♪ this sunday, another police shooting. the fatal shooting of an african-american man after a struggle with atlanta police leads to angry protests and the immediate resignation of the city's police chief. >> i do not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force. >> we'll have the latest from atlanta. >> this as coast to coast marches -- >> i just want justice and we just want it now. >> -- have prompted a national debate on reforming police. >> we're talking about engaging a plan to create a public safety system that works for everyone. >> we won't be defunding our police. we won't be dismantling our police. we won't be disbanding our police. >> this morning i'll talk to senator tim scott, who's leading

the efforts on police reform and former defense secretary bob gates. pl plus, the coronavirus spike. half of the u.s. is now seeing a post-memorial day surge. >> we saw even more acceleration at that point in time. i think people have left their guard down. >> so why has the coronavirus task force been silent for nearly 50 days? >> my guests this morning, infectious disease experts joseph fair and dr. nahid bhadalia. >> missing poll workers, long lines. >> why are you so intent upon staying here? it's important for me. it's important for my son. >> why this is a big, flashing warning sign for november. >> joining us for insight and analysis are nbc news capitol hill correspondent casey hunt. hello lean cooper for "the new york times". and tim alberta, chief political correspondent for politico. welcome to sunday.

it's "meet the press". >> from nbc news in washington, the longest-running show in television history this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. another fatal shooting of an african-american man at the hands of police, this time in atlanta, has led to renewed protests and a resignation of the city's police chief. it happened friday night at a wendy's restaurant, after he fought with one of the officers and was running away with one of the officer's taser guns. as news spread, protesters took to the streets, blogging an interstate, and the wendy's itself was set on fire. keisha lance bottoms moved quickly, firing the police officer who fired the fatal shot and announced that police chief erica shields was stepping down. >> i do not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force and have called for the immediate termination of the officer. >> the second officer involved has been placed on administrative duty. our own blaine alexander is at wendy's restaurant in atlanta

where all of this took place this morning. and, blayne, there was quite a bit of time when things were sort of routine until they weren't. >> reporter: absolutely. it was a very sharp escalation there in that video that we saw in the body camera video. let me set the scene. you see the aftermath behind me. up until minutes ago or so, parts of the wendy's were still smoldering and i have to say even standing out here through our masks, we can snell tmell t scent of smoke in the air. it's hanging heavily in the air, and that's what happened overnight and well into the morning. the fact that there are six different angles at least of video that show exactly what happened, what unfolded in this wendy's parking lot on friday night, one of them eyewitness video, surveillance video by the georgia bureau of investigation, and four different angles from

plirchs. >> when you look at that surveillance video you see the final moments of rayshard brooks' life. we do know that this was something taken on surveillance video. officers were called to the scene because he had fallen asleep in his car blocking the drive through and that's why they were called to the scene. when you take a look at the police body camera, there were two things that stood out strongly to me. one is you see on the video officers search brooks and find that there are no weapons on him and he was not armed and it was 43 minutes into the video, chuck, before things escalated. for the better part of the video you see brooks sitting in his car, the officers talking to him, asking him how much have you had to drink? what were you doing? where were you coming from? he takes a field sobriety test, which he failed, and 43 minutes into the video, you see the officers try and place him under arrest, and that's when things quickly begin to escalate there.

and in a 90-second piece, you see it go from a calm conversation to hearing the gunshots that ultimately ended his life. there are things taking place, the gbi and the fulton county district attorney to see if there are charges to come from this case and attorneys for brooks' family say they're conducting their own investigation, chuck. >> blayne, this was really swift action in comparison to other incidents and other communities and how quickly not only the firing of the police officer, resignation of the police chief. what is the reaction of other atlanta police officers? are we hearing anything from the police side of things? >> reporter: and that's why the reaction was very intentional, chuck. i have to remind you, we were covering the protest and it was less than six weeks ago and we saw officers now facing charges surrounding two students, breaking and using tasers on them, and they were fired, and

subsequently another two were fired, and this is a pattern when we're trying to take swift action in this. i will say that at least a couple of atlanta police officers that i've spoken to it is how quickly they're transpiring. it's an investigation and it could take weeks and months before charges are brought. so certainly a very stunning speed with which this was happening, chuck. >> blayne alexander getting things started for us at the scene at the wendy's in atlanta. senator tim scott who is -- has been tapped to lead the republican effort. senator scott, welcome back to "meet the press," and i just want to get your reaction to what you've seen in atlanta in the last 48 hours and what you make of the swift action that has already taken place with the firing of the police officer and the resignation of the police chief? >> i think the mayor decided to fire the officer and have their chief resign in order to perhaps quell the response from the community. that video is disturbing to watch, but i'm not sure that

it's as clear as what we've seen around the country on some of the other issues that's driven us to the conversation about police reform and the conversation is necessary and very important. that situation is an outlier and it has brought us to where we are as it relates to police reform and george floyd. >> the issue of use of force and when do you escalate and things like that, i feel like that is part of this larger conversation you're seeing there. as part of police reform, should there be a federal standard on use of force and when it's required and when it isn't? >> i think it's difficult to establish a codified and law standard for use of force. there are millions of scenarios that play out, and it's one of the reasons why we've tried to

achieve through legislation is finding the best practice of use of force around the country and providing clarity and guidance for those departments who may need to have a better perspective on use of force. so we're getting at it, but i'm not sure we'll ever codify in law a use-of-force standard. >> so if you can't codify it in the law, what would a best practice look like? have you identified a local police force that you think is doing it right when it comes to trying to create use of -- different training, better training when it comes to use of force? >> i think you've seen under the previous administration and under this administration, we're focusing -- at least i am -- to try to get the former police officers and current police officers and civilians to work on a commission to help us discern what it looks like to have effective policies that lead to better outcomes and those intent split-second decisions.

that's what we're achieving studies of use of force and other aspects of it. there are more aspects like the choke hold. this is a policy whose time has come and gone. we have to tackle that in policy and tackle it on the state level. i think the president is looking at it from an executive order, and i think every single aspect wants to tackle the issue of choke holds, and that's part of that entire conversation around the de-escalation of force. >> i want to show quite a few local and state communities have already enacted reform measures. six states have governors have issued executive orders or the legislature has passed reform and signed them into law, and a whole bunch of communities that we'll show in a scroll or police departments have instituted things like a ban on the choke hold. i know miami-dade did that, among others, but on the federal level, what has the most

momentum here -- what is the most consensus? the democrats want to track police misconduct and they want to end no-knock warrants and qualified immunity for police officers. of those four priorities -- like i said, those choke holds, there's a lot of consensus. where are you on the other three? >> no-knocks, we want to understand. there's no database on no-knocks. we don't know when it's used, to whom it's used, the race, the sex, the age. we know nothing on no-knocks except for the breonna taylor situation, which was tragic without question. i want to take the breonna taylor case and have an act that requires more data to be provided so we can come out with policies that are consistent with the best use of no-knocks or the elimination of no-knocks. i know the house bill said let's just eliminate it for drug cases and we have no information that supports that that is the best way to go. i'm good to have the

conversation and if we get to the end of the road and whether it's a local or state approach on choke holds, that will be on the table. weather there's a national registry or a local department-by-department registry around the misconduct, that will be on the table as well. there are approaches that are very similar and somewhat different at the same time. i think we'll get you a bill that actually becomes law. >> i was just going to say. it seems as though your disputes are more on implementation to get to the goal whether it's financial incentives to encourage change versus mandates. is that the -- do you think there are more disputes on implementation than on the larger goal? >> well, chuck, let me just put some skin on that comment you just made. so the house bill reduces money or takes money away from the

state on the choke hold issue. we take it by department by department. on the qualified immunity, something you mentioned, i would be interested in desertification of officers. that's a union issue that's hard to get at. qualified immunity on the right, that's an issue that most republicans, including myself, don't like at all. the question is is there a path forward for the necessity to eliminate bad behavior? is there a path for it? i don't know if it's qualified immunity, but there will be more information provided to the public so that we can make concrete decisions. but if we're that close on making progress, i hope we don't let partisanship get in the way. >> well, let me ask you about the president and the role he plays here. you know, he's even now called demonstrators thugs. he's uncomfortable with some of the -- he's talked about things he doesn't want to see.

they've called getting writ of qualified immunity a non-starter. and, of course, there's his own history when it comes to race when it's remarkably consistent and not in a good way. can he play a role here that gets this across the finish line without sort of maybe apologizing for some of his views on race over the years? >> i think we can -- "a," i think the answer is yes. "b," i think he is engaging now in a way that is constructive and helpful, and the executive order they think will come out on tuesday really does reference a national database strengthening and a national database police misconduct from my understanding, and it talks

about the importance of co-responders from a mental health perspective that both law enforce&and communities like that approach. i think he's weighing in at the right time in a constructive manner. i'll look at yesterday's speech at west point where he talked about the powerful institutions of authority in this country and how they eliminated desegregation and broke the back of it and how the civil war led to the freedom of african-americans in this country and his approach yesterday at west point is what we'd like to see a whole lot more of because it was constructive and it is important that all three levers of government work together to solve what is, in fact, the original sin of this country. if we do that, i think the american people will celebrate neither party, but the fact that we work together as one country. >> senator scott, considering that the trump campaign ended up planning a rally in tulsa of all places on juneteenth, they've since moved it. i'm curious, do you think juneteenth or a federal holiday already sort of marked in a way -- one of the ways we use our federal holidays is for remembrance, for education, for things like that, a mistake like that wouldn't have happened?

>> i do think the more information -- obviously if it's a hoist, it would hit you in the head. i would say the more information we have and obviously if it was a national holiday, we would all know about juneteenth and we'd all have opportunity to celebrate it, and there would be fewer mistakes on that day. one of the aspects of the legislation is providing resources in a similar fashion as it's done in the holocaust museum. to celebrate juneteenth and the tulsa oklahoma race riot and 100 years ago next year. we think the more education and information we provide the better people behave in all corridors of this nation but specifically within the law enforcement community, and we have the opportunity to do that. we provide the resources for the historical perspective in understanding. >> what about a federal holiday? >> listen, i'm open to it and i've been talking to my friends throughout the country, including at the white house. i think that's a brilliant idea.

the conservatives in the house seem to be interested in that, so you never know what may happen. >> senator tim scott, the republican from south carolina we look forward to this. you'll unveil more of this. thanks for coming in and sharing your perspective. >> looking forward to it. thank you, chuck. the clearing of protesters from lafayette square lead to condemnation by dozens of military leaders, and on thursday it continues when the chairman of the joint chiefs mark milley publicly regretted taking part in that incident. >> i should not have been there. my presence in that moment and that environment created -- >> joining me now is robert gates who served as secretary of defense for both president george w. bush and barack obama. he's also the author of a new book, "exercise of power."

secretary gates, welcome back to "meet the press." general millie's speech late this week after a number of attempts to put some distance between what happened. your reaction, was it appropriate and did he do it soon enough? >> i think he really wrestled, chuck, how to respond when he realized how the appearances of him being present for that photo-op seemed to the rest of the country. i think -- i've known mark milley for a long time, and he's a man of great integrity and takes his responsibilities as a military officer very seriously. i think the important thing was that he made the statement and made it with all sincerity and frankly, that, plus his statement, the written statement to senior commanders around the world around the apolitical nature of the american military sent a powerful signal and re-emphasized the importance of

the military staying out of politics, and, frankly, not getting used. all of the presidents i worked for like to use the military as a prop. i think this president's probably taken that to a new level, but the military has to be very sensitive about being exploited in that way. >> you know, another aspect that's come under scrutiny with the military, on one hand as an institution, it's perhaps more integrated than any other major institution in this country, and yet we had the first ever military chief to be the head of the military branches be an african-american. so how far behind do you think the military has been at least on its upper levels and why is that? you've seen it. what do you think that is? is that a systemic racism issue? >> i don't know if it's systemic racism in the military. the military for a long time was out in front of the country when it came to integration and

offering opportunities for african-americans and other minorities, but i think one of the points that general milley has made this week is that the military is going to have to pay more attention to how it moves officers and minority officers into the most senior positions. there have always been, and colin powell, the general and commander in iraq during the period when i was secretary, so there have been a number of african-americans, but as you point out, this was the first african-american service chief. in all honesty, the first four-star woman was appointed while i was secretary, and that was pretty far into the process as well. so i think the military is really focused now on how regularly minorities and

particularly african-americans are moved into the most senior positions in the military. >> i'm curious on you changing the names of the southern military institutions, the banning of confederate paraphernalia in the marines. are all of these things whose time has come? >> i think that the opportunities are presented by events, and i think we now have the opportunity, particularly to change the names of our military facilities. i've always puzzled over the fact that we don't have a ft. george washington or a ft. ulysses s. grant. so i think the time has come, and i think there's the opportunity to not only name some of these places for some of our great generals of the 20th century but also individuals other minority medal-of-honor recipients and so on. we've done that in naming ships. we just haven't done it with our facilities. >> you've had some tough words

on both of the two potential men who are meeting in the next presidential election. here's what you wrote about joe biden in 2014. joe is a man of integrity and incapable of hiding what he thinks and one of those people you can turn to in crisis, still, i think he is wrong in on every foreign poll said and national security issue over the past four decades. does that make it hard for you to support him for president? >> well, i think the important thing is the quality of his character is important. i have a lot of policy disagreements, frankly, with the former vice president, but i think one of the things that people will be weighing this fall is probably the character of the two contestants. >> well, let me put up what you said about president trump in 2016. you were pretty tough on him as well. let me read this quote.

he is stubbornly uninformed about the way in which he views the world and temperamentally unsuited to lead the men and women in uniform and being commander in chief. >> write about this in the book, at least he hasn't started any new wars, and he has robustly funded the military. i supported his outreach to north korea. it hasn't come to anything, but i thought that was a bold move and everything else had failed in the previous 25 years. i thought his challenging china was about time. but there's also the other side of the coin in terms of some of the things he says, his treatment and words about military people and military heroes like john mccain that i admire a lot that are really troublesome. >> i'm just curious.

in this case is this a case where character trumps policy for you? >> i think that will be up to the voters of the country. >> secretary gates, i'm going to leave it there. i'm glad you brought up north korea. if i had more time, i was going to ask you about an interesting comment from your book about north korea and about whether it's time for us to accept them as a nuclear power. among the many interesting things you write about, i encourage folks to pick it up. thanks for coming on and sharing your perspectives, sir. >> thank you, chuck. coming up, a surge in coronavirus cases in half of the states. what can we expect this summer to bring? i'm going to talk to two infectious disease experts, dr. nahid bradalia and dr. joseph fair. bradalia and dr. joseph fair

welcome back. the cdc andthe cdc and white ho coronavirus task force aren't talking about it much, but the united states is on another surge with covid cases. 25 states and puerto rico have seen spikes of more than 10% over the last two weeks.

overall we've seen 2 million confirmed cases in the united states, and 116,000 people have died since february. what does this all mean for the hopes of getting back to something approaching normal in the near future? joining me now our virologist joseph fair who recently covered from covid-19 himself and dr. nahid bhadelia. dr. fair, let me start with you because i would like you to share a little bit about your recovery from covid-19. what should americans take away from your experience? >> first of all, i did not have any underlying conditions and i'm not a triathlete or anything like that, but i was generally very healthy and could run and exercise four or five times a week. being said, i did not expect that i would get that ill because i didn't have any of those underlying conditions and i'm 42 years old and you would not think that i would be one of those people who would get so very ill.

i would say the seven or eight days of hospitalizing myself when i was doing the self-treatment, that's the worst i ever felt. i probably spent 23 out of 24 hours in bed, and obviously i developed the secondary struggle with breathing and everything else. i was shocked at how severe my illness got without having those underlying conditions that we discussed so many times and so what i would take from that is everyone that's younger and everyone that is going out without masks now and being cavalier with that and ignoring this ongoing pandemic, and we used the analogy and the band played on with hiv and its response from the early days, that's wrl the analogy that we should be using with coronavirus now to a much greater extent, and those people that are young and invincible, don't think that it will affect them that

greatly. i can say that my own experience was the complete opposite. i can't say that i had a brush with death, but it was enough to put me in the icu for four days and in the hospital for six days. >> for both you and dr. bhadelia, first to you, we're seeing spikes across the country and we've broken it up by region and you can see the northeast and the midwest and those are going down and when you break it up in the south and the west, both of those curves are going up. what does this tell you, dr. bhadelia, about what the rest of the summer's going to look like? >> summer, when the coastal state his their peak we all locked down around the same time and the lack of movement protected them from the influx and new cases coming in and the evidence to me in the south and some of the other places is that we opened too early in those states, that we didn't have the ability to basically trace down those chains of transmission and stop them once people started

m mingling and hospitalizations are going up. we talked about arizona and they're at 84% inpatient bed use. in north carolina, they're inching at 80% or 79%. so it's not just the cases and the fact that at this point hospitals are at risk of getting overwhelmed and that is signaling to me that the states are already behind and they should consider potentially whether they should be rolling back, at least not progressing with further reopening and they should be rolling back, at least not regressing, and reopening, and considering lockdowns in certain counties when there are a lot of disease activity. >> dr. fair, there is quarantine fatigue, and you have state officials who politically don't want to have to pull back or are tired of doing this. had we at the beginning had more aggressive testing and contact tracing being we have been able to sort of have regional shutdowns at the beginning of this so then there would be more

comfort today, for instance, protect us from the shutdown because they didn't shutdown before? does this go back to our initial blindness to where this virus was three months ago? >> absolutely. i can say one of the things that you and i spoke about very early on was the need for a nationwide shutdown and i explained at the time that unless we all do it it's really moot to do it in one place within the united states and the porous borders. and i think having not done that early on, we missed a huge opportunity to contain and even potentially eradicate this virus, and we're always going to have travel in and out of the united states and advivice vers, but that being said we could have truly mitigated its effects and we missed that opportunity so now we have so many cases that as i said earlier this

week, we risked the virus with the pandemic in the united states and that will have derivative effects to it such as the united states banning its citizens from traveling to it because we're a covid-19 hot spot. >> i was going to say you used this word "endemic" with me the other day, dr. fair, meaning we're not going to have second waves. no, we're not, it will be one long, continuous until we get the vaccine at this point. is that your assessment? >> i just think that at this point in time we have so many people that have this virus. we are not only not putting down the stricter measures. we are loosening the measures we had in place, and those cases are going to continue to rise, and once we get past a virus like this, which is seasonal, and we don't see it yet being seasonal, but once it gets so ingrained in the population, there's not a point that we can come back from that other than getting a vaccine in place. that just means we'll have it in the country until a vaccine is here.

>> dr. bhadelia, it's clear that we'll see political rallies and facilities where public officials think it will be a good idea. number one, if you were going to go into an arena with 15,000 people, how would you do it to protect yourself or would you even bother? >> i guess i would start i would not take that risk and it's a risk assessment that everyone would make for themselves and it's a bad idea for states that are already seeing increases in cases to have these large -- this perfect storm setup t idea of tons of people where one sick person can have an impact of generating secondary cases on this immense level where it's indoors, where there's no ventilation. and so if you had to have it, i think i would move it to the outdoors. i would reduce the number of people. i would reduce physical distancing, and i would require everybody to wear a mask and stay home if you're sick, and once you've attended a rally,

get tested. >> dr. joseph fair and nahid bhadelia, always a pleasure to have you on. >> thank you, chuck. as confederate symbols around the country come down, president trump's is a lonely voice in the national culture wars. the panel is next. the panel is next.

panelists are joining us from remote locations.

kasie hunt, jim alberta, and helene cooper, pentagon correspondent for "the new york times," the largest sustained protest in 50 years is also, i think, turning the voting public decidedly against the president. the killing of george floyd, the racially disparate impact of the pandemic, and the violent police riots has shown what the future may hold if we continue along this path of inequality, exclusion, and authoritarianism. casey hunt, are you seeing -- are the actions we're watching on capitol hill sort of in some ways proof that jamal's right about this? >> chuck, i think what you heard from tim scott at the beginning of the broadcast says everything you need to know about this. i mean even at the beginning of this past week, there was a

sense that republicans weren't necessarily going to make significant policy news beyond the data collection. tim scott spoke to ways in which data collection is important and he also in the interview suggested that they'll go beyond that in this and you would not be seeing that reflected in what they are actually doing if they weren't seeing the exact kind of political movement that you just described here. i mean, the shift on this has been fast and deep and you know, if the lawmakers are seeing it this quickly that tells you how significant it is. i will also just say i think republicans are pretty lucky that they have a leader in tim scott who brings so much credibility to this issue and his measured approach, i think, has gone quite -- it's gone quite a long way in convincing his colleagues to start to make these changes. >> tim alberta, you wrote about the phrase law and order and how it doesn't have the same meaning politically anymore on the right. >> you know, chuck, it doesn't.

and obviously, post-2012, republicans began to have this conversation about how do we soften the image of the party and how do we expand our appeal into these non-traditional communities, and they talked about immigration reform and other issues, but they didn't talk at all about this issue of systemic injustice and institutional racism and police disproportionately targeting and brutalizing the african-american community, and that is a conversation that is now taking place inside the republican party in a way that was really unimaginable just a few years ago. and so i think regardless of the outcome this november, the writing is really clearly on the wall for a lot of these republicans now. the polling is just remarkable. frank luntz spoke to it earlier

this week. karl rove spoke to it as well. he said i've been doing this for 30 years and i've never seen public opinion so quickly, and there is a clear line of delineation that the spring of 2020, and they recognize that regardless of what the president is doing that they need to address this issue in order to be competitive and move through the door with these communities. >> the question is whether he can play a role and two excerpts from the president, one just this week to fox news about abe lincoln. take a listen. >> i think i've done more for the black community than any other president, and let's take a pass on abraham lincoln because he did good, although, it's always questionable. in other words, the end result -- >> we are free, mr. president. i think he did pretty good. >> you understand what i mean. i'm going to take a pass on abe, honest abe, as we call him.

>> before you respond, i want to play one of the challenges for this president is that this has been a long history of having one view about race. listen to this quote from 1989. >> a well educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well educated white in terms of the job market. if i were starting off today, i would love to be a well educated black because they do have an val advantage today. >> it's sort of the a similar question i had to tim scott. can the president, because of his history, even his recent instincts here, can he play a constructive role without sort of acknowledging views that he had in the past this no longer seem to be mainstream? >> i have an easy answer for that. no. i don't see how president trump can play any kind of constructive role in what's going on right now in this movement for change because of who he is. i mean i wish you had the face palm emoji for when you were

playing that tape of him on fox news talking about abe lincoln. that's insane, very trump. he's always talking about how much he's done for the black community, but as you can see from his actions and the actions of the administration, that's patently untrue. there's nobody that can make that defense or that case for president trump. and when you look at what he did, i've been so focused this past week on the military and what's been going on between president trump and the military, but when you look at what he did on confederate bases when he immediately slammed down pentagon efforts and they didn't say they would absolutely do it and they started in such an anemic way and a bipartisan commission to talk and trump shut that down immediately and he infuriated his senior

military officials who were just ready to throw their hands up in the air. so the idea that this guy will play a constructive role in this movement for change in the united states i think is preposterous. >> tim alberta, is the president misreading his own base? i think he instinctively assumes his base is going to rise up on this confederate name change thing. i don't fully see it that way, do you? >> no. it's at the margin, chuck, as with everything else the president does. i think he has such a myopic focus on his base that he doesn't recognize that politics is a coalition business and that a lot of the votes that help get him across the finish line in 2016 were coming from wealthy, affluent, two-car garage suburbs where voters are not only turned off by his rhetoric around race, but specifically, when he gets to issues of the confederate flag or the protests in nfl stadiums, these are voters who culturally have drifted further and further from these traditional republican positions of orthodoxy, and now the

president has a choice to make heading toward november. do you begin to soften ever so slightly? do modulate, or do you continue you do modulate some of your positions supporting that you can't understand these suburban voters, door you take these hard line positions believing that if he does not do something, they need it. >> speaking of math, we're about to put up a math problem here for president trump in our next segment. in fact, when we come back, the changes in our political culture and political parties that could play a big role in november. stick around. play a big role in. stick around try olay skin care. just one jar of micro-sculpting cream has the hydrating power of 5 jars of a prestige cream, which helps plump skin cells and visibly smooth wrinkles. while new olay retinol24... provides visibly smoother, brighter skin. for dramatic skincare results, try olay.

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♪ ♪ welcome back. data download time. we've said it before, donald trump is making a mark on the republican party, and it may be that he's reshaping the democratic party as well, changing those who self-identify as members of either major political party. data from the pew research center show the shifts in the make up of both parties since 2015 just before mr. trump entered the race five years ago tomorrow. let's start with the ever-widening political divide among men and women. in 2015 there was a gender gap. republican his an eight-point edge with men and they leaned democratic by 12. combine that with data from 2018 and 2019 and by then they were

holding steady with men who held 18% with women. in 2015, republicans only held an edge among white voters and as much as 71 points among black votes. that advantage among whites is slipping. now it's down to only plus 11. and look to the right at that huge jump in asian americans identifying as democrats in just four years. dramatic. and then there's the other great divide in this country, geography. republican was the party of choice in the suburbs and with rural voters and in the 2018 and 2019 numbers, democrats gained in urban areas and we're almost even in the suburbs, but the republicans have made big gains with rural americans. all this is to say the republican party who was once the bastion of wealthy white establishment voters is looking

more like the home of working-class and rural white voters. that's a shrinking demographic. it was enough for president trump to eke out an electoral college and it could be a problem for the party as the country continues to change. when we come back, is joe biden closer to choosing a running mate? running mate when we started our business

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the panel is with us again, and i guess since we're a day closer to the democratic convention, we're a day closer to -- we can say vice president biden is one day closer to picking his running mate because at some point he has to pick one. i want to put up nine candidates and the first screen of six candidates appears to be almost

the consensus top six in various reporting outlets are the times a.p., val demings, kamala harris, keisha lance bottoms and lujan grisham, rice and warren. the next page here, there are various reports, tammy duckworth, tammy baldwin and amy klobuchar that they're also being vetted in some form or another. kasie hunt, i think what's notable is if you take a look at the consensus top six, four of the six are african-americans and five of the six are women of color. >> that's right, chuck, and i think it's very clear that that is a significant consideration in this moment. he certainly is under a lot of pressure to choose a woman of color, although, i would note that jim clyburn who is someone

who's had the vice president's ear on this says it's not necessarily a requirement that they do that. i do think also the thing that is probably weighing the most heavily is that there say very real sense that they need to make sure that they are choosing someone who voters, and particularly, independent voters feel confident could step into the top job were that necessary and that set of quantifications is particularly important in this instance. they don't want to repeat a mistake that john mccain made when he selected sarah palin and it raised questions about his judgment in her ability to take over. >> you know, helene cooper, i think about some of the top candidates here. you've got val demings who has not run for statewide office before, susan rice who's not run for any office before but has a ton of national security credentials. val demings, obviously a lot of credibility on law enforcement issues being a former police chief. kamala harris who has run a national campaign. there are different ways of looking at this. which way do you think biden is more concerned about what at this point? >> i think in the moment that

we're in right now, obviously the push for an african-american woman is probably something that vice president biden has been focusing on a lot, but let's assume that this moment sort of eases at some point and then you get to the whole -- both the electability issue and also the issue of who can step in once -- if given his age, if he actually wins. so he's got to balance who can help him beat trump and who looks like they are going to be qualified enough to step in on day one because of his age, and that's where you start leaning and seeing him lean more towards maybe the senators and maybe the kamala harris or maybe elizabeth warren. it's such a tricky road to hoe for him. you know, val demings looks fantastic right now when you look at her on paper. she did a really good job on the impeachment trial in the eyes of many people, but there's still a

lot to consider, and i still think he might take some time, a little more time on this because we're in the middle of such a huge moment, it seems that making this kind of a decision right now, it may be a good idea to wait a little bit. >> tim alberta, i'm reminded by a longtime friend of mine, the greatest v.p. disparity of all time with 1988, lloyd benson, dan quayle and the post said how much more qualified benson was and it didn't seem to have any impact. are we doing it again, or could we be overhyping the importance of this? >> it's possible, chuck. historically, you're right. the vice presidential selection has not had the huge impact, and in many cases, it has no impact at all, although, we only have go back four years to see how donald trump's selection of mike

pence along with his unveiling of the potential list of supreme court justices and those two things in tandem really matter as far as assuring the evangelical base that was very nervous about donald trump and mike pence provided them a familiar face to the extent that this guy will govern in a way that that will be specific with our values. >> well, you make an important point and the trump worrying about a base constituency group that biden has as well. meet the press is working with the american film institute, the afi docs institute is going virtual, obviously, featuring more than 50 documentaries. it runs from wednesday through sunday. tickets are available at docs. we look forward to this and i hope you will too. thank you for watching us. thank you for trusting us and stay safe and health owe this

flag day. we'll be back next sunday, because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." unrest in atlanta this morning after the fatal police-involved shooting of black man in the parking lot of a wendy's restaurant. one officer has been fired. another is on administrative leave. also a spike in coronavirus cases in several states, arizona, texas, and florida, all confirming their highest number of cases yet. and amid criticism, president trump moves the date of his tulsa rally from juneteenth to the 20th out of respect for the occasion. ♪ good morning. it is monday, june 15th, and