this not be a referendum on donald trump? i think that's impossible because you can't ask to be in my life every day and for someone not to the cast a verdict on you. >> that is virtually impossible, and i feel like that is a fact. jim vanehei, thank you very much. i will be reading "axios a.m." in a little bit. sign up for the newsletter. that's it for me on this wednesday morning. i'm yasmin vossoughian. "morning joe" starts right now. however, in other areas of the country, we're now seeing a disturbing surge of infections that looks like it's a combination, but one of the things is an increase in community spread, and that's something that i'm really quite concerned about. the next couple of weeks are going to be critical in our ability to address those surgeings that we're seeing in florida, in texas, in arizona, and in other states. it is another big news morning.

dr. anthony fauci and other health experts appeared before lawmakers yesterday to address the surging number of coronavirus cases in the united states. we'll also break down results from some of yesterday's notable primary races, including one in north carolina, where a 24-year-old defeated the republican candidate endorsed by president trump. >> boy, and it wasn't even close. >> hello! and a fight over police reform. senate democrats will oppose the republican bill to reform policing guidelines, setting up stalemate in congress. we'll talk about that. good morning and welcome to "morning joe"! it is wednesday, june 24th. along with joe, willie, and me, we have white house reporter for the "associated press," jonathan lamire, nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of "kasie dc" on msnbc on sunday nights, kasie hunt, the host of msnbc's "politicsnation" and president of the national action network,

reverend al sharpton, and co-founder and ceo of axios, jim vandehei joins us. >> we have a lot of news to get to. and you know, willie, you and i, we're always going back and forth -- >> oh, boy. >> -- about what our favorite bible verse is. i know a couple days ago, you talked about how the lord loves a joyful giver. and i agree with you there. but you know what, we'll take baseball any way we can get it, and we don't care whether they like it or not. we're at least going to get 60 games, whether they're joyful givers or not. >> there's so much news. >> absolutely. the 10-year-old poll in my house was ecstatic yesterday, so that's what i'm going on. we've got 60 games. it's not 162, but i yelled upstairs at bedtime when the news crossed, "george, the yankees are playing in a month!" and he was thrilled. so, i hope the rest of the country feels that way. the truth is, we've been waiting a long time for sports, for any sports, really, and to be able

to sit there with your son or daughter and turn on a baseball game at night, we'll take 60 games. i know it wasn't pretty, but we'll take it. >> exactly. okay, a lot to get to. look at this. joe biden is leading president trump by 14 points nationally in the latest "the new york times"/sienna college poll. biden now sits at 50% to trump's 36% of support. the former vice president also has a two-point advantage over trump among voters 65 and older, a group the president carried by nine points in 2016. it seems things are changing. biden also has an 18-point advantage among independents and is up 28 points among college-educated whites and 39 points among college-educated white women. while trump is up 19 points among whites without a degree, a group he won by 36 points in 2016. what does this tell us, joe? >> yeah, well, it tells us -- you know, willie, national polls

this early don't matter, and we have to keep saying that. >> okay. >> at the same time, a 14-point loss by the sitting incumbent, down among seniors, a group he won handily, down 18 percentage points by independents, and down by massive figures in other areas that he needs to do much better on. you know what, maybe it doesn't matter a whole lot, but you look at history, and there is just -- there's no evidence anybody this far down will be able to catch up. but long way to go still. >> yeah, you're right to add all the caveats, but at some point, when you have a series of polls showing the same thing, there's something going on here. i think people were so, you know, gun shy because of what happened in 2016 that they

hesitate to make any judgments based on these national polls. and of course, it's not a national referendum. but the fox poll had the spread at 12 last week. this week, "the new york times," just this morning, at 14. and as you say, what's really most interesting as you go through these numbers -- and you can hardly find in this "the new york times"/siena poll, a place where trump is winning. he's winning with white voters with no college degree by 19 points. but other than that, jim vandehei, when you go down the list and look, among women he's down 22, men, losing by 3 points, older voters, in a statistical tie, younger voters he's losing, african-american, latino. you go down the list, and the independent spread of 21 is significant for all the obvious reasons. when you look at this poll, as someone who usually gives us the grain of salt that we need on a national poll, what do you see? >> i'm with you guys. you can ignore a poll here, a poll there. the trend is devastating for donald trump, and he knows it. listen, 14 points.

when you talk about, hey, there might be a hidden vote, there's not a 15-point hidden vote out there. and there's a lot of indicators. it's not just the national poll. another poll yesterday in texas basically tied. the wisconsin polls, the minnesota polls, pennsylvania polls, michigan polls, arizona polls, states that matter polls, all bad for him. and look at that event, which did not get a lot of coverage, which i think people covered it a lot. in tulsa, he was talking about a million people being interested, hundreds of thousands showing up, side venues being put up so they could have the big rock star appearances by him and vice president pence, and almost nobody showed up. a third of the arena is empty. he's devastated afterwards. a lot of turmoil inside the campaign. why? where does that turmoil come from? not from one poll by "the new york times," but from all of the polls they're seeing by fox, by "the new york times," by quinnipiac, by all of the internal polling that shows the exact same thing. so, yes, this can change. he's freaking out. his new top -- his first meeting

of the day now is at 5:30 a.m. with jason miller, his campaign strategist, so he can get the latest polls and latest gossip about politics. now they're all worked up about how do we smoke joe biden out and make it a referendum on joe biden and not just on me? and there's no way it's not going to be a referendum on donald trump. that's what these numbers show. and the idea that biden is going to suddenly start taking big chances and come out and do a lot more -- why would he? this is working pretty well for him. make it about donald trump. play it safe. you're the same alternative. seems right now like a smart strategy. >> but the problem is, mika, that every day -- and we say this every day, and i actually looked at the news yesterday and just came to the conclusion, this does not look like a man who wants to win, who wants to be re-elected. you know, remember when he asked china to help him get elected? >> yeah.

yeah. >> and marco rubio came out and said, oh, he's just joshing. >> nope. >> here, he's asking the communist chinese, the people's republic of china, to rig the election for him, to get involved. and marco rubio said, oh, he's just joshing. isn't that a funny joke? he's just joking. and then, donald trump came out a couple days later, said, no, i'm not joking. and he repeats it again. and so, at this event in tulsa, the president said, he told people that he wanted to slow down the testing. and everybody said, oh, he's just joking. president's just joking. staff members saying, oh, he's just joking. and the president, after they were insisting he was joking, he said at the tulsa rally on the slowdown the testing -- he said, no, he wasn't joking. and he said, you know, i don't -- i don't get around. like, so, again, time and time

again, this guy every day acts like he doesn't want to get re-elected. he undercuts his aides who are trying to cover up for previous mistakes that he's making, and the situation just keeps getting worse. and you have to ask yourself, why is a guy who's down 10 points, 12 points, 14 points, why doesn't he adjust? why -- i mean, obviously, he's incapable of adjusting, but at least he proved in 2016 that he knew when to keep quiet. but no, no! and yesterday, while he was speaking to reporters ahead of his arizona trip, donald trump, once again, basically told people, assume the worst of me at all times. i wasn't joking. [ inaudible question ]

>> were you just kidding or do you have a plan to slow down testing? >> i don't kid. let me just tell you. let me make it clear. we have got the greatest testing program anywhere in the world. we test better than anybody in the world. our tests are the best in the world, and we have the most of them. by having more tests, we find more cases. >> okay, okay, again, first of all, i just -- you can never let that pass without just saying -- >> incredible. >> -- the president's lying. the ignorance is incredible. we don't have the best tests in the world. even yesterday on capitol hill, you had dr. fauci and the cdc director saying we need to make the tests better! >> yeah. >> we don't have the best tests in the world. they also said, well, nobody ever told us to slow down the testing. but again, mika, i'll just keep going back to what i've been saying all along -- the president of the united states continues to say something, as

he's about to leave for yet another superspreader event -- >> that's what these should be called because that's what they are. >> that every american knows is a lie, that somehow, if you stop giving tests, that the infection rate will go down and people will stop dying. even if we hadn't done any tests, mika, we would still, despite the fact we only have 4.5% of the world's population and the best scientists, the best doctors, the best everything, like, we would still, mika, have about one out of three deaths. >> yeah. >> in the world from the coronavirus, from covid-19, which, of course, the president said, where do they get the 19 from? >> honestly, joe, when you really look at this presidency, he's never joking. and you and i never want to be on fifth avenue with him, because he is never joking. and you're right, these events

are superspreaders. they may be rallies. they may be some sort of campaign event, but they are, before anything -- ask any doctor -- the perfect petri dish to spread a deadly virus. this is crazy that we're at this point. >> he was visiting one of the nation's biggest megachurches to talk to arizona college students yesterday -- >> stuffed together. >> stuffed together. and listen to this rhetoric. >> the democrats are also trying to rig the election by sending out tens of millions of mail-in ballots, using the china virus as the excuse for allowing people not to go to the polls. hey, we have a virus coming. we have to send -- think of it, california. he's going to be sending out millions and millions of ballots. well, where are they going? where are these ballots going? who's getting them?

who is not getting them? a little section that's republican. this will be, in my opinion, the most corrupt election in the history of our country, and we cannot let this happen. they want it to happen so badly. there's never been anything where they have so many names. i could give you 19 or 20 names for that, right? it's got all different names. wuhan. now, wuhan's catching on. coronavirus, right? kung-flu. covid. covid-19. covid. i say, what's the 19? covid-19. some people can't explain what the 19. give me the -- covid-19. i said, that's an odd name. i could give you many, many names. some people call it the chinese

flu, the china flu, right? they call it the china, as opposed -- the china. i've never seen anything like it. >> i really -- willie, i don't know where to begin. first of all, all the president had to do was ask any staff member in the white house. they would tell him the 19 came from the year of the outbreak. covid, corona, "v," virus, "d," disease. say it with me, covid-19. the year of the outbreak. that said, i remember back in december of 2015, after seeing donald trump's press conference on the muslim ban, and i think

we talked about how it helped him in the polls, in the republican polls. i remember asking, is this what germany looked like in 1933? i've got to ask the question, what are people going to be saying about us, willie, 50 years from now, when you have the president of the united states working himself up into a sweat and a lather, talking about naming the virus something that millions of americans find deeply offensive, and the crowd breaking out in wild applause. i'm 57 years old. i can safely say that i've just never -- i've never heard anything like this before, before donald trump, and i pray to god, i pray to jesus that we as a country will never hear anything like this again. the president makes a racist

remark. and a crowd of college students break out in wild applause. and getting back to the earlier theme, that this is a guy that doesn't act like he wants to be re-elected. you ask any republican state party chairperson that wants their candidate to win what that does to asian americans who used to be a reliable republican faction, and they'll say, well, it just, it hurts us, not only with asian americans, it hurts us with people of color. it hurts us with a majority of suburban voters. it hurts us with women, whether they have college degrees or not. again, this is a guy that is driving this campaign off the cliff every day, and it seems that he is working as hard as he

can to boil down his base to 30%. >> yeah, and he's enjoying it. and that was a manifestation -- a literal manifestation -- of playing to the base. as he went through the names of covid-19 and coronavirus, you could hear the crowd waiting for that racist term that he used. it was almost like at the old rallies when they did the "lock her up" chants. they were waiting to say it. they were there to hear the hit song, one of his lines. and he delivered it. and he delivered it twice. and it's ugly and it's racist, and imagine being an asian american in this country and hearing your president say that. we heard that side of it. the ugly racist side. we heard the ignorant side, that he didn't know what the 19 stood for. and then we heard the truly, as jon meacham said on this show yesterday morning, perhaps the most damaging side, which is that he's laying this predicate already that the election is rigged. and why is he doing that? because we have polls that show him down 14 points, that show him getting crushed among women,

suburban women, the people he needs to win over to be re-elected. he's laying the groundwork to look back, jonathan lamire, after election day, if he does lose, and say, this election is rigged, we should not go quietly. jonathan, you were on that trip yesterday, all day. what was it like first to be -- we'll talk about the border in a moment, but what was it like to be around him when he was making that speech? >> reporter: willie, what we saw with the campaign yesterday is they wanted a burst of enthusiasm. what they're seeing also is the president is increasingly talking to a smaller and smaller portion of the electorate, that base, and even just the die-hards, truly hard-core portion of that base. as you said, i was with him yesterday in arizona. that megachurch in phoenix is about 3,000 or 4,000 people there, were the estimates, and it was packed. and on one hand, you could tell the president drew a lot of energy from it. after sort of the debacle in tulsa, where he stared at thousands of empty seats, he was

clearly revived to see a large, boisterous, very loud crowd, that indeed, you mentioned "lock her up." we heard that yesterday. we heard that yesterday, too. but the president was hitting the notes like he was talking to simply viewers on fox news or, in this case, young republicans. some of them are college students. trying to make the case as to why the last 3 1/2 years, why his grievances are what they are, and laying, as you said, potentially laying the groundwork for the ultimate sort of -- the ultimate play of unfair sports play this fall with the election. so, there's a few things. you heard it. the crowd was goading him on when he was going through the names of the coronavirus. they were anticipating. even shouted that racist term before the president said it back and then reveled in it. we heard him talk about the election being unfair. we heard him talk about joe biden not being able to get out of the basement and so on. in there was somewhat of a coherent argument.

we heard it a little bit in tulsa, too, here as well, trying to paint democrats as the radical left, trying to suggest that biden can't control them. they're going to control him. we're going to see a lot of that. his advisers have told us that's an argument they're trying to make, make that case in the months ahead. but it's drowned out by the other noise and it's drowned out by today headlines, once again, of him using a racist term that even some in his own staff have urged him just in the last few days, urged him not to repeat. >> by the way, jonathan lamire looking pretty good this morning after being in 108-degree heat yesterday. but jonathan will tell you, it's a dry heat. reverend al -- >> great. >> let's talk about, again, the president continuing to use his racist term, a term that's deeply offensive to a lot of asian americans and a lot of other americans. and you do sit back and wonder -- mitch mcconnell was asked what he thought about it,

and he wouldn't respond. he said -- >> geez. >> -- "ask my wife." you wonder what elaine chao is thinking about it. >> thanks, mitch. >> how long can she stay silent? she stood by him after charlottesville. he had her stand behind in a press conference as he defended himself in charlottesville. she said nothing. she's saying nothing now. but, we'll see if she decides to ever say anything, because we really don't want to read about it in her book after the administration. she needs to say it now. for millions of asian americans who need a voice to speak up to this president. but reverend, you know politics extraordinarily well. "the new york times" says you're one of the most important players in national politics, certainly for the democratic party. i just wonder about, again, forget about the immorality of it for one second. let's just put that to the side. it's immoral. it's wrong.

it's demagogic. it's racist. it speaks ill of our president. it speaks ill of our country. >> yep. >> but just the politics of it is stupid and self-defeating, yet he does this every day! you have known him, like i have known him for a long time. does this guy want to win the election? >> it is becoming more and more clear to me that, you're right, he really doesn't really want to win this, and he's not doing anything that would demonstrate otherwise. aside from the immorality and the outrageous racism of it, the politics of it is that he's saying that to vote for me is to identify with outright bigotry of a deadly disease. let's not act like he's just making a racist term about something that is lighthearted. people are dying and have died

about this disease, and you use this racist term to really cover something that is so devastating, which is also why i think joe biden is so far and steadily ahead in the polls, because where he's trying to make him sleepy joe, joe biden is doing what muhammad ali did when i was a kid. he's rope-a-dope. he's laying on the ropes and let the guy punch himself out. and if he stays on the ropes in the basement, this guy will beat himself. then all joe's got to come out and do is finish him off. he's beating himself to a pulp, and he seems to be enjoying it. >> well, joe, we were talking about the national polls really representing maybe, perhaps, the shifting mood of the country. let's bring it down to a local race. in the race to be the republican candidate for the north carolina house seat, vacated by now white house chief of staff mark meadows, a 24-year-old motivational speaker defeated

the trump-backed candidate. >> badly. >> madison cawthorn beat linda bennett in north carolina's 11th congressional district's republican primary runoff, a 24-year-old. bennett was endorsed by both mark meadows and president trump, who not only endorsed her, but cut a robocall for her as well. so, he put his stamp all over that candidate. cawthorn will face democrat mo davis in november, and he will join us this morning in the next hour of "morning joe." >> so, kasie, we've been, all of us have been talking about the terrible choice republicans have had to make over the past 3 1/2 years for themselves. i think it's a simple choice, but they consider it to be an agonizing choice, trying to get trump's base to support him, trying to get the republican base to support these congressional candidates, while not losing general election support.

and that's proven impossible to happen. they get wiped out. you look at the senate map right now. it's looking really bad for a lot of republicans. but in this case, we move to the next stage, it seems, that not only does donald trump not have coattails in general election. you look at this race, the mark meadows seat -- he doesn't have coattails now in the republican party. >> i don't think there is any other way to look at this than an embarrassment for mark meadows, for the president. it's mark meadows' own seat here. now, i'm really interested to hear from madison cawthorn later in the hour because i think it might give us a sense of why he -- he clearly -- i mean, this wasn't even a close race, right? he was doing something interesting and different, and he does have a life story that's pretty compelling. he's young, as you pointed out. he'd be the youngest member of congress. he was in a car accident, was paralyzed from the abdomen down. you know, there's a lot there. but i also think it speaks to

this reality that voters are tired of being told who to vote for. and there has been this longstanding strategy from the national parties to try and pick people that will be palatable, back them up with money, kind of organize the map in a way that is favorable to them. and we're seeing time after time after time that voters are saying, no, you try and do that, i don't want to listen to you anymore. i mean, it's part of why we have donald trump. but that's also what makes running for re-election, if you're donald trump, so challenging. normally, being an incumbent is a huge advantage, but he ran as a guy who was going to shake up the system completely, and instead, we've seen the last 3 1/2 years have, while, yes, he certainly has shaken up our norms and kind of the baseline for how we consider how governing is supposed to work in this country, but now he's also in charge, he's got to own all of this. and people, frankly, are still angry.

they're even in a harder position now than they were in 2016 from an economic perspective with the pandemic, and now, of course, the racial unrest that we're facing. and to bring it back to the national poll we started the show with, joe, i mean, one national poll in the presidential race, 100% doesn't necessarily matter. but what we have seen time after time in recent years is that these are wave elections. you know, in 2014, across the senate map -- i traveled to all of those states. i covered almost every single competitive race that year. i wrote granular stories about what was going on. and all of the democrats lost. none of that little stuff mattered because the wave just swept across the map. and these numbers, as well as kind of the way we are talking about this, the nationalization, you know, the demise of local media, quite frankly, which is unbelievably sad for so many reasons. i see a wave shaping up again this time, and you know, that's why i think republicans are in such a difficult position when we ask them questions in the

hallway every day. >> and as kasie said, we'll have 24-year-old madison cawthorn, who beat not only his opponent, but president trump and mark meadows, the incumbent in north carolina, on the show in a few minutes. on the democratic side, kasie, in kentucky, the race for who will take on senate majority leader mitch mcconnell in november is too close to call between amy mcgrath and charles booker. mcgrath leads by about 2,000 votes at this point. they're still counting. in new york, two democratic incumbent seats could be in jeopardy in the state's 12th congressional district primary. democratic incumbent carolyn maloney, who shares the oversight committee, is narrowly leading challenger theirage patel. and in new york's 16th congressional district, democratic primary, longtime congressman eliot engel, who chairs the foreign affairs committee, trails jamaal bowman there. kasie, what are the surprises you see in these races and democratic races across the country last night?

>> so, i think it's tempting to read this as, you know, progressives have -- you know, voters are looking for somebody that's more progressive, that's not part of the establishment. i think it's a little bit of a mistake to look at it that way. i think it's a rejection of the calcification of our politics, the people that have been in office for decades in many cases. the kentucky race is fascinating, and we still have a lot of counting to do in that race. it really could right now go either way, but the turnout in that primary election shattered previous records. and charles booker was someone who caught on to this last-minute energy, really was a part of the protests that were swelling in louisville around black lives matter, and i think really showed how you can you don't have to operate inside the systems that have been built again. and that's kind of the trend

that i see here is voters looking at these candidates and saying i don't want to be told what to do, i don't want to be told who to vote for. and while, you know, we've talked so much about kentucky, and i still think it's incredibly unlikely that mitch mcconnell would lose this race in kentucky, it is true he is incredibly unpopular. and it is also true that this is a pretty unpredictable outcome. they've been running against amy mcgrath for a year. and i think given the current environment, it's going to be tricky to figure out if charles booker wins this race, mitch mcconnell's going to have to figure out how to run against a young african-american man who has captured a lot of excitement and seems to be expanding his appeal beyond the traditional centers of louisville and lexington that a democrat would vote for. you know, they are looking at appalach appalachia. we'll see if that's actually real. but a lot of trends going on here that i think should make republicans nervous. >> and reverend al -- >> absolutely. >> -- i'm curious, what are your takeaways from the races from north carolina to kentucky to

new york? >> i think that more than rebellion against just the candidates or incumbents that have been there for decades is they're facing candidates that represent the spirit of the times and that symbolize the issues that are prevalent in people's minds, because there are many veterans that were re-elected or renominated yesterday. so, i think that we shouldn't confuse the two or three that seem to be upsets with what it's based on a new form of leadership, a leadership that identifies with the issues of now. every one of these, if you look at the engel race and the other races, were people that were involved and symbolize, as we see in kentucky, the actual issues that people are caring about now, and that's what the veterans missed. the veterans that identified with that won handedly yesterday. all right, still ahead on

"morning joe," the senate gop bill on police reform is about to hit a road block as democrats argue that the measure is adequate enough. senator cory booker, who calls the republican proposal not salvageable, will be our guest this morning to explain why. plus, the key takeaways from dr. anthony fauci's testimony on capitol hill yesterday. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ." we'll be right back. 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... to the university moving hundreds of apps quickly to the cloud... or the city government going digital to keep critical services running. you are creating the future-- on the fly. and we are helping you do it. vmware. realize what's possible.

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the most powerful and comprehensive border wall structure anywhere in the world. my administration has done more than any administration in history to secure our southern border. our border's never been more secure. >> before that phoenix event, we talked about a moment ago, president trump yesterday traveled to the u.s./mexico border in yuma, arizona, hoping to revive his campaign's message on immigration while touting his efforts to build more than 200 miles of a new border wall, or

at least to renovate it. a fact check. a recent department of homeland security report found only about three miles of new border wall system have been constructed in locations where no barriers previously existed. the rest are replacements of existing, dilapidated fences or vehicle barriers. so jonathan lamire, you were there physically with the president of the united states in that 109 heat along the border. the president autographing the three miles of wall that his administration has built. the other 213 miles, just bigger wall, effectively, has been put in place. what was his message down along the border there? what did he try to get out of that day? >> reporter: well, he was hot. we all were. no. but i think this was an effort to try to talk about any, other than the pandemic. that was the plan here is to revive a signature 2016 issue, to point towards the progress he has made. and yes, as noted, there's actually not much in terms of new construction, but the wall/fence structure that you're

seeing behind the president there, which he did autograph, i mean, it is tall, it is imposing, it is black, very hot to the touch. and he was trying to talk about how he's really cracked down on illegal crossings at the border. but he also said something interesting. he said he believed that the pandemic would be far worse in the united states if that wall weren't there, because he thought that mexico would be a hotspot bringing cases into the united states, and he said that wall was keeping covid out. now, let's stop for a second here. first of all, the united states has been far more -- had far more of a coronavirus problem than mexico, and also, he's talking about keeping covid out. arizona is one of the states where the cases are surging. and that was sort of a backdrop to the entire day yesterday. as much as the white house is happy with the images they got of the president at the wall, the president speaking in front of that packed church, arizona, like texas and florida, are the states that are really buckling right now under these surging infections. and i will say, to reiterate, we noted earlier, that megachurch in phoenix, there were no

temperature checks, there was no social distancing, it was packed shoulder to shoulder in there. only very few, i'd say a dozen or so of the 3,000 or more people, rallygoers in there, were wearing masks. the only masks that people were wearing were most of us in the press pool, for the most part. >> incredible. >> it felt unsafe in there, and i think that is sort of the concern, is that you can have a triumphant moment like this, but are we going to see cases spread from a moment like this or will we just see further rises two or three weeks down the road? >> you know, jonathan, i can ask a doctor what that is, and if that would be defined as a superspreader event. sure seems like it. and purposeful, which is really at this point lunacy. as jonathan mentioned, the president's visit to arizona came as the number of coronavirus cases in the state continues to spike. so you put a superspreader event in a state that's having a problem with the virus. it came on the very same day

texas governor greg abbott urged texans to stay home, to fight the rampant spread of the coronavirus, after a record spike of cases in his state. and as the nation's leading infectious disease expert, dr. anthony fauci was testifying on the hill. >> however, in other areas of the country, we're now seeing a disturbing surge of infections that looks like it's a combination, but one of the things is an increase in community spread, and that's something that i'm really quite concerned about. the next couple of weeks are going to be critical in our ability to address those surgeings that we're seeing in florida, in texas, in arizona, and in other states. so, plan "a," don't go in a crowd. plan "b," if you do, make sure you wear a mask. we are still in the middle of the first wave. so before you start talking about what a second wave is,

what we'd like to do is to get this outbreak under control over the next couple of months. >> joining us now, clinical assistant professor at the nyu grossman school of medicine's department of population health, dr. lippy roy. she is an nbc news medical contributor. dr. roy, you know, just looking and analyzing the facts here. you have an event in arizona, a state that's seeing an uptick in hospitalizations in coronavirus cases, and you put people in a megachurch sitting next to each other without wearing masks, close to each other, chanting, clapping, singing for hours, what would you call that? >> well, good morning, mika. to quote dr. fauci, this is nothing short of disturbing. the community spread of this virus all over the country. yes, we're seeing a decline like in states like new york, new jersey, after we went through a

hellish period, but yeah, that scenario that you're showing footage of in that church in arizona, i mean, it's creating the perfect environment for this virus to thrive. it's indoors. people are in close -- closely congregating, so that means the respiratory virus, the virus doesn't have to travel very far at all. and the key point here is that those young kids -- they're maybe what, teenagers, 20 years old, they're not the ones that are going to get severely ill. they're going to go back to their homes, their communities, and they're going to infect grandma, who has congestive heart failure, their uncle who has diabetic kidney disease, even a 10-year-old niece or cousin who has leukemia. i'm thinking of my own father, who's over 80, has had quintuple bypass and now congestive heart failure. these are the vulnerable people who are going to get sick, and unfortunately, probably intubated and even die. that's what's really disturbing, mika. >> well, and i'd just like to point out that they had these

people, this captive audience, sitting there together, not wearing masks. again, the president of the united states refuses to wear one. he is the leader by example. there was even someone who shouted, you know, "no more masks!" or something, as they were also shouting "lock her up," they were chanting. they were listening to don junior and others in the run-up to the president. so, wouldn't this also characterize -- and i'm just laying down facts here -- as prolonged exposure as opposed to just walking by someone? you're sitting with these people for hours. >> yeah. no, you're absolutely right, mika. we already have data showing that the risk factors for increased transmission or increased risk for viral transmission is close contact for prolonged periods. and you know, what's interesting is that, if you notice with the footage, the president was on the stage when two young kids were at a podium. did you notice how far apart

they were from the president? >> yeah. >> so, he actually believes in science insofar as it applies to him. meanwhile, the audience, not, almost barely a mask to be found amongst these kids that were so closely congregated. i mean, it just -- it makes me feel ill at how reckless at the conduct. >> dr. roy, it's willie geist. good to have you back on the show. you have public health officials, including this morning the former head of the fda, saying that hospitals in texas, florida, and arizona are on a trajectory to see, as you describe, what we saw in new york a couple months ago, to have to suspend elective surgeries, to be overwhelmed, to create covid units in their hospitals. the governor of texas yesterday, without issuing a formal order, said you know what, it's probably best if everyone stays indoors, unless you have to go out. so, what do you see over the horizon in places like texas and arizona? >> well, willie, it's really concerning. you know, texas medical center, i actually, after hurricane katrina, i was a second-year med student -- we evacuated to

houston. so to this day, i have such warm feelings about that entire city and that medical community. it's one of the world-class medical centers with multiple hospitals, and they are all going to be burdenedspital is ae opening up to adult beds. it's going to be really serious. but i've got to tell you, that congressional hearing yesterday, as a doctor, i was so happy to see, who hear from dr. fauci and redfield. every day that we have a pandemic, we need to be hearing from these health officials, every single day so that there's no mixed messaging, so the public is very clear in terms of what needs to happen. wearing the mask, keeping the physical distance, and do not -- i mean, avoid the congregation of mass gatherings. >> all right. dr. lipi roy, thank you very much for sharing basic facts with us this morning. some still need to hear them. coming up, president trump's job approval rating has fallen to 39% amid nationwide protests

and an ongoing pandemic. we're digging into the new polling with politico's jake sherman next on "morning joe." ke sherman next on "morning joe." my nunormal: fewer asthma attacks. less oral steroids. taking my treatment at home. nucala is a once-monthly add-on injection for severe eosinophilic asthma. not for sudden breathing problems. allergic reactions can occur. get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. infections that can cause shingles have occurred. don't stop steroids unless told by your doctor. tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. may cause headache, injection site reactions, back pain, and fatigue. ask your doctor about nucala at home. find your nunormal with nucala.

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dealdash.com, the fair and honest bidding site. an ipad was sold for less than $24; a playstation for less than $16; and a 4k television for less than $2. go to dealdash.com right now and see how much you can save. remember, shipping is always free. an update now on a story we brought you yesterday. an fbi investigation has concluded that the noose found hanging in nascar driver bubba wallace's garage stall at talladega superspeedway in alabama had been placed there

nearly eight months ago, long before the stall was assigned to wallace, who is the only full-time black driver in nascar's top racing series. a joint statement from the u.s. attorney's office and the fbi reads in part, "after a thorough review of the facts and evidence surrounding this event, we have concluded that no federal crime was committed. the investigation also revealed evidence, including authentic video confirmed by nascar, that the noose found in garage number four was in that garage as early as october 2019. although the noose is now known to have been in garage number four in 2019, nobody could have known mr. wallace would be assigned to garage number four last week." but during an interview last night on cnn, wallace questioned the findings. >> have you seen ropes like that hanging from garages? is that typical? >> don, the image that i have and i have seen of what was

hanging in my garage is not a garage pull. i've been racing all my life. we've raced out of hundreds of garages that never had garage pulls like that. so, people that want to call it a garage pull and put outlook all the videos and photos of knots being in their, as their evidence, go ahead. but from the evidence that we have, that i have, it's a straight-up noose. the fbi has stated it was a noose over and over again. nascar leadership has stated that it was a noose. i can confirm that. i actually got evidence of what was hanging in my garage, over my car, around my pit crew guys, to confirm that it was a noose. and never seen anything like it. >> so, reverend sharpton, what bubba wallace is referring to there is other reports that that was actually a door pull for the garage, the way to close the door when it's up and bring it down. but the fbi, as bubba wallace

said right there, again and again, referred to it as a noose. we should take it as good news that someone didn't place it into his stall specifically as the only full-time black driver in nascar who pushed to have those confederate flags removed from nascar events, and nascar did take that step last week. but it does appear there was a noose, as the fbi is calling it, placed in that garage last fall. >> the fbi identified it as a noose. nascar said it was a noose or went along with the fbi's characterization. it was a noose. so, the question is, even if they did not know that bubba wallace was going to use that stall, why was a noose in the stall? it's clear what a noose represents. and i think to go whether or not they knew that sooner or later the one black driver would use that stall really doesn't answer why it was in the stall at all.

and then did someone know that it was in the stall when they did belatedly assign bubba there? so i don't think this answers a lot of questions. and clearly, from what we just saw of bubba wallace, it does not seem he, who is the victim and possible target in this matter, seems to be satisfied with this. so i do not think that we've seen closure in this particular inquiry. >> and rev, it doesn't take away from the scene we saw at the track in talladega two days ago, when all of the nascar's drivers and pit crews pushed bubba wallace's car to the front of pit road, to the top spot. he came out of his car in tears, put his head down on the roof of the car. and an extraordinary scene -- i say again for people who don't follow nascar -- first of all, that the confederate flag is now banned from those tracks all across nascar, and that's a huge step, if you've ever been to a nascar race. and as bubba wallace ran along the edge of the track, rev, the other day, he was high-fiving

some of the fans who were there who were wearing "i can't breathe" and black lives matter t-shirts at a nascar race. it may seem like a small thing to people who aren't fans of nascar, but culturally in the south, culturally for nascar, those were big steps. >> it is a huge step, given this climate. and as one who has been on the forefront of a lot of these protests and a lot of raising these issues this summer and even during george floyd's eulogies, i think it is a big deal. because to see in the nascar culture, which is the culture of the deep south, them push his car up front and openly embrace him means that we can win and we can change america. i don't think that we should underestimate the statement that made, the impact that made at all. i think it really shows that change can come if we keep fighting. we're not anywhere near there yet, but it gives us a lot of encouragement that if we keep

going, we can change it. you cannot get more southern-based, southern-grounded culture than nascar. and to have that happen was a huge deal, whether you're a nascar fan or not. >> no question about it. reverend al sharpton, great to have you on, as always. we'll see you soon, rev. >> thank you. >> thanks so much. we'll be right back on "morning joe" with an update on the police reform bill. where that stands this morning in the united states senate. e tg in the united states senate. - [narrator] the shark vacmop combines powerful suction

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the president suggested over the weekend, just the day before yesterday, that he wanted to slow that down. if we do that, can you imagine the situation changing significantly? >> well, i think the president clearly said that in jest, in a rally when he was talking about the numbers. in no way is it the president's policy or our policy to slow down testing. >> mr. president, at the rally when you said you asked your people to slow down the testing, were you just kidding or do you

have a plan to slow down testing? >> i don't kid. let me just tell you. let me make it clear. we have got the greatest testing program anywhere in the world. we test better than anybody in the world. our tests are the best in the world. and we have the most of them. by having more tests, we find more cases. >> welcome back to "morning joe." it is wednesday, june 24th. with us, we have msnbc national affairs analyst, co-host of showtime's "the circus," and executive editor of "the recount," john heilemann. washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay. msnbc anchor joshua johnson joins us. and chief white house correspondent for "the new york times," peter baker, as well as senior writer at politico and co-author of "the playbook," jake sherman. good to have you all on board this hour. >> so, peter baker, what's the quote when somebody tells you who they are? >> yeah.

>> maya angelou, believe them. donald trump, whether it's asking china to interfere with american democracy and marco rubio saying, oh, no, he was just joking. then donald trump coming out, you know, talking to you guys, basically saying the same thing again later. here we have donald trump again letting everybody know he wasn't joking about the tests. >> yeah. >> he -- yeah, go ahead, peter. i'm sorry. >> i was going to say, it must be so hard to work for this president and to have to explain away statements that are controversial, that are getting everybody worked up, and trying to find a way of saying, well, he was just joking, he was just kidding, just saying this or that, then to have the president himself contradict you within hours. it happened to kayleigh mcenany yesterday. it happened to steve mnuchin yesterday. it's happened on so many different occasions that it's even hard to keep track at this point. and, you know, i think on the testing part, it suggests that

the president is not as focused on the coronavirus as a thre threthreat, as he was at least at one point in the past. we've now passed 100,000 deaths, rates are going up in more than half the states. one of the statements yesterday, he said, "we did" a good job on the coronavirus, past tense, as if we're past it. anthony fauci said we're not past this, not near past this, and we have seen spikes in states that have begun to reopen. there is a lot of pain and hardship ahead and it doesn't look like the president at the moment is confronting it in a straightforward way. >> and he's becoming, john heilemann, more and more isolated, where before you actually had governors that would go along and recklessly repeat what the president was saying. it's not happening anymore. you look, whether it's arizona, whether you look at what's happening, greg abbott telling

people, stay home. you know, i've got so many friends in texas who have just told me over the past several months, a lot of people in texas just not taking this seriously. that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. and greg abbott has been more responsible, certainly, than a lot of republican governors here. but john, let's -- we're about to get into this poll. but let's explain. let's expand this out a little bit. that when the president does superspreader events, even if he's doing superspreader events with a lot of young people, who may have 1%, 5%, 10% chance of having, really being negatively impacted by the coronavirus -- seniors are watching that in arizona and saying, okay, that's a superspreader event. they're going to see somebody who's going to see somebody who may kill me. >> right.

>> right. >> and it's just like donald trump making a racist comment that's not just offensive to asian americans. and again, we're just explaining the politics of this, folks. it's just like charlottesville didn't just defend black voters. it started chipping away his support even more in the suburbs, among college-educated women, about women who didn't have a college degree. these things that he's doing, it's having these ripple effects that are causing him to see one devastating poll result after another. and i'll be quiet now and let you expand on that, john. i'm sorry to go on. >> well, right. i mean, look, joe, you think about back in 2016. there are these people, obviously, who didn't want to tell pollsters that they were for trump, because you know, he

was uncomfortable to be for him, you're a republican, you wanted to be for the republican. it was uncomfortable to be for him. he made you uncomfortable, about out you stided that you were kind of for him. and there was a bunch of social stuff going on that kept people, made people kind of -- social pressure not to acknowledge that you were for trump, even though there were things you liked about him. you wanted him to break the system down. you don't like political correctness or whatever. now it's like the opposite thing has taken hold, where for a lot of these mainline republicans -- and you're talking about the suburbs -- that's the key place for this taking place. people who voted for trump in 2016 in a lot of cases are just embarrassed about that vote now, and they're embarrassed about the way the president's behaving. so, your point is right. it's like, everyone's looking at him, and they're seeing the irresponsibility, they're seeing the racism, they're seeing the performance on the handling of the virus, how he talks about the virus, the fact that, you know, you pointed out greg abbott, you know. greg abbott has abandoned the president. ron desantis has now abandoned the president.

the president's out there saying, you know, the only reason that we're seeing a rise in cases, if there's a rise in cases, is because we're doing more testing. and ron desantis has walked away from trump on that, saying no, the testing's not the problem. we're having spikes here in florida. so, it's becoming increasingly socially unacceptable in what used to be the reasonable part of your party, the shrunken part of that, is the reasonable part of your party. there's not much of it left. but to be for this president, because he's just gone over the line so many times and has endangered so many people's safety, so many people's parents' safety, grandparents' safety, you know. it's got to -- this is what we're seeing. it's why you're going to get to the poll i know you said in a second. but the thing of tulsa was so revealing in so many ways. we talked about it on monday, what it said about the president and his performance and his attitude towards re-election. but you just think about how what happened there basically was donald trump's followers were too rational to do

something insane and show up at that event, you know. they looked at it and said, no, this is ridiculous! and so, some of them -- there's still a cult of trump out there, but the cultlike behavior is now getting shrunken down to its irreducible core, and no one else -- anybody who has some kind of connection to reality and has not completely lost any sense of rationality, is starting to look at trump, his behavior, and say, no, i'm not -- i can't -- i can't follow him down this path anymore, and it's just, he's now beyond the pale to so many people that it's just falling apart on every level. again, we'll get to the numbers right now, but that, i think, is the biggest thing that's happening in these suburban strongholds among a lot of what used to be regular republicans. >> well, and as you look at these national polls, you go in and you look at the demographics inside of these national polls. and suddenly, the national becomes local -- >> right. >> instead of all local things

becoming national. like for instance, when the president says what he says about asian americans, he doesn't just insult asian americans, he offends voters in swing counties like hillsborough county, florida, and all across the i-4 corridor in orange county, florida, in bucks county, pennsylvania, and the other suburbs of philly. and he offends those people when he does these superspreader events in arizona. this i don't think anybody will agree with me. i actually think the visuals out of arizona yesterday, where people are packed in there -- >> this is horrific. >> -- and donald trump sweating andel i eyelling. and they're seeing the superspreader event when there are governors that are in red states that are encouraging no more than ten people to be

together. >> this is -- there's a spike in this state. >> i know. >> right now. >> there's a spike in arizona. i would argue that the images coming from this rally will hurt him more with senior citizens in arizona, in texas, in florida, in pennsylvania, in wisconsin, in georgia, in michigan. in i could go down the line. then even the tulsa rally -- because again, people in hillsborough county, that swing county, older voters will be offended there. certain suburban voters will be offended there. the same with bucks county. again, what he is doing is not just damaging himself nationally, it's really cutting into support in the swing areas that are going to determine who the next president of the united states is going to be. >> and how are those devoted going to feel if they contract coronavirus after going to that event? are they still going to be pro-trump? >> or their loved ones.

are there people in that audience -- >> i'm just curious. >> i'm just curious, did everybody that go into that audience, like, were there no people in that audience that didn't have parents or grandparents that they're going to see that are at risk for contracting and dying from the coronavirus? did none of those attendees yesterday have a brother or sister with diabetes or a mother or a father with diabetes or a grandmother or a grandfather with type 2 diabetes or heart conditions or other underlying conditions? i'm telling you, we're going to look back at that arizona rally and the cheers that are going to go up for a racist term, and the cheers that went up for other offensive things, and him being completely ignorant of covid-19.

even the name. even what the 19 stood for. >> cavalier. >> and being cavalier. people are going to look back 20 years from now and be absolutely stunned that this is where america was in 2020. >> well, here's where america is right now. the latest "the new york times"/sen siena college poll has joe biden ahead. 50%-36%. also ahead in voters 65 and older, a group trump carried by 19 points in 2016. joe biden has a lead among independents and is up among college-educated whites and 39 points among college-educated, white women. while trump is up 19 points among whites without a college degree, a group he won by 36 points in 2016. so, you get a sense there, joe, that at least in terms of the national mood, it's leaning against trump. these polls don't mean a lot in

terms of the election down the road, but they give you a sense of maybe shifts happening in the country. >> willie, when i read polls in my campaigns, i never actually look at the bottom line. i always looked at the trend lines. the trend lines, they just don't look good for the sitting president. >> yeah, joe. i mean, the president of the united states, as we've said, over the last four months is casting his lot with a narrow minority of the country, whether it's talking about his opposition to masks and polls showing that, you know, 85%, 90% of people say they wear a mask either all or sometimes when they go outside. he's casting his lot with the people who don't wear the mask. and he did it again with the protests. the protests, 75% of people say they side with the protesters in the street right now, and the president has gone another direction, obviously, with his rhetoric. so jason, i would ask you -- well, let's look at the poll real quick.

new politico/morning consult poll, if we can go ahead here, believe the country's on the wrong track. 71% say the country's on the wrong track, down one point since last week. 29% believe the country's on the right track, up one. and nearly six in ten americans disapprove of president trump's job performance. 39% say they do approve. jake sherman, here's a poll here that you guys are working on. what do you see in these numbers? sift through these, combine them with "the new york times." what's going on right now? >> a pretty grim picture for the administration. and if you combine this also with another element of the poll, which is that the public broadly supports the police reforms that congress is considering. and president trump, while he's released an executive action, has sat on the sidelines when it comes to the overall situation of police reform, is not eager to legislate. i mean, you see the president

turning his back on the priorities of a broad swath of the american public. in the 80s. 80% of people support more body cameras and various elements of the police reform bill that the white house is all butasual mind to. and i just want to make one point that joe brought up and follow up on something he said. the republican party that joe helped usher in in 1994, a lot of people believe that to be the beginning of the modern-day republican party, the big coalitions that they built up in the house of representatives have just completely crumbled. and we're not only talking about pennsylvania. we're talking about the suburbs of new york city and connecticut, which was represented by a republican for so long when joe was in the house. i mean, this was not a tangential part of the republican party. this was the building blocks of the modern-day house and senate and presidential coalition that republicans built that donald trump won without in 2016. i don't know -- i'm not saying

it's impossible, but a lot of the experts i've talked to who conduct these polls and internal party polls look at the erosion of the republican party in the suburbs and wonder how the president's going to get it back, if he could ever get it back, and whether the republican party, as previously constructed, could exist, the republican party that joe was a part of in 1994 to 2000-something. it's just difficult to understand how that's going to be reconstructed in this modern era. >> so, joshua, if you tick through these "the new york times" numbers, as mika read through some of them, you were hard pressed to find a single demographic group where president trump is doing well. he's leading among white voters with no college degree, but among white voters with a college degree, he's down 28 points. he's down with black voters, latino, women, men, he's in a statistical tie. statistical tie, 65 and older. these are voter groups where he won in 2016. and let's remember, you've got fewer votes than hillary clinton. he won the electoral college,

but his margins are very thin. i think, as we've been talking over the last couple of days when we see these polls come out, whether it's this one or the fox news one or the cnn one that showed double-digit leads for joe biden, a lot of democrats and a lot of progressives say pump the brakes a little bit. we feel like we've been here before. but now we see a trend of a double-digit deficit across demographic groups for donald trump. >> i think everyone should be pumping the brakes, including us. let's not forget that it was only one presidential election cycle ago where all the polls were wrong, for the record. we do not have a track record of actually seeing what a donald trump-era presidential election poll means, if it's accurate to the actual electorate. now, the signs are very bad, granted. this is, as joe said, this is a point, not a pattern, and you've got to look at the trend lines. i think that's correct. but i remember when i was still working in san francisco, before i had gotten to npr, sitting with a room full of my friends on election night in 2016 as

they were going, how could this happen? how could this happen? all the polls said that this was -- how could this happen? and i had to kind of be a trump whisperer for the night? it was a very strange evening. where they just could not understand how this was possible. and ever since then, i have been hyper skeptical of polls, because last time we got this wrong. now, i'm not questioning the quality of the polling. i think it is accurate and precise to say that americans are expressing more open disdain of president trump, including across demographics that voted for him in 2016. the poll also, interestingly, shows that voters were more effusive in saying that they disliked mr. trump than saying that they liked mr. biden. and i heard what reverend sharpton said in the last segment. maybe he's just trying to rope-a-dope the president and waiting for him to burn himself out, but sooner or later, he's going to have to get people to

actually like him, to actually enjoy him. i think that event in arizona yesterday, he was trolling the public. i mean, the rally in tulsa, the event in arizona, it's entertainment. it's professional wrestling. at the rally in tulsa, he was drinking that glass of water, telling some story about there was some controversy over him being able to hold a glass of water. i wasn't paying attention. i was playing call of duty. i didn't even hear it. but he took a sip of water and then flung it across the stage, and the crowd went ape. and then, the thing in phoenix yesterday, where he used that incredibly racist term to refer to covid-19 -- by the way, if you're playing the home game, please do not use that term, that is incredibly racist -- he said that after someone in the audience yelled it out, and he yelled it back, and the crowd goes wild. and today, we are clucking our tongues and tut-tutting him and saying, i can't believe he would

say such a thing. doesn't he know what covid-19 is? yes, but he's interesting. at what point will joe biden become interesting and defensible to his base? donald trump got both, and that's how he won in 2016. can he beat trump at his own game in 2020, and will we have the numbers right? both of those questions have yet to be answered. >> yeah. and joshua, i'll be asking you later your war zone strategy. >> oh, boy. no. >> yeah, so, you know, katty, it's very interesting that in 2016, mika and i would come on this show and we would say that when we were out and we were talking to people, and we would ask a room full of people, how many people here are going to vote for donald trump, and nobody would raise their hands. they would come up after and whisper to us, we're going to vote for him. now, i've got just the opposite happening!

i've got republicans coming up to me all the time, like office-holders, saying he can't get re-elected, i'm not voting for him. i'm going to write in somebody else. so, there is sort of this whisper about donald trump, whispers about donald trump, but they're going in the opposite direction from where he wants them to go and where they were four years ago. >> yeah, i mean, i've heard from republicans, too, similar things. and the big difference is hillary clinton and joe biden, right? that somehow, joe biden seems to be acceptable to those republicans who don't really like donald trump, in a way that hillary clinton just wasn't to republicans who also didn't like donald trump back in 2016, but they feel now they have an alternative candidate. and so, actually staying in the basement, doing what he's doing, seems to be working pretty well for the former vice president, amongst that group of people. i mean, in the end, i think it's going to be down to the women

again, as you were saying. they decided the last six presidential elections in the state, so there's no reason they're not going to decide this one, too. and the numbers that we all need to watch are the numbers amongst women with college degrees has tankered. but watch the numbers starting to erode amongst women who don't have a college degree, and you're starting to lose there, too. and the speculation there seems to be is that, particularly after covid and lockdown, a lot of mothers are really exhausted. they're trying to juggle lockdown. they're trying to juggle their kids' schooling. they don't have anywhere to send their kids in the day. they may or may not have been able to keep their own job, so they're trying to juggle their income as well. and the last thing they want is more exhaustion. and the president, with his twitter feed, and the more the president doubles down on that kind of racist rhetoric on the inflammatory rhetoric on trying to get to the base by being this, you know, larger-than-life, but extremist figure, that's exhausting. and it's one thing to handle

that in normal times. it's a completely different issue to be trying to handle that when you're already totally overwhelmed by everything that's going on in your life and all you want is a bit of calm and sanity. and this double-down strategy of the president's is not giving those women that calm and sanity. one caveat, and we should always be watching the state polls as well. interesting to hear congresswoman debbie dingell this week say she's nervous about michigan in a way that most pollsters don't seem to be. don't write off michigan for donald trump at the moment because she still thinks there are those voters in michigan who will vote for trump, even if they're saying at the moment that they won't. >> well, i mean, nervousness especially in states like michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania, certainly, is understandable by democratic elected officials. it's interesting, though, that, katty, you talk about exhaustion among women. we've been talking for the past

six months about how covid-19 disproportionately impacts black americans, been talking about health care disparities. that's true. but when you look at the subset of white voters without a college degree, what are the stories we've been reading for the past two or three years about that demographic? that for the first time in american history, life expectancy for white americans is going down, especially for white americans that live in rural america that don't have a college degree? there are those health care disparities there. so when donald trump has superspreader events with young people in arizona, that scares the hell out of a lot of working-class americans. >> yeah. >> yeah. >> so, there you go. >> yeah, i mean, i think if you're looking at that event, it's scary. >> yeah, no doubt about it.

john heilemann, deval county. he talked about hillsborough county earlier. let's talk about duvall county, a county, we're talking about northeast florida, something that should be comfortably in donald trump's hands now. >> right. so you know this group that mike murphy's involved in and a couple other apostate republican voters, against trump. they do a poll in duvall county. it's basically jacksonville. it's the county that jacksonville is in and it's pretty much a direct overlap. and they wanted to know how the people of jacksonville felt about the convention coming there. because of course, trump's like jacksonville's going to love me. that's why i want to move the convention down there from north carolina. they found it's 41-31, a ten-point spread, against having the convention in jacksonville. so jacksonville's not into the idea of trump coming down there. a huge proportion of, again, the 60s, of jacksonville residents

are worried about that being a superspreader and having seeing a coronavirus outbreak after the republican convention. but here's the thing that i'm interested in, and i think you'll be interested in, which is the ballot test question, right? duvall has not voted democrat since jimmy carter. it's reliably republican. in the last election -- it's been getting narrower and narrower, and trump won it by a point and a half against hillary clinton, right? but still, reliably republican for 35 years. biden's up eight in duvall county in that poll. so, you know, we've been talking about, one of the kind of alarm-bell counties, one of the pockets where, you know, if donald trump's in trouble here, he's in trouble everywhere? donald trump's almost behind by double digits in duvall county, florida. i don't know, you can tell the viewers what that means for the rest of the country. that's a bad poll number for donald trump. >> peter baker, i've been asking the question for weeks now, how does donald trump turn it around? i'll ask this question.

how are his -- how are the people that you talk to that work inside the white house responding to the bleeding that's happening in the polls and the fact that they're on a constant cleanup operation with a president who just, again, i'll say it again, is not acting like a man who wants to be re-elected? >> yeah, i wouldn't say -- at the trump campaign operations. been a bad couple weeks for them. what they're looking to do is turn from a referendum on trump into a choice between trump and biden, right? that's the key to their getting some momentum back. it's not just would you like -- joe biden acceptable, and they want to try to tear down biden as an acceptable alternative in the way president obama did with mitt romney in 2012 and george w. bush in 2004. it's harder for them because joe biden has been out of sight. the out of sight in the basement

thing seems to be working, as it happens. but at some point or another, the trump people think that they can flush biden out and make it more of a choice. that's not going to happen maybe in the next few weeks. it may not be until fall. remember, these are early numbers. june matters, but it's still june. at one point, michael dukakis had a 17-point lead. he never became president. so you know, as josh said, we've got to be careful about overinterpreting where things are today. but they're in such a hole right now that the mood is sour and grim, it's offensive, and i think you see a lot of people in the trump campaign -- it's no longer unthinkable that this would be a one-term presidency. senate democrats intend to block a vote on republican police reform legislation today, calling it, quote, irrevocably flawed. the move undercuts plans by majority leader mitch mcconnell to hold a procedural vote, which would need the support of at

least 60 senators, including 7 democrats. but democrats say they don't believe the president is willing to work toward a solution, and they are skeptical of mcconnell's intentions. senator cory booker of new jersey said that mcconnell is, quote, setting this up for failure so he can check a political box. and senator booker joins us now. cory booker, great to have you on the show. what's wrong with the republican legislation? >> well, first of all, it doesn't address any of the issues that we're all distraught by. it is a bill that wouldn't ban the choke holds that killed eric garner, wouldn't allow george floyd's parents or family to sue in federal court against the officers that did that horrible murder. it wouldn't stop the no-knock entry that killed breonna taylor. it wouldn't create any accountability for police officers or police departments that are doing actions that are against not only our public consciousness, but against the law, from pattern and practices

of discrimination against african-americans, all the way to unjust use of force. so, if there's no accountability, if there's no way to hold people accountable or ban the kind of practices that are leading to so many black lives dying, then what is their bill about? it calls for lots of studies. it calls for data and commissions. well, people in the streets in all 50 states are not chanting "we want a commission! we want data!" they're asking for accountability and transparency, and their bill offers none of that. >> hmm. >> senator booker, willie geist. good to see you this morning. we had senator braun on yesterday, republican of indiana, who is talking about something that you've been focused on, and that's qualified immunity. he wants to reform qualified immunity. i think he agrees with you on some of that. do you believe that in republicans, and specifically in mitch mcconnell, you have good-faith partners here? in other words, do you believe that they want to reform policing in america?

>> first of all, i just want to say that i've had incredible conversations with really good people that are my colleagues that i've done bipartisan work before on criminal justice, the opportunity zone legislation, people that are friends of mine, people that i pray with, and there is incredible sincerity amongst many of them to get work done. i do not believe mitch mcconnell has any desire to pass any kind of policing reform that would actually make change of the kind that we need in america. i believe he is working actively by designing a strategy that's counter to how we've gotten things done in the past. he has designed a strategy for failure. what i do know is that when we do get things done, from criminal justice reform to even the gang of eight that was formed on immigration reform -- remember, immigration reform bill passed out of the senate -- the leaders of the senate put groups of bipartisan senators together, whether it's through the committee or through a gang of eight or six or ten, to say get to work, let's produce

something historic. that's just not what's happening here. yesterday, in public, on the floor of the senate, in press conferences, democrats gathered to plead with mitch mcconnell to stop this bridge to nowhere or leading us into a dead end, to assign a bipartisan committee to come together and begin talks to work something out that will give folks in america what they're demanding, which is real change and real reform. >> john heilemann. >> hey, cory. senator booker. i'm curious about whether you see the obvious parallel here between this situation and what mcconnell is doing and what the strategy of republicans and mitch mcconnell in particular has been on gun reform. because they seem to me to be exactly the same phenomenon, where we have these moments, galvanizing moments in the public, where you have overwhelming support for some kind of change, some progress, some reform, then mcconnell manages to kill any kind of meaningful reform.

if you see the parallels between these two that i do, what do you do about that? is there anything to be done? and i know you guys are going to try to put pressure, but we saw -- we've seen where that's gone on gun reform. is there anything to be done here except for democrats retake control of the senate and get rid of the republican majority? >> john, and first of all, you can call me cory as a fellow big bald guy. but this is not a partisan moment. this may be a mitch mcconnell and donald trump moment, but i look at the polls. the majority of republicans support the things in my bill that are not in -- the bill i've done with kamala harris -- that are not in this republican bill. the majority of republicans support an end to no-knock warrants. the majority of republicans want to see a ban on choke holds. the majority of republicans believe that we should not be a nation that racially, religiously profiles. this is not a partisan moment. it's a moral moment.

and what i see is mitch mcconnell trying to do everything he can to stop the real work in the senate from happening on tough issues and just trying to turn the page. i watched him do it, as you said, when chris murphy did a 15-hour filibuster to try to force bipartisan compromise. and by the way, there was. manchin/toomey. there are so many things in the senate i know from conversations with those on the other side that we can get done, but mitch mcconnell himself calls himself the grim reaper. that's pretty dark. he brags about the fact that he kills momentum and bipartisan desires for change. >> yeah, that's pretty dark. joshua johnson has the next question. >> good morning, senator booker. it's good to talk to you again. with regards to what is going to happen from here, i have to say that i'm not quite as optimistic that congress will get anything

done. congress' approval rating right now is 25%, according to latest gallup poll, and if one man, mitch mcconnell, can prevent 634 other members of the united states congress from getting something done, it looks grim. what i'm curious about is your experience as a mayor. i do believe that something's going to happen with police reform. i'm just not convinced it's going to come out of congress. could you speak to us from your experience about the things that a mayor can accomplish locally on their own, compared to the things that a mayor has to have done at the congressional level? >> right. and so, your comments are so insightful. there needs to be reform at every level. we have had really promising signs from republican control, like i just talked to iowa legislators last night, who are telling me about they ban choke holds. they put a lot of really good reforms in. colorado did the same thing. these are happening in bipartisan areas in the states, which is really important. mayors are starting to really step up.

we've always been in cities -- the incubators for innovation. and i'm proud to see mayors creating real steps at reform. but we learned this in the civil rights movement, in the violence against women act -- the federal government has a role to play. and so, we are in our bill saying, okay, we are going to do just like we've done before. in areas, especially where you don't have good-faith actors, we are going to provide levels of accountability on the federal level, where everything from the department of justice, by a supercharging pattern and practice investigations, by surin sup supercharging investigations into police officers who have done misconduct. and here's the rub, because you know my record in newark, and we were innovators in veterans courts, in youth courts. we were a national incubator. but we have a majority black city. i had a majority black city council and a black mayor, myself, all with good intentions to do reform, but it wasn't until the federal government came in and used tools that we didn't have in a recession, to

do a deep dive, data collection and analysis, that they finally showed us the data that showed that we were disproportionately using practices against african-americans versus white residents. and so, with all the good intentions that we had, it took a federal government assist to help us move faster to the reforms that newark needed to make. and so, that is my point. the federal government is a key partner in this. and the federal government has thousands of law enforcement officers under our purview as well. the fbi is in newark. the atf is in newark. all these folks are operating within cities as well. and so, we have to step up to this moment. here we are in washington where martin luther king gave the "i have a dream" speech, and i know there's off-quoted passages. what people forget is he spoke directly towards police brutality. the kerner report. i can go through all of the studies, all the commissions, all the cries for change, and this has got to be a moment that finally, after my entire

lifetime of nothing real happening at the federal level, that we come together. and i still have hope. i'm a prisoner of hope on this. and what's giving me the most hope is that folks in the streets are not leaving. they've been there for weeks now. the bill that i wrote wouldn't have been possible in my own party to get the majority of the house members and about 40 senators on this bill, wouldn't have been possible a month ago. and so, just like civil rights legislation, voting rights legislation, suffrage and workers' rights, people taking to the streets demanding the change is often the catalyst to make things happen and that's my hope for the future. >> senator cory booker, thank you very much for being on the show with us this morning. and joshua johnson and jake sherman, thank you both as well. we're going to get back to the global fight against coronavirus. recent reporting has suggested that the european union was considering a ban on some foreign travelers, including americans. nbc's keir simmons joins us with the latest on that. and we'll be joined by the

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[ inaudible ] let's redefine -- and get rid of this partisan divide. let's take our country back. >> yeah! [ cheers and applause ] >> don't even think they had like real tv cameras there. that was republican candidate for north carolina's 11th district, madison cawthorn, celebrating his win last night over the trump-backed linda bennett. he's 24 years old. and if he goes on to win the seat, he will become the youngest member to join congress since the 1970s. and madison joins us now. welcome to the show and congratulations! >> it's an honor to be here. thank you for having me.

>> so, madison, i'll just ask, what happened? i mean, we've had, you know, republican candidates for the past 3 1/2 years have been begging for this board of the republican president. it's not much different than when george w. bush was president. but you were going against the tide last night. how did you win? how did you pull it off? >> you know, i think that's a great question, but i really account that to we kept it local. my opponent was focused on d.c. politics and just trying to focus on washington, whereas we focused on really just accepting all of the republicans around here and the local leaders. they really helped push me over the line. our ground game, our volunteers is just, i believe, unbeatable in this country right now. >> you are going to be running in the general election against colonel morris davis, a democrat. we'll get him on the show as well, maybe you guys can debate

on the show. and i'm just curious, what is the message for the fall against colonel davis? >> you know what, our message for the fall is very similar to our message that we had throughout the primary, and it's the message of freedom. i believe conservatism all boils down to personal responsibility, and you know, that's just really having the pin of destiny in your own hand and being able to determine your own future. i think that resonates with the unaffiliated voters, the republican voters, and even some of the democratic voters who don't agree with what's going on the very far, far left. >> willie geist is with us -- >> hey, madison. >> ask a question. willie. >> madison, congratulations. welcome to the show. mark meadows you've described in the past as someone who was a mentor to you, who helped you through your car accident that left you paralyzed from the waist down in 2014. you said he was a mentor to you, he encouraged you, he helped lift you up, a guy you looked up to. then he went and endorsed the other candidate.

why do you think you didn't have his support for his old seat? >> you know what, that is the question i believe a lot of voters were asking in western north carolina last night and all throughout early voting. i can't really give you an answer on that. all's i know is that mr. meadows has been very good to me throughout my life. i wish i could have had his endorsement early on, but it appears that we did not need it, you know. we expected to win last night, but we didn't expect to win by that large of a margin, so. >> have you heard from mr. meadows since your victory last night? >> i have not heard from mr. meadows, but i did -- i have heard from the president so far, so, you know, it was an honor getting a call from air force one. >> what did the president say to you? >> and so, madison -- yeah, what did he say? >> he congratulated me. he was talking about how amazing of a victory it was. he defined it as beautiful, you know. just talking about how impressive it was that we were able to overcome just so many large obstacles that we did.

and so, i really appreciate where we're at right now. i believe, you know, the president recognized that we ran a campaign that was very difficult to beat and also that we are someone who can really help ease this partisan divide that's going on in our country right now and help bring a lot of our voters together. >> madison, as you know well, having knocked on a lot of doors and talked to a lot of voters, there is great economic pain across this country. i'm sure that has spread to your district as well. what do you do where you live? what do you do in your potential district, to turn the economy around? >> i think what we need to do is really just follow the conservative doctrine of slashing regulation, getting rid of a lot of taxes. you know, in 2017, they created the fundamentals for the opportunity zones that i know the president's been pushing for pretty hard, but i would love to see that really expanded all across our district so that we can cut down on capital gains taxes to really increase more investment into our area. and i believe that's going to

create more jobs, which we all know competition creates higher wages. >> all right. just want to -- when's your birthday, madison? >> august 1st. >> whoo! that's a close one. >> okay. just made it. >> just made it. >> i've got to say this, too, madison. forgive me for talking about myself. this is the first time i've ever done it or talked about when i was in congress. >> oh, no. >> but let me just tell you this, you've done something that actually liberates you, if you get elected in fall. because i had the party leadership and newt working against me in '94. and when i went against him in '95 and '96 on votes, you know, at one point, one of them started to threaten me. i said, oh, what are you going to do, work against me again? maybe i'll get 70% next time. so, you have been presented -- well, you've actually helped make it, but the voters have presented you with a wonderful gift of, if you get elected this fall, being able to go to washington and be your own

person. >> you know what, that was really our biggest message when we were drawing a contrast between myself and my primary opponent. it was that we are not beholden to any washington, d.c., insiders. you know, the only people i'm beholden to are the people of western north carolina, and i look forward to representing our people and being able to represent our values without feeling like i owe somebody else. >> all right. thank you. >> nice. >> so much. and we'll, hopefully, get colonel morris on, davis, and you guys can talk issues. >> madison cawthorn, thank you so much. >> congratulations! great job. all right, still ahead, president trump doesn't talk about coronavirus without mentioning a ban on certain travelers, and certain travelers into the united states, but could the tables soon be turned on americans? we'll go live to london for the latest on that, straight ahead on "morning joe." e test on that, straight ahead on "morning joe. you can't predict the future.

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. there could be growing diplomatic tensions as eu limits travel from around the world. joining us live from london, nbc news senior international correspondent, keir simmons. keir, what is the latest? >> reporter: mika, you remember we began to talk about this issue on "morning joe" weeks ago when we had an exclusive

interview with the greek tourism minister discussing who to let in from around the world where there were low infection rates. rubber hitting the road now. as we speak today, european countries are talking about that very issue and they are considering not allowing u.s. citizens to come to the european union for holidays or for business for nonessential travel. now, a european union diplomatic tells nbc news that the situation is fluid, that the decision has not been made, but we do know that the assessment is being made in very simple terms, mika, that is infection rates. europe's infection rates is much lower than the u.s. one eu, european union diplomat, saying being measured in the past 14 days per 100,000 people and the eu is 16 per 100,000 and america is 107 per 100,000.

the problem, though, of course, we talked about this, this has the potential to cause a really serious diplomatic impasse. for example, we know that china's infection rate is lower than europe's so could we see a situation in the next week, we're talking about july 1st, where europe decides it will allow nonessential travel by chinese visitors but not allow nonessential travel by america visitors? european countries have the right to not follow this guidance, but that then would cause more problems because it would cause divisions within europe. it's diplomatically a nightmare. >> keir, it's katty. this would put u.s. in the same bracket as brazil and russia. i just wonder if this feels like a european anti-trump move as a tit for tat, or something

political in this as well? >> reporter: that's a great question. you know just how complex europe is. when you're trying to get an agreement between different european countries how tricky that is. i think the answer to your question is no. i think europe is between a rock and a hard place, if you like, because they've been open how they're going to assess this. they're based this on infections. the reality is america's infection rate is higher. european countries are facing an incredibly difficult decision because there's the diplomacy and then there's the politics. european leaders and american leaders are going to have to, you'd hope, handle this with great delicacy. the question, i'll leave it hanging there, are the leaders in washington and the leaders in europe the kinds of politicians who are going to handle this kind of situation with

sensitivity? >> nbc's keir simmons, thank you very much for your report. still ahead, president trump once again puts himself at odds with his own aides who claim he was just kidding when he said coronavirus testing needs to slow down and he asked his people to slow it down. plus, a former prosecutor in the roger stone case heads to capitol hill today and will reportedly testify about how the justice department intervened for political purposes. "morning joe" will be right back.

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however, in other areas of the country we're seeing disturbed areas of infection that looks like it's a combination, but one thing is an increase in community spread. that's one thing i'm quite concerned about. the next couple of weeks are going to be critical in our ability to address those surgeryings we're seeing in florida, in texas, in arizona and in other states. >> it is another big news morning. dr. anthony fauci and other health experts appeared before lawmakers yesterday to address the surging number of coronavirus cases in the united states. we'll also break down results from some of yesterday's notable primary races, including one in

north carolina where a 24-year-old defeated republican candidate endorsed by president trump. >> and it wasn't even close. >> hello. and fight over police reform. senate democrats will oppose the republican bill to reform policing guidelines setting up stalemate in congress. we'll talk about that. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is wednesday, june 24th. along with joe, willie and me, we have white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire. host of kasie d.c. on sunday nights, kasie hunt. the host of nbc's "politics nation" and president of the action network, reverend al sharpton and co-founder of axis, jim vandehei. >> we're always going back and forth about our favorite bible

verse. you talked about how the lord loves a joyful giver. i agree with you there. but we'll take baseball any way we can get it and we don't care whether they like it or not. we're at least going to get 60 games, whether they're joyful givers or not. >> absolutely. the 10-year-old poll in my house was ecstatic. we get 60 games, not 162. i yelled upstairs at bedtime, george, the yankees are playing in a month and he yelled. i hope the whole country feels that way. to be able to sit there with your son and daughter and turn on a baseball game, i know it wasn't pretty but we'll take it. >> joe biden is leading president trump by 14 points nationally in the latest "new

york times"/sienna college poll. biden sits at 50% to trump's 36% of support. the former vice president has a two-point advantage over trump. among voters 65 and older. a group the president carried by nine votes in 2016. it seems things are changing. biden has an 18-point advantage among independents and up 28 points amongst college educated whites. what does this tell us, joe? >> it tells us -- you know, willie, national polls this early don't matter, and we have to keep saying that. at the same time, a 14-point loss by the sitting incumbent, down among seniors, a group he

won handily, down 18 percentage points by independents and down by massive figures in other areas he needs to do much better on. maybe it doesn't matter a whole lot, but you look at history and there's no evidence anybody this far down will be able to catch up. a long way to go still. >> yeah, you're right to add all the caveats. at some point when you have a series of polls showing the same thing, there's something going on here. i think people were so gun shy because of what happened in 2016 they hesitated to make any judgments based on these national polls. fox news had the spread at 12 points, this week at 14. what's most interesting as you go through these numbers and you can hardly find in this "new

york times"/sienna poll a place where donald trump is winning. he's winning with white voters with no college degree by 19 points. other than that, jim vandehei, when you go down the look, among women down 22, men losing by 3 points, younger votes in take statistical tie, african-american, latino. the independent spread of 21 is significant for all the obvious reasons. when you look at this poll, as someone who usually gives us the grain of salt we need on a national poll, what do you see? >> i'm with you guys. you can ignore a poll here and there and it's devastating for donald trump and he knows it. there's not a 15-point hidden vote out there. there's a lot of indicators. it's not just a national poll. another poll in texas basically tied. the wisconsin poll, michigan poll, arizona polls, states that matter polls, all bad for him.

then look at that event which did not get enough coverage, although i think people did cover it a lot. in tulsa, he was talking about a million people being interested, hundreds of thousands showing up. a third of the arena is empty. he's devastated afterwards. a lot of turmoil inside the campaign. why, where does that turmoil come from? not from one poll by "the new york times" but all the polls they're seeing by fox, by "new york times," by quinnipiac, the internal polling, it shows the exact same thing. yes, this can change. he's freaking out. his first meeting of the day and now they're all worked up about how do we smoke joe biden out. there's no way it's not going to be a referendum on donald trump.

that's what these numbers show. and the idea that biden is going to suddenly start taking big chances and come out and do more, why would he? this is working pretty well for h him. make it about donald trump. seems like a smart strategy. >> but the problem is, mika, every day, and we say this every day, and i actually looked at the news yesterday, and just came to the conclusion, this does not look like a man who wants to win, who wants to be re-elected. remember when he asked china to help him get elected. marco rubio came out and said, he's just joshing. he asked the people's republic of china to rig the election for him, to get involved. marco rubio said, oh, he's just joshing. isn't that a funny joke. he's joking.

then donald trump came out a couple days later and said, no, i'm not joking. and he repeats it again. so, at this event in tulsa, the president said that he told people that he wanted to slow down the testing. and rvel said, oh, he's just joking. the president is just joking. his staff says, oh, he's just joking. and the president, after they were insisting he was joking, on slow down the testing, he said, no, he wasn't joking. he said, you know, i don't -- i don't kid around. so, again, time and time again, this guy every day acts like he doesn't want to get re-elected. he undercuts his aides who are trying to cover up previous mistakes that he's making. and the situation just keeps getting worse. you have to ask yourself, why is

a guy who's down 10 points, 12 points, 14 points, why doesn't he adjust? i mean, obviously he's incapable of adjusting but at least he proved in 2016 he knew when to keep quiet. no, no. and yesterday while he was speaking to reporters ahead of his arizona trip, donald trump, once again, basically told people, assume the worst of me at all times. i wasn't joking. >> i don't kid. let me make it clear. we have got the greatest testing program anywhere in the world. we test better than anybody in the world. our tests are the best in the world and we have the most of

them. by having more tests, we find more cases. >> okay, first of all, you can never let that pass without just saying, the president's lying. the ignorance. we don't have the best testing in the world. yesterday on capitol hill you had dr. fauci and the cdc say we need to make the tests better. we don't have the best tests. no one told us to slow down the testing. again, mika, i'll keep going back to what i've been saying all along. the president of the united states continues to say something as he's about to leave for yet another super spreader event. >> that's what this should be called because that's what they are. >> that every american knows is a lie. somehow, if you stop giving

tests, the infection rate will go down and people will stop dying. even if we haven't done any tests, we will have 4% of the population and the best scientists, the best doctors, the best everything, like, we would still, mika, have been one out of three deaths in the world from coronavirus, from covid-19. as the president says, where do they get the 19 from? >> you and i never want to be on fifth avenue with you because he is never joking. and, you're right, these events are super spreaders. they may be rallies. they may be some sort of campaign event but they are before anything. ask any doctor, the perfect petri dish to spread a deadly virus. still ahead, there's no couching the president's

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. walk to "morning joe." the president continued made his way around to speak to thousands to arizona college students where those in attendance heard rhetoric like this. >> the democrats are also trying to rig the election by sending out tens of millions of mail-in ballots use the china virus as the excuse for allowing people not to go to the polls. hey, we have a virus coming. we have to send, think of it, california, he's going to be sending out millions and millions of ballots.

well, where are they going? who's getting them? who is not getting them? a little section that's republican. this will be, in my opinion, the most corrupt election in the history of our country and we cannot let this happen. they want it to happen so badly. there's never been where they have so many names. i can give you 19, 20 names. all different names. wuhan. wuhan is catching on. coronavirus, right? kung flu, yeah. kung flu. covid. covid-19. covid. i say, what's the 19? some people can't explain the 19. i said, covid-19, that's an odd name. i could give you many, many names. some people call it the chinese

flu, the china flu. right? they call it the china as opposed to -- the china. i never seen anything like it. >> i really -- willie, i don't know where to begin. first of all, all the president had to do was ask any staff member in the white house, they would him the 19 came from the year of the outbreak, covid, corona virus. covid-19, the year of the outbreak. that said, i remember back in december of 2015 after seeing

donald trump's press conference on the muslim ban, and i think we talked about how it helped him in the polls and the republican polls. i remember asking, is this what germany looked like in 1933. i get to ask a question. what are people going to be saying about us, willie, 50 years from now when you have the president of the united states working himself up into a sweat and a lathe r, talking about naming the virus something that millions of americans find deeply offensive and the crowd breaking out in wild applause. i'm 57 years old. i can safely say that i've just never -- i've never heard anything like this before, before donald trump. and i pray to god, pray to jesus that we as a country will never hear anything like this again.

the president makes a racist remark. and a crowd of college students break out in wild applause. and getting back to the earlier theme, this is a guy that doesn't act like he wants to be re-elected. you ask any republican state party chairperson that wants their candidate to win what that does to asian americans who used to be a reliable republican faction. they'll say, well, it just -- it hurts us, not only with asian-americans, it hurts us with people of color, it hurts us with a majority of suburban voters, it hurts us with women, whether they have college degrees or not. again, this is a guy that is driving this campaign off the cliff every day. it seems he is working as hard

as he can to boil down his base to 30%. >> and he's enjoying it. that was the manifestation of literally playing to the base as he went through the names of covid-19 and coronavirus. you could hear the crowd waiting for that racist term that he used. it was almost like at the old rallies when they do the lock her up chants. they were there to hear the hit song, to hear one of his lines. he delivered it. he delivered it twice. and it's ugly and it's racist. imagine being an asian-american in this country and hearing your president say that. we hearded that side of it, the ugly racist side, the ignorant side that he didn't know what 19 stood for and then as jon meacham said yesterday, the most damaging side, which is he's laying this predicate already that the election is rigged. why is he doing that? because we have polls show him

down 14 points, that show him getting crushed among women, suburban women, the women he needs to win over to be re-elected. he's laying the groundwork to look back, jonathan lemire, after election day if he does lose and say, this election is rigged, we should not go quietly. jonathan, you were on that trip yesterday, all day. what was it like first to be able to talk about the border and a moment but what was it like to be around him when he was making that speech? >> willie, what we saw at the campaign yesterday was they wanted a burst of enthusiasm. what they're seeing also is the. the is increasingly talking to a smaller and smaller portion of the electorate. that base and even the die-hards true hard core portion of that base. i was with him yesterday in arizona. that mega church in phoenix is about 3,000, 4,000 people there, estimates, and it was packed. on one hand you could tell the president drew a lot of energy from it. after the debacle in tulsa where

he stared at thousands of empty seats. he was revived to see a large, boisterous crowd. lock her up, we heard that yesterday, too. the president was hitting the notes like he was talking to viewers on fox news, or in this case, young republicans, some of them are college students, trying to make the case as to why the last 3 1/2 years, why his grievances are what they are and laying -- as you say, potentially laying the groundwork for the ultimate play of unfair sports play this fall with the election. you heard it. the crowd was goading him on when he was going through the names of the coronavirus. they were anticipating, a few of them shouted the racist term before the president shouted it back and revelled in it. we heard about him talk about joe biden not able to get out of the basement and so on. in there was a somewhat of a

coherent argument. you hear a little in tulsa, trying to paint democrats as the radical left, trying to suggest biden can't control them, they're going to control him. we're going to see a lot of that. his advisers have told us that's an argument they're trying to make, make that case in the months ahead. they are drowned out by today's he headlines that even some in his own staff have urged him, urged him not to repeat. coming up, the latest on the primary fight in kentucky to see who will challenge mitch mcconnell in november. kasie hunt breaks down that razor-close race. that's straight ahead on "morning joe." "morngni joe."

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who will take on senate majority leader mitch mcconnell is too close to call between amy mcgrath and charles booker. mcgrath leads. two democratic incumbent seats could be in jeopardy in the state's 12th congressional primary. democratic incumbent carolyn maloney is narrowly leading patel. in new york's 16th congressional district, eliot engel trails progressive jamal bowman there. kasie, what are the surprises you see in these races and democratic races across the

country last night? >> so, i think it's tempting to read this as, you know, progressives have -- voters are looking for somebody that's more progressive, that's not part of the establishment. i think it's a little bit of a mistake to look at it that way. i think it's a rejection of the calcification of our politics of people that have been in office for decades, in many cases. the kentucky race is fascinating. we still have a lot of counting to do in that race. it really could go either way. but the turnout in that primary election shattered previous records and charles booker was someone who caught onto this last-minute energy. was really a part of the protests swelling in louisville around black lives matter. and i think really showed how you can -- you don't have to operate inside the systems that have been built again.

that's kind of the trend i see here is voters looking at candidates and saying, i don't want to be told what to do. i don't want to talk about who to vote for. we talk about kentucky and i think it's unlikely mitch mcconnell would lose kentucky, it is true he's incredibly unpopular and this is an unpredictable outcome. they've been running against amy mcgrath for a year and i think it's going to be tricky if charles booker wins this race, mcconnell will have to figure out how to run against a young african-american man who has captured a lot the excitement and beginning to look at appe appalachie. we'll see if that's true. >> reverend al, what are your

takeaway from the races from north carolina to kentucky to new york? >> i think that more than rebellion against just the candidates or incumbents that have served for decades, they're representing candidates that represent the spirit of the times. there are many veterans that were re-elected or renominated yesterday. so i think we shouldn't confuse the two or three that seem to be upsets that it's based on a new form of leadership, a leadership that identifies with the issues of now. every one of those, if you look at the engel race and other races were people that were involved and symbolized in kentucky, the actual issues people are caring about now and that's what the veterans missed. the veterans that identified with that won handedly

yesterday. coming up on "morning joe," our next guest says americans need to know the truth about william barr's friday night massacre. joyce vance explains why we can't afford to wait straight ahead on "morning joe." we can't afford to wait straight ahead on "morning joe. we miss you. like real bad. we can't wait to get you back so we've added temp checks, face coverings, social distancing and extra sanitizing to get the good times going again. we're finally back... and can't wait until you are too.

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my predecessor who i disagreed with on a whole host of issues still had a basic regard for the rule of law. and the importance of our institutions. what we have seen over the last couple of years is a white house enabled by republicans in congress and a media structure that supports them that has not just differed in policy but has gone at the very foundations of who we are and who we should be. what makes me optimistic that there is a great awakening going

on around the country particularly among younger people who are saying not only are they fed up with the sh shambolic, disorganized approach to governance as we've seen over the last couple of years but more than that are eager to take on some of the core challenges that have been facing this country for centuries. >> former president obama on the virtual campaign trail with joe biden for the first time yesterday. you heard president obama mention the rule of law, and there are a number of developments this morning concerning attorney general william barr. professors at barr's alma mater, george washington university law school, say he has failed to

fulfill his oath to defend and support the constitution of the united states. in a letter issued on tuesday, 65 faculty members outline the actions they believe, coaquote, undermine the rule of law, breached the constitutional norms and damaged the integrity and traditional independence of his office and of the department of justice. that's damning. they are the summary of the m l mueller report, the sentence of michael flynn and the clearing of lafayette square. the professionals and faculty conclude their six-page argument writing, quote, attorney general barr has besmirched the basic calls of the office and our legal values. it was written as a campaign to have barr stripped of his honorary degree is gaining momentum. willie? >> meanwhile, mika, at a house

judiciary committee hearing later today, a federal prosecutor plans to testify that attorney general william barr and his top deputies gave inappropriate orders on cases in an effort to cater to president trump. yesterday the committee released the prepared remarks from aaron zielinski, assistant u.s. attorney. in his opening statements he discusses the doj's change in sentencing recommendation for roger stone, writing in part, what i saw was the department of justice exerting significant pressure on the line prosecutors in the case to obscure the correct sentencing guidelines calculation to which roger stone was subject and to water down and in some cases outright distort the events that transpired in his trial and the criminal conduct that gave rise to his conviction. he goes on, what i heard repeatedly was that roger stone was being treated differently

from any other defendant because of his relationship to the president. i was also told the acting u.s. attorney was giving stone such unprecedentedly favorable treatment because he was, quote, afraid of the president. he will testify he raised his objections with superiors and then resigned from the case when they filed the change in sentencing recommendation despite his protests. joining us now, former u.s. attorney for the northern district of alabama, joyce vance and former u.s. attorney for the eastern district of michigan, barbara mcquaid, and the bbc's katty kay is back with us. joyce, we'll start with you and aaron zelinsky testimony that there was pressure exerted to cut roger stone a break. let's just start because we've seen this stew of corruption over the last few years.

how unusual is that kind of pressure, in your experience? >> i don't think unusual begins to catch what's going on here. it's unprecedented. i spent 25 years at doj. i can't think of a single case i was involved in where political pressure was successfully brought to bear. if there was even a suggestion of it, everyone in my office, from the u.s. attorney down through the supervisors to the line prosecutors would have slapped it down and found it to be unacceptable. and, you know, what we say at doj is we prosecute without fear or without favor, willie. now what we see is that prosecutions favor the president's friends and people who are opposed to the president have to live in fear of what he might direct his justice department to do. the justice department is meant to be independent of the white house. under bill barr it's sum succum

to be nothing more than the president to use as a tool and that takes away from the work prosecutors do every day and do with a high level of integrity. in these key sliver of cases that impact the president's personal interests, his attorney general has subverdictted the w of the justice department. he won't resign. he should be impeached. >> barbara mcquaid, as you look at this based on your experience, and out in the open you have attorney general barr and the justice department putting its thumb on the scale in this roger stone case and not thinking anyone like mr mr. zelinsky was going to raise his hand and say, there's something that stinks. have you seen like this? >> no. i'll agree with what joyce just said and i'll add, not only is this a divergence from the norms, it is specifically prohibited under the justice manual. this is the bible that applies

to every justice department across the country. it is something that new prosecutors are taught when they join the department. one of the things it says is decisions should not be made on the basis of political association, activities or beliefs. that is a basis for misconduct. if anyone besides the attorney general were involved in this, they would be reported to office of professional responsibility for misconduct. one thing i'll be looking for today is for aaron zelinsky to name the supervisors involved in this chain of command that suggest he go along to get al g along. it's not just appropriate, willie, it absolutely destroys the independence and integrity of the justice department. i think that's why joyce and i and all of our colleague canning around the country are so outraged to see the justice department being used as a political tool instead of the temple of justice we think of it. attorney general lynch used to

say the justice department was the only cabinet agency named for an ideal of justice. that means something. we care about it deeply. and this deeply offends us. >> i want to back up and ask both of you about the firing of berman last friday. what exactly that move sort of telegraphed to you as to what exactly the president or the attorney general was doing. and in terms of how it ultimately played out with his second in command, i believe at least temporarily taking over. how worried are you about the investigations and the work being done there, perhaps, being botched? joyce, i'll start with you. >> well, barr seems to have really taken a shot and missed with this one, mika. now it looks like the public spotlight will shine on the southern district of new york. u.s. attorney berman has been

successful in maneuvering to his deputy will take over probably until there's a senate confirmed new u.s. attorney for the southern district, which seems very unlikely here. he's been successful in that sense. the real problem is the attorney general of the united states lied about that firing. he said berman was stepping down, said he had been offered other positions and berman publicly refuted that. he took to twitter to refute that. the question we're left with is why would the attorney general of the united states lie to the american people? what interests of his or perhaps the president's are so very important that he took that risk of exposure, and almost certain risk, quite frankly. maybe he thought he could slide this in late on a friday night or in the wake of other folks leaving doj on this same timeline? but he has to have known there were risks his lie would come to light. now congress has ho ask him, maybe the press can uncover,

what is it the attorney general is trying to hide from the american people? >> barbara, your take? >> yeah, i agree with everything joyce just said. i think this is an example of william barr miscalculating that a bullying tactic would work. it made me wonder, when have bullying tactics have worked? are there similar things he's done to other people that did go along? in this instance, geoffrey berman did not go along and by standing up to william barr he got a significant victory instead of having a hand-picked u.s. attorney in the southern district he now has audrey strauss, a career prosecutor, running that office. i think that gives us confidence she will run it with independence. the problem with that is her boss is still william barr. even if she continues to lead investigations in that district against associates of president trump or trump's organization, at the end of the day, william barr ultimately gets controlled what gets filed out of the

southern district of new york in the same way we saw them file this sentencing recommendation for roger stone and moving to dismiss the flynn case, william barr is still the boss of the justice department. until he's removed i don't have any confidence in the justice department. >> i was going to ask you, what can democrats do, if anything? jerry nadler has already said it's a waste of time trying to impeach william barr. do they have any other recourse here? >> i think one thing is just exposing the truth. transparency is very important at any stage of democracy. like today's hearing in front of the house judiciary committee. aaron zelinsky and other colleagues are going to detail some acts of improper influence at the justice department. i think at some point if the facts become too overwhelming and too awful to bear, you could see pressure on william barr to

resign. we saw this alberto gonzales in the bush administration when it was exposed that he was improperly firing u.s. attorneys for political reasons. i don't know that william barr has the same sense of shame or decency that alberto gonzales had, but i think at some point it becomes untenable for him to remain as the attorney general when you see things like the letter that mika read earlier from the georgetown university law school. at some point the pressure becomes so overwhelming, it becomes impossible for william barr to do his job. we could see resignation. >> yeah, that letter from george washington university law school, damning. joyce, your take. i mean, are things beginning to close in on barr? >> i think barr is exactly right, that anybody with shame would resign at this point. if barr loved the institution, he would resign to protect its integrity. but i think ultimately it's going to be up to democrats to expose the conduct and the hope

will be that public sentiment will be so strong and so over whelming that barr will leave the justice department or at least be so damaged that there will be public awareness and a spotlight on conduct so that the justice department can slowly begin to rebuild after november, hopefully. >> former u.s. attorneys, barbara mcquaid and joyce vance, thank you both for being on the show this morning. up next, the power of diplomacy in an age of trump. that conversation is straight ahead. as we go to break, a snapshot from congressman max rose, who just posted this picture of his newborn son, myles, who he says officially is a "morning joe" baby. hi, myles. myles is very cute. we'll be right back. 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

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states, capricaa marshall. i love your book, it's so useful. thank you for coming on with us. i guess first of all, i remember as a young girl going to the white house with my parents and being told you have to follow protocol. i thought what is that. can you explain what protocol is? >> well, it's wonderful to join you this morning, mika. thank you. i too remember fondly my parents growing up and for being a first generation american from mexican and croatian background, so protocol is deeply seeded in me. the cultural differences in others, celebrating those. what protocol does is creates a well detailed road map for any engagements our world leaders are going to step into.

i attended the g20 with president obama in mexico, he had to have a tough discussion with president putin after learning some things, and i put down all the details of that meeting down to the height size of the room. every detail matters. we wanted to put president putin into a space where he was push the inpushed into having these tough conversations with president obama. the ceiling height as well forced you into a concrete decision. so that is where protocol really comes into effect and gives our president the advantage. >> so in terms of how people can apply this to their lives, how diplomacy is so incredibly useful, you talk about the smallest details, sometimes impaithat impacts the outcome of something so large.

can you explain that piece of advice? >> absolutely. protocol whether it's in your social, professional or business engagement it's imperative to tend to all of those details. it could be the president having a discussion like i said with president putin or it might be a negotiation with a business client, making sure you put them in the right room to have that discussion. and what is the language you're using during those conversations. down to your son interviewing for a job or possibly with an admissions director at a college. you want to make sure they're fully prepared. that's what protocol does. i talk about that in this book, making sure you're ultimately prepared for every negotiation, any interaction that is coming your way. do your research. do your homework. and then make sure you put yourself in the right environment for success. >> someone who never follows protocol at all, mike barn knic

is here with us and he has the next question. >> that's very true. very true. thank you. ambassador marshall, we know you know a lot about the power of diplomacy, given the fact you worked in two administrations, the clinton administration and the obama administration. could you speak to diplomacy and the underlying current of diplomacy and the power of relationsh relationships, and what happens when that power of relationships is interfered with belligerence or isolation from other former partners of ours? what happens to diplomacy under those conditions? >> diplomacy, in diplomacy you want to create a strong relationship with your counterpart. while creating that relationship, bridging it, you want to persuade them to your side of thinking. in doing so you have to invest in that relationship. you have to show respect for that relationship, you certainly

have to build up bonds of trust. when you don't do that, when there's confusion, when there's chaos, it leads to bumbles. when president trump used an interpreter when he was meeting with president putin, he used president putin's interpreter to interpret his own words. language and diplomacy is very, very specific. you want to make sure that you are incredibly detailed in what is being conveyed to you and what you are conveying to your counterpart. contrast to that, when i was with president obama and we were in the czech republic and he was signing the new start treaty, he wouldn't start the negotiations without having his interpreter in the room. that is the importance of diplomacy. knowing those rules and then implementing them appropriately. >> before you go, your book has some real tales of when protocol is not followed and how

sometimes skipping protocol can lead to international incidents. we've had a lot of them in this presidency, but you take a look back. tell us about some of the awkward moments that you look at in this book. >> oh. there's a few awkward moments. you know, there's a learning curve in leadership. how they get there, but they -- but what they invest in is how that relationship, how their leadership skills provide them the direction of where they want to go. okay. so some of those examples are when regrettably president carter, when going in to give a peck on the cheek to her majesty, there was a slight swipe across the mouth and a bit of a peck on the lips. when president bush was going into a g8 meeting, he greeted

chancellor merkel with a really cozy neck rub. she gave him that look of what are you doing? so there are several leaders that -- in applying protocol that sometimes they take a little side step, but they adjust their way. and that's what is important in leadership. making sure that you redirect yourself, you get yourself back on the right way. >> as we close, it's easier said than done. these world leaders, the two you just named, they're exhausted on these trips. they're on a completely different time zone. they have the world on their shoulders, sometimes they get outside of themselves. i think of that bush moment with merkel. sometimes it happens. you have to regroup. get back on track. the new book is "protocol: the power of diplomacy and how to

make it work for you." congratulations on the book. >> thank you very much. >> that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. thanks so much. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle, it's wednesday, june 24th, here's what's happening this morning. the coronavirus has come roaring back in many cases it never left, it just rose. new cases have surged to their highest levels since april 24th. more than 35,000 new cases were reported yesterday. in all, over 2.3 million people have gotten the virus, more than 121,000 have died. in more than two dozen states the cases are going up sharply. what we're seeing and hearing out of new york and new jersey in april, you remember april, is what is happening across the western and southern united states