robert:a defiant president, a dysfunctional congress, a divided nation. >> this is the biggestwe shock e seen in living memory and the question looms in the air of is it enough. >> there is the risk of rmanent damage. robert: top officials paint a bleak picture, as tens of millions remain unemployed. and p theresidente hits oad. closure and n we're going toial open it up. robert: but republicans and democrats in congress and in the istates a a bitter standoff, with billions in aid on the line. >>e're all americans. we all got to get this right and remember that one another is not the enemy. the enemy is a virus. robert: next. announcer: this is "washington

week." --rporate funding is provided by >> life isn't a straight line ndand sometimes you can fi yourself heading in a new direction. fility is here to help you work through the unexpected with financial planning and advice for today and tomorrow. ♪ >> kaiser permanente. additional funding iided by the estate of arnold ads and koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the corporation for public broadcasting and contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

once again, from washington, moderator robert costa. robert:good evening. we start with sobering numbers. an update on the health of the nation. more than 95,000 americans have died due t the coronavirus pandemic with nearly 1.6 million nfirmed cases in the united states.xt a spike in the joblessness rate, almost 2li m americans filed for unemployment last week, pushing the t total more than 38 million people who orve sought out support. states areng to reopen and president trump on fridayhu declaredhes and other places of worship essential and threatened to override states that refusedo allow them to open. pres. trump: the governors need to do the right thingnd allow these very important, essential places of faith to open right now, for this weekend. if they don't do it, i will override the governors.

in america, we need more prayer, not less. robert: as the president works to fire up his base and re-ignite the culture war,dividd the next stimulus.r the scope of re's a heated exchange this week between ohio democratic senator sharrod brown and treasury secretary steven mnuchin. many workers should give their lives to increase the g.p. or d jones by 1,000 points? >> no workers should do that, mr. senator, and i your characterization is unfair. we've providedd equipment, wor with the governors, done a terrific job. robert: the campas a big part of the story. president trump has hit the road stopping i swing states and at times refusingo wear a mask. polls show joe biden is pulling with 164 days until theat home.

election, and devastation in towns and qities, thestion remains what will leaders in washington doext address the crisis. we begin tonight on the economy with four well sourced and insightful reporters. stephanie ruhle, senior businesn correspo for nbc news and anchor forsnbc.da balz of "the washington post," ayesha rascoe of national public radio, and jonathan swan, national political reporter for axios. jonathan, beginning with you. i have been following yr reporting all wee trump and leader mcconnell. tell me what's next on what congress will do,hat the white house will do to address this economic dilemma? jonathan: there's some disagreement. they're trying to present a united front but the fact is withinhe republican conference there are differing opinionst about w needs to be done, how big it needs to be and how

qukly it needs to b done. sources to spoke to me told me that the meeting yesterdayit mitch mcconnell and president trump, the main message that veyed tcconnell c president trump is that this next package, phase four, needs to come in under one trilln dollars. as you know, nancy pelosi has 3 trilliond a package. mcconnell has setrineion as a red line. he's also told president trump that he's hring from business owners who are telling him that the unemployment boost is making it too hard to get workers back. mcconnell is telling trump that the unemploent payment are disincentivizing people from returning to work so that appears to be another red line that he's drawing.an the third thing he's trying to do is pour cold water over the idea of a huge infrastructure package. president trump has always bee seduced by the idea of a massive infrastructure bill and there senate, liksey graham, who support that.

mcconnell has never been a fan of this and i trying to head this off before it gains momentum. robert: jonathan laid out a lot right the. as washington debates that, americans are struggling. earlier this week, ayesha asked president trump about minority communities. ayesha: you continue to talk communities.ority what specifically are you looking at to help those communities?wh actions? pres. trump: one of the things i was most proud of was the minority community and all the work we'vefor the minority communities. black unemployment, hisnic unemployment, asian unemploymene was est ever in the history of our country. right now we're opening up areas and a lot ofet people areng jobs. i heard some numbers yesterday that were readiy ince and i think next year will be an incredible year economicay. you can never make up for all of the loss of lif robert: stephanie spoke with new york governor andrew cmo abo the challenges in states

stephanie: what tight rope are you walking a itelates to your state's budget? governor: i'm not onht a t rope. i fell, i'm falling. i'm just hoping there's a net people of the sta of new yorkhe hit the net. the net would be federalfo fundg state and local governments have tout -- if i don't getld funding, what happens? i cut schools, i cut hospitals, i cut aid to local goverent, local governments are police, fire, et cetera. bert: but the trump white house, they're taking a hard line on state aid and unemployme benefits. here's my "the washington post" live interview with the president' top economic adviser, larry kudlow. what about extending the $600 unemployment benefit? could you supportt t a deal? >> one of the things we learned -- this is not traditional macroeconomic recession, because of the virus story. but i think we've learned in the

last recession, the so-called great recession, that increasing and extending unemployment benefits are disincentives to work. work.ather people went back to robert: ayesha, you asked the president about minority communities. you hear larrylo k there drawing another red line on unemployment benefits. whats your reporting telling you about where the white house is ready to go to help minority communies that are struggling? ayesha: when i asked president ump that question, he talked for a long time but never really gave an answer on whatec ically he was planning to do. i did talk to a white house official, jauron smith, who's been aoint person on minority issues and on things like criminalefusticem and opportunity zones. house is looking at a host ofe options but one option in reparticular the looking at is extending opportunity zones bwhichically give tax credits to investors who iest in

low-income neighborhoods so the white house is looking at that and they say this will help give a boosto those areas that are already struggling and will be struggling eveha more now the economy has completely slowed down. whatritics, though, say, is that a lot of that tax credit, what it has done, is that it's telped very wealthy investors and t it hasn't helped local residents, as much, and there's a real questioth of w most of the money is going into real estate, not into operating businesses so how much will that helpt' an economy t on ice right now. the business community leaning on congress to not give more in unemployment benefits? stephanie: the unemployment benets is a tricky one because you'd like to say, oh, the unemployment benefits are so good, people don't want to go back to work. that's huge overstatement. remember, we have a health

crisis that sparked an economic crisis. we turned the economy off. so just becauseusinesses are reopening and they're trying to rehire their employees, thi n't like a snowday and we can work.ack totside and we don't have schools open. we don't have camps open. r working families out there, it's not just oh, they're getting so much money, they want to hang together. they don't have anyone to watch their children andhey are getting more financial security being on unemployment because even as businesses are reopening, they don't need as much of a staff. if you work in the restaurant likely you're only doingps, take-out so there is moreur financial sy but it doesn't mean that people don't want to go back to work. it's a complicated issue. about your intervie withow up governor cuoco, is the -- cuomo, is the picture in new york different than in nebraska? not every ste is having the same experience across the country. stephanie: absolutely.

that's what's caused this economic crisis that's inflamed a culture war if you're not in one of the hot spots, you are getting angrier because you don't feel the backyard but you feel the pain of staying home. if you ran a sll business in nebraska and you had to shut that business down -- you ran a gift shop or retail store -- you would be getti b noiness, you can't pay your rent but down the block wal-mart or target is allowed to be ope because they're considered essential where you can buy bikes and books and jewelry. so if you ran a small business in nebraska, you would be agetting more more furious with your state government becauseou don't get to be open or to a limited capacity so the fact that many states haven't been hit as hards as pla like new york has made the cultural divide and anger even worse. robert: the cultural point, d, is so important, the political

point. jonathan mentioned the trillion dollars, leaderescconnell t want to go beyond a trillion dollars in the next round. you cover the campaign. will republicans be forced to buckle -- we' seen dealsn prior weeks with nancy pelosi and steven mnuchin. one of the things to remember about the packages put together so far is that they were done very, very quickly and i think with a sense that this was not going to be as ilongated as has turned out to be and as stephanie says correctly, its a very complicated process about reopening. so in trying t design the next phase of the support, i thinkev ybody is to some extent backed in traditial corners and not thinking about what they need to do that is different in structure and in support than they did the first time around. but they will have to come together becau if you listen to fedhairman powell, he's

made clear, as have many economists, that the pain is going toe long-standing, that this is likely to be a slow recovery and that if nothing is done, it could be terribly, terribly damaging to businesses and to individuals. robert: dan, what about the debt issue and deficits? is thathe even part of equation in american politics anymore? dan: a a voting issue, bob, it is not. it has n been for som time. and i think one of the things that's happening is that a lotpl of p who have talked about it as an issue of concern have because we have considerably grown the size of the national debt over the period ofe of the trump administration and yet because of low interest rates,ha service on debt is not that high and the united states is still able to continue borrowing. so as an issue, i don't think it is a dramatic issue. there are conservative it and still talk about it as if

it is something that is going to have to be dealt with but in the middle of this crisis, i think even has kind of put that to the side as somhing, well,vee'll o deal with that down the line. right now we have to deal with the problempl of p being out of work and businesses being shuttered. robert: back to the culture war question, jonathan. what's theheeal story with president's decision to make an announcement about churches and places of worship being essential gathering places. is this something he's readyito enforce the department of justice or not? jonathan: it's part of -- you have to see it in a larger picture. obviously there's a huge political dimension to it and it's not just about his base, about evangelicals. it's also a much bigger campaign rategy they're following. what they're trying to do is create a contrast with joe biden and this is not my opinion. this is from talking to people who are close to the president, who are talking this. about they are trying to create a

situation where president trump is t candidate, the incumbent, the candite of reopening, of action, of dynamism, gettingerut no mask, striding boldly into thi rpened future. and they're going to keep hammering. i expect they're going to make this a point in some of their advertising of biden hiding away in his basement, et cetera, et cetera. and one thing they're alreadyta ing abt privately is the optical contrast of thes. conventi so they're sort of salivating over this idea of having a republican conventiot's much more in-person with peoplek in -- not packed in but to the largest extent possible and democrats doing a morel virtonvention. again, same theme. there are huge risks involved in this strateg one of them being, if you look at t polling data, trump is slipping among senrs, amo

senior voters and dan would have more detail and insight t ont th i do but is clear to anyone looking at those polls, trump is not doing well against biden with seniors and they're the group most vulnerable. so it's a huge risk. robert: jonathan, you've piqued my interest because you're right, the campaign hovers over everything. former vice president joe biden sparked controversy on friday with comments he mad to a radio etst about african american voters tornen him and president trump. >> it's a long way until november. we got more questions. >> if you have a problem figuring out if you're for me or trump, you ain't black. >> it has to do with the fact that i wantor something my community. >> take a look at my record, man. i extendi the voting -- 25 years. have a record second to none.

robert: former vice prt joe biden later walked back those comments and said he should not have been so cavalier. ayesha, what did this moment reveal aboutid the campaign? ayesha: it revealed they have a lot of whk to do w the former vice president and how he's able to talk about these issues. the african american part of the ectorate is the huge part of the democrat's base and you need to be able, as the democratice nomior president, to talk about these issues, to talk about race and to tal about your record and especially when you have a record as long as joe den's, to explain, maybe your es thaton and the cha you might make or things you might do differently now. for him to get caut up io questioning people's blacknessay or to that he was kind of joking, like, that is something that will need to be addressed and somethie'll have to talk about. it doesn't mean, i don't think

this is goingo soften his support from african americans. but it is something that he's going to hav to address. how do you talk about these issues? robert: stephanie, get in here. i see you want to jump i stephanie: you know what else he did today, he made news. had former vice president joe biden given a thoughtful, mature explanation, whi would have been t correct answer, do you think we would be talking about it right now? the answer is no. and president trump, with his three-word slogans and the er-the-top things he says, good or bad, controls the narrative. and joe biden has to figure out so while his word choices were not the best choices, he is trying to inject himself and gep to pay attention and we're paying attention. robert: dan, what's your view? what does your reporting tell you?ve yo been covering campaigns for deces. dan: a couple of things.e was this was not a smart

statement, to put it mildly. it is not the right of any white person to tell black people whether or not they're black and i think the vice president, former vice president and his team, realizeduickly this was aistake and that if they didn't deal with it right away, iousould be a more s mistake.i think it could have implications. i'm not predicting this but it could have implicationsn his choice of a vice president. but beyond this, in talking to amople who are involved in the bidenign, one of the things they see is that in this period when people are s needs to get out of the basement and he needs to engage more, what they've seen is that president trump, a jonathan mentioned, president trump's approval rating on handling of the coronavirus hasone from slightly positive to notly negative. in one 538 a summary i lookedt today, it had gone from two points positive to 10 pointsne tive. there's other polling that underscores that. if you're the biden campaign, you have to say, the president

is doing all ofhi theses and, in fact, he's going backwards, while we are sitting here being criticized for not own and in many of theolding our background states he has a slight lead so their view is they are not going to engage in the tradition way with president trump. they hope that he will be able to, as one person suggested to me, model presidential behavior, which is to say when he goes out, he'll wear a mask and dgs thike that. but they feel at this point they're not taking anything for granteertainly, but they feel at this point that trump i. hurting himse robert: to that question, whether the president is hurting himself,'t jonathan, i d want to forget about your reporting this week on the dismissal of thenspector general at the stateepartment. is there any concern inside the white house tt they wil pay a political price for these kinds of moves, and secretary of state pompeo, not oy his situati with the i.g., but having these big madison fancy dinners in

foggy bottom? jonathan: it's not so much those episodes that concern them. you're talking about concerns in the white house and the politicaleam around trump, the thing they are most concerned about consistently is what i mentioned earlier which is the polling among seniors. they are quiterbed by the slippage in president trump's numbers among senrs and how, to the extent to which biden is outperforming hillary clinton, her performance among that age group in novber 2016. they'reot panicking because it's may and we're in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic and terrible unemployment numbers so it's not the best time t take a snapshot ofhe electorate but they are concerned about it because if the numbers h you're in real trouble. you can forget about theuaes

about digital campaigning, there's something meeper than that going on which is what they're worried about. robert: they worried about losing the senate my own reportersaying there's concn about the g.o.p. ayesha: i think the president's response to the pandemic, that has to be a concern across the board. at this moment, i think there in a for the white house that the way to get ahead of thishe s get economy going again, get everything running again, get things up and going, but it seems like when you look at the polls, what people are conrned about is their health and being safe and a lot of times when you look at the polls, the majority of people say they support social distancing. they're not itching to get out and go to restauran and do all of these things again because they want make sure they're

healthy and safe andhe white house seems to be struggling with meeting that dynamic and that couldave real implications all around for the ninate. robert: step follow up on that. stephanie: the white house thinks one of the reasons the can help those businesses open potentially if they put together this liability shield. so businesses won't face any liabity risk if customers or employees get sick and we know small businesses large are concerned about that. if you ran a small gym, you might say, you know what, i could lose everything if i open and i risk getting sued. but on the other hand, if thisni adration is able to move forward and givehat liability protection, think of all those businesses. if you're an eloyee, customer, knowing that that business only has to think about their botm line, not your safety. you might think again about going.be : final thoughts, dan, in the closing minute, about where

this campaign snds? dan: it stands where it has stood for some time which is biden is leading in the national vote but we learned in 2016 that the national vote doesn't elect the background states are pretty clear. there's probably half a dozen true background states. it is very competitive in those places. both sides say they want to expand the map but i think in thend those handful of states determine it. there's one other area where the trump campaign probably should have som concern and that is voters who have an unfavorable opinion of both candidates. in 2016, donald trump won that constituency over hillary clinton. right now the indications are that joe ben is winning that constituency over donald trump so that's another area ofn conc for them. robert: dan, you got my attention with that. i have a story to tell in the

"extra" about that point. that's all the time we have for tonight. many thanks to stephanie ruhle, danalz, ayesha rascoe and jonathan swan. you took us as close toew the as we could get this week. if you'd like more, check out our discussion o our website. we'll talk about the campaign and biden's serve for a running mate. we want to express deep gratitude for all the americanso who serve country on the battlefield or in our hospitals. i'm robert cta. good night from washington. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org.] announcer: corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- life isn't a straight line

and sometimes you can find yourself heading in a w direction. fidelity is here to help you t work through unexpected with financial planning and advice for today, and tomorro >> kaiser permanente. additional funding is provided a by the estate old adams and koo and patricia yuen through thyuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communies. the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

and you wonder, how are we gonna ever get the different voicesd. to come together to get something done? -there was a symbolic impact being the first asian-american cabinet member. -i tried to depoliticize my cabinet. and there's no better public servant for america than norm mineta. -does our constitution indeed protect all of us? nm -as a former ie of an american concentration camp, norm's life and norm's perspectivebo died the japanese-american experience. -what drives him is the idea that being aamerican citizen with all these strengths from other cultures could then actually add to the fabric