with just six days until the election, cnn is here to help. go to cnn.com/vote and we'll connect you to resources in your state. thank you very much for watching. i'm wolf blitzer in "the situation room." erin burnett "outfront" starts right now. "outfront" next, the president's own task force warning of an unreelementing and broad spread of coronavirus. tonight, dr. anthony fauci says we won't even be close to back to normal until the end of 2021. with six days until election day, the president denies it. the road to bide within the edge ght, but democrats still so nervous. why? and historian john meacham has covered presidents his entire career, but the first time he's made an endorsement. how come? he's my guest. let's go "outfront."

good evening. i'm erin burnett. "outfront" tonight, the october surprise that isn't a surprise. coronavirus is raging. we are now six days away from election day. and team trump is betting on the message that the virus is vain quished. even as his own task force washes of an unrelenting and broad spread of the virus, even as dr. anthony fauci says the u.s. will not get back to some semblances of normality until the end of 2021, maybe later. well, you can see the denial at trump's rally right now. it is his second of the day in arizona. few masks, no social distancing. even as arizona is facing a near 60% increase in the seven-day average of hospitalizations. you can see it at vice president pence's rallies today, breaking his quarantine again. this is wisconsin earlier today, which recorded a record number of deaths yesterday. pence just now landing in michigan for another rally which

is facing a record in hospitalization levels. this is on a day that american voters have been given the starkest choice yet. maskless rallies violating quarantines, images of a virus va vanquished. a that's one choice. the other is this, joe biden briefed by public health experts and talking about only one thing today -- the virus. >> i'm not running on the false promise of ending this pandemic by flipping a switch. but what i can promise you is this -- we will start on day one doing the right things. we'll let science drive our decisions. we will deal honestly with the american people, and we'll never, ever, ever quit. that's how we'll shut down this

virus. >> americans have a stark choice to make indeed. and when it comes to the facts on the virus right now, the facts are not on trump's side. the president proclaiming that he has ended the covid-19 pandemic and n that press release, on the same day that one american died every 90 seconds from covid. those are the statistics in the past 24 hours. one american dying every 90 seconds. if that doesn't put the concept to rest, up to 20,000 more americans projected to die in the next 2 1/2 weeks of coronavirus. those are facts and you don't have to take them from me. here today are the president's former fda chief, trump's former fda chief and trump's current top infectious disease expert. >> i think we're entering the most difficult phase of the pandemic right now. >> we're not in a good place. >> the president is not listening to them. in fact, he's they have wanted to. and you don't have to listen to me, listen to this.

newly obtained audio of jared kushner talking to bob woodward back in april. >> trump's now back in charge, not the doctors. >> yes, trump was back in charge, not the doctors. therefore he owns america's response to this virus. not only has president trump not accomplished ending the pandemic, but it did not have to be this bad six days before his presidential re-election bid. if the president had made different choices, up to 210,000 american lives could have been saved according to the latest columbia university study. specifically, things the president could have made happen. wearing masks and social distancing. >> i feel quite confident that if we had uniformly done the things i was talking about just a moment ago, that certainly considerable number of lives could have been saved. >> 200,000 fellow americans have

died in the last seven 3407bmon. if we had taken the virus seriously, implement public health measures, 80%, 90% of those people would be alive today. >> so while president trump today declares victory over the virus, and his chief of staff says that they can't "control the pandemic," the president's own testing czar, now breaking with him saying this is all wrong. >> i do want to emphasize that as we did in the sun belt, as we did in the deep south, we can control the virus. we know how to do that. smart policies, very critical to wear a mask when you can't physically distance. >> we have both campaigning covered tonight. as american voters face this stark choice on the coronavirus. kaitlan collins is at the white house, and jessica dean is covering joe biden. kaitlan, the president denying what the doctors are el ttellin. jared kushner saying trump was

in charge, not the doctors. and they're claiming credit for ending the pandemic. >> yeah. and when jared kushner made those comments, only 40,000 americans had died. we've seen where we have come now, just a short time later. be the president is defying what his administration guidelines say by holding rallies but ignoring what his doctors say, as well. something he has insisted and it's never been accurate, there are more cases because there is more testing. his testing coordinator said that is not the case. it's because there are actually more cases. that is in addition to disputing what the chief of staff said about being able to control the pandemic. of course, it culminated with that press release from the white house, touting ending the pandemic as one of the president's accomplishments in his first term in office. and they later acknowledged that was a poorly worded statement. it wasn't just poorly worded, it was inaccurate. if you look at the numbers and see that 500,000 americans

contracted coronavirus in just the last seven days alone. even though these mixed messages are coming out of the administration, what is not avoidable is the pandemic itself. you can see that as the president is holding these rallies, trying to close out the final days of this race that they can try to ignore the pandemic or spin it in a certain way. of course, the reality is still there, the numbers are still there. of course, the pandemic is still here, as well. >> kaitlan, thank you. jessica dean is "outfront" covering the biden campaign. jessica, biden getting all in on coronavirus with the exact opposite message of president trump. >> reporter: yes. it's striking how differently these two men are handling this in the closing days of this election, erin. today, this is the conversation that joe biden and the biden campaign want to be having. they want this to be a referendum on president trump and his administration's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. and to that end, he spent the day in his home state of delaware where he early voted

and took time for a briefing with his officials, his health officials and scientists, doctors. it was all done remotely. he was briefed on the current trends in the coronavirus pandemic and gave remarks. you aired some of them a few moments ago where he slammed the president's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and offered another way, another choice, which he says if he's elected, he has a plan he will put into place on day one. and you heard him say there, he says it's not going to be the flip of the switch. he's acknowledging it's going to be hard, but he says he's ready to take action. at one point, he said enough, it's time for a change. and the biden campaign is hoping, is betting that americans feel the same way, that they want someone else to lead them through this. >> thank you very much, jessica. "outfront" now, john avolon, mia henderson, and dr. jonathan reiner. the contrast between the two

candidates on this virus couldn't be more stark. and you certainly see it tonight. six days until the election. joe biden focused on the virus, president trump saying he should have credit for ending it. >> i think that's right. and this has echoes of the rnc convention when they talked about the coronavirus pandemic as if it was in the past. you have the administration echoing that again. they are treating this with indifference, as if it is in the past and if they have had great success in 200,000 -- over 200,000 americans dead. and you have biden treating it with great urgency, laying out a plan for what he would do differently, including urging governors and state and local officials to implement masks mandates and ratcheting up the testing. all things we know that president trump and his administration have not wanted to do, so they continue with these super spreader events across the country and

pretending that there isn't this terrible economic and health crisis that americans are going through every single day. >> john, the white house cla claiming the list of accomplishments ending the covid-19 pandemic. that's one of the highlights. how can anyone think that is an okay claim to make in a press release when you have deaths and hospitalizations at record levels in some states? and your own task force, person after person after person saying it is unrelenting and broad? >> it speaks to the unbelievable gravitational pull of tone coming from the top and this presidency, that somebody in the press office wanted to write down what they thought the president would want them to say, which is an outright lie, taking credit for the end of something that is growing and expanding on their watch. and it just speaks to a culture of deceit and self-deception that has been created by this president, while simultaneously trying to give themselves self-congratulation while people

are suffering. >> dr. reiner, we have that new audio that just came out of president trump's son-in-law, jared kushner, boasting to bob woodward how the president had successfully cut out the doctors and scientists who were advising on the pandemic. i want to play the bottom line of what he told woodward. >> trump's now back in charge. it's not the doctors. >> so at that time, 40,000 americans had died from the virus, as kaitlan pointed out. kushner admits the president owns going against the doctors. the death toll now would mean 190,000 deaths that happened between when jared kushner said that, trump's back in charge, it's not the doctors and the president was not what they wanted. 190,000 people have died since then. should voters hold president trump accountable for those deaths once he was back in charge? >> absolutely.

he's the president of the united states. he's running the show. he would be the first person to tell you he's running the show. look, back then, in the middle of april when jared kushner did that interview, there were 700,000 cases in the united states. so since that time, 8 million more people have tested positive. you know, we wondered whether -- or how much of this horrible performance was incompetence versus malfeasance. now we know that it was both. the president intentionally sidelined the professionals running this. think about when that april time point was, just after the cdc issued its guidelines how to safely open states. and then the president sidelined that and encouraged states to open as quickly as possible. he sidelined the doctors. he took control. states opened quickly and here we are now. >> so john, now you have this issue where they're putting that

as one of their highlights. to the extent they're talking about coronavirus, it's to say covid, covid, covid, fake news. let's go to states with record hospitalizations and have our crowds and not have an issue. other than that, the team is trying to have the confidence. senior adviser steven miller went so far as today on a call to make this claim about joe biden. >> his policies would incentivize child smuggling and child trafficking on an epic global scale. >> that is the stuff of conspiracy theorys to be clear, john. >> yes, it is. that dog whistle to qanon from a senior adviser to the president who has been known to traffic in white supremacist websites, who followed it on with a lie saying they reunited families, but to play to that kind of a conspiracy qanon base while on

the taxpayer dime, speaks to the moral degradation that's occupied this administration. it's just the latest sign, but we shouldn't lose sight of how ugly it is just because it happens down the stretch of an election. >> this is shocking in a sense that you would see the president's team, and i know john points out there's been this -- but to bring up a qanon conspiracy, then they're claiming the pandemic has ended. you know, doing this on a call not by accident, right? they now believe this is their best shot, their best path to turn out in victory next week. >> that's right. it is an all about the base strategy. that's what this president has done for the last many years of his presidency. it's clear that, you know, he's coming up short, at least in the polls so far. you see some of his key voters drifting away from him in choosing biden instead, again, at least according to some of the polls that we have seen from this election so far.

we'll see what happens down the stretch. but listen, this suspect a dog whistle, this is a bull horn talking about child trafficking and pedophilia. this is right in the wheel house of qanon. we saw the president embrace them or at least refuse to rebuke them many, many times before. these are his people because they lionize him, and they are wacky, crazy, antisemitic conspiracy theorists, and they're a dangerous element of american society at this point. and you see steven miller, who we pay his salary, giving them aid, comfort, and support. it's a very, very dark thing that happened on that call. and the president obviously hashas sentiments. >> i thank you all. president trump is griping to have to be out there campaigning. >> i would love to drive the

hell out of here. just get the hell out of here. >> and a renowned presidential historian, taking sides in this election, endorsing a candidate for the first time in his career. he'll tell you why. john meacham is out front. and hurricane zeta just making landfall, lashing the gulf coast. we are live in new orleans where they just got the worst of it. alright, i brought in ensure max protein to give you the protein you need with less of the sugar you don't. [grunting noise] i'll take that. woohoo! 30 grams of protein and 1 gram of sugar. ensure max protein. with nutrients to support immune health.

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tonight, a record. more than 74 million voters have already cast their ballots. more than half of the total votes cast in 2016. and nearly half of those ballots are coming from voters affiliated from the democratic party. democrats tending to vote early. phil mattingly is "outfront" at the magic wall. so phil, it can kind of be confusing how to interpret that, because you have a lot of days left and you have election day. new polls out showing biden leading in key states. so where are we on the race to 270? >> reporter: don't draw too many conclusions by the early vote. pay attention to it and draw some conclusions, that is mostly 2020 is not 2016. this was the 2016 map. president trump and his campaign are hoping to replicate that to the extent that they can. at least to get 270 electoral votes. if you want to see why it's different, start with the

national polling. six days back out in 2016, donald trump was trailing hillary clinton by five points. that narrowed to three. right now why does it stand? president trump is trailing joe biden by ten points. but, again, you know this well, erin. it's about state polls. so let's zone in on wisconsin. this was a crucial state to donald trump's blowing apart the blue wall and he did it by 22,000 votes. take a look at where wisconsin polling stands today based on the poll of polls that are currently out. joe biden holding a rather handy nine-point lead. that is emblematic to a number of different things, but mostly it's strength in the midwest. why does that matter? we talked about that blue wall. here's the reality of where things stand. joe biden already above in the cnn racetracker 270 electoral votes. good reason why, strength in the midwest. say you give president trump every single toss-up, including florida, georgia, north carolina, ohio, iowa, and why not just give him the state of

arizona, as well. and the state of nevada, two states where joe biden is leaning ahead. if president trump does not puncture that midwest blue wall, he can win all of those states and joe biden is still over 270 electoral votes. so while president trump may be in arizona today and focusing somewhat on the sun belt, it will all come back to the midwest, erin. >> which is so crucial. now when you go through this, there's so many things you need to know state by state. you can vote early, can your vote be counted if received after election day, which it cannot in wisconsin, can they start counting those mail-in ballots before election day. all of the answer to these questions in addition to the margins become crucial to the answer to this question -- will we know who is president by this time next week? >> don't have the answer to that question. but here's the important point, that's okay, right? and if you don't have the answer to that question by this point seven days from now, that doesn't mean something is wrong or something has gone amiss. you make a crucial point, and it

lines up with the map. if the midwest is so important, if this will come down to the midwest, states like pennsylvania, michigan, and wisconsin, they don't get to count their absentee ballots until election day. so when you have a flood of vote by mail and they can't start until election day, that will likely slow the process down. a lot of thought that pennsylvania could take multiple days, but we don't know. we've never had a coronavirus election before. if this comes down to joe biden winning say a state like florida or north carolina or a state like arizona, they count before election day. they have infrastructure in place that has dealt with mail-in ballots more than the midwest states. so you may have an answer. the reality is, we don't know if we are still going through this by this point next week, the good news is we have young children, we're not used to sleeping any way. but we just don't know at this point. >> this is all true, this is all true. phil, thank you very much. i want to go to bakari sellers, former democratic member of the south carolina

house of representatives and scott jennings, former assistant to president george bush. and like phil and myself, you are both used to young children and not getting much sleep. so bakari, biden is holding his lead in the battle ground states. why are democrats, though, still so nervous? >> because we have ptsd from 2016, that's why we're so nervous. everyone thought that they would be partying until the morning hours with a madame president hillary clinton. and i think that we were all hammered by about 10:00 after president trump won florida and the night was over. we realized our dreams were shattered. ever since then, we have had this anxiety we can't shape. the fundamentals of this race are vastly different from 2016, for all my democratic friends who can't sleep. there's no green party candidate that's credible where left leaning voters will flock to,

and there's no comey letter. comey letter dropped 11 days before the election and that traininged the trajectory of the race. and the last thing, is you had the two most unpopular candidates in the history of the country running in 2016. you don't have that fundamental in this race. >> so scott, president trump is busting, he's going across the country, doing multiple rallies in states, and he's playing defense in some states he won in 2016. but he's putting it all on the table. but he is not happy about it. he is complaining about the fallout of the coronavirus and saying this has forced him to go out on the campaign trail for multiple rallies a day. here he is over the past couple of days. >> what the hell do you think i'm doing here on a freezing night with 45 degree winds? i would love the drive the hell out of here. i probably wouldn't be standing out here in the freezing rain with you. i would be home in the white house, doing whatever the hell i was doing.

>> so scott, he's trying to be funny there, but is that what his voiters want to hear in the final stretch of the election? i shouldn't be here but i have to be? >> yeah, look, i think it's part of his schtick to decry jokes. but he's obviously frustrated because before coronavirus i think he thought he was on glide path to re-election. even today, 56% of americans say they're better off today than four years ago. he really thought this was going to be a re-election campaign about the economy and about the state of family's finances. but the race has turned into something much different, which is largely about the coronavirus and of course, we have spiking cases around the country propelling this to the top of the news at a very bad time. so i assume and understand why he would be frustrated. traditionally, if you close out a campaign, you would want to be projecting a more policy driven message. i tell candidates all the time, you're not a pundit, you're a politician. and your job is not what my job

is or what bakari's job is, your job is to talk to people about your vision for the future. >> so bakari, the trump campaign today was responding to fallout because he had this rally in omaha last night and i saw this going down. hundreds of people were stranded for hours. it was freezing, freezing temperatures, waiting for buses to take them back to their cars. so there they are, freezing, jeff zeleny saw medics helping people. the trump campaign said it was local road closures to blame. now you have a story like that, older people dealing with the cold, not able to get home. in a must-win state. >> yeah. i don't know how much effect it's going to have. i think donald trump voters are always going to be donald trump voters. they will run through anything to do -- to vote for him. if you're out in 30 degree weather during the middle of a pandemic, all likelihood not

wearing a mask to hear president trump speak, i don't think that being stranded is going to change your vote. but i do think it's indicative of how poor this campaign is. scott jennings runs campaigns all the time. if you're going to have shuttles, there have to be shuttles there to pick people up. >> i can tell you, scott's buses would have been on time and known about road closures. >> they would have at least had a way for people to get home. but this is analogous to -- and i think joe biden said this earlier, this is the way president trump has treated this country, which is just left us stranded. left us stranded to fend for ourselves. and unfortunately, those individuals have to feel the brunt of it. >> you have biden jumping on that omaha situation, trying to capitalize only it. here's what he said. >> it's an image that captured president trump's approach to this crisis. he makes a lot of big pronouncements, but they don't hold up. he gets his photo-op and gets

out. he leaves everyone else to suffer the consequence of his failure to make a responsible plan. >> seizing on those images to make that point, what do you say, scott? >> yeah, look, any time you have a presidential event, a campaign event, you want the message to be whatever the candidate said. and what you want people to remember. you don't want them to remember that they were stranded in the freezing cold. so this is a situation where the logistics trump the message. i will say in nebraska, by the way, i look at the race and the map from the stand point of subtracti subtraction. ju i think it's unlikely trump wins any other states. so there's an electoral vote in nebraska, the nebraska two, because they split their electoral votes, that it's in play, and this kind of thing wouldn't be good for that congressional district. so i would just say that all around, not a great thing for the nebraska situation that they're in today.

>> no, no. and he's in a situation -- i liked the way you put that. he needs to keep every one of those electoral college votes he can. thank you very much. next, trump and biden in florida tomorrow. election officials spell out when they will count the ballots there and how. this is crucial information for all of us. so what does that tell us about when we will know who the next president is? plus, historian endorsing a presidential candidate for the first time in his life. why? john meacham is "outfront." it's an important time to save. with priceline, you can get up to 60% off amazing hotels. and when you get a big deal... ...you feel like a big deal. ♪ priceline. every trip is a big deal. keeping your oysters busihas you swamped. you need to hire. i need indeed indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a shortlist of quality candidates from a resume data base

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new tonight, president trump and biden in the same state tomorrow, both in florida. polls showing the state remains a dead heat. president trump claiming he's not worried about the state flipping to biden. >> we're really up in almost all of the states that we're talking about, most of the states. we're up even or very close. and doing fantastically in florida, doing fantastically in north carolina. i'm calling it a great red wave,

and i think you're going to see something that's going to be amazing. >> drew griffin is in tallahassee. you have spent the day talking to voters. what have they told you? >> reporter: they are so eager to cast their vote that nearly half of registered voters in the state of florida already have, erin. 6.9 million voters either in person or by mail have cost their ballots. this is what a few of them said they were not shy about voting and who they voted for. >> i'm going to tell you exactly who i vote for. i think president trump is the best for the time being, beca. e it's unbelievable what they're doing. they're taking the money from the government, from me, from you. >> it was really easy, because i did the mail-in vote, but i wanted to make sure i got it in on time. so i decided to drop it off into the ballot box. and i voted for biden and i'm

very happy about it. >> reporter: we heard that from a lot of voters, erin, that they wanted to bring their mail-in ballots to make sure they were counted. some deciding to take their ballots to rip them up and get a new one to make sure their vote counted. very eager to vote, and that's why i see so many of these people voting early. it's going very smooth so far. erin? >> so this is the question. very smooth so far. who wins florida could decide all of this and could determine whether this is something we know right away or it takes days. you talked to a county election supervisor. how soon does he expect to have the numbers out for who wins florida? >> reporter: this is what is different about some of these other states. florida department of elections in these various counties have been able to start counting those mail-in votes. we watched them being counted today. they started this process in

leon county in tallahassee on october 7. so all of those mail-in ballots, 4.1 million to date, essentially have been opened, screened, verified and counted. so the supervisor of elections here says within minutes of the closing of the polls on tuesday, i'll be able to tell you all of those ballots. and by law, i have to tell you, by 7:30 that night. so potentially we could have a huge chunk of counties reporting all those votes here in florida right away, erin. the one caveat is those mail-in ballots that come in on the day of the election. those probably will not get counted until wednesday. so if it's a squeaker, like florida often is, we could still be waiting to see who won. >> wow. incredible that we may know earlier, depending on how this map plays out. you could know it early and it could take days, giving us that wide range. drew, thank you. i want to go now to the senator

from minnesota, amy klobuchar. good to talk to you, senator. you have just returned from campaigning for joe biden in florida. so what drew is seeing i'm sure is much of what you saw, as well. who do you really think has the edge right now? the state is marked a full toss-up. >> you see joe biden surging ahead in a number of polls. and i was in tampa, i was in sarasota, and i was in ft. myers. and people were pretty excited. and i was smiling as i listened to your correspondent talk about the people voting. they're voting in droves. 75 million people have already voted across the nation, erin. they are excited. and i think that bodes very well for joe biden, because president trump, you know, he's coming back to my state again. and joe biden is leading by double digits. we take nothing for grant it. but the excitement in the midwest is palpable. 1.5 million people having voted

in wisconsin. people who voted for trump before or stayed at home in the midwest are saying wow, i can't even see my mom at thanksgiving, because he's got to keep herself safe and isolated. to teach my first grader how to run the mute button to go to school. people realize he has mismanaged this crisis and they want somebody with competence in the white house. >> earlier this week, president trump and supreme court brett kavanaugh suggested it is improper to allow mail-in ballots received after election day. as part of a majority decision to block wisconsin from receiving ballots after election day, they're not allowed to do that. kavanaugh wrote, states want to avoid the chaos and suspicion of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in and potentially flip the results of an election. president trump then, senator,

took this concept of impropriety further and more specifically. here he is. >> now they say we would like to get the ballots and maybe get them within a few days of the election, and we'll take ten days to count them up. oh, good, let's let the whole world wait while you count the ballots. you know what happens when they count them? they're dumping more in there. >> what is your response to that? he's saying they would be dumping more ballots in to flip results. >> i guess he needs to talk to the people in utah and the people in kansas. there's a number of states that actually do the same thing. 21 states, erin, 21 states count the ballots after the -- their due date is election day. it has to be post parked by election day, so they're counting them afterwards. our military, so many of their ballots are postmarked by election day, and they're counted afterward.

so i have no idea why he would say this, and most i would say bernie and i did a statement together on this because we found it so chilling that justice kavanaugh, in his own opinion that he joined in, in the concurrence with the wisconsin case, would actually say the same thing. when he knows very well from being a lawyer in the bush v. gore case that, in fact, votes must be counted. you can't flip a result when you don't know a result. a result comes when all ballots are counted. >> let me ask you about amy coney barrett, the justice. the supreme court tonight said it would leave in place the pennsylvania supreme court decision. that decision would allow ballots received up to three days after the election to be counted, even if there is no leg legible postmark. amy coney barrett did not participate because of the need for a prompt resolution.

i know that you and other democrats have been calling her out, trying to have her to recuse on election related cases, she has refused to do so thus far. isn't that what she basically do, didn't she just do what you want? >> no, she wanted to recuse, she would say she was recusing. in this case, i suppose we still leave it open. but she said she didn't have time to review it. that makes it sound like if she had time she would have weighed in. that is concerning to me, because she wouldn't answer my basic questions. i do want to make one thing clear, erin. that is that there are local officials all over this country, democrat and republican, that are simply doing their jobs, processing these ballots, very clear that as your earlier guest said, some states we're not going to know the result on election night. and that's okay. we don't want to feed into this trump hysteria on this point. many states we may know.

if the polls hold up and if people vote like i think they're doing, we may well know the results on election night. i don't think people should be concerned if local officials are still counting. 21 of them, they have to count afterward. >> thank you very much, senator klobuchar. i appreciate your time tonight. >> great to be on, erin. thank you. next, something's going on in this election that's made a pulitzer prize winning historian take sides for the first time ever in his career publicly. john meacham is here. and polls show that red state arizona could possibly swing biden's way. >> it is still shocking for me to get those words out of my mouth, yeah.

tonight, pulitzer prize historian winner john meacham, whose life work has been chronicling american presidents, has endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time. >> this is a grave moment in america. a deadly virus is ravaging us. our jobs are evaporating. our faith in things that bind us

together is fraying. for our democracy is under assault for an incumbent more interested in himself than he is the rest of us. >> john meacham is "outfront." he has a new hbo documentary called "the soul of america" which premiered last night and is available now on hbo and hbo max. john, i hope everyone will watch it as they read everything you write, as well. so i want to ask you about that documentary in a moment. first, to make this point, all these years i watched you, i've been with you onsets, you are an historian, you are not a partisan, you have voted for presidents of both parties. but you have never gone public with an endorsement with joe biden. why did you feel, john, you had to speak out now? >> i think it's an existential election. i have, in fact, voted for more republicans than i have for democrats along the way. which surprises some folks.

i think decency and democratic values and a respect for fact and science and reason are all on the ballot. and that's not a talking point. i believe that is deeply as i believe anything. you know, in this country for about 80 years, we had a kind of figurative conversation between fdr on this end and ronald reagan on this end. and presidents governed. eras were defined between those two polls. this is not a sequential chapter to that. becoming the president is not on a consensus continuum. that doesn't mean the consensus and the continuum always produces the result we want, but at least it was a recognizable political universe. and my fundamental argument about american history is that we are always stronger the more widely we open our arms and the more generously we interpret when jefferson wrote we are all

created equal. so fundamentally, do you want to be john lewis or bull connor? and i wasn't born in time for the civil rights movement, so i hate to say it, but to be honest, i don't know where i would have been if i this is fundamental and that means i know where i stand now. >> so, the new york magazine put together a fascinating video, they're asking for foreign correspondents who are faced here. descri describes how they view our reporting in our country. here are two of them from bbc. >> what is happening here won't happen across the world. >> trump makes it hard on us because some of the things he does makes me wonder whether i am covering an election in the

united states, one of the oldest democracy in the world or i am actually reporting from almost a failed state. >> you hear that, john, and larry sabato, told john harwood that trump is the worst president and i can't believe historians spending ten minutes debating that. you are the historian, what do you say? >> trump is exacerbated from disagreeing however deeply it could be to delegitimatize. we don't disagree with each other, we find a consensus and achieve and move on. that's what politics is. that's the ordinary realm of

politician. clash of interests, certain point you have the right policy and you have to decide whether you tax people or what you are going to do. this is different. the incumbent president led this effort to undermine the institutions that has set us apart throughout the century of free press and a reason to debate and this is not to say that every policy position held by the republican party is somehow wrong. what it is to say that we are supposed to use our reason and deliberations to decide big questions and public policies. the president encouraged an atmosphere of reflexive partisanship as opposed to reflective. >> your show, you are looking at the past. when people say you say this is

a moment so you are not minimizing it. to give people a perspective of what happened before of struggles of divisions that consumed our country in the past. >> they lash out. >> build a wall. >> you saw the white southerners. you saw the second clan immigration is shifting the economy. saw the 1930s. it is incredibly powerful political notion and the great political leaders are the ones who don't cater to it and tamper it down instead of flame it. >> so many thoughts and even as he took off, president trump would rise to the occasion and in your interview clearly he has failed. >> he has not risen to the

equation. what you see is what you get. i think as michelle obama says, someone show you who they are, believe them the first time. we have four years of him. i don't think there is not a lot of mystery there. jon, i appreciate your time, so glad to see you even though it is remotely. everyone will watch your great documentary. thank you. >> thank you, erin. breaking news at new orle s orleans, a powerful storm near a category 3 with a life-threatening storm surge up to 50 feet off the coast. i want to go now to new orleans with noelle walker. how is the condition where you are? >> reporter: conditions have

changed. the skies were clear and myself and producers were out taking photos of how beautiful the sky was and just like that things changed. we are half way through the storm and worry on the backside of the storm and gusts were picking up. they're quite brutal but during the calm in the eye of the storm, a lot of people came out to the streets which was a bad idea. like i said the storm and the condition can change really quickly again. gusts just continue right now. there were no mandatory evacuation in the city of new orleans because this is expected to be more of a wind event. there is no rain right now. overall i can tell you talking to the people out on the streets, they are fatigued by the season. this is the fifth named storm to hit the state of louisiana. it is a record for the state. the awful thing is there are more than 3500 evacuees from hurricane laura that hit in august and delta hit in october.

13 miles apart just six weeks apart from each other. they are displaced and scattered at hotels all around new orleans. you will just have to walk around and you will find evacuees on the streets and they'll tell you these back-to-back storms taken an emotional toll. >> amara, thank you very much. of course we watch that and 50 foot wave off the coast. president trump is in arizona, two rallies there today, four rallies there in the past nine dan da days. biden leading there currently by 4% point. >> reporter: an election for the ages. >> can you put stickers on this. all volunteering to flip the state blue. >> there will be people pissed

off. it used to be a red state. >> reporter: voting democrats hoping to turn their state into a battleground. >> there is been shift, a noticeable shift. arizona is growing rapidly. it is no longer just retirees, it is going to change and there are more families like us. >> reporter: families like theirs are apart of maricopa, 200 residents relocated to phoenix's most powerful county, every single day. >> it used to be cowboys out here. >> reporter: now? >> it is upper middle income, it is professionals, it is highly educa educated. it is having a political effect, there is no doubt about it. >> reporter: adams should know. he was one of the top elected officials in the state. arizona has voted for republican

candidate since 1952 with the exception of 1996 for bill clinton. >> and this year is joe biden. >> reporter: is it shocking for you to say it? >> it is shocking to get those words on my mouth. president trump was gasolining on that fire. the political position that we find the state today. >> reporter: the body campaign and allies are spending 6.7 million on tv ads the week before election. about 3 million more of the trump campaign, both president trump and joe biden have made arizona a top priority increasing their presence and ground game as election day approaches, adding to the changing demographics about one-third of america, the county

is latino. maggie acosta believes new residents can help democrats take the state. >> do you feel it is different this year? >> yes. it is more latinos getting out there to vote. >> reporter: a once reliable red state now home to a closing view. >> if arizona stays red, will it discourage you? >> yes. i mean she will say no. we'll keep voting. >> yeah, we'll keep working. >> reporter: early voting is underway in arizona, scottsdale, arizona, a few people voting outside as they cast their ballots. 1.26 million ballots. that's a record when it comes to early ballots as compares to

2016. the same story, erin, in tucson. so when it comes to early ballots, it is being smashed when it comes to records. >> thank you very much. keep it here in new york. a state that everyone assuming it is a go. three hours of wait. thanks for joining us, "anderson cooper 360" starts now. good evening. it is just six days. >> the virus does not have a preferred candidate. according to health e experts, that's what it will do. tonight we are getting a reminder of how cynical the trump administration have always been about