her sustained popularity. thank you alexi. great to see you. you too can sign up for the newsletter at signup.axios.com. that does it for me on this tuesday morning. i'm yasmin vossoughian. "morning joe" starts right now. >> if you add up the network streaming numbers, netflix, youtube, i don't think there's any question it was the largest watched inauguration ever. >> finally one thing i want to point out that was handed to me, wow, a whopping 7.7 million total viewers tuned in to fox news to watch the rally on saturday night. big numbers. thanks so much guys. >> spicy, the more things change, the more things stay the same. good morning and welcome to "morning joe," it is tuesday, june 23rd. joe is off this morning. along with willie and me, we

have white house reporter jonathan lemire, columnist and editor of "the washington post," msnbc political analyst eugene robinson. nbc news correspondent and host, kasie hunt. and historian john meacham. the author of the forthcoming biography of john lewis, entitled "his truth is marching on," which accomplishes in october. we look forward to that. we have a lot going on this morning. the president leaves for arizona this morning. jonathan lemire will be traveling with the president. he can tell us what to expect. senator majority leader mitch mcconnell is planning to hold a vote for a gop police reform bill this week. but democrats may try to block the measure and house democrats looking to subpoena attorney

general bill barr, kasie hunt will be reporting on those stories and much more. an emotional seen at talladega as nascar drivers and crews rally behind bubba wallace one day after a noose was found in his garage stall. look at that. beautiful moment we'll be talking about that as well. as i said, president trump is stated to visit yuma, arizona today, to mark a campaign promise. the completion of 200 miles of a new wall along the u.s./mexico border. it is the president's second visit to arizona in the past few months. after that, trump is expected to head to phoenix to deliver remarks at a church event for a student organization called turning points usa. but in a statement the mayor of phoenix said the event quote does not abide by current cdc guidelines during covid-19. the mayor's statement also reads

in had part, quote, while i do not believe an event of this magnitude can be held safely, particularly as arizona sees rising covid cases, the president has decided to continue with this rally. everyone attending tomorrow's event, particularly any elected official, should set an example to residents by wearing a mask. this includes the president. jonathan lemire, i'm wondering if you can, first of all, back up a little bit because i've seen a lot of controversy on twitter. the president and his wall and the way different media outlets are covering it. he wants a certain story out there about his wall. not sure he's going to get it. but then also the safety issue. the trail of germs left in tulsa after 6,200 people crammed into the lower seats of a convention center is going to be bad enough now he's hopscotching across the

country, sending a signal that masks are a bad idea. this president constantly is putting american people's lives at risk as he demands their presence. >> mika, we have a lot of story lines coming from the president's trip to arizona today, of which i will be traveling with him. i'll start with this one it's going to be 109 degrees in yuma, not good folks. but what we have, we have him heading to the border wall, as you say, trying to in some ways change the subject to what we've seen around us. he's trying to go back to 2016, trying to go back to immigration, going back to an executive order he signed yesterday stopping visas. it's 200 miles of this border wall, it was his signature campaign promise four years ago. he did indeed fight on twitter last night with fox news

suggesting he wasn't getting enough credit for the amount of wall that had already been constructed. that's one stop. it comes on the heels of the white house trying to make the case that some of the rise in covid infections they're seeing in states like arizona and texas are because of crossing from the mexican border which angered immigration groups and democrats saying that was a tactic. this today will be the president's first political event since the debacle in tulsa this weekend when he drew a smaller than expected crowd to his first comeback rally. leaving him furious and his staff in turmoil. today is a political event speaking at this young republican's group in phoenix, founded by charlie kirk, and there's going to be thousands of people inside this megachurch in phoenix.

as the mayor said she doesn't believe it can be held safely, she's urging everyone to wear masks. as we know the president has yet to wear one in a public setting. we're not sure if the attendees will wear them. it comes as arizona turns into a hot spot in surge of coronavirus infections. >> it's a dry 109. you'll be fine in your wool gray suit there. let me ask you about campaign themes for 2020. if you closed your eyes and listened to the rally the other night, you could have gone back to 2016 rallies. there's an executive order to suspend work vies a, going down to survey the wall, a tiny sliver of which has been built as new wall since he became president of the united states. it looks like he's leaning back on the 2016 playbook going to those familiar themes.

is that the idea with these two acts? >> i'm going to be back on the lawn tomorrow morning for the show sun burned, willie. i think that is part of it. that shows you the struggle this campaign has had to make a case, two reasons first of all it's yet to define its opponent, joe biden. we were talking about the rally in tulsa, a lot of attack lines that drew applause were about hillary clinton or barack obama. he's yet to land on something about joe biden. even the venders outside are still selling stuff about obama and clinton, not really about joe biden. he's also trying to now make a case for another four years. trying to point to his accomplishments and they're struggling with that as well, especially in terms of of the pandemic and how he handled it. they're hoping the economy revives itself, they want that to be the main argument. but with that uncertain they're pivoting back to cultural war

stuff, talking about flags, nfl players kneeling for the national anthem. visas yesterday, trips to the border wall today. we're told to expect more action in the coming days and weeks. but amid everything going on, will an immigration play have the resonance it did in 2016? >> speaking of 2016, president trump's former campaign manager, corey lewandowsky said donald trump's re-election campaign made a mistake touting how big a crowd was expected in tulsa. he described it as an unforced error. >> i think a fundamental mistake was made. overpromising and under delivering is, you know, the biggest mistake you can make in politics. and even if you receive a million or a 1,200,000 rsvps,

it's about the turnout. i did it when candidate trump was running. we never did something like this. what that means is we have to go back and reevaluate the system in which people were getting those tickets and determining if they were real, they were robots or putting additional protocols in place so this doesn't happen again. >> gene, it's a rare day that corey lewandowsky speaks out against president trump, i think he was preserving his own record four years ago and going after brad parscale, the current campaign manager. but that image of the president returning to the white house, stepping off air force one, trudging back into the house, what did you read into that night? what did you see as you watched the president perform? what did you see in the crowd? other than people that didn't want to go out in public because of coronavirus?

>> i think if this were a chapter in the book or the -- the series of the trump presidency, it would be called in search of lost mojo, that seems to be what the president is trying to find. he, in all reporting, said he really looked forward to that rally, because he thought it was going to -- you know, that's where he feels comfortable. that's what he took away from the 2016 campaign. those rallies that brought him such success and that got him such wall-to-wall coverage. and that so excited his base. and so, you know, to go there and to see it fizzle in a rather spectacular fashion, with the entire upper part of that bowl empty, no outside event at all

because there was no overflow crowd, there wasn't crowd to fill the arena. so to see him trudging back to the white house, as you said, late at night with the tie undone, that's an image of donald trump that we have not seen really since he began -- since he came down that escalator and started his campaign. it's all about moving forward. it's all about confidence, going 90 miles an hour and here he was going about 2.5 miles an hour. and looking deflated and defeated. and so, we don't read too much into one night, but this has been a bad few days for the president. >> looking deflated and defeated and knowing that that image was going to be seen by the cameras. it does show a level with him that we haven't seen before.

but make no mistake, today in arizona the president's team, in both events, will be cramming audiences full of people, will be making sure it looks like so many people showed up. people will be stuffed together to sort of give that optic that people want to see the president, and john meacham, i know we got to talk about mail-in ballots, we have to talk about the southern district of new york and what that's all about. but right now some would argue we have a president who knowingly is so freaked out about crowds he's going to endanger the lives of his staff. we have eight members of his advance team in tulsa that have tested positive for coronavirus. and who knows how many others that they infect d by woed by working on that advance team. that's before the rally even started. we have a president who wants

crowds crushed together, campaigning in a pandemic, having temper tantrums over the amount of people there, in terms of like that poll question, a president who cares about you, i think we can, you know, check off the box that this president does not care about the health of his supporters or his staff as it pertains to whether or not he should work or show up in the middle of an extremely contagious pandemic. this is a level that i can't even imagine. i'm wondering, can you think of a presidential personality that matches this moment? >> no, in a field that does not exactly attract retiring people, which is politics, this president has remarkably weaponized his own narcissism to use as a means to power, a means

to prominence in the public sphere, at the cost of virtually everything else. >> yeah. >> i don't know how much of what the president actually says or types he believes. it's a pretty de minimis number, i think, or rate. you mentioned just in massipass almost, which is understandable given the public climate, the pandemic we're in. the deadly pandemic that is not all that different from where it was some months ago. i chuckle, which i shouldn't do, but it is a remarkable thing that we have, in some ways, allowed ourselves and i think we'll be spending a lot of time, we as a nation, trying to figure out levels of responsibility, locking ourselves in this repetitive drama with donald trump. it is almost like an abusive relationship and we do enable

him. and right now it's entered a different phase. my sense, historically, is that the way moments of what you hope will be aberration end is what happened to joe mccarthy. people get tired of the show and we don't have -- americans are not -- americans are not known for their remarkable attention span. martin luther king said -- he was standing at president kennedy's funeral in 1963 and walter fontroy said to him, at least we'll get the civil rights bill now. king turned to him and said we're a 10 day nation. we focus on things for about 10 days. i used to think that's overly generous. but that's about where we are. the president is going to -- anyone who thinks that tulsa is a genuine inflection point i think is being overly hopeful. it may be a data point.

a data point that maybe the country is beginning to disenthrall itself from this fever we've been in about this man. the forces, quickly, the forces that put him in office are not going away. no matter what happens in november. the forces are tribalism and nativism and isolationism, those are going to be with us forever. and the battle of the american public sphere is how do you make those forces ebb and get the better forces to flow? >> at that rally in tulsa, you'll remember the other night the president said he asked his people to, quote, slow down testing. now white house officials are delivering mixed messages about what the president meant. initially they said he was just joking. but in interviews yesterday, the president declined to say that he was joking.

>> are you saying that he told his people to slow down testing is not true? >> it was a comment he made in jest, in passing, specifically with regard to the media coverage and pointing out the fact that the media never acknowledges that we have more cases because when you test more people you find more cases. >> is it appropriate to joke about coronavirus when 120,000 people have died. >> he was not joking about coronavirus. i said he was joking about the media and their failure to understand the fact when you test more, you also find more cases. >> we do more testing than any country in the world by far, 25 million tests. other countries do one million. every time you do a test it shows more and more cases. we're so far advanced, in terms of the quality and amount and we're doing all these tests and it shows cases that other countries aren't doing or if we did slow it down it wouldn't show as many cases.

you have asymptomatic people, young people that don't have a problem. but we're doing 25 million tests. >> did you ask to slow it down? >> if it did slow down -- frankly, i think we're way ahead of ourselves. we did too good a job. with 25 million test you're going to find more people. then they say we have more cases in the united states. the reason we have more cases, we do more testing than any other country by far. >> at the tulsa rally when the media is hitting you on that where i told the staff stop the testing. was that tongue in cheek? >> it's semitongue in cheek. i say it all the time. it's unfair. >> there wasn't a direct order, if you will, for staff to stop the testing? >> no. but i think we put ourselves at a disadvantage. i told my people, we've gotten so good at testing -- number one we have the best tests, number two we have the most tests. we test more than any other nation so you hear about these

cases. instead of doing 25 million tests, say we did 10 million tests we'd look like we were doing better because we'd have far fewer cases. >> jonathan lemire i'll ask you the question david brodie put to the president yesterday. is there any evidence, reporting that shows that the president of the united states actually did ask public health officials to, quote, slow down testing as he put it in tulsa. >> it's not clear that he gave a direct order to do that. we know he set this tone from the beginning. that he's been nervous that he knows, in his estimation, the more tests you get, the more cases you'll find. let's take a half step back here and go, it was a symptomatic massive testing failure and short falls in the early days of this pandemic that led to some of the death totals and the number of people sick that we've seen. the country itself failed on testing. it did not do nearly as well as some of the others. we point back to south korea,

south korea and the united states had the first positives on the same day. south korea got the epidemic under control far more quickly, the united states hasn't. we're seeing cases rise in huge portions of the country right now. remembering the early days in the pandemic where there was the cruise ship docked off the coast of california, the president wasn't sure he wanted them to come dock, these were sick people, sick americans, yet he didn't want them to dock because once they touched american soil he feared it would inflate the statistics and the total number of cases would go up and it would reflect badly on him. that's what we're seeing right now. he's more concerned about the messaging, the appearances his critics say of coronavirus and the testing, that he's turning a blind eye to the problems this country is having. we're seeing spikes and surges in places like arizona, texas,

california, florida, others as well. and as much as the white house is pushing the message of reopening, you need to go back to normal, adapt to this, it is still for a lot of people in a lot of places a real crisis in their lives. >> let me take it a step further. what you have here the two major components of helping this country through the pandemic since we don't have a vaccine, since we started late, since the president ignored this from day one, saying it would fade away, it's just a few people coming from china, it would magically go away, since he didn't actually respond to this pandemic and take it seriously, compared to joe biden who was writing in "usa today" in january this was coming, it was going to be epic, be bad and we need to prepare. since this president didn't respond to this pandemic and that is clearly logged in the history books for all americans to see and hear and read for years to come, now you have a

president who is actively working against the health of the american people in his words and in his actions. he won't wear a mask, he makes fun of people who wear masks. he makes sure his staff makes fun of people who wear masks. masks can keep this virus from spreading. the president won't wear one and makes fun of people who wear them. and actually sets an example that you actually should not wear a mask, when it's the one thing that could actually keep this from spreading because we are so unprepared for this. same with testing. he keeps saying if we test more we'll have more cases. yes, idiot, we want to know where the virus is and where it isn't so we can protect people. had we had testing in place, maybe at this point we'd be at mass testing. maybe there'd be testing before people go into concerts and rallies so that we could make sure that these arenas and these

public venues are safe. so that we could make sure that this economy could reopen. so again and again and again the president works against himself and the health of the american people and continues to botch this. that's what we're seeing happening. this is not me, you know, having a slant on it. this is the reality. look at the science, talk to your doctor, talk to scientists you trust and tell me that what i've said isn't exactly the case in terms of the example he's setting as a leader to try and keep this country safe. i'll say it applies to the example he's setting around the world. other countries are doing better on this, and there's a reason, because they're leading on this. other countries are stepping up now and embarrassing us on this. we're number one in areas we don't want to be with this virus. we're -- other countries are leading on racial unrest. they are holding protests around

the world about what happened here in america, and this president once again holds a blind eye to it all and makes it worse. at this point we're looking for more from our leader and it's not even about his campaign. it's about keeping the american people safe. kasie, anybody in congress, any republicans want to step up about anything that has happened in the past week? the berman story, the coronavirus, i'll look at racial unrest, any republicans speaking out in any way? >>. >> mika, we -- every single time there is one of those things and you just stacked four or five examples on top of each other in situations where republicans are having to answer for a president that they have fully embraced. and, you know, senator bill cassidy was asked by a reporter about this yesterday in the hallways about one of these

issues. and he was asked, you know, do you still support the president? and cassidy said, yes, do i have an alternative? i think it captures the entirety of the situation that many republicans find themselves in. so we still have five months till this election. that's a long, long time. it's plenty of time for, you know, republicans who decide they want to run this campaign differently. but i don't think we have a great body of evidence that says that they ire 're going to star shift and change the way they've been with the president, it's been that way for quite some time now. >> on capitol hill we haven't seen dr. birx or dr. fauci. today we will see dr. fauci, the head of the cdc, head of the fda, some other officials as well.

what do you expect to hear? these questions we're asking about whether the president told officials to slow down coronavirus testing will be top of mind after what the president said on saturday. >> i think that's going to be the first question out of the gate, obviously. you know, dr. fauci, i think there are a lot of questions right now about how often he's speaking with the president. we heard it had been a couple weeks since they had last spoken. questions about the roles that the coronavirus task force is playing or not currently. it's very clear that the white house simply wants to basically move on from a pandemic that isn't ready to move on from the company. they broke down the tents taking people's temperatures outside the white house yesterday. now you can visit the white house campus without a mandatory temperature check which was something that was keeping everybody on the white house campus safe. i would expect focus on that.

what are you still doing, what is our public health infrastructure doing to try to alleviate some of these problems because there are states across the country grappling with a version of what new york went through early on in this pandemic. while certainly, yes, if you test more, you will get -- you will find the virus, get more positive results. if you do it correctly, i think you see it in the results coming out of new york state currently. they're doing more testing than they had been but their rates of positives are way down. that's not true across the rest of the country or necessarily in many of these places, they're having the same struggles with ppe, hospitals grappling with cases they can't necessarily handle. they're worried they're going to run out of beds. so the idea this is over i think is one the administration clearly wants to present. i think you'll see a lot of pushback from democrats on these officials today on whether that's actually the case. >> still ahead on "morning joe,"

dr. anthony fauci isn't given advise about quantitative easing, yet economist larry kudlow continues to moonlight as an infectious disease expert. we'll show you the latest comments from him straight ahead on "morning joe." you can't predict the future. but a resilient business can be ready for it. a digital foundation from vmware helps you redefine what's possible... now. from the hospital shifting to remote patient care in just 48 hours...

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here's a headline you don't read every day. yesterday the president of the united states accused his predecessor, president barack obama in this case, of treason. >> the spying situation, this idea they were spying on your campaign, you've been asked before about what crime he would have potentially committed -- >> treason. treason. treason. it's treason. look, when i came out a long time ago i said they've been spying on my campaign. they've been taping, that was in quotes, a modern day version of taping, it's all the same thing but a modern day version. but they've been spying on my

campaign. >> again, no evidence of the spying. in the series of tweets yesterday, president trump continued to spout baseless conspiracy theories about mail in voting. he claimed without evidence rigged 2020 election millions of mail in ballots will be printed by foreign countries and others, it will be the scandal of our times. more than 32 million americans voted by mail in 2016 with no signs of widespread fraud foreign or domestic. president trump went on to add, we voted during world war i and world war ii with no problem but now they're using covid in order to cheat by using mail-in. john meacham, we don't want to get mired in all of donald trump's tweets but these are significant. he's accusing his predecessor, president obama, of committing treason against his campaign and this latest series of tweets talk abouting about mail-in

voting. he appears to be softening the ground unless he loses the free and fair race from the beginning. >> that was the most significant thing that happened yesterday, you're right, he's laying a predicate for raising fundamental questions about a result that he fears will run against him. and so, if you want to know the significance of tulsa or the significance of whether folks show up in the desert today, it is really about the result of the campaign that he's thinking about. and one of the things we know from the last four or five years is that the more he says something, the more a significant part of the population will believe it or at least pretend to believe it for whatever purpose. and i think that's the -- in many ways i use this word adviseedly, the scariest thing

about this because without practicing psychiatry, without a license, he was accusing someone else yesterday of treason on the same day he was talking about subverting our democracy, so you wonder if there was some projection there. the thing about obama, this is how trump got to this party was by raising racist questions about -- falsely raising questions about barack obama's birth certificate. right. that's one of the reasons he is president. that is the ticket he rode to political prominence in this particular era. so his hostility to obama is of a piece. there are very few coherent elements actually in the trump world. but a discomfort with, dislike of, and disdain for, barack obama is one of them. and i suspect one of the things that's driving him a little crazy right now is that biden is

more elusive. biden is, in some ways, and i say this with respect, a more conventional political figure. it's just harder. barack obama was the first african-american president, hillary clinton was trying to be the first female president. that gave trump, with his kind of archie bunker-ism, except archie bunker was knicfictional gave him targets. biden is not that. biden is someone who comes from virtually the world that gave trump a lot of inroads in 2016. i think in some evangelical he h -- i think in some level he has a fear that biden will take those votes away. >> really concerned about trying to shore up the election

process, that's where they feel the president is going to go to try and win. president trump continues to rail against mail-in voting, been doing so on twitter. but his closest aides reportedly have embraced it. for years. according to the records obtained, vice president mike pence and half a dozen of trump's other senior advisers have voted by mail. you know why? because it works. military does it too. more than three years of leaving the indiana governor's residence, pence still votes from that address. betsy devos has permanent voting status in michigan. brad parscale voted absentee in texas in 2018 and did not vote in the general election two years earlier when trump's name was on the brallot. two other senior campaign officials voted by mail in new jersey while one voted by mail

in georgia since 2014. in addition, white house press secretary kayleigh mcennayny has voted by mail in every florida election she's participated in since 2010. and according to "the washington post" ivanka trump attempted to vote absentee for new york mayor 2017 but sent the ballot too late. her husband, jared kushner requested a ballot for the mayoral election in 2017 but didn't return it. kellyanne conway voted absentee in 2018. republican chairman rona mcdaniel voted absentee in michigan multiple times. and donald trump himself who voted absentee himself in 2018 and in florida's march primary. jonathan lemire, look, he's

losing in swing states. he has nothing to say about joe biden, except he's sleepy. and the show is tired and the seats won't fill. this is the next battleground for the president. whether it be asking for foreign help or tampering with the election or just trying to under mine the process, would that be fair to say his focus might be on how to win a different way? >> i think mika what you're spelling out here is causing rising alarm among democrats and government groups wondering where the president is going with all of this. we have seen him for weeks now rail against the idea of mail-in voting, suggesting without evidence, that it could lead to widespread voter fraud. in 2016 he claimed there was voter fraud then. he thought there would be about 3 or 4 million illegal votes cast. coincidentally, that was about the margin of his defeat in the

popular vote to hillary clinton. he signed a commission to study that. there was no evidence any of that happened either. i think we've seen disturbing scenes in georgia. concerns about the election in kentucky. the one in wisconsin that was held during the height of the pandemic in that state about restrictions to access to voting. i think there is a sense here that is one of the plays that the republican party is trying to use. trying to simply make it harder for people to vote. they'll have their arguments why they're trying to do that but democrats say they're simply trying to take away up one of the fundamental rights of the american people because republicans thinks and everyone agrees a lower turnout race probably helps donald trump and right now they're stumbling. saturday night in tulsa was meant to be the campaign reboot, the restart, energize the president, reassure republicans seeing these polls. instead they're faced with thousands of empty seats and

real questions about the message and direction of the campaign, the status of his senior staff, and whether they can ever possibly elude the virus, which is infecting more members of his own staff. still ahead on "morning joe." >> covid-19 is now spreading at an unacceptable rate in texas. and it must be corralled. we have several strategies to reduce the spread without having to shut texas back down. >> okay. from coast-to-coast coronavirus infections are on the rise. but some state and local leaders, like texas governor greg abbott, who you heard there. are still pushing to lift restrictions. we'll talk about the surging number of coronavirus cases in the u.s. next on "morning joe." ? wherever you make go, lexus will welcome you back with exceptional offers. get zero percent financing and make no payments for up to 90 days

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start now at godaddy.com covid-19 is spreading in texas at a high rate. yesterday republican texas governor greg abbott addressed the rising numbers urging it must be corralled but stopped short of introducing any new policies. the governor reiterated that closing down texas again will always be the last option. texas has broken its record for number of people hospitalized with the virus for 11 consecutive days. for the past week, the state reported 3,500 new cases each day. in an effort to curb the recent

spike, new mandatory mask policies are popping up in dallas and other cities. both austin and san antonio are now two of the top five hot spots in the country. >> there are now more than 100,000 cases of coronavirus in the state of florida according to data released by officials there. the state has added nearly 3,000 infections since sunday. the death toll rose to nearly 3,200 there after reporting 12 new deaths. amid the surge in cases, florida officials are now changing guidelines for hospitals' reporting of intensive care beds in the state emergency status system. the change could reduce the number of occupied icu beds according to the state. the florida surgeon general, also the secretary of the department of health, said he no

longer wants hospitals to report to the state the number of patients in icu beds he only wants hospitals to report patients that, what he describes, require an intensive level of care. joining us is dr. gupta, an nbc news medical contributor. great to see you again this morning. let's start with the state of florida. what is going on there? is it a are product of reopening some businesses there or is there another layer to that story? >> good morning, willie, good to see you. i'm stunned by that news report, i didn't see that. it's puzzling, i'm in the icu right now caring for patients with covid-19 admitted where we're having an outbreak here on the west coast. we report every bed that is taken up and being cared for by an icu doctor, respiratory therapist and nurse. that icu bed can't be used for

another purpose. so that's data manipulation, let's be clear on that. that's fudging the data so they can report better numbers. that's really dangerous. because like palm beach, places moving more rapidly, opening up more rapidly, places they haven't locked down, it's dangerous for local county health commissioners because they don't know what surge capacity they have, how many dialys dialysis nurses they need. if you're a hospital administrator you need to know how many beds you have at a high level so you can staff appropriately. beds is one thing but you need people to care for those beds. this has huge implications and is concerning. thank you for highlighting that. >> we need to work with the data we have. we can't have bad data on top of the fact that there's still so much mystery around this virus, how it spreads, how long it

lasts, different levels. let's bring in "morning joe" chief medical correspondent dr. dave campbell. you've been looking at, dr. dave, a recent study that shows that covid-19 antibodies can disappear after only two to three months. what does this mean in terms of our overall effort to get our arms around this virus? >> it means we need to get back to the basics. the basics are face masks, social distancing. so the study that came out of china recently looked at a little less than 100 patients and what they found -- it's an early study but what they found was after a couple of months, the number of antibodies starts to drop and it particularly drops in those patients that were asymptomatic. so we've been hoping for and waiting for news that there will be an immunity long-lasting after you've been infected with

covid-19. there are almost 5 million people in the country -- sorry, in the world, that have recovered from covid-19. this should put all of those people who have recovered on notice that perhaps they're not as immune to the disease moving forward, coming back and catching it again, than we all would have hoped for mika. it's a big, scary study that needs to be reproduced and looked at again with larger numbers. but it's a signal that we perhaps have to go back to basics, face masks, social distancing, mika. >> so the w.h.o. reported the largest single day jump in covid-19 cases around the world so there's a lot of, are we in a first or second wave, but is the world headed for a second round of this? how is the u.s. fairing? >>.

>> we have not gotten out of the first round and here we are in the summer hoping, of course, that the heat would make the virus go away. and, in fact, all the heat is doing is pushing all of us inside into the air conditioning so we can be closer. as we know, face masks are less common in homes than they are in public spaces or public areas. so the numbers are surging across the country and across the world. and as the world goes, so to the u.s. goes. this is exceedingly scary, frightening and should put everyone on notice that we need to harden our defenses against this virus and now we know that's simply washing hands, using face masks, physically distancing from others, and if possible doing things outside rather than inside. mika? >> dr. gupta, the state of texas for 11 consecutive days has set a new record for hospitalizations on covid-19.

we heard from governor abbott yesterday who said we have to corral this thing, it's coming, it's coming. but he said the last resort would be to shutdown businesses again. what do you see as a public health expert between here and shutting down the businesses? what other interventions can the state of texas make to stop the trend of record setting cases and hospitalizations? >> willie, the truth is there's not a lot at this point. they're in their peak right now. we don't need effectless leadership, we need strong leadership. this is the time to shut it down. maybe it's targeted like dallas, san antonio, austin having outbreaks. but if he's not willing to do that, what are the things we can do and build on. let's talk about the science since we don't hear from dr. birx or dr. fauci, they're not allowed to talk, i'll do it, we're seeing this 14 day quarantine policy from the cdc,

last three months, 14 days if you're positive. turns out if you're older with symptoms you might carry the virus for six weeks and still be infectious. why are we not hearing about guidance here? this is a series of studies suggesting that quarantining should be different depending on age and demographics. symptom-based screening. if you're screening childhood or elementary school classroom, for example, they tend to be more asymptomatic than screening a nursing home filled with individuals greater than 65 who tend to be symptomatic. so testing in schools doesn't make as much sense as it does in nursing homes. mask guidance, shows counties that implemented mask had a 3% decline in covid-19 in just a few weeks. let's message on this and hopefully people start to

listen. our young individuals out there are not listening, not wearing masks. that's part of the reason you're seeing these spikes. >> dr. vin gupta and dr. dave campbell, thank you both for your expertise this morning. on that point of needing guidance, we used to at least have the coronavirus task force and dr. fauci and dr. birx speaking to the american people and answering questions every day. we don't have that anymore, so we just have the president and his bad example that doesn't follow any of the guidance. kasie hunt rapid fire, three big stories. first the policing bill on capitol hill, what's the status? >> right now it looks like senate democrats are preparing to block mitch mcconnell from moving forward with this. there's a procedural vote planned for wednesday on senator scott's bill. the sense among democrats, i spent last night reaching out to offices across the hill. senator doug jones of alabama probably the most moderate member of the conference, the one in the most electoral danger

he told me sunday night he was inclined to move ahead with it even though he thought the bill was flawed. but that doesn't seem to be the posture of senate democrats at this point. so i think that effort is going to stall at least for a little while. the house is looking at their own bill, plan on voting later in the week on that, mika. >> house democrats preparing a subpoena for bill barr, where does that stand? >> we learned about that from jerry nadler, the chairman of the committee last night, they initially threw up their hands saying it's not the time, this guy has shown he's willing to stand in the way to go to the courts but that changed with the firing of geoffrey berman late last week. >> finally it's primary day in a number of states but especially kentucky where a couple of candidates are hoping to take on mitch mcconnell. where does that race stand? what does it look like right now? >> this has taken a dramatic

turn in the final weeks, mika. it's largely due to the black lives matter protests, as well as a sustained campaign from a guy named charles booker who i also interviewed on my show. the democrats had thrown their weight behind amy mcgrath, who we talked to on this show, i interviewed several times she's considered a rising star, retired military officer. however, she's raised, you know, 40 plus million dollar as people across the country say they want to beach mitch mcconnell but she made a couple early missteps, particularly in how she would have handled the kavanaugh nomination that alienated some liberal democrats in kentucky, there are some. and booker has caught fire here at the conclusion of this primary. he's gotten endorsements from alexandria ocasio-cortez, from bernie sanders, running on a liberal platform of medicare for all and some other things. but it's a pretty unpredictable race.

i'm interested to see how the mcconnell team takes on booker, especially considering how emotional the protests have been in kentucky on the streets of louisville over breonna taylor. so it's going to -- it's going to set up a particularly interesting, i think, contrast for mcconnell in the fall if booker does end up winning this race. >> both of those candidates will be on stephanie ruehl show right after "morning joe." just more lunacy from the president who tweeted, cases are going up in the u.s. because we're testing far more than any other country and every expanding. with smaller testing we would have fewer cases. still ahead, the trump administration is targeting foreign workers with a new freeze on visas. nbc's julia ainsley joins us with that new reporting. plus president trump is headed to arizona today as the coronavirus rates skyrocket in

that state. jacob soberoff joins us live from yuma. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. i wish i could shake your hand. granted. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ 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. i but what i do count on...ts anis boost high protein...rs, and now, there's boost mobility... ...with key nutrients to help support...

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>> there is no second wave coming. it's just hot spots, they send in cdc teams. we have the testing procedures, the diagnostics, we've got the ppe. so i think it's a pretty good situation. >> white house economic adviser larry kudlow yesterday claiming that despite the resurgence of covid-19 cases across the u.s. he isn't too concerned. in contrast, white house economic adviser kevin hasset who will be leaving his post this summer told "the washington post" he's concerned about the economic impact of the pandemic. according to the post, despite president trump's repeated beaus of a rapid economic recovery,

hassett said in part, quote, i think everyone should be worried about how this is going to turn out in the end because it's a shock unlike anything we have ever seen. certainly the crisis is not over and there's a lot of work to do but there's an incredibly competent team in place to do it. welcome back to "morning joe." it is tuesday, june 23rd. with us we have columnist and editor of "the washington post," eugene robinson. n nbc contributor mike barnicle. and analyst susan dell ber owe. and errin haines an editor at large for the news room. along with willie and me. joe is off this morning. president trump is slated to visit yuma, arizona today to mark a campaign promise, the completion of 200 miles of a new

wall along the u.s./mexico border. it's the president's second visit to arizona in the past few months after a stopover in yuma, trump is expected to stop in phoenix to deliver remarks for a student organization called turning points usa. but the mayor of phoenix said, quote, the event does not abide by current guidelines set by the cdc. she went on to say, while i do not bali an event of this magnitude can be held safely, i don't think it should be held. but the president insists on continuing with the rally. everyone attending tomorrow's event, particularly any elected officials, should be wearing a

mask. this is a collision between science and the president's form of leadership which flouts science and scientifically speaking and, you know, this will come from doctors and experts and epidemiologists, he is putting americans' lives at risk when he tries to stuff them all together in an event for him. >> we heard the same thing from tulsa public health officials last week, please don't hold a mass gathering indoors here, we're going through a spike in cases in tulsa and the state of oklahoma. obviously what you hear from local officials like mayors, they're dealing with this on the ground, they don't have the luxury of dealing with the politics the way president trump would like to have it go away. let's go to arizona. joining us from eyuma, jacob soboroff. thank you for joining us. you've been covering the border for years. what will you be watching for today when the president visits

arizona? >> reporter: first of all what's important to note, the reason i'm wearing a mask in the middle of nowhere is that the city of yuma is mandating that people wear masks because of what is going on along the southwest border. two workers that worked on this wall that president trump is coming to see today, have been diagnosed with the coronavirus according to reporting from our own von hillyard. that's the context people need to remember when the president comes to show this off today. it's 30 feet tall, 200 new miles of border wall here along the southwest border. i think it's easy to say most of that is replacement wall but the reality is when you talk to advocates and activists along the southwest border they're devastated by the fact this thing has gone up and while mexico has not paid for it, the president used department of defense money to put it up. they believe it will lead to more deadly and dangerous crossings here. and back to the coronavirus,

that is the larger story that is happening right now in arizona. the president doesn't want to focus on it but it's almost unavoidab unavoidable. local officials have been talking about it nonstop here. they're literally sending patients from yuma, arizona to tucson, arizona because the hospital is overcrowded here. in addition to the workers working on the border wall contracting the virus, it's rampant throughout the community. it's also in i.c.e. detention facilities here as we reported on in the last couple weeks. arizona is this hot spot, immigration is what the president wants to focus on, but it's going to be unavoidable, the coronavirus is what's hanging over this entire trip for president trump here on the border. >> on the question of testing nbc news is reporting a chaotic scene in arizona as the cases spike you see people going for

testing, long lines at testing, some people turned away, some going to other states to get tested, what does it look like on the ground? >> reporter: von hillyard wanted to get a test and was unable to do so. there's a week-long turn around to get a test here. i come from los angeles, drove here last night, i'm able to get a test and virtually the next day i get a result in california. that's not the case here at all. there's also the argument to be made that president trump said he shut the border down for people coming back and forth to stop the spread of the virus. that's not accurate at all. there's legitimate trade and travel coming back and forth across the border. the medical centers and medical providers in mexico are not as good as they are here in dealing with coronavirus, and that presents another issue. which is the virus, which came from the united states into

mexico and is now freely going back and forth, it's not being tested or treated adequately. the president saying we're testing too much. listen to local officials here on the ground in arizona, they're saying the opposite, without sufficient and robust testing on both sides of the border fence you'll see a big problem continue to get bigger here in arizona. >> you mentioned the crowded detention centers. you've been down there for years covering the story of family separations and detentions at the border. americans shifted their attention to coronavirus, they shifted their attention to fights in the streets for racial justice in this country, but update us if you can, our viewers, on what is happening in terms of family separation and in terms of what you're seeing in those detention centers? >> reporter: what i hope people don't forget, when the president meets with border patrol officials it was the yuma sector that julia ainsley and i

reported on last year in as far as the overcrowded and conditions here led to at least 30 children to accuse the border patrol in this sector of abusive treatment we have not heard the results of an investigation into our reporting and what was alleged by the children here in yuma sector from over a year ago. i asked as recently as yesterday. we have not heard. family separation, of course, also took place two summers ago right now in this sector. one family i followed closely was separated right here where the president will be later today and that's something the people shouldn't forget. the president is going to come down here and make a strong showing about the 30 foot border wall behind us. but there's more when it comes to immigration in this area the president is responsible for and a lot of pain and suffering for migrants who were coming here to seek asylum, willie. >> jacob soboroff, i know we'll hear from you all day as the

president makes his visit down there. jacob is the author of the book "separated, inside an american tragedy" which looks at separations of migrant families by the trump administration. that comes out in a couple of weeks. mika. >> it's a really important book. citing the need to preserve jobs amid the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the white house announced that president trump plans to sign an executive order freezing new visas for many foreign workers through at least the end of this year. senior administration officials say that visas for tech workers, low skilled jobs, spouses of certain visa holders were for those participating in work and student exchanges and intracompany transfers will all be suspended through december 31st. workers in the u.s. food supply chain are exempt from visa suspensions. for more on this, let's bring in

nbc news correspondent julia ainsley. what's behind this, julia? and what are some of the ramifications of this potentially? >> well, mika what we're hearing from the business community, particularly tech leaders, is that covid is the cover here. this is something that the trump administration has wanted to do all along. it's an extension and expansion of what the president laid out in april when he said in order to preserve jobs because of the economic downturn we need to preserve jobs for americans. so he started to cut off visas for new workers. now this is expanding far beyond i think what even a lot of people had predicted. primarily because the right wing, the hard liners like stephen miller inside the white house, their voices are prevailing over the business and tech interest. we're seeing workers all the way from low-skilled, from hospitality and service industry, all the way to sea

sweet will be affected by this. the white house said this would preserve 525,000 american jobs but the business leaders who are speaking out about this now, we saw the microsoft ceo tweet about it, facebook has come out about it, i've talked to many leaders just over the past 12 hours about this, who say these jobs are not easily filled by americans. they need that high-tech, that high skilled jobs, also even people like au pairs we understand will not be able to come to the united states, which is a problem for anyone trying to find child care right now. it's not as much about the logistics or trying to preserve american jobs. this is about trying to further an immigration agenda that this administration has had since the time that trump took office. >> julia, gene robinson is with us, he has a question for you. gene? >> julia, is this actually about the policy, meaning it's going

to affect enough workers to sort of move the needle for american jobs in their view, or is it more about the politics of running for re-election and going back to immigration, which was a bread and butter issue for the president? >> well, i think you know, gene, it's the politics. what is interesting, though, is the first proclamation trump set himself up to have 30 and 60 day renewals. a lot of people predicted we would hear about this every 30 to 60 days because it would allow the president to keep talking about immigration as it got closer to the election. but instead, he's kicked this all the way to december 31st. really solidifying what a lot of people within the white house, within his administration and some of these immigration hard liners wanted. this has to do with being able to point to immigration and saying, it's saving the economy. but even if the white house was correct in saying this would

save 525,000 american jobs, we're talking about 46 million unemployed americans, that's a drop in the bucket. so it doesn't have to do nearly as much with policy. another thing that's beneath the sub text of all of this is that the administration is asking the departments of homeland security and labor and state to look at ways to further prevent visa holders from coming in in the future even after this executive order might end they want to redo the h1b lottery system so high-tech workers will only be able to come in if the their guaranteed salary is the top tier of the pool of applicants. it changes the game for these businesses and tech communities looking to get to the most competitive worker they can. and we're also hearing from ceos that will hurt the economic recovery rather than help it along. nbc's julia ainsley.

thank you so much for your reporting on that. i want to turn to errin haines now. politics of covid, using covid as a cover for industry changes, definitely one facet of this. but what about the politics of the president's approach to the coronavirus, this sort of we're strong, we don't have to worry about it, you don't need to wear a mask, just come out and root for me. who is he exactly appealing to in the middle of a pandemic? i would imagine that americans across the country are feeling very constrained by this pandemic and frustrated. >> americans are frustrated. they're weary. they've been doing their part across the country, staying at home, sheltering in the place and they're hearing from their commander in this chief, seeing him out in public, not wearing a mask, continuing as he has kind

of throughout his administration to confront science, to contradict science. but i think, you know, the bottom line around this pandemic, which is really touching every single american and potential voter in this country is that ignoring the realities of coronavirus is not changing the realities of the coronavirus. we are seeing states reopen. we're headed into summer. this pandemic has not taken a vacation, and, in fact, it may even be roaring back in multiple states we're seeing that, you know, on full display. >> a little bit of -- we're going to get errin's audio figured out here and we'll get back to her in just a second. sorry about that, sometimes that happens. so susan delpercio, the president's covid attitude

toward covid and leadership on it, as he goes to arizona today, holds a mini-rally. by the way, doctors, scientists, epidemiologists would say whether it's a mini-rally in arizona, yuma or phoenix, or a protest in the streets of minneapolis, or if it's a rally in tulsa, that people should wear masks and they should socially distance or they shouldn't do it. that is a blanket, scientific epidemiologist's analysis of how to deal with the coronavirus. so who is trump appealing to when he is leading in a way that flouts the very advice from his cdc? >> mika, no matter how much donald trump wishes to be back in pre-coronavirus, if he clicks his heels three times it's not going to happen. this is the environment we live in. it's been mind boggling to me if the president wants the economy

to grow, he should encourage people to be healthy. it just makes no sense that he is so worried about showing this image of strength that he's willing to put his own re-election campaign above the people of this country as we approach 120,000 deaths nationwide of the coronavirus. he decides that i will -- i will out -- i will will this away. and that's what he's doing. of course it doesn't work. what i think the bigger mistake is, he's looking at everything through the lens of what happened in new york and the northeast in march and april. we're looking at more of a virus creep, if you will, meaning there's no other city as big as new york that's going to have the problems. but these are not just hot spots these are just as substantial problems because the counties do not have hospitalization and ventilators for the amount of crisis they're seeing, which

brings up the florida story you mentioned last hour. that is what's so frightening, he doesn't understand what's at play here. >> but you and i know that, doctors know that, the cdc knows that. a lot of people know that and they're concerned about it, and that's why we see them wearing masks when we go to the mall or if we go do drive-up pickup. but 6,200 people showed up in tulsa. there are people who are going to show up today in phoenix. and many of those people were not wearing masks. what is the nerve that trump is touching on here. you know, in the four years ago the campaign was, you know, washington doesn't get it, we're going to get them out of there, we're going to drain the swamp. the thing we heard all the time about, you know, sort of what was compelling about trump is that he says what he thinks. you know he doesn't mean it but he says what it thinks, that's what that means. what is the nerve he's touching

on saying risk your life, especially if you're vulnerable, older, if you suffer from obesity, make sure you show up at my rally, don't wear a mask, just like me, and, you know, risk it. what is the nerve he's touching on? >> well, let's see, he didn't fill that 19,000 person arena. only 6,200 people showed up. so it shows that more people than not cared about their lives so that was a positive. although a negative having 6,200 people in those positions. i think the nerve he's touching on right now with his supporters is that everybody is feeling the side effects, if you will, of being locked down, the cabin fever, and they want an excuse to go out. and the president is more than happy to provide it, because he thinks it's too his benefit. now it's easy for the president to do that. he gets tested daily. he's watched very closely. the people around him are. but what's going to start to

happen as we see the spread continue in a smaller than new york way but all around the country is people will be affected by it. their kids are home. they may not be able to go back to school in september. their older relatives will be getting sick. this is just a colossal mistake on so many levels, including a political one. >> mike barnicle as an objective matter of fact, some voters are turning away from president trump because of his handling of the coronavirus crisis, because of his response to the killing of george floyd and the protests and movement that have followed from that, we saw it manifest itself in the rally in tulsa. we knows that, he reads polls, he's frustrated. so he's doing things like yesterday getting back on this issue of mail-in voting, which he claims is rife with fraud, which he said -- remember a couple months ago, children were running around stealing mail-in

ballots from mailboxing, now he says millions are going to be voting ten times and everything else. he's laying the ground as john meacham said in our last hour, if he loses the election in november he'll be able to say this election was rigged, there was fraud because of the mail-in balloting, which has not shown fraud historically, now he's ready to say okay i lost the election, if he does lose the election, but there was an entire system working against me and i'm not going quietly. >> sure, willie, he's lining up the excuses in case he loses. mail in ballots are filled with fraudulent elections. immigration, they're stealing our heritage, the radicals on the left. all of this seemingly is part of

oldies but goodies brought back, a reversion of 2016. one of the things we had on this morning, we just had it on, jacob soboroff's report from arizona. if you look at it, it tells the tail of what's happening in this country right now. we have danger on the ground. we have a lethal danger on the ground, a virus that nobody knows how to control and nobody knows how to stop. there's no vaccine, but worse than that, there's indifference at the top of our government. dr. gupta was on earlier talking about there's no guidance. there's no guidance from the president of the united states. he very rarely refers to the virus in terms of here's what we can do to help stem it. here's what we can do to help you protect yourself. and he is who he is. he's going backwards, not forwards. he doesn't know enough about the virus to talk about it. the tulsa rally that you

mentioned, patrick samansky, i believe we showed the picture earlier today, of the president of the united states walking across the south lawn of the white house, early sunday morning upon his return from tulsa, he looks bedraggled. look at that face he's wearing. he's wearing a rumbled blue suit, white shirt, red tie undone, and he's walking slowly and his face looks defeated. all i could think of in looking at that photograph was "death of a salesman" willy lowman. donald trump is willy lowman. he's out in the country, going to arizona today, but he's selling a stale product, an old product, that more and more people aren't buying because they're confronted with the reality that we're all corn fronted with, more than 40 million people unemployed and a virus that could kill you like that if you catch it from god

knows where, and he says very little about that. still ahead on "morning joe," kasie hunt ran through the politics of police reform, but what about the principles of it? our friend wes moore joins the discussion next on "morning joe." 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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outside the white house last night police pushed demonstrators out of lafayette square after they tried to take down a statue of president andrew jackson. video shows protesters climbing on top of the statue while chanting, hey, hey, hoe, hoe, andrew jackson has got to go. a smaller group scaled the statue and draped ropes around the seventh president on top of a horse. someone drew killer in black on the pedestal below. police eventually formed a barrier in front of the statue and appeared to pepper spray

some protesters and swing batons at them to get them to move back. a department of interior spokesperson confirmed to nbc that some people were, in fact, pepper sprayed and arrested. according to "the washington post," one woman hurled a folding chair, striking an officer. things calmed down by 9:00 p.m. in a statement interior secretary david bernhart said i just left lafayette square where another so-called peaceful protest led to destruction. we will not bow to anarchists, law and order will prevail and justice will be served. president trump weighed in, quote, numerous people arrested in d.c. for the disgraceful vandalism in lafayette park of the magnificent statue of andrew jackson, in addition to the exterior defacing of st. john's church across the street.

10 years in prison under the prevision act. someone spray painted on the columns of the historic st. john's church, a similar sign spray painted. black house autonomous zone, b-h-a-z. whether it's the president's rally or something like this, this is also dangerous in terms of spreading coronavirus. >> yeah, it is. and the president has been tweeting again about this this morning. he's digging in deep on the question of the statue, on the question of heritage, saying he will have people arrested who deface statues and serve 10 years in prison. obviously there's questions if he can do that. hundreds of mourners lined up in the rain yesterday to pay their respects for rayshard brooks, a black man fatality shot by a white atlanta police officer in

a wendy's about 10 days ago. people filtered through quietly, masked to pay respects as mr. brooks lay in his casket during a four hour public viewing. a closed funeral will be held today for brooks at the church where martin luther king jr.'s youngest daughter, bernice king, is expected to speak. joining us today combat veteran of the united states army wes moore. author of the new book out today "five days," as you know i read the book. it is phenomenal, it speaks to our times. it's the story of freddy graves' death in the city of baltimore five years ago. what do you see echo to his death and what's happening in the streets right now? >> i think the echo we're seeing is an echo for justice. you know, it's interesting

because some people say, well, the story of five days is very timely. i think part of the challenge and part of the heartbreak is, name a time when it wouldn't be timely to tell the sorry. we have a long, long history of what it means to watch inequitable policing being displayed on our streets. we also have a long history of inequitable living conditions that exist the inequity of economics, of health. i think what we're seeing in the story of five days, and freddy graves, how the interaction happened. let's be clear what he did to have the interaction with the police in the first place. he made eye contact with the police and ran. that's important because that's only something that's probable crime in certain neighborhoods, if you run from the police and that's all you've done wrong, and they can give chase and

detain you. everywhere else you're out for a jog. we're watching how this contains itself and watching a community saying if if we cannot have an honest conversation about justice now, we cannot bend the moral arc of history now, we can't have a moment to stop repeating these incidents now, then there's never going to be a time we can do it. >> one of the themes you get at in this book, wes, the end of freddy graves' life was something that began when he was a baby. yes, this is about chokeholds and no-knock warrants and qualified immunity, but upstream from these moments there's so much more at the root. >> that's right. the thing at the root and we talk about these things, these changes we need to make in policing like they 'a cause. and they're not. they're an effect. we're looking at the cause, we're looking at issues of poverty and we're looking at

issues of racism. it's understanding the fact that race is one of the most reliable predictors of outcomes across several areas, including life expectan expectancy, income, health. it's looking at the fact that freddy graves as a young man never had a chance, he was born underweight, premature, addicted to heroin, his mother battled addiction much of her life, she never made it to high school. she gave birth to twins. once they finally had gained enough weight to leave the hospital, they move into a housing project in west baltimore. that housing project, that house they moved into, along with 400 other homes was in 2009 named in a class action lawsuit. and that lawsuit was because of the levels of led inside their house where the cdc indicates that five microbes of led in every december liter of blood is

enough to make a person damaged the rest of their life. freddy had 36. here's a man born underweight, addicted to heroin, led poisoned and by that time in his life he's years old. so freddy never had a chance. that encounter he had with police where he made eye contact with police, the reality is freddy gray could have died 100 times before that. if we're going to have a conversation about justice. it does need to include all the things you mentioned, willie, it needs to include the fact we do not have equitable policing in neighborhoods. it has to understand the fact that poverty and race matter in the context of everything we're talking about when we're talking about bringing justice of all forms into societies and communities. >> mike barnicle? >> wes, let's talk about the

roots, as you just referred to, and it's an epidemic of bad roots. but in the case of freddy gray, what happens when he becomes 5, 6 years of age and in the public school system -- i don't want to denigrate public schoolteachers in bad situations, in bad school systems, in bad neighborhoods, it's usually the best teachers want to go where they're needed the most. but in freddy gray's case, the concept of freddy is trouble, he's difficult, he has no parents, he's ruthless, let's just push him through school and the indifference that comes with skin color. he's a young black child. let's push him up to fourth grade, fifth grade, get him out of here. and you have freddie running from eye contact with a police officer. talk about that syndrome.

>> i think we have to understand all the various touch points that either touch freddie or didn't touch freddie. we think about the education system as a whole, where freddie gray's last day of documented attendance in the baltimore public school system was when he was in 10th grade and 19 years old. because of the led poisoning he spent his entire career in develop mental course work, special education classrooms. we watch something where because of the poison introduced into his body at a young age we were asking our teachers to turn around and perform essentially an impossible task. as we think about what it means to have a school system that can truly support all students regardless of how they come in, there first needs to be how are we dealing with the fact that we have a disproportionate amount of children entering school

unprepar unprepared, dealing with issues before they walk into their first classroom. and think about the schools and structures that we have our kids attending. the reality is we're saying everything to our children about what we expect from them and about how we expect them to perform by the buildings we're asking them to be in. the fact we still currently right now in baltimore city have schools the kids cannot drink the water because of led. where schools look more like places of incarceration than they do places of education. so how we think about that pathway, the fact that education is it really the only -- the only quantifiable mechanism we have to create sustainable economic mobility for people. if we can't put a core focus on that and able to give our kids a platform, we put ourselves in an expensive predictment, which is looking at the cost of rehabilitation and incarceration later on down the line. it costs our nation over $1 trillion every year to deal

with child poverty. it costs this country over $1 trillion a year, child poverty, and that's an expensive bet on the fact we're making we're not getting kids everything from early childhood to schools they attend a reasonable shot and education at being able to attain success. >> erin hanes, everything we're talking about right now has to do with believing the three words black lives matter. and we are at a moment in our political history where there are literally some politicians and a president and a vice president who won't say those words, let alone -- whether or not they believe them. this is something that can be solved at the ballot box, today is primary day in a number of states. if you could tell us about kentucky and how black lives matter is potentially playing out in that race. the primary today for the person who is hoping to run against

mitch mcconnell. >> yes, i think this primary happening on the 102nd day where the people accused of killing breonna taylor have not been arrested looms over the election in kentucky. particularly in louisville, you know, where there is one precinct in a stadium, yes, but one precinct for, you know, hundreds of thousands of people to cast a ballot. and so they're thinking about being able to vote safely in an environment where we know that black people are being dispuerto rico p-- disproportionately fro a deadly virus. the question of black lives matter from a public health, policing standpoints, all the inequalities that wes mentioned is on display in this pandemic today, and voters in the community are wondering how their elected officials plan to respond and show concerns for their health and safety going

forward. that is also a huge part of this conversation. and i think that, you know, as i've been saying even before this pandemic that race and racism is on the ballot for a lot of voters, it is survival vote for many black voters, what's happening in this primary and what's happening going into november. and i think that the return of the black lives matter movement in the midst of this pandemic is a reminder of that for many voters. so i think that is potentially what you could see playing out in this primary today in kentucky. you have a candidate that has surged because he has raised issues of racial injustice and wanted to confront that, challenged his opponent, who he has said has not really spoken to those issues. even mitch mcconnell said that the breonna taylor case was something that needed to be looked into. and they managed to pass a law, you know, before these officers

were even arrested for, you know, allegedly executing one of the no-knock warrants that that law is now designed to prevent. what does that say to the residents of that community? >> so in reaction to the movement we've seen in the streets for the last month or so, senate majority leader mitch mcconnell said he's planning to hold a vote for a police reform bill this week, but democrats may try to block the measure. mcconnell scheduled a procedural vote tomorrow. he urged democrats to allow the bill to advance but democrats argue it is inadequate. they need the support of seven democrats to debate the bill. but a number said last night they would not vote to advance the measure. meanwhile, republican senator mike braun of indiana is unveiling a bill today that aims to scale back the qualified immunity act which shields officers from actions in the

line of duty. the proposed bill would pull back protections that let officers avoid being held personally liable in certain cases. the move sets up a potential collision with mcconnell who's backing another republican police reform bill that does not tackle this issue. and president trump, of course, who opposes reforming qualified immunity and senator braun of indiana joins us now. it's great to have you with us. explain how far you would like to go in this new proposed legislation, in rolling back qualified immunity. i think it's worth defining qualified immunity for our officers which protects officers from civil lawsuits in the line of duty. how would you like to change that? >> i don't want to eliminate it, you have to reform it. this law was originally established in 1871 and qualified immunity was no part

of it. it evolved in the '60s and the '80s from just cause to established events. what it's done is made it almost impossible for any individual whose rights have been trampled upon to find remedies. i want to make sure in this moment, republicans we often times get behind on the issues, i cited in our conference discussions it's analogous to health care. we're here defending preexisting conditions. and i don't know any republican who wouldn't be for it. if you don't take these moments and do something with them when it's so clear, i want accountability and transparency, tri principles that i think all republicans believe in, make sure we don't apply them selectively. this would simply say if your only defense is if there is a law on the books that says the action that you took is okay or a court ruling says it's okay,

if not you have to have that basic accountability. and willie, the other thing is for law enforcement. got to be one of the hardest, riskiest jobs out there. when you're being stigmatized by these horrific events like george floyd why wouldn't you want to fix it so the best of what you do comes out and you're not hampered by this. >> it sounds like, senator, you have not only some republicans on board with you but some democrats who say, yeah, let's do this. are you concerned that leader mcconnell doesn't want to go quite as far and certainly president trump doesn't want to touch qualified immunity, so how do you move forward with this? >> this is easy for me, willy, when i ran my business for 37 years, i tried to go to where i thought you got a good long-term solution. in this case i think we could end up with no democrats wanting to proceed so then the bill is dead in the senate. and there's going to be a vote

in the house, but that doesn't mean it's dead in general. that's when i think you'll start seeing more republicans come out, get out there, talking about it like with what i'm wanting to do, democrats as well. so we don't lose this watershed moment and we get something done. so what we see happen tomorrow i don't think is going to be the end of the story. and if it is, i think it's a mistake where we lost a moment of opportunity. >> mike barnicle? >> senator, policing, of course, is obviously a huge national issue right now, you were a former state legislator in indiana so the concept of dealing with police unions. police unions as you know are powerful and often rigid. and they contribute moneys to political campaigns, especially at the local level for state representative or district attorney or mayor.

what do you think about the concept of having police unions being forbidden, being banned from contributing to publically elected officials at a local level? >> mike, that's a good question. i can tell you for the time i'm going to spend in the senate, i have the luxury of really not worrying about calculating a vote on who that contribution might come from, or what it might do to get myself re-elected. the stage of the game that i got here, i think it would be better for most of us here where you can put that aside, vote your conscious. yes, that will be a real world consideration at the lower level of politics and especially here where so often you have to make that consideration before you actually vote and do what is right. i think that will be one of the things. when it comes to police unions, they generally have backed democrats over the years, and i don't think i was endorsed by

the fop when i ran back in 2018. but that should be a secondary consideration to the merits of the case. and sadly, it's all too much a part of politics as it exists at the local, state and national level. >> wes moore has a question. wes? >> senator thank you. i'll completely agree that the idea and having the conversation about qualified immunity is incredibly important because i think one thing we're seeing is the conversation around policing in had our society is both about the actions that we're seeing. it's also about the lack of accountability. it's about the fact we are watching these incidents happen and there is not any form of accountability for it. and so, how do you think ideas and concepts such as things like the civilian review boards and who becomes accountable during these processes, what role do you think that plays in it? and also how do you think the role and question of the funding

issue then plays into how you're thinking about legislative action both on the federal and the state and local level? >> when it comes to any action, i cite again, indiana. i introduced health care transparency bills as a naive senator in 2015. didn't get a hearing. i did get a conversation the year i left the state legislature. so i'm hoping a lot of these reforms well up from the grass roots. and ideally, that's where it should be, because that's where law enforcement is centered. when it comes to funding, i think that funding in almost every case is where the rubber meets the road. and if it's not -- you don't put money behind the ideas, you're not going to get a result. so i think, in general, this is such a tough issue because again i believe law enforcement has a tough job. they risk their life every time

they suit up. we need to fix it, though. i think for their own long-term health, this needs to be addressed at the community level. you need to readjust funding where necessary, factor. just don't lose a moment of opportunity. that's here now. >> senator mike braun, thank you very much for being on the show this morning. >> you're welcome. coming up, nba star lebron james, another prominent athletes have teamed up to start the voting rights group more than a vote. the organization is kicking off its efforts to combat voter suppression, and we have an exclusive first look at their inaugural video. that is ahead on "morning joe." we miss you.

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the deal that happened yesterday -- sorry i'm not wearing my mask but i wanted to show whoever it was, you're not going to take away my smile. i'm going to keep on going. >> that is bubba wallace, the only full-time black driver in nascar's top racing series a day after a noose was found in his team's garage stall at talladega super speedway in alabama. in show of solidarity ahead of his 14th place finish, workers painted i stand with bubba on the infield grass and they pushed his number 43 car to the front of the grid in prerace

ceremonies as crew members followed in a parade to the end of pit road. afterwards as he climbed from his car's door, he lowered his head. he was consoled by the legendary richard petty and hugged by other drivers. petty also stood with wallace for the invocation and the anthem as the drivers and their crews stood behind them. wes moore, that is an extraordinary scene at nascar. obviously, this comes to the heels of nascar eliminating the confederate flag from the grounds of its races. bubba wallace was at the forefront of pushing for that. and two days ago a noose was found hanging in his team garage. we saw things yesterday at nascar, i've been to nascar races, you don't see at nascar races. there were people with i can't breathe t-shirts, people with black lives matters t-shirts, he ran along and high-fived them along the fence. it may seem like a small thing

to some people but nascar culture is huge and nascar is sending a new message to its fans with this. >> this was not a small thing at all, willie. honestly, when i saw that, it took my breath away. it took my breath away both for how proud i am for bubba wallace. i think people might underestimate how difficult the situation he found himself in was. oftentimes with entertainers or athletes, they're asked to go out and entertain us and stop there. they're asked to go out there and put on a show but not say too much about where you are or what your belief is. this is a person in all of him wants to put it all on display for us. and to say i'm not simply here to entertain you, but i want to do it in a fashion and a way that's honest with who i am. he stayed consistent in that knowing the fact there were

going to be people who would not only not like it but people who would attack him for it. and then i think about all the other people in the pit, all the other drivers, all the other people who understand that silence is complicity, and complicity is evil. all the people who said that not only am i going to stand up for an issue, i'm going to stand up for my friend. what bubba did was he took a very powerful and potent issue and he personalized it for people. when people watched bubba go through the pain, they saw this is much more about just an issue. this was a human being, a friend. that's why it was powerful watching them all in unity. >> errin, as you know, nascar has been a culture of good ol' boy, and richard petty, known as

the king, comes out with a famous hat on and gives a hug to the driver driving the black lives matter car on the infield that says i stand with bubba and all the white members of crews push his car to the front of the pack. an extraordinary scene at talladega yesterday. >> it was extremely extraordinary, willie. you know, i am a southerner. i'm more than familiar with nascar and nascar culture and what we saw on display yesterday in support of bubba wallace was remarkable. black lives matter t-shirts in the stands of talladega instead of confederate flags signals this may be an old fight but it's a new day in this country and in that culture and the institution that is nascar. you know, i think that what is important to see somebody like richard petty, you know, standing with bubba, to see so many of the folks on that racetrack supporting bubba

wallace in that way was remarkable, and it was sending a message to the rest of the country that this is not who we want to be, even though this is who we may have been. so, i think that the other thing that really matters is whether folks are really going to rally around this one black man or whether people are ready to listen to black america when they say these kind of inequalities cannot persist in this country going forward. >> so many good points. errin, thank you very, very much. ahead, mike barnicle will report on the latest with major league baseball, will there be a season? plus, the white house is offering conflicting explanations in response to the president's remarks about slowing down coronavirus testing. his aides say he was joking, but president trump doesn't appear to be laughing about it. we'll talk to new york governor andrew cuomo, who joins

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call or go online today. by participating in the 2020 census, you can make sure that federal funding reaches your community-- for schools, hospitals, libraries, and other public services-- and that your district is represented in congress. the census is safe and confidential, and it's critical that you participate. when you're counted, your community is accounted for. for more information, visit getcounted.com, and to participate, go to census.gov. if you add up the network streaming numbers, facebook, youtube, all the numbers we've put on livestreaming so far, i don't think there's any question it was the largest watched inauguration ever. >> one thing i want to point out to you, wow, a whopping, 7.7

million viewers tuned into fox news to watch the wally on saturday night. big numbers. thanks so much, guys. >> spicy, the more things change, the more things stay the same. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, june 23rd. we have white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lemire, associated editor of "the washington post" and msnbc political analyst, eugene robinson, nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of "kasie d.c." on sunday nights, kasie hunt and historian jon meacham, the author of the biography of john lewis entitled "his truth is marching on." we look forward to that. president trump is slated to visit yuma, arizona, to mark a campaign promise.

the completion of 200 miles of a new wall along the u.s./mexico border. it is president trump's second visit in arizona. after a stop in yuma, the president is expected to head to phoenix to give a speech at a church. the mayor of phoenix said the event, quotes, does not abide by current cdc guidelines during covid-19. the mayor's statement also reads in part, quote, while i do not believe an event of this magnitude can be held safely, particularly as arizona sees rising covid cases, the president has decided to continue with this rally. everyone attending tomorrow's event, particularly any elected official, should set an example to residents by wearing a mask. this includes the president. jonathan lemire, i'm wondering if you can, first of all, back

up a little bit because identify seen a lot of controversy on twitter. the president and his wall and the way different media outlets are covering it. he wants a certain story out there about his wall. not sure he's going to get it. but then also the safety issue. the trail of germs left in tulsa after 6,200 people crammed into the lower seats of a convention center is going to be bad enough. now he's hopscotching around the country, sending a signal that masks are a bad idea. i mean, this president constantly is putting american people's lives at risk as he demands their presence. >> mika, we have a lot of story lines coming from the president's trip to arizona today, of which i will be traveling with him. i'm start with this one. it's going to be 109 degrees in yuma. not good. but what we are we have him

heading to the border wall, as you say, in some ways change the subject from what we're seeing all around us. he's trying to go back to 2016, talk about immigration. comes on the heels of him signing an executive order cutting down on the number of visa for the next two months in relation to the pandemic, the white house says. he's marking 212 miles the president tweeted yesterday of this border wall. of course, it was his signature campaign promise four years ago. he did, indeed, fight on twitter last night with fox news suggesting he wasn't getting enough credit for the number of -- the amount of wall that had already been constructed. that's one stop. it also comes on the heels of the white house trying to make the case that some of the rise of covid infections they're seeing in arizona and texas are because of crossings from the mexico border, which of course angered a lot of immigration groups and democrats saying that is a scapegoating tactic.

this will be the president's first event since the debacle in tulsa where he drew a much smaller than expected crowd to his first comeback rally, leaving him furious and his staff in turmoil. today's event is not officially a campaign rally. the campaign is not organizing it but it's a political event. he's speaking at this young republicans group in phoenix that's founded by charlie kirk, who's an ally of the president's eldest son, donald trump jr., and there are going to be thousands of people inside this mega church inside phoenix. as the mayor said, she doesn't believe it can be held safely. she's urging everyone to wear masks. the president has yet to wear one in a public setting. it's unclear if he will today. we're not sure if the attendees will wear it and it comes as arizona is one of the hot spots in terms of leading a coronavirus cases. >> 109 in phoenix, you'll be just fine in your wool suit.

let me ask you about campaign themes for 2020. if you closed your eyes and listened to the rally in tulsa, you could have replaced some names and dates with the 2016 rally. as you say, with the issue and executive order that suspends temporary work visa in this country, going down to survey the wall, a tiny, tiny sliver of which has been built since he became president of the united states, it does look like he's leaning back on the 2016 play book, going to those familiar themes. is that the intent with these two acts. >> i'll be back on this lawn tomorrow very sunburned, willie. i think that's part of it. it goes to show you the struggle this campaign has really had to make a case. two reasons. first, it's yet to define its opponent, joe biden. we were talking yesterday at the rally in tulsa, a lot of attack lines were about hillary clinton and barack obama. he's yet to land on something

about joe biden. even the merchandise, the vendors outside are still selling stuff about obama and clinton, not really about joe biden. he's trying to now make a case for another four years. he's trying to point to his accomplishments. and they're struggling with that as well, particularly in terms of this pandemic with so many questions about how he handled it. they're, of course, hoping the economy revives itself. they want that to be their main argument. with that uncertain, they're pivoting back to some 2016 issues, willie. cultural war flags, we're talking about nfl players kneeling for the national anthem and in particular the immigration. the visas, the trip to the border wall. the question is, amid everything else going on, will immigration play have nearly the resonance it did in 2016. >> speaking of 2016, president trump's former campaign manager corey lewandowski said donald

trump's campaign made a mistake by touting how big the crowd was. describing to iheart radio, he described it as an unforced error. >> i think a mistake was made. overpromising and underdelivering is, you know, the biggest mistake you can make in politics. and even if you receive a million or 1,200,000 rsvps, it's always about the turnout. jack, i lived this, as you know. i did it when candidate trump was wonning. we won 38 primaries and caucuses under my stewardship, obviously all due to donald trump, but we never did something like this. what that means is we have to go back and re-evaluate the situation in which people were getting those depicts determining if they were real, robots or putting additional protocols in place so this doesn't happen again. >> it's a rare day corey

lewandowski speaks out against president trump. i think he was preserving his record from four years ago and going after the current campaign manager. symbolic, obviously, on saturday night in tulsa and the image of the president returning to the white house stepping off marine one with his tie undone and trudging across the south lawn back into the white house. what did you see as you watched the president perform, what did you see in that crowd other than, perhaps, some people who didn't want to go out because of coronavirus? >> i think if this were a chapter in the book -- or the series of trump presidency, in search of lost mojo. that's what the president is trying to find. all reporting says he really looked forward to that rally because he thought it was going to -- that's where he feels

comfortable. that's what he took away from the 2016 campaign, those rallies that brought him such success and that got him such wall-to-wall coverage and so excited his base. so, to go there and to see it fizzle in a rather spectacular fashion with the entire upper part of that bowl empty, no outside event at all because there was no overflow crowd. there wasn't even a crowd to fill the arena. so, to see him trudging back to the white house, as you said, late at night with his tie undone, that's an image of donald trump we have not seen really since he began -- since he came down that escalator and started his campaign. it's all about moving forward.

it's all about confidence, going 90 miles an hour. and here he was going about 2 1/2 miles an hour, looking deflated and defeated. and so we don't read too much into one night. but this has been a bad few days for the president. >> still ahead on "morning joe," is a joke funny if you have to explain the punch line? the white house says the president was only kidding about slowing down coronavirus testing. but the president seems serious about it. plus, lebron james has been speaking out with a growing number of athletes joining him. we'll talk to one of them about the fight to get out the vote. that's just ahead on "morning joe." i don't keep track of regrets and i don't add up the years, but what i do count on... is boost high protein... and now, there's boost mobility... ...with key nutrients to help support... joints, muscles, and bones. try boost mobility, with added collagen.

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tools to manage your business from any device, anywhere. and a team of experts - here for you 24/7. we've always believed in the power of working together. that's why, when every connection counts... you can count on us. at that rally in tulsa, you'll remember the president the other night asked his people to, quote, slow down testing. now white house officials are delivering mixed messages about

what the president actually meant. initially saying he was just joking when the president said at the rally that officials should slow down coronavirus testing as aides claim he was kidding, but in interviews yesterday, the president declined to say he was joking. >> were you saying officials told his people to slow down testing is not true? >> it's a comment he made in jest, a comment he made in passing, specifically with regard to the media coverage and pointing out the fact that the media never acknowledges we have more cases because when you test more people, you find more cases. >> is it appropriate to joke about coronavirus when 120,000 people have died? >> he was not joking about coronavirus. he was joking about the media and they're failure to understand the fact that when you test more, you also find more cases. >> we do more testing than any country in the world, by far. 25 million tests. other countries do 1 million. every time you do a test, as you do more tests, it shows more and more cases. we're so far advanced both in

terms of the quality and the amount, and we're doing all these tests and it shows cases. if other countries aren't doing or if we did slow it down, we wouldn't show as many cases. you're showing people that are asymptomatic, you're showing people that have very little problem, young people that don't have a problem. we're doing so many testing, 25 million tests. >> did you ask to slow it down? >> if it did slow down, we're way ahead of ourselves. we've done too good of a job. then they say, oh, we have more cases in the united states. the reason we have more cases, because we do more testing than any other country, we far. >> at the tulsa rally where the media was hitting on that, i told my staff, stop the testing. was that tongue-in check? >> it's unfair. >> there wasn't a direct order for staff to stop the testing? >> no, but i think we put

ourselves at a disadvantage. i tell my people, i said, we've gotten so good at testing -- number one, we have the west tests. number two, we have the best test. we test more than any other nation. so you hear about all these cases. instead of doing 25 tests, let's say we did 10 million tests, we would look like we are doing better because we would have fewer cases. >> jonathan lemire, i'll ask you the question david brody put to the president, is there any evidence that shows the president did ask public health officials to, quote, slow down testing, as he put it in tulsa? >> it's not clear he gave a direct order to do that but we know he set this tone from the very beginning that he's nervous, in his estimation, the more testing, the more cases you find. let's take a half step back here. it was the systemic massive

testing and shortfalls in the early day of this pandemic that really led to some of the death totals and number of people sick that we've seen. this was -- the country itself failed on testing and we did not do as well as other countries. we keep pointing back to south korea. south korea and united states had the first positive test on the same day. they put in massive testing and got it under control far quicker than the united states. we are still seeing numbers rise in huge portions of the country. in the early days of the pandemic when there was that cruise ship docked off the coast of california, the president wasn't sure he wanted them to come dock. these were sick people, sick americans and yet he didn't want them to come dock because once they touched american soil, he feared it would inflate the number -- the statistics and total number of cases would go up and it would reflect badly on him. that's what we are seeing right now. he's far more concerned about the messaging, about the

appearances, his critics say, of the coronavirus and the failures of testing, that he's turning a blind eye to the actual problem that some of this country is still having. we're seeing spikes and surges in places like arizona. not just arizona. texas, florida, california, others as well. as much as the white house is trying to push that message of reopening, the country is going back to normal, you need to adapt to this, it is for a lot of people in a lot of places, a real crisis in their lives. coming up, john bolton sat down with a news anchor, but not house investigators. kurt bardella says that illustrates how hesitant democrats have been about pursuing the open threads of oversight. we'll talk about that just ahead on "morning joe."

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a number of black artists and athletes have signed on to launch the new voting rights organization, more than a vote, it's called. with the mission to fight voting suppression this election cycle. the group includes nba superstar lebron james, tennis champion sloane stephens, kevin hart, olympic track and field medalist allyson felix and super bowl mvp patrick mahomes. here is now a first look at the group's inaugural video.

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>> joining us now is another member of the group more than a vote, wnba chiney ogwumike. i can say that but not patrick mahomes. welcome to the show. mike barnicle is back with us. who are you hoping to reach as you all work forward on this, releasing this video? >> we're trying to reach everyone. we're trying to reach our communities. i am very glad to be a part of more than a vote, which as you mentioned, a group of black athletes and entertainers, that simply refuse to stay on the sidelines during this crucial time in our society in the world. of course, our team captain is, obviously, lebron james. he brought us all together. i'm not going to lie. the collective is awesome. i never thought i would be on zoom calls with lebron james, and kevin hart and sloane stephens, but in all seriousness, there's a major

shift happening. the group is full of athletes and entertainers. athletes across different sports, entertainers across different industries coming together as one team. we're at a pivotal point where we must seize the day. we must turn activism into actions. athletes are not to be on the front of social change but we realize sitting on the sidelines is not an option. it's in our dna. we are wired to care about the last athletes on the bench and want to win. we want to share that feeling with others, winning. we can't turn that on or off. our coalition is for our communities. more than a vote is here to educate and energize our communities to vote because that is the way to create meaningful change. i guess in basketball terms, when we shoot, in order to have the best chance at making the shot, you have to follow through. so, this is just us following through. educating ourselves so that we can educate others, partnering

with amazing groups that are doing the great work on the ground, fighting this good fight every day to get our communities to vote. >> tell me about the role black women play in this current movement and why it is especially significant. >> i'm proud to hold it down for the black women on this coalition. as a black woman myself, i'm blessed with a platform and i must speak for those i represent. we must continue to defeat the odds as black women and defy expectations. i was born and raised in sip press, texas. i've been called racial slurs at basketball games. as a black hooper i've been told to get back in the kitchen. as a black female broadcaster in the nba, i've been questioned and judged based upon my long, beautiful, nigerian name, chiney ogwumike, based upon my gender and my skin. but my parents have taught me

that my existence is my resistance. we have to go through it in order to get to it, right? and we are going to go through difficult times as we are now. but i fully believe that positivity and purpose will always prevail. that's why i'm really glad to be a part of this campaign. >> chiney, it's willie geist. so great to have you on the show this morning. as you said, your entire life you're experiencing things that some americans are just starting to speshs. what do you think about this moment has so brought out the american public, that allows a coalition like yours to step forward and bring about a leadership role? this has been going on, as wes moore points out in his book, for generations, for hundreds of years. there's something a little different just from the outside looking in in this moment. what do you see as you look out in the streets? >> i think the time is now. and i think we're realizing this because there is way too much at stake. i was at school in stanford

university in the bay area when colin kaepernick began his peaceful protest with the 49ers. he was in the wnba when maya moore announced she was leaving the league in her prime to fight for the wrongfully convicted. even for lebron james after winning a championship, my favorite game of all time as a basketball player was game seven of the 2016 final. he followed that up with his i promise school. showing athletes are passionate about activism and putting it into action. athletes have been doing this on their own for such a long time. now the difference is we're trying to do it together using our collective voice, bringing in the entertainers, pushing one message, a message that says, are our community is important. a message that says our community needs to vote. >> chi mentioned wes moore. he's here with a question. >> i'm so happy and thankful for your leadership on this,

sincerely. and to mika's point, i'm so honored to see you assi a woman and a black woman taking leadership on this. i think even when we're talking about things like the black lives matter movement, some people forget, that was started by black women. that was started by patrice and alicia garza. your leadership in this matters deeply. i have a question for you about this two-headed priority about when it comes to getting people out to polls. dr. king talked about both the priority of giving people the right to vote and reminding people that they have something to vote for. how are you thinking about that in terms of looking at this two-headed priority, that it's both about addressing the realities of voter suppression, addressing making sure we can make voting access accessible and easy and simple for people to do and also reminding people

that your vote actually matters, now as much as ever before. >> that is the most important aspect of this coalition. that's why i'm so excited to be a part of it. thank you for recognizing black women because too often black women are neglected in the narrative. we're still here fighting justice for breonna taylor. that's one thing the wnba is extremely passionate about, making sure we say her name. the best way, in my opinion, and in our coalition's opinion, to -- voter suppression is awareness and education and information. my mom has always preached education. my dad, too, but my mom has preached it because she's walked that walk. she preaches education in all aspects of her life. she just earned her ph.d. in education in december. she started off as special ed teacher, vice principal, my little sister's principal. for example, we just saw --

>> gosh -- >> we're aware of such actions we can energize the community and stay strong to find creative ways. >> we're losing a little bit of the sound there. we'll try to work on that. susan del percio, this obviously coming at a time when president trump is really working to sow doubt in the election process, specifically targeting mail-in balloting, which many in his administration do themselves. which he has done himself. which the military does. and yet he's tweeting away about it saying it's, you know, corrupt and open to fraud. >> this is just another one of trump's ways to find someone to blame if it doesn't go his way. it's a dangerous thing he's doing claiming the election is rigged. at the same time, i believe that you'll see every republican organization at the county,

state, federal level all trying to do absentee voter ballots. so, it's not unusual, republicans and democrats have done it for years. republicans in swing states count on it. it's one of their big-ticket investments in a campaign. so, it's not surprising that donald trump is disconnected from the operation that will probably end up helping him in some states. so, while he, once again, the same thing with the masks we talked about. wear masks. it keeps people healthy and working. donald trump allow mail-in voting, you may need it. >> i want to thank wnba all-star and member of the group, more than a vote. we lost the sound at the end but we got your message. thank you very, very much. while we're on sports with sports stars on the show, we did say mike barnicle would update

us on where baseball stands. mike, where does baseball stand? >> baseball stands in a very precarious position right now, mika. they've done irreparable damage to the sport. you've had 90 days of billionaires fighting millionaires over money. but as a result of that squabble they've had and the near ruination of the game rob manfred was given the right to impose a 60-game schedule. the players will report to a supposed spring training in july. they'll have spring training for two to three weeks. the season will probably start towards the end of july, 24th or 25th of july. they'll play those 60 games. they'll have playoffs. but they missed the moment. it gets back to what we were talking about earlier with chiney and with lebron james and get out the vote and black women and the power of this movement. but more than that, it's the power of this moment. and i would think it's upon all

of us, we're on tv nearly every day talking about issues that we don't miss the moment. don't let it go by because this is bigger than politics. it's bigger than a presidential election, as huge as that is. it's about the human condition. it's about what we've lived with and been surrounded with and ignored for generations. that's the indifference of people of color. black people specifically. we are indifferent to them as we go about our own lives. that's got to end. and we ought not to miss the moment. use it. use it. that's our power, to use this moment to perhaps change this country for the better for a long period of time. >> that's well said, mike. and back on the question of baseball. trevor bower, cincinnati reds pitcher, controversial guy, always speaks his mind on twitter, said yesterday in a series of tweets, it's

absolutely death for this industry, talking about baseball, to keep acting as it has been. both sides, we're driving the bus straight off a cliff. how is this good for anyone involved? the players have said, name the time and place, show us when and where, we want to go play baseball. as you see it, mike, even if they come back with a shortened season, is there lasting damage to baseball? >> oh, i think so, willie. i really think so. not only did they miss their moment 90 days arguing over money, they did it seemingly oblivious to the reality of our lives. more than 40 million people unemployed. a virus at war with the human race in this country and around the globe. people dying. people sheltered and dying. the elderly dying. the only connection they have to their families is to say good-bye via an ipad. we've endured all of this but the baseball players and baseball owners seemingly ignored the life around them

when they could have brought a little relief to the country by playing baseball earlier. the season should have begun july 4th. america's game on america's birthday, july 4th. they missed it. they blew it. they ignored our needs for their own selfish needs. i think they've done great and lasting damage to their game. >> all right. moving on to tennis, tennis champion novak djokovic says he has tested positive for the coronavirus. as yahoo! sports reports, it comes after a croatian tennis tournament that he organized resulting in three positive cases drawing backlash from the tennis world. djokovic said he's opposed to vaccination and has criticized the extreme and impossible coronavirus safety measures planned for the u.s. open in the fall. well, this is the problem. joining us now, governor andrew cuomo of new york, who knows a thing or two about trying to

manage through this crisis. thanks for being on the show this morning. i want to ask you about that, but i first want to get an update on how new york is faring, where we stand and what hospitalization rates are looking like right now. >> thank you, mika. new york is doing remarkably well. we're seeing states all across the nation with the virus going up. new york has one of the lowest infection rates in the united states of america, believe it or not. we went from one of the highest to one of the lowest. all of our numbers are good. our hospitalization rate is going to be down again today. we test about 60,000 tests per day, which is more than any other state. more than any other country per capita. so, we got that testing up. we do it religiously. we watch the rate and we calibrate our reopening by that rate. so, the reopening is happening all across the state.

we have different regions at different points, but they're all moving forward. we're now worried about increasing our transmission because people from other states might come from new york. you want to talk about a 180-degree turn and a cruel irony, that's where we are. >> and it's going to be a long haul, from what we've heard. we have dr. fauci testifying today. we might get more information from him. we know in florida people are asked to quarantine when they travel to florida. are you considering the same for new york? where do you stand because new york has, obviously, tons of people who travel all the time. >> yeah, we are seriously looking at that because, you know, where do we go from here? our rate is good. our rate is stable. as i said, it's one of the lowest in the country. we have to make sure that doesn't tick up because people don't get sloppy or

undisciplined. we also have to make sure we don't raise that rate by having people come in from other states. that's something we're seriously considering, that if you come in from a state that has a high transmission rate, you would have to self-quarantine or we would have to test you because we don't want to see that happen. so many of these issues come back to the same point. we tested the theory that the white house put out, right? they said just reopen. and they took a very political stance, in my opinion, to the entire issue. we see what happens when you just reopen without science, without metrics, without data. it wasn't good for public health. we lost people we didn't need to lose and it wasn't good for the economy. because those states that reopened in a rush now see a boomerang. they may wind up closing again.

so we tested the president's theory, a political reopening, covid was a political issue. it wasn't. it was a virus. you had to be smart. you had to use science. those states that used science are doing much better than those states that made this a political issue. that's a fact. >> you're dealing with a lot, as you sort of try and get your arms around this crisis and continue to do so. there's been the ongoing reports about the thousands of deaths in nursing homes in your state. are there -- there are people claiming you were negligent with the situation, especially at the height of the epidemic. i'd like for you to respond to that. also i'm just wondering, looking back are there measures that were taken too late or measures that could have been taken that we learned through the process? >> yeah. look, you have now the republicans trying to point fingers because they don't want to admit the total reality,

which is the federal government was asleep at the switch. why did new york have so many cases? when they said the virus was coming from china, they were 100% wrong. the virus left china. it went to europe. they traced the strain welcome back to europe. not the cdc, not the nih, nobody said, watch the people coming from europe. we had 3 million people come from europe and land at jfk, our airports, between january and march before they did the european travel ban. so, they totally blew it and they want to point fingers. on nursing homes, yes, people died in nursing homes, every state in the nation, because this virus affected older people in congregate settings.

there's no fact to it but they're doing what they're doing, which is playing politics. >> governor cuomo, willie geist. appreciate you coming on. to mika's question about lessons learned over the course of this process. looking back with the information you have, was it a mistake to issue that march 25th order to send people back into the nursing homes now that you have all the information you have? >> first, it was federal guidance that was put out, willie. and with the federal guidance -- >> but your -- >> yes, we're following the federal guidance. no, it wasn't a mistake because if you look at the facts, not that anybody looks at facts anymore, by the time -- you didn't want to leave a senior citizen in the hospital for two weeks if they didn't need to be in a hospital bed for two weeks. you didn't want to use a hospital bed that way. it's very dangerous for the senior citizen to be in the hospital for two weeks, sepsis,

secondary infections, et cetera. by the time a person was transferred after nine or ten days, they were no longer contagiou contagious. what all the data says is the reason you had infectionses in the nursing homes were because the staff brought in the infection. you look at communities that had the highest infection overall, those are the nursing homes with the high infection rate. it is that the staff got infected, they came to work and they brought in the infection. now, how do you fix that in the future? i don't know that you really can. we have mandatory testing for all nursing home staff. twice a week we were testing nursing home staff. take their temperature when they walk in. but it's very hard. all you need is one person, an air conditioning repairman, a delivery person. once that virus gets in the nursing home, it's fire through dry grass.

and it's not just nursing homes. you look at people who died from covid, over 80% are senior citizens. that's where this virus preys. but in terms of learning lessons, look, it is going to be books written on lessons learned. how did this happen in the first place? how did this virus get to the country with nobody knowing and us doing nothing? how did it get to europe and get to america and no one said anything? we had no testing protocol, we had no tracing protocol, we have no public health system. we have private hospitals. there's no public health system. that's why you see these places like florida now being overwhelmed because there is no way to manage a pandemic in this country. so, there's plenty of lessons to learned and it's going to start with what the federal government should have done it and when they should have done it. >> governor, we documented for

sure the federal failures throughout this. as you look at the fall and some experts have said there will be a recurrence in the fall, that this could come back in places like new york city, what do you take from these, let's call them four months of every day, every hour, intensely focused on this. what did you learn? what would you do differently if, god forbid, it comes back in the fall? >> we're preparing for that. first of all, willie, testing was key. everybody said the it was key. it was just too hard to accomplish. and the federal government ran from any substantive responsibility all through this thing. we're doing 50,000 to 60,000 tests every day. if there's a tick, we're going to see the tick. then stockpiles for ppe. it was ludicrous we're running around trying to buy masks and gowns and china was the manufacturer for all of them. all the testing reagents. we're employmenti implementing

surge and flex. every hospital has to be coordinated in the system and you have to be able to share patient load, et cetera. we have a database of 60,000 emergency health care workers who could be brought in when you're getting overwhelmed. so, just having that whole operational system in place. but i can't stop the virus from coming in over our border. and that's where we have to get a federal government that either knows what it's doing or the world health organization or whoever is the watch dog that stands on the wall and blows a whistle when the virus is about to invade a state or the country. >> governor cuomo, susan del percio has a question for you. she used to work for you, full disclosure. >> good morning, governor. >> hi, susan. good to see you. >> one of the things i know is

you're always looking twashowar the future. not that we're coming back and reopen new york, but how we're going to make new york better. one of the words you kept using in your briefings was reimagine. we saw that about ten ago when you talked about the police force and how policing can be reimagined. i'm curious what else do you see in the future, what your administration is looking to, whether it be in education or health care. it seems like there's a lot of opportunity here. >> there is. and thank you, susan. first, i want to punctuate what mike barnicle said. good for him. this is a special moment in society. and there has been a beautiful voice of outrage, finally. this nation has stood up as it related to covid. is it related to the sense that we're out of control that covid gave all of us? i don't know what started it, but it's great. but you have to seize the moment. they talk about carpediem, seize

the day. carpe momentum, seize the moment. how do you reform the police department? what does it look like? what do you mean defund the police? what do you mean demilitarize the police? in new york, i'm forcing the local governments to reinvent their police departments in this moment. but beyond the police department, reimagine education. we went to this immediate, remote education, remote learning because we were forced to by covid. we weren't really ready. but we've learned a ton. how do we institutionalize that? telemedicine. again, we were forced to dotel medicine before we were ready. but we learned a lot. in terms of public health going forward, how do you run a transportation system when you are worried about a disease and spread of a disease. we're now disinfecting the subway cars.

these cars are cleaner than you have ever seen them. you know, there were years where you couldn't get homeless people off the subways and newspapers and now we're disinfecting them, literally. they've never been cleaner. so there's a whole raft of issues we can learn. also in new york, this is the time to build. we've been talking about infrastructure forever. the economy now needs a real adrenaline shot. people need jobs. now do the construction you've never done. every president has talked about it. trump was going to do a $3 million infrastructure program. get those airports built. get those tunnels built. get those bridges built. and we're doing that in new york also. but again, to mike's point, this is a special moment. someone like myself who fought for change all their life knows that change only comes when the people stand up and demand it. but you have to then be ready to

actually have the program, have the legislation so you take that popular energy, put it together with progressive government policy, and that's tnt. that's political dynamite. and that's what i'm working very hard to do here. >> governor andrew cuomo, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. we really appreciate it. when it comes to the trump administration, there's plenty of outrage among congressional democrats, but what are they doing about it at this point? so much is happening. our next guest says not enough. joining us now, "usa today" opinion columnist and former senior adviser for the house oversight and government reform committee, kurt bardella. he's a "morning joe" contributor. also communications consultant tim miller. also an adviser to the group republican voters against trump, and he's got some interesting poll results to tell us about.

kurt, i want to start with you. what is it with democrats at this point sort of taking a pass on certain parts of the norms that the president is breaking through and constitutional norms and possibly even legal norms? is it just that there's so much chaos that there's literally not enough time in the day to keep up with it? >> well, mika, no question that there's some truth to that. but my frustration is that since impeachment earlier this year, i feel overall democrats in congress have been missing in action from oversight. where are the hearings? where are the subpoenas? they were given a strong majority, 40-seat majority in 2018 by the voters. an overwhelming mandate that they wanted accountability. they wanted oversight. trump spent the entire 2018 midterms, the run up to it complaining if you give them the authority, democrats are going to have hearings and subpoenas and the voters gave it to them

anyway. here we are flash forward to now. inspectors general are being fired. the justice department is doing whatever it wants firing u.s. attorneys in the dead of night, completely unethical and corrupt conduct. and the judiciary democrats and the oversight democrats haven't really done doing a whole lot. i don't understand why, especially when the check and balances that we rely on for our system to work and function are just being hit with a wrecking ball by donald trump. they haven't been more active. now finally as we turn the page here, they're starting to do more stuff. tomorrow the judiciary committee will hear from two doj whistle-blowers about what they call unprecedented level of conflicts of interest and corruption in the justice department by bill barr. jerry nadler said last night on msnbc that he'll be issuing a subpoena to the attorney general to appear. but, remember, barr was supposed to appear earlier this year. that hearing was delayed because of covid. republicans on the committee are saying, well, because of covid, barr shouldn't come right now. barr's happy to come when the pandemic is done with.

now let me get this straight here. donald trump can fly to arizona or fly to oklahoma and have rallies with a couple thousand people, but the attorney general can't walk down the street and testify before congress? how does that work exactly? so democrats need to start being aggressive. maybe they need to start listening to what project lincoln is doing in terms of tone, tenor, how you combat trump. how you combat republicans. take the fight to them. if republicans and people like trump and barr sense any weakness, sense any hesitation, sense any delay in what you want to do, they're definitely not going to cooperate. they're not going to be afraid of anything you have to say or do because they know you're reluctsant in it. they have to be stronger than this, mika. >> the polarization is staggering given some of these issues shouldn't be arguable, but tim miller, let me get to you. i want to look at these pole results you have but to help our viewers understand the significance, tell us about your group and exactly what was looked for, what was the poll

that was conducted and where? >> sure. republican voters against trump which i'm doing with mike murphy, bill kristol, our goal is to elevate the voices of real republicans across the country who are unhappy with trump in the hopes that their stories will resonate with their peers. i think that maybe they've heard a lot from people like kurt and joe and me and it's more compelling for them to hear from people like them. and if you go to rvat.org, you hear moving stories about people who have left the party over just the absolutely despicable behavior of this president. and so what we did is we went to jacksonville to see what real voters there thought about a gop convention coming. and what we found was they don't want it. and i think it is reflected in the lack of turnout in tulsa. if you looked at republican voters in jacksonville, 60% are worried about the virus coming to their city.

about one-third of republican voters in jacksonville didn't want the convention at all. overall, by 10 points, the entire community duval county did not want the convention to come. i think that's an ominous sign for tulsa reducts for the president if he gets there. and it shows the disconnect with the way he's handling this virus. not so seriously. and with how some rank and file republicans. obviously there are loud voices on twitter who agree with him and some loud voices at these protests not wearing masks who agree with him but a lot of rank and file republican voters who are not so sure about why he's not taking this seriously. we want to elevate their voices and try to push them into joe biden's camp in november. >> hey, tim. it's susan del persio. bravo for the work you're doing. i'm curious what you're seeing and whether if you brought it out in florida, did a bigger study and see where republicans in general, how they are feeling about the president or overall

voters because that's such an important state. >> we only looked at duval county. what we saw, though, this is important. the president won duval county. an important swing countdy by 1.5 points in 2016. no democrat had won it since jimmy carter. joe biden was up by 8 points there. so i think that clearly shows movement in florida. and what we're seeing in our conversations, look, the president has a solid base within the party. nobody is lying about that. but there is this group, maybe about 15% of the party, that don't like the tweets, don't like the way he handled himself in these press conferences. don't like the way he handled the virus but have always thought, i don't like the democrats more. we're starting to see some movement from those folks and that is the core group that we are trying to talk to at republican voters against trump, and we feel if we can move just a percentage of those voters over to joe biden's camp we can get rid of this president in

november. >> tim miller and kurt bardella. your piece is bolton versus bezos. house dems dropping the ball or bolton/trump bombshells prove house democrats have lost focus. that's on nbc think. thank you both for being on this morning. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks, mika. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's tuesday, june 23rd. here's what's happening this morning. any minute now, president trump gets back on the road. this time to the state of arizona. and for the second time in just four days, he is looking for his supporters to show up in a state that has been slammed by a rising number of covid cases. the plan to visit the border wall south of yuma and then speak at a students for trump event in phoenix. but if the virus kept people away from his rally in tulsa, he could face the same challenge this time. arizona is one of 23