on behalf of all of my colleagues at the networks of nbc news, good night from our temporary field headquarters. our live msnbc coverage continues next hour. we have breaking news from buffalo, new york, at this hour. in a moment, we will be showing you some very disturbing video of a 75-year-old man in buffalo being knocked to the ground by two buffalo police officers, and you can clearly see that his head starts bleeding immediately. governor andrew cuomo has seen the video. he tweeted, this incident is wholly unjustified and utterly disgraceful. i've spoken with buffalo mayor byron brown, and we agree that the officers involved should be immediately suspended pending a formal investigation. police officers must enforce not

abuse the law. those police officers have been suspended. a local official in buffalo will join us in a moment with more details on that story. we're watching live coverage tonight on the tenth straight day and night of protests around the country. our coverage covers the country. today, 10,000 people gathered in brooklyn for a memorial for george floyd led by his brother terrence, before then marching across the brooklyn bridge into manhattan. in washington, d.c., protesters kneeled at the martin luther king jr. memorial while a loudspeaker called the names of those who have died in police custody. massive crowds marched through the streets of houston, texas, today, george floyd's, hometown. protesters in pittsburgh gathered outside of the county jail there. and in los angeles, thousands of

protesters were in the streets as the curfew was finally lifted today. today in minneapolis, during the family memorial service for george floyd, people outside of that service out in the streets joined george floyd's family and friends inside when reverend al sharpton asked them to stand in silence for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time george floyd was trying and failing to breathe with a police knee on his neck. starting off our coverage tonight in los angeles is gadi schwartz. we're going to gadi right now. gadi, where are you, and what's the situation? >> reporter: lawrence, take a look behind me. this is a pretty large crowd here. this is in front of the iconic lapd -- or the los angeles city hall. you can see lapd is down there below. they are guarding city hall, but they are much more at ease than they were yesterday. they don't have their riot helmets on as we saw yesterday.

they do have officers posted up on basically every street corner around here. there are probably more officers in this vicinity than there are protesters even though this crowd is extremely large. it's still not as big as it was yesterday. and as you said, the curfew here in los angeles has been lifted. but the protesters here are demanding more and more reform from lapd even though what happened happened in minneapolis. they say they need localized reform here. in fact you were just talking about what happened in buffalo. the protesters here have been speaking for quite some time. many of them sharing their stories of police brutality. locally, they say they have experienced overaggressiveness from police. in fact, many of them are starting to share videos. we've started to see a lot of those videos on social media. the mayor here in los angeles promising oversight. they are saying that they're looking into appointing a special prosecutor. they're also looking at defunding or slashing the budget

for lapd by about $150 million to $200 million. but the protesters here say there is a lot of work to be done. this is a pandemic. they say that there were going to be cuts anyway. they want to see that money invested back into communities of color, which the city says they are planning to do. they also say that they want accountability at the lapd headquarters, the same type of accountability that we're now seeing possibly out of minnesota. so still a lot of work to be done in terms of trying to repair some of the community relations between protesters, between communities of color and between police. lawrence. >> gadi schwartz reporting from los angeles. thank you, gadi, for that report. really appreciate it. we're now going across the country to new york city, to nbc's chris jansing. chris, where are you, and what is the situation in new york city tonight? >> reporter: yeah, in new york city, widespread arrests across at least three boroughs,

including here in manhattan. let me show you exactly where i am, lawrence. this is the iconic plaza hotel. across the street from it is central park. and maybe about 90 minutes ago it was chaotic here. there were hundreds of protesters who had still been marching. we saw in at least two minutes, in just two minutes, 60 police cars flying across park avenue, sigh le sirens blaring, and coming here, essentially encircling those protesters. many of them were able to scatter, some of them it looked like into central park. but there were also a number of arrests here, something we saw over and over and over again, making good on a promise by the mayor, who said enough is enough. police were going to enforce the 8:00 curfew. it was such a dramatic contrast to what we had seen all during the day with protests that were very quiet, very somber.

we were at one at gracie mansion, where there was a half an hour of silence honoring george floyd. before they took to the streets, about a third of the people who had gathered for that, i talked to one person, skyler foster, to ask her was she willing to be arrested, and she said yes. here's what else she told me. >> will you march past curfew? >> absolutely. >> tell me about that decision because obviously there's a lot of anger toward de blasio, toward cuomo. tell me what's behind that. >> i think that there are certain rules that have been bent and broken on the law side to keep people of color oppressed, and i think that staying out past a curfew to participate in a peaceful protest is a risk i'm willing to take. >> reporter: there has been widespread criticism of mayor de blasio for what they say are

two intention actise actions by. he says it has to be done to keep the streets safe. one good piece of news here is the looting that we saw earlier in the week that was so widespread, that has virtually gone away. that doesn't mean it hasn't been expensive, not just for the stores that have been broken into, but so many that have built protective barriers around them. look at the apple store, one of the places a lot of people come to. it's not just a place to buy phones. it's become a tourist attraction for its design. but that big, well-known glass cube has now been surrounded by a huge wooden wall that has been painted white. so that's the story on the streets of manhattan, lawrence. very quiet but across the bronx, brooklyn, and here in manhattan, tremendous police activity tonight. >> chris jansing in new york city, thank you for that report, chris. we appreciate it. we're now going to that breaking news story in buffalo, new york, tonight.

we're going to show you some very disturbing video from buffalo that has gone viral tonight. this video is from public radio in buffalo, and you will see buffalo police, two police officers, knock a 75-year-old man to the ground, and the back of his head immediately begins to bleed. we have confirmed the man is now in stable condition, but i must warn you before you watch this video, that it is very disturbing. we're going to show you about 18 seconds of that video. and here is that video. >> [ bleep ]. >> he's bleeding! >> he's bleeding out of his ear! >> get a medic. >> what the [ bleep ] -- >> the mayor of buffalo tweeted tonight two buffalo police

officers knocked down a 75 -- this is not a tweet. it's an official statement by the mayor -- a 75-year-old man. the victim is in stable but serious condition at emc. i was deeply disturbed by the video as was buffalo police commissioner brian lockward. he directed an immediate investigation into the matter, and the two officers have been suspended without pay. after days of peaceful protests and several meetings twenz myself, police leadership and members of the community, tonight's event is disheartening. i hope to continue to build on the progress we have achieved as we work together to address racial injustice and inequity in the city of buffalo. my thoughts are with the victim tonight. joining us now by phone is erie county executive mark pullen cars, who has seen this video and tweeted his objections to it immediately, tonight. what can you tell us about the

situation? you've confirmed that the officers have been suspended and that the victim is in stable condition, is that correct? >> lawrence, good evening, and i wish it was a good evening. we've all seen the videos, and there's a second video in which you can actually see the gentleman's head snap back and hit the concrete. he is in serious but stable condition at the erie county medical center. it is our level one trauma center. he's receiving the best care possible, and while it's early, i've been advised by the representatives from erie county medical center corporation that he is expected to recover. the videos are disturbing. this is a 75-year-old gentleman. he is not a risk to the police. while this occurred after the curfew had been implemented in the city of buffalo, which started at 8:00 and this was approximately 8:30 when it occurred, this is not appropriate. i think we all agree that the actions that need to be taken are those officers need to be held responsible. and as was also seen in the video, one officer tried to come

back and actually provide assistance and he was -- eventual live a medic from the new york police came and offered assistance. we're all disgusted. we're disappointed. i was in that square earlier today talking about how we need to allow peaceful protest. it's guaranteed by the first amendment. but this is not anything that any of us wanted to see, and those officers need to be held responsible. >> clearly the man did not feel fear in approaching buffalo police. he certainly had no expectation of something like that happening to him. >> it definitely appears like that from the video. most of the protests we've had in the last few days have been peaceful. there were two protests primarily in the city of buffalo tonight. the vast majority of protesters left before 8:00, and while there have been some arrests in the last few days, they generally have been in situations where it has been much more aggressive between a protester and a police officer. there's no question from

watching the video that this gentleman was not posing a risk to the police officers and just a perfect example of how we have to -- no matter who we are, we have to be careful of the actions that we take. and these police officers truthfully are not following what appears to be standard police protocol. as a result, there's a 75-year-old gentleman who's in our hospital tonight in serious but stable condition. but as i noted, he is expected to recover, and that is good news. >> we have been seeing videos like this from all over the country, different police departments, new york city and others, and some of these departments have thousands of officers in the streets. some of them have several hundred in the street. and then we find one, two, or who knows how many who engage in this. do you know of any specific instructions that might have been given to the buffalo police to be aware of this problem, that any kind of move like this this week is especially

sensitive? were they given any instruction about that? >> my understanding is yes because there have been numerous events since, of course the murder of george floyd in minneapolis, the protests that have occurred in our community, an incident which happened two nights ago in which an individual appears to have deliberately driven into a police line and seriously injured three officers, one of which was run over by a vehicle and has a shattered pelvis. so the officers have truthfully been on guard. they're aware that the protests were going to continue, and the message that was being sent out is we want everyone to peacefully protest. a curfew was in place effective as of 8:00 p.m. as instituted by the city of buffalo. we previously had a county wide curfew. i lifted that a couple days ago because we did not fear or have any reason to believe that there would be violent incidences, so i lifted the county wide curfew, but there still is one in the city of buffalo.

but even though it was post-curfew, police still have to act appropriately to ensure that an incident like this doesn't occur. i mean i'm offering my best wishes and hopes for the full recovery of this gentleman. i think everyone in western new york is. we're all disgusted by what we saw, and those officers need to be held responsible regardless of the commands that were given to them, which to my understanding was to clear the square but to do it in a manner where it's peaceful and no one's injured. >> erie county executive mark poloncarz, thank you very much for joining us by phone on this important story tonight. we really appreciate it. >> you're welcome. and now to our discussion. paul butler is joining us, a law professor at georgetown university. marq claxton is with us, retired nypd police detective and the director of the black law enforcement alliance. and, marq, because we're coming off of a video of police tactic there that we just saw, where these two officers knock a man

to the ground, his head immediately begins to bleed, i want to get your reaction as someone who's been there, someone who's been on the street in situations like this. someone approaches you, starts to talk. how does it become this? how does it turn into we're knocking him to the ground? >> lawrence, what we just witnessed, what the video shows is what many people refer to as a toxic police culture. and really it gives a clear example. we start with the unified police presence marching in unison. that's the us marching towards some protesters, obviously peaceful protesters. that's the them. an interaction occurs where a police officer uses an excessive amount of force, violating the use of force continuum, which basically says, you know, you want to meet force with equal force. shoving an individual down and

then a sense of humanity kicked in automatically from that police officer. he begins to reach down and offer assistance consistent with the public doctrine, obligation to provide support, and who stops him? a supervisor. that gold shield from the individual who pulled that police officer away indicates that that's a supervisor. that's the toxic police culture that has been demonstrated here, and the same type of toxic police culture that creates and establishes all sorts of problems for us across the nation, whether it be from simple assaults and abuses of authority to killings on the street. and it's something that needs to be addressed. >> paul butler, governor cuomo saw that video. he's a former state attorney general in new york state. he immediately calls the mayor of buffalo to say these guys

should be suspended immediately. when you look at that video as a former prosecutor, what do you see? >> suspension is the first step. the next step is criminal prosecution. lawrence, this week we've seen some incredible acts of grace and patience and forbearance from police officers, and we've also seen acts like this. it's like the police sometimes just can't help themselves even when they're policing protests about police brutality, they go all brutal. it's that warrior mentality that marq was talking about with cops on one side and citizens on the other side. what i can say is thank god for the video because the police report was a lie. the police report said that this man tripped and fell just like the police report in the george floyd case said initially that he resisted arrest. so thank god for the video. you just have to wonder how

often things like this happen that aren't recorded. >> marq claxton, in the age of video, no one proves the case against police better than police. we have been harvesting videos like this from all over the country. sometimes they come in during our programs, and because we can't verify everything about them, we can't put them right on the air, so it takes a while before we see them. but people are seeing them on the internet. they're seeing them on twitter immediately. they saw someone being beaten last night in new york city, and this is the police on video convicting the police of police brutality in the moment when the country is wondering how much of this is going on. >> and that's why it's important for those people who oppose any type of reform or modification of the current police climate,

the enforcement models that are out there, et cetera -- how could they remain in denial? the reason they remain in denial, it's not a matter of them not being aware of the dangers that are clear and present and that are impacting in large part black and brown communities. it's because they refuse to address the inequities. they refuse to address toxic police culture. they act as if, you know, it's necessary for this type of behavior to occur for us to have, quote, unquote, civilized society, and it's abhorrent, and we should never accept it. these are the type of incidents that move us closer and closer to a comprehensive reform act. >> marq claxton and paul butler, thank you for joining us tonight. we really appreciate it. and when we come back, the military is coming for donald trump. yamiche alcindor and malcolm nance will join us next. effortless is the lincoln way.

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the military is coming. the military is coming not for the protesters. the military is coming at donald trump. marine corps general john allen, former commander of american forces in afghanistan, joined in the chorus now of military condemnation of donald trump after donald trump used tear gas on peaceful protesters so that he could stage a photo op in front of st. john's e piece co-cal church. john al enwrote, donald trump isn't religious, has no need of religion, and doesn't care about the devout except insofar as they serve his political needs. yesterday donald trump's first secretary of defense, former

marine corps general james mattis condemned donald trump's, kwoes, abuse of executive authority and his mockery of our constitution. mitt romney is the only republican senator who voted guilty in the senate impeachment trial of donald trump and voted to remove donald trump from office. today when asked, mitt romney could not bring himself to say whether he agrees with general mattis' description of donald trump being a threat to the constitution, but mitt romney did praise general mattis' judgment and character. republican senator lisa murkowski was so stunned by james mattis' attack on donald trump that she is now actually considering being honest, not promising it, just considering it. in an exchange with reporters, senator murkowski said, i was really thankful. i thought general mattis' words were true and honest and necessary and overdue, and i have been struggling for the right words. and i was encouraged a couple of nights ago when i was able to read what president bush had

written, and i found that to be empowering for me as one leader. but then when i saw general mattis' comments yesterday, i felt like perhaps we are getting to a point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up. and so i'm working as one individual to form the right words, knowing that these words really matter, so i appreciate jan mattis' comments. joining our discussion, yamiche alcindor, white house koern correspondent for the pbs news order, and malcolm nance. yamiche, donald trump has struck back at his former defense secretary james mattis, claiming that he fired him when the record seems to show that james mattis resigned in principle over a difference in policy and that donald trump did not fire

the general. how is the exchange going at this point, donald trump having to fight back against so many generals this week? >> well, i think the president is always looking for a foil, so in this case in his mind, i think -- i should say in the people around him, they would probably venture to think that the president feels like he's in a good place when he's arguing back, when he's defending himself, when he's on the defensive. but i should also note that of course what he said was wrong. we all know that general mattis resigned. we all know that the president in this case is again not telling the truth. i think the other thing to note is that when we see a number of generals speaking out, we see people that are speaking out because the part of america that they seem to value the most, in this case them being generals, the military, they're saying, we don't want to be used as political pawns. we also don't want to be used against the american citizenry. but i think there are critics of these same generals who say, where were you when president trump was separating immigrant

children? why didn't you speak out then as americans? where were you when the president was saying there was very fine people at a nazi rally? these same generals weren't speaking out then, and i think critics of the president and critics of them say, yes, it's good they're speaking out now. but there's also this idea that they're speaking out at a moment that is convenient for them when americans around this country have been waiting for republicans to speak out for a long time. >> malcolm nance, james mattis had all been taken a public vow never to speak out against donald trump. he said when he published his book after serving as defense secretary that he very specifically did not want to be in a position of criticizing the president in whose cabinet he served. but he just reached a point apparently where as admiral mullen put it in the piece that he wrote, i cannot remain silent. that was the headline in admiral mullen's piece. he was of course the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. it seems as though they've

reached the "i cannot remain silent" point. >> yes, and what we have here is technically a revolution of the generals. and now we're at the point where we have the retired generals, but we also saw secretary esper do multiple somersaults this week about the deployment of active-duty troops to washington, d.c. he brought them in, sent them back, brought them back in, and now i understand he's sending them back. but also reiterated along with the chief of staff -- the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff that the constitution is the supreme authority that the armed forces of the united states responds to. that must burn donald trump up immensely because donald trump thinks these are toy soldiers that he can use and position around the table and that they are a pre-taurean guard who will protect him and only him at his whim, which is why very early on

i recall he said general milley is in charge here. he's taking command here. well, that's not what the chairman of the joint chief of staff and the joint staff itself does. they command the forces of the armed forces and the force commanders. so he put now we understand attorney general barr in charge of what can only be described as a conglomerate of federal forces and prison officers to be a secret police force to do the dirty work that the armed forces of the united states won't do. >> yamiche, former marine general john kelly, who of course served as the white house chief of staff, stepped into this to kind of back up general mattis, saying of course he was not fired. he resigned. that seems to be an indication that john kelly from inside the white house is one of those people who is on his way, as i expected most of them to be, to getting into that space where

they will be publicly turning against donald trump and saying, you know, every day i was in there, i was trying to save the country from him doing something horrible. but john kelly has an awful lot of time where he spent trying to enable donald trump. >> that is the critique of general kelly, that he didn't speak up when there were things that people, especially critics of the president, found to be appalling and to be not constitutional and against international law. that being said, i think the idea that this is at least beginning to be a revolution of the generals is really key and really remarkable because president trump is someone who likes to talk about "my generals." he likes to talk about the fact he has these kind of people around him who have gravitas and who are steeped in its military armor and this military background to in some ways beef himself up, people would say. that being said, what you have now is also a president who's facing the reality that his own

party is turning against him. there's reporting and some of the sources have told me that the president is increasingly worried about being re-elected and that if you have republicans now openly saying that, saying that they really don't -- they're questioning whether or not he is going to treat america like america or is he going to use the military against people like in other countries like venezuela or in haiti. so i think there's a lot of issue there when it comes to the president getting more and more scared. usually when the president feels backed up against the wall, what you see is someone like maybe secretary esper being the target of his anger. so i think secretary esper understands what he was doing when he spoke out, and i think that we should just be watching that position now. >> yamiche alcindor, and malcolm nance, thank you both for joining our discussion tonight. really appreciate it. and when we come back, we're going to have more breaking news from buffalo where police are caught on video knocking a man down who is now hospitalized. that man is 75 years old. we have reached the mayor of

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we are continuing our breaking news coverage of the situation in buffalo, new york, now where police officers knocked a 75-year-old man to the ground, flat on his back on the pavement, and his head hit the pavement and he immediately began to bleed. you can see all of that happen on video that was recorded by buffalo public radio station wbfo. this video has gone viral. we have shown it once already. i must warn you even when we show this again, this is very disturbing video to watch. it's about 18 seconds long, and here is that video. >> [ bleep ]. >> he's bleeding out of his ear.

>> get a medic. >> what the [ bleep ] -- >> joining us now by phone is the mayor of buffalo, byron brown. yoer mayor, thank you very much for joining us tonight at this hour. when did you first see this video? when did you first find out about this? >> the video was sent to me late tonight by buffalo police management, simultaneously sent to buffalo police commissioner lockwood. when i saw the video, i was deeply disturbed and extremely disappointed in what i saw. i want to say that my thoughts and prayers are with the man that was injured, and i am pleased to hear from erie county medical center that he is expected to make a full recovery. >> and what about the police

officers involved? >> the police commissioner immediately suspended both officers without pay and directed an immediate investigation into the matter. >> did the police commissioner do that in consultation with you, or did the police commissioner do that before speaking to you about it? >> the police commissioner did that after we spoke. he called me. he told me that he had seen the video, that he was disturbed by the video and the action that he was going to take. and i certainly supported his recommendation to suspend both officers without pay. >> governor cuomo tweeted about this at 11:00 p.m. tonight, said that he had spoken with you and that you both agreed that the

officers involved should be immediately suspended. did you discuss it with the governor before they were suspended? >> no. i spoke to the police commissioner first. the governor's office did call. the governor was very concerned about what he saw on the video, very concerned about the condition of the man. and i believe the governor even placed a call to the hospital to check on the condition of the gentleman himself. >> mayor brown, buffalo police have to know how tense the country is this week, how tense buffalo is this week. have they been given any direct message? have you given them a direct message telling them just how sensitive situations like this are and that they must be extra careful in their -- in the way they conduct themselves,

especially this week? >> absolutely. the police commissioner and police management have been giving our officers direct messages about the importance of protecting the community, the importance of protecting peaceful protesters, making sure that people have the opportunity to exercise their freedom of speech rights and to make sure that they're able to do that safely. there are daily calls with the commissioner and the management of the police department. there are calls with the rank and file. there are bulletins that go out to the rank and file. and so this is disappointing. certainly we don't want to see anyone injured in our community.

and we respect and protect the right of people in the city of buffalo to peacefully protest. >> mayor brown, there's a report that the initial police reporting on this was that the victim simply stumbled, nothing about the victim being pushed. what can you tell us about that reporting, and is that a disturbing part of this story for you? >> i am aware of that, i did not see that report. these events are moving very quickly. police personnel are working around the clock. certainly i don't think there was any attempt to mislead or falsify a report. i'm glad that this video surfaced so that it could be

brought to my attention, the police commissioner's attention, and the attention of our management. we expect the height of professionalism from our police officers, and we expect when there are incidents, that those incidents will be reported accurately and completely. >> buffalo mayor byron brown, thank you very much for joining us tonight. i know buffalo wants to hear from you, and the country wants to hear from you tonight about what they're seeing on this video. we really appreciate it, mr. mayor. thank you. >> thank you for having me with you. >> thank you. and when we come back, joe biden said this about donald trump tonight. we can't take four more years of this. well, new polls say we won't have to. maria teresa kumar and crayamic alcindor join us next.

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with five months left before the presidential election, polls show joe biden is increasing his lead over donald trump today. the real clear politics average shows joe biden beating donald trump by 7.8 points. that is a five-point jump for joe biden from this time one month ago. at this time four years ago by comparison, hillary clinton was ahead of donald trump by only 1.5 points according to the real clear politics average. and at this time eight years ago, president obama was ahead of mitt romney by only 1.6 points in that real clear politics average. "the new york times" reports in private mr. trump has expressed concern that his campaign is not battle-ready for the general election. joining our discussion now, maria teresa kumar. she is the president and ceo of vo ta latino. she's an msnbc contributor. and yamiche alcindor is back with us. one thing about the real clear politics average number taken on

this date is that in the end, the democrats' lead was even higher than that number. >> that's correct. what i encourage photocopies to do is that it's good to feel the pulse of the public with the polls, but one of the things that we learned in 2016 was that a lot of individuals felt that hillary had such a lead in the polls that they decided to stay home. so keep watching the polls, but what we need is everyone registered to participate. what's interesting, lawrence, the places that are in play that weren't when hillary clinton is on the ticket is arizona. arizona went purple during 2018, and mark kelly right now is the democratic senatorial nominee against mcsally, and he's leading her there. so there's a good sense that arizona is going to be in the biden camp. . the other one that i'd encourage folks to look at is texas. both arizona and texas have the same dynamic.

demographics are knocking on the door of the republican party where you have a surge of young latinos coming of age, and they are upset. anecdotally, voto latino, we have been doing voter registration since the beginning of january. we spent all the money we had for june yesterday. we had a record, over 23,000 people registering to vote in texas alone. so that tells us there's an appetite for change, and it's coming disproportionately from young people. >> yamiche, republicans have not had to spend money to win a presidential election in texas in decades, and here is the quinnipiac poll showing texas right now, donald trump 44, joe biden 43. so it's a statistical tie in texas right now, which means that republicans are going to have to pour resources into texas that they would have wanted to spend on a state that they thought would be more competitive than that. >> that's right.

we've already seen with the trump administration and the trump campaign rather that they're spending money in states like florida and texas and arizona, and they're up on the airwaves just trying to make sure that they're rallying up the base when they wanted to be spending money on some of the more swing states. so you already hear that the president is lashing out at one point at his campaign manager, angry at the fact that he's in some polls he's not doing as well. of course as you just noted, there are a lot of polls that are showing that joe biden is in a really good position. and the thing i will remind people of course is that president trump is an incumbent president. he has a lot of money, more money than joe biden. so he has a lot of money to spend. the republican national committee has really merged and become the trump campaign. so they're very, very effective in working together already. that being said, the elephant in the room, the big thing is that president trump, while he's maybe lashing out at aides and lashing out at communications staff, he's the person who is driving the message, who is

either making people happy that -- his supporters who maybe think they want to see a president talking about law and order and claiming that protesters are domestic terrorists. but for a lot of people, he's angering them. you have a trump campaign staff really trying to backtrack some of the things the president is doing, the president today still has not talked about systematic policing issues. he still has not talked about racism in a way that people feel -- at least a lot of people feel is showing that he understands the issue. so i think what president trump is doing in this case is that he's playing to his base and that worked in 2016, and the president is again making that bet that it's going to work this time. and we're just not sure. the polls show it's probably not likely but the president is incumbent in a strong position. >> we'll be back. when we come back, we're going to look at some swing state polls and the loss of trump support among maybe his most important supporters. that's going to be next. o be ne.

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and we're back with maria teresa kumar and yamiche alcindor. let's take a look at the fox battleground poll of three states, wisconsin, arizona, ohio. biden ahead in all three, by nine points in wisconsin, four in arizona, and basically a statistical tie, two points ahead for joe biden in ohio. maria teresa, if that's the way things are looking in september, joe biden's in a very, very strong position. >> it's a very strong position because arizona is a state that folks didn't think was going to come along so soon. but as i shared, we also have a very strong senatorial candidate from the democrats with mark kelly, and he's going toe to toe right now with mcsally, the republican senator, and she's not doing so well. it's interesting to see ohio. ohio was a strictly trump state, and even during the midterms when you saw such a wave of new

democrats coming in from these congressional dicts, thstricts, did not happen in ohio. i think the challenge, though, with donald trump is that he has not rosen to the moment of the pandemic nor of the race relations with the policing right now. and he had the opportunity to talk about this and being very straightforward with what was happening and providing people with the information they need just around covid alone. instead he's going into an election incredibly hobbled because he's going to have over 42 million unemployed americans. the country's still not right, and people feeling that the sea change that he promised was not exactly what they were looking for. >> yamiche, it was not a good week for donald trump to go play games with religion in front of st. john's church holding up that bible so foolishly with "the new york times" reporting today, trump's approval slips among evangelical voters. yamiche, if he doesn't hollywood on to every single evangelical

voter he had before, he cannot squeak out that electoral college. >> that photo op, that walk, it had ripple effects. you had evangelicals immediately and members of the clergy immediately speaking out against the president. catholic priests, of course the bishop that oversees that church. the president was taking that walk in some ways, it seems a pretty obvious play to evangelicals. he also then of course signed an executive order about religious freedoms. but he's obviously in a tough position when you have white evangelicals starting to reconsider whether or not they're going to support him. you also have to think that the other democrats that are also giving him a second look and possibly starting to flee are white seniors, white college educated men, white women living in the suburbs. those are all constituencies that are key and that were key to his squeaker of a win in 2016. and if he can't hold on to all

of those demographics, he's going to be in real trouble. but, again, i think the issue, the main person that has the power to either get president trump out of this or help him is president trump. no one else is doing his communication but doing his communication but him. >> yamiche alcindor, maria teresa kumar, thank you both for joini joining our discussion tonight. really appreciate it. >> thank you, lawrence. >> that does it for this hour. thank you for watching. "the rachel maddow show" starts now. this is what the nation's capital looked like today. statue of dr. martin luther king towering over protests against the police killing of george floyd. look at that shot. just incredible. it was more than 90 degrees in washington, d.c. today and humid. one reporter for "usa today" said they saw people being treated for heat stroke on the walk from the white house over to t