this sunday, pandemic and politics. with covid cases on the rise -- >> i think there's more complacency and there's a higher risk of spread. >> president trump holds an indoor rally in tulsa playing down the coronavirus threat. >> so i said to my people, slow the testing down, please. they test and they test. >> defends his record. >> i saved hundreds of thousands of lives. >> and blames protesters for the smaller than expected crowd. >> the unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments, our beautiful monuments. >> why experts fear last night's rally could become a super spreader event. my guest this morning acting homeland security secretary chad

wolf and infectious disease specialist dr. michael osterholm. >> john bolton's revenge, the former national security officer describes president trump as ignorant, obsessed with his re-election, and mocked by his cabinet. >> i don't think he's fit for office and i don't think thee has the competence to do the job. >> i'll talk to the top democrat on the house intelligence committee adam schiff. >> also, president trump fires a top federal prosecutor who has investigated several of the president's close allies. what's the real story behind the firing? joining me for insight and analysis are nbc news correspondent carol lee, republican strategist al cardenas and yamiche alcindor for "pbs news hour." welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history. this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning and a

happy father's day to all of the dads out there. presidential politics, demonstrations, and a partisan pandemic all came together last night in tulsa, oklahoma. president trump has refused to wear a mask and his supporters have followed suit dismissing mask wearing as some liberal virtue signaling and somehow is nothing more than signaling opposition to the president. last night a president frustrated by a virus that has kept him off the campaign trail finally gets to do what he loves best about his job, thrill an adoring crowd of loyal supporters though the crowd was much smaller than anticipated and plans for an overflow area were scrapped. he did it in a tulsa arena with mostly non-mask wearing partisans, this as experts fear the indoor rally could be a super spreader event. this as the united states, oklahoma and tulsa, specifically, are all seeing spikes in covid-19 cases. this as we're still experiencing a 9/11-like loss of life every four to five days. the rally came at the end of a

rough week for the president, sinking poll numbers, the john bolton book, two supreme court decisions that didn't go his way, all on top of swiftly changing public attitudes that have put mr. trump on the wrong side of the culture wars that he'sless leveraged in the past to his advantage. >> i saved hundreds of thousands of lives. we don't ever get even a mention. >> president trump at his first campaign rally since the pandemic began. >> when you do testing to that extent you're going to find more people. you're going to find more cases, so i said to my people, slow the testing down, please. >> with 26 states recording a 20% spike in new coronavirus cases over the last two weeks, oklahoma among them, the president went maskless, mocking covid-19 with racist language. >> i can name kung flu. >> insisting on the rally despite warnings from his own coronavirus task force.

>> i would get a chance i would get that virus, but i'm not going to get that virus. >> president trump spent nearly two hours on the attack. >> the unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments, our beautiful monuments. >> black lives matter! >> and blame protesters and the media for the smaller than expected crowd. the president is facing a handful of new polls that show him trailing joe biden substantially including a fox news poll where he's down by 12 points. and the rally caps a week where the president suffered a series of setbacks. the rollout of former national security adviser john bolton's new book. >> i don't think he's fit for office. i don't think he has the competence to carry out the job. there really isn't any guiding principle that i was able to discern, other than, what's good for donald trump's re-election. >> the president called the bolton book a compilation of lies and made-up stories and then insisted it is full of classified information. >> he should go to jail for that for many, many years. >> mr. bolton is the fourth top former administration official to question the

president's fitness for office. the president has called bolton a wacko, jim mattis overrate eo john kelly way over his head. >> why do you keep hiring people that you believe are wackos and liars? >> twin defeats on the supreme court on daca and protecting lgbtq employees from being fired because of their sexual orientation. mr. trump tweeted on thursday, do you get the impression that the supreme court doesn't like me? >> it's almost like we're a minority court. >> and the late-night friday firing of the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. jeffrey berman was investigating a number of the president's associates. >> that's all up to the attorney general. attorney general barr is working on that. that's his department, not my department. >> i'm going to talk to acting homeland security chad wolf and epidemiologist michael oster holm in just a moment. i want to bring in nbc justice correspondent pete williams to talk about the trump administration drama-filled firing of the top prosecutor for the southern district of new

york, jeffrey berman. so, pete, walk us through the last 48 hours where first he was i guess getting promoted to a new job in justice. it was supposedly a resignation and then he wouldn't go and then he was willing to go. how did we get to where we are today? >> our understanding is jay clayton, the s.e.c. chairman, raised his hand and said, i want that job. he played golf with the president a couple of weekends ago, he told barr about this. the president knew him, barr knew him, they said, fine. according to the people we've talked to barr then said to berman, hey, we want to move this guy in, would you like to be s.e.c. chairman or head of the civil rights division at justice? and berman said no. so friday night out of nowhere barr announced that the president would be nominating jay clayton for the job and berman would be stepping down. and berman shot back no, i'm not going anywhere, i was appointed by a court so i'll stay until the senate confirms my replacement. by saturday the president said, you're out. >> so, pete, obviously when you look at this over the last four

months the president seems to have gotten rid of inspectors general, folks investigating different things. there are many critics on capitol hill looking at this berman firing, wondering if it's about the rudy giuliani investigation or things like that, that it fits a pattern. any evidence that suggests that is part of this larger pattern? >> no evidence, chuck. it's the appearance that has concerned democrats so especially, because it was berman's office that handled the prosecution of michael cohen, the president's former lawyer, although berman was recused from that case and is now investigating rudy giuliani's practices and has prosecuted giuliani's former associates. but several people in the office have told us that they know of no imminent case. they don't think this was intended to derail anything, and it may, at the end of the day, simply be that the president and the attorney general wanted somebody that they liked better and knew better in that job. still, it's a bit odd for someone to say i'd like to take

a position that somebody else already has and at the end of the day who knows whether this is going to work because the republican and chairman of the judiciary committee, lindsey graham, has signaled he won't go ahead with a nomination unless new york's two democratic senators approve of it, and they both say they don't. >> pete williams, really appreciate you trying to make some sense out of what was a chaotic 48 hours for what is also known as the sovereign district of new york. pete, thanks very much. >> you bet. >> and joining me now is the acting secretary of homeland security chad wolf. secretary wolf, welcome to "meet the press" and a happy father's day, sir. >> great, thank you. >> want to start big picture here. here we are in june and there's been over 8 million confirmed cases of the virus around the globe and the united states accounts for just over 25% of all confirmed cases leading the globe, unfortunately, in that statistic. how did we find ourselves in that precarious situation? >> well, i think what we saw

early on in january and february is a virus that came to the u.s. we saw china not being very clear, not being up front about what they were seeing early on. we took a number of dramatic steps, the president did in limiting the spread and the seeding of that virus in the u.s., and what we've seen since then is a white house coronavirus task force working day and night to make sure we have the resources, the testing, the ppe, as well as the guidance to state, to local, to governors, to make sure we can open up this economy in a safe and reasonable way. i think that's what we're seeing. we're seeing a number of states throughout the country in different phases, from phase one to phase three trying to get this economy and trying to get the country back up and running and we're doing a great job at that. >> i -- why do you -- if this is what is considered a good job at this point, i mean, i say this -- other countries in europe have been able to flatten their curves and we have not. if anything, we're on the rise, and i know we're doing more testing, but i want to show you

these statistics right now, very troubling in the south. three states to show you, yes, testing is up 30% to 40%, but the positive case percentage is up in florida, 88%. in texas, 77%. oklahoma, 94%. we're in the midst of a spike. is there anything we could be doing now to basically bend this curve that we're not doing? >> well, again, the coronavirus task force has put out that guidance, has put out -- cdc has put out a number of things that states can continue to do in their various phases and we're seeing that from social distancing to the face coverings and everything in between. i think it is important when you talk about testing, we've tested over 25 million folks and we tested more than any other country, and we're logically going to see a number of cases positive over what we see in other countries. it's important to keep that in mind, but again, we're supporting and this is a state-led reopening. we're supporting that through

our medical professionals at hhs and cdc, making sure our state and local officials have all of the resources and the knowledge they need to open up in a safe manner. >> it looks as if, though, that what you guys have put out, the guidelines that you've put out and the guidelines that cdc has put out, even the president and his campaign aren't following these guidelines, holding an indoor rally. is it a surprise that the public is not following the guidelines as well as they should, given that the example from the top is not wearing a mask, holding an indoor rally against the recommendation of various public health officials? including people on the task force? >> i think i disagree with the premise of that question. i think what we saw, particularly in tulsa when you talk about the president's rally, is a state in a phase three reopening. so activities like this are allowed. again, when you talk about face masks or face coverings, hand sanitizer, temperature checks at such an event, these are all things that are in these guidelines, that are in that guidance we talked about.

i think it's also a personal choice on the face coverings and where you are within that phase. it is very specific to individual states and we'll continue to provide that resource and guidance making sure governors have all of the information that they need to make those decisions locally. >> it's been a couple of months since we've had a coronavirus task force public press briefing. the lack of constant public reminders of wearing face masks and social distancing, we're not seeing that right now. any reason? >> no. there's no reason. look, the coronavirus task force continues to meet. i know the press would like everyday press conferences, but the guidance is still out there and we're still holding calls with governors weekly. the vice president is as part of the lead of that task force, so there's a lot of the messaging that continues to go on both individually to states and governors and also to the american people. the american people know about the social distancing and they know about the face coverings and we'll continue to push that message.

>> are you concerned now that we're in an endemic where this virus, we'll live with it and we we're not going to be able to get our daily case load below 20,000, which we've yet to be able to do, i think? >> we have a lot of individuals continuing to work hard at therapeutics and vaccines and that's the end goal. we have hhs and their medical professionals and cdc and the nih and others looking for the therapeutics and vaccines. i think as we look towards the fall and the end of the calendar year, that's where we hope to be. we'll continue to push that while we also continue to do that social distancing, face coverings, and some of the everyday practices that we encourage all americans to do. i-switch is under dhs, an estimated 24,000 people right now detained. how are you handling the virus among those detained, and are you deporting people who test positive, or are you waiting until they test negative before you deport them?

>> as you indicated, i.c.e. holds a number of individuals waiting for the deportation. we've taken a number of steps and we've had cdc look at those facilities, we're adhering to cdc guidelines. and in almost all of the facilities we've reduced the intake to 70% so we can social distance in many places. we have voluntarily released 900 individuals that are in vulnerable populations or have underlying health conditions. and we're court ordered to release a number of other folks. we're taking a number of measures to make sure those facilities are as safe as possible. we're not going release criminals into american communities. we're going to make sure we do that in a safe and reasonable way. on the repatriation side, we are repatriating back to foreign countries and making sure that they are not symptomatic as we do that and we'll continue to do that and we're working closely with the northern triangle and others as we do that. >> you're not intentionally sending anybody back that tests positive? >> of course not.

what we know is this virus is difficult. you can test one day, asymptomatic one day, two days later you can be symptomatic, the viral loads pick that up. we're doing everything within the power to make sure the repatriation is safe and secure. we're communicating robustly with the foreign government and letting them know everything we're doing as we send their nationals back to them. >> i want to go to daca, those folks brought to this country as children by their parents. the president described the decision as saying, hey, he actually won. it just means they have to fix the paperwork. let me ask the question this way. for somebody that is participating in the daca program, how concerned should they be that they might be asked to leave the country in the next two years? >> what we know is the program is clearly unlawful. i would point you back to the supreme court decision. at no point in that decision did they say that the program was lawful. they simply didn't like the

rationale and the procedures that we used. i find that a little troubling. what we know is the obama administration created this program out of thin air. they haven't been held to task why they didn't put this out to public comment and notice. it's such a large decision and program, the american people needed to have comment into that. what we've seen from this administration, we take a very logical approach to winding this down over a six-month period, been very clear about that. and so we find ourselves where we're at today. the president's been very clear. we need to find a solution for this population, and we'll continue to look at that. we'll continue to look at the opinion that the court produced this week, making sure that we adhere to that, but we are going to end an unlawful program. as acting secretary of homeland security i don't have the luxury to ignore the law. the program's unlawful, we need to solve it. the president's begging congress, has been the last 2 1/2 years, to solve this program. we're willing to sit down at the table and negotiate with them.

>> so are you going to solve this administratively and follow sort of what the supreme court seemed to lay out about how you need to give more time in all of this, or will the -- does that mean the president has ruled out just ending this by executive order, which is another way he could have done it, he just chose not to? >> no, i think we'll continue to encourage congress to come to the table and find a solution for the population. the president has been clear about that over three and a half years. but at the same time, he's also directed the department of homeland security to look at that opinion, look at the rationale, look at what the court has asked us to do. that's what we're doing. i'm not going to get ahead in front of the president and he'll make that decision at the right time, but the department will be ready to make that call. >> all right. acting secretary chad wolf of the department of homeland security. i appreciate you coming on and sharing the administration's view. happy father's day. >> thank you. president trump's tulsa rally came one day after the united states recorded the most new cases of covid-19 since may 3rd, and at a point when

according to johns hopkins university the u.s. is doing a far worse job of controlling this pandemic than the european union is doing, basically similar size, if you will. look at that graph. joining me is dr. osterholm. infectious disease expert from the university of minnesota. welcome back to "meet the press." i'll begin with the same question i asked secretary wolf, how do you explain that the united states has 25% of the globe's cases and we're sadly number one with the rocket ship? >> first of all, good morning and happy father's day to you, chuck. >> happy father's day to you, sir. >> thank you. and at this point we don't really have a national plan that puts together what we're trying to do. we have 50 different states and the district of columbia, the territories all kind of with their own plan and you've seen in the past week how disjointed that is. what are we trying to do?

we are at 25% of the cases than we were at the very height of cases in early april, yet i don't see any kind of, a this is where we need to go, this is what we need to get there kind of effort. that's one of our challenges. >> is this a failure of testing and tracing? is that where this failure is? or this is just across the board? >> well, we have to understand that as i've said to you on multiple occasions, we're not driving this tiger, we're riding it. and while other areas are doing much better around the world and stopping it after a very difficult period of time with it, we haven't done that. and part of that is the fact that we just have not really, i think, gotten the message across to the public yet that this is a serious issue, and we can't shutdown our economy but we just can't say, we're done with it. this virus is operating under its own time and under its own rules and we are trying to act like somehow we can impose our will on this virus and that's what's happening.

other countries have been much more aware of the fact that the virus is going do what it's going do, and so you have to basically stay locked down. you have to limit transmission in areas that we're not doing. and that's what i think you're seeing right now is the increases in a number of states because everybody's back to a pre-pandemic mindset. >> basically, without a national structure here, if we let this be 50 flowers blooming on how to do this, we're never going to get control of this curve? >> well, we do have to allow for local decisions, meaning that, you know, in some cases -- it will be different in rural america in one area than another area. at the same time, what is our goal? to hear that we don't want to do testing is wrong. obviously, we should be testing as much as possible. second of all, once we have positive tests what are we doing to make sure additional transmission isn't occurring? how do we do contact tracing? you've heard a number of stories in the past week about some of the failures of contract tracing. we should learn from those.

what are we doing to improve upon it? right now we don't have even at a local level necessarily the kind of plans that say, this is what we're going to do to get shut down transmission over this period of time, and we need much more clarity in that way. it almost seems random. why are some areas doing better than others? we have to learn from those areas seeing fewer cases, why that's happening. >> you have said a second wave is inevitable. every pandemic, there's one, it's coming, this one is no different. given that we've not gotten through this first wave. we sort of, as some people have called it more endemic, if you will. are you concerned the second wave will be even worse than first anticipated? >> well, in early april our group put out a document that laid out different scenarios because we're dealing with the coronavirus, we don't know is that going to make it different than influenza virus, where you traditionally see that first wave, a period, a trough where

very few cases occur, then suddenly a flare-up of a second wave. i'm actually of the mind right now, i think this is more like a forest fire. i don't think that this is going to slow down. i'm not sure that the influenza analogy applies anymore. i think that wherever there's wood to burn, this fire's going to burn. and right now we have a lot of susceptible people. i think right now i don't see this slowing into the summer or into the fall. i don't think we're going to see one, two, three waves. i think we're just going to see one very, very difficult forest fire of cases. >> by the way, team sports, is that probably going to not happen? considering what we've already seen as they are trying to start up? >> you know, at this point it's going to be a challenge if you have teams that continue to have outbreaks of cases within their players. at some point we'll hopefully have a situation where we won't

have all that transmission. but i think it's going to be very, very difficult at this point to protect players, protect their staff, coaches, to protect the public. i think it's not going to be easy to do. >> it's looking more dire there. dr. michael osterholm with grim short-term news going forward. again, a happy father's day. i know you haven't seen your grandchildren. hopefully that will happen soon. thank you, sir. >> thank you. when we come back, john bolton's book and one of many democrats who are saying what took you so long? congressman adam schiff joins me next. lexus will welcome you back with exceptional offers on exceptional vehicles. get zero percent financing and make no payments for up to 90 days on all 2020 lexus models. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. ♪ ♪

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welcome back. john bolton has pulled off a trick that few others have accomplished in partisan washington, maybe jim comey being the other one. bolton has managed to unite republicans and democrats against him. republicans are angry over what bolton says about president trump in his new book. democrats are angry he didn't say it sooner, particularly during the house impeachment hearings. joining me now is the chairman of the house intelligence

committee, adam schiff, who oversaw the trump impeachment hearings. congressman schiff, welcome back to "meet the press." i want to start -- first of all, happy father's day. >> happy father's day to you and to my dad. thank you. >> excellent. let me start with what we saw over the last 48 hours with the southern district of new york. pete williams is reporting that they know of no motivation having to do with some other case, that this was simply the president wanting to do a favor for a golfing buddy who is currently at the s.e.c. do you accept that explanation? >> i can't accept that explanation given the pattern and practice of the president in seeking to use the justice system to reward friends, punish enemies, protect people he likes, and bill barr's willingness to carry that water for the president. also, if you look at berman's statement himself, berman apparently has the same skepticism. there's a reason why he included that passage in his statement

when he was saying, i'm not stepping down, that he wanted to ensure that these investigations continued or words along those lines. so berman clearly had a concern about why he was being pushed out. and given the firings of these inspector generals and given the way that barr has sought to intervene in cases to help out people like michael flynn or roger stone or seek punishment for people like michael cohen, then you really have to question what's really at the basis of this friday night attempted massacre and now completed one. >> do you want to see -- should we expect to see mr. berman in front of congress in the next week or two? >> i certainly hope that he will come and testify before congress, and i know chairman nadler intends to investigate this, and he should. it's -- you know, i think the most disastrous management of the justice department in modern

memory. and like so much of what we have seen in this administration, it doesn't come as a surprise anymore, but yet it's completely demoralizing to the people in the department and dangerous to the rule of law. >> have you read mr. bolton's book yet, congressman schiff? >> i have not. i've certainly read the excerpts that have been published in the newspaper thus far, and there's a tremendous amount to be disturbed about the substance of them. you know, i would put frankly, at the top of the list the fact that the president of the united states was willing to change tariffs on china if only china would help him get re-elected. of course, this is a perfect echo of his misconduct with ukraine. but more than that, we warned during the trial that you could only count on donald trump to do what's right for him, not what's right for the country. and john bolton says that is exactly this president's pattern and practice, that he didn't see a significant national foreign policy decision made on any

other basis than the president's personal and political re-election interest. and, of course, that's a tragic and dangerous situation for the whole country, when a president has that kind of myopic focus on what's right for him and is willing to sacrifice the national interest. >> i know that you wanted to see mr. bolton testify. you wanted to see him do it voluntarily. you also -- i remember you and i had a conversation before the impeachment trial began about the issue of bolton and why the house chose not to force the situation. because you thought it was better done in the senate. do you regret that decision now? should you have fought harder for bolton to testify before you voted on the articles? >> no. i think, indeed, our decision has been vindicated by the fact that we are still in court now over a year later trying to get mcgahn to testify. bolton said he would sue us if we subpoenaed him. we would still be trying to get john bolton's testimony today, and given that the president was

trying to cheat in the upcoming election, we couldn't afford to wait another year to get john bolton to testify. more than that, i think what we did is ratified from what we're hearing from the senators. we made the case when we were urging his testimony in the senate that the senators would one day have to explain why they didn't want to hear from him when they had the opportunity. they have now explained, those that haven't run away from the camera, have explained, trump is guilty. they found him guilty. the house proved him guilty, but they weren't prepared to do anything about it. and so we had the evidence to prove it, we did prove it, but nonetheless, what john bolton has demonstrated, and i think to the length and degree that he indicts donald trump, he also indicts himself for cowardice and for greed. there were people who did come forward. people like colonel vindman who fiona hill who risked their careers. and he lacked that basic courage and patriotism. it was only the greed that made him come forward in this book.

because remember, chuck, what his lawyer was saying at the time was that bolton might damage the presidency or he might violate his own oath and that's why he needed to go to court. but apparently those things have given way to a book deal. >> there is some damning allegations involving china which you brought up, but there's also things in there involving turkey, involving saudi arabia. these are a lot of things in the purview of the house intelligence committee. do you plan on getting ambassador bolton to testify soon and go under oath with these allegations? >> we haven't had a chance to read the book, as i mentioned, chuck. when we do, and we expect we will within the next 24 to 48 hours, like the rest of the country, we will look at what allegations, like those involve turkey and other countries, particularly involving china, need to be fleshed out and exposed to the light of day. then we'll make our decisions. but, you know, we do need, i

think, to expose thelength and breadth of this president's depravity and how much it is endangering the country. those facts will need to come out, and we're discussing with the speaker and my fellow chairs just how to do that. >> look, if you don't act now and you sort of wait to act and you wait to see what happens in november, is that too late? if you believe he's done impeachable acts with the chinese government, can you really wait until after the election to put bolton under oath, to start the process? >> i don't think we should wait if we conclude that there are important things that he says that need to be exposed to the public. the public needs to know exactly what they have in this president. a lot of it is not a surprise, but at the same time, exposure of this president's misconduct is the best way to protect the country. congress can take steps to protect the country. you know, look, those comments that the president made when only the interpreter and

president xi were in the room, blessing the concentration camps of the uighurs. it's exactly why we want to know what he said to putin when he's alone in the room with putin because he is dealing away our national security. he's dealing away the values of this country in secret in order to help himself. and that's just so destructive of everything that this country stands for. >> congressman adam schiff, i've got to leave it there. the chairman of the house intelligence committee. we'll be watching to see what you guys do next regarding mr. bolton. appreciate you coming on and sharing your views, and again, happy father's day. >> you, too. before we go to break, john bolton will be my guest right here next sunday on "meet the press." i hope you join us for what i hope will be a fascinating interview. when we come back, why does president trump wind up calling the many hires for top jobs wackos and liars? d shouting]

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welcome back. the panel is with us from their remote locations. nbc news correspondent carol lee. republican strategist al cardenas, and yamiche alcindor, white house correspondent for "pbs news hour." i want to start last night and what you are hearing this morning from the campaign. it seems to me that the turnout of that rally, the fact that they had no overflow, they didn't need it. they only had what looks like the estimate is less than 7,000

attended. in isolation you could chalk that up to the health. but when you combine it with everything else we've seen the last couple of weeks with his poll numbers, this is a troubling sign for the campaign that they have an enthusiasm issue? >> yeah, chuck, they've really raised expectations for this rally. they were saying they had over a million responses to requests for tickets to the rally. and we really wound up yesterday with something very similar to inauguration day. the crowd size was the issue. you saw the campaign spokesperson put out a statement saying this was a huge audience that watched the president's rally. that's very similar to what we heard on the president's inauguration day over crowd size. the message was very similar, very doomsday, very much saying, if you elect the democrats, if you elect joe biden, it's the liberal mob is going to take over. so the president had that kind of a message. this comes at a time when the

president can't really afford to lose any more support in the sense that the polls are against him and they're want getting any better, his internal polls, the public polls. he's got a pandemic, he's got an economic problem, he's got civil unrest across the country. this rally was a risk, a risk politically, a risk health wise. he had his task force numbers advising him against this, but he really wanted to go forward with this. a lot of the reason behind that is they feel this is their only play, that they have to get the president out there. whether or not that winds up being wise, being see in a couple of weeks. how the polls respond and how the pandemic responds. is there a big spread of coronavirus cases because of this? >> al cardenas, you grew up in a politics that always knew campaigns and in presidential races the more optimistic messenger usually wins and that's not the case in the trump era. but more importantly, can you

discern a re-election message that's forward looking at all out of the president right now? >> well, i think he's playing right into joe biden's hands. joe biden's campaign is based on the fact that he's going to be a healer. our country is divided. our country's feelings are too separate, too different, and we need to come together. so when the president speaks in a way that divides the country into two or more totally isolated, segregated pieces, it plays right into joe biden and his campaign. but the random thought about the rally was the fact that it was because the numbers were spreading in joe biden's favor, so i think the campaign got nervous and oversold the rally in order to compensate for this declining polling numbers, and the result was a disaster for them. and then also the era. i mean, without social media you couldn't have 800,000 people punk the campaign, getting

tickets, getting the campaign to give out bad information. so it was a confluence of panicking over the sliding numbers and the consequence of being punk'd or fooled by these people, and it was not a good night for the trump campaign last night. >> yamiche, i want to bring up john bolton here. there's a pattern in the criticism of john bolton to others that the president has criticized. he loves them when he hires these folks and hates them when they go out. >> just a brilliant, wonderful man. what's he done for me? how has he done in afghanistan? not too good. i like bolton, tough cookie, knows what he's talking about. he made some very big mistakes. john wasn't in line with what we were doing. i have tremendous respect for him. we were not really thinking the same. >> of course, yamiche, some of this is because these four gentlemen have put damning

things about his fitness for office. john bolton, stunningly uninformed. john kelly, we need to look harder at who we elect. jim mattis, three years without mature relationship. rex tillerson, someone who is undisciplined. you can chalk this up to inside the beltway elites, but you can't help but wonder if this is having an impact, this pile-on, questioning the president's leadership. >> i think what you saw last night and what you see going forward is a president who is playing defense, who is trying to really put out this message that he is a strong leader and he's someone who has the virus under control and someone who has his re-election under control. what we see in the john bolton book and it's a 500-page bombshell of detail after detail. john bolton's thesis is that the president is unfit to be president and that he is someone who tries to curry favor with strong men and authoritarian leaders, and who john bolton

says is ignorant of global affairs. and what makes his book so damning is what you laid out in that this is not happening in a vacuum. you think of general mattis saying he would ignore commands by president trump because he had a stream of consciousness with every meeting and that he was undisciplined. i was thinking of san fernando bob coker who talked about the fact that the white house was an adult day care and the president took issue with that. in john bolton's book, laying out there are adults around the president who are steering him sometimes well, and sometimes doing bad things because of their own self-interest. >> carol, i want to bring it back to the virus for a second because it sort of stung that chad wolf, and i understand in one way he's saying what he's supposed to say which is we've done a good job, but there is no acceptance of responsibility here of how we are the country that is leading in number of cases. it just, you know, we're the same size as the european union, if you will, and they've flattened this curve and we haven't. is there any concern in the

white house that they have just botched this completely? >> we know that there's concern among the president's political allies, even if the president doesn't admit it publicly, about how the president's handling of coronavirus will impact his re-election chances in november. and also not only that, but how the gamble that they're making on putting the president out there with the message that everything is fine, get back to normal, hold big rallies, gather around, that that's a real gamble for them too. specifically because they're not at the same time asking people to follow their own cdc guidelines. so the virus is a wild card and they know it. >> all right. let me pause it here. when we come back, there were events across the country this weekend marking june teeth, which celebrates the end of slavery in the united states. why the celebrations may be even bigger next year and beyond. that haunt me the most.

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welcome back. "data download" time. for many americans june 19th, juneteenth has long held a special meaning, but for others, especially many white americans, this was the year it was suddenly recognized everywhere. even so, momentum to recognize the holiday has been building for quite some time. first let's talk about what it is. juneteenth commemorates june 19th, 1865. it is the day union troops arrived in galveston, texas, to announce the civil war was over. the news hadn't reached galveston yet. and to inform people the emancipation proclamation had freed enslaved people

nationwide. texas made juneteenth an official holiday and 46 states and the district of columbia have joined and done the so. most states doing so since 2000. the only exceptions are north and south dakota and hawaii. in the last few years we've seen resolutions recognizing the holiday pass congress numerous exceptions north and south dakota and hawaii. talk in both chambers to make this a federal holiday. as we've seen with other cultural shifts, corporations are ahead of the policy makers. wide array of companies offered paid holidays this year. 47 states, congressional resolution, big moves and could see the entire country recognize what african-americans have known a long time, juneteenth is freedom for everyone, worthy of a national holiday. when we come back, did president trump just lose a big campaign weapon he was counting on? stick around.

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welcome back. let's turn a bit more directly to the campaign trail. and al, i want to play a snippet of what the trump campaign wants to make their negative -- their consistent attack ad message on joe biden. let me play a montage of various attack ads they've been running last couple of weeks.

>> joe biden, china's candidate. iran's candidate, and osama's candidate. joe biden won't stand up to china, he never has, he never will. [ laughter ] >> china, china, china, al. they want to make it about china. here's what john bolton wrote about one specific meeting between trump and xi. he then stunningly turned the conversation to the coming u.s. presidential election, alluding to china's economic capability to affect the campaign, pleading with xi to ensure he would win, stressed importance of farmers and chinese purchases of soybean and wheat. i would print the exact words but review process has suggested else-wise, unredacted notes say make sure i win. al, how much does this undercut

what the campaign thought would be effective against biden? >> first, i've known john bolton for decades and believe him. he may have many faults but he's a truth teller. i would take anything he says about china and the presidency as alarming. look, china right now is kind of trumping, pardon the pun on hong kong, invading the border with india, relations with china are horrible, information about china's intelligence breaches are also alarming. i don't know it's a good idea to harp on china, but i do know they expect joe biden to do so. this is a way to neutralize biden's campaign and talk about trump's record on china. i call it way to try to get even on china, don't see a plus one way or another with ads.

>> democrats are also going to try to make hay of china. i want to show this graphic of the matchup between biden and trump and how very slowly it's sort of been -- if you check day-to-day, presidential race doesn't change that much, until you look at three-month period, gone from about a three-point race a little before april 15th to now, close to double digits. got to be alarming for team trump, number is eroding faster than the biden number is growing. >> that's why you see the president feeling he had to go out on the campaign trail, reinvigorate his base and get those numbers higher up. will say he's not overly concerned about poll numbers and as we saw in 2016, lot of signs, people saying don't think about it too much. but spread is growing and joe

biden by staying at home mostly, select visits to places, he's got a strategy working for him. just talking to the biden campaign this morning, they told me they're rushing to make an ad out of president trump saying he's going to be slowing down coronavirus testing. white house says he was joking but he said it at rally. joe biden's campaign is saying let president keep doing things, not mention george floyd's name in 90-minute speech, his first on the campaign trail, if we continue to do that, not overthink or have the gas that joe biden has sometimes made. >> trump campaign is desperately trying to make hay that joe biden doesn't answer questions, campaign, do this, come on media, get him out there. reminds me of losing football team saying why don't they pass? why are they punting or running out the clock?

reason is they're winning. >> that's right. i was talking to president trump's campaign allies yesterday, one of the things they plan to do on top of trying to tether joe biden to the idea he's not going to be tough on china is rebrand joe biden. they believe voters think they know who joe biden is, what they're trying to do and will get aggressive on this, we've seen some of it, say this is not the joe biden you know. this is somebody not fit to be president, not all there mentally. really going to go at the idea that he is not fit for office because he's unwell. and that's just one of many ways in which they're reaching back for 2016 playbook. >> yep. it's an odd thing to hit biden on when the president keeps bringing up this issue with his own health watch on that front as well. odd amount of time he's spent on that. i have to wrap it there. that's all for today.

thanks for watching, trusting us. happy father's day to everyone out there who is a dad. we'll be back next week, because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." will a wrong, be made right? will a family, be made whole? i'm lester holt and this is "dateline." >> something is wrong here. the system doesn't want to acknowledge -- that they made a mistake. but you made a mistake. >> the detective was, like, "you're gonna -- tell us you did this." and i'm, like, "man, i ain't did nothin'." >> reporter: you hear the judge say, "guilty." >> everything just froze. on this juneteenth -- inequality in america. two brothers convicted of murder, fight back against the justice system. >> twice is a pattern. a pattern of how to gain a --