menendez. let's get you caught up. we have now in america surpassed 130,000 deaths nationwide from coronavirus. nearly 2.9 million people have been infected. over the weekend florida and texas reported their biggest daily rise in new confirmed cases. on saturday, florida added nearly 11,500 cases. and texas reported a record 8,300. on sunday california reported more than 5,400 new cases. while arizona added more than 3,500 major concerns growing over the surge in hospitalization. at least two counties in south texas reportedly say their hospitals are at full capacity. and as florida reports record case numbers, governor ron desantis says he will not close businesses again. we'll have more on the public

health and the medicine of this in a moment. as for president trump and his response over the weekend, he addressed a crowd at mount rushmore on friday that raised a number of health concerns amid the growing number of coronavirus cases. about 7,500 people expected to attend and photos show a packed crowd in close quarters with few wearing masks. according to local reporting there, health professionals in south dakota are concerned the lath lack of mitigation efforts could cause the coronavirus to spread in communities where those attending live following the event. as for the president's fourth of july message to the country, three and a half years after vowing to end what we called american carnage at his inaugural event, the president denounced what we called the

left wing cultural revolution. he also pushed back against the movement for racial justice accusing his opponents of wanting to erase america's history, indoctrinate our children and overthrow the american revolution. >> the radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice. but in truth, it would demolish both justice and society. it would transform justice into an instrument of vengeance. and turn our society into a place of domination and exclusion. they want to silence us, but we will not be silenced. [ cheers ] >> those who seek to erase our

heritage want americans to forget our pride and our great dignity so that we can no longer understand ourselves or america's destiny. in toppling the heroes of 1776, they seek to dissolve the bonds of love and loyalty that we feel for our country and that we feel for each other. their goal is not a better america, their goal is to end america. we will never allow an angry mob to tear down our statues, rerace our history, indoctrinate our children or trample on our freedoms. we will safeguard our values, p traditions, customs and beliefs. we will teach our children to cherish and adore their country

so they can build its future. together we will fight for the american dream and we will defend, protect, and preserve american way of life, which began in 1492 when columbus discovered america. >> that was president trump on the south lawn of the white house in the last speech you heard there on saturday. jonathan lemire you cover this president closely every single day. this appears to be his re-election message that america is being overrun by angry mobs. there were brief references to the coronavirus and the public health crisis at the center of american life right now because of its health impacts and also the economic impacts but it's clear where the president is headed here for re-election. >> that's right, with bleak and at times apocalyptic language,

he revisited the american carnage here. only passing on the crisis that has consumed the nation for months instead leaned hard into the culture wars, the base play, stoking racial resentment and grievance, i think it can't be overstated what a departure these two speeches, mount rushmore are one day and the white house the next are a deviation from the usual fourth of july. there was no attempt to unify the country, trying to bring the nation to the at a time of crisis where so many have died and suffered. this was him as if he were delivering a speech at a campaign rally, not from the lawn of the white house. this was not a message to all americans. this is a message to his base. and shows, in stark black and white, maybe perhaps in this case, red versus blue language, how he views the next four

months of his term that will determine whether or not he gets another four years in office. >> so, michael steele, let's talk about the political strategy of this, you come from the republican world and helped oversee a lot of campaigns as chair of the rnc. what exactly is he going for here? what is the strategy behind this? again, he's plowing everything into a base he has locked up, if you look at his numbers and has had locked up about five years from now. it doesn't appear there's any olive branch or extension of those who may be considering voting for him. it's just solidifying the people he has. >> it's us against them at this point and the reality that the trump campaign is facing is the "us," which is the base support that you referred to, a lot of the republicans on capitol hill that have sort of curried the president's favor in a number of

areas, that is actually weakening some. the numbers are showing, both internal and external polling, showing that that hard 95, 96% of the republican base that's behind the president is now down around 84, 85%. there's been slippage. there has been some weakening of the reception of that message because, guess what, that base is also now impacted by covid-19 as we see across the country in the red states. and the president also is feeling the impact. his base is feeling the impact of the economy, which is not recovering at the pace -- even though the great jobs numbers last week are good to see, the reality is businesses are opening, but the people aren't going out and shopping. they're not gathering to spend money the way they were a year ago. and then on top of that, willie, the social unrest right now, the civic unrest, which is a good

thing. this is a good, healthy conversation the country is just beginning to have. you would think that would be something the president would step into, but that's not what his base wants to hear, what they want to talk about, so he's doubling down on those things that have motivated their anger, their frustration, and that us he talks about in his mount rushmore speech, folks are scratching their heads and going what do you mean by us? aren't us all of us? no, to jonathan's point. it's those people who feel are losing are grip he's given them on some of these visceral issues and he wants to get them back. >> i had to read and re-read one of the passages from his speech on saturday night. where he declares the defeat of the radical left to the defeat of nazi's, communism and chasing

terrorists like osama bin laden, he said we did that as a country we too can beat the radical left. an astounding comparison by the president of the united states. >> i don't know where to go with that. jesus christ, if that's what donald trump thinks the crisis this nation faces is right now then we really are in a terrible, terrible state of affairs. i found it so incredible that fourth of july weekend, huge address at mount rushmore, he does odd history mash-up and grievance police but doesn't talk about any of our current armed forces serving abroad in war zones. you look at all the recent scandal with donald trump not protecting our troops in afghanistan from russian

bounties and instead cozying up to putin even more and you can see where this commander in chief's priorities are. just to add to what michael said about how donald trump is going for the grievances, going for the culture war, that didn't go so well in 2018. remember, the caravan narrative, and remember when that was what was supposed to really drive his voters at the last minute and he saw that narrative pretty roundly defeated as the blue wave went into office. >> former trump homeland security and counter terrorism adviser tom bossert was watching what was going on and tweeted out, quote, we are in trouble. he emphasized, quote, masks are important but not enough. and former fda commissioner, scott gottlieb, warned that the current spike in coronavirus cases in several cities could be just the start now of a second

wave. >> we're right back where we were at the peak of the epidemic during the new york outbreak. the difference now we had one epicenter of spread when new york was going through the hardship now we have four, los angeles, cities in texas, florida, and arizona. the case fatality rate is going down although we're in the able to measure it right now because we are able to save more people who are hospitalized because of advances in care. the number of deaths have gone down because infections have gone down, but the number of deaths are going to go up again as the number of hospitalizations are going to spike again. i wouldn't be surprised in the next two weeks to see deaths go over 1,000. >> let's bring in the director of the harvard global health intuit, a professor of medicine at harvard medical school.

doctor, great to see you. do you share the concerns we heard from dr. gottlieb and health officials about the spikes we're seeing across the southern southwest and california, texas numbers spiking to record levels day by day. where are we in this right now and how concerned are you about where we are? >> good morning, and thanks for having me on. i am concerned and share scott's take on this. here's the bottom line. we're heading in the wrong direction as a country. we have cases going up not just in four hot spots but when i look across the country i see lots of other states going in the wrong direction from utah, nevada, idaho. we're seeing about three-quarters of the country heading in the wrong direction. the problem is deaths always lag. people are going to get sick, we're seeing hospitalizations increase and i agree in the next

week or two we'll see deaths increase. we always sort of assume the best or hear from our political leaders is the rosiest scenario where we should be planning for the worse and thinking more critically about where we are and how we stave this off. >> you no know doctor, seeing t coverage this weekend, watching people celebrate the fourth of july, they 'been cooped up for four months they want to get out, but there wasn't a lot of social distancing, a lot of fireworks shows were cancelled, some weren't. what concerns did you have watching this fourth of july weekend where we were all outside doing our best to social distance but it was a difficult thing to do on that holiday? >> july 4th is an important, fun holiday for all americans. things that made me feel better. first is at least in some places i saw a good amount of mask wearing. second the evidence is clear

that being outdoors is safer than being indoors, so that made me feel better. i'm sympathetic to the fact we've all been feeling cooped up. i wish we lived in a country where our political leaders prioritized bringing virus levels down so we could celebrate the fourth of july more openly and the way we've always done it. but it was more of a restricted weekend because of that. >> so the president tweeted about testing over the weekend, writing in part this, cases, cases, cases. if we didn't test so much and so successfully, we would have very few cases. yes, he's making that argument again. the president also downplayed the severity of the virus. >> we've made a lot of progress. our strategy is moving along well. it goes out in one area and rears back its ugly face in another area. but we've learned a lot, we've

learned how to put out the flame. now we have tested almost 40 million people. by so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless. >> the commissioner of the fda was asked about that claim of 99% of the virus cases being harmless yesterday. >> i'm not going to get into who's right and who's wrong. what i'm going to say is what i said before, it's a serious problem we have. we've seen the surge in cases we must do something to stem the tide. >> you won't say whether 99% of coronavirus cases are, quote, completely harmless as true or false, what the president said at the white house last night? >>da dana what i'll say we have data that shows us this is a serious problem, people need to take it seriously.

>> that's dr. steven hahn, he knows 99% of the cases aren't harmless. let me give you a crack at that, i'm guessing you won't be shy in answering it. >> i'm sympathetic of the situation he's in, he can't stand up to his own president, that's a difficult situation for anybody. but as a public health person i wish he would come out and say what we know, which is a large portion of people, 5 to 10% get hospitalized. it's not trivial for them and many people not hospitalized have substantial symptoms, many of which can linger for months. this isn't a benign disease and hadn't helpful for the president to characterize it as such. i wish the president would level with the american people and be clear about how serious of a disease this is. >> so the president over the

weekend, effectively said, we need to live with the disease, the reality is it's going to be here and we have to live with it. that's a departure from a few days ago and months ago, saying it's going to disappear. now saying 99% are harmless, we can live with the 1% and move on, despite the fact that's completely incorrect. >> which welcome to the party we've been living with this. this is a step in the right direction admitting the virus is not going to magically go away. doctor, i was struck by the fact that governor phil murphy of new jersey, my governor, was talking yesterday about a concern on his part that has there is now interstate travel there will be the possibility that there will be additional spread of the virus, even in areas that seem to have gotten the virus under control. i wonder from your vantage point as you look at this holiday weekend, to the summer, people do want to get out there, how

concerned are you seeing a reemergence of the virus in places it's already been? >> so this is the problem with the 50 state solution to a pandemic. the idea that every state should fight this pandemic on its own with no federal coordination or help. the states that do a good job will continue to import cases from states that are not doing a good job. unless we build walls around states and do border checks, which we have never done and i hope we never do as a country, so governor murphy, governor cuomo, governor baker have cases to make they've done a good job of taking bad outbreaks and getting them under control and now they're going to import from places like florida and texas who have taken it less seriously. i wish we had a national strategy. >> jonathan lemire has a

question for you, doctor. >> in those states where we are seeing the real surge right now, florida, texas, arizona and others we've been discussing. can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of the ability to treat the patients, hospital capacity, particularly the icus, that's what we saw that was so vital in places like new york city in april that was a huge concern they weren't going to get the help they needed. are those hospitals on the verge of being overwhelmed right now? >> a couple of things. the good news we're getting better at treating the disease we have two therapies that we didn't know about two months ago that seem to work. we're getting better at managing a disease we didn't know much about six months ago. so all of that is good news. but your question around icu capacity, hospital capacity we are seeing in cities hospitals

coming to the edge of what they can do. we can keep adding capacity on some level, add field hospitals, ship people to other cities but the question is for how long? we're still early in the pandemic. the way new york dealt with it was they shut the city and the state down and that's what brought the disease under control. that's what we want to avoid in the new outbreak zones. the hospitals have capacity they're brushing up against their normal capacity, but it's not going to be a sustainable approach. >> doctor, let's end with you on some potentially hopeful news that is the vaccine, the development of which we've seen some progress, green shoots of good news over the last couple of days and weeks. where do you think we are in the process with so many companies raisi racing to find the vaccine? we heard optimism from the president, dr. fauci, it could be the end of the year,

beginning of 2021. is that the beginning, where the masking and all the stuff we need to do is biding the time until the day the vaccine comes? >> i am optimistic where we are on the vaccine front. the scientific community has responded brilliantly. i suspect by early 2021 we'll have multiple vaccines. and that will make a huge difference. do i think we're going to get to a point where everybody gets vaccinated and the disease goes away? might not. it might be we turn a serious disease into a mild one but i'll take that. i think it's sometime early to middle of 2021 but all of this does change. until then our job should be to preserve life, the economy, and to make sure as few people get sick as possible. and that's what i'd like for us to focus on. >> doctor, always great to have you with us. thanks so much.

we appreciate it. still ahead on "morning joe," joe biden's message to the country this fourth of july weekend. in contrast very much so to the president's tone. plus the governor of mississippi blaming recent protests for the spike in coronavirus cases but what are health officials saying about that? you can're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. watching "g joe. we'll be right back. and we always will. ♪ ♪ for people. ♪ ♪ for the future. ♪ ♪ and there has never been a summer when it's mattered more. wherever you go, summer safely. get zero percent apr financing for up to five years on select models and exclusive lease offers. i appreciate what makes each person unique. that's why i like liberty mutual. they get that no two people are alike and customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need.

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biden offered a message of hope and unity over the fourth of july weekend in a video post today twitter, he focused on racial inequality saying despite deep divisions the united states can still live up to the principles of founding equality. >> it's been a constant push and pull between the two parts of our character. the idea that all men and women, all people are created equal and the racism that has torn us apart. we have a chance now to give the

marginalized, demonized, the isolated, the oppressed a full share of the american dream. we have a chance to live up to the words that have founded this nation. this independence day let's not just celebrate the words. let's celebrate that promise, commit the work, the work we must do to fulfill that promise and remain locked in the battle for the soul of this nation. but believe me, truly it's a battle we can and we will win if we act together. >> alicia if you look at that campaign video from joe biden and compare it to president trump's two speeches over the weekend, it distills the way the two of them are looking at the country since the killing of george floyd in minneapolis, you had the president focussing on bad people pulling down statues and joe biden looking at the

larger message of the vast majority of the demonstrators asking for an end to systemic sbraic racism and looking for racial equality in the country. >> you see a contrast in substance and style. we talk when we have this conversation about the culture wars or america's history as it's something in the past when we're seeing this play out in real time. there are black americans taking to the streets who feel they're fighting for their lives. we have thisongoing conversation about who is free in america also. we have the story of the federal judge who ruled that migrant children need to be let out of detention facilities because there's a concern over outbreaks of covid-19 so this conversation about who is free in america which very much ongoing. you see joe biden in that ad stepping into that conversation, talking about racial equality.

grappling with a lot of this at a policy level but you also see a stylistic difference. you see a recognition of a country that is in need of healing, of unification. and that speaks to what many perceive to be the former vice president's greatest strength. a person who has experienced tremendous grief and loss in his life, who has what many perceive to be a deep well of empathy. that is the strength his campaign is hoping to rely on to create a sharp contrast with the president in the lead up to november. >> jonathan lemire, the fourth of july is a good moment to pause in any campaign year and see where the race is. i think you saw two speeches that indicated where it was. you saw the president of the united states talking about angry mobs trying to wipe out american history, overturn the american revolution. comparing the radical left to nazi's fascists and communists

defeated by generations of the past. where does the president believe he is in the race against joe biden right now? >> it's such a study in contrast to further that point. also i think part of the argument that joe biden has made throughout this campaign is really doing so now. it's sort of acting and looking like americans are accustomed to from our president while donald trump seems to only be interested, his critics say, in governing a small portion of the electorate. his base. that's where the campaign is right now. as we've been discussing on the show, particularly the last couple weeks, everything is a base play. with the latest the idea of heritage and statues and confederate soldiers. yes, part of his mount rushmore speech the president proposed a national garden of american heroes, they include different

demographics and what they mean in politics and science and so on. but he's leaning into protecting the heritage throughout the country which seems to be out of step with the energy we're seeing on the streets and have for more than a month after the death of george floyd where the president as a republican strategist said president trump seems to be out of step with what's going on in the country and how fearful americans are with the pandemic. we're seeing some adjustments for instance we know about his rally in tulsa a couple weeks ago that was indoors, drew a sparse crowd, the president announced his next rally, saturday in new hampshire, outdoors. talk of masks, no sense of social distancing but attendees will be recommended to wear a mask. being outdoors perhaps will

help. the virus spreads not as easily outside. but the president and his team, they know they're losing. they know they're down. and every week brings a wave of battleground state polls that show them down. they feel they have time to make it up, particularly if the economy recovers. and right now as they're leaning on the only thing they can do, play to the base, turn them out, excite them, and get 38, 40% of voters to turn out at a huge rate while hoping that the rest of the country, those that like joe biden, turns out at less of one. it's a risky gamble. >> there's new reporting from "the washington post," they called trump's push to amplify racism is unnerving republicans who have long enabled him. quote, on capitol hill, some

republicans fret that racial and other cultural issues leaves their party running against the currents of change. and it leaves those following -- according to a white house official an outside trump adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the adviser added this, it's the 2016 campaign all over again when we had the muslim ban and the wall, just add confederate statues. the president tells the post his words are not racist but attentive to his voters. a white house spokesperson rejected the notion that the president has amplified racism.

michael steele, it's a broken record, we can hear how deeply concerned they are off the record. >> yeah. >> but again, the president is burrowing down, drilling into the core base play that in no way expands the electorate. is there a strategy that people are missing? something that he's doing that appeals to suburban women that he is hemorrhaging in recent polling? >> i'm still marinading on the idea that oh it's not racist. he's just talking to his base. let's let that sit out there. that sets the stage of how people are looking at this. inside both the campaign, the party, and then, of course, within his base itself. now so, given everything we've said so far this morning, whether from covid-19 to the discussion on race and the tensions there, the one thing

that i don't think people need to discount or sort of walk past very quickly is that, yeah, it seems like trump is only talking to 38% of the country that's all hard core trump. but you've also got to be mindful there are a lot of folks in those suburbs of america, a lot of folks in those rural portions of our country who while they may not raise their hand and go me too, or i agree, or other forms of outward expression in support of the president, they quietly and silently do follow this and they are listening. for some of them, i've had a chance to talk to a few of them over the past few months, this message does resonate. there is something to this idea of a cultural -- it may not be a full-scale war, but has a lot of tension that trump gets to tap

into as those white americans look at the shrinking of their idea of america. that's why this play around confederate, that's why this play around, you know, great monuments like mount rushmore and standing with these backdrops that remind them of the symbols that they like about this country. and that speaks to them in a somewhat personal way. that's the play the president's making here. so i think we need to be very careful and not be so dismissive too quickly about how this is really impacting folks. what you saw, i think real quick willie, in the contrast of messagings between the president and trump -- i mean, biden and trump is that biden is trying to move americans towards each other, and trump is looking at ways to say, hey, that other is your neighbor and that person

who you may -- you have always had suspicions about i'm going to give voice to those suspicions, this is going to be the test of the country going into november whether we want to move forward together or do we want to stand together around the old images of america, the idea of the confederacy that made you feel good? >> the obvious difference between 2016 and 2020 is that donald trump is an incumbent in 2016 he was this candidate that nobody believed could win and pulled it off with his inside straight on election day. but he's talking about a country right now as if he hasn't governed it for three and a half years. he's president of the united states. in 1968 richard nixon campaigned this way, he was the challenger, not the incumbent. this is donald trump's country that he's railing against when he makes those speeches over the weekend. >> i wonder about the sim bymbo

of monuments to the darkest era of america's history, how many americans want to stake their current day situation on preserving and protecting the confederacy. in 2016, donald trump campaigned against immigration. he campaigned racially charged against mexican citizens crossing the border to america. building a wall. and this year he still talks about the wall and still inse inserted it at mount rushmore and still building it, he claims, but the confederacy is a dead relic. and even mississippi, my home state voted to finally get rid of our flag about two weeks ago. and if in mississippi you don't have people still supporting the lost cause, the lost cause might really finally be lost.

>> coming up on "morning joe" we've talked about the public health side of coronavirus this morning. now we'll look at the u.s. economy and where it stands. steve ratnor joins us and the search for joe biden's running mate, the woman who seems to be a serious contender right now. "morning joe" is coming right back. right now. "morning joe" is coming right back extra cheese, extra pepperoni right to the edge and the biggest slices in papa john's history. but it's bigger than pizza because $1 from each sale is donated to support communities.

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welcome back to "morning

joe" on a monday morning. joining us former treasury official, steve ratner. good to see you. last time we got together we were talking about the 4.8 million jobs added in june. that was on thursday. you got charts that dig deeper into that number. what are you finding? >> that's right. we added 4.8 million jobs, the unemployment rate came down 11.1%. all good news. but there's more behind the story. for starters what the labor department measures is simply the number of people out of work completely looking for work and so forth. there are other ways to look at this. you start by adding to the 11.1%, 1.2% that the labor department says is a misclassification due to the crisis. add to that 5.7% of americans who are working part time but want full-time. and finally add 4.3% of

americans who want a job but are not actually in the labor force looking for one. that adds up to 22.3%. almost exactly double what the labor department says are out. as you look to the left you can see the number has been coming down since april but as you look all the way to the left you can see it's still dramatically higher than it was earlier in the year. there are still 37 million americans who are either out of a job completely or want to work full-time and can't. another thing to understand about the report last week was that it was taken in the middle of june. so this is our standard chart showing the rise in viruses, then the fall off, then the new rise we're seeing the last few weeks. i've shown in grey here when this unemployment survey was taken. it was taken about the second week of june when cases were at their lowest at 25,000. now they're up to 45,000 and

what we expect to see some economic impact from that. the other report that came out last thursday show the number of americans filing for new unemployment insurance was still stuck at around 1.4 million, where it's been the last several weeks. it's still a high number, more than twice it was before this pandemic. we found out last week also that 19.3 million americans are still receiving unemployment insurance that number was up from the previous week. so some of the earlier indicators are scary. the question, of course, is will this increase in cases translate into people's economic behavior into what they're spending. this chart shows it has. you can see on the right consumer spending after recovering nicely from the middle of march and early april got to almost 10% below where it was before, almost back to normal. in the last couple of weeks it's now down 13% from where it was before the pandemic.

this chase credit card data they make available. you can see i've shown on the left where this survey was taken. you can see we're kind of basically back almost to where economic activity by this one measure was when the survey was taken. as we look ahead to next month and beyond. there are some worrisome signs about how americans are responding to the increase in viruses by pulling back on their economic activity especially places like texas which are among the hardest hit. >> steve, alicia menendez here, i woke up just for these charts. thank you so much. i wonder as you look at them, as you look at the unemployment numbers, the spending numbers, how that shapes your thinking on what level of stimulus is necessary to keep americans afloat? >> that's a great question. yes, clearly these numbers while encouraging and as you look ahead the way i tried to do, we do need to do more.

the extended unemployment benefits, the extra $600 a week we're giving to people runs out at the end of july. the famous ppp money to smaller businesses which provided about eight weeks of payroll is going to run out. you're going to see at these levels of unemployment hardship. so there is the beginnings of negotiation in congress over this. we need at least probably another trillion dollars, something to extend unemployment benefits, something for state and local governments to help people in their communities. yes, we need another stimulus bill. >> steve ratner with his charts and four lovely chairs behind him. steve thanks so much. still ahead an independence day wish for the disunited states of america. mike barnicle joins us with his new column ahead on "morning joe." w column ahead on "morning joe. no matter where you live,

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joe biden is expected to name his running mate sometime next month and senator tammy duckworth of illinois has emerged as a contender for the position. "the washington post" reports biden's team is seriously considering duckworth according to people with knowledge of the search. harry reid, who's been in direct contact with the campaign about the search said in a recent interview said there's a lot of attention on duckworth who he called a highly decorated woman. she's a purple heart recipient and veteran of the iraq war and the only finalist with combat experience. senator duckworth is also one of the several candidates of color under consideration. but a spokesperson for the biden campaign and duckworth declined to comment to the post. they float these names out there to show they're considering a wide range of people. where is your read on this?

where does senator duckworth fit in a conversation with kamala harris, elizabeth warren, val demings, where do you see senator duckworth in that conversation? >> as you said, a fluid process. we watch this every cycle. what was interesting in that reporting was part of the conversation being what republicans, the trump re-election committee hopes to see, they want a vice presidential pick they feel they can go after, launch negative attacks on. that's difficult with senator duckworth given her history of service. so that is part of her appeal, of course, her service itself part of her appeal. but there's also conversations inside of the company about the necessity of this being someone who has a larger national profile, also a conversation about whether or not former vice president biden needs to choose a black woman as his running

mate. so most of the names we have heard up to this point, senator warren, senator harris, val demings, those names continue to be in circulation, hearing susan rice's name mentioned. and someone you hear less about, governor grisham out of new mexico. so as you said, very fluid and that conversation ongoing. but clearly they're running up against a deadline here. >> susan rice, president obama's former national security advisor a name that keeps coming up, she was on "meet the press" yesterday talking about the potential. she said she would serve and help joe biden get re-elected anyway she can, dodging the question like any good vice president candidate would. how is the biden campaign looking at this? we know he pledged he's going to choose a woman. people believe given the stakes, he would be wise to choose an

african-american woman as well. >> no question, willie, those are pressures internal and external the biden campaign is facing right now. i can tell you the trump campaign is hoping they pick susan rice, someone they can establish a third term barack obama administration. the biden camp has another month here before they make their pick. traditionally these picks come a few days before the party's convention. we know there will be a limited convention this year, but they're still in the same time line, early to mid august for this pick. right now the biden camp, they pledged to pick a woman, there's a sense they should pick a candidate of color. but let's not overlook one thing here, i've been told by people close to the former vice president, he takes this seriously. he wants someone who can step into the job at a moment's notice, which should be the

qualification for any vp pick, but particularly now, joe biden would be the oldest president were he to be elected and would come to office in a time of national crisis, the pandemic still will be going on and, of course, the economy will still need to be rebuilt. so the thought is, he wants to pick someone if needed to step into the job without any learning curve. >> the commander in chief test will be important this time around. coming up new coronavirus infections on the rise, still no national strategy to get the crisis under control. plus the president uses his fourth of july speeches to rail against the political opponents, the media and the call for racial justice. "morning joe" is coming right back. racial justice "morning joe" is coming right back

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welcome back to "morning joe." as you look at a live picture of the white house at 7:00 eastern time on the dot on a monday morning. it is july the 6th. we have jonathan lemire, alicia jordan and joining us is mike barnicle, and john heileman and white house correspondent for pbs news hour yamiche alcindor. mike barnicle since i have you here, i have to start with the national past time coming off

the fourth of july weekend. baseball supposed to start two and a half weeks from right now. a shortened season. you had mike trout a couple of days ago, one of the greatest players to ever play baseball saying he's still not comfortable with going out there. he has circumstances, his wife is expecting their first child next month but are we sure there's going to be a baseball season in two and a half weeks? man, i hope so. >> yeah, i hope so too willie, but i don't think we can be certain. david price one of the biggest names in pitching, up until about a year ago one of the highest paid pitchers, he opted out of the season. if you look at specific teams and cities, the marlins, astros, dodgers, san francisco giants, each of those teams is playing in a region, a city, where there are explosive growing numbers of people affected by the virus.

i don't think you can say for certain that on the 23rd of july every team will be playing. i hope they are. but like all of us, major league baseball is at the hands of the virus, depends on what happens. >> and jonathan lemire, sometimes it just takes the biggest names at the top to start this kind of cascading effect of people saying this isn't worth it. you have david price opting out, mike trout said he's not comfortable yet needs more safeguards in place. how are you feeling about the season? >> that's right. and a few other players like bryce harper and buster posey, who reported to what is the beginning of spring training in july this weekend said they had concerns as well. and they did say they weren't sure if indeed it would be safe enough to play. i think -- i know you and i and mike and a lot of people watching really hope there will indeed be baseball this season. i can speak for my 8 and

5-year-old sons, they're desperate for there to be games this season and have baseball played. i think what we've seen the last two weeks with the surge of cases throughout this country including a number of players being affected. freddy freeman of the braves announced he has coronavirus and has been laid low by it. certainly can't be playing baseball any time soon. the other sports as well, questions raised whether basketball and their bubble in orlando, the nhl, nfl, all these leagues trying to get back, the country wants them back, but at the same time there are real concerns about whether it's safe to play. even if the seasons do start in a few weeks if the vire continus to get worse and we see a second wave, there's a real chance seasons could start but may not finish. >> as i look at the photograph to your right of alex rodriguez

punched at fenway park, some comfort knowing if there is a season, the yankees will be the favorites in the american league. >> it's good mask wearing being displayed here by jason vertech urging others to do the same. that's something we want to see here. this is a trying time for this nation and the triumph is evidence of this photograph of good over evil i think is something that most of us, willie, can rally behind. >> gosh. boy. that's just gross. we have digressed too far and it's my fault. let's get back to the news here. here's where things stand with the coronavirus after the holiday weekend. we have now surpassed 130,000 deaths nationwide from covid and nearly 2.9 million people have been infected in this country. over the weekend florida and texas confirmed their biggest rise in cases. on saturday florida added nearly

11,500 cases, temxas reported a record 8,300 new cases. california added 5,300 cases and arizona added 3,500 cases. two counties in texas say their hospitals are at full capacity. as florida reports record case numbers governor desantis said he will not close businesses in that state. president trump addressed a crowd at mount rushmore in south dakota on friday amid concerns of this growing number of cases. about 7,500 people were expected to attend. photos show a packed crowd in close quarters with few people wearing masks. and as for his message after vowing to end american carnage in his address, the president

painted another dark picture in two speeches this weekend. the president denounced what he called the left wing cultural revolution and pushed back against the movement for racial justice. >> 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 indocket nation 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 were villains. the radical view of american history is a web of lies, all

perspective is removed. every virtue is obscured. every motive twisted, every fact distorted and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition. >> american heroes defeated the nazis, dethroned the fascists, toppled the communists, saved american values, upheld american principles, and chased down the terrorists to the very ends of the earth. we are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the marxists, the anarchists, the acknowledge sta

agitators, the looters and people who in many instances have absolutely no clue what they are doing. >> so the president of the united states in two separate speeches, one at mount rushmore, one at the white house, talking about mostly the radical left wanting to undo the american revolution, about preserving history and we can't underline this enough comparing the radical left he calls it and the defeat of the radical left to the defeat of nazis, fascism, and communism and terrorists around the world by generations past. the president is drilling deep into his base strategy here. what's the re-election campaign? is this it? he's the man standing in the breech as the radical left tries to undo american civilization? >> that's what it seems like. the it seems the president has focused in on this culture war strategy, he's digging in on race, poking at the worst parts

of society. and the speech at mount rushmore what stuck with me, lesaid the protesters, talking about black lives matter activists who have been in all 50 states, including red states, they were trying to erase our history and erase the values of america and called the black lives matter movement and this movement we're seeing across the country dangerous. what the president is doing is positing himself against this idea there should be a rethinking of american history. he said in that speech, at mount rushmore, under the statue of two slave owners, under theodore roosevelt, pushing for the expansion on the left. he was saying we should not rethink american history, not think deeply about the flaws of this country that were problematic. protesters in america are learning some of the darkest

secrets and histories, that our founders were slave owners and even george washington was also a slave holder. he's saying we can't see the facts of our founders and seek to do away with this myth of america that everyone on july 4th that everyone was created, treated equally. that's not true. the president is looking at this movement and saying what i'm going to do is not join them, be an ally of peaceful protesters, i'm going to tell people our history is the history they want to remember that is false. i think it's a strategy that worked for him in 2016 when he dug in on immigration, on race, but in 2018 when he talked about the caravan in the middle of the midterms it backfired on him and we got nancy pelosi as speaker of the house. this is a political risk the president is taking but obviously the polls or instincts are telling him the way to win the election in 2020 is to go

after culture wars, the idea that america shouldn't be reshaped. and to call slavery a flaw. it was not a flaw. it was a mistake that was the original sin of america. >> john heileman, this has been the president's view of the movement for social justice for a couple of months now since george floyd's death, it was a put out in stark and stunning terms by the president but he looked at the movement as yamiche said as agitators, antifa, looking at the looters, the subsection of larger movement of people asking to be treated fairly and equally in this country as they have not been for 400 years, he's focussing on that aspect of it and we see the contrast of joe biden talking about how he was going to pull up the roots of systemic racism. stunning at times to hear the president of the united states talk that way but not surprising

really. >> not surprising in the least, willie. the president's racism has been clear for a very long time, clear to new yorkers who remember as far back as central park five and anybody that paid attention to him throughout the administration, the list of his racist views and sympathies and expressions, the way he courted white nationalists, white grievance, white supremacy and espoused the values of white supremacy have been a hallmark of his career before politics. none of that is surprising. and these speeches come in the wake of several days which the president puts on his twitter feed puts a gentleman shouting white power, he took that down but not denounced it. they're living with the fiction that he couldn't hear the man shouting white power. he's been campaigning to

conserve the confederate statues across the country. so the context of the speeches are contrast to george floyd's death and the protests across the country. so in terms of where the campaign is going right now -- yamiche understands this, she's framed this up really well -- the president is doubling and tripling down on a campaign that reads to every non-white american like a campaign situated in driving towards the heart of the counter movement of the movement for racial justice but the movement towards the preservation of white supremacy. it's what he's doing here. it's what he did in 2016 but doing it now on steroids under the circumstances. the thing to say about it, unlike in 2016 because of the context, the real context in which this is taking place, the context in the country, the president finds himself in a stark way catering to a clear

minority of americans. this is not a close run thing. you have 70% of the country expressing sympathy with black lives matter. you had on the friday he was speaking at mount rushmore, you had tens of millions of americans sitting in front of their televisions watching the premier of "hamilton" on disney plus which is remimaging of american history because it plays with entirely a non-white cast. so we have an america celebrating "hamilton" and the president sitting up on mount rushmore yelling about how america is trying to rip our history away. it's not true what he's saying and he's self-evidently not just on the minority side -- i'm saying politically the minority side of this -- but a shrinking base and a shrinking number of people in america who are with him on this. it is not a winning strategy and

a strategy a lot of people are looking at it now and seeing it for what it clearly is in a way they may not have in earlier iterations. >> we're seeing reports of republicans clutching their pearls, off the record, of course, as they watch the president unfurl this strategy once again. >> mike barnicle captured this weekend well in a piece entitled "an independence day wish for an un-united america" saying i thought about a man standing in the is that doe of mount rushmore friday night, seemingly intent on provoking a 21st century civil war. division is his dream, duplicity is his principle tool as he feasts on resentment. people thinking economic security, their future, their children's future is being

stolen by the other, by them, an enemy, the man in the shadow of four of our greatest presidents, right now in this self-doubting and not so aptly named united states we are in a moment that must not be missed. now is our time to think and remember not so much who we are but who we want to be. in order to make our mark on this singularly unique moment we must show up in november to make sure the man who stood at the foot of mount rushmore and the foot of lincoln memorial is sent into the shadows of history with the knowledge that americans want something he cannot deliver, an end to the race war, the constant fear of a virus, incompetence, corruption, and the premedicated cruelty of a fraud who stole our fourth of july and is trying to steal our country too.

mike barnicle writing for the daily best. i'll let you expand on your piece there but joe biden offering a different view of the country with the sub text as you write of do you want to do this for four more years? do you want this kind of division in the country? >> you know, willie, this is all so depressing. we began this hour talking about hopefully the reemergence of baseball and other sports to provide people with something to watch, something to relieve themselves of the day-to-day pressures of worrying about the virus, the economy, their family's futures. we're talking about back-to-back speeches delivered by the president of the united states friday night and saturday that were as dark and as doomed as anything i have ever heard. and you wonder, does he know what this country is all about? this is a big, big country. it's filled with flaws.

our history is filled with flaws, mistakes and failures. there's no way around it. but the way to go forward is, i don't think, to listen to this man, the portrayal of this country that's in his mind. and michael steele, in listening to him friday night and saturday night, all i could think of is, at some point in the future, historians will look at this period, they will look at this man, and they will have no other choice but to study the effect of what happened here, how could we have done this to this country, putting this man in charge at this tragic time when there's so much to deal with that he's unable to deal with. >> first off, mike, kudos to your piece. very powerful and folks should take to heart the words not just as they were read by willie but

what you say in this piece gets to the core of the answer to your question. when you stop and you pull back a little bit and you think about how the country is moved since 2000, since the bush v. gore election where it became this sort of all in war against our neighbor. how we began to perceive our politics, began to perceive each other. over that 20 year period we watched an escalation of resentments, an escalation of fear, an escalation of political chicanery, that sort of manipulated the system. and what trump did was really reach down into that and pulled out of that that anger, frustration, and gave voice to it. and so, that's how he could stand in front of those four great presidents and say what he said. because he knows there are a lot

of americans in which he still is that avatar of white resentment. that avatar for white grievance. that avatar that speaks about that slippage of what they perceive america to be. so what yamiche was saying earlier in her reporting that we're looking at this as a rethinking of american history, what we're witnessing is not a rethinking of american history but an explosion of exposure to what american history really is. that's why people sat down and watched "hamilton". they saw it not just remagimage- remessa re-i imagined by a minority cast, but to reconcile what we heard biden say off of what trump say of a stark contrast of

not just a history of this country but its future. and the question is what future do you want? do you want a future where you're mired in incrimination and distrust of your neighbor and, you know, grasping onto a history that really didn't happen the way you imagined it. or do you want something that's different that's more honest and true so we can move forward as a country recognizing that original stain, that original sin of slavery and all that's come from that and how we walk together that future. so right now this avatar that the president presents is one he's hoping, going back to the point i made in the last hour, willie, there are a silent number of americans who agree with him more than we know. that's what he's counting on come november. >> no question about it. most americans don't want to see statues of george washington or thomas jefferson or yesterday

one of frederick douglas pulled down to the ground. as you know more than anybody covering this, jonathan lemire, you and yamiche covering this president every day, this is the only way the president knows how to do politics, how he's been doing it since he first came down the escalator five years ago, division he believes is the way he won in 2016 and he believes it'll happen again this time. >> that's right. first of all credit to you by flagging this piece by that up and coming writer mike barnicle. >> got a bright future. >> yeah, he might be able to put something together here for a career. best of luck to him. but you are right. this is a president who has a few plays in the playbook. he's someone who leans into the racial e aresentment, the polit of grievance and the divisive rhetoric. it has worked for him in the

past, he is president. he feels it has propelled him throughout his term in office. that he feels like if he continues to cater to the base, they will turn out for him and support him and win another term. we see him say that out loud, boasting about the silent majority being back and supporting him, even though polls don't support that. i wanted to get -- we know this might work for the president, his advisers think it will, it has before, but let's talk about other republicans, there's growing fears within the gop they could not only lose the white house, won't win the house but could very well lose the senate, what kind of rhetoric that we heard from the president the last couple days, at mount rushmore, the white house for the fourth of july, how is that going to play for corey gardner, thom tillis, those trying to hold onto their seats, can they

wrap their hands around that? >> you have to wonder if republicans who have stuck with donald trump publicly but behind his back if they're talking off the record have nothing nice or kpl complimentary to say about him, now you look and the senate might be on the rocks. you look at the recent battleground polls that have been coming out and consistently biden is leading in places that donald trump needs to win and even places like iowa that seem to be turning much more red. i remember being there in 2018 for focus groups in the congressional races, yet they don't -- it's not looking like it's a total lock for joni ernst. you see the cheap imitation of

donald trump in someone like martha mcsally not going to take her over the finish line because at the end of the day it's so inauthentic and no one can get away with what donald trump has. and at this point maybe even donald trump isn't going to get away with it either. >> john heileman? >> you know, i want to come back to the question of trump -- i know we're running out of time in the block. yamiche i want to ask you this question. we talked a lot in this discussion here about the nature of the trump -- the nature of trump's grievance politics and the white supreme acy of it and all this stuff. but what strikes me, there's an element of this missing from the trump argument and it's a clear attachment of the arguments he wants to make to his opponent, joe biden. it is a fascinating thing. he rails against the far left,

against this whole line that he's trotted out all weekend long but what he's not been able to do is portray biden as part of the evil that he is positing he's going to try to fight against. i'm sucurious on your reportingf you're getting a sense of how frustrated the white house is that trump says things like -- you heard him admit that joe biden is not far left. he says things occasionally like biden is not the far left but he's controlled by the far left, controlled by these protesters. my sense is they are very frustrated that they have not yet found a way to marry this argument they want to make broadly to joe biden specifically and not able to find a negative frame they can put around biden that feels comfortable to them and fits their opponent in the way they need to if they're going to win. >> that's right.

in some ways what i hear from trump campaign sources and white house sources is their main argument against joe biden isn't the argument of him being from the far left, in terms of wanting to pull down statues of every single american hero or figure that even protesters say are problematic. what they're focussing on is the idea of the capacity to do the job. they want to paint joe biden as someone who is flustered, not physically ready not for the job, someone who can't handle the presidency. what we saw in joe biden last week was him making the same argument against donald trump, making the case he is someone not fit to be president. someone whose capacity should be questioned. what joe biden has been doing, including to maybe the frustration of some black lives matter activists he's not on board with taking down every single piece of american history that protesters are looking at saying that is flawed. he said there's a difference between focussing on confederate

generals and founders of americas, saying there's a different between robert e. lee and george washington. most americans agree with him. what you see is george washington using dentures from slaves. you see from george washington someone who owned hundreds of slaves, much like thomas jefferson who raped enslaved people. i think joe biden has been smart to try to balance that line so he seems he's taking the side of protesters without going too far to the left. there is this idea in joe biden what the president is also frustrated in he's appealing to people who president trump won in 2016 and needs to win again. white suburban women, senior citizens, the president as he leans into culture wars he's looking at those people saying are they going to come with me or go with joe biden? part of the reason joe biden is in the situation he's in now is because black voters in south carolina looked at joe biden and

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welcome back to "morning joe." joining us resident fellow at the harvard kennedy school institute of politics, tiffany cross. author of the new book "say it louder," black voters, white narratives and saving our democracy. the it's great to see you. congratulations on the book, it's out today, it couldn't come at a better time as we move toward election day, especially in the wake of this movement, the middle of the movement in the streets of this country since the killing of george floyd in minneapolis. how does your book tap into the

themes and how will it show itself on election day? >> great to be with back with you willie. the last time we shared the screen -- >> i know, great to see you. >> happy to make my return. >> i'll take number three. >> i was on with you it was a great segment. let's try to get number one today. i wrote this book long before the george floyd killing happened, long before ahmaud arbery, so it shows how common and persistent the oppression of black lives has been in the country so i wanted to write a book that focused on the power of black people and voters and the media has on our democracy, it casts a wide net of influence. name a war black people haven't fought in, haven't influenced, any part of the culture that black people have not had a

direct impact on and we've never been acknowledged for that. even in the moment of the cultural shift and people are celebrating that, you have the newly woke corporations coming out, but we've been the alarm clock in the last centuries. it's the narrative in the media, intentionally or not, is still pushing white supremacy that positions white people in the position of allowing black people to live, allowing black people their freedom. this says we should allow black players to kneel, white owners say we should allow black drivers to wear black lives matter. but we need to see a power shift. the two things driving that power shift are the media and also black voters. i think we saw a lot of

narratives that were not accurate in 2016 and some of the same things happening this go around as it relates to the election cycle. i'm thrilled to present this body of work, i wrote it unfiltered. did not pull language from the chattering class but wanted people to be able to consume it if you're a political novice or con sore. but as a letter i wrote to black voters, but this is not for black readers. everyone should have a curiosity about the black experience. i hope people receive it with my good intentions and learn from it and get inspired by it. >> i suspect they will. we're going to get to number one trending this morning but we can't do it without yamiche. >> number one, congratulations on the book, it's exciting to see you put out this body of work. we see in poll after poll enthusiasm for biden does not

match as much negative for trump. rather a lot of african-american voters are voting against president trump, at least right now, than they are for joe biden. what lessons do you think joe biden should take away from that and what does it say about african-american voters they're loyal to the party even if the they're picking a candidate they're not enthusiastic about. >> first the lesson for joe biden is we're at a moment where people previously i think a lot of black people saw the possible. even the possible seemed out of reach. we're at this moment in america now where people are seeing the impossible. it's not a time to make a safe choice. i think because so many conversations in the media center white people that politicians take the lesson from that and think the job is to appeal to these quote/unquote swing voters and people in middle america -- all the euphemisms we have for white voters. i say to joe biden those voters

left you a long time ago. the landscape looks different today so how do you excite voters the base the people who resurrected your campaign. so i encourage his campaign to focus on that. black voters we are a pragmatic people and you saw the landscape after some people's candidate didn't get to be the democratic nominee, there were a lot of people upset and i'm not voting for president and so disappointed. you think i, as a black woman, have ever been excited about a candidate? i was excited to vote for obama but how many people have we had to vote for that we weren't excited about. we voted for white supremacists, the lesser of two evils many times. it shows because black voters have been so brutalized we have often been put in position to make the choice for the person who will do the least harm to our community. >> tiffany, john heileman is

here with a question for you. john? >> tiffany, congratulations also from me on the book. can't wait to read it. i just ask you a very specific question, or two really, that grow out of the question yamiche asked. one is given the dynamics in play that the biden campaign faces do you think it's essential that his choice for running mate be an african-american woman, number one? and number two, if he makes that choice, which a lot of people think he's likely to do, i'll bet every dollar i've ever seen you're going to have a conversation that's going to be engaged by president trump over the question of reparations. i'm curious what you think the politics of that discussion would be like in a general election where joe biden was running with a black candidate as his running mate and where president trump, given the way he's running right now, seeks to make a political issue out of the question of reparations in the moment we're living in. >> i penned an op-ed for "the

washington post" a few weeks ago with my friends and colleagues, so i think yes, but i want to be very clear, it's not so simple that joe biden should pick a black woman, if you pick a black woman not willing to adapt an agenda comprehensive to black people that's not helpful either. it's not necessarily how black are you, but how black are your policies, and mhow focused are you on this community and communities of color. so i would encourage him to do that. we have to be honest and address the elephant in the room, joe biden is not an exciting candidate, a lot of people are voting against trump not necessarily for joe biden. and when black women organize they don't just organize themselves but community. how can we help the strong faithful constituency push him over the finish line in november

and to do that he needs a black woman at his side. i think the question of reparations is interesting. this warrants a lot more discussion and having a black running mate would be helpful. the wealth that black people generated in this country and never benefitted from, black people have been historically victimized and brutalized by systems of white supremacy that have rippled through time, generations, there has to be a way, and it can start with sheila jackson lee, she's asking for a committee to study the impact of reparations and the fact that she's met with so much resistance. something else i think the campaign has to consider is how does joe biden, which as we talked about on this show is somewhat of a moderate, how does he reconcile pushing this forward with an increasingly progressive congress. we saw torres and jamal win

their elections for the democratic candidacy come november so they join folks like the squad. how does he, he can be a relic sometimes in his policies how does he push that legislation forward, and having a progressive black woman at his side would be nothing but helpful to him. >> the new book is "say it louder". tiffany cross, congratulations, great to see you again. >> thank you. thanks, willie. coming up, our next guest is warning about what could happen in the fall if the united states doesn't take action right now to control coronavirus. former acting director of the cdc dr. richard besser joins us next. we're coming right back. s next we're coming right back. you can't predict the future.

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we've made a lot of progress, our strategy is moving along well. it goes out in one area and rears back its ugly face in another area. but we've learned a lot. we've learned how to put out the flame. now we have tested almost 40 million people. by so doing, we show cases 99% of which are totally harmless. >> that's the president speaking on saturday on the south lawn of the white house. joining us president and ceo of the robert wood johnson

foundation, dr. richard besser, former acting director of the cdc. great to see you again this morning. i'll give you the easy one first, are 99% of coronavirus cases harmless? >> no, willie. when i heard that. it's a frightening number because it -- what it to people is there's nothing to worry about. it's just the opposite. current estimates are that roughly 1% or maybe slightly less than 1% of people will die. but for those who get the infection, who don't die, it's not an easy course. somewhere in the order of 15 to 20% of those with known infection will be hospitalized, about 15 to 20% of those individuals will end up in the intensive care unit on a ventilator and the road to recovery for many people is quite long. for many people it involves some neu neurolodgic difficulties. this is a serious illness and one we as a nation have to come

together around if we want to control this. >> as you know, dr. besser, as the cases have spiked across the country in places like california, texas and south carolina and florida, we have seen the death rates stay low. the president is right about that, that fewer peopl coronavi. yesterday we had our lowest number of deaths since back near the beginning of this crisis. what does that tell you about what we've maybe learned about coronavirus and how to treat it? >> i think there's probably a couple things there. one is we are learning how to treat this better and that's a really good thing. patients are managed differently in terms of ventilators and oxygen therapy. there are a couple drugs showing some promise, so that's a good thing. the other a piece of this, though, what we're seeing in many parts of the country is young people want to get back to their socialized, they want to be out and about, so rates of

infection young people are going up and up. what will happen i expect is a lag. young people don't stay with young people. so they'll be infecting older people, essential workers, many of whom are people of color who may have higher rates of underlying medical conditions that put them at risk. there's a delay. you'll see increased rates in young people and then among the people they've had contact with and then a couple weeks later increased in hospitalizations. death rates are a poor indicator of what's happening right now. it can be many, many weeks before you see any changes there. >> dr. besser, elise jordan here. donald trump said the strategy against coronavirus is winning, but last week we saw a spike in single-day cases of over 50,000 new cases. in your opinion, what would a winning national strategy to combat coronavirus look like? >> a winning curve would be what you see with europe, where the

numbers are going down and down across many different countries and cultures. it says you can tackle this. the approach is one of having people shelter in place, in pla stay-at-home orders to drive the numbers down, and then switching over to a model where you're able to identify every case in every community, and then have public health track those individuals, see who they had contact with. and then ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to isolate and quarantine. it takes data down to the zip code level and data broken down by race and ethnicity so the impact we've seen among black americans, latino americans, native americans, doesn't continue over the next months as this progresses. if we're not looking at things ot that level, we will continue to see a disproportionate impact of this pandemic on different communities. >> dr. besser, mike barnicle has

a question for you. >> he sewe seem to be about a m from a pivot point and that is when parents begin to wonder and worry about whether the daycare center and school is going to open in the fall. first of all, what do you think about schools and daycare centers opening in august or september and parents being able to go back to work? and secondly, what would be the mechanics involving young children being sent off to daycare centers and schools? >> as a parent and as a pediatrician, i know how important it is for children to be in school. there are so many children who are falling behind because they're not in school. it has to be done, though, very safely. and in order to do that, you have to drive the overall numbers down. if you're having widespread community transmission, opening

the schools is not something that's going to go well. if you're a state that's been able to drive the numbers down very low so that you are able to identify cases and track and trace and quarantine, then you can move towards opening the schools. but it's not going to be schools and daycares like we remember six months ago. they need to have different controls in terms of screening children when they come in, identifying staff who may be at high risk, teachers at high risk so that they're not put at increased risk. so for some teachers it may not be possible to go back to school. for those who can teach remotely, they may be able to do that. but one of the upsides of this pandemic is that the risk to children is much lower than it is to adults. so if you can identify ways of protecting children, ensuring that they're not bringing this disease home to parents or

grandparents or others who are at higher risk, there will be the possibility of some kind of school and daycare coming forward. it's important in terms of getting people back to work, especially working women who are so often the primary caregivers for the children, as well as income earners for the family. >> dr. richard besser covering a lot of ground for us this morning. always great to have you with us. thanks so much. broadway star nick cordero lost his battle with covid-19 yesterday. his wife announced his death yesterday. cordero had no known pre-existing condition, but coronavirus caused mini strokes and septic shock and doctors placed him in a coma. his right leg had to be amputated. last night his wife said he would likely need a double lung transplant to survive.

cordero was known for his roles in waitress, a bronx tale, and bullets over broadway, in which he won best featured actor in a musical. nick cordero was 41 years old. we'll be right back. ack. facing leaks takes strength. so here's to the strong, who trust in our performance and comfortable, long-lasting protection. because your strength is supported by ours. depend. the only thing stronger than us, is you.

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good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it is john, july 6th. i'm willie geist. we've got the reporter from the associated press and former aed to the george w. bush white house elise jordan and former chairman of the republican national commit michael steele a and alicia menendez. we have now in america surpassed 130,000 nationwide from coronavirus, nearly 2.9 million people have been infected. over the weekend both florida and texas reported their biggest daily rise in new confirmed cases. on saturday, florida added nearly 11,500 cases and texas

reported a record 8,300. on sunday, california reported more than 5,400 new cases, while arizona added more than 3,500. major concerns now growing over the surge in hospitalizations. at least two counties in south texas reportedly say their hospitals are at full capacity. as florida reports record case numbers, governor ron desantis says he will not close businesses again. we'll have much more on the public health and the medicine in just a moment. as for president trump and his response over the weekend, he addressed a crowd at mount rushmore, fireworks celebration in south dakota on friday that raised a number of health concerns amid the growing number of coronavirus cases. about 7,500 people were expected to attend and photos show a packed crowd in close quarters with very few wearing masks. according to local reporting there, health professionals in south dakota are concerned the lack of litigation efforts at

the event could cause the coronavirus to spread in communities surrounding mount rushmore. as for the president's fourth of july message to the country, three and a half years after vowing to end what he called american carnage in his inaugural address, the president painted another dark picture of this country. in two speeches, one on friday at mount rushmore and the other at the white house on saturday, the president denounced what he called the left wing cultural revolution. he also pushed back against the movement for racial justice, accusing his opponents of wanting to erase america's history, as he said, indock indoctrinate our children and overthrow the revolution. >> the ideology attacking our nation advanced under the banner of social justice. but in truth, it would demolish both justice and society.

it would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance and it would turn our free and inclusive society into a place of repression, domination and exclusion. they want to silence us, but we will not be silenced. those who seek to erase our heritage want americans to forget our pride and our great dignity so that we can no longer understand ourselves or america's destiny, and toppling the heros of 1776, they seek to dissolve the bonds of love and loyalty that we feel for our country and that we feel for each other. their goal is not a better america, their goal is to end

america. we will never allow an angry mob to tear down our statues, erase our history, indoctrinate our children or trample on your freedoms. we will safeguard our values, traditions, customs and beliefs. we will teach our children to cherish and adore their country so that they can build its future. together, we will fight for the american dream and we will defend, protect, and preserve american way of life which began in 1492 when columbus discovered america. >> that was president trump on the south lawn of the white house in that last speech you just heard on saturday. jonathan lemire, you've covered this president closely, every

single day. this appears to be his re-election message, that america is being overrun by angry mobs. there were brief references to the coronavirus and the public health crisis at the center of american life right now because of its health impacts and also its economic impacts, but it's clear where the president is headed here for re-election. >> that's right, willie, with bleak and at times almost apocalyptic language, the president definitely revisited his american carnage inaugural here. only passing mentions to the crisis that has consumed the nation for months. instead, he leaned very hard into the cultural wars, into sort of the base play, stoking racial resentment and grievance. and i think it can't be overstated what a departure these two speeches, mount rushmore one day and the white house the next, aren't the usual message we hear from a president on the fourth of july.

there was no attempt to unify the country, there was no bold statements of american greatness and american unity. you're trying to bring the nation together now in a time of crisis where so many have died and suffered. instead, it was a divisive message. it was as if he were delivering a message at a campaign rally. this was not a message to all americans. this was a message to his base and it shows in stark black and white, or in this case red versus blue, language, how he views the next four months of his term that will determine whether or not he gets another four years in office. >> so michael steele, let's talk about the political strategy of this, because you come from the republican world and you've helped oversee a lot of campaigns as chair of the rnc. what exactly is he going for here? what is the strategy behind this? again, he's plowing everything into a base that he's pretty well got locked up, if you look at his numbers, and has had locked up for about five years now. it doesn't appear from the

outside, anyway, that there's any olive branch, that there's any extension of those who may be considering voting for him. it's just solidifying the people who he already has. >> well, it's us against them at this point and the reality that the trump campaign is facing is the us, which is the base support that you referred to, a lot of the republicans on capitol hill that have sort wanted the president's favor in a number of areas. that is actually weakening some. the numbers are showing that that hard 95%, 96% of the republican base that's behind the president is now down around 84%, 85%. there's been slippage. there has been some weakening of the reception of that message because, guess what, that base is also now impacted by covid-19, as we see across the country in those red states, and the president also is feeling

the impact. his base is feeling the impact of the economy, which is not recovering at the pace, even though the great jobs numbers last week, you know, are good to see, the reality of it is businesses are opening, but people aren't going out and shopping, they're not gathering to spend money the way they were a year ago. and then on top of that, willie, the social unrest right now, the civic unrest, which is a good thing. this is a good, healthy conversation the country is just beginning to have and you would think that would be something the president would step into. but that's not what his base wants to hear. that's not what they want to talk to. so he's doubling down on those things that have motivated their anger, their frustration, and the us that he talks about in his mount rushmore speech, a lot of folks are scratching their heads and saying, aren't us all of us? to jonathan's point, no.

it's those people who he feels are losing the grip that he's given them on some of these issues, some of these visceral issues, and he wants to get that back. >> elise jordan, i had to read and re-read one passage from his speech on saturday. this is the president of the united states speaking from the south lawn where he compared the defeat of what he calls the radical left to the defeat of the nazis, to the defeat of fascists, to the defeat of communism and to chasing terrorists to the end of the earth. he said we did that as a country. together, we too can defeat this radical left. an astounding comparison from the president of the united states. >> i mean, i just don't even really know where to go with that. if that's what donald trump really thinks the great crisis that this nation faces is right now, then we really are in a

terrible, terrible state of affairs. i found it so incredible that fourth of july weekend, a huge address at mount rushmore, he does an odd history mash-up and grievance police, but he doesn't talk about any of our current armed forces serving abroad in war zones. and you look at all of the recent scandal with donald trump not protecting our troops in afghanistan from russian bounties, and instead cozying up to putin even more and you can see where this commander in chief's priorities really are. and just to add to what michael said about how donald trump is going for the grievances, he's going for the culture war, that didn't go so well in 2018. remember the caravan narrative and remember when that was what was supposed to drive his voters at the last moment and he saw that narrative roundly defeated as the blue wave went into

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>> former trump terrorism adviser tom bossert was watching what was going on all weekend with coronavirus and tweeted, quote, we are in trouble. he tweeted out data on rising numbers in some states and emphasized, quote, masks are important, but not enough. and former fda commissioner scott gotly warned that the current spike in coronavirus cases in several cities could be the start of a second wave. >> we're right back where we were at the peak of the epidemic during the new york outbreak. the difference now is that we have one epicenter of spread when new york was going through

its hardship. now we have los angeles, cities in texas, cities in florida and arizona. >> the case fatality rate is going down, although we're not able to measure it, because we're able to save more people who are hospitalized and get critically ill because of advanced in care. the number of deaths has gone down because the number of infections went down for a period of time. but the total number of deaths is going to start going up again as the number of hospitalizations starts to spike again. so we're going to see deaths creep up and i wouldn't be surprised in the next two weeks to see deaths go over 1,000. >> let's bring in the director of the harvard global health institute, a practice physician, and also professor of medicine at harvard medical school. great to see you, as always. do you share the concerns we just heard fr, and from the pub health officials about the spikes we're seeing across california and the sun belt as well, texas, numbers spiking to

record levels day by day. how concerned are you about where we are? >> good morning and thanks for having me on. i am very concerned and i very much share scott's take on this. here's the bottom line. we're heading in the wrong direction as a country. we have cases going up not just in those four hot spots, but when i look across the country, i see lots of other states going in the wrong direction, from utah and nevada to smaller states like idaho. we're seeing three-quarters of the country heading in the wrong direction. the problem is that deaths always lag. the people are going to get sick. we're now seeing hospitalizations increase. and i completely agree that in the next week or two we're going to start seeing deaths increase. and what's striking to me is that we always sort of assume the best. we hear from our political leaders the rosiest scenario, where we really should be planning for the worst and thinking much more critically

about where we are and how we stave this off. >> just anecdotally and seeing all the coverage and seeing how people celebrated the fourth of july, they've been cooped up for four months and they want to get out and have a fourth of july. there wasn't much social distancing. what concerns did you have watching this fourth of july weekend where we were all outside trying to do our best to social distance, but it was a difficult thing to do on that holiday? >> july fourth is obviously a really important, fun holiday for all americans. things that made me feel better, in some places i did see a good amount of mask wearing. second, i think the evidence is pretty clear that being outdoors is much safer than being indoors, so that made me feel better. and i am completely sympathetic to the fact that we've all been feeling cooped up and i wish we lived in a country where our political leaders had

prioritized bringing levels down so we could celebrate the fourth of july much more in the way we've always done it. but obviously it was much more of a restricted weekend because of that. >> dr. jha, thank you, as always. coming up, while the president was talking about angry mobs, joe biden was talking about healing the country. we'll look at the former vice president's weekend address straight ahead on "morning joe." "

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biden offered a message of hope

and unity over the fourth of july weekend in a video posted to twitter. biden focused on racial inequality, saying despite america's deep divisions, the united states still can live up to its founding principles of equality. >> it's been a constant push and pull between two parts of our character, the idea that all men and women, all people are created equal, and the racism that has torn us apart. we have a chance now to give the marginalized, the isolated and oppressed a full share of the american dream. we have a chance to rip the roots of systemic racism out of this country. we have a chance to live up to the words that have founded this nation. this independence day, let's not just celebrate the words. let's celebrate the promise, commit to work, the work we must do to fulfill that promise, remain locked in the battle for the soul of this nation.

it's a battle we can and we will win if we act together. >> if you look at that campaign video from joe biden and compare it to president trump's two speeches over the weekend, it distills perfectly the way the two of them are looking at the movement in the streets of the country since the killing of george floyd in minneapolis. you had the president focusing on what he called bad, evil people who are pulling down statues and looting stores, and you had joe biden looking at the larger message of the vast majority of those protesters, of those demonstrators asking for an end to systemic racism, and looking for racial equality in this country. boy, those two speeches boiled it right down. >> you see a contrast both in substance and in style. we often talk when we have this conversation about the cultural wars or america's history as though it is something that is in our past, when to your point, we're very much seeing this play out in real time. there are black americans taking

to the streets who feel like they are fighting for their lives and that message is echoing. we also have this conversation about who is truly free in america. we've been following a story about a federal judge who has ruled that migrant children need to be let out of detention facilities because there's a concern over outbreaks of covid-19. so this conversation about who is free in america is very much ongoing. you see joe biden in that ad stepping into that conversation, talking about racial equality, grappling with a lot of this at a policy level, but you also see a stylistic difference. you see a recognition of a country that is in need for healing, in need of unification, and that speaks directly to what many perceive to be the former vice president's greatest stylistic strength. this is a person who has experienced tremendous grief, tremendous loss in his own life, who has what many perceive to be a deep well of empathy and that is the strength hits campaign is

hoping to rely on to create a sharp contrast with this president in the lead-up to november. >> jonathan lemire, the fourth of july is always a good moment to pause in any campaign year and see where the race is. and i think you saw two speeches that sort of indicated where it was. you saw the united states talking about angry mobs trying to wipe out american history, overturn the american revolution, comparing what he called the radical left to nazis, fascists and communists, defeated by america in generations past. so where really does the trump campaign believe they are right now? where does the president believe he is in this race against joe biden right now? >> it's such a contrast. also, i think part of the argument that joe biden has made throughout this campaign is just sort of acting and looking like americans are accustomed to from a president, while donald trump seems to only be interested, his

critics say, in governing a small portion of the electorate, his base. that's where the campaign is right now. as we've been discussing on this j show, everything they're doing is a base play, with the idea of heritage and statues and confederate soldiers. yes, it is part of this mount rushmore speech, the president proposed a national guarden of american heros and they ran the gamut of american life, different demographics and what they mean and politics and science and so on, but he's leaning into the idea of protecting the heritage, whether it's the confederate generals on bases or statues throughout the country, which seems to be remarkably out of step from the energy we're seeing in the streets and have for more than a month now after the death of george floyd, where the president as a republican strategist put to me recently,

that he seems completely out of step with what's going on in the country with racial justice but also how fearful americans are with the pandemic. we're seeing some adjustments. we all know about his rally in oklahoma that was indoors, drew a very sparse crowd from what he wanted. the president has announced his next rally, this saturday in new hampshire. it will be outdoors at an airport hangar. there's still no social distancing, but the attendees are recommended to wear masks. being outdoors perhaps will help, according to scientists. the virus of course spreads not quite as easily. but the president and his team, as a final point, they know right now they're losing, they know they're down. every week brings a round of polls that show them down. they feel like they've got time to make this up, particularly if the economy recovers, but that is in danger by the virus surging back and they're leaning on anything they can do, which is try to play to the base, turn them out, excite them and get

that 38%, 40% of voters to turn out at a huge rate, while hoping the rest of the country that like joe biden turns out far less of one. that's a risky gamble but it's the only play right now. >> our next guest says america is not living through one crisis, we're living through five. next on "morning joe."

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american heros defeated the nazis, dethroned the fascists, saved american values, up held american principles and chased down the terrorists to the very ends of the earth. we are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters, and people who in many instances have absolutely no clue what they are doing. >> that's the president of the united states at the white house on saturday. welcome back to "morning joe." jonathan lemire, elise jordan

and mike barnicle all with us. and joining us is the host of vice tv's show "seat at the table". it's great to see you. i'm just interested, first, we've got a lot to get to, but to your reaction to what you heard in the speech on saturday at the white house, but also on friday night at mount rushmore when the president talked about the bad, evil people trying to strip away american history, people trying to undo the american story. how did those two speeches put together hit your ear? >> the president of the united states is making it very clear that he is sort of a fascist who didn't do the homework and it's sort of maybe the only saving grace that he didn't do the reading, which might give us a little bit of room yet to save democracy. but this is increasingly clear as a strategy where, as jonathan was saying as a matter of political analysis, but it's also a moral fact that he's

basically trying to govern with 30 some percent of the population, but offering them his overwhelmingly white base the hope of supremacy and the hope they get drunk and don't realize this country's economy is not benefiting them and the institutions don't work for them or any of the people who are not voting for donald trump either, with the exception of his oligarch friends. he is clearly doubling down in the middle of a murderous pandemic, doubling down on white supremacy and, frankly, fascist calls for military dealing with protesters and all of that, in a way that feels unimaginable. >> as i listen to you speak and read a lot of what you write, you don't spare democrats in the middle of this conversation either. obviously donald trump, as you say, bares a lot of the blame,

but the democrats in the streets for social justice, they've pledged their support for the movement, i'm talking about leading politicians in washington, they've backed the movement, but that's the easy part, as you say. what more should democrats be doing to make this moment real and to make it mean something? >> as you teased before the break, i really do think these are five crises that have entered an acute phase right now that you're talking about every day. we've got the health crisis obviously, the economic crisis that has caused, the racial crisis, a democratic crisis incarnated by the president testing the rule of law and the climate crisis. remember the climate? and the silver lining of these synced crises happening at the moment they are together, intersecting and making themselves each worse through the prism of the other, is that we are actually liberated from

the illusion that we were living before, that our systems were right, that our way of life was right. it is impossible to believe that today. whatever you thought about our democratic institutions or the form of manic hyper capitalism we were practicing or employer-based health care or whatever, you have to think new things now. so when it comes to the democrats, the question is are we seeing -- it's very clear what the president is doing. are we seeing an equal and opposite and virtuous message, a vision actually that is exciting, thrilling and adequate to this moment? we have now in regular white people across this country, putting white fragility, how to be an anti-racist. regular middle class people are buying that book and trying to figure out how to change themselves. do we see in members of congress, in joe biden, frankly, in nancy pelosi and chuck schumer, do we see leadership of the party that is an fdr scale

vision for how to transform these countries in a moment of crisis that actually reminds a lot of people old enough to know of those kinds of very dark moments in history right before it gets light, which kind of despairing moment that sometimes, if we play our cards right, erupts into hope. >> mike barnicle is here with a question for you. mike? >> i have always valued your opinion and this has been a horrific weekend in terms of rhetoric from the oval office from the president of the united states at mount rushmore and on saturday in washington, d.c. so let me ask you this very simple question, and it's about the racial aspect of your five crises, the racial crisis in this country. it has been with us for 400 years. do you think we will ever see a time, reach a time when our elected officials, both democrat and republican, instead of

viewing race as a special problem, a significant special interest that we have to deal with as a special interest, do you think we'll ever get to the point where they as human beings recognize, realize and talk about more often the fact that the aspirations of a black family for their children are the same exact aspirations that we have, white people, whatever, for our families? >> you know, i think -- i hear your question and i would love to hope that that is the case. i think we sometimes don't give ourselves credit as a culture for having the capacity to change. i actually do think, if you look at all the polling on this, white people are actually, according to the data, being affected by these protests. this black lives matter uprising has caused a real mind shift in

large numbers of white people that maybe in 2014 you didn't see in the polls. so people can change our attitudes to lgbtq people, have drastically changed in everybody's lifetime on this show. however, it's important to say on the question of race, unlike maybe any other question we could bring up about our economy or lgbtq people or anything else, that this is the original sin of this country and so much of the edifice of this country, philosophical and institutional edifices and the text of our constitution is built with this racism baked in. in some ways the racism has allowed the structure to be what it is. you wouldn't have had the constitution enacted without the three-fifths clause in there. so the challenge is this is the ultimate moral jenga game. we have to remove these pieces of our national character, of our education system, of our

constitution. we have to remove all these things and a lot of people fear, i think those who resent these changes, resent this conversation, that we're going to lose the whole structure if we do that. and i think what those of us who want this change to happen have to argue is, no, actually the opposite. we will never be whole as a people, we will never be healthy, we will never be safe, we will never actually have the pursuit of happiness as we could if we don't deal with the stain of race. the very white people voting for donald trump are shortening their lives because of covid and because of a lack of universal health care in this country because they are sold the hooch of supremacy. so everybody in this country, everybody watching this is disfigured by the racism that has been the original fact of this country, some far more than others.

>> what you said about how this possibly could be a moment of hope after a really dark time, since the pandemic began and the ensuing months of death and then of protests, what do you see as the most hopeful trends for this country? >> i think -- i'm very struck, maybe what feels new this time, is all the reading that regular people are doing. we see that reflected in best seller lists. we see it in school curriculums. every school i have had a glimpse into, colleges, grade schools, is right now thinking about how do you adjust curriculum, how do you teach this moment. parents of young children, i think we just signed up for some workshop about how to talk to our kids about race. we probably haven't done as good a job about that because they're

2 and 5, but people are realizing you've got to do that. i think what feels hopeful is something between the first cries of black lives matter several years ago and today, and this is how protests work. you've got to keep saying the same thing and maybe people will listen. somewhere down the line, a lot of, frankly moderate people, the people dr. king called white moderates, somehow flipped from thinking this is an extreme movement, to this is a truthful movement declaring an honest, basic truth and now you have people like mitt romney signing on to that kind of slogan. so my big hope is not in our leaders at this moment, but in regular people educating themselves about what supremacy is and the possibility of liberating ourselves from that original sin. >> his show is "seat at the

table" on vice tv. great to see you, friend. >> thank you so much. the show is no more, but i am still here. >> all right. we'll add that to your list of credits and look forward to your next one. thank you. so jonathan lemire, the president of the united states, as we've been talking, is tweeting about bubba wallace, the nascar driver, seemingly out of nowhere. that story hasn't been in the news a week or so. he's saying he should apologize to fans for the, quote, hoax he perpetrated. remember bubba wallace is nascar's only full-time african-american driver who saw a noose hanging in his garage. it turns out it wasn't directed at him. it had been there since october. the president also lamenting the fact that nascar has taken the confederate flag away from its events, again drilling into more of what we've seen over the weekend in his speeches. >> as you say, willie, the

timing is inexplicable because there have been no developments in this story or nothing written about it or nothing on tv in a couple of weeks, except the timing is completely logical if you take it in tandem with the president's marks over the weekend at mount rushmore and at the white house where he is really leaning into this idea of racial division, stoking this divide and culture war, trying to gin up his base and point to not just the driver, but the confederate flag. trying to rally around symbols for a losing side in the civil war when it shows the vast majority of americans are not siding with him on this. it is a play to the base that doesn't seem to make a lot of political sense and just instead stoking divides in our country at a time when it doesn't seem like we can really afford that. >> the president of the united states saying what he calls a hoax from bubba wallace and the flag decision are leading to

nascar's lowest ratings ever. that's the president of the united states. coming up next, coronavirus has hit nearly 3 million americans, including our next guest, comedian dl hughley who collapsed on stage in nashville. we'll bring you our conversation next on "morning joe." don't juse you're headed this summer. think about how you'll get there. and now that you can lease or buy a new lincoln remotely or in person... discovering that feeling has never been more effortless. accept our summer invitation to get 0% apr on all 2020 lincoln vehicles. only at your lincoln dealer. i but what i do count on...ts anis boost high protein...rs, and now, there's boost mobility... ...with key nutrients to help support... joints, muscles, and bones. try boost mobility, with added collagen.

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comedian dl hughley announced he tested positive for covid-19 after collapsing on stage during a performance at a nashville comedy club. hughley said he learned about his diagnosis while being treated for exhaustion and dehydration at a local hospital. joining us now, one of the original kings of comedy, dl hughley, he hosts the national program "the dl hughley show" and he's the author of the new book "surrender white people". we'll talk about the book in just a minute. first of all, how are you feeling after that extraordinary scene in nashville? kind of take us through that night and what the next few days

were like for you. >> well, actually i had -- the previous week i had been in dallas and then i had gotten home and then i was preparing for a gig in nashville. i had to do my radio show and my tv show. and i didn't actually feel anything and i got on the plane and did the two thursday shows and then got up and did my radio show and walked my dog and ran five miles and got on stage, and all of a sudden the lights went out. i knew that i was a bit tired, but that's pretty typical. then when i got to the emergency room, they obviously ran a battery of tests and said that i was exhausted and dehydrated, and then they asked could they run some other tests, one of them was the covid test, and of course i said yes. and then a couple hours later they said i was positive. so they told me i needed to quarantine and so i was kind of

blown away. my first thought was i hope that -- later on i found out my son had it, i had given it to my son and some people at the radio station that i work with. thoug. i hope i didn't kill anybody. >> so, d.l., what was it like then? you had an ordeal trying to get home, i understand. it's tough. you come out and said publicly you have coronavirus. to get on a plane going anywhere. >> right, right. i'm -- in retrospect, i probably should have gotten home before i made the announcement but i was so worried about -- that i exposed people. from when they were releasing me, i made the announcement i had it, and i had no idea, obviously, that it would go viral, but when i got to the hotel, i was going to quarantine in nashville at the hotel and my security guy gets a call and they were, obviously, more comfortable with me leaving. so we had to call, you know -- of course, american airlines.

commercial airline was never going to happen. so we tried to charter a bunch of jets. a bunch of them fell through and then finally we got one and were able to get home. >> i'm wondering if, first of all, what your takeaway is if you've learned anything about the coronavirus since this horrible experience, and also just from looking at the small scene that we saw. it seemed pretty tight, and i saw people not wearing masks. were you at all concerned about -- at how close knit the room was given the fact that we're in the middle of a pandemic? >> well, the thing that was interesting. i was very, very sick in january, you know, with all the symptoms, as opposed to this time having no symptoms. in jrnanuary, i was really, reay sick. they kept saying it was an upper respiratory thing. i assumed i had it. we took our temperature every day and all the service wore mask and they had taken

one-third of the room out. so according to the health care department guidelines they had taken one-third of the room out. so you know, so this way you'd do a meet and greet. we didn't do any of that. i worked from the stage. so the thing i take away from this is how many people walking around not knowing that they are -- have the potential to expose people and really how ad hoc our approach is. one of the reasons people are getting sick is primarily there's no central edict. nobody tells you what to do. it varies from city to city. people are dying literally, and i never saw it more stark in my leadership from lack of leadership. you have to wear masks here. you don't here. this establishment can be opened here and this one can't. our approach is like a patchwork quilt, and it's one of the reasons that people are going to die and there is primarily no

centralized, nobody is telling anybody what to do. everybody is kind of running on their own. it's very ad hoc. >> there are other countries stl that have had clear mitigation techniques, and they're doing better than us. >> let's turn to the new book. we also have host of "politics nation" and president of the national action network, reverend al sharpton. also erin haynes, editor at large for the nineteenth, a nonprofit newsroom focused on the intersection of women and politics. >> d.l., i'm glad you're healthy. >> how are you dooring, rev? >> i'm doing good. >> you and i have talked about race for a couple of decades. when i saw the title of your book, obviously, it's going to jar a lot of people's attention. as we have had to deal with addressing hate in this country, particularly under this

administration, part of it, which you and i have talked about, is that we've got to not project hate ourselves to fight hate. we have to always be self-aware and correct a lot. 20, 25 years ago, a lot of stuff i would say, never was a hater, didn't say some of the things, but did say others and you've got to be able to be honest with yourself which makes you then the best person to come forward, as you are in this book, challenging others because you get those out of yourself. do you deal with a lot of that in the book? >> primarily what i look at is our -- my kind of vantage point. i don't think -- i think my obligation as an entertainer, as an author, as a comedian is to be truthful. i don't have -- all i can cell y tell you is what i see. when i say surrender white

peerg people, it's this notion of supremacy. my father, his father, his father's father, his father's father, father has felt the same fear and frustration i do. and so i think that the thing that i tried to do is -- people should dispel the notion that white supremacy isn't toxic and isn't pervasive and isn't destroying america. right now america is being destroyed because we decided that trump's personal appeal was to this notion of supremacy. even as recently as a couple of days ago. people are dying right now because they decided white supremacy was better than any other -- our economy is in shambles. our streets are on fire. people are dying, literally, of a pandemic and for some people, that's enough. my gig is to make people laugh

as much as i can but to be as honest as i can. but i think that honesty has a level of toxicity. that's not up to me. >> d.l., congratulations on the book. you are somebody that's been telling the truth about this country for a long time. and you started this book a year and a half ago trying to start a conversation on race. and so since you brought up white people, i want to ask you, we're seeing so many more white people than we saw at the beginning of the black lives movement in the streets joining us, a lot of black folks in protest on the street. i'm wondering just the idea that black lives matter now is becoming a more mainstream idea and that we're talking about reparations in a 2020 presidential cycle, something you also talk about in the book. what do you make of that and the prospects for us maybe having these old fights and a new day? >> i am hardened by just

watching the fact that young people of all races, of all hues and religions are really risking life, limb. i've watched people be beaten, shot with rubber bullets. people are bleeding for this idea that black lives matter. it's on the lips of people. nascar cares about black lives. the nba, the nfl. obviously, you would expect that, but just run of the mill people. even the latest polls show that 75% of americans are really realizing what we've been saying all the time. but in that, right now, i think there's always a dichotomy. like i talk about in the book. you'll have people right now who were appalled by what they saw with george floyd. the specter of him being executed on our streets. and they want something done about it. but they fight to keep the monuments of men who did far worse to black people. they are protecting andrew jackson. he killed thousands.

it's an interesting dichotomy to watch people want to watch things. i watch people talk about -- i watched this young conservative tell me how america's dream was a black woman -- a free black slave on a pancake box and america is more comfortable with america on a pancake box than a $20 bill. and the book is saying we need to let go of these notions that hold us back and make everything part of this grand experiment. we love america as much as everybody else but this should never be an asterisk next to our name. >> do we also need to make sure, d.l., that we resolve some of these, we're protecting our rights, since you have white premacy in this country, so that we must deal with continuing to let the demonstrations that all of us are in, young, black, old, white, but also have legislation that's enforceable because i may never be able to make somebody like me but i sure should be able to stop them from putting their knee on my neck for 8:46.

>> the fact we're having an argument about an archaic approach to policing. qualified immunity, i don't think anybody should have it. now you can have it. that's a misnomer. nobody should be able to choke somebody to death. this is more punitive than anything. i think we have to understand clearly that america has been badly unfair and to pretend like it isn't is one of the things that hold us back. in any other endeavor, they have to admit there is one and i'm certainly glad that america is seeing that. my job more than anything else is to make -- it's to look and laugh. to say what i see. your job as an activist and a civil rights leader takes on a different tone. for me, truth and kind of humor and irony are the only thing i'm primarily concerned about.

what i want to project. and through humor, people see themselves. and that's really, as unvarnished and as truthful and as honest as i can be about things. but i try to do comedically and in this book. >> the new book is "surrender, white people, our unconditional terms for peace." d.l. hughley, thanks for being on. that does it for us this morning. ayman mohyeldin picks up the coverage right now. >> hi there, everyone. i'm ayman mohyeldin in for stephanie ruhle. it's monday morning, july 6th. here are the facts at this hour. this morning, america is hoping for the best, but unfortunately, bracing for the worst amid new concerns that this weekend's fourth of july celebrations will lead to new spikes in cases of coronavirus. as of today, the country has seen roughly 2.9 million cases just under 131,000 americans have lost their lives so far.