why are we doing this? why are we doing what? using my old spice moisturize with shea butter body wash... all i wanted was to use your body wash and all i wanted was to have a body wash. this weekend joe biden's presidential campaign released this ad. ♪ ♪

last night joe biden followed up that ad with this tweet. "the presidency is about a lot more than tweeting from your golf cart. it requires taking on the ultimate responsibility for the biggest decisions in the world. donald trump simply wasn't prepared for that. i promise you i will be." and less than two hours after that, donald trump of course took to twitter to defend golfing trump-style as, "exercise." while attacking joe biden and former president barack obama. stuart stephens who was mitt romney's 2012 top strategist in that presidential campaign wrote on twitter, "when you make political ads, half the fun is wondering if the other guy will be dumb enough to take the bait. trump never disappoints.

that dog chases every car". a quinnipiac national poll shows joe biden leading donald trump by 11 points. joining us now, zerlina maxwell, senior director of progressive programming at sirius xm radio and an msnbc analyst. author of the upcoming book, "the end of white politics: how to heal our liberal divide." back with us, jonathan alter and david frum. zerlina, the president spent the weekend in a golf cart after urging his followers to spend their sunday mornings shoulder-to-shoulder in church. donald trump didn't go anywhere near a church, of course, and this is apparently the way he's going to play it. he's going to social distance on golf courses while urging people to get together everywhere else. >> well, the thing that's so confusing about the president's strategy is his base of supporters is older voters, is white voters, is -- are voters

they are currently going through these hot spots that were the results of people going out the first few weeks of may without the appropriate ppe. and i just -- i can't think of an electoral strategy that involves actually killing your potential voters. i do not understand the strategy that he is doing. but i -- but i think that part of what is on display, despite the fact that i'm baffled by the strategy, just in terms of the math of it, is that the president has always been a walking, talking national security threat. from the beginning. from day one. i have always felt that way. i've always gone to sleep at night fearful that he was going to tweet us into a nuclear war or some sort of conflict. now we're actually living my greatest fear. and the thing that is bothering me the most is that even in quarantine we are still obsessed with his personality.

and i think what we -- we could be focused more on is not so much his personality traits and when he's lashing out at folks, but the sheer incompetence of the followed responsederal resp there are real, tangible things that you can point to and say 36,000 americans would be alive today, potentially, if he had made better choices as president. so i think he's really worried. maybe that's why he stays on the golf course because he doesn't know what to do in this moment. >> jonathan alter, zerlina mentioned this issue of why would you put your own voters at risk? adds donald tru as donald trump seems to be doing. shows a ten-point lead for joe biden among seniors. so there actually isn't a group that donald trump can point to in that poll and say let's make sure we take very good care of them, at this point anyway. >> right.

the only constituency that he really still has a real advantage with are white men between the ages of 40 and 60. so people aren't quite old yet. maybe they think that they're invulnerable to covid. they see this as kind of a, you know, the cowboy state versus the nanny state. there aren't enough of them to win a presidential election. and if he's not careful, he could be in danger of getting blown out. because the, you know, the constituencies that he got the last time are rapidly eroding. so, for instance, older white women who went with trump, they didn't like hillary for whatever reason. they like joe biden. they think he's a nice guy. and they are tired of trump and want to change the channel on him. so trump now has a big problem with older white women, and the real question for him is, how

does he get support back? there are two things that you have to do. not lose support. if you're behind. not lose more support. but also figure out ways to get back on track with various constituent sise constituencies and i don't see the entrance ramp to that expressway for donald trump. i don't know where he gets the votes. so his only hope is to depress turnout. that's why he's threatening the post offices, the absentee ballots. democrats have to understand this. it's not about persuading more people to be against trump. there are already enough of those people. democrats just have to get turnout in gear. >> david frum, it's so striking to see that very, very powerful biden campaign ad made this weekend about things happening this weekend in the trump presidency. there is such a rich archive that we would normally think of

as relatively recent news that the biden campaign hasn't even touched. for example, north korea. zerlina mentioned the fear of donald trump kind of tweeting us into a nuclear exchange. i think we were all very nervous about the way donald trump was dealing with north korea at the beginning. then he fell in love, publicly declared his love for kim jong-un, who this weekend, kim jong-un, re-emerged at a meeting in north korea, which was about strengthening north korea's nuclear capability. the biden campaign hasn't even touched any of that yet. the trump/north korea -- what happened to north korea's nukes, why is north korea now re-energizing their nuclear approach? >> i think the biden campaign is focused on one very simple metric. the highest unemployment ever suffered by a president to be

re-elected was president obama in 2012. at the end of the year 2012, unemployment was 7.8%. the second highest was ronald reagan in 1984. at the end of 1984, unemployment was 7.7%, but in both cases the job situation had improve before the election. moderately in 2012, which is why president obama got moderately re-elected and dramatically in the 12 months before 1984, which is why ronald reagan got dramatically re-elected. there just isn't time for that kind of improvement before voting day 2020. and even if there were time, the magnitude of the unemployment problem is so enormous, so mined boggling, so great depression-like, if you were to bring meddles of people into work in the next few months, they're at 38 million or there were last week 38 million unemployed. there may be more unemployed by the end of this week, and i think the biden people are just focused on that crushing economic weight. it's impossible to imagine how

president trump gets past that. >> zerlina, it's such a good point that the -- that this campaign now is the coronavirus and coronavirus unemployment campaign. it's very, very hard to get the electorate's attention on to anything else, but if the brady campaign ever does, there's a massive amount of material for them to work with. >> oh, yeah. donald trump was doing poorly as president before the pandemic. one of the things i don't want us to walk away from this horrible moment in american history with is this idea that the pandemic is what destroyed donald trump's presidency. right before the new year, we impeached this president. then we went to christmas. he was indicted -- indicted in the trial but not convicted, obviously. and then we went to the new year and we were worried about war with iran. i mean, i don't think that this

presidency has been particularly solid. i would like to go to bed with a little less anxiety. but i think in this particular moment, this is the culmination of the president's incompetence. and it is on full display in the worst-case scenario. so what i think going forward is joe biden needs -- i'm glad to see him outside modelling the mask-wearing because it -- i think the mask-wearing is more than just i'm a tough guy, you know, and i'm not gonna wear a mask thing. i don't think it's so much that. i think it actually has to do with the fact that donald trump cannot admit when he is wrong. and that is a -- that's a quality that we need in a successful president. we need a president who is going to be deliberative and think about the decisions that they are making and how they're impacting the american people. and if something is wrong, you need to correct the record. you need to correct that. so i think that joe biden modelling mask-wearing because that's the only thing that is going to ensure that we do not

have a second wave that is worse than the current wave -- because we're not in the second wave yet. my dad's a scientist. he keeps talking about the fact that we can't jump ahead and talk about the current upticks in certain parts of the country like in alabama as if that's part of a second wave because we're very much still dealing with the initial impact of this virus. >> let's take a look at something that donald trump said on april 10th, april 10th about the coronavirus. and about the number of deaths that we are approaching tonight. let's listen to this. >> we'll see what it ends up being, but it looks like we're headed to a number substantially below the 100,000. that would be the low mark. >> jonathan alter, there's going to be a biden tv ad at some point that just rattles off every one of these trump statements about the numbers when he said we had 15 cases and we were gonna go to zero. he kept coming out with and

attaching himself to specific numerical predictions like that. that looked pretty dark when you look at them tonight. >> well, it's just so stupid on his part, you know? anybody should know that you want to underpromise and overdeliver. so that, you know, if he had said we could have had 300,000 deaths and then it comes in at 150,000 then he looks better. what he's trying to do is instead of, you know, dealing in an up front way with the situation as it is, he's trying to turn it into another kind of statistic. to normalize it. so essentially to say, look, we have a lot of deaths from auto accidents. he started with the flu. he wants to make it something like, you know, it's just part of american life. and so it's really up to all of the rest of us and the press to make sure that we memorialize not normalize.

that we -- we actually put markers down. now, these markers -- this -- these -- this branding of the utter failure in february, march, april and now may, it doesn't happen by itself. and this is part of the blocking and tackling of politics. so i'm reminded of, you know, in my research for a book i wrote about franklin roosevelt. everybody knows about hoovervilles. you know, herbert hoover's, the shanties in central park. it was called hoovervilles. it was a very effective way of roosevelt pushing hoover out of office in 1932. that didn't just come up out of nowhere. that was the creation of the democratic national committee, and they threw a lot of things against the wall before hoovervilles stuck. so i think biden is off to a good start with golf. but it has to be just one of the

first of many, many attack lines. because, you know, as you know better than anybody, lawrence, politics ain't bean bag. you got to stay on the offensive all the way from now until the election. i guess one of my worries a little bit about biden is i want him to be a little more pete buttigieg i want him to go after trump a little hard? i think it will pay off for him if he does. >> david frum, if you look at the polling numbers, it's hard to see what the biden campaign is doing wrong. >> and it doesn't matter what they would be doing wrong. years and years ago i was tracking a senior politician who was in the company of a kind of loud-mouth junior politician, and the junior politician was running against an incumbent, and the senior politician just tried to tell him to stop talking all the time. when you're running against an incumbent, there are two questions, her record, it was a woman in this case and you are

not a kook. it's the record. this is going to be a referendum on the trump presidency and we're going to have somewhere in the vicinity of 20 to 30 million people still out of work in november under the best, best circumstances. and so i think the question for people around biden and soon for all of us is, what is the future of the country going to be like? this is the thing that i worry about in the book. it's not like the trump voters are going to go away. and it's not like it's going to be so easy to change their minds about things, so how do you build a political system in which a third of the country is able to do less damage and how do you begin to renew the bonds of nationhood in a way you begin to at least find some commonalities between the alienated 30% in less dynamic areas of the country and the majority that live in the most dynamic area of the country? >> zerlina maxwell, jonathan alter, david frum, thank you all for joining our discussion. coming up later in the hour, we have a very special last word

tonight. you will hear someone sing who you have never heard sing the end of this hour. and coming up, many of the questions that you sent us about the coronavirus about how to keep yourself safe and keep your family safe this summer. you're going to get your answers. laurie garrett will join us. i'm told her camera is working. she will join us to answer your questions next. it's time for the memorial day sale on the sleep number 360 smart bed. can it help keep me asleep? absolutely, it senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. save $1,000 on the sleep number 360® special edition smart bed. plus 0% interest for 36 months & free

delivery when you add a base.

all 50 states have now started easing restrictions to allow some activities to occur, more activities and some businesses to reopen. on twitter we asked for your questions about the medical and social impacts of the coronavirus and how that's affecting you and to get your answers, we're joined now for those answers by laurie garrett. she's a politzer prize-winning reporter covering global pandemics and the msnbc science contributor. laurie, thank you very much for joining us. i'm glad we got your camera working. i wasn't going to be able to answer these questions without you.

so let's start with this first question from delia. she says, do you have serious concerns after observing the activities this weekend that we could have a coronavirus second wave all over the country or some hot spots with uncontrolled spread? >> yes. i am concerned. i am seeing all kinds of images and, frankly, i see behaviors right here in new york that make me very, very anxious. i'm worried that -- well, let me put it this way. i was in the ebola epidemic, of course, in 2014 in west africa and i attended church services in liberia. ebola is a lot less contagious than this covid virus, a lot less contagious. and yet, in liberia, people went to church but they understood you entered one person, then

another person, not a crowd going in. you sat 12 feet away from each other in the pews and you staggered in the pews. everybody had sanitizer. this is in liberia. and i look at the images from this weekend all over the united states and i see behaviors that no one in liberia would have been doing in the middle of an ebola epidemic. to see crowds gathering, shaking hands, you know, high-fiving each other, sharing drinks in a pool, hanging out in ways that just obviously put them at risk of acquiring an airborne virus from another person, a contact virus from another person, it's just appalling to me and it means that people really don't understand that we are walking steak. you know, we're meat on wheels

for a virus and they're just -- the covid virus is just looking for another happy hunting ground, and we're making it very easy for this virus. >> let's go to the another question. this is a practical question. i need to travel from washington to arizona in july for family medical urgency. i am planning on driving. is it safe to stay at hotels for two nights along the way and then isolate in an airbnb when i get there? >> so a lot of companies are going to great lengths to demonstrate they have sanitized their facilities, they've made it possible for you to go through all the check in and the check out and everything without any physical contact with another human being. they're trying very hard to convince you that they will make it very safe. and without specifically going in and inspecting what each individual hotel is doing and what the nature is of the

precautions that they're taking, i can't give you the kind of assurance on a specific level. what i would say generally is that it still is risky to travel. and it's probably still best to avoid it, if possible. you say you have a medical emergency that requires your travel, then i would say all right, but let's be sure that you minimize all form of contact with strangers and that's not just when you reach your hotel but across your travels. as you reach your destination, just tremendous caution. >> well, laurie, you've kind of answered the next question in what you've just said but this question is worth asking because i get this from people all the time. it says, what precautions should people be taking in airports and on airplanes right now?

asking for a friend who intends to go on vacation with her extended family next month. >> well, depending on where you live and where you're planning to fly to, a month might buy us a fair amount of additional safety. but that's not necessarily an absolute and there certainly are parts of the country that are still just getting started in the first wave of this pandemic and there are certainly locations around the world where the pandemic is just starting to take off. consider the situation, for example, in brazil and russia. but let's assume you're staying inside the united states and going from one place to another where the epidemic is roughly the same stage. then, again, the airlines, just like hotels, are doing everything possible to convince you that they have sanitized, that they've changed the way they're operating. they're not going to jam you in shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh with strangers. we'll see.

i should caution that dr. joseph fare, a good friend of mine and friend of msnbc acquired infection of covid, just recently got out of hospital after a long difficult bout with the disease and he thinks he acquired it through his eyes on a flight and, of course, the vitro fluids of your eyes can indeed absorb viruses and you can be infected through your eyes so doctors that treat covid patients wear very tight goggles and leave incidents on their cheeks at the end of a shift. this is tough. i personally would not at this time get on an airplane. >> let's do one more before we go to a break here. this is a question that says the social impact i find hard to grasp, will we ever be able to return to mass shared experiences like sporting events, movies, concerts, et cetera? is this going to be similar to a

post-9/11 where the world we knew was dramatically different? >> i really appreciate this question because i've put eight years of work into a book called "i heard the sirens scream" that documented how 9/11 changed the way we live in america, and not just 9/11, but also the anthrax malgs that came immediately on the heels of the 9/11 attacks. and i think we're going to go through a far more profound change that will affect much more of our lives than did 9/11. 9/11 let's remember really two places were hard hit and then fortunately, in pennsylvania a relatively unpopulated location. in this case, everywhere in the world is hit at the same time. every human being on the planet is facing some degree of risk and threat simultaneously. when 9/11 happened, yes, it

ushered a tremendous economic catastrophe, but nothing compared, nothing compared to what we're going through now and what we're going to face. and, of course, 9/11 and the anthrax attacks constituted basically three months of difficulty for direct threat for americans, particularly in new york and washington. this is only at its beginning and we will be experiencing rounds of infection and of threat and concern all over the world for at least another three years. so i think that the level of change that we're going to experience in everything, in how we view the arts, what is entertainment, what is going out for a meal, what constitutes necessary travel, essential travel? what constitutes, okay, i can do it at home or, okay, i can go to the office? all of this is going to get completely reconsidered,

rethought, and, frankly, whatever conclusions we reach by july will change by october and perhaps again by next april. and so we must all have somehow the ware >> the wearwithal. be resilient, to adapt to constant new information, new changes, whatever are the absolutes you hear about this virus today and about the risks for today, you must be prepared for new understanding, deeper innovation, deeper science that gives you yet another, you know, permutation of concern, another way of viewing the problem. and i would just add one other thing. i think that we all have to be careful not to be overly persuaded by what wall street wants. the virus is not wall street, and wall street is not the virus. >> all right. we're going to squeeze in a quick break here and laurie, when we come back, we'll have more viewer questions for you

but we'll begin with my first question when we come back, which is why do you put a three-year frame on the challenge we're currently facing and the way we're facing it. we'll start with that when we come back after this break. we'll be back with laurie garrett.

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and we're back with laurie garrett answering your questions about the coronavirus. laurie garrett is of course, a pulitzer prize-winning journalist who has dealt with a pandemic before. let me go back to something you said before the commercial break, which is you put a three-year time frame on what you described as this kind of challenging world we're living in now before we get to the post-coronavirus world, whatever that's going to be. what is your -- why do you have a three-year time frame on this? >> lawrence, three years is my best-case scenario, not my worst

case, by any means. three years is because it's going to take much longer than most people think to come up with a safe, proven, viable vaccine, have mass production, really get it out there, and deal with all the resistance against vaccination, deal with all of the questions associated with, you know, decisions about who should have access to it. where the priorities should be. and keep in mind, if we went on the hyperspeed timetable that the white house is now pushing, as one very dear friend of mine, who is one of the great vaccine experts on earth, put it, oh, rushing a vaccine to be distributed across america just before the election, what could go wrong? and, i mean, it really is amazing that we're going pell mill speed with the leading

candidates for a rapid vaccine use of a type never previously used, not only in human beings, but in animals. one is an m-rna based vaccine, the other is dna based. budget nucleic acids. has to be stored on dry ice, not just a refrigerator, dry ice, because it's so unstable. i mean, we could be rushing into a real mess. meanwhile, i think in reality if we want true safety profiles, if fda doesn't get pressured by the white house, to give the green light on something that is inadequately tested, both for its efficacy and its safety, then we could be out to this time next year before we're really even thinking about vaccinating people outside of test subjects. and we would only begin to be receiving long-term test results

on our initial volunteers who went through phase iii test trials. >> let's go to another viewer question. this is from sid. it says given the importance of accurate reporting, can a different reporting mechanism be established, more specifically, keeping it in scientific circles, bypassing political players, and use this data to help find answers and/or solutions to the fact that black people are impacted at three times the rate? >> this is such an important question, lawrence, because it goes to the heart of every single problem we have right now with this epidemic. it's about trust. it's about do we trust the data? do we trust the policy decisions? do we trust the advice handed down by the president, by the cdc, by our governor, by our mayor? who do we trust? and at the core of that is, do we trust the numbers? somebody giving us at least the

straight -- how many got hospitalized today. how many have died? how many have recovered? what's the rate of infection out there in my community? what percentage of my friends and neighbors might be carrying this virus? how dangerous is it to be around them if they are? we need a solid basis of trust in order for people to make the kinds of decisions that really matter, and in particular, when we see a racial divide, as we do quite acutely, quite acutely with covid-19 right now, it's latinos, native americans and african-americans that are all at higher risk of both infection, and more importantly, of death if infected. and a lot of different theories have been put out. a lot of different ideas about why this is so, but we don't have any real definitive, solid scientific answers about why it's so. there is just a lot of people

leaping to their, you know, boilerplate issues in national politics. i've consistently pointed out that one of the -- well, really, the only factor that coincides 100% with likelihood to succumb to coronavirus is a history of improperly treated or untreated hypertension, high blood pressure. and if you have high blood pressure, you're at great risk of a fatal outcome. well, high blood pressure runs in precisely those three groups. african-americans, native americans and latinos. >> laurie garrett, thank you very much for joining us tonight. we have a stack of questions we haven't gotten to. we will get to them in another hour on another night. thank you very much, laurie. really appreciate it. thank you. and when we come back, as we wonder when we will ever get to the other side of this coronavirus story.

historian jon meacham will join us to consider why history gives us hope. jon meacham is next. it's best we stay apart for a bit, but that doesn't mean you're in this alone. we're automatically refunding our customers a portion of their personal auto premiums. 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 ]

this virus is testing all of us. and it's testing the people on the front lines of this fight most of all. so abbott is getting new tests into their hands, delivering the critical results they need. and until this fight is over, we...will...never...quit. because they never quit.

the greatest depression, world war ii, the polio epidemic, the cuban missile crisis, the 1918 influenza pandemic, the american way of life was changed by each of those unprecedented events. pulitzer prize-winning author and presidential historian jon meacham is viewing the coronavirus pandemic through the lessons of these events and finding hope through examples of american political leadership, scientific ingenuity and resilience. in his new podcast "hope through history." joining us now is pulitzer prize-winning historian and msnbc contributor jon meacham. he is now the host of the

podcast "hope through history." and, jon, the title is so perfect, "hope through history". it's something i attempt to do occasionally on this program. i'm glad it is now finally a formal course that we can all take on our iphones. where do you begin in your lessons of hope through history on this memorial day weekend as we approach 100,000 deaths from coronavirus? >> as bleak and difficult as this moment is, a lot of us are still here. we still believe in the promise of america. which is that the sentence that thomas jefferson wrote in june of 1776 on a desk made by an enslaved person, so you don't have to look very far for irony in american history, do you, that all men are created equal, the country has always been strongest and we always come to the moments we celebrate and commemorate when we more broadly

apply the implications of that sentence. there is still an enormous legacy that is living and breathing that we have to defend and perpetuate. it is incredibly difficult. and my only argument is that it's always been incredibly difficult. and if we look banostalgically,e fall prey to the problems of the past, the problems of jamestown, the revolution, the 1790s, the first president threatened with impeachment was george washington in 1795. you know, we are the beneficiaries of generation upon generation of sacrifice and resilience. memorial day is obviously set aside for a particular kind of commemoration, people who gave the last full measure of

devotion, but let's not look back and think, you know what? they had it easier. our problems are uniquely oppressive. because it doesn't do justice to what they fought for and what they fought against, and it creates a sense of narcissism on our problem -- about our problems. and if we can't look back and learn, what is the data set in history? what's the -- what can the social sciences use except the past to figure out what we can do to move forward? >> there is so much just in the fdr years, which i know you've written a book about. the -- when you look at the great depression and franklin roosevelt comes into office as the president who has to try to deal with this. and people really did not know what tools to use. he and others in the administration went to work trying to figure out what those tools were and how to do it. they were confronted with

something that no other policy makers had been confronted with before. >> right. the banks -- all the banks were closed, right? there was a run on the banks. there was a bank holiday that fdr declared almost immediately. that was the first action of the first 100 days. and it was a sense that we had to have what fdr had called a spirit of bold, persistent experimentation. if we try a moethod, if it fail admit it frankly, try something else, but above all, try something. that was the roosevelt insight. but nobody knew if any of it was going to work. the line we all remember, right, is the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. nameless, unreasoning fear that paralyzing our best efforts and converts advance into retreat. fascinating, isn't it, that he used the word paralyze because he himself had overcome

paralysis. he thought he could help the country do it. that's the line that we remember. the line that got the biggest cheer on march 4th, 1933, is when he said i might require wartime-like executive powers as if we had been invaded by a foreign foe. and the crowd roared and mrs. roosevelt wrote in her diary that night that it child her to the bone because it felt as though the people might be ready for a dictator. the beginning of the 1930s, democracy, democratic capitalism was very much in the dock. there was no guarantee that it was going to survive the decade. and roosevelt basically by insisting that the american experiment was not going to end on his watch, very much the same way winston churchill nine years later would say british freedom is not going to end on my watch. he called on what lincoln called our better angels. our spirit joh generosity and

enabled us to stagger through that decade. let's not be sentimental. we can't bes in ta nostalgic, id until the beginning of the second world war. but he put the public sector, he put the government at the center of the fight and redefined the relationships between the individual and the state in a way that has shaped our politics ever since. you can argue with the specifics of what he did. but fundamentally nobody really doubted that franklin roosevelt had the american experiment in mind and the endurance of that as his main goal. >> jon meacham, thank you very much for joining us tonight. the podcast is "hope through history." it's on my phone. you should get it on yours. jon, join us whenever you can to give us some hope through history. we really appreciate if. >> thanks, lawrence.

>> thank you. and when we come back, a very special last word in song. to commemorate this memorial day. can my side be firm?

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on this memorial day, the last word goes to bob kerry, who was awarded the highest military decoration that exists, the medal of honor in 1970. bob kerry was a navy s.e.a.l. who lost a leg in vietnam. he was elected governor of nebraska before he ran for the united states senate and won in 1988. on that election night, with five of his navy s.e.a.l. teammates on the stage with him, bob kerry ended his victory speech with a song that was written during the vietnam war looking back at the devastation of world war i through the eyes of an australian soldier with a message for all of us about all

wars. >> it does go like this -- ♪ when i was a young man i carried me pack and lived the free life of the rover ♪ ♪ from the murray's green basin to the dusty outbreak, i lost my matilda all over ♪ ♪ then in 1915 my country said, son, it's time to stop rambling, there's work to be done ♪ ♪ and they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun and they sent me away to the war ♪ ♪ and the band played waltzing matilda as our ship pulled away from the key ♪ ♪ amid all the cheers, flag-waving and tears, we sailed off to galloply ♪ ♪ how will i remember that terrible day, the blood stains, the sand and the water ♪ and how in that hell they called

we were butchered like lambs to the slaughter ♪ ♪ johnny turkey was ready, he'd primed himself well ♪ ♪ he rained us with bullets, he chased us with shells ♪ ♪ is in five minutes blood he kicked us all to hell, nearly chased us all back to australia ♪ ♪ and the band played waltzing matilda ♪ ♪ and we stopped to bury our slain ♪ ♪ the turks buried theirs and we buried ours and we started all over again ♪ ♪ we kept ourselves alive ♪ in a mad world of blood, death and fire ♪ ♪ for ten weary weeks i kept myself alive while around me the corpses piled higher ♪ ♪ then a big turkey shell knocked me ass over head and when i awoke in my hospital bed, i saw what it had done and i wished i were dead snot

♪ never knew there were worse things than dying ♪ ♪ and the band played waltzing matilda around the green bush far and near ♪ ♪ a man needs both legs ♪ no more waltzing matilda for me ♪ ♪ they collected the wounded, the legless, the maimed ♪ the poor wounded heros of soula ♪ the legless, the armless, the blind, the insane and shipped us all back to australia ♪ ♪ and as our ship pulled into the key looked down at where my legs used to be ♪ and thanked christ there was nobody waiting for me to mourn and to grieve and to pity ♪ ♪ and the band played waltzing matilda as it carried us down the gangway ♪ ♪ and nobody cheered, they just stood and jeered and turned all their faces away

♪ and now every april i sit on my porch and watch the parade pass before me ♪ ♪ i watch my old comrades, how proudly they march, renewing old dreams and lost glory ♪ the old men march proudly all bent stiff and sore ♪ the tired old men from a forgotten war ♪ ♪ and the young people ask, what are they marching for ♪ ♪ and i ask myself the same question ♪ ♪ and the band played waltzing matilda and the old men answer the call ♪ ♪ year by year their numbers get fewer ♪ ♪ some day no one will march here at all ♪ ♪ waltzing matilda, waltzing matilda, who go waltzing matilda with me and their ghosts can be heard as they pass by the billybong ♪ ♪ who will go a-waltzing matilda

with me ♪ >> we'll waltz tonight and work tomorrow. thank you very much. >> bob kerry, who i'm very proud to call a friend, gets tonights last word. ari melber is up next. tonight's last word. ari melber is up next. we have several special things planned of the next two hours with you. we have the latest news on what's happening on what you need to know to stay healthy and safe during the pandemic. we have news about who donald trump is eyeing to replace the watch dog that he ousted. one report suggests the details may be troubling. later in the second hour that i'm going to be with you tonight if you stay with me, we have a special warning about bill gates issued about this pandemic. and also, of course, may is graduation season, but this is a very different graduation year,

with virtual addresses from president obama and other artists and celebrities trying to cheer on this class of 2020. later in the next hour, singer tiana taylor joins us live. but we begin with yes, a memorial day unlike any this country has problem ever seen, a nation honoring many fallen soldiers throughout history with heavy hearts. as well for all the people around us who have been dying right now. s we have approaching 100,000 american lives lost, people who were living what was so recently something we took maybe for granted, just normal life going outside and interacting people. today, president trump laying a wreath at the tomb of the unknown. and joe biden appeared in public for the first time in two months. you can see him also laying a wreath and wearing a mask along with dr. jill biden in delaware.

president trump traveled to baltimore. the mayor there urged him not to come. and he delivered some scripted remarks at ft. mchenry. >> together, we will vanquish this foe and america will rise to new and greater heights. as our brave warriors have shown us from the nation's earliest days, in america, we are the captains of our own fate. no on tackle is a match for the sheer determination of the american people. >> so that's the president's address. and this is a day, of course, that the u.s. government, the federal government that he leads, explicitly devotes this day to fallen soldiers. but president trump picked a fight with the governor of north carolina.

attacking a range of other foes, including the "new york times." but he did not remark on a "new york times" front page. this is an image that even if its overwhelming detail, reflects 1% of the person lives lost thus far to this often deadly virus. joining us now on our memorial day special is britney cooper, the author of "eloquent rage" and professor at rutgers university. john stanton, and dr. ann ramoin, from the school of public health at ucla. when you look at the very rare contrast, at least since joe biden has become the presumptive nominee of what it looks like to have a leader come out and

wearing a facemask while doing his ceremonial duties, what did that contrast look like to you? >> it showed that joe biden is taking this very seriously in trying to have it to create an example for the world. i think that there's been so much mixed messaging on masks. when we in the united states don't see our president wearing a mask, it creates confusion. and what fills the void of confusion is politics. so i'm really glad to see joe biden wearing a mask, taking this so seriously and showing an example not only to the u.s. but to the world. >> john, let me play for your analysis, any addition to response you have to the bidens, here's some republican governors discussing this. take a look. >> if someone is wearing a mask, they're not doing it to represent what political party or candidates they support. they might be doing it because they have a 5-year-old child who

has been going through cancer treatments. they might have -- vulnerable adults in their life who are currently fighting covid. >> this is not about politics or what you're liberal or conservative, left or right, republican, democrat. we wear the mask and it's been very clear what the studies have shown. you wear the mask not to protect yourself as to protect others. >> john? >> yeah, i think it's interesting to see them to come out and say this, because i think there are a lot of republicans that are very much sort of like normal, rational human beings, and see what's going on right now and realize that this is a very dangerous situation that's become politicized by people within their party, particularly the president. unfortunately, they are the minority in their parties. both those governors have been

outspoken in trying to make the case this is a serious issue that needs to be dealt with. but too many people in the party over the last especially month or so, have really made the calculation that because their voters aren't the primary demographic, so to speak, that's been affected by this, that they're willing to basically sacrifice everybody else, as the president -- because that's what the president wants. we've seen that in other instances politically within the country and republican party. when you have 100,000 people dead and maybe 500,000 people that are mourning those dead people, it's kind of a stark and remarkable moment to decide to go along with some crass political maneuvering. >> britney, the vice president has to continue to wage a campaign during a national crisis, during a pandemic. and part of that is showing

implicitly or explicitly about how we do it differently. there's a new biden ad, we'll just show you some of the visuals it from it to give you a flavor, but it's the idea that while all this goes on, the mounting death toll you see here, that's reality on one side, and the president golfing, an image of him out to lunch. in fairness, i can note that many presidents take some leisure time, but this seems to key in on something that is the biden folks feel is a larger contrast with president trump and sort of being allegedly not up for the job. >> president trump is not up for the job, and we should say that as many times as we can. we've got 100,000 folks nearly 100,000 folks dead in less than three months. we haven't even reached the three-month mark in terms of the quarantine we've been experiencing as a nation, and nearly 100,000 people have died. and this is shocking.

i think it's smart on the part of the biden campaign to point out president trump's inadequacy and ineptness for managing this moment. i still have deep reservations about running as the anti-trump is going to work for biden, because in many ways trump continues to win the information war here. mostly because the thing he's shown us is there is no level of carnage that actually shifts his focus on the optics of things. so 100,000 americans have passed away in less than three months' time, and he's still doing public memorials on memorial day not wearing a mask. and when you have that brazen kind of show of ego, the democratic party is still hard pressed to figure out how you beat that when the facts cease to matter, when we only have 1% of the lives on the front of "the new york times" and still folks can't grasp the magnitude of it. we're seeing the stories of people being on beaches

celebrating memorial day. that's because the president hasn't shown leadership. so we can continue to talk about how he'sinept, but people, even folks on the left side of the line, are following conservative talking points in terms of their behavior in parts of the country that have not been hit so hard. so we have a real uphill battle here, but i'm glad joe biden is doing his part in this moment. >> john? >> yeah, you know, i think i agree. i look at what's going on here in new orleans. we've been hit very, very hard by the coronavirus. thankfully our mayor and governor showed a lot of leadership and community leaders here early on, because the numbers here would have been way worse than they are. it's horrendous what's happen md the city already. but the idea that this -- we didn't need to do what we have done already is terrifying to me, because i think as we see these spikes, we have governors

in arkansas and other places saying yeah, we're going to have spikes. i think that is born out of this sort of like dumbing down of the threat, and that comes directly from the president. i think that we have to be very careful as people in the media, to make sure people understand that this is a very real ongoing crisis, that it hasn't gone away, and it's going to maintain itself and come back even harder than it is. >> on that point, doctor, we also wanted to get your view here on this -- we covered some aspects of the holiday, but in the latest reporting on the national testing that is a part of a phased reopening, we have this from "the new york times." experts took issue with this assertion that they're only testing about 300,000 people a day, targeting only those likely to be positive would be enough to contain outbreak.

on the face of it, the idea that 300,000 tests a day is absurd, says the director of the global harvard health institute. doctor, are we at a place three months in, give or take for america, where the federal government is giving up on comprehensive testing and just saying, here we go? >> this is really a big problem here. you know, we need good testing. we talked about the need for testing. it needs to be widespread, available to everyone. accessible. and testing not just people who are likely to be positive, but looking at asymptomatic infections, as well. we do not know where we are. ari, we've been talking about this for months now. i'm saying the same thing today that i said two weeks ago, three weeks ago, four weeks ago. you know, it's the same song i'm singing here, which is -- >> right. although doctor -- hold up.

you could hold up a newspaper that would say memorial day to prove you're on live television saying what you said months ago. >> right. so the national strategy, your point is important, we still need a national strategy. as we are opening up, it is more important than ever that we double down on testing, national strategy, more testing available to everybody. as this country opens up, we are going to be seeing more cases, and we need to have all of these things in place, all of this time, testing, contact tracing, goody cease surveillance. numbers that we can trust. we are not there, so we are at great risk as the country opens up. >> all important context, doctor. thank you. britney comes back for another segment. john, we need to deal briefly with your decor. can you tell us anything about what's mounted there in the background? >> umm, there's so much.

chuck brown on the one side. there's a poster or painting of little freddie king, one of our local legends, who is thankfully still with us. it's chaotic as my brain, pretty much. >> and why the mouse ears on the apparent bull or whatever it is? >> i thought why not, right? i got those last year when i went to disneyland for the first time. >> you know, i love it, because i love learning from everybody. i think you're doing you. and now we know a little bit more. we love learning about people through their backgrounds, sir. >> yeah. >> thanks to john and the doctor. and britney comes back for another discussion. let me fit in a break. secretary of state mike pompeo now dismissing these questions about these watch dog firings, shedding new light on the people

president trump is trying to get in to replace the people supposed to oversee the -- him. so the federal judge in the michael flynn case hiring his own lawyer. new developments with an unprecedented series of actions involving the barr justice department. we have a special coming up on that. and coronavirus, new insight into how communities of color are at risk in this pandemic. that's an important discussion we'll bring you tonight. stay with us.

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we have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption by imposing a five-year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials. >> you could hear right there members of congress laughing in the president's face at his claim this he was still trying to drain the swampl. now the nation is grappling with 100,000 deaths from the

coronavirus, which is a big story. there are other stories that we want to bring you, including new twists in trump administration. controversies over bias at bill barr's justice department. this is a case we've been tracking. you've certain lly heard about . it began in the mueller era. but now the judge overseeing the flynn case, facing an appeal to drop the case at the request of the trump administration, especially bill barr's doj. "the washington post" reporting that this federal judge has hired his own lawyer to handle this appeal. this is very unusual. but let me be clear, so is this whole legal situation, because the attorney general tried to reverse a legal victory his own justice department had won because michael flynn had already pled guilty. and that's not all. president trump's hand picked fbi director, christopher wray who replaced comey, is asking for an internal review of the fbi's handling of the same case.

then you can widen out the trump administration may not want you to know what's going on. beyond these developments, which stem from the initial mueller probe, new questions face secretary of state pompeo over ousting the watch dog investigating matters that involved him. including arms sales to saudi arabia that congress opposed. pompeo has not fully explained the controversial dismissal. >> let's be clear, there are claims that this is for retaliation for some investigation that they were engaged in. patently false. i have no sense of what investigations were taking place inside the inspector general's office. couldn't possibly have retaliated. i've seen the stories that someone was walking my dog to sell arms to my drycleaner. it's all just crazy stuff. >> and that's not the only

government watch dog to be suddenly fired by the trump administration during a pandemic, when people are focused on other things. four are now gone. and a new appointee that is supposed to combat fraud has a dual role running another part of a trump agency. "the washington post" report thing candidate's appointment was the fifth where president trump replaced a career investigator, writing trump has install new leadership. drawn from the senior ranks of the agencies that the inspector generals oversee. in other words, a deliberate conflict of interest. we have two special guests that i rely on for these exact kind of stories. david corn and joyce vance right after this break. vid corn and jt after this break

we are back with joyce vance, professor at the university of alabama law school. and david corn, washington bureau chief of mother jones. both msnbc analysts. david going with the pandemic beard. >> i like to call it my tom hanks' beard. >> i will say, full disclosure, i've become friendly enough with you that i can say, dream on. [ laughter ] >> well, that's what we're doing during this shut-in period, dreaming along. >> we're both a long ways from

tom hanks. having chided david, i will return to him for his reporting. he's reported on these cases in detail from the inception of the mueller probe. but on the law, joyce, walk us through what we were just speaking about before this short break how unusual these twists are, what does it mean? >> i think we have used the word "unusual" so many times during this administration, ari, that it's run out of steam. so i'll say irregular, highly unusual. and something that would have been unacceptable in any other administration. senator grassley, the republican champion of the inspector generals. one would expect to really be beating a drum at this point. it's critical to have independent inspector generals who don't work for the secretary or the head of their office so they can fully investigate any allegations of fraud, waste, or abuse. that's what this is all about. president trump didn't like it when the inspector general for the intelligence community

forwarded the whistle blower complaint about ukraine that ultimately led to impeachment. now he seems to be retaliating against the entire ig community, making sure they can't bring forward misconduct by anyone in his administration. >> can you say under the law, joyce, whether that looks like an effort to all of this to undercut the way these watch dogs are supposed to work? which by fighting fraud and abuse and other issues from the president or anyone the agency, that's supposed to protect the american taxpayer, our civil liberties, et cetera. >> it absolutely looks that way. there's this technical, legal violation with the state department inspector general where president trump is required to give congress 30 days notice before he removes him. trump immediately locks him out of his office, so he can't continue his work, which

reportedly includes investigations, including the fact that secretary pompeo was throwing dinners at taxpayer expense, lavish dinners, that looked a lot like early politicking for a future political run by the secretary. so that sort of thing violates the law. president trump also sends a message to all 74 inspector generals in the ig community, telling them don't investigate. don't get too close, or you'll find your self-removed. that's what happened to glenn fine, the acting inspector general at the department of defense that was removed so he couldn't take over oversight of $500 billion in small business grants and other loans going out as part of the covid enterprise. and other inspector generals also have to be questioning whether they risk their job by continuing to act with independence. >> and david, on the mike flynn side of this, he pled guilty. let's recall how he was campaigning for trump and

against hillary clinton in 2016. >> lock her up! lock her up! lock her up! >> lock her up. that's right. yes, that's right. lock her up! if i, a guy who knows this business, if i did a tenth of what she did, i would be locked up and in jail today. >> david? >> well, i think he did more than a tenth, and he might have been heading toward some jail time. but president trump and bill barr are trying to prevent that from happening. you have to remember what this is all about. the fbi was investigating contacts between the trump campaign and the trump transition team after the election and russia while investigating the russian attack on the 2016 election. to see if there was any cross pollination between those two

acts, right? and flynn lied to the fbi about his contacts with the russian ambassador, serge kisliak. that made him vulnerable to compromise by the russians. he ended up lying, at least to the vice president. so put him in a difficult situation and president trump fired him and said i don't like liars. so it's clear what he did here. what's not covered by this case, which gets to the ig issue as well, is that while he was working with president trump on the campaign during the transition, he was a secret lobbyist for turkey. he made over $500,000 lobbying for turkey without doing what he's supposed to be doing, that is registering with the justice department as a foreign agent. so he was the swamp. he epitomizes the swamp. and he was able to get rid of that charge, that accusation,

which he admitted to actually, by pleading guilty to the lying to the fbi charge. so it's all about corruption. it's all about the russia investigation. and that's why president trump wants to get rid of the investigation and rid of michael flynn and the prosecution of michael flynn. because at the end of the day, this gets to joyce's point. president trump doesn't believe in the public interest. he really doesn't believe in the public interest. that's why igs are there. that's why you prosecute cases like michael flynn. he believes only in the trump interest. >> mm. joyce, we have 30 seconds. but what does it tell you that the appeals court is even getting involved before judge sullivan rules? >> usually, judges on appeals courts wait until a trial judge has made a decision and created a record before they consider whether or not that judge got it right. so this is very unusual.

worth paying attention to. this is a petition where this circuit court could perhaps order district court judge sullivan to dismiss the prosecution about mike flynn, removing his discretion to hear the case. >> it's really striking, and one of the several stories we're going to stay on for the reasons stated. thank you to both of us for joining us on this memorial day. appreciate it. when we come back, the coronavirus does have issues with discrimination. reporting on how communities of color are hard hit and what can be done about it. and later tonight, a courtesy you extend to your successor. but apparently not with the trump-obama relationship. we'll get into all that with a very special guest. you're watching msnbc.

audible is my road-trip companion. audible is a routine for me. it's like a fun night school for adults. i could easily be seduced into locking myself into a place where i do nothing but listen to books.