never even dream of. >> thanks. next time we'll talk books. i see a jon meacham back there and ed mcmorris just to start the conversation. congressman max rose, enjoy domestic life as much as lack of sleep will allow you. when we come back, u.s. supreme court justice back at work electronically despite being hospitalized. an update on the condition of ruth bader ginsburg. our justice correspondent pete williams will join us for that. e williams will join us for that

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how do we put this zm the most senior justice of the liberal wing of the supreme court, ruth bader ginsburg was hospitalized to treat a gallstone causing an infection. court said the 87-year-old justice is resting comfortably at the hospital, expects to stay another day or two, but the trip didn't stop her from calling into work this morning from the hospital. the court discussed a few cases considering the consolidated bundle of cases regarding the obamacare requirement for employers to provide birth control. here is some of what the justice said about the trump administration rule that allows employers to be exempt if providing birth control would violate a religious belief. >> the glaring feature of what the government mass done in

expanding this exemption is to toss to the winds entirely congress gres' instruction that women need and shall have seamless, no cost, comprehensive covera coverage. instead you're shifting the employer's religious beliefs, the cost of them onto these employees who do not share those religious beliefs. >> for more let's bring in our justice correspondent pete williams. pete, other than never bet against ruth bader ginsburg who pound for pound has more energy than a nuclear power plant, what do we know about the justice's condition? >> i think she'll get out of the hospital in the next 24 hours or so. think about this. i've never had a gallstone, but i've talked to people who have, and they say it is at the very least uncomfortable and very often painful. think about this.

the oral arguments by phone start historically on monday. she's already in some discomfort clearly. she goes to the hospital here. they diagnose it. she's on the conference call again tuesday despite her discomfort. then she goes up to the hospital in baltimore and they break up the gallstone, give her an antibiot antibiotics. she's back on wednesday. despite a number of health problems, she takes pride in not missing many days of oral argument. she did miss a few days with what the chief justice said was a stomach bug. a lot of people were going through the flu. you're right, it is testimony to her dedication to the job and her determination to the many miss any oral argument. >> and her extraordinary constitution, pun intended. pete williams, thank you for that update.

pete williams from washington. the time has come for me to recede because i need to go watch nicolle wallace starting at the top of this hour. i'll watch the remainor of this hour. >> it always flies by too soon. what an extraordinary times. the headlines aside, the supreme court functioning in the same way my son's second grade class is remotely, over the phone. >> exactly. >> we didn't hear any reporting of zoom arguments yet. nothing is left unchanged by these times. >> whether for birthday parties or landmark cases, we're all in the same little box on the screen. >> we sure are. it's great to do this remotely this way with you, brian. thanks for joining us. we'll be watching your subsequent shifts today. we've talked a lot about how the coronavirus has disproportionately affected communities of colors. as authorities go back to work,

we're seeing a new inequity. that story and reporting is ahead. and reporting is ahead. ♪ right now, there are over a million walmart associates doing their best to keep our nation going. because despite everything that's changed, one thing hasn't and that's our devotion to you and our communities. our priority will always be to keep you and our associates safe, while making sure you can still get the essentials you need. ♪

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we've reported extensively on this program and across this network has coronavirus has had a disproportionate impact on communities of color. now startling new data shows ill lum nating economic disparity among racial lines as well. people disproportionately are being forced to choose between

their jobs and protecting their health. a growing number are pushing back saying they will not return to work. many of them are the kinds of wovgers who find themselves on the front lines. in new york city alone according to a march analysis by the city comptroller, people of color make up 75% of front line workers. joining us with more reporting on this, nbc news correspondent morgan radford. morgan, what are you hearing? >> reporter: nicolle, the workers we've spoken to say they're facing an impossible choice, the catch 22 of, one, do they keep themselves and the families they go home to safe? or do they put themselves on the front line and risk getting coronavirus but protecting their livelihood? when you look at the numbers, they're striking. as you mentioned, 75% of front line workers in new york are black or latino. all across the country, 41% of front line workers are non-white. when you look at their options, of those people polled, 61% of black americans said they've

lost their job during this pandemic. that's compared to 48% of their white counterparts. take a listen to what some of the front line workers all across the country told me. >> what are you asking the corporations to do? what do you hope happens and what would make you feel safer going back to work? >> so osha should step in and say, hey, before you open your doors, you need to put a sed of guidelines together and do an osha walk-through to make sure. we can't be business as normal, business as usual anymore. if not, all of us are going to get sick and a lot of workers are going to diechlt we spend more time together than our own families. we don't want to contaminate the community when we go back to work. >> reporter: as you saw, nicolle, that was just one of the many workers we spoke to. two of whom told me they've had to go on food stamps and receive unemployment for the first time in their entire lives. even if those dire economic

straits, say say they still will not be reporting back to work because their health is more important. nicolle. >> nbc's morgan radford. one of the most important stories to be covering. thank you for being on it. joining us, mara gay from "the new york times" editorial board and msnbc contributor. mara, you flagged for me, brought to my attention the piece that's out last night, a new york city transportation worker, conductor talking about just this. we don't talk enough -- i think we're covering the impact on health care workers, people in the hospital, the extraordinary disproportionate burdens placed on them. but this is now the new fight it would seem. talk about a workforce that is not protected by the kinds of protections that we have as luxuries if we get to work from home. where do you see this front moving, this new battle? >> sure.

it's completely understandable that we've been focused on health care workers who deserve so much credit and they're absolutely heroes. we're learning more and more there's a whole army of other essential workers and first responders who are putting their lives on the line to keep things moving for the rest of us. new york city is a microcosm of the counted at large in that a large percentage of our workforce here, the municipal workforce is made up of minorities who tend to be disproportionately affected by covid, and i think what we're seeing, for example, is over 100 mta workers, transit workers here in new york have already died. they've been really hard hit by this virus. there are really important things we can do to help them. all of them require federal health in order for new york and other cities to do the right thing for them. these are also workers who need and deserve, for example, paid sick leave that will work for

covid. they need family care, family leave. some of them now, their families are dealing with the reality of not having line of duty benefits. in other words, if you die in the line of duty as a police officer, for example, if you get shot, god forbid, your family is protected and continues to receive health care. in this case it's not happening because it's very expensive for states, cities and companies to provide that kind of benefit. i think between unions and cities and states and the federal government, there's going to be a lot of help needed to take care of these workers who are continuing to work to keep the economy going such as it is. >> mara, i wonder if we take for granted the debates around reopening that we just bake into the cake. we assume the subways will run, the buses will come, the services that we -- i don't want to say we take for granted, because i think a lot of people are very grateful these days for everyone working under these

circumstances. do you see the politicians, mayor deblasio shifting his attention to this very vulnerable workforce, any sort of aspirations or goals about reopening his city? >> i do see and hear that from mayor deblasio, governor cuomo and others. but the problem does continue to be the uneven distribution of aid from the federal government and the lack of cash flow is making it difficult for the state to cope on its own. the amount of tax revenue that new york has lost -- new york is about 10% of the national gdp comes from the new york city region. contextualizing that and thinking about that, we need a lot more money to flow directly to states and hard-hit states in particular in order for them to really absorb these costs and support these workers and keep folks safe. one of the issues we had at the mta, the transit workers in new york, they really didn't get the

protection they needed early on according to their union, so that really helped things spiral out of control. similarly getting ppe to not just health care workers but also focusing on delivery workers and other essential employees and people living in poverty. that's key. >> it's so amazing. at a time when you've got bailouts for cruise ships and airlines, it's amazing this workforce is so frightening and having to make life-or-death decisions. mara gay, thank you for spending time with us. >> thanks for having me. >> great to see you. as parts of europe come out of lockdown, cases of coronavirus in russia are skyrocketing. doctors who have sounded the alarms there have mysteriously fallen out of windows. that story is next. that story is next ughter: slurpg don't pay for water. pay for clean. it's got to be tide.

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in europe, as many countries come out of lockdown after weeks of isolation, russia on the other hand has become a major

coronavirus hotspot. more than 10,000 cases have been reported there each of the last three days, making russia's outbreak the second fastest growing in the world behind only the u.s. experts have cautiond that recently low numbers out of russia may have been much higher. keir simmons joins us from london. i'm used to seeing russian oligarchs around to get answer about collusion and election meddling, but now getting answers about a public health crisis seems just as tricky. >> reporter: yeah, it's good to see you. it's been a long time, my friend. i got to say, with russia, it just underscores something that we can't say too much. we don't yet understand this virus. one question with russia -- why had it taken so long to get there? 10,000 new cases per day. it's now escalating there.

and that's incredibly threatening, that we have seen and we don't exactly what these stories really mean. we have these stories being thrown from windows, some of whom have complained from lack of personal protection. that might to do with the kind of place that russia is you just got to be honest about it. also, of course, this is deeply threatening to president putin, nicolle, because the president of russia knew he needed to turn around the economy of russia, he wanted to extend his presidency, but now what he's seeing the trust in him, sky-high ratings are starting to fall as people question the way that he and his leadership have handled this. that's so dangerous for the russian leadership and it's just one of the many examples of how, we said it at the beginning, coronavirus is going to change the politics of the world, we

don't know how, be you can see how it might. china, russia, these are country that we have looked at recently and talked about how strong they are but they're always incredibly fragile because they're not democracies. clearly what's happening right now, china thinks it's controlled it and begin messaging like mad it has controlled coronavirus. russia is not in that strong position at this stage. we'll await to see how this plays out. >> keir, you just gave me 10,000 tantalizing leads i want to follow up. can you come back tomorrow? you're standing there in london, i want to know how it's going there and everything you said about putin's political fate being tied into how this pandemic goes in his country you could change the name putin for donald trump. so let's have that conversation tomorrow if you're free.

>> yes. the difference is, though, there's fair and free election in the u.s., most people agree, in russia, there are questions over that and we've always questioned whether these leaders are strong in these autocracy. we may see coronavirus raise doubts about that. >> it's such an interesting and important point. let's pick this up tomorrow. nbc's keir simmons in london. coming up -- donald trump reverses course after getting slammed for calling for the winding down of to coronavirus task force. "deadline: white house" begins next. some companies still have hr stuck between employees and their data.

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transfer your service online in a few easy steps. now that's simple, easy, awesome. transfer your service in minutes, making moving with xfinity a breeze. visit xfinity.com/moving today. hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in the east. another glaring example today of donald trump's unsteady stewardship of a nation in the grips of a global pandemic, just one day after it was reported that donald trump planned to wind down the coronavirus task force, trump today reversing his position, saying this afternoon in the oval office he had no idea how popular the task force is with all its science and facts. >> i had no idea how popular the task force is, until actually yesterday when i started talking about winding it down i would get calls from very respected people saying i think it would

be better to keep it going. it's a respected task force. it's -- i -- i knew it myself, i didn't know whether or not it was appreciated by the public but it's appreciated by the public. >> "the new york times" digs deeper on the flip flop writing this, mr. trump frequently reacts to news coverage of his decision and reports on tuesday that he mind wind down the coverage. with the science-defiant president who in recent days has revised his public pronouncements uncapable of delivering adequate testing supplies who's refusing to use the office that he holds as an example to save some lives. the new measures that trump is

publicly ed lly encouraging, he trying to selling, easing restrictions which means accepting loss of life. >> will the nation just have to accept the idea that by reopening there will be more cases, there will be more deaths? >> i call them warriors, john, i'm callering the nation warriors, we have to be warri s warriors. we can't keep our country closed down for years. we have to do something. hopefully that won't be the case, john, that could be the case. >> warriors, trump calls the americans risking their lives and the lives of their neighbors and friends, children and grandparents, to restart the economy. a striking image from a president who nearly two months ago declared himself a wartime president. greg sergeant in the washington post writes this, trump is basically walking away from the very fight that he sought to project engagement in only six week ago. what we're seeing now is trump

vaulting back the position he held in the early weeks of this crisis by it could disappear. the president's full pivot to reopening comes as the country suffering most daunting and deadly days yet. "the new york times" writes this, the country is still in the firm grip of a pandemic with little hope of release. for every indication of improvement in controlling the virus, new outbreaks have emerged elsewhere. even sgreg abbott cautioned on the loss of lives in leaked aud request owe. he acknowledges that the virus will continue to spread after the state reopens. a representative for governor abbott didn't dispute its authenticity to nbc news.

>> pretty much every scientific and medical report shows that whenever you have a reopening, whether you want to call it a reopening of business, or just a reopening of society, in the aftermath of something like this, that actually will lead to an increase in spread. it's almost ispo facto the more that you have people out there the greater the possibility there is for transmission. >> the trade-off and trump's inability to veer america is where we start today. joining us is dr. ckavita patel plus white house reporter with the washington post, ashley parker is back. let me start with you, dr.

patel, on what in the last hour, a false choice, the americans have to choiz between opening up and risking their lives and risking frankly the health and well-being of their grandparents or children, or killing the economy. what are the real choices we're facing right now. >> the real choices especially with burden on people to return to work, either physically or even the burden to take care of your children while you're trying to return to some sort of normal work process. the burdens are entirely real, particularly, nicolle, when you think about the lack of testing. we keep talking about testing, even florida, seems to be rejoicing in its lower numbers, all health experts agree that this is really just the fact we're still not catching a lot of the cases. so the choice is, how can you do

your best as an individual to try to protect yourself against this? knowing that there are still at will of people out there who are not taking it as seriously including some of our leaders and so that's the choice and we don't have -- we don't have validated treatments that give us enough security and we're still a long way away from a vaccine. so we're setting up our most vulnerable populations to really have to march into disease and face their own mortality and that's not trivial. >> what do you think the coming weeks hold for us as a country with this patchwork of reopenings, with this daunting new model from donald trump's own administration, from the cdc and the federal emergency management agency, fema, that shows the death rate doubling, the infection rate quadrupling against the backdrop of the president sort of seizing on this message of we have to get

out even if it kills us. in the case of governor abbottle, having some pause about it, but following up on that edict. >> i used to do a lot of infectious disease control life in a former life in south america, in those countries it was almost neighborhood by neighborhood and block by block, i hate to say it, nicolle, it reminds what we're entering into, y'all have to come together at a very local level and almost kind of shame each other into social distancing or wearing a mask, because there's just not an uniform standard. even in places where there's order, there are protests, so i'm as a physician, i'm relying on the fact that there's still a lot of trust in our frontline workers and i'm hoping and praying that these frontline workers have the respect they've earned and that people will

listen to them but it's going to be very local. >> ashley parker, your colleagues wrote this, with several covid-19 models taking a turn toward bleaker death forecast in recent days because of reopening moves in some states most americans say they worry about getting the virus themselves and they oppose ending the restrictions meant to slow its spread according to washington post, university of maryland poll. it would seem that the president is engaged in a persuasion effort, upwards of 80% of americans don't want to do the things they did before the pandemic, eat at restaurants, go to movies, how are they planning on changing public sentiment and with which messengers and some of your reporting suggest some acknowledgment that donald trump's credibility has been damaged by his turn at the podium. >> well, that's exactly right, nicolle, and it was calling

around inside and outside the xwhous today to try and understand what this new form of the task force may look like. one of the things that you hear there's an understanding that they need to change the psychology, is the word you hear, of the american people and the american public, because reopening isn't about getting the best business leaders to advise the president, it's about consumer confidence. people feeling comfortable leaving their homes, going out to a restaurant, feeling comfortable to hire a baby-sitter to come into their homes. the tricky thing now is this administration seems to be grappling, there's a psychology marketing pitch. at the end of the day, lot that will impact the psychology of the public is actually public health and medical data and for people to really feel comfortable. it comes down to science, it comes down to having enough

tests so you can feel comfortable enough. it means coming up with therapeutic treatments so you feel like if you get the virus it might be unpleasant but you won't die from it. it involves a vaccine. the president talked about it recently this is purely economic decision but in fact the public health aspect is tied now more than ever to the sort of whole of reopening approach. >> you know, ron klain, as ashley parker is talking, i'm sort of nodding along because it's -- it's exactly right, and you just wonder if that's exactly right, why was the task force disbanded yesterday and put back on today because the president saw it was popular? does it look like to you from the outside? >> well, i mean, i think the problem remains that the president hasn't solved the core

public health problem, which is we need widespread testing, we need to be fighting this disease on all fronts. from the start he's treated this as a pr problem. first he told us it didn't exist, it would go away like a miracle. he held press conferences, they were went poorly, he disband and now he brought it back. if he wants people to go out dinner, go to movies, he has to fix the country so we're not going to die going out to dinner and going out to movies. all the spin and the press conferences that's not going to change the reality of what people are experiencing. you know, there's a poll out today that shows 1 in 3 americans knows now someone who's been affected by covid.

as long as that number grows, the president at his podium won't get me and other people to go out and risk our live for a plate of sushi. >> the plight of the other people on the frontline, not just healthcare workers, people in a slowly reopening economy, people who drive buses, people who work on public transportati transportation, we're also -- we have the luxuries of deciding on whether to go out, there's a whole lot of americans who do not. do you those decisions are considered by this white house? >> they are. i said from the very first time this started, lockdown in economy was a misstatement because there are millions of americans who work risking their lives so some of us can stay home and be safe. that's the reality. you add that the president has

used his legal authority to command meat packers to go back on the job, to produce meat, for us to eat. he won't use that authority to command big companies to produce testing kits? he won't use that authority to command big companies to produce the gear that healthcare workers need to stay safe? but for his allies in the meat industry he used that authority to have those workers to risk their lives to process meat. that says everything about his priorities. he said he's a wartime president, but he's sending all of us into battle without adequate protection and we, we lost the same number of people last month to covid as we did know ten years of the vietnam war. >> another leader said, probably had the effect of making

everybody think, it's about thinking about how we value life, it's the governor of new york, i should say new york has reduced their cases because of the rather extreme steps that are still in place in new york, extreme social distancing, everyone wearing a mask, but here he is talking yesterday about the value of a human life. >> the fundamental question, which we're not articulating, is how much a human life worth? the faster we reopen the lower the economic costs. but the higher the human cost. because the more lives lost. >> dr. patel? >> i mean, there's no question that this keeps going back to, you know the statement the president made about the cure being worse than the disease. i mean, there's just no price we

can put on human life which is why you see essential workers, why you see people to ron's point, millions of people that come out to try to support the economy so they can support people not just themselves and they have a sense of kind of moral responsibility and so, to think about the devastation of the economy, certainly we're all feeling it, 30 million americans and counting who don't have jobs, but i can tell you that many, many conversations that have had with patients and real people if they want to live they're desperate to think about that opportunity. i can't stress that enough. if you think about the american way it's offering that to everybody and i feel like that's exactly what we're facing as we go into the summer months. we need that chance to keep ourselves alive. >> ashley parker, i have heard this argument made by trump

allies that people are going to have to be asked to sacrifice, to take risks, and i'm sure you have heard it more than i have. is donald trump the right person to ask them to do that, having told people to inject bleach into their body, to take high drox chloroquine. his allies said he's all we got. what's the sense whether or not donald trump can ask people to risk their way of life? >> you're certainly seeing that shift, even though the language of him referring to individual citizens and the public at large as warriors, that implies a agree of sacrifice for a larger cause and this is what the nation and the white house is going to be grappling with as we go forward.

it's one thing for the president as we seen him to do, to stand up there and tour a mask factory, and say, look, there may be some bad outcomes, that means one thing in the abstract when you think about you're a citizen and you thinking about being a warrior and there have some people affected. another person who's affected may be your grandparent, or a sibling, or a close friend or a colleague, and we don't know how people will react until for instance a state opens up and maybe gets one of these grim outcomes where there's a lag in cases and suddenly they spike again. real soul-searching in a couple of weeks when we have a better chance of the outcomes that's being laid down by the president's decisions.

dr. patel, thank you for starting us off. it's always great to see your science and fact-based advice about how we navigate these times. thank you. when we come back -- as the nation struggles with how and where to get much-needed medical supplies, jared kushner was at the center of federal response. enlisting inexperienced volunteers to help. we'll also turn to 2020 race, the new poll has joe biden growing his lead over donald trump. former president barack obama calling out republicans in congress for doing the work of the russians. we'll explain, all those stories coming up. our offices, schools and playgrounds. all those places out there, are now in here. that's why we're still offering fast, free two day shipping on thousands of items. even the big stuff. and doing everything it takes

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the notion of the federal stockpile it was supposed to be our stockpile not state stockpiles they use. we're encouraging the states to make sure they're assessing the needs, getting the data from their local situations and then trying to fill it with the supplies we've given them. >> remember that? just a month ago, donald trump's son-in-law and senior adviser jared kushner told the world and the states that the nation's stockpile of supplies wasn't for them? instead, the federal government was working to make deals with the public sector get the ppe to handle the crisis. from reporting by washington post and the "the new york times" kushner was in charge of that operation, leading a group of volunteers, struggled to execute its mission. one volunteer filed a complaint. from the washington post, quote, the complaint alleges that the team responsible for the ppe had

little success in helping the government secure such equipment in part because none of the team members had specific experience in healthcare. volunteers were instructed to fast-track leads. ron and ashley are still here. ashley, take us through it. >> sure, so basically what happened was, jared was under pressure to think outside of the box, he came up with this idea of bringing in quite young volunteers from the private sector, from private equity firms and i want to be clear, these volunteers by all accounts, smart, hardworking young people but they found themselves in this environment they themselves felt like they were set up to fail. they were brought in, a few had healthcare backgrounds but not in the specifics that you would need in supply chain

procurement. they for instance weren't given dot.go dot.gov e-mail addresses. the first hurdle is to prove they're working on behalf of the federal government, right, and not a spam e-mail address. one of these volunteers was so alarmed by what they witnessed that they sent a complaint, which the washington post we broke to house oversight, detailing these concerns and they were concerns that lead from vips whether inside the administration or outside from people like jeannine pirro at received priority. so there are a lot of concerns and i want to add, social distancing, the complaint said, a volunteer we talked to, said

there was minimal social distancing, they were sometimes crowded into conference rooms. these were young people doing their best but they felt it was emblematic of a federal effort. >> ron klain, it's hard to know where to start. so much to unpack there and certainly good for the young and smart private equity workers who came to try and help their country. but the mission as crafted by jared kushner was corrupt from its inception. you asked these questions, how bad was it? it was so bad that one of the young eager, patriotic, hedge fund volunteer filed a whistle-blower complaint. what do you think? >> i think ashley's brilliant

piece reflects three biases that we have seen from the start here with fatal consequences. in january, i wrote thought that the trump response to the coronavirus would be a disaster, to fight a disease like this you need the deep state. when i came in as the ebola response coordinator, i wasn't an expert, i looked around inside our government are the very best experts those were the people that needed to be put to work on this. instead you see trump and kushner buy siases. they think the men and women who served their lives in the government aren't as good as the bright, young people with ivy league degrees who work in these consulting groups. they set aside the experts they're admirable volunteers, they wanted to do this work, but the experts were in the government and to allow your

government-hating ideology and your elitist biases to not to allow on those experts to bring in consultants produced the result we have seen. i think this has just been embl emblematic approach to government. this time it had fatal consequences. >> ashley parker, jared kushner was put in charge of the government shutdown which ended up with the calamitous effect on government workers and the president seems to be in charge of the pandemic response, how is his standing within the west wing? >> so i was talking to someone about this today and they were saying, you can look at jared in two ways, it follows a familiar pattern, jared's not involved in something, he decides this thing he's involved decides is going

to wrong track, there's no one inside the west wing who doesn't have a strong opinion of jared kushner one way or other. but he's the president's son-in-law and in that manner he wielded for better or worse a tremendous amount of power and you talk to people outside of the government who don't necessarily like him or should be in these positions and they'll say, i deal with him because i know if i go with a concern i can get answer, i can get something on the president's desk incredibly quickly. now does it mean that's something that should be on the president's desk? not necessarily. but kushner wields power. the president hasn't yet hired long term. >> you know, ron, you think of the professionals who were repelled by the javanka access

of people, people like general kelly, don mcgann, people like chris christie and others, you have to wonder when the history is written if jared kushner wasn't one of the most influential in not a good way during this government during this extraordinary time. >> i mean, i think there's no question he has been and on project after project he's failed and i think it's because the same tactics are used over and over again. expertise eschew experience, the people who know what they're doing instead rely on these crazy half-baked schemes to use volunteers, connections or friends or allies to do the work that our government should be doing that has failed in the middle east process, that has failed in a number of trade

problems that mr. kushner has handled, failed in dealing with a variety of other problems that he's been handling and now it's failed badly in this life and death scenario we're facing with coronavirus. this isn't working for the american people. again, i think we're seeing the consequences of that in a real serious circumstance. >> ron klain, ashley parker, thank you so much for spending time with us. ashley, congratulating on the reporting. >> thank you. after the break -- buried in the latest polling data a number that should have donald trump very, very worried about his current standing right now today against joe biden. we'll tell you about it next. achoo! ...do your sneezes turn heads? try zyrtec... ...it starts working hard at hour one... and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day.

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new polling out today on the 2020 presidential race that may not land well at the white

house. mock voters nationwide, joe biden leads donald trump by nine points, 50% to he 1%. more telling numbers are found when you break that down by gender, trump leads the former vice president two points among men. but biden leads trump 20 points among women. joining us is steve schmidt and donna edwards. if i were on a normal republican campaign and there were a 20-point deficit for my candidate i'd see that race as unwinnable, what do you make of that advantage biden has among women. >> i think you're right. i think what you see here over the course of the last three years to the extent that the president had even marginal support mostly among white women that that has disappeared and

it's disappeared for a number of reasons not at least which is the president's behavior, his conduct, his seem ingly unwilling to identify with the truth. i think the women voters have gotten this and they're tired of it. >> steve schmidt, you've gotten under the president's skin this week, one, how are you doing? two, anything surprise you in these new polls and anything in it that will influence the strategy you guys now in the arena with the lincoln project with the powerf fuful ad that w know the president saw. >> a couple of things, nicolle, first, with regard to his polling numbers with women, there well earned over three years. we have seen his belittlement of women, he's a credibly akuszed sexual assaulter in at least a dozen cases probably more.

but i think you're going to see deterioration with women voters because women voters are looking out at the totality of the situation the country finds itself in. the death, the suffering, the economic collapse and devastation, and women are saying, this guy did not protect my family. he left the country unprotected and we're all less safe because of it. and on the security issue, as well as the economic issue, i think you'll see those numbers continue to break and with regard to the lincoln project ad that he was so upset about and spent most of the night apparently hate-tweeting and raged about it all day yesterday, what the ad makes the point of which is obviously true, he's the worst president in american history. we never had a president fail so terribly in a crisis. we never had a president so derelict in his duty.

and we'll have a shattered american economy. he got hoodwinked by the chinese. he lied to the american people. he's inept and incompetent talking about the television ratings up there while the country is suffering and telling the american public to inject lysol, a terrible performance for the ages. lastly the man who said i alone can fix it i'm going to make america great again, the country is weaker, it's poorer, and it's suffering at a level that's never before in its history and there's never been an amoment of american weakness quite like the one that donald trump has brought, brought on to the country. >> donna edwards, donald trump has certainly appeared all those

things and on top of it is something that we're all really uncomfortable talking about, but i watch him all day, all of his pool sprays, i don't them put on tv every day, because in this context in this pandemic it's wrong. he's said things that are life-threatening, injecting bleach and taking unproven drugs. there's an open question, steve's efforts and the president's own performance have soften the ground around his stability, around his fitness for office, do you see democrats having the appetite to make those kind of arguments? >> yeah, i don't know if democrats are ready to go there yet but i think the american people are buying the argument themselves. i mean, they don't trust at all what the president has to say, i mean, we have seen over and over his disapproval numbers sinking

every single time and i think that reflects the fact that the american people don't believe that he's on solid ground. and i don't think that there's anything that democrats can do to add to that to conversation because every time the president appears at a podium, at a pool spray, the american people can see that themselves. what they see is a president who overstates reality because he can't deal with the reality of the circumstances that we're in. we see a president who diminishes his own scientific and other staff because he doesn't want to look at the truth of the numbers that are on display and we see a president frankly -- we knew he couldn't really run his businesses and now we know he can't run this country. he doesn't have the ability to juggle the multiple things that

have to be juggled, the information that's coming in and so democrats don't have to make that argument, democrats and joe biden in particular need to make the argument that come january of 2021 he's going to be bring a level of competency and attention to detail and attention to the facts and to science that this president has not done and that stark contrast right there is what i think you see reflected in the strength of joe biden's poll numbers in this latest poll. >> steve schmidt, there's a cautionary tale perhaps right now the public is with the governors who are largely the ones urging more caution, wanting people to if they come out of their homes do so safely in a social distanced way while donald trump is cavorting about mask-free. any danger if donald trump grabs the economy reins and has any

success as depicting democrats as being against sort of reopening in. >> i think the political argument is one that decide the election on the economy. here it is, what donald trump wants to say the economy is shattered because of the coronavirus. that of course is not true and there are other places around the world where it's not true. the economy is shattered because of donald trump's ineptitude and incompetence in responding to the coronavirus. that's why we're going to have 30% unemployment, that's why the fabric of america is going to be strained and broken in the ways that's going to be in the months ahead. i do disagree a little bit with donna. i think it's essential for democrats to make the argument every day about his manifest on fitness for the office. and also, to talk about how they'll unify the country and what will the plan be for recovery which will take many,

many years from one of the most epic events in american history? but donald trump is so manifestly unfit for this office that in the end, the consequence of it will be one of the worst crises facing the country in our 200/50-year history. it has to be called out every day. what was true about the last election was this -- the person who the election was about was losing, all through the election and for most of the election it was about donald trump until the last week when it became about hillary clinton and donald trump narrowly won an electoral college victory. nobody should underestimate the power of his propaganda networks, his enormous cash advantage, he should be taking

seriously as a political competitor and we should not be at each other about the profound, profound tragedy that has been brought to this country because we have had a real thety show star who's unfit, mentally, morally and intellectually to sit behind the resolute desk as the american commander in chief and head of state. >> steve schmidt is just getting started. we'll hold steve and donna both over. next, president obama's response from an unprecedented request from senate republicans. the most 4k content and movies and shows on any screen. the best entertainment experience all in one place.

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some of you on this committee appear to believe that russia and its security services didn't conduct against our country. that ukraine did, this is a fictional narrative. >> it's prove on the be one of the most enduring moments of the impeachment process, former national security official fiona hill setting the record straight about who was actually responsible for the attack on the 2016 election and where the fiction about ukraine comes from. now new reporting reveals that the office of former president barack obama has explicitly referenced those comments

calling ukraine meddling a fictional narrative. the letter was in response to a request made by republican senators, ron johnson and chuck grassley back in november, they asked for records having to do with any meetings with any obama-era officials with dnc officials and ukraine. still, obama's team approved the release of the records in quote, to counter the misinformation. it's amazing that democrats will have to run against trump, fox news and russia and to see obama trying to get in and push against the russia narrative is just a remarkable new normal in american politics. >> well, it is. and what we saw during the impeachment hearings is we saw

one witness after another, including fiona hill, who described in very, very clear terms that the ukraine story was a complete made-up fiction being promoted by the russians to deflect their own culpability and we here we have the president of the united states and republicans in the congress and these senators continuing to promote the exact same propaganda, it does feel like a replay of 2016 but we are ready this time. the american people are simply not -- we're not going to have them buy in this argument that it was ukraine and russia isn't behind this continued disinformation and interference in our election. >> you know, steve, the new feature, though, is that you got a very willing partner in powerful republican senators, i

mean, what are ron johnson and chuck grassley doing still sort of eating at the trough of the russia disinformation. >> his retirement remains faithful to his oath of office and unwilling to be a dupe in a russian intelligence services misinformation campaign designed to sow division in our democratic process and institution and it is a remarkable moment when we see united states senators, republican senators, who are willing, complicit, accomplices in furthering the propaganda of a hostile foreign power and it takes a former president of the united states to call b.s. on it. it is nonsense. it is untrue. it is a lie and it is shameful and despicable that these

republican senators are doing that and it shows why the republican senate majority is in such jeopardy when you look at the polling numbers from around the country at the number of races that the democrats are ahead in. >> donna, do you think that the russian disinformation, you said that the american people are kind of onto it, do you think that more needs to be done to sort of certify that which is coming out of american sources, do you think there really is enough that is different from four years ago that people could spot the troll populated things on social media? >> no, but i do think both from the media covering these stories and also i've seen in my own work a number of organizations around the country that are really tracking this so that they could try to nip these

trolls in the bud. people are getting more sophisticated when it comes to twitter and others. but i don't think we've done enough. and frankly i think that the congress needs to block by republicans in congress are really trying to put a stop on this by getting our social media companies for example to pay more attention to what is happening on their platforms. but we have to be much more sophisticated and understand these divisions. they're being done by race and by class and by gender and any manifestation that republicans can do. russians continue and they haven't stopped interfering in our election. >> it is a conversation i think we'll have many, many times over in the days to come. so important. donna edwards, steve schmidt, thank you both for spending time with us today. after the break, a story of true love. our farewell to a couple married 71 years.

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okay, grab your dog or cat for this one. you're going to need them. world war ii veteran couldn't be with his wife as she was dying. after 71 years of marriage daniel said the final days were, quote, like being in the fox hole at battle of the bulge but even that was easier. before the pandemic, the two of them moved into a senior living facility outside of philadelphia. daniel had his own independent apartment and valerie was in a separate wing for more intense care but when daniel came down with the virus they were forced to be apart, quarantined. later valerie passed away without the love of her life holding her hand. two days after that daniel died from coronavirus. their daughter told "the new york times," quote, in the end it was as if she said i'm not going alone and as if he said

you're not going alone. and so today we're honoring their true love in robert and valerie. thank you for letting us into your homes during these extraordinary times. our coverage continues with chuck todd right after a quick break. we're also offering flexible payment options for those who've been financially affected by the crisis. we look forward to returning to something that feels a little closer to life as we knew it, but until then you can see how we're here to help at libertymutual.com/covid-19. [ piano playing ] saturpain happens. aleve it. aleve is proven stronger and longer on pain than tylenol. when pain happens, aleve it. all day strong.

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