okay, hans nicks nik yolz. thank you so much. awfully good to see you, my friend, hans nichols. i'll be joining you as we read "axios a.m." in a little while. you can sign up for that newsletter at signup.axios.com. that's a wrap for me this wednesday morning, everyone. i'm alex witt. i look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning, but stay right where you are. "morning joe" starts right now. again, mortality rate the lowest anywhere in the world, and we want to get this done and we want to get our country going again. >> it's a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death. there's so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus. don't get yourself into false complacency. >> dr. anthony fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, with that word of caution for those taking comfort in a lower death rate due to the coronavirus, people like president trump. by the way, we should add, the united states does not have the

lowest mortality rate from the virus anywhere in the world, as the president said. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is wednesday, july 8th. i'm willie geist. joe and mika have the morning off. we woke up this morning to the news that there now are more than 3 million reported cases of coronavirus in the united states with record days in a number of states, including texas and california. against that backdrop, president trump is touting the administration's response to the virus, saying, "we're in a good place," pointing to the united states' mortality rate, even as we just heard dr. fauci publicly calls that a false narrative. the president also is pushing state and local leaders across the country to reopen schools and colleges this fall. new modeling predicts a national spike, though, through those first months of school. meanwhile, the trump administration announcing it will formally withdraw from the world health organization early next year. vice president joe biden says if he's elected, that will not happen. meanwhile, dr. deborah birx says

officials were caught off guard with this latest wave of coronavirus. during a panel discussion with the atlantic council, the coordinator of the white house coronavirus task force said, "none of us really anticipated the amount of community spread that began in really our 18-to-35-year-old age group." she added, "this is an age group that was so good and so disciplined through march and april, but when they saw people out and about on social media, they all went out and about." dr. birx also told the "wharton business daily" podcast, instead of being more cautious, some states, quote, stepped on the gas while reopening. texas set another record on tuesday. for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, the state reported more than 10,000 new cases in a single day. the record-breaking surge comes as hospitalizations grow at an alarming rate. the "associated press" reports nearly 80% of the state's hospital beds are in use and intensive care units are filling up in some of the biggest cities, including san antonio

and houston. as of yesterday, nearly 9,300 people were reported hospitalized in texas with covid-19. the pandemic also straining florida's health system. state health officials there say more than 40 hospitals, some in the state's most populated counties, have either maxed out of their icu capacity or are close to running out of intensive care beds. as of yesterday, more than 5,000 patients were using roughly 83% of the state's icu beds. according to florida's health agency, that leaves a little more than 1,000 beds free at this moment. this comes as the state suffered a 30% surge in new cases just from last week. florida, which has nearly 214,000 confirmed cases, is struggling with the third worst outbreak in the country after new york and california. but yesterday, president trump seemed to downplay the challenges we're seeing across the country. >> hospitalization, i think florida, basically -- you're talking about florida,

california more than anyplace else. many other states are in very fine shape. they're doing very well. but we have some areas that looked like we were going to escape and they were going to escape, and then all of a sudden, they became hot, like florida, like california, like a couple of others. but i think you're going to see with all of the things that we're doing and with all of the therapeutics that are coming out, and then ultimately, the vaccine, we're going to be in very good shape very soon. >> let's first bring in white house reporter for the "associated press" jonathan lamire. jonathan, good morning. so, the president yesterday, on the very day that the country crossed the 3 million case threshold of coronavirus, and we saw these record spikes in places like texas and california, says we are in a good place. i guess it shouldn't be surprising anymore. that's been the narrative, to sort of wish it away with rhetor rhetoric. apparently, though, no plan at this moment of bringing that spike down. >> good morning, willie. that's right. the white house for a while now has sort of tried to assert its own reality when it comes to the

pandemic, not wanting to fully engage and to play off these disturbing spikes we're seeing throughout the country. the case levels reaching record highs in states like texas and florida and others, and it's part of this new messaging the white house has really tried to debut this week, saying to americans, we all need to get used to living with this virus, that this is going to be here for a while, that therapeutics have improved, that there's work under way on a vaccine and there's some encouraging notes that one could be on track for distribution, at least small doses, by the end of the year or early next year. but trying to suggest that the virus here really playing up the mortality rate, as you brought in at the top of the hour, that yes, people are getting sick, but they're really trying to play up the idea that not as many people are dying as we saw in those horrible first weeks of march and april, in places like new york city, and that's true, for now. but we know that icu capacity is

getting dangerously high. and in hospitals throughout the south right now, we know that, yes, though there's a rise in young people infected right now who have a better chance of surviving this virus -- first of all, surviving it doesn't mean you're okay. it is a punishing disease, and people could have -- they're still studying what the long-term effects of having this virus could be. there's also, of course, a lag when it comes to the death total, that it could be weeks before we see the impact, not just of these young people, but the people that these young people are affecting, infecting, perhaps their parents and grandparents. but the white house is trying to move forward. we saw the president yesterday pushing school districts throughout the country to reopen this fall, even suggesting that those that don't, that it's some sort of political ploy. the democratic mayors or governors are trying to keep schools closed to hurt him. willie, of course, there's zero evidence of that. >> yeah. let's bring into this conversation clinical director of the division of infectious diseases at brigham and women's hospital, dr. paul sacks.

good to see you again. i want to talk about the death rate first. we have a lot to get to, but the president zeroing in the mortality rate, saying it's the best anywhere in the world. that's not true. but what do you make of the argument, which is true in many cases, that we're getting better at treating this, that getting coronavirus is not a death sentence? we talked to director of houston methodist hospitals yesterday, who says his patients are getting younger, fewer of them are going into the icu and the er. but what about this focus on death rate, which dr. fauci calls a false narrative? >> well, not surprisingly, since i'm an infectious disease specialist, i do agree with dr. fauci, that there has always been and we've recognized from the very start, a broad spectrum of illness from covid-19, from mild illness to very severe illness, and this severe illness can occur in young people as well, as has been mentioned. some of the young people who get this become critically ill, and some even die, and those are really deaths that we should not be experiencing. so i very much agree with dr. fauci, that this is a false narrative.

i also think that we may see an increased death rate in the coming weeks to months that hasn't yet occurred because deaths often lag behind new cases by several weeks. >> and what's your read on these spikes? california, texas, several other states yesterday set their daily records for the number of cases of coronavirus. is that a factor of reopening? is that a consequence of masks not being mandated? what do you see as behind all this? >> it's a combination of factors. we've known, again, for some time how this virus spreads. it spreads most efficiently in indoor settings, when people are congregating in bars and restaurants, in houses of worship. those are all places where lots of people get together without masks and potentially transmit the virus to others. by opening too early, before we really had an effective testing and isolation program, we ended up allowing the virus to spread in these communities, and

eventually, seed these communities and cause these surges. we experienced the same thing in the northeastern united states earlier in the pandemic. fortunately, we know how to get it under control, as seen in the declining numbers in the northeast and some other regions, but it's not easy. it means mask-wearing in public. it means not opening bars and restaurants and religious settings, as i mentioned, being very careful with schools. i think schools are important, but they have to be opened very carefully and not just pretend that this doesn't exist. >> we know from the beginning of this that testing is so crucial to our understanding and getting our arms around coronavirus. we've heard not just from president trump but from others who said, well, of course you're seeing a large number of cases because we're getting better at testing. therefore, we've identified more people who have it. and that's why you're seeing a spike in the numbers, because we're doing a better job testing. what's your response to that? >> well, i think we could do a better job still. unfortunately, some of the regions that are hardest hit with covid-19 right now are

recapitulating some of the difficulties we had with testing in march and april in other hard-hit areas. so, there are long lines to get tested. there are long delays before people get the test results. what would really be transformative is if we could have an inexpensive, rapid home test, so that we could expand testing to not just those people who have symptoms but people who are potentially asymptomatic or presymptomatic and could spread the virus to others. i think that would be a very exciting development. many companies, many academic centers are working on this. it's something that i really am hopeful we're going to see in the next few months. >> all right. clinical director of the division of infectious diseases at brigham and women's hospital, dr. paul sax. dr. sax, thanks for your perspective this morning. we really appreciate it. let's bring in our panel. white house correspondent for pbs news hour, yamiche el sinnedor, national security expert, columnist at usa today and author of "the death of expertise," tom nichols, and

political reporter for axios, hans nichols. no relation, as far as i understand. good to see you all. yamic yamiche, let me begin with you and the president talking about schools. the white house plans to pressure state governors to reopen schools in the fall. here's what the president said. >> we're very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools, to get them open. it's very important. it's very important for our country. it's very important for the well-being of the student and the parents. so, we're going to be putting a lot of pressure on open your schools in the fall. >> yamiche, as jonathan lamire said, the president framed this as a political issue, suggesting that democratic governors, democratic mayors, officials are out to get president trump, and so they want to keep the schools closed to make things seem worse than they are. there's absolutely no evidence of that. i think those governors, republican and democratic, just want to keep kids safe. is there a plan behind this, yamiche? is there something, a benchmark

where the president says, well, we believe we're at this point or that we'll be at this point next month in december, therefore, it will be okay to open schools, or is he just saying, throw open the schools and let's see what happens? >> that's a great question, willie. it's one that the american people obviously want to know. it's one that health experts and scared parents want to know. but it's a question that at this point the white house doesn't have a clear answer on. neither do the trump administration health officials that are really serving as the face of the response to this. what we have in president trump is someone who is doubling down on the idea that it's an us versus them, and that if you're on his side, you're on the side of reopening, you're on the side of no masks, you're on the side of social distancing when it's convenient but also going to large campaign rallies when it's convenient for the president, or you're against him. and that means that you're on the side of joe biden, who is still saying that we should be cautious as a country, who is still saying that we should wear masks, and who is still saying, before we open schools, let's try to figure out what the metrics are that we should use

to measure when we think it's appropriate. yesterday, senior administration officials held a call where i spoke to several senior officials, asking them, what are the metrics that you're using? is there a benchmark? are you saying there are this number of hospitalizations or this number of deaths or this number of cases are the number we're trying to hit before we can open in certain states? and what i got was, well, really, that's going to be a local authority thing. what we want to know is that schools need to be reopen. so, what you have is the federal government pressuring local governments, pressuring governors to listen to the president and open back up these schools without any real guidance on how to do that or when to do that. >> tom nichols, i don't know a single parent who does not want their kids back in school. it was a long spring for kids. it was a long spring for parents. a lot of parents need some certainty about what's going to go on in the fall in terms of their own jobs and whether or not they'll be able to get child care. so, yes, everyone is behind the idea of getting these schools open, but it would be nice to hear that there's a plan behind that and not just a political idea that the president wants

kids back in school to make him feel good. obviously, his track record on this administration's handling of the coronavirus does not suggest that there is, in fact, a plan in place where benchmarks would be met and then schools could be open. yesterday, the president declaring, we've got to open the schools. >> as you say, everybody wants the schools open, but i don't think there's a lot of parents in america who want their children to become, you know, carriers for covid to bring it back home and to make the family sick and, you know, potentially kill grandma or grandpa. and i think part of the problem is that when the president says these things, he lacks evident conviction that he cares about anybody but himself when he's saying it. it's very obvious that he steps out to the podium and says, you know, someone told me that there's a constituency for opening the schools, so sure, i'll try that. you know, tomorrow it might be, well, keep the schools closed,

open the beaches, close the bars. the president is just dialing through various things without any evident conviction that he's really interested in or cares about any of these things, and that's why you don't see a plan. i mean, if the president was really serious about opening schools, he would say, here's the group of people i've put together to do this. we're talking to governors. we're talking to medical experts. but instead, he uses it like kind of an applause line. he walks out and he says, gotta get the schools open, because he assumes, somewhere, that that's an applause line. and that's all he's looking for. you know, that's really all he's looked for in his presidency. but during a pandemic, trying to push the applause light button really isn't an effective replacement for a strategy. >> yeah, the president attacked harvard as well for already declaring that it would have online school and not have all of its students back. he called that the easy way out. he said harvard's taking the easy way out.

hans nichols, you covered this white house for a long time, first for us at nbc news and now at axios. something yesterday we saw out in the open that we've seen many times in the last several months was this sort of parallel track, where the president is saying one thing, that we're in a good place, and the experts, dr. anthony fauci, is talking about the president's false narrative, not specifically citing the president, but it's pretty clear who he's talking about when he says it's a false narrative to focus in on the death rate, as dr. sax just explained to us. there is this push and pull in the white house, whether or not he's meeting with anthony fauci is another matter, but they're speaking past each other in public. >> look, what we know about parallel tracks is that in the end, even off in the horizon, they don't meet. and that's the challenge with this. and i don't -- when i look at the sort of rhetoric between what the white house is saying, what the president is saying, and what white house advisers, it doesn't seem parallel. it seems perpendicular. there's going to be some sort of clash. and when you look at the support

among democrats, and specifically, joe biden, when they talk about how dr. fauci would be a member of their administration, you have to wonder how secure does that make dr. fauci? everything has been politicized, whether or not it's schools, it's masks. we see with republicans that they're going ahead with fund-raisers. if everything has been politicized, it's only a matter of time before dr. fauci becomes more and more politicized. dr. birx as well. you see this so clearly, or you saw it so clearly over the weekend when dr. hahn of the cdc was put in the almost impossible position of defending and not -- defending the president and not contradicting the president, while also staying true to the science. and his most important answer there, dr. hahn, over the weekend, was almost the silences, the pauses, because there's really no answer on how to square that circle. so, with now three geometric references that probably are all wrong, willie, i'll toss it back to you. >> i was going to say, there's a lot of geometry in that

explanation. i'm still working through that. meanwhile yesterday, the trump administration officially notified the united nations and congress it will withdraw from the world health organization over criticism of america's response to the coronavirus pandemic. with thedrawl is expected to take effect july 6th of 2021. president trump first said in late may, the united states would be, quote, terminating that relationship, citing the organization's ties to china and failure to make requested reforms. jonathan lamire, i should point out that vice president joe biden has said if he is elected, that will not happen. on day one, he will put us back in with the w.h.o. the president has liked this fight with the world health organization now for a couple of months. boogie man who fell down on the job in many ways, as we've detailed, in the early stages of this with its relationship with china. but the president now lifting up again the w.h.o. as someone he can punch at. >> there will be no geometry in my answer, willie.

but yes, the president has been looking for a scapegoat for the coronavirus for a long time, and he's settled on the w.h.o., and by extension, china, that he wants to blame them for the virus reaching america's shores back in february and march. and that way, it allows him to skirt past the warning signs that he and his administration missed, that they were slow to respond to the virus. and as we have documented on this show many times, put together the needed supplies to be ready for when it came in full force. and i think we need to -- this is a helpful reminder that all of this, in any administration, but particularly this one, we need to look through this through a political lens, just four months until election day. this is about blaming china. this is to shift the blame from the west wing and the virus, and it's the same with the push to reopen schools. the white house in their calculation, this is about trying to instill a sense of normal normalcy, that we all know that life can't really feel like it's back to normal, it can't feel --

americans can't feel that they have the virus under control, the pandemic is something that they can live with, which is the white house's new messages, if their kids are home all the time because schools are closed. they want kids to be in closed to create that sense of normalcy this fall just two or so months, you know, first week of september, labor day, just two months to the election. and that also, of course, is about the economic angle. for so many americans, they can't fully re-engage in the workforce if they're home with their children, if they don't have reliable child care, if they don't have a place to send their kids to school, setting aside all of the impact it's having on the nation's children, from missing all this time in schools. that will be studied for years to come. it's about the economy. it's about the president trying to, again, jump start what he needs. he and his advisers feel he needs to win re-election. schools open, the economy can further open. that's the plan. of course, the virus may have other ideas, as we are seeing surges now with more

potentially, health experts warn, expected right when schools are opening, during that stretch run of the campaign this fall. >> both ideas every american supports, but there needs to be a plan to get there. you can't just throw open the doors and cross your fingers and hope it goes well. back to the w.h.o. for a moment. the president was criticized by even some republicans yesterday, senator la ma'am alexander among them, who says the w.h.o. has made a lot of mistakes, we acknowledge that first, but now is not the time to pull out of the w.h.o. let's talk about how they screwed up afterward, after we've gotten our arms around this coronavirus pandemic. >> there will be no geometry in my answer because i was told there would be no math. >> never math on this show. >> but the president's response to the w.h.o. is the classic trump response, which is, when the international environment is difficult, to take our ball and

go home, rather than exercise american leadership. the answer to the evident problems at the w.h.o. is to stay in the w.h.o., exercise the considerable power and influence that the united states has, not just in that body, but in others, and to send the message that during a pandemic, we're all rowing in the same direction, and the united states is actually going to take the lead. and instead, this is really an extension of the way the president runs everything in his life, that if things aren't going well, he just flips the table up, you know. if he's losing at checkers, he just flips the board over and walks away and says, we're not playing this game anymore. and it's purely a political act because it's meant to shift blame to china, but it's also meant to show that the president, really, he's not going to put up with these

foreigners who hurt us, you know, that these nefarious chinese, they're going to pay a price. i mean, that's another motif in the trump campaign arsenal, you know, that these foreign powers and these kind of dark forces that have hurt you americans, i'm going to get even with them by pulling out and taking our money out and walking away. and of course, this is the opposite of leadership. this is going to leave us in a terrible position, and it won't last, i mean, assuming joe biden wins the election. but i imagine even under future administrations. it's a tough sell, because we need to be in those organizations and we need to be exercising our leadership in them. the president just doesn't -- i think this is another case where the president doesn't understand his own job. >> yeah, the president's back to calling it the china virus this week and worse, obviously, in the last couple of weeks. everybody stay with us. we've got much more to get to. still ahead, a troubling new

number of coronavirus cases at an immigration detention center in arizona. at least half of the employees there have tested positive for the virus. so, what does that mean for detainees? nbc's julia ainsley joins us with her new reporting on that and much more ahead when "morning joe" comes right back. "morning joe" comes right back usaa is made for what's next no matter what challenges life throws at you, we're always here to help with fast response and great service and it doesn't stop there we're also here to help look ahead

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we have health care workers, they don't get infected because they take appropriate precautions. they engage in social distancing. they wear facial covering. they use good personal hygiene. this can work. you can do all of this. there's no reason schools have to be in any way any different from the rest of what we need to do on opening ourselves up. >> that's secretary of health and human services alex azar claiming yesterday health care workers don't get infected by coronavirus because of the safety precautions they take. 765 frontline medical workers have likely died from coronavirus after helping patients during the pandemic.

that's according to a study by kaiser health news and "the guardian." meanwhile, medical workers across the country are warning of yet another dire shortage of personal protective equipment as coronavirus resurges. according to the "associated press," a doctors association says physicians' offices are closing because they cannot get masks and other necessary protective supplies, while a national nurses union is concerned gear will need to be reused. citing the results from a survey of its union members, the president of national nurses united told the "ap," "we're five months into this and there are still shortages of gowns, hair covers, shoe covers, masks, n-95 masks. they're being doled out and we're still being told to reuse them." now turning to concerns of the virus at an i.c.e. detention center in arizona, where nearly half of the employees there have tested positive. nbc news correspondent julia ainsley has been covering this story for us. julia, good morning. it's good to see you. so, where are we talking about here?

who's in this detention facility and why are so many of them getting sick? >> reporter: so, willie, this is the eloy detention center. it is an i.c.e. detention center, but contracted by a private company, core civic, and it can hold up to 1,500 migrants, and as we understand, has one of the highest rates of infection. 222 migrants have been infected with the coronavirus, and a shocking number, we've now learned, 127 out of approximately 300 employees -- that's nearly half -- have tested positive for covid-19. and my colleague, jacob soboroff, and i did some deep digging, and we actually spoke to two employees at this facility, who spoke to us on the condition of aminity. obviously, they're scared they could lose their jobs for speaking to us. but they said that there are a lot of problems that are happening because of this. it's created a staff shortage, that not only are there people who can't come to work because they're sick, but people who are scared to come to work.

they're scared of passing it to their families. they gave us examples of family members who have become sick. and as a result of this staff shortage, the immigrants themselves are reporting that they're not being able to be let out, that some of them are reporting being on lockdown in their cells for over 24 hours, not able to have access to phones so they could call an attorney, not able to shower or do laundry. but i should say that core civic, this company who runs the facility at eloy, denies these allegations and says that these immigrants are confusing a lockdown with what is really an appropriate procedure to try to quarantine them during the virus. >> julia, what's the federal government saying about this? we've heard from the private company that runs some of these detention centers, but what is the administration saying about this? are they concerned that there are outbreaks in their prison? is there any move to perhaps re-evaluate the policies that put all these people inside the facilities? >> reporter: you know, i.c.e. is constantly updating their policies here.

there is an ongoing lawsuit, though, for these groups that are trying to get immigrants released. and they say that these people really shouldn't be here, they're not a threat to the public, and that many of them should be released because right now they're just sitting ducks. i.c.e. has not gone to that extent yet. in fact, we are waiting. today, willie, we may hear what the federal government will do in having to release children from i.c.e. custody. but for this particular facility, it's interesting, i.c.e. would not even share the data on the employees. that is not known to them, because core civic keeps their own set of data on their employees. i.c.e. doesn't have that. so, this news may even be news to i.c.e. themselves. now, one thing that they're saying, though, is that they consistently are updating these policies and that they quarantine people who are positive. but one thing that we hear over and over again, both from the immigrants and from the staff, is that that means that if an entire -- say you have a cell block of 50 people, one person tests positive. you put that entire block under

quarantine. but then that positive person could in some cases be returned. there isn't really anything in place that says that they have to remove someone who's positive away from everyone they've been living with. instead, their entire cell block goes under quarantine. so, you can understand these conditions. some of these immigrants said that they sit there with their fingers in their ears all day because of the banging and the shouting of people trying to be released. >> the conditions are bad enough to begin with. now you add in coronavirus, making it all that much worse. julia, yamiche alcindor has a question for you. yamiche? >> good morning, julia. excellent reporting, as per usual on your end. i have a two-fold question. the first one is, can you talk a little bit about what treatment, if at all, these imgrapts are getting in this detention facility? what do we know about how they're handling when people get sick? and how feasible is it that some of the immigrants might be let go? are their lawyers suing? is this something where we think there might be some sort of next chapter for these immigrants, or

are they basically stuck here? >> reporter: those are great questions, yamiche. as far as the treatment, i mean, they do have doctors in these facilities. some of the immigrants say that they're not getting enough treatment, that they're not treated in time, that they do have people that would come, test them and treat them. and i.c.e. says that they consistently spend the hundreds of millions of dollars on medical care for detainees. but then the immigrants themselves who are so scared of getting sick say it's the front end where they're feeling like they're not getting heard and that they are not getting enough masks in time. core civic denies that and says they are handing out masks, and if anyone needs a new one, they will give it out. but as far as what can be done and who will be released, that is something that the federal government, that we've seen this administration really fight on. they have not wanted to release immigrants after there have been lawsuits. and about 900 have been released. those were identified as people who may have underlying conditions and also met the

qualifications of not having certain criminal backgrounds. but these lawyers say that there are more people who should fall under those thresholds, and particularly, as we've talked about here on "morning joe," children. apart from this facility, we know that a federal judge has said that children need to be released from i.c.e. detention, i.c.e. family detention. the question is whether or not the government will release them with their parents. so, that's the next place we're turning to, to see how i.c.e. and this administration will respond to that lawsuit as well. >> nbc's julia ainsley, always great to this beat. you can read her full piece at nbcnews.com. julia, thanks so much. coming up on "morning joe," our next guest was one of the civil rights leaders who met with mark zuckerberg yesterday to urge him to take action to combat the spread of hate on facebook. the head of the naacp, derrick johnson, on why he and the other organizers of the facebook advertising boycott say the meeting was a disappointment. plus, new reporting that says president trump is going

with his gut in fanning racism. "morning joe's" coming right back. g racism "morni jngoe's" coming right back from prom dresses... ...to soccer practices... ...and new adventures. you hope the more you give the less they'll miss. but even if your teen was vaccinated against meningitis in the past... they may be missing vaccination for meningitis b. let's help protect them together. because missing menb vaccination could mean missing out on a whole lot more. ask your doctor if your teen is missing meningitis b vaccination.

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>> president trump yesterday dancing around a question when asked to explain his criticism of nascar's ban of displays of the confederate flag. nbc news has learned the president's defense of that flag and his racial tweets are frustrating many of his aides. two officials say he is, quote, going with his gut and relying on instinct as a re-election strategy, but also the trump allies are telling him he has a better argument to make and to focus on his accomplishments in office and offer sharp criticism of former vice president joe biden. a second white house official said president trump is making a mistake by stoking racial divisions, adding the president's attack lines no longer have the same resonance as they did four years ago. jonathan lamire, you have a similar piece up just overnight in the "associated press." frankly, these accounts are exhausting, of people inside the white house, of anonymous sources, non rouse republicans saying they're shocked, stunned, and deeply saddened about the president's rhetoric.

they could do something about it. but this is, of course, the president's gut. this is the kind of politics he knows. it's the way he thinks he won in 2016, and it appears he's going to ride this racial resentment through 2020. >> that is his plan, willie. and yes, that is over the objections of some in his staff. and let's set that aside because you're right, if they won't go on the record and say it, there's a limit to how much space we should give them right now. but certainly, it is a vine for other republicans. we quote senator thune talking about how he feels that some of his colleagues in the senate who are running for re-election are going to have to distance themselves from the president, at least on these issues, because he feels that they're not helpful. but let's be clear about what this is. this is the president trying to revive what worked, he believes, in 2015 and 2016, with a stark difference. we, of course, remember his rhetoric back then, some of it flat out racist. but much of that, the culture wars he was stoking then was

about immigration, and he touched on something there. that was one of the, despite republicans after the 2012 defeat, you know, trying to come up with a platform that would be more immigration-friendly -- remember the autopsy of the party after mitt romney was defeated by barack obama. donald trump went the other way and he played towards white grievance, white resentment, the fear of the other, the fear that immigrants are coming into this country, taking our jobs, and also that's who the government cares about. that's the belief that the president tapped into among these supporters, and he had stunning success in the republican primaries, onto the white house. this time around, though, immigration feels far less central to this campaign, much to the president's dismay. so, instead, he's moved on to this other, these other racially charged arguments about confederate monuments, about keeping the names of confederate bases, trying to cloak some of these defense of the confederacy with the defense of the founding fathers, but that's a very

different argument if you're defending stone wall jackson versus george washington, in most americans' eyes. we have seen him go after elizabeth warren with a racist charge. we have seen him use the phrase kung flu to describe the covid pandemic. he is trying to stir up racism here to both explain away his failures of the coronavirus, but also, many americans feel, racially charged remarks about fellow americans, not immigrants. these are african-americans who have been here, who are those that are so offended, and many others, offended by his defense of the confederacy. it may not be a good political argument, willie. he's trying, again, to excite that base, that 30% to 40% of americans, to get them who like him, to get them to turn out in huge numbers. right now, polling shows this isn't working. >> yamiche, we've said a thousand times on this show, if not more, it's overthinking punditry to say, why, what's the strategy behind this with donald trump, what is the political strategy here? it's not a strategy.

it's his gut. he watches tv. he sees what's stirring people up. and he puts his foot on the gas on some of those issues. but strategically, if you're trying to get re-elected, you need to expand the number of people currently. if you look at the polling, who will vote for you. what does this emphasis on race, what does this emphasis on protecting the confederate flag, getting to the right of both nascar and the state of mississippi, what does that do to help him get re-elected? >> well, president trump, we often say, digs in on culture wars. but in this case, he's not just digging in on culture wars, he's making an entire home on culture wars. he's making the thesis of his campaign the defense of racism, the defense of racist terms. and he's talking about the idea of keeping up a flag that is associated with trees yom and slave -- treason and slavery as a way to get re-elected. so he is banking on the idea

that as he talks about all of these culturally divisive things, that he is, somehow, bringing into the party people who maybe are the silent majority that he hopes shows up to the polls. the other thing we should, of course, note, is that republicans in state after state in 2016, and probably again in 2020, they found out where people were voting and they focused on making sure that there were some people who were suppressed. that's a federal judge said in north carolina that they targeted black voters with surgical precision. so, when we think about, is president trump trying to expand his base, maybe he's trying to do that. maybe he's trying to find those people that are the violasilent majority, but he's behind the party accused by a federal judge of trying to suppress the vote on the other side. so in some ways, the strategy could be different in expanding rather than trying to retract the other side's ability to vote. the other thing to note, of course, is the fact that the president is someone who began his career by questioning the birthplace of barack obama, the first african-american president of the united states. so when we think about who donald trump is, we have to also think about the fact that this

is fundamentally who he is. he grew up with african-americans who were serving his father as drivers, as maids, so he is someone who for a long time has seen people of color and african-americans in particular through a very particular lens. and then, of course, there's the idea that he liked hanging around african-american celebrities. but in terms of what he thinks about actual african-americans, i've interviewed his black ex-girlfriend, who maybe a lot of people don't know about, but she told me pretty easily that the president really was interested in african-americans when it came to kind of social upheaval, when it came to people who had social capital, rather. but he was still perplexed by the idea that someone like serena williams could have people come and watch tennis and have a lot of african-americans in the stadium. so, from a very early age, president trump has had a very particular view of people of color, and that continues into his presidency. and he would say that he is an

ally of peaceful protesters, that he's an ally of african-americans, but just from his own actions, it's pretty clear the president has decided to have this strategy of impulse that means that he's going to be continuing to use racist terms up until and probably past november 2020. >> tom nichols, the president, obviously, in 2016 won the election by a small sliver of votes in places like wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania. he's got to at least do what he did last time and probably expand a little bit if he wants to be re-elected. are most people who are listening to his rhetoric over the last month, at least in many years, actually, as yamiche points out, missing something? is he speaking to someone in this country, some silent voice, perhaps, by conflating george washington with stonewall jackson when he gave his mt. rushmore speech on friday night? he did talk about the idea that some americans want to rewrite the american story, that they want to take george washington out of it, that they want to take thomas jefferson out of it. does, perhaps, that part of it

appeal to some americans and somehow expand the number of people he's voting for? otherwise, what's he doing exactly here? >> what he's doing is watching too much television. and he's now in a kind of a feedback loop with some of his favorite television hosts who are playing to the oldest, most conservative, most scared, most angry of viewers in that loop. i think what's different now compared to 2016, in 2016, the president could kind of cleverly fuse some of these issues of race to issues of class. he could say to people in places like wisconsin, you know, i'm not against african-americans. i'm against the educated white elites in washington that are giving too much away to african-americans, and you know, making cities bad places to live. you know, i'm not really against immigrants, i'm against those educated elites in d.c. who are

letting in too many immigrants and ruining, you know, your community. all that, the mask is off now. and i think instead of feeling insofar as they ever did, i think some of those voters in the heartland felt reassured by trump. they're afraid of him now, because he's made it clear, i will go after american citizens, black, white, hispanic, rich, poor, anyone who opposes me, anyone who criticizes me, anybody who makes my life at all difficult is my enemy. and that's different from 2016. he had pitched himself as, i'm on your side, and i'm not just on your side against minorities. i'm on your side against educated elites, people in d.c., international cabals. there was a lot of that steve bannon kind of rhetoric there. all that's gone. now he's just draping himself in the confederate flag, ignoring

warnings about bounties being put on u.s. servicemen, defending statues of confederates. i mean, this is really a very different race play from 2016, and i don't think it's working very well, because you know, instead of reassuring the people that he's trying to reach out to, i think now they're genuinely scared. and all of this chaos around race that he has promised will happen if the democrats are elected is hang now -- happening now on his watch and he can't really explain that. >> also different in 2020, there's a movement for racial justice in this country that has the support of 75% or 80% of the population. let's turn to civil rights groups now meeting with facebook ceo mark zuckerberg yesterday as part of the stop hate for profit campaign which advertised an ad boycott of the social media giant. but according to the boycott's organizers, yesterday's meeting was a, quote, disappointment.

the campaign released a statement, which reads this way -- "instead of actually responding to the demands of dozens of platforms' largest advertisers that have joined the ad boycott during the month of july, facebook wants us to accept the same old rhetoric, repackaged as a fresh response." for its part, facebook said the meeting, "was an opportunity for us to hear from the campaign organizers and reaffirm our commitment to combating hate on our platform," adding, "we know we will be judged by our actions, not by our words, and are grateful to these groups and many others for their continued engagement." joining us now, someone who was inside yesterday's meeting, president and ceo of the naacp derrick johnson. derrick, it's great to see you again. so, take us inside that room, if you will, with mark zuckerberg and sheryl sandberg. you laid out your case and they said what? >> well, it was the same information we've heard before. there was nothing new. in fact, they asked us for the meeting. we provided them with

information. they've had it for over three weeks. and we get on the phone and they want us to rehash what we had already sent to them. unfortunately, it was a waste of time. they are tone-deaf to what corporations are saying. they are tone-deaf to what many people across this country are saying. and we simply want a platform that protects people and protects our democracy. >> so, let's be specific, mr. johnson, about what you would like to see out of facebook. what are two or three things that you think facebook could do this morning that would help protect people from the hate and the bile that's spewed on facebook? >> they need to be more aggressive with removing white supremacist groups off the platform so the platform is not used by those groups to recruit and plan these that cause harm to individuals. they need senior-level individuals, civil rights experience within that structure so they understand the culture sensitivity of the information that's brought across the platform. they need to completely do away with any politician perceptions.

there is no way someone, no matter what office they hold, should be able to say when the looting starts, the shooting begins. that's a direct threat to african-americans across the country. and they completely missed that. they let that stay up there. and they have to remove the review of content from their policy shop. their policy shop is too close with this administration. they are pandering to this administration sh as opposed to having a platform that put partisanship below the question of race. race should not be seen as a partisan conversation. it is an american conversation that we must address once and for all. >> your argument sounds crystal clear and probably does to almost everyone watching, so why didn't it get through to mark zuckerberg on that call yesterday? in other words, what's their response? what do they say in defense of leaving up white supremacist groups who can congregate and plot on facebook? >> well, it was very clear. they said, we agree with you. there's just some nuances we

need to discuss. many of the groups have been talking to facebook for over two years. we've heard many of the responses. now we are waiting for some outcomes. they are more concerned with dialogue than action. it is time for action. we need to protect this year's election. we need to protect humans who have been subject to the racial hate target, whether it's the latino community, african-americans, anti-semitic sentiments on that platform. this platform is so large, it's like a public utilities. there is no board of directors to hold them accountable. there is no shareholder interest to hold them accountable. there is no governmental regulation to hold them accountable. there's only one person who owns 60% of the stock that makes all the decisions. there's no alternative to this platform. we as a society must demand more from companies who are so situated that they operate like a public utility and there is no accountability. >> yamiche alcindor has a

question for you. yamiche? >> good morning. thanks for taking my question, derrick. i have a two-fold question. >> good morning. >> the first is, tell me a little bit about why you think facebook is too close to the trump campaign, in particular. what does that look like? what have you heard? what have you learned about that relationship? and second, what were the action items, if at all, that came out of that call? did you leave that call thinking, okay, facebook is going to do one, two, and three? >> well, i left that call disappointed. the only thing we realized what facebook was going to do was the same thing they've always done, have a really beautiful dialogue with no outcome. we've had no outcome. this administration has enjoyed a very comfortable relationship with facebook. if you think about twitter, and they stood up against the president, and they simply put a fact check on his post. it was mark zuckerberg who went on the news and criticized jack dorsey for doing so. with the shoot and loot comment, as opposed to address the post

and take it down, it was received -- a call was placed to the white house to have a conversation. we have to move away from this. the 2016 election was a manipulated by a foreign nation, russia, on that platform, paying with russian currency for groups calling themselves black lives matter that didn't exist. they sold hate to create a different level of energy to impact the 2016 elections. that should not be accepted. that should not be tolerated. >> president and ceo of the naacp derrick johnson, thank you for taking us inside that meeting. i know you'll be back to talk much more as you continue to push. thank you so much for your time this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," atlanta mayor keisha lance bottoms will be our guest on the heels of her announcement that she has tested positive for coronavirus. plus, texas hit a daily record of 10,000 new covid cases yesterday. we will go live to dallas for the very latest. another busy morning when "morning joe" comes right back. "morning joeco" mes right back

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hospitals, i think florida, basically, you're talking about florida, california, more than anyplace else. many other states are in very fine shape. they're doing very well, but we have some areas that looked like we were going to escape and they were going to escape, and then all of a sudden, they became hot, like florida, like california, like a couple of others. but i think you're going to see with all of the things that we're doing and with all of the therapeutics that are coming out, and then ultimately, the vaccine, we're going to be in very good shape very soon. >> that's president trump saying we're going to be in very good shape. despite that, as this morning we cross 3 million cases in this country. and yesterday, texas set another daily record for the first time since the start of the pandemic. texas reported more than 10,000 new cases in a single day. the record-breaking surge comes as hospitalizations also grow at an alarming rate. the "associated press" reporting that nearly 80% of the state's hospital beds are in use and intensive care units are filling up in some of the biggest cities

like san antonio and houston. as of yesterday, nearly 9,300 people were reported hospitalized in texas with covid-19. the pandemic also straining florida's health system. state health officials there say more than 40 hospitals, some in the state's most populated counties, have either maxed out of the of their icu capacity or are close to running out of intensive care beds. as of yesterday, more than 5,000 patients were using roughly 83% of the state's icu beds. according to florida's health agency, that leaves a little more than 1,000 beds free. this comes as the state suffered a 30% surge in new cases from last week. florida, which has nearly 214,000 confirmed cases, is struggling with the third worst outbreak in the country after new york and california. welcome back to the top of the hour of "morning joe." with us, we have msnbc national affairs analyst, co-host of showtime's "the circus" and executive editor of "the

recount," john heilemann. chief correspondent for "the new york times," peter baker, nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of "andrea mitchell reports," andrea mitchell, and erin haynes, editor at large for "the 19th," a non-profit newsroom focused on the intersection of women, politics, and policy. joe and mika have the morning off. peter, i want to start with you and some of your new reporting this morning. president trump said yesterday, the white house now is planning to pressure state governors to reopen schools in the fall. here's what he said. >> we're very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools, to get them open. it's very important. it's very important for our country. it's very important for the well-being of the student and the parents. so, we're going to be putting a lot of pressure on open your schools in the fall. >> so, peter, the president effectively issuing an order, not that he can enforce the order, but suggesting that governors and local

municipalities open their schools. he's been tweeting in all caps about this, this week as well. he wants the schools opened. a worthy goal i think that you want, that i want, that most parents want to see kids go back to school, but safely. so, is there a plan behind this? is there a plan coming behind this? are there benchmarks that the white house has to see before they open the schools, or is it just let's get these schools open, come hell or high water? >> yeah, this is a president, of course, who wants the economy going and to get the economy going, you have to have the schools going. parents can't go back to work if they have their kids at home. and so, you see him, of course, eager, anxious to push the schools into reopening. he didn't say how. he didn't give any concrete ideas about how to make that happen. he didn't offer any financial assistance to schools trying to figure out how to change their, you know, their physical layouts, to change their staffing, to change their programmatic aspects to make you're right, a lot of parents and schools and educators and

csays -- and in fact, their president was there at the event -- says that the cost of staying home are greater at this point in some ways for the kids than the virus. but the problem isn't really necessarily even the kids, who have a greater degree of immunity to this or a greater degree of resistance to this virus, it's the teachers. and the teachers, of course, being older, are a more vulnerable category than the kids. how do the teachers teach, you know, 10, 20, sometimes more kids, and do that safely? the president didn't say. he simply brushed off the idea that we're seeing fresh spikes in most of the country and said, well, the death rate is down, which is true, thank goodness, but we don't know whether that's going to stay that way or whether it's a lagging indicator. so you saw a lot of consternation, i think, over this yesterday. >> and as he often does, peter, he gave away the game when he said he believes that democrats are using school openings as a political tool, to held them back to make president trump

look bad, to make the coronavirus pandemic seem worse than it is, revealing that he's doing this because he thinks it hurts him. >> well, politics, of course, are sort of inseparable from this at this point. the idea of schools being closed in september, just two months before the election, with the economy on the edge, with the virus, you know, spreading now through most of the country. it's all wrapped up into a single, you know, political health crisis kind of moment. and what's really, of course, striking, is that just like wearing masks, suddenly the idea of opening schools is going to be seen as an ideological or partisan question rather than a public health and educational and psychological question. you know, these are really, really hard issues. a lot of parents would agree with president trump, but they don't want their kids to be put at risk, either. and that's a harder question than simply we're going to put pressure to open the schools. the president didn't really address that, even though he spent a day, along with his education secretary and others, talking about this yesterday at the white house.

>> part of the reason president trump believes that we are in a good place -- his words yesterday -- is that he's touting the falling death rate among coronavirus patients and using that as evidence of the united states' successful response to the pandemic. >> again, mortality rate, the lowest anywhere in the world, and we want to get this done and we want to get our country going again. >> we'll repeat, the united states does not have the lowest anywhere in the world. he also tweeted last night, "death rate from coronavirus is down tenfold." but during a news conference yesterday, dr. anthony fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, had this to say about that. >> it's a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death. there's so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus. don't get yourself into false complacency.

>> andrea mitchell, we're seeing this dynamic play out into the open once again, where president trump says one thing, anthony fauci goes to a media interview and says something to contradict the president, not directly using the president's name, but pretty clear who and what he's talking about here when he says we can't focus on the mortality rate, we're getting better at treating people. that's great news. fewer people having to go into the icu and ers, but to focus on the death rate, which is a lagging indicator, we've heard from doctors again this morning, is a false narrative, says dr. fauci. >> and he is not alone in this, of course. all of the other infectious disease experts whom we interview -- he is simply not going to compromise his credentials, his credibility as a scientist. he is avoiding the politics and being very careful about that and caught between both sides but trying to preserve the credibility of the nih and not just his institution, but him personally and the science,

because he feels so strongly, clearly, about the public health of americans. the leadership, of course, the political leadership and the politicization of everything from the beginning of this -- the masks and everything else that has taken place, and now, of course, going back to school, which is something that parents desperately want to happen and employers want to happen but is not necessarily safe without a plan. and there is, as peter is writing in today's paper and as all of us who watched the president yesterday know, there is no plan, and that is the striking factor to this. there's been no plan on masks, no plan on ppe, there's no plan from the beginning. and again, we don't know enough about this virus yet. from all the doctors i've talked to, we don't know what the long-term effects are, even on young people, even on people who are asymptomatic, people who are discovering that they now have lung damage, according to scans, and kidney damage and other organ failures. so, there is a lot still to learn. there's a lot of success also. the death rate is going down.

that is a good thing. and part of this is figuring out not to put people on ventilators right away. and there are better therapeutics, not, i should add, hydroxychloroquine, which the president and peter navarro were incredibly, still flacking this week on twitter and on the white house lawn in navarro's case, despite the fact that it is now the w.h.o. has joined the fda, which on june 15th said don't use it for covid-19. >> john heilemann, it is astounding, as andrea points out. it is july 8th, and we're still asking, is there a plan? we've been asking that for almost six months now. is there a federal plan to grapple with this? and the plan throughout has been the president saying it will disappear, more recently saying we have to learn to live with this, and now saying he thinks we're in a good place on the very day that the united states crossed the threshold of 3 million cases, and there are spikes in some of the most populated states in the country, california and texas setting records yesterday. the plan is to hope it goes

away. >> right, willie. that's the plan. that's not really -- it's sort of -- if the whole thing weren't so tragic, it'd be comical. and i'll focus on the politics of this here, right? i mean, you -- you just spent a lot of time doing analysis of the president's poll numbers in various battleground states and nationally and where he stands with respect to other public figures in terms of credibility on this crisis. i just, like -- you know, i think at this point -- you know, we're in july. there's 3 million cases now. and you just in the course of the last ten minutes, willie, cited a couple of things in passing, right? in passing. the president says that, you know, we have the lowest mortality rate. that's not true. just out and out false, right? the president yesterday says, well, 99% of cases, there's nothing to worry about. we know from our own lives that's not true. we both know people who have had this disease, who have had coronavirus and have had a brutal, merciless experience with it, but luckily, survived. we also know people who haven't

been so lucky. and most americans now know that. so, what's -- you know, we asked the question of where the president's political standing is. the president's political standing is the worst it's been in 3 1/2 years, and it's directly, i think, attributable, when all is said and done, to the fact that, you know, when we get to this crisis, the president's penchant for lying and his lack of credibility has been laid bare in a way that's not just clearer than it's ever been laid bare, but that affects people in a more direct way. so tens of millions of americans now have had experience with a life-and-death matter, direct experience, friends and family, in some ways, connected to this disease in some way -- this virus in some way -- where they can see the president just, the emperor has no clothes. the president is just talking nonsense most of the time. and when he talks about things like we are going to order the schools, i'm going to tell the schools to open up, i think americans now know, the president has no power to do that. so he has no plan. he says he's going to do things they know he can't do, and he says things about the virus that are false and we in the media pointed out, and people in their lives know or sense that it's

false. so people ask the question of, like, where's the president's political standing? well, the president's political standing's the worst it's ever been, and this is why. and the question of whether the president's ever going to be able to turn it around is directly answered by the question of is he ever going to -- can he ever regain this lost credibility? and i think it's now past that. i don't think -- it's not recoverable. there's nothing the president can do tactically to get that credibility back. and that's why, again, without predicting what the outcome of this election is going to be, the president's in really a world of hurt politically and it comes directly back to this. >> it comes back to this, and he thinks he can turn it around by opening the schools and opening the economy again at whatever risk that may come. erin haynes, john's right, the public doesn't need the media to pull back the curtain on what's happening with coronavirus because it's happening in their own lives. it's happening in their neighborhoods. it's happening in their cities. it's happening in their hospitals. they know that their schools may not open in the fall if we don't get our arms around that. that throws a wrench into all kinds of lifestyle plans.

can i go back to work if my kids isn't back at school? so, again, the president out of step with where the country is on this, just as he's been out of step on the movement for racial justice in this country, focusing on confederate flags, criticizing bubba wallace and nascar for taking the confederate flag away from their public spaces. he doesn't seem, for someone who claims he has a good political gut that he rode into the white house, to seem to have much of a gut on these two major issues that have consumed our society for the last six months. >> yeah, i think that's right, willie. i mean, you have the president with the dual pandemics, coronavirus and racism, really at odds with where the country is, particularly in terms of the american people's lived experience on both of these issues, right? i mean, for four months, you have americans really trying to do their part, staying at home, wearing masks, trying to take guidance from their federal government on how they should protect themselves and protect their neighbors and friends and

loved ones against this virus. and many of the voters that i talk to are really wondering, you know, when is the president, when is the federal government going to do its part? like you said, the president not having a plan, really telling people that we should learn to live with this. listen, it's just like dr. fauci said, living with this virus -- even for folks who contract covid-19, if they don't get sick, surviving it -- if they don't die from it, surviving it, this is really a rough road for the people who come out on the other side of this. and i'm also thinking about, you know, the "times" story this week that they had to sue for the federal data that showed the disproportionate impact on black and brown people in this country being diagnosed and dying from this virus. tell them to live with it, right? tell the essential workers who have been on the front lines and continue to put themselves at risk. tell the women who were, you know, most of the voters in this country, who are, you know, the

caregivers in most cases in this country, who are trying to figure out how they are going to go back to work and also take care of their children and find out, you know, how their children are going to maybe be able to go back to school safely. i mean, americans have been trying to learn to live with it that have largely been trying to do that without a plan from their federal government. >> yeah, the federal government strategy of wishing away not working. of those 3 million cases, 500,000 just in the last 10 or 11 days. meanwhile, in brazil, brazilian president jair bolsonaro has tested positive for coronavirus. in his announcement yesterday, bolsonaro stepped away from the cameras and removed his mask, attempted to show that he is well, despite his diagnosis. president bolsonaro reportedly began feeling sick after atte attending a fourth of july lunch, seen here, hosted by the u.s. ambassador to brazil at his home where bolsonaro and other guests sat shoulder to shoulder

without masks. the ambassador and his wife both later tested negative for coronavirus. the leader of latin america's largest nation has repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virks shunning masks, attending v rallies and promoting unproven remedies. bolsonaro has also referred to covid-19 as a "measly cold." brazil has reported more cases and deaths than any other country, except for the united states. andrea mitchell, as you cover the world, brazil certainly, along with the united states, unfortunately, one of the places that has turned its back on the disease. as i said, president bolsonaro has mocked the disease, and now he has the disease. >> you know, he is perhaps the world's greatest covid-19 denier, also flacking hydroxychloroquine, providing it to all brazilians, even though it has proved to be not effective against covid-19, and actually harmful in some cases. so, he has followed the lead of

president trump and then gone one better. and it is just, it's a tragedy. we have to certainly be concerned about our own ambassador and the staff at the embassy. because typically, in all of these countries, what the american ambassador does is have a celebration on july 4th and invite people in and have not only the local officials but all of the embassy staff. so, we don't even know how far this has spread. and fact that they tested negative in the immediate aftermath doesn't really -- is not dispositive, because they could still, the ambassador and his wife, his staff, his other aides could certainly become positive as well. one other thing i also wanted to circle back, which does affect the world, not only the world health organization, exiting from that in the middle of a pandemic, which denies the fact, despite all of the problems that you have been reporting, you did in the previous hour, about the world health organization, its bias, reported bias towards china. they do a lot of other things --

malaria and polio and tb, hiv-aids. there are so many other aspects of the world health organization. we've been members for 72 years. thankfully, even though we're taking money back, we can't actually officially exit until 2021. so who knows what might happen by then. but the other big thing on the education front is the decision to announce that i.c.e. is going to be denying visas for those who are coming, foreign students coming in to graduate study and college study here in the u.s. as well as deporting foreign students who are going to online schools, which, you know, includes harvard and a lot of other places who have decided to be online until there is a vaccine. and this is at least 1.1 million people. universities, presidents of colleges around the country are distressed by america closing our doors to foreign students. many of those who are here are here because they cannot safely return home, and they are going to be deported, according to this i.c.e. rule.

it's not even coming from the state department. >> yeah, the proposal is, if you go back to campus, you're okay, but if you have online school, you shouldn't be here -- >> right. >> -- and you will be deported. that's what i.c.e. is talking about right now. peter baker, let's pull back a little bit here, as john heilemann said, the president's political standing, if you look at polling, is the worst it's been since he's been president. we've seen all those polls in the battleground states. we're hearing, as we often do, from anonymous white house sources who are troubled by the president's rhetoric lately. how often have we heard that before? we hear republicans behind the scenes saying they're troubled about the way he's talking about race right now. how does the president himself, how does his tight inner circle you report on all the time, viewing his prospects right now? obviously what he's saying, hi bluster, we're doing great in terms of coronavirus. but he reads polls. he keeps them in the front pocket of his jacket. he knows what's out there. he knows their internal polling.

how is the president feeling about where he is now a few months from election day? >> yeah, that's a great question. i don't want to oversuppose what i know, but i think what we have heard from people around him is that he sort of veers back and forth between, you know, understanding the dire situation he's in politically and denying it, basically. and he's obviously decided to flow at this point with stoking up his base as opposed to a strategy of reaching out to independents or anybody who might not have supported him the last time. you know, his strategy was always kind of, you know, a gamble this year, even before the covid-19. he had spent his presidency catering to the 45% or 46% of the public that supported him in 2016, thinking he could replicate the inside straight he pulled last time by winning the electoral college vote, even if he didn't win the popular vote. that became a much harder task once this virus came forward, once we saw protests in the streets against racial injustice, once we saw the economy crater. all of these issues have just

eroded that support among the people who backed him last time. and with the talk about the confederate flag and statues and all of that, he's simply playing to the base, trying to restore that group of people that he brought with him to the dance. and they're not coming with him at this point, according to the polls. he knows that. he understands that. he has some hope that, you know, the economy will pick up enough by the fall that it will restore some of the momentum he's lost this summer. but it's a pretty sour moment right now, i think, in trump world. you know, double-digit lead by biden and uncertainty and unhappiness of the fellow republicans i think is wearing on him. i think there's a feeling inside the trump world for the first time in a way they hadn't felt in most of the last three years that, you know, victory is not necessarily around the corner. just because president trump pulled a rabbit out of the hat last time doesn't necessarily mean he'll do it again. >> peter baker, thank you very much, as always. we'll be reading your reporting in "the new york times."

john heilemann, all this, all this polling, as joe biden stays at home in wilmington, delaware. he's doing some small events. he's doing interviews online. he's having his own version of a presidential campaign. but the fact of the matter is, he's happy to step back and cede the stage to donald trump as he stokes racial resentment, as he talks about the confederate flag, as he describes a country with 3 million cases of coronavirus as being in a good pla place. it's a very strange presidential campaign, to put it mildly, but one that joe biden is happy to have. >> right. i mean, look, willie, the basic -- when you have an incumbent president, there are two possible campaigns that can play out. one political dynamic where it ends up being a referendum on the incumbent, up or down. what does the country think about the guy who they hired to do the job four years ago? are they going to rehire him? the other is a choice between two alternatives. and if you're an unpopular

incumbent or a not terribly popular incumbent or one who's not quite 50% -- that's the case with barack obama in 2012, the case with george w. bush in 2004 -- you try to make the race into a choice where you say, okay, you may not love me, but this guy, the other guy's worse, right? that's what the trump people had planned to do, and they thought they had the economy as their main weapon. and then they were going to characterize joe biden as an unacceptable alternative. the biden campaign, their central strategic objective throughout, before the pandemic and before the george floyd moment that we're going through, post-george floyd moment, was to try to keep the focus on donald trump, make this a referendum on trump. after covid, or in the middle of covid, in the moment we're now living in, it's all the more important, and i would say also easier, to keep the focus on donald trump. so you know, i think it's the case -- people make fun of joe biden and his basement strategy. i think it's a little unfair for two reasons. one is that he comes out and he has made strategic interventions at various times to go out and hit donald trump at the right

moments. the other thing is that this is the whole strategy -- make this race be about donald trump. if you can make this race be about donald trump, you are likely to win this race. and so, the biden campaign has been disciplined and has been focused and has had the moments when it has chosen to intercede in the campaign, have been wisely chosen, largely. he's not going to be able to -- i mean, joe biden's going to -- whether it's in the debates, on the convention stage and other places, he's going to have to step forward. there's going to be a clear contrast. those are the moments that donald trump is waiting for. but right now, the central strategic objective of the biden campaign is served by the kind of campaign they're running, and they can't be faulted for that. and right now, you know, donald trump is doing nothing but continuing to batter himself over the head with his own bag of golf clubs. so i mean, you'd be kind of a moron if you were joe biden and wanted to try to get in the way of a guy who is in the process of committing harry caray every day on national television as donald trump has been for the past few months. >> one of the ways, andrea mitchell, that the president has

been battered over the last couple weeks is from his former national security adviser in that best-selling book. and i understand you'll be talking to him this morning. >> indeed. and you know, all of the anecdotes about the way he approached china, the way he has frightened, frankly, south korea and other allies because of his whole love affair with kim jong-un and the russia bounty allegations -- well, clearly, the intelligence that was important enough to warn the allies to toughen up the security of our troops but not to tell the president of the united states, as he continued to call vladimir putin, that whole bromance are vladimir putin, central to the story from, as he puts it, the room where it happened, where he was. we'll have a lot of questions for john bolton today. >> john bolton with andrea mitchell today, noon eastern on msnbc. we'll be watching, andrea. thanks so much. still ahead on "morning joe," the coronavirus pandemic has hit home for atlanta mayor keisha lance bottoms. she and some of her family members now have tested

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welcome back to "morning joe." we are joined now by the mayor of atlanta, keisha lance bottoms. mayor bottoms, thanks so much for joining us this morning. it's good to see you. you announced a couple of days ago that you have tested positive for coronavirus. you look well. how are you feeling? >> i feel okay. and thank you for having me. i feel like i have seasonal allergies -- scratchy throat, headache, all of the things that come with allergies. but i can tell you, i'm so frustrated. we tested eight days previously, didn't get our results back. one person in my house was positive then. so, for eight days, we are operating in our household as if everything is normal. we then retested, and then by

the time we retested, three of us had tested positive. >> well, that's instructive to a lot of people about how difficult testing still is in this country, if the mayor of atlanta has to wait eight days to get a test back, what does that mean for the rest of us? so, did you suspect, did you get the test because you suspected someone in your house may not be feeling well? >> no. the initial test i had taken was because i had been to a funeral, and there were a lot of people at the funeral, so i just thought following that, going out, that i would get everyone in my household tested. and so, that was eight days previously. and then by last weekend, my husband was just sleeping a lot. i've known him almost 30 years. i've never known him to sleep that much. he has allergies, too. i initially thought that his allergies were flaring up. so, by the third or fourth day of his sleeping, we decided to

get tested again because we had not received the previous test. and that test showed that three out of the six of us in the house had tested positive. two of us were asymptomatic. >> so, what does that mean for your life, number one, and your job, mayor bottoms, as you continue to run a city that's got a lot on its hands right now? how are you going about life right now? >> well, we are doing the best we can. thankfully, we had closed down city hall back in march, so we have not reopened city hall. we have been operating in the same way that many across america have, conducting meetings via zoom and on conference calls, et cetera. but again, what's so frustrating to me last week was an exceptionally busy week in terms of my being outside of the house. i went into police headquarters, met with a family who had just lost their daughter. i was near my fire chief.

i was near my police chief. i was near my chief of staff. i had gone into city hall, had a meeting with my senior team inside of city hall. so, there were so many things that i personally would have done differently had i known that there was a positive test result in my house, and i share that with you because, as we talk about corona and we talk about the need for us to get to the other side of this, we will never get to the other side of this if we can't perfect the basics. we've been testing for months now in america. the fact that we can't quickly get results back so that other people are not unintentionally exposed is the reason we are continuing in this spiral with covid-19. >> as you said, the pandemic has literally now hit home for you, found its way into your house and into your family. does this change the way, at all, you look at your approach to this virus and the treatment and the way that we should be

handling this from a policy point of view? what more would you like to see from your governor? what more do you think atlanta can do? because we are seeing those cases spike in the state of georgia. >> well, the city of atlanta has had to operate in a very different lane than the state of georgia because the state of georgia has been very irresponsible in the way that it has opened back up for business as if everything is normal. so, we convened an advisory council, and there were representatives from small businesses, from universities, from big businesses. so, we are still in phase two of our reopening, which is helpful, because many of our large job centers with our fortune 500 companies have not reopened. but what i would like to see from our state is some consistency. i specifically asked our governor about allowing atlanta to go forward with mandating masks in our city.

he refused. other cities had taken the approach that they are going to defy the governor's executive order, and savannah has done it. some other cities have done it. and atlanta is going to do it today. because the fact of the matter is that covid-19 is wreaking havoc on our cities, specifically black and brown communities with higher death rates, and we will never be able to reopen our schools and our economy if we don't take some responsibility for what we can do as leaders to make sure that people aren't exposed to this virus. >> you led me to my next question, mayor bottoms, about schools. the president yesterday announced that he wants schools opened across the country. didn't offer a specific plan about how that would be done safely. does that feel like a good idea to you as we sit here on july 8th and you all are a month or so away from school opening in georgia? do you think you'd be ready by then?

>> absolutely doesn't feel like a good idea, because our covid numbers are going up in ways that i haven't seen since the beginning of this pandemic. the last numbers i saw yesterday evening showed that we were over 20% with an increase in people who tested positive over a seven-day period. and it's not just about our kids. our children are extremely important, and obviously, a part of this consideration. we have very high asthma rates in our city, so that's a concern. but what about our teachers and the faculty and staff and the people who have to come in and clean up the building? those are the people who we need to be concerned about will be exposed to covid. because again, our children are often asymptomatic. my child was asymptomatic. and so, you have children who are asymptomatic and who are around adults who may be more vulnerable. and i think it's irresponsible

to rush to open our schools in the same way it was irresponsible to rush to open our state. i think our focus needs to be making sure that our children have access to technology and to broadband so that they can continue learning in a virtual environment. >> mayor bottoms, errin haines is here with a question for you. >> good morning, madam mayor. i want to say as a fellow atlantan, i'm certainly hoping for a full recovery, both for you and for everybody in your household, that came down with this coronavirus. i wanted to ask you, because we're seeing that gun violence is something that has reappeared. it's not taking a break, even in the midst of a pandemic. that's happening in cities like chicago and it's also happening in atlanta. i guess i would ask you to talk about it. i mean, there are really tragic stories coming out of the city from over the weekend, the surge of gun violence in the midst of a pandemic. how, as mayor, are handling

that? and what is your message to citizens who are continuing to commit gun violence in the midst of the pandemic? >> well, errin, we had an absolutely terrible weekend in atlanta. there was a lot of violence across our city. and again, part of the frustration for me as mayor is people have to remember, georgia is an open carry state. and so, you don't get to pick and choose who gets to openly carry a gun. so, we have people walking around very much aware of their second amendment rights and their ability to walk around with guns this long on our street. and i think that what you're seeing happening in atlanta and what you're seeing happening across the country is just this conversion of anger, it's frustration. people are upset that they've lost their jobs. people are upset that they've lost loved ones to covid. and it is something that in a normal america, we would have

some support and leadership from the white house to address many of the issues that are boiling up and spilling over onto our streets. so, what you saw me do this weekend in atlanta was to make a plea to people, a plea to those who want to be out and about in a peaceful manner, that sometimes you have to remove yourself from situations and gatherings if it feels like it's going in the wrong direction. we certainly as an urban city won't be able to stop every single shooting, but we can certainly try and tamper down the number of people who are gathering in large numbers. and again, it's not their fault that people are shooting on our streets, but certainly, an opportunity for people to remove themselves from situations that seem to be turning very volatile. >> you referenced a young girl, 8-year-old secoria turner was shot and killed. i know you spent time with her family.

you were at that press briefing, as you said, around that, when you said enough is enough with the shooting. what can you tell us about her and her family? >> this, by all accounts -- we've seen her picture. she was a beautiful child. and by every description just a loving child. i was reading something from one of her teachers about how helpful she was in the classroom. and there were probably at least 50 family members who joined us at that press conference. and we have gotten a number of tips that have come in. people are calling in. and again, the area that she was killed in, people were walking around with long rifles. and the reality is this -- our police department couldn't do anything because georgia is an open carry state. you have to have probable cause to stop people when they are walking around with rifles and guns openly. that being said, this was the

most tragic outcome. there were a number of people who have been gathering at the wendy's, many of them peacefully gathering at the wendy's where rayshard brooks was killed, but many of them were not peaceful. we've had some flare-ups in this area over the past couple of weeks. there have been some discussions from our city council members with people who were camping out at the wendy's. but what i said this weekend is, at the point that an 8-year-old girl is killed, then all bets are off. all discussions are over. so, we've had to close down that site. and we will continue to monitor that area as well as the rest of our city. but again, this, unfortunately, is happening across the country. mayors across the country are dealing with this. and i think the root cause of this goes way beyond one specific site. it has to do with so much of the uncertainty, and quite frankly,

the unhappiness with where we are in america. but i know we'll get to the other side of this. this is not the first crime spree that atlanta has experienced, but i know we'll get to the other side of this. >> let's certainly hope unhappiness isn't driving people to kill 8-year-old girls. secoriea turner, let's remember her name. mayor keisha lance bottoms, sending well wishes to you and your family. hope you get well soon. thanks for being with us. >> thank you. we will turn now to texas, where despite rising coronavirus infections, state officials there say public schools must reopen this fall. msnbc correspondent garrett haake joins us live from dallas. garrett, good morning. >> reporter: willie, good morning. more than 10,000 cases reported across texas yesterday, the same day that the education administration here in the state said that those schools must allow some in-person instruction when they reopen. now, the schools will be required to enforce a mask order

for students older than 10. it's not clear if that could be revised, that even younger students could have to wear masks, and teachers will be expected to self-check for symptoms. but you can forget about regular and fast testing for coronavirus for teachers. you can largely forget about regular and fast testing across the state. this has been a persistent problem in texas. i spent the entire month of april in the state. and when i left, the story was, it was very hard to get a test turned around quickly, certainly quickly enough to do meaningful contact tracing. and as i stand here in july, that's still the story, a lot of cases taking up to a week or perhaps even more before those test results come back. the other startling number in texas, just since i've been back the last couple days is the hospitalization numbers continue to go up. just here in dallas county alone, there are more than 750 people hospitalized around the county with coronavirus just this morning. i've been talking to public health officials. i've been talking to doctors. they're less worried about things like ppe.

they're less worried about things like bed space than we saw in some northeastern cities early in the pandemic. but the other thing that makes people really nervous here are staff -- nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists. they've been fighting the pandemic for just as long here as they have in the northeast, but only now are they seeing this surge that's keeping people really around the clock. and folks are getting exhausted. and there's really no indication that this big spike that we're seeing in texas just over the last couple weeks is slowing down, is stopping, is going to do anything other than keep just going up, willie. >> yeah, and for all those reasons, governor abbott has pulled back on some of the reopening that they've done in the state of texas. nbc's garrett haake in dallas. garrett, thanks so much. coming up next, new jersey was hit hard and early by the pandemic, but that state's fight far from over. governor phil murphy joins us with his latest order, an attempt to keep people there safe. "morning joe's" coming right back. ming right back

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nascar chose to go a certain way, and that's going to be up to them. that is up to them. i'm very friendly with nascar. i know the people there. i know drivers. i know a lot of them. but i view it as freedom of speech. nascar can do whatever they want, and they've chosen to go a certain way. other people choose to go a different route, but it's freedom of speech. >> president trump yesterday attempting to explain his criticism of nascar's ban of displays of the confederate

flag. joining us now, msnbc political analyst zerlina maxwell. she is author of the new book entitled "the end of white politics: how to heal our liberal divide." zerlina, good morning. good to see you. congratulations on the book. this book congratulations on the book. this book focuses on progressivi progressivism, it focuses on liberals. it focuses on the democratic party and improvements that need to be made. what are we talking about here? >> so essentially i'm talking about the fact that ever since we've been here in the united states, we've been doing when a i call white identity politics, and so you saw in 2016 donald trump effectively exploit that white grievance and identity politics to court a certain section of the republican base who responds to that type of messaging. what i'm trying to say in the book is identity -- we've always been doing identity politics, but right now what we have to do is expand the spectrum of

concern and interest as we set forth policy going forward into the future because pew research predicts that a minority of american voters will be white by 2045 meaning that for the first time ever the majority of the american electorate will be people of color, and so that coalition will have a transformational impact on our politics. >> so zerlina, do you think, then, let's take this down to today, that the biden campaign is doing well enough in that department? obviously they're trying to steal back some of those voters you've just described that swung over from president obama and voted for president trump, white working class voters in michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, all the states we talked about, but do you believe his campaign is doing enough outreach? >> i think that they can always do more. we've been so focused on that 77,744 votes in those three states as you said, but we don't

necessarily know that every single one of those voters is a white working class person. additionally, over a million black voters in those same three states, willie, stayed home in november. those voters came out twice for barack obama in 2008 and in 2012 and for whatever reason did not feel compelled to go out and vote in 2016. what joe biden needs to do is try to get those people. a million is a lot bigger number than 77,000, so you have a lot of work to do, but there's an opportunity here because in this moment, in the midst of covid, in the midst of this racial reckoning thisat we're all experiencing in every sector, people are willing and open to hear messaging about how democrats and particularly joe biden, can work to improve their lives. and stacey abrams puts the -- you know, describes identity politics this way, and i think joe biden should heed this

message. it's essentially saying to those communities of color, i see you. i see your concerns, and they are valid, and here are my solutions to tackle your everyday problems. too many communities have been thought of after the fact or two weeks before an election when you need them to gotv, but we need democrats and joe biden throughout the course of this campaign to ensure that they have fair and equal voting access, and additionally, solutions and messaging so that when he does become president, if he wins, that, you know, he's going to set forth specific policies to improve their looiflives. it's that simple. >> zerlina, we've got a full panel of people who want to ask you some questions. john howellman is first. >> hey, zerlina, congratulations on the become. i want to drill down on something that you just said, just to try to be a little bit as specific as possible as we

can be. you were on the clinton campaign in 2016. i'm going to make this is a statement of fact, right, that when the -- as the campaign modeled what it needed in terms of turnout from black voters, african-american voters in places like philadelphia and cleveland and milwaukee and detroit, the campaign did not get what it needed from those cities, and you said a second ago for whatever reason that people stayed home. i think it's essential for the biden campaign to understand what -- what for whatever reasons means. obviously a lot of theories about that case. the some of them put the blame on hillary clinton and the way she campaigned in those communities. some talk about the way in which donald trump's campaign sought to suppress the african-american vote in those cities. we're almost certain to see that again. in fact, we're already seeing in some cases in the media campaigns that the trump campaign is running.

in a very practical way, what do you think the biden campaign needs to do on both sides of the equati equation, one in terms of really generating enthusiasm in those places, key constituencies, key places where the black vote's at stake, and secondly, what does the campaign need to do to combat the efforts of the trump campaign and the republicans to try to dampen that vote in those places. we know we saw it in 2016, and we know we're going to see it again. >> i'm going to start with the second part of your question about voter suppression. i think one of the really important things that you mentioned, john, is that donald trump right now by exploiting racism and the white grievance politics, that's a voter suppression strategy. that is not a -- i'm trying to win over black voters strategy, so we need to be cognizant of the fact that when he's trying to appeal to the, quote, unquote, racists in his base, that he's also doing so to suppress the black vote.

you make black people so disaffected with this process that we stay home and stay out. so the way that skrjoe biden cao about doing that effectively is by actually going and speaking to communities where they are, and not looking at the -- even the internet landscape as certain sections, you know, on tikt tiktok, those are not my voters. that's not my audience, those are things you hear within a campaign, but i think that often we rely too much on the data analytics and the metrics, which sometimes obscures just the human nature of politics, and what people need is for you to show up in their communities, and not just at a church service, and speak to their specific issues. and i think that often democrats will only go to the church service and not do the rest of that community building. additionally, biden needs to use effective surrogates and on the ground organizers that the campaign has actually pulled in

and hired so that they have validators in the communities that can speak to joe biden's message in voices that those communities can trust. >> as i turn it over to erin haynes, i note that you're writing about this very subject in "the washington post" right now. >> yeah, that's right, willie, i had a story just the other day about the power of black women voters who are saying that they want to be valued, not just for their output but for their input long before the election cycle. just as zerlina points out. congratulations, zerlina, i guess i'm going to have to get a copy of the book on my shelf. i'm sorry i don't have it yet. this idea of racism is on the ballot for so many black voters. this is a very different conversation than we're having in 2016 in terms of who in the electorate that we're talking about, when we talk about who has racial and economic anxiety, right? i wonder if the end of white

politics for you means in part an acknowledgment, you know, from the democratic party finally on the work that black women voters have long put in to this party and the return on their investment that they are saying not only that they are owed but that they have earned and how that might show up in terms of how democratic nominee joe biden would govern if elected. >> that's exactly right, and i think in the chapter on black women that's in the book, i talk about the fact that, you know, black women are the base of the democratic party. women of color are a growing force in the american electorate, and my colleague on the clinton campaign maya harris wrote that and did all that analysis in 2010 when she wrote a paper for the center for american progress. and essentially what it showed is as we head into this future in 2045, black and brown women are going to become increasingly important up and down the ballot in terms of winning elections

because we don't just vote. we vote in large numbers and we pull the whole household with us. as my other colleague on the clinton campaign always says, she says black women are the moral compass, and if you don't have them, not only inside of your campaign to validate and speak on behalf of that campaign, but if you're not actually going into the communities and showing up for those black women, then they're not going to show up for you, and they're not going to be very excited about it, even if they do show up for you, and you want black women to be engaged because they bring the community with them. they bring the family, they bring the church view. that is where we need to be focused, and you're right, black women are the most important section of the democratic base, and we finally need to be acknowledged for that reality. >> the new book is "the end of white politics: how to heal our liberal divide."

zerlina maxwell thanks for being with us this morning, and congratulations on the book. good to see you as always. >> thank you. still ahead this morning, nbc news has obtained a copy of the new tell-all book written by the president's niece. we'll take a look at some of the claims in that book and the ongoing legal fight to keep it from being published. plus, the very latest on the coronavirus. the president said we'll be in very good shape soon as the country now has confirmed more than 3 million cases. the next hour of "morning joe" starts right now. again, mortality rate the lowest anywhere in the world, and we want to get this done, and we want to get our country going again. >> it's a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death. there's so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus. don't get yourself into false complacency. >> dr. anthony fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert with a word of caution

from those taking comfort in a lower death rate due to the coronavirus, people like president trump. the united states does not have the lowest mortality rate from the virus anywhere in the world as the president said. welcome to "morning joe," i'm willie geist, joe and mika have the morning off. we woke up this morning to the news that there now are more than 3 million reported cases of coronavirus in the united states with record days in a number of states including texas and california. against that backdrop, president trump is touting the administration's response to the virus saying, quote, we're in a good place pointing to the united states's mortality rate even as we just heard dr. fauci publicly calls that a false narrative. the president also is pushing state and local leaders across the country to reopen schools and colleges this fall. new modeling predicts a national spike, though, through those first months of school. meanwhile, the trump administration announcing it will formally withdraw from the

world health organization early next year. vice president joe biden says if he's elected, that will not happen. meanwhile, dr. deborah birx says officials were caught offguard with this latest wave of coronavirus. during a panel discussion with the atlantic council, the coordinator of the white house coronavirus task force said, quote, none of us really anticipated the amount of community spread that began in really our 18 to 35-year-old age group. she added, quote, this is an age group that was so good and disciplined through march and april april. instead of being more cautious some states stepped on the gas while reopening. as i said, texas set another record on tuesday. for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, the state reported more than 10,000 new cases in a single day. the record breaking surge comes as hospitalizations grow at an alarming rate.

the associated press reports nearly 80% of the state's hospital beds are in use, and intensive care units are filling up in some of the biggest cities including san antonio and houston. as of yesterday, nearly 9,300 people were reported hospitalized in texas with covid-19. the pandemic also straining florida's health system. state health officials there say more than 40 hospitals some in the state's most populated counties have either maxed out of their icu capacity or are close to running out of intensive care beds. as of yesterday, more than 5,000 patients were using roughly 83% of the state's icu beds. according to florida's health agency that leaves a little more than 1,000 beds free at this moment. this comes as the state suffered a 30% surge in new cases just from last week. florida, which has nearly 214,000 confirmed cases is struggling with the third worst outbreak in the country after new york and california. but yesterday, president trump

seemed to down play the challenges we're seeing across the country. >> i think florida basically, you're talking about florida, california, more than anyplace else. many other states are in very fine shape. they're doing very well, but we have some areas that looked like we were going to escape, and they were going to escape and all of a sudden they became hot like florida, like california, like a couple of others. i think you're going to see with all the things we're doing, with all of the therapeutics coming out and ultimately the vaccine, we're going to be in very good shape. >> let's bring in white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire. good morning, the president yesterday on the very day the country crossed the 3 million case threshold of coronavirus, and we saw these record spikes in places like texas and california says we are in a good place. i guess it shouldn't be surprising anymore, that's been the narrative to whisk it away with rhetoric. apparently no plan at this

moment of bringing that spike down. >> good morning, willie. that's right. the white house for a while now has sort of tried to assert its own reality when it comes to the pandemic, not wanting to fully engage and to play up these disturbing spikes we're seeing throughout the country. the case levels reaching record highs in states like texas and florida and others, and it's part of this new messaging the white house has really tried to debut this week saying to americans we all need to get used to living with this virus. this is going to be here for a while, that therapeutics have improved. there's work underway on a vaccine, and there's some encouraging notes that one could be on track for distribution, at least small dozes i tses. but trying to suggest the virus here, really playing up the mortality rate as you brought in at the top of the hour, yes, people are getting sick, but they're really trying to play up the idea that not as many people are dying as we saw in those

horrible first weeks of march and april in places like new york city. and that's true for now. but we know that icu capacity is getting dangerously high in hospitals throughout the south right now. we know that, yes, though there's a rise in young people infected right now who have a better chance of surviving this virus, first of all, surviving it doesn't mean you're okay. it is a punishing disease, and people could have -- they're still studying what the long-term effects of having this virus could be. there's also, of course, a lag when it comes to the death total, that it could be weeks before we see the impact, not just of these young people, but the people that these young people are infecting, perhaps their parents and grandparents. the white house is trying to move forward. we saw the president yesterday pushing school districts throughout the country to reopen this fall, even suggesting that those that don't, that it's some sort of political ploy. the democratic governors or mayors are trying to keep schools closed to hurt him.

willie, of course there's zero evidence of that. >> let's bring into this conversation clinical director of the division of infectious diseases at brigham women's hospital. dr. paul sacks. the president zeroing in on the mortality rate saying it's the best anywhere in the world. that's not true. but what do you make of the argument, which is true in many cases that we're getting better at treating this, that getting coronavirus is not a death sentence. we talked to director of houston methodist hospitals yesterday who says his patients are getting younger, fewer of them are going into the icu and the er, but what about this focus on death rate, which dr. fauci calls a false narrative? >> well, not surprisingly since i'm an infectious disease specialist i do agree with dr. fauci. there's always been a very broad spectrum of illness from covid-19 from very mild to very severe illness. this severe illness can actually occur in young people as well, as has been mentioned. some of the young people who get

this become critically ill and some die, and those really are deaths we should not be experiencing. i also think that we may see an increased death rate in the coming weeks to months that hasn't yet occurred because deaths often lag behind new cases by several weeks. >> and what's your read on these spikes? california, texas, several other states yesterday set their daily records for the number of cases of coronavirus. is that a factor of reopening? is that a consequence of masks not being mandated? what do you see as behind all this? >> it's a combination of factors. we've known, again, for some time how this virus spreads. it spreads most efficiently in indoor settings when people are congregating in bars and restaurants, in houses of worship, those are all places where lots of people get together without masks and potentially transmit the virus to others. by opening too early before we

really had an effective testing and isolation program, we ended up allowing the virus to spread in these communities and eventually cause these surges. we experienced the same thing in the northeastern united states earlier in the pandemic. fortunately we know how to get it under control as seen in the declining numbers in the northeast. it's not easy. it means mask wearing in public. it means not opening bars and restaurants and religious settings as i mentioned, being very careful with schools. they have to be opened very carefully and not just pretend this doesn't exist. >> we know from the beginning of this that testing is so crucial to our understanding in getting our arms around coronavirus. we've heard not just from president trump but from others who said, well, of course you're seeing a large number of cases. we're getting better at testing. that's why you're seeing a spike in the numbers. we're doing a better job testing.

what's your response to that? well, i think we could do a better job still. unfortunately, some of the regions that are hardest hit with covid-19 right now are recapitulating some of the difficulties we had with testing in march and april and other hard hit yiareas, so there are long lines to get tested. there are long delays before people get the test results. what would really be transformative is if we could have an inexpensive rapid home test so we could expand testing to not just those people who have symptoms but people who are potentially asymptomatic or presymptomatic and can spread the virus to others. i think that would be a very exciting development, many companies, many academic centers are working on this. it's something that i really am hopeful we're going to see in the next few months. >> dr. paul sacks, thank you very much. still ahead on "morning joe," an update on the president's push to get the country up and running with a renewed focus on reopening the nation's schools, but is there a plan to do that? our conversation next on

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♪ let's bring in now our panel, white house correspondent for pbs news hour, yamiche alcind alcindor, columnist at usa today, tom nichols and political reporter for "axios," hans nichols, no relation as far as i understand. good to see you all. yamiche, let me begin with you and the president talking yesterday about schools. the white house plans to pressure state governors to reopen schools in fall. here's what the president said. >> we're very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools to get them open and it's very important. it's very important for our country. it's very important for the well-being of the student and the parents, so we're going to be putting a lot of pressure on opening schools in the fall. >> yamiche, as jonathan lemire

said the president framed this as a political issue suggesting that democratic governors, democratic mayors, officials are out to get president trump, and so they want to keep the schools closed to make things seem worse than they are. there's absolutely no evidence of that. i think those governors, republican and democratic just want to keep kids safe. is there a plan behind this, yamiche? is there something, a benchmark where the president says, well, we believe we're at this point or we believe we'll be at this point next month in september. therefore, it will be okay to open schools. or is he just saying throw open the schools and let's see what happens? >> that's a great question, willie. it's one that the american people obviously want to know. it's one that health experts and scared parents want to know, but it's a question that at this point the white house doesn't have a clear answer on. neither do the trump administration health officials that are really serving as the face of the response to this. what we have in president trump is someone who is doubling down on the idea that it's an us versus them, and that if you're on his side, you're on the side of reopening.

you're on the side of no masks. you're on the side of social distancing when it's convenient but also going to large campaign rallies when it's convenient for the president or you're against him and that means that you're on the side of joe biden who is still saying that we should be cautious as a country, who is still saying we should wear masks and who is still saying before we open schools let's try to figure out what the metrics are that we should use to measure when we think it's appropriate. senior administration officials held a call where i spoke to several senior officials asking them what are the metrics that you're using. is there a benchmark? are you saying there are this number of hospitalizations or this number of deaths or this number of cases or the number we're trying to hit. what i got was really that's going to be a local authority thing. what we want to know is schools need to be reopened. what you have is the federal government pressuring local governments, pressuring governors to listen to the president and open back up these schools without any real guidance on how to do that or when to do that.

>> tom nichols, i don't know a single parent who does not want their kids back in school. it was a long spring for kids. it was a long spring for parents. a lot of parents need some certainty about what's going to go on in the fall in terms of their own jobs and whether or not they're going to be able to get child care. everyone is behind the idea of getting these schools open. it would be nice to hear there's a plan behind that and not just a political idea that the president wants kids back in school to make him feel good. obviously his track record on this administration's handling of the coronavirus does not suggest that there is, in fact, a plan in place where bench marks would be met and then schools could be open. yesterday the president declaring we've got to open the schools. >> as you say, everybody wants the schools open, but i don't think there's a lot of parents in america who want their children to become, you know, carriers for covid to bring it back home and to make the family sick and potentially kill grandma or grandpa, and i think part of the problem is that when

the president says these things, he lacks evident conviction that he cares about anybody but himself when he's saying it. it's very obvious that he steps out to the podium and says, you know, someone told me that there's a constituency for opening the schools, so, sure, i'll try that. you know, tomorrow it might be, well, keep the schools closed. open the beaches, close the bars. the president juis just dialing through various things without any evident conviction that he's really interested in or cares about any of these things, and that's why you don't see a plan. i mean, if the president were really serious about opening schools, he would say here's the people i've put together to do this. we're talking to governors. we're talking to medical expe s experts, but instead he uses it like kind of an applause line, he walks out and says got to get the schools open. he assumes somewhere that's an

applause line. that's all he's looking for. that's really all he's looked for during his presidency. during a pandemic, trying to push the applause light button really isn't an effective replacement for a strategy. >> yeah, the president attacked harvard as well for already declaring it would have online school and not have all of its students back. he called it the easy way out. he said harvard is taking the easy way out. hans nichols, you covered this white house for a long time, first for us at nbc news and now at "axios." something yesterday we saw out in the open that we've seen last time in the last several months, this sort of parallel track, the president saying one thing, and the experts, dr. anthony fauci talking about the false narrative, not specifically citing the president, but it's pretty clear who he's talking about when he says it's a false narrative to push the death rate. they're speaking past each other

in public. >> look, what we know about parallel tracks is in the end even off in the horizon, they don't meet and that's the challenge with this. when i look at the sort of rhetoric between what the white house is saying, what the president is saying, and what white house advisers, it doesn't seem parallel, it seems perpendicular. there's going to be some sort of clash, and when you look at the support among democrats and specifically joe biden when they talk about how dr. fauci would be a member of their administration, you have to wonder how secure does that make dr. fauci? everything has been politicized, whether or not it's schools. it's masks. we see from republicans that they're going ahead with fundraisers. if everything has been politicized it's only a matter of time. you see this so clearly, you saw it so clearly over the weekend when dr. hahn of the cdc was put in the almost impossible decision of defending the

president and not contradicting the president while also staying true to the science. his most important answer was almost the silences, the pauses because there's really no answer on how to square that circle. so with now three geometric references that probably are all wrong, willie, i'll toss it back to you. >> that's a little more math than i was ready for this morning. hans nichols, thank you very much. coming up on "morning joe," new jersey governor phil murphy is standing by, his state hard hit early in the pandemic, of course, so what is his advice to other governors now dealing with a surge of infections? "morning joe" is coming right back.

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governor mike dewine of ohio announced yesterday that state will require masks in the seven counties where coronavirus is spreading most quickly. the measure is set to take effect at 6:00 p.m. this evening. a number of states have begun mandating face masks in outdoor public areas as well as indoors. among them now, new jersey. governor phil murphy set to announce a new executive order today on that, and governor murphy joins us now. governor, it's great to have you back with us this morning. tell us about this executive order, and you felt like you needed to do it at this point. >> good to be with you, willie. there's no question that face coverings are game changers. i think we were the first state in america to require them indoors. they've been strongly recommended out of doors. we're going to turn that up a notch today and say we're going

to ask you if you can't socially distance, it's going to be required. we believe the combination of social distancing, face covering, basic wash your hands with soap and water and stay away from everybody if you don't feel well and get tested, that's the combination of steps that we continue to need to take. >> so what does that mean as a practical matter? if i'm walking down the boardwalk in asbury park and i don't have a mask on, can an officer write me a ticket or what's the enforcement like on a mandate? >> yeah, i mean, willie, you know asbury park well. if you're there by yourself or with your family, the answer is new york city but if you're congregating with a lot of other folks and there's no social distancing, you could get -- you could at least get a warning if not something stronger. admittedly, this is harder to enforce, which is why it's not a no-brainer, but we have to take this step, particularly given the hot spots that we're seeing elsewhere in the country. we've gone through hell in new jersey, we've lost over 13,000

people. we've brought our numbers way down. we can't go through that hell again. >> governor murphy, as you know, you've heard from some frustrated people, many of them i've heard from as well who have run restaurants who believe heading into the 4th of july weekend they were going to have indoor dining, and a couple of days out you said, actually, no, i'm looking at these numbers. i don't like what i see. we're going to stop it. they had already hired a bunch of people and bought all their food. what do you say to the small business owners frustrated by the stop and start nature of the policies in new jersey? >> yeah, we've only really done that once, and it was with indooi indoor dining in fairness. i have nothing but complete sympathy for those restaurant owners. the rates of transmission started to creep up in new jersey. we saw explosions around the country almost in every case that was from indoors, and so, listen, we're in an awful predicament at that point.

we've got to save as many lives as we can. it's another reason why we need federal cash assistance to help states be there for small businesses and for restaurants. i also will say this, i'll make a little bit more news later today we're also going to announce that if you've got a restaurant that can open up two sides of your restaurant and you can have 50% of your wall space open, we're going to allow you to have that under that roof, which is a step -- another step hopefully to help out our restaurants. >> so just to clarify that, that is indoor dining as long as you only have 50% of your dining room full? >> no, it's not 50% of your dining, 50% of your wall space on two sides, so if you can open up your walls or your doors to the outside and you've got an overhang up until now, we haven't allowed you to do that. we're going to allow you to do that from now forward. >> and how are you looking at

this as we look at a long run here, perhaps of having this in our lives? the white house has said it's something we're going to have to learn to live with. what are you telling the people in new jersey who want some clarity not just on whether or not the restaurant can open, but whether or not their kids are going to go back to school, how do you offer them any form of certainty in these times when the stories seem to change by the day? >> admittedly, it's hard because this is a virus that operates on its own terms. we can't dictate the future here. we have put out guidelines. we have a strong bias that will get our kids back in school in some form. restaurants indoors won't be closed forever. we'll see a development of therapeutics and hopefully sooner than later a vaccine, but until then we're going to be aggressive in taking the steps that we've taken to shutter the state or to hold our place, and

we'll be cautious in opening. again, this is about saving lives at this point, and we believe that public health creates economic health, not the other way around. >> the president said yesterday that schools across the country should open this fall. obviously he doesn't have the power to open the schools. you do. how are you looking at school as we sit here on july the 8th? you've got a month and a half or so before parents are going to want to know if their kids will be in those class rooms. do you see schools opening this fall? >> right now, willie, i do. obviously we've got to reserve the right to tweak that if it means saving lives, but we've put out a -- i think a hundred and something page set of guidelines. the toughest nut for me to crack here is the asymptomatic healthy young person unwittingly passing the virus to someone who's older, an educator, administrator or someone when a

comorbidity. that informs a lot of the steps we're going to take, but right now as we sit here, we want to see schools open in the fall. >> governor jonathan lemire is with us and has a question for you. john. >> hey, john. >> governor, you and your fellow governors from connecticut and new york a few weeks ago issued an advisory where that if -- noting that if the coronavirus was surging in other states, places like texas, and florida and arizona and if people were to come to your state from those, that they should self-quarantine. one of the people that would have applied to incidentally was president trump who at the time was coming from arizona and had intended to go to his golf club at bedminster, new jersey, although he eventually canceled that trip, and it's not clear when he will return to bedminst bedminster. my question to you is how is that going? are you able to enforce those sort of quarantines and is something where you need to expand that now that we're

seeing even more states suffer the spikes of this virus? >> yeah, it's going okay, but it's hard to enforce admittedly, and so it's a lot of bully pulp pulpit. it's a lot of pleading to personal responsibility for folks to do the right thing. we call it common sense for the common good in america. you can't constitutionally stop somebody from going from one state to another, but it's a big public relations campaign. we update the list of states each week. we just did yesterday. it's now to your point, john, it's now 19 states. so this is not an insignificant -- it's well over half the population in america. we have had some successes, unfortunately there were cases related to a wedding in myrtle beach. we were able to through contact tracing run that down. hoboken, new jersey, had a dozen or so cases over the weekend. again, we were able to trace them down. it's a concern, and it's a challenge, and we're pleading

with folks to do the right thing. >> governor, before i let you go, as a new jersey native i love ac as much as the next guy driving all the way down from north jersey down the turnpike to get there. why do you say that casinos can be open but indoor restaurants cannot be open? that doesn't make a lot of sense to some people. why can people pack a casino and not a restaurant? >> yeah, a fair question, but it actually -- at the end of the day, i think you'll see a difference here. number one, huge footprint on a casino floor. number two, face masks required at all times. there are a whole series of social distancing steps that have been taken, and capacity limitations. remember, indoor dining or a bar, you've got a very bad data set. that's not to say we won't get there. but you're indoors lacking ventilation. you're sedentary, close proximity and by definition you're taking your mask off to eat or drink. that last piece in particular is

not the case at a casino. that's being strictly enforced and god willing we'll see good results from this, but believe me, we're monitoring it. >> governor phil murphy of new jersey, again, the news this morning is he will issue an executive order mandating masks indoors and outdoors where social distancing is not possible. governor murphy, thanks for your time this morning. we appreciate it. coming up next, the new tell-all book from the president's niece, a psychologist who describes the president as a traumatized narcissist. the claims in the book and the legal fight surrounding its scheduled release ahead on "morning joe." ♪ it's all right

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nbc news has obtained a copy of a new book by mary trump, president trump's niece. it paints the president as a, quote, emotionally damaged narcissist who cheated his way to success. nbc news white house correspondent peter alexander has more. >> in her blistering new tell-all book president trump's niece, mary trump, a trained psychologist slams her uncle as a narcissist who's unable to experience the entire spectrum of human emotion. ms. trump details a dysfunctional family led by a domineering father fred trump

senior who she writes is emotionally abusive and perverted her son's perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it. >> my dad, fred trump, was the smartest and hardest working man i ever knew. >> reporter: on the night her father fred trump jr. died of an alcohol-induced heart attack. the family sent him to the hospital alone while donald trump had gone to the movies. why reveal family secrets? she writes if president trump is afforded a second term, it would be the end of american democracy and goes further in describing her decision, she says, to provide some of the president's tax documents to the "new york times." quote, i had to take donald down. about the president's self-proclaimed brilliance. >> i'm an extremely stable genius. >> ms. trump who's nearly 20 years younger than the president claims her uncle enlisted a friend to take the s.a.t.s for him, donald who never lacked for funds, she writes, paid his buddy well. an allegation the white house calls completely false.

overnight a friend of mary trump authorized to speak on her behalf explains why she wrote the book. >> mostly she wants to get across that her uncle is really dangerous and she has the unique perspective of having had a ringside seat to this family her whole life. >> ms. trump says the president's sister marianne, a retired federal judge, mocked her brother's 2016 candidacy. he's a clown. mary says marianne, a devout catholic was furious that evangelicals backed her brother quoting that the only time donald went to church was when the cameras were there. it's mind boggling. the white house blasts the book as fiction. >> it's ridiculous absurd allegations that have absolutely no bearing in truth, have yet to see the book but it is a book of falsehoods. >> peter alexander reporting there the president's niece mary trump already is under a gag order until a judge hears arguments on the merits of robert trump's lawsuit to stop the book's publication.

last week a new york appeals court determined publisher simon & schuster may go forward with the release of the book, though mary trump is temporarily halted with publishing. she signed a nondisclosure agreement as a condition of an inheritance settlement that her uncle argues prohibits her. has left the book in the hand o'after number of media outlets. robert trump, president trump's younger brother is asking the judge for an emergency gag order that covers the publisher as well. let's bring in legal analyst for nbc news and msnbc, this is confusing, i think, to the layman and to anyone really listening. so the gag order for mary trump does not apply to the publisher so the book can be released. how does that work exactly? >> you're right that it's very confusing for most people e. let's pull it apart. you know, what robert trump says

in his suit is that mary trump was not allowed to say anything about donald trump and the family based on a nondisclosure agreement she filed back in the 1990s when they were fighting about her father'ses ka estate. so what he's saying is there's a contract that prevents her from talking. there's no contract with simon & schuster, so the question here is if she shouldn't have talked, what is the remedy, if it is, in fact, a breach of contract, and essentially what the appeals court is saying is i don't know whether or not there was a breach of contract or not. i can't figure that out. i don't have those facts, but what i do know is it doesn't cover simon & schuster, so simon & schuster having already sent out 75,000 books, they were already in the mail so to speak to booksellers said that and the

reason that's so important is because as we saw from civil liberties groups saying this is free speech, so simon & schus r schuster, to tell simon & schuster you can't share free speech because someone else signed a nondisclosure agreement really endangers what free speech is, and also endangers the public interest in having free speech because donald trump is a public figure, he's a sitting president, and voters have a right to assess and make their own assessment about what mary trump has said in her book. >> so it protects simon & schuster, but if there is, in fact, a signed nda with mary trump, isn't she breaking the nda by putting all these story sbos into a book and handing it to sim simon and shuster that may have

some protection when they go to publish it? >> we don't know. that's part of what the court is going to lack ook at in conside whether or not the trump family is right in suing her in the fist place. but here's the thing, if it is, if mary trump is, in fact, bound by a nondisclosure agreement, the question is what do you do about it if she violated it? in this case i think part of what's happening here is the court -- which i think is rightly sort of suggesting -- is then you get damages. then you get to make her pay, but you don't get to stop the speech itself necessarily once it's already -- and plus, it's already out there, right? so this is not something as simon & schuster said, it's already up on amazon with a picture of the back cover of the book, 75,000 booksellers have it, and we're not covered by a nondisclosure agreement, so it's that mary trump may have to pay. >> so bottom line, maya, will this book be on the shelves next

week? will it be in people's hands? >> you know, i can't say for sure, but i certainly believe that the right outcome here is that that book be on the shelves for sale. >> all right, maya wiley, thanks so much for your insights. we need it this morning. good to see you. jonathan lemire, how is the white house handling this? obviously we saw caylee mac -- dismiss it as lies. >> truthfully, it was a neat trick for her to dismiss it as a book of lies after saying i haven't read it, which seems to me sort of how the white house operates on a number of levels these days. sure, they did eventually put out a statement that they were very dismissive of this. they focused on two things in particular saying that the president did have a good relationship with his father. the book charges that fred trump

was emotionally abusive to donald that sort of shaped him to be the person that he is today, and made a point of saying that the president did not pay anyone to take his s.a.t.s. we know how much the president does like to talk about the good schools he went to and how intelligent he is. certainly it's a distraction that they don't particularly care for. i don't think there's a huge level of concern about what this will change voters minds about him. it certainly doesn't rise to the level of the john bolton book from a few weeks ago, which is of course another book they tried to stop from seeing the light of day unsuccessfully. because whether or not this -- whoever wins, whether the book is for sale next week or not, a copy is already in all the newsroom across the countries. the excerpts are already out. the white house is looking to pardon the pun, the white house looking to turn the page. >> let's bring in alice frankston, she's a woman we saw in peter alexander's report,

she's a childhood friend of mary trump who is authorized now to speak on mary's behalf. because as we pointed out, mary is not doing media under that gag order. thanks for being with us this morning. first of all, your relationship to mary trump, you go back to i guess summer camp days when you were kids. you've known her for a long time. in the context of this conversation, did she share some of these stories with you in realtime? do these ring true to you? >> oh, absolutely, yeah. i've been with her talking about this and reading through things with her since the beginning when she started to write this and when she even thought about writing it. >> and why is she doing this right now? what does she believe is the significance of putting out a book like this let's say three and a half months before election day? >> she felt morally obligated. she felt it was her duty to let the american people, if not the world, know and understand who's in charge and the foundation of

how he got to be the way he is, what her opinions and views are of it. why now is look at what's going on in the world between a global pandemic being ignored. there's a complete lack of leadership, kids at the border, food insecurity, any number of things have really frustrated her, and she stands a lot to lose. i think it was very brave of her to come forward at any point, frankly, but now is when it's most crucial. the country's at a tipping point. >> she makes some explosive claims in the book, among them that donald trump, young donald trump paid someone to take the s.a.t. for him. is there documentary evidence of that? is there a witness? has she found the person who took the test? >> she spoke with multiple sources including people in her family. it would be great if she could be here to tell her stories firsthand, but she's been muzzled by her uncle in a most

unprecedented way. but yeah, these are her accounts. she's always been a truthful person. i've known her to be a truthful person her whole life, who stands everything to lose. she's also somebody who never utilized her name. she always flew under the radar her entire life, quite elegantly, i might add. it's not a revenge piece or anything of the sort. she feels this information is important and people need to know who's in charge. >> jonathan lemire has a question for you. jonathan? >> my question is a simple one. we just had our legal analyst talk about the nda. why does mary trump believe it doesn't apply to her? what is the legal standing for that? >> i mean her attorneys are managing it, but from what they say, the nda was entered into

fraudulently because they undervalued and misstated a number of values of the estate of her grandfather and the properties that were a part of it. so if it was based on fraudulent terms, i guess their argument is that it's null and void. >> all right. alice frankston here on behalf of mary trump who as you said cannot speak with us right now talking about her new book. we appreciate it. let's turn back to coronavirus. students at tulane university in new orleans host parties for more than 15 people and now risk being expelled. an email obtained by nola.com from the dean of students chastised students for hosting large off-campus parties over the fourth of july weekend, included this stern warning of the do not host parties or gatherings with more than 15 people, including the host. tulane dean of students erica

woodley wrote this in all capital letters in a mass email. quote, if you do, you will face suspension or expulsion from the university. according to the email, students hosted large gatherings without masks or social distancing over the holiday weekend, then posted them on social media. the gatherings drew attention from neighbors. woodley closed her email with do you really wanting to be the reason tulane and new orleans have to shut down again? it comes as louisiana again see infections trend upward. in florida, state health officials say more than 40 hospitals have maxed out of their icu capacity or are close to running out of icu beds. joining us now, congresswoman debbie. it's great to have you with us this morning. as you're well aware, the cases are spiking in your state. what's behind it? >> florida is breaking all the wrong records. we unfortunately have passed more than 200,000 positive cases

here in the state of florida. miami-dade county is now the epicenter with more than 50,000 positive cases. the truth is that we opened too soon. we went from phase one to phase two without really waiting that 28-day period to see a consistent drop in positive cases. we have failed at every level. the governor and the county mayor had a press conference yesterday. it was the incompetent leading the incompetent looking at each other, not being able to answer basic questions. we know what we need to do. we have been through this pandemic now for a few months. we need to expand testing without any restrictions. we need to make sure that we have enough contact tracers. right now in the state of florida, originally we needed about 7,000. we haven't even reached the 2,000 threshold. and now it was reported that we may need over 10,000 contact tracers because the more positivity rates, the more contact tracing.

then we need to quarantine those positive cases. and not just myself, but other congressional delegates here in florida have asked the governor to put a mask order in place for the entire state of florida. >> congresswoman, maya wiley has a question for you. >> good morning, maya. >> thank you. and thank you, congresswoman. i'm curious, as the president is demanding that schools reopen, how you're approaching that and what you're hearing from parents, because you're completely right about test, trace, treat. in context of school and with teachers concerned and with parents concerned, what's the balance there and how are you seeing that? >> that's a great question, maya. you know i'm also a mother. i have an 11-year-old, a 15-year-old and it is one of the most complicated questions that we are facing as leaders and also the superintendent here of

miami-dade public county school, what he has said, and he had a conference as well yesterday, is that the way that things are looking right now currently in miami-dade county, as we see the rise in cases over 20% positivity rate, it's a very dangerous proposition to open schools because it's not just the children that need to be going to school but it's all the teachers, all the administrators. parents are not feeling comfortable to send their kids to school. it's a necessity. we do know for their social and emotional learning it is extremely important for kids to be able to socialize with one another, to be able to get that instruction in their classroom. but at this point, maya, unfortunately because of the lack of leadership, because of the incompetence of our county leader here, the mayor, and the governor, we are in a situation where it may be too dangerous to open schools in august.

so one of the things that we have been discussing is possibly pushing that date start a little further into september. >> jonathan lemire has a question for you. jonathan? >> congresswoman, as you note, there's real debate whether or not schools can even open, but about a month and a half from now there's another event scheduled for your home state. the republican national convention is set to be in late august in jacksonville. the president yesterday in an interview acknowledged that cases are rising there, it's a bit of a hot spot he said. they might have to be, quote, flexible in terms of the convention but he didn't give any details as to what that could mean. but we know that he is hoping for a robust multi-day convention, one similar to what he saw in 2016 in cleveland. talk to us about that possibility. do you see any scenario where that could happen? and if the president does insist upon having a convention, what can lawmakers in florida do about it?

>> look, what we have seen from this president, and unfortunately now the governor, is that they have abandoned their responsibility of protecting american lives. the governor has put the floridian lives in danger and as you're asking this question, i'm thinking you're saying what flexibility can we have. well, this virus is not flexible. this virus doesn't really have any borders, it doesn't really have any bias on which coast it's going to attack. so at this point in the situation that we're in here in the state of florida, we should not be having any large gathering indoors. the president only cares about his political campaign, of scoring political points. you know he's coming to miami-dade county at a moment when we have to be laser focused on containing the spread of virus. he's taking away resources from miami-dade county because he wants to come and have another political visit into the state of florida. all he's thinking about is his re-election campaign.

what he needs to be thinking about is protecting american lives. and i think it's extremely dangerous and ruthless for this governor to even continue to discuss the idea of having an indoor rally for president donald trump here in jacksonville. >> congresswoman debbie mucarsal-powell of florida. wishing you all the best in grappling with that down there. thanks for your time, we appreciate it. that does it for us this morning. chris jansen picks up the coverage after a break. cove rage after a break ♪ ♪

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hi there, i'm chris jansing in for stephanie ruhle. it is wednesday, jewuly 8th. we begin with breaking news overnight that the u.s. has passed 3 million cases of the coronavirus. now, to put that in perspective, if all the americans who contracted the virus were gathered together in one place, they would make up the third largest city in the country. nearly 57,000 new cases were reported on tuesday, with 780 deaths nationwide. the president, making a big deal of that second number on twitter, but dr. fauci says the death rate doesn't tell the whole story. >> it's a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death. there's so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus. don't get yourself into false complacency. >> big picture, cases are