Transcripts For MSNBCW Deadline White House 20200902 : compa

mr. president, that's your job. that's your job. >> if he wins, joe biden has pledged to listen to advice from the nation's top infectious disease expert, dr. anthony fauci, who has spent much of his time during the trump administration correcting the record from donald trump's disinformation lies and outright medical quackery. something he had to do yet again yesterday when donald trump touted a conspiracy theory that the virus' death toll is lower than has been reported. >> by the way, i saw a statistic come out the other day, talking about only 6% of the people actually died from covid, which is very -- that they die from other -- >> well, they had co-morbidities, which you've gotten criticized for, because there are co-morbidities, as the italians show, i think it's every covid death, i think 70%, had two or three co-morbidity, but the covid may have been the key morbidity to hit them. >> it could be, but it's an interesting statistic. >> the point that the cdc was trying to make that a certain percent had nothing else but just covid. that doesn't mean that someone who had diabetes or something else didn't die from covid-19. they did. the numbers you've been hearing, the 180,000-plus deaths are real deaths from covid-19. let there not be any confusion about that. >> imagine what he could do if he didn't have to fact check the president all the time. the country stands at more than 186,000 souls lost. more than 6 million infections in this country and 58 million americans have sought unemployment assistance since the coronavirus outbreak began. and if joe biden's two powerful speeches this week weren't enough to demonstrate how differently an administration with joe biden at the helm would handle the crises facing our country, the former vice president and his wife will head to kenosha, wisconsin, tomorrow, to speak with that community. just two days after donald trump visited and praised the city's law enforcement. the covid denier in chief versus the man who seeks to replace him is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. infectious disease expert and director of the texas children's hospital center for vaccine development, dr. peter hotez is here. also with us, msnbc national affairs analyst, my friend, john heilemann. and white house reporter for "the washington post" and msnbc political analyst, ashley parker is back. john heilemann, i start with you. i mean, joe biden has made this pivot to trying to share these news cycles with donald trump on a day-to-day, toe-to-toe basis. this is the first week we've seen him try that on really offensive messages. saying, do i look like a radical socialist when it comes to donald trump's smears when it comes to standing with the looters. in this case, taking on donald trump in a place where he's even more vulnerable, his failures to manage the pandemic in a way that made school reopenings safe. what do you think? how's he doing? >> well, i think, nicole -- hi, happy wednesday, by the way. >> hi. >> it's good to see you. i miss you. >> i miss you, too. >> i'm sitting here in wisconsin and thinking, you know, i need a little nicole in my life on a wednesday to help me get through the rest of this week. >> you know, i think it's fair to say -- i think it's fair to say that democrats, the most predictable thing on earth is that democrats were going to be nervous after the republican convention. you know, that distilled -- we talked about it last weak. that kind of distilled trump message, with him pervasive. and on script for most of the week. you know, you had a lot of fear among a lot of democrats over the week. fear that the race was tightening. fear that trump had shifted the conversation to law and order, which they again, feared was a position of strength for trump, and a position of weakness for biden. and fear that the biden campaign would not adapt quickly enough to this new moment and that they would not -- and that this basement strategy, you know, keeping biden safe, keeping him largely off the campaign trail, which had worked very well for many months, that they would overplay that for too long. and i think what you've seen over the -- from the pittsburgh speech on monday and the fact that he's going to be in kenosha tomorrow, has put a lot of democrats' minds at least at ease, because the messaging has been crisp, it's been sharp, it's been aggressive. they've moved up their timetable for when they expected to get him back out on the trail. everybody was talking about that happening after labor day. they said, no, the moment is now. they've gone into teeth of these arguments and not only combatted them in a very effective way, but also kind of taken on, not just taken on the fight on trump -- that trump wants to fight on, and said, we can fight on that turf, but also tried to redefine the argument in a way that i think for a lot of democrats, they say, this is what joe biden needs to be doing, which is to be in a very direct way saying, the country is in chaos. the source of that chaos is donald trump. that includes things like safety and order. and if you want to get back to something that approximates normal, joe biden is your guy. and i think it's been bracing to see, i think a lot of democrats who were freaking out over the weekend, at least they were freaking out in my ear, are freaking out a lot less as we sit here on wednesday. >> ashley parker, one thing that's so interesting, and i know this from my time on campaigns. there's this whole sort of narrative about structural advantages of incumbency. and donald trump takes them off the table. but he doesn't run as an incumbent. he doesn't reason as someone interested in protecting the country, which is the greatest structural advantage of an incumbent president. i've been doing the job, i can keep doing the job. he's running as somebody who has literally every former national security official who worked in his cabinet and in anyone else's of democratic and republican administration administrations either actively campaigning against him or having rebuked him. the idea that biden has landed on this week, monday being the voice in america, the lone person running for president, condemning violence on all sides of the ideological spectrum, the only person running for president listening to and sort of deferring to scientists, it is, in it own way, erasing those traditional advantages of incumbency. does that worry anybody, or is incumbency not his brand? >> it's fundamentally not the president's brand. you have to look at just the facts that he is trying to paint his america as joe biden's america, to see that he's not eager to take responsibility for the past four years, certainly for some aspects of the past four years of his presidency. and to go back, trump is constitutionally views himself as an outsider, right? he is the kid from queens who with his father wanted to get over to glittering manhattan. and then he gets there, but he's not really welcomed. he's a tabloid guy rather than "the new york times" hometown paper guy. he's someone who may go to these parties with "c" and "d"-list celebrities, but never invited to the private parties of the wealthy for intimate dinners. he ends up buying his own club in mar-a-lago because he can't gain admittance to the established clubs. so he's trying to run as an outsider, even though, of course, he has been and is the incumbent, has been the president for the past four years. and whether you like the situation that the country is in or not, it is because of the choices that the president did and did not make. >> you know, dr. hotez, i know you're an infectious disease specialist, not a psychologist, but it seems like ashley gave us plenty to work with there if we wanted to try to delve into those dynamics. but i want to ask you about joe biden's opportunity. really, take the campaign out of it. i know that's hard to do, 67 days out. but americans are starving for leadership and access to the scientists. and i wonder if you think it makes good public health sense that he's out there every day pointing to the science, explaining how he would make decisions if he becomes the country's next president, and trying to sort of rehabilitate or re-evaluate people like tony fauci. >> you're absolutely right, nicole, and getting back to ashley's comments, the president over the last four years has had access to some of the most important scientists globally, working at the greatest research universities and institutes the world has ever seen, as well as the national institutes of health and other agencies, and instead, he's chosen to marginalize them and push them to the side. and never made an effort to try to launch a national strategy to fight covid-19. so he's missed every single opportunity he's been given. and this is reflected on the fact that the united states, throughout the year 2020, has been the epicenter of the global pandemic. we still, all through the summer and still today, we still continue to lead the world in the number of new cases of covid-19. on a daily basis, and the number of deaths with really no end in sight, although it's gone down a little bit now, it's still plateaued a as a screaming high level and we'll be at 200,000 deaths in a couple of weeks. and that would be an awful tragic milestone. and teachers don't feel safe. getting back to joe biden's comments. he's absolutely right. i've been talking to schoolteachers, superintendents, schoolboards all during the summer who are going through incredible heroics to try to make schools safe for students and teachers. things with plexiglas and social distancing you couldn't even imagine. thauf be they've been incredibly innovative and what i tell them are very sad, and say there are a couple of states where if you did what you're doing, such as in new hampshire and maine, you might be able to have a good school year, or at least a good semester, but it will fail catastrophically in texas and across the south, because the white house didn't do its part. it didn't contain covid-19 when every other major country has. >> john heilemann, to that end, the president is stacking up quacks. he's not adding brilliant scientists like dr. hotez or any of his peers. he's added this guy that he saw on fox, because of course he did. this is what "the times" says about him. dr. scott atlas, the guy he saw on fox, argues that the wearing of mask wearing is uncertain, that chirp cannot pass on the coronavirus, and that the role of the government is not to stamp out the virus, but protect its most vulnerable citizens as covid-19 runs its course. mr. trump has embraced dr. atlas even as he upsets the balance of power with ideas that tony fauci and deborah birx and others feel misguided. my question isn't that scary, isn't that dangerous, because of course and of course. i guess my question is, it seems like even donald trump knows that this guy is a whackadoo and just likes setting up the gladiator dynamic. because if he wanted to go with the full whackadoo, he has the right to get rid of dr. birx. he can fire -- i guess he can't fire tony fauci, but it would seem that what he's setting up is conflict and chaos and confusion. because at some level, he thinks that in that fog, he benefits. >> yeah. i mean, there are two things going on, nicole, that are both characteristic of donald trump. one is the one that you just pointed to. he has done this throughout his career. and there are bosses in the world that you probably at least know of some or if not have worked for some that think that this gladtorial combat internally is somehow that survival of the fittest, lord of the flies quality is a quality they like. they like their underlings compete for their praise. they like to see the backstabbing, all that byzantine kind of courtiership. he likes that. and he's done it in every aspect of his management of the white house throughout. he likes to have people kind of fighting with each other. and i think partly, it's -- he sees it as them fighting for his affection, which flatters them and he thrives in chaos. it's not surprising that his white house should reflect the kind of chaos that he thrives in politically in the outside world. he also thrives politically in the inside world. and donald trump is an idiot, but he's not an idiot. and the way in which i knew that is -- he knows, as much as it makes him crazy that tony fauci's approval rating is off the charts and so much better than his own -- >> 67%. >> yeah, right, he knows what kind of cost it would exact on him politically. he hears from enough people in his political inner circle who say, you know, your approval on coronavirus is devastatingly bad. it is the thing that if you lose is probably going to be the main number that is going to spell your defeat. you can't go -- you thinkncan't to get re-elected and let those numbers get lower. and if you were to fire tony fauci, that would be a very fast way to lose 5 to 10 more points. and he knows that would be too much water to take on, especially this close to election day. >> ashley, the biden campaign announced today the backing of noble laureates. i'm just waiting for one of the trump kids to say who wants a noble laureate, because they are decidedly running against nochblg, against information and against expertise. but i wonder if you sense that there's any concern from the professionals that do remain. that this is now a candidacy about disinformation, about spoken conspiracy theories, about anti-science. about really anything that anyone that remains in the federal bureaucracy have spent their careers fighting against? >> when you read that letter from the noble laureate, what was striking was the reasons why they were supporting joe biden. and it was that exactly. his reliance on things like science and expertise, which in any other moment would not be that novel or unusual. but in this moment, very deeply are. are there people in the vast business bureaucracy who care about this? the experts, the scientists, the career public servants? of course there. but if you look at the president and the people in his inner orbit, this week in particular has been a tremendous week for disinformation. if you look at the videos that they are tweeting out, that the campaign is sharing, deceptively edited. when you look at the fact that the president retweets stuff that is simply misinformation and in any other white house, you know this, nicole, there would be an entire process in place that if the president sees something, it is vetted. he only sees things that are factually accurate and only tweets out things that are factually accurate. in the best defense, the president tweeted out earlier this week a video about a black man pushing a woman on a subway station. and it was unrelated, a video from 2019. the best defense was that he hadn't watched the video. >> and we all know, i think, after the age of '16, not to retweet something you don't watch yourself. dr. hotez, i want to continue on this topic of the harm donald trump does by spreading disinformation, by showing this sound bite of joe biden on the patriotic act of wearing one's mask. >> when i find these folks talking about new freedom, i talk about patriotism. why do you wear a mask? to protect your neighbor. to keep someone else from getting sick and maybe dying. i call that patriotic. this is the united states of america. every generation has made sacrifices that help others in moments of crises. >> dr. hotez, i wonder if you think this effort to rebrand mask wearing as patriotic in the same way that taking our shoes off and throwing away our water bottles became our patriotic duties to obey the tsa after 9/11 is too little too late, or is there still a difference that can be made if enough people hear that? >> there's still a difference that can be made. we have some of the information coming out of the institute for health metrics that have shown that it could save tens of thousands of lives if we still put masks on everybody. but the problem is this. what the white house has done this year is launch what looks like a deliberate anti-science campaign, all about minimizing the impact of covid-19. if you remember, 99% of the cases are harmless. only 6% of covid-19 deaths are really due to covid-19. these are all fake assertions or we heard that the hospital admissions, the rise in that is due to the hospitals catching on elective admissions. this is all a deliberate anti-size disinformation campaign. and now, of course, the lead science adviser is like something out of stalin's lysenko, promoting false theories. i'm scared. and now what you've got, now the president expects us to buy this emergency use authorization in the days and weeks going up to the election. and it's very dangerous. and he's showing us that he's prepared to do whatever it takes to get re-elected, even if it means potentially doing something unsafe with something as important as covid-19 vaccines. >> and just because i didn't see you when it happened, i want to ask you what your personal feelings were when you saw donald trump and mike pence cram a lot of sploerlelderly support some instances in seats with minimal mask wearing during their convention last week. >> you can imagine my thoughts. i was watching with my wife, ann, and my jaw was dropping open. and it was -- >> i pictured you like putting your own mask on at home. >> exactly. it just sets such a terrible example for the nation. and here we're supposed to follow his leadership. and again. again, we have to focus on what the result is. and the result is, we'll soon hit that benchmark of 200,000 american deaths that didn't have to happen. sure, there were going to be some aspects of covid-19 that we couldn't prevent and some of the deaths we couldn't have prevented, but it's multiple times what it should have been, had there been leadership and had there been a national strategy, which the white house and the white house coronavirus task force refused to implement. >> dr. peter hotez and ashley parker, thank you both so much for starting us off today. when we come back, it's looking like half of america's children will spend a large chunk of this fall learning bloremotely. new york city despite a delay in reopening is still planning to offer in-person schooling. will the nation's largest school district be a leader or guinea pig on what not to do. and only the best people, remember that? the man who said dr. fauci was wrong about just everything. well, we're learning today that peter navarro is facing an internal investigation for his treatment of colleagues, infuriating those around and two of his coronavirus-related actions are under scrutiny. plus, former vice president biden responding to the current vice president reportedly being on standby during donald trump's mystery walter reed visit. we'll bring you all of those stories, coming up. we'll bring you all of those stories, coming up i've always been fascinated by about what's next. and still going for my best. even though i live with a higher risk of stroke due to afib... ...not caused by a heart valve problem. so if there's a better treatment than warfarin, i want that too. eliquis. eliquis is proven to reduce stroke risk better than warfarin. plus has significantly less major bleeding than warfarin. eliquis is fda-approved and has both. what's next? reeling in a nice one. don't stop taking eliquis unless your doctor tells you to, as stopping increases your risk of having a stroke. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. don't take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. while taking eliquis, you may bruise more easily- -and it may take longer than usual for any bleeding to stop. seek immediate medical care for sudden signs of bleeding, like unusual bruising. eliquis may increase your bleeding risk if you take certain medicines. tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures. ask your doctor about eliquis. and if your ability to afford... ...your medication has changed, we want to help. donald trump's threat to cut federal funding for all school districts that don't reopen for in-person learning is thankfully falling mostly on deaf ears. virtually all big city school districts are starting the year online only. a notable exception and due to new york city's less than 1% infection rate, it is the largest school district in the country that plans to offer some in-person learning. staggered schedules, social distancing, retrofitting the buildings, are all going to be involved, if that's to work. and the risks and the stakes remain high. under the threat of a teacher strike, the city of new york is now delaying the opening ten more days to allow time to get the classroom set up safely. now, if new york city, with a less than 1% infection rate can't pull off in-person learning, maybe it can't be done. joining our conversation is former secretary of education, arne duncan. john heilemann remains with us. mr. secretary, i follow this more closely than i follow the presidential election, to be totally honest. and i guess my question for you is, is this worth a try? and is this something that without testing is still a crapshoot? >> well, new york is working extraordinarily hard and as you said, our positivity rates are very, very low there. part of their plan is to do testing and to be clear, our testing is just one part of this. then you have to do contact tracing. you have to do quarantine and isolation. the l.a. school district is very, very ambitious in trying to do this across the district. and i think new york could learn some things from l.a. so people are working as hard as they can, as thoughtfully as they can. i guess what makes me so angry, i'm so furious is that we're fighting this war against a pandemic, against a virus, and our commander in chief is weak. he's inept. he's scared of this thing and he's a coward. we have 15,000 school districts across the country trying to figure this out by themselves. it's not fair and it's not right. and this is the absence of federal leadership, the absence of a massive federal investment. $200 billion to make our buildings safer and to add tutoring. that lack of leadership is just having a devastating impact on children, on families, and on teachers. >> you know what, i share your theory, and to me, this is also a missed political opportunity. this could have been his moon shot. he could have said that recovering -- this country beginning to recover from coronavirus starts with making sure that none of our children pay price of this and we're six months in. no one's really positive what all the long-term impacts are for children that do get sick. it would seem to me that an abundance of caution would go into the school plans. and i wonder if you think that they're still responding to some pressure, because of all the other dynamics? for parents, especially parents without all the advantages that being able to work from home and having the money to have help during the school day and what not. this is a lose/lose, parents are risking their children's development and socialization or potentially risking their health. what are they supposed to do? >> i'm a parent with two children, and we're all struggling with this. your question is the right question. the problem is, you're really smart, really empathetic, you're really rationale. president trump is none of those things. he's never taken this on in a serious manner. he's never followed science. he's always tried to minimize -- he can't handle the truth. he can't deal with it. so every rationale move that could have made him look like a real leader is impossible for him to do. if you're scared of science and literally have no empathy and you truly don't care. if you truly don't care whether children or teachers or parents live or die, then all the kinds of things you and i are talking about -- it's like speaking greek to him. it's just not part of his world view. >> hey, arne, john heilemann here. i have a couple of questions here and i'll ask them in sequence. own of the things that's true of you is you talk to a lot of teachers, even in having been out of your role for a while, you talk to a lot of teachers and a lot of parents. i want to start with the parents. and i'm curious about this, as we get closer and closer, we're now in september, we get closer to when school is supposed to have started, i'm sure parents are angry, i'm sure you hear a lot of frustration about how this has been handled. who are they blaming. do they blame donald trump primarily? do they blame their local school board s? their governors, their mayors? where is the frustration directed right now on the basis of many conversations you have with parents with kids in school? >> apparentlies obviously aren't monoloathic, but the vast majority of people, parents, really understand what's causing this -- again, it's more from a natural disaster to a man-made catastrophe. they understand a lack of federal leadership, and there's no trust there. they do trust their superintendents. who live in their communities, who often send their children to schools. who shop in the same grocery stores as they do. they trust their local public health officials. and actually, more than anger, more than fear, more than frustration, parents are really scared. parents are really worried for their children's health, for their own health, their grandparent's health. it's really a heartbreaking situation. and there isn't -- you know, it isn't clear what the right thing to do is here. the vast majority of schools are going to start virtually. some will try to do hybrid like new york city. nobody wants to be in this situation. every parent, teacher, children wishes we could go back to a physical school building this fall. and had we had better leadership over the past six months, we could do exactly that. that's happening in other parts of the world. other countries, it's not happening here because of a desperate lack of leadership. >> it's an unbelievable travesty and state of affairs. secretary arne duncan, thank you so much for spending time with both of us. john heilemann is sticking around for more. after the break, a combustible demeanor, a reputation of verbal abuse, and allegations of a hostile sexist working environment. new reporting from "the washington post" on one of donald trump's closest advisers at the white house. only the best people, remember that? se only the best people, remember that tremendous reporting to tell you about from today's "washington post". it surrounds donald trump's trade adviser, peter navarro. the post reviewed thousands of pages of e-mails and documents and spoke to 28 current and former administration officials, congressional aides, and business executives. what emerged was a well-documented series of incidents that painted a picture of a hostile work environment, one that reportedly almost got navarro fired by john kelly back in 2018. just some of "the post's" stunning reporting. quote, the trade adviser routinely exploded at his assistants, while scheming to undermine other senior white house officials. young women appeared to suffer the most verbal abuse. some female white house employees complained that navarro 71 was habitually disrespectful, assigning professional women to act as note-takers during policy meetings, rather than allowing them to participate. in recent weeks, navarro screamed at a low-level government procurement officer over a purchase of medical splice under the dpa. that's the defense production act. when the official refused his order, navarro grew incensed. are you loyal to china or to the american taxpayer, he bellowed. in april, michael pillsbury of the hudson institute was starleted to answer the phone and hear navarro snarl, i'm going to rip your f'ing throat out. only the best, right? navarro is often hostile and overbearing in arguments, prone to attack anyone who agrdisagre with him as a representative of the deep state. joining the conversation is former obama campaign manager, david plouffe, and mara gage. john heilemann is also back. underneath this is a really, really serious -- if this were a company and one of its management teams, this would be a hostile workplace case. this company would be facing not just the firing of the individual, but an hr investigation about who knew what when. who else was in the room. when he asked fema policy advisers who take notes, who else saw? who else knew? chief of staff john kelly knew. but a company would start at firing the abusive person, and then investigate the culture. what do you think it says that none of that has happened? >> well, it's important behavior, nicole, but sadry, rather than investigate it, this will probably have peter navarro grow even more fondly in donald trump's eyes. this is kind of how he rolls, too. and i do think it raises a really important question. we have donald trump increasingly looking unwell, mentally. kind of going down conspiracy rat heils. and he's surrounded by stephen miller and peter navarro, probably his two closest advisers. joe biden has an opportunity here to potentially talk about some of the people or announce some of the people who serve in his white house. that's tricky. you don't want to get that wrong. you would rather get it right than rush it for a campaign. but i think that is a card that needs to be more played more frequently by the biden campaign. you not only get sane, professional joe biden, but you'll get a real team. but it's terrible behavior. and i think the question will be, are we going to see more of these types of stories, more people who are part of the trump white house speak out now. if they think that the ship is going down, you may to try to see people single out some of their colleagues who have been the worst offenders. >> you and your velvet hammer slid something in there. donald trump seeming unwell was laid bare in that laura ingraham interview, where she tries to guide him in this interview. he talks about people choking golfers, and heads down this conspiracy of snakes on a plane. she said, whoa, whoa, whoa you sound whacky. what did you mean by that? >> these are like home games. he's talking to laura ingraham. he's talking to hugh hewitt. and he is a disaster. it's scary. by the way, if your neighbor or anybody you met in life said these things, you would walk away a little bit and be scared. he's got the nuclear codes. he's running the country. so, in his twitter feed, by the way, is increasingly, you know, showing, i think, deterioration, as well. so what's fascinating is he's setting up the first debate as, i'm the smart, competent tough guy. biden's basically senile. and i think trump is increasingly showing signs that he's destabilizing. so that is one of the worst interviews i've seen in my political career, particularly given the circumstances. but for a presidential not just candidate, but the president to do that nine weeks out from an election was really scary. we can make fun of it. it is frightening that this is his mental state. and i put that front and center. this guy is not ready to lead us through january 20th, much less another four years. >> all right. i'm going to put a pin in the peter navarro reporting and stick with this. because i think this is probably a more uncomfortable, but more relevant topic. so i'm sorry to switch tracks on you, but i know you've been watching donald trump. let me lay out the litany of what is public facing. because what david plouffe is saying has been observed for the better part of three and a half years. but the sum total of everything before the deterioration was a column when a bunch of senators left a brief -- and david brooks reports in his column that republican senators noted that donald trump sounded like he was someone in the early phases of alzheimer alzheimer's. then there's this mystery trip to walter reed, that's in mike schmidt's new book, that the vice president did not deny had happened yesterday. and i know joe biden responded to it again today. and then there is the thing that smacks us all in the face. the occasional slurring. the performances that are so completely nutso that his going down on the "titanic," you know, being the ones playing the music kind of supporters are jumping in, interjecting and trying to save him from himself. what do you think is going on, marge? >> well, i can't disagree with david. to be clear, it's very alarming to see someone with the codes act this way. don't get me wrong. but i think we need to take a hard look at the durability of the president's base in spite of that. this isn't new, as you said, nicole. and i do think that there is a hard-core group of trump supporters who truly would follow him, no matter what. there's a cultive personality at play. and there are other folks who look at wall street's success and they're just voting with their wallets, especially those who are the top of the income bracket. and they want a tax cut. and there's a selfishness there. and so if you're the democrats, i'm not really sure that that's actually a winning strategy. it may be, i don't know. david would know more than i would on that front. but i guess it's really disturbing. i don't know that it's a winning political strategy. but it's just troubling, it's just troubling for the republic. >> john heilemann, i'm going to sneak in a break, come back to you on the other side. but as mara was talking, i was remembering that it was republican tennessee senator bob corker who said back in 2017, donald trump hasn't zploi edisp the fitness for the office he has. so people who saw him up close have had these feelings for years. the 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what it was all about? i just don't know. and the only time that i have been on notice is when the president's out of the country and i'm in the country. not that i should wait for something to be immediately be aware of anything. but that that's something that would -- that might be called for. it wasn't called for. >> that comment from vice president biden comes after mike pence said in an interview with bret baier on fox news that he does not recalling told to be on something called standby, to assume the powers of the presidency. but notable that pence didn't deny the account either. john heilemann, david plouffe, and mara gay are all back. john heilemann? >> well, i think we were talking about dementia, right? >> i think so. >> and i'll say, nicole, you and i have in fact discussed this on this show on more than one occasion in the past. and i have commented, and something that plouffe said in the previous segment, if you ran into a guy behaving the way trump behaves at a backyard barbecue in your neighborhood, back when you were still allowed to have backyard barbecues in your neighbor, and you met that guy, you would be expressing sympathy to your relatives saying, yeah, i've had someone in my family who have had issues with dementia. but we hesitate to go here, because none of us on this show right now are doctors. none of us are qualified to go diagnosis. i'm not qualified to do diagnosis. i'm not going to pretend like i am. but probably all of us have gone through, i have seen friends and family members in their advanced years have dementia and have g cognitive issues. and there are familiar things we have seen in our lives. and there are lee things that i have seen in others who have gotten into stages of one of th delusional tendencies. another is paranoia, intense paranoia, and the third is, unfortunately, and again, many people, god people, upstanding people have had this problem where you see someone in your family or in a family close to you where someone starts to exhibit racist tendencies. they start to say -- their submerged racism comes to the surface. you see the 80-year-old, 90-year-old man, often men, who have become paranoid, delusional and more racist than maybe they exhibited in their first signs of racism or what they low level of racism was exacerbated on that age. and in that ingram is interview, all of that is on display. comparing the smooting of jacob blake to the choking on a three-foot putt, the stuff when he talked about the low income housing in the suburbs, those were just naked -- nakedly racist in the case of the housing claim. the three-foot putt thing has shown such disregard for black lives that it is also clearly racist and this crazy antifa plane story, i know some people want to say, well, he's playing for the qanon vote, but that is the sounds of a man who is drifting off into the nether world of paranoid, delusional conspiracy theories that unfortunately are a hallmark of dementia. and so, again, i can't diagnose the guy, maybe he doesn't have any at all, but if he doesn't have dementia, he's exhibiting signs of a lot of people who do have dementia, and i think everyone in this panel is right and anyone in america who watches this behavior and is terrified by it for the reasons that plouffe referred to before, nuclear football, they should be terrified. it's terrifying. >> well, and let me just put it back in its proper frame, i think we would not be having this conversation if donald trump wasn't doing interviews where he said man, woman, potato, cucumber, tamale. he's thrust his own mental acuity by talking about a test that is designed to screen the tragic diseases in the category and including alzheimer's and frontal dementia. they are not i.q. tests, as donald trump seems to remember it is. so, i mean, john, to your point, we're talking about this because donald trump wants us to. >> yes. as i have said many times, with donald trump, everything is either confession or projection. and in this case, i think the raising -- the same way he's denying the story about the strokes, when the mini-strokes before anybody raised the possibility of there being mini strokes, he often is, he projects like crazy, but when it comes to his health, in a lot of cases, he is, or, at least he gives every appearance, trying to confess to us what's actually going on with him and i think the issue of him putting the cognitive test on the table is a classic example. there is no leader in america, let alone a president of the united states, but a ceo who had a public company, had board of directors, who would start putting forward the question of, hey, i went and proved that i don't have dementia, i took a test to prove it, unless he had some questions about it in his own mind, because why are you talking about this if it's not something that you are thinking about and an issue that's been raised with you by people close to you. i just think, you know, it has all the hallmarks, in? case, of a kind of confessionism on the part of donald trump. >> you know, david mruplouffe, started this. coming back to you with a question. presidential candidates are usually taken aback how invasive medical questions. i worked were george w. bush, my cog league and i had to run around and to find a doctor to brief about his colonoscopy. that's what we had to do that day, but he was mortified. the fact that we have never had a true readout of donald trump's health is another sort of underreported norm that has been obliterated during his presidency. >> well, you're right, nicolle. it's not place where he's breaking with every standard. i'd say a couple of things. one, the american presidency gets more powerful every time we elect a new president. so, donald trump now sits in the most powerful office the world has ever known. and the fact that he is being very cagey about his health, physical and mental, i agree, i think the mental deterioration is clear for all eyes to see, cannot be a more important story. but it's political malpractice. he's introduced this. and his core argument against his opponent is that joe biden is not up to this job. he doesn't have the energy, he's senile. they couldn't be clearer about this. and the bar he has set for joe biden on september 29th is the lowest debate expectations bar anybody's had to cross. if joe biden 125puts a few sentences together, it will be far better than donald trump supporters are expegging. and this is my point. pandemic, the mismanagement, the economy, climate change, critical issues, but underlying all those questions is, who is up to the task, whether it's biden or trump, they're going to inherit probably the most challenging circumstance since franklin roosevelt. and i think questions of trump's fitness, not just his mental state, but his embrace of conspiracy theories, that he's just not up to this, i think is an important message and for biden, since that's the core argument against him, if he's able to fend that off and do some damage to trump, i think politically, it's quite smart. but listen, mike pence wouldn't have be asked that question if -- by the way, mike pence seemed as uncomfortable in that question and answer session about walter reed as trump did holding up the bible, okay? >> yes. >> donald trump's brought all this onto himself. it's just epic political malpractice. >> all right, we have run out of time. thank you for derailing our planned programming, this was a mup more interesting conversation. david, mara and john, thank you all for spending time with us today. when we come back, donald trump and vladimir putin both pursuing the same strategy against joe biden. we'll look at that similarity. the next hour of "deadline white house" starts after a very quick break. don't go anywhere. e. if you're in the office of the presidency, we have to be sharp. so, they were saying all these different things, it was going all over, whichever stuck, none of it stuck. but one of the reasons is because i took a test. it's like you'll go, person, woman, man, camera, tv. so, they say, could you repeat that? so, i said, yeah, so, it's person, woman, man, camera, tv. they say, that's amazing. how did you do that? i do it because i have, like, a good memory, because i'm cognitively there. now, joe should take that test. because something's going on. >> hi again, everyone. it's 5:00 in the east and donald trump may be using russia's playbook there again. news breaking today that trump has so badly hobbled the flow of critical intelligence about russia's campaign to damage joe biden that we are learning today for the very first time about a bulletin that was intended to go out to all u.s. law enforcement agencies. it would have warned them about a russian interference campaign meant to impact the 2020 election that sought to do what donald trump does every single day, as he did in that clip we just showed you. attack joe biden's mental acuity. the russian campaign reportedly sought to spread disinformation and to jug zest thsuggest joe b stutter, which was actually something that was featured during the democratic convention as something that's helped him connect with young children struggling with a stutter and the loss of confidence that accompanies it, is actually dementia. from the scuttled intelligence report that never went to law enforcement as first reported by abc news, quote, russia likely to denigrate health of u.s. candidates to influence 2020 election. that's the title. russian maligned influence actors are likely to continue denigrates presidential candidates through allegations of poor mental or physical health to influence the outcome of the 2020 election. that intelligence assessment was deemed, was described as one that the intel community had, quote, high confidence in. and that's about as certain as anyone can ever be about any intelligence. but here's what happened to that high confidence intel assessment. abc news reports, quote, just one hour after its submission, however, a senior hdh official interven intervened. quote, please hold off on sending this one out until you have a chance to speak to acting secretary of homeland security chad wolf. the bill tin was never distributed to its intended audience. law enforcement agencies around the country. the scandal here is two-fold. once again, a piece of evidence that donald trump and russia are communicating the exact same messages in their campaigns to smear joe biden at almost the exact same time and in almost the same words. and the intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been at best decapitated and at worst, corrupted. the bulletin is where we start this hour, with john brenton, also joining us, frank figliuzzi and former u.s. senator claire mccaskill. director brennan, let me start with you. i think one of the things that donald trump has done is made people question intelligence. but a high confidence intelligence report is about as certain as you can get. what did you make of this reporting today? >> well, it's quite concerning, as we have seen before, that donald trump is trying to suppress the information flow, whether it be to congress or to state and local officials. and also is quite evident to me that the russians, just like in 2016, would like to see donald trump re-elected in 2020. therefore, they are trying to push out disinformation. very much like donald trump is doing. he's pushing out a lot of disinformation about joe biden and other things. and so the fact that they would have the acting secretary of homeland security suppress this information from getting out to state and local officials, i think just underscores just the seriousness that, you know, we have to look at what donald trump is doing, because he is using every tactic that he has in order to steal this november election. >> you know, frank, it is, i think, in a post 9/11 era, one of the things that was -- that a lot of oversight and a lot of agencies worked to improve, which is the flow of intelligence directly to law enforcement with minimal political intervention or touching in between, what does it represent to you that an act ing ally -- i don't want to call them allies, a sick fanycophans is a secretary that's carrying the president's water in portland and other places, stopped this information from getting to law enforcement agencies? >> well, let's remember, the acting secretary of dhs has been found to be unlawfully in his position, so, there's that. but look, we could argue all day about whether this particular bulletin fit their reporting protocols or local chiefs and sheriffs needed to know this information -- here's the bottom line. there's a suppression of actionable, important intelligence going on. thosal even the cabinet secretary level who suppress such information about who is meddling in our election are actually aiding and abetting a foreign power through that suppression. this is the equivalent of cheating on a massive level, to break it down to its simplest point, we have a president who refuses to denounce foreign assistance in his victory, in his election. he seems unwilling on unable to denounce foreign assistance to him. and whether it's the russians mimicking him and his strategies against biden or whether it's him taking direction from russia or a combination of both, this is cheating and it's the equivalent of, in a massive world championship in sports, a team or individual found to be cheating. he will have an asterisk next to his name forever in history, saying, this was the guy who accepted foreign assistance. this is, essentially, if you remember several years ago, the tour de france. there were professional sicklists of having tiny, almost undetectable electric motors on their bikes. the motor that's assisting trump is the russian intelligence service and it's cheating on a national level. >> claire mccaskill, here's what the biden campaign had to say. they put out this statement. russia and the trump campaign are speaking from the same script of smeerps and lies and trump does not want to expose the degree to which his political partners in the kremlin are propagating this message for his benefit. this is one way that trump can further the cause of his collusion with a foreign power to influence the election. it is especially notable and deeply concerning that we learn about this at the same time that the administration is also seeking to keep the american people in the dark about election interference by cutting off congressional briefings on that same subject. it just feels like this time, the russian attack is done in -- at least publicly, coordinated fashion with the trump white house and we've now publicly pulled the intelligence community out of any sort of oversight from congress by canceling in-person briefings. it seems like we are in a far worse, far weakened position than we were four years ago. >> yeah, let's review the facts, just over the last few weeks. first, russia puts a bonedy on our soldiers and we hear nothing from president trump, even though he's talked to putin numerous times. never challenging russia over such an outrageous thing to do to america's military. second, we found out just within the last few days that, in fact, russia did poison one of the opposition figures with nerve gas and germany has let us know that. nothing from the president. nothing. now we now that chad wolf has shut down an intelligence brief that says with high confidence that russia is doing political damage on behalf of donald trump against joe biden. and by the way, this last point, it's illegal for chad wolf to do that. chad wolf, who is a former lobbyist, speaking of this swamp, you know, no experience in homeland security or the military or police, he shuts down this intelligence memo. that violates the u.s. code. there's a specific -- it's 18 u.s.-c 595. it's against the law for him to do that. now, what would we have expected in a normal world? the chairman of the homeland security committee call a hearing. guess who is that? that's putin's boy ron johnson. >> oh, god. >> it is unbelievable how putin has weaseled his way into our politics through donald trump and his minions. >> you know, director brennan, i'm going to ask you to respond to claire here and let me just, she brought code there, let me just read you this headline about alexei navalny. chancellor angela merkel said he was a victim of attempted murder and the world would look to russia for answers. apparently the world looking for answers doesn't include the united states. how unprecedented is that? >> well, i think we've seen so much unprecedented behavior on the part of this administration since its first day in office. the fact that it doesn't call out things like this and as claire mentioned, in terms of all of the reporting about what russia is doing to undermine u.s. national security interests, kill american soldiers, but also continue to take these aggressive actions against their dissidents. it's clear that mr. putin believes he has quite a bit of latitude in terms of what he does on the world stage, because of the relationship he has with donald trump. and donald trump has, i think, demonstrated time and time again that he is not going to push back against mr. putin. who knows the actual motivation for that, but it's clear that mr. putin is going to continue to try to manipulate this year's election, in order to try to make sure his friend donald trump stays in the white house. and i think that's a danger to the american people, it's a danger to the russian people. it's a danger to world order, because the united states has abdicated for the last four years its traditional global leadership role. >> director brennan, let me just follow up and ask you what your sort of take is on morale and on state of mind of agencies who have been subverted to donald trump's political will. you've got the odni who assessed that russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former vice president biden and what it seems as an anti-russia establishment. it is consistent with moscow's public criticism of him when he was vice president for his role in the obama administration. policies on ukraine and support for anti-putin opposition inside russia. you've got the intelligence agencies that have always been so robust and i know this from working in the white house when there was discomfort, there was outcry, there was congressional oversight, i spoke to speaker pelosi yesterday about how polarized those bush years were, but there was still vibrancy inside the intelligence communities and that relationship with congress. it seems that trump has succeeded in cutting off ties between the intelligence community and their oversight committees and corrupting the intelligence agencies, at least in terms of what we as an american people know about what they're able to do. they're not able to share intel with law enforcement, they're not able to brief congress and do we have any reason to assume that they're able to project the united states of america from another russian attack? >> well, i am certain that all my former colleagues at cia or fbi or homeland security, they're professionals who take seriously their responsibility to keep their fellow citizens safe. they're exceedingly frustrated, as well as demoralized, when they have somebody in the white house, their first customer, who doesn't take -- read intelligence, he doesn't take it seriously, he does everything to undercut it and prevents its appropriate dissemination to congress and state and local officials. so, i know they're working hard, despite the head winds they have to endure, but i'm sure that when john rad cliff decided there weren't going to be anymore in-person briefings of congress, that must have really rankled a lot of my former colleagues. the head of the counterintelligence center is a professional. he briefed congress before, he can do it again, you can manage that, you can protect methods. but clearly, this is an effort by donald trump and his minions are carrying out his orders to suffocate the intelligence work and the great work of law enforcement and homeland security professionals. and it's particularly dangerous as we only have 62 days or so before the election, that he continues to do this. >> you know, frank, you and i have talked a few times this week about the fact that counterintelligence investigation like the one we assumed, obviously, incorrectly, robert mueller had conducted, didn't happen. one of the revelations in mike schmidt's new book, but again, if you just take what's publicly facing, as claire pointed out, ron johnson's trying to launder russian disinformation through his committee, thing acting dhs secretary putting a squash on this information going to law enforcement, our silence, america's deafening silence around the poisoning with nerve agent of a russian dissident. what is, you know, same question to you about the fbi, what is the current state of morale and state of situational awareness of just how detrimental donald trump's public facing actions, we don't know what he does in private, are to our country's national security? >> yeah, we've gone -- my sources tell me we've gone from early on some eye-rolling and leave us alone, we're going to put our head down and do our job to just outright frustration. right now, people really considering what they've chosen to do for a living during this administration. i want to just talk about the counterintelligence issues here, because vladimir putin is sitting in the cat bird seat right now. and remember, his desire, first and foremost, is chaos and confusion in the united states and then secondly, to get president trump elected, if that helps with the chaos and confusion. so, german authorities telling us, hey, we found the nerve agent novichok in putin's opponent's bloodstream and now dhs suppressing evidence of social media attacks by russia against biden, these are not disparate things. essentially what we're watching here is russia leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. they want plausible deniability. we didn't do it, but they also want the world to know, we did it. we can poison people, we've chosen our nerve agent that you know is ours. we can put social media propaganda out with electronic signature that you know is ours, because that's chaos and confusion and power for putin. they're telling us they can do this at will and why can they do it at will? because the president refuses to denounce and reject it. >> well, claire, let me just take frank's analysis and lift it and expand it to all the people acting, literally and figurativety, removing their hoods, white supremacists marching in daylight without their hoods on, because hey, donald trump takes support wherever he can get it. individuvigilantes walking into lives matter rallies with guns around their neck and walking out because, hey, in donald trump's america, a good guy with a -- whatever it is, i mean, you can lift that analogy and really all of the world's forces for violence and things that america has stood against since her founding are now unleashed on the american people. >> yeah, the pillars that have supported america on the world stage, the values about human rights and democracy and protecting our allies and standing up to thugs, all of those -- all of those are in danger of crumbling under this president. the integrity is gone. the predictability and stability is gone. the close working relationship with our allies is gone. the love affair he has with everyone from kim jong-un to putin, that is what has been replaced with. and it is a terrible thing for our national security. and one which i think most americans don't fully understand how serious it is. and it would be devastating for it to continue for another four years. it would permanently alter our position on the world stage and therefore the security of our people. >> john brennan, frank figliuzzi, thank you so much for making time for us today. claire is sticking around to spend more of this hour with us. after days of hearing donald trump spread conspiracy theories and lies, the republican party is saying nothing, not a peep, not one word about trump's plane-load of thugs or his talk of biden being controlled by people wearing black suits and living in the shadows. it's a silence that's still shocking, but at this point, shouldn't be surprising. we'll get some reporting on today's gop. plus, a new report for the postal service is raising concerns that all that extra mail around the election might not get delivered in time after all. and the trump administration decides to go it alone on the single biggest issue facing the global scientific community, developing and distributing a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine. "deadline white house" continues after a short break.af ter a sho. you're clearly someone who takes care of yourself. so when it comes to screening for colon cancer, don't wait. because when caught early, it's more treatable. i'm cologuard. i'm noninvasive and detect altered dna in your stool to find 92% of colon cancers even in early stages. tell me more. it's for people 45 plus at average risk for colon cancer, not high risk. false positive and negative results may occur. ask your prescriber if cologuard is right for you. i'm on it. that's a step in the right direction. that's unnecessarily complicated. make ice. making ice. but you're not because you have e*trade which isn't complicated. their tools make trading quicker and simpler so you can take on the markets with confidence. don't get mad get e*trade. so you can take on the markets with confidence. i'm a verizon engineer and i'm part of the team building 5g ultra wideband. it's already available in parts of select cities and it's rolling out in cities around the country. 25x faster than today's 4g networks. it's the fastest 5g in the world. this is 5g built right. i think i did win the popular vote in a true sense. i think there was tree men douse cheating in california. there was tree men douse cheating in new york and other places. >> at this point, he is just making stuff up and shoveling it out to anyone who will listen. prove bly false and crazy stuff. like over the weekend, when he retweeted a conspiracy theory that insisted the real american death count of the pandemic was only 9,000 people. a claim so crazy twitter deleted it. and then, there's his recent plugs on a plane anecdote which he trotted out again yesterday. >> a person was on a plane, said that there were about six people like that person, more or less, and what happened is, the entire plane filled up with the looters, the annarchists, peopl that were obviously looking for trouble. and the person felt very uncomfortable on the plane. this would be a person you know, so, i will see whether or not i can get that person, i'll let them know and i'll see whether or not i can get that person to speak to you, but this was a first-hand account of a plane going from washington to wherever and i'll see if i can get that information for you. maybe they'll speak to you, maybe they won't. >> he's on it. he's going to see if he can get the looters on a plane information for us. we may or may not hear from an unnamed person about their uncomfortable experience aboard a plane full of looters going from washington to wherever. full of people looking for trouble. and in the last interview, donald trump described them as pulling joe biden's strings. antifa planes, blatant lies about the 2016 popular vote, conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, which anthony fauci's already knocked down. as we keep seeing, such false claims made by a president of the united states, any president, is shocking, but with donald trump, it's not surprising anymore. what is astonishing is the deafening silence from the people who presumably know better. or i'm starting to wonder, maybe they don't. in his latest piece, mark lebowitz asked the question, where are the republicans? he writes this, by the end of the day, there was nothing forthcoming from elected republicans, from anywhere, no criticism, no condemnation or even acknowledgement that the president had said anything problematic. nothing about planes filled with looters, nothing about the racial dog whistles 'em bedded in some of mr. trump's other statements about how low income housing destroys american suburbs, bringing in a lot of other problems, including crime. joining our conversation, mark is with us, the chief national correspondent for "the new york times" and eddie,. claire is also still here. mark, i'm so glad you did this reporting. tell us about it. take us through it. >> well, we're not supposed to denigrate or own work, but this was not a scoop, i mean, this is a story that, as you mentioned, has been recurring for 3 1/2 years and it's a theme that, you know, has gone on and on and on. and i knew exactly what i was going to find. i said, look, at the beginning of the days, i'll see what i get, i knew i wasn't going to get anything and we would report on the news of the day through what the silence we knew we were going to hear. so, it is completely, you know, a story that you could have predicted. i mean, i guess this is -- what's interesting, there are two things that are interesting to me right now. i mean, one, we're right in the thick of a campaign. i think the question at one point, the democrats, i'm sure are going to ask, even the biden campaign is going to ask is, to what degree are you going to run against the republican party? in a debate, are you going to make a point as someone who was in the senate for a long, long time, that without the republican senate, donald trump doesn't exist today, or at least, you know, his presidency is not as impactful as it has been. i think also, what you sort of have to ask is, i mean, to what degree are you going to run against the people, the republican senators who are up for re-election this year and ask them and try to ask, you know, put the question directly, where have these republicans been? and again, the answer has been the same throughout and obviously claire mccaskill's talked a lot about this, but it's something that i think you sort of wonder, i mean, to what degree will there be a reckoning on election day that not just -- that is not just about the presidential choice itself. >> let me ask you something, i mean, there's the sycophants, lindsey graham carries his golf bag and ted cruz has forgotten that he smeared his wife and father and now follows him around like a puppy. there are those sashgtcharacter what explains the people -- i may have been dead wrong, i'm not pretty sure that i am, but people that used to believe in the republican stuff. and you can hate the republican stuff, but donald trump isn't for any republican stuff, so, i'm talking about people like portman, burr, thune, like, what happened to those guys? >> i mean, i think it's probably 80% politics here. i think it's just a question of, they've made the calculation and their aides have made a calculation to go against your base, to go against donald trump, is going to cost you your re-election and certainly get you primaried out of existence. and they're basically just mostly afraid to lose. and, you know, i've written about all these people. lindsey graham has been extremely naked about why he has done what he has done, to sort of explain the sort of calculation he's made and why he has sort of aligned himself so closely to donald trump and i'm sure in his more private moments, he's horrified by what happens and he has been. so, i mean, i think that's the calculation, it's really not that more complicated than politics and a fear of losing. and, you know, there's just a lot of things people will do to get re-elected and you realize that self-perpetuation is the juice that gets everyone up in the morning and sometimes principles don't go anywhere near beyond that. >> so, eddie, i mean, what they're perpetuating and what they don't want to lose is their participation in the most racist, misknowledge nis, inc e incompetent administration in history. donald trump's got a 37% approval rating, a 26% of the public finds him credible on covid. i'm sure there are people in their states who have lost their lives to covid and lost their businesses to covid and they are, by staying silent, part of all of his failures, nos to say anything of all of his racism. what are they winning by staying silent, eddie? >> well, i mean, look. i think what mark just gave was the generous read that it's mere self-interest, it's only politics. it could very well be the case and we might need to begin to really entertain this, that many of them actually agree with donald trump, nicolle. and what i mean by that, they might not necessarily agree with the tweets or they might not necessarily agree with the way in which he engages in his politics, but the substance of the policies, they've gotten their tax cut, they got the derelations. so, there's a way in which we try to do is to render donald trump as exceptional and as the center of gravity, then folks are trying to adjust, but what if he is simply a caricature of a form of politics that we've been experiencing before, that he just does it badly in some ways, right? so, i think part of what we need to do is to kind of understand him for who he is. hillary clinton tried to separate trump from the republican party in 2016, if you recall. she tried to say, this is not the republican party. and lo and behold, what we've seen since then is just silence and capitulation and enabling. and then the last point i would make, nicolle, is this. when we hear donald trump lying, we're in a post-truthiness moment. not post-fact or. that suggests that the very ground, the foundation of public deliberation has been fundamentally weakened, it seems to men, and undermined. >> you know, claire, my question for you goes back to the bush years and there was plenty to criticize for democrats but also plenty for republicans and i think this is where i'm particularly startled by the zombies and the sort of brain lobotomies that they've all had, because they did not wait a b t beat, they didn't wait a beat to attack donald trump and he was more popular, his approval rating was awful, except those last 18 months, there was never a mean tweet, i don't think twitter existed, and they did not blink or wait a nanosecond to jump on television and, listen, there was plenty to criticize. it made us better and in some cases, forged alliances with democrats, but what is it about trump? i mean, is it that he's like a crime boss? i mean, what do you think it is that somebody who actually isn't a republican is someone that they'reservient to? >> it's interesting that you mention that, nicolle, because just today, i was looking at some old transcripts of oversight hearings during the obama years when a number of democrats were critical of various decisions and vary yougs positions that the obama white house had taken. it was not all, you know, a sycophant situation with -- and the same thing was true with republicans when bush was in the white house. there were senators that understood their job was something more than just being the choir for the president. that is now gone. these republican senators have voluntarily chained themselves to an immoral liar on the deck of the titanic. and when it goes down, their integrity and their character is going to go with it. now, there are some republican senators that are all-in, that want to be the new trump, and you see them circling like vultures, tom cotton and josh holley, nikki haley, they are all ready to pick the bones of donald trump and emerge as the new trump, but there are also people like pat toomey in pennsylvania and rob portman in ohio who have watched this president take them from about a half a billion in deficits to $3.3 trillion in deficits under his watch. a crippling deficit and debt under his watch. what are they going to say when the titanic goes down? >> mark will break it first. mark, i refuse to accept that there are no scoops in your stories, there always are. thank you for spending some time talking about it. eddie and claire, thank you all for spending some time with us. when we come back, with just about two months before the election, we're getting a big red flag about the postal service and its ability to deliver the mail on time. that story's next. and tailored recommendations. that's the clarity you get with fidelity wealth management. and tailored recommendations. about medicare and 65, ysupplemental insurance. medicare is great, but it doesn't cover everything - only about 80% of your part b 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voters the day of or the day before the primary election in 11 states. 500 ballots sent to pennsylvania voters the day after the election and more than 589,000 ballots mailed to voters after the mailing deadline in 17 states. as "the new york times" puts it, quote, the findings underscore deep concerns about whether the agency will be able to process what is expected to be a significant increase in mail-in votes for the presidential election. joining our conversation is nbc news white house correspondent jeff bennett, who is always on the post office beat and my former colleague and dear friend brad jenkins, a group dedicated to educating americans on vote by mail policies. jeff, let's start with you an the latest reporting on the post office. >> yeah, well, look, this u.s. postal service inspector general report, it's important to point out, did not include the changes, the operational changes put in place by the new postmaster general. i think if it did, the results that you just detailed would be even worse. but this watchdog set out to answer a simple question, can states handle -- or, rather, can the postal service effectively handle election and political mail ahead of the november election and the answer is a resounding no. and in the results of this audit, what they do is, they point the finger at the states and say the states didn't follow best practices. so, it including things ballots mailed without bar codes, ballot designs that result in improper processing, election and political mail likely mailed too close to the election, postmark requirements for ballots. but the complicating factor is you have secretary of states all across the country that are pointing the finger at the postal service, so, it's not entirely clear, we stand 60-plus days until the election, it is not clear what will break so that it does become a reality that the postal service can, in fact, handle election mail in a timely and secure manner. it was a couple of weeks ago where the postmaster general committed to doing that, but the i.g., this audit makes clear that he can't. and of course, as we said, this doesn't even account for the delay-causing changes that he's put in place. >> you know, greg, just report i ing, despite his calm demeanor, is staggering. things are worse now than when we had that terrible outcome with the primary season. tell me what project yellowstone is trying to do and if it takes into consideration these new practices that have slowed down the mail even from those failures to get all the ballots and requests in on time. >> sure. the whole point of project yellowstone is to encourage people to vote early and get their absentee ballot and vote by mail ballot now and to send it in now, in part to help get ahead of the deluge that the post office most certainly will be dealing with on election day. for a lot of folks, they tend to wait until the last minute. if they vote by mail or vote absentee, and that might, frankly, compound the problem, so, what we're suggesting is, a lot of states are allowing for people to get their ballots right now and we're saying, go to our website, click on your state, find out the rules, fill out your ballot now and send it in now. don't wait. >> so, i'm one of those people that holds this fantasy that i'm going to vote in person and wear the sticker and feel good about myself and it never comes to pass so i end up scrambling asking for an absentee. i'm probably your target customer. tell me exactly what i do. >> right now, if you want to vote early, what you do is, you go to our website or plenty of other websites out there doing the same thing, click on the state that you live in, it will take you to your state's election office and it will give you all the rules and regulations for your state. as you know, federal elections in this country are decentralized to the state level, so, all the rules are a little bit different. but pretty much all the states at this point allow for a form of requesting a ballot right now and filling it out and sending it in right now. i mean, i think the big point is, you don't have to wait until election day to either walk into a voting precinct and cast your ballot in person, which, frankly, a lot of people don't want to do because of the virus, the effects of the virus on people. nor is it such a good idea if you get your absentee ballot going back to your original reporting about the post office, to get your ballot now, fill it out and then wait a couple of weeks until you're very close to the deadline to turn it in for your particular state. so, again, we're saying, get your ballot in now, send it in now. >> greg jenkins, we're going to put up project yellowstone's website and information for voters like myself who end up scrambling for those absentee ballots at the last minute and jeff bennett, thank you for staying on this, it sounds like there's all the more reason to, you know, make a plan and to get your ballots in early if you can. when we come back, as kids go back to school here in this country, cases of coronavirus are rising sharply overseas. our friend dr. gupta will tell us what we can expect in the weeks and months ahead here after a quick break. ick break. this week on "the upper hands"... special guest flo challenges the hand models to show off the ease of comparing rates with progressive's home quote explorer. international hand model jon-jon gets personal. your wayward pinky is grotesque. then a high stakes patty-cake battle royale ends in triumph. you have the upper hands! it's a race to the lowest rate, and so much more. only on "the upper hands." pnc bank believes that if an app can help you track your pizza... come on cody, where are you buddy? ...then your bank should have the technology to help you track your spending. virtual wallet® is so much more than a checking account. easily see what's free to spend. and see where your money is going so you can budget even better. okay, he's 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is now bracing for a second wave there, after new outbreaks have been reported in spain and russia. reuters can reporting that the eu even issued a warning against the shortening of the 14-day quarantine rule for those infected. joining our conversation is global health policy expergt and m s msnbc medical expert dr. vin gupta. i remember at the beginning of this, mike pence went out and said, we're just like italy, as we got worse and worse, we were more like brazil, as things got worse and worse, there wasn't anybody left doing as badly as we were. where are we now on the world stage? >> good afternoon, nicolle, good to see you. where we are right now is concerning for children at adolescents, most notably as we talk about school reopenings. the american association of pediatrics actually published yesterday and your viewers can find their analysis in "the new york times," between the end of may and now recently in august, august 20th, what we saw was that the rates of not only cases but hospitalizations and deaths among children and adolescents was rising disproimportance nattily, much higher than for the general public. this is hospitalization and deaths, nicolle. that's important to say, to really emphasize here, bau dr. scott atlas and others that have the president's ear are claiming, without any truth or evidence, that children are immune, that they don't transmit the disease and they don't end up in the hospital. couldn't be further from the truth and it's critical as we think about a safe reopening to schools. >> you know, when we talk about the propaganda and the disinformation that's out there, we usually focus on the president being against masks for as long as he was, last week showcasing four nights of events with no social distancing, but we don't often delve into all of the misinformation and disinformation out there about kids. can you just say something else about how some of the places that have opened have seen immediate and rampant outbreaks? i mean, i think even really well informed people are still under the misperception that children don't get sick from coronavirus. >> i'd be happy to, nicolle. for all your viewers out there, the state that actually had the highest increase in cases among children, in the summer months, was actually arizona. as the community outbreak was worsening amongst adults, large outbreaks in arizona, across the state, in june and july. do you know where the children were most affected? in that state as well so children are not spared the worst effects of what is happening in the surrounding community. let me emphasize, a few governors, the governor of iowa, of florida, the governor of texas, these are governors who have mandated that brick and mortar schools must reopen. they must reopen for five days a week teaching in person. iowa, over the last seven days, has had the highest per capita rate increase in covid cases among children. florida, lafayette county, union county, seeing some of the highest rates per 100,000 individuals in the country. these are states that should be doing the opposite. they should be moving to virtual only, rapid testing, well ventilated classrooms. they have none of those things and they're mandating the reopening of schools. it is irresponsible. >> and it is playing with the lives of every single one of those teachers. we know adults are still very much at risk. thank you so much for spending some time with us. it is always great to see you. when we come back, we will remember lives well lived. unless... getting lost is the whole point. ♪ gimme two minutes. eligible for medicare. and i'll tell you some important things to know about medicare. first, it doesn't pay for everything. say this pizza... 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"the beat" begins after a short break. don't go anywhere. we made usaa insurance for veterans like liz and mike. when their growing family meant growing expenses, our agents helped make saving on insurance easy usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa a lot goes through your mind. how long will this last? am i prepared for this? are we prepared for this? with fidelity wealth management, your dedicated adviser can give you straightforward advice and tailored recommendations, with access to tax-smart investment strategies designed to help you keep more of what you've earned so you'll know you're doing what you can for your family and your future. that's the clarity you get with fidelity wealth management. for your family and your future. >> tech: when you've got ...safelite can come to you. >> tech: and you'll get a text when we're on our way. >> tech: just leave your keys on the dash and we'll replace your windshield with safe, no-contact service. >> tech: schedule at safelite.com. >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ ♪ if i could, baby i'd ♪ how can i, when you won't take it from me ♪ ♪ you can go your own way ♪ ♪ go your own way your wireless. your rules. only with xfinity mobile. welcome to "the beat." thanks for joining us as we track these stories now. joe biden raising a record $350 million in august while trump under fire for slow walking, a key message. and then the trump administration talking up a possible vaccine by november. but with pushback from dr. fauci himself. much to cover tonight. we begin with the measurable news in the 2020 race. signs that august matters. 1.6 million people also donating to the biden campaign. that smashes fundraising records with the whopping $365 million total in august. powered partly by the surge of in

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