thank you as always. sam seder, christina greer, always great to see you. that does it for me tonight. but not for msnbc. i'm going to be back tomorrow morning, 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. with the very latest news with my great friend ari melbourne. >> ari, you know why they call you the james brown of news, the hardest-working man in news. >> thank you, my friend. have a good night. >> you too. have a great night. i want to wish you a good evening because i'm coming to you here with our live special coverage continuing, and we have great experts and journalists covering a range of topics tonight. we will also be covering a presidential appearance tonight which critics call down right unsafe. president trump speaking at mount rushmore in south dakota. at other times, let's be clear, this could be a simple, normal, regular observance of independence day. but there are several reasons why it's not.

the president's appearance, for one, will break his own administration's guidelines. he arrives amidst four separate controversies, a surging pandemic. over 7,000 people will be at this event. no social distancing, masks are optional. there are protests by native american groups, for whom these very hilled are considered sacred ground. they have their views, their free speech on this american holiday heading into the weekend about what it means and what they think of this president. meanwhile, the nation struggling with of course what we have been living through for months, the reckoning, the legacy of slavery, our history, jim crow, and the symbols that accompany all of that. there has been news on that just today. but donald trump choosing to speak in front of a monument with his advisors previewing a speech that will dig into a racial cultural war. we'll obviously keep an eye on

that. we have the right guests to fact check of it. we won't be showing all of it, but we have guests to give you content for the excerpts we will hear tonight. this will be the first fireworks display at the site in over a decade because of serious concerns about wildfires. so we have all star guests and experts on so many of these issues tonight. reverend al sharpton, dr. patel and many more. as you can see, we mean it when we say live special coverage. and we begin with two very special experts. first tramaine lee, host of the "into the america" podcast and we will be joined by cal perry who has been keeping an eye on this all day. the context that you see tonight? >> think about this is perhaps one of the most donald trump things to do. we saw him go from tulsa, oklahoma, the scene of one of the most bloody massacres in american history.

here we are again in the black hills, sacred ground for the lakota sioux native american tribe. this flouting of not only the health and safety, you think about the ongoing pandemic. but we're in the midst of, as you described, a reckoning, where one side wants to grapple with who we are, right, and strive to be our better selves. is there is another side that harkens back to a past where native american people were slaughtered, where blacks were demeaned on a regular basis. while we're having this conversation about confederate monuments and what it means acid sevens to walk in the shadow of that reminder of that ugly american past, here we are at mount rushmore, two of the four presidents, two enslavers. we herald george washington, but let's not forget about the fugitive slave act. let's not forget about how he shifted his enslaved people around to make sure they were never free. so the backdrop is tremendous. coming off the death of george

floyd and the protests and the reconciling of who we actually are, here we are in this moment. it will be interesting to see exactly the tone and how donald trump positions this moment. >> you lay out so many things for us to chew on. cal perry is on the ground there, and you have been reporting throughout the day on this. i'm curious what you are seeing in your journalism on the ground and given you are there, your thoughts about the way we are encouraged to think about this. an american holiday where we can reflect on patriotism and positivity as well as the unassailable other aspects of american history, which protesters have been pushing everyone to do this season about what kind of country do we want to be. cal, take it away on all the above.

>> reporter: this is the summer in which america is doing exactly that. and this is the summer in which america is doing exactly that. so the question is is the trump administration ignorance of all of these things or are they choosing to be ignorant of it and make all these stops across the country. when you look at the black hills, the history is a dark one. but it is an important one because it is instructive of in 1868, the u.s. government promised this land to the lakota people. it was a way of ending years and years of conflict. and less than a decade later, people were starved and raped and pushed out of this land. in 1980, the supreme court said that was wrong. the u.s. government was wrong in doing that and that this should be native land. unfortunately, it hasn't panned out that way. the people who live here, this is their heritage. this is their history. today there was an incredibly ugly scene just about a mile up the road where i am where police were arresting protesters in a completely peaceful manner. but you had donald trump's supporters yelling and mocking these protesters in sometimes racial ways, and you had this lack of understanding on both

sides, both sides, both with the native american protesters and trump supporters. trump supporters saying, go home, and the protesters saying this is my home, this is my land. for people here, that is a serious thing. add to that the every day concerns about coronavirus. the community here on reservations that is not able and doesn't have the equipment and have the tools to handle the virus because there is no running water. there is no access to health care. there is no access to hospitals. and, so, you have these reservations closing themselves off to the rest of the state. you have the governor of the state saying the reservations cannot do that when legally they absolutely can. so you have this clash of cultures happening in 2020. all the while, the president continues to make these stops. first in tulsa right around juneteenth on purpose, upsetting that city. people felt like they had to go out during the pandemic to change the narrative.

literaling risking their lives for equal rights. and then today, the name narration playing out where the president is going to come and speak at a place where people here view as a flagrant violation of their rights. as a president who is celebrating their down fall. they view the timing as very purposeful, and they will view this speech as purposeful as well. with no sense of irony, i think we're going to hear the president talk about american history and about holding up the icons in american history. and to his narrow audience, i think that speech will make sense. to everybody who lives in this area of the country, i think they will be a little lost. >> you know, when you think about the intent here and you go across the country and there is some folks who may, quite frankly, be ignorant of the history. let's not forget the ideals of white supremacy, the shadow in history to lionize certain individuals. but there are other folks that this moment is not lost on them the very least bit, right? it is very intentional. so we call it a dog whistle or

it is a whistle whistle that everyone can clearly here. we're in the midst of this progress. my concern has always been what happens when the pendulum swings back? every time in american history when great progress and great strides are made, we see that pendulum swing back. here we are just four months away from the election, and we know for a fact how donald trump will hunker down. his supporters will hunker down. the scary part is in this moment what does that hunkering down actually look like? what will we hear not just in tone and rhetoric but as emotions flare? these grand pronouncements of equality signals like the fall of something, right? the loss of something. with the browning of america, the blackening of america, but also the recentering of the narrative of who we actually are and who we actually see ourselves as. that's a great threat and that's very concerning. >> let's think about that in the context of part of the thread moving away from donald trump.

the ways that he kicked off, for example, the charlottesville statue fight. whatever the ethics were of that, which we could speak to and you have reported on. you have won awards on your reporting of these kinds of issues, the statistical facts was that was far more divided at the time than where we meet tonight going into this holiday, where states like mississippi, which remain maga red in their voting pattern are taking down the confederate symbols, where corporate america is adjusting. people may say late, overdue, but the so-called redskins, a profitable franchise, being pulled down and rebranded. i'm curious what you think about the environment that the president enters to try to kick off another fight about these symbols, whether he is at a practical level on weaker ground

than he was even just two years ago in public opinion. >> certainly. if you think about those early fights, as long as it was a smaller group or black folks making noise or black folks and a small group of allies making noise, folks had the cover of saying, well, it's history. people are being drawn from the sidelines. so the environment most certainly is different. think about what we have seen in certain weeks in terms of the makeup of the crowd, cross racial, cross cultural where white folks are getting a taste of police violence. we're seeing young white kids and older whites being beaten with batons. we think about the elijah mcclain protest where there was a peaceful protest and they were literally playing violins, dozens of people playing violins and here come the troopers coming in, right? so now i think the ground has shifted in terms of the actual outcry. also, the corporate culture. corporations have some cover now. now they can say black lives matter without fear of any kind of repercussions.

i think the tone has shifted. the silent now maybe not so silent majority of folks who are hunkering down and bracing for the fight, let's not forget. when you think about some of the white supremacist violence, it was always edging toward a race war. i'm not saying that's where we are now, but the tone of america is in this great contention of who we are in this reckoning. i don't know. but public opinion, think about those that support black lives matter. you mentioned two years ago. think about in the wake of michael brown's killing. black lives matter was almost a pejorative. we're talking about cancel culture in this pejorative tone. now it's shifted dramatically in terms of folks who actually support this idea of equality and pushing america to be more equal. >> yeah. all really important context as we head into the holiday. i think this is on america's minds and with people who are spending times with their family or distancing, these are the

conversations to have and to do it forthrightly. i'm thrilled to tell viewers, tremain lee and cal perry are with us for the hour. you have set up a lot of the conversation, and we appreciate that. we turn now to other experts as promised. the reverend al sharpton, the host of politics nation here. he has worked on these issues, including advocating for families of victims of police brutality for decades. he's also planning a march on washington this summer. we appreciate you. and the dr. patel, also an msnbc contributor. couldn't ask for two better experts on this. good evening to both of you. >> good evening. >> doctor, i'm going to start

with you because we talked about some of the big issues and i'll come back to that with rev. but we also have the reporting. you look at that crowd. what do you see medically? >> number one, ari, it just makes me cringe. there was a part of me hoping that this would not be as packed as it was. there was just some wish i had that i would see people spacing themselves out in those seats. but this is to the point absolutely against every single one of the president's science and health advisors' own recommendations for the entire country. it is classified by its own nature. those pictures, that appearance is a highest risk event. and i'm looking at the crowd, and i'm pretty sure there are probably people that are high risk themselves because of age or chronic conditions, obesity. it feels like this speaks of someone who has the makings or consciousness of an

authoritarian regime where he is consciously leading his own people against their health and well-being. >> right. >> and i can only -- honestly, i can only hope that people have some sense to avoid the crowd based on these pictures and move away. that's all i can say scientifically and ethically as a doctor. >> appreciate that. and viewers can see as we're reporting these live events and the doctor is giving us the analysis, the president and the first lady have stepped out neither in a mask. they are going through what look to be the warmups that we see here in many of these patriotic events and saluting. we'll keep an eye on that. we're not going to go to the speech when it begins. we will monitor it. we may cover some of it. we may take excerpts of news value and also give context and fact checking. what is your on your mind given

what tramaine lee and others have spoke about, the work i emphasized you have been doing for so long as we have a president who is flouting many different things and who has pledged to use tonight's speech to dig in and double down on a culture and history war he wants to have. >> i think it's clear that this president wants to draw a line in the sand because he's taking a day that we will all acknowledge as we challenge statues coming down of confederates and all-out slave owners and racists and say, no, i'm going to put it in your face. i'm going to land that native americans it was owed. it was theirs. i'm going to celebrate presidents, some who advocated slavery and some who owned slaves themselves and i'm going

to do it at the risk of the health of those supporting me. so i'm drawing a line in the sand. this will be a cultural war election, and i'm on the side of white supremacy. i'm on the side of holding up the statues and relics of those that represent the dehumanization of people of color, particularly black people. and either you are on my side or the other side. i don't think you could have a more graphic example. he in his mind is saying i'm holding up the greatness of america and those of us with an increasing amount of americans, some folks saying majority is saying, no, those are the disgraceful days that we need to eliminate out of the continuing american story. and i think that it is a line in the sand that many of us on the other side are going to resist. >> and, rev, if you could build

on that point, in our business, in the media and political sphere as probably as well as life in general, things can be taken for granted or normalized. whatever you think of the police executive order that the president released, and we have heard from many experts that walked through it, i think you and i would certainly agree that a year ago donald trump was not planning on kicking off the general election july 4th by being dragged to say or do anything about alleged police brutality. that he now pivots through this speech away from what he may have been pushed or dragged to do, whether people think it was genuine or for optics or not, which is try to respond in some way to the protests. i'm curious what you think about that. you have been around this man, you know, in new york for a long time. >> i think clearly the protests,

i think the movements that many of us have been engaged in, not only for decades but just a few weeks ago. i mean, the rallies that i have spoken at. i did the eulogy at two of floyd's funerals. i don't think that any of that can be in any way dismissed from the fact that the president had to respond because the nation responded. let us not forget, ari that had there not been this massive response by the american public, he would not have done anything. he did it because he began seeing mainstream america respond. mainstream america that had been sheltered down that couldn't have the distractions of watching sports, no basketball, no football and all that was saying, wait a minute, this is really happening. and when they responded, he tried to in many ways deal with

it by distorting it, giving some really ineffective executive order but acting as if i am responding when it was no response at all. to say that we're going to deal with criminal acts and that's what now these policemen have been charged with in the floyd case and the arbery case, to say i'm going to deal with criminal acts by giving you incentives to do better. you be nice guys, now, and i'll give you a lollipop shows how out of touch he is. >> you are actually saying something we heard earlier here on msnbc from congressman jeffries who you know and have worked with about the fact that more americans than usual were forced in this particular environment that you just ill loose illuminated to face it. when actually faced with it, we

found more people ended up supporting black lives matter and saying, gosh, maybe i ignored that. they're telling pollsters this, some of this has got to change. the question is how do you scrutinize that. very important on that point. i have a lighter point. i realize i earlier credited ali vel she for all of hard work as the james brown of the news, the hardest-working man. now i realize i should have gotten your blessing for that first as james brown's former manager. >> well, i was james brown like a surrogate son that i had to do different roles. but i could say as one who was mentored by james brown, i'm properly the james brown of activism that i will co-sign you giving ali the james brown of news because he is a hard working man. i'd just tell him, make sure he has somebody to throw the cape on him at the end of the night. >> hey, i love that.

i'm happy. i'm relieved to get your co-sign. >> when james would do it, it always meant, when it looks like i'm gone, i'm really just recharging. i'll be right back. >> amen. you were close to him. i got to see him when he was performing in his late 60s, early 70s and he looked like he was 40. the energy was incredible. reverend, on a night of history, reverend al sharpton has been a part of many different aspects of history. dr. patel, we're happy to have you for your medical expertise. i'll keep you out of politics. thank you both. >> god bless. >> amen. thank you both. we have special coverage continuing. we will be joined by, this is important, the first native american member of the u.s. congress. she's here tonight as part of our special coverage and others that we're really excited to reflect with. stay with us. ta-da!

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welcome back. we're checking several stories including the donald trump rally, which is slated to include fireworks tonight, something many different parts of the country scaled back on to discourage large gatherings, but it is especially dicey in south dakota. they're actually limited there for over a decade because of major wildfire concerns. fireworks responsible for 27

different wildfires around mount rushmore, trump bragging about bringing fireworks back. >> i said you can't have fireworks because of the environment? i said, what can burn? it's stone. so nobody knew why. they just said environmental reasons. so i called up our people and within about 15 minutes, we got it approved. >> what a great story. meanwhile, the park service did not announce it was looking into this for another month. it was actually three months before the fireworks were approved. donald trump was obviously, though, looking forward to getting his fireworks. joined now on this and a lot more, we have the white house correspondent for pbs news hour and the new yorker's jelani cobb. good to see both of you. jelani, we can talk fireworks or everything else. your pick.

>> does it really matter at this point, ari? >> does anything matter? i hope so. >> given where we are, i mean, it's the 4th of july. the president of the united states wants fireworks at a place that may well go up in flames as a result of it. it is the perfect encapsulation the perfect metaphorical encapsulation of everything we've seen during his presidency. >> i think what we're seeing is a president who is determined to fly in the face of the experts and his own health officials, environmental experts as well as people that are saying there is a myth of america that this idea that america treated people well, that they treated men and women equally, that we founded this country just by our own wits, that that is a lie and we're seeing a celebration of america's independence on land stolen from native americans and

being seen and overlooked by two presidents, their figures rather that owned slaves. and a third president, roosevelt who oversaw the desecration of native land. you see trump saying, you know, i know all of these things, i know we're in the middle of a pandemic, but i'm going to show you. this is a big political risk on his part. the president, according to reporters who are there, the event that he's at, people are sitting shoulder to shoulder. there is no attempt of social distancing. and the vast majority of people sitting there right now are not wearing masks. >> yeah. that's something our medical experts and others have highlighted. gel lan any widening out to the history, there are always extremes. someone could be so judgment of their own neighborhood, country, people.

but they could be overly harsh when we all have room to grow and there is positives and negatives. on the flip side, much of american political propaganda over the course of our history has tried to completely erase, ignore, lie about the ugly parts of our history, that we would be better to simply address and move forward. what's more patriotic than honestly improving ourselves? i'm curious what you think about that long running prism for a big holiday with the president obviously not engaging on most of those things forthrightly. >> you know, ari, there is an interesting book that touches on some of this, not directly, but a historian did a book years ago called "american violence," a documentary history in america. what they discovered was contrary to the perception, america was not particularly violent, not comparatively when you kind of shook everything out.

and said what was atypical? what was unusual was that the united states had a significant level of violence while maintaining a perception of themselves as the most nonviolent people in the world. and you can exploit that out to everything else, that the fragility of the american sense of itself, this nation's sense of itself has never allowed it to actually countenance what america's history is. while it would be easy to interpret the act of holding a 4th of july celebration on purloined land, just as you could talk about the insensitivity and the objectionable nature of holding a rally in tulsa on juneteenth, that is really facilitated by the fact that people aren't even aware of just how brutal and unfair the history of this country has been.

and the only way you can be truly exceptional as a country is in confronting that. that's the road to exceptionality. we have confronted the weaknesses of human nature and said that through that we will transcend and create a community that is embracing. but you can't do that based on what we're seeing right now. >> well, you're inspiring me to want to get into it. are we going to get into it here? >> let's get into it. >> i'm going to take the issues. let's get into the fact that when we talk about stealing, donald trump stole words, plagiarism from ronald reagan who literally ran on make america great again and launched a campaign deliberately invoking

america's anti-black racist history and the quest against civil rights. that stolen language and southern strategy goes all the way back from nixon to jim crow to the roots of this country. and, so, we are literally watching this president here approach this holiday trying to hit the same buttons that he has before, trymaine three speaking about this earlier in this hour, where it is a direct indication of a type of nostalgia that everyone knows what's being said when you say things were way better back then. >> that's why you saw so many people in this country, especially people of color look really, really disturbed when the president and then candidate trump started saying make america great again. the question was what part of america and what period are you talking about? is it when african-americans were enslaved? is it when women couldn't vote? is it when native american people were literally run off their land? the people i talk to, voters and experts, they all believe

president trump is doing what jelani and trymaine say he's doing, that he's sitting somewhere in history between george wallace and ronald reagan and fitting in this history that is some ways a republican history about the idea they're looking at white resentment and giving people worried about the future of america but also angry at the idea of america browning and saying, you are the victim. this country owes you more instead of looking toward the future and saying, let's have an america where people understand the history of america. president trump wants to be on the side of the myth of america. i also want to be on the side of the myth that the pandemic is over, when we know for a fact that those things simply aren't true. >> i'm running over on time, but jelani, i'll give you the final thought. >> i think yamiche is absolutely correct.

it almost has an undercurrent of desperation to it. in 2016, donald trump had this stand-up kind of schtick. he did comedy. he was playing on people's resentments and fusing that with popular politics. now it appears like an old performer whose greatest hits just don't move the crowd the way they once did. so you are looking for bigger and bigger things to get the same sort of effect you once had. >> which artist are you thinking of? >> i think the relevant comparison has been elvis. >> right. like the older, harder years elvis. >> the karate kicking elvis. >> i don't want to offend anyone, but sometimes you go to jimmy buffett and not every hit lands the way it did in earlier

days. but shout out to jimmy buffet. he's also talented. thanks to both of you. >> thanks. we're in special live coverage tonight partly because there's a lot of news. i just got this handed to me, breaking news on a new positive covid test in donald trump's inner circle. we'll back in 30 seconds. circle we'll back in 30 seconds breaking news, nbc news confirming that kimberly

guilfoyle, a senior trump campaign official who is the girlfriend of donald trump jr., now tonight for the first time has tested positive for covid-19. this is, of course, ahead of the president's event at mount rushmore that we've been tracking. the sourcing here is according to a person familiar with the situation. the same source telling nbc news donald trump jr. tested negative. kimberly guilfoyle and donald trump jr. did not travel on air force one with the president today to mount rushmore. we bring in dr. patel. dr. patel, there are extra precautions taken of course around the president. but this is someone who is in the inner circle and despite the caveats i mentioned could be very close to several people who are physically close in the inner circle around the president. your interpretation of this news. >> yeah. i mean, this is incredibly concerning. it is not the first one. there are people in the president and vice president's inner circle creating a national security risk by the proximity

to the president of a deadly virus. i think, by the way, the fact that she was there with donald trump jr. in advance from out of town illustrates why this entire spectacle just doesn't need to happen. we're actually bringing in the virus just like the vice president and the president's secret service details did in other states. and there is no reason for it. and i do think that two days ago the president said that this virus will just go away and this is living proof that this is not going to go away. >> you mentioned it as literally living proof. as with every case we report, we wish everyone well on it. when you look at the exposure risk, a personal valet for the president tested positive and did the press secretary for vice president pence. it comes at a time where anyone watching the news knows this event included, the president has been doing more, getting out there more, interacting with more people.

when you look at something like this, if you take out all of the ideology or politics or whatever you want to call it, would you as a doctor advise a person in the situation to close the circle to be less exposed or not? >> yeah. just medically speaking, ari, the fact that you have someone in your own inner circle in your family who has any positive case immediately puts you at high risk. while i understand the president of the united states may not want to completely self-isolate, it's practically not feasible, you certainly would want to mitigate the risks by doing everything possible to ensure that you do not get infected or anyone else in your close circle get infected. the doctor's orders in this case would absolutely be to stay at home and as much as possible practice physical distancing in order to decrease the risk and wear a mask, wash your hands and i don't see any evidence of any of those things happening.

>> all very interesting and very clear. dr. patel, thank you as always. >> thank you. this maga style independence rally has drawn protesters from native american leaders, some angered at the president's use of this monument that some call desecration of hand violently stolen from them. to get a perspective on this as part of our special coverage, we're joined by deb holland of new mexico. the first native american woman serving in congress. good evening to you. >> how are you? good to see you. >> good to see you too. i'm all right. walk us through your perspective on all this. >> sure. well, first of all, yes, there is a fire risk right now because of a beetle infestation. so fireworks that have been banned in that area for ten

years could easily start a fire that would not only -- and right now as your previous guest tensioned, there is a lot of people that are not wearing masks, not social distancing. the governor of the state made it very clear that they were not going to require people to worry about the pandemic while they're at that event. but he could also put firefighters' lives at risk. >> go on. >> so, yes, this is land that, you know, you see in the headlines, stolen land. i saw president bear runner on this station last night saying that he had requested president trump to meet with him to have a conversation with him before coming to mount rushmore for

this event. president trump has had an extremely neglectful relationship with indian tribes in this country since he's been in office. you remember that he had the navaho code talkers and had a portrait of andrew jackson behind them in the office. he tried to cut coronavirus funding for tribes. he hasn't cared that we have spikes in our communities. there is some real issues that are happening in this country right now that can't be, you know, pasted over with a 4th of july fireworks presentation. >> all well put. food for thought. how do you think we, as we're going through a reckoning, and we have been discussing with people are rethinking and trying to open their minds. that can be constructive. how do you think big picture

americans should meditate on and learn about the native american aspect of our long ago history on holidays like this. >> yes. well, yes, 4th of july, the birth of our country, right. what better way to celebrate it than at a sacred place sacred to the indigenous cultures of that area and not to even acknowledge tribes, not live up to their wishes that they would like to have consultation before these types of things happen. ari, i'm the vice chair of the natural resources committee and the chair of the subcommittee on national parks forest and public lands. we get a lot of these issues in front of our committees. not too long ago we had a

hearing in our committee on the blasting of sacred burial grounds on the border of arizona and mexico with a tribe. the trump administration is blasting sacred burial grounds so they can build his wall on the southern border. that is outright disrespect. here at mount rushmore, which is a sacred mountain, i posted a photograph of it on my twitter account today and it showed it before the carvings of these presidents faces have gone into it. it is a sacred mountain. tribes were not at the table when the exterior boundaries to their tribes were drawn. and just because sacred sites are not included in their

exterior boundaries doesn't mean that tribes cease to acknowledge them as sacred sites or care for them as sacred sites or even go to pray and hold ceremonies in these places just because it is not on their land. and i think that in this reckoning that's happening in our country right now, to say that, yes, our history is everyone's history, native american history, its american history and all of us have to care about that. we have to respect it. i don't think it was too much to ask for president trump to consult with tribes before he even thought about doing this. he's like a bull in a china shop. he just decides to do something and nothing stands in his way. and in the process, he's going to make people sick from the coronavirus, a super spreader event. he's going to inflict a fire

danger on this fragile environment. and to top it off, folks, you know, i saw some of the video throwing smoke bombs and arresting people. we just went through this in lafayette park not too long ago. peaceful protesters using their constitutional rights to make their voices heard, you know, having chemical smoke bombs thrown at them and arresting them to shut them up, i think it's par for the course with this administration. >> all important points, and you stitched it all together. thank you very much for giving us that perspective. >> thank you. >> appreciate it. we're going to fit in a break. as i told you, we have a lot of folks lined up, including some new ones which we haven't heard from yet, and some new controversies on a big weekend. controversies on a big weekend [indistinct radio chatter]

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we are back following our special live coverage here. donald trump, you can see, getting ready to take the stage at this big and controversial decision to go to mount rushmore, south dakota and hold a packed rally. donald trump is leading this high profile event. he's modeling the conduct that all experts and his own task force say would make these infections worse. he's also been re-engaging a culture war in demanding fireworks that officials thought could cause an actual wild fire. in other words, this is independence day in the year 2020. we are joined by cal perry and trymaine lee. cal, what are you seeing on the ground? >> reporter: there are a number of people in the town behind me who are just waiting for the

fireworks display. they are lining the roads hoping the president would drive down the road. they are sitting down watching that fireworks display. you reported that kimberly guilfoyle tested positive for covid-19. she was here in town the last couple of days, part of that group that are some high profile republican donors. people that raised money in the west, wyoming, montana, south dakota. she was at a number of events with some very senior people. >> one thing jelani cobb said, he talked about this event being staged on purloined land. it means stolen. it's not just the land that's been stolen in a place like mount rushmore and the black hills. it's the history. places like mount rushmore or

spots all across this country where confederate monuments had been erected, it was to steal the history, to steal the truth. as folks are gathering at risk of their great health, we see the pandemic continuing to spread. we think about this moment of reconciliation of who we are and who we have been and who we could possibly be. to say this moment independence day and you think about frederick douglas said what is the fourth of july to a slave? it's a terrible day. it's also a day of deep reckoning a reckoning. congressman holland said it best. it's not just native american history. it's not just black history. this is all part and parcel of american history. as we grapple to understand it, we are certainly without question at an inflection point.

>> trymaine lee making several important observations and quoting from several of the other experts we've heard from. i appreciate you and cal perry. we'll be coming back to you. stay with us. we want to bring in new york time's columnist michelle goldberg, joshua johnson. good evening, everyone. >> michelle goldberg, you have helped us and our viewers through many different story lines. i come to you first on somethth breaking that the son of the president's girlfriend has tested positive for covid. i will repeat what i said earlier. as with any case, we wish everyone well. and yet it also does seem to yurn undercut donald trump's approach which he is living and foisting on many others with regard to managing the risks.

your thoughts? >> i said that donald trump is a mobile covid hot spot, right? he is bringing this disease with him wherever he goes. wherever he goes offers evidence of the recklessness of these rallies. again and again he does these rallies against all public health guidance, including guidance from his own government. again and again penal wople who for him pay the price. the communities that he holds these spectacles in pay the price. he's not even willing to take precautions to protect his own secret service agents, his own staff and now somebody who's basically a member of his own family. one of the things i think is happening in what i pray is the last months of the trump presidency is the increasingly wide and desperate disconnect between what the president says and the obvious reality of on

the ground and the reality in most americans' lives. >> joshua? can you hear him? i can't hear him. all right. joshua we're going to work on that. >> can you hear me? >> try it now. yes, sir. >> there we go. like i said, 16 years in radio, you'd think i'd know to unmute myself. >> the saying goes microphone check. >> motorcycicrophone check, one one two. he just mentioned that these monoyurmuments referring to mou rushmore will never be discreatediscrat desecrated. it has to do with the way we've been engaging in these cultural

conversations about the imagery we have and the way we view our own history. trymaine was just referring to this in terms of the land being purloined from indigenous people. the governor saying this is discrediting the individuals who formed them so that america can be remade in a different political image. she also said, quote, to attempt to cancel the founding generation is an attempt to cancel our own freedom. let us not destroy history. let us learn from it by preserving and imitating what is good about it, unquote. that's one of the early themes of this event that came up in the last few minutes. >> appreciate your reporting. it reflects what i told viewers we were going to do with this speech, which is keep an eye on it and report it out and also fact check and analyze it. it's not a free c-span broadcast for this or any other

politician. we've been monitoring the speech. there is a debate over so-called, quote, cancel culture. as a free speech person myself, i tend to err on the side of listening and reckoning with ideas and, if they're bad, debating them rather than cancelling them. ed f cancelling strikes me as a misnomer. the founders themselves created a mechanism whereby we could amend the constitution. and thank goodness we did. in fact there's an ongoing debate about improving other parts of it. i'm curious how you might contrast that to so-called cancelling or censorship. >> that's part of what i think the dpogovernor was trying to g at in her remarks. she said, quote, to attempt to

cancel the founding generation is an attempt to cancel our own freedoms, unquote. that's part of the debate, right, how do we view america now in the context of 2020, covid-19, george floyd's homicide in terms of the country that we want to become. the issue of what we do with these monuments and with our legal structure is really not just the question of the day, it's the question of the nation, right? that's what we've always been. we declared independence from a government which did not allow us to amend our own laws and did not even allow us to have agency over them. that's one of the long lists of usurpation. the issue is, i think, in what we define as that more perfect union that we refer to in the preamble of the constitution. this argument now is what we do with the values of the founders,

with the legacy as opposed to with their flaws and their foibles. roosevelt is one of the four people on mount rushmore. he was one of the greatists of . >> picking up the theme of amending, the 19th amendment didn't cancel men's right to vote. it amended so women would have the right to vote. take it away. >> you're bhabsolutely right abt that, but i would point out that it did cancel the right for all women to participate in the franchise of the 19th amendment this we are supposed to be celebrating in the midst of this pandemic. what i would say is a couple things on cancel culture. one, the difference between cancel culture and telling the truth, right, i'm based here in philadelphia, you know, home of

the constitution, cradle of our democracy as seen by many americans. yet we know that this is a country that was founded on protest, right, that was founded on dissent. and we are in the midst of i think this national reckoning that really asks who gets to be part of protest. and really the fundamental question that we're asking there is who gets to be american. i think the other part of this is there are some parts that have been cancelled. we don't celebrate slavery. we don't question the motives of the start of the civil war as a country although this president has certainly done that. we are not honoring confederate. every single day the walls of racism seem to be coming down in this country and the alimomomenf progress really seemed to be sustained by a apandemic that h

laid bare america that make us want to cancel some of the myths we've been telling ourselves about our country. the pushback of cancel culture is a resistance to want 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 trymaine 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 ]