this sunday, the coronavirus surge. >> we find ourselves careening toward a catastrophic and unsustainable situation. >> half the states seeing a steep rise in infections. >> time for prevention measures was a month ago. now -- i mean, the wheels are coming off. >> we might feel like we're done with covid-19, but covid-19 isn't done with us. >> states slowing reopenings as younger americans drive the surge. >> are you concerned about coronavirus really? >> i'm really not. >> vice president pence spins the administration's record. >> we have made truly remarkable

progress. we slowed the spread. we flattened the curve. >> while anthony fauci offers a warning to the young. >> if you get infected you will infect someone else who clearly will infect something else. >> health and human secretary alex azar and andrew cuomo. john bolton speaks out about president trump. >> there is no guiding principle that i was able to discern other than what's good for donald trump's re-election. >> it's a close race to see who could see through him the clearest and try to manipulate him. >> and the president strikes back. >> everyone thought he was crazy because all he wants to do is bomb people. >> this morning my one-on-one with john bolton. >> i believe america can recover from one term of donald trump. i believe that very, very strongly. i'm more worried about a second term. >> also mississippi lawmakers take steps to remove the confederate battle emblem from their state flag, the last of the southern states to do so. joining me for insight and analysis are eddie glaude jr., princeton university. nbc news capitol hill

correspondent kasie hunt and hugh hewitt, host on the salem radio network. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press". >> from nbc news in washington, the longest-running show in television history, this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning. throughout his presidency there have been countless this is it moments that opponents of president trump felt sure would puncture his standing with voters. charlottesville, immigrant children in cages, impeachment, just to name three. but nothing seemed to move mr. trump's approval ratings one way or the other. now, he's facing a crisis he's been unable to tweak, bluster, or bluff his way out of. covid-19 and the economic dislocation that comes with it is there for all to see. every american is aware of it. every american is affected by it. every american has an opinion about it. the past week felt more like april with states and then the

whole country setting records for new cases. cities shutting down and renewed fears that hospitals would soon run out of icu beds. through it all president trump has been in denial and the united states has become the object of avoidance, ridicule, and even pity around the world. at home, covid has given republicans a permission slip to criticize or ignore the president and provided space for former administration officials like john bolton who i will interview in a moment to criticize a president of their own party. ultimately as the number of cases goes up, mr. trump's political standing goes down, making him now the most endangered incumbent since george h.w. bush lost in 1992. >> we find ourselves careening toward a catastrophic and unsustainable situation. >> texas and florida praised by president trump for being among the first to reopen are now backtracking. abruptly setting new restrictions on bars, restaurants and beaches. >> there was widespread non-compliance and that led to issues. >> if you do need to get out, please wear a mask.

>> on friday the u.s. set a record for new cases, in 25 states cases have increased by 25% or more over the last two weeks. in nine states cases are up more than 100%. >> the time for prevention measures was a month ago. now -- the wheels are coming off. >> but on friday at the first coronavirus task force briefing in two months the vice president appeared to deny that reality. >> we have made truly remarkable progress in moving our nation forward. >> the nation's top infectious disease expert dr. fauci says current efforts to test sick people, isolate them, and trace their contacts are not working. >> we don't extinguish the outbreak, sooner or later, even ones that are doing well are going to be vulnerable to the spread. >> for months the president has minimized the virus. >> we have it totally under control. it's one person coming in from china. >> it looks like by april in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes

away. >> this is going to be gone. >> it's going to go. it's going to leave. it's going to be gone. >> this will go away without a vaccine. >> six months into the pandemic in the united states, the message largely dismissing the virus hasn't changed. >> we're doing well after the plague. it's going away. >> this is a localized situation. >> we slowed the spread. we flattened the curve. we saved lives. >> but the curve hasn't been flattened. the virus isn't going away and the issues that plagued early testing efforts remain. >> so i said to my people slow the testing down, please. >> did you ask to slow it down? >> if it did slow down, frankly, i think we're way ahead of ourselves if you want to know the truth. we've done too good a job. because every time we go out, with 25 million tests you're going to find more people. >> some republicans would like to see president trump stop politicizing mask wearing. >> until we find a vaccine, these are really important. this is not as complicated as a ventilator. >> joining me now is the secretary of health and human

services alex azar. secretary azar, welcome to "meet the press." let me start with just a simple first question. why are we failing in the fight against covid-19 when so much of the rest of the world seems to be succeeding right now? >> chuck, let's talk about what we know, which is that we're seeing surging in cases in counties, especially in southern parts of the united states. we've gotten reports from our governors that the majority of the positive cases we're seeing are age 35 and under. a large number of those are going to be asymptomatic. we've got our fatality rates and our hospitalization rates are the lowest they've been in two months. but this is a very serious situation. what are we doing? we're working with local authorities and states. this is a county by county issue so getting in there and getting to the bottom of why the cases are surging. in addition to the traditional contact tracing, what we're doing now is we've got to test entire communities, find all positive cases, because this is a very different virus with this

asymptomatic spreading, get every positive case, get those people isolated. we've got hospital capacity in all of these areas, we have personal protective equipment and we'll be there to back them up. we now have treatments. we've got steroids, remdesivir, convalescent plasma. i encourage your listeners, if you've had covid, call your blood bank, american red cross and donate plasma to increase our supplies. we have the tools to do this. we just did this in the last couple of weeks in north carolina, but the window is closing. we have to act, and people as individuals have to act responsibly. we need to social distance and we need to wear face coverings if we're in settings where we can't social distance, particularly in these hot zones. >> let me ask you this, did we blow it during the first shutdown? the first shutdown was dedesigned to do three things. get our testing capacity up, provide relief for hospitals, and one of the big things was contact tracing.

so it seems pretty obvious what happened here if you are just looking back at a layman. you guys put out guidelines in april about what it would take for a state to open up. no state followed those guidelines at all. some states followed them okay, pretty closely or came close, but a lot of the states in the south didn't do it at all, and a bunch of them don't have contact tracers. isn't that why we're here? >> so, chuck, this isn't about reopening or not reopening. we've got many communities in states that are just as reopened as these southern states but aren't experiencing this. we've got to get to the bottom of why we're seeing these cases surge in this area, but at its core, we all own as individuals, our individual behavior to make sure that we are practicing appropriate social distancing and wearing facial covering when we're not able to and practicing good personal hygiene and especially protecting our most vulnerable citizens. but dr. birx and dr. fauci talked about this at a press briefing on friday, that one of the things about this virus is

the asymptomatic spread of it, which means the traditional contact tracing of public health that our local authorities are so used to is a necessary but not sufficient protection. we've got to do that, but it can't just be sitting in a public health office making phone calls. we've got to get into the community. we have to get dust on the boots and find the people and test entire communities to get our positive cases. that's the type of action we've seen in north carolina, and that's what we need in these other communities. >> mr. secretary, i still don't understand why we have enough contact tracers. the head of the cdc said we have less than 100,000 nationwide. we should have 300,000, some experts have thought. and again, we've been at this five months now. why don't we have enough physical contract tracers in these southern states? >> well, chuck, these states have to build up their contact tracers, but they've also got to build up getting into the states, getting out into these

counties, local communities. this is a community-based effort at this point. we've surged people into every one of these states. we're working with them on the ground, but it's about getting out, working with ngos and working with community, trusted community leaders and getting testing done, getting people isolated. it's important to remember, we now have many more tools than we had months ago to deal with this. we have therapeutics. we are on the road to vaccines. we have personal protective equipment. again i'd say any hospital, nursing home that needs anything, be sure your governor's office knows and we'll get that into fema and we'll make sure we're there to support you. >> i asked the governor of arkansas, republican asa hutchinson, if his job would be made easier to get his community and get his state to wear masks if the president -- he didn't have to wear one, if he would just say it, just tweet it. here was his response. >> a consistent, national message talking about the

importance of wearing a mask and social distancing is very important to making sure everybody understands the importance of it. nothing beats leadership. >> mr. secretary, multiple times with me in our seven minutes so far that you've talked you've brought up masks, you've brought up social distancing. but without the president of the united states doing this, how is half the country going to listen? have you directly asked the president to please ask the country to wear a mask? >> so i'm the president's secretary of health. i'm telling you, practice social distancing where you can't appropriately social distance. we encourage you to wear a facial covering. the vice president of the united states on friday stood on stage, walked up on stage wearing a mask even though he doesn't need to in the sense that everybody around him is tested, he's in a bubble. the president we know is a very unique circumstance as leader of the free world. he's tested constantly and those around him are tested constantly and are kept at a distance even with that. but we're all saying that. the president's guidelines for

reopening, the president's guidelines have said from day one, practice social distancing. if you can't, wear face coverings. practice appropriate personal hygiene and always please consider your individual circumstances and those of your household members. protect the most vulnerable. those over 80. those over 65 with three or more of the serious comorbid conditions. these are the people we have to ring, fence, and protect right now. >> you just articulated, do as i say, not as i do. the president of the united states holding indoor rallies twice in the last ten days, once in a state that is seeing a potential of an out-of-control spread in arizona. he doesn't talk about wearing a mask. you avoided my question about whether you've asked the president to at least ask the country to wear a mask. just because you put guidelines under his name, when he doesn't do it, his people don't listen. >> well, chuck, i'm not going to talk about politics, but we've seen mass gatherings over the last several weeks with people rightly expressing first

amendment and political views, and this is appropriate, but my message is one of public health which is if you're going to participate in any type of large gathering, i encourage you, consider your individual circumstance. consider the circumstance of those you live with. and take appropriate precautions that are appropriate to yourself and your community. >> secretary azar, i have to leave it there. i appreciate you coming on and sharing the administration's perspective. >> thank you, chuck. during the first peak of the covid crisis andrew cuomo was one of the faces of the response giving daily televised press briefings as new york became the epicenter of the pandemic in the united states. now cases and deaths are way down in new york and instead of new yorkers being quarantined when they travel to states like florida, it's new york that is doing the quarantining of out-of-state visitors from places like florida. joining me now is the governor of new york andrew cuomo. governor, i want to start with what we just heard from secretary azar, and that is sort of, it seems as if he believes

this is on the states, that our contact tracing problem in the south is on the states. was this second surge, in your opinion, preventible? >> yeah, good to be with you, chuck. first, i don't think this is the second surge. we're worried about a second wave. i think we're still in the first wave and this is a continuation of the first wave, and it was a failed effort to stop the first wave in the country. and as you pointed out, new york is in a totally different place. look, if you listen to what the secretary said, if you listen to what the president says what they're saying at the white house briefing, they're saying what they said three months ago. they're basically in denial about the problem. they don't want to tell the american people the truth and they don't want to have any federal response except supporting the states, supporting the states. so i heard that, and i understood where they were. i didn't need to torture the rhetoric. i knew what they were saying.

you're on your own. you know? >> right. >> it's not a good feeling, but it's sort of liberating. so in new york, we just handled it totally differently, chuck. we handled it on our own. communication, clear, as you mentioned, every day. then we came up with a plan and did the testing and did the isolation, and that makes a difference. >> you followed the set of guidelines i pointed out. i remember this distinctly, only one time did we hear the white house ever talk about the infamous gating criteria, then i think that phrase disappeared. sort of using that guidance, you guys sort of created your own. in all honesty, how hard is it going to be to stop another resurgence in your state if the rest of the country is struggling the way it's struggli struggling? >> well, that's our problem. look, the cdc guideline, first of all are just guidelines and they were very vague and i don't even know what they meant. the trajectory has to be coming down. we put in place our own metrics

where we used science. and we wouldn't open any region unless they hit certain metrics and then we have a phased reopening that we're in the midst of. but you look at the number of hospital beds, you actually have the testing up. we do more testing than any state in the united states, chuck. we do more testing per capita than any country on the globe. the testing is the key. you do the isolation, and you have enough ppe and enough icu beds. then you -- from the testing, you have a rate of transmission that you can monitor. and you proceed through the phases if you hit that rate of transmission. this is a virus. it doesn't respond to politics. you can't tweet at it. you have to treat it. and we never did that. now my fear is we had today five deaths. now we -- we offer thoughts and prayers to every death in our state, but five deaths is the

lowest number we've had since this started, chuck. we are in the exact opposite end. we have less than 800 people in hospitals. lowest number, basically, since we started. how does that number go up? two ways. lack of compliance, and i'm diligent about staying after new yorkers and local governments that have to police it. >> right. >> and second, i'm now afraid of the spread coming from other states because we are one country and people travel, and i'm afraid the infection rate in the other states will come back to new york and raise that rate again. >> all right. if governor desantis calls you up this afternoon, governor abbott calls you up this afternoon of texas and florida and say, all right, let's set the politics aside, i know we mouthed off at you a little bit, what's your recommendation? what should we do here? what would you tell them? >> i'll tell you, i don't wait for them to call. this is new york. we're proactive.

my team has called their teams and said, look, can we help? when we were in trouble, chuck, we had states all across the nation who came to help us. we had 30,000 volunteers from across the united states who came to help us. so i called those states and i said, any way we can help. we've gone through it, we have the equipment, we have the staff, we have the testing protocols, we have the testing software, we have the tracing program, can we help? anything you need, ventilators, et cetera. and that's the right thing to do from a community point of view and citizenry point of view. it's also, there's a parochial interest which is, if these states keep going up, we're going to have a national crisis like we never seen. they said this was the way to help the economy by reopening and it's been the exact opposite. every time the virus goes up, the stock market goes down. and if those -- if those states continue to increase you'll see it go all across the nation.

you'll see new york on the rise again and you'll see the other states starting to go up even more. >> has this -- you have not released a school opening plan. i know you have some recommendations out, but i'm curious now because this is my fear is that this new surge or spike that we're seeing in the south is now going to delay every school district's plans for creating maybe a dual hybrid system of some in person, some remote, universities. are you now thinking that maybe we might not see everything goes remote now in the fall given we're living with this virus until there's a vaccine? >> well, first -- on the first point, yes, i agree with that. you know, everybody talked about the economic consequence, and the president said we should reopen and that's going to help the economy. it turned out to be exactly wrong. but there's also a social consequence. children have missed schools. children have missed interaction with other children and that's part of the socialization

process. we are preparing to open schools and we have plans to open schools, but look, chuck, i'll be honest with you. it's two months away. anything can happen in two months. you look back two months and you see how many things have changed. i want to see what the infection rate is and what the disease is doing before we pull the trigger and make the decision. we're looking at this kawasaki-like syndrome that is now is an inflammatory syndrome that affects children who were previously infected with covid. i mean, this is complicated. so let's get the facts and we'll make the decision when we have to, but we're prepared and if this continues across the country, you're right, chuck. kids are going to be home for a long time. >> and final question, we talked about this, about nursing homes before, and you've taken some heat on the directive and you said you were following a national directive, but let me ask it again similarly at this point.

do you think these senior centers are safe, period? >> yeah. look, there's -- i've taken political heat, okay? there are facts and there's politics. there's no doubt in nursing homes all across this nation, that's where we saw most of the deaths. not most, but almost 50% of the deaths, senior citizens in congregant settings. and it is becoming more and more clear that the infection and the nursing homes came from the staff that got infected and brought it in. but in new york we're number 46 in the nation in terms of percentage of deaths at nursing homes compared to the total percentage. by "the new york times" we're number 46. so it's been unfortunate. in every state we have to do more, we have to figure it out. but if they want to point fingers, not at new york. we're number 46. you have 45 other states to point fingers at first. >> i understand that. are these safe?

are these facilities safe, in your mind, right now? >> they are as safe -- they are as safe -- well, in this state we're testing every week. every nursing home employee, right? >> right. >> so you could argue that they are safer than a senior citizen at home who is receiving care at home. the safest environment, my mother, stay home, don't see anyone. if you are at home and you have an aide coming in, that aide is not tested. in a nursing home, that staff is tested once a week, and seniors do have to be careful wherever they are. >> governor cuomo, i'd love to keep going but i am out of time. i appreciate you coming on, sharing your perspective with us. stay safe out there. >> thanks, you too. when we come back, my interview with president trump's former national security adviser john bolton. 24/7 protection. as it -- [ cellphone chimes ] [ clears throat ]

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welcome back. it's been only five days since john bolton's book "the room where it happened" hit bookstores. in that time president trump has

called his former national security adviser, a fool, crazy, and someone who wanted to drop bombs on everyone. bolton has dropped verbal bombs of his own saying mr. trump is easily duped by adversaries, is unfit for office, and has used his power as president for personal gain. joining me is the author of said book. master bolton, welcome back to "met the press," sir. >> thanks for having me. >> well, before we get to the substance of your book, i want to get to what we just learned over the last 48 hours. there was reporting this weekend that an arm -- reported by "the new york times" that an arm of russian military intelligence has secretly been paying bounties to taliban-linked militias to kill american and other coalition forces in afghanistan. there's a lot we don't know. the u.s. government has not confirmed or denied the intelligence report. they have only simply denied that the president was informed in march of this. i'm just curious of your initial reaction to this report, ambassador. >> well, as you say, there's a lot we don't know so we should be cautious.

but what we do know from the president's own tweets this morning, to me it looks like just another day at the office at the trump white house. i've never recalled a circumstance where the president himself goes out of his way to say he wasn't briefed on something. we may be in what the definition of "is" is here. when you say briefed, does that mean he's never been told anything about it? we don't know the quality of the intelligence or the extent of it. if it does go back to march that raises other questions. the key point is if there's any accuracy to it, if the russians have actually been paying to see americans killed, that is a very, very serious matter. >> i'm just curious. if there was an intelligence assessment like this, can you imagine a scenario where it is withheld from the president? that part of it just seems extraordinarily hard to believe, is it not for you? >> it depends on what the level of confidence in the

intelligence is. i tried during my tenure at my white house to read as much intelligence as i could. that doesn't mean i passed all of it on to trump and others. i think it's important to understand there needs to be a filter for any president, maybe particularly for this president. there's obviously more to this story, but it is remarkable to say that the president is going out of his way to say he hadn'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 the past four or five months. it may look like he's negligent but of course he can disown everything if nobody ever told him bill. about it. >> let me ask you this, do you

think that the president is afraid to make putin mad because maybe putin did help him win the election and he doesn't want to make him mad for 2020? >> honestly, i don't think there's evidence for that, and i think it's a mistake on the one hand to say the russia collusion theory was true, which some opponents of trump still can't let go of -- >> i'm not saying collusion. >> versus trump himself -- hang on -- >> i'm not saying collusion on this. >> hang on. hang on. versus the donald trump approach which is the russians didn't do anything at all in the election. i think it's clear from all of the data, and it's been discussed publicly, of course the russians tried to interfere in the 2016 election. and they're going to try and do it again this year. as will the chinese and maybe the iranians and the north koreans. that's why during the trump administration, whether the president was fully cognizant of it or not, the agencies and departments charged with trying to prevent that worked very hard to increase our defenses. so why is the president so defensive about putin?

i don't -- as i say, i don't read anything into it necessarily. if i had evidence, i would reveal it. i just don't know what to say other than he likes dealing with strong, authoritarian figures. >> you've made it clear that you think the president is unfit for office. do you think a second term of donald trump is an existential threat to the country? >> i'm very worried about it. i think damage has been done in the first term. i lay it out in the book as i see it. but i believe america can recover from one term of donald trump. i believe that very, very strongly. i'm more worried about a second term. and it's not just decisions in the national security space. i'm worried about the corruption of the civil discourse in this country by a president who says the sorts of things that you quoted at the outset of our discussion. i think it -- i think it degrades the body politic. there are plenty of other people doing the same thing, don't get me wrong.

i just think it's unpresidential to behave that way, and that will have serious consequences. >> let me ask you about the impeachment and your decision not to testify. this week the new yorker profiled fiona hill, who was the russia national security director during your tenure, who did testify during the house impeachment investigation, and there was this anecdote in there, ambassador. after hill's testimony bolton asked sarah tinsley, a longtime aide to relay a personal message. you did the right thing. if it was the right thing for fiona hill, sir, why wasn't it the right thing for you? >> because i was in a different circumstance. my deputy charlie kupperman was subpoenaed by the house, he was directed by the white house not to testify. he went to court. you have the one branch, the legislative branch, saying one saying one thing, the judicial branch saying another, the house of representatives wrote the subpoena. i've written in the book and the house advocates of impeachment committed impeachment malpractice. i think they played right into donald trump's strategy, and

last a real opportunity by creating a partisan issue when they might have gotten some republicans who could have helped out. and by the end of the process i think everybody, including on the republican side believe that there was a quid pro quo in ukraine, but the house effort didn't take into account the possibility that the white house would argue successfully that even if it were true it didn't rise to the level of an impeachable offense. i think there was another way to do this. we saw it in watergate when there was bipartisan cooperation. if i were one of those that had advocated impeachment in the house, i'd be looking for other people to blame at the moment, too. >> final question. you've made the case that a second term of donald trump would be really damaging. you have said, though, that you cannot support a joe biden candidacy. what is worse, in your mind? a second trump term or a first term of joe biden? >> it's a comparison of apples and oranges. i'm very unhappy and i don't think i'm untypical of a lot of

conservative republicans who really wish there was a conservative republican on the ballot. some will vote for joe biden. i respect that. i'm not going to do that. i'm going to write in the name of a conservative republican. i think others will probably just not vote at the presidential level at all. it's not an easy choice. it's not a happy choice and i wish there were an alternative. maybe one will come. i don't see it, but that's where we are at the moment. >> and you have said that you really want to focus on helping republicans keep the senate. george will, who i know you're familiar with, has argued that senate republicans have enabled donald trump too much and they are part of the problem. what do you say to his critique? >> well, i have enormous respect for george will and have over the years. look, this is part of, i think, the damage to the political system that donald trump has done, that everything has been torqued around donald trump personally. i think politics is about

philosophy. and that's why i think ultimately it is critical for the republic that the republican keep the majority in the senate whether trump wins or loses. >> ambassador bolton, i have to leave it there. i appreciate you coming on, sharing your perspective. your book has made quite the splash, and i have a feeling it may linger for some time. good luck out there. >> well, thanks very much. when we come back, the polling, all the polling has gotten much worse for president trump. is he able to change the direction of this race? the panel is next. after my dvt blood clot... i wondered.. could another come around the corner? or could it play out differently? i wanted to help protect myself. my doctor recommended eliquis. eliquis is proven to treat and help prevent

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welcome back. the panel is with us from their remote locations. eddie glaude jr., princeton university, author of "james baldwin's america and the urgent lessons for our own." nbc news capitol hill correspondent kasie hunt and hugh hewitt, host on the salem radio network. i want to begin with an answer that has made the rounds in the political world and it was an answer the president gave to a simple question sean hannity asked him, what's your agenda for a second term? here it is, hugh hewitt. >> what are your top priority items for a second term? >> one of the things that will be really great, the word experience is still good. i always say talent is more important than experience, i've always said that. but the word experience is a very important word, it has a very important meaning. i never did this before, i never slept over in washington, i was in washington i think 17 times, all of a sudden i'm president of the united states, you know the story, i'm riding down pennsylvania avenue with our first lady and i say, this is great.

but i didn't know very many people in washington, it wasn't my thing. i was from manhattan, from new york. now i know everybody and i have great people in the administration. you make some mistakes like an idiot like bolton, all he wanted to do was drop bombs on everybody. >> was that roger mudd redux? >> that was clayton kershaw windup and the president did not want to throw the pitch, which is we'll get back to 3.5% unemployment in january, i have two supreme court justices, 53 appeals court judges, 143 district court judges, we're going to have the economic blue collar boom back. you've got to deliver on the pitch, but no, i didn't think it was a roger mudd moment at all. >> kasie hunt, we have started this week for the first time public, on-the-record criticism of the president's political

messaging. john thune probably the most prominent. is this the beginning of a crack, at least, in a rhetorical split, between senate republicans and the white house? >> well, chuck, we've asked ourselves that over and over and over again, and it never has been. but on the other hand, the president previously was winning. he had republican support behind him. and the theory was that the republican base was going to get them across the finish line and therefore bring senate republicans along. and this pandemic, i think, has really shattered that theory of the case as we have seen this president's numbers sink in a substantial way. and i don't think you can disconnect that from the rhetoric we're hearing from senate republicans. as you pointed out, this isn't a situation where the only americans who are following politics are the ones who are the most invested, the most partisan. the coronavirus has affected and touched every single american household.

the numbers of americans who know someone who has died from coronavirus are terribly high, and they're much higher among households of color who are also newly re-engaged in the wake of george floyd's death. and if you are someone who is relying on the president's coattails to get you across the finish line in november, this is a very, very difficult place to be. now, i think the sense is going to be, especially for many voters who have been tuned into this all of the way along, that it is far too little, too late for these republicans to break with the president at this stage, chuck. >> right. eddie, why do you believe it's been the virus that has produced the first cracks in that floor of support? one of the things we noticed is that for the first time, instead of sitting at that 44, 45 mark subornly, no matter what happened, this is the first time you're starting to see, and it's slow, but you're starting to see cracks, and he went down a

couple of floors. he's more like in the 40, 41 age. why the virus -- how did the virus make this happen while none of those other stories did? >> in some ways, chuck, the virus isn't partisan. it doesn't care about politics to my mind. and what it has done in some ways it has created a continuity and a similarity across our differences. we're all vulnerable, and some are more vulnerable than others, and we're all strong deal with the fact that some of us have lost loved ones and we can't send them home. we can't attend their funerals. we can't celebrate their lives like we wanted to, like we would ordinarily do. so i think at the end of the day, everyday, ordinary people around the country want a response from the federal government to a pandemic that has disrupted everything in our lives. and i think the administration has failed. it's failed not only democrats, it's failed republicans, independents, it's at alled all americans. >> hugh, how would you advise

the president to turn this around? it does look like at this point they've made the decision and the federal government isn't going to own the response. secretary azar kept bringing it back to the states, back to the states. i understand that's a federalism response, but it's not working. >> well, yesterday 500 americans died, chuck, and in germany 680 germans died. the united states' death toll has dropped dramatically from may when it was 2,700. and in between, it's been a month and three days since george floyd was murdered. in between we had millions of americans express their anger at overzealous policing and the unnecessary use of violence, often lethal, against african-americans and that was an event in the story of this virus. there's another event in the story of the virus. there's a ventilator supply now of 50,000 that the president got done. there is a lot more social distancing and a lot of older americans are intuitively staying away. and the sharp rise in cases is among younger americans.

so what i think the president has to do -- look, joe biden is very confident. he's measuring the drapes in the white house basement already. he thinks he's got this in the bag. the president needs to, as i said in the first sentence go back to his numbers and say, hey, america, who's going to get us back to where we were in january? joe biden in the basement or donald trump? i think he's got to do that in one-on-one interviews with as many people, including you and people who might be very tough on him in conversation, every day, a one-on-one interview like he did in 2016. >> to republicans want the federal government to take more responsibility for this response? >> yes. yes. absolutely yes. this has been an unmitigated disaster from the perspective of many of them. i'm sorry, but this picture that hugh is painting of americans looking at the way the world was in january and deciding in june that president trump is the one to fix the problems that frankly

cascaded on his watch seems to me to be something certainly that when i talk to senate republicans behind closed doors, they don't buy. >> i'm going to pause the conversation here, but i promise everybody's got another shot at this in a moment. when we come back, just how far behind the world is the united states in combatting the coronavirus? that's next. ♪ here's a razor that works differently. the gillette skinguard it has a guard between the blades that helps protect skin.

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with other countries in controlling the coronavirus. at 107 cases per 1 million people, the united states has one of the highest infection rates in the world. brazil's is higher with a seven-day average of 163 infections per 1 million. russia and indian are also in double-digits per 1 million, and of course we can't be sure how accurate the reporting is in all cases. at other end of the data, germany and italy have made large strides in containing the virus. both were above 60 new infections per 1 million people at one point, andnor in the single digits. as we pass the six-month mark of the virus in the countries, the data first infection does not seem to be playing into infection rates either. the united states had its earliest recorded covid-19 case on january 21st. with all of the other countries like brazil following a week or so later. and it should be noted, the united states is not only the wealthiest nation. we also have the highest health care spending of any of these nations.

president trump argues the numbers are only rising because the united states is testing more, but the data suggests that other factors are driving this increase. for instance, the united states' positive test rate is 6 percentage positive test rate is 6 percentage points, that is higher than all of the other countries except india. compared with germany at .9% and italy where the percentage of positive cases is much lower, lower than 1%, actually, one thing of the struggling countries that all of them have in common is leaders like president trump and bolsonaro in brazil who have played down the threat of the virus. obvious, no one leader is entirely responsible for infection rates but as the pandemic continues the politics and data seem to carry a warning the voices at the top matter and may matter a lot. when we come back, the growing debate over taking down monuments. s.

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welcome back. panel is back. kasie hunt, i'm going to start by giving a hat tip to the team. we put together, we're here at the halfway mark of this calendar year. these are the notable important news events of the first six months of this year. it starts with the killing of soleimani. i'm sure many americans, many viewers, probably forgot that was the beginning of this year. the iowa caucuses broke down, didn't know who the winner was. there was a point joe biden was in fifth place. we could go on and on and on. at some point the virus becomes

a dominant feature of this timeline. kasie hunt, in going through this exercise, when i hear people say, oh, geez, there's still a long time to go, i think of this list and think, boy, a lot of things have happened and nothing changed the trajectory of this for donald trump. >> chuck, i do think on the one hand it's easy to look at that list, think, man, what are we going to add to it between now and november? there are many possibilities a lot of us don't want to contempla contempla contemplate. on the other hand, we also know, history teaches us that heading into any election this is often the period of time that sets things not necessarily in stone but a firm trajectory that's very difficult to reorient. worry back to when barack obama was running against mitt romney they defined him in this spring and summer period and couldn't come back in the fall and that's a big risk for president trump, this time of year is going to

cement what he is able to do or not do in the fall and the challenge is avoiding complacency under these circumstances. i think they're remembering back to what happened back to hillary clinton and think complacency is not as big of a risk for him because of what happened there. >> hugh hewitt, if there was a message of the week from the administration, it was that they wanted to show there was a concerted effort here that they were on the side of protecting statues. the administration. the social media platforms, had the president's letter to chicago. do you think an old-style law-and-order type of messaging really is the right messaging right now? >> i heard a different message, chuck. i think there's a consensus the statues of the confederacy have to come down, name e ed for tre, have to be renamed. i think there's a consensus on that. there's also a consensus that

they have to be changed by lawful methods, not by mob violence. i thought tom cotton's speech on the floor of the senate talking about mob violence and lincoln's speech was really well received. i do believe what kasie just said, complacency on the democratic side is their biggest danger. the democrats have gone hard left. hard left. and the phantom of joe biden on the top of that is not going to cover over the aoc and the squad's effect on the party. >> eddie, your school, princeton, is dropping wilson's name. it's something i know you write about in your book. it looks like mississippi is on its way to dropping the confederate emblem that was in their state flag being the final southern state to do this. what does this mean for us in the story of america? >> well, i think we're in a moment of reckoning. i don't think what brother hugh just laid out in terms of the fear of the radical left is

what's going to drive us. it's really about our story. who do we take ourselves to be? look, mississippi put the stars and bars in its flag at 1894. and now the president of the s.e.c. told them we might not have championship events in your state if you continue to embrace the confederacy. so there's big business that's bringing pressure to bear. and there's everyday ordinary people who say what are you commending to us when you celebrate these sorts of folk who held the view that african-americans were inferior. so in some wayways, chuck, i ar this in the book, we're at an inflection point, we're trying to imagine ourselves differently. it's not just going to take the form of symbols. it's going to take the form of policy. we need to put the two together i think in a very clear and concise way. >> i'm curious, very quickly, what -- the woodrow wilson's place in history now, eddie, what should it -- what should it be? >> well, it should be, very quick, it should just facts.

we should tell the truth about who he is and who he was. right? tell the truth about his achievements and tell the truth about his faults and fill yeail. that's what we need to do and give an interpretation of his presidency that actually reveals how flawed we are and how we're always on the road, not necessarily to a more perfect union but to a more just society. >> right. >> we need to commend the values we uphold and cherish as we tell the story of the people who made us who we are. >> right. well, before i say good-bye this morning, i want to take note this is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the negro leagues this year. a tip your hat campaign to bring recognition to those who played in the negro leagues when african-americans were banned from baseball. presidents clinton, bush, have paid tribute. in honor of this anniversary i'm happy to tip my homestead grays hat, team that played right in washington, d.c., in honor of the negro leagues. happy anniversary. that's all for today.

thank you for watching and we'll be back next week because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." ♪ ♪ ♪ good evening, and welcome. i'm joy reid. i can't breathe. it's been a month since those last words from george floyd and his death after 8 minutes and 46 seconds in a police choke hold took the movement for police reform and made it global. and now these voices have reached the halls of congress. >> no justice!