i'm yasmin vossoughian. "morning joe" starts right now. russia, china, someone else offers you information on an opponent, should you accept it or call the fbi? >> i think you do both. i want to hear it. it's not an interference. >> china should start an investigation into the bidens, because what happened to china is just about as bad as what happened with -- with ukraine. >> we didn't really need a tell-all book to tell us what the president has flatout admitted himself. but among the allegations made by former national security advisor john bolton in his new book about his time in the trump white house, bolton says president trump asked chinese president for re-election help. and theresa may, trump had no idea the uk was a nuclear power.

when it comes to the house impeachment inquiry, bolton says lawmakers should have investigated trump not just for pressuring ukraine but a variety of other troubling episodes as well. good morning. we have jonathan lemire with us, kasie hunt, chief white house correspondent peter baker, and historian, author, and professor at vanderbilt, university, john meacham is with us, he's an msnbc contributor. we have a lot ahead on the allegations in john bolton's book that news rooms obtained yesterday as the trump administration is seeking an emergency order to block the book's release. little late. we'll also discuss the felony

murder charge announced yesterday against former atlanta police officer who fatally shot rayshard brooks in a wendy's parking lot last friday. it's an incredible revelation of details, especially in the moments before rayshard brooks' death. where things stand on capitol hill. with police reform legislation as senate republicans yesterday unveiled their plan. but first let's dig a little deeper into one of bolton's biggest claims the allegation that the president asked china to help him win re-election. >> this is something that the president did in front of cameras. >> yep, as we opened. >> yeah, and we opened with it. and you'll remember that marco rubio said, donald trump is just joshing. >> not joshing. >> that was his way to get a laugh from people. >> nope.

>> which is sad and pathetic because he knew and other republicans knew -- other republicans knew that donald trump was asking the leader of china, people who consider us to be their enemies, to help him win the election in 2020. like he wanted russia and like he asked russia in press conferences to help him win the election in 2016. >> and ukraine. yes. >> and like he asked ukraine, of course, too and marco rubio and the other republicans just remained silent. i hope it's worth it. >> bolton writes that trump told xi jingping to purchase american agricultural products in order to win farm states. according to a copy of the book, bolton writes with the press gone, xi said this is the most important bilateral relationship

in the world. he said some figures were making erroneous judgments by calling for a new cold war, this time between china and the united states. whether xi meant to finger the democrats or some on of us sitting on the u.s. side of the table, i don't know. but trump immediately assumed xi meant the democrats. trump said there was a great hostility among the democrats. trump, bolton writes, then stunningly turn it had conversation to the u.s. presidential election, alluding to china's economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with xi to ensure he'd win. he stressed the importance of farmers and increased chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. >> willie, sadly -- >> he waits until now. >> -- none of these are surprising. they're really not. he asks the leader of china, he

asked the leader of communist china to help him get re-elected, that's not a surprise because we showed the clip up top. that's exactly what he did in front of the press. we also have a report that president xi talked about building concentration camps for 1 million people, 1 million muslims, donald trump through an interpreter, john bolton said donald trump told president xi sounds like a good idea to me, not a surprise, do anything for a trade deal. and besides, he's always looked up to autocrats and praised president xi in the past for seizing total power in china. and then, of course, there's the little part of the book where he talks about how he supported the execution of journalists. again, not a surprise. i think i said something on this

show a month or two ago that he'd jail us and jail other people and possibly execute us if he had the opportunity to do that. mika and i have been saying that for -- privately at least for some time. that's no surprise. this guy, the only thing that stops this guy from doing any of this, is the fact that we live in the united states of america and not communist china. so yes, these are revelations. it's good to see it put down on paper and put in context on when he supported the execution of journalists, when he supported concentration camps in china, when he was begging the leader of communist china to help him get re-elected. good to know but to me none of this is shocking that it came out of his mouth. >> i had the same thought, joe. then it made me think what does it say about this president and

this administration that it's not shocking that he casually talked about executing journalists or gave the green light to concentration camps in china when president xi brought it up or he encouraged president xi to help him meddle in the election, help him get re-elected by buying from farm states that the president needed to get re-elected. john bolton describes in the book an instance where president trump appears to ignore china's human rights abuses while encouraging construction of large scale camps to forcibly reeducate muslim minorities in china. bolton writes this, quote, at the opening dinner of the g-20 meeting in june of 2019, with only interpreters president, xi explained to trump why he was basically building concentration camps. according to our interpreter, trump said she should go ahead

with building the camps which he thought was the right thing to do. in another example of the book, bolton writes on the 30th anniversary of china's massacre of demonstrators in tiananmen square, trump refused to issue a white house statement. that was 15 years ago, he said inaccurately, who cares about it. i'm trying to make a deal. i don't want anything and that was that. peter baker we can tick through everything in the book, and we will throughout the course of the morning, the big question is how did the national security advisor stand by and watch all of this? did he raise these protests in real time and why did not he volunteer to testify once he'd been fired in september during the trial, during the hearings inside the house impeachment? obviously adam schiff came out yesterday expressing his frustration not hearing from

john bolton? so why not then and why now? is it as simple as he got a couple million for the book? >> it's a little more complicated for that. he did resist testifying during the house impeachment proceedings. he said he had the white house on the one side saying he shouldn't testifying with the house of representatives on the other saying he should and he would wait for a judge to tell him whether or not he had an obligation to testify over the objections of the president they serve. the house democrats chose not to pursue that kind of legal process because they wanted to move the process along faster. by the time it got to the senate, john bolton said i will testify if subpoenaed by that point the senate republicans voted against having john bolton or any other witnesses testify in the trial. now, what's interesting is would it have made a difference? remember, right before the senate voted, my colleagues at the times wrote that this book would, in fact, confirm the quid

pro quo at the heart of the impeachment case involving the ukraine. now we see it does. it says the president directly said he department want to give money for security to ukraine until they cooperated with him in incriminating democrats through these investigations. but even though we had reported that's what john bolton was saying in this book at the time, senate republicans went ahead and said we don't want to hear from him and acquitted the president. john bolton make it is case they were going to do this anyway regardless. his argument is what the democrats in the house should have done is widen their inquiry, rather than just narrow it on ukraine, there are other episodes he said should have been investigated. things he called a pattern, obstruction of justice as a way of life. >> jonathan lemire, talking about the white house's reaction to the book, trying to get the tooth paste back into the tube after it's all out. >> right.

seems a little too little too late. they did file an injunction, the department of justice did in court to halt the publication of this book. that comes after news rooms across the country have obtained a copy, although it's not officially on sale. the president argued this shouldn't be out there. he argued last night in an interview with sean hannity on fox news that it was illegal that john bolton wrote this book, suggesting the information inside of it was classified. no suggestion that that's the case, that bolton broke the law, any sort of classification law by printing this book. at the same time, the president seems to have the argument of saying it's classified but also none of it is true and sugge suggesting john bolton is a bad actor, sour grapes because the president fired him a year or so back. bolton suggests he resigned instead. the white house knew this was coming. at this point there certainly

doesn't seem -- they were able to delay the publication, it was slated for a few months ago. at this point the contents of the book are out and the question is what does it mean? it reaffirms the heart of the impeachment matter, the president was willing to deal with foreign countries to get electoral interference. he's not asking for dirt on a political opponent like he did with ukraine but he is asking for china's help to help him retain the red states, the sort of farm states that he feels he needs to win again in 2020, if china could buy soybeans and other agricultural products. certainly the claim about the concentration camps and giving his approval of those is striking. let's connect it, also, joe and mika, to our current crisis with the coronavirus pandemic. this shows again the president eager to turn a blind eye, according to bolton's book, to

human rights abuses because of a trade deal with china. same thing we saw at the beginning of the pandemic, department want to criticize china, president xi, we told report ers he didn't want to denounce was china was doing because of his re-election process. >> i said this book describes a president botch a pandemic, which appears have happened. bolton reportedly writes the president did not know that britain has nuclear weapons and asked if finland was part of russia. bolton also writes that president trump came closer to withdrawing the united states from nato than previously known. bolton describes a scene from trump's 2018 meeting with north korean leader, kim jong-un,

where secretary pompeo slipped a note to bolton about the president saying he's so full of blank. bolton details how the president's closest advisers had an unfavorable opinion about his abilities such as chief of staff john kelly who asked what if we have a real crisis like 9/11 with the way he makes decisions? this book illustrates potentially how bad, how overtly bad things were inside the white house. my question to you is, what is the duty of the mattises, the tillises or the boltons to do something or say something in real time? these aren't just nuances that might be troubling. this is unpatriotic behavior. these are actions that endanger our national security, that endanger the american people. >> when he's commander in chief and he's in charge of the

nuclear codes. he's got the nuclear codes. and he's in charge of the united states government's executive branch, they have a duty, immediately, to go to capitol hill, if they don't want to talk in the press, to testify behind closed doors, and to intel committees behind closed doors, to armed services committees, to foreign affairs committees, and let them know that the ship of state is in the hands of a mad man. or at least in the hands of an ignorant man who doesn't have the temperament or intellect to effectively run the country. james mattis didn't do that. rex tillerson didn't do that. john bolton most glareingly did not do that. >> until he could make money. >> right. until such time he could make

money. and so you do have a duty, you do have a responsibility, if you think, as john bolton believes clearly, that the president is unfit for office, that the president is so ignorant that he doesn't even know that finland is not a part of russia, if he's so ignorant that when he's in a meeting with theresa may, then the united kingdom's prime minister, somebody points out that britain is a nuclear power and he was shocked by that fact, then, yeah, john bolton has that responsibility. clear responsibility to the nation that he took an oath to, that he swore to protect and defend the constitution of the united states. he had that duty, he failed that duty bluntly, kelly failed that duty, mattis failed that duty, everybody that served with this president and left and remained silent, kept their peace, failed their duty. john meacham, hard to say where

to begin. i want to ask you if there's any parallel here with other presidents, obviously there aren't. when i was reading the excerpt about finland, the story from world war ii came to mind when stalin kept looking at a map of europe and talked about countries that russia wanted to attack and he kept asking whether holland -- or he kept talking about the germans are in holland right now, how can we remove them. the germans are in the netherlands. and none of stalin's aides dare to tell him hollands and the netherlands were the same place. in this case, donald trump ignorant of the fact that finland is its own country, that the united kingdom became a nuclear power decades ago, ignorant of so many other facts.

but john, more concerning his support for concentration camps, his verbal support of concentration camps, in support of a trade deal, him begging for help in front of cameras and off of cameras from communist chinese to get re-elected. we know he's done that, we know he did that with russia. . and, of course, the footnote that he said that journalists were scum and he thought they should be executed. this is -- this is no longer about the president. this is about where we are as a nation and this is just the information we know, we are in perilous, perilous waters. >> absolutely. i was thinking yesterday when i was reading peter's story and others in a way how quaint it is to think that donald t. reagan

in 1987, '88 shook the core of the american system by revealing that mrs. reagan used an astroll ger to adviser on mr. reagan's schedule. do you remember that? and that moment, during iran/contra, when howard baker, tennessee, came in as chief of staff, his folks looked at the 25th amendment about ronald reagan in 1987 and they got in and they saw president reagan, realized he was totally fine and moved on. but that's actually a small example of how grown ups should act in moments like this. they were worried that the president might not be all together there, and so they did some homework.

in all of these books, and peter, jonathan can correct me here, i don't think anybody has said that mike pence has ever in any way raised the possibility that, in fact, we might have to take steps here in the event of a genuine crisis. and you're right, we can't normalize this kind of revelation. we will, of course, because, you know, we've -- it's a pandemic, we're in this reckoning about structural racism, just on and on. but the president of the united states is soliciting the help of foreign powers, compromising the sovereignty of our elections. we knew that. the united states senate knew that and simply decided, because so many of their supporters not just support the incumbent, but strongly support the incumbent,

i think that's an important point and you know this, part of the reason, i think people need to really focus on this, part of the reason when people in the center say, why don't, you know, these seemingly sensible senators they say they're worried but don't do anything about it, the reason they don't do anything about it is not because of trump's broad supports in their states but because of the ferocity and devotion of an ever-shrinking demographic base of support for the president that is scary when they look at it on their polling sheets, but they're on the wrong side of history here. the bolton project gives us detail and it's the dump of, you know, the notes of a washington insider, who clearly always knew he would be doing what he's doing, and we're all playing our parts here.

we are enabling the hold back of information for a memoir right now. so we should acknowledge that. but the fact is, this is the narrative, this is the reality of our president. and i think we're, what, 142 days or so away from the election and i hope people can stay focused enough to realize that we need to make this an aberration not our reality. >> well, and, willie, again, the question is, i remember in law school my constitutional law professor read a case and goes, well, that settles it, the tenth amendment as drafted by our founders is officially dead. after this case. and he was a liberal, so i don't know that he saw that as a bad thing. but donald trump, if people look back at the actions of donald

trump, they can be excused for coming to the same conclusion as john meacham was saying about the 25th amendment. you have somebody who in 2016 solicited help from russia, jonathan lemire asked if he trusted a kgb agent or his own agencies more in helsinki. and donald trump sided with the ex-kgb officer and threw his own intel community under the bus on russian interference, when everyone knows that russia interfered in the 2016 election. you have a president denying a pandemic was coming, even as joe biden was warning in january it was coming. donald trump saying it was one person coming in from china. donald trump a month after joe biden's warning saying it was only 15 people coming from china. the next month saying it'll all

be gone soon. now we have almost 120,000 people death ded. then we have the president going on, in front of his white house doctors, saying let's try disinfectant, let's try sticking lights inside of people while this pandemic was on the way to killing three times as many americans -- it's hard to -- it's hard -- i -- i -- reading a biography about the battle of britain right now and the pain and the misery that the british people went through as hitler bombed their city almost every night, but we're in a pandemic that has killed three times as many people as died from hitler's bombing raids during the battle of britain, up to 120,000 we're going to go up to

200,000 in the middle of this crisis. he denied the crisis was here, denied it was coming, denies it will be here in the fall. and he engages in magical thinking that is untethered from reality. facebook, hello my friends at facebook, while facebook puts out conspiracy theories that doctors that i've spoken to over the past week have had to tell their patients is a conspiracy theory. is a lie about dr. fauci. is a lie about the coronavirus. is a lie about it being the same as the flu. these things circulate around. and grave damage is caused, and the president promotes this. and then, of course, you have a president who openly praises china, asks openly for china's help while marco rubio says he's

just joshing about asking a communist country to interfere in the elections. he's just joshing, isn't it funny? he's just that way. then we find out behind the scenes, donald trump gives his go ahead to the building of concentration camps for a million minorities in china. we find out that he also says, that journalists should be executed. so willie, i wonder, when mike pence writes his book and starts pitching his book six months from now, will mike pence lie and say, well, at this point i started thinking about the 25th amendment and i went and talked to a or talked to b? all of these, will kellyanne conway be the one who lies and says, yes, i was very concerned.

and i just -- i let people know that i was so concerned. kellyanne conway, the person who screamed at a cbs reporter early on, who had suggested the coronavirus was not contained, and she snapped at her saying, are you a doctor? are you a doctor? are you saying it's not contained? and here we are 120,000 deaths later, recognizing the cbs reporter was right, kellyanne conway was pushing fake news. and again, now maybe going up to 200,000. but will kellyanne conway be the one who says, yes, i was so concerned. i furiously worked around the white house corridors to try to get someone to push forward the 25th amendment to take this man out of office? willie, who's going to say it then? you know they're going to lie. they're all liars. you know they're going to lie?

who's going to say it? nobody in real time, i can tell you. nobody in real time. nobody, nobody will do it when we need it most. just like john bolton didn't do it when america needed to hear the truth the most. >> we're going to see a long list of books in the next few years of people whose claim will be that they were the ones -- they were the guardrails. they were the ones that kept the country together because they were on the inside and it was some patriotic duty they had to do that. how many pieces have we seen about jared and ivanka, they were the ones who tempered the president. another story today in the "new york times," anonymous sources saying they told the president you can't say when the looting starts, the shooting starts. i point out last night in an interview with fox news the president said that coronavirus

is, quote, fading away. he's looking past coronavirus. it's fading away, even as it spikes again across the country. kasie i want to go back to a point that john meacham was making about republicans, the people you cover on capitol hill. are they responding to this book and do they have any regrets about not pushing harder to get john bolton to testify, or at least to allow john bolton to testify? something he said he was willing to do during the senate impeachment trial? >> well, willie, we heard from senator lamar alexander who spoke to a reporter in the capitol hi capitol and said this changes nothing, i always thought president trump was guilty of doing -- of the quid pro quo in ukraine, this doesn't change that, i just didn't think it was an impeachable offense. so you're starting to see how they are positioning that. we've had others say, i didn't

read the book. i think you'll end up with a number of additional sound bites today as republicans walk by cameras and try to do the business they're doing on capitol hill. the really here -- you know, bolton's approach to this is very telling to me because he has tried very hard to protect himself as a conservative but never actually happening democrats. the book criticizes democrats, saying if the they had done the investigation differently they would have nailed it. if he talked to them they may have had the information. the republicans, i'll come and testify, the republicans decline to do that. so he set himself up to be anti-trump but never in favor of the democratic party. that's a careful needle to thread but that's kind of the overall politics of this, and the bargain that republicans in power have made is that well, all this stuff trump is doing might be norm breaking and

vaguely terrifying and all these things they say off the record, in private, but it's not as bad as it would be if a democrat were in the white house or in control of the senate because we have these other things we're worried about. that's the bargain we struck. i think john meacham is more eloquent than i in what this means in the context of history. but we have quite a body of evidence and set of actions, heading into november, that between what we know from the bolton book now and what we have learned all the way along about this president plus his response to the coronavirus and now grappling with systemic racism, the incident in lafayette square, the totally of all -- of the ways in which this president has broken through our norms as we head, you know, 140-some days to this election, it presents an extraordinarily stark choice to americans. >> i'm curious, kasie, when you're on the hill today whether

people like lamar alexander, they say this book doesn't change anything about impeachment, i wonder what lamar alexander and what susan collins and thom tillis and joni ernst, i wonder what their thoughts are about the president supporting the building of concentration camps for 1 million minorities. i wonder what lamar alexander if he'll be as glib about the president of the united states calling journalists that cover him scum and saying they should be executed. i wonder if susan collins and thom tillis and joni ernst and cory gardner and all those others who are up for election really want to go up to the election supporting a president

who says he wants to execute journalists and who is begging the communist chinese to help him get re-elected and who's talking about how the communist chinese, to their leader, should build concentration camps for 1 million minorities. >> joe, i mean, as i start to think about this and, you know, i try to come up with a simple straightforward question that goes to the heart of the matter and we're at the point now where that simple question is simply, can you vote for president trump in the fall? we have not seen that question put to all of those people you just listed, to all these people in seats that are potentially gonna switch from republican to democrat. mitt romney has said he's not going to vote for president trump. he won't say who he is going to vote for either. we know he wrote in his wife at one point. but that really i think is something where it presents the

choice in a stark and straightforward way. i think it also illustrates again the conundrum that republicans have been in as well as the decision they've made. which is to never show any cracks in solidarity with the president. and i think john me chum hit on, it's the ferocity of the supporters he controls or seems to control, that really can shift opinion in some of these states in a way that has them afraid they can't win if they don't do these things. it's a straightforward way to ask the question and, you know, based on what we know now, if you say yes, you're saying yes, to a lot of pretty potentially damning things. >> it's easy to say, mika, yes, i oppose the president's support of concentration camps for 1 million minorities in china. i oppose the president of the united states asking the leader

of the communist chinese government to help him get elected president of the united states. i oppose the president calling if for the execution of journalists who do not write favorable stories about him in the "new york times" or "the washington post" or "the wall street journal," those are all easy things to do. what's not easy, what's not easy, my former fellow republican friends, my poor, poor, fellow republican friends, it's going to be hard for you to go out and call a guy you've been hero worshipping for the past 30 years a liar. you see, that's the problem with john bolton. john wasn't hanging out at the young marxist league meeting houses in the late 1960s. he probably wasn't at woodstock. i doubt he was marching with green peace in the 1980s against ronald reagan's nuclear pro liv

ration there. pretty sure he wasn't chaining himself to the pentagon or trying to make it lev at a tima back in the early '70s. probably wasn't calling ronald reagan a fascist, wait i think he was for ronald reagan. he was a hawk against communist russia. he was a hawk against communist china. he was a hawk against iran. good luck saying today that suddenly john bolton has become a liar whose words mean nothing. you, not john bolton, will be the ones who are looking like fools, and people just won't believe you. that probably doesn't matter to you, just letting you know that ahead of time today. >> but, joe, i want to get to

peter baker. kasie is talking about the conundrum republicans are in, i put members of the cabinet as well, they're in a conundrum if you're asked to join a criminal enterprise, your answer is no. i don't understand standing by while this list of egregious risks to our country that this president was spewing out -- i don't think it's a conundrum. maybe i'm different. >> yes. it's not a conundrum. not for people who take their oath seriously it's not a conundrum. do you oppose the president saying he supported concentration camps for a million minorities? i oppose that. >> tell him. >> do you oppose the shooting of journalists who write articles unfavorable to donald trump? yes. these are not hard things it's not a conundrum, except for those that are currently in the republican party driving it

straight to the ground. >> peter baker there's reporting that maybe he doesn't want to win. people are trying to make sense of the president's behavior right now because it seems so self-destructive and that's before the revelations from this book even came out. >> and, peter, you know, we've been saying it here for a couple of years, we just find it hard to believe that this is a president who wants to get re-elected because he's never acted that way from his american carnage speech forward he's been playing for the 40% and only the 40%. and that's where he is right now. >> i think my colleagues are reporting this morning his own aides z, as you said, are watching this behavior and wondering how much is he trying to win versus sabotaging himself. he's not talking in public or private about what he wants to use another four years for.

a lot of the actions of the last, you know, weeks and months do not, you know, suggest he's trying to build more support but somebody, in fact, who is busy dividing the country further as general mattis said. this is a president who came into office with fewer popular votes than his opponent. he won the electoral college. with that minority of the popular vote he has not done anything in that time to try to expand the base. most presidents come in, try to expand the base, the number of people who support them, reach out to those who brought them to the dance in the fist place. this president has not done that. he's only spent time trying to hold the people together that were by his side in the beginning. now he's kind of doubled down on it. it may work again, you never know, but the key battleground states which were the critical

component of putting together an electoral college description despite losing the popular vote seem to be going the opposite direction now and he's not doing what his advisers think he ought to be doing in order to change that momentum. >> one of the advisers said a while back that the president fears losing far more than he loves winning. and just told me -- i don't believe it, but just -- an adviser close to him said, he may decide in august just to walk off the field. say you people don't deserve me. i gave you the greatest economy ever, i'm never going to get a fair shake from the press, i've given america more than enough i'm going home. i don't believe that will happen. i'm saying an adviser close to him, that you see in the paper whenever there's stories about donald trump not only told me that now but has said it for

some time, said he hates losing more than he likes winning. and he would not be shocked if this president in late august is down 10, 15 points to biden in swing states throws up his arms and says you people don't deserve me. peggy nunan had written about it a few weeks earlier that the president should get on tv say you don't deserve me, i gave you everything, i'm going home. >> it's hard to believe that. being a two-term president is something that is appealing to him. if you read through this "new york times" piece again anonymous people around the president, current and former staffers expressing concerns about his behavior. it suggests a strategy of self-sabotage. does he really want to win? but everything he has done is

exactly consistent with who he is. was anyone surprised he tweeted when the looting starts, the shooting starts, was anyone surprised he had lafayette square cleared? was anyone surprised he dabbled with the idea of deploying active duty military to the streets to clear out these demonstrations? i think it probably gives him more credit than he deserves in terms of a strategy than him being who he is. >> you're right, with few exceptions there's not much of a strategy with president trump, never has been. never been that three dimensional chess. it's all impulse, reacting. to pick up on the times report and what peter is saying, his advisers are worried, they know he's damaged right now, they know he's losing to joe biden, they know the events of lafayette square a couple weeks ago is resonating. as we reported yesterday, they're following internals, they fear it's going to have a

long-lasting effect like charlottesville or helsinki or the images of the children in the cages on the border of mexico. they do point to the battleground states where the deficits aren't so big but they're frustrated with him and he's frustrated with the state of the race because he's not able to have -- he told advisers, he can't get by the idea he's not able to have the campaign he wanted on the back of a strong economy going one on one with joe biden. we heard him say time and again, biden is hiding in his home in delaware although joe biden on the road yesterday in pennsylvania. he feels biden has gotten off unfairly here, avoided the camera, the spotlight isn't on him. and aides have been trying to get the president to deliver the attacks on biden and also focus on the economy, focus on trying to push the federal response to the still growing coronavirus

pandemic and feel he is flailing from one crisis to another, spending an extraordinary amount of time complaining about media coverage rather than a campaign message or as peter said any agenda for a second term. as a final note, there is some belief among his closest advisers that wibelieves that t tenor could change starting as soon as saturday because what happens saturday they say it can't be overstated how much he misses the campaign rallies and they're hopeful when it begins -- there's questions about how safe this one on saturday in tulsa, oklahoma is, but they're hopeful when he starts hitting the road again and he's headed to arizona next week, the fight will return and that's when the campaign begins in ernest. they're hoping he can change and focus more so than now. >> two new national polls have joe biden expanding his lead

over president trump, a new cnbc change research poll has biden up by 10 points, 51 to 41%. and the latest "reuters" poll shows biden with a 13 point advantage, 48 to 35%. joe biden is traup by 7 in flor, by 3 in pennsylvania, bi49 to 46. by 4 in wyoming, 48 to 44. and by two in north carolina, 47 to 45. i know we need to get to break, but another story that's just as big we've got to get to now. the developments out of atlanta, the now fired officer who shot and killed rayshard brooks in atlanta on friday night was charged yesterday with felony murder, along with ten other counts. and an average conference -- news conference district

attorney paul howard explained the extensive charges against garrett rolfe, which include five counts of aggravated assault. >> we also noted that officer rolfe was firing a taser at mr. brooks, atlanta's s.o.p. prohibit officers from firing tasers at someone running away. so the city of atlanta says you cannot even fire a taze erat someone running away. so you certainly can't fire a gun, a handgun at someone who is running away. >> the second officer present faces a charge of aggravated and three charges of violation of oath. brosnan faces 20 years if convicted.

rolfe faces life in prison or the dealt penalty. joining us is reverend al sharpton and holly harris. >> reverend, if any american has their head buried in the sand deep enough to believe that an incident like george floyd's or trayv trayvon's or eric garner's are isolated innocents and n isolated incidents and not part of a bigger problem let them look at what happened in the wendy's parking lot, let them read the details about what happened after this man was shot in the back as he lumbered away, a threat to no one. >> for two minutes and 12 seconds. >> and then let them look at the description of what happened then as they stood over his

dying body for 2 minutes and 12 seconds and one put his foot on the dying man's shoulder and the other kicked him. i know we're all talking about police reforms on capitol hill. we're talking about the things we can do to constrain bad cops. this is not just a cop problem, this is a culture problem. you can see it weather you're looking at a black man bird watching in central park, or you're looking at young black girls who are walking in front of their grandfather's house in wellington, florida. we have much deeper problems that can't just be fixed by a couple pieces of legislation in washington d.c. how do we do it? how do we get beyond this point? >> it is definitely a severe cultural problem and it's going to take a real shift to change

the cultural problems that are so embedded in the very fabric of the country. but you need real laws, enforceable laws to govern us through that transition. to protect people like brooks and like floyd, because in the interim, while we're dealing with how do we re-establish a culture of fairness and justice, how we train generations to come and this generation not to feel like this, you have people dying. we have to remember one week after the floyd funeral, we have a flpoliceman doing this where was never under thought as the prosecutor laid out, and he is oblivious to the fact that people were marching the night he shot brooks about criminal justice, it meant nothing to him. the only way to protect any of

us in those communities that have the disproportionate impact, you must have real laws, real enforcement and real legislators to understand that while we need to change the culture, we must protect the innocent. >> yesterday republican senators unveiled their bill for police reform. it differs in several ways from the democratic-led house bill proposed earlier this month. listen. >> i think we achieved some of the same ends by our approach, frankly, if you think about the inability to have any grants if your department has chokeholds, that frankly is by default a ban on chokeholds. there are things i believe the conference will not support. we don't make it about bipartisan or partisan politics. we make it about families of lost loved ones, restoring

trust, respecting officers. if we can put that on the table, not your shirts versus skins game we'll get to the finish line. >> that requires departments to keep and share disciplinary information on officers but does not create a national database for police officer complaints. it also leaves no knock warrants and qualified immunity touched. mitch mcconnell said he plans to bring the bill to the floor next week where it faces a show down with democrats. so at the end of the day when we put together the more detailed and expansive proposal with house democrats with what the republicans have put forward in the senate and the white house executive order. do we come out of this with real police reform? >> there's no question we're going to get there because the american people are demanding it. we worked on the first step act two years ago, yes, you know, upwards of 70% of the american

people wanted criminal justice reform. but they weren't voting on criminal justice reform. well, that's totally changed. the world has shifted under our feet and we're now chasing the movement. it's not going to be tenable for the house and the senate to retreat into their corners and not talk to one another. senator scott's bill is a baseline. the house bill, that is their ceiling and baseline for negotiations. so i'm heartened by what i'm hearing from people like congresswoman karen bass, who talks about the need for bipartisan and her willingness to work across the aisle talking to folks like doug collins, and this is already happening. i think there's going to be a lot of movement on places like demilitarization. nobody likes to see tanks in the streets during the protests, that's not deescalation, certainly a mechanism of investigation of individual rights of police misconduct. and you mentioned qualified

immunity. i saw senator brawn, a republican very bullish about qualified immunity which shields law enforcement from lawsuits. we saw him talking about the need to reform qualified immunity. there is a huge playing field for negotiations. i think we're going to get to a broad, bipartisan bill. >> so, reverend al, what have you seen in the republican bill that you like? where do you think the republicans and the democrats need to come together to compromise, to put a bill forward that actually would make a difference? that actually would bend history a bit more towards justice? >> i think the republican bill does clearly deal with the fact that you need to give incentives to local police discrickets and policing areas in order to get

their funds. clearly that is good. and it's a step away from the president and others denying not long ago there was a problem at all. where they must get to is there must be criminal penalties for crimes by police. it is not enough to say, i'm going to give you an incentive to stop chokeholds. you must say it is against the law. that's what various governors, like andrew cuomo in new york, has done, it's against the law. punishable by what happened in atlanta yesterday, you can be charged with a crime. unless we make police criminality a crime like every other crime, i don't think we're where we need to be. police cannot be above the law and republicans and democrats need to agree on that. >> reverend al and holly harris, thank you r both for being on this morning. coming up, former federal prosecutor, daniel goldman was the chief litigator for

democrats during trump's impeachment inquiry. he joins us ahead with what he thinks john bolton was willing to say on paper for money, but not in public. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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the moment has come to deal with the denial of the promise of this nation made to so many. because if it weren't clear before, it's clear now. this country wasn't built by wall street bankers and ceos, it was built by the great american middle class. we've come up with a new phrase for that, essential workers. we need to do more than praise them, we need to pay them. as president, it's my commitment to all of you to lead on these issues. and to listen. for that's what the presidency is. the duty to care.

to care for all of us, not just those who vote for us but all of us, this job is not about me, it's about you, it's about us. i'm joe biden and i approve this message. >> first look at the new ad from the biden campaign. it is a $15 million ad buy. the first ad buy of the general election. airing in six states that donald trump carried in 2016, pennsylvania, wisconsin, michigan, florida, arizona, north carolina. >> you'll notice, willie, what the biden campaign is doing is moving away from the donald trump is a bad man. donald trump is a liar, donald trump hangs out with porn stars. donald trump pays them off and violates this. donald trump steals money from that. donald trump says terrible things about women.

that's what the hillary clinton campaign team tried to do in 2016 and americans, at least enough to get him elected in the states where he got elected, said he's a bad man, maybe we need a bad man. even trump's people are putting out advertisements saying he's a bad guy, maybe you need a bad guy now, biden is bringing it home. biden is talking about jobs. biden is talking about health care. biden is talking about trump's tax cuts for billionaires. biden is talking about the millions and millions of people that donald trump has left behind. that seems to be a far more effective approach than saying what even trump's own people are saying, which is donald trump is a bad guy. >> i think most people would agree that we have established, as a nation, who donald trump is. and the biden campaign spent the last several months doing that,

establishing what trump is, why he's bad for the country according to the campaign and many voters and they're making that ad buy in those six states that are the whole ball game. we talk about the national bolling but the polls that mika shows are the stories. the stories in michigan, wisconsin, north carolina, pennsylvania, that's where the biden campaign is going to focus. i think the biden is speaking to something more visceral that has nothing to do with stances or candidates, which is do you want to do that for four more years. do you want to feel like we're in perpetual combat that every day is an airing of grievances and the politicians to those grievances or do you want to move forward and get things done? i to answer in november. >> but those ads what biden is

doing right now just shows such a stark contrast. jonathan lemire and kasie hunt are still with us. joining the conversation author and nbc news presidential historian, michael beschloss. former chief of staff at the cia and department of department of justice, jeremy bash. and former assistant united states attorney for the southern district of new york daniel goldman is with us, he served as majority council in the impeachment inquiry against donald trump. >> willy, i'm just wondering what room raider is going to do with daniel's. it appears to be a hurricane developing over his living room behind him. >> i was going to say, he's in our "morning joe" weather center with an update on the tropical storm goldman coming through. >> i'm confused. >> daniel, you can explain. >> is it a rock? >> it's ocean artwork.

>> an ocean? >> this quick conversation hazlett us know we need to fix his audio. as we do that, i'm going to say the justice department filed for a temporary restraining order yesterday to prevent the tuesday release of former national security advisor john bolton's memoir. according to the filing the administration said bolton failed to complete the prereview for classified information, arguing the book should not be released until the review is completed. but bolton submitted the book for review twice, in december and then after redactions when they claimed it still contained classified information. the justice department has a hearing on friday to try to stop the release, but it's out.

one of bolton's biggest claims from the book is the allegation that the president asked china to help him win re-election. bolton writes that trump told chinese president xi jingping in japan last year at the summit meeting to purchase american agricultural products in order to help him win farm states. according to a copy of the book obtained by nbc news, bolton writes with the press gone xi said this is the most important bilateral relationship in the world. he said that some unnamed political figures in the united states were making erroneous judgments by calling for a new cold war, this time between china and the u.s. whether xi meant to finger the democrats or some of us sitting on the u.s. side of the table, i don't know. but trump immediately assumed xi meant the democrats. trump said approveingly there was great hostility among the

democrats. bolton then writes trump stunningly turned the conversation to the coming u.s. presidential election, alluding to china's capability to affect the ongoing campaigns pleading with xi to ensure he'd win. he stressed the importance of farmers and increased chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. joe, think about our relationship with china now and all that has happened with the pandemic since this egregious situation that bolton claims he witnessed. >> not just claimed that he witnessed. we have evidence, we have the receipts. we have donald trump praising president xi in republican. we have donald trump talking about how much he likes him. we have donald trump praising the fact that he had consolidated power and the most powerful leader in china since

mau, bolton confirms that that donald trump the american president praised xi at a meeting saying he was the greatest chinese leader in history. but we also have the receipts on video where the president of the united states is asking china to help in the election, to help communist china, to have communist china help donald trump beat a domestic political opponent. >> how do you describe that act? what is that? >> you also have been, of course, have him doing that to ukraine's president. you also, of course, had him in 2016 looking straight at the camera and asking russia to hack into democratic emails, to hack into hillary clinton's emails. i suppose marco rubio could say he was just joshing like he said about china, but he wasn't because he said it later. except in 2016 donald trump

looked in the camera and asked russia for help in hacking hillary clinton's emails. that night the intel community tells us they went to work doing exactly that. so how do you put all of this into perspective? things, much of which we already knew but now we have it from a right wing aide that the conservatives have loved for decades, saying, donald trump was asking communist china's leader to help him get elected, donald trump was calling for the execution of american journalists, donald trump was approving of the building of concentration camps for 1 million minorities in china. how will you be writing about this five years from now, 15 years from now? >> well, it really depends on what happens this year. what you've seen is a guy who has authoritarian ambitions, who

has no respect for human rights, who is perfectly happy to compromise the security of all of us to try to get re-election. those are only the things that we 'seen him do in public and the things that john bolton knows about, imagine what we don't know about yet. the result is we have a couple of sanctions. there's a 25th amendment as you and mika were talking about earlier, that's toothless. impeachment did not work. the founders left us one alternative and that's an election this fall. you'll remember, joe and mika, from studying it, in 1946, there was a midterm election, the republicans were running against the democrats who had held the house and senate for 16 years, held the white house for 14 years, and it was just two words, had enough and if americans see the way that donald trump has behaved thus far, that's donald trump on good behavior, if he's in a second

term without the fear of being re-elected, much of what we're talking about this morning could seem like peanuts. daniel goldman, back to bolton's book, i think it affects you directly. i think bolton's accusation confirm house testimony with regard to ukraine. bolton writes i took trump's temperature on the ukraine security asis answer the, and he said he wasn't in favor of sending them anything until all the russia investigation materials related to clinton and biden have been turned over. bolton adds he and mark esper tried eight to ten times to get trump to release the aid. meanwhile the national security advisor had nothing but scorn for house democrats and the handling of the impeachment inquiry. claiming he committed what's

called impeachment malpractice by limiting their inquiry to the ukraine matter and moving too quickly for their own reasons. bolton points to other troubling episodes that democrats should have tied to trump, including his willingness to intervene in international investigations to curry favor with other countries such as turkey and china. daniel goldman, you were the lawyer, familiar face every day and the house intel committee during impeachment, what's your response to john bolton's accusation that you all committed, quote, impeachment malpractice. >> i think it's rich coming from john bolton because he refused to testify. we would have welcomed his testimony about the intervention into international criminal investigations that may or may not have brought in the investigation that we were under taking. but you raise, i think, the most important point which is that

john bolton confirmed our case, and he did it by citing conversations that he had directly with president trump, which as you may recall, willie, was kind of the last line of defense that republicans and the president put up, which was oh, well, he may have done this or you're only hearing this from second-hand sources, even though there was direct -- there was plenty of evidence of trump's direct direction, i should say, in the conduct. but that is what our case was. is that he was withholding the aid to help an ally in order to get re-elected and now we're seeing in bolton's -- in the reports about bolton's book that it was not only ukraine, that it may have also been china, who there's the famous video that we played a number of times during the senate trial where he went on the white house lawn and said, china, why don't you

investigate biden as well. in the meantime, he apparently was asking china to buy lots of products from the farmers because he needed the farmers' votes. this is a pattern of conduct that joe mentioned from the very beginning when he asked russia to intervene in 2016, he extorted ukraine. he's now trying to use his authority as the leader of the free world and the most powerful person in this country to help with his re-election, and it is exactly -- he is -- he believes he's the state. and what's in his personal interest is in the national interest. >> so daniel, as you say, when you read through this book, john bolton confirms chapter and verse the case you all made for impeachment. obviously his testimony would have been powerful coming from someone who served very recently alongside president trump. talk if you can about your efforts to get him to testify, it never came to a subpoena, i

think you thought that would have drawn out too long, perhaps forever. how hard did you get john bolton to testify and what was the response you got? >> we tried very hard. we recognized that john bolton was a central figure in the investigation that he would have had conversations with president trump that some of those people who worked for him did not have -- and those people who worked for him actually did risk a lot to come and testify, and they put themselves out on the line to ridicule scorn and potential retribution in order to come testify. john bolton was represented by the same lawyer as his deputy, who we did subpoena and who filed a lawsuit to ask a court to essentially intervene and determine whether or not he had to testify. i personally had conversations with john bolton's lawyer and he said that he would do the exact

same thing if we subpoenaed john bolton. that would have drawn out litigation, as we have seen in the don mcghan case, in other cases, for months and months and months. and remember, the conduct that we were talking about here is the president's efforts to cheat in the upcoming election this fall. we didn't have time to wait months and months and months to play out in the courts, we would have been past the election, it would have been irrelevant by the time we were finished. so we made the decision, chairman schiff did in particular, we were not going to subpoena bolton because it was just going to go to court and that was a waste of our time. >> so jeremy bash, let alone the fact that it appears john bolton let fiona hill and several other american patriots who testified before congress and put themselves out there, just let them hang on their own, which is just unbelievable to me. i just have to ask, if you

witness a president telling a leader that a prison camp is a good idea or if you witness a -- if you are in the room when a president asks a foreign leader to help him win the election, what is it that you are witnessing and what is your duty? is there a duty to do something? >> you're witnessing, mika, corruption and what you're witnessing is fundamental weakness. i think that's the headline out of this narrative from the bolton book, which is that trump is weak on china. trump prortrays himself as fighting china, as trying to have the back of the american worker. what i think this episode shows, because he's on hand and knee groveling to the chinese communist party saying please help me win re-election and i'm going to do a trade deal favorable to you so you do favors for me. it shows not that he's got the american worker's back but he's

a stabbing the american worker in the back. i think the core frauds at the center of the trump presidency, boll ton is illuminating. he's weak on china and he doesn't have the best interest of the american workers at heart. i think bolton's obligation is to say that. i think congress should now call john bolton to testify and congress should press this issue on oversight because this is an enduring threat to national security. >> jonathan lemire, i just -- i'm stuck on the part where he didn't do anything about this. he didn't say anything. he didn't perhaps even as joe pointed out at the top of the show, go to a congressional -- go to congress and -- i mean, is it treason, is it a criminal act to ask china to help you win the election because it certainly isn't the way the american system works.

and i know we should all be shocked and appalled and everyone is not, which is another troubling factor that this president has somehow desend desensitized the entire country to criminal, corrupt behavior. but for john bolton himself and for others in the room when this is happening, what is their duty to the american people to the country? >> mika, you made a really good point a minute ago, in terms of how john bolton, it's not just that he didn't testify, he let others do so, he let others like lieutenant colonel vindman and the like walk the plank, if you will and be subject to the public moments of scrutiny, lieutenant colonel vindman i bring him up because he know he faced threats to his life because of his testimony. while john bolton we're pouring over these revelations now, they do provide more insight into the presidency but he could have

done this months ago, he chose to do it this way in the form of a book. michael be michael loesch beschloss, do we know of any parallels of this? >> no. >> aides who have explosive information and do not come forward to do their duty for the american public, is there any sort of similarity, a similar moment you can draw from and tell us what should we be looking for now? >> nothing of this magnitude, john. you look at john dean, the most important witness against richard nixon during the senate hearings on water gate in 1973, this month in 1973, june, what if john dean had said somehow i'm not going to testify before congress, instead i'm going to write a book and sell it to you the american people in eight months from now and collect a million dollars. and the result would have been that we did not have that kind of firsthand testimony to richard nixon's potentially

felonies. the whole course of history would be different. so the question is, what kind of a person is john bolton who professes to be a patriot, yet sat on this for months, felt that donald trump was doing things that were very much damaging the interests of the united states and all of our children and yet let it go on and on until he could publish his book. >> it's kasie hunt, daniel goldman, what do democrats do now? i remember as i was covering this and while it was not that long ago, it fees like a million years ago considering what's happened since, but chairman schiff left open the possibility they may call john bolton in some fashion. he didn't slam all the doors shut on this. is there something they may do now that bolton is out doing television interviews and selling his book? is there a recourse for chairman

schiff? >> absolutely. i think there's a lot of oversight that still needs to be done, what does john bolton know about either the president or other people in the administration's efforts to intervene in criminal cases to trade favors? you know, our democracy is founded on the separation of powers and it's founded on oversight, part of the reason that we did not pursue these allegations that bolton is saying is one, bolton did not testify, and the lower level people who testified were really the ukraine experts, they would not have known necessarily about china or turkey or other areas of the world. and two is that the president ordered that there be no compliance with our document subpoenas. now in documents you're going to find a lot of information, whether it may be about ukraine

and may be also about other areas, but there can be no claim of executive privilege now this is public. there is really no legitimate claim of classification issues, and if there were the house intelligence committee can handle all of those. so there's no basis for bolton to refuse to testify now that all this is out there, and we need to know, the american public, congress, needs to understand whether our national security is being traded for personal favors for the president of the united states. >> and speaking of daniel goldman, thank you very much. jeremy bash, there's this part in the book where trump is obsessed with the secretary of state giving kim jong-un a cd, by the way, a cd, of "rocketman" of elton john's "rocketman" that he autographed, elton john

himself. this goes on for months that president trump wants mike pompeo to hand him this "rocketman" cd -- apparently i'm sorry trump had autographed the cd, which is even -- i don't know, in some ways even more disturbing, but what the heck is going on? our foreign policy is reduced to what? >> well, mika, i think it's going to be a long, long time before we have another president like this. the north korea example i think also show cases trump's essential weakness, groveling, his desire to have a bromance with a dictator and for all of this bogus outreach to north korea what have we gotten? nothing. north korea has advanced its nuclear program, icbm program, these week they blew up a

liaison office with south korea and we are on heightened alert on the korean peninsula. so cds, elton john, bromance, it got us precisely nothing. in fact, i think harmed american security over the long term. >> jeremy bash and michael beschloss thank you both. still ahead the debate over mandating face masks intensifies in some states across the south. former fda commissioner scott gottlieb joins us to weigh in on that. plus senator and foreign relations committee member chris murphy will be our guest on the allegations that president trump asked for china's help in winning re-election. "morning joe" is back in a moment. with spray mopping to lock away debris and absorb wet messes, all in one disposable pad. just vacuum, spray mop, and toss. the shark vacmop, a complete clean all in one pad.

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all right. back now to the major

developments out of atlanta where the now fired officer who shot and killed rayshard brooks in atlanta on friday was charged yesterday with felony murder along with ten other counts. at an afternoon news conference district attorney paul howard explained the extensive charges against garrett rolfe which include five counts of aggravated assault. >> we also noted that officer rolfe was firing a taser at mr. brooks, the city of atlanta's s.o.p. in fact, prohibit officers from firing tasers at som someone who is running away. so the city of atlanta says you cannot even fire a taser at someone who is running away. so you certainly can't fire a gun -- a handgun at someone who is running away. >> the second officer present, devon bros nan faces a charge.

>> joining us now maya wiley and dave aaronberg. maya, i was struck by the information revealed yesterday in that news conference that after brooks was shot twice in the back, there was a failure to give him medical assistance, along with, apparently, images on video footage of the officers kicking him and standing on his lifeless body. i cannot think of one thing that would explain that act, except hatred or racism or just a complete disregard for humanity.

>> all of the above, mika. all of the above. i think what was so important about the charges that we heard yesterday is a real signal to the people of atlanta, as well as the american public that law enforcement can't be lawless. and the charges, you know, including felony murder, mean to the -- we saw district attorney saying we are going to bring every count we possibly can against these police officers because they did grievous wrong. not just wrong. remember that in this -- in the conference what he also made clear was, that third shot -- remember, there were three shots, two of them hit mr. brooks in the back as he was running away after 40 minutes of essentially no violent behavior, except he didn't want to be arrested and wanted to get away. so the only danger to the public

in everything we've seen both in the videos and the evidence we've heard from the district attorney was that the police officers were the danger to the public because that third bullet actually hit a different car and one of the aggravated assault charges is for that third bullet that could have hit someone else. so when they discharge their weapon, when rolfe made a decision that i'm going to go after someone running away from me who i have already patted down and have not found any weapon on, who i've stopped because he was in a parked car where he shouldn't have been, and probably was drinking too much and needed to get home safely and not injure other people and then held to account for drinking. anyone should be held to account for drinking and driving, but that's a very different thing from needing to pull your gun and shoot someone in the back. so what we're hearing and seeing is, public safety means police

officers can't be above the law or none of us are safe. >> dave aaronburg, i want to understand what challenges lie ahead for prosecutors in this case and what's going to stand out when this goes to trial? the fact that he was shot in the back i think is absolutely very clear that he was running away and that probably will stand out, but what else? >> mika, it's hard to say at this point what the final charges will be because in georgia you have to take it to the grand jury to get an indictment. based on what we know right now, it seems this will be a tougher case for prosecutors than the george floyd case because in this case the victim had a taze erand was attempting to fire it at police. that's a reality the prosecutor gs are going to have to overcome because the jurors will want to know the level of danger of that

taser, that's the argument that the defense lawyers will make, this is a dangerous weapon. on the other hand the district attorney is going to point out that the two officers knew that the taser had been discharged twice and thus did not pose a threat to them. plus the officers had mr. brooks' identification and his car. so even if he got away, he wouldn't be able to go too far and they could always find him later yet officer rolfe still shot him twice in the back and instead of rendering medical assistance, gave him a kick to his lifeless body. you can rest assured that video of that kick will be shown during the prosecutor's closing arguments. >> maya, it's willie, you've seen a lot in your time as prosecutor including the way police officers are treated by pros curiosi prosecutors and the way the charges are considered and happenedled or not handled by

prosecutors. do you see a change, even in the last three to four weeks, in the way these officers are looking at these incidents of police shootings? >> so to be clear, willie, i was on the civil side of the u.s. attorney's office. but certainly in my role as chair of the new york city civilian oversight board and police misconduct, certainly have had a lot of contact with these issues. the point here that is so critically important is we have seen significantly more aggressive prosecution, and it's because of the massive outcry from the american public. that was already clear in the ahmaud arbery case where it had to go through three different prosecutors to get charges against the two men involved in killing ahmaud arbery. and that, again, was with video. that was, again, with a clear indication that there were real reasons to consider charges. and initially they considered

none. in fact, the day after ahmaud arbery was killed, prosecutors said there's nothing to see here. which is kind of astounding when you see that video. so if you think about it, what we are hearing from the public is having an impact on prosecutors in terms of the demand to stand up to lawless policing. what i will say is, it points to one of the reforms that we have not yet heard sufficiently about, and that legal circles we've been discussing for decades, which is whether or not you should have an independent set of prosecutors who do not have relationships with police departments, whose -- whose -- whose careers are fundamentally built on their success in their trials and in their cases, which requires a close relationship with police, that we have independent prosecutors who don't have that relationship so that they're making -- i'm not accusing prosecutors necessarily of bias, but certainly that

close relationship creates, you know, a sense of well, it's a hard job, well, you know, what is reasonable here for the police to do. because remember, excessive force is about whether the officer reasonably believed that there was a danger to him or herself or the public. and there is a lot of subjectivity in that and we should make that a lot less subjective. >> maya, she brings up such a break point -- great point, mika, because all the reforms she's talking about, it's critical that we understand and there's nothing nefarious about it that prosecutors have a close relationship with law enforcement officers and that has to be because they work together to help bring charges and help put people who deserve jail time in jail. it's really hard to move from being on the same team with somebody and a group of people

time after time after time to suddenly being the person who decides whether you bring charges -- >> right. >> -- against that law enforcement officer at the risk of offending not just the people that know that officer but say an entire police union and suddenly your job as a prosecutor is made more difficult. so maya brings up such a great point. the need for independent prosecutors to be able to look at these cases, judge them fairly and not have to worry about retribution down the line is one of the most important reforms as maya said we've been talking about for a long time, here on the show, and it's time that we move forward in the united states if we really want to get this issue taken care of? >> dave aornberg are you sensing any type of shift, even in the amount of time that it took, which i think was rather quick,

for charges to come against these cops in atlanta? >> mika, there's definitely been a sea change here. the george floyd case has changed everything. you saw the swiftness in which the district attorney filed these charges. he filed felony murder charge similar to the charge filed by the prosecutors in the george floyd case. he filed ten other counts you don't normally see in this type of case. this is a far cry from the walter scott case of 2015, you had an unarmed black man running away from a white police officer and shot and killed from behind. the prosecutors in south carolina filed one count of murder and the jury deadlocked. and the officer eventually did plead guilty to a felony charge. but i suspect if that happened in 2020 instead of 2015, you'd have a different result in the jury verdict and the charge by the prosecutors. but you don't have to look to 2015 to see the difference the george floyd case has made.

look at the ahmaud arbery case as maya said, two months ago where it took more than two months in the same state of georgia for prosecutors to file charges against the two vigilantes and you had a district attorney writing to the police chief saying do not charge these guys because they're protected under georgia law. so there has been a great change in opinion inside and outside the criminal justice system and that's because although justice is supposed to be blind, it is not deaf. >> maya wiley and dave aronberg, thank you both for being on the show this morning. we have breaking news, reading from the "new york times," robert m. mcfadden. gene kendy smith, sister of the kennedy clan as united states ambassador to ireland in the 1990s, helped pave the way for a formal agreement to end decades of violence in ireland died on wednesday in her home in

manhattan, she was 92. her death was confirmed by her daughter kim. ms. smith was the youngest and last surviving sibling in a family that embedded itself in the american consciousness and wrote itself into american history producing a president and senators and an unrivalled mystique fashioned out of political glory, a riz a ris ma great wealth. still ahead -- >> we're close to a vaccine, even without it. i'll tell you we're close to a vaccine and close to therapeutics. really good theory pat therapeu. i don't want to talk about that because it's going to fade away but we'll have a vaccine and

it's going to happen. >> good lord. >> he just keeps going. he can't stop himself. >> the president said again last night that coronavirus will fade away as cases are rising in several states across the south and he gets ready to hold a rally. >> it's the opposite of what dr. fauci is saying. dr. fauci saying yesterday we're not in a second wave. we're still in the first wave. >> you know who we could ask? >> who's that? >> former fda commissioner scott gottli gottlieb. he joins us next. we'll be right back. when you take align,

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joining us now former fda commissioner dr. scott gottlieb. joe we can maybe get a sense from him whether or not the coronavirus is fading away as the president predicts. >> thank you so much dr. got remember f -- dr. gottlieb. i want to discuss something that's concerning me we've heard about restaurants opening up and then having to go close down again because someone who works there has the coronavirus. are we looking at the possibility of business owners losing their jobs eventually because people won't take basic safety precautions and wear

masks? >> i think what we're looking at is the reality we're going to have rolling outbreaks. there's going to be parts of the country that get hot, there's infection, we have to take targeted mitigation steps and certainly in the states where you haven't seen much infection to date, i think there's more complacency and higher risk of spread, that's what's happening in the south, southwest, florida. those states during the first wave weren't hit as hard as the northeast. so when you look at the habits of people down in those parts of the country, you don't see mask wearing, people taking the same precautions because they haven't experienced the same level of death and disease from covid as parts in the northeast. go out in connecticut where i am, everyone is wearing a mask. so i think it's important that political leaders, governors start to talk about some of the common sense measures people can do every day to reduce the risk to the population and risk to yourself. >> how important -- i'm sorry to make you repeat this again but

in case somebody is watching and we're talking about the possibility of a second wave or continuing spikes in the first wave, how far will wearing a mask, like an n-95 mask go when a person goes to a restaurant or goes out shopping? how far will it go to stop the spread of this disease? so again, people can continue to shop, go out to restaurants, eat outside, and not worry about these businesses being closed down again? not worry about them contributing personally to the spread? >> right. well, uniform masking would go a long way. there's one study that shows if 60% of the people wore masks you would get the reproduction number under one, which means you would have a declining epidemic rather than expanding e epidemic which we have in this country. another study that came out

recently looked at the same question and found if you can get 50% of the people to wear effective masks you would get the reproduction number under one. most people can't get their hands on highly effective masks. but that's going to change. there are more n-95 masks in the system. consumers can purchase them. they're expensive but they're entering into the consumer sector. but even a level three mask is going to offer more protection than a cloth mask. certainly people at high risk, think of an older individual who might be going into a congregate setting because they have to, a visit to the doctor's office, i think we should be thinking about how to get those individuals n-95 masks to use, it would reduce their risk and the overall risk in the public. >> dr. gottlieb, it's willie geist. you said earlier this morning in

another interview that you're more concerned now than you were three weeks ago heading into the fall. what do you mean by that specifically? what are you looking at and where are your areas specifically of concern? >> well, we have well, we have persistent infection in this country. we're diagnosing 20,000 cases a day. if you figured probably one in eight to one in ten infections, that's about 150,000 infections a day the that are new infections each day. and the prevalence of covid right now and the general population is probably 1 in 200. 1 in 200 people have the infection right now. either coronavirus the infection or covid the disease. it's a lot of infection to be taken into the fall when we think there's going to be a resurgence because we're going to be bam in school, back in college campuses. when you look at what is happening in parts of florida, parts of texas, houston and the austin areas, you look at arizona, south carolina, those are outbreaks. there's no other way to phrase

them. and we're not really implementing the kind of tough measures, targeted measure r measures that could get those outbreaks under control yet. there's no reason to implement a population wide mitigation again. we're t we're not going shut things down. but that doesn't mean we can't take targetedmakers in places where it is spreading. so in texas, for example, 25% of all the hospitalizations are between the ages of 20 and 29. in some parts of texas around austin, more than half of the infections are under the age of 30. the governor said he thinks bars are congregate settings. you might target targeted actions again 24those establishments. you might say, well, you have to go back to 50% or 25% occupancy. we have to be willing to consider those kinds of targeted steps if we want to prevent

these outbreaks from happening. >> dr. gottleib, rallies, concerts where there are lots of people, but large groups in a room sitting next to each other or standing next to each other, is that safe? if you deem it not safe, what is the risk level? and when would it be okay to do such an event? >> it's hard to say what the risk level is. it's hard to quantify that. you think the prevalence is about 1 in 200. so you think any room with thousands of fekinfected people you can apply sa activities on what the likelihood is you're going to get a super spreading event. but certainly large gatherings are risky. large gatherings done indoors are riskier. large gatherings where people

are cheering or yelling is going to be higher risk. so you think of movie theaters and restaurants, as well. >> so, doctor, what is your read on the news out of britain that uk doctors believe a cheap steroid actually may be able to help those who are most seriously stricken with covid-19? >> it looks very encouraging. i mean, the top line from that study, a 30% reduction in death for people on ventilators and a 20% reduction in death for people who require oxygen in the hospital. there's two components to covid the disease. first there's where you get sick from the virus. that lasts about a week to ten days. then a certain set of people go on to develop an inflammatory phase of the infection. that's an immune response to the infection.

those are the people who get in trouble. it appears as if steroids treat that commune response, that inflammatory phase of the infection. and we've known things that can interfere with the immune response potentially can be infected. steroids can help suppress that immune response. we didn't think steroids would be effective in this setting because they typically don't work in settings of acute respiratory distress syndrome. but they seem to work based on this study. it was a rigorous study, 11,000 patients. so it seems to work. >> sounds like some good news. thank you so much, former fda commissioner dr. scott gottleib. we always appreciate you being here so much. have a good day. jonathan lamere, i keep thinking about your piece on lafayette square, about that being a defining moment of this trump presidency. and i've got to say, along with charlottesville, i think charlottesville and lafayette

square are going the be two of the defining moments of this presidency. talk about what you learned when you dug into that story a bit deeper. >> thanks, joe. yeah. lafayette square has entered the very short list of moments that seem enduring for this president. as we well know, he generates controversies and bad headlines multiple times a day. and seems to get past them relatively quickly. this book today from john bolton is another example. let's see how long this news cycle really lasts. the president has an uncanny ability to drive media coverage good or bad. and we know things like the russia probe or the ukraine impeachment inquiry seem to have a shelf live, but a few things are the exception. charlottesville when he defended very fine people on both sides of the clash, helsinki when he

stood up next to vladimir putin, the children in the cage at the mexican border which allowed democrats credit towards their 2018 midterm win. and people i've talked to around the president feel like this is one of those that's going to last. they're seeing the impact on the polls now. they're worried about the impact it will have going forward on the election. this is not an issue that is going away. we still see these protests in the streets. and yes, those around the president know lafayette square along with those others, the very short list, they're going to be in the first few paragraphs of the president's entry in the history books. still ahead, asking china for help getting re-elected. encouraging concentration camps and not knowing the uk was a nuclear power. a look at some of the most troubling allegations in john bolton's new book and why bolton never spoke out in realtime. plus, senator chris murphy joins our conversation. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. - [narrator] the shark vacmop combines powerful suction

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should they accept or should they call the fbi? >> i think maybe you do both. it's not an interference. they have information. >> china should start an investigation into the bidens. because what happened in china is just about as bad as what happened with ukraine.

>> we didn't really need a tell-all book to tell us that the president has national out admitted himself, but among the allegations made by former national security adviser john bolton in his new book about his time in the trump white house, bolton says, president trump asked chinese president xi jinping for re-election helps. he says in the 2018 meeting with then british prime minister theresa may, trump had no idea the uk was a nuclear power. and when it comes to the house impeachment inquiry, bolton says lawmakers should have investigated trump not just for pressuring ukraine, but for a variety of other troubling episodes, as well. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is thursday, june 18th. along with joe, willie and me, we have white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lamere. nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of the kc

d.c. casey hunt and historian author of soul of america from vanderbilt university, jon meacham is with us. he's an nbc news and msnbc contributor. let's dig deeper into one of bolton's biggest claims from the book, the allegation that the president asked china to help him win re-election. >> now, you will remember, mika, this is something the president actually did in front of cameras. >> yep. >> and we opened with it and you'll remember that marco rubio said donald trump is just joshing. >> nope, not joshing. >> that was his way to get a laugh from people. >> nope. >> which is sad and pathetic because he knew and other republicans knew, other republicans knew that donald trump was asking the leader of

china, people who consider us to be their enemies, to help him win the election in 2020 like he wanted russia and like he asked russia in press conferences to help him win the election in 2016 and like he asked ukraine, too, and marco rubio and the other republicans just remained silent. i hope it's worth it for them. >> bolton writes trump told xi jinping on the sidelines in japan last year to purchase american agricultural products in order to help him win farm states. according to a copy of the book obtained by nbc news, bolton writes, quote, with the press gone, she said this is the most important bilateral relationship in the world. he said some unnamed political figures in the united states were making erroneous judgments by calling for a new cold war. this time between china and the united states. whether xi meant to finger the

democrats or some of us sitting on the u.s. side of the table, i don't know, but trump immediately assumed xi meant the democrats. trump said approvingly that there was a great hostility among the democrats. trump, bolton writes, then stunningly turned the conversation to the coming u.s. presidential election, allude to go china's economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with xi to ensure he'd win. he stressed the importance of farmers and increased chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. >> so, willie, sadly -- >> he waits until now. >> sadly, none of these are surprising. i mean, they're really not. he asked the leader of communist china to help him get re-elected? that is not a surprise because we showed the clip up top. that's exactly what he did.

in front of the press. he -- we also have a report that president xi talked about building concentration camps for 1 million people, for 1 million muslims. donald trump, through an interpreter, john bolton said donald trump told president xi, it sounds like a good idea to me. not a surprise. he would do anything for a trade deal and, besides, he's always looked up to autocrats and praised president xi in the past for seizing total power in china. and then, of course, there's the little part of the book where he talks about how he supported the execution of journalists. again, not a surprise. i think i said something on this show a month or two ago that he would jail us and jail other people and possibly execute us if he had the opportunity to do

that. mika and i have been saying that privately at least for some time. that's no surprise. this guy, the only thing that stops this guy from doing anything of this is the fact that we live in the united states of america and not communist china. so, yes, these are revelations. it's good to see it put down in paper and put you on context on when he supported the execution of journalists, when he supported concentration camps in china, when he was begging the leader of communist china to help get him re-elected. good to know. but i must say, at least for me, none of this is particularly shocking that it came out of his mouth. >> i had the same thought, joe, and then it made me think what does it say about this president and this administration that it's not shocking to hear that he casually talked about executing journalists or that he sort of gave the green light to concentration camp necessary china when president xi brought it up or that he encouraged

president xi to help him meddle in the election, to help get him re-elected by buying products from farm says, soybeans and wheat from farm states that the president needed to get re-elected. on that question of human rights, bolton describes in the book an instance where president trump appears to ignore china's human rights abuses while encouraging the construction of large scale camps to forcibly reeducate muslim minorities inside china. according to a copy of the book object stained by nbc news, bolton writes this, quote, at the opening dinner of the osaka g20 meeting in june 2019 with only interpreters present, xi explained to trump why he was basically building kons trait tragz camps. bolton writes, trump said xi should go ahead and build the concentration camps which he thought was exactly the right thing to do. in another example according to the book published by "the wall

street journal," bolton writes, quote, on the 30th anniversary of the massacre of demonstrators in tiananmen square, president trump refused to issue a white house statement. that was 15 years ago, he said inaccurately. when cares about it. i'm trying to make a deal. i don't want anything and that was that. so peter baker, we can tick through all of this in this book and we will over the course of the morning. the big question many people in this country have is how did the national security adviser stand by and watch all of this? did he raise these protests in realtime? and why did not he volunteer to testify once he had been fired in september during the trial, during the hearings inside the house impeachment? obviously, adam schiff came out yesterday expressing his own frustration with not hearing from john bolton. so why not and why not then? is it as pure and simple as you got a couple million buck toes write a book and you wanted to hold the information for that? >> it's more complicated than

that and certainly a lot of people will see it that way. he did resist testifying during the house impeachment proceedings. he said he had a white house on one side saying he shouldn't testify a house of representatives on the other said he should and he would wait for a judge to tell people like him whether or not he had a right to testify over the administration they served. by the time it got to the senate, john bolton voluntarily said, hey, i will testify if subpoenaed. by that point, the senate republicans went against having john bolton or any other witnesses testify in the trial. what's interesting is would it have made a difference? right before the senate voted, my colleagues at the time wrote that this book would, in fact, confirm the quid pro quo at the heart of the impeachment case involving ukraine. in fact, as we see now with the book, it does. it says the president directly said they didn't want to give money for security to ukraine

until they cooperated with him in incriminating democrats through these investigations. but even though we had reported that that is what john bolton was saying in this book at the time, snaet republicans went ahead anyway and said we don't want to hear from him and they went ahead and acquitted the president. so john bolton makes the point that they were going to do this anyway, regardless. and his argument is what the democrats should have done was widen their inquiry. rather than narrow it on ukraine, there are a lot of other episodes, he says, should have been investigated as possible impeachment offenses involving the president, things that he called a pattern of obstruction of justice as a way of hooif. > life. still ahead, president trump struggled with the concept of the nuclear try yad. according to bolton's book, he was still chewless about the issue, next on "morning joe." rap combines powerful suction with spray mopping to lock away debris

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bottomon reportedly writes that the president did not know britain has nuclear weapons. and even asked if finland was a part of russia. bolton also writes that president trump came closer to withdrawing the united states from nato that's previously known. bolton describes the scene from trump's 2018 meeting with north korean leader kim jong-un where secretary pompeo slipped a note to bolton about the president which said he is so full of blank. bolton details how even the president's closest advisers had an unfavorable opinion about his abilities such as chief of staff john kelly who openly asked about trump, quote, what if we have a real crisis like 9/11? the way he makes decisions.

this book illustrates how overtly bad things were inside the white house. and my question to you is, what is the duty of the tillersons and the boltons to do something in realtime or to say something in realtime? these aren't little nuances that might be troubling. this is unpatriotic behavior. these are actions that endanger our national security, that endanger the american people. >> when he's commander in chief and he's in charge of the nuclear codes and he's in charge of the united states government's executive branch, they have a duty, immediately, to go to capitol hill, if they don't want to talk in the press, to testify behind closed doors, to armed services mt.s, to

foreign affairs committees and let them know the ship of state is in the hands of a madman or at least in the hands of an ignorant man who doesn't have the temperament or the intellect to effectively run the country. james mattis didn't do that. john bolton didn't do that until such time he could make money. and so you do have a duty and a responsibility. if you think, as john bolton believes, clearly, that the president is unfit for office, the president is so ignorant that he doesn't know finland is not a part of russia, if he's so ignorant that when he's in a

meeting with theresa may, john bolton has a clearly responsibility to the nation that he took an oath to to protect and defend the united states. he failed that duty. kelly failed that duty. mattis failed that duty. everybody that has served with this president and left and remained silenced kept their peace from their duty. jon meacham, hard to say where to begin. i won't ask you if there is any parallel here with other american presidents. obviously, there aren't. the story from world war ii came to mind when stalking about stalin looking at a map and he kept asking whether holland -- or he kept talking about the

germans are in holland right now. how can we remove them. the germans are in the netherlands. after holland, we should go to the netherlands. and none of stalin's aides dared tell him holland and the netherlands were in the same place. in this case, donald trump ignorant of the fact that finland is its own country, ignorant of the fact that the united kingdom became a nuclear power decades ago. but, john, more concerning is his support for concentration camps, his verbal support of concentration camps in support of a trade deal, him begging for help he on camera and off

camera. and if footnote that he said journalists are scum. this is a confirmation of what we know, we are in perilous waters. >> don reagan shook people to the core when he advised that used an astrologier. what does joan say. that moment led when howard fwaker of tennessee came in as chief of staff, his folks looked

at the 25th amendment about ronald reagan. they got in, saw president reagan and saw he was totally fine and moved on. but that is a small example of how grownups should act in moments like this. >> coming up, republicans often said i haven't seen it when they talk about the president's tweets. they say the same thing about john bolton's new book. how about no

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kasie, i want to go back to a point jon meacham was making about republicans, the people you cover on capitol hill. are they responding to this book and do they have any regrets about not pushing harder to get john bolton to testify or at least to allow john bolton to testify, something he said he was willing to do during the senate impeachment trial? >> well, we heard from senator lamar alexander and he said essentially this changes nothing. he said i always thought president trump was guilty of doing what happened quarterback of the quid pro quo in ukraine. this doesn't change that. i just didn't think it was an

impeachable offense. so you're starting to see how they're positioning that. we've had others say i didn't read the book. i think you're going to end up with a number of additional sound bites today as republicans walk by cameras and try to do the business they're doing on capitol hill. the reality here, you know, and bolton's approach to this is very telling to me because he has tried very hard to protect himself as a conservative by never actually helping democrats. the book criticizes democrats saying, well, if they had done this investigation differently, maybe they would have actually nailed it. if he had talked to them, perhaps they would have been that information. and then he says, republicans, i'll come and testify. so he set himself up to be anti-pro. that's a very careful needle to threat but, you know, that's kind of the overall politics of this. so the bargain they essentially

made is all the stuff trump is doing might be norm breaking and vaguely terrifying and all these things they stay off the record and private, but it's still not as bad as it would be if the democrats were in control of the house or the senate because we have these other things that they're worried about. that is the bargain that they have struck. jon meacham is much more eloquent than i in what this means in the context of mother. we certainly have quite a body of evidence and actions heading into november between what the bolton book now and what we have learned all along about this president plus his response to the coronavirus and now grappling with systemic racism. the incident in lafayette square. the totality of all -- of the ways in which this president has broken through our norms as we head, you know, 140 some days from this election. it presents an extraordinarily

stark choice to americans. >> i'm curious, kasie, when you're on the hill today, they say this book doesn't change anything about impeachment. i wonder viola march alexander and what susan collins and tom tillis and joni ernst and martha mcsally and the republican from montana running against steve bullock, i wonder what their thoughts are with the president supporting the building of concentration camps for 1 million minorities? i wonder viola march alexander, if he will be as glib about the president of the united states recalling journalists that call him scum and saying that they should be executed. i wonder if susan collins and tom tillis and joni ernst and corey gardner and all those others up for election really

want to go up to the election support ago president who says he wants to execute journalists and who is begging the communist chinese to help him get re-elected and who is talking about how the communist chinese, to their leader, should build concentration camps for 1 million minorities. >> joe, as i start to think about this and i try to come up with a simple, straightforward question that goes to the heart of the matter, we're at the point now where that question is simply can you vote for president trump in the fall? and we have not seen that question put to all of these people that you just listed, to all of these people in seats that are potentially going to switch from republican to democrat. you've seen a few people, mitt romney said he won't vote for president trump. he won't say he is going to vote for, either. we know he wrote in his wife at

one point. but that really is something where it presents the choice in a stark and straightforward way. and i think it illustrates again both the conundrum republicans have been in as well as the decision that they've made, which is to never show any cracks in solidarity with this president. and, again, i think jon meacham hit on it's the ferocity of those supporters that he controls or seems to control that can really shift opinion in some of these states in a way that has them afraid that they can't win if they don't do these things. so it's a very straightforward way to ask the question and, you know, based on what we know now, if you say yes, you're saying yes to a lot of pretty potentially damning things. coming up, our next guest asks on a scale of one to ten, how messed up is the trump administration's foreign policy? the answer, 2,000.

senator chris murphy reacts to the bolton book, next on "morning joe." at t-mobile, you don't have to choose between a great network and the best prices. we give you both. switch your family from at&t or verizon to t-mobile and you will save up to 50% off your current service

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welcome back to "morning joe." a number of films and television shows that touch on race have seen a big uptick on viewership since george floyd's death sparked civil unrest in our country. the netflix series "dear white people" has seen a 39% increase. justin, it's great to have you with us this morning. as i said, there's been a lot of this. the documentary "13th" has seen a big spike, kerry washington's show. what do you make of the uptick? i imagine it has to be bittersweet, but at least you have to be conflicted about it. a lot of people are seeing it, but they're seeing it for terrible reasons in this country. >> yeah. it's an odd feeling. it's like we've been speaking about these issues for so long. really, the beginning of my career is marked by finding a way to tell people about these issues and so there is a sense

of like, finally, people are paying attention and it also, you know, there's something nice about it as an artist, i've made something that can meet this moment. but as i said, the circumstances are devastating. >> so justin, for people who haven't seen the series, "dear white people," just lay it out a little bit. other people, if they're not part of this 329% netflix increase in viewership, they would be interested to check it out. >> yeah. come on in, the water is warm. the dear white people is not as aggressive as one might think. but it's basically about a group of black students who attend a mostly white college. one of them has a radio show where she calls out microaggressions. and the reaction to that show

"dear white people" is wind kind of what the series untangles. we follow these different black kids who sit at different intersections of gay and black or female and black or something else. and we kind of explore what that experience is in a comedic way. >> so i'm curious. first of all, i think it would be great if you could give us a few example ows of what microaggressions are and what impact they have on people and also with this jump in engagement, might there be an intunt opportunity? if so, what is it? >> to me, the opportunity of the show has always been to start a conversation. it's not about blaming or saying that one group of people is wrong or anything like that. the whole point of it is that these kids who are black and attend a school where everyone is very liberal and very white, what they're trying to say is they're having an experience that, you know, the majority of

this campus may not be considering. maybe it doesn't look like the racism that you learned about in history class, but we are experiencing racism and we can't sort of do anything about it by ourselves. we need some attention on these issues which is exactly what i think is kind of happening at the moment. and, you know, examples of microaggressions, it means anything from reminding people that it's not okay to touch my hair to pointing out the ways in which after tragic events like this, you know, virtual signaling, for instance, or, you know, being called multiple times to be asked if i'm okay, like just sort of explaining that some of these experiences are -- you know, you might be inadvertently affecting black folks in a negative way. >> so two questions again. what is the best reaction to a microaggression? especially if you feel the

person has a good heart, but is totally screwed up? that would be the first one. i'll let you answer that. >> well, i don't -- i don't know that there's such thing as a best reaction. i think people right now are making space to feel -- >> what is the most constructive way to communicate in the face of a microaggression? >> well, again, i think that at this time, because black folks are, for the really first time that i can think of, are really demanding space to have the reactions that we need to have. so i don't know. i mean, for me, for me, like, it's -- i -- i like to respond with compassion and i like to sort of meet people where they're at and, you know, that's the whole purpose of why i do what i do as an an artist. but if somebody has a maybe not to compassionate reaction, i

think right now that might be all right. >> so, justin, it's been interesting to hear people interpret through their own lenses what they're seeing in the streets over the last three weeks, what all this energy means, all this multi racial, multi generational energy means and whether or not it means that this time is different and the country really is changing this time. what do you see in all that passion and that energy in the streets? >> man, i see a lot of pent up expression. these are, again, things that i think playbook folks have been saying and you see people waking up to the fact that, wow, even though i thought i was one of the good ones, i was on the good side of this, i have to -- there are some areas of the black experience that have fallen into my blind spots. what we're seeing is the necessary outrage that has to come when a person realizes that. every black person, person of

color, marginalized person in this country at some point has to go through this cycle of outrage where we realize, oh, my god, this is really happening. this is baked into the system. white people don't necessarily have to have that moment. you can go through your life as an american citizen and never encounter that feeling. and right now, we're just feeling a surge of people encountering that feeling for the first time. and it's terrifying and bewildering, but also exciting because it does feel new. it does feel like maybe we can do something this timeab to do . >> we would like to have many more of these conversations. the creator of the netflix series "dear white people" justin simon. thank you so much for coming on this morning. >> thank you for having me. >> you're welcome. just ahead, we're going to speak to the author of a new essay in "the atlantic" magazine that president trump says powerfully expresses the hope, heart, grief and rage that are driving this moment of potential change.

back now to flits and the stunning revelation necessary john bolton's book. democratic senator chris murphy of connecticut. great to have you on the show. obviously, you know at this point some of the most egregious foreign policy revelations in bolton's book. i guess my question to you is if they are true, what was his duty to report this in some way as it was happening? >> everything in bolton's book is shocking and unsurprising. the president told us essentially from day one that he was going to use the power of his office to try to work with foreign powers, to gain political advantage. in one of his first interviews, he said if he was offered dirt on a political opponent from a foreign government, he didn't see any reason to tell anybody about that. of course, john bolton had an obligation to report this to

congress if what he's saying in his book is true, and i don't doubt it, that every single foreign policy decision the president was making was made with his re-election in mind, then that the absolutely impeachable and it would have put a lot of additional color and context around the specific allegations included in the impeachment charges. so it is a dereliction of duty that john bolton decided to make money off of what he knew rather than to try to save democracy. but it is just yet another reason why all of us need to work like heck over the next five months to make sure that we don't have four more years of this. >> so i'm not sort of -- there's two sets of people i'm concerned about right here, or three if you include the republicans in congress who seem to stand by and do nothing, most of them. but what about other cabinet members that are witnessing these things that have left this white house and said nothing?

and what about lieutenant colonel vinman and fee iona hil and others whose lives are in danger, who are being criticized and threatened, walking the plank while john bolton stays silent? >> there is no excuse for john bolton to not have testified. because there were all of these other heroic former trump officials who took the risk of testifying, who knew that they were, perhaps, going to get in trouble with the white house, who knew they might be divulging classified information but thought that it was so important, the salvation of the country, that they tell that story. now, let's be honest. had john bolton said what is in his book to the impeachment inquiry, it probably wouldn't have convinced any more republicans in the senate to vote to impeach because, you know, frankly, they haven't seem

to have raised any issues over the last 24 hours. but that doesn't mean that he still didn't have that obligation. and it sets, you know, a really terrible precedent whereby other administration officials, seeing how much money bolton is going to make on this book or maybe holding back and believing that if they just keep it quiet until they can get a book deal, they'll ultimately prosper and profit, the country will be weaker for the stories having been hidden from us. >> hey, senator, it's willie geist. good to have you on the show this morning. we've audible already been through impeachment as you said you would have liked to have had john bolton sit before you and testify, but he did not. any of these allegations in the book, are they worthy of another investigation of some time r kind? if the president was, in fact, reaching out to president xi and saying help me out with re-election, buy these products from these farmers so i can win

those states. is that ago interesting tale in a book or is there something more to be done here? >> it's absolutely worthy of an investigation. we're not going to go through another impeachment proceedings between now and the end of the year, but issuing subpoenas and demanding come before congress is i think critical. in this book, 24r8 be a host of things that should be subject to investigation. the idea that the president may have been manipulating investigations to favor certain dictators, the idea that he would have endorsed the camps pore the uighur people in china, the so the history books as an account as to how disastrous these last four years were so future presidents can not fall into this trap. this investigation isn't going to happen under mitch mcconnell.

and livingly what happened in these interactions with china. >> are there efforts being made in the house to investigate these matters? >> i don't know. i mean, obviously, we have our hands full right now. we've got to pass another relief bill for states that are literally going under with the giant costs of the covid response. we have to get a policing reform bill done and show the country that we can respond to this outpouring of demand for action so there isn't -- and let's be honest. every member of the house of representatives is running for re-election and we have a presidential campaign. there is not a lot of room to get this done.

to the extent the president will no longer be immune after he leaves office, some of these investigations may be important for future criminal proceedings. >> yeah. at the same time, the sorpt of overall desensitize information that even us in the news media has towards this, this hopelessness that nothing can be done because we have too much on our mate, the bullied cabinet members who truly took the trump oath and never spoke up along with many other things are exactly what madeleine albright talks about in her book and how this all happens. so having said that on my soap

box, exactly what kind of danger can you articulate for us? has this president put us in by interacting with foreign leaders this way? >> well, he's put the united states in serious danger. what we know is there are auto accurates around the world like the chinese who are developing a suite of tools that make it harder for democracies and make it easier for deck taters. and it's always been our belief that in order to protect our own democracy, we have to protect other democracies. that as autocracy spreads in other parts of the world, it will be a threat to our democracy. and by the president cozying up to these dictators, it does compromise our own. and, you know, china in the last few days has made it clear that they are going to root for four more years of donald trump and that's one of the primary reasons why. they see another four years of

president trump as an ability to spread their model of dictatorship, autocracy to the rest of the world. they see the next four years as a potential for democracy to become weaker around the world. inside us. what should good people do? try to manage in this administration and smooth out the rough edges or should they leave in protest? and i still am conflicted about that. i don't want every person of decency to leave because they may be able to stop some awful things from happening. when called upon congress to testify, they need to do that. that is one bottom line, and john bolton did not do that. >> all right, senator chris murphy, thank you very much. up next, so many voices are sounding off about rayshard brooks' death at the hands of an atlanta police officer. now we're hearing from brooks himself in comments he made months ago before his life so abruptly ended. keep it right here on "morning

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with a felony murder charge announced against the former atlanta police officer who shot rayshard brooks in a wendy's parking lot last friday, we're learning more about brooks himself. reconnect sat down with rayshard brooks in february of this year for an on-camera interview as part of a project looking for individuals on probation or parole to share stories of their encounters with the criminal justice system. in a write-up on "reconnect's" website, the company's founder and ceo describes how mr. brooks came to us with a smile that stretched from ear to ear jumping at the chance to tell us about his experience with the justice system. >> if you do some things that's wrong, you pay your debts to society. and that's the bottom line. i just feel like some of the

system could, you know, look at us as individuals. we do have lives, you know. it's just a mistake we made. and, you know, not just do us as if we are animals. it's caused an effect on our mental state. just being locked in a room for 23 hours a day or, you know, and it just hinders us in a lot of ways. >> let's bring in professor of african-american studies at princeton university. her recent piece for "the atlantic" magazine entitled "racism is terrible. blackness is not." it was heralded by president obama as a powerfully expressing the hope and heart and grief and rage that are driving this moment of potential change. thank you for being on.

>> thank you for having me. >> in light of your piece, i don't know if you were able to hear rayshard brooks' words there. >> i was. >> if so, what was your reaction to hearing him say what he said? >> you know, it's heartbreaking because you think, it's a life cut short that had this profound insight about the cruelty of american racism. the persistence of it. and the unwillingness to really realize the full humanity, which is really the point behind my piece is that even in moments where we are trying to address racism and racial inequality, oftentimes there isn't the reckoning with the fullness of our experiences, of our lives, of our joys, of our beauty. and that's part of the struggle of this transition moment and hopefully transformational moment.

>> hopefully. what do you think the opportunity is here now, today, and what are your fears? because i worry that it will -- the moment will pass by, but how do we make this become a moment that is pivotal in our history. >> sure. i mean, i think -- i keep thinking we have an appointment with history right now and we'll all have a particular calling to meet this moment of potential transition. this moment of reckoning. it will require us to be honest, to reject the desire for innocence. it will require us to be uncomfortable. all of the above. i will tell you, my worry is not simply about whether or not this will actually be a moment of change. there's so much potential. we can choose for it to be a moment of change. my worry is about how devastating it will be if it's

not. literally a 400-plus year struggle on these shores. an anguishing choreography of movement forward. and then being smacked down again, for lack of a better word, that there is a limit to what black americans can endure with so many generations of struggle. and so, you know, there's an imperative now. there's an absolute imperative now. and for me, that imperative requires, and i'll just repeat it again, a full recognition of black people in this country as flawed, as beautiful, as brilliant, as nuanced human beings as everyone else. and also as a presence in this country over the course of many generations that really testify to how much we don't see and that we need to see about what it means to create a just

society. >> professor perry, it's willie geist. great to have you on this morning. >> hi. >> in that essay, you recommended to everyone in "the atlantic." you write this. i want the world to recognize our suffering. but i do not want pity from a single soul. i wonder if you could elaborate on that. what did you mean? >> well, in the midst -- i talk about this in the essay of this moment. i and many of my friends and peers experienced people expressing sympathy but expressing sympathy that felt as though it was -- i'm so sorry that, it's so terrible to be black. and it was really important for me to say, no, in fact, there are these, you know -- there are ways in which it's terrifying, it's anguishing, but it's also magnificent and beautiful, and that's part of what makes the racism so insidious is that there is a destruction of life

that is abundant. and so i don't want the transformation or the reckoning to require me to be reduced to nothing, to require our lives to be reduced to nothing. i want the reckoning to be a realization of the fullness and beauty of our lives and embrace that. and actually learning from that. i think that all americans can learn from african-american struggle. >> and you write beautifully in this peace about showing solidarity with your african-american friend does not absolve all white people. it just means you have to be an ally going forward, as you write. i wonder what you think, professor, about what a good practical outcome of all of this would be. we talk sort of in a grand theoretical scale of what it means to be black in america. what has to change on the ground? what has to change on a practical level in this country out of this? >> i mean, i think the immediate

piece is that the killing needs to stop. i mean, it's just that simple. you know, and then we can go from this sort of disaster of mass incarceration and militarization of police. those are issues that need to be addressed that are directly related to, you know, the urgency of this moment. but i have also been saying repeatedly that every single industry has to do a form of accounting. that it is not enough to say black lives matter. you have to turn that statement into your institution, into your industry and say, where are the points of inequality. where are the points of unfairness. how can we take on this challenge seriously. and for that, you have to -- the institutions, the industries have to be vulnerable. people have to be willing to admit failure and wrongdoing over time. and willing to -- and us be

willing to reckon with the residual anger of so many generations of hurt, yeah. >> professor of african-american studies at princeton university, imani perry, thank you for being on. her essay for "the atlantic" is "racism is terrible. blackness is not." and that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's thursday, june 18th, and we begin with breaking news. the atlanta police union says officers are fed up. protesting new charges against the two men involved in the death of rayshard brooks. the police department said they had an unusually high number of officers suddenly decide not to show up for work last night. this after a felony murder charge was brought against the former atlanta police officer who shot