will truly get better. that's what life does generally. and on top of that, we are resilient. we do respond to leadership. it has won wars. it has fought fires. it has defeated pandemics. it has accomplished impossible tasks. it may take a little bit. it will be uneven at first. but as the man once said, happy days will be here again. that is our broadcast on this tuesday night. thank you so very much for being here with us. for all of us at the networks of nbc news, good night. this was the front page of the tulsa world newspaper today. you see the main headline there. "trump in tulsa." now, the president coming to do a big rally event in tulsa is the main headline, but then look at column one. the other main news of the day on the front page of the tulsa world. new cases surpass peak.

tulsa county's seven-day rolling average more than doubles the peak that was hit in april. you can see the lede of that story right there above the fold. covid-19 in tulsa county is surging well beyond its original april peak, disappointing those who hoped the disease might at least stay somewhat under wraps during the summer heat like the flu or common cold. tulsa county's seven-day rolling average of new cases is now more than double the peak that tulsa hit in april. the county also just reported the most new cases on a single day yet. again, that's the front page of the tulsa world in tulsa, oklahoma, today. vice president mike pence recently said that the trump campaign picked tulsa for the president's big re-election rally this week specifically because they've done such a great job flattening the curve and stopping the virus there. it's not at all true. the virus is actually off to the races there, and it is the worst it has ever been throughout the

duration of the epidemic, both in oklahoma broadly and in tulsa specifically. we will have more on that coming up. but the president announced the tulsa campaign rally right after he moved the republican convention out of charlotte, north carolina, this year because he didn't want to do anything at the republican convention to mitigate the threat of coronavirus, and so north carolina basically said, no thanks, then. well, in charlotte, north carolina, here's the front page today of their local paper. quote, governor cooper asked pence for help with testing. again, you can see the lede there above the fold. governor roy cooper says he's spoken with vice president mike pence about the state's climbing coronavirus infections and the need for testing. the governor says the state is monitoring hospital capacity as new infections in north carolina have hit record numbers in the past few days, as have hospitalizations in north carolina. on that front page, you can also see the other major headline

above the fold, page a1 is about how the state's nursing homes are unable to contain the coronavirus at this point. the president has also reportedly decided to do another campaign event in alabama sometime soon. well, here's the front page of the montgomery advertiser today. virus infections rise among alabama prison staff. here's the lead coronavirus story at alabama live right now. hospitals in several alabama cities now seeing all-time highs in coronavirus patients. quote, the number of covid-19 patients in hospitals in birmingham, tuscaloosa, montgomery, and decatur has hit all-time highs this month, filling beds and taxing staff as the state struggles with the wave of new cases. that's alabama. here's the front page at "the arizona republic" tonight. arizona reports record high new covid cases. then here's their big front-page feature story today.

headline, "i am taken aback. here's why arizona's covid-19 trajectory is concerning." here's the lede of that story. from the perspective of arizona emergency room physician dr dr. murtaza akhter, he says, quote, i am taken aback. i was walked into the hospital today, and i was like, oh, my god. the doctor, who works at both florence hoils and valley wise health medical center in feex, says, quotes, we are getting all sorts of patients who look quite sick. the paper continues, trend lines are moving up in arizona. total hospitalizations have doubled since april. the number of new daily cases reported by the state have recently reached record levels. the doctor says, quote, it's very important for the people to know that whatever your politics may be, whatever your family members may be doing, whatever you want to do for fun, there really is a huge pandemic. it is important to distance even

if you aren't sick. in arizona's second largest city in tucson, as of yesterday morning, the tucson medical center had just one remaining bed available in its icu. one icu bed left. a spokeswoman writing in an email to "the arizona republic," quote, we have been very constrained within our icu because of the recent spike in covid-19 cases. the republic then reprints these graphs from the covid tracking project showing the kind of company that arizona is in right now. take a close look at that. what that is, you see the headline there, daily positives. that's the graph of daily numbers of positive cases in texas and arizona and north carolina and south carolina. look at how steeply those numbers are rising. this also from the covid tracking project is the graph of hospitalizations in those states. again, texas, arizona, north carolina, south carolina. that's bad. in texas, they have just set

five consecutive days of record hospitalizations, and this is the front page of the texas tribune right now. texas' republican governor greg abbott assuring texans that there are plenty of hospital beds to go around. never mind the five straight days of ever-increasing record numbers. fill 'em up. they can take way more. so it's okay if the daily number of new infections keeps hitting new records as well. let's just see how high we can go. i mean you see the secondary headline on the front page there, which is ther there. texas governor greg abbott blames people in their 20s for the latest increase in coronavirus. that's kind of a hard sell, right, to pick somebody to blame if you are simultaneously denying that the huge increases in coronavirus transmission and new cases in your state are any sort of problem, right? because you got plenty of hospital beds to fill up with sick and dying texans. we can take 'em all.

make more. some texas cities and communities want to put in place new mitigation measures to try to slow down the spread in texas, but the governor made clear today he will block any texas cities and towns and counties from doing that. because, again, his approach is fill 'em up. there's lots of room for people to die here. lots of beds to fill up with sick and dying people. got plenty of room. the vice president today wrote an op-ed in which he said that the state of the u.s. coronavirus epidemic is, in his words, quote, cause for celebration. cause for celebration. he said, thanks to the leadership of president trump, we are winning the fight against the invisible enemy. i just want to put something on the screen here. if you're like doing the dishes and not watching what i'm doing, you might want to look at this for a second. up in the upper left hand corner, that's italy, how they have dealt with their epidemic. in the upper right-hand corner

there, that's spain. that's how they've dealt with their epidemic. in the lower left-hand corner, that's france. that's the shape of their epidemic over time. now let's put us up there. let's put the united states up there for comparison's sake. yeah, that's us. that's what the u.s. government is calling "cause for celebration." closing in on 117,000 americans dead, and we appear to be doing something you might reasonably call peak plateauing. i mean all these other western industrialized countries, all these allies of ours that got hit hard and early like we did, they did actually succeed in bringing their numbers basically back down to their baseline or close to it. but us, no way. we are just plodding along, steady as she goes, with the biggest epidemic on earth, the deadliest one already, and we are just holding forth now at 20,000-plus cases a day. more than 20 cases seeing daily increases in their number of cases this week.

"the new york times" reporting that vice president pence told governors on a call yesterday that they should stress in their public remarks that the reason it might look like case numbers are getting worse in lots of states is just because of additional testing, not because we've got any problem with a persistent and even growing epidemic. that advice from the vice president is not borne out with what's happening with the numbers in the states, where case numbers are outpacing the rate of testing and where the percentage of positive test results is going up in multiple states. vice president pence also apparently told the governors that they should play up what a success reopening has been, which sounds like an awesome thing to want to be able to say until you look at the front pages of local newspapers around the country. i mean here's "the miami herald," front page today. miami and miami beach mayors sound alarm on covid-19 increase. miami is one of the places nationwide that is now considering stopping or rolling

back reopening efforts because of exploding case numbers and record hospitalization numbers. miami's considering that. nashville's considering that. utah, oregon, and counting. we went through all that national discussion about reopening. well, we're now entering into the part of the botched reopenings that's going to lead to a big national discussion about reclosings unless, of course, you are buying what the white house is selling. vice president pence in his op-ed today saying any panic over a so-called second wave is, quote, overblown. tonight we're going to speak with the top infectious disease doctor at the university of alabama, which is treating a record number of coronavirus patients as of today along with many other health facilities in her state. she may actually agree with vice president pence on that second wave idea, at least in this one specific sense. her name is dr. jeannie

marrazzo, and she announced at a public update yesterday, coyote, it quote, it is a real increase in the cases that we are independent tooing. people ask about a second wave. i've been saying, we never stopped having a first wave. she says, quote, i think we now have just widespread, sustained community spread. there's so much infection out there, you could go anywhere and potentially be exposed. it's been an unfortunate series of days of record-setting. again, i'll be speaking with that infectious disease doctor from the university of alabama later on this hour. but the white house says it's all over. the white house says it's cause for celebration th, that we hav won, this thing is done. let's pile 19,000 people into an indoor arena in tulsa for the largest indoor congregate event in the western hemisphere since the onset of this global pandemic. and we're do it in the country that has the worst epidemic on

earth. let me just say one other thing about this, about the white house saying there is cause for celebration in the american coronavirus disaster. i mean it turns your stomach in one direction to look at, you know, 117,000 americans dead and say, that's good news. cause for celebration. but there's something even more disturbing about the white house telling us that there's cause for celebration when you look at not just where we've been but where we are going. you might have seen yesterday that forecasters at the university ever washington have updated their projection for the course of the u.s. epidemic. this is the data group whose models the white house used to promote and cite all the time at the white house. when their model was -- this model from the university of washington was based on the premise, the expectation that we were going to have a competent response as a country. so their initial projections,

which were modeled internationally on successful things that other competent governments did to contain this thing, their initial projections from the university of washington looked pretty rosy from the white house's perspective in terms of how things were going to turn out in terms of how many americans were going to die. but those premises, those expectations were wrong. we didn't respond in a coherent and effective way as a country. given how we have actually responded as a country, they've had to revise their model. they've had to revise their projections, and their new forecast from the university of washington is over 200,000 americans will be killed by this thing by the time september is over. and let me just put that in perspective, right? in terms of the vice president saying our coronavirus epidemic as of today is cause for celebration. let me put that in perspective this way. as a country, it took us this long to get from our first case on january 21st to 100,000 dead

americans on may 28th. it took us 129 days for this thing to kill 100,000 americans. this new forecast from the university of washington is that our next 100,000 dead will take even less time, that it will take 127 days for the coronavirus body county to climb from 100,000 to 200,000 dead americans. the pace is holding steady, maybe even picking up just a little bit. this is what the white house today calls cause for celebration. and it's not like this is a tragedy that is unfolding separate and apart from the federal government, right? the parts of the response for which the government has direct responsibility continue to be the deadliest and worst handled aspects of this american disaster. i mean "the wall street journal" reporting today that among the 116,000-plus american deaths, it now looks like over 50,000 of those deaths can be attributed

to nursing homes and long-term care facilities. 50,000 americans dead in those facilities. it just rocks you to your core. well, in terms of responsibility for that, the federal government regulates nursing homes in this country directly. but the federal government's response to this problem where 50,000 americans have been killed already continues -- i mean it continues to be basically nonexistent. the trump administration, who heads cms, who heads the part of the federal government that regulates nursing homes yesterday did a photo op event with the president at the white house where she said that american nursing homes by and large have done great. yeah, nothing to worry about other than 50,000 people dead in those facilities. this comes as abc news today obtains a recording of a call between fema and nursing homes in which a fema official starts apologizing for fema and the federal government sending

american nursing homes expired, broken, and inappropriate gear. fema now apologizing to nursing homes for sending them junk they can't use. and this is something we've been hearing from nursing homes who have been puzzling through what to do with the fact. look at her hands. look at the arms. nursing homes have been puzzling to do with the fact that they may not have access to testing, but the federal government has found the time to send them random crap like these poncho thingies that don't have holes to stick your arms through. look at that. fema now apologizing, but that's what the federal government has done for nursing homes. the federal government, the white house, also took it upon itself to issue that executive order mandating that meat processing plants stay open even as local health authorities wanted to shut them down because meat processing plants all over the country were turning out to be super spreader facilities where thousands of people were getting infected with the virus.

well, amid lots of chest-pounding from the administration and claims from the big meat processing companies about how that presidential order to stay open was a necessary move to keep american dinner tables and american grills supplied with adequate supplies of meat, well, today "the new york times" reports that actually what the meat companies did during that time when president trump ordered them all to be open despite what local authorities might want -- what american meat companies did during that time is that in april, they exported more american pork to china than they had ever exported before. it was a record. the president intervened to keep these plants open, creating known, huge clusters of infection where hundreds and then thousands of people got coronavirus. also china could receive record u.s. meat exports. and american tinies and cities and counties where these plants are, where these huge locuses of

infection are located and were forced to stay open, they can pay the price in terms of having hundreds and thousands of infections in their communities. we are a poorly run country right now, and this is a bad time for it. we are a poorly run country right now, and among other things we have the body count to show for it. and that is one thing when we are the deadliest country in the world right now with this incredibly botched response to this epidemic, right, the largest case count in the world, the largest body count in the world, and another 85,000 of us slated to die over the next four months at the same torrential pace that we have been dying over these last four months. but, you know, it's one thing to think about that domestically in terms of how poorly run we are right now, how incapable we are of pursuing even our own interests and saving our own lives because of how badly run

our government is at a time that we need government. but we're not alone in the world, and the world and its threats and challenges are not taking a time-out for this mess. and us being very poorly run right now has consequences for that stuff too. i mean stuff is happening. stuff is in motion. today on the disputed border between india and china in the himalayan mountains, a long-simmer dispute erupted between indian and chinese soldiers which reportedly results in 20 indian soldiers being killed. this is the deadliest violence on that part of that border since the '70s, and of course india and china are both nuclear powers, and they're both basically ascendant and pretty aggressive right now, eager to show their strength. how about an international standoff between nuclear armed india and china? the united states in a good position to delicately handle what needs to happen in terms of that kind of a standoff?

today you might have woken up to headlines like this one, about north korea blowing up a joint liaison office, dramatically raising tensions with south korea. if you're like me seeing that headline, you might not have re realized at first that that headline is meant in a literal sense. this isn't a proverbial thing. this isn't north korea blowing in some diplomatic -- this was literally north korea blowing that thing up, bombing it, bombing this joint liaison office. it's a sort of de facto embassy used in the border region between north korea and south korea. north korea dropped a bomb on it and blew it up today. that will probably resolve well. what could possibly go wrong? the president has incredible faith, though, in the sobriety and wisdom of the north korea leadership. at the end of his new book "exercise of power" former defense secretary robert gates has this sort of dark but also sort of hopeful take on how

president trump has talked about leaders like north korea's kim jong-un since he has been president. gates says this. he says, quote, americans, i think, understand the value of allies and how they are a unique asset for the united states, especially compared to both china and russia, neither of which have any. he says, quote, i believe most americans want our country to stand for something beyond just our military strength and economic success. a lot of people are uncomfortable, he says, with an american president cozying up to autocratic foreign leaders, full of praise for how wonderful they are and siding with them on issues while deriding american government institutions. we must work with these leaders, but we don't need to say we love them. that's from robert gates' new book, "exercise of power." russia this week sentenced an american named paul whalen to 16 years' hard labor for allegedly

spying against the russian government. whalen proclaims his innocence. he has asked out loud and in signs that he's held up during his trial, he's asked specifically for president trump to speak out forcefully and clearly to get russia to release him. we shall see. a couple of weeks ago we learned from the russian government that president trump had taken a call with president vladimir putin. we tend to usually learn these things from the russian side. that call happened on the day that vladimir putin announced he would generously give the russian people the opportunity to vote on whether or not he should have 16 more years in power as russia's leader. putin has already been in power for 20 years. now he's changing the russian constitutional framework to let him go for 36 years in power, which is a heck of a presidential term. so the day that he announces that he's going to do that, he has a call with president trump. there's no record, at least from the white house side, that our

president expressed any objections or concerns about that in their call. what the kremlin says they discussed in that call is the idea of letting russia back into the g7. russia was kicked out of what used to be the g8 for invading a neighboring country and taking over part of it for itself. they're still in that status, so there's no clear reason why they should get the record of getting back into the g7, but they want it, and president trump did start reiterating publicly that he wants it to happen. the other g7 countries including the uk and canada promptly said they would veto any such thing. then in fairly quick order, german chancellor angela merkel said she wasn't interested in coming to the g7 in the u.s. in person this year, the g7 meeting that the u.s. is supposed to hofrt this year was quickly just scuttled yaultaltogether. so there will be no g7 meeting hosted by the you, not even on zoom. they're just not doing it. president trump wants russia in there and russia's not going to get in there, and there's not

going to be any g7. i will also just mention that president trump has unilaterally announced within the past week that he's taking thousands of u.s. troops out of germany. another inexplicable gift to russia, which wants that very badly. a gift to russia that was apparently announced by president trump without any consultation not only with germany or our other allies b you it was apparently announced by president trump without him consulting anyone in the pentagon or in the u.s. state department. he just announced he's going to do it. thousands of u.s. troops pulled out of germany. this comes as the president's loyalist attorney general has moved to drop charges against trump national security adviser mike flynn for pleading guilty to lying to the fbi about his communications with the russian government about sanctions against them for them interfering in the 2016 election. it comes as the president appears to be publicly promising a pardon or some other kind of intervention to save from prison one of his campaign advisers, who was convicted of multiple

felonies in conjunction with his efforts to help the dim sem nation of the information that russia stole in that election to try and influence the outcome. how democrats announced today that they will take whistle-blower testimony next week from a federal prosecutor who quit that case after the attorney general intervened to try to lighten that sentence for that trump adviser convicted in conjunction with the russia investigation. we are not a well-run country right now. in our disastrous and still cratering relationships with our allies, in our submarining of international institutions that we not only helped set up but that we have bolstered for decades because they're in our own interest as well as in the interest of world peace and stability. in our inexplicable and troubling relationships with our supposed adversaries. in our basic adherence to things like the appearance of the impartial rule of law, which is fundamental to our basic self-worth as a civilization.

in our botched, incoherent, fatally mismanaged response to the largest and deadliest public health disaster in a century, we are poorly run. it's bad. and of all people, robert gates' new book makes the case that actually, it's really bad. as he says, quote, despite or braggadocio, the overall trend for us in the global arena has been negative. he says, quote, how did our country go so quickly from unique global power to a country that is widely perceived as no longer willing to bear the costs or accept the responsibility of global leadership and is no longer even capable of governing itself effectively? yeah, how did we do that so quickly? former defense secretary robert gates joins us live next. don't bring that mess around here, evan! whoo! don't do it.

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at a time when we face unprecedented transition amidst two wars, i've asked secretary robert gates to continue as secretary of defense, and i'm pleased that he's accepted. two years ago he took over the pentagon at a difficult time. he restored accountability. he won the confidence of military commanders and the trust of our brave men and women in uniform as well as their families. >> i am deeply honored that the

president-elect has asked me to continue as secretary of defense. mindful that we are engaged in two wars and face other serious challenges at home and around the world. and with a profound sense of personal responsibility to and for our men and women in uniform and their families, i must do my duty as they do theirs. how could i do otherwise? >> that is tape from our country, from our nation's capital, from not that long ago, just over a decade ago, but in our current times, doesn't it feel like that's being broadcast from a different planet, right? december 2008, president-elect barack obama, vice president-elect joe biden. secretary of state nominee hillary clinton. robert gates, the actively serving defense secretary under outgoing republican president george w. bush being tapped to stay in the job. it was the first time in

american history that a new president had kept on the defense secretary from a predecessor of a different party. robert gates has had more than 50 years as a public servant in this country in the national security field. he served eight presidents during his career, including secretary of defense to two. he served under four different presidents in national security council roles. he was director of the cia. public servants like that who spend a career developing expertise in how the government works, who think of themselves as serving the office of the presidency as much as the person who happens to be holding it, those kind of people are completely absent from the upper levels of the current administration. some have tried to work for this president. it hasn't worked well for them. so when you pick up robert gates' new book, which is called "exercise of power" american failures, successes and a new power in the post-cold war world, about his time serving all those presidents, it can feel a little bit like robert gates is beaming in not just

from another time but from another planet, and i mean that in the best possible way because our planet right now is troubled. joining us now for the interview, i'm honored to say, is former defense secretary robert gates. his new book, as i mentioned, is called "exercise of power." it's an honor to have you. >> thanks for inviting me, rachel. >> you sort of mock yourself a little bit in the book for being a glass half empty kind of guy, for being a gloom and doomsayer. but the book, as constructive as it is, does take a pretty dark role of america's situation in the world. you essentially say that for 25 years, things have not been going our way and that there are serious signs of decline in terms of our influence in the world. what do you think are the most important ones? >> i think two things have happened that are major in terms of the way the rest of the world perceives us. first was our economic crisis in

2008-2009, which led the rest of the world to wonder whether our economic model actually worked and whether american capitalism was the path to follow. and then what we've seen over the past number of years, which is the complete paralysis of our political system, our inability to address any of the major problems facing our country, whether it's infrastructure or immigration or race or a host of other issues. and so you have the perception that both the economic and the political model are not working very well, and the rest of the world has noticed this, and frankly our adversaries, our rival in particular, china, are taking advantage of that. i would say that another piece of it obviously is the fact that the country has been at war for nearly 20 years, and it has

exhausted the patience of the american people with an international leadership role because it's been conflated with being the world police. so if we are going to try and be and must be -- have a leadership role internationally, it has to be in a different framework. >> one of the hallmarks of your time as secretary of defense was how outspoken you were about the -- i don't want to say overuse of the u.s. military, but essentially starting to look at the use of military force as a first resort rather than a last resort. you were very outspoken in your time as defense secretary and also in the book about the need to build up and resource and use other forms of american power, that the use of force should always be last and we should sharpen and build all of our other ways that we can preserve our influence. i've always that was a very interesting role that you play add as source of a public

intellectual and practitioner on that. i'm curious what you think about this strange new wrinkle we've just had in terms of the use of the american military where the president has talked about using active-duty u.s. troops in american streets. i know you've been critical of what happened in lafayette square, but i wonder if you could talk about why that's problematic, why it troubles you, why you think that would be a mistake. >> well, first of all, i think it's important to understand the difference between the national guard and the regular army. the regular army, the 82nd airborne, the 10th mountain division, these troops are trained primarily to do one thing, and that is to kill our enemies, just to state it as bluntly as it needs to be stated. the national guard, on the other hand, are people from the community. you saw some of the interviews of d.c. guardsmen expressing their concerns about what had

happened with the use of their units at lafayette square and so on. but those national guard troops take off those uniforms the next day and go to work in those towns, in those cities where they come from. and they're trained in crowd control, and they have great relationships often with law enforcement. and so i think one of the reasons you saw the strong reaction of many of the former military leaders was the notion of using the insurrection act, which allows the president to use regular military forces domestically, was it involved the use of the regular army in domestic affairs, and it compromised -- it had the danger of compromising the apolitical nature of our armed forces. our armed forces, rachel, are about the only institution left in the united states that have the respect of nearly all

americans, and our current and former leaders very concerned about kmiecompromising that. so that's why i think you got the strong reaction that you did from people like admiral mullen, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, general dempsey, another former chairman, and so on. >> one of the things you write about eloquently in the book is the utility, the short-term and long-term utility of having good communication skills as a country, about being able to tell our own story about being able to sort of participate in ideological combat, trying to win the argument around the world, particularly against rising authoritarianism. and you write with some regret about how some of those skills, some of those ways that we do that as a country have been defunded and weakened over time. because of that, i wanted to ask you about this recent controversy, very recent controversy involving voice of america. voice of america is an interesting part of the u.s.

sort of quiver. in that regard, they are editorially independent although they're part of the u.s. government. we've had the president install somebody who is perceived as an ideological loyalist there, and we had the director and assistant director resign suddenly and they're not being replaced, at least not yet. are you worried about voa? are you worried about those types of capacities of the u.s. government during the trump presidency? >> i'm worried that our entire strategic communications capability has been dramatically weakened since the end of the cold war. you know, in the late 1990s, because of budgetary and other reasons, the u.s. congress eliminated the united states information agency. this was an agency under ronald reagan and john f. kennedy and dwight eisenhower, under leaders like edward r. murrow and charlie wick in the reagan

administration had enormous influence and enormous reach around the world. and one of the reasons that voa was so important was that people around the world in eastern europe and in the soviet union, when they could get voa believed it gave them an honest and objective view of what was going on in the world. the voa would also report what was going on in the united states, and the truth is most presidents really got annoyed by what voa said about what was going on in the united states because it was often very revealing and very honest about problems we had here internally. but it had a great deal of credibility around the world, and there were other radios originally operated like c.i., like radio free europe, radio liberty and others. all of those have basically been dismantled, and so when you have a country like china that has a global communication strategy

and they've invested billions and billions of dollars in it, in acquiring networks and broadcasting to every country in the world and owning that works in various countries, we don't have anything comparable to that today. and in this rivalry we're going to have, we have with china going forward, we're going to need these kinds of tools because iffe we're lucky and wee smart, we can avoid a military cob infli conflict with china, but that means the rivalry will take place using the -- and strategic communications is one of the most important. the chinese have enormous assets in taking this on. we're very limited at this point, and that's why these controversies but also the lack of funding and frankly the lack of imagination and aggressiveness in using our strategic communications capabilities is so bothersome to me. i mean why haven't we been more aggressive in telling the

iranian people about the corruption of their leadership? why haven't we told the russians -- you know, the russians interfere with our politics all the time and try to divide us and stuff. why aren't we going into the russians, getting past their firewalls and talking about the corruption of putin and his henchmen? we just don't do that kind of thing, and frankly it's going to be very necessary going forward in the world. and we're at a disadvantage because we've basically eliminated or reduced dramatically the funding for almost all these non-military instruments of power. that's really what the book's about. >> it is what the book's about, and you speak about it from an incredibly authoritative position having been secretary of defense to two different presidents, talking about the erosion of non-military forms of power. it's just a unique and really public spirited perspective that i'm grateful to hear more about. former defense secretary robert gates, thank you so much for

taking time to be here. again, the book is called "exercise of power" american failures, successes, and a new path forward in the post-cold war world. good luck with it. thanks again for being here. come back anytime. >> thank you very much. >> all right. much more to get to tonight. stay with us. people are surprising themselves the moment they realize they can du more with less asthma. thanks to dupixent, the add-on treatment for specific types of moderate-to-severe asthma. dupixent isn't for sudden breathing problems. it can improve lung function for better breathing in as little as 2 weeks and help prevent severe asthma attacks. it's not a steroid but can help reduce or eliminate oral steroids. don't use if allergic to dupixent. serious allergic reactions can occur, including anaphylaxis, which is severe. tell your doctor right away about signs of inflamed blood vessels, such as rash, shortness of breath, chest pain, tingling or numbness in your limbs. tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection

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a little breaking news for you from montgomery, alabama. i'm just going to read you directly from this story in the montgomery advertiser that was just posted. the headline, montgomery city council votes down mask ordinance, sends doctors out in disgust. jackson hospital, which is in montgomery, alabama, jackson hospital will mondayologist cleared his throat as i explained the dire situation to its city council before they voted tonight on a mandatory mask ordinance. he said, quote, it's been a long day. i apologize. he said, quote, the units are full with critically ill covid patients. about 90% of them are black. he said hospitals are able to

manage for now but it is not sustainable. he said, quote, this mask slows that down. 95% protection from something as easy as cloth. more doctors followed him to the microphone describing the dead being carried out within 30 minutes of each other. and doctors being disturbed when people on the street ask them in the media is lying about the pandemic as part of a political ploy. after they spoke and before the council voted on a proposal to mandate mask wearing in public in montgomery, one councilman brantley lyons questioned whether masks and six-foot distancing really helps. they do, the doctors replied. lyons was unmoved. from the crowd, doctors called for him to visit the hospital sometime. instead the council killed the ordinance after it failed to pass in a 4-4 tie, mostly along racial lines. a trio of doctor who's had waited for hours to speak got up and left the chamber in disgust. unbelievable, the doctor said. william boyd, one of several people who spoke in favor of the

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. # liberty. liberty. ♪ . i think that we now have just widespread sustained community spread. there's so much infection out there, you could go anywhere and potentially be exposed. people ask about a second wave here, and i've been saying we never stopped having a first wave. >> that is dr. jeanne marrazzo, who is the director of the division of infectious diseases at the university of alabama at birmingham. the hospital there set a record this week for coronavirus cases, which is part of what appears to be a wide surge in alabama now. dr. jeanne marrazzo joins us live from alabama. doctor, i really appreciate you taking the time. thanks for being here. >> happy to be here, rachel. thanks for having me. >> when you talk about widespread, sustained community

spread, what should we understand from that? what i take from that is that the rise we're seeing in alabama case numbers shouldn't be seen as an artifact of just increased testing or something, that there is a real rise and that it can't be assigned to any one specific problem. >> yeah, exactly. a lot of times people make the case that the increased effort to test people is what's explaining the increased rate of detection. that can be true, and that's almost certainly contributing, but there are a couple of other metrics that's really important to follow. and one of the things i talked about yesterday that we're looking very carefully at is the average positivity over the course of the last week or the last two weeks. if you look at the average percent positive tests in the state of alabama over the last two weeks, it's been about 8%. and you can contrast that to someplace that is well past the peak of their epidemic like seattle, where it's now below

2%. in the last seven days, that percent prevalence or that percent positive rate is now up to 14.5%. so, yes, we're testing more. but we're also detecting more. the other thing that's important to know is that for the last week, pretty much every county in the state has reported new cases every day, which tells you something about how diffuse the infection is in the community, very much so. >> how are alabama hospitals doing in the face of this? i know that it's not, you know, uniformly happening the same in every corner of the state and alabama is a big place. but we spoke with the montgomery mayor who raised the alarm about hospital capacity in his state. i know that your facility, uab, is having its own strains right now. how do you think hospitals in the state are coping? >> i think that the hospitals in montgomery are really being challenged right now. their icus are smaller, considerably smaller than the icus here that we have at uab,

and they're being very much maxed out. their ventilators are being maxed out. even equally important, their staff. so i think people aren't paying attention enough to the fact that, you know, health care workforce is not an inexhaustible supply. people can ship ventilators in. you can try to ship people in. but the people who are working really, really hard to care for these patients are facing serious exhaustion not to mention the psychological stress of seeing patients die and having to deal with all the concerns about getting infected. here in birmingham, we're actually doing fine. we've actually had a very steady census of people with covid-19, between 40 and 65 since march. it feels like groundhog day here basically. you just get up, and you see the same thing. i wouldn't be surprised if we do see an increase if this trend continues and we start to see people being transferred from other parts of the state where they can't be adequately cared for in those hospitals that we're talking about.

>> dr. jeanne marrazzo, director of the division of infectious diseases. we've been watching alabama as closely as we can. please come back. we'd like to be apprised about how things go. good luck to you and your staff. >> thanks very much. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us. an entirely new feeling, the difference between excellence and mastery is all the difference in the world. the lexus es. a product of mastery. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. it won't wait for a convenient time. or for hospitals to get back to normal again. that's why, at cancer treatment centers of america, we aren't waiting. we're right here, still focused on the only thing we do, providing world-class cancer care, all under one roof. because cancer isn't just what we do, it's all we do. cancer treatment centers of america. call now for an appointment.

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mccusker is resigning from the department. you see the headline there. pentagon official who questioned ukraine aid freeze resigns. mccusker is a career civil servant. she saw her nomination for a senate confirmed position she saw her nomination withdrawn by the white house in march after emails she sent related to the ukraine fiasco, questioning the legality of holding up military aid to ukraine became public as part of president trump's impeachment trial. you might remember she sent the email that said to the trump white house official, "you can't be serious, i am speechless." that scuttled her nomination for a higher ranking job. now tonight she has resigned. her resignation is effective ten days from now. we don't know what is behind this, but we'll try to figure it out. that does it for us tonight. see you again tomorrow. now time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." good evening, lawrence. >> and you can't be serious, i'm speechless, is a reasonable response to so much of the trump