as General Honore said, and that we have to behave like a community.

More importantly, I'd be, again, saluting Nancy Pelosi, but also hoping that the Senate... She has an agreement with Schumer, but where is Mitch McConnell? So hoping that they... Well, no, no, no, no, no. That was... What that was that that what that

was that wasn't announced that's what she gave about three hours ago okay okay so what happened was she gave that uh and then of course they continued negotiations so a little less than about 50 minutes ago they announced the actual deal so when trump was up there complaining at that news conference so that was about 4 30 when he was talking what democrats are not doing they the democrats were negotiating yeah so their whole deal is they knew the Grim Reaper is gonna say nothing and so they were negotiating with Manuka in the White House so when the White House signed off on it then it's kind of like okay Mitch get your ass in line Brittany because bottom line is they aren't agreed to it

so what you gonna do hello I mean that's the only way you deal you deal with McConnell you got a cut you got a cut the deal with the White House. And once they did, OK, now, Mitch, if you got any problems, go talk to them. Absolutely. It's going to be interesting to see how everything truly plays out moving forward. I know even just looking at, like, Italy, who suspended mortgages. I mean, are we really going to be doing these type of things for our lower and working class individuals fully? I mean, I think about those that have student loan debt

that they need to pay back, high rents. I mean, what... I'm curious about what this is really gonna look like on the ground. Uh, Wilmer, Trump, in the announcement, did not suspend student loan payments, only the interest on student loans. Mm-hmm. It's all about the language.

It's all about the bait and switch. And it's all about all sizzle and no steak and that's what the president pretty much is offering and again it's we keep going we also have to focus on these neoliberal policies which basically privatizing government operation privatizing government function and responsibility under the pretext or pretense of being more efficient. But in times like these, you need, to your point, an army.

You need a government. Hence, China. What did they do in Wuhan province? Completely built the whole place down. Completely built a damn hospital ground up. No, they built six hospitals. Ground up.

Ground up. Five minutes. And what is their exposure growth rate now? I think they had eight cases from their reporting. They had eight cases over the last day or two. So they're now on the downside of the curve in terms of this illness. We had Mike Pence on Sunday not even able to tell us how many people had been tested. Or maybe it was Monday. He was on CNN and he wasn't able to tell us how many people had been tested.

Because the growth here has grown exponentially because we have not tested. No, because they don't have a website where all the data can be aggregated. But it's coming. Oh, it's coming. Everything is coming. The website is coming. But meanwhile, we see this curve. And the curve has a slope that is frightening. No question.

And, Foggy, you say, look, we're trying for that curve not to be there. We're trying to lower it. But again, though. But they don't know what the curve is. Right. And I think, and I, go ahead, go ahead. There just hasn't been enough testing. And I think it's interesting to hear that, okay, we're going to give everyone free testing.

But what happens when you've waited so long to test all these individuals and you realize you have hundreds of thousands of people that are infected and are continuing to affect other people? And then you're going to end up in a situation where you don't have enough, you don't have the capacity to treat all of these people. Well, they're claiming now, they're claiming, you know, in the next week, you're going to have, you know, 4 million tests.

But remember, but remember last week, remember last week, remember last week they said we're going to have a million by the end of the week. And they're like, oh, actually we're not. But look, there was an attorney in New York who rides the train from Westchester into the city. He was diagnosed with the virus. He infected his wife and his two kids.

His neighbor that took him to the hospital, he was infected. That guy's wife, and three kids, all within a span of 48 hours. And we're supposed to wait another week, another 10 days, another three weeks? But this is happening again and again and again because they refuse to step up and Pence and 45 have said

anybody can have a test when they want to, but that's just not happening. And we don't even know who's infecting who. But what we do know is that all... Not to throw stones, all of this could have been prevented, and even now there are the resources to create and provide more tests.

We have 320-some million people in this country. They're talking about 2 billion tests. Give me a break. Again, but the point is here, this is what happens while you have government. And for the people who say they hate government, and for the people who want to say, oh, we need to get rid of government,

get rid of bureaucrats, part of the problem here is that the private sector can't do all of this. They can't, because they don't have the same capacity to order things like government does. Got to go to a break. We'll be back on Roland Martin Unfiltered.'ll be back on Roller Martin Unfiltered. You want to check out Roller Martin Unfiltered?

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Martin and don't forget to turn on your notifications. So when we go live, you'll know it All right, so a lot of y'all always asking me about terms some of the pocket squares that I wear now I don't know Rob. I don't have one on now. I don't particularly like the white pocket squares I don't like even the silk ones And so I was reading GQ magazine a number of years ago and I saw this guy who had this pocket square here and it looks like a flower. This is called a shibori pocket square. This is how the Japanese manipulate the fabric to create this sort of flower effect.

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one of these shibori pocket squares, we have them in 47 different colors. All you got to do is go to rolling this martin.com forward slash pocket squares. So it's rolling this martin.com forward slash pocket squares. All you got to do is go to my website and you can actually get this. Now, for those of you who are members of our bring the funk fan club, there's a discount for you to get our pocket squares. That's why you also got to be a part of our Bring the Funk fan club. And so that's what we want you to do. And so it's pretty cool.

So if you want to jazz your look up, you can do that. In addition, y'all see me with some of the feather pocket squares. My sister was a designer. She actually makes these. They're all custom made. So when you also go to the website, you can also order one of the customized feather pocket squares right there at rollingnismartin.com forward slash pocket squares.

So please do so. And of course, that goes to support the show. And again, if you're a Bring the Funk fan club member, you get a discount. This is why you should join the fan club. All right, folks. Louisiana postponed their primary schedule for April 4th as states scrambled

to adjust to coronavirus. It's the first primary to be postponed since the outbreak. Now, on Tuesday, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio will continue as planned. Brittany, should this be the case and should we be changing rules down the line for mail-in balloting?

I mean, I think the reality is that that is what's going to happen. And we need to prepare accordingly because I think as soon as we continue to do more testing, we're going to realize just how widespread this COVID-19 is. And we need to be prepared. So I think that actually other folks should follow suit. And I think that we need to start thinking about the presidential election as well in terms of what we're going to do if we can't have people physically coming out to vote? This is going to be a problem moving forward, Wilmer. So, this is April 4th. Yes.

Now, was it too early for them to stop it? Um...or is it smart? I think it's smart, but the issue is perception. And with what transpired in Iowa, with the software package and people, and what happened in 2016 with what the Clinton campaign did to Bernie Sanders, people are quickly losing confidence, any little confidence that they had in the process to begin with. So Louisiana, I think, is being proactive in this, and kudos to them for doing so. But public perception and losing confidence in your elections

is a very, very, very dangerous thing. Wilbur, I think I halfway disagree with you because I think the issue is election integrity. And I think that they're out of where are the safeguards in Louisiana? How are they ensuring that they've postponed the election? How is this election going to happen? Is it going to be mail ballots? First of all, all they've done is postpone it. They haven't they haven't say, well, we're going to move to a primary.

This is what it's going to entail. They're reacting in the exact same way as the NBA and everybody else. And that is, here's an event taking place in our state. There are going to be large numbers of people who are turning out. We don't know even how to combat this. So the easiest thing is to postpone it. And a lot of their poll workers are elderly.

But there has to be an issue of election integrity. I mean, this is the challenge that we've had for some time, not only with this president, but when you have election suppression, we have voter suppression. And so I'm not disagreeing fully, but I'm saying let's make sure, while they're sitting up here

doing emergency appropriations for this and for that, can there be an appropriation? Marsha Fudge, HR1, they talked about this, you know, years ago, three years ago. How can we make sure that our elections are fair? Okay, okay, okay, okay. You keep saying fair and integrity. That's nothing to do with this here.

What they're saying is this is no different. Louisiana is saying this is no different than a large scale sporting event So what they're saying is in three weeks all these people early voting will start all people gonna be going to the ballot box Alright, how do you deal with that? If you know who the hell is coming up who has coronavirus who does it? So they're saying is you know what the easiest thing to do is to postpone this. You can have the primary in three months. They're saying it's coming up in three weeks.

Let's postpone it. And so now I think and then now what's going to happen? I think what they're saying is, hey, we need to give our federal folks four to eight weeks to see what happens when we have mass testing to now begin to study it. Now, let's see how long this thing goes. Then states are going to have to then make a different decision what now happens for the general. Four other states are sticking with their date.

No, no, no. For now. Right, because elections are state elections. Just like it's no different in some states have said no school. Others, they're still in school. Those are state-based decisions. These are not national decisions. And so what they're saying is, okay, in our state, we're doing this here. That's fine because you got to better handle what's happening on your state than somebody else

over here. So I don't have an issue with that. The issue is, okay, if this thing does get prolonged, what then do we deal with November? How do we deal with that? Because, to Wilmer's point, my parents are 72. My dad will be 73 next week. They work polls all the time. And so the question is, are you going to put people

who are in the most high-risk category for coronavirus who are controlling polls and not knowing who the hell is coming up? And that's the point where seniors are more likely to vote than others. Right, but also they're workers. Yep, and Louisiana officials have said, like at the end of the day,

we're fearing that people are physically not going to show up, the actual poll workers. They're scared. And even if they are doing mail-in ballots, they've been informed that they need to wear gloves. I mean, this is a legitimate concern. And I think I'm glad that it's happening so early so that we can seriously

think if this thing is not contained and it continues to grow in the way that we think it might, what we're going to do about the actual presidential election. Let's just make sure that there is accurate counting and integrity. Hold up, Julianne, ain't no voting. You keep saying counting.

Ain't going to be nothing to count. Because Louisiana is postponing the entire primary. Well, when are they going to put this on the table for there to be citizen input about how they change it? Okay, because what they're first doing is they're in the midst of an international pandemic, now national emergency. So their deal is, yo, this is the last thing

I need to be thinking about right now. Plus, it's the primary. And the reality is here, if you look at the polling now, the people who support Bernie Sanders, Yo, this is the last thing I need to be thinking about right now. Plus, it's the primary. And the reality is here, if you look at the polling now, people who support Bernie Sanders versus Joe Biden, folks may be upset by saying, you know, well, my candidates, I'm going to have a chance to actually, I can't vote for them to get some delegates.

What they're saying is we're kind of worried about people dying. So we'll get to that. And again, I think what it is, it's April. The Democratic Convention is in July. Bottom line is this here, we have to see how long this thing goes, what happens, do we reach the point to where

this thing continues? Is it going to be a three or four or five or six month deal? I think what's going to happen is we're going to get if this thing continues, we get to get past the conventions. Then states are going to begin to make some some immediate decisions. What do we do? Do we do mail in balloting? How do we and how do we do it? How do we ensure that? How do you make sure it gets counted? You have no paper receipt. They got to figure all those things out.

Because here's a couple of things. One is when you get to the Louisiana primary, you've got a number of people standing in long lines for a very long period of time. And so your exposure and your transmission of this becomes an issue. But when you talk about the general election in November, one of the things that they're warning us about right now with this virus is it could very well become seasonal, just like the flu. So what could wind up happening is we see the cases start to subside around May. The thing lays dormant for the summer. And then just like the flu around the middle of September or early October, this thing pops up again like gangbusters.

That's going to depend on the CDC and others in terms of this period between April and September. Here's the whole deal. Have we created more test kits? Here's the deal. Today's March 13th. I am not focused on after their primary. Bottom line is, their whole deal is postpone it.

Let's see what happens next. But it's a smart call for them to make. And then we'll see what moves forward. Let me deal with this story here. Andrew Gillum, who in 2018 came within 34,000 votes of becoming Florida's governor, was discovered by police at the Mondrian South Beach Hotel early this morning at South Beach with bags of possible methamphetamines in the room in the company of a man who appeared to have overdosed on drugs. This is according to Miami

Beach Police report. Now, police say they were called to the hotel this morning and found early Friday morning found paramedics treating Travis Dyson, a 30-year-old Miami man, for an apparent heart attack. They say two of the men were in the room. Gillum was not arrested and was too intoxicated to answer questions. An offense incident report says that officers found three clear plastic baggies of suspected crystal meth on the bed and the floor. In a statement, Gillum said this, quote,

I was in Miami last night for a wedding celebration when first responders were called to assist one of my friends. While I had too much to drink, I want to be clear that I have never used the methamphetamines. I apologize to the people of Florida for this distraction. This has caused our movement.

But he also said in the statement that for the next few weeks he'll be spending time with his family and ask for privacy as well. So now the gentleman, Travis Dyson, gave the interview. He did do the interview with the Miami Times. And then in the interview, he said that he was not there for a wedding and that he had known Gillum for more than a year.

And so we certainly will try to get more details. But there's a whole bunch of, let me say this here. There's a whole bunch of other crap out there that's been spread, and it was spread by Candace Owens, the right-wing provocateur. And I took a black website, the Taz, because they included that crap in one of their tweets,

and I'll put them on blast again because it was shameful and despicable. And so let me just say this real clear, okay? If Candace Owens is your go-to source, you're trash and she's trash. It's called go-to, go-to hell. That's what it is, okay? Here's someone who knows nothing about what happened,

wasn't there, has no details, who just made up some crap in order to sit here and trash Andrew Gillum. We don't know what happened. So we only report what are identifiable and known facts. When you're an idiot like Candace Owens and you tweet, oh, I heard this happen, but it's unsubstantiated, yeah, you don't run it again based upon what that fool had to say

because we know what those games are. And so if y'all heard anything else, oh, I heard that, you don't know a damn thing because it was unsubstantiated. And here's the other piece here. Just because your ass put the word allegedly in front of it still does not make it right, okay? And so she is not a source, a credible source, and so it's idiotic for anybody,

especially a black media outlet, to put anything out there and then trying to say, oh, well, it was both sides. No, there are no both sides. It's either what actually happened, according to police, witnesses in the room, and the truth. That's all that matters.

And so that's what we have there. And so certainly not great news to hear, but we're certainly praying for Andrew Gillum and his family. Remember we talked about Nathaniel Woods, the man who was put to death this week in Alabama, actually last week in Alabama. And there was a temporary statement of the Supreme Court. They lifted it.

Governor Kay Ivey, Alabama governor, she could have actually stopped it, but she chose not to do so. Well, this week, let's just say she was at an event, got rolled up on by the sister of Nathaniel Woods. Watch this. I'm the sister of Nathaniel Woods. Excuse me, we're still doing the press conference. You killed my brother. Governor Ivey, you killed my brother. He's an innocent man. You guys can email me. Well, I had nothing. I got no problem with that.

Now, Woods, of course, he was executed. Ivy could have stopped it, but she chose not to do so. Brittany, I'm fine with that. She should get challenged like that because she had, a year ago, had posted something about protecting life, all life matters. But here was a man who the guy who was convicted of killing these three police officers said he was not involved with it. He did not pull the trigger, yet he was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering three police officers. And the crazy part is, the guy who actually pulled the trigger, he's

still living. Yeah, I mean, it's unfortunate. And I don't blame the sister at all. Absolutely run up on her. Absolutely tell her that she's a killer. And this is a modern-day lynching. And this really, I mean, things haven't changed. You know, it's the changing same for the African-American community at the end of the day.

It was a modern-day lynching. She could have stopped it. She could have did some additional investigation. If nothing else, be an empath. Touch that sister's hand and say, I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm so sorry it was beyond me. Anything. But you just look at her and walk off cold. It almost makes me feel as if they continue to just believe that we're not human at the end of the day. And I mean, it has to do with the police. They have blood on their hands. You know, three white police officers were killed at the end of the day, and they feel like somebody has to pay for that with their life. It's unfortunate. And so we're basically back into the post-Reconstruction era where black men were

lynched because they knew somebody who might have shot somebody. This governor, Kate Ivey, has been totally not only a contradiction, but an abomination. She does not like abortion because it kills children. But she likes killing somebody with a death penalty. She runs her woman thing when she thinks it works for her, but it does not work when you look at someone's humanity. As you say, it would have been impactful for her at least to show a moment of empathy with that.

But I applaud the sister for keeping that in her face because that's what needs to happen. We never need to let this go about how many black men and women are killed when they basically have been innocent. In a failed system. Carrie Spencer, the trigger man, was on record and very clear that Nathan Woods was not

involved in a conspiracy. What they linked Nathan Woods with to this horrific issue was that he was a conspirator. And so Kerry Spencer, the trigger man, was very clear, no, there was no conspiracy. And you can't conspire with yourself. It takes more than one to conspire. So the prosecutors ignored Spencer's statements

that Mr. Woods was not involved in a conspiracy, that he himself picked up that automatic weapon and shot those three police officers. And it's also important here to look at, this came through Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas was the one who provided the stay. Clarence Thomas was also the one an hour or two later that lifted the stay. And we don't have to go too far back in history to remember when Senator Joe Biden was the head

of the Judiciary Committee and withheld the information that would have proven Anita Hill to be correct. We may not have to even be dealing with Clarence Thomas if it hadn't been for the machinations of Joe Biden. So I bring that up just so that the audience can understand you have to connect these dots over time. And you can't give people passes

simply because it's warm and fuzzy and convenient. But, Wilbur, while I agree with you that Biden was really horrible, and he has apologized to Anita Hill, I think there has to be some issue of context. I do not like what he

did, and at the same time, I'm not... But you also can't leave out the 52 people who voted for him. Okay, here's the whole piece. It went through committee, but he still got voted on and was confirmed. And it wasn't just Biden. It went through committee, but he still got voted on and was confirmed. And it wasn't just Biden.

It was 5248. So, basically, what we have to look at is contextually why those white people, frankly, were afraid when a black man said a high-tech electronic lynching. All of a sudden, they all backed off. Biden could have said what he said, but there still could have been other things said.

I'm not going to throw Biden under the bus because my priority at this moment is to making sure that 45 is up out of the White House, period. Now, Biden is flawed, but every single one of them is flawed. All right, folks. Earlier we talked about the closing of schools

as a result of coronavirus and the problems that it's presenting for children as well as for parents. Joining us right now is Kalia Harris. She's managing director for K through 12 education policy for the Center for American Progress. Kalia, we're seeing officials try to figure out how to feed children, children who rely on nutrition in school. We're seeing people come up with all kinds of different creative ways to deal with these issues that the average person has no idea even exists. Absolutely. It's a critical time in our communities. We have young people who rely on schools for sometimes two meals, sometimes three meals a day.

And oftentimes it's the only place that our young people are getting hot meals. So this is a true equity situation. We're seeing the remnants of not investing in our public schools at the levels that we ought to, whether it be from access to technology or the capacity of teachers to even enact distance learning. But first and foremost, when we think about basic needs of our children, we also see in New York City that we have homeless students that would be without a place to go for many hours during the day if they're living in a shelter with family that doesn't allow for people to stay during the daytime.

So it's a critical issue for our students. We have rural students who also don't have the capacity to go down the street to school to get a grab to go breakfast or lunch. So there are lots of implications for us to think about in our families where we need to work together. And also, I think that the average person, whenever there's a calamity, people go, oh my goodness, I didn't know anything about this. This is what we're actually seeing right now. I think we lost Kalia there. And I want to bring, so Julianne, you made that point earlier. Natural disasters like this here reveals stuff that we ordinarily don't focus on or see.

It reveals the weakness in our infrastructure. It reveals the way that we ordinarily don't focus on or see? It reveals the weakness in our infrastructure. It reveals the way that we deliver services. We're not only looking with this coronavirus at what we have in hospitals, we're also looking at basically the offshoots of what's happening. So we have young people who are not gonna be fed. We have bus drivers who are not gonna get paid.

We have a whole ecosystem that's going to be disrupted because of this coronavirus, not to blame the virus, but to say, what do we do to the least and the left out? How do we ensure that everybody is included? And we have not heard much about that. Nancy Pelosi took a first step today. But again, you know, Mayor Bowser in D.C. talked about what D.C. was going to do. And I heard very little. And she's doing her best, but I've heard very little about what we're going to do for young people.

So, when some people get two-thirds of their calories from a public space, what's going to happen? And the whole notion of learning remotely. Many folks don't have the Internet. But the thing that also...

And I totally agree with all of that, but here's the other piece. Look, this is something that you actually can't game out. I mean, you can't. You can't show me the last thing where literally everything is shutting down. Okay? Take 9-11.

All right? What actually shut down after 9-11? Flying. Yeah. That's all. Flying. In New York City. Well, no, no, but even in New York City, New York City didn't shut down.

No, I understand. So this is a case where... No, I'm agreeing with you. Where literally, I mean, you've never had a situation where sporting events, schools, churches, organizations, conventions, all these things.

First, travel is still happening. You can still fly. You can still get on the train, but airports are real damn empty. And now, all of a sudden, now when you'd have a system where all these things are happening immediately, what also then begins to happen is not, not the trickle down effect, but just what had been happened. So you take all the Chinese restaurants, no one's even going to eat there. Now you take other restaurants. I ain't trying

to eat around people. I don't know who the hell's in the kitchen. I don't know what they have. So we've never experienced in a lifetime, essentially, the nation self-quarantining. And so now, if you're a school district or you're a city official, you're having to figure these things out. There is no game plan for something like this here. Go ahead. But I think what's interesting,

it truly exposes how the American project is a failure. I'm sorry. First off, 45 can't figure it out. But even if we're going with an establishment politician for the Democratic Party, at the end of the day, it's going to be business as usual. And business as usual means extreme inequalities in terms of our school systems,

in terms of food disparities, in terms of education, in terms of incarceration, those that are going to suffer disparities, in terms of education, in terms of incarceration, those that are going to suffer as a result of being incarcerated, the old and elderly there. Um, it shows the extreme break in-in what is supposed to make America so great. And I think specifically just looking at our school system,

we don't have the infrastructure. But what you're saying, what you're saying, it exposes it, but again, I go back to... you can't plot for anything like this. No, but you don't have to plot for it. We have been, we have bought into this fake ideology of

America the Great. Which is nonsense. We have been told ad nauseum that we don't need socialized medicine because we have the greatest healthcare system in the world. And what are we finding out now? It's been exposed.

What this event is doing is pulling the covers off and presenting the realities of the ugly America. We are not exceptional. We are not great we have not been anointed by God to rule the world but here's the deal and I use China as an example like when all these people uh when Trump and the rest of people talk about oh look what they're doing in China look how fast they move okay first of all there's a reason you can move fast when you're a communist government so it's like because you don't have of all, there's a reason you can move fast when you're a communist government. So it's like because you don't have

rules. So the bottom line is you can create whatever rules you want to. You can say, okay, we're going to take over your land. No, they have rules. And it's the fact that they do have rules that allow them to do what they do. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. When I say they have rules, they have rules, but rules that can be completely changed without going through a process.

First of all, we got something here, you got eminent domain. They have a process. No, no, no, no, but here's my whole point. They have a process, but they can throw the process completely out the window whenever they want to. Because they have a culture that focuses on the importance of the whole and sacrifices. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, We actually played the video that came from the folks at Vox Media that one of the reasons this outbreak actually happened is because they have allowed the growth and development of wild animals that are actually eaten by the elite and the rich there and not the vast majority of its 1.4 billion people. The point I'm making is this here. They can do things in that country that because of laws that we have set up federal state that we simply cannot do is a whole different deal here what i'm saying is what this these type of events what they do is they expose i don't care what system you are they expose uh uh how fragile whatever your particular country is right we have been all these people have been trained to think that whatever happens, we got it, can be solved. No.

This is why what it does require is real leadership, that when it does strike, you have folks who can maintain calm, who can present calm, and then we say we're working on a plan together while you bring stakeholders together, pull them together in the same place. But this is also why you have to have leadership, why you bring stakeholders together, pull them together in the same place. That's... But this is also why you have to have leadership. Why leadership matters. And real leadership who can think and who are not arrogant or narcissistic and who only

care about the stock market being at a high number. But you know, Roland, the issue here when you talk about this has basically pulled the covers on so-called American exceptionalism because of Korea and China and other people can do this, but we can't. What we call ourselves the greatest is

ridiculous. People are testing at a faster rate. South Korea. Yeah, no, but... That's what I'm just saying. The difference also goes to leadership. If you had real... Well, that's my point. Well, we have... No, we do. We have leadership The difference also goes to leadership. If you had real, well, that's my point.

Well, we have, don't we do? We have leadership, but the problem is they're not sitting at the top. The problem with what you have is you have individuals. You have people who are in HHS or in CDC who know what the right thing to do, but then you got the people who are above them who are actually the ones who are in power who are like, no, we're not going to do that.

And they're fighting it. The other piece is this here. Trump has run out a lot of our top scientists in every single department. This is an administration that has a war on science. They cut CDC by like 80%.

Not just CDC. I'm talking about every department. They have run out scientists in the Department of Agriculture, people in EPA, people who are in commerce in every single department because their whole deal is scientists are BS. Again, what hopefully, I doubt these people even pay attention to it, hopefully you're going to see these conservatives and these MAGA people or people who are back in realize that, oh, you know what? That probably wasn't did make a lot of damn sense.

But this is what happens when you fall for that okey-doke. And that, to me, is one of the biggest problems. Do we have Camila back? Kalila back? OK, we don't have her back. And so we'll try to get her rescheduled. We'll still be dealing with, of course, this for quite some time all across the country as we are dealing with now what is a national emergency. I've been in the workforce, uh, this for a... for quite some time, uh, all across the country,

uh, as we are dealing with now what is, uh, a national, a national emergency. And so, uh, man, it has been, uh, quite, uh, quite the week. Um, the question now is, uh, are we going to truly see these people get out of the way to allow the experts to do what they're supposed to do. No. I agree.

The absolute smartest thing, what I was hoping was Fauci was just going to say, Mr. President, I need you to go sit down. I need you, because you know what? Every time you talk, you keep lying.

The president should have said, you know what? I'm out of my lane. I'm turning to the professionals. Yes. Fauci, talk to the people. Yep. And then he should have stepped back.

But no, instead he contradicted this man for the opportunity that he had. And what it caused was absolute confusion. That brother from the Utah Jazz who was sitting there playing, putting his hands on all the microphones, he was taking clues from 45. So many other people, I ain't worried about it. You need to be worried about it.

But basically, people have poo-pooed this. This is not the same thing as the flu. Of course. But that's what people are saying. Yeah, you have the president saying, you know, this is nothing but the flu. It's just going to go away. We don't need to worry about it. Go back to work.

And then what happens is he goes on Fox News, and these idiots in prime time on Fox News parrot Donald Trump, saying it's no big deal. They downplay it. And the reality is, what's the most watched cable network out there? Fox News. You got all these millions of idiots who watch them,

and then go, well, you know, he said everything is all fine. And so that's part of the problem that you have here. And so one of the reasons why we do what we do is to give real information. So you're not, cause we know y'all ain't watching Fox News cause I'm damn sure not watching Fox News. So we just not dealing with crazy. All right, folks. Um, we'll be kicking out more information, of course, all over this weekend, uh, getting it to you. so you're aware of what's going on. And don't forget to support what we do at Roller Martin Unfiltered by going to RollerMartinUnfiltered.com. Join our Bring the Funk fan club. As we do every single Friday, we always be sure to celebrate those people who have joined us to make it possible to do what we do.

Here's that list. I'll see y'all on Monday. Ha! this is an iHeart podcast