her and that book is out today. thank you so much for joining us. "ac 360" with anderson starts now. good evening. with more than 136,000 dead in this country due to the coronavirus pandemic, the president of the united states today stepped into the rose garden and tried to turn into a political rally he can no longer do because of the pandemic. for the better part of an hour he rail against china, democrats and joe biden and climate accords and energy saving air conditions, statute vandals and on and on the president at times seemed like he was reading a list. at other moments, he seemed to free associate. he talked about bombers under his command and said hope we don't have to use them and boasted of things he did three years ago with the wall, undocumented immigrants and old applause lines but no applause, only silence. because this wasn't some stadium packed full after supporters that come to cheer and bask in the glow of this artificially tan man.

his it was not closeed to anything one would expect or accept of a president but that shouldn't surprise us he chose to do it in the rose garden steps from the oval office. that's how numb we are. we listened to this man moose and miander and boost and brag and do that odd thing with his nose when he sucks in air loudly and none of it surprises us. that's how far we have fallen. more than 136,000 of our brothers and sisters, our moms and dads, grandparents and friends are dead. the president did briefly mention them but only to boast about how many more people would have died had it not been for his actions. he calls it leadership but to call it that would be misleading. the largest single peacetime lose of life in this country since the 1918 influenza pandemic and no end in sight and today the president was taking another victory lap, yet again. the graves are still fresh but

this president ignores them. he spreads for falsehoods and standing apart from so many others opponents and supporters alike including within his own circle beginning face reality so before we play you some of what he had to say from the biological bunker where he lives and everyone is tested and wears masks frto protect him, here is what you do need to hear. >> i think the fall and winter of 2020 and 2021 1 will probab be one of the most hard times we experienced. keeping the health care system from being over chechstretched important. the degree to do that will define how well beget through the fall and winter. >> cdc director robert redfield today and anthony fauci saying it could get as bad as the 1918 pandemic. tate reeves, the governor of mississippi and staunch

supporter of the governor making a plea for mask wearing and republicans holding their convention in florida outdoors, all signs that regardless of where people stand, the political spectrum they are facing up to the facts and beginning to and the facts with few exceptions continue to be crushing. texas reporting a record high 10,745 new cases. florida reporting their highest death toll so far. cases now rising in 37 states. the president today brushed it off as flames to be put out other than lives being extinguish. they got straight to the boasting and the falsehoods. >> we saved tens of thousands of lives, millions of lives by closing, we saved millions of lives. could be a number that we're actually working on but it could be 3 million lives and frankly, if we didn't test it wouldn't be in the headlines because we're showing cases.

we have just about the lowest mortality rate. if we did think of this, if we didn't do testing over 40 million people, if we did half the testing, we'd have half the cases. if we did another, we cut that in half, we'd have yet again, the cases are created because of the fact that we do tremendous testing. we have the best testing in the worl world. >> this is just ludicrous. this is the president of the united states. more than 130,000 people dead in this country and he's continuing this ridiculous lie, it's nonsensical. it defies any belief. we shouldn't be surprised because this is what he does. this is one of president's favorite lies. the united states is not the best or close to it in deaths.

it's the seventh worst in the world. the testing doesn't discover them. dr. redfield and others, cases we know about are probably far under estimating the actual spread of this virus. his testing, the president also spoke to cbs news tonight, he said the testing is working quote too well and probably the only person who thinks that. he equated the confederate battle flag with people protesting the killing of african americans by police. i'll have more on that shortly but first, more on the rally in the rose gardenacosta. i think i know the answer of this. there seems like there is no one around the president, mark meadows, the chief of staff is new. he came in, i guess, some people thought there would be some change right now which seems to be rearranging, is there anyone

around the president who shakes their head when they hear rambling in the rose garden like this. >> reporter: no, anderson we're down to kool-aid drinkers and next of kin. there are no more adults that will level with the president and tell him he can't deliver a rally like rant in the rose garden as he did earlier. the reason why that took place in the rose garden was like a rally is because the way he just went into the lies, the myths and the truth that he does out on the campaign trail. you know, one of the reasons why the rally is because the president can't be relied upon to tell the truth at those kinds of events. what he essentially did in the white house rose garden is transform one of the last places any presidential administration is supposed to be sort of removed from politics and plunged it head first into a

cesspool of campaign politicking. we heard him check the boxes checked at a rally. he went off on hunter biden and immigrati immigration. at one point he was making magical claims that the wall was going to be finished or almost completed by the end of the year. that is not true. anderson, as you illustrated a few minutes ago, he continues to talk about the state of testing and the spikes in coronavirus in this country and continues to lie to the american people that the reason why we're seeing these spikes in cases is doing more testing and why is it that the former white house chief of staff nimick mulvaney that work for administration, why did he put out an op ed on cnbc yesterday saying that testing remains a very big problem in this country? and so no, anderson, getting to your question, there isn't anyone to reign him in and make

sure he doesn't do that in the rose garden this evening, and what i think for the rest of this campaign and the president using the rose garden like a rally space, what we saw tonight was a switch. they told us it would be a press conference. the white house said he's having a press conference in the rose garden. he spoke and went on a rambling tirade for 53 questions, one of the questions was a propaganda outlet for the president. >> you know, what i don't understand is early on tried to portray this as he was a wartime commander in chief. fine. if coronavirus is invasion from outside our shores attack america, if that is what the president early on was saying it was, fair enough way to look at it, the idea it's an attack on america, the president of the

united states would not just continue to make the lies he does constantly but spend an hour in the rose garden with this rambling, you know, rift on all his greatest gripes and grievances. he would be relieved of duty if he was a commander in chief. really extraordinary. if we're under attack, this is what the president of the united states is doing and you know if he spend an hour doing it in front of reporters, it's what he does all day long to, as you said, the kool-aid drinkers and the next of kin who are the only people who can stand to be around him any longer. >> reporter: that's right, anders anderson. one of the things he did during this press conference, so-called press conference, it wasn't a press conference was went back attacking china and going as you said one of the greatest hits that he likes to put out there that china is solely responsible for this pan dedemic in this country than anyplace around the world. as we recall and been trying to make this clear to the american

people from the very beginning of all this, the president has time and again praised china. praised ping and so on and so anderson, i think one of the reasons why the event in the rose garden, the 53 minutes of rambling ininas he was, i thinke knows what the questions are going to be. he knows. that is why -- >> he has no -- there is no plan. there is no plan. there is no plan for opening schools. there is no plan -- >> reporter: exactly. most especially schools. >> there is no plan for the ppe, which we're still freaking talking about ppe four months into this thing. it's just -- >> reporter: you have to wonder why he thinks the american people want to put children back in schools when he's been wrong on so many different occasions. >> yeah. jim acosta, appreciate it. thank you. digging deeper with dr.

peter hotez and dean of tropical medicine in houston and dr. sanjay gupta and cnn senior political reporter nia mallika. can you believe the commander in chief in the midst of the biggest deaths in the this country, i talk about it every night and i'm still stunned we're in this mess at the helm. >> yeah, i watched his comments this evening, anderson and i was speechless. you know, today we have 40,000 new cases and that's southern from florida to california. globally we had 200,000 cases. so basically, one-fifth of the world's cases, one-fourth, one-fifth of the new cases are in our southern states.

the deaths are going up. the hospitalizations are going up. hospitals are becoming overwhelmed and wooee're doing s largely without a federal response. this there is fema support and fragmented pieces. the states are left to more or less figure it out on our own and it's only going to get worse. you know, this is 136,000 deaths now but the deaths are starting to increase and the projections are about 200,000 deaths by october and again, no end in sight. the point is there is no plan. there is no federal led effort to bring this back. >> sanjay, again, the president claiming testing is working too well. you know, it's ludicrous. >> it's getting worse, anderson. today even saying look, it's taking too long for us to get test results. for people getting testing done,

which can take hours of waiting, this is just the practicality of what it's really like for people right now and get these calls all the time waiting in their cars for hours on end to get tested and they know, you know, quest diagnostics, a big test provider said today, it could take seven days to get test results back. it kind of defeats the purpose, right? people realize that by now. you're worried you have the virus. get tested, it takes seven days. what have you done in seven days? have you been out spreading the virus? makes it worse. it's hard to believe the president came to the cdc and said anybody that wanted a test to get one. we're obviously nowhere near that. >> i remember during the town hall when the white house was talking about the number of tests they were doing and which is, it takes a week to get test results. those are phony tests because they are pointless if it takes a week to get the results and you're out spreading it to who

knows who and not enough contact tracers to figure out where you've been spreading it. nia mallika, again, this is clearly like campaign-style speech the president attacking vice president biden multiple times, full of lies about the pandemic. i guess at this point since there is no plan with the virus and trying to come up with a plan and roll up his sleeves and be held accountable for that. he's just kind of leaning fully into living in his biological bunker and just going after the same kind of cultural campaign lines that he's used time and time again. >> yeah, in a fairly inco-her rant way. that was a rambling speech. a 53-minutes and ten minutes of questions after that had that no real theme and no real lift and

no purpose other than the president getting out there and riffing and the greatest hits, all of the falsehoods whether it's about biden or his own record or about the covid crisis americans are living with every single day of their lives. this is an urgent crisis on the president's plan is that he has no plan. i mean, we keep saying will there be a federal response, his response is not to really respond and let the states deal with the patch work, one going on now for all of the cases and republican governors. they always wanted to please the president and follow his lead and find themselves now having to reverse some of those efforts to open up the economies down there so this is the president and what we'll see from this president and he has a vision, not for this present crisis and doesn't really seem to have a vision for why he should be handed another four years at this point.

>> you know, no plan, leave it up to the states, attack the basic steps we could all take wearing a mask, social distancing as states reopen. that's the role he's chosen to play, which is just surreal. i mean, it's deeply harmful to the country. sanjay, i want to play something admiral -- he's not a navy admiral. he wear as navy uniform. he's a member of the public health service and administration's testing zar which i'm not sure anybody would want to claim credit for but i want to play something he said this morning. >> we are in a much different place now than we were several months ago. a much better place. we're not there yet, but we are seeing some early light at the end of this tunnel. >> again, for anybody who knows anything about the military, light at the end of the tunnel is a phrase used around 1968,

'69 about the vietnam war. we know how long that went on for. so what is he talking about a light at the end of the tunnel? >> i don't know. anderson, it's a very long tunnel. you know, i hate to say it because the need and desire to be optimistic but i mean, you got to be real here. we -- and the numbers -- this is an objective story that they're telling because there is numbers and data and people can look at the numbers themselves. you don't have to believe us. look what is happening in the icu in florida. 48 icus in different counties in the state that are basically either full or near full. i mean, this is happening in other states in texas and arizona and california, 1800 patients in icus in california. my parents in are in florida. they are worried the hospitals in their area may be too full if they get sick. that is something we talked about in northern italy.

what's happening but because when you hear people utilizing it in this way, it makes me worried, they aren't going to do enough about it. i don't know what he's talking about. likely to get worse before it gets better. >> dr. hotez, there still seems to be so much we don't know about long-term impact of coming down with covid. i a i used to think it would be better sooner rather than later and develop immunity to it but everyone i know who has gotten it, some of them had real continuing lingering problems with their lungs, problems in their numbers in the blood. we heard the warning this pandemic could be as bad as the 1 1 1918 flu pandemic. do you think he's right?

>> long-term neurological complications, cognitive issus s and depression that is well documented. this is a horrible virus. vascular injury, sudden death and, you know, tony, dr. fauci mentioned compared it to the 1918 flu pandemic. he may not be far off. by the end of this year, we may be at 300,000 deaths. the flu pandemic between -- remember it was several years. 1918, 1920, '21 was 675,000 deaths. i hope we don't get there but it's not impossible. this is past a public health issue. this is a homeland security issue. people don't feel safe. people don't feel safe going outside their home. they don't feel safe going into the workplace. they certainly don't feel safe with their kids in school. they don't feel safe at so many different levels, and this will have a very chilling effect for

months to come, and i don't see how we sustain the economy at this rate, as well. eventually things will start to fall apart unless we can figure a way to get federal guidance and leadership. i'm not sure who takes that over. there is large pieces of the executive branch that are unwilling to do this. >> yeah, dr. hotez, nia mallika, sanjay, appreciate it. an emergency medicine doctor in arizona, what it's like on the front lines. the president erased remarks about confederate flags and what he had to say about good people on both sides back in charlottesville during that attack. because heart and kidney disease shouldn't prevent you from pushing your limits. because every baby deserves the very best start in life. because a changing environment should mean caring for the land that takes care of us all. at bayer, everything we do, from advances in health to innovations in agriculture,

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acknowledging, they distracted from hopeful news about treatments and vaccines, none of what the president said focused on that to the extent it focused on anything at all why it's important to pay attention to what is happening in the fight we're in right now. with that in mind, we're grateful to spend a few minutes with dr. quin snyder. dr. snider, appreciate you being with us. poi paint us a picture what things look like for you and the people you're treating. >> it's really unfortunate. arizona is in a state of crisis right now as we speak. we're watching our health care system overflow. we're starting to see very unusual behaviors, such as transferring patients all the throughout the state and our neighboring states. patients are going to las vegas, san diego, albuquerque and southern utah. we're starting to house patients internally in unusual locations, as well. we're putting pediatric -- excuse me, adult patients in

pediatric hospitals, which is very unusual and seeing providers act outside of their scope of practice. there is also a significant shortage of health care workers in this state, disaster teams have landed in this state to help with the covid fight. we're needing a significant number of travelers from other locations coming in, helping out with nursing and respiratory therapy and we're grateful they have come to help us and most disturbingly, we had some requests for refrigerated trucks to come into our state to house dead bodies because our morgues are beginning run out of space and unfortunately, right now, we find ourselves with our backs up against the wall and we could end up in a position where we have to make decisions like who gets a ventilator and who doesn't. >> i mean, so much of what you're saying is, i mean, it is horrific. it also just reminds me so much of the conversations i had with doctors back in april in new

york where i live and where i'm from. you know, exactly all of those things and i remember even doctors in it laly talking abou difficult choices they have to make who would get a ventilator and how do you make those choices in the most ethical way possible? >> i think -- >> to be in that position in arizona is crazy. >> well, to be in that position so many months later from what had happened in new york and new jersey and italy and to not have learned those lessons is frankly inexcusable and some of your viewers in new york and new jersey might be surprised to hear here in arizona we don't have a statewide mask mandate and further more, i can go walk down the street and go have a sitdown meal inside a restaurant right now and we are at a very

critical junction tour in tkric p pandemic. it should have been done a long time ago. >> you know, one of the things when you're in a war zone, people fighting in a war zone, you're around other people doing and going through the exact same thing. i'm wondering when, you know, you are fighting every day in a medical setting and when you leave and you drive down the street and you see people without a mask or you see people eating in restaurants, do you feel like you exist on another planet in your work life where you are -- you know, you are seeing this life and death and yet, outside the walls of the hospitals it doesn't seem like people are paying attention? >> it's very challenging to be in this position and doing my best to try to take care of my community and i know that all the people i work with are doing their best to take care of some of the sickest patients we've ever seen and that contrast going out and driving around and seeing people out at restaurants

is really heartbreaking to us and frankly, in someways, it feels insulting. it's probably never been a more difficult time to be a health care worker than right now. >> if you could bring, you know, a leader, governor of your state, the president of the united states, whoever it may be to, you know, to spend the day with you, what would you want to say to them right now? >> well, that's a great question. i would love to tell the governor of my state the president and frankly, the governors of every other state that if they want to succeed in this pandemic, if they actually want to contain it, then they need to step back from the podium and they need to allow medical professionals and they need to allow scientists to handle the pandemic. they need to let us manage the pandemic because they are putting us in a very dangerous

position and i don't think they really know how to handle this correctly. and i understand that they think that they can politic their way around this, but the problem is that the virus doesn't care about your feelings. the virus isn't something you can sit down with at a negotiating table and get a good outcome. it doesn't work that way. the virus is going to do what it wants to do and i think that once our leadership comes to that realization, i think we'll all be in a safer place. >> dr. quin snyder, appreciate it. makes me sick we're having this conversation for plus months into this because it is, it's a conversation i've had too often with doctors, months ago in new york and elsewhere and to know that it's now similar situations in arizona and elsewhere is sickening and i just wish you the best and appreciate all you're doing, thank you. >> appreciate your reporting on this, anderson. thank you very much. >> take care. just ahead, more reaction to

the president's rambling rose garden speech and claims of historical leadership during the pandemic and gretchen whitmer when we return. e we're from? well, actually...we're from a lot of places. you see we're from here and there and here... your family's story is waiting to be shared. at ancestry.com

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download the xfinity stream app today to stream the entertainment you love. xfinity. the future of awesome. president trump's rambling campaign style speech is an area of grievance and grateful enough for his actions as president during the pandemic. >> the governors would tell us with 50 different, great job, great job and then they'll go to the media and say well, they didn't do such a great job. we did a good job. we made a lot of governors look

fantastic. >> joining me is the democratic governor of michigan gretchen whitmer. there was a time listening to the president today this is the monologue like he's the guy in the bar who just rambles to anybody who listens to the same story over and over and over again. we heard that so many times about governors or other people. i don't know if you listened to the president today because you're busy and he spoke for a long time and didn't say anything of particular import. what do you make of what you heard from him today? >> i didn't listen to the speech but i'll say this. we've got incredible challenges in this nation. we need to be banding together and yet we have inconsistent at best remarks from the white house when lives are on the

line. we're seeing record numbers every single day coming out of states with regard to covid-19 cases and, you know, the acknowledgement so many lives have been lost and the pain, the economic pain we're feeling in this country. you know, it is really important that anyone with the leadership position is speaking to how we're going to get through this as encouraging people to wear masks is focussing on can we get our kids faithfully back into the schools? it's troubling and disturbing to hear remarks like that when we have so much work to do right now when it comes to this virus. >> >> let's talk about what is happening in michigan until august 11th today and you said michigan now faces an acute risk of a second wave one that not only threatens lives and may jeopardize the reopening of schools and in response, i've paused the reopening of our

economy. i know you asked the president to let the national guard stay through the end of the year. >> that's right. 49 states out of 50 are in a state of emergency in some sort of another. the only one that isn't is wisconsin because they had a lawsuit about the governor's powers. the fact of the matter is, covid-19 is still very present. we took an aggressive stance. we pushed our curve down. there are studies that show these actions saved tens of thousands of lives. we know how to get this under control and we see people dropping their guard in michigan and across the nation. that the why mandating masks and ensuring we are tightening upright now, we're supposed to start school in 56 days. that is not that far off. so the conduct that we, you know, engage in right now is going to determine whether or not our kids get back into school in a meaningful way in person. that's why right now it is time to get more serious, push this curve back down, michigan led at one point, michigan and new york were proud of that but the

slipping is very concerning and that's why we got to get right on it. the last thing we want to be are states that have uncontrolled growth going on in the south. >> the decision about schools, he said it would be a terrible decision if schools don't open in time in the fall. everybody wants schools to open and children to get out of the house and to learn and all of that and they need to go back to work, as well. what's the calculous on schools in michigan? how is that decision going to be made? >> one of the hardest decisions i've made and i've had to make a lot of tough decisions with the lack of leadership in washington, the nation's governors have stepped up. when i took kids out of schools at the end of march, 1.5 million kids in michigan half of whom get a meal or two five days a week at school.

it created a lot of concerns and those concerns continue. the learning gap, the learning loss that happens every single summer is exacerbated for kids in poverty and the stress of covid, i want to get our kids back in school. if our trajectory is headed upward, we know it's probably not going to be safe to do that. tightening round now when things are still relatively good compared to what's going on across the country is really important because if we continue this trajectory, we just, you know, it's going to be -- we're going to be hard prezed ssed toe parents confidence and teachers confidence it's safe to resume. right now the moment is critical. masking up across this nation, taking politics out of this so we can get our kids back to school and our economy re-engaged. if the numbers keep going up, we got to follow the science and protect lives. that's got to center the work we do. >> yeah.

governor whitmer, appreciate your time. thank you very much. >> thank you. as promised, we want to come back to the interview that touched on police shootings and the confederate flag and what mary trump said about her uncle, the president in her first interview since her bombshell book. you can't predict the future. but a resilient business can be ready for it. 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.

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as we mentioned at the top

of the program, president trump taped an interview with cbs news before his white house session today. he talked about the confederate flag and white people killed by the police compared to black people. >> president trump back in 2015 you said the confederate battle flag belongs in museum. do you still believe that? >> freedom of speech. very spimimple. with me it's freedom of speech, very simple. like it, don't like it, it's freedom of speech. >> would you be comfortable with your supporters displaying the confederate battle flag? >> depends on your definition. i'm comfortable with freedom of speech. it's very simple. >> you understand why the flag is a painful symbol for many people because it's a reminder of slavery. >> people love it. i think about slavery, i look at nascar, you go to nascar with flags all over the place. they stopped it. i think it's freedom of whether confederate flags or black lives

matter, it freedom of speech. >> let's talk about george floyd. you said george floyd's death was a terrible thing. >> terrible. >> why are african americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country? >> and so are white people. so are white people. what a terrible question to ask. so are white people. more white people, by the way. more white people. >> obviously, the second part of the president's answer deserves context as far as police killings according to a study published in 2018 by the american journal of public health adjusted for population, black men are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by the police than white men. the president displaying the confederate flag as free speech. bakari sellers author of "my vanishing country" and david axelrod and a cnn senior political analyst. when the president of the united states goes on national tv giving misleading information about police violence against

black people in this country, making excuses for the confederate flags, i mean, i guess none of it is surprising. >> none of it is surprising but i think the question we have to ask ourselves is how far have we come? i think that's a question that the country literally has to sit back and ask themselves. how far have we come and where do we go from here? those are two simplistic questions. when you hear the president of the united states and the resolve to come down on the side and legacy of whit supremacy. the president is a wipe sup preliminary i -- supremacist, you have to believe we have so far to go. this is not new. i don't want people to get outraged simply over the president's statement. he is harkening back on a time like george wallace, lester maddox. he's going back to a time of jimmy lee jackson and cheney and what the president doesn't understand is the history of this country. i firmly believe that the ignorance that the president of

the united states displays and arctic lates dctic lates day in adds gasoline to the fire. there is 35% of the country that adheres to everything he says. the president is a danger. he truly is a danger, what people and i firmly believe this and people are going to -- >> bakari, what if -- >> go ahead. >> bakari, what if the president actually -- he doesn't read, he doesn't read history but you said he doesn't understand the history. what if he does understand the history and doing it because he understands the history? i mean, that's also a possibility, isn't it? it's a sickening possibility. >> that's a sick -- i don't give him that much credit. i believe the president to be racist. i believe the president to be a white supremacist. i do not believe he is the architect of trying to espouse these racial ideologies and supremacist ideologies forward.

he's in this moment using racism as a political currency. people around him may be more what you're talking about. regardless, this did not start with donald trump and it's not going to end when he's rooted out of the white house this is the under belly of the united states of america and this is something that we have to have a reckoning with that we are having a reckoning with and people have to understand that. >> david, i mean, it certainly seems like the president understands this is the under belly of america and is very happy to play into it and play with it for his own ends. >> listen, he's riding the horse that he ran in on -- rode in on. he became president of the united states by espousing these views. he's espoused them throughout his presidency. i disagree slightly with bar

carrca bar c bakari. he's badly misreading this moment and the country moved, the president has not. if you look at polling, you see that overwhelming majority of america subjeggest he's off on this. they don't want to see him pouring gasoline on the fire. he's now losing by double digits. this is part of the reason why. people are uncomfortable with this tactic. but there is this, he believes, a silent majority, a term we heard back 50 years ago that support this kind of id eology and support this white supremacy premise and they will take him back to the white house. i'm sure he believes that.

>> hmm. i want to play some from this interview. let's listen. >> april 2017. you go, you see the president in the oval office. and you tell him don't let them get you down. did you mean that? >> i did. actually. um, he -- that was four months in. he already seemed very, um, strained by the pressures. you know, he'd never been in this situation before where he wasn't entirely protected from criticism or accountability or things like that, and i just remember thinking he seals ti-- seems tired, he seems like this

is not what he signed up for, if he even knows what he signed up for p for. i thought his response was actually more enlightening than my statement. and he said th, "they won't get me." and so far looks like he's right. >> and if you're in the oval office today, what would you say to him? >> resign. >> boil it down. what's the single most important thing you think the country needs to know about your uncle? >> he's utterly incapable of leading this country, and it's dangerous to allow him to do so. >> based on what you hasee now what you saw then? >> wasbased on what i've seen m entire adult life.

>> bakari, it's quite a story obviously. does any of it matter? is all this baked in? is everybody's mind made up? >> no, but i think that proves my point, though, anderson. we've known this. this isn't anything new. it's not as if the president became racist and incompetent yesterday. this is the same person when i was in the studio playing footsy with dave duke. the united states of america we deserve the president we had today and we've never dealt with this issue and so now we have to and hopefully we can turn the page. >> very quickly, david axelrod, do you thisnk this matters? >> no, i think what matters is 136,000 people have died and this virus is raging and he seems unresponsive to it. he seems to be pouring gasoline

on the fire of race at a time when the country isav think peoe on what touches their lives. i think long ago they made a judgment about his character. >> david axelrod, bakari sellers, thanks for being here with us. we try to remember the victims of the pandemic, including a couple married for 60 years and a marine veteran. (upbeat music) - [narrator] this is kate. she always wanted her smile to shine. now, she uses a capful of therabreath healthy smile oral rinse

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we begin the hour with the raw number of lives lost in this largely preventable national disaster, more than 13 of,06,00 rising. fred and judy were married and spend 60 years ago side by side. when it was time to go into the nursing home, they went to the nursing home together. the same day fred was rushed to the emergency room and put on a ventilator. they died just 12 hours apart. his son said they were so

connected, he just didn't want to be left behind. jerome was a sergeant in the u.s. marine corps who served in the korean war, part of the so-called frozen chosen, part of the chosen reservoir battle in korea, surrounded in a brutally cold winter. he became a police officer, suffered 34 years in new jersey. his love for his country was only second to his love for his family. he and his wife audrey had five children, 21 grandchildren and 22 great grandchildren together. jerome rice was 86 years old. and joe swanson grew up in new york city. after graduating from high school, she worked as a secretary, which is where she met her future husband, carl swanson. they spent nearly 50 years together, raised a son and a daughter. joan was an active volunteer in her community in new jersey, but her favorite title was mom. she loved not only raising her

own children but also welcoming all her children's friends into her home. joan swanson lived an extraordinary life and she was 89 years old. that's it for us. the new continues. i want to hand it over to chris for "cuomo prime time." thank you. the president let another day pass without handling the pandemic and continuing his up-and-down strategy, insisting the virus is under control and it's under control because of his efforts alone. >> we did a travel ban in january. like dr. fauci said, they would have lost thousands of more people if president donald trump hadn't done that and i was a crowd of one. >> who? so now he draws on dr. fauci to vouchee for him. he cites hip m as