JUDY WOODRUFF: President Trump has been in the White House Briefing Room again this evening,
along with other administration officials, for what has become a regular discussion of
the COVID-19 response.
And our Yamiche Alcindor joins us now with the latest.
Yamiche, hello.
We know so much of the focus today has been on those grim projections from the president,
from the White House yesterday about the number of deaths, the number of cases. What are you
learning about how that is affecting the White House' thinking overall?
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: (AUDIO GAP) White House continues to be the fact that more than 100,000
Americans could die from the coronavirus even in the best-case scenario.
So President Trump today was talking about those numbers, and Vice President Pence made
it very clear the White House was studying models. And, on last Friday, they decided
to finalize those numbers, present them to the president.
On Saturday, when the president actually learned of these numbers -- that's what the White
House is saying -- he was moved by this, and that's why he went from saying that the country
could be possibly easing up guidelines by Easter Sunday to saying, no, we're going to
have to keep the guidelines in place until April 30.
I want to put up this graph for people. This is a graph that the White House was using
yesterday as they were describing -- and it's one that they have continued to go back to
today.
If you look at this dark hill, the dark blue hill, what you see is 1.5 to 2.2 million Americans
could die if there was no intervention, if there was no social distancing. That's what
the White House's worst-case scenario is.
Then, if you look at the other hill, it's a smaller bump, it's says that 100,000 to
240,000 Americans could die. Those are the numbers that we should be focused on today.
That's the graph at the heart -- the graph, rather, at the heart of the White House's
numbers.
The president also made it clear that a lot of these deaths are going to be happening
within the next month.
And the important thing to note here is that the governor of New York, who is, at this
point, the hardest-hit state, he said that, in his models, about 16,000 people will die
in New York. That means 93,000 other people, he said, could be dying on other states and
-- in other states.
So what we see there is that this is obviously a big issue in New York, but he's saying that
the deaths might be nationwide, so we should really be looking at this as we go forward.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So grim, so -- still so hard to comprehend those numbers.
And so, Yamiche, you have been in the briefing. What more can you tell us about what the White
House is saying today?
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Well, Judy, it was a really different White House briefing than we have
seen in the past.
Today, the president began with talking about national security. And he said -- and he said
specifically that he wanted to talk about anti-drug operations. And he said that the
Navy is going to be beefing up operations in the Pacific Sea, as well as -- in the Pacific
Ocean, I should say, rather, and the Caribbean Sea.
And they're going to be fully focusing on cartels, they say, that are trying to use
the coronavirus outbreak to smuggle more drugs into America.
Here's what the president said about that:
DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: Well, for a long time, we have had a lot of
drugs coming into our country. And it's not that it's increased. It's probably -- we have
probably got it down a little bit, but it's still a tremendous number.
And families are being ruined. Lives are being ruined. It's an incredible thing, especially
as you're at this position. You would never believe it. I see things that nobody would
believe. I see reports that nobody would believe.
So I met with the group behind me, all of them. And we said, what do you think we can
do? And they think they can interdict. They think that we can stop it before it gets to
the shores.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: So, today, the president brought out national security officials. He
brought out the national security adviser. He brought out Attorney General William Barr.
He brought out people like the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These are people that we usually
do not see at the Coronavirus Task Force Briefing. We usually see the top scientists talking.
But he waited until the second half of the briefing to have the scientist speak. And
he wanted to underscore that he thinks that this narcotics appropriations that he's having,
that they are really the top priority, at least today, even though, of course, we're
looking at those grim numbers when it comes to the coronavirus outbreak.
So that's a really important point that President Trump was trying to make. Now, I should say
that this comes with the context that there was a Naval ship that was asking -- a commander
was asking that sailors be evacuated from that ship. It was docked in Guam.
John Yang, of course, had that in the script. And he was talking about it at the beginning
of the show.
And what you see there is the president basically having this context, saying that there needs
to be this anti-drug activity.
The other thing I should note, really quickly, is that Adam Schiff, a prominent member of
the House, says that, after the coronavirus bill phase four is done, after more relief
is given, he wants to see some sort of commission to really look at the White House's handling
of the coronavirus outbreak.
So, we should be looking out for that as well.
JUDY WOODRUFF: For sure.
Yamiche Alcindor monitoring it all at the White House, thank you, Yamiche.