good evening. i'm joy reid in new york. while most americans were staying home over the holiday

weekend, social distansing and finding unique ways to celebrate america's independence, like remembering the great tv painter bob ross or rereading frederick douglass' iconic essay, or getting into a tiny barbecue in the backyard. donald trump spent the weekend wallowing in dark warnings about the dangers of a new far left fascism that would wipe out the nation's values and culture. he barely mentioned the coronavirus that has killed roughly 130,000 americans. meaning the pandemic is the thing that threatens the country. why does it matter that trump doesn't care about coronavirus and consistently sends the mess ajit will just disappear or that americans just need to learn to live with it? because donald trump may not be the president of the entire country or want to be, but he's all but the king of his base,

and as he does, they tend to follow. thousands of people who packed beaches such as myrtle beach, south carolina, and clear water, florida, looking for a distraction, case in point. this comes as an exploding surge of cases is taking place in several states. confirmed cases are rising in 41 out of 50 states. plus the district of columbia. the percentage of tests coming back positive is increasing in 39 states. on saturday, texas health officials announced more than 8,000 new cases. florida hit a record number with more than 11,000. these numbers were the highest single day totals for both states. doctors in texas and arizona are warning that they are coming dangerously close to running out of icu beds. on saturday at the white house, president trump dismissed this surge. >> there were no tests for a new virus, but now we have tested

almost 40 million people. by so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless. >> and then trump spent the rest of his weekend golfing. behind the scene sources tell "the washington post" that trump wants to avoid the topic of the coronavirus because he views it as a political loser. and this white house officials hope americans will grow numb to the escalating death toll and just learn to accept tens of thousands of new cases a day. for more, i'm joined by atlanta mayor keisha lance bottoms, who moments ago announced that she too has tested positive for the coronavirus. i'm joined by former senator barbara boxer, and dr. badillia from boston university medical school. madame mayor, that was a dramatic announcement. i just retweeted it. please tell us when your

diagnosis came down, what do you think was the background behind it? because i assumed that you, as somebody who has presided over a city that's faced this virus down, were taking really serious precautions. >> i have been, joy. and thank you for having me. and i'm processing this, all of this. i just received my results. my husband literally has been sleeping since thursday, which is just not like him. so i decided that we should all get tested. again, we were tested about two weeks ago, we were all negative. and our results came back positive today. and it's a shock, because what i have seen with him is not out of the ordinary for seasonal allergies, which are just about year-round allergies in atlanta. it leaves me for a loss of words because i think it really speaks to how contagious this virus is,

and we have taken all of the precautions that you can possibly take. we wear masks, we're very thoughtful about washing our hands. i have no idea when and where we were exposed. >> how are you feeling, and how is your husband feeling? >> well, like i said, he's been sleeping a lot. that really has been the only unusual thing about him. i feel fine. i suffer from allergies, so aside from just a mild cough and a headache, it's been a lot going on in our city, so not to give you a headache, i've not had any symptoms, anything aside from the fact that my husband's been sleeping so much that would have made me think to even get tested. >> and dr. badillia, this is an important marker to show that even somebody with as much responsibility and who has done such a good job leading in this nightmarish pandemic can be

victimized by coronavirus. i'm noting in "the washington post" that african-americans, at least one in three know someone who has been diagnosed with the coronavirus. african-americans are much more like likely to know somebody that has been diagnosed with coronavirus and african-americans and latinos face the highest incidents of coronavirus cases. out of 10,000 people, it's 23 among white americans versus double that, 62 among black americans. 73 among latino americans. can you just speak to this for a moment? because it feels like in a lot of ways this horror is visiting communities of color, indigenous populations as well, just so much harder. >> that's right, joy. thanks for having me. mayor bottoms, my best wishes for your speedy recovery and for your family. "the new york times" article today was released gave a more

complete information about the distribution and burden of this disease. among different minorities in our country. what they found is hispanics and african-americans are three times as likely to get infected and two times as likely to die from this disease. you and i, when we last talked about this, i said pandemic attack is the fault line. they prey on those that we leave out in the dark and don't protect. the story that "the new york times" piece talked about today, 40% of african-americans and hispanic americans are part of the service industry, that are frontlines that can't work from home. many of the jobs didn't have the personal protective equipment or weren't protected as well as they should have been and forced out more quickly before we were ready to provide that kind of protection. you also have -- there's no biological basis that we have discovered that explains it.

it is access to care, it is co-morbidity, but the huge part is that minority populations are getting infected, have greater opportunity of getting infected because of where they are, where they live, and their access to health care. >> you know, barbara boxer, former senator, it strikes me that president trump is delivering this message that don't worry about this, just don't care about it, to a base that is 90% white. that is who his base is, he has a strong base among white voters without a college degree. and that's pretty much who his base is. and so when he's delivering a message saying don't care about this, and they just see all these videos of people who look like members of his base, walking into stores and refusing to wear a mask, refusing to be inside, going to beaches, yelling and screaming at reporters who try to talk to them and being belligerent about the idea that they're not going to do a darn thing to stop this

virus from spreading, that is really felt and read within communities of color in a particular way, saying we don't care that you all are the ones dying. when you see the mayor of atlanta is now facing this, it is -- i guess it just brings it home even more. your thoughts on this? >> my first thought is, mayor, we need you badly out there, so get well and i wish you nothing but a quick recovery, you and your husband. listen, president trump every day is nurturing his base. and that base is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. and joy, even though we all know who has taken the brunt of this, and there's so many reasons and we know somewhat they are, people have to go to work every day who don't have the ability to work from home, people who have underlying conditions, they don't have good health care, all this adds up. i have news for president trump. he's killing off some of his base, too.

believe me, i have seen case after case, we know that this is happening. it's happening even in his own circle where they are getting sick. and for this president to say oh, 99% is nothing, this is nothing. this is nothing. it belies the fact more people in america of every background have died of this coronavirus than we lost in three wars. really. vietnam, afghanistan, iraq. and those wars brought our country to its knees. because we hurt so much for the people who were losing their loved ones. this man is delusional. he is dangerous. and i want to put it in the most stark terms, and that is he's really killing us, because remember when he was peddling these drugs that can't work, and then he said inject yourself with chlorine and a couple of his people did it, one died actually.

and everything he's doing, the whole mask fiasco, this is our only prevention as the doctor will tell us at the moment. and i'll just bring it -- i'll close with this. i think a lot about the aids crisis, because i was a young woman and i was in the house and i represented san francisco in those years. and i have to say a word that was embarrassing, and it was condoms. i had to say to save your life, use a condom. it was hard. i said it. somewhat is so hard about saying wear a mask? >> yeah. >> because it's the only prevention we have. so he's killing people. and that's a fact. >> you know, doctor, that is a good point. i've had friends who are hiv positive who made this point, that it reminds them as well of ronald reagan refusing to speak to the aids crisis in the early days, because it was affecting a particular community that was not his community, his

constituency. suspe isn't it true that president trump is wrong about this? he's almost making it sound if you are a white christian conservative you can't get coronavirus, that this is only affecting black and brown and indigenous people, so his base doesn't need to worry about it. that is not true. is that true? is there something about black and brown and indigenous people that make them more likely to get this? >> nope. aside from structural racism and back of ability to access -- less opportunity to access good quality health care, there is nothing different. and you can say that there's an intersection between economic inequality and health inequality, that this virus takes advantage of. and in that way, it doesn't see what color it is. and as senator boxer just said, we have over 130,000 americans who are dead from this disease, of every community, of every stripe. and what we know is that if we

started wearing masks today, 95% of us started wearing masks today, we would save about 3300 fellow americans between now and october alone of every community. when you don't follow the public health measure, it's the people you live around, your neighbors, your family members, your friends most likely to be at risk. not somebody in a community far away that you don't identify, but people in your communities that get sick. >> mayor bottoms, talk us through how you then go on continuing leading your city. obviously, you have a lot on your plate. you just gave a very moving presentation with a family of a young child who was killed. we still have gun violence in this country that is still happening. you're still dealing with that in your community. so just walk us through how you go forward. also dealing with this with yourself and your husband and your family. >> joy, like so many people, i

immediately began doing the necessary thing, i even reached out to the family to let them know, because i was with them yesterday. and i will be in one place in my home office for the next two weeks, and praying that the rest of my family is healthy. i talk about my kids and so forth, they of course are a concern. i was even with my mother on yesterday. and so, i mean, this is startling for me. because we've been so very careful. but certainly we are not immune, and, again, this is just a lesson to everyone that you have to take every single symptom seriously, and as i see this

growing list of symptoms, you can't assume it's just seasonal allergies. you can't assume a mild cough are seasonal allergies. we all need to be tested. and in my case, tested regularly. this is probably my second test within a month. i was tested right after the funeral of rayshard brooks, because i was in a large crowd, and then tested again and now i've tested positive. >> and can you just talk about the availability of testing? that was a big problem in the early days of this pandemic. but it was not that easy to get a test. i can remember being here in new york and not figuring out how to get a test and being in the dmv area and not figuring it out to get a test. even though we had a colleague here that passed here at nbc. so having been near that person, that didn't make it easy enough to get a test. how easy is it right now, in the city of atlanta, to get tested, if you're not mayor keisha lance

bottoms? >> well, you can get the testing. the challenge is the results. i had a test sh th-- this is myd test. i had a test last monday that i haven't gotten the results back from, because there's such a backlog. so we have testing sites set up, but an important part of managing covid-19 and containing covid-19 is the contact tracing. so in my situation, i got a test last monday, just a routine test, because i said i would start getting tested regularly. and i was out yesterday doing a press conference with 50 family members and press and my test came back, i was able to get a rapid test today. and so we have to do better if we are going to get to the other side of covid-19. we keep making the same mistakes

over and over again. and this is why we keep getting the same results over and over again. this is why the numbers are going up so high. >> doctor, that is what it feels like, that we have been locked in this vicious cycle of testing not being available, the president and some governors refusing to take seriously the threat of coronavirus. then people get sick. then people reopen. it's a cycle that doesn't seem to be ending. i don't see how this ends. no one is safe from this obviously, from what the mayor is going through right now. i don't see an end to it, because in her state, the governor is acting in contravention to what she's doing to try to keep her city safe. how does it end? >> it is so frustrating to see this, because you're seeing it play out, and at some point numbers don't make sense to the human brain when you talk about the number of people infected.

if we let the flood gates open, the number of people, some areas want to let everybody live their lives. we're not going to achieve herd immunity, because not enough of us have gotten sick to achieve that. so we're just pushing our health system to the -- this level, this level of being overwhelmed. one way that i saw the former cdc director this weekend comment on the fact that one way that we can talk about getting together, you know, among states is the consortium among states and governors, bipartisan states and governors and coming up with a strategy. what happens in sunbelt states affect us here in the northeast. when you guys run out of -- when you have a large demand for a test down there, mayor bottoms, the regents are part of the same pool we pool from, so we start feeling shortages. we need to have a national strategy, and it doesn't seem like the federal government is

willing to do that. so we need a consortium with governors and local politicians. >> or cities. this is insane. this is a modern country in the 21st century, and we can't get ourselves together to have a national strategy to make sure that we rein in coronavirus. new york managed to do it, and no other state learned from it hardly ever. this is really insane, that we are in this place. and you have to have a national strategy to make it work. mayor keisha lance bottoms, we wish you and your family well. please get well soon and keep us posted. thank you for taking the time, particularly given the circumstances to be here tonight. and doctor, former senator barbara boxer, thank you very much, stay safe. coming up, two things have not changed. one, russia is still actively trying to enter veer in our demock aty. and two, president trump is ignoring the threat hoping they help him. and trump continues to campaign

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do you think that this was a single attempt by the russians to get involved in our election or did you find evidence to suggest they'll try to do this again? >> it wasn't a single attempt. they're doing it as we sit here, and they expect to do it during the next campaign. >> that dire warning from robert mueller should have put the u.s. government on full alert. instead, the trump administration and congressional republicans have seemed to shrug off the fact that having succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in 2016, russia has put the 2020 election in their cross hairs. in an ominous new report in "the atlantic," they write that russia's interference in 2016 might be remembered as the experimental prelude that foreshadowed the attack of 2020. he reports that when it comes to our election security, many of

the warnings have gone unheeded, and what fortifications have been built appear inadequate. that's in large part thanks to president trump, who has not just ignored russian interference, but hostile to even hearing about it. even as russia's behavior has only gotten worse, including putting cash bounties on american troops. as "the new york times" reported last year, any discussion of russia is not a good subject and should be kept below trump's level. the times reported that trump berated his former director of national intelligence for allowing congress to be told that russia favors his re-election. needless to say, it's a disturbing pattern that leaves us more vulnerable. you would hate to think by design. he concludes his piece, a democracy can't defend itself if it can't describe the attacks dwe against it. i'm joined by congressman

swalwell, and malcolm nance, author of "the plot to betray america." i'm going to start with you, malcolm, and then go to the congressman, because you and i have been -- we're now in year five of this conversation about russian interference in the election of 2016. what he's describing in his piece is that almost seems like a test for what they are going to try to do or can do if they wanted to do in 2020. how worried are you, given how right you were about the threat in 2016, about that threat in 2020? >> well, i'm extremely worried, and i was so worried i wrote an entire book about it two years ago. and we've been discussing this on msnbc, as you said, going full-time four years.

the thing about russia, as a strategic adversary against the united states, is that they are going to always test the boundaries of what we think our defenses are, and what their offensive capabilities are, and in this case, using asymmetric warfare, or active measures. that is going out and doing a direct attack on american democracy. and then, of course, you step back and you watch to see what the response from your opponent is. the response from the united states has been this -- we approve of what you do. we're not going to do anything of what -- punish you for anything you've done. and if, in fact, you do it again, and it is in my benefit, as the mueller report said about the trump campaign, we will even assist you and call for your interference. that, of course, doesn't -- you know, for anyone who is in the intelligence community on the opponent's side, it's a whistle

that allows for them to do anything that they want, knowing there will be no consequence if their preferred candidate donald trump is elected, which leaves us wholly and utterly defenseless except for maybe a few elements at the national security agency, the cia, and department of homeland security. but the rest of the nation, they're on their own. >> you know, the problem i think, representative swalwell, it's not just trump. mitch mcconnell, that nickname moscow mitch, he too seems to look around and go, russia, what's that? when he's presented with an opportunity to put a bill on the floor to protect our elections, he won't do that. and we know that russia looked below the presidential line and thought, well, maybe those people could use some assistance, too. the reality is, the republican party overall doesn't seem interested in doing anything about this. i'm going to read a little about from the article, he writes, the

russians have learned much about american weaknesses. they are now more capable of mayhem on election day. even the tiniest hint of interference could undermine faith in the tally of the vote. so it's not just what they do, but what people think they're going to do. i think one of the big worries is that will suppress the vote. people will think my vote isn't going to count. i shouldn't bother. that is a big fear. because people want to vote. what is the democratic party doing to ensure that not only is the election safe, but people feel it's safe and they feel confident in going out and voting? >> thank you, joy. nice to see you, malcolm. first and foremost, it's overwhelm the ballot box on issues people care about, especially health care. but a submarine mission at the courts and county registrar's office to make sure we're preventing suppression, making

sure they have hardened election security systems. you pointed it out, if we are talking about suppression of the vote, that actually has the affect of suppressing the vote, and the republicans know that. now, russia, as that article points out, look at our elections like an open speedway. there's no stop sign, no stop light and not many cops on the beat right now. what we are trying to do in the hero's act and the covid relief packages that we passed is to have the republicans welcome the election security funding that we're putting in place, allowing people to vote from home, having an increase in the election security protections that we passed in the house, that states could apply for. joy, what's so certaining, they have on the senate side, stripped those out of relief packages, and just last week, we wrote a duty to report, saying if you are an agent of a form power, you have to tell the fbi or the same for a social media company, and senator rubio took

that out of the intelligence bill. so that's what we're up against right now. >> malcolm, that's the problem. if republicans are open to it, as open as president trump is, it's very difficult to do anything about it. so what can americans do to make sure their ballot is secure to the extent they can? >> well, first, the single most important thing you can do is to actually vote. and if possible, vote ahead of time, try to get an absentee ballot, try to get a provisional ballot, anything other than waiting for the collapse to happen. believe me, the trouble is not going to be russian hackers who come in there and they change your voting machine. even though they may experiment with that. we don't know. it's going to be at the state level. and i had trouble in 2016 with the secretary of state of florida, who swore and insisted and complained when i said they had been probed by russian intelligence. low and behold, a year later, they were more than probed.

they were checked out, voter registration databases could have been affected. this year, what we can do, of course, is you have to blow out the margins. they have to get so many people to come out to vote that whatever machinations that they do, can be seen as won't affect the vote. >> yeah. and there is reporting that the biden campaign is prepared to fight it to the bitter end in case it's close. but i think the point that you are making is don't make it close if you want the election to be legitimate. there was a strange thing that appeared on social media over the last couple of days, over the july fourth weekend. and it was michael flynn. i think we have it, him appearing to take the qanon pledge. he's standing there, they do a pledge that sounds like a standard pledge if you were taking office, and in the end, it was the statement that's appeared a lot, his lawyer is saying that's not what he was doing.

but let's play this real quick. >> so help me god. where we go one, we go all. god bless america. >> okay. so he recently also added a qanon hash tag to his bio, and started writing an internet column. this guy used to be the head of the defense intelligence agency. what is going on with this man? >> you know, a few years ago, when he wrote his book about a vast global conspiracy that was pit against the united states, that was made up of venezuela, north korea, iran, isis, al qaeda and russia, we all in the intelligence community thought it's good he's gone, because that's nutty. michael flynn is over the edge.

that pledge, that whole where we go one, where we go all, that is a conspiracy theory that the fbi has called a threat to the national security of the united states. i know, going through this whole trial, him confessing to the crimes he confessed to, trying to reengineer a way out of it, has put the zap on his head. i will tell you, he's lost it. he cannot stand now in any platform with any decency without people thinking he's crazy, because it appears he is. >> i do want to ask eric swalwell, but it appears that about half a dozen republican congressional candidates running in november ares a qanon people. how exciting are you about serving with those folks? >> i'm going to work like hell to make sure they never see congress. let's just take general flynn at his word. that's a better allegiance

pledge than when he gave to russia asking them to go easy on us. so his allegiances are shifting from where they were, which was towards russia after the 2016 election. >> all right. nobody is mincing words tonight. everybody is open with their opinions. thank you both very much. still ahead, joe biden's moat critical constituency and the roll they might play in the search for his perfect running mate. stay with us. search for his perg mate stay with us new microban 24 watch as microban 24 kills 99.9% of bacteria... and then, even after multiple touches, keeps killing bacteria for 24 hours. i trust microban 24 to keep killing bacteria for 24-hours. hey frank, our worker's comp insurance is expiring, should we just renew it? yeah, sure. hey there, small

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welcome back. that was from the bitdden campan back in february. leading that surge were black women voters, and they could well be the key to a biden victory in november. in "the washington post," black women are not just the country's most consistent voters, they could be among the most coveted. black women are only 7% of the population but vote at higher rates than other groups. so they're also the democratic

party's most loyal voters. how much will the biden campaign factor this in, and if he wins, formulating policy? this book is out today. congratulations on the new book. so erin, your piece was excellent. congratulations on that. but you talk not just about black women lining up behind the democratic candidate, which is what tends to happen in democratic elections, but also talking about wanting power to flow from that, that black women voters want more than just to show up on election day. talk a little more about that. >> thank you so much for having me, joy. thanks for feature thing story, which is the culmination of three years of work that i've been doing since the 2016 election, around the value of the black women who organized

the vote and run for office, because they are the perfecters of this democracy as we know. look, black women have long foreseen the national reckoning that we now find ourselves in, the political and racialized climate we now find ourselves in. and the systematic racism that's been laid bare by the dual pandemics of coronavirus and race that we now see ourselves in. so that brings us to this primary, where black women showed up and showed out at the polls in record numbers in many states. and looking ahead to november, they are galvanized and energized. i talked to a voter who said in the story, that black women lose sleep at night over injustice. that's true of a lot of the black women voters i talk to. black women, as latasha brown told me, are the caregivers of our democracy. that was true even before we were free and before we could vote. so i think looking ahead to the centennial of the 19th amendment, which is this year,

and what my newsroom is named for, black women are asking to be valued, not just for their output, but for their input long before the election happens. and also when it comes time to govern. >> tiffany, i note that the mayor of atlanta now having tested positive for the coronavirus, she and her husband, "the washington post" had noted that one in three african-americans know someone who has died from coronavirus, or at least has been diagnosed with coronavirus. i know somebody who died from coronavirus. so i wonder if, in a moment like this where we're seeing that even some of our most powerful women, somebody who has talked about as a potential vp, are also vulnerable to this. how is that going to impact the way black women voters think going into november? >> first of all, i want to say my best wishes and for a speedy recovery to mayor keisha lance bottoms. and i certainly don't want to put undue pressure on her,

because i hope she takes the time to get well. but i predict that she will go on and show up and work every day, even through battling this illness. even through dealing with children getting shot over the weekend. even through a white supremacist in the white house. she will continue to lead, organize, campaign for joe biden, because that is the spirit of black women. and so i think what this highlights is that, as we deal with the fallout of covid-19, as we deal with gop voter led suppression, that black women are going to have to leapfrog over the huge issues that can suppression or oppress the vote and suppress the vote and oppress black lives. so i don't doubt that black women will still show up, but we are asking to make our job easier, and so i think we need to take seriously the impact of covid-19 what it's going to have on voting. we need to take seriously the threats that foreign

adversaries, that we face at the election booth. and we need to take seriously voter suppression. so with this combination, i predict a lot of challenges in november. but coming from the lineage that we come from, i do not think that will be enough to stop the will of the people specifically this that erin wrote so beautifully about. >> you were one of seven women who signed an op-ed, that was also read in the washingt"the w pos post", about joe biden needing to pick a black woman vp. there are a lot of other very popular politicians that are also being considered. do you think that as this -- as we get closer to election day, that that still becomes a top priority for black women over donald trump simply not being president of the united states anymore? >> it's not really -- when we wrote that op-ed, it's not really about appealing to black women. black women show up, we do what needs to be done. but when you have a democratic

party and a democratic candidate who sometimes seems to want to appeal to these mythical swing voters the media seems to be obsessed with, or to these obama-trump voters, we are simply saying, make our jobs easier, because while you're talking to red state voters, we're talking to the people on the block, we're talking to the streets. and the streets have been speaking for themselves, demanding what they want finally at a time where we sit at the epicenter of political power. so it's not necessarily good enough to have a black woman running mate, if she's not willing to adopt an agenda that addresses so many of the needs in the black community that's what the biden campaign should focus on. they've laid out policies where people are putting it all on the line, black people are saying, look, this ask what we want and demand, and i think some of joe biden's policies venture towards the middle of the road. that is how you become political road kill. so we're saying it's not the time to make the safe move or a

move that might appeal to these maga voters. this is the time to go hard or go home. go hard in the paint and pick somebody who can inspire people, who can excite people about this ticket. and i think that's what people want. i said over the weekend, a lot of people have an obama hangover. and i just -- i don't think that people look at obama as their ceiling, they look at him as their floor. they're ready to aim higher. so i would encourage the campaign, don't make the safe choice, go dance with the ones that resurrected your campaign, and this is overwhelmingly black women. >> you know, erin, i wonder if when you're talking to black women voters, the climate that we're in, that has become with exacerbated, very overt and obvious hate, that's the thing now, you had in oregon state a police trooper who appeared to throw the white power sign during a black lives matter rally, where there was an

anti-black lives matter protester on the side of this black lives matter rally. he gives a pound to this member of the proud boys, who we know are a white nationalist group and also anti-woman group. the state police cleared the trooper, saying that he made the gesture when he was checking on a man who had been knocked to the ground, and was just checking to make sure the man was "okay." we have that, and you have b donald trump attacking bubba wallace. how much does this hate factor into the votes that black women are going to cast in november? >> it's going to be a huge factor. even before this pandemic happened, the dual pandemics of racism and coronavirus, black women were telling me that racism was on the ballot in 2020. racism, the economy, health care, in some order, those are usually the top three issues for black women. they are certainly seeing racism on full display headed into the 2020 election.

and they -- that is something that black women want to push back on, and to use their care giving role, that the vote is an extension of that for so many of them. and so i think that what we can expect to see is as this -- as these protests go on, you see black women at the forefront of these protests, you see black women mayors on the frontlines of this coronavirus fight. you see people like stacey abrams on the frontlines against voter suppression. the idea of a black woman in the number two slot in that historic -- potentially historic role is more than symbolic. black women's leadership is proven. and it's something that many voters that i talked to say is needed in this moment, because black women are solutions oriented and are ready,ing with to do the work. >> i thank you for writing. i hope everybody will check out your story.

thank you both. i notice that erin has tiffany's book in the back. i have a copy of tiffany's book here. let's show this. the only person -- oh, i was going to say the only person not displaying the book -- now we're all in accord. thank you all very much. up next, the future of travel in the age of coronavirus. back after this. of n the age coronavirus. back after this. -that's how a home and auto bundle is made.

[ chuckles ] so, what are some key takeaways from this commercial? did any of you hear the "bundle your home and auto" part? -i like that, just not when it comes out of her mouth. -yeah, as a mother, i wouldn't want my kids to see that. -good mom. -to see -- wait. i'm sorry. what? -don't kids see enough violence as it is? -i've seen violence. -maybe we turn the word "bundle" into a character, like mr. bundles. -top o' the bundle to you. [ laughter ] bundle, bundle, bundle. -my kids would love that. -yeah.

welcome back. the beginning of july is typically one of the busiest times for travel, but this year with the pandemic still out of control, most of us are staying home. nbc news correspondent sarah harmon has a look at how international travel is changing. >> reporter: u.s. flights are taking off again. but few are headed overseas. after the e.u. extended a travel ban barring u.s. tourists and dealing a major blow to u.s. carriers, which typically earn far more on lucrative international routes than domestic ones.

the skies are increasingly busy. but on the water, the outlook is less clear. the once booming $45 billion cruise industry is now fighting for its very survival. major cruise lines have voluntarily suspended u.s. operations until mid-september, canceling ocean cruises through fall. but in europe the first handful of river cruises are cautiously resuming. this five-day cruise down germany's rhine and mosul rivers are only operating at 70% capacity. boarding is a lengthy process. first there is paperwork. >> have you had covid? no. >> reporter: an antibody test. a and a temperature check, all before you set foot on the ship. meals look different too. >> so this entire area, this would have been the buffet but

it's completely off limits. >> reporter: plastic dividers keep diners apart. and floor markings keep them moving in one direction. up here on the deck, passengers have a bit more freedom. they can even take off their masks as long as they stay at least six feet from their neighbor. still, there's no live music, no spa, and the swimming pool it off limits. >> was it hard to wear the mask? >> yes. the whole time. >> reporter: with all the restrictions, it may not feel like a vacation. >> what'd you guys do? >> we had some dinner and some cocktails of course. >> reporter: for americans, if and when cruises come back, they might look a lot like this one, fewer passengers, closer to home, with limited activities and excursions. after months of lockdown, operators will be hoping that stringent hygiene protocols combined with simple pleasures will be enough to convince weary customers to return. >> nbc's sarah harmon reporting.

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welcome back. well, donald trump spent much of his fourth of july weekend testing his campaign message to his political base. on his red, white, and crazy independence day weekend. and if what we saw around the country this weekend is any indication that crazy is