Transcripts For MSNBCW Morning Joe 20200622 : comparemela.co

over 1 million people requested tickets. there's just a hunger for the rallies. >> the event in oklahoma is unbelievable. the crowds are unbelievable. they haven't seen anything like it. we'll go there now, give a hopefully good speech. see a lot of great people, great friends and that's it, okay. >> i have a great feeling we're going to see 100,000 maga supporters down there wanting to see the country reopen. >> we're so excited to have you. i don't know if people caught that, but over 1 million people have requested tickets to come to this event. >> what are you going to do with these people that could hundreds of thousands of people trying to come and you have 19,000 seats in doors. what are you going to do with the other people? >> there is an overflow crowd. people are evidenced they want to move on. >> i think it's time to have a conversation about freedom and responsibility. >> all right. we'll talk about the political implications of the president's sparse crowd in tulsa. it wasn't going to be just a rally. it was supposed to be the relaunch of the president's ailing re-election campaign. also, what he said during the rally. namely, that we need to slow down coronavirus testing. the white house says he was just joking. a joke? at a time of 120,000 dead americans and cases rising in growing hot spots around the country. the weekend also saw a standoff between the attorney and the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york who has been overseeing investigations into some of trump's associates. we'll talk to two veterans of the southern district of that huge story unfolding. you'll be able to buy a new copy of john bolton's book tomorrow after a judge rules the administration's attempt to block the book release is denied. somebody released bolton's book on twitter, also. there you go. good morning, it's monday june 22nd. we have white house reporter jonathan lemire, political reporter for "the washington post," robert costa, the moderator of washington week on pbs. senior political correspondent david drucker. also a contributing writer at "vanity fair." what the trump campaign hyped would be a raucous return to the campaign trail for president trump turned out to be a major disappointment for the campaign. while they boasted they would fill the bank of oklahoma center that seats more than 19,000 people. the tulsa fire marshal tells nbc news that 6,200 supporters filled the general section of the arena. tim murtaugh blames small numbers on the radical protesters and the news media who said frightened away attendees. according to the times, some users of social media said on saturday night that teenagers helped keep attendance down by seeking tickets they did not intend to use. tiktok and twitter users posted they registered for hundreds of thousands of tickets for trump's rally as a prank. but trump campaign manager brad pascal pushed back against the report issuing a statement saying the campaign weeded out tens of thousands of bogus cell phone numbers ahead of the rally. but, quote, these foe any ticket requests never factor into our thinking for possible crowd size. >> i think they said these are general admission events, if they want to get into the event, they can get in to the event. >> they have to hit the disclaimer, i don't know if that made a difference. meanwhile in an interview on fox news yesterday, trump campaign adviser mercedes sclap said the turnout was lower because supporters were worried about the protests outside turning violent. >> the key is to understand, i had this with my own personal family who lives not far from tulsa. they were concerned about the protesters coming in. there were protesters who blocked the mags, so we saw that have an impact in terms of people coming to the rally. >> the fact is the president talks about the attendance at his events as we know he made a big issue of the attendance at his inauguration. he talks about how he can fill an arena and joe biden can't. he didn't fill an arena last night. you guys are so -- if i may finish, you guys are so far-off you planned an outdoor rally, there wasn't an overflow crowd. watching the coverage, talking to mark meredith on the crowd today, protesters did not stop people from coming to the rally. the fact is they didn't show up. >> they did. there were people and families that didn't want to bring their children because of concerns for the protesters. >> president trump was reportedly left fuming over the lackluster attendance. upon his arrival on "air force one" trump was quote furious and laid into his aids for the sparse crowds. for people familiar with the event said the president was stunned and yelled at aides backstage while looking at the endless rows of empty seats. two white house and campaign officials tell the associated press that trump was upset that he was led to believe that he would see huge crowds in deep red oklahoma. although there was no sign of an imminent staff shakeup, members of trump's inner circle questioned how campaign manager brad pascal and other aids couldover promise and under deliver. they called the rally a disaster and an unforced error that heightened tensions among some of the president's advisers and campaign aides. >> jonathan lemire, as fantastic mr. fox would say this is amateur night in dixie. you have a campaign pushing the 1 million number repeatedly, we're told there's going to be rallies, outside festivals, this is like nothing we've ever seen. those were false expectations set up by the trump campaign itself. question number one, how did they -- how did they -- the campaign so badly miscalculate and secondly, what does donald trump do next? does he risk having another rally where he has a weak performance? it would seem to me the campaign has a lot to figure out this morning. >> so saturday night in tulsa was meant to be a defiant show of force from president trump. they were expecting to draw huge crowds in a deep red state with a very friendly -- trump-friendly governor in oklahoma. they wanted to send a signal that americans could go back to normal. it was another sign of reopening the country amid a pandemic. they ignored the health warnings of the president's own coronavirus task force as well as state officials because they thought they could draw a big crowd that would not only be a sign that the president still had this drawing power. they thought it could reassure nervous republicans looking at the polls trying to hold onto the senate. and they wanted to reenergize the president himself who's been so off the mark with the pandemic and the clearing of lafayette square and so on. but they got a lot of questions and faced a lot of empty seats. even before the president touched down, remember, six members of his staff had come down with the coronavirus in tulsa while preparing for the rally. showing the virus' reach could go into the ranks of the president's staff yet again. they hoped to have an overflow room. they hoped to draw over 100,000 people. yes, there's discussion about social media pranks and tiktok teens. and campaign advisers i talked to say maybe that inflated some of the numbers but they still thought they were going to get a big crowd but at the end of the day, people didn't show up. leaving the president furious, campaign aides pointing fingers at each other. and the question is what comes in next. we know the campaign had prepared this week to finalize the date of the president's next rally, maybe two. he is going to be traveling this week to arizona and wisconsin but those are not for campaign events. tomorrow he's going to visit his border wall. but right now it shows his real vulnerables. beyond drawing empty seats it's the message from the rally stage. he's still scrambling and fumbling to deliver strong, concise, effective attacks on joe biden. there was no attempt, no message of national unity. he down played the pandemic and did not mention the name of george floyd even once. >> it was a rambling, strange speech even by donald trump's standards. and it seemed like he was testing out material, most of it seeming to fall flat. bob costa you and phillip rucker wrote, this event symbolized the beleaguered state of the trump presidency after june 1st, the problems of the past several months this was supposed to be donald trump breaking out, instead it looked more like a campaign broken down. what happened? >> for weeks now inside the trump campaign, inside the republican national committee there has been a push, as jonathan said to well to return to rallies, a pressure on the president to get out there, to tell his own story and at its core, the return to rally politically speaking is an effort to make this election not a referendum on president trump's record but a choice between him and vice president biden. and many of the president's top political advisers were hoping on saturday night the president would test out line after line against vice president biden, to tear into his record, his persona. he did do that but it came 45 minutes to an hour into his presentation on tulsa. after an extended riff about his remarks at west point to the cadets and other grievances with the media. this leaves logistically and politically, the trump orbit reeling at this moment on monday morning not sure what to do next. older americans are very concerned, i'm told by top trump advisers, about coming to the rallies, even if they want to, because of health concerns. not fear of protesters but fear of hurting themselves and contracting the coronavirus. so maybe airplane tarmacs have to be the future of the events. and they don't come out of tulsa with a stinging attack on biden, the focus instead on the crowds. >> a couple of things. first of all apparently trump was reportedly angry that the six advance team members who contracted coronavirus, he was angry that was released. obviously he talked on stage about not wanting to do testing. so we wouldn't get more information. which is downright crazy and dangerous and, you know, obviously the trump campaign would have never done this, but they missed an opportunity to social distance. they had those empty seats. they could have spread people out so that more coronavirus wouldn't be spread inside that arena, instead everyone was crushed on the lower bank of seats so that it could look full, which was increasing the risk, of course, that more people in tulsa would contract the virus. >> you heard what the president said at the rally. you heard him bragging about tamping down testing. >> wow. >> and his campaign aides rushing out saying it was a joke. actually, it makes things worse for 120,000 americans, likely 150,000 americans dead by the time of the campaign itself. >> yeah. >> i think historians are going to look back, political scientists are going to look back and ask why this president, at the end of february, decided that he was going to run against a pandemic. because he's not running against joe biden. he's not running against protesters. he's running against a pandemic and has said time and again it was one person coming in from china, it was 15 people, it was going to go away, it's not coming back in the fall. it is coming back in the fall. it's coming back right now. we had so many people. a lot of my friends that got out crowing about ron desantis, where does he go for his apology? nowhere. he goes the same place a baseball coach goes in the second inning of a game for an apology. this is, as every doctor who knows -- or scientist or epidemiologist knows what they're talking about, this is a nine-inning game. we're not even halfway through the game based on the smartest minds in america, who donald trump has ignored to disastrous results, especially for our senior citizens. florida's numbers are higher than they've been. ron desantis is admitting himself it's not the testing making the numbers go up. it's the fact that more people are getting coronavirus. so donald trump has set himself up as a man who's decided he's going to run against a pandemic and tell people that the pandemic is going to magically go away. >> he's asking those 6,200 people to join him in his fantastical thinking with 120,000 people dead and with this virus spreading that it's going to fade away. these are people that he asked to click on the disclaimer that, just in case they got it at this rally, the trump campaign wouldn't be held liable. this is asking for a lot, i think, in his remarks at the rally, president trump told the mostly unmasked crowd of supporters that he wanted to slow down coronavirus testing. take a listen. >> testing is a double edged sword. we've tested now 25 million people. it's probably 20 million people more than anybody else, germany's done a lot, south korea has done a lot. they called me, the job you're doing -- here's the bad part, when you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people, more cases. i said to my people, slow the testing down, please. >> the people are still dying. it has nothing to do with the testing. we've said it time and again. the united states is coming close to having one in three people in america -- one in three people across the world who have died from the coronavirus are americans. that has nothing to do with testing any more than not taking pregnancy tests will not make you pregnant. >> all right. those remarks come as coronavirus continues to spread across the u.s. according to data tracked by "the washington post," 29 states and u.s. territories reported a higher seven day average yesterday than they did on june 14th. the world health organization reported the largest single day increase in coronavirus cases. the un health agency said brazil led the way with nearly 55,000 cases tallied and the u.s. was next with more than 36,000. a senior white house official tells nbc news that trump was clearly speaking in jest to call out the media's absurd coverage of the ongoing pandemic. here's what some other administration officials had to say. >> you know, it was tongue in cheek. come on now. that was tongue in cheek. please. >> i don't know that it was tongue in cheek. >> it was. >> he has said h similar things for months. i think testing is a serious issue -- >> i work on it every day. >> you're the one that said -- >> it was a light moment. >> the president was being tongue and cheek. >> we're 60 seconds into the tongue and cheek thing. asked and answered. >> are you aware of the president telling officials to slow down testing as it relates to coronavirus? >> no, i heard those comments as well. i think what you heard from the president is frustration. frustration in that we've tested over 25 million americans, tested more than any country in the world. instead the press and others all they want to focus on is an increasing case count and we know that's going to occur when you test individuals more and more. >> that guy is acting head of dhs and he's saying that? it's asinine. it's anti-science. it's anti-medicine. again, this is an administration, this is a president that is running against a pandemic. and as we tried to say from the beginning calmly and in an encouraging way, a pandemic is going to win. they don't care about your politics, if you're on the left or right, holding trump rallies or holding black lives matter rallies. you put on masks, you social distance, you protect yourselves. i saw pictures of people going through the gate at the trump rally and they weren't wearing masks. i was horrified for them. >> who are they modeling after? >> i was fearful for their mothers and fathers, grandparents, childrens and relatives and friends who have underlying health conditions. this stuff is sticky. this stuff is dangerous. this stuff is deadly. you look at the six people and this made donald trump very angry, the six people on his own advance team they got the coronavirus just going and advancing then event. look at the six phillies in training camp that were just practicing. and you see this remains an extraordinarily dangerous pandemic. we have social distanced, we've been responsible and because of it we bent the curve but this is not the time for the trump administration or for lackies that go on news shows to talk about how he was joking and to suggest cases are only going up because of more testing. again, he's running against a pandemic, the pandemic is always going to win. david drucker, even before this rally you had said this was going to be more than a rally. it was going to be the relaunching -- the dramatic relaunching of donald trump's re-election campaign. where is trump, where is parscale, where is kushner? where are the people that are running the campaign this morning? what do they -- how do they think things went so badly, and what is their next step forward? >> it's so interesting because the tulsa rally -- >> we're having trouble with david's sound. >> let's fix that up. >> alex, can you fix david's sound and we'll get back to him. bob costa, i ask you the same thing. what's next for this campaign and how do they continue -- >> with these key players -- >> -- how do they continue to run a campaign in the middle of a pandemic where numbers keep going up in certain hot spots, states like florida, arizona, states he has to win and he seems to keep denying the reality of it all. >> there's a point of tension, joe, within the trump political circle about what is next. as i said, they're talking about do you continue to go to arenas because of the health concerns and the challenges you have in filling an arena. the other debate around president trump is this, where do actually go? because in going to tulsa, oklahoma, you're going to a red state, the president is eyeing a trip to alabama, a trip to phoenix. phoenix, of course, is a real swing state, important senate race in that state for both parties. but why go to tulsa some trump advisers are asking, why go back to alabama. yes, you could get a bigger crowd in a traditionally red state, what's the political advantage. you look at vice president pence's own travel. he's rarely going to red states. he's going to battleground states like iowa, michigan, and wisconsin. >> david drucker i'll ask you that question again, what's next? it's just a disaster of a political rally. he was actually out fund raised by joe biden last month and he's down double digits in the last few national polls that have come out, especially the fox poll. >> right. so it was such an interesting contrast. a year ago in orlando, he packs a rally, had an all-day festival outside the arena that was packed with supporters, where they did address the overflow of crowd. and here in tulsa you have a completely different scene. and the irony of all of this is when the pandemic forced political activity underground and made it virtual if you will, the trump campaign rolled well with a lot of virtual online programming and virtual door knocking, and they've been pretty pleased with the success of that, in the battleground states the polling is closer than the national polls. but for the president these live rallies with the physical crowds are so important to him, this became a very big deal, it's the only thing they're talking about where the campaign could easily shift to smaller events, different sort of events where the president could still get outside of the white house without putting people in jeopardy and having to deal with fears by people who were going to be afraid to show up to some of these events, even though they're still going to show up to vote and if the president is not careful, the entire campaign becomes about him not wanting to be able to match his own boasts versus being able to shift some attention to jobe. i think the campaign has to make a decision with the president in charge, obviously, because he always micro manages this stuff. exactly how important these crowds are, and if they're willing not to pivot a message because there's only one speed for him and no such thing as a pivot, but for the optics and their own psyche of a campaign, a campaign psyche is so important in a competitive race. if they're able to do that and not get caught up in this circular firing squad they can be just fine as far as it goes given how competitive the race is in florida, wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, compared to nationally where the president is obviously very deep under water. >> so jonathan lemire, as we end this segment, tell me what did the white house put the grand failure down to this weekend? is it, at the end of the day was it just the pandemic that there weren't enough trump supporters willing to go waive all liability, go against the advice of all medical professionals and show up at a political rally inside. >> publicly as you covered, they're pointing the became at media and protesters and concern there might be unrest around the controversy of the juneteenth holiday. but privately they are concerned, yes. first of all, there's some real second guessing about the choice of tulsa. oklahoma is a deep red state but not that many people live in oklahoma. there were people wondering, there's a lot more republicans in florida, for instance, than in oklahoma, maybe that would have made more sense for a rally and it's a battleground, while oklahoma isn't. there is a concern now, as bob said to pivot to perhaps smaller events to try to figure out another way of both getting the president's message out safely but also satisfying his need to see crowds. he draws so much energy from these events. advisers have been telling us that part of the reason he exploded in such anger is he'd been pining for these events he wanted to get in front after a huge crowd and it didn't work out this week. this week he's going to have an immigration event in arizona going to the border wall, speaking to young republicans. later in the week he's off to wisconsin for a manufacturing plant. those are the states they feel he needs to be in. but they're going to have to take a different shape for now. it's clear, even the most die hard trump supporters only so many are willing to turn out in a crowded indoor arena during the middle of a deadly pandemic. >> mika, you know we went out yesterday -- >> yeah. first time ever. >> first time since maybe early march we went out, we had to pick up something at a mall in florida, and we put on our masks and didn't know what we were going to see. and we were shocked. >> we carried hand sanitizer thought we'd look out of place. fit right in. >> everybody, i mean everybody in the mall had on masks. everybody in the mall socially distanced. >> it was -- >> this was in the state of florida. >> right. >> a state that donald trump is supposed to, you know, be doing pretty well in. and we just looked around and said, wait a second, if everybody in florida were walking around in -- you know, a lot of trump supporters in there, if everybody in the mall is wearing masks, everybody is social socially distancing. >> they're nervous about something. >> obviously there are people that were in oklahoma saying we're going to listen to what doctors say, instead of what a political campaign is saying about our health and safety. that had to play a huge role along with the fact that donald trump has had a few terrible months politically. >> another glaring example of the difference between trump and the truth, the scientific truth here. still ahead on "morning joe," the trump administration tries to take on the southern district of new york by firing the top prosecutor who's been investigating some of the president's allies. plus, president trump is facing a new threat ahead of the november election. joe biden's growing support among evangelicals. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. this is the tempur-pedic breeze°. and its mission is to make sleep...feel...cool. so, no more night sweats. no more nocturnal baking, or polar ice cap air-conditioner mode. because the tempur-pedic breeze° delivers superior cooling from cover to core. helping you sleep cool, all night long. during the tempur-pedic summer of sleep, save $500 on all tempur-breeze mattresses... and experience your coolest sleep this summer, on our best breeze savings of the year. and experience your coolest sleep this summer, but a resilient business you cacan be ready for it.re. a digital foundation from vmware helps you redefine what's possible... now. from the hospital shifting to remote patient care in just 48 hours... to the university moving hundreds of apps quickly to the cloud... or the city government going digital to keep critical services running. you are creating the future-- on the fly. and we are helping you do it. vmware. realize what's possible. - i'm szasz. [norm] and we live in columbia, missouri. we do consulting, but we also write. [szasz] we take care of ourselves constantly; it's important. we walk three to five times a week, a couple miles at a time. - we've both been taking prevagen for a little more than 11 years now. after about 30 days of taking it, we noticed clarity that we didn't notice before. - it's still helping me. i still notice a difference. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. hellbut you already itknew that.. and i've got some tips to help you get through these challenging times. first, practice physical distancing. i'm sorry, i did not see you there. i've been doing it my whole life. or there. plus, there are lots of things you can do at home. like, stay active with some sick dance moves. be daring. and whip up a new dish. i love the combination of gummy bears and meat. you can do video calls for all of your important meetings. what? sorry. or just have some fun. ok, not that much fun. now, this does not come naturally to me. but, try to be kind to each other. this is a tough time for everyone. so that's it. stay home. stay healthy. and remember, we're all in this together. what? but totally separate. you know what i mean. yaaaaay! some people say that's ridiculous. age is just an illusion. how you show up for the world, that's what's real. what's your idea? i put it out there with a godaddy website. why did you fire jeff berman? >> that's up to the attorney general. attorney general barr is working on that. that's his department, not my department. we have a capable attorney general. that's really up to him. i'm not involved. >> huh. >> president trump seemed to not know that he was involved with the dismissal of the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york after attorney general william barr failed to obtain his resignation. geoffry berman, who until saturday oversaw the office that prosecuted the president's former personal attorney, michael cohen, and continues to investigate his current attorney, rudy giuliani, did not go quietly. in a friday evening press release, attorney general barr announced the nomination of jay clayton to become the u.s. attorney for new york's southern district and said berman would be stepping down. berman quickly responded with a statement of his own. saying, i learned in a press release from the attorney general tonight that i was stepping down as the united states attorney. i have not resigned and i have no intention of resigning my position to which i was appointed by the judges of the united states district court for the southern district of new york. so the recourse was to have the president fire berman. >> but he said he didn't know about it. >> in a terse letter he did, telling berman he had chosen quote a public spectacle over public service. berman agreed to resign after announcing that berman's hand picked deputy would replace him for the time being. as for what's next, senate judiciary chairman lindsey graham says he plans to honor the committee's blue chip rule, a practice that permits home state senators to disapprove of a nominee and prevent the confirmation going forward here. big moment. >> hold on. bob costa, that's fascinating. you have lindsey graham said we're going to stick with the tradition and we're going to let chuck schumer and gillibrand make a determination here. >> lindsey graham, even though he's an ally to president trump, the thing to watch is the house democrats. what are they going to do? it is election season. they're busy campaigning. but what are they going to do in terms of attorney general barr. there are growing calls from progressive lawmakers to impeach the attorney general and while people like jerry nadler, the chairman of the house judiciary committee believe it would be a tough road ahead to impeach the attorney general but based upon my conversations over the weekend that call is going to continue as the sdny issue does not go away. >> joining us are two people who know the sdny well, former attorney in the southern district of new york, mimi rocah. she's a candidate for district attorney of west chester county. and former assistant united states attorney for the southern district of new york, daniel goldman, served as majority counsel in the impeachment inquiry against donald trump and staff council to the house managers in the impeachment trial. daniel goldman, start with you. first of all, what's your read on what happened compared to exactly how the president and the attorney general are -- i think it's interesting that berman was, i believe, offered a promotion before he was fired. >> well, barr was clearly trying to get rid of berman for some reason that we don't have clarity on. but what happened is that because berman was appointed by the judges, he took the position under law that he could not be removed by barr and there's an opinion from the department of justice that says the only individual who can remove someone appointed by a judge is the president himself. so that's what barr then wrote to berman on saturday and then shortly after the president clearly trying to deflect from the responsibility for actually making the firing said that it was barr who was doing it, not the president. now we don't know the reason why, mika. there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that this is not done in good faith, that this is done in bad faith. i'm not aware of any circumstance where someone like berman, who has been -- who has been nominated by the current president is subsequently fired by that president five months or in the election year. so we need to get to the bottom of it. whether it's impeachment hearings, a formal impeachment, it doesn't matter. there needs to be an investigation where we start to unpack what happened and why. it doesn't have to get into the confidential information that may be involved in ongoing investigations, but we need to understand what occurred between barr and berman and why berman was so uncharacteristically and atypically removed so close to an election. >> jonathan lemire is with us, mimi, and has a question for you. jonathan. >> let's talk about sdny and what they've done so far. they led the investigation and michael cohen, the president's personal attorney. we know they've been looking into rudy giuliani, the president's next personal attorney. do we have any sense as to what's behind this? what else, beyond those what else the sdny is looking at? new york has jurisdiction over the president's business, what's going on, do you think? >> as dan said earlier, we don't know. quite honestly, it sure smells like there was something that barr either knew was coming or was afraid was coming, right, so the timing of this, as dan mentioned, is just so strange that whether there was an indictment coming down the pike or another investigation, whether it's an interesting investigation or a new one coming down the pike, it seems to me what barr was trying to do was remove the possibility of anything happening between now and the election. we don't know that for sure. we're taking basically circumstantial evidence here of barr doing this in this way of just bizarre timing, in the middle of a pandemic, when it makes sense to have stability in that office and berman obviously has not done anything to make them question husbais qualifications. because berman was essentially being offered or talked about other positions. so this was not only removing him but his people from the control of the southern district of new york. and the only reason that berman relented was -- to the firing, we should call it a firing because that's what it is. but the only reason he relented is because barr at least backed down and allowed for the deputy u.s. attorney audrey strauss to stay in as acting u.s. attorney, which is the way this should proceed. >> david drucker, here's one more example of the president of the united states making a decision that seems -- it just seems calculated to damage his political standing. certainly none of his 44 predecessors would ever do this in the middle of an election year, fire the most important sitting u.s. attorney who just so happens to be investigating your own personal attorney. it's quite a bizarre ending to a bizarre first term for this presidency. >> bizarre has been reality for much of the last three years, or at least it's been different. when it comes to scandals like this, potential controversies, the president has always felt secure he can operate this way and enough voters will be okay with it. he won election sort of as a political figure who was going to function like this, and the -- it's been built into the price of admission. even, you know, at his strongest point before the pandemic he was coming off of impeachment and in some ways politically never looked better p so i think this sort of thing doesn't phase him. if you're watching this, this could be as bad as it looks, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but if it bothers you, you probably made a decision about the president, and for his base this is the kind of thing that's going to gin them up and make them feel as committed as they've ever felt. and what about the voters on the margins, disinfected republicans that may like his policies but not the way he conducts himself. because we have a pandemic and an economy in recession because of a pandemic that has not dissipated and we're dealing with so much else in the country in the wake of george floyd's death, he is going to be judged on that, joe, and i think things like this as a political matter, as important as they may be, are going to these side shows and what voters are going to say at the end of the day is this the guy i want in charge for another four years given what the country is going through, or not. i just think that even though these things matter for the country long term and it could set precedents, that's where the president is going to be judged. >> david drucker, thank you. and great insight from mimi rocah and daniel goldman, thank you both as well. coming up, new figures out of florida show a rising number of coronavirus infections in younger people. and among those without symptoms. our chief medical correspondent digs into that next on "morning joe." suction and spray mopping. to lock away debris and absorb wet messes. all in one disposable pad. for a complete clean, vacuum, spray mop, and toss, in one click. the shark vacmop, a complete clean all in one pad. 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what is the data telling you and is the hospital -- are the hospital systems prepared? >> my sources in florida, palm beach county in particular, show that three hospitals have zero icu beds available today. that means that as the hospitals fill back up with increasing hospitalizations, ventilator needs, icu bed needs, we could find ourselves without opportunity to have patients with icu bed availability. now since april governor desantis did point out that we have more icu beds available right now in florida than we did in april. that's not very comforting given that we're in june and we may see exponential growth soon and a handful of icu hospitals -- with icu lack of availability is happening here in palm beach already, mika. >> dr. dave, thank you. comedian d.l. hughly announced he tested positive for covid-19 after collapsing on stage during a performance at a nashville comedy club on friday night. it's posing a lot of questions. a video posted saturday he explained he learned about his diagnosis while being treated for exhaustion and dehydration. this was after he collapsed and went to a local hospital. >> they ran a battery of tests and i also tested positive for covid-19, which blew me away. i was what they call asymptomatic. i didn't have any symptoms, you know, the classic symptoms. >> hughley plans to quarantine in his nashville hotel room for 14 days, the remaining two nights of his engagement were cancelled. the comedy club has closed for comprehensive cleaning according to its website. they have reopened to half capacity in late may after it was forced to close during the coronavirus pandemic. dr. dave, you know, these places are in a tough spot. obviously you want businesses to be able to reopen, but here you had a pretty packed -- i watched the whole video and i was studying it. people were in there pretty tight, they were not wearing masks and he's on a small stage, intimately talking to -- i just wonder if sometimes businesses are unfortunately creating problems for other businesses that want to open up but are holding right now because it's not safe. is it safe to be doing comedy clubs and concerts where people are singing and having tight rooms of people? >> no. it's not safe at all. we know how transmissable this virus is. we know it's more transmisable inside than outside because inside there's less air flow. and we know that the numbers hold that out. so as the community spread increases across many states in this country we should be particularly concerned about indoor proximity to others and especially indoor, without a face mask, without any opportunity for social distancing. it's a frightening scenario that we're in, mika. we've been talking about this by july 4th showing that we have gone from memorial day to july 4th with this rapidly increasing spread of the virus. and we are on track to do that. and every single individual is advised to take this opportunity, learn from what they are hearing from friends or family, the news or the government, and ramp up increase their personal protection and their adherence to social distancing guidelines and face masks, where it's just critically important now more than ever. >> dr. david campbell, thank you very much. still ahead, president trump holds his first rally since early march. his campaign touted 1 million ticket requests, but that's not what we saw on saturday. even the drudge report described it as a magaless mega. jen palmieri joins the conversation to weigh in on that. "morning joe" is back in a moment. here's the bad part. when you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people. you i you're going to find more cases. so i said to my people, slow the testing down, please. >> it was tongue in cheek. you know. come on, that was tongue in cheek. >> i don't know it was tongue and cheek. >> he said that national security advisor john bolton likes dropping bombs on people and killing them. now he will have bombs dropped on him. >> if you listen to the president in a variety of different remarks, some of his comments are taking from a humor standpoint, a joking standpoint. >> according to the white house, the president was just joking when he suggested slowing down coronavirus testing. and when he glorified violence against a political enemy, where have we heard that excuse before? >> russia, if you're listening, i hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. >> when i'm being sarcastic -- >> were you being sarcastic? >> of course. >> when you see these thugs thrown into the back of a pad dy wa wagon, i said please do not be too nice. >> i believe he was making a joke. >> they were like death and un-american. un-american. somebody said treasonous yeah, i guess why not. >> the president was clearly joking with his comments. >> this just came out, wikileaks, i love wikileaks. >> clearly the president was making a joke during the 2016 campaign. >> the comedy stylings of donald j. trump. welcome back to "morning joe" it's monday, june 22nd. when is he serious? >> the jokes -- >> is he ever serious? >> he wasn't joking about russia, the russians didn't think he was joking. because after he said that in a press conference, what did they do? that night is when the russian government began trying to get ahold of hillary clinton and the dnc's emails. >> i think what we're deducing here -- >> and china. >> -- he's never joking. >> and china. marco rubio liked to say donald trump was joking about having china interfere in democracy, and after he said that, donald trump repeated it again. and then, in john bolton's book, he confirmed again what donald trump already admitted. that he did ask china to interfere in the 2020 election. now if you think that's funny, i guess you and i just have a different sense of humor, but when the president is talking about cops beating up people, talking about treason and all these other things and talking about not moving forward aggressively on tests, when all the doctors and scientists say the only way we can reopen this country of 320 million people effectively is to scale up in a very expansive way on testing and the president says, no, i was telling them to slow down, that was actually the suspicion of a lot of people, including us on this show. it's a strange joke to make -- >> 120,000 deaths. >> -- when twice as many people have died of this coronavirus that he said was only one person coming in from china or was 15 people coming in and it was going to be away, when twice as many people have already died of this so-called hoax than died in vietnam, than died in combat deaths in world war i for americans. i don't -- i don't actually think you joke about 120,000 people and senior citizens dying and senior citizens fighting for their life and senior citizens now afraid in oklahoma that they're going to get it. senior citizens afraid in florida that they may get it because the president keeps going, we're not talking about not wearing masks, this is about not taking this seriously. about trying to run a campaign against a pandemic that has killed 120,000 americans, and is disproportionately killed senior citizens. not funny. >> yeah. >> not funny at all. >> on testing joe we just showed the dl hughley video. if we had massive testing, people could open because they could use the testing. >> that bar in nashville, what are they doing cramming people into a small space? >> desperately ftrying to stay alive. >> you can come in, do it, but we have social distancing and you have to wear a mask. >> very hard. >> it's just not hard to wear a mask when you have scott gottlieb and you have dr. fauci and you have every doctor, ever medical expert saying, hey, you want the economy to get going again, play it safe, play it smart, wear a mask. i didn't see a single person in that club wearing a mask. what's the impact of that going to be now? by the way, you brought up a great point, if something bad happens with people that went to that comedy club, it doesn't just impact that comedy club, it impacts small businesses all around nashville. it impacts other comedy clubs across the country. like i told my friend, who owns a restaurant, told the governor of his state and my friend is a trump supporter, very conservative guy, but when the governor of the state was rushing to reopen restaurants, he said, no, hold on. you open up too soon. i only need one story coming from anywhere in the state that somebody had -- got coronavirus because you opened up restaurants too soon and i will be shutdown for months. let's use some common sense here. if you own a small business, it's not too late. we see in some states coronavirus is going up. we hear there's going to most likely be a spike in the fall. if history is any guide, so make it simple. mika and i went to the mall yesterday. we said a florida mall. everybody in the mall was wearing a mask. everybody. did i feel safe in that mall? damn straight i did. i actually took a son -- took one of my sons to the mall with me yesterday who has an underlying condition, wearing a mask, 6 feet apart. went into a store that only let a certain number of people in the store and we were safe. there is a way to do this that actually protects the public health and also protects small business owners, we got to get this economy going again. >> do it right. >> and the only way to get the economy going again is to be responsible. wear masks, socially distance, and if you have a comedy club, if you have a restaurant, if you have a bar -- >> hair salon. >> -- if you have a hair salon, make people who come in wear masks. it's in their best interests health wise, it's in your best interests economically. so you don't have to shut it down again in the fall. >> with us for this conversation we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle and national affairs analyst, editor in chief of the recount john heileman. professor at the university eddie glaude jr. and former directorer of communications for the hillary clinton 2016 presidential campaign jennifer palmeri. now a contributing editor at "vanity fair." >> you picked up on the elvis '77 theme that you and i had been talking about. i wasn't thinking elvis '77, i was thinking yellson '76. a man who was tired and exhausted and out of his element and didn't belong on the campaign trail yet he was still out there and in the middle of the speech i just sat there thinking, this guy doesn't want to be there. like his heart's not in it. >> yeah. >> you could tell he loved being out there in 2016. there was none of that in oklahoma on saturday night. >> joe, you and i were texting about it in real time. i think -- there was a story last week in the "new york times," a well reported piece that talked about the number of senior trump advisers who have been watching his self-pity and his self-sabotage over the course of the last couple of months and starting to wonder openly amongst themselves does trump want a second term or not. and i -- it was the first thing that screamed out to me, i've been to 100 trump rallies, i went to a lot of trump rallies in 2016, that was not -- that was donald trump doing sclik. that was donald trump in his most aimless, pointless mode. there's been this focus, rightly so, given the way the white house focuses on crowd size, everybody talked about what happened, why was the turnout low, those are good questions and worthy of discussion but to me the bigger question, the problem for the campaign was not the anemic turnout against the expectations they foolishly raised way too high but what the few people who showed up got. what they got to see. they got to see a donald trump who was not in the form as a political athlete that he was in 2016 or that he has been in other times. four months out from the election and that donald trump was not a donald trump driving a message about bringing america back. he was not driving any message whatsoever. he was ambling around, telling jokes. doing the 15 minutes on the ramp and on the water glass. i just thought to myself, man, this is not a -- this is not where an incumbent president or the nominee for the other party, for that matter, needs to be in terms of their energy, focus, discipline, that close to election day. it's not that far away, election day, donald trump is not there. >> he seems to have nothing on joe biden. he didn't have any material really. >> joe biden is a -- joe biden is a guy from scranton, pennsylvania. >> um-hum. >> biden, despite the fact that he's been in washington for as long as he has, gets on the train every night, goes back to wilmington, he took care of his boys, he raised his boys after tragedy. they've within trying to hammer, joe biden, nothing is sticking. look at the fox news poll, i think it's plus nine when it comes to his approval ratings. and jonathan lemire was saying he heard reports and saw reports that outside of the tulsa convention center they were still selling anti-hillary and anti-obama wear, but nothing on joe biden. corey lewandowski a few weeks back, john, came in and said what's the message? and he got in big trouble for asking what anybody should ask, i want you to look at the clip about donald trump. this is the top of the speech talking about a ramp and asked if lieu wan do you ski wasn't onto something. look at this. >> sure we can now leave the stage, great, general, let's go, i'll follow you. he goes like this, right here, sir. i said, general, i've got myself a problem, general, because i'm wearing leather-bottom shoes, which is good if you're walking on flat surfaces, it's not ramps. if i fall down, look at that press back there. look at it. and this was a steel ramp, you saw it because everybody saw it, it was a steel ramp, had no handrail, it was like an ice skating rink. i said, general, there's no way i can make it down that ramp without falling on my ass general, we have no railing. we finally reached almost the end and the fake news, the most dishonest human beings they cut it off. you know why? because when i was 10 feet short, i said, general, and i ran down the rest. i looked very handsome. i said, to our great first lady, i said, let me ask you a question, was it that good a speech that i'm trending number one because i felt it was good. no, they don't mention the speech. they mentioned the fact that you may have parkinson's disease. so then my wife said, well, it wasn't only the ramp. did you have water? i said, yeah. i was speaking for a long time. i didn't want to drink it, but i wanted to wet my lips a little bit. you're working hard up there with the sun powering down on you. they said you couldn't lift your hand up to your mouth with water. i said, i just saluted 600 times. like this. she said, well, i know what you did. you had on a very good red tie, that's sort of expensive. it's silk because they look better. they have a better sheen to them. and i don't want to get water on the tie. and i don't want to drink much. so i lift it up, the water, i see we have a little glass of water, where the hell did this water come from? where did it come from? i looked down at my tie because i've done it. i look down and it spills on your tie and it doesn't look good for a long time and frankly the tie is never the same. and i put it to my lip and i say -- because i don't want it -- and they gave me the disease. they gave me another disease. [ crowd cheering ] >> john heileman, as we were saying elvis in '77, complete with the sweat. but he talked about a ramp and he talked about water, and he talked about tvs on air force one for -- >> quite some time. >> -- a long, long time. never mentioned george floyd's name. he never mentioned the fact that we had the worst health care crisis. never acknowledged that the had the worst health care crisis in over 100 years and how serious it was. instead he claimed he was joking about not wanting tests. didn't acknowledge that we had the worst economic crisis in 90 years and how serious it is and how it may be with us for some time and we need to keep our heads down. and, of course, never really talked about the civil rights marches that are the most dramatic in a half century, since 1968, 1969. instead, was doing, as you said, sort of a shacky green, elvis, '77 routine, that again if you want to play in the poconos this friday night as an opening act, that's fine. but if you're running for president of the united states and you're down double digits and this is supposed to be your big comeback, it was just bizarre. there's not a message. he does not have a message going into the heat of this campaign. >> well, that's the thing about fat elvis, joe. in that period he's in vegas and at his disalute, lazy, most addled, lost period, he's playing the hits. he's playing them from memory. you talked about the hillary clinton thing too. it's all the 2016 stuff. he's running out all the old favorites, he's got these rifts, the standard cookie cutter culture war stuff there. he knows there's red meet to throw out here and there, but how much of that speech of the 135 minutes, at least 35 minutes of it was a pure waste of time. he did 12 minute osts on the ra and the glass of water. 12 minutes on that. he has another 20 minutes of digressions and stuff that's not making a positive case for himself or putting a negative frame on joe biden. most of the speech could have been ren swritten six months ag five years ago, it's out of time. we're living in this tumultuous moment in america where the reason he's losing and he knows he's losing is the race has become the one thing he feared the most, a referendum on him. he's not blind, he knows what's happening, he's seen the polls he's obsessed with the polls. he knows where he stands. instead of trying to reach that moment politically, forget as a leader because he's not, but as a politician, he's not saying i'm campaigning with fierce urgency, instead he's wandering around fat elvis, play the hits and waste 105 minutes of people's time. that's not a formula for a president right now given all the numbers in front on of him right now, that is not the formula, the message that's going to lead him back into contention in this race, let alone put him in a position to somehow win it. >> more than a waste of time. we had 6,200 people squashed together in the lower part of that arena, so it could at least look like the crowd was large and all of those people were putting themselves at risk not wearing masks, squashed together, all chanting or listening to the president and laughing at his jokes, exposing themselves to a deadly virus. mike barnicle, didn't hear anything serious about the virus and serious about the need for social distancing, didn't hear anything about the racial unrest that has taken over the nation. he really, as john heileman pointed out, this is almost an evergreen speech that could have been done anywhere, any time. but this time is an important turning point in our history, or it should be. >> well, mika, he didn't say anything because he has nothing to say. . we know that. we have more than 40 million people unemployed, we have a severe health crisis in this country, we have a virus still in its first phase not the second phase everyone is talking about this fall. still in its first face, with victims in various states going up, up and up. and the president of the united states stood on the stage and john spoke to it, joe spoke to it, did schtick for 105 minutes. elvis had a comeback, he had "suspicious minds," restored his career, revived his career. to john's point, i don't think donald trump knows what's going on. he certainly knows the polls, but i think what he senses is that a referendum on donald trump in various states means one thing. it means he loses. he loses that referendum. so he's got to find something that he's done his entire life. he's got to find an excuse so he doesn't have to blame himself and people don't blame him. the virus will be his excuse when he loses. that his campaign was coopted and overshadowed by the virus and everything that happened after the virus was established. the economic collapse. the racial unrest, but donald trump is the root of all that. not the virus. he's the root of everything that is disrupting this country today because from day one of his presidency, he has focused on one thing above all else division. dividing the country. >> you know, jen, you've been involved in quite a few campaigns. the campaigns that i was involved in for myself, i always told everybody we need to know the issues and we need to cover the waterfront but if you can't strip down your purpose to a bumper sticker you're doing something wrong, sit down until you can tell people on a bumper sticker why you need to be elected. one of my favorites was when edwin edwards ran against david duke and his bumper sticker was vote for the crook it's important. but, of course, we won't have that in this campaign, but in 2016 donald trump had make america great again. people seemed to get that. it's sort of bizarre when they say that in 2020 when they're running against themselves mike pence said it the other day we have to make america great again. wait, what have you been doing the last four years? it seems going into this campaign they have no message. not a message you can put on a bumper sticker, not a message you can put on a billboard. >> and they keep switching it. we had keep america great for a little bit then they told us it was going to be transition to greatness, which doesn't quite roll off the tongue. and so i think what they've settled on is trying to divide america. the problem with that is you need to put some kind of winning coalition together. and even in 2016, he got more of the african-american vote than mitt romney did. he got 8%, it's not a lot. but mitt romney only got 6%. when you lose a race by as little as we did, 2% of the african-american vote is a big deal, it's a game changer. to continue to not have a message that inspires people but also to seek to divide everyone, that's going to only -- you know, condense the amount of people who are open to voting for him. and he doesn't have a great critique against joe biden. you talked about how when he was at the rally in tulsa, he didn't have much to say about biden. i think that's because biden is not scary to people. that is a very big deal. you know, the first woman president, that's a little threatening to people, first black president, that can be challenging as well. but there's nothing scary about biden, they spent a whole year on the trump campaign trying to taint him with ukraine. let me tell you something, a good hit against a presidential candidate won't just motivate your base it will hurt the democrat's base as well. so that was meant to drive down enthusiasm for joe biden, the ukraine argument not just with republicans but also democrats. it didn't work. he won the democratic primary by a lot. so they find themselves no message, not a big -- not a lot of voters that are open to considering him and not a very good critique against biden who's a really acceptable alternative to a lot of people. i have friends in florida, the restaurant owner, does he think that joe biden is a scary alternative to president trump? i bet he doesn't. >> does not. that's the thing, hillary clinton, as many people have pointed out, hillary clinton was vilified by republicans on a national stage for 35, 40 years. joe biden, well, joe biden he made friends 35, 40 years because he was in the senate. you talked to people who worked with hillary clinton in the senate they had a lot of good things to say about hillary clinton, republicans like, you know, trent lie, a lot of other conservatives. but biden was there for a very long time and you ask people like lindsey graham about joe biden and he starts tearing up and says, he may be one of the finest men that god ever created. that's a guy who's hard to vilify. eddie, i want you to look at kellyanne conway and something she said back in march to yamiche. take a look. >> i like to know who they are. hold on. you can want say that and not name them. tell us who it was. come up and tell us who it was. i'd like to know. >> what is your message to the staffers -- >> no. excuse me, that's been alleged. you need to excuse me -- yamiche, i'm not dealing in hypotheticals. of course, it's wrong. you can't make an accusation and not tell us. yamiche if you want to argue, i'm going to argue about standing away from each other and washing our hands and everything -- >> you're telling that the staffer was wrong -- >> i think you understand how the conversations go. >> i don't know how these conversations go, and that's highly offensive so tell us all who it is. i'd like to know who it is. >> what actions have you -- >> i'm not going to engage in hypotheticals. i'm married to an asian, i'm not engaging -- >> you're married to an asian? >> yes, i'm married to an asian-american. my kids are 25% fiphilapino. >> who is it? i'm trying to be here to help you help america understand how to slow the spread and you're shouting at me in a way about something that somebody at least said to somebody else and i'm asking who was it? why didn't we go to the source? i didn't say it, i don't believe it. why don't we go to the source and tell them that's hurtful and unhelpful for what we're trying to do. >> it's covid, it's this. by the way, it's a disease without question has more names than any disease. i can name kung flu. i can name 19 different versions of names. >> so kellyanne conway said that was highly offensive name, it is wrong. she's deeply offended because t it's her family. she wants to know who said that. it's the president. i love how she was shocked and stunned, like she was with the cbs reporter who she got angry with when the cbs reporter asked about the coronavirus not being contained, got very angry and asked if you were a doctor and said it is contained. here we are several months after that and 120,000 americans are dead, a lot of them senior citizens. but eddie, here you have the president still spitting out racist trash at rallies. despite the fact he finds himself now in an america where 75 -- he's on the wrong side, it seems, of just about every major issue. on the pandemic and wearing masks. it's a 75/25 split. he's going with the 25. he's against the 75. on the marches it's a 75/25 split. he's on the 25 side on the marches. 75% of americans think it's whol wholly justified. immigration, he's going to arizona on the wall, on the wrong side of the 75/25 split. highest numbers of americans support immigration, 75%, and say it's important. those numbers have actually gone up under donald trump, who has actually done more to show americans the latent racism and the latent bigotry that not only black americans but hispanic americans, asian-americans, every group that has been discriminated against, it seems that donald trump has inadvertently shined the brightest of lights on that racism and if you believe what the polls say, the overwhelming majority of americans are offended. offended by the views donald trump has on race and offended that the views that have unfortunately been around this country for far too long. >> joe, as we've been talking about what he spoke about in tulsa, i put on my professor hat. when you get a paper from a student and you can't figure out what the thesis is so you have to work hard to figure out what the elements are. there are two elements i heard in the speech, fragments, that we can pull out. one is what you just identified. that is his fear mongering, we saw it over and over again, we saw the racist appeals, the descriptions of covid-19, we saw the implication of the old playbook with the forgotten americans. we saw the notion of the radical left and they're going to destroy the country. and then we heard the other thread, that is the democrats are going to raise your taxes, they're going to destroy the radical left, aoc, representative omar and the like. so we have evasion around the pandemic, evasion around 45 million unemployed, evasion around the racial crisis in the country and then we have december separatio desperati desperation. how he plays fear and resentm t resentment, then ended with the plea, no matter what you think of donald trump you know you have to vote for me because these people are going to destroy america. that was the message i got and as a professor i wrote on the paper, a big d minus and circled it and wrote, see me. >> you know what's interesting john heileman. eddie brings up a great point. he brought up omar, aoc -- >> right. >> -- he brought uphi hillary clinton, he brought up obama, and it reminds me of bringing up nancy pelosi in 2018, spent tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars trashing nancy pelosi in 2018 and we know how that ended up, the republicans were routed in record fashion, the greatest vote landslide ever in american history for a midterm election. and here they're trying it again. they're not being -- they can't land a blow on joe biden. so they're now naming all these other people that are not going to have an impact on the outcome of this race. >> right. it's like there's a -- there's -- one thing a lot of those people have in common, i know you're already aware this, they're women. i think one thing we've learned is that donald trump, who has no political experience, other than running for president in 2016, it was very comfortable running against hillary clinton for a variety of reasons but one of them is his misogyny and he was able to tar her, demonize her, attack her, and it work in the sense he drove her negatives through the roof and he was able to get this victory that he created in his mind a historic landslide but it wasn't historic or a landslide. but certainly a shocking outcome. but that is the race that he wants to run. he wants to run a race against hillary clinton every way -- the dimensions of it, that's his comfort zone. so he seems more comfortable demonizing these women. obviously more comfortable trying to rerun the culture war. to try to do the play book of, trying to cast democrats as the party of the radical left. and as jen said earlier, that's his biggest problem, he's not comfortable running against joe biden. he's not comfortable running against another white man of his age and he's not comfortable running against a guy who cannot be easily idealogically, racially and otherwise demonized and caricatured, that is part of why you heard the sleepy joe frame has gone nowhere. joe biden criticized for being in his basement for the last few months and that whole time all that's happened is joe biden's political prospects have gotten brighter and donald trump's has gotten dimmer not for lack of effort. the campaign can't find a way to frame joe biden effectively and damaging to joe biden in a way that donald trump is comfortable running on. that's part of what explains what a terrible piece of political messaging and performance we saw on saturday night. he wants to run against an enemy and cannot figure out how to put a frame on joe biden that he thinks will work and he's comfortable runing with and that has him more befuddled than anything. >> john heileman, thank you. jen palmeri, thank you. we didn't get to your piece entitled "how white women can be better black lives matter allies". thank you for that. still ahead on "morning joe" our next guest had a three week tweet in response to what's happening at the doj. quote, investigate williams barr. hakeem jeffreys joins us next on "morning joe." one thing about air force one we have plenty of televisions. we have televisions in closets. open up the closet we have a television. we got a lot of televisions. it's a great plane, great everything. by the way, we ordered new ones, no president wanted to do it, thought it was luxury. i said, wait, air force one is 31 years old, people don't realize that. you may have overactive bladder, or oab. not again! we're seeing a doctor when we get home. myrbetriq treats oab symptoms of urgency, frequency, and leakage. it's the first and only oab treatment in its class. myrbetriq may increase blood pressure. tell your doctor right away if you have trouble emptying your bladder or have a weak 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business is prepared for times like these. powered by the nation's largest gig-speed network. to help give you the speed, reliability, and security you need. tools to manage your business from any device, anywhere. and a team of experts - here for you 24/7. we've always believed in the power of working together. that's why, when every connection counts... you can count on us. how do you think history will remember donald trump? >> i hope it will remember him as a one-term president who didn't plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can't recall from. we can get over one term, two terms i'm more troubled about. decisions are made in a scatter shot fashion. especially in the potentially mortal field of national security policy. this is a danger for the republic. >> joining us now, a member of the house judiciary and budget committees congressman hakeem jeffreys of new york. we'll get to the william barr, geo geoffrey berman story in a moment but first john bolton i have so many questions. but tell us what yours are. what do you think the most important questions about the content of this book, the release of this book and the timing of all of this information coming out. >> good morning, first, i'm troubled by the timing. john bolton had his chance to step up and be a patriot. he could have participated in the house impeachment inquiry. he could have provided information during donald trump's senate impeachment trial instead of being a patriot, he chose to be a profiter and delay this information. so that's highly problematic in terms of his motives. with respect to the information we have ever reason to believe that the things that john bolton talked about in this book, as it relates to an out of control president, using his office to interfere with a 2020 election is in complete alignment with what we proved in article i of the impeachment of donald trump. >> mike barnicle is with us opinio. he has the next question. mike? >> we know over the weekend the attorney general of the united states of america, bill barr finally succeeded in firing geoffrey berman the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, manhattan. we know the morale has been shattered by various acts of the attorney general. we have not seen the report that john durham, who has been retained by the attorney general to do an independent investigation of the whole russia probe, obama administration, fbi director all the way, everything -- what's your view on what is going on with the attorney general of united states? is he that bad a manager that he can't control what he wants to do? >> well, within the executive branch, as you know, you have the white house counsel and then you have the attorney general. and the white house counsel's role is to be the president's attorney. the attorney general's role is to be the people's attorney. william barr appears to be confused or is intentionally doing the political bidding of donald trump on issue after issue after issue. he has done the political bidding of donald trump with respect to michael flynn in rolling back the guilty plea. he's done the political bidding of donald trump with respect to paul manafort, in releasing him from prison allegedly because of concerns related to the coronavirus when you have everyday americans lan kwishing in prison after prison throughout the country with higher rates of infection of covid-19. now it appears with the firing of geoffrey berman, doing his bidding for rudy giuliani. so we need to figure out what's been occurring under the tenure of william barr because it stinks and it's toxic. >> eddie take the next question. >> i have a quick question. we're dealing with the effects of, you know, continued police violence, we've seen 30 plus days of consistent protests. give me a sense of the path forward for police reform quote/unquote or transformation. how are we moving forward? how is the house bill going to be reconciled with what's going on in the senate? can you give us a sense what's the next steps? >> eddie, great to see you as always. we need to move forward with the george floyd justice in policing act in the house and senate. we're going to pass the bill on thursday because it's the strongest bill, the most transformative and most comprehensive. it will establish a national standard for the use of force, anchored in in the principle of deescalation tactics in the first instance and deadly force only as a matter of last resort. it'll criminalize the chokehold, it will end qualified immunity, which serves as a block for the ability of everyday americans who have been victimized by police brutality to use our nation's civil rights laws, not just the right to have a lawsuit but also a remedy. it would also eliminate no knock warrants and drug cases. these are all things that the senate bill doesn't do. the senate bill portends to try to incentivize departments throughout the country to do the right thing but this is a national problem of police vie lens we have. it requires a national solution and the only way to bring it about is with a strong piece of federal legislation through the house and senate. hakeem jeffries, thank you for being on the show this morning. we'll be following all of this, of course. now to a master class in civil engagement. in a viral video, baton rouge activist gary chambers jr. sharply criticized a school board member who defended the naming of a school after confederate leader robert e. lee. the board member also appeared to be online shopping while discussing the topic at a hearing last week. and here is what ensued. >> so i had intended to get up here and talk about how racist robert e. lee was. i'm talking about you cotton, shopping while we talking about robert e. lee. this is a picture of you shopping while we talking about racism in the country. you don't give a damn and it's clear. i'll tell you what my ancestors said about robert e. lee. after he got off the field at gettysburg, robert e. lee was a brutal slave master. when he whooped the slaves he said lay it on them hard. after he said lay it on them hard, he said put brine on them so it'll burn them. and you sit here shopping while the pain of this community is on display. you don't give a damn, and you should resign. you should have resigned two weeks ago when you got on tv and said foolishness. you should resign and never come back you're the example of racism in this community. you're horrible. now to the rest of the board. you have an obligation to the people of this community and 81% of them are black. do you need a klan rally outside before ending it because holding it up means you put that building in jeopardy, you do, sir. all over the country they burning stuff down and black folks in this city has stood with protesters. i haven't seen you out there with them. it's been folks in this community who give adamn, not just when it's comfortable but every time. mr. drake they say you a good man, be a good man. black folks say you a good man. white folks say you a good man. your legacy is attached to tonight, brother. your legacy. let me say to the black mens of the board. this is the most solidarity i've seen out of y'all in forever. let's stay on that moving forward. we don't needs to apologize for connie. she showed you who she was when she was sitting next to you. you don't need another example. when do we as baton rouge stop being in 1856, if you want to name the building after somebody, how about after the first black stagovernor of the state of louisiana. or how about oscar dunn, who gave rights to get here. you want to name it after somebody from reconstruction, name it after the people who fought. if you want to name it after somebody honor the right people, the people on the right side of history. but it's your ancestor that the school is named after, so you're holding onto your heritage. but we built this joint for free, and we done begging you to do what's right. thank you, sir. >> the school board member who gary called out, connie bernard, has said she is, quote, deeply sorry for her actions. joining us now is the activist and baton rouge resident in tha chambers jr. welcome to the show. >> thank you for being with us. i have to start by asking you, are you a preacher or are you what our good friend elijah cummings was accused of being, a counterfeit preacher, because you sure sounded like a preacher up there. >> that was a good. >> so, i am a minister. >> there you go. >> very good. well, tell us, gary, if you will, obviously a lot of people saw your impassioned speech. tell us what the current status is right now in baton rouge regarding the naming and renaming of the school. >> well, first of all, thank you all for the opportunity to share with you. we won the vote that night and lehigh school will no longer be named lehigh school. >> fantastic. i've got eddie glaud jr. here who would like to ask you a question. >> it was great to see you hold the council accountable. talk to me about the overall sense of the community right now in this moment. as we are pressing for broad shift in our policing, as rear pressing for a shift in who we celebrate in our history, what is your sense of the pulse of baton rouge. you were the voice at the moment. what's your sense of the pulse in baton rouge. >> i think what's happening in balance rot rouge, is what is happening for black folks all over america. we're sick and tired of being sick and tired. so, the frustrations exist. you see folks showing up, advocating and leaning in on their local government because all politics is local. >> mike barnicle is with us and he has a question. mike? >> reverend chambers, could you help us out, could you help the country out by telling us what it's like for you, your family and thousands of other people who you know in your community to live their entire lives under the blanket of the confederacy, the lost cause and the history of treason that simply will not go away. >> in the words of the late, great chad butler, they're wrapping the body while we're paying the price. all the streets around lehigh school are named after a confederate general. lewis, ross, even whitehaven. when you go into a local school board meeting, what you saw in that video is really a reflection of what black america is dealing with as it relates to white america. you have black folks speaking up passionately about what they feel while you have a school board member, a representative of the people, a republican, sitting there scrolling on the internet while people are expressing their concerns. and we wonder why buildings burn because when we come before you, you scroll on the internet. the state like louisiana that's ranked number 50 in the nation, we're ranked number 45 in health care, we're ranked number 48 in education, number 49d in the economy, number 50 in opportunity, number 50 in crime. when you look at that and the republican policies failing us day in and day out, and a republican sitting there while we're talking about a critical issue and ignoring us, it's heartbreaking. i think that is why it's resonated with so many people. >> so, this is eddie glaude again. i just want to ask you a question about the future and where you locate hope. you preach the gospel. we're in a moment where it seems as if the country is on a knife's edge. where do you find hope and where do you see hope and possibility in your -- in the community of baton rouge? >> well, yesterday was father's day and i'm the father of a 10-year-old daughter. and every time i look at my daughter, that is the hope. when i look at young protesters showing up all over the country in the streets of america, commerce and leaning in on their government, that gives me hope because a dream deferred is not a dream denied. this is simply our leg of the race. >> sir, to close, i'm wondering, that moment really crystalized your frustration, especially framing around the councilmember who is shopping as the council was supposed to be listening to the frustration that really has gripped the community for decades. what is your next tangible focus in baton rouge, because the board has unanimously voted to change the school's name. obviously there's so much more that needs to be done to have more goals now that you have a spotlight. >> well, of course. not just for baton rouge. when we look at the streets that are named that i just named, we need to -- -- we look at the state of louisiana, we have a university named after a confederate general. when we look at -- there are slaves etched on the exterior of the louisiana state capitol while there is a statue of former brigadier general of nichols university. until every monument of white supremacy is removed and we lift the proper voices, we have work to do. and until connie is off the baton rouge school board, we have work to do. >> gary chambers jr., thank you so much for coming on the show this morning. thank you. >> thank you. and coming up, the mayor of los angeles, eric garcetti joins us straight ahead. also, stacey abrams will be our guest. we'll have much more on the president's overpromised and underdelivered campaign kickoff in tulsa, oklahoma. a rally that looked more like a scene from the movie "major league." >> anyway, listen to the roar of the crowd as the indians take the field. yes, sir, they love this club here in cleveland. (music) ♪ with spray mopping to lock away debris and absorb wet messes, all in one disposable pad. just vacuum, spray mop, and toss. the shark vacmop, a complete clean all in one pad. they have a new, pretty new magnificent arena. as you probably have heard, we're getting exact numbers out, but we're either close to or close to 1 million people wanting to go. >> they're excited about it, you have no idea. we have so many sign-ups. there are lines of people right now trying to get into the arena. they'll be there. they'll be early. over a million people requested tickets. there's just a hunger for the rallies. >> the event in oklahoma is unbelievable. the crowds in oklahoma are unbelievable. they've never seen anything like it. we'll go there now, hopefully give a good people. we'll see a lot of great people and great friends. that's it. >> we'll see 100,000 maga supporters down there just wanting to see this country reopen. >> we're so excited to have you and, like you said, i don't know if people caught that, but over a million people have requested tickets to come to this event. >> what are you going to do with all these people that literally could be hundreds of thousands of people trying to come and you only have 19,000 seats indoors. what about all those other people, what are you going to do with them? >> well, there is an overflow crowd but it really is a testament to people are ready to move on. >> i think you're evidenced by seeing 1 million ticket requests for this rally in tulsa. i think it's time to have a conversation about freedom and responsibility. >> well, talk about the political implications of the president's sparse crowd in tulsa. it wasn't going to be just a rally. it was supposed to be the relaunch of the president's ailing re-election campaign. also, what he said during the rally, namely that we need to slow down coronavirus testing. the white house says he was just joking. a joke? at a time of 120,000 dead americans and cases rising in growing hot spots around the country. the weekend also saw standoff between the attorney general and the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, who has been overseeing investigations into some of trump's associates. we'll talk to two veterans of the southern district on that huge story still unfolding. and you'll be able to buy a copy of john bolton's new book tomorrow after a judge rules the administration's request to block the book release is denied. in a new interview, bolton says the company can survive one term of president trump but not two. also somebody released bolton's book on twitter, so there you go. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it is monday, june 22nd. with us we have white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire, political reporter and msnbc political analyst, robert costa, the moderator of "washington week" on pbs and political correspondent for "the washington examiner," david druk drucker and writer for "vanity fair." what turned out to be a major disappointment for the campaign. while the trump re-election effort boasted it would fill the bank of oklahoma center that seats more than 19,000 people, the tulsa fire marshal tells nbc news that 6,200 supporters ultimately filled the arena. tim murta blames the small numbers on radical protesters and the news media, who he said frightened away supporters. there was a strong security presence. according to "the times," some users on social media say teenagers helped keep attendance at the rally down by seeking tickets they didn't intend to use. tic tok users said they registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets as a prank after the campaign asked those to register for free tickets. but campaign manager pushed back against those reports, issuing a statement yesterday saying the campaign weeded out tens of thousands of bogus cell phone numbers ahead of the rally. but, quote, these phoney ticket requests never factored into our thinking for crowd size. >> "the washington post" said these are general admission event. >> they have to hit that disclaimer. i don't know if that made a difference. but if they contracted coronavirus. meanwhile, in an interview on fox news yesterday, trump campaign adviser argued that the turnout was lower than expected because the president's supporters were concerned about protests outside the venue turning violent. >> the key here is that is important is to understand that i had this with my own personal family who lives not far away from tulsa, that they were concerned. there were factors involved. they were concerned about the protesters who were coming in. there were protesters who blocked the m.a.g.s. >> the president talks about the attendance at his event as we all know, he made a big issue of the attendance at his inauguration. he talks about how he can fill an arena and that joe biden can't. he didn't fill an arena last night -- >> i mean, joe biden -- >> let me -- if i may finish. and you guys were so far off that you planned an outdoor rally and there wasn't an overflow crowd and watching the coverage and talking to mark meredith on the ground today, protesters did not stop people from coming to that rally. >> oh, there were. there were people and families that couldn't bring their children because of concerns of the protesters. >> president trump was reportedly left fuming over the lackluster attendance. upon his arrival on fair force one, trump was, quote, furious and laid into his aides over the sparse crowds. for people familiar with what took place at the event tell "the new york times" that the president was stunned and continued to yell at aides backstage while looking at the endless rows of empty seats. two white house and campaign officials tell the associated press that trump was upset that he had been led to believe he would see huge crowds in deep red oklahoma. members of trump's inner circle angrily questioned how campaign manager and other senior aides could so wildly overpromise and underdeliver. according to "the times," several white house officials called the rally a disaster and an unforced error that heightened tensions among some of the president's government advisers and his campaign aides. >> jonathan lemire, as fantastic mr. fox would say, this is amateur night in dixie. i mean, you actually have a campaign that is pushing the 1 million number. repeatedly we're told there will be rallies, outside festivals. this would be something we've never seen. again, those were false expectations set up by the trump campaign itself. question number one, how did they -- did the campaign so badly miscalculate? secondly, what does donald trump do next? does he risk having another rally where he has weak performance? it would seem to me the campaign has a lot to figure out this morning. >> so, saturday night in tulsa was meant to be a defiant show of force from president trump. they were expecting to draw huge crowds in deep red state with a trump-friendly governor there in oklahoma. they wanted to send the signal that americans could start going back to normal. a sign of reopening the country amid a pandemic. they could have a large gathering indoors. they ignored the health warnings of the trump's own coronavirus task force as well as state officials because they thought they could draw a big crowd that would not only be a sign that the president still had this drawing power. nervous republicans were looking at the polls and worried about not just holding onto the white house but the senate and they wanted to re-energize the president who's been so off message during the pandemic. the clearing of lafayette square over my shoulder here, so on. they got a lot of questions and faced a lot of empty seats. even before the president touched down in tulsa, let's remember, six members of his own staff, it was announced, had come down with the coronavirus in tulsa while preparing for the rally, showing that t ining the, could go into the president's staff as well. we know some white house staff have been infected. they hoped to draw over 100,000 people. yes, there's discussion of social media scheme, and campaign schemes. at the end of the day, people just didn't show up, leaving the president furious, campaign aides pointing fingers at each other. to your point, joe, real questions as to what comes next. we know the campaign had planned this week to make -- to finalize the date of the president's next rally, maybe even two. they would be announced soon thereafter. it's unclear there those proceedings will go forward. he'll be traveling this week to arizona and wisconsin. those are not for campaign events. tomorrow he's going to visit his border wall. it goes to show his real vulnerabilities. beyond drawing empty seats, it's his message. he's still scrambling and fumbling to deliver strong, concise attacks on joe biden. there was no mention of national unity, no attempt to address the crises facing this nation. he downplayed the pandemic and did not mention the name of george floyd even once. still ahead, we'll play you the sound we mentioned at the top. president trump suggests slowing down coronavirus testing in america. it's not a joke. it's not funny. and a nation is paying a heavy price. plus, potential vice presidential contender, stacey abrams joins the conversation on her effort to get out the vote this november. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. this is an athlete, twenty reps deep, sprinting past every leak in our softest, smoothest fabric. she's confident, protected, her strength respected. depend. the only thing stronger than us, is you. to save on auto insurance. there's lots of ways really? she's confident, protected, her strength respected. yeah. very proud of that. with smartride® from nationwide, they can get discounts for safe driving. does she get one? mrs. carmichael? safest driver in peytonville. takes a lot of work and effort to be the safest 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employees in the know. to keep business moving. comcast business is prepared for times like these. powered by the nation's largest gig-speed network. to help give you the speed, reliability, and security you need. tools to manage your business from any device, anywhere. and a team of experts - here for you 24/7. we've always believed in the power of working together. that's why, when every connection counts... you can count on us. his remarks at the rally, president trump told the mostly unmasked crowd of supporters that he wanted to slow down coronavirus testing. take a listen. >> testing is a double-edge sword. we've tested now 25 million people. it's probably 20 million people more than anybody else. germany's done a lot. south korea's done a lot. they call me, they say, the job you're doing -- here's the bad part. when you test -- when you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people. you're going to find more cases. so, i said to my people, slow the testing down, please. >> the people are still dying. it has nothing to do with the testing. we've said it time and again. the united states is coming close to having 1 in 3 people in america -- 1 in 3 people across the world who have died from the coronavirus are americans. that has nothing to do with testing any more than not taking pregnancy tests will not make you pregnant. >> well, remarks come as coronavirus continues to spread across the u.s. according to data tracked by "the washington post," 29 states and u.s. territories reported a higher seven-day average yesterday than they did on june 14th. the world health organization yesterday also reported the largest single day increase in coronavirus cases. the u.n. health agency said brazil led the way with nearly 55,000 cases tallied. and the u.s. was next with more than 36,000. a senior white house official tells nbc news that trump was clearly speaking in jest to call out the media's absurd coverage of the ongoing pandemic. and here's what some other administration officials had to say. >> you know, it was tongue-in-cheek. come on now, that was tongue-in cheek. >> i don't know that it was tongue-in cheek at all. he has said -- >> that's news for you, tongue-in-cheek. >> he's said similar things for months. i think testing is a very serious issue. >> i work on it every day. >> you're the one that said -- >> come on. it was a light moment. >> you -- >> we're 60 seconds into tongue-in-cheek thing. asked and answered. >> are you aware of the president telling officials to slow down testing as it relates to coronavirus. >> no, again, i heard those comments as well. i think that what you heard from the president was frustration. frustration in the sense that we are testing -- i believe we've tested over 25 million americans. we've tested more than any other country in this world. instead, the press and others, all they want to focus on is an increasing case count. we know that that's going to occur when you test individuals more and more and more. >> that's just -- what position. that guy is head of dhs and he's saying that? that's assanine. it's anti-medicine. this is an administration, a president running against a pandemic. as we tried to say from the beginning calmly and in an encouraging way, a pandemic is always going to win. they don't care about your politics. they don't care if you're on the left or if you're on the right. they don't care if you're holding trump rallies or holding black lives matter rallies. you put on masks, you social distance. you protect yourself. i saw pictures of people going through that gate to the trump rally and they weren't wearing masks. i was horrified for them. >> who are they modeling after? >> i was fearful for their mothers and fathers. i was fearful for their grandparents. i was fearful for their children and relatives and friends that had underlying health conditions. it's dangerous. this stuff -- this stuff is sticky. this stuff is dangerous. this stuff is deadly. you look at the six people, and this made donald trump very angry. the six people on his own advance team got the coronavirus just going and advancing the event. you look at the six phillies in training camp that were just practicing. you see, this remains an extraordinarily dangerous pandemic. we have social distanced, we've been responsible, and because of it, we bent the curve. but this is not the time for the trump administration or for lackeys that go on news shows to talk about how he was joking and to suggest that cases are only going up because of more testing. again, he's running against a pandemic. the pandemic's always going to win. >> coming up, former georgia gubernatorial candidate stacey abrams will be our guest. plus, amid an apparent spike in coronavirus cases in los angeles. mayor eric garcetti will join the conversation. how about no no uh uh, no way come on, no no n-n-n-no-no only discover has no annual fee on any card. with spray mopping to lock away debris and 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in the house of representatives, stacey abrams. she's the founder of fair fight action and fair fight 2020 to promote fair elections across the country. author of the new book entitled "our time is now: power, purpose and the fight for a fair america." it certainly is now. great timing for this book, for this message and to have you on the show, stacey abrams. thank you for coming on. >> thank you. >> i want to start with donald trump tweeting in the past hour this, rigged 2020 election. millions of mail-in ballots will be printed by foreign countries and others. it will be the scandal of our times. he got the caps lock stuck again. is this the scandal of our times or is the president trying to set up something here potentially to try and undermine the process? >> it's entirely his intent to undermine the process. if eligible americans cast their ballot, he will lose. we know vote by mail is a critical part of how voting has to occur in 2020 to ensure that as many people as possible can vote safely from home. it's not only about those who can vote safely from home, as many people who can vote by mail, that reduces the number of people who will be in line. there are populations that have no choice. there are folks who are disabled, who have been displaced by covid, who are homeless, who have language baerriers. if you're african-american or lati latino, you're five times likely to have your ballot rejected. some people have no choice but to show up in person. we want vote by mail to reduce the number of people who have to be in line on election day. that keeps everyone safe. that means our democracy can work. >> our military does it, the president does it, his secretary votes by mail. it has been a proven process that happens in every election. what needs to happen to protect it this time around? clearly the process is being undermined from the top, the president of the united states himself. >> we know that 34 states allow vote by mail with no excuses. that means at this moment if you want to vote by mail in 34 states, you can do it and they have the capacity to do so. what they don't have is the ability to scale it as need as likely will be. we have 16 additional states that require an excuse, either disability, age or infirmity. unfortunately, about four of those states are immovable on the use of covid-19 as a justifiable infirmity to qualify you for mail-in ballots. we know the challenge is not whether you have access alone, it's whether the states can meet the scale. we know states are crippling. they're under a crippling debt because of the tax implications of the covid-19 pandemic. they are cash-strapped and to scale appropriately, they need the senate to take action. the adoption of the heroes act, which will provide $3.6 billion in funding for elections as well as guardrails so no matter where you live in the country, for the first time, we have uniformity in how elections happen. this would also provide opportunities for communities that have too many restrictions on their access, to have those restrictions actually meet a national standard. all it takes is action by the u.s. senate. mitch mcconnell recognizes he, too, would be in jeopardy. if we have full participation, when americans speak right now, they're speaking with a single voice saying, it is time for change. >> so, actually, this is the first time you've been on since the debacle in georgia, election debacle. what happened? what can we learn from it? what are your thoughts on that? >> in "our time is now," i spend the first half of the book laying out what we call voter suppression, which is the impediment to any eligible voter being able to cast their ballot because of administrative actions. those impedestriiments are aliv well in georgia. what happened in georgia is malfeasance of voter suppression as well as the incompetence of the secretary of state. he purchased $100 million worth of machines but failed to do the investment, the training, direction for those machines to be operable in all of the counties in the state of georgia. we have 159 counties. 100 counties had to seek judicial order to extend the time of the election, including republican-run counties, democratic-run counties, it was a complete and utter meltdown because the secretary of state abdicated his responsibility and showed a deliberate indifference to the needs of the voters. >> eddie glaude, jump in. >> first of all, it's wonderful to see you. i hope everyone is safe and healthy. i want to pan out a bit and talk about it. what does it mean, our time is now? we just heard the president in tulsa. we heard the culture wars. we see the possibility of cheating happening. the scale of our problems is enormous. what do you think -- just give me a sense of the scale of the solutions. what does it mean to say in this moment, our time is now given the scale of the problems we face right now? >> challenges overwhelm us often because we don't know what they are. it's one of the reasons president trump is having such a difficult time with testing. testing shows us where the problems lie, it shows us where we need to focus the attention. what "our time is now" tries to arctticulate and lay out in strg detail, here's what we face. challenges with the ability to register and stay on the rolls, with the ability to cast a ballot and have that ballot counted and this is an historical challenge in our nation since its inception. and i lay out opportunities. one is participation in the 2020 census. i've spent a lot of time talking about fair fight and fair fight 2020. i also want to lift up a second organization i created called fair count, whose sole purpose is to ensure we have an accurate count. georgia and the states is hitting an inflection point demographically. this is an inflection point where people of color, young people, where single white women, where whites of progressive and moderate bent can come together and actually move this country forward with progress. let's be clear, conservative tends to refer to keeping things as they are. progressive simply means we want to expand access to opportunity in this country. i spend the second half in the book laying out the changes we can make. embracing identity as politics that work because it's worked for a certain community for the last 240 years. now it's time for identity at work for all of us. we saw that on display last week when the supreme court acknowledged that the -- that sexual orientation and gender identity was covered by the 1964 civil rights act. when they expanded and protected daca students and young people. we know dreamers are part of the identity of america. we know the lgbtq community is part of the identity of america. and the racial protests we see reckoning with the identity of america. our time is now is not to say that any one community will have primacy but everyone will have opportunity. >> stacey, mike barnicle has the next question. mike? >> ms. abrams, policing in america would be one of those challenges. do you have any specific thoughts on how america redefines police work in communities large and small? >> absolutely. we need to do two things. one is refermation, that means changing rules for how policing is held in communities, that means banning chokeholds, it means reducing excessive force, it means increasing training time in the united states, which is one of the lowest in the democratized world. it also means investing and making sure we do not have social workers with guns responding to problems across this country. it means fixing the policy and behaviors of our law enforcement, but transformation means resetting our mindset about how we redistribute resources in this country, investing in education, investing in health care, investing in community programs we know work because in communities that are successful, that are stable, that have access, we see a reduced necessity for policing. we have to do both refermation and transformation and resist this false dichotomy that it's one or the other. it's a both/and solution to the challenges that have plagued this country since the beginning. >> the book is "our time now," stacey abrams, thank you so much for coming on the show this morning. great to have you. >> thank you so much. coming up, los angeles mayor eric garcetti joins the conversation. as we go to break, there's a lot going on this week. at knowyourvalue.com, frequent "morning joe" guest, dr. leana wen tells me her top five tips for social distancing, and katica roy lays out a blueprint for a workplace that truly values black women, and kim church tells us what the women in the class of 2020 really want. check it all out at knowyourvalue.com. at cancer treatment centers of america, treating cancer isn't just what we do, it's all we do. and now, we're able to treat more patients because we're in-network with even more major insurance plans. so, if you've been turned down before, 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summer of sleep, save $500 on all tempur-breeze mattresses. nascar says a noose was found in the garage stall of bubba wallace's team before yesterday's postponed cup race at talladega super speedway in alabama. the incident occurred less than two weeks, wallace, the only black driver in nascar's top racing series, pushed the sport to ban the confederate flag at its tracks and facilities. in a statement announcing the discovery, nascar says in part, quote, we are angry and outraged and cannot state strongly enough how seriously we take this heinous act. we have launched an immediate investigation and will do everything we can to identify the person responsible and eliminate them from the sport. wallace responded to the incident on twitter writing in part, quote, today's despicable act of racism and hatred leaves me incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society and how persistent we must be in the fight against racism. together our sport has made a commitment to driving real change and championing a community that is accepting and welcoming of everyone. nothing is more important and we will not be deterred by the reprehensible actions of those who seek to spread hate. eddie, i mean, this is, again, as we saw in the baton rouge scenario we talked about this morning, signs of we're not where we thought we were in this country when it comes to racism and just how significant and deep the problem is in every level of society. >> mika, you're absolutely right. we need to understand that racism continues to be the underbelly of american society. some of us have to experience it in particularly, shall we say, venomous ways. it's important for us to associate, to understand the association between the confederate flag and a particularly noxious and insidious idea of whiteness. so much so that when bubba wallace and nascar, and nascar is often considered to a sport tethered to white folk, tethered to the south and the like, it seems to threaten the very understanding of white identity. what that bubbles up is this hatred. we have to in some ways root it out. we can't allow it to continue to choke the country. this is just the latest sign. it's also a sign of bubba wallace's courage. we want to lift him up and keep him in prayer because we know by being courageous in this moment, he risked his life and his safety. >> sports is at the center of the coronavirus as well as american sports leagues eye a return to play. there have been a number of new cases of the coronavirus among athletes. major league baseball has temporarily closed all spring training camps after outbreaks among the philadelphia phillies and the toronto blue jays. the san francisco giants, houston astros, los angeles angels and washington nationals have all also reported cases of the virus within their organizations. in the nfl, two players on the tampa bay buccaneers have now tested positive for covid-19. after reports last week of infections among the houston texans and dallas cowboys, including star running back ezekiel elliott. in the nhl, the tampa bay lightning announced three players and additional staff members have tested positive for coronavirus. while a player on the pittsburgh penguins has also become infected. and in college sports, at least 34 schools have reported positive tests among athletes. including the infection of 28 members of clemson's athletic department since their return to campus two weeks ago. this is a problem on a number of levels because the effort to reopen is running into the fact that this virus is not even in the middle stage. we're at the beginning. joining us now, the mayor of los angeles, democrat eric garcetti. also with us, the president of the open society foundation, patri patrick gaspard. we thank you for that and want to hear more about that. mayor garcetti, let's talk, first of all, if you could tell us what's happening in your city in terms of the number, in terms of the hospitalizations and if your city is ready for what potentially is to come. >> well, i'm very concerned but here in los angeles we've held steady. our available beds have gone up. our deaths have gone down. but there's a lot that's opening up. my message especially to young americans is young americans feel absolutely that they are invincible. that they can go out, they can party, they can come together and we're seeing more and more of the data coming back that they are the ones spreading in their own homes, in their own kind of neighborhoods and where they live. and i think the message has to be very loud and clear that we might be done with covid-19, but covid-19 isn't done with us. so, wear those masks, physically distance and practice all the things that we did such a marvelous job of to save tens of thousands of lives. you can either be a killer or somebody who can save lives. let's make sure it's the latter. >> there seems to be, especially among supporters of president trump, when you saw at his rally, there are those that do not want to wear masks. there are companies opening up that are not necessarily following social distancing guidelines. are you concerned that the more that that happens, the more that there will be more outbreaks and then companies that are actually trying to do things right are going to be shut down again? >> no question, mika. there's been so many people left behind in this crisis economically. we've seen this in immigrant communities, we've seen this among african-americans, we've seen so many workers in the gig economy. this threatens our economy. this is first and foremost about saving lives and people's health and also making sure our economy doesn't shut down again. the smallest thins we can do can have the biggest effects, negatively and positively. we have the three es, i call it. we don't have the resources just by enforcing and none of us want a police state in america. it's really about educating people and encouraging them, giving our police officers or our park workers masks to hand out to people when they're not, and i say real men wear masks, so get over it. whether it's the president or somebody else, this is an act of love, an act of strengthening the economy, an act of saving lives, not an inconvenience. >> it's an act of respect as well in many ways. it's not hard to do. patrick gaspard, this is $130 million investment. the mayor mentioned vulnerable populations. who are you targeting with this money? how is it going to work? >> well, thank you so very much for having me on. and thank you to the mayor for his extraordinary leadership, not just in los angeles, but the leadership that's partnered with mayors across the country, because none of us are in this by ourselves. mika, this effort we've taken on is intended to help and support and promote the interest of the most vulnerable workers in this economy. you just had stacey abrams on. she realizes when she talked about the police effort that we don't have a policing crisis, we have a governance crisis. when we look at covid and the impact, we don't have an unemployment crisis because of covid. we have a structural economic challenge in this country and a lack of inclusion for gig workers, for domestic workers and certainly for undocumented workers as well. so, through this effort partnering with mayor garcetti, a number of mayors across the country and with mastercard, we're providing this debit card that will directly to these workers that will enable them to receive resources from the government and community in order to take care of their essential needs because they have proven to be our essential workers. mika, we know much of what we hear about immigrant workers in this country is a fiction. without them we wouldn't be able to have any food on our tables. there are so many things from front line health care to our security needs that are taken up by these workers. we're trying to integrate them into this economy with this work. with direct relief. but we're also saying congress be, the president has to take up transformation in future stimulus and beyond that makes it clear that we're all in one boat through this storm. >> for sure. so many people are hurting. there are also, as i reported earlier, major controversies exactly how to move forward in sports. mike barnicle, i'll let you take it to the mayor with that, but first, what's going on with baseball? >> well, with baseball, mika, the original argument with major league baseball, the mayors and commissioner's office was over money, salaries. how much of their salary were they going to get to play a shortened season. i don't think that's any longer the case. i think the case now with major league baseball and all the other sports is the biggest opponent they're going to face in terms of getting back on the field, whether it's a football field, a hockey rink, basketball court or a major league baseball stadium, like dodger stadium, it's going to be the virus. it's going to be players' health. that's going to be the governing factor how soon, if at all, they come back. mr. mayor, i would like to ask you -- ambassador gaspard just mentioned what they were doing and the foundation money allotted to specific causes in specific places. i can't think of a city in this country that has subjected -- that has been subjected to random violence and planned violence more often than los angeles. watts, rodney king, you've been through it all. and yet despite all of the money and all of the good intentions we've poured into into your city, boston, new york, all the other cities, we still have a clear division among people. in los angeles, i mean, you live there. you know it. you run the city. you have a clear division between people growing up in places like compton and watts and south central l.a. and compared to other parts of l.a., you have a clear division in education, in health care access and in terms of their reaction to policing. what can we do? we've tried so often, so hard to heal these divisions. is it ever going to be possible to heal them? >> well, i think it has to be. and we have to not miss this moment. we have to meet it. we're halfway up the mountain. we can look down and see in 1992 how much worse things were and 50-plus people who died and a police chief you couldn't get rid of who said black people's veins were different than white people's veins which is why they were dying in chokeholds. now we've cut it in half to just 11 last year where it was 21 four years before. but you're exactly right. this is about something bigger than policing. even as we re-imagine policing and reallocate resources, this has to be about people's health, their education and economic opportunities. and our racial agend ai just appointed the first chief equity officer of the city of los angeles to look at race across all of our departments from our airport to our port and it won't just be done by cities. if we don't have national leadership that fundamentally looks at reparations, economic opportunity, it's looks at ways the starting line in 50 feet behind if you're black or an immigrant or people of color, we won't get to the truth of this. let's fix policing and make it better and get to the truth of the economic development. after 1992 it was estimated we needed 6 billion to rebuild south l.a. they raised $400 million. this has to be a national leadership moment. i don't think this president can step up to it but hopefully in november we'll see a change of the guard and the possibility of finally to make this a multiracial democracy, not just in words, but in practice. >> the mayor of los angeles, eric garcetti, thank you very much. >> mika -- sorry, mika. just one second. i think -- sorry. mike's question had some despair in it and the mayor is right not to despair. there's been tremendous progress. but we need to be hon best the obstacles in front of us. the policing issue is spoke ben without the proper context. the u.s. represents 5% of the global population. we imprison over 20% of those in jail around the world and they're mostly black and brown men. it's really important because that has economic considerations as well. let's have real truth in order to get to reconciliation and to get to economic inclusion. profoundly greater transformation needed here beyond policing. >> ambassador patrick gaspard, thank you as well for being on this morning. we appreciate you both coming on. up next, there are still big issues playing out on the world stage. the u.s. and russian officials are meeting today for nuclear arms negotiations. we'll get the very latest from nbc's keir simmons. keep it right here on "morning joe." - [narrator] the shark vacmop combines powerful suction with spray mopping to lock away debris and absorb wet messes, all in one disposable pad. just vacuum, spray mop, and toss. the shark vacmop, a complete clean all in one pad. since your ancestors 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investor with a diversified portfolio. who am i?! i refinanced my student loans with sofi because of their low interest rates. thanks sofi for helping us get our money right. ♪ discussions between the u.s. and russian envoys are under way in vienna to help establish a three-part arms control deal with china, limiting the nuclear stockpiles of all three countries. china, however, does not plan on participating. today, russia's deputy foreign minister will lead discussions with america's envoy about whether the final nuclear arms treaty between the u.s. and russia will expire. joining us now live from london, nbc news senior international correspondent keir simmons. and keir you spoke with the russian foreign deputy minister late last week. what did he say? >> he says the fact these talks are beginning today is good news, but worryingly says he certainly has no basis for believing that this deal will be extended when it expires in february. now just to be clear, mika, this is the last nuclear deal between russia and america. the last one standing. it limits the number of warheads. if it goes, then there is -- there are no agreements between the u.s. and russia over controlling their respective nuclear arms. and we've just heard on twitter from the u.s. special representative, presidential envoy for arms control, marshall billingsley who is tweeting, china is a no-show and accuses china of hiding behind a great wall of secrecy on its crash nuclear build-up. the reality is that china, we don't know exactly, has around 300 nuclear weapons, whereas respectively america and russia has around 6,000. and listen to how the deputy foreign minister of russia talks about these talks because he says that this insistence on bringing china in by america is going to scutter the whole thing. >> president putin and president trump are supposed to have such a great relationship. how can it be that we can be just months away from the end of this crucial nuclear deal without any sign of an agreement between the two sides? >> the two presidents, in my humble opinion, really communicate and understand each other in a very positive way. that's very true. and we welcome the u.s. president's repeated idea that he wants to go along with russia. we do the same. we want a much, much better relation with the u.s. and we're prepared to bear our share and to go even an extra mile, if you wish. nonetheless, the u.s. administration currently is so obsessed with china and everything that is associated with china that the chinese idea overshadowed, in my view, everything else. >> overshadows. i can't help thinking about those john bolton words over the weekend about a lack of direction from the top and obsession with electioneering by the president. how that must be leaving this u.s. team in these negotiations and whether they even know what the strategic game is from the president. >> okay. nbc's keir simmons, thank you very much. boy, that's a little unnerving at this point. we'll get a full report following up tomorrow on this on "morning joe." that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. thanks, mika. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's monday, june 22nd. here's what's happening this morning. we're kicking off a critical week. the president's case for re-election running smack against the fears and uncertainty still shaking our nation. this week was supposed to be the point at which the president wanted to prove that he was bigger than the coronavirus. bigger than civil unrest and that his supporters would run through a brick wall to come see him. but saturday's turnout showed that so far it is not going as planned. now he will try to move fast disappointing rally in tulsa by holding a smaller campaign event in arizona tomorrow. here's the

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