over the weekend we saw in a pair of speeches, he certainly leaned in had on some of these racial grievances, sort of these divisive rhetoric. and, you know, he defended monuments, among them confederate monuments. so this is clearly a cultural issue that he wants to fight upon and flames he wants to stoke. but attempting to do so, his advisers thought, for him in a somewhat subtle way we can make judgment on that. there's nothing subtle about this tweet willie, to the frustration of the white house hoping to spend the week talking about the economy. the mexican president is coming in, they wanted him to renew attacks on joe biden with links to china. but now the republicans have to answer for this tweet. we saw the white house press secretary unable to take a position or unwilling to take a position as to whether the

president of the united states thought the confederate flag was okay. that can't be overstated. she didn't touch that issue, didn't come out and denounce it. and another tweet saw the president weigh in about the nicknames of washington's football team, the cleveland inians in baseball and took a shot at senator elizabeth warren while doing so. this is a fight the president wants, even though a lot of people around him and most people in his own party don't. as you say his chief of staff mark meadows was on morning television moments before the tweet of bubba wallace saying we're looking at the economy, china and joe biden. then comes the tweet. we'll dig deeper into everything the president was saying yesterday but more importantly cases of the coronavirus continue to surge nationwide. so far the united states has confirmed nearly 3 million cases, at least 131,000 deaths. the seven day averages in a dozen states have hit new highs

with the u.s. adding nearly 300,000 cases in the first week of july. fears are growing over the rising number of hospitalizations across states, like florida, texas and arizona, hospitals are reporting they're at capacity or almost there. yesterday morning arizona announced 89% of the state's icu beds are full. dr. fauci warned that the united states is still experiencing the first wave of this pandemic, he spoke yesterday during a live stream interview with the director of the national institutes of health. >> the current state is really not good in the sense that, as you know, we have been in a situation where we're averaging about 20,000 new cases a day, two days ago it was at 57,500 so within a period of a week and a half we've almost doubled the number of cases. so in answer to your first question, we are still knee deep

in the first wave of this. and i would say this would not be considered a wave. it was a surge or resurgence of infections superimposed upon a baseline that never got down to where we wanted to go. >> let's bring in dr. vin gupta, a pulmonologist who has treated critically ill coronavirus patients in washington state and also a nbc news contributor. this is something that dr. fauci has been saying for a long time, this is not a second wave, it didn't go away and now comes back. this is the way he laid it out, the way dr. birx laid it out, the way you've been telling us it's going to take place for about three or four months now. where are we now in the phases of this pandemic? >> morning, willie. always good to see you. hospitalizations are rising at a concerning rate nationwide. so we're seeing models from the

cdc website we're from 1,000 to 15,000 new hospitalizations every single day by the end of this month. that's deeply concerning. what i'm really concerned about are my friends and colleagues in arizona who are fighting in icus to keep patients alive without the support of military or national guard forces to bolster icu capacity. at least the governor has activated the national guard in some degree. in texas and florida -- florida and georgia specifically you've seen the national guard activated to quell protest but not bolster icu capabilities. we're dealing with a surge here in washington state because of eastern washington, some of the native american tribes, it's not easy to say we need more dialysis nurses, more icu docs and nurses. you can't do that. you need to plan ahead. we're not seeing that especially

in states like florida and texas and people are going to die. >> dr. gupta, the president as you know and others have touted the low death rate in this country. if you look at it, the deaths are down in terms of the pace they have been accelerated over the past few months. we had the doctor on yesterday at this time saying deaths were a lagging indicator but we're learning that doctors like you have learned how to treat coronavirus patients better. what do you read into the death rate in this country? >> i appreciate that, willie. as was mentioned, in march i didn't know how to save a patient's life on a ventilator with covid-19 as well as i do now, as well as my colleagues do now. i know if you're young -- if you're old, you come in and need a vent, you probably need to be on a blood thinner, i probably need to give you steroids at high dozes. i didn't know that a few months ago and then you need to be put on your belly, we call it prone

position. these are interventions that have allowed us to save more lives amongst those critically ill. so yes, treatments are better. we know with testing we're testing and finding more individuals are younger. we're seeing the median age of individuals drop from 65 to 35 in florida. that means you still see people end up in the icu, whether you're young or old but they're more likely to survive covid-19. doesn't mean they're going to have harmful effects of it. i've seen people as young as 20 have strokes. so the president's messaging on harmful, versus harmless, deeply damaging to the cause here. we're seeing deaths happening likely from infections that occurred a month ago. it's the case that some individuals come down with covid-19 and then immediately die. but majority of cases you're seeing it takes a while.

i have patients that are on ventilators for 45 days before they present one way or the other, either they're going to make it or not. so that lagging indicator piece is also critical. >> psychologically i think as you and i have discussed a lot of people in the country saw the crisis in the beginning in march and april in new york city, the explosion of cases, deaths, the overrun of icus and emergency rooms and saw the numbers come down and perhaps were lulled into a false sense of security. where are we now in terms of states that have rolled back? who have said we're going to open our businesses and now florida, arizona, texas, georgia, tennessee are saying we need to pull back a little bit? where do you want us to be in terms of those kind of regulations? should we have mandated masking in america, for example? what should the country be doing to stem the outbreak we're seeing right now? >> ideally the president should be messaging right now, but

every governor should be enforcing masks. i'm worried if we say let's do a national mandate on masks, who's going to enforce it? the lone security guard? it's a dangerous situation because masks have become political. we need enforcement. something like if you don't wear it you're going to be fined, like indoor smoking that's controlled people's behavior, that's number one. i love what governor murphy and mayor de blasio have done, they stopped indoor dining. we know transmission rates increase 20 times relative to indoor dining. just the lack of ventilation, the fact we think there's some degree of airborne transmission with covid-19 in confined spaces. every state, zip code in the country needs to rethink indoor dining for the time being. again, i'm a reservist icu doc

for the air force we get taught how to put up hospital capability quickly, governor desantis in florida, governor abbott in texas, you need to deploy any assets you have available up to and including your national guard. president trump needs to stop politicizing deployment of the military and needs to think about utilizing military forces as well. >> alicia menendez has a question for you, doctor. >> dr. gupta, when you and i started talking about this months ago, the thinking was we were going to see the numbers rise and then see them drop during the summer, rise again in the fall, which is why i keep coming back to something that dr. fauci said in the live stream, a resurgence of infections superimposed on a baseline that never got down where we wanted it to go. what do the numbers we're seeing now mean for the numbers we can expect to see in the fall. >> good to see you.

unfortunately, i think there was a hope that because of warm weather and humidity that we would decrease transmission of covid-19 that was the hope. what we're seeing out of rio de janeiro, the southwest, warm weather isn't doing a thing unfortunately. you may have heard the infection rate epidemiologists like to talk about, get it below one we can do contact tracing, get back to test cases, we can get back to normal life, we never got there. we're seeing infection rates of three and higher in cities in texas and florida. it's not going to go away with the fall wave then we have to deal with flu. i'm worried the fall resurgence is going to look like a catastrophe if we don't get testing on board. but i think we'll get great point of care testing, so it

won't be cost prohibitive for school districts employers. there's new knowledge about immunity. there's a different path way to immunity, called t cell immunity and there's great studies suggesting if you had a negative antibody but exposed to covid-19 this other track of immunity in your body is kicking in this, so maybe there's greater underlying immunity to covid-19 than we think. i'm hoping that's the case to help safeguard us against a worse fall wave. >> dr. vin gupta, up early again with us this morning on the west coast to guide us through this. we appreciate it. thanks so much. as the virus rages across the country, as you heard, president trump is digging in on his campaign of racial resentment. after railing against the

movements for social justice in two speeches over the fourth of july weekend yesterday he amplified that in two tweets asking when bubba wallace would apologize for the noose found in his garage, suggesting nascar made a bad decision banning the confederate flag. he referred to the coronavirus as the china virus. suggested the increase in crime in new york and chicago are due to the citis' immigrants. and accused sports teams of rethinking names of giving into political correctness. robert costa posted this, many are eager to turn to biden and china, very little appetite for the continued focus on race but the president insists on driving his own message the adviser says. now more specifically on the president's tweet asking if nascar driver bubba wallace has apologized to those who stood by his side after his team

discovered a noose in his garage stall on june 21st, calling the incident a hoax. nascar had notified wallace of the rope hanging in his stall and an fbi investigation then concluded no hate crime was committed. the noose found in the garage had been there since october of last year, long before the stall was assigned to bubba wallace. wallace, who is the only full-time black driver in nascar's top racing series, led the push for the sport to ban the confederate symbols at its tracks and received a flood of support from his fellow drivers after the rope was found. in a statement yesterday nascar said it, quote, continues to stand tall with bubba. wallace tweeted yesterday afternoon addressing, quote, to the next generation and little ones following my footsteps, quote, always deal with hate being thrown at you with love. love over hate every day.

love should come naturally as people are taught to hate, even when it's hate from the president of the united states. white house press secretary kayleigh mcenany was asked by reporters in the briefing room about president trump's nascar tweet yesterday and specifically about the confederate flag. here's how she defended the president. >> why is the president so supportive of flying the confederate flag? >> so i think you're referring to a tweet this morning is that right? >> right. >> i think you're mischaracterizing the tweet? >> nascar saw bad ratings because they banned the confederate flag. does he believe nascar should fly the confederate flag? >> the point of the tweet was to note the incident, the alleged hate crime that was not, in fact, a hate crime. >> what is the president's position, does he think nascar made a mistake banning the confederate flag? >> i spoke to him this morning about this, he said he was not making a judgment one way or the other, the intent of the tweet was to stand up for the men and women of nascar and the fans and

those who have gone in this rush to judgment of the media to call something a hate crime when the fbi report concluded this was not an intentional racist act. >> does he think it was a mistake for nascar to ban it. >> the president said he wasn't making a judgment one way or the other. >> why is the president suggesting that mr. wallace should apologize? >> the fbi concluded this was not a hate crime and he believes it would go a long way if bubba came out and acknowledged that as well. >> shana thomas, that's an extraordinary moment at the white house. the press secretary stood there and could not answer the question about whether or not the president supports the confederate flag. and she sort of spun out of control trying to explain some context around it. nascar has supported bubba wallace, i will say again we saw the images a couple weeks ago at the track, bubba wallace has been clear about what he found,

we saw a photograph of it. the fbi said it was not a hate crime and it was not directed at him, that's great news. if you can't answer a question about the confederate flag from the white house, what are we doing? >> it's -- the reason why i was smiling when you came to me is because it is almost laughable. it looked like a "saturday night live" sketch if it was on the air. they don't need to be on the air because we are doing this at the white house. the question about the confederate flag to the white house press secretary is a gimme question. it's a gimme question to support nascar in trying to be more inclusive. it's a gimme question to say mississippi did what they needed to do and to have to torture yourself as you try to figure out how to answer pretty simple questions from the white house press corps, it seems like we're living in an alternate universe. i was reading a washington post story and they talked to lindsey graham about this.

lindsey graham said i'm from south carolina and what i learned is if you fly the confederate flag -- this isn't an exact quote -- but if you fly the confederate flag that's not good for business. i don't think being able to -- i don't think that if you can't actually say you know what, the confederate flag is a symbol of hate for a lot of people in this country and probably it's time for it to come down, if you can't even be that wishy-washy about it, and lindsey graham knows that the confederate flag is bad for business, the confederate flag is bad for growing your base also. it still comes back to the election, it comes back to 2020. and in her tortured response the way i got that is i don't want to alienate anyone right now. but you're not bringing anyone into your corner if that is how you have to answer those questions from peter alexander

and jonathan carl. >> the president got a great jobs number, the country got a great jobs number on thursday, 4.8 million jobs added. he's been touting that number. mark meadows and others around would like him to focus in on that, on the economy getting better, not where it should be, of course, but getting better and yet the president comes out and steps all over any messaging the white house planned. this is a pattern we've seen many times before, by tweeting against bubba wallace and getting to the right of nascar and the confederate flag, to the right of the state of mississippi on the confederate flag. what is his play here exactly? >> this is his only play and this is something we discuss over and over again throughout the first term here of his presidency, where republicans and even people close to the president who have his best interests at heart want him to discuss his successes that can grow his base, that everybody can be a part of.

a growing economy. we went through this in a 2018 midterm campaign where the economy was booming and republicans close to the president, on capitol hill, were begging the president to talk about the economy, a success for him and the country that people could feel good about that could make people feel good about his leadership and the president instead is much more comfortable discussing cultural politics and prosecuting a culture war because he believes that it bucks up his base, squeezes out every ounce of support he can get from people inclined to support him and his party if they show up at the polls. it's where he's a more comfortable politician. it's a message that he feels, i think, more interested in. he feels better about. so as we head into this next election we're seeing the same thing and i don't expect it to change. obviously what republicans would like is for the president not to just focus on the economy

because it's something that could be unifying but because when you look at polling, it's the one area he still gets positive marks, he's not under water. he has issues with the pandemic, coronavirus, anyway you ask the question. when you ask about his handling of the economy, even though we're in a pandemic induced recession, he still gets positive marks and china is another issue if messaged properly where the president has a record that he could fall back on. he's been willing to go to war with china on trade, maybe it hasn't turned out so well but he's been authentic and consistent there. but the president instead prefers to talk about the things we've seen over the past few days and that's what we're going to continue to see regardless so republicans better fasten their seat belts and get used to it. >> it's obviously his instinct to go in this direction. jonathan lemire this is a pattern we've seen many times

over the course of this administration. interesting to hear you as someone who covers the white house walk us through how this works. they have a meeting, they say mark meadows you're going on tv you're going to talk about china, the economic number we got last week, improvement, still 11% unemployment and we're going to look at joe biden. and then he comes out, the president tweets this about bubba wallace and nascar and the confederate flag and the white house press shop does what? kayleigh mcenany goes to work, coming up with some explanation for this? >> the best laid plans, willie. yes, so much of the operations of the west wing from day one of the administration are just purely reactive to whatever the president is doing. he is, of course, if he doesn't attend the meetings where they decide on messaging for the w k week, he's read in on them at least. the press secretary talks about her access to the president,

she's in the room with him when key decisions are made. yet so much of what this president does is impulse. this isn't three dimensional or fourth dimensional chess, often it's the president reacting to what he sees on television. hard to know precisely but the tweet about the cleveland indians and the washington football team came a few minutes after a segment ran on fox business about that. we know yesterday there was media matters on "fox & friends," as many if not more mentions of statues than the coronavirus. so there's this echo chamber between what the white house and conservative media, not just fox, and they feed off of each other. this is the concern that people around the president have had, he's talking to an increasingly smaller portion of the country, a portion of the electorate. we have to think of it that way, it's an election year. and as much as he's doubling and

tripling down on the base plays, racial grievance, distancing himself from the movement we've seen in the last month or so, stoking white resentment, they feel like this is out of step right now, some of the moves that worked in 2016, this cultural grievance may not be working now, the polling on black lives matter has shifted so dramatically since 2016, far more of the nation supports that movement and what it's trying to achief. that as much as the president is about enthusiasm turning out the base this fall, there are many people, growing concern of those in his inner circle and certainly republicans on capitol hill that these are providing distractions, not helpful to his message and it's in the not goi help his case or other republicans' case come november. >> the bottom line, this is who donald trump is, you can have the political analysis and

wonder what he's thinking, but donald trump is reacting to what e he sees on tv with gut instincts and they all spilled out yesterday. >> you look at the grab bag of tweets that you read us off the top and one of them that could get lost was about sanctuary cities. that's a note that the president returns to over and over again. yet if you look what is happening in the real world, the supreme court just three weeks ago refused to hear his challenge to yeacalifornia's sanctuary city laws, you had the supreme court upholding daca, saying the federal government violated the law redirecting funds to go to his border wall. so when it comes to the substance of what he promised his base, he has not been able to deliver very much of it. so what he is left with is these tweets. >> still ahead on "morning joe," much more on this, shana mentioned lindsey graham, we

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many states now are implementing extra precautions to limit the rate of infection of coronavirus, in connecticut governor ned lamont announced his state will pause phase three of reopening indefinitely. he emphasized he's keeping an eye on what's happening in other states and connecticut will allow 25 gathering person indoors. jim justice of west virginia made face coverings mandatory for most residents inside

buildings when social distancing is not possible. in miami-dade county, the mayor said he will keep gyms and restaurants closed. and the mayor of miami frances suarez joins us now. thanks for being on with us. >> good to be with you. >> the restrictions you put in place and had in place in the city of miami for a long while, you were criticized by some for staying closed too long. looks like it might have been a good idea. what will the city of miami look like starting this week, this weekend and going forward as you take steps back to close up again? >> as you mentioned, gyms are going to be closed, indoor dining is going to be closed, people are required to wear masks in public, that's a requirement we put in place a few weeks ago. for other businesses that don't follow the rules, they're going to be penalized, closed for ten

days for the first occurrence, 15 days for the second occurrence and 30 days for the third occurrence. we're trying to put in a series of measures to once again flatten the curve, which unfortunately has -- you know, has completely spiked out of control in the city. we went from a point we had an increase in slope of 34 new cases a day prior to the lockdown, prior to the stay-at-home order to now we have 125 cases -- new cases per day as a five-day average. so obviously we're -- you know, the growth rate is four times greater. we have to take extreme measures because our icu capacity is diminishing and we'll have more and more people on ventilators, which means our death rate is probably going to go up. >> so from where you're sitting, mr. mayor, what is the driving this? the fact of reopening the state? reopening the city too soon? >> i -- you know, we got to a

point we were very, very low and we see in other parts of the country and the world where you can drive the number down to very low levels, the problem is when you reopen, whenever it is, i think even states that are closed now and cities closed now, they have to reopen, the question is how do people behave when you reopen. do they follow the rules? what kind of rules are in place? because all cities and states are going to have to reopen in some form or fashion. so the problem is the behavior of people, do they forget, you know, that this virus that threatens them is still out there? do they forget the lethality of it, do they forget the efficiency of its ability to propagate in our community? i think that's what happened down in miami and obviously we're starting to see some of the consequences of that, the behavior of people congregating, not wearing masks, not taking the precautions is something that we see sort of rampant, which is part of the reason

we're dialing back. the question is what do we do long term? that's the question we have to ask ourselves as a country and as different cities, how do we deal with this on a long term basis, we can't open and shut continually. we have to come up with a long-term plan. >> as you know, mr. mayor, the education secretary in the state of florida yesterday signed an order that public schools will be open come august five days a week in the state of florida. despite the explosion in cases we're seeing right now. is that a good idea? >> you know, i hate to say this but august seems so far away from me. we're taking things one day at a time here. just trying to get things under control, it's hard for me to even conceive of school opening or august being right around the corner. but the truth of the matter is, as you said, it is right around the corner and we're going to have to deal with it. so it'll be interesting to see what our local school board

does. i believe they're going to have to follow the education commissioner's decision. and i know they're going to give parents multiple options. i think parents will have the option to, you know, go to school telephonically or virtually as well. those that don't feel comfortable sending their kids to school. it'll be interesting to see what the next month has in store for us. >> alicia menendez has a question for you, mr. mayor. >> mayor, you are mayor of the city, there's also a county mayor, he has suggested that part of the rise and spread of the virus has to do with the black lives matter protests that you've seen in your community. that, of course, has been contested by medical experts. i wonder what your take is? >> what's interesting is we have multiple calls with the department of health and they have, at this point, almost 300 contact tracers. i have not received any information from the contact tracers that links the increase

in cases to the protests. now obviously, you know, logic sort of dictates when you have people congregating in large groups some of which may not be wearing masks. there's a possibility that the spread will increase among that group and among the people they come in contact with, that's sort of a logical deduction. we have not received any credible evidence from contact tracers, the ones that are supposed to be calling people to find out where they were exposed and who they were exposed to to give us that sort of evidence. i have not gotten that from our department. i'm not sure frankly they're asking that question, which they should be, of course. >> the mayor of miami, francis suarez. thank you for your time this morning we appreciate it. still ahead, the republican national convention is set to take place in florida next month and one republican lawmaker will

not be attending due to fears of coronavirus. and senator lindsey graham's challenger jaime harrison joins us just a day after lindsey graham broke with the president to defend nascar and bubba wallace. h the president to defend nascar and bubba wallace. what do you think? i don't see it. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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so what i would tell people from outside of south carolina that nascar is trying to grow the sport and one way you grow the sport is you take images

that divide us and ask that they not be brought into the venue. that makes sense to me. i don't think bubba wallace has anything to apologize for. i do say this about the drivers. even though it was a noose created to hold a door open, in the times in which we live, there's a lot of anxiety, so what did you see? you saw the best in nascar. and there was a chance that it was a threat against bubba wallace. they all rallied to bubba's side. so i would be looking to celebrate that kind of attitude more than being worried about it being a hoax. >> that is senator lindsey graham on the radio yesterday breaking with the president over his nascar tweet saying bubba wallace has nothing to apologize for. joining us is senator graham's

democratic opponent for the senate seat in south carolina jaime harrison. former chairman of the south carolina democratic party. it's great to have you on with us this morning. >> good morning. >> obviously the state you live in, the state you come from, the state you're running to become senator has grappled with this question of the confederate flag for a long time, it came down a few years ago under governor nickie hailey, what was your reaction and what has been your reaction over the last couple of days and weeks to the president of the united states equivocating and coming down on the side of the heritage, as the sort of phrase goes, the old heritage of the south, and saying that nascar made a bad business decision by banning confederate flags from its properties? what's your reaction? >> it's a different statement from the president's statement when we took down the flag here in south carolina. i believe he said it was time for it to go. and listen, i stand with bubba wallace. there's just no room for any

type of symbol of hate. and we got to push back against those things. i hope lindsey graham will join me in saying that the ben tillman statue on the grounds of the state house needs to go. tillman was the guy who sat in the seat for the united states senate that lindsey currently occupies. but this was a united states senator who would go to the floor of the united states senate and talk about the joy of lynching black folks and has a statue on the state house grounds today. his name is emblazened on the hall at clemson university. it's not about us forgetting our history. it's about making sure we elevate those folks who deserve to be elevated. and, you know, we know that history all too well here in south carolina. and it's about time that we close the chapter on the old south and start a new chapter on the new south that is bold,

inclusive, diverse. and that incorporates all of us. that's the greatness of the state, that's the greatness of this country. and i hope we see the courage in our leaders to move forward in that direction. >> how do you see this debate playing out over the statues? obviously confederate monument like that and the man you described should not be standing on a pedestal as you said but there's been discussion over the last couple of weeks and review of america's history. and there are those who say someone like george washington or thomas jefferson doesn't deserve to have his name on a school or statue, do you believe those statues should come down? >> i think each community is going to have to make a determination about what they see is what's being a symbol for them and what they represent. we can't revisit our history. we can't rewrite our history, we understand that. and statues are only part of how

you tell your history. you also have history books. so i think we just need to -- we need to figure out what brings us together as a community. what helps us move forward as americans. and so, you know, in terms of the confederate names on military bases, i think those things probably should be revisited. but in terms of, you know, presidents and all that, i think it has to be a different standard probably as we look at those things. but, you know, it's hard. listen, this is not easy stuff. it's not easy at all. i think about, you know, i have a 5-year-old. >> -- a 5-year-old and a 1-year-old and my 5-year-old is smart as a whip. if i take him to the state house grounds he's going to see the statues there and ask me, daddy, what did those people do that makes them have a statue? why should they have a statue on

the grounds? there's so many people that did such good things, let's elevate those folks and use them as symbols of how we unite ourselves as americans. >> you believe there should be a different standard for george washington than a confederate leader? >> i think all of that has to be in discussion. i do believe there's certain -- i mean, until you start to change washington d.c. and all, i think we just got to sit back and step back from the -- and just evaluate whether or not that's the right direction to go. >> mr. harrison, shana thomas is here with a question for you. >> hi, shana. >> hay, mr. harrison. as you continue to approach your campaign and the conversation about race, which you're para e partially here to talk about right now, as the president sends tweets like the ones we've

been talking about all morning, does the conversation of race strengthen your campaign or make it harder to run in south carolina? i think the president's view on this is by stoking racist fears in his base, that's good for his campaign and good for his potential to win. i think a lot of us disagree with that but we'll let him deal with that. but how does it affect your campaign? >> listen, the thing i think about, shana, when we're talking about these things, these are things we can't hide from. i wake up every morning and i'm a black man who grew up in south carolina. i can't change that. that's a part of the perspective i will look at and the lens i will look at to the rest of the world. these are difficult conversations and conversations i wish we would have had in the '60s because if we had those hard conversations and tried to find a real truth, we wouldn't be in this place right now. the thing i understand and i

understand with so much clarity is i don't want my two sons, the sons and daughters of south carolina in 20 and 30 years from now to be having the same types of conversations. to be talking about a statue of a man who talked about lynchings of black folks. to be talking about being scared to be stopped by the police force that is there to protect and serve our communities. we have to move past this. there's been generational pain that has been passed on from generation to generation of african-americans. i remember the stories of my grandma telling me about the kkk marching through her street and how they were all so scared. those are not stories that i want to pass on to my boys and i don't want them to have to pass the stories on to their kids. we can stop this right now but we need the moral leadership in order to do that. we need to get rid of folks who are putting their fingers in the wind like lindsey graham and

have someone who can stand up and bring hope back to all communities in south carolina. not just a select few. so if that means in this context, this campaign, that i have to talk about it, then i'm going to talk about it, because that's what real leadership means. it's not about putting your finger in the wind, doing what you think is the politically best thing to do, play washington political games, it's about standing up on the side of right. that's what i said from day one of this campaign. it's not about democrats versus republican, it is about doing what is right versus what is wrong. >> jonathan lemire of the associated press is here and he has a question for you. jonathan? >> good morning, mr. harrison. you had a strong fund-raising queue a, i believe about $14 million, which indicates real enthusiasm for your campaign but you're still running for senate in a state where president trump is very

popular. and you're running against a senator who, for the most part, sound clip we played a minute ago aside, has aligned himself very closely with president trump, senator graham. how do you thread the needle? how do you convince voters to do something they don't do often these days, split the ticket? how do you convince someone who's going to vote for president trump to also vote for you? >> listen, at the end of the day, it's about what is a person doing? what is a leader doing for you, your families and your community? lindsey graham has been a missing in action senator. this is a guy who hasn't done a town hall in -- a live town hall in south carolina in well over three years. but every night you can flip over to fox news and he's there with sean hannity. it tells you where his priorities are. instead of fighting for folks in south carolina, he's talking about the china caused the coronavirus. but here in south carolina, people are suffering.

we have over 600,000 people in this state who filed for unemployment. if you look at the ppp funding allocation, south carolina is 50th per worker as it row lates to the allocation of dollars for our small businesses. this guy has not been doing his job. and at the end of the day, when 38% of your rural communities don't have wi-fi, when your hospitals are closing, just a few years ago 14 of our 46 counties had no ob-gyns, it has to come down to your record. are you doing your job? if you're not doing your job, you need to go. that's why i keep telling folks join jaime harrison dot com be part of the movement to build a new south and get rid of lindsey graham. i believe we're making history in the race. people said in the start, you have no chance. what i said to them is, watch me. what we have been doing is breaking record and making a new

history in south carolina. we outraised lindsey last quarter probably will outraise him again this quarter by raising $14 million, which is unprecedented. and we are going to get voters out, democrats, republicans and independents who are tired of him being a rubber stamp and they want somebody with a spine and backbone who will stand up for the state of south carolina. >> that second quarter haul as you said $13.9 million nearly doubled the first quarter of $7.3 million, which was a record itself. democratic candidate for south carolina senate seat, jaime harrison great to talk to you. thanks for the time. >> thank you, willie, take care. >> coming up next, an rnc spokeswoman attacks joe biden for the phrase, all people are created equal, show you that next on "morning joe." equal, sht next on "morning joe." i have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.

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iowa's republican senator chuck grassly announced he will skip the republican national convention for the first time in 40 years citing his concerns about coronavirus. the iowa senator told reporters on monday, i'm not going to go. i'm not going to go because of the virus situation. grassley who is 86 years old attended every convention since he was elected to the senate in 1980. david drucker, bigger picture on this, the president as we marched through the summer is trying to get himself out there as much as is possible in the context of coronavirus with the mount rushmore speech and he'll have another rally in new hampshire this weekend. they've seen the national polling, the battleground state polling, he's out of step with the country on the movement for

social distanci social justice and changes in the police culture. how do they feel about where he is. >> i think the president's campaign and top strategists think that over time if they believe they can get the president out there where he's more comfortable and at least when he acts politically in campaigns it's a different and better bara better backdrop for him in the white house and doing that he shows his supporters he's committed. i think what they're also trying to do is push the idea even though we're dealing with the coronavirus pandemic the reopening of the economy continues. i think from the president's perspective they're trying to look at the economic anxiety out there. anxiety about whether or not parents will be able to send their kids to school and what that means for child care if they have to go to work and their child's educational development and say the president is behind that and

moving forward in that direction. i think then the question is then how are voters going to respond to this when they see a spike in coronavirus infections and they wonder if the president's approach to this is where it needs to be. i think one of the reasons why painting joe biden as running a basement campaign has not worked is a lot of voters right now think that's what he should be doing. is he running a basement campaign, no. but to the extent he's not getting out as much as the president, wearing masks and appearing to be very cautious i think that makes sense to a lot of voters in the suburbs, particularly that the president needs to win over. he won suburban voters in 2016 he's hemorrhaging them now and for him he has to find a way to thread the needle, be on the road in a way that ways voters believe is prudent and not grow tu tow.

>> unclear how his rhetoric gets back the voters. coming up on "morning joe" state and local officials in texas over the weekend warned about a surge in cases of coronavirus and the possibility of a shortage of hospital beds. we will talk to the ceo of houston methodist hospitals who's on the front line right now. plus "the washington post" robert costa joins us with how the president's push to amplify racial issues is concerning to those advising him. "morning joe" is coming right back. "morning joe" is coming right back not the doubts, distractions, or voice in my head. and certainly not arthritis. new voltaren provides powerful arthritis pain relief to help me keep moving. and it can help you too. feel the joy of movement with voltaren.

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welcome back to "morning joe" a beautiful live picture of the white house on a sunny summer day, top of the hour, 7:00 east coast time. joining us now, white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire. msnbc contributor shana thomas and professor at princeton university and author, eddie glaude junior. claire mccaskill and political reporter for "the washington post" and analyst robert costa. he's the moderator of washington week. claire will talk about patrick ma homes and his half a billion dollar deal in a moment.

but bob i want to start with you and your new piece about republicans being offended, clutching their pearls about the president's rhetoric. what's their specific concern this time? >> ever since it published, willie, it's evident that republicans are still searching for an answer, i'm hearing from my sources across senate and house races that they don't have a plan at this moment, it's the hot summer of campaign season. president trump is targeting the confederate flag as an issue. he's going after mr. wallace at nascar, one of the lone black drivers in that sport. you see him eight, nine days ago retweeting a racist chant from the villages. attacking black lives matter movement as a symbol of hate has led republicans to wonder if they can run on anything else and pressuring the white house

to turn the page with the trump campaign. but they're hearing from the top advisers this is driven by the president. the president personally is driving this message, this focus on race. >> bob, i can almost feel and see our viewers' eyes rolling in the back of their heads as they hear more republicans being worried about something or deeply concerned about something the president has done because we've heard it so many times over the last three and a half, four years, is there something different now about what he's saying and doing? is it the racially charged tweets, the nascar thing? the confederate flag, the preserving heritage, which is the euphemism for keeping the statues up, is there something different for them and their party different from previous moments? >> no. and their behavior is the same it's been for the last three and a half years under president

trump. you don't see any significant break. those who broke with president trump, like senator mitt romney, have done so before on impeachment and other issues. this is the same private grumbling we've heard from three and a half years from republicans talking about their own prospects but the thing that's different now willy is the fear, the fear their power is at risk. they have control of the senate, they want to continue to control the nomination process in the courts and now they fear that's slipping away. you see across the map, even in traditionally red states senate democrats are having mayor hauls because of the grass roots energy on the left. >> eddie glaude jr. it is something to see so many republicans finding their principles when they see power slipping away, when they believe they could lose control of the senate and the ability to lose the things they want to do le e

legislatively if the president drags them down. your reaction to what we saw over the weekend and then the president's tweets yesterday saying nascar made a bad business decision by banning the confederate flag from the grounds of its events and then the press secretary, kayleigh mcenany, not able to answer a question about whether or not the president supports the confederate flag. >> i think what we see here clearly is the logical extension of what we always recognized as the southern strategy. unlike nixon's appeal to the sun belt, the strategy in this instance is a kind of -- i think a blatant white nationalist strategy, appealing to white resentments, grievance and hatred and white fear. i think this is the way donald trump -- i don't understand the

calculus, it doesn't make sense to me, but this is the way he believes he can grow the electorate. he thinks there are the white voters who have not participated in the process, who believe the federal government has left them behind that he can somehow get them excited. now in the process he's losing the suburbs, white women and the like, but he believes i think -- at least this is how i'm reading it, the selfishnesselfishness, going to look at their 401(k)s and see the economy and see what he's done. i don't understand the political calculus, i'll leave that to you guys. but i understand he's doubling down on hate, division. so we need to understand november as a reckoning of sorts, willie. and the folks who have revealed they're not principled, just acting in self-interest, these are the actors who will make that reckoning all the more difficult and dangerous. we need to buckle up, as i

always said. >> claire when you talk to your former colleagues in the united states senate, republicans in particular, what are they saying right now behind the scenes? how concerned are they that something perhaps a year ago was a wild speculation that the democrats could flip the senate looks real to republicans on the ground. >> there's a lot of nervousness right now. you know, they all will tell me privately promoting racial tension as a political strategy is bonkers. you know, nobody likes that. except racists. they're the only ones who are all down for a strategy of promoting racial tension in america. and to make that the entree of his campaign, whether it's the confederate flag or whether it's protecting bases named after confederate heroes or statues memorializing traders, that

seems to be where he thinks his best chance for re-election is. and the republican members of the senate know better. i'll tell you who's worried, the republican women of the senate, they've grown their caucus and four of them are in real danger. they have nine republican women now, which is an all-time high for the republican party. i don't probably need to tell our viewers that republicans are struggling with women. and the fact that they could lose four sitting women senators and put their caucus back to where it was two or three cycles ago, that is really worrisome to them, and they know women particularly are not down for this idea that this should all be about promoting the confederate flag for gosh sacks. it is a stupid political strategy but it seems to be what this guy thinks is going to work. and joe biden has to know that this gives him a tremendous advantage going forward.

>> on that point of addressing women an rnc national spokesperson criticized former vice president joe biden for his suggestion that america should adopt the phrase all people are created equal. in an op-ed for nbc news think on independence day joe biden wrote this, there has always been a push and a pull between our founding ideals and forces of inequality. but independence day is a celebration of our persistent march toward greater justice. the expansion of our founding notion from all men are created equal to all people are created equal and should be treated equally throughout their lives. liz harrington took issue with what he wrote? >> it's fitting that joe biden in this op-ed has the audacity to rewrite the greatest foundational document in the history of man kind, the declaration of independence, his woke staffers changed it from

all men are created equal to all people are created equal and are guaranteed equality in life. that's the same radical left socialism that has taken over his party that's not just eroding our foundation but rewriting it and out to destroy it. >> so, shana thomas, the position from the rnc and the talking points from the rnc here are that it is the radical left as the president has described it as well that wants to include everyone in the founding principles of this country. >> yeah, i mean, it's a deliberate misreading by her of what i think president -- i'm sorry, former vice president biden was trying to say in that interpreting what that declaration means now should include everybody. that's very clear but it's also kind of a misrepresentation of what the republican party was saying less than ten years ago.

i know this gets mentioned on the show at least once a week but they had the autopsy that the rnc did after the 2012 election. and they talked and they researched deeply about what that party was saying to black people, to hispanics, to people of color, and it was an entire plan about how they needed to bring people into this party. and every time i hear, you know, even senator claire mccaskill say behind closed doors her republican friends say this but in front of the cameras they're vacillating and some still support trump or don't know what to do. i think back to that. they figured out that the republican party, to a certain extent, was already dying at that point and they needed to do something to prove that they were a party that everyone could be welcome in, in the way that it seems the democratic party is welcoming to people. and it doesn't -- none of this makes any sense.

as claire sort of said, this is a losing proposition. president trump aside, the republican party if you can't figure out how to answer these questions. if you can't figure out how to be welcoming to everyone, if you can't figure out how in some ways to distance yourselves to some of president trump's more inflammatory racial rhetoric you're not going to have a party in five, ten, 20 years. i don't know how long that's going to take. but the country is going to change to such a point, and as we look through what's happening in the last few months, that if you they don't figure out a way to speak to those people in the streets in a way that seems truthful and a way that seems to move things forward, how will any of those people on the streets ever consider that party. i think that's what republicans have to think about, putting president trump aside for a second. >> jonathan lemire, if you listen to that sound bite from the rnc spokeswoman, it's

another moment where the republican party, president trump as well, trying to push vice president joe biden into that camp of radical left, which is not it shall bterribly convi lot of people who saw his record over the years, to a lot of democrats who don't think he's progressive enough, and if you look at the polls, to many americans. >> that's right. it's a tough fit to suggest that joe biden is a radical left winger so what the republicans are trying to do is suggest he's under the control of the radical left wing and the democratic party. it is yet another attempt at an attack line that has not proven very effect i've. two points, one to follow up on what eddie was saying, and his new book is fantastic as an aside, everyone should read it it's so important for these times. when i covered the president's campaign in 2015, 2016 and attended more than 100 of these

rallies you would find a lot of people there who would say they felt left behind by the process. they hadn't voted in several cycles or ever, they haven't talked to a pollster in years yet they were going to stand up and vote for this guy, donald trump. that's the hidden vote that republicans are counting on again this time around, but who have been missed by the polls. that's a tall order considering the deficits that donald trump is running in these battleground state polls as opposed to 2016 when he was facing hillary clinton. but claire mccaskill i wanted to get you on this broader point. we heard from republican leader mccarthy a few days ago, suggesting how can they fight for america, they don't believe in america, and hearing the president talk about heritage, trying to make the link between the divisive confederate figures

and the george washingtons and thomas jeffersons, they're trying to bring all the statues down. is this the president who has the ability to drive the republicans? do they want this fight? do they think this could keep the white house and also the swing state senators who are in a tough fight? is this the argument they want to have? >> absolutely not. republicans in swing states, those that are in trouble, they know this needs to be about the cost of prescription drugs, they know this needs to be about the creation of jobs after a pandemic. they know this needs to be about the economic progress they want to tout was made before the pandemic. they don't want to talk about the pandemic and they certainly don't want it to be about the confederate flag. and the more that trump -- i mean, i thought his speeches over the weekend were dark and

very stephen miller-esque and bannon-esque. they are all dark and divisive, but many republicans thought they were good. but then he goes out and does the bubba tweet, he goes after a black nascar driver. when people read that tweet running for office as republicans they krincringed bee they knew we were off down this racial rabbit hole that's not going to help us convince suburban voters, women voters, voters of color that the republican party has any place for them. >> bob costa you cover the white house as closely as anybody you're as plugged in as anybody in washington, the strategy here as mystified a lot of people, including republicans in that group. what do they believe is the objective here? you write in your new piece in "the washington post," they're solidifying the base, a base

that's been solid for the last three and a half years but if the goal is to win enough votes, get enough swing states to get four more years in office, how does the tweet about bubba wallace and the confederate flag and the statues, how does that help the president win when we see the battleground state polls in places like michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania where the president is trailing? what's the goal with this rhetoric? >> to build on jonathan's point there is the belief in the trump campaign and the trump world they can stoke the trump core voter who may not be a traditional political participant to come to the polls to get a higher turn out among working class voters, suburban voters who lean right. but his advisers are trying to talk about other issues. there's the president and then the white house and the

campaign. when you look at the white house, they're talking about tax policy executive orders, talking about china. in the last couple days i keep hearing from trump campaign add visors and allies they would like to see more of a focus on vice president biden, on the issue of china and trade, issues they believe could play in a state like pennsylvania, like wisconsin or michigan, rather than race. but there are concerns that race could also backfire in an enormous way in a state like georgia and in texas even where senator codin has a tough re-election race. senator cruz told me after the beto o'rourke race they cannot take texas for granted. you see the city of atlanta becoming more diverse by the day. >> eddie glaude, it's interesting, we talked about this, there are people in this country, this is a lesson we

should have learned long ago who don't raise their hand and tell the pollster they like what president trump is doing but there is a quiet backlash out there. call it what you want to call it. even among people who support, 75% of americans who support the movement we've seen in the streets and those marching against police violence and marching for social justice who say let's pump the brakes a little bit on some of this stuff as we talk about it. do you have concerns about people getting ahead of themselves saying trump is focussed on a base that means joe biden is in good shape, democrats in the senate are in good shape? this isn't just about being burned in 2016 but about understanding the country as well? >> yes, willie i am. sometimes it seems as if i'm not hopeful but i'm trying to be realistic here. i don't think the partisan divisions that led to the election of the donald trump have disappeared.

i believe they're still operative and moving us about in this country. we talked about it when mayor bradley of los angeles ran for governor of california, there was the bradley effect you had the poll data showing he was going to win and then folks did not vote for him in the voting booth. we might be seeing the trump effect where you have folk who are decent, who are resistant to this kind of inflammatory rhetoric that appeals to a racist under tones who don't want to be seen as trump voters but they are committed to his political policies, his economic policies, they're committed to his judges. so the poll data might be skewed, i don't know. i'm not convinced that the partisan divisions that we've seen over the last three and a half years have simply disappeared because the poll data shows that some folk have come around when it comes to the slogan black lives matter.

and lastly, willie, i'm confused about what is conservative about the position with regards to expanding the notion of, you know, everyone being equal. right, i don't understand what's conservative about this. i think joe has made a distinction between conservativism and the far right and the right and what we're seeing is the right making its explicit appeal to hatred and resentment again. >> part of the reason president trump is struggling right now is because of his reaction, his response from his administration to coronavirus. we've told you this morning about the spread, the explosion in cases across the country from california to arizona and texas and georgia, south carolina and florida as well. and now major league baseball is struggling to administer coronavirus testing for its upcoming season. several teams cancelled workouts yesterday after failing to receive results. the washington nationals, houston astros, st. louis

cardinals all postponing practices over testing delays. test administrators did not arrive to the angels' facility on sunday, so they collected their own samples and mailed them to utah. the team's manager likened the testing set back to a rain delay and believes the mess up was a short-lived situation. the nationals' general manager found the situation alarming, writing the mlb, quote, needs to work quickly to resolve issues with their process and their lab, otherwise summer camp and the 2020 season are at risk. mlb blamed the delays in testing on the holiday weekend saying it does not expect issues again. coronavirus testing for the league is done out of one lab in utah, according to baseball's 2020 operations manual. the league and the union are actively seeking another lab to speed up and streamline testing.

we're joined by mike barnicle this morning. let's start here, you are our resident baseball expert we were watching the yankees intersquad scrimmage last night. good to have baseball back but walking a fine line with testing. what are the prospects for the season actually starting? >> i think you're right, willie in what you just said. the season is at risk. you have a group of human beings, young men playing baseball, they are not quarantined after their summer practices at yankee stadium or fenway park or anywhere else. they are free to go, they mingle with people, they do whatever they want after they leave that ballpark so they're exposed to a lot. i think it's going to be very difficult to get the season going. what might happen is if they do implement a season, you could have one team flying to another city to play for a three-game set in the city and the other

team might have so many people -- so many men, so many players hit by the virus they would be unable to field a team, that would be it for the season. and more and more the players are becoming increasingly concerned about their own physical well being. we've had a series of fairly well known players, freddy freeman and a few others coming down with the virus. i think the season is jump ball right now. >> let's hope it jumps in the right direction. much more on the virus ahead. hospitals in houston dealing with one of the worst coronavirus spikes in texas, doctors facing some of the same challenges new york city saw a few months ago. we'll talk to the ceo of houston methodist hospitals for an update on the situation on the ground. you're watching "morning joe" we'll be right back. g "morning we'll be right back. whoa! is that shaq? this is my new pizza the shaq-a-roni and it's bigger than pizza because for every shaq-a-roni sold, $1 is donated to the papa john's foundation

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situation where we were averaging about 20,000 new cases a day. two days ago it was at 57,500. so within a period of a week and a half, we've almost doubled the number of cases. so in answer to your first question, we are still knee deep in the first wave of this. and i would say this would not be considered a wave. it was a surge or resurgence of infections. super imposed upon a baseline, francis that never got down to where we wanted to go. >> dr. anthony fauci with a warning yesterday during his conversation with the nih. the u.s. has confirmed nearly 3 million covid cases now, at least 131,000 deaths. the seven day average in a dozen states hit new highs with the u.s. adding nearly 100,000 cases in the first week of july. now fears are growing over the

number of hospitalizations across states, texas, arizona, florida. yesterday morning arizona announced 89% of the state's intensive care unit beds are full. here is reporting from houston methodist hospital from sherry fink of the "new york times." >> tell me about your experience with coronavirus. you look good right now but you're breathing with extra help. >> had a little party for my 8-year-old. just a birthday cake. >> reporter: this is rosa v. hernandez. like many people she tried to be careful but she let her guard down and she got sick and was very close to have having to have a breathing tube yesterday. >> people are not taking it seriously. they're like, i got to party hardy, i got to go to the bars, the beach, i got to eat out. really? like you've never done it

before. please, please, please take it serious. >> that's reporting again from the "new york times." joining us now is ceo of houston methodist hospitals dr. mark boom. it's great to have you with us this morning. many people have made a comparison to where you are in houston right now to where new york city was a couple months ago but there are a number of differences namely your patients are much younger, less sick as you described it and your mortality rate is much lower. what does it look like in your icus and emergency rooms right now? >> it's gotten really, really busy let me tell you, since memorial day we've seen seven times the number of patients in hospital beds across our system so we're right around 700 patients hospitalized out of 2,300, 2,400 beds. there's a difference in this

curve and the first curve. in early april half of our patients were in icu, elderly, high mortality rates for many individuals. this time around we're seeing younger people. we're seeing a significant, i mean, less than half of the mortality that we saw back in the april time frame. some of that is simply the math of younger people but a lot of that appears to be advances in medical care that we all learned through the last four months now that we've been taking care of patients with covid. but this is spreading rapidly through the city of houston. we see increases in hospitalizations each and every day so far. we're watching this with a great deal of concern, handling it with stress for sure for our front line workers. but two, three weeks from now things will get challenging if we don't bend this curve across the city of houston. >> so what do you write that up to? how are -- the numbers have gone

up among young people in your beds, you had older people in april, why are you seeing this influx of young people in your hospitals? >> i think ms. hernandez said it well in the clip you just showed, which is people let their guard down. they started acting like the virus wasn't here. we lacked the discipline as a society to say for a long time life is going to be unusual and not the way we would like it to be and we started doing everything like we used to and this started spreading and once it started spreading it amplifies and it has hit all walks of life across the city of houston. you can't point to one area of town or one group of people, it's really everybody. definitely a younger predilection. i see the older, more vulnerable people have been more careful staying home, the younger people heard the message, this is about old people and old people get sick and die but i don't get sick and die, so let me run out

and do what i want to do. the problem is if you get enough young people sick some get extraordinarily sick, some of them will die. we had somebody in their mid 20s present to the emergency room and died within an hour, they were dying when they came in. that's just so sad. it doesn't have to happen if we have the discipline and do what we need to do to care for each other as a society. >> if you had your way as a doctor, what would happen from a public policy standpoint right now in the state of texas that would slow this and keep your emergency rooms empty of those cases? >> i think we've seen a lot of it over the last couple of weeks. we had two masking orders now we have one that is masking everywhere outside of the home. that is important and evidence keeps emerging that's probably the most important thing that can be done short of a full shutdown to control the virus. we're seeing early signs in the testing data that we think some of the measures that have

happened of late have started to help. so we're hoping the lagging indicator of hospitalizations in the next seven to ten days will start to show the result of that flattening in the testing data, but it's way too early to say that. if we let our guard down, our discipline down, we will have significant problems. i think we need to come to grips as a society, if we want to open, if we want to have things return to any semblance of normal, masks are going to be with us for a long, long time. one thing going forward we need to change it's masks are going to need to be mandatory or pretty near mandatory everywhere because they are highly effective from the data that keeps coming. >> doctor, mike barnicle is here with a question for you. >> doctor, two quick questions, one on the sad circumstances of a 20-year-old dying in the hospital to covid, do we know if

that 20-year-old had any preconditions that might have led to his dying in addition to the disease? and the other question is, you just mentioned about bending the curve and perhaps getting to the point we have mandatory mask wearing, we hear you, we hear many other accomplished physicians and scientists telling us the importance of the mask and separation, but do you need help from public people, from the president on down, expressing how critical it is for people to be cautious, to be careful, to wear masks? >> so let me take the second question first. what we need is unity. we need a country that rallies together like we all did early on in the first wave back in march and into april. and links arms and says we're going to listen to the medical advice, listen to the medical evidence and do this together. so that's every political figure. it's, frankly, every actor,

movie star, singer, everybody else, we need to make mask wearing cool. we need to make this the thing that we do for each other that we show that, you know, as human kind, as americans we care for one another and we make that simple sacrifice. if i can wear a mask and save one life by wearing a mask, why wouldn't i wear a mask? i don't understand what the issue is, that's what we all should be doing. in terms of younger people, i don't want to talk about specifics because of privacy and other things. in general the younger people we see who get sicker, obesity is a major factor, often times a couple of other medical comorbiditie comorbidities, like hyper tension, diabetes. when we look at our population under 50 getting ill, lots of diabetes, lots of obesity. >> the ceo of houston methodist hospitals dr. mark boom. we know how busy you are right

now and how critical things have become in the city of houston. thank you for your time. we're sending our best to all of you down there. we appreciate it. newt gingrich said president trump's mount rushmore speech may have been the most important yet. coming up our next guest says it was newt that laid the foundation for that kind of rhetoric. foundation for that kind of rhetoric you can't predict the future.

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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. >> i think the president, in his amazing speech at mount rushmore, which i think may have been the most important presidential speech since ronald reagan at west minister in 1982, really laid it out in a way that's going to make the "new york times" and "the washington post" and the major media very, very uncomfortable. >> former house speaker newt

gingrich touting the president's speech over the weekend. joining us now, professor at princeton university julian zelinzer. congratulations on the book, it's great to have you on the show. so let's talk about newt gingrich first and draw the line through to the president of the united states today. when did newt gingrich's style of smash mouth politics begin? what were the origins? what was the reaction to? >> it was in the 1980s when he comes to congress as a member from georgia and argues to fellow republicans, if republicans are ever going to win back control of the house of representatives, they're going to have to employ a much more aggressive style. they're going to be willing to talk about their opponents in much more blistering ways and they're going to have to

threaten institutions and norms that a lot of washingtonans thought were essential. and it's in 1989 when he brings down speaker of the house jim wright that gingrich moves to being part of the republican leadership from a back bencher. >> claire mccaskill is here with a question for you, julian. >> some could argue that newt gingrich is a classic example of a swamp creature who can't seem to lose washington d.c., his wife is a political appointee of this president. we haven't heard much from ryan, some of his con temporariries when you look at modern day speakers of the house in the republican party. can you compare and contrast newt gingrich's love of trying to stay in the limelight with the disappearing act that banner and ryan seem to have done once trump became prominent in this

republican party that newt gingrich seems to have ascribed to. >> even before newt gingrich was speaker and after he was speaker is his understanding of the media, and his focus on making sure that he constantly was part of the media conversation. he used to say, in the 1980s you had to give the media more indiana jones than philharmonic and understand that controversial statements would attract the eyeballs of television, newspaper. that's part of how he becomes speaker, by attracting news attention that way. so it's not a surprise that he hasn't stopped. that's the platform really he's used since the time as speaker since he ran for president to remain a conservative and some of the other speakers have faded, they didn't have that same knack, instinct that newt gingrich had. >> your fellow member of the

princeton faculty, eddie glaude jr. is here. >> good morning. and congratulations on this important, important book. typically people tell the story or offer the genealogy of donald trump by tracing him through pat buchanan, to george wallace to stroll thurman. but you introduced newt gingrich as a character in american politics that helps us in some ways understand trump. what does it mean to think about donald trump or trump-ism not necessarily going through the racist demagogues i just laid out but through newt gingrich and that stran of the republican party? >> thanks for the question, eddie. he's different from these other figures because if you locate trumpism to newt gingrich you see the origins to this style of politics in the heart of the republican parties since the 1980s. part of the story i tell is yes, newt gingrich was a political

bomb thrower, a maverick in the 80s but what was clear was senior republicans, such as bob michael, and george h.w. bush they were tempted by what begin gr -- what newt gingrich was doing and let him into the halls. so you see this is as republican as ronald reagan. what we're seeing from president trump is the outgrowth of many decades of how the party has evolved since this crucial period and it's about the inside part of the party. it's about the establishment rather than fringe elements of the gop. >> jonathan lemire? >> professor, congrats on the book. i want to follow-up on a point, a name you mentioned, which is president reagan. there are some parallels between reagan and trump, show business backgrounds, winks and nods at the lost cause. the idea of controlling the

media attention and so on. of course, ronald reagan was re-elected in a landslide. donald trump right now is trailing badly in the polls. walk us through a little bit about some of the differences. setting aside the external factors, obviously the pandemic versus cold war. but in terms of their style of politics. how is reagan able to grow the electorate despite remaining popular with the conservative base while trump is failing to do so? >> i think ronald reagan, newt gingrich, that generation they were still connected to a ber juning conservative movement that had taken form in the 1970s and that was the heart of their coalition. reagan himself had ambitions of growing a coalition and doing what fdr had done in 1936. donald trump comes at the end of the entire era, he's much less connected, in my opinion, to the future of the party.

not that he's not of the party, but he cares less about it. i think the coalition is no longer growing, it's shrinking. so he is governing over a coalition that keeps getting smaller and smaller and that's a fundamental difference from where the reagan, gingrich republicans were back in the 1980s. >> professor of history and republican affairs at princeton, juli julian zelinzer, thank you very much. coming up on "morning joe," new reporting shows the trump administration was aware its family separation policy could break laws yet the homeland security department signed off anyway. that is one of the revelations in jacob soboroff's new book. he joins us ahead to talk about his reporting. "morning joe" is coming right back. "morning joe" is coming right back i'm bad.

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harvard university announced yesterday it will welcome freshman and some other students to campus this fall. but it will be teaching all classes online amid the coronavirus pandemic. the university says although it will not be discounting tuitions, students enrolled remotely will not pay room and board fees. upper classman will be able to petition to return to campus if they don't have sufficient technology at home or have challenging family circumstances, but any students on schoolgrounds will have to test for the coronavirus every

three days. the university also says it will be limiting undergraduates living on campus to about 40%. meanwhile, princeton university announced it will cut tuition 10% in the coming school year and bring no more than half of its undergraduates to the campus. the university plans to bring freshman and juniors to campus for the fall term, then sophomores and seniors in the spring. most instruction will be remote. we just so happen to have a princeton university professor with us. edd eddie, anybody who thought it was going to be back to business, back to usual on any campus or any school this fall is getting a dose of reality here. what's it going to look like at princeton and harvard and universities across the country and what will it be like as a professor to teach this way? >> well, you know, i think most of the instruction will be online. we're all trying to figure out how to do that. in a place like princeton, where you have such an intimate undergraduate experience, where

teaching is so critical, it's a difficult transition, at least for me, where you want to have this kind of intimate contact and connection with your students as you're moving through the term. but you're going to have freshman and juniors, you're going to have some courses on campus like freshman seminars and junior seminars that could happen, but we're going to be following social distancing rules. so if a class has 15 students, it has to be in a room that can hold 50 students. so you can have that distancing. the classes can't last as long. the semester won't last as long. so we won't have a spring break. so we're trying to figure out how to do this. it's going to be a new normal. we know that the situation is fluid, particularly in the fall. so we have to be ready for changes. but there's also a new normal. how we go about teaching. because universities and colleges, as you know, willie, are petri dishes. a cold can, you know, spread through a university setting like wildfire. so covid-19 in that space is very, very dangerous.

and we have not only be mindful of the students, we have to be mindful of the faculty and staff. so we're learning this, just as our students are learning it, so we'll figure it out. >> yeah, the college experience antithetical to social distancing. i think it goes without saying. but, yeah, university of princeton and public schools across the country are going to have to figure out how to do this safely and get our kids back into school. claire, as we close out the hour, i mentioned briefly at the top, patrick mahomes of your kansas city chiefs got you that super bowl ring after 50 years of waiting. and yesterday, he got paid for it. $503 million, his contract could be worth, over ten years. you've got him locked up for a decade. you've got to be thrilled to have him back there for ten more years. >> yeah, we are very excited that we now are assured of 12 seasons of no-look passes, amazing runs, you know, just the kind of stuff that makes football so fun.

and the added whip cream and cherry on top for us, especially those of us in st. louis, is this is going to make jerry jones have to pay a bunch of money for dak prescott. and we love that, because jerry jones was instrumental in stealing the rams from st. louis. it's a double whammy. we get patrick mahomes, who's a great man, and we also cost jerry jones a bunch of bucks. how can it get any better that that, willie? >> you're happy for patrick mahomes, but i can sense your real joy is in sticking it to jerry jones in dallas. >> absolutely! >> still ahead on "morning joe," several states, as we turn to the top of the hour, nearing hospital capacity for treating coronavirus patients. and dr. anthony fauci reiterates now what he says that we are still knee deep in the first wave. plus, the other crisis. the racial crisis in this country. a divide the president continues to stoke as campaign strategy. a busy hour ahead on "morning joe." hour ahead on "morning joe. my life.

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good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, july 7th. with us this morning, white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lamir. nbc news and msnbc contributor, shauna thomas. nbc weekend anchor, alisa menendez, and david drucker, a contributing writer at "vanity fair." joe and mika have the morning off. jonathan, let me begin with you. we're going to get into this deeply in just a moment. but as you and i went off the air yesterday, the president wrote that tweet about bubba wallace and nascar, saying nascar's ratings are down, although they're not, because of its decision to get rid of the confederate flag on its grounds and calling bubba wallace's claims of a noose in his garage a hoax. what was the reaction in the white house? we know what the press secretary came out hours later and tried to spin.

but what was the reaction to those tweets as they've tried to turn the corner to the economy and to joe biden? >> willie, this is the president yet again deciding that he is his own messenger and he's going to set the course, despite the advice he's getting from advisers. over the weekend, we saw in a pair of speeches, one at mt. rushmore, and one at the white house himself for the fourth of july, he certainly leaned in on some of these racial grievances, this divisive rhetoric. and you know, he defended monuments, among them, confederate monuments, although he, of course, grouped them in with some of the founding fathers. this is clearly a cultural issue that he wants to fight upon and flames he wants to stoke. but attempting to do so in a somewhat subtle way. we can make a measurement on that. there's nothing subtle about this tweet yesterday, willie. it was the frustration of some of the white house who really spent he would spend this week talking about the economy. the mexican president is coming

in. they wanted him to renew a tax on joe biden. basically anything about this issue, but they now, of course, other republicans will have to answer for. and it wasn't just this one tweet. you did see the white house press secretary, kayleigh mcenany yesterday, be unable to take a position or unwilling to take a position as to whether the president of the united states thought the confederate flag was okay. that can't be overstated. she didn't touch that issue. she didn't come out and denounce it. we also, of course, another tweet a short time later, saw the president weigh in about the nicknames of washington's professional football team, the cleveland indians in baseball, and then proceeded to take another racist shot at senator elizabeth warren, while doing so. it's clear, this is a fight the president wants, even though a lot of people around him and most people in his own party don't. >> as you say, his chief of staff, mark meadows, was on morning television, moments before that tweet about bubba wallace saying, we're looking at the economy, we're looking at china, and we're looking at joe biden. then comes the tweet.

we'll dig a lot deeper into everything the president was saying yesterday. but more importantly, cases of the coronavirus continue to surge nationwide. so far, the united states has confirmed nearly 3 million cases, at least 131,000 deaths. the seven-day averages in a dozen states have hit new highs, with the u.s. adding nearly 300,000 cases during the first week of july. now, fears are growing over the rising number of hospitalizations across many states. in florida, texas, and arizona, hospitals are reporting they are at capacity or almost there. yesterday morning, arizona announced 89% of the state's icu beds are full. dr. anthony fauci warned that the united states is still experiencing the first wave of this pandemic. he spoke yesterday during a live stream interview with the director of the national institutes of health. >> the current state is really not good, in the sense that, as you know, we have been in a

situation, we were averaging about 20,000 new cases a day. two days ago, it was at 57,500. so within a period of a week and a half, we've almost doubled the number of cases. so in answer to your first question, we are still knee-deep in the first wave of this. and i would say this would not be considered a wave. it was a surge or a resurgence of infections, superimposed upon a base line, francis, that really never got down to where we wanted to go. >> let's bring in dr. vin gupta, a pulmonologist who has treated critically ill coronavirus patients in washington state. he also is an nbc news medical contributor. dr. gupta, great to see you, as always. frankly, this is something that dr. fauci has been saying for a long time. this is not a second wave, it didn't go away and now comes back. this is the way he laid it out. this is the way that dr. birx laid it out. this is the way that you've been

telling it's going to take place for about three or four months now. so where are we now in the phases of this pandemic? >> good morning, willie. always good to see you. you know, hospitalizations are rising at a concerning rate nationwide, so we're seeing models from the cdc website showing hey, we're from 1,000 to 15,000 new hospitalizations every single day by the end of this month. that's deeply concerning. what i'm really concerned about are my friends and colleagues in arizona who are fighting in icus to keep patients alive without the support of military or national guard forces to bolster icu capacity. at least governor doocy has activated national guard to some degree. in texas, in florida -- in florida and georgia, specifically, you've seen the national guard activated to quell protests, but not to bolster icu capabilities. and willie, i'll say this right now. you know, we're dealing with a mini surge here in washington state, from what's happening in

eastern washington, some of the native american tribes in and around yakima. it's not easy on a dime to flip the switch and say, we need more dialysis nurses, we need more icu docs and nurses. you can't do that. we're not planning ahead, especially in states like florida and texas, and people are going to die. >> dr. gupta, the president and others have touted the low death rate in this country. if you look at it, the deaths are down in terms of the pace of what they've been accelerating over these months. what does that tell you? we had dr. aajij shah on yesterday at this time and we learned that deaths are a lagging indicator, but we've also learned that doctors are learning how to treat coronavirus patients better. what do you read into the death rate in this country? >> in march, i didn't know how to save a patient's life on a ventilator with covid-19 as well as i do now. as well as my colleagues do now.

i know that if you're young -- if you're old, you come in and need a vent, you probably need to be on a blood thinner. i probably need to give you steroids now at high doses. i didn't know that even a few months ago. and then you also need to be put on your belly. we call it prone positioning, if you're on live report, on a ventilator, needing assistance to breathe. these are interventions that have allowed us to save more lives amongst those that are critically ill. so, yes, treatments are better. we also know that with testing, we're testing and finding that more individuals are younger. we're seeing the median age of new infected individuals drop from 65 to 35 in florida. that means that you're still going to see people end up in the icu, whether you're young or older, but they're more likely to survive covid-19. doesn't mean they're not going to have harmful effects from it. i've seen individuals as young as 20 have strokes, have long-term impacts from covid-19. so the president's messaging on harmless versus harmful, deeply dangerous, deeply damaging to the cause here.

so those are two things. and yes, lagging indicators. we're seeing deaths here happening likely from infections that occurred at least potentially a month ago. it's the case that so many individuals come down with covid-19 and immediately die, but the majority of cases, you're seeing, it takes a while. i have patients that are on ventilators for 45 days before they present themselves one way or the other, that either they're going to make it or they're not. that lagging indicator piece is also critical. >> and psychologically, i think, as you and i have discussed, a lot of people in this country saw the crisis at the beginning in march and april in new york city, the explosion of cases, the explosion of deaths, the overrun icus and emergency rooms and they saw those numbers come down and perhaps were lulled into a false sense of security. where are we now in terms of states that have rolled back, who have said, okay, we're going to open our businesses and now florida, arizona, southern california, texas, georgia, tennessee are saying, wait a minute, we need to pull back a little bit? where do you want us to be in

terms of those kind of regulations? should we have mandated masking in america, for example? what should this country be doing to stem this outbreak we're seeing right now. >> thanks, willie. i think there's three things every governor should do. ideally, the president should be messaging on this, as well. enforcing masks, not just mandating it, but enforcing it. willie, i'm worried if we just say, let's do a national mandate, a national mandate on masks, who's going to enforce it? it's going to be the lone security guard or good samaritan. that's a dangerous situation. masks have become political. we need enforcement. something simple like, if you don't wear it, you're going to get fined, like indoor smoking. and that's controlled people's behavior, believe it or not. that's number one. number two, i love what governor murphy and mayor bill de blasio have done, they have stopped indini indoor dining, they've paused it. outdoor dining, okay, but indoor dining, transmission rates increase up to 20 times relative to outdoor dining. just the lack of ventilation,

the fact that we think there's some degree of airborne transmission with covid-19 in confined spaces. i think every state, every zip code in the country needs to rethink indoor dining for the time being and willie, i'm going to message you again. i'm a reservist icu doc in the air force. we get taught how to put up portable icus and elastic hospital capability quickly. governors in florida, governor desantis, please, governor abbott in texas, you need to deploy any assets you have available, up to and including your national guard. president trump needs to stop politicizing deployment of the military and think about utilizing military forces, as well. >> alicea menendez has a question for you. >> hey, dr. gupta. when you and i started talking about this months ago, the thinking was that we were going to see these numbers rise, we were going to see them drop during the summer, rise again in the fall, which is why i keep coming back to something that dr. fauci said in that live

stream, which is, a resurgence of infection superimposed upon a base line that never really got down to where we wanted it to go. what are the numbers we're seeing now mean for the numbers we can expect to see in the fall? >> alicia, good to see you. unfortunately, i think there was a hope that because of warm weather and humidity, that we would decrease transmission of covid-19. that was the hope. what we're seeing out of rio de janeiro, what we're seeing out of the southwest is warm weather isn't doing a thing, unfortunately. and so that -- you may have heard that metric, r-0, that infection growth rate that epidemiologists like to talk about. get that below one, we can do contact tracing, we can go back to test, trace, and quarantine of cases and go back to normal life. we never got there, alicia. meaning this is still spreading. we're seeing infection growth rates, it's three or higher in certain cities in texas and florida. it's not going to go away by the fall wave and then we have to

deal with flu. i'm worried the fall resurgence is going to look like a catastrophe if we don't get testing onboard. luckily, i think there's going to be some relief here. we're going to get great point of care testing that's going to allow us to spit in a tube and get a result in 15 minutes at a cheap price point, meaning it's not going to be cost prohibitive for universities, school districts, and employers. so people are going to get tested. that's one. and then, two, alicia, something we haven't talked enough about is, there's now new knowledge about immunity. we focus so much on antibiotiod but there's a different pathway to immunity. it's called t-cell immunity. and even if you had a negative antibiotic, but you were exposed to covid-19, this other track of immunity in your body is kicking in. so maybe there's actually greater underlying immunity to covid-19 than we think. and i'm hoping that that's the case to help safeguard us against a worse fall wave. >> dr. vin gupta, thank you, as

always. staill ahead on "morning joe," lindsey graham splits with the president over his nascar tweet and bubba wallace. you're watch "morning joe." we'll be right back. a wallace. you're watch "morning joe. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪ ♪ the open road is open again. and wherever you're headed, choice hotels is there. book direct at choicehotels.com. ♪ c'mon pizza's here. whoa! is that shaq? this is my new pizza the shaq-a-roni and it's bigger than pizza because for every shaq-a-roni sold, $1 is donated to the papa john's foundation for building community.

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president trump is digging in on his campaign of racial resentment, after railing against the movement for joisso justice and two specious over the fourth of july weekend, yesterday, he amplified that message in a series of tweets. the president asked when nascar driver bubba wallace would apologize to the drivers and officials who supported wallace after a noose was found in his garage stall, saying the whole thing was a hoax and suggested nascar made a bad decision by banning the confederate flag. he again referred to coronavirus as the china virus. he suggested the increase in crime in new york and chicago are due to those city's immigrants. and he accused sports team that are rethinking their names of

giving into political correctness. "the washington post" robert costa reported this yesterday. a trump adviser tells me this morning that many in the president's circle are eager to turn to biden and china to make that front the battleground. very little appetite for this continued focus on race, but the president insists on driving his own message, the adviser says. now more specifically on the president's tweet, asking if nascar driver bubba wallace has apologized to those who stood by his side after his team discovered a noose hanging in his garage stall at talladega super speedway on june 21st, calling the incident a hoax. nascar had notified wallace of the rope hanging in his stall and an fbi investigation then concluded no hate crime was committed. that the noose found in wallace' garage had been there since at least october of last year, long before the stall was assigned to bubba wallace. wallace, who is the only full-time black driver in nascar's top racing series led

the push for the sport to ban the confederate symbols at its tracks. and he received a flood of support from his fellow drivers after the rope was found. in a statement yesterday, nascar said it, quote, continues to stand tall with bubba. wallace tweeted a response yesterday afternoon, addressing, quote, to the next generation and little ones following my footsteps. bubba wallace wrote this. quote, always deal with hate being thrown at you with love. love over hate every day. love should come naturally, as people are taught to hate. even when it's hate from the president of the united states. white house press secretary kayleigh mcenany was repeatedly asked by reporters in the briefing room about president trump's nascar tweet yesterday and specifically about the confederate flag. here's how she defended the president. >> why is the president so supportive of flying the confederate flag? >> so i think you're referring to a tweet this morning. is that right? >> correct. >> well, i think you're

mischaracterizing the tweet. >> the president said that nascar saw bad ratings because they took down the confederate flag, banned the confederate flag. does he believe that nascar should fly the confederate flag? why don't you fly it here? >> the whole point of the tweet was to note the incident, the alleged hate crime that was, in fact, not a hate crime. >> what is the president's position? does he think that nascar made a mistake by banning the confederate flag? >> i spoke to him this morning about this and he said he was not making a judgment one way or the other. the intent of the tweet was to stand up for the men and women of nascar and the fans and those who have gone in this rush to judgment of the media to call something a hate crime when, in fact, the fbi report concluded this was not an intentional racist act. >> does he think it was a mistake for nascar to ban it? >> the president said he wasn't making a judgment one way or the other. you're focusing on one word at the very bottom of a tweet. >> why is the president even suggesting that mr. wallace should apologize? >> well, look, the fbi, as i noted, concluded that this was not a hate crime and he believes

it would go a long way if bubba came out and acknowledged that, as well. >> shauna thomas, that's an extraordinary moment at the white house. >> mm-hmm. >> the press secretary stood there and could not answer the question about whether or not the president supports the confederate flag. and she sort of spun out of control trying to explain some context around it. nascar has supported bubba wallace. i will say again, we all saw those images a couple of weeks ago at the track. bubba wallace has been clear about what he found. we've seen a photograph of it. the fbi says it was not a hate crime and it was not directed at him. that's great news. but if you can't answer a question about the confederate flag from the white house, what are we doing? >> well, it's -- the reason why i was smiling when you came to me because it is almost laughable. it looked like a "saturday night live" sketch if "saturday night live" was actually on the air. i guess they don't need to be on the air right now, because we are doing this at the white house. but the thing is, the question about the confederate flag to

the white house press secretary is is a gimme question. it's a gimme question to support nascar in trying to be more inclusive. it's a gimme question to say, you know what, mississippi did what they needed to do. and to have to torture yourself as you try to figure out how to answer pretty simple questions from the white house press corps is -- it seems like we're living in some kind of alternate universe. and i was reading a "washington post" story and they talked to lindsey graham about this. and lindsey graham sort of said, you know what, i'm from south carolina and what i've learned is if you fly the confederate flag, this isn't an exact quote, but if you fly the confederate flag, that's not good for business. well, i also don't think being able to -- i don't think that if you can't actually say, you know what, the confederate flag is a symbol of something -- of hate for a lot of people in this country and probably it's time for it to come down, if you can't even be that wishy-washy about it, and lindsey graham knows that the confederate flag

is bad for business, the confederate flag is also bad for growing your base. this still comes back to the election, right? this still comes back to 2020. and in her tortured response, the way i personally analyze that is, i don't want alienate anybody right now. that's what she's trying to figure out. how do i not alienate someone? and it's going around and around in her brain. but the thing is, you're also not bringing anyone into your corner if that is how you have to answer those questions from peter alexander and jonathan carl. >> coming up on "morning joe," president trump saw a solid jobs report just a few days ago, but you wouldn't know it from his twitter feed. why he's burying that news in favor of more controversy. favor of more controversy. ♪

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david drucker, the president got a great jobs number. the country got a great jobs number on thursday. 4.8 million jobs added. he's been touting that number. and i think mark meadows and others around, as we saw yesterday, would like him to focus in on that. to focus in on the economy getting better, not where it should be, of course, but getting better. and yet, the president comes out and steps all over any messaging the white house had planned. this is a pattern we've seen many, many times before, by tweeting against bubba wallace. and getting to the right of nascar on the confederate flag. getting to the right of the state of mississippi on the confederate flag. what is his play here, exactly? >> well, willie, this is his

only play. and this is something that we discuss over and over again, throughout the first term here of his presidency, where republicans and even people close to the president, who have his best interests at heart, want him to discuss his successes that can grow his base, that everybody can be a part of. a growing economy. we went through this in the 2018 midterm campaign, where the economy was booming and republicans close to the president, republicans on capitol hill, were begging the president to just talk about the economy, a success for him in the country that people could feel good about, that could make people feel good about his leadership and the president, instead, is much more comfortable discussing cultural politics and prosecuting a culture war, because he believes that it bucks up his base, it squeezes out every ounce of support that we can get from people inclined to support him and his party when they show up at the polls.

and it's just where he's a more comfortable politician. i think it's a message that he feels more interested in. he feels better about. and so as we head into this next election, we're seeing the same thing and i don't expect it to change. obviously, what republicans would like is for the president not just to focus on the economy, because it's something, you know, that could be unifying, but because when you look at polling, it's that one area where he still gets positive marks. he's not underwater. i mean, he's got issues with the pandemic, with coronavirus, any way you ask that question, when you ask about his handling of the economy, even though we're in a pandemic-produced recession, he still gets positive marks. and china is also another issue, if messaged properly, where the president has a record that he could fall back on. he's been willing to go to war with china on trade. maybe it hasn't turned out so well, but he's been authentic and consistent there. but the president, instead, prefers to talk about the things

we've seen over the past few days. and i think that's what we're going to continue to see regardless, so republicans better fasten their seat belts and just get used to it. >> yeah, it's obviously his instinct to go in this direction. jonathan lamir, this is a pattern we've seen many, many times over the course of this administration. so it would be interesting to hear you as somebody who covers this white house sort of walk us through how this works. they have a meeting. they say, okay, mark meadows, you're going on tv. you're going to talk about china, you're going to talk about the economic number we got last week, improvement, still 11% unemployment. and china, and we're going to look at joe biden. and then he comes out, the president, tweets this about bubba wallace and nascar and the confederate flag. and the white house press shop does what? kayleigh mcenany goes to work coming up with some explanation for this? >> the best-laid plans, willie. yes, i mean, so much of the operations in this west wing, from day one of this

administration, are just purely reactive to whatever the president is doing. he is, of course, even if he doesn't attend the meetings where they decide on messaging for the week, he's certainly read in on them at the very least. there's some consultation there. the press secretary all the time talks about her access to the president. that she's in the room with him when key decisions are made. but yet, so much of what this president does is impulse. this isn't three-dimensional or fourth-dimensional chess. often, it's the president reacting to what he sees on television. yesterday seems to be another one of those examples. it's hard to know precisely, but the president's tweet about the sports names, the cleveland indians and the washington football team came just a few minutes after a segment ran on fox business about that. we know yesterday, media matters tracked this, that on fox and friends, there were as many, if not more, mentions of statues than there were the coronavirus. so there is this sort of echo

chamber between the white house and conservative media, not just fox, but they feed off each other. this is a concern people around the president have had, that that he is talking to an increasingly smaller portion of the country, a portion of the electorate. it is an election year, we have to think of it that way. and as much as he is doubling and tripling down on these base plays, on racial grievance, distancing himself from the movement that we've seen sweep the nation in the last month or so, stoking white resentment, you know, they feel like this is out of step right now. that some of the moves that worked in 2016, this cultural grievance, may not be working now. the polling on black lives matter, for instance, has shifted so dramatically since 2016. far more of the nation supports that movement and what it's trying to achieve. that as much as the president, is about enthusiasm, about turning out that base this fall, there are many people, a growing concern of those in his inner circle and certainly republicans up on capitol hill, that these are providing distractions,

they're not helpful to his message and it's not going to help his case or other republicans' case come november. coming up, former massachusetts governor deval patrick joins our conversation. but first, msnbc's jacob soboroff has been reporting on the child separation crisis since it first spilled into public view. now, he's written a book about it. jacob joins us next on "morning joe." b joins us next on "mornin joe.

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but caravan after caravan is forming unvetted, illegal aliens trying to flood into our country, on your dollar, overkmove overwhelming your schools, depleting your resources and endangering your community. homeland security has just confirmed that members of the lawless caravan, the one you've been watching, come from 20 different countries and include among them criminals and gang members, convicted of crimes ranging from armed robbery to sexual assault. >> two years ago, the trump administration looked to make political gains out of thousands

of migrants venturing from central american countries to the u.s. southern border in the form of a caravan, in an attempt to enter the united states in an effort to curb the amount of undocumented immigrants from crossing into the u.s., the trump administration introduced its zero tolerance policy, which began to criminally prosecute all suspected migrants who entered the country illegally. the result, thousands of families separated when parents were charged with unlawful entry, revealing that children were being kept in cages. msnbc correspondent jacob soboroff covered this topic extensively right from the beginning and is out now with a new book that details that humanitarian crisis. it's entitled "separated: inside an american tragedy." mike barnicle, eddie glaude jr., and claire mccaskill all back with us, as well. jacob, congratulations on the book. as i said, you have been on this story quite literally from day one. and the picture you paint in the

book is a methodical effort by this administration, starting just days after president trump's inauguration in 2017, to put in place a policy of family separation. >> it's exactly what i tried to do, willie. thank you very much. good to be on with all of you and good morning to everybody. you know, i was there. i saw it myself with my own eyes, and we all remember, because we experienced it together, the kids under the mylar blankets, supervised by security contractors in a watchtower, sitting there in the cages or the 1,500 boys in that former walmart, 250,000 square feet, allowed outside for two or three hours a day. and while i spoorexperienced th realtime, after having covered it, there were so many questions that i still had. number one, how could this have happened in the united states of america? a systemic separation. what physicians for human rights

calls now, today, torture. it meets the clinical definition of torture of these children on american soil. and the answer is, a deliberate attempt by the trump administration to do something that no other administration had ever done before. and i basically wanted to go back and understand how we got to this point. so really, the book starting 30 years ago from the policies of the united states of america when it comes to immigration, but really how the trump administration supervised this in a way that no one had ever, ever done before and the results were catastrophic. were an american tragedy. >> and jacob, you've got a ton of original reporting in this great new book, including that meeting i referenced a couple of weeks after the president's inaugurations, where the acting head of customs and border protection in his office, there was a meeting among the new officials in the trump administration, where the family separation policy was first laid out. how did that meeting go and what was the reaction of the people

in the room? >> people left shell shocked. there were career officials. what this was, there was a meeting in the office of kevin mcaleenan on valentine's day of 2017. and i detail it in this book for the first time. it was a story i had never heard before, but as soon as i started digging, everyone pointed to this meeting as one of the first places that the idea of using family separation as a deterrent to basically scare people away, using cruelty from coming to the united states was raised. and in that room, the idea of celebrations were raised. there were -- it was a celebratory tone in this room, where people were laughing about denying asylum applications for migrants coming to the united states. and as i said, officials who were in the obama administration, career officials who had been holdovers left shell shocked, are the words that they used. and almost every step of the way, as this -- people had to become detectives in the office of refugee resettlement, in health and human services, to

really understand what was going on. because this was hidden by the trump administration, despite the fact that john kelly came out in march of 2017 and confirmed our colleague, julia ainsley's reporting. at the time she was at reuters, that they were considering this policy. but from then until 2018 when this exploded into public view, at every twist and turn, the administration denied there was a family separation policy. and one of the others things that i learned and write about in the book, willie, is that kersten nielsen, who famously sent out a tweet and had that disastrous press conference at the white house, saying there is no family separation policy, period, is the one who signed the family separation policy into existence, despite the fact that she was warned by john mitnick, the general counsel of the department of homeland security, in a memo that's never been reported on, at least published from, before, i should say, that this policy was going to be likely unconstitutional. that it would be overturned on the grounds that it violated the due process rights, the human rights of these migrants coming

to the united states. and she went forward with it anyway. >> and that the policy would break a number of american laws, to boot. jacob, mike barnicle has a question for you. mike? >> jacob, good job every day, and great job on the book, by the way. it's a story that deserves to be told over and over and over. >> thanks, mike. >> so two questions here. how many children are still being held captive by the united states of america? and do we have any idea the percentage of children who were separated from their parents, who might never be able to be reunited with those parents? >> i'm glad you asked that, mike. yesterday i actually spoke with the lead lawyer for the american civil liberties union, who i will say, is responsible for the reuniting of these children. they brought the case to federal court, that, by the way, kerstin nielsen was warned would ultimately overturn the policy when she put it into existence

in the first place. and because of that case, the miss l. case, was able to stop the separation of policy and a federal judge ordered the reunifications. yesterday -- i'm twaualking oney ago, lee told me that there were children and parents that may never be reunited because those parents were deported back to their country of origin and the children are today living with a sponsor in the united states. at the time, we were warned that you could have permanent orphans because of this. and the truth of the matter is, that has come to pass. over 5,000 -- over 5,400 kids were separated as a direct result of this policy and it's also important to note that right now, as we are all talking to each other, there's around 130 kids in i.c.e. family detention that were ordered released due to a coronavirus outbreak in i.c.e. family detention. yesterday, chad wolf, one of the architects of the policy, and you can read about that in both book, as well, said he wasn't going to do a jailbreak,

quote/unquote, and let the children and parents out together, when advocates are saying, you could do it now. they could let them out right now if they waned edwanted to, trump administration continues to try to use this policy as a way to square migrants from coming into this country. >>jacojacob, i am anxious to taa deep dive into this book. i was a ranking member on thehome security committee when a lot of this was coming to pass. it's complicated. people probably don't realize the handoff that goes on between the department of homeland security and the department of hhs. and the fact that there's been this finger pointing back and forth that's been hard to really tag responsibility. but my question to you this morning is about our asylum laws. they have tried to basically blow up the law, as it relates to seeking asylum in this country. how would you characterize the current status of the united states of america's asylum laws under the trump administration?

>> let me put it into perspective, senator. at the time, when we were there, down on the border, there were thousands, over 10,000 children in the custody of the department of health and human services. here, attempting to seek asylum. those children are not even being let in this country any longer in order to declare asylum. under the cover of the coronavirus, the trump administration has essentially expelled unaccompanied children from this country. made tens of thousands of people wait in mexico under the npp program, which proceeded the coronavirus. but asylum, as we know it, virtually not an option for most migrants who are coming to this country. and i mean, that's the crux of this. when you ask where we are today, you know, this was two years ago, it feels like it was a long time ago. things, arguably, today, are worse than they were back then. children are not being systemically tortured by being separated from their parents, but the trauma endures, not only in those children, but in the

ones who are trying to get into the country today, in order to seek refuge. and i write about a father and son, who i spent quite a lot of time with, who came here to do just that. and today their case is in jeopardy because of the way that the trump administration is handling asylum. and they had to go through separations only to get to that poin point. >> jacob, eddie glaude jr. has a question for you. eddie? >> jacob, thank you for writing this book. the writing is powerful. the stories are heartbreaking. i urge everyone to sit down with this text and read it slowly. let's pan out for a minute, jacob. what you've laid out, it happened. the cruelty happened. the barbarity happened. pan out and tell me what you think this story says about who we are as a country in this moment? not just simply the individual players. it's easy to scapegoat donald trump. what does this story say about

us, because it's happened on our watch? >> well, you hit the nail on the head. and the first thing i would like to say, professor, your book is sitting just out of camera frame on my desk, and i'm grateful to you for sending it, as well. what does it say? what does it say about who we are and where we are? that this is america. this is the united states of america. and it's been a long time coming to this point when we talk about refugees. deterrence-based immigration is a policy that has existed in the yooits at least since the clinton administration. prevention through deterrence was the official policy of the united states border patrol in 1994. the idea was to make people go through more dangerous and deadly routes to basically choose between potentially losing your life or getting harmed and making it into the united states of america. and administration after administration has used some

form of this denser-based immigration policy and here we are today, in the trump administration, that has taken it to a place where we have never seen before. i do want to say, though, in reporting in the book, and in talking to people who i didn't know at the time, there are people inside the government who are fighting back. people like commander jonathan white at the department of health and human services, at the time at the department of health and human services, who fought at every twist and turn with his colleagues in order to make sure that these policies did not harm children. as clinical social workers and child care professionals do, they put the best interests of the children first. and at the time, i kept saying, there is no plan to reunite these children. this is a slow-motion disaster. and i have to say, in some measure, i was wrong. because there were plans. there were plans by people who

cared. there were plans by compassionate people within our government, pushing back against these type of policies. but they were stymied by the trump administration. this was evaluated to senior leaders in the department of health and human services, including scott lloyd, who ran the including scott lloyd who ran the office of refugee resettlement. his first instinct when katlyn dickerson's explosive "new york times" expose was published was to get rid of the list of children that the department was keeping of separated kids and parents. and they would not have been able to reunite those children were it not for that list being preserved by people like jim de la cruz, a career official inside the department of health and human services. so while this paints a dark picture of american immigration policy over the years, professor glaude, there are people inside who, day in, day out, are fighting to make sure that we're putting those migrants and refugees first. >> the new book grounded in years of his own reporting

"separated -- inside an american tragedy." jacob soboroff, congratulations on the book. everybody is going to be reading. we're proud of you. nice job. coming up next -- we know how the president feels about the confederate flag at nascar races. what about at the department of defense? new reporting on a pentagon draft policy that would ban confederate flag displays. also ahead, former massachusetts governor deval patrick joins our conversation. it's all next on "morning joe." . . 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.

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to give you the protein you need with less of the sugar you don't. [grunting noise] i'll take that. woohoo! 30 grams of protein and 1 gram of sugar. ensure max protein. with nutrients to support immune health. pentagon officials are considering a policy that would ban the display of the confederate flag in work public workplaces. that's according to a draft policy by the associated press. it's being circulated by pentagon leaders. if the ban is approved it would bring the other military services in line with the marine corps which banned d ened confe

displays on its bases last month. it was sent out to service members for their input and response last week. joining us, deval patrick, the founder and chair of together fund as well as co-chair of the superpac, american bridge. governor patrick, great to see you. we'll dig in to some of the issues you're working on with voter suppression and other spaces. just your broad view of what you've seen in the country over the last month or so since the killing of george floyd. the movement in the streets for racial justice. i'm not sure everybody knows that you grew up on the south side of chicago in public housing. went to harvard and harvard law school. you have seen a lot in this country over the course of your lifetime. what do you make of what we're seeing right now? >> it makes me proud. i think at the outset, i had a range of emotions that started

with shock and horror, although not surprise, sadly. and then grief and then skepticism because of our famously short attention span here in america in these times. and then hope as i saw the crowds grow, become more diverse, sustain the protest over time. every once in a while, america reinvents herself. and how incredibly exciting to think that the reinvention right now might be led by young black and brown people. the outcast and the despised over a long period of time and their sons and daughters. and our white allies. so i am hopeful. and i am urging the biden campaign and indeed all political and civic leaders and business leaders to step up and make the most of this moment to move us more affirmatively toward justice and equality for

everybody. >> so what does that mean as a practical matter, governor? we take the energy that we've seen in the streets that has broad support of americans, of all backgrounds and ages in this country right now and turn that into policy change. you've obviously sat in the governor's mansion of massachusetts. what has to happen now with the energy in the streets? >> first of aushlll, i think fo have to show up and vote. while many have, you know, come to expect the worst from republicans, it's also true that many have come to expect the minimum of democrats. and so there's a lot of skepticism among a lot of people from all kinds of communities about the value of the vote. but the question, you know, if the character of the candidates is always an issue in elections, this time it's the character of the country. and so participating in that surmounting all of the suppression that's been out there and that is still at large to prevent people from voting i

think is incredibly important. and then we have to push our elected leaders from the white house on down through the senate and the congress and into statehouses and state legislatures to think big about how we address the ways in which we make the economy and our society equitable and expand opportunity and fair play. practically, that's going to mean re-imagining policing. we've got to re-imagine education from pre-k up through public higher ed. it means we have to reimagine capitalism and what it means to grow an economy out to the middle and marginalized and not just up to the well connected. we have to reimagine housing strategy and policy and certainly climate strategy and policy. and that's a very exciting thing. and i will say that the work we've been doing at american bridge is to this point of trying to be sure we're talking

to everybody. not just the folks who always vote democratic. in fact, in the case of american bridge to the so-called swing voters in wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania. >> governor, andy glaude has a question for you. >> good to see you, governor patrick. >> good to see you, professor. >> in light of that transformative agenda you just laid out, how do you respond to what we've seen over the last weekend. donald trump is doubling down on white resentment and white hatred and white fear. we see him in some ways playing the culture wars. how would you respond to that as we pursue this transformative agenda you just laid out? >> so there are two things that come to mind when i hear what donald trump is doing. first of all, you know, the obvious that that really is his core. he goes back to his core time and time again because he can't

help himself. but secondly, he goes there because there's nothing left to go to. you know, he's failed in successfully and effectively managing the pandemic. he's failed in developing a safe reopening of the economy. he's failed in our engagement with our adversaries like russia or china from a trade perspective or in the middle east. he's failed our troops. we've heard he's shown a lack of curiosity about the reports of russian bounties on the heads of american troops in afghanistan. he's failed in helping working people help themselves from all kinds of communities all over the country. and he knows that. but he is always first and foremost, if not exclusively, about himself. not about us. and that may be unfortunate when it comes to a private citizen.

it's unacceptable when it comes to a president. and that has got to change. >> former massachusetts governor deval patrick, we appreciate your taking some time with us. always good to see you. thank you all for joining us this morning. we'll be right back here tomorrow morning. for now, chris jansing picks up the coverage. hey, chris. >> hey, willie. hello there. i am chris jansing in for stephanie ruhle. it's tuesday, july 7th. here are the facts at this hour. knee deep in the first wave. that's how dr. anthony fauci describes america this morning as we watch a skyrocketing number of cases in nearly every corner of the country. more than 300,000 new cases were reported just since the start of july. we saw roughly 53,000 cases on monday alone. that's more than double what we saw the day after memorial day weekend. so big picture, the country is closing in on 3 million infections. more than 131,000