we've still got 11 days to go and election day, and one county in texas, hayes county is close to being the first county in america to completely surpass its entire vote from 2016. every single day, millions of people are voting, the window is of course closing for undecided voters and for the campaign. last night, we saw the final set piece of the campaign, meaning there are no more built in planned inflection points for an incumbent president who is trailing badly, and his desperation to pull out some magic trick was evident last night. president trump's approach to the campaign has been precisely the same as his approach to the coronavirus, and it is why he is 10 points down in the polls with eleven days to go, and it is why we are setting new records for covid cases today. according to the covid tracking projec project, there were a record 83,000 cases in the united states today. that means more cases today than any other single day during any of the eight months of the pandemic. it is raging out of control. eight months in, right now, eleven days before election day, and from the beginning of the first outbreak, watt problhat tm needed was sustained attention, will, judgment, collective problem solving, difficult hard work and study, and what trump brought to it was magical thinking and bouncing from one silver bullet idea to the next, wishing some fairy tale solution would make the problem go away. remember, he said the virus would just disappear, the cases would go down to zero, and the warm weather was going to solve it. then it was hiydroxychloroquine everyone take the malaria magic drug, the malaria magic drug will get rid of it. and a vaccine is just around the corner, lying on stage to hundreds of senior citizens at the villages in florida. most memorably was trump's wishful thinking which peaked in this ridiculous display exactly six months ago, as a countries suffered through the worst catastrop catastrophe since the great depression, the president six months ago, during another peak was in front of cameras, desperately brainstorming ways to get sunlight, beach inside of people to clear the virus. dr. deborah birx, the coronavirus response coordinator to the white house sat to the side. >> supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ult ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and i think you said that hasn't been checked but you're going to test it, and i said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and i think you said you're going to test that, too, sounds interesting, and then i see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and does a tremendous number on the lungs. it would be interesting to check that. >> yeah, she can't watch in the end. she puts her face down. this is why we are where we are. trump refused to take the virus seriously and do the hard work. he searched around for a magic solution that of course never came. and he has approached his reelection campaign in precisely the same manner, it is why the twin disaster and the substantiative human disaster of the coronavirus are both peaking at exactly the same moment. you might remember it was just a few weeks ago, trump has found his campaign version of hydroxychloroquine, law and order. he was going to destroy joe biden with law and order, dialing up the racism to eleven, praising white people who either brandished their guns at protesters or actually shot and killed them. stoking as much hatred and racial division as he could, randomly tweeting videos of a black person attacking a white person, winking and nodding at white nationalists and that was it. that was the plan. that was going to turn the campaign around, the magic solution, the cure, guess what, it didn't work. and then trump was going to come out and bully joe biden in the first debate and show him who's boss, and that didn't work. it was a disaster. his poll numbers sunk even farther. and then he was going to push some impossible to follow extremely sketchily sourced vague allegation of business impropriety at biden. trump and rudy giuliani spent so much time building it up, and then that just sputtered into nothing. there's nothing there. that is why we are where we are. i mean, the irony here is the most straightforward path that president trump had to reelection was to do a good job battling the coronavirus. and more broadly to do a good job as president, but he's not capable of that, obviously. and so he is now facing an election where he is losing with eleven days to go and over 50 million votes cast and the only possibility he has is an increasingly desperate barrage of smears, and lies and disinformation, and wild accusations and sudden tone shifts and lawsuits in the courts to stop people from voting, praying for a miracle with the supreme court they are rushing to pack right now, and if this was any other candidate, people would just be talking about how this is a flailing and desperate campaign, how pathetic it looks, particularly at that performance last night, it would have been like whoa, what's going on here because trump briefly playing by the rules is not an example of newfound discipline, it shows how terrified he is of losing, that he is losing. and trump can swing wildly for a new distraction, but has it happened, with the coronavirus, it looks like reality will win out. and in the new voting reality, we all need to stop thinking of the election as a day, more of an election season with tens of millions of votes cast, eleven days until the final vote no november 3rd, this weird and hard fought election, i want to begin in wisconsin where a million voters have returned their ballots, a third of the total turnout in 2016 when donald trump won the state by 23,000 votes. wisconsin, however is also facing a really bad surge in coronavirus cases. part of an alarming outbreak in the upper midwest. nbc news political report, shaquille brewster is in milwaukee where early turn out is 2 1/2 times compared to 2016. how are things looking there? >> reporter: you're really seeing national threads colliding in the state of wisconsin. today was another day where you had new cases, exkuding 4,000, after a week where each day seemed to bring a record number of cases or deaths of hospitalizations. talking to voters here not only in milwaukee, but here in the milwaukee suburbs, that is what has been driving people to the polls, the concern over the coronavirus and how the president has been handling it. and to that point, when you look at the early voting numbers here across the state of wisconsin, you're seeing that more than 1.2 million people have already cast a ballot by mail or going and voting early in person. if you compare that to what we saw in 2016, that's about 40% of the total vote just four years ago. it's the coronavirus driving many people to the polls and to go ahead and vote early. chris. >> shaquille brewster in wisconsin. of course had that awful election for a state supreme court seat in april where people had to congresswomme out in the a bad pandemic. and people are taking precautions to get the votes in early. shaquille brewster, thank you for that. i want to turn to georgia, a state democrats have long dreamed of flipping blue. a new poll shows the president leading there 49 to 45%. the difference is within the poll's margin of error. there was another poll, 49-45 for joe biden on the same day. msnbc senior national correspondent chris jansing is in alabama, where voters are weighing not just the presidential race but two senate races as well. how do things look in georgia, chris? >> well, early voting records are being smashed, by dekalb county, chris, where you have a majority african-american population but they have already cast more ballots in the first eleven days of early voting than all of early voting in 2016. having said that, when i talked to voting rights advocates, they're very nervous the problems we have seen so far are a presur scursor for election d technology problems, and also systemic approximate. we have a million more registered than we did in 2016, and they cut 200 polling sites, most in african-american areas. so the concern is will they get out to vote. it's why kamala harris was here today, among the places she went to, morehouse college, trying to push to get out the vote, and another push, the naacp and other organizations have an ambitious agenda to get 100,000 voters out. because listen to this statistic. in 2016, chris, only 48% of black males eligible to vote in georgia actually went to the polls. as one expert put it to me, if you don't think your vote is going to be counted, why would you take the time, and that's what they're trying to fight against as they see this opportunity. at least five polls in the last couple of days show this race as a toss up, chris. >> yeah, chris, it's a great point. i think part of what we're seeing in georgia and in texas, particularly, and we're looking at these early vote numbers, these are two states that are not used to being toss up states or swing states that now look like they are, and that, i think, is having some effect on turnout on both sides for supporters of both candidates, chris jansing in atlanta, thank you for that report. pennsylvania helped propel donald trump to the presidency in 2016, and he won it by just over 44,000 votes. this year it has been the site of hotly contested legal battles, over mail-in ballots among other things. the state supreme court rejected an attempt by pennsylvania republicans to toss ballots due to signature mismatches. dasha burns is in beaver, pennsylvania, outside pittsburgh. what's the latest from pennsylvania? >> reporter: well, this is pennsylvania's first presidential election with no excuse absentee voting. about 3 million absentee ballots have been mailed out. about half of those have already been returned, but remember, it could be days if not longer before we get results from the state because election officials here can't begin to start opening those millions of envelopes until election day. still, chris, many are planning to go to the polls in person on november 3rd, including some of the folks i have been talking to here today to get their reaction to that final presidential debate, and one of the big moments that is hitting home for people here is that conversation on energy: bind ehind me here, shell cracker plant bringing thousands of jobs to the area and there are a lot of voters in western p.a. who have some connection to the industry. the response is that joe biden muddled his response, he needs to take a clearer stance on fracking. that could be important here because donald trump did win this county by 19 points in 2016. very unlikely it's going blue this time around, chris. but joe biden needs to eat into those margins to help him win this state, chris. >> all right, thanks for that report from pennsylvania. finally, to florida, florida, of course, is unlike georgia and texas, always a toss up. donald trump, of course, is now registered to vote there. he beat hillary clinton by just over 1 point or about 113,000 votes in 2016, but in the latest morning console poll, joe biden leads 52 to 45 in florida. let's just be clear that florida will obviously be extremely close because it just always is. that polling and the polling that's been coming out of the state is pushing the president to hold not one but two rallies in that state today as he tries to make up that gap in the last 11 days. allison barber is in miami gardens, florida, near where former president barack obama will hold a drive-in rally for joe biden tomorrow, and what do things look like in florida in terms of the voting situation down there? >> hey, chris, well, i mean, for starters if you are in florida anytime soon, there is a very good chance you could see a candidate or surrogate in your neighborhood. they are absolutely fighting for every single vote in this state right now. it is essentially going to be a battle of the presidents in south florida tomorrow with president trump expected to vote in west palm beach, and then former president barack obama having that drive-in rally for former vice president joe biden in miami. we are starting to see some of the early voting numbers come back in florida. it just started this week, and the numbers here, they are strong, especially among black voters and we're also seeing what could be a bit of a pattern here of where you have people who supported president obama in 2008 and 2012, but then sat out in 2016 come back and vote. i want to run through numbers that we have for you from our nbc news decision desk. across florida, close to 78,000 black voters who voted in 2008 and twooef2012 sat out in 2016,s of thursday night, according to data from our nbc news decision desk, 13% of those voters have already come back and voted absentee or early. miami-dade is an incredibly important county. >> that's fascinating. >> reporter: it's very diverse and has a very large hispanic population, but the hispanic community here, they're not homogenous, mexican americans, cuban americans, el salvador americans, you have seen both campaigns target the subgroups. cuban americans have historically leaned right, overwhelmingly supported donald trump in 2016. as we are talking to voters here, young cuban americans, there were a lot of them saying they are not lining up with their parents' policies and say they are leaning towards and looking towards joe biden. could be a promising sign, because if he's going to win the state, he could use the help of young latino voters. chris. >> allison barber in miami gardens florida. thank you very much. there's only one person who can help us make sense ouch the early voting numbers we are seeing, which i find equal points fascinating and bewildering, steve kornacki joins me at the big board. we saw each other in person which was a nice treat the other night. it's really hard, right, like we knew that this would be different than other elections both because we knew turnout would be very high, and the pandemic, it's hard to get your head around what do these numbers mean, walk us through it. >> they're certainly suggesting, give you the bottom line, 47 million ballots cast in this election, that's a third of what was cast in 2016 total. the pace here of early voting compared to 2016 is staggering. it speaks to high energy level. it speaks to the possibility here of turnout that's up at like 150, 155 million, when all is said and done. that would be 20 million more than 2016. the cautionary note on all of these numbers, you start seeing, though, is this. this is our nbc "wall street journal" poll from a week ago when we asked folks are you planning to vote early or are you planning to vote on election day, and this has become a partisan question in our politics this year because among folks who say they want to vote early, this is what we found. biden by nearly 40 points, early voters, folks who say no, i'm going to wait until election day to cast my ballot, a mirror image, trump, 65. biden 31, the president has been encouraging supporters to vote on election day. democrats have had a much more concerted effort to get folks to vote early, and it reflects itself in these numbers. it becomes a cautionary note when you get these reports of, you know, democratic registered voters, turning out in record numbers. not is much the republicans. the question becomes how many republicans are waiting until election day, and by the way, small scale, that was 2016 in florida. clinton won the early voting. trump won the election day vote. trump won the state by a point. >> yeah, it's a really great point because i think it really is hard to read in a specific partisan gains in these early numbers particularly because of that confounding polarization around this, although i will also say that the polarization around this and people going into election day, we're eleven days out, we set record cases at 80,000. i don't know where the pandemic is going. it's not head instead a good direction. we are staring at a real public health problem, you know, as we bear down towards election day, and that's been part of the messaging from democrats the whole way through is precisely because we don't know what election day is going to look like, you should vote early. >> and it's really, we have had early voting as an increasing presence in our elections for a while. we have never had it during a pandemic. what does that do in terms of folks who maybe now say they are going to turn out on election day. do they actually? does that play a factor in the decision? only way to know is to get the results in on election night. >> that's sort of the numbers about early voting. you know, take us through where the sort of chess board of the electoral college, a preposterous institution, if i may editorialize for a moment. where the path to 270 is. >> this was 2016, trump is playing defense here. trump is behind in a lot of battleground states. he got 306 electoral votes in 2016: the question is can he hold on to 270 electoral votes this time around: let's lo. let's look at it this way. these are all battle groground states. again, if he started out at 306, his 2016 number, what could he afford to lose here. supposed to stay on the screen. what could he afford to lose here and still win the presidency. michigan, he's down nearly 8 on average. that's the worst battleground state number for trump right now. if he does not win michigan, loses those electoral votes, 306 comes down to 290. wisconsin, that's his second worst one. 6 1/2, a little bit better than 6 1/2 point deficit, if he misses wisconsin, 280. nebraska, 2, remember, they do it by congressional district in nebraska, that's the second district, that's omaha. trump won by three points in 2016. the polling we have seen from there is not good for him if he does not win that district. he loses an electoral vote and then you get to pennsylvania, buy five points a little bit better than five points. trump is losing in the polling in pennsylvania, if he does not get pennsylvania, then that would knock him down to 259. under 270. so you can kind of look at the polling right now. look at the battleground states and draw a line right there. trump could afford to lose this, can't afford to be losing anything underneath here. >> that is a great, great illustration, steve kornacki, thank you as always. great to have you on. >> thanks, chris. next, with eleven days left of voting, the trump administration has engaged a full battle in the courts to make it harder to vote. the latest voter suppression tactics after this. voter supprn tactics after this ♪ you may 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it you would never have a republican elected in this country again. they had things in there about election days, and what you do, and all sorts of claw backs, and they had things that were just totally crazy. >> as the president himself noted back in march, republicans want fewer americans voting, and right now, they are doing two specific things to make it harder to vote and count ballots. first, they're suing everywhere all the time. the republican national committee is litigating at least 17 states, and the trump campaign has lawsuits in nearly every major swing state, including one filed this morning in nevada to stop mail-in vote counting. second, trump is clearly recruiting people to attempt to intimidate voters. he suggested on trump tv he wanted law enforcement to watch the polls and in the first debate, he urged his base to quote go nto the polls and watc very closely. to give you an idea what that looks like, two off duty trump supporters showed up to a polling place. one official who says she will not let the president send law enforcement to the polls in her state is the secretary of state of colorado, jennifer griswold, and she joins me tonight. tell us what is the law in your state, about what is lawful activity around elections, and what is unlawful. >> good evening, chris, thank you for having me on. it is illegal to just show up at the polls, so there is a way to do it properly, appointed by the party, a candidate or a ballot admission. they go through a training, swear an oath, and we want folks from different political backgrounds, different political parties in the polls watching the process. but we will not allow voter indi intimidation in colorado. it is illegal across the nation and in colorado. >> it's an important point, like i have at earlier points in my life, i have been an observer in a polling place or been there as part of the one of the campaigns and there is a process for that but just to reiterate, no one should be showing up to look at people in a polling place, and they sure as hell shouldn't be doing it with guns. >> you can't show up to watch. you can sign up as a poll watcher. i think the two take aways from this whole situation is first and foremost that despite the obstacles, americans are showing up to vote in record numbers. we have already had 1.4 million coloradoans cast a ballot. that is two times more than at this point in 2016, and we're seeing the same across the nation. and the second thing that i would really point out is we need national law to make sure that every american has access to exercise their constitutional right to vote. so just like in colorado, every american deserves to be sent a mail ballot, have access to online voter registration, same day voter registration, and hundreds and hundreds of polling locations and drop boxes across every state. >> yeah, you're a state that is largely been voting via mail for, you know, before the pandemic. do you -- you're one of those states, i feel like is probably best equipped to process this. there's a bunch of states that are going to run this for the first time, and are worried about it. i wonder, is there coordination between the different secretaries of state, folks that can manage this, expertise can be shared from states that have a lot of experience to someone like pennsylvania that is just going to be trying this for the first time. >> absolutely, secretaries of state are working together across the nation, and it's not just on the final hour before election. i started working with secretaries of state from both parties, immediately in march, to expand vote by mail for all. and i'm very confident in this nation's ability to have great elections, i think we are seeing great elections happen right now. and although there may be issues here and there, overall, things are going really well and americans are turning out. i think that's all very positive, and i think we will have a pretty good election, but when this election is over, we cannot stop this conversation. no american should have to wait in eleven hour lines like we saw in georgia. nor should there be executive orders from governors like we saw a governor tempted in texas to try to decrease turnout or access during a pandemic. that's why i really think we need to keep the pressure on and make sure americans have the access they deserve. >> final question for you, how quickly, what is your vote counting procedure set up to be like in colorado? because there's going to be a big division between states that count them quick, and states that don't. which are you? >> well, we are a state that counts relatively quickly. the colorado election model actually enables us to start processing ballots fifteen days before election day. you know, overall, election night results are never official results. and a lot of things ahappen aftr election day, including the counting of ballots overseas, and military voters. with mail ballots, allowing voters the ability to fix any signature discrepancy. so what i can say as a nation is that we're going to have great elections. every secretary of state is very dedicated to making sure that every american's voice is heard, and the votes are counted. >> all right. jena griswold who's a secretary of sate of the state of colorado. thank you so much for making time tonight. >> thank you. tonight, the dangerous result of falling the president's lead has multiple states with record high coronavirus cases today. why we are facing maybe the biggest outbreak yet, just after this. e the biggest outbreak yet, just after this east cancer. east cancer. our time... ...for more time... ...has come. living longer is possible- and proven in postmenopausal women taking kisqali plus fulvestrant. in a clinical trial, kisqali plus fulvestrant helped women live longer with hr+, her2- metastatic breast cancer. and it significantly delayed disease progression. kisqali can cause lung problems or an abnormal 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a safe, healthy community. that's why i support prop. 15." vote yes. schools and communities first is responsible for the contents of this ad. who'sgovernor gavin newsom. the governor says prop 15 is, "fair, phased-in, and long overdue reform", that "will exempt small businesses and residential property owners." join governor newsom. vote yes on 15. the latest data from the covid tracking project should alarm you. their four-way graphic has become familiar, the cases in pink exploding. 83,000 cases today, which conclude a few thousand backlogged cases from alabama and california, but it is still a brand new record, and the blue graph, you can see the hospitalizations, continuing to spine, 41,000 today and going up, and 916 americans tide of coronavirus. and that lagging indicator, which we have covered through three of these now is sadly going back up because cases started going up two or three weeks ago, and that's the way it works. we told you about the massive outbreaks in north dakota and south dakota, among the worst outbreaks in the world on a per capita basis. unfortunately, several states are headed in the same direction, like montana and wisconsin and idaho and utah, and the problem is the outbreak is diffuse enough that you can't point to any one policy or place that's at fault, but what's been clear basically since may is that donald trump and the republican party put out the message that opening up was a key priority. donald trump is very explicit in opening up states would mean the economy would come arrroaring b which would be the political benefit of donald trump and the republican party. as a result many states led by republican governors started reopening no matter what the virus was doing in cont, in tex the governor allowed bars to reopen with capacity limits as long as county governments approved. in south dakota, governor christie noam is recording videos about this is how we social distancing, and tweeting about masks being optional, and the cumulative effect is possibly the worst outbreak we have seen at, one that surges just as people go to the polls on election day. charlie psyc charl charlie sikes is a prominent conservative voice in wisconsin, charlie, one thing that's so striking here to me is how the republican party in mass, not just donald trump, told themselves a story that what mattered most was opening up, and that that was going to be both substantively ben if isefi and to their political benefit no matter what was happening with the virus, and they believed their own story to themselves. how did that happen? >> well, by the way, that is exactly what happened here. you go back to early april. remember we had an election here, and there were all canines of efforts here, could we do this virtually, delay it, and the republican legislature insists that people show up in the midst of the pandemic, and right about then, you could tell that the conservative movement in wisconsin was all in, taking their cues from donald trump. you had social conservative organizations, business organizations, the conservative media all lining up to down play the significance of the coronavirus and come out against any of the mitigation policies that were put in place by the democratic governor. look, everything here is very very pola polarized, what happes early on in wisconsin, not only did they take their cues from donald trump, tweeting out liberate michigan, but they also made this on the front lines of the culture war. i do think they made this bet, early on we weren't hit that hard. as it has spiked up, what you're seeing is the republicans in the legislature are frozen. they are frozen in place. they're not going to defy their base. not even pretending to lead on all of this, and even on days where we set new records, they're all in in fighting efforts to mandate masks or to limit public gatherings. >> yeah, it is an incredible example of self-december truck titruck -- destructive behavior, in terms of human life, and politically. donald trump's worst polling was during summer spike. it clearly had, there was a cause and effect, right? people saw, oh, we're having another wave? we have now a bunch of republican governors, not exclusively, this is happening in lots of places, it's happening in france and italy. i don't want to make this overly partisan, but it is the case now that cases are going to be spiking as people go to the polls. >> exactly. and this is the story that's dominating politics in wisconsin. now, the republican legislature probably won't be affected by this because of gerrymandering and other things. they're going to keep their majorities. i think it's very likely this will cost donald trump wisconsin in the presidential election, and you don't know what's going to happen on election day. you don't know how bad it's going to be. i will tell you that on my phone every day, i get panicky text messages from the republican party saying vote early, get your ballot in, because i think they realize that maybe this strategy of encouraging people might actually be backfiring on them. >> yeah, it's crazy to tell people to go vote in the midst of a pandemic. again, the idea that people couldn't see the obvious truth, which was the best thing to do politically is manage this. and i don't mean like, you know, everyone goes into lock down, and close every business but managing as best you can is in your political incentive that that message should not get through. >> right. and so tomorrow morning, people are going to wake up in wisconsin with new headlines about the new number of cases, record number of cases, record number of hospitalizations, the rising death count, and find out that an appeals court went along in throwing out the governor's latest efforts to control this, and then the president is coming back here to southeastern wisconsin, have good super spreader event in wacashaw, and the take away is not going to be the president is rallying in wisconsin, he's coming here to time when we are experiencing a genuine crisis and he continues to engage in this magical thinking. this is not working out well for him in wisconsin. >> all right. charlie sikes, that was really illuminating, thank you for that. coming up, despite what president trump thinks, we have seen what it takes to go from fossil fuels to clean energy, and it is under the hood of this truck. i'll explain just ahead. r the hs truck. i'll explain just ahead. mine tasted like poopoo! mine tastes like broccoli, yuck! i want candy! that's why i get up in the morning! i have a secret method for remembering all my hr passwords. my boss doesn't remember approving my time off. let's just... find that email. the old way of doing business slows everyone down. with paycom, employees enter and manage their own hr data in one easy-to-use software. visit paycom.com for a free demo. i'm a peer educator,... a fitness buff,... and a champion for my own health. i talked with my 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was still trying to sell this conservative talking point that somehow barack obama was only winning because he was giving people free stuff. do you remember the obama phone? after an african-american woman said on camera she was voting for obama because he gave her a free phone. republicans accused obama of effectively buying votes. this was dumb for a number of reasons. the program called lifeline predated obama and was started under reagan and it was a subsidy for low income people, not a free phone, and just to be clear, helping poor people get phone services is good policy. helps to have a phone if you want to get a job, stay connected to a family. that didn't stop the right from trying to make obama phone a thing. >> we are borrowing money that is yet to be earned by generations yet to be born in order to bribe people with the obama phones and all the rest right here and now in the present tense. that's immoral. >> we got to drag people to the polls, that's what they're doing. you don't have to offer them cell phones like they're doing. >> you don't care about tomorrow, you want your obama phone with 120 minutes right now. >> that brings us to the current election. the "wall street journal" has a great story out this week about how much farmers, most farmers are sticking with trump despite the president's trade war which caused serious problems for a lot of them, and there isn't just one reason for this but it certainly doesn't hurt that donald trump just gave them a whole lot of money. trump's own usda the department of agriculture projects it will pay a record $37.2 billion this year to farmers and ranchers with the administration pledging an additional $14 billion in aid. that is a massive, massive payout. and just to be clear, these are direct payments t.. it's not like a program. it's checks, free money. look at this net farm income from 2015 to 2018, the orange represents non-government income, earnings from selling your stuff, and the gray represents direct government payments. as you can see, pafarmers had se income supplied by the u.s. govrl government. what conservatives like to call welfare in other context is a staple of u.s. ag policy. look at the projected data from 2020, a line on the right, do you see how big that gray section is, see how much of net farm income is just direct free money from government payments? that is public money trump is just handing to farmers in election year without much congressional overnight. trump made sure to remind farmers of his large at the debate last night. >> i just gave $28 billion to our farmers. >> taxpayer money. >> what? >> taxpayer's money. didn't come from china. >> you know the taxpayers, it's called china. >> not true. >> no, it actually is taxpayers' money. i gave farmers 28 billion. the lesson is not that it's bad to give people money. some of these farmers needed it because of trump's bad trade policies but democrats and the press as well should never ever ever worry or take 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because the oil industry pollutes significantly. >> that's a big statement. >> donald trump is trying to capitalize on that moment from last night's debate. i don't know how it will play in the election. here's what i do know. we are going to transition from oil whether joe biden says it or not. four years ago trump and the republicans thought their checkmate move was defending coal. notice how nobody talks about that anymore? that's because things are moving quickly away from fossil fuels. if you want a sense of that, check out this video. >> the real revolutionaries, change the game forever. understand that strength is never enough. evolving, imagining, seeing the world not as it is, but how it could be. introducing the world's first all electric super truck. the revolutionary gmc with no limits, no emissions, and no equals. >> that's right. general motors is bringing back the hummer, the infamous gas-guzzling fu car as an electric vehicle and it's one of a whole bunch of new electric cars rolling out soon, including a ford 150 truck. this transition is happening and people are excited and, in fact, it is a winning issue for democrats. charlotte swayze is the vice president of data and polling at the data for progress, a think tank that uses data to eliminate important stories. she joins me to talk about where ves voters are on climate issues. i feel like there is a sense that democrats are on the defensive on this stuff. if you talk about fracking or transitioning from oil, you are in bad territory. what does the data say? like what is the polling landscape on this stuff? >> so the polling landscape for climate at this point is that it's genuinely a popular and persuasive issue. we are finding really large percentages of voters, 56% of voters say they are more likely to support a presidential candidate who pledges to achieve 100% clean energy by 2035. this is not place where democrats are playing on the defensive anymore. this is actually a winning, positive issue we can really use as a wedge to persuade even republicans and independents who we kind of have this mindset are skeptical of climate. at this point it's genuinely something we can use to bring them into the democratic camp and to get them excited about democratic candidates. >> you know, i have been talking about this polling result from the times because it was so striking to me, and biden talked about his climate plan a little bit last night. should the government invest 2 trillion in clean infrastructure spending, 55% yes, 34%. when you tell people -- sorry, a data for progress poll. when you tell people that price tag, when you say here is 2 trillion, like the fact that you are still plus 20 there says something to me. >> yeah. and we have really been pushing this issue. we didn't want to just poll it as sort of a do you like the environment, yes/no. we are polling as if it's in the environment, they will hear messages from both sides. even when we include republican messaging about deficit, it's expensive, majority are in favor of this plan to invest $2 trillion into infrastructure and jobs. so we believe it's a strong issue that will hold up even through the sort of inevitable politicization that it will undergo as it becomes more of a prominent issue. >> do you think that some -- as you watch the messaging from national democrats and from prominent democrats? >> i think it's something folks are still coming around on. i mean, there is a lot of sort of institutional ideas that climate is a difficult issue and that it's not popular with republicans, but that's just not the state of the world anymore. it's not an issue where we have to be on defense. and in my opinion, every minute we spend being on defense and defending our commitments to oil and so on is a minute that we are not talking about investments, we are nothing talking about jobs, we are not talking about the front line commutes that will really be helped and have their lives improved by these popular climate policies. >> yeah, i mean, there is also this weird, you know, the perversity of the electoral college. there was a column in "the times" talking about how no one cares about the voters of california because there is nothing happening there electoral college-wise. sure, the whole state is on fire, but we have to focus on like the fracking that happens in west pennsylvania, like there is a regional aspect that is missing in some cases part of the totality of the national picture. >> yeah, i mean, there is definitely a case here where this is very much a state-specific thing. but we have been doing a huge amount of senate polling and we find in our battleground senate states we are still finding 55% support for this $2 trillion investment. so it's not something that's limited to popularity in california and new york. it's something that's really popular and useful as an electoral tool in these states that are aware the senate map is being fought out. >> this poll as well just a basic like who do you trust more on the issue. this is another 60/40, who do you trust more to handle climate change, 60% joe biden, 40% donald trump. last night trump said that's a big deal and joe biden said it is a big deal and he -- i mean, there was some defensiveness on fracking and all that stuff, but he didn't shy away as much as maybe i would have anticipated he did and afterwards people interpreted it as a gauf. they understand this is a winning issue, too. >> yeah, i think the biden camp has come around to the fact that this is an issue important to voters and an issue that's persuasive to a segment of the population and i think people are slowly realizing that we can both talk about the fact that this is a huge existential problem for the problem and also talk about the fact that this will reduce pollution, haelp people have clean air and give people jobs, wihich we believe s what voters care about at a base level. >> yeah. really striking to me that biden used the term pollution last night when talking about oil. that's been a long time in coming. charlotte swayze, thank you so much for sharing your insight. appreciate it. >> last for having me. that is all in for this evening. the rachel maddow show starts right now. good evening, happy friday. >> happy friday. is it friday? it is. thank you, my friend. >> it sure -- a-f is. >> i know exactly what you mean. but i'm still at work and you're still watching the news because there is a lot going on. it is