full truth about america, and you have the president now here at another culturally relevant site in our country, saying that he is there to do truth-telling. and while there's been a lot of truth-telling by a lot of people on the show tonight, i don't know how much truth-telling we're going to hear at this fourth of july celebration here in south dakota. >> fair and an important conversation here. i want to remind viewers we have tremaine and cal perry, who have been basically quarterbacking a lot of coverage. we have our expert panel here, which we'll continue to fact-check. we are as promised going to dip into the speech and add context and reporting. let's listen to a little bit of the president's big address tonight. [ applause ] >> true. that's very true actually. that is why i am deploying federal law enforcement to protect our monuments, arrest the rioters, and prosecute

offenders to the fullest extent of the law. [ cheers and applause ] >> four more years! four more years! >> thank you. i am pleased to report that yesterday federal agents arrested the suspected ringleader of the attack on the statue of the great andrew jackson in washington, d.c. [ cheers and applause ] and in addition, hundreds more have been arrested. under the executive order i signed last week pertaining to the veterans memorial preservation and recognition act

and other laws, people who damage or deface federal statues or monuments will get a minimum of ten years in prison. [ cheers and applause ] and obviously that includes our beautiful mount rushmore. our people have a great memory. they will never forget the destruction of statues and monume monuments to george washington, abraham lincoln, ulysses s. grant, abolitionists, and many others. the violent mayhem we have seen in the streets and cities that are run by liberal democrats in every case is the predictable

result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias and education, journalism and other cultural institutions against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes but that were villains. the radical view of american history is a web of lies. all perspective is removed. every virtue is obscured. every motive is twisted. every fact is distorted. and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition. this movement is openly

attacking the legacies of every person on mount rushmore. >> the president of the united states speaking at this independence day weekend event. we heard him say something that had been previewed by the white house, the argument that people seeking change or opponents of the president are seeking to somehow disgrace, as he put it, every presidential face on mount rushmore. as our experts and others have argued, it may be more complex than that. it is 9:04 p.m. in south dakota. we'll continue monitoring the speech for any newsworthy events. but i want to bring back in several of our experts. trymaine lee, who has been helping lead the coverage along with me here tonight. michelle goldberg as well as errin haines. errin, we were speaking beforehand. your thoughts on a little bit of what we just heard from the president and the larger themes going into this holiday. >> well, i think he's already, you know, started with a lot of

the themes that we would expect. but i think that it is remarkable that he opened his speech, you know, talking about the arrest of protesters who were trying to, you know, take down the statue of andrew jackson right there in front of the white house. opening a speech about -- and on independence day weekend by bragging about particularly taking away some people's freedoms and people who were protesting, people who took away the freedoms of other people in this country. i mean that is really a remarkable message, you know, that was greeted with applause by the people in that audience. and so that certainly reflects that the president has some measure of support still in this country. but i think that what we have seen in the midst of this national reckoning is that there are many people who do reject that kind of message. you are seeing black americans joined by an increasingly diverse coalition of people during this sustained, you know, protests that are happening in cities across america. you are seeing, you know,

corporations and sports organizations that are responding to consumers' calls for them to change and for them to be accountable in some way around racial justice in this country. and so a lot of the old fights that president trump is starting or reviving from his 2016 campaign seem to be happening in a new day. >> hmm. that's, of course, one of the themes. michelle, i would call on you on the other, which is as the president was taking the stage, stepping on his message was reporting from nbc and "the new york times" maggie haberman about his son, donald trump jr.'s girlfriend, former fox news employee and analyst getting covid, testing positive. now, they weren't on air force one on the way down, but it fits with a rally that was really, as we saw tonight and now we've seen it with our own eyes with the president onstage, a rally that has people packed together as if medical science and the greatest surge this week in

covid ever, as if it's not occurring. michelle? >> well, i'd say, you know, let's say we all survive the trump presidency and there's still movies in the future. when somebody makes a sort of dark film rendition of these awful, awful four years, this, you know, surreal and noirish and frankly kind of fascist spectacle is going to be part of the deknew mau. i want to say something about cancel culture. there is no bigger practitioner of cancel culture in this country than donald trump. a man who has made it in his mission and his legacy to cancel barack obama, to extry pate everything that barack obama accomplished, to undo the last eight years of american history. and obviously barack obama is not the only one that he wants to cancel. donald trump is constantly calling for the firing of media figures who displease him,

right? so the idea that this president is some sort of champion of the free -- of, you know, the free exchange of ideas and the open-minded pursuit of our history is completely ludicrous. >> well, let's build on that, michelle. i'm going to turn to tremaine on the larger points. because this was in the speech tonight, we're reporting out what's new, and some of these word games have consequences. i think you raise an important point. we've been covering all week and tonight many of the president's problems, including a huge national security crisis where the president, to use your analysis, one could see he's also tried to cancel the intelligence and the facts. in other words, he hasn't said, okay, yes, the cia found that, but we're going to explain or discuss in a free society what our choices about the facts. he's trying for his followers or anyone else to literally cancel their existence. that that is, as you mentioned, a part of the core propaganda

rhetorical style of this president, michelle. >> well, look, everything that this president -- this president has always, always, always sought to -- basically, everything that he's said, to bend the truth, to distort history, to, you know, magnify the flaws of his opponents, to impute frankly, you know, paranoid and conspiratorial motives to everyone around him. and something we know about this president is that every accusation is really a secret confession because this is a man who is a master of projection. >> hmm. tremaine? >> you know, listening to that speech, we've heard it said before the cruelty is the point. this hero worship of andrew jackson, on sfotolen land, and think about the indian removal act which andrew jackson led as a white supremacist, the trail of tears. there are no accidents. there are no mistakes.

i think people want to cloak it in some sort of faux americana. the cruelty is to send that message about our monuments and the lies told in school -- and there certainly have been many lies told throughout school that has shaped our understanding of america in itself. so maybe there is a point there. but i think it's not just tone deaf. there's deep intent here. >> errin? i 100% agree with tremaine here. these are not dog whistles. these are people whistles, and i don't think there's anybody that can't hear what the president is trying to say in this moment. imagine being a black child in the south, going to a school named for robert e. lee and having to say the pledge of allegiance. i mean, you know, does that seem american? we are, you know, celebrating the signing of the declaration of independence this weekend, a

declaration that didn't apply to everybody who heard that, you know, that message at the time that it was read in town squares across america, to native americans, to women, to enslaved people, right? we know that the revolution is an ongoing experiment in our democracy, and yet we are hearing from a president who is unwilling to confront this country's history and really the truth not only about our founding fathers, but the founding ideals that we created and who those are going to apply to and who gets to be included in this democracy. it's just -- you know, his message seems to be directed at a very specific audience and also seems to exclude a lot of america. >> michelle? >> you know, i think it's important to remember that these statues that the president and his supporters are fetishizing, these monuments to the

confederacy, are not actually monuments of the civil war. they're not legacies of the civil war. they went up much later. they went up in the period of jim crow as sort of statues basically saying we're back in charge now by white supremacists. and they were part of a project of not kind of commemorating history but rewriting history, rewriting the entire history of the civil war, the motives for the civil war, of reconstruction, right? so when people now kind of try to replace these statues, when they tear them down, this is not an assault on our history. it is a reclaiming, an assertion that we know what actually happened, and we know what the civil war was actually about, and we know what these statues were actually put up to signal. >> just to add to what she's saying. >> sure. >> those statues and symbols and naming of buildings and other

structures was meant to send a message to black people in communities across this country. it was meant to intimidate. they were meant to invoke fear for the people who had to walk past them every single day, and they were meant to be a reminder that white people were still in control of america. and so the toppling of those statues, the fall of those statues, you know, is seen as -- rightly seen as a victory by many people of color in this country, and you have to wonder, you know, what it means when people see the toppling of those statues as some sort of loss. like what does that mean for those people because we know why those statues were erected and the message that they were meant to send every single day to a very specific part of the people in those communities. >> well, errin, how much of that do you think is specific to people who are versed in the southern experience and the rest of the country, which may be fooled or tricked into having some gauzy idea of oh, i guess

this is really old because as you both emphasized, the so-called living history is from the jim crow segregation uprising, if you will, the whites' rights efforts, and is not even about the original insignias from that contemporaneous time, errin. >> i think the point is, you know, there certainly are a lot of people alive today who were not alive when those monuments -- when those statues, when those buildings were named for confederates, and yet as people -- you know, so you could walk past the edmund pettus bridge. you could drive across that every day and have no idea who edmund pettus is. you could associate edmund pettus with bloody sunday and know that was the bridge that was a battlefield for the fight for voting rights in this country. but once you learn who edmund pettus is, most people learn the full history of a woodrow wilson

at princeton, for example, right? once people learn that history, when you know better, you have a chance to do better in this country. i think that is a lot of what america should be about and what a lot of americans do believe. and so, you know, the thought that for people to learn about who andrew jackson is, maybe if they didn't even know before, once they learn that, how do you reckon with that history? you know, do you continue to embrace it as president trump and some other americans do, or do you tell the truth about it and decide that maybe we don't need this as, you know, an offense and an insult to many americans who, you know, don't really -- it's an insult to them as our fellow citizens. like that is something that is worthy of recognition and consideration. >> tremaine? >> you know, that is the one kind of paradox in this situation is that we don't need stone and metal monuments to

know what those that came before intended for black folks because the monuments are in segregated housing. the monuments are in inadequate access to health and education. we look at the wealth gap. these are all monuments left for those who intended us to remain in a lower lot of life. so when we grapple with what these monuments mean and what they stand for, the more troubling question is how do we tear down those things that live on in man and woman, right? those who have never seen a confederate statue under black folks' position in this country, right? and so while we're dealing with the edifice, the stone and granite and metal and the names of those confederate statues, where do we begin to tear down the other remnants of the past, the other refuse of the past that continue to bog us down? how do we handle that? >> all such important points as america does have this conversation. trymaine lee, michelle goldberg, errin haines, stay with me. we're going to take a look here at the president, who is still speaking. i can tell viewers that means the president here is at mount

rushmore. you can see the applause. you can see of course the people both in the vip and the general section all packed together, violating trump administration cdc rules. the president is going longer so far than was initially scheduled. we're eyeing this as mentioned for newsworthy moments. we're going to fit in a break and keep you covered on this holiday weekend. i'm ari melber with special live coverage -- sorry. we're going to take a look here. we'll take a look at donald trump here full and listen in. >> -- every child of every color, born and unborn, is made in the holy image of god. [ cheers and applause ]

we want free and open debate, not speech codes and cancel culture. we embrace tolerance, not prejudice. we support the courageous men and women of law enforcement. [ cheers and applause ] we will never abolish our police or our great second amendment, which gives us the right to keep and bear arms. we believe that our children should be taught to love their country, honor their history, and respect our great american flag.

queen latif we've been following this rally through the day. meanwhile, his daughter is saying something that doesn't really match what is happening tonight. just a short time ago, ivanka trump posting a tweet that says as we celebrate this fourth of july, follow state and local guidelines to, quote, keep you and your loved ones safe. practice proper hygiene, social distancing and she says, quote, wear a mask when in close proximity to others. of course ivanka trump, who

works as a white house adviser and it part of the administration, is dealing with her father's event tonight at mount rushmore that has very few masks and no social distancing requirements. quite a contrast. i think we bring in some of our guests back as we've been following all of this. there they are. tremaine, michelle, and errin haines back with us. we have been trying to juggle because these events are live events, so the president has gone way longer than planned. we're obviously covering that and seeing if he makes news but not taking every single word as i've told viewers and keeping everyone updated. michelle, you have been a bit of our point person here on the covid hypocrisy. the ivanka trump tweet combined with the cdc guidelines violated, combined with her brother's girlfriend getting covid, your thoughts. >> well, ivanka trump does this thing from time to time where

she pretends that she is working for a completely different administration, right? i mean she doesn't so much contradict her father as pretends that he's an entirely different man and that she's not complicit in all of these disasters that he's perpetrated upon the country. but, you know, another piece of this is that ivanka trump, like anyone else, can read the polls, see what's likely going to happen in four months although it's not guaranteed, and obviously we might be shocked again. but, you know, this is a person who was a socialite, who wants to be somebody in this country, doesn't want to slink away to live a life of infamy. and so if she were to start creating just the smallest bit of daylight between her and this failing regime, you know, it would make sense from a branding perspective. >> hmm. errin? >> well, you know, i think you see ivanka trump, the first daughter.

you see melania trump, the first lady, who also talked about wearing a mask. i think she had a social media post encouraging people to mask. both of them are mothers. you know, certainly a lot of women in this country are concerned -- particularly concerned about the threat of coronavirus for themselves and their family. you know, but the president seems to be saying, you know, do as my administration says but not as i do. and that is being reflected certainly in this audience, but we saw what happened in the audience in tulsa. memorial day was a holiday where we saw a lot of the cases going back up as a result of folks being at the beach, being out. you know, and i understand certainly the fatigue that many americans have in this country. i certainly share that of, you know, quarantining, doing their part. i mean there are going to be the

fireworks for the first time in more than a decade in south dakota tonight. there are cities across the country, especially in philadelphia where i am that would love to be having fireworks this weekend but understand that that may not be the best strategy in terms of keeping communities and citizens safe. you have americans who have been doing their part for months, and i think many of them are now looking at this president and wondering when he is going to do his part. >> we have our three panelists here who will stay with us. joshua johnson and cal perry were with us earlier. cal is out in the field, but josh is able to rejoin us. joshua, you know, we've seen on the spectrum the movement from many of the president's most vocal allies when it comes to covid echoing what he was saying, whether that was governors in florida and texas or people on fox news. and we've seen a shift. texas has mandated masks. sean hannity, we reported earlier today, featured in a psa pro-mask, which is a shift from playing down the virus months

ago. that might be constructive because he's backing the cdc for his viewers, who may have gotten a different message before. i'm curious if you think there's a next wave to this. i mean that movement is toward cdc and away from trump. do you see at some point rallies like tonight, if they continue to try to hold them with even worse surging case counts into the fall, basically having any kind of revolt where more maga folks say, either i'm only going to attend in a different way, cdc-style, or not going to do it? >> that's a good question. i think that remains to be seen. i mean if you look at the rally tonight, people are packed in very, very tightly. i have not noticed a lot of masks on faces of folks who are under the shadow of mount rushmore this evening, if any at all. whether or not the tone is going to shift will of course depend on how many people get hospitalized, how many die. of course you've got the republican national convention coming to jacksonville, to my

home state of florida. and the states are not h homogeneo homogeneous. carlos gimenez instituted a curfew. further north, you've got ron desantis, who is a native of jacksonville, who is very eager to have the rnc come to the state of florida. i think it's a safe bet that he's not going to demand social distancing, but we'll see what happens between now and then. so there's going to be this split. plus remember a state like florida is diverse. the complexion of south florida and parts of central florida are different than north florida in some areas. i know that because my family is from north florida. we're from madison county, which is near tallahassee. in states especially like florida, where there is so much political diversity, it's a swing state for a reason, you might find some of these internal debates in terms of how we are perceived by the rest of

the country, what kind of precautions we take, whether or not we just let people do their thing like, fine, you don't want to wear a mask, stay away from me, or whether or not the dictates come from higher up. i already know what my family is dealing with in south florida. we're in palm beach county, and we've been having this conversation for a while about what's going on at a governmental level and then what goes on within our own families and the politics of this begin to kind of crush in on all sides. also let's not forget we've also been through a little over a month of protests after the homicide of george floyd. that sent people into the streets too. that was one of the turning points where we also began to mark an increase in the caseload. there's probably a clear connection between people gathering for these perfectly justifiable protests and the increase in infection rates. and we're going into an election, and we've got political conventions coming up, and the protests aren't going to end. so all of these different

vectors for the spread of covid-19 are going to continue to grow. i think people are kind of crossing their fingers for a vaccine. we know that wall street is betting on people pouring trillions of dollars into the economy in the next quarter because people are going to get pent up. they're going to be tired of being stuck inside. kids go back to school. investors want to get back to work as normal. so people at a certain point are just going to say, screw it. let's just go and cross our fingers. whether or not that becomes political or becomes cultural in terms of americans just saying, we're done staying home remains to be seen. my biggest fear is people next year are going to look back and go, oh, yeah, remember when the media told us that corner was going to kill everybody and people were going to be dead in the streets, and it turned out that only a few hundred thousand people died. you can't trust those media. they were just trying to scare us. that is my big concern. that's my fear, that the nation will lose its sense of mutuality, will lose that sense of interdependence that the

founders wrote about even in the declaration of independence, that we will stop thinking about one another and that our sense of mutuality will give way to our desire to go out and shop in the mall as we see fit. but it may be bigger than politics by that point. it may just become american. >> hmm. briefly, how do you contrast the different protests because you make the point that some look at it and say, well, people wanted to go out during covid for their reasons, their values? >> the protesters by and large, including the ones that i saw here in new york, were wearing face masks. some of them were even social distancing as best they could. so there was much more adherence than we see tonight at this event. it's also worth noting that some of the rhetoric at this event, as i've been continuing to monitor, has very much had to do with upholding these symbols of the nation. i don't know that history is on the president's side in terms of

lionizing these images or denouncing some of the institutions like journalism for example. thomas jefferson said, were it up to me that we should have government without newspapers or newspapers without government, i shouldn't hesitate to choose the latter. >> thank you. i'm going to fit in a break. we'll be right back. ight back.n. with a painless, one-second scan you can check your glucose with a smart phone or reader so you can stay in the moment. no matter where you are or what you're doing. ask your doctor for a prescription for the freestyle libre 14 day system. you can do it without fingersticks. learn more at freestylelibre.us. they're going to be paying for this for a long time. they will, but with accident forgiveness allstate won't raise your rates just because of an accident, even if it's your fault. cut! sonny.

was that good? line! the desert never lies. isn't that what i said? no you were talking about allstate and insurance. i just... when i... let's try again. everybody back to one. accident forgiveness from allstate. click or call for a quote today.

. welcome back to our live special coverage. i'm msnbc's ari melber. we've been tracking the president's controversial independence day weekend address. cal perry has been reporting on this day and night, working hard. this is some of the footage we saw earlier. the president coming out on offense, picking fights. cal, what did you think now having really reported this out for our viewers day and night pregame, game, and we're heading into postgame? >> reporter: you know, it's interesting because when we talked throughout this day about whether or not president trump would kind of ignore the history of this place or lean into it, he leaned into it in an

unbelievable way. he said the great andrew jackson. he was talking about how andrew jackson's statue was violated or was spray painted or whatever it was. he said the great andrew jackson. well, andrew jackson is responsible for the ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of native americans. trump is giving this speech at a site that is incredibly important. it's a spiritual center for the native american community. and to hear him lean into that, the community here is going to be very upset. picking up on what joshua said, if you take a step back here and you look at the american president, you look at how the federal government is behaving, america is not exactly coming out like a first world country right now. europe has been closed. the testing rates have gone through the roof. europe sets their standard at a 2% positive rates. you look at a place like houston where it's one in four people and the president's seemingly now saying that the coronavirus is something we're all going to have to live with, seemingly sort of a new strategy on his part as he continues this tour and he stops in these cities,

ari, he's really leaning into these arguments that you would think he would avoid. for a man that watches cable news, today was a day in which the cable news was focusing on this location, a location that is incredibly important to the indigenous community here, and he just hit it right out of the gate. i thought that was fascinating because there was some questions here about whether or not he would avoid it. but when you look at his speeches in tulsa and other places, i suppose that was wishful thinking, ari. >> right. stay with me, cal. obviously viewers can see here we are. this is the one part that may remind people of other years in history because we're watching the fireworks. 9:36 p.m. in mount rushmore. we mentioned this is not typical. they've been paused for over a decade there. but if you forget other things, fireworks are of course a general american july 4th tradition. here they are. can you hear them, cal? how is it playing out there? >> reporter: i can't hear them from where i am, and i was expecting to be frightened and

have my live shot interrupted by them. but this is exactly what the president wanted. it reminded me and it reminds me of his inauguration where he relied heavily on these fireworks. it will be interesting to hear sort of what people think locally. tulsa was not a big hit for the people that lived in tulsa. keystone is a small town that does rely on tourism but i think does fear the virus. there are people watching these fireworks from out of town who will enjoy them. it will be interesting to see for the folks who live here whether or not this was something that was welcomed or unwelcome. you have of course this balance between the economy and the virus and some of these places are welcoming tourists. but as we've talked about, specifically the native american community is not. they feel very vulnerable, and this is not something they will enjoy seeing at all. >> look, i appreciate your perspective on the ground, cal. that's obviously as folks know why we have reporters fanned out over the field, sometimes taking, you know, risks and obviously you all take precautions and our team takes precautions as you travel around

even with the traditional voifd risk. we've got views of the president and the first lady taking it in. the majestic mount rushmore and the fireworks overhead. you're walking us through why this is different, why this according to so many critics on the ground according to people you've interviewed and reported on say that whatever pictures, whatever photographs, whatever visuals come out of this for perhaps the rest of the country -- and here we have -- i'm no fireworks expert, but i've been to july 4th before. it looks a little bit like the thing they do at the end. you always end with a bunch of them in a row. that's not a scientific observation. we may be near the fireworks finale. but whatever people around the country might see and think of this rapid-fire visual, you're educating our viewers that it's actually among many on the ground, for a range of reasons, this was of a piece with other aspects of a presidential trip that was viewed skeptically and may wreak havoc long after the president leaves the photo opp.

>> for the indigenous community, this was sacred land. this was their land given to them in 1868. the u.s. government in 1868 signs a treaty and in less than ten years violates that treaty basically because of gold. by the way, rushmore was initially supposed to be just a stop on the great american road trip. that was the whole theory behind mount rushmore, named after a new york city lawyer who looked at the hills and said, what is this place called? you contrast that with the people who live here, the black hills, a sacred spot for native americans. this is something that they have now been fighting for for 150 years and fought for it today on this road, on the day in which the president called andrew jackson a great man. and you can understand a little bit how upset people are and for very good reason. contrast that of course with what we saw three, four years ago at the keystone pipeline in north dakota where donald trump put down those protests

forcefully. the new president in office puts down these protests forcefully on a native american reservation where there's a pipeline running through. so this is not new for this community. i think people have felt this for a long time. this president has made his position clear on these issues. he's highlighted it tonight by again calling president andrew jackson the great andrew jackson. it's not clear to me what his strategy is in widening his support. i mean i don't know how you widen your support with this sort of talk. but he loves the symbolic nature of these fireworks. we've seen that throughout his presidency. that's what he's playing for, and he made this all about patriotism. tonight was all about patriotism and defending american history. he did it with no sense of irony in the black hills, a place that is native american land. >> cal perry, thank you for getting us up in the morning all the way to the evening for your reporting. speaking to my control room, let's take this in full for a moment so we can all take it in

together. we've covered the controversy, the criticism. but here we are looking at fireworks over mount rushmore as we head into a very unusual july 4th weekend here in america. i have just a couple minutes left in our special coverage. i'm glad for everyone who's been joining us and we have, of course, our panelists as well with about 90 seconds left. final thoughts starting with errin. >> well, you know, i think that what we heard tonight is a message from the president that is just out of step on the dual pandemics of both coronavirus and racism. you have four presidents here on mount rushmore that are looking out across history and a president who stood underneath them and rejected a lot of what we now know about the true history of our country. during the pandemic, we say that we're all in this together. i think that it is an open question of whether or not that is going to be true with regard to how we respond to how race is lived in america. >> right. >> we know at this point four

years in that this is who the president is. i think this election -- >> let me bring in josh so everyone gets just rotating, thank you, errin. josh, real quick. >> i'll be very brief. i think the conversation that we're having tonight about these monuments and the founding fathers, the train may have already left the station on that. i mean thomas jefferson is one of the people immortalized on mount rushmore. there's a director of african-american history at monticello. i interviewed her last year on npr. one of the thing we talked about is if you go to monticello for a tour and you ask can we just see the pretty part of monticello? do we have to talk about slavery? can we just skip that? the answer is no. you're not allowed to skip that history anymore. so the argument the president made tonight, the train may have already kind of left the station on that. the larger question may be with these founding fathers, with these monuments that we don't want to forget, what do we do

with them? maybe they don't stand in the town square, but should they stand anywhere? should we demolish them? that's the next phase of the question. the president may be answering an old argument, which is already over with. >> errin, josh, and trymaine because i'm over time, i thank each of you for being a part of our coverage. i'm ari melber signing off. my colleague nicolle wallace picks up after this. [ thunder rumbles ]

[ engine rumbling ] [ beeping ] [ engine revs ] uh, you know there's a 30-minute limit, right? tell that to the rain. [ beeping ] for those who were born to ride, there's progressive.

what we've seen is the positive rate, the positivity rate which is the percent of

tests that come back positive is continuing to grow. it's now up to just under 25%. that's one in four. there may still be a bias in who's going to get tested, but even if that's doubling what's in the community, that puts it at one in eight people would be affected. >> close to one in four people testing positive in houston for coronavirus, leading top local health authority officials to believe, as we just heard there, that as many as one in eight houstonians could now be infected. now a dramatic 180 from longtime trump ally texas governor greg abbott who decided late yesterday to make masks mandatory in public for any county with 20 or more cases, going as far away from trump's rhetoric as to say, quote, wearing a face covering in public has proven to be one of the most effective ways we have to slow the spread of covid-19. but with hospitals running out of beds, is a new mask mandate enough to reverse the current course in texas. joining us now to help us answer that, standing outside of one of the hardest hit hospitals there,

our friend, nbc's david gura. david, we talked to dr. hotez at the top of this hour, and he's been one of these steady, sage voices of calm for the last 3 1/2 months. and what he's seeing in texas and around the country has him more alarmed than i've seen him, and he's from texas. so take me inside what's going on in texas. >> reporter: he plays a critical role here, nicolle. i'm glad you spoke with him because as i talk to officials here, they talk about how he's on these conference calls that local officials is having. he's bringing that voice of reason. he's focusing on the data and it's sobering but it's so important here. i'm front of lindyndon b. johns hospital. i spoke with the ceo yesterday and he said this hospital behind me is already at capacity. they've been tents that they can use as triage. they can find out in a patient might have symptoms for covid-19, try to get them a bed here, but if not, move them to

the texas medical center proper where i was yesterday. officials here are really looking at three things right now very closely. it's a pretty dire situation. they're looking at hospitalization as we see the number of icu patients ticking up. they're looking at testing. you mentioned that startling statistic of positivity, one out of four. so many people here still haven't been tested and can't get tested. that's a huge problem for the city and the county. the last thing i'll mention, nicolle, is contact tracing. that's a program still in its infancy. i was talking with the gentleman you quoted at the top, who has a high ranking position in the department of health for houston. he said they're still trying to get it to work. you get a phone call from a random number and you might not take it. it could be a critical phone call for you, asking where you were, maybe about one of your friends. they're still trying to figure out the technical side of things, nicolle, trying to make that work. >> you know, texas, i spent a lot of time working for politicians from texas, and there's great optimism. there's great independence. there's great pride. what is the mood of the state

under this absolute shellacking from coronavirus? >> reporter: you know, i think people are worried, and you mentioned that 180 yesterday. it was really startling to see the governor issue that executive order because he'd been so resistant to it for so many days. local officials in houston, in harris county, have been pushing him to institute a statewide mask mandate and he was reluctant. he wouldn't do it. we know now there was a letter written from the mayor of houston to the governor asking him to do it just a couple of days ago. now we've got that mandate in place, and i think it kind of underscores the seriousness of what's going on here. earlier today i was talking to our colleague peter alexander and my phone lit up. i got one of those alerts like you get an amber alert and it was telling me that mask mandate was now in effect, and from where i'm standing, i could be fined $250 if they approached me and i didn't have a mask on. one thing i want to point out as you talk about the politics of this state, we focused the attention on the mask mandate. there's this other ban on gatherings of ten people outside. there's no ban on gatherings of

ten people inside, and a lot of people are sort of raising an eyebrow at that. this state has its republican convention in two weeks time in houston. last night the executive board of the republican party here voted to continue ahead with that, to have 6,000 people descend on houston for that conference in two weeks' time. a lot of people, including the mayor, pushing back on that, saying that is wrong-headed, not what they need to be doing right now. >> david gura, thank you so much for spending some time with us from there. we're grateful. after the break, a celebration of two more lives well lived. , , keeping armies alive? drafting the plans. taking the pictures. was it your family members? who flew. who fixed. who fought. who rose to the occasion. when the world needed them most. (♪) find and honor your ancestors who servered in world war ii. their stories live on at ancestry.

you can't give them everything they want... but you can find lots of things they'll love at petsmart. this week, get 15% off and a free care package with curbside pick-up orders. little things can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently.

with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. tell your doctor about your medicines, and if you're pregnant or planning to be. otezla. show more of you.

gregory armstrong's family used to joke that he had nine lives. this was him back in the '70s. 45 floors up atop a chicago skyscraper, completely untethered. really iron work before harnesses and bucket lifts he said of it.

according to "the chicago tribune," he once fell off a bridge and broke both arms. admirable toughness that just couldn't protect him from the coronavirus. gregory died of pneumonia last month with covid-19 as a contributing factor. in his final conversation with his sister after he had been hospitalized, gregory was apparently more concerned with plans to insulate the pipes in her house than his own health. he was a fixer, a hard worker, and a fierce advocate for the people he loved. he was a single dad. he had a daughter and stepped in as a surrogate father to two young men. his daughter told the tribune, quote, he was the world's greatest dad and grandfather. his heaven on earth was spending time with us. that is what he always called us, heaven on earth. and a devastating cautionary tale appropriate for the day before fourth of july. two weeks ago tommy macias posted this on facebook. quote, some of you know but most

don't. i bleeped up and went out a couple of weeks ago, and i contracted the coronavirus. monday i tested for it, and it was confirmed on thursday. because of my stupidity, i put my mom and sisters and my family's health in jeopardy. this has been a very painful experience. this is no joke. if you have to go out, wear a mask and practice social distancing. don't be a bleeping idiot like me. thank you to all my friends that have brought me food and everyone who has been there for me. hopefully with god's help, i'll be able to survive this. love you all. tommy died the day after he wrote that. his family says he was truly a good guy, that he'd do anything for anybody, no questions asked. so let's honor his memory this weekend by reading that one more time and following his advice. be safe like tommy said. this is no joke. give you straightforward advice

and tailored recommendations. that's the clarity you get with fidelity wealth management. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ the open road is open again. and wherever you're headed, choice hotels is there. book direct at choicehotels.com. andwe know you're alwaysed, at univethere for them.x,e. that's why our advisors are always here for you. learn more at phoenix.edu. iredefined the wordng th'school' this year. it's why, at xfinity, we're committed to helping kids keep learning through the summer.

and help college students studying at home stay connected through our university program. we're providing affordable internet access to low income families through our internet essentials program. and this summer, xfinity is creating a virtual summer camp for kids at home- all on xfinity x1. we're committed to helping all families stay connected. learn more at xfinity.com/education.

good evening from philadelphia. i'm ali velshi in for chris hayes. tonight later this hour, the president is holding an independence day celebration in south dakota at mount rushmore. it's an event where, as you can see from the moment the chairs were laid out earlier today, there's no real attempt at social distancing. the republican governor of the state, kristi noem, who's a trump ally, has said that while masks would be available to anyone who wanted one, quote, the event would not require social distancing or masks. the president is set to speak to thousands of people at mount rushmore later this hour, where there will be no social distancing and masks are optional. but thiss