i love it. i meant to apologize because last week i didn't realize we were in the same room and i came in with a good morning, everyone, and i interrupted your show. >> you were loud! >> i was loud. my wife would share your view on that. >> good to see you. enjoy your saturday. whomever the nominee is, the president will make up lies about. he thinks he has free rein right now. >> the question is who can go toe to toe with mr. trump. he's the real threat to the country. >> colonel vindman got thrown out of the white house, got walked out. >> there was courage. i read today about lieutenant colonel vindman being escorted out of the white house. >> we should be pinning a medal on vindman and not rush limbaugh. i think we should all stand and give colonel vindman of how much support we gave him. stand up and clap for vindman. get up there. who we are. that's who we are. we are not what trump is.

>> good morning from nbc news world headquarters in new york, i'm ali velshi and here is what's happening on your saturday. days after the senate delivered the president a victory with the akwidcquittal of abuse of power charges, trump is out for revenge against his adversaries and showing republicans that there will be a heavy price to pay for disloyalty. two star witnesses who testified during the impeachment inquiry have been purged from their positions. lieutenant colonel alexander vindman was escorted out of the white house on friday evening. gordon sondland has been fired from his position and that was the fear all along, that there would be consequences for telling the truth. something that vindman himself was aware of when he testified before congress. >> you made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the soviet union, come here to the united states of america in search of a better life for our family. do not worry. i will be fine for telling the truth.

>> democrats say the payback goes too far as they weigh whether or not to continue investigations into the president. >> that's a shame. what a patriotic person. it goes too far. >> what about those vulnerable republicans who said the president had, quote, learned his lesson? friday saturday susan collins of maine was defending her vote to acquit even as the news of this purge began to break. >> i obviously am not in favor of any kind of retribution against anyone who came forward with evidence. >> all right. joining me now executive director of stand up republic and 2016 independent presidential candidate evan mcmullin. shanny pettypiece and author of "do morals matter, presidents and foreign policy from fdr to

trump," joseph nigh. joseph, i'll start with you because this week has been momentous. the president's state of the union address was unusual even by donald trump standards. thursday morning when he went out and spoke to 62 minutes about everything filled with lies and then last night, this purge, while technically all within the president's rights, nothing that anyone can inquire into or investigate him for or punish him for feels like a shift in our democracy. >> well, i think it is in the sense that trump is the -- is a unique president in terms of his style. he is basically master of social media and reality tv and used everything as a whipping up the base as a way to have a political tool, an instrument

which allows you to override institutions. and there is a danger in that. i think we've seen it in the last few days. but making -- taking the bipartisan national unity prayer breakfast and turning it into a political pep rally and criticizing nancy pelosi and mitt romney in many terms of the quality of their religious views or the sincerity of their religious views, that's something we've never seen before. >> evan, you ran against this president. it is a hard thing to do. in fact joe walsh, who's a lot more like the president than you are, stepped out of the race against donald trump this week sort of putting his hands up saying no one can beat donald trump certainly for the republican nomination. governor bill weld is still in that race and some people might come out to vote for him in new hampshire. but ultimately putting aside what republicans can do about it, democrats, can they do what joe just talked about, do something that motivates

democrat democratic voters the way donald trump motivates his base? >> you know, i actually am a little bit -- i would be a little more cautious about trying to motivate the base the way donald trump motivates his base because he motivates his base with fear and division and hatred. you know, i don't think we want to go there actually, ali. i think we want to go, and i say we as sort of democrats, independents and anti-trump republicans, i think we need to have a unifying message and we need to come together and build an overwhelming coalition, majority to defeat donald trump and replace donald trump. we need somebody who, yes, like donald trump can leverage communications and social media effectively and really master that and be better on sort of marketing of their political ideas that are unifying, not divisive. but i think that's the key. if he's going to divide, we've got to unify. i think there's enormous power

in that and we can do it. we did it in 2018 and the democrats took the house on that. we can do it again in 2020. >> shannon pettypiece, most of the democratic candidates, at least the major ones running, do not have a whole lot of space between them on policies that matter to democrats and/or independents, and yet what evan is saying is not happening in the democratic race. the fire is not focused on donald trump. a few candidates are doing that, michael bloomberg is, joe biden has been trying to. but really this is becoming a bit more of a snipefest as we saw in last night's presidential debates. there are some who fear that the democratic party right now does not look anywhere near as you know filed as the republican party does. >> and that's exactly what the trump campaign had been hoping for. that's what they had been banking on all this time. there was such a big field of democrats, eventually they would all turn their fire on each other. there would be a prolonged primary process where whoever emerged as a victor would bey

bloody, broken, bruised, they would have no money left and then come out in the summer and have to take on trump who has been untouched by republicans, has enormous republican unity behind him and a ton of money, just like bags of money. he has been bringing in over this impeachment period. so this is all good for trump. the more they see democrats fighting amongst themselves, the better position the campaign feels they are in. the other thing the campaign sees happening is they see the more moderates having to be pushed to the left in order to fend off that elizabeth warren/bernie sanders wing of the party. pete buttigieg, the campaign seized on some comments that made that implied he was supporting late-term abortion earlier this week to show him as a further to the left candidate than he had portrayed himself, so that's also something that benefits trump. and meanwhile, yeah, trump really has the stage to himself

until a democratic candidate clearly emerge who say can go head to head with him. >> joe, what's the danger of it taking too long for the democratic party to find itself? this is an ongoing discussion. we saw it with the entry polls. the one successful part of the iowa caucus was we got some entry polls in which democrats by a plurality suggested that they need the candidate who will defeat trump more than they need the candidate who is aligned with their own personal views. more democrats think that than not, but those democrats who don't, and many of those support bernie sanders, will they align in time to defeat donald trump? >> well, i think they may get some help paradoxically from donald trump. if you look at american opinion, the parties are polarized, but the bell-shaped curve, the majority of americans are in the middle still. if trump were smart, he would

have after his acquittal by the senate, he would have done what he did or what his advisers told him to do in the state of the union address, tout the good economy. he would have appealed for unity and he probably would get re-elected. instead what he's done is polarized even more. that eventually is going to hurt him in the middle. in my book i mentioned something, morals matter, that psychologists tell us there's a thing that's called emotional intelligence, which is the ability to master your emotions for political benefit. fdr had it, reagan had it. trump does not have it, because narcissists are thrown off balance about anything that's critical to them. that's why you get this polarization vindictiveness at the national prayer breakfast. eventually that's going to hurt him. that's going t ao alienate the

middle. normally in a strong economy a president gets re-elected but we've never had a president with such low emotional intelligence as donald trump. that may be the wild card in this race. >> joe, i want to read from your book, which is called "do morals matter, presidents and foreign policy from fdr to trump" but i'm asking it as a question to evan because i think it's very relevant. policies were announced and cabinet secretaries were fired on twitter. the result was an administration with frequent changes in top personnel and often contradictory messages. while this caused problems for trump with the courts, the press and among allies, what he lost in organizational coherence he made up in his virtual, complete domination of the agenda. and i would add, joe didn't write this, but i would add his virtual and complete domination of the republican party at this time. i find it hard to believe. you have lived and worked

amongst republicans for much of your career. it can't be possible that 93% or 94% of republicans that polling indicates are actually supportive of donald trump and his behavior. >> they may not be supportive of all of his behavior, but they're supportive of, for example, the cultural war that he's fighting. they're supportive of his ability to win, their ability to win with him, they're supportive of his willingness to take harsh actions against their political rivals and to respond to the things that they're afraid of. they fear this changing world around them. they fear even senior members of republican leadership in congress, i'll tell you, are afraid that they are in a position with the country changing demographically, et cetera, that they will not be able to compete. this is a literal thing that's discussed. they're afraid they won't be able to compete, they'll lose their power and never be able to get it back. donald trump is this

anti-democratic leader, small d democratic, anti-freedom, anti-democracy, anti-republic. for them that fits quite nicely for their desire to hold on to power. he plays dirty but they need to play dirty in order to hold on to power. that's what the game is here. it doesn't matter what donald trump says or does. many of us expect is this the final straw that will break the camel's back and republicans will abandon trump. their support for him doesn't take into consideration decency or not, it's about power, especially with senior republican leaders in congress. it's all about power. if he's going to attack our democracy and that's going to help them stay in power, they're going to go along with it. >> shannon, quick question to you given that you, like me, have covered the economy. what role does that play in this whole thing? donald trump ran on this idea that you've all been cheated out of something and i'm going to fix it.

he hasn't empirically fixed a lot of it and low unemployment and high stock price growth are trajectories that started long before he got here. but it is working for a lot of people. there are a lot of americans who are saying the economy, their economy is better than it was four years ago. >> and to echo the point evan was making a bit when, i go to trump rallies and i talk to people there and supporters, what do you think of the president, what do you think of how things are going, a lot of them will consistently say, well, i don't like his tweets, i don't like his attitude, i don't like his behavior, but the economy, i love what he's doing on trade. i love him going to fight for us. i love the unemployment numbers. even sometimes i'll talk to people who individually -- i remember talking to a man who business was really slow at his company and his hour had been cut so the economy wasn't even going good for him but he blamed that on other factors, global factors. he blamed that on the company's management, not on the president. he felt like the president was

sending the economy in the right direction, even though things weren't great for him, that was someone else's fault so i think the economy is key. of course if any other president had this kmeerks and this is what i hear from republican strategists and pollsters, they would have approval ratings at 63%. but this president, he barely -- he got to 49% this week after a month of keeping his mouth shut about impeachment and looking presidential, but it's really in spite of himself that he's not benefitting more from this economy. >> shannon, thank you. former 2016 independent candidate for president evan mcmullin, shannon pettypiece and dean of the john f. kennedy school of government at harvard university, joseph nye. his new book is worth a read, thank you. breaking news this morning out of china where the first u.s. citizen has died from coronavirus. a 60-year-old who was diagnosed with coronavirus died thursday in a wuhan hospital. this now makes 722 people dead

in china from the virus. we'll have more details on this developing story worldwide later in this hour. coming up next, what exactly happened to change the dynamic of the 2020 race in the last 24 hours? the answer and what it says about the state of the democratic party when we come back. e com back ♪ siren give me your hand! i can save you... lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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we're going to have to take mr. trump down on the economy because if you listen to him,

he's crowing about it every single day and he's going to beat us unless we can take him down on the economy, stupid. and that's the issue here. it is not about who has the best health care plan. all the health care plans are better, a million times better. the question is who can go toe to toe with mr. trump. who can take down mr. trump because he's the real threat to the country. you need to be able to go toe to toe with this guy and take him down on the debate stage or we're going to lose. i have heard this debate so many darn times and i love all these people and they're all right. but we've got to win or we are in deep trouble and we keep not talking about the facts. >> tom steyer speaking the truth last night. roughly 72 hours to go until new hampshire. the democratic candidates took to the debate stage once again, this time in manchester. while some of the conversation centered on the current commander in chief, much of the back and forth focused on either small personal battles or the minutia of the policy differences between them. as expected, a lot of the

attacks were aimed at senator bernie sanders and mayor pete buttigieg. the candidates who may or may not have won the iowa caucus and who are currently the clear front-runners for new hampshire, according to the latest nbc news/marist poll. this all comes at the end of what was a disaster of a week for democrats, including critical failures in counting votes cast in the iowa caucus and trump being acquitted of the two articles of impeachment, which as you can see was all too happy to brag about at the national prayer breakfast on thursday morning. this is a prayer breakfast. trump is also enjoying a 49% approval rating. his best in gallup polling since he took office and a whopping 94% approval among republicans, up six points since early january and three points higher than his previous best among the gop. with me now, staff writer at the atlantic, edward isaac delvare. he's writing a new book "you are right to be concerned, democrats

in crisis in the trump years." also with me former mayor of philadelphia, michael nult nutt who's supporting michael bloomberg. let's talk about the crisis in the democratic party because it is on display during these debates in which they are finding space between them on issues that for most americans there is no space. there is no fundamental difference between most of these candidates on the issues that americans say matter to them most, health care, climate change, guns, matters like this. but the target does not seem to be donald trump in some of these debates. >> yeah, and what this potentially does is draw out-the-door bigger divisions that will last between the candidates in a long drawn-out primary that could go into the convention in july in milwaukee, the idea of a contested

convention which seemed ridiculous a year ago seems more realistic almost by the day at this point. as these fights dig in and these candidates are each of them scrambling to shore up their base and knock the others out of the way, that sows bad feelings that don't seem like they're going go away very easily, especially when you look at some of the divisions between pete buttigieg and bernie sanders and elizabeth warren, joe biden swinging at a couple of the candidates last night, tom steyer of course after a number of debates in which he basically just said i agree with everyone last night was going at almost everybody on stage. and that is the dynamic of the race at this point. even we see amy klobuchar trying to distinguish herself that way too taking swings all over the place. this is now into 2020, we are nine months from november. we are just a few months from when theoretically this would be

settled and it is nowhere near settled. >> and i hear people, michael, saying don't worry, by super tuesday this will all be worked out and everybody will unite around a candidate and that will be fine. i think back to 2012 when the republicans realized that that didn't happen with mitt romney. people didn't -- it was too late. he went in hobbled because there had been such attacks by others running against him in the nomination. there is some concern that an obvious target like donald trump, a target not just of democrats but of moderates and of republicans who don't like donald trump are not going in with the ammunition necessary for a president that is riding high and is nine months away from an election. >> well, you know, ali, the fact of the matter is, is that some -- a number of democrats, you know, still have not healed and reconciled from 2016. and often are still fighting some of those battles. that's not helpful.

at some point in time as edward yesterday, there's going to be a nominee or there will be a contested convention. but someone has to come out of milwaukee strong and with everyone united. and so, you know, circular firing squads generally don't work out too well. you might feel good while you're firing away, but ultimately it's a pretty bad outcome. >> isaac, who gains in this, because there are people who come out, including tom perez, the chair of the dnc, telling me this is good, this is the process, this is how it's going to work. this is how democrats will figure this out and maybe that is really true, except for the fact that is anybody going to solve the problem that the democrats are in two tents and republicans are in one. democrats have one tent that says they want to be more moderate and one that says more progressive. democrats have one tent that says they want somebody that can beat trump and one tent that says i want somebody who shares my policy views as closely as

possible. that seems to be a bigger mend than which one is going to be the nominee. >> well, it depends on how this all works out, of course. it may be in nine months when we're saying when they couldn't get things settled before new hampshire, that was when things were in trouble. there will be one thing that unites democrats more than anything else is their absolute rejection of donald trump and whether, no matter how this plays out, if it's any of the candidates on stage or candidates that didn't make the stage last night, if they are able to galvanize not just their supporters but the party overall against donald trump into november, that may be what this is about. >> part of that whole question of unity and how this works, michael, the candidate you are supporting, michael bloomberg, has said that he will give his -- put his money and his engine and i think the information engine, the data engine that mike bloomberg has

at his disposal might be the more powerful tool to anybody that becomes the nominee. when asked about this by erin burnett on cnn last night, jeff weaver of the bernie sanders campaign said that they wouldn't take it. they wouldn't take the money. i didn't know if he said he wouldn't take the help. talk to me about that. >> yeah. so first and foremost, mike bloomberg is running to become president of the united states of america, is running to become the democratic nominee. that's first and foremost for mike bloomberg. and is running a general election-type campaign in the primary and caucus season and is running directly against donald trump. he has made that commitment from many, many years ago and helping democrats, house and senate members in the 2018 election leading to democrats taking over the house. so he is like a laser beam focused on donald trump. that's who he talks about, that's who he talks at, that's what we talk about on a daily basis. and he has been consistent in

that effort. in addition, recognizing that sometimes things don't work out in politics, has already made the commitment to support whomever the nominee is. people say a lot of things during the course of the primary. i would hope that if somehow mike bloomberg is not the democratic nominee, that whoever that person is, that they take all the help and support that they can get because you're going to need it in the general election against a united republican party, a well financed republican party and a party that has rallied around possibly the most damaged presidential candidate in modern history. but he's their candidate and they're going to rally around him. >> edward-isaac dovere, former philadelphia mayor michael nutter representing the bloomberg campaign, thank you for joining us, gentlemen. we'll talk again soon. coronavirus has claimed its first american life in china. we'll tell you what's being done to stop the virus from spreading

as the death toll climbs worldwide. worldw ♪ good ideas catch on fast. good, clean food, even faster. order panera for delivery, catering or rapid pick-up at panerabread.com. americans come to lendingtree.com to compare and save on loans, credit cards and more! but with the new lending tree app you can see your full financial health, monitor your credit score, see your cash flow and find out how you can cut your monthly bills. download it now to see how much you can save. obama: he's been a leader throughout the country for the past twelve years, mr. michael bloomberg is here. vo: leadership in action. mayor bloomberg and president obama worked together in the fight for gun safety laws, to improve education, and to develop innovative ways to help

teens gain the skills needed to find good jobs. obama: at a time when washington is divided in old ideological battles he shows us what can be achieved when we bring people together to seek pragmatic solutions. bloomberg: i'm mike bloomberg and i approve this message. there's my career,... my cause,... my choir. i'm a work in progress. so much goes... into who i am. hiv medicine is one part of it. prescription dovato is for adults who are starting hiv-1 treatment and who aren't resistant to either of the medicines dolutegravir or lamivudine. dovato has 2... medicines in... 1 pill to help you reach and then stay undetectable. so your hiv can be controlled with fewer medicines... while taking dovato. you can take dovato anytime of day,... with food... or without. don't take dovato if you're allergic to any of its... ingredients or if you take dofetilide. if you have hepatitis b, it can change during treatment with dovato and become harder to treat. your hepatitis b may get worse or become life-threatening...

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the u.s. embassy in beijing has confirmed the first death of an american diagnosed with

coronavirus. the 60-year-old died on thursday at a hospital in wuhan, china, the city where the outbreak originated. now this death comes after china reportedly ignored help from the centers for disease control and the world health organization for weeks because they didn't, quote, want the world to think they need outside help. let's take a look at some of the latest numbers. according to china's national health commission, 722 people have died with reports of 31,481 confirmed cases of coronavirus around the world. now, if we compared those numbers to what we showed you last week, there have been 465 additional deaths and 19,528 new cases of the disease. the cdc says there are now 12 confirmed cases in the united states with six in california, two in illinois, one each in arizona, wisconsin, washington and massachusetts. now, some are questioning china's transparency, though, including one "time" magazine writer who says, quote, the

official response lurched from cover-up to overreaction only after premier xi addressed the crisis, which begs the question, if chinese officials disclosed information about the coronavirus earlier, how many of those 722 people would still be alive today? joining me now msnbc's molly hunting and erin mclaughlin. molly, let's start with you in hong kong and with what is developing in china. this, the world health organization has come out and said we're not at the peak of this thing yesterday, numbers continue to increase. >> that's exactly right, ali. we have heard from health officials this may not be the edged, it may only get worse. about those numbers coming out of china, coming out of wuhan, we are not in wuhan.

janis mackey frayer got into wuhan a week and a half ago. we're not there to see how many beds are filled, how many cases there actually are so we're going off of the official chinese numbers. going off of those numbers, a number that struck me is that the death rate in wuhan is more than 4%. it is so much higher than the rest of china. of course the epicenter of this outbreak. but i also think that we're getting the numbering as they test people, ali, and we don't know how many people are infected who might not have been tested. >> erin, let's talk about the situation where you are in newark. this has to do with passengers that came in on a cruise ship. what's the update? >> reporter: that's right. an extraordinary story here in new jersey, ali. yesterday a cruise ship, royal caribbean, docked. four chinese nationals were escorted by medical professionals from the cruise ship, brought to this hospital in newark, new jersey, for testing. those chinese nationals did not exhibit symptoms of the

coronavirus. authorities do not think they have the coronavirus. nevertheless, they have been brought to this hospital, placed in isolation, are being tested. one of the passengers tested positive for the flu, another had a fever that went away after the passenger took tylenol. nevertheless, every precaution is being taken. the royal caribbean going so far as to delay the next cruise, which was scheduled to leave yesterday, until these results come in. the results are expected today. meanwhile, royal caribbean and other cruise lines going so far as to ban chinese nationals now from boarding their cruise lines given the events that unfolded yesterday, given this situation. there are simply too many unknowns as relates to this virus. >> molly, what's the response from the chinese now? they initially refused help from the cdc and the world health organization. do they continue to? do they sendi out a signal this

is under control? is there word from the chinese as to when they think this will peak given the trajectories they are seeing? >> there's no word about when this may peak because i think so much, as erin just said as we've been talking about the last two weeks is unknown. president xi has spoken about. this he's also spoken with president trump, where he told president trump that he was powerfully leading the fight against coronavirus. he feels they're doing very well. there was a top official, the leading chinese official in the coronavirus response visited wuhan earlier this week. she said it was wartime conditions. she also said, ali, that no one should desert. there was an edict from the government that said if you are a suspected patient, you must comply with the law, you must go get tested and go to the hospital. if you refuse, that edict said that security personnel, police will round up suspected cases of the coronavirus. we're seeing a lot of unverified very disturbing videos out on

social media showing just that. >> erin, you spoke to one man in the united states who's been quarantined in san diego. it's quite a remarkable thing, these quarantines, because they need to figure out, there's an incubation period to this illness, as you describe, so there are people who have to stay quarantined until they develop symptoms, be tested for it to determine whether it's the cold or the flu or coronavirus. what did this man tell you? >> reporter: that's right, ali, hundreds of americans from nebraska to tokyo have been quarantined as a result of this virus. i spoke to one man yesterday. he arrived earlier in the week from the epicenter there in wuhan, now being quarantined in san diego. he said he has to stay there the next two weeks. they're checking his temperature twice a day, monitoring for any symptoms. again, the key here, he was telling me, is the great unknown. authorities don't know incubation period, they don't know how the virus is transmitted and they don't know

how deadly it is. until they have answers to those questions, we can expect to see more of those quarantines throughout the united states. >> thank you to both of you. molly huntier in hong kong and erin mclaughlin in newark, new jersey. protecting your vote after the iowa caucus failure. how can we make sure why elections are reliable. why new technology presents a whole new set of problems. you're watching msnbc. roblems. you're watching msnbc. seen evy so we know how to cover almost anything. even a "gold medal grizzly." (sports announcer) what an unlikely field in this final heat. (burke) not exactly a skinny dipper, but we covered it. at farmers, we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. so get a quote at farmers-dot-com. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪

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bernie has been screwed by the democratic party. he's -- look at last week. they wouldn't allow the poll to be released he was up four. then as soon as the whole debacle about the counting, as soon as he starts closing in, the democratic party says, hey, let's have a recanvas. >> on tuesday new hampshire voters head to do polls and the democratic national committee is still taking heat for this week's fiasco in iowa. the nevada democratic party which caucuses in two weeks isn't just scrapping plans to

use that same caucus reporting app that failed in iowa, but all apps as it still figures out how to secure this nominating contest. 2020, folks, it shouldn't be that hard but the damage has already been done and false conspiracy theories are exploiting the first results of the 2020 election, sowing confusion among voters. joining me to talk about this, brandy and benecolins and roger mcnamee and author of the best-selling "zucked," a necessary read about disinformation and misinformation in our times. roger, your take on this, because basic confusion you have often told me is the best weaponization of the internet, of disinformation. it's not the stuff that targets someone, it's confusion. >> and it's really important to understand the debate we're having about technology is about whether move fast and break

things, the philosophy that built facebook, has any business in democracy. i would argue the answer is no. we should not be having smartphones counting everything. this is not about the product, it's about the idea in the first place. and what you see going on now is this weaponization of social media and, frankly, cable television to get people in an agitated state. and there's a real focus on the bernie sanders audience because they have a lot of anger left over from 2016. so the older fans are more easily enraged. it has become a huge problem, because it's a no-lose thing for the trump people. no matter what happens, you reduce the vote in november because if the party doesn't come together, either the bernie fans are angry if somebody else gets nominated or the fans of other people because bernie did. >> we already saw lower turnout

in iowa than expected. brandy, one of the things roger used to say was when we were focused on foreign intervention in elections, don't take your eye off the ball, there are bad actors here. do these platforms, can they handle that. they spent a lot of time and not satisfying time to some of us on foreign interference. what about domestic interference? >> can they handle it? no. or maybe they can but they haven't shown us that. what they have shown us is they have said they really want to curb misinformation and disinformation but when that comes into practice, they're either too slow or don't take strong enough movement to do so. there was an example of voter fraud, misinformation story spread by a group called judicial watch and further spread by some fox news types and disinformation types and it spread like wildfire. what happened with that? twitter didn't take it down, didn't do anything to stop its reach. facebook hours after the fact had a separate fact checker fact check that and put a warning label on that, but not -- but by

the time they had done that, a conservative pro-trump outlet had already been seen by 175,000 people, interacted with online by 175,000 so the cat was out of the bag when they chose to do those things. it had already spread. when the iowa secretary of state put out a fact check saying this isn't true, here's the evidence, that was seen by a teeny, tiny, small group of people compared to the lie. we don't stand a chance. >> ben, you and brandy dig around in these places to get the answers and find out why as roger has pointed out, i don't know whether it's the algorithms or people and how they act but why the bad stuff spreads so much more effectively than the true stuff. >> you just saw steve bannon, he made a career out of it. don't trust institutions. they're not going to help you out. by the way, it doesn't matter what your vote does anyway,

because that's what he had incredible success in 2016 pulling off basically. roger has talked about this too. the goal of all of these talking points, from -- that saturday night poll coming out that bannon was talking about was to split the party and make it so people distrust institutions. once you start distrusting institutions, it doesn't just end with politics, it ends with people saying maybe i don't trust the cdc anymore. maybe i don't trust people talking about coronavirus and it drums up fear in the populous and makes it so everyone is a little bit more afraid. bad actors come in, provide them with feel-good information that's wrong and they know how to exploit it and social media companies do not stop it. >> so there's a specific example of this that brandy has reported on this week in a remarkable article about the erosion of trust. you have a devastating story that was posted on nbc news and i think more than a million people have read it now and i

think hopefully by the end of this show it will be another million about a woman whose son got sick and she turned to facebook for some advice. she had gone to the doctor and sought advice and been given guidance. what happened? >> this mother went online and she checked in with a facebook group that she had belonged to for several years called stop mandatory vaccination. it's a huge group. 179,000 people belong to this group. it is the number one spreader of health and vaccine misinformation. she went in and said i don't want to take the tamiflu the doctor prescribed for the two kids that had the flu. the child died. the child that died didn't have the flu yet so it might have helped that child lessen the symptoms. she instead took advice from this facebook group like take elderberry, boil some thyme on the stove, put potatoes in the child's socks. insane things that none of us would believe.

but because this group trades in misinformation and distrust in institutions, medical doctors, the gambit, she took that advice and it had really sad consequences. meanwhile facebook has -- gave us a statement that they were very sad about what happened. it was a tragedy and that they're trying to stop this information. but how can you claim that you want to stop misinformation and health misinformation and vaccine misinformation and yet allow a group to exist that's predicated on spreading that misinformation. it's their mission. those two things don't align. >> roger, one of the things we've always talked about is people think that you're focused on facebook, is you're actually focused on broader areas of reach of disinformation and misinformation campaigns, and in fact health is probably as big as if not bigger than politics in terms of going on the internet and getting bad information. >> and the thing that we have to understand is the point that brandy is making. these platforms are based on grabbing our attention and

holding it. they need to activate us emotionally. the best way to do that is by appealing to fear or outrage. that means hate speech, disinformation and conspiracy theories. and that is the business. they have no interest in actually removing this stuff. what they want to do is remove the opposition of people like me or people like brandy, right? they want us to believe that they're doing the right thing while actually leaving it out there. and they -- you can see this in politics, you see it in health. you see it across such a wide range of things. as a country, we have to face up to the fact that the things we love about social media are getting drowned by these really deep harms that are undermining democracy and public health and privacy and, frankly, competition -- >> but only when people hear enough of these discussions about the ways in which it is detrimental, including the death of a child, or the hate that gets spread when you and i talk,

ben, when there's been a shooting or the things we talk about about the spread of disinformation, will they register this is something they have to vote on. >> and they have to recognize that people are trying to prevent them from voting by spreading disinformation to they're doing it on purpose and doing it for profit or if it's facebook it's profit and if it's a political organization it's because they want to win by cheating. >> thank you. >> up next, donald trump has broken all the rules and continues to come out on top. why that means changing how the game is played. why that means changing how the game is played r the perfect win. but i hear a different calling.

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