hey, everybody, i'm i can't see minu-- i'm yasmin vassoughi. vice president pence was holding a press conference alongside texas governor greg abbott, his

about face on masks coming after a surge of cases across the southern half of the united states from california all the way to florida. some astounding numbers there. the numbers are also growing around the world. total deaths have surpassed the grim milestone of half a million today, that number coming to us from johns hopkins university. the mississippi legislature, separately from this, voting to remove the confederate battle flag from the state flag. more on that in just a minute. but we want to begin this hour with the vice president, now recommending americans wear masks. especially in states like texas, where the coronavirus cases are surging after being one of the first states to reopen. here is a little more of what the vice president said. >> the state is under local ordinances, strongly recommend, if your local officials in consultation with the state are directing you to wear a mask, we encourage everyone to wear a

mask in the affected areas and where you can't maintain social distancing, wearing a mask is just a good idea. and it will, we know from experience, will slow the spread. >> joining me now with more from the white house is josh lederman, nbc news national political reporter. josh, great to see you, good early evening to you, great to see you on this sunday. talk about this recommendation from the vice president. a major about face as i mentioned earlier. how did he get here? >> reporter: what a difference a few days makes, yasmin, not only in terms of what the vice president is saying but also what he's doing. we saw the vice president several times today wearing a mask himself, demonstrating that behavior in public, on television, wearing a mask as he was coming into events, then taking it off to be able to speak, but putting it on as he was wrapping up. it's a really sharp departure

has he's calling on americans to be wearing masks. from the focus that the vice president had only a few days ago, when the message was really about liberty, personal responsibility, freedom in america for people to make their own decisions. we should note it's not like there's some massive distinction across the country where the cdc and the coronavirus task force have been saying you only need to wear a mask in certain places. the message consistently from public health officials has been the way to slow the spread is to prevent transmission and that masks are a large part of that. but we heard a very different message from pence today. if you just scroll back to a couple of days ago when he was delivering the first coronavirus task force press briefing in several weeks, we heard him answer the question about masks very differently. take a listen to what he said on friday. >> is there a message that you would like to send to people about the importance of wearing masks? >> we just believe that what's most important here is that

people listen to the leadership in their state, the leadership in their local community, and adhere to that guidance, whether that has to do with facial coverings, whether it have to do with the size of gatherings. we'll continue to reinforce that message. >> reporter: so what's changed between then and now, yasmin? we don't really know except that we're seeing more and more alarm from local governors and officials. the real question now, is this going to be the new consistent message from the trump administration? are we going to see president trump himself encouraging people to wear masks, maybe even wearing a mask himself in public? or is this a message the vice president is pushing that the president himself is going to reluctant to echo? >> so two things here i want to dig into a little bit more. one, this idea of the federal mandate. we haven't gotten a federal mandate from this president and vice president before when there was outbreaks in the northeast area earlier on, the outbreak of

covid-19. now it seems as if we're getting this federal mandate. but even in the messaging we're getting from the vice president, i'm playing that sound and listening to it and i'm thinking, he doesn't necessarily sound as dire as he should sound when you have thousands of folks, the numbers infected doubling every day. you have a lot of trump voters now being affected by the spread of covid that you weren't necessarily having in the first go-round, in the april and may time when the northeast was predominantly being affected. >> reporter: that is a very good point. the focus of the virus, so to speak, has shifted from what happened to be largely democratic areas when we were seeing those spikes, especially in really dense urban areas like new york city, to places that are more rural, to the sun belt, to parts of the country that are more largely concentrated with voters and supporters of the

president in the past. so that may be part of what's happening here. but we've seen the whole administration really trying to walk this very delicate line, to your point, where they want to be calling on americans to do more, they want to be acknowledging that there is this spike, that they have to take more action. at the same time, they don't want to send the message that we're back where we were in march, that we've backtracked, that everything is at the crisis level that we saw when americans were really getting quite scared in february and march. >> all right, josh, stick with me. i want to bring in now lynn beverly, former national deputy director for african-american outreach for the obama campaign. great to see you. talk me through this, give me your reaction to the vice president there making an about face, asking folks to wear masks. >> well, it's reassuring to know that the vice president is finally actually following the givens his public health professionals. for me it is a lot too late

because it only took, you know, 126,000 individuals to be infected with the virus for him to make that about-face. and it only required the virus to be plaguing republican states for him to do that about-face. we have no coordinated national response. when it comes to both protective equipment, preventive equipment, ppe, when it comes to tracking and tracing this virus, testing and tracing for those who are infected, and we know it is still disproportionately affecting communities of color. so it is certainly too late. it is not surprising to me that the majority of voters do not have faith or trust in this administration. something like 26% of voters, according to the most recent "new york times" poll, trust president trump and his administration to tell the truth when it comes to this virus. so i think we're going to see reelection or election day hinge

upon this administration's treatment of covid but also the other major social upheaval that our communities are facing right now. everything including the fight for equal justice as well as the economy. and we know who is deemed essential and we know who is on the front lines of that fight. so it is reassuring that the vice president has finally gotten the message that his public health officials are sending. but it's too late, frankly, for way too many people. >> do you foresee the president and the vice president now leading by example and wearing a mask because of what he said today? >> no. maybe vice president pence will. but i do not see president trump wearing his mask. he is not going to concede on this issue because he has said repeatedly that he sees individuals' decisions not to wear a mask as being supportive of him and the decisions of others to wear a mask as flouting his leadership.

and as an affront to his leadership. he's not going to about-face. and i don't mind. >> the vice president actually visited this freedom rally, it included a choir performance at the first baptist church in texas. the choir was more than a hundred people, they all performed without masks at the event that was attended by nearly 2,200 people of all ages, as you see there, folks that are potentially vulnerable to covid more than others. organizers of the event are saying that the venue capacity for the indoor event was close to 3,000 attendees. and this as the state is seeing a record surge, as we've been talking about, in coronavirus case numbers and hospitalizations. it is astounding to see this event take place the way that it is, no social distancing amongst these choir members. watching the numbers go up and up in the state of texas. and then the vice president

turning around and asking folks to wear masks just a couple of hours later. >> that's right, it is a complete abdication of responsibility. these events that they're hosting, they're putting people's lives in jeopardy. in tulsa just last week, the campaign for donald trump pulled up tape that would help people social distance. they are putting people in harms way. now, it isn't just communities of color now. now he's putting his own base in jeopardy. so it's remarkable. it is tragic. and i don't think it's going to stop. >> so josh, we've been talking about a lot about texas. but another state that has been hard hit as of late, florida, we know governor ron desantis said something pretty interesting about the heat during his press conference today. let's take a listen to that.

>> one of the things that i think is a factor is as it gets warmer in florida, people want to beat the heat, they want to go inside, they want to do air conditioning. if they're having a party or getting together, they're much more likely to be doing that indoors, in the ac, and in a closed space. that is going to increase the risk of transmission of the coronavirus. >> it's so interesting to me, josh, because we have the conversation about the potential for the summer heat to get rid of the coronavirus a couple of months ago, and scientists didn't necessarily know what the answer would that to be, as to whether or not we would have a lull in the spread of this thing come the months of july and august because the heat would help us get rid of it, as we see with the flu epidemic, and that obviously is not happening. and now the governor is pointing to the fact that the heat is driving people indoors and that is how they are transmitting this virus and why numbers are growing. >> reporter: yeah, it's a real

illustration, yasmin, of how much we've learned about this virus and how much we're continuing to learn and how some of the initial assumptions, the best-laid assumptions from medical professionals about how this virus was likely to operate, when we first started learning about it, turned out to be wrong. if you recall back then, they were, as you were saying, talking about the possibility that it would have to do with seasonality and once we get into the summer, that it would reduce. also even just how you treat this thing, the instinct to put people on ventilators as soon as they're hospitalized has been something that doctors have shifted as they've learned more about the virus. but one thing that doctors are really learning about this is just how much more transmissible this virus is if you're in an enclosed space as opposed to if you're outside where there's less exchange of air. and that's one of the reasons that the governor of florida is so concerned about that. >> and i think two things important to mention here, the state of texas was one of the last states to shut down and one of the first states to open up.

and if we could bring up that video, guys, the governor ron desantis and vice president mike pence when florida was opening up from back in may. this was the vice president along with governor ron desantis in florida visiting a restaurant of sorts, a fast food restaurant, without masks as that state was beginning to open. and you compare that -- we are awaiting this video, hoping it comes up now -- you compare that to the numbers that we are seeing across some of these states like texas and florida which are incredibly troubling, and thinking about the decisions in which they have made throughout they have made throughout this entire process as to when they were opening up their economies and getting things started and then having to roll things back. thank you guys both, you'll both be joining me later in the hour. we didn't get that video up but we'll get it later in the hour.

in california, governor gavin newsom announcing a short time ago that because of the spike in cases, he's ordering bars and night life to close in california counties including los angeles. nbc's gadi schwartz joins us from california, great to see you. talk us through this. >> reporter: good evening, yasmin. look at these numbers leading up to this, it was pretty clear the restrictions were coming. so far those mandatory closures seem to be directed at bars and nightclubs in seven counties including here in los angeles, which is by far the most populated county in america. that could have a really big impact when you consider that the day that restrictions were lifted, officials estimated about half a million people headed out for a drink. and the main reasons bars appear to be targeted right now is really the nature of the setting. you've got people gathering with other people who might not live in the same house. you've got people taking their masks off to take a drink if they wear them at all. bars and nightclubs are also --

they can be extremely loud, making people raise their voices when they're very close to each other. what health officials say is that's a recipe for spreading viral droplets and heavy viral loads. lastly, alcohol adds a whole other layer of difficulty in getting people to comply with mask-wearing and keeping social distance. and all this news today is coming as the number of younger people infected with covid-19 continues to rise here in california. much more dramatically than other age groups. officials are worried that those who may have seen the protests, who may have seen the reopening of bars and restaurants, might not be taking the threat of covid-19 as seriously and they may have let their guard down, but stressing that cases of people in their 20s and 30s can be just as severe and hospitalization among those under 50 are up in some places like imperial county, completely overwhelming the health care centers there. so state officials are now saying that if the strain on hospitals continue at the levels that we're seeing right now and

the levels we've been seeing in the past couple of weeks, more closures are very likely to follow, yasmin. >> feels like groundhog's day, doesn't it, gadi? great to see you this sunday, appreciate you coming to us from los angeles, thank you. dr. megan rainey, co-founder of get us ppe. thanks for joining us on this. let's talk about the message from the top. we're hearing this announcement from the vice president essentially saying folks should wear masks. there has not been a consistent message from this administration throughout the entire time that we've been battling this pandemic in this country. there have been instances when the president and vice president have been seen on numerous occasions outdoors, not social distancing, not wearing masks. they have deferred mostly to local governments to make decisions. and now you hear the vice president, because these cases

are spreading in states like texas and florida, asking folks to put on masks. what do you make of it, what is the directive, what should folks be doing from your perspective? >> thank you. so let me be super clear that the right thing to do is to wear a mask when you are out in public. there's a reason that doctors and nurses wear masks in the hospital, right? we wear it to protect ourselves from getting infected as well as to protect our patients from potentially getting infections from us if we don't know that we have covid-19. we've been doing this long before covid-19, we know it works now for this disease too. we still don't have a lot of great treatments. the best thing that we can do is prevent the spread. and mask-wearing is an essential part of preventing the spread. it's important to wear the masks correctly. i was out at the grocery store today. there were a bunch of people with masks under their noses, that doesn't work. you really have to have it cover your face. i know i wear glasses, the masks fog up. put some tape there, protect yourself and protect otherwise.

it's absolutely critical for us as we continue to try to fight this pandemic. >> it's tough to wear the mask. it is annoying. that is the truth. but it helps us and it's even more annoying to get sick and to possibly get your family members sick and that's even tougher to have to battle, is covid, because we have so many instances of folks who are perfectly healthy ending up in icu units. governor greg abbott, interestingly, touted the lower death rate in the state of texas despite the fact that the numbers continue to rise there, the folks testing positive for covid. can you walk us through what you make of this lower death rate this time around? >> so the low death rate could be from a couple of different things. the first is, as you've already commented, we're seeing higher percentages of younger people getting infected, likely because young people are going out and socializing and going to bars as well as because young people are generally those essential workers who have to be out and about. young people are less likely to die than older people.

but the other thing that most of us in the medical and public health community are worried about is that we just haven't seen those deaths yet. it takes a couple of weeks from when we have positive tests until people get hospitalized and then another week or two after hospitalizations until we start to see the death rate climb. so my suspicion is that in the next week or two we're going to see higher death rates in texas and that right now we're just in a nice little area where we're not seeing high deaths but that that is going to change. >> all right. so dr. ranney, give us some hope, as you often do in these instances, in the way in which you deliver this message of being cautious as we go out there. give us hope about a possible vaccine. we heard dr. anthony fauci telling congress this week that he is cautiously optimistic that there could be a vaccine by the end of the year. what are your thoughts about a vaccine emerging then, how it will be distributed to folks around the country, and this is

a big ask, at what point we can emerge from the reality of covid. >> i tell my friends and family all the time, we are not in this state forever. we have to hold out a little longer until we have an effective vaccine and until there is enough of the vaccine for all of us to get it. but there is one coming. there are a number of very promising trials under way. i wish i had a magic ball to say when a vaccine was going to be available. i don't. but assuming that everything proceeds according to plan, assuming there are really no negative side effects, we will hopefully have first production of vaccine by the beginning of next year. we'll start making it ready to our high risk people, our elderly, the health care workers first. but i'm hopeful that by the middle of next year we'll have vaccines for all of us. in the meantime we're going to have to change our behavior a little bit to keep all of ourselves safe. >> wear our masks and not drop the ball, keep our eyes on the prize. >> that's right.

>> dr. making egan ranney, thany much. ahead, history in mississippi. the vote that will change the face of the only state flag to still bear the confederate emblem. in a rare move, president trump pulls a retweet that shows an apparent supporter shouting "white power." so, when you get a check... you can deposit it from here. and you can see your transactions and check your balance from here. you can save for an emergency from here. or pay bills from here. so when someone asks you, "where's your bank?" you can tell them: here's my bank. or here's my bank. or, here's my bank. because if you download and use the chase mobile app, your bank is virtually any place. visit chase.com/mobile. they get that no two people are alike and customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. what do you think?

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welcome back. with 128 days left until the election, trump's poll numbers are down and his leadership is being called into question. senator chris murphy from connecticut tweeting, "our president is openly working to help a deadly virus spread that has killed 120,000. russia is putting bounties on the head of american soldiers and he seems okay with it. he's distributing white power videos. and that's just the last 48 hours." wow, a lot in a tweet. i want to bring back nbc's josh lederman, msnbc contributor david jolly and former

congressman, and former member of the obama administration elena beverly. josh, earlier today the president retweeted a racist video taken at a florida retirement community outside of orlando called the villages. i want to watch it first and then we'll talk about it. [ yelling ] >> white power! white power! >> there you go, white power, you hear that? >> so if you couldn't hear it, he said "white power" there. that tweet was deleted. but it drew some pretty quick reaction from not just democrats as well. josh, talk us through what we are hearing in washington right now in reaction to the president. >> perhaps not surprising that we would have heard quick and

swift reaction from the democrats and the president's critics. the democratic national committee speaking out, joe biden calling this another example of the president creating divisions within the country. what's significant is we also started to see rebukes from members of the president's own party, from republicans such as senator tim scott, the only african-american senator who is a republican at the moment. he had some very harsh words to say about what the president tweeted. listen to what he had to say. >> there's no question he should not have retweeted it. he should just take it down. >> does it offend you, though? i mean, it offends me, and i'm white. >> well, listen. i mean, if you watch the entire video, you can't play it because it was profanity-laced. the entire thing was offensive. certainly the comment about white power is offensive. we could play politics about it.

he should take it down. >> we saw other members of the administration trying to dance around this issue, including alekx azar, health and human services secretary, who said he hadn't seen the tweet but that trump would never promote white supremacy. i asked trade advisor pete ar navarro about the tweet, and he walked away without answering. it's one thing for the white house to say the president hadn't watched the full video and didn't see, according to the white house, that that statement had been made about white power, according to what a white house spokesman told us today. but the white house and the president are not actually distancing themselves from that comment. there was no denunciation of that supporter, no comment from the white house saying that those kinds of comments about white power are inappropriate or should be rebuked. and a lot of people are saying the president needs to go farther, not just pull down that

tweet but speak out affirmatively to say that white supremacy is wrong. >> elena, david, there is so much to unpack here. i'm not quite sure where to start. i want to bring up once again what josh has just read from that response from the white house. elena, let's dig into the white house's response. there's two things wrong with this situation here. there is the president of the united states retweeting a tweet. in this tweet, this individual, a supporter of the president, is yelling out "white power." then you have the white house deputy press secretary giving a response and the reasoning as to why the president would do this and he said, he did not hear the one statement made on that video. those are two very wrong things. not only that the president did this but the president isn't actually listening to the videos that he's retweeting as president of the united states with millions and millions of followers that he has. >> i mean, the real problem here

is that donald trump fosters division and supports white nationalists, supports racists and calls them very fine people. the problem with him saying he didn't hear the statement, he tends to use ignorance in his defense so often when it comes to these activities that undermine the very fabric of our democracy. so he -- in criminal law, ignorance is not a defense. i'm not saying he committed a crime here. but i am saying that it is undeniable that he has supported and fosters white nationalism, with charlottesville, even his recent executive order proposing stiff penalties for those who would exercise their interest in taking down confederate i concentrate and mondayicons and

monuments to those who promoted slavery. there are a number of challenges here, both the fact that donald trump would put the tweet up in the first place, that he has a consistent pattern of supporting this type of hatred and this type of racism, and that he always pleads ignorance when it comes to these types of actions. >> david jolly, what do you make of senator tim scott basically not going so far as to say that he is offended by this retweet? this is an individual who was part of the effort to write the republican police brutality reform bill that has not reached passage. why won't he say outright that he is offended by this president's retweet? >> look, for some of us, donald trump has become normalized in society. and for republicans it's more than that, it's placating. when senator scott said he didn't want to play politics with it, the arena of politics is exactly where you condemn

this. and yasmin, i think we just have to be blunt about this. this was a vile and disgusting moment by the president of the united states and it is a vile and disgusting moment as we watch the republican party starting with the number two republican, mike pence, who has yet to come out and condemn this, and every other republican senator and house member. if we go to the response, and josh referred to this, note that there is no condemnation of the man who shouted "white power." there is no condemnation of the principle of white power. this was an opportunity for the president of the united states and every republican to lead. and coming off the death of george floyd where we should already be having a national conversation on the issue of race, that donald trump has tried to avoid at all costs, today he remained silent after retweeting somebody shouting "white power." it is a disgusting, a vile moment by this president and it is so too of the republicans who refuse to condemn him for it. >> guys, hold right there, i

want to get into another piece of something that is developing today. nbc news confirming that the united states did in fact gather intelligence indicating russian intelligence officers, gru officers, offering money to taliban fighters to kill coalition soldiers. "the new york times" was actually the first to report on this story, saying the president was briefed on the intelligence findings that led the president to tweet a denial today, saying neither he nor the vice president were told about russian blount iounties. take a listen to this clip from "meet the press." >> it is remarkable the president is going out of his way to say he hasn't heard anything about it. one asks why would he do something like that. i think the answer may be precisely because active russian aggression like that against american service members is a

very, very serious matter. and nothing's been done about it, if it's true, for these past four or five months. so it may look like he was negligent. >> and then you have house speaker nancy pelosi also saying something doesn't smell right, and urging more action. david jolly, i want you to respond to this. in that i want you to take into consideration a tweet that we got from congresswoman liz cheney. in this tweet, she says, if reporting about russian bounties on u.s. forces is true, the white house must explain, one, why weren't the president and vice president briefed, was the information in the president's daily briefing, that's pdb there, who did know and when, and number three, what has been done in response to protect our forces and hold putin accountable. david jolly, respond to this. >> liz cheney is right. there's only two explanations for the president of the united states. it's either that he is so negligent in his job as the

commander in chief and the chief intelligence officer that he did not get the brief, which is really hard to believe considering some reports say that the intel goes back to january, and the very purpose of the presidential daily brief is to bring his awareness to issues like this. the second is that he was made aware of it and did nothing. and in this white house, that seems more likely. chris murphy's tweet you showed at the beginning is absolutely right. i think the reason donald trump is plummeting in the polls is a majority of americans know that he is dangerous to our national security, he continues to undermine the rule of law, and he can culturally toxic. fortunately it appears that at least more than 50% of the nation wants to go in a different direction rather than be led by a man like that. >> we're going to be getting into polls later on in the show. josh lederman, how often does the president actually read through, cover to cover, his daily briefing, from our reporting? >> there's been a lot of reporting including from nbc news in the past that the president does not regularly

read the entire pdb, presidential daily brief. we know he's much better with these in-person briefings. so his national security staff has tried to find ways, particularly graphical ways involving maps and diagrams, to try and convey to him intelligence and other information without giving him written materials that they're not actually sure that's going to assume. so that may have been a factor here as well. >> thank you, guys. david jolly, elena beverly, josh lederman, thank you all on this sunday afternoon. still ahead, mississippi lawmakers make history with a vote to change their next flag. the next steps to rid the flag of the confederate emblem. people across the country have proeftested in his name. but who was elijah mcclain? a look at his life and tragic death. thousands of women with metastatic breast cancer, which is breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body,

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welcome back, everybody. let's get the latest on some headlines across the country.

after weeks of mounting pressure, the mississippi house has passed a bill to change the state flag. the last in the country to still include the confederate battle emblem. just hours ago the vote passed by a wide margin to remove the current design and replace it with a flag that will include the words "in god we trust." >> 91 yays and 23 nays. the bill passes. [ applause ] >> the senate has now taken to the floor to debate the measure. if passed, it will head to republican governor tate reeves' desk who said yesterday he would sign the flag change into law. we're learning more about a man killed during a fatal shooting during a protest in louisville, kentucky, 27-year-old tyler girth who was killed when a gunman opened fire on a crowd of protesters in jefferson square park. the suspect is currently at a local hospital. the park where it happened had

become an encampment in recent weeks with demonstrators sleeping in tents overnight and protesting against police brutality during the day. authorities say protesters will no longer be allowed in the area overnight. heartbreaking news out of chicago, where a 1-year-old boy was fatally shot in broad daylight while riding in a car with his mother. officers are saying the boy's mother was driving home from the laundromat when another car pulled up alongside her. the suspect opened fire, hitting the 1-year-old in the chest. the mother drove him to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. a $25,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the shooter's arrest. thousands of demonstrators are gathering around the country to protest the death of 23-year-old elijah mcclain who died last august after a confrontation with police in aurora, colorado during which he was placed in a chokehold and later died following a heart attack.

the investigation into his death has recently been reopened. joining us now with the latest on this tragedy is nbc news' david gura. david? >> reporter: hundreds of protesters gathered here over the course of the weekend, gathered in front of the police department and city hall. they're calling for justice. they're calling for police reforms. and they want the world to know who elijah mcclain was. this is elijah mcclain. his name is now known by hundreds of thousands on social media. his friends and family say elijah was full of wonder, a shining star. >> elijah was one of those people who actually would make the community better. >> surprise! >> reporter: elijah mcclain was a son and a brother. he was someone who liked to dance. he was slight, about 140 pounds. he was anemic. he was just 23 years old when he died. >> the very first time i met him, he danced out of the back,

through the doorway. >> reporter: he was a massage therapist. that's how he met marna. >> he was welcoming and he was just loving and kindness, and just encapsulated. >> reporter: the night of august 24, 2019, elijah mcclain went to a convenience store to pick up iced tea for his brother. he was wearing a mask because he had anemia and got cold easily. someone called police because he was wearing the mask. he pleaded with the police to stop. >> i don't do that stuff. >> he tried to get my gun. >> why are you attacking me? >> you're done, dude.

>> i don't do that stuff. i don't do any fighting. >> other units can slow it down a little bit. >> reporter: millions of people now know those words. in the last few weeks, elijah's life and death have attracted attention worldwide. >> it's a bittersweet moment because for the mcclain family, their son was killed almost a year ago. and this has been an entire year of mourning. >> reporter: this week, three police officers have been reassigned. colorado's governor has promised an independent investigation. but the mcclain family's lawyer says -- >> what troubles me is the fact that it takes millions of signatures and international media pressure before there's an independent look when an innocent young man is killed by police. this shouldn't happen as a matter of course. when law enforcement kills somebody, there should be an independent investigation every single time, not just when the entire world demands it. >> reporter: the official autopsy was inclassificationclu.

a local prosecutor decided not to press charges. >> it's certainly fractured the relationship between law enforcement and the african-american community. >> reporter: the independence of the aurora investigation was called into question. the city started over. >> we want no credibility questions whatsoever. >> reporter: colorado implemented sweeping new police reforms brought about by what happened to elijah mcclain. >> it would not have happened without the protesters and it would not have happened without the victims and the families of the victims coming forward and testifying. >> that's what they did to elijah mcclain. >> reporter: there's a desire here for change and for closure. >> i'm outraged. but i'm just so grateful that somebody's finally listening, because he deserves a voice. he deserves justice. >> reporter: yasmin, the governor of colorado was among those who saw that video cam footage, heard those words from elijah mcclain.

he said that's why he's called for this unprecedented investigation. many protesters yesterday want to see justice, that is seeing the officers involved in this confrontation prosecuted. the governor said in his statement accompanying the executive order, that very well could come at the end of the investigation which is yet to get under way. yasmin? >> thank you to david gura for that report. and it was and is elijah mcclain's death and george floyd's death that have sparked nationwide protests and conversations around the country about race, about wealth, about justice, policing, and politics. but for black americans who have long been dedicated to this movement, these conversations of racial inequalities don't happen only when there's headlines and there's mass media coverage. they happen every hour of every day, because it is their lives, and it is affecting all of them. with me, jodie paterson and

chloe mackenzie, welcome to you both, thanks for joining me on this sunday evening. chloe, we have talked a lot over the last couple of weeks throughout these protests about police brutality and the reforming of police departments across the country, and police brutality especially when it comes to black men and women. we have not necessarily talked about how to address systemic racism in this country. and part of systemic racism in your view, and as many view, is the wealth gap, the wage gap. i want to give a stat for folks out there. at $171,000, the net worth of a typical white family is nearly ten times greater than that of a black family. that is based off of 2016 data. and the gap has only been widening. why is that, chloe? >> there are a number of

reasons. one of them biggest reasons really is because our financial system makes racism profitable. and when we tend to think about the multigenerational trauma from slavery to now, let's talk about that for a moment, minus the stolen indigenous land, black bodies created all of the we wealth in the western world to begin with. part of the reason why the wealth gap is widening is because our policies are continuing to create inequity on a wealth-based perspective. we see that more black people are going to college, for example, but the student debt crisis is worsening. and so you see these different vectors of where wealth is getting worse for the less advantaged and underrepresented groups like black people and it's getting better for the wealthy white elite people who are making some of these laws

and policies that continue to perpetuate wealth inequity. >> how do you tackle it? how do you change the system? >> there are a number of different things, and i like to think of this on three as threet plains. so there is the individual. there is the cultural and then there's the governmental. so on the individual level, we actually, the reckoning that we're having in this country requires that we start to think about the trama that we need to recover from also from a financial perspective. so the killings of unarmed black people is one place we need to heal but we also need to recognize that money is used as a communication tool in america and where we allocate our funds, which is why defund the police is becoming such a popular discussion is one of the things that we need to think about individually but from a policy perspective, if we're continuing to advance policies that will

let's be real, kind of substantiate and buttress white supremacist business models and operations, we'll widen the wealth gap. one way we can close the wealth gap is through education but it's not just teaching how to budget, how to trade stocks. that is very important but also recognizing that there is another dimension to money, the extra economic side and realizing that we do have to have some type of healing of the financial trama that we've sustained as a people. >> jody, i'm getting to you. i want to get into this because as i have been covering these protests out in the streets, i see a lot of men and women, mothers and fathers with their children in the streets and you and i have spoken before about this, but how do you talk to your kids about this? you have black sons. how do you talk to your kids about the inequities that exist in this country when it comes to

black americans? how do you talk about police brutality when it comes to george floyd and elijah mcclain and breonna taylor. >> i'm a mother of four children. four of them are black boys and of the four black boys, one is a black trans boy. when i think about and how do we raise our black children up against this presidential-led attack on our children, i take this job of mothering really seriously, and we're looking at the idea of like loving our children is not enough. we have to raise them as activists. and so activism can be on the streets. it can be on your dinner table but when i talk to my children, i talk to them very frankly about each situation, and i think about it in terms of i'm raising powerful people, right? we need to be raising powerful activists. not pretty kids. not perfect kids. but activists with power. in order for them to be modern

day revolutionaries they have to see the gaps and make a difference and that's about giving them the real information with a dose of it. we can't overload them. it's dose and environment. so a dose of the real in information in an environment they can feel safe at the dinner table, perhaps. >> you guys, i'm so sorry because i want to continue this conversation and i would do a whole show with you two women talking about this, so i want to make a promise to you that we're all going to be back together in a segment because i have run out of time but i think it's an important conversation we need to continue to have. i hope you'll take me up on that. thank you to you both. we'll be right back, everybody. . we'll be right back, everybody

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welcome to "kasie d.c." reports of bounties on the heads of americans in afghanistan. it's another sunday night in 2020. i'll talk to afghanistan vet max rose about concerning reporting russian operatives offered bounties to the taliban on american heads. how much did the white house and president know? wave watch. i'll talk to ianna pressly. mississippi on the verge of finally taking the confederate emblem off the state flag as a vote passes the house and senate moments ago. >> as we come on air, the coronavirus is spreading across the country faster than ever before there are now