Published March 12, 2020
This is a rush transcript from "The Five,” March 12, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: This is what we need more than anything else. It's not about fundamentals, it's not a financial crisis, it's a crisis of confidence. The Five starts right now.
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: Hello, everybody. I'm Jesse Watters along with Dr. Nicole Saphier, Juan Williams, Shannon Bream, and Greg Gutfeld. It's 5 o'clock in New York City. And this is THE FIVE.
President Trump taking unprecedented action as Coronavirus fears impact almost every aspect of life here in America. Wall Street taking another big beating today. The stock market dropping by almost 10 percent. Major sports leagues suspending or delaying seasons. The NCAA just announcing that this year's March Madness has officially been canceled. Large gatherings are being limited across the country. And New York City just declaring a state of emergency.
There are now more than 1,400 confirmed Coronavirus cases in the United States, and at least 37 people have died. President Trump responding by reassuring Americans that we as a country will get through this pandemic. Here he is earlier today talking about restricting travel from Europe.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We get along very well with European leaders, but we had to make a decision. And I didn't want to take time. And, you know, it takes a long time to make the individual call.
I mean, when they raised taxes on us, they don't consult us. And if Americans coming back or anybody is coming back, we're testing. We have a tremendous testing setup where people coming in have to be tested. And if they are positive, it will be a pretty strong enforcement of quarantine.
Look, the key is, you have to have separation. You have to have separation or this thing takes longer to go away.
WATTERS: Well, it seems like in the last 24 hours, it just got a lot more intense, Greg, Oval Office address and now, some new travel restrictions from across the pond. It's not something to joke about.
GREG GUTFELD, FOX NEWS HOST: No. Is that something in the morning to me?
WATTERS: That was a warning, Greg.
GUTFELD: Yes, yes, yes. The important thing is you can't make -- you can't make fear your de vault on this. Because I think, again, we're confusing statistical risks with personal risks. I would first -- I would first ask a really dumb question.
When 9/11 occurred, we closed the stock market until September 17. That was six days because we were shell shocked. I think we're making a mistake here by not doing that. And we're making a mistake by foolishly comparing this virus to other viruses or other flus, right? Because it's like comparing last year's Super Bowl to the next year's. You're missing a crucial piece of information, which happens in the future, which we don't know.
In that case, this virus is much like 9/11. And that the whole point of terror is that it gets through undetected, when your defenses are down and that's constantly morphing and changing its shape or it mutates in order to survive. So we have to think about this the same way we think about terrorism and thinking about 9/11.
Now, thinking about the swine flu or whatever other flu you want to talk about, because we know what happened. But do remember being in New York in 9/11 walking down the street thinking the world was going to end every single day. And then you look back and go, well, we got through it. That's exactly -- right now, because you're in this thing, you feel it.
WATTERS: Right.
GUTFELD: You feel it. And also, what's different now than then, an accelerated media, a news cycle that's on hyper speed, and that also gives a sense of lack of control. How you regain that control? By doing positive things for other people, by doing practical things, and practicing all the hygiene tips that the doc suggests, because that gives you a sense of control.
But in the meantime, you're going to overstate this because you're in it. And you're going to look back and go like, wow, we got through it. And we will get through it. It's just right now it feels weird.
WATTERS: Right.
GUTFELD: One last point, I know I'm babbling. We're all getting freaked out about the NBA, baseball, hockey, you've got to understand that a lot of this stuff is legal advice. So you don't get sued. You're freaking out, I can't believe they are doing this. No, it's because some lawyer is saying you don't want this player to sue you or a corporation, you don't want somebody working here to get the virus when you could have sent them home. So all of these are just warnings.
WILLIAMS: That's a good point, Greg. Unlike some other people who have compared the Coronavirus to be Chernobyl or Katrina, you made a 9/11 comparison, is that how you see it?
NICOLE SAPHIER, FOX NEWS HOST: That is certainly not Chernobyl. I understand how Greg is drawing parallels with 9/11. What has been upsetting me is when I'm seeing the parallels being drawn from like 1918 Spanish flu. And we live in an era that's pre-antibiotic, pre-enhanced sanitizers, and hygiene, and just overall personal hygiene.
We're living in a very different time where we have a lot more information. And, you know, unfortunately, the travel bans have to be implemented. Because right now, we have community spread within our country.
And I'm not saying necessarily I agree with the exact way the travel bans are being handled because one thing that I think that they missed last night is explaining why the travel ban was in a certain area of Europe and not in other areas of Europe. And I do understand because you have a massive epicenter right now from China and now Italy is close to China. And there is free travel between Italy and a lot of these other nations.
But you also have the highest single daily increase in cases in the U.K. And that wasn't part of the travel ban. So I would like some explanation from someone on the task force as to why we chose specific areas. I do agree with travel bans. We need to focus on our internal community spread and not have a more of influx of cases coming into our country. But, again, I don't know if you can necessarily pick and choose these.
WATTERS: Juan, how do you see things today after last night's Oval Office address?
JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS HOST: Well, you know, I was sort of -- I wanted the President to give that address. I think the country would like to be assured -- reassured in some ways, Jesse. I don't think he did that, but I liked the tone of his address. I think he got the tone right. It was just in terms of the content. The kinds of things the Dr. Saphier was talking about, you know, why are you doing this country and not that country, because this country has a major outbreak? What are you thinking? We don't know.
I do think when Tom Hanks gets it and his wife, and when the NBA, and now, Major League Baseball, can you imagine cancelling the NCAA tournament? That's a big deal because initially, you think, they will just play it on TV because it's TV revenue. They just canceled it.
So, to me, this is a signal for people like me who tend to not want to be an alarmist and think, you know what, let it go. Let it pass, you know. I'm going to just be careful myself. But there is no reason to think things are really bad. You know what, I think things are bad.
WATTERS: I think people woke up when they saw on their screens that Tom Hanks had it. And when they can't watch basketball anymore, I do agree, there is probably a legal liability. But personally, I think if one player or two players from the NBA has it, maybe they go on medical leave for the rest of the season.
WILLIAMS: Right.
WATTERS: You play without crowds in the stands, but they went in another direction.
SHANNON BREAM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Yes, you think about as we learn -- you do have a lawyer and a doctor on the panel, so you're fully covered.
WATTERS: Wait, wait, wait. Is that me and Greg? Me and Greg?
BREAM: You have to think about the fans, people that take selfies. They are exposing so many people. Their trainers have to be there. What happens to the concession workers? I mean, there are so many things to consider.
I like what you said, Greg, that when it becomes personal, when you hear Tom Hanks and the NBA, it gets closer and closer to home, and we get it then in a different way. And we freak when we're in the middle of it.
And I've said today like on Twitter, one day, this is going to be in the rearview mirror. It's going to hurt in the meantime, but we are going to get through it. I believe in this country, and I believe in the systems that we have in place. But somebody tweeted me back and said, yes, this, too, shall pass, but it will be like a kidney stone.
SAPHIER: And I one thing I want to mention, Chernobyl and 9/11, those were intentional actions. Chernobyl is extreme negligence that caused such a disaster. There is nothing intentional about this novel virus causing a pandemic. And we have to remember that.
There is a sense of nature here. We have pandemics. We're going to have another one. We have to make sure we get through this, which we will. But there will be another one. And now, we have to continue to make sure that we have the right things in place and that we're a healthier America.
WATTERS: And you said, real quick, before we go, what was your time frame prediction, not to put you on the spot?
SAPHIER: Oh, boy. Honestly, I think we're going to see a lot more cases over the next few weeks. A lot more people have it than we already know and we'll find more cases as we test more.
But I would say we'll see an equilibrium once we start having - implementing these measures, just like what we've seen in China and South Korea. So I would say four to six weeks, I think we're going to level off and then we may have a decline. It may be more than four to six weeks. I don't think it's going to be four to six months, until we have an equilibrium but I don't know -- we don't know.
GUTFELD: And the good news -- I mean, the good news is, as the infection rates increase or we find them through testing, the percentage death rate will naturally go down. Right now, because we don't have that denominator.
WATTERS: Yes.
GUTFELD: We're freaking out, we don't know -- we thought it was 3.5 percent. It might be -- still 0.9 is going to be a lot. Can I just ask you one question? I know we have to go. You're not seeing cases or very little cases in Africa, Australia, Buenos Aires, is this the theory of heat and humid? A strong theory.
SAPHIER: Actually, to be honest, I think it has more to do with international travel right now. What this is, is a highly infectious disease virus. Australia, they had a travel ban. Initially, very early on, they had a travel ban. The only thing is they allowed foreign students from China come in and they had them do 14-day quarantines elsewhere, Dubai, wherever else, and then they went to Australia.
But the point is some of these people didn't actually self-quarantine and then they went to Australia. And now, Australia has it.
BREAM: And now, Tom Hanks has it.
WATTERS: All right. Up next, Democrats and the media bash President Trump's Oval Office address on the Coronavirus. Stick around.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SAPHIER: Welcome back. The Democrats and media are not so happy with President Trump's address to the nation about the COVID-19 outbreak. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The President referred to the Coronavirus as a foreign virus.
I think it is going to smack -- it is going to come across to a lot of Americans as xenophobia to use that kind of term in the speech.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Incompetence kills. And the response thus far from the administration has been unfortunately plagued with incompetence.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The President also called this a foreign virus. What does he accomplish by making this an outsider's problem?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is kind of America first rhetorical flourish that has nothing to do with public health, safety, or public health communication.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Don't you think this is a good time for him to resign?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAPHIER: Wow. OK, so, Jesse, I want to go to you first. He got a lot of heap for calling this a foreign virus, to the extent of calling him xenophobic. What do you feel about that?
WATTERS: The President goes out there on TV and calls for unity, hope, and resilience and the media calls on him to resign. How sick is that? This guy is not interested in political correctness. He's trying to save lives. If the virus originated in Brooklyn, they would call it Brooklyn virus and other countries would be slapping travel bans on America.
It is what it is. It's just about saving lives. And I want to talk about lives and put it into perspective for a second. There have been 37 deaths here in the United States, from Coronavirus. Every death is tragic. But swine flu, during 2010 under Barack Obama, there were 13,000 deaths, 60 million Americans were infected.
So 37 versus 13,000, that's a big difference. Now, I'm not downplaying it. I'm putting it in context. And what the President gets hit on is, they say he's downplaying it. Where I'm seeing it, he's trying to reduce fear. If you say we have to be optimistic and we're going to beat this thing and eventually it's going to end, but at the same time, trying to say we've got to wash our hands, quarantine, slap travel bans on.
That's a comprehensive approach. And he's trying to be aggressive and he's dynamic. And he's changed gears a little bit because he's responding to how the pandemic is met metastasizing.
Last point, this is not a financial crisis. Once we get a handle on thing, markets are going to rally hard back. And we can all get back to watching basketball.
SAPHIER: So, Juan, I have a question for you. Because you said that you liked the tone of his address last night. And there were some -- there were some errors in his address. Now, do you think -- I kind of want to know where the error is from. Because to me, it seems like he was reading a script. I mean, a lot of times, he just speaks off-the-cuff. It actually seemed like he was reading a script last night. So, do you think the speech writers potentially had something to do with his errors and it wasn't necessarily his incompetence as people are saying?
WILLIAMS: Well, he's the President, so, I mean, you can't not take responsibility as President when you're addressing the American people. So, as I said yesterday here, the speech had to be thoroughly vetted. And apparently, it wasn't.
But I mean on the flip side, you've got to understand, and this is what I would say to Jesse, because the Democrats didn't like the speech or some people in the media didn't like the speech, that's not the point. I mean, the point is that he failed to reassure because of the errors that we're referring to.
For example, I would say in terms of the travel ban, explain it. I would say talk about the fact we haven't had testing and that the doctor says that was a fail. Talk about where the virus is now, what we can do to reduce its spread in our country. We see all these people acting independently, Broadway, the NBA, certain school systems, where is the leadership?
SAPHIER: Well, actually, I will -- I will say that he did have a great call to Americans last night. And that was my favorite part of his speech. He talked about what he wanted to do from the economic side. He talked about the travel ban but then he also said Americans, you have to do this, you have to avoid public places, nonessential travel.
I mean, I think that's what's most important here, Shannon. Didn't you think that message did come across?
BREAM: I mean, I hope when he kind of appealed to our better nature, our better nature or better angels, and this optimistic thing, America can do this. We've done this before. We're going to come out the other side. We do have to keep reminding ourselves we're going to be looking at this in the rearview mirror, and not super distant future, we hope.
Jason Riley had a great piece in the Wall Street Journal this week. He said no matter what, this is going to be politicized. If he comes across as being urgent and overreacting, he's going to be accused as inciting panic. If he seems calm and not that into it, he's going to be accused of -- the word he used was lackadaisical.
But this guy, right now, I feel like, you know, he's not going to be able to win. He can't make both sides happy. It's a little dispiriting because you would hope in this moment -- listen, if Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi who immediately put out a statement saying how terrible it was last night, I think you can criticize the President. But maybe in this moment, for the country, you call him up, you sit down at the White House, or read on the phone, maybe think of the greater picture before you immediately put out a press release that didn't -- you know, wasn't too long after the speech that sounded like it might have been pre-written.
WILLIAMS: But I just want to make this point. They were real. I mean, let's forget the partisan take. I mean, there were real mistakes that the White House had to walk back about cargo and people being banned. No, no, no, not cargo, we're talking about humans. Oh, no, not American citizens, American citizens can come back.
I mean, these are mistakes that he made. He talks about, you know, flu, as Greg was saying, this is more dangerous than the flu in so many ways. And he wants to equate where he says your health insurer will cover this. You don't have to pay -- well, it turns out they will cover the test, but they won't cover the treatment.
SAPHIER: I agree. And I agree that there are some mistakes in his speech last night. However, I appreciated the tone. And I appreciated the message.
Now, Greg, Obama got some criticism for his Gulf Oil speech, where they said there was a lot of rhetoric, very short on answers and other things. Do you feel -- I personally did not feel last night's speech was full of rhetoric. I thought he was actually getting to the point and telling us his plans. How do you think it compares?
GUTFELD: It doesn't matter what he says, because the media and the Democrats will nitpick. I don't blame them because that's what you do when you're out of power. You think that the Democrats are out of power but remember, it's the media that's out of power in this administration.
So no matter what Donald Trump does, he's going to get nailed. They -- when you call it a foreign virus or call it the Wuhan virus, that's racist. Is Ebola racist? Because it's named after a river, another was named after a place. Rocky Mountain Fever is named after the Rocky Mountains. All right.
What is really frustrating, you can't trust people anymore because their political hatred is guiding their words, right. And these are people I would normally listen to, but I can't, because you can hear the dripping invective that contaminates their opinions. That's also a virus.
I can say fairly that I think America is doing great. I'm disappointed that the stock market isn't closed. That bothers me. I think Trump needs to adjust the way he talks about this. He needs to improve on it because in his heart, Trump is an optimist, right.
He's used to engaging and competing against groups, Democrats, and media. A virus is not something you vanquish. It's something you avoid and prepare against. That's something new for him. It may not be in his tool box, but he's a quick learner. And he should learn it.
And so, coming from me -- you should trust me, that I say positive things. And I said negative things. But when you listen to the -- when you listen to CNN, Don Lemon screaming at a never Trumper, John Kasich, he wouldn't pile on the President, you see that you can't trust these jerks because they are polluted with bias. Juan.
WILLIAMS: But I'm going to tell you something. I'm not polluted with bias, but I'll tell you this. Let's take the politics away.
GUTFELD: I have.
WILLIAMS: People who are in the game, Wall Street, who have every reason to say President Trump has been pretty good to Wall Street, what did they do? They said that speech didn't reassure us. It didn't buy us any sense.
GUTFELD: You're mindreading.
WILLIAMS: We don't know what's coming.
SAPHIER: We can't blame him. We can't blame him this happened. We got to go.
So, up next, Joe Biden and Democrats are attacking President Trump over his response to the COVID-19 outbreak. More of that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WILLIAMS: Joe Biden -- they love my music. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders hammering the Trump administration's response to the Coronavirus outbreak. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The leadership will panic, a fall back on gynophobia, labeling COVID-19 a foreign virus does not displace the accountability for the misjudgments that have been taken thus far by the Trump administration.
The administration's failure on testing is colossal. Nor should we hide the true number of infections to protect the political interests or the stock markets. The markets will respond strong -- to strong, capable leadership. That addresses the root of the problem, not efforts to cover it up.
BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have an administration that is largely incompetent, and whose incompetence and recklessness have threatened the lives of many, many people in our country. The American people deserve transparency, something that the current administration has fought day after day to stifle.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: So, Dr. Saphier, let me just say, what I took away from the Biden speech was sort of that he felt -- he's the Democratic nominee, he laid out for the American people how he would respond to this issue.
And on that point, he said he would expand the testing, boost hospital capacity, create an information hotline for people, and offer assistance to people who are losing their jobs. How did you react?
SAPHIER: I mean, to me, that just sounds like Oprah, like we're going to do this, and you can have this, you can have a house, you can have a school. Yes, of course, we want to do that. And President Trump has said the same thing. We're going to expand testing. We're going to make sure we have enough physicians and nurses able. Everyone says certain things and I want to know how exactly you're going to do that.
And, you know, listening to Bernie Sanders, he said he is going to do -- if this were him, he would declare a state of emergency. And he put together a bipartisan emergency group, full of experts. What do you think the task force is? We have several doctors there, people have been pointed by Obama and people have been pointed by Trump. And we have experts working on this together.
So, I, again, feel like that's a lot of rhetoric. And you can say that you would do these things, but they are not giving specifics. What I want from the President, I want him to tell us it will be OK. I know it's going to be OK. But the American people need to know it's going to be OK.
So I liked the tone last night. There were some -- some errors in his messaging. But I like that he said we're going to be OK, but here's what we're doing and here's what we need to do. I thought it was great in that sense.
WILLIAMS: Right. But I think that, obviously, the President is now -- and this I took from his speech last night, acknowledging the severity of this crisis, where as previously he was somewhat dismissive.
Now you have a situation, Jesse, where I think that the Democrats are saying, here's what we would do. So I think that was very concrete and specific about actions they would take that the President is not discussing.
WATTERS: The President is discussing it, Juan. He's trying to get Nancy and Chuck in a room with Mitch and solve the problem. And that's what Wall Street wants. They want a fix. And right now, both sides in Washington won't put their knives down and fix it.
Everything Joe Biden read off that teleprompter were things the President is doing. I wasn't blown away by Biden's speech at all. I'll give him this. Testing capacity is not where it needs to be. That's on the CDC. They have plenty of money. Here's the criticism. This is what Joe said, that this was a foreign-born virus, you can't say that. The virus is from China. It's a foreign country, Joe.
WILLIAMS: No, no, no. His point was, how does that help us deal with that situation.
WATTERS: You know what, he calls it how he sees it, Juan. And it is a foreign-born virus.
WILLIAMS: Fine.
WATTERS: Joe said that last month. He said it's from China.
WILLIAMS: Right. So -- but how does that help us?
WATTERS: What do you mean, how does it help us? It's from a foreign country. You have foreigners coming to America and that's why you slap a travel ban.
WILLIAMS: It's already here. It's already here.
WATTERS: Right. And you want to prevent it from spreading, Juan.
WILLIAMS: Right.
NICOLE SAPHIER, FOX NEWS MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: And calling the President - -
WATTERS: And one of the things you do in your toolbox is slap travel bans. Another he said which was ridiculous that the travel ban is racist and xenophobic. This travel ban that he slapped on China a month ago, every doctor now acknowledges was the right move. And the scientists agree.
Last thing, real quick. During the swine flu, Biden said something that scared the entire airline industry. And Joe Gibbs, White House Press Secretary at the time had to go up on the podium and apologize on behalf of Joe for scaring everybody, and he had to clean up that mess. So Joe is the last person I would want in charge during a pandemic.
WILLIAMS: Joe Gibbs was the --
BREAM: I will -- I will say this though.
WATTERS: Robert. I call him Joe.
WILLIAMS: OK. All right. Just don't call him a (INAUDIBLE).
BREAM: Don't call him late for dinner. I think though I will give credit to the Democrats. And listen, they're in a political fight. They're trying to win the nomination of their party. We are in political season. But I appreciate if a Democrat is going to be critical of the president that they come out with their own steps. That they say these are THE FIVE things I can do. So either the administration can say, we aren't doing that, we haven't outlined every single step we're doing. Or they can say, good, OK, yes, how can we work that in? Would that be feasible? How would it work?
Listen, though, on Capitol Hill, those folks who are already elected, got some problems there because, you know, we hear that they're trying to talk for all kinds of writers and things into these bills that they're putting together. Both sides just need to stop it for the American people. Get it done. Get it done and get something to the President's desk.
If they all got to get in the room and hash it out. Don't leave Washington don't take a recess. I mean, get it done. But I think regardless of party, if you're offering concrete solutions, good, we need an airing of those and we need to hear how we can fix the problem.
WILLIAMS: So Greg, I thought that -- as I said, I thought they were concrete solutions and what Joe Biden had to say. The biggest one to me, and I think I hear this when I from the experts is expand hospital capacity.
GUTFELD: I don't think anybody would disagree with that. But the whole point of this is to compare their performance to Trump. So first, let's do that. Number one, neither Joe or Bernie took questions, so right there they flunk because you got to think fast and you got to think what surprises and go off script, what Trump is really good at.
Number two, Biden's lied. He's a liar and he's a tool. He lied when he said -- when he opened the thing up and said this isn't about politics, and spent eight months saying that Trump was an unfit president, and that he would be a president. That's politics. He also accused the president of a cover-up. That's politics.
So he is a liar and a tool and he's losing his mind before our eyes. He is unfit. That -- it just upset me that he went to that place. Now, Trump's words could be better, but his deeds are effective. His deeds are effective enough to buy us time so that we can prepare and also to prepare for mistakes.
If we didn't have a robust economy and we didn't know ahead of time of what was coming. What would have happened with this testing fiasco, right? Fiasco, fiasco, yes, that's a good word. Anyway, I'm going to, stop because I'm getting mad.
WILLIAMS: But I wish we did. I wish we had acted.
WATTERS: You're getting mad.
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: We didn't act in time. We didn't act in time.
GUTFELD: I want to say a nice thing about Bernie. I want to say a nice thing about Bernie. At least Bernie is real and you believe what he's saying. Joe is a cardboard contraption standing up there to speak, saying stupid things about it's racist, and it's a cover-up. He doesn't know what he's saying.
WILLIAMS: Yes, I think -- I think Wall Street thinks Trump doesn't know what he's saying.
GUTFELD: Then you're an expert on Wall Street.
WILLIAMS: No. I'm just saying, Wall Street -- I don't have to be an expert. Wall Street had its verdict very clearly. And the whole thing from Trump is he was saying it's not a problem. It'll pass in a few days. You can go to work. It's just not effective leadership.
GUTFELD: All right.
WILLIAMS: Stay with THE FIVE for the latest breaking news on the coronavirus. We're going to bring you some of it here next on THE FIVE.
BREAM: President Trump defending against criticism over his decision to clamp down on passenger travel coming into the U.S. from more than two dozen European countries. Here's the president earlier.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If I didn't close very, very early -- you know, we close very early with China, and I took a heat from you people, a lot of heat. They call me everything from a racist to everything else, so it's terrible. And the same people, then they say, he close too fast, why did he close -- most of them said why did he close which I -- when you think of what happened to your -- because it was very fast and very furious and what happened is a lot of people went from China into Europe, and Europe suffered tremendously.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BREAM: All right, as you earlier said, that there are people on both sides of the aisle, all sides of the aisle, doctors who are saying this was the right move. Fauci said things would be much worse here already if the president hadn't done this, but his critics are not changing their assessment of what he did back then. But Doctor, let's talk about the fact that what we're trying to do now, we know the cases are going to explode here as testing does, but the negatives are going to explode as well.
I mean, we're going to see that there are people fully recovering. There are negative tests. Our numbers are going to go up. But the idea is to flatten this, to flatten the curve instead of having this spike where we do overrun the hospitals and people completely freak out. How can these travel bans help to flatten that? We know the cases are coming, but spread them out over time so that our medical system can handle them.
SAPHIER: Well, you know, Biden was right in one sense when he said that there's a cover-up. And it was in the sense that there was a cover-up, but it was from China. And China did not tell us -- they actually said to their people, that this is not a highly contagious virus. They were testing them and then sending them home without quarantine, which is why they have now over 80,000 cases.
But here's the good news. Over -- the majority of them are already recovered and they're seeing less and less cases every day just like South Korea. The reasons that they having fewer cases is because of tight restrictions and increased testing. So we need to do that here in the United States. Travel bans give us time, give us time here to lesson community spread and be prepared.
What we need to do for that is we need aggressive testing. We need our private sector to step up just like it did in South Korea. That is why South Korea has gotten this under control because their private sector, four private companies started making these tests. Not the government, we need to stop depending just on the CDC. We are a nation of capitalism.
Yes. And fighters, I believe, and survivors. All right, we're going to make it quickly around the table. So Juan, will you give the president some credit on the early ban regarding China?
WILLIAMS: It wasn't early. In fact, it should have been early.
BREAM: Wait, wait, wait a minute.
WATTERS: Very good, Juan.
(CROSSTALK)
WATTERS: (INAUDIBLE) and you were against it. Roll the tape. You were against it.
SAPHIER: You called it -- he's called it racist.
(CROSSTALK)
BREAM: Hey, hey, hey, you're all getting (INAUDIBLE)
WILLIAMS: Can I explain -- can I explain that the president -- the president had knowledge of this that we didn't have. And then -- and then - -
BREAM: We were talking about this.
WILLIAMS: I see you don't want to hear, but anyway -- yes, because here's - -
GUTFELD: Yes, because it's not true, Juan.
WILLIAMS: You can't handle the truth. The truth is that when the President -- that when the President acted, it was again, not clear to everybody the extent. And we had people going from China, guess where, Italy, North Korea.
BREAM: Which is what the President said. Which is what the president said. All right.
WILLIAMS: But it's just like what happened yesterday with, oh, not England, when in fact the cases are spiking in England.
BREAM: OK, Jesse.
WATTERS: Juan, you've totally discredited yourself.
WILLIAMS: Yes, by hanging around with you.
WATTERS: It's over. It's done. We don't believe anything anymore because you will criticize no matter what he does.
WILLIAMS: That's not true.
WATTERS: And then pretend like what you said two months ago didn't happened.
WILLIAMS: But Jesse, he didn't --
WATTERS: I will pull the tape and I will show everybody --
(CROSSTALK)
GUTFELD: (INAUDIBLE) because I knew he was going to say this.
BREAM: OK, all right.
WATTERS: Here's the thing. I love being right about this one.
(CROSSTALK)
WATTERS: Wow, that's a lot. It just takes a lot to say that way.
WILLIAMS: Because this guy makes mistakes. I mean, you cover in any example and say, oh, no criticism.
WATTERS: Juan, stop.
BREAM: No, no, no. The President makes mistakes and we make note of that.
GUTFELD: The first person to mention a travel ban on this show and I think on the network was me and Juan, you push back and said, what about what happened with Ebola? You were like, oh, I'm so concerned. So you're lying, Juan.
WILLIAMS: Yes. That's concerned. That's not a lie. In other words, telling you the truth about concerns and realism --
GUTFELD: Oh, so now you said it should have been faster, which would have been a violation of what you said before.
WILLIAMS: No. If he -- if he had all of us, we understand the severity of this rather than trying to downplay it --
SAPHIER: Can you see how politely Shannon is sitting here? Shannon is sitting so politely.
BREAM: We are going to continue this as a paper view somewhere during the commercial, but up next, the "FASTEST SEVEN."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GUTFELD: This is a Fox News alert. Dr. Anthony Fauci talking to reporters outside the White House. Listen in.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: The only way that works is if you get the private sector involved, some of the standard companies that make the diagnostic test that you and I get when we go for a regular visit to a physician. They have been engaged right now. The FDA, the CDC, all of the government agencies, the Secretary himself, Secretary Azar, has been very much involved in working with that group to be able to get that revved up really quickly.
You know, I hate to give dates on things, but what I'm hearing from the task force meeting that I just left, that that should very likely happen within the next week or so. It's not going to be months, it's going to be a week or so where you're going to get many, many more tests that are going to be available.
The other thing that's important, and there was a considerable amount of misunderstanding about that, that the original guidelines for whether you could get a test was somewhat restrictive. The FDA has now removed those restrictions. You know, it was part of the thing was, well, you have to have been either in contact with someone or very closely geographically. It doesn't matter where you are who you are, you could get a test.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dr. Fauci, Maryland and Ohio -- Maryland and Ohio have just closed their schools, Dr. Fauci.
FAUCI: Who do I --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her first, then I'll go.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Maryland and Ohio has decided to close schools. Do you advise for other states to do the same?
FAUCI: You know, you have to take it by a state by state basis. The one thing I do advise and I've said this at multiple hearings and multiple briefings, that right now, we have to start implementing both containment and mitigation. And what was done when you do closing the school is mitigation.
We've got to try as best as we can, to distance ourselves from each other, particularly if you are within a group that are at higher risk, if you do get infected, you're going to have a complication. And those are the elderly, people with underlying conditions, chronic congestive heart failure, heart disease, lung disease, kidney disease, diabetes, particularly among those if you're an elderly with that.
So those are the kinds of things we need to do now. And the point that I was trying to make is that we don't want to wait until you get a lot of infections because sometimes when you make -- whether it be Maryland, whatever they did, you make a decision to do something. And someone might say, well, are you overreacting. We got to -- we got to lose that. We got to start looking at doing things now in anticipation of what might happen.
And the reason is if you look at infectious diseases, how they work, particularly outbreaks of new infections, they go like this, then they go like this, and then they shoot up like that. And if you look at the curves of the history of outbreaks, they have the sharp peak, and then they start coming down. If you look at what happened in China. That's exactly what happened. It's starting to happen a little bit now in Korea.
The purpose and the goal of both containment and mitigation is to instead of making it go up like that, blunted so it goes like that. You're never going to suppress it completely. So we have to get used to it. We're going to get infections and probably a lot more infections.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think the travel ban has helped for that?
FAUCI: I think it absolutely has. I believe if we did not do that with China early on --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What about with Europe?
FAUCI: Well, well, I think that was a prudent choice. We spent a lot of time thinking about it, discussing it about whether we should do it, and it was the right public health call. And here's the numerical reason why. If you look back early on, Chinese travelers who were infected, ceded not only the United States but countries in Europe, including Italy.
If you look today at the majority of cases that are new cases, not old ones, new cases throughout the world, the majority of them are from Europe, Europe to other countries. If you look in the United States, at states that have new cases, the majority of them are coming from that region. It was based on that, that the travel restriction was suggested and accepted.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dr. Fauci, even --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dr. Fauci, are you considering --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let's move on to Kaitlan.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dr. Fauci, even when the testing criteria was at its most restrictive, one of the standards was if you'd been in touch with someone who is positive with coronavirus. So how could anyone make the argument that the President shouldn't be tested?
FAUCI: I'm sorry?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One of the standards of being tested for coronavirus, if I'm correct, was that you've been in contact with someone who's now testing positive.
FAUCI: Right.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So how can anyone make the argument that the president who we now know was in contact with the Brazilian press secretary shouldn't get a test?
FAUCI: And like I said, I am not going to comment on an individual who has a very competent physician and the White House physician is very prominent. Yes?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, can we step inside the West Wing?
FAUCI: OK, good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need to cut this off. You can all move to the press briefing room for a few minutes please.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is there going to be a briefing?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GUTFELD: All right. That was Dr. Fauci. Jesse, he was talking about how -- the reason for the travel restrictions, because that was a path of infection that they were seeing a lot of these people coming from Europe.
WATTERS: Right. So it started in China, and we had the travel ban on there, so that helped. And then they went around to Europe. And then from Europe, they came into the United States. And after consulting with the whole Task Force, they decided to slap it on the E.U. And I just think that's smart.
Right now, he said, we're doing containment and mitigation. And that's instead of you're getting that huge spike, you're trying to blunt the spike, because the Wayne Gretzky analogy from the other day was brilliant. Because you don't go where the puck is, you anticipate where the puck will be. And that's what they're trying to do now. And they're doing the best job they can. And as he said, there will be more infections, but they're doing the best they can to test.
GUTFELD: I don't know much about baseball, but I think I understand. Doc, upfront there, he was talking a lot about private sector involvement. Can you will -- you know, add anything to what he might --
WILLIAMS: Yes, before we do, let's give her credit because she said --
BREAM: I literally just said that.
SAPHIER: Yes, we need the private sector involved and that was his opening remarks. And I agree because the South Korea already had -- they have a lot of cases and they're seeing a decrease in cases right now. And it's not because containment measures. They didn't do the stuff that China's doing.
They didn't shut everything down. They had testing and they had testing right away. And that is because four tech companies came out, put together this test. It was a rapid test. It didn't take days to come back. It took hours to come back. And they gave it to their people. And now they're supplying it to the rest of the world.
Shockingly, they're running low on material now because we depend on reagents from Germany, we depend on a lot of things from everywhere. But that's what they did. And now we are dealing with it. Our private sector also needs to step up. We need to make the reagents here and we need to make these testing kits here.
GUTFELD: You know, Juan, I think you and me both can agree that we're kind of bombed that this broke into covering Sarah Palin on the Masked Singer.
WILLIAMS: You know, it's a rare moment. It's a rare moment. But Sarah Palin on the Masked Singer deserved attention from America today. She was terrific. She was terrific. Clearly, no evidence of any virus. That girl was shaking.
BREAM: Yes, she was. She's having a good time.
GUTFELD: Yes. So what did you -- what did you take from the Fauci -- anything hits you?
BREAM: As we were talking about, I mean, he has worked through numerous administrations and numerous crises. This guy is not new to this. He's a very respected voice. And I think when he just calm and says, yes, we're going to have a spike in cases and we're going to have more trouble, I think people feel comfortable listening to him across the board, regardless of party or ideology or anything else.
He needs to be out there every day. The administration needs to get someone out there every day, because transparency is the only thing that is going to reassure people, I think.
SAPHIER: And I think this man, he is so intelligent in what he's doing. He's been doing this for decades. And his message has been this. We expect the virus to do this. We know this is going to happen. So as we keep seeing the numbers of cases and deaths happening and increasing and it's like a shock factor every day, Fauci is saying this, this is expected. So let's do what we can now to do this and we're doing that.
So we're still on our way up, but it will -- it will start to even out. Just give it time and do your best to stop community spread.
WILLIAMS: Yes, but I think what the Wall Street Journal said this morning, you got to be honest with people and you can't say things and then walk it back 10 minutes later.
WATTERS: All right, this is great. Juan is praising the private sector and the Wall Street Journal all in one hour.
(CROSSTALK)
WATTERS: Time now for "ONE MORE THING." I'm going to go first, as Greg mentioned. And as Juan, definitely put an exclamation mark on, Sarah Palin was on the Masked Singer last night. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NICK CANNON, ACTOR: Oh my God, wow, you guys, you cannot believe.
NICOLE SCHERZINGER, JUDGE, MASKED SINGER: Is that Tina Fey?
CANNON: She's putting on her glass first. Governor Sarah Palin.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUTFELD: She's absolutely amazing.
WATTERS: Yes, I mean, we should keep showing it. It actually gets better from there. I m1ean, she definitely would have made a greater V.P. than Joe Biden.
BREAM: Tina Fey did play her though, didn't she, on SNL?
WILLIAMS: Yes. But this was more than funny, she's actually good at dancing and rapping.
GUTFELD: No, she's great. It's amazing.
WATTERS: She's great. And thank you very much.
BREAM: OK, and listen. Because Dana is not here and I'm filling in for her, I, of course, have to do a dog story. You know that's happening. I love this. Catcher out in Colorado, a three-year-old golden retriever. There were some people working at the house. He got out.
A FedEx driver finds Catcher, looks at the tag, texts the family and says I found your dog. I'm taking the dog back to the address that's on the tag. And their little you know, surveillance cam catches this FedEx driver, taking Catcher back to the house, putting the doggie inside, and Catcher was safe and sound.
This is a good Samaritan. Listen, the FedEx driver did not have to do this. He's not getting paid for this. But Catcher is not fighting it. He's fully picked up and ready to go.
WILLIAMS: All is good.
BREAM: 60 pounds of him.
WATTERS: Caught the Catcher.
GUTFELD: There you go. I want to let everybody know who got tickets to the Gutfeld Monologues, we are postponing.
WATTERS: That's bigger than the NCAA thing.
GUTFELD: It is.
BREAM: A long national nightmare.
GUTFELD: I care about my fans, Jesse. And so the Memphis will be moved to September 12th, Nashville will be moved to I think August 9th, and all tickets will be honored, blah, blah, blah. You know, you can trust us, but can you trust this?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GUTFELD: Animals are great. Animals are great. Animals are great.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUTFELD: In these trying times, you know what you need, puppies jumping rope. Take a look at this. This is amazing. Look at this.
BREAM: Oh my God.
GUTFELD: Research shows that stress increases your risk for disease but watching puppies jumping rope reduces stress, reduces infection, because I'm a doctor. All right.
BREAM: I love the little white one. It's stretching out like getting ready.
WATTERS: Better than yesterday's, ball bouncing up.
WILLIAMS: You know what it wasn't better then?
WATTERS: Sarah Palin.
GUTFELD: Something that unites us all.
WILLIAMS: All right, you never know where you're going to find extraordinary talent. How about an electronics store in the Philippines? Yes, the Philippines. Take a look.
Yes, that boy surprise shoppers when he grabbed the microphone and created an orchestra of one by singing percussion and other beat --
GUTFELD: No Sarah Palin, Juan.
WILLIAMS: What a kid. Sign him up. Give that kid a contract.
WATTERS: Not too bad. All right.
SAPHIER: All right guys, my turn. So COVID-19 has brought into light, how those with chronic illnesses are more vulnerable to severity of the symptoms, which brings to light my book that I have available for presale now where I talk about all chronic disease called Make America Healthy Again, how bad behavior and big government caused a trillion-dollar crisis, and how this is actually making us a very vulnerable society, the how much chronic disease we have and how much of it is actually preventable.
WATTERS: How did you come up with that book title?
SAPHIER: That's a great -- that's a great question.
WATTERS: It's an amazing title. It was incredible.
SAPHIER: It was -- it was a group effort.
WATTERS: All right, set your DVRs. Never miss an episode of THE FIVE.
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