Prosecuted bombings in birmingh birmingham. Last night the president left the white house heading to oklahoma where his Campaign Said there were hundreds of thousands of ticket requests and he would give an address to the arena and an overflow crowd. The events in oklahoma is unbelievable. The crowds are unbelievable. They havent seen anything like it. But this is what he found instead. The overflow area where his campaign built a stage was almost empty. Inside the arena, there were thousands of empty blue seats. The Tulsa Fire Department said fewer than 6,200 were inside the 19,000seat venue. The trump camp claims it was twice that. In his campaign speech, he spent more time talking about walking down a ramp than he did on George Floyds death. He repeatedly attacked joe biden drawing boos from the crowd but none of the chants from when trump rallied against Hillary Clinton. President trump said this about his strategy for fighting coronavirus. When you do testing to that extent, youre going to find more people and more cases so i said to my people, slow the testing down, please. With that comment that he made decisions about testing for his own reelection he seemed to prove the accusation the former National Security advisor john bolton makes in his book. I dont think hes fit for office. I dont think he has the confidence to carry out the job. There is no guiding principle i was able to discern other than what is good for Donald Trumps reelection. After last nights rally, the president walked off marine one at the white house with his tie undone. You can see it there. And tonight, my nbc colleagues report that he said to be furious about how it all went down starting with the reports ahead of the rally that six members of the advance team tested positive for the coronavirus. Quote, this was a major failure one outside advisor told nbc news. With that id like to welcome in my panel, political reporter jonathan swan, Washington Post columnist eugene robinson. He is the author of and an msnbc contributor john much m, the author of jon lewis his truth is marching onset to be published in october. Very timely, as always. Thank youall for being here tonight and jonathan swan, id like to start with you for the latest reporting out of the white house in what has to have been a turbulent day for many staffers who were involved in planning for this rally. I mean, the expectations were set so high based on what his Campaign Manager was saying publicly about tickets. Obviously, there has been some suggests perhaps they were punked by a bunch of teenagers on the internet, but between the actual substance of the speech, the optics, the number of people in the arena and now our reporting that the president is furious about this, where do things stand behind the curtain and is there any chance the president is going to fire his Campaign Manager . Well, i have no reporting that the president is going to do that, but i can confirm that he was not pleased with, as you can imagine. I interviewed the president on friday. I was with him in the oval office on friday. He was very excited about this rally. He put extreme importance on this rally as his comeback rally and they had set sky high expectations. That was the major problem. They had built this not as a rally but a festival with an indoor stage and outdoor stage the president was supposed to speak at. They constructed this outdoor stage with musical and tens of thousands of people. And of course, when you have an empty outdoor area that you have to shut down and then you have an indoor area with 6,000 arena with the capacity of 19,000, that by any measure is a fiasco. So i expect there will be recriminations. I dont know what they look like but as for where they go next, im told they are going to make some changes to the way they do these. I dont know what they look like but i expect youre probably going to see more Outdoor Events and more of an acknowledgement, i think from the conversations i had today, people on trumps team recognize they dont really talk about the trolling, the left wing trolling. I think a number of them really recognize that some of trumps supporters, hes got a lot of supporters in the elderly age group, which is vulnerable to the coronavirus that they simply were concerned and didnt show up and i have heard that acre nol leknowledge acknowledgem within trumps advisors. Gene robinson, that does give us a note of caution interpreting this from a political perspective. The way trump can draw crowds was certainly in 2016 what distinguished him from his republican rivals and then was obviously an intense focus of coverage. That the partly of course, because President Trump himself made it so. What is your take away if youre the Joe Biden Campaign having watched what unfolded as well as a broader context of this rally in tulsa. They had moved it off of juneteenth. What is your take away in terms of where the Biden Campaign stands based on what we saw last night . Well, if im a Biden Campaign, ive just witnessed what has to be considered an unmitigated disaster, this typed festival, this sort of trump stock that he had promised in tulsa. Totally failed to materialize. Here is what else ill thim thi if im the Biden Campaign. First of all, im going to guard against drawing too many conclusions. And then possible conclusions. These rallies, this crowd size and enthusiasm is oxygen for President Trump. Thats nourishment. Thats what sustains him and believes him and tells him that everyone loves him and that he is going to go on and win and to have had such disappointing event is really deflating and so i guess the question that hapgs in the air is whether the mojo he had in 2016 and he had since in his rallies is john, whether he still has that it factor that he had thats so that created these vents that are a highlight of the trump years and of the trump presidency. So you dont draw conclusions, you dont jump ahead of yourself but you do have to wonder. John, weve been thinking through we in the media of how the 2016 election played out as anyone who was involved or worked on that, but since then, i think theres been this on going conversation about whether what were seeing from President Trump and what americans said they wanted is an aberration in our history of some sort of, you know, step into a new version of america that is deeply pollizard and many view in a very dark way. What do you take away from what we saw on screen last night from this very different feeling rally from President Trump about trying to answer that broader historical question . Yeah, trump is not an aberration in the sense of the forces that he represents. I think we can make ourselves feel better if we tell ourselves that but history cant be a narcotic. Gene and i talked about this before. Forces in america. Nationali nationalism, racism, anti immigrant feeling, these forces ebb and flow and they for flowing pretty substantially over the last four years or so. What i thought when i saw the image there were two things. One was i think im right that oklahoma last voted for a democrat for Lyndon Johnson in 1964. So if you cant get folks there, its like when Richard Nixon the last days of watergate had to go to mississippi to find a crowd that would be there for him. Thats a bad sign. The second thing was the way these fevers tend to break for a time and lets be clear, defeating donald trump will not defeat racism in america, isolation in america, nationalism, but it will put things on a better course for hopefully the short and middle term. The way that joe mccarthy fell from power and i had my authority on this is Donald Trumps old lawyer roy also in the way of these things Joe Mccarthys lawyer, sometimes you just dont have to make this stuff up. It just happens. Indeed. He wrote a book in 1968 saying that mccarthy fell from power, not necessarily because of the great moment we all remember of have you no decency sir at long last but because the audience, interesting image, the audience got tired of the pitch. They got tired of the act. And i watching last night i thought maybe folks, theyve sent him to washington. They wanted to restore a largely white america. It hasnt happened. It cant happen. Its a reaction. Its not action. Maybe people are beginning to see that he cant deliver and therefore you judge him on ordinary president ial grounds, its an abysmal failure. To that point, gene robinson, im curious your sort of historical take, too, on whether we are in fact shifting away from such a nationalist often times racist type. Whether those under currents are seizing to dominate because the reality is not only is he battling the coronavirus, which kept people away from things like this because theyre afraid of it but this National Reckoning on race has whites looking around and suddenly saying in greater numbers than before, you know, these problems are real. We are not treating black people in our society the right way and this is not something that is confined to liberal corners. It is kind of across the board. Were seeing it in so many ways from businesses in emails and on instagram all of these places. Do you think that is something that sustains in the way that john is talking about here . Well, look, what were seeing in the streets and what were seeing in the polls clearly suggests that President Trump is badly misreading the appealing and conclusions of the American Public about race and out of step. I am not one to think that racism is gone and, you know, current nationalism is gone and White Supremacy is gone and these have disappeared from this country but this is a moment where unlike anything ive seen in terms of diversity and scope of the protests and just the re reaction around these issues of race following, george floyd and President Trump seems to be trying and people compare to 1968 and President Trump calls for law and order and talks about the silent majority, he seems to be trying to channel r Richard Nixon and misreads candidates. One President Trump sounds like is george wallace. So he was a player in that election. President trump is taking that hard right absolute position and sort of leaving the whole rest of the field open to joe biden. I dont think where trump is where the country is. Jonathan swan, quickly, john mecham said how the president reacts to these things, becomes very angry and in fact, part of the motivation for some of his staffers to try to put him in this situation was to try and lift his mood. This seems to have done the opposite. Is there anything on the horizon were watching for because sometimes when this president finds himself in a mood like this, very unexpected things tend to happen. I wouldnt want to speculate. I also think wed be making a terribly foolish mistake to over read that rally and to over interpret that rally at the turnout and they will do a series of these rallies. I suspect because they actually do, they have been doing this for awhile now, five years, the art of the rally and id be very surprised that the next rally they do doesnt fall to the raft tor ers. I dont think that will mean much. There is a leap to the donald trump obituary and declare the end of the trump era and i still have ptsd from all of the obits written in 2016 and i remember some written in 2018 that Michael Cohen was going to be the thing that brought him down. The campaign really hasnt started earnest and he hasnt started to nuke joe biden. Joe biden has been able to stay effectively in hiding and well see. Right now, all the indicators are terrible for trump. Hes suffering with independence. Hes got a historic gender gap with joe biden. Hes not a good position for any swing states. Boy, can a lot change between now and november . Certainly five months ago if you said we would be in the middle of a Global Pandemic and reckoning about race, this campaign was completely different and we have not that much less time between now and november, so your point is very well taken. We also want to get, though, to the fast moving case of attorney general barr versus the Southern District u. S. Attorney. He said Jeffrey Berman resigned. Then berman said he wasnt going anywhere. Then bill barr said saturday that the president had decided to fire berman then the president said this. Thats all up to the attorney general. Thats his department, not my department. But we have a very capable attorney general so thats really up to him. Im not involved. Then berman said okay, i am leaving with his deputy taking over. All of this likely to cause a new wave of pressure for democrats to have barr and berman testify as leaders call for an investigation. Joining me is nbc news justice correspondent Pete Williams. Pete, what can you to help us cut in the back and forth and the blame shifting . What is the back story according to your reporting of why this happened . My understanding is jay clayton the chairman is the person they want to put in this job that he simply said im interested in that gig that he had played golf at bedminster with the president and mentioned it to barr he was interested in the job and said okay, they both knew him and they knew him better than berman. The president known him for a number of years. They thought okay. My understanding is secondly, they offered jeff berman two other positions, one is to take over the job of sec chairman or become the head of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department and he said he wasnt interested in either one. You thought he would quietly go. Is there anything there is obviously speculation about investigations going on. He over saw the investigation into Michael Cohen, Rudy Giuliani and it doesnt seem as though this was driven by ranker of berman. It was the ability of everything we understand. More may come out on this. A couple points. On the Michael Cohen case, berman had nothing to do with that. He was recused. It is true under his oversight, the u. S. Attorneys office is investigating the Business Practices of Rudy Giuliani. The u. S. Attorneys office indicted two of his former associates for Campaign Financial violations but several people in the Office Tell Us that they dont know of any big case that they feared would be derailed by this. And the other thing is, one thing that changed from friday night, originally the attorney general said hed have the u. S. Attorney in new jersey take over new jersey and the Southern District by saturday that changed to be bermans deputy who he likes very much. Berman has Great Respect for. I think that should reassure people on one level and secondly, barr said an interesting thing in his letter on saturday. He said im going to have the Inspector General of the Justice Department keep an eye monitor is the word he used to make sure everything in the Southern District stays on the up and up. So bill barr has become such a figure, a polarizing figure. The left is increasing recalling for him to be impeached. There was a perception when he was first confirmed, he was george h. W. Bushs former lawyer and he was an establishment guy who would be one of these adults in the room so republicans would be fine with him, senate republicans. Now this is another thing on a long list of places where he is clearly made himself very close partner with President Trump. I mean, what is the rational there . He believes in a strong presidency. He believes when the president tells him to do something, he should do it unless there is good reason not to. In this case i think they thought it is a political appointment in the Southern District and berman had two and a half years and lets give somebody else a chance. I think as things are playing out now, this may not work because a very interesting thing happened on saturday. Lindsey graham the chairman of the committee who would have the confirmation hearings for jay clayton said nobody contacted me about this and i am going to honor what loyal fans of kasie dc know as the blue slip process. This is a Senate Procedure whenever there is a big federal appointment like the u. S. Marshall or u. S. Attorney or a federal judge, the committee wont proceed unless the senators turn in the blue ships. Obviously, they wont do that. They have beenips. Obviously, they wont do that. They have beenlips. Obviously, they wont do that. They have been critical of the move. They said clayton should take himself out of the running. Unless Lindsey Graham changes his mind, there wont be a confirmation hearing. The new senator Lindsey Graham unincumbered by a republican primary challenge in the race for his senate seat protecting longstanding, if obscure norms that protect the way things are done in the senate. Thank you very much