wear a mask. i have never been against masks, but i do believe they have a time and a place. >> also today, pushback to the president's decision to commute the sentence of longtime confidante, roger stone. robert mueller penning a scathing "washington post" op-ed writing, quote, stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed several federal crimes. he remains a convicted felon and rightly so. and despite resistance from his own attorney general, trump standing by his decision. >> roger stone was treated horribly. roger stone was treated very unfairly. roger stone was brought into this witch hunt, this whole political witch hunt and the mueller scam. so i'm very happy with what i did. >> with me now is msnbc national political reporter josh letterman at the white house. josh, we're seeing reports that dr. fauci has been sidelined by the trump administration. trump hasn't consulted with him

since early june, and a white house official released a statement saying that, quote, several white house officials are concerned about the number of times dr. fauci has been wrong on things. what is going on here? >> yeah, this is pretty remarkable. i have covered politics for a long time and seen a lot of candidates drop opo, as we call it, opposition research on their political opponents. i have never seen a white house do it to one of their own officials, much less in the middle of a pandemic, but that appears to be what's happening at the white house tries to relegate dr. fauci to the sidelines amid his increasingly dire warnings about the pandemic and shortcomings in the u.s. response. in addition to the white house official saying that fauci has been wrong a lot and that white house officials are concerned about it, the official actually provided me with a lengthy list of past comments by dr. fauci that didn't age particularly well. these are from much earlier in the pandemic. for example, in january, when it was not clear that this could be

transmitted by asymptomatic people, in february, when it wasn't clear that masks were something that we needed to wear. the white house now trying to use those comments that fauci had made at some point in time on the record to make the point that he's been wrong before and that therefore he could be wrong now as he warns that we're not doing enough to fight this pandemic. what's so interesting here is the fact that they're doing this to one of the top infectious disease doctors in the country who is still part of the task force, still supposed to be leading our effort on this, but it shows how concerned the president is with some of the candid talk that dr. fauci has been giving when he does speak out publicly about what he sees as more steps the u.s. needs to take to get this under control. >> right, and that comes, josh, as the president is wearing a mask in public for the first time. that should not be remarkable. that should not be news. and yet, as we watch it, we wonder how it comports with all the reporting you just shared.

>> yeah, well, we know that the administration currently feels that they need to send a stronger message on masks than they have in the past. that goes all the way to the top of president trump himself, who has continued to waver on masks and said yeah, in certain conditions i'm okay with it, but i wouldn't necessarily. yesterday, we did see him in public for the first time with a mask. for what was largely a photo opportunity designed to show he was comfortable putting on that mask, and then today, we saw the surge surgeon general, dr dr. adams, wear a mask when he did a television interview. we don't know if the president is going to be doing this now on a regular basis, but as the medical consensus seems to be forming since people who are asymptomatic are transmitting this, we do have the wear masks when we're in close proximity to other people. we see the white house finally willing to try to send that message more publicly. >> over to the roger stone story. you saw the mueller piece in "the new york times." has there been any response from

the white house? >> well, it might not surprise you hugely that the white house was not particularly pleased by that scathing op-ed by robert mueller in the post yesterday. the white house responding to that in a statement saying that robert mueller and his corrupt investigation failed to hold anyone in the obama/biden administration accountable for their negligence toward russian interference. that statement going on to say that mueller should keep his promise to the american people and let the report which fully exonerated the president stand instead of pontificating in the editorial pages. we have to of course note robert mueller in his report did not exonerate the president. it explicitly stated it was not exonerating the president when it comes to obstruction of justice. >> last year, you had senate dems on the judiciary committee wanting to call mueller before the committee to discuss his report. you had senator lindsey graham denying that request. now, graham tweeting that since

mueller published this op-ed, he will grant that request. what more are you hearing about that piece of the story? >> this was an unexpected development today. we're sorting out why exactly graham might be inclined at this point to let robert mueller, whose investigation he's criticized repeatedly, come and testify before the senate judiciary committee. but it's also not clear what more robert mueller would really have to say given that he published a lengthy report about his findings and also testified already before the house of representatives. the other big question mark here, whether bob mueller actually wants to go and testify yet again about the findings of that report. >> all right, josh. thank you. coronavirus is spreading in arizona faster than any other state or any country in the world. and now the state is activating emergency plans to use refrigerator trucks as makeshift moth morgues.

vaughn hillyard is outside of phoenix. the latino community is being hit hard, harder than any other group. what is the state doing with access to testing? >> this is the issue, alicia. it's still not like there's a situation if you want a test, there is a high volume location just down the road you can drive over to and get a test the day of. there were multiple locations around the valley yesterday, but like for one instance, down the road in glendale, there were 1200 appointments and those 1200 slots got eaten up by wednesday. there's also a location in avondale, but for the most part, you can't just show up at these locations, and even if you are lucky enough to get a test here in the valley, those tests are still not coming back, most oftentimes in less than a week. so at that point, it's essentially moot in terms of its relevance and importance to really understanding the spread of covid here. to give you an idea, there's

been 86 new deaths reported over just the last 24 hours here. more than 2500 new cases in the percent positive rate here is still over 22%, which is double that of florida. because of the lack of access to testing here, it's still really hard to get a good grip on just how expansive this is. i want to let you hear directly from one mayor who we were talking with, mayor tovar of tulson, one of those latino communities here in need of more testing. >> my community is about 88% latino. and the vast majority of my community does not have the luxury of working from home. they're at the front lines here in arizona. they are providing food, they're at our hospitals. they are risking their lives day in and day out so that people in our economy can move forward. but yet, we're leaving them behind when it comes to the most crucial component, and that's

testing. >> alicia, latinos make up just a third of the population here in arizona but more than half of covid positive cases to date. >> all right. that tracks with what a lot of what we have seen across the country. thank you so much. >> to north carolina, where the stort registered its largest increase in cases of coronavirus this weekend. over 2,000 cases reported on saturday alone. and more than 1,000 are currently hospitalized. nbc's jordan jackson in winston-salem, north carolina. jordan, what are the health care officials you're speaking with most worried about? >> yeah, alicia, health care officials i speak to tell me that they're worried about how this spike will impact testing capacity here in the state. now, there are roughly 22,000 tests being conducted here per day. that's up from about 1300 in early march. and we're seeing this combo in this surge in testing and this

nationwide shortage in testing kits and supplies. and that's causing all types of issues for states like here in north carolina. earlier this morning, i spoke to a doctor here at wake forest baptist health just about what he is seeing with this issue. take a listen. >> a lot of patients and staff frustration. we all want to be able to test who we think needs to be tested. and whether or not it's restriction on testing because it's just not available or because we're having to be cautious because it might not be available, that creates a lot of frustration for everybody. >> and that frustration is not specific to this hospital, to this area. i have spoken to other doctors in this state who have shared similar feelings. alicia. >> jordan, thank you. this week, president trump threatened repeatedly to withhold federal education funding if states and school districts do not open their

doors to students beginning next month. i.c.e. announced monday international students must attend in-person classes for their visas to be valid. the move leading universities like harvard to sue the trump administration. and while most parents want their kids back in school safely, many are still wondering what is the plan? european countries that have reopened their schools could offer some answers, and some warnings. nbc's molly hunter has more from london. >> it's a rare sight and rare sound these days, at least in america. in recent weeks, hundreds of millions of kids across the globe have gone back to school. >> glad to be back. >> denmark was the first in europe to reopen schools, and we were there. they started with pods of four or five kids enforcing the two meter rule. >> will you guys show me two meters? >> the kids were psyched. >> what did you miss the most? did you miss your friends? >> my friends. >> meanwhile, in thailand, masks, the smallest face visors.

and lots of hand washing. across asia, masks are mandatory, and in south korea, schools opened and then closed then reopened with temperature checks and plastic dividers. but when european schools started opening, they only did it when cases were dropping. and in norway, so far, it's working. >> you have to remember that covid-19 outbreak in norway has been pushed back so the situation is completely different from, for instance, compared to the states or brazil or something like that. >> because experts warn it's not just about what happens in the classroom. >> in norway, we decided that we were not covid-19 experts. we decided that our role in this was to be experts on education. >> in neighboring denmark, they capitalized on outdoor time, teaching the kids and us new noncontact games. >> so they have to literally

just tap the shadows. >> yeah, so i can touch your shadow and say tag. >> here in the uk, author sarah, wife of an nbc cameraman, like so many moms, worried all the new precautions might be a bit overwhelming. >> it was this weird sci-fi world where my 4-year-old, who really doesn't understand, was going to be picked up by teachers wearing gloves with thermometers, with face masks. i just thought this is going to terrify him. he's never going to want to go back to school again. >> actually, their littlest was just fine. >> literally not a tear. i was -- i was apoplectic, him, not a tear. not bothered. >> they didn't send their eldest back, and looking to the fall, it's wait and see. >> still this thing of kids can't touch each other. kids have to be two meters apart. i would be quite reluctant to send my kids back to that environment. >> summer traveling and fears of a second wave could mean september looks different once again. >> molly hunter reporting from

lundened, thon. here in the u.s., america's parents and teachers aren't getting answers from the trump administration. we'll show you what the president's secretary of education had to say about it this morning. >> plus, new poll numbers out today show the president trailing joe biden in texas. that has some democrats calling for the former vp to go big in the deep south. we'll talk about that later in the hour. the hour looks like they picked the wrong getaway driver. they're going to be paying for this for a long time. they will, but with accident forgiveness

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the trump administration is continuing to push for schools to fully reopen this fall, while ignoring the rising number of coronavirus cases. trump this week threatening to cut federal funding if children are not back in class. education secretary betsy devos pushed trump's message today without providing a plan no matter what question was raised. >> can you assure students, teachers, parents that they will not get coronavirus because they're going back to school? >> well, the key is that kids

have to get back to school. >> it sounds like what you're saying is you as the secretary of education is compelling, you are compelling schools to reopen regardless of what's happening. >> no, what we're saying is that kids need to be back in school. there is no -- nothing in the data that would suggest that kids being back in school is dangerous to them, and in fact, it's more a matter of their health and wellbeing that they be back in school. >> let's bring in katie rogers, "new york times" white house correspondent and adam sewer, staff writer at the atlantic. katie, what are you hearing from inside the white house about why they're making this aggressive push to open schools in the fall? >> i think inside the white house, this administration is sort of an administration of free-lancers is the best i could put it, people with different approaches, different beliefs, and at the end of the day, as we saw with secretary devos,

there's a fear of angering the audience of one, president trump, who has dismissed data, has dismissed science, has barely addressed this virus over the past couple weeks in service of promoting his presidential campaign. so i think within the white house, i think there's frustration that the people who are leaning in to science and data the most are the ones we hear from the least. >> adam, there is such deep frustration understandably on the part of educators who are trying to figure out what this is all looking like. you talk to anyone who is an administrator. they say we're putting together four contingent plans. we're not sure if we're going to open, do some home schooling, long distance learning and also have kids in class, have a staggered schedule. their wr working hard to figure out a variety of plans and we also spoke with educators yesterday who are incredibly frustrated that educators are not the one, the people in the classroom, are not the ones making the decisions about how this is going to go down.

you have this administration talking about a mandate that all children across the country have to go back to school, and yet there are no clear guidelines about how that is supposed to happen. what position then does that put local school districts in come the end of august, come september? >> well, look, from the beginning of the pandemic, the white house has placed the president's political prospects above americans' public health and safety. it's been that way from the beginning and it's that way with schools. you can't have a strong functioning economy when you have -- when parents have to take care of their kids all day instead of going to work. that's why the president is threatening school districts with withdrawing their funding if they don't open schools, regardless of whether or not it's actually safe to do so. but they're also not willing to do the necessary work to figure out how you can open up schools and under what conditions. the truth is that other countries that have opened up schools, the outbreak has been under control. but the administration isn't

interested in controlling the outbreak so much as it is interested in persuading americans that it's not as big of a deal as they currently think it is. and that's really the core of the problem. >> katie, to adam's point, new reporting today from the washington from nbc showing dr. fauci has been sidelined by the trump administration. i wonder if you have anything to add to the reporting that we have already heard. and you know, you see the president now out after months of refusing to wear a mask, wearing a mask. if they could persuade him on that, they could persuade him to begin listening to dr. fauci again? >> i think from the reporting i have done on the task force meetings and dr. fauci, i think he's much more interested in talking to the people in those meetings, the people who are invested and interested in paying attention. he is somebody in these meetings, i know from my reporting, who has pushed on the administration relying on data, listen to the data. let science guide you.

he's less interested in meeting with the president because i don't think he believes that that would go as far as convincing people like vice president pence, for example, or working with admiral giroir, who is somebody the white house is putting out more front and center because he's a pediatrician and a lot more rooted in data than someone like secretary devos. >> can there be a comprehensive national plan if dr. anthony fauci is sidelined by the white house? >> i mean, i think that fauci as an individual, i mean, it's not about fauci as an individual. it's about the white house sidelining public health experts who say things the administration, that the president doesn't want to hear. and no, you can't have a comprehensive response if you're ignoring the experts, whether that's dr. fauci or someone else, who is willing to give actual factual data to the administration about how to handle the outbreak. but again, the issue here is that they're less concerned with containing the outbreak than containing the political fallout for the president.

as long as that's the case, you cannot have an effective response. >> all right, katie and adam, thank you both. up next, the president kept his longtime president roger stone from going to jail, but there is serious blowback, even from his own white house. >> and i'll talk to the filmmakers behind "get me roger stone" about his history of dirty tricks and if this is the greatest escape of his political career. hi, i'm pat and i'm 75 years old.

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news out of california this hour. a three-alarm fire on a u.s. military ship, the uss bonham richard, at a naval base in san diego. several sailors are being treated for various injuries, according to a tweet from the san diego fire department. the extent of the injuries is unclear at this moment. the ship had gone through routine maintenance before this fire. we will bring you updates here on msnbc as we learn more. >> attorney general bill barr rarely contradicts president trump, but he reportedly advised against commuting the prison

sentence of longtime trump ally roger stone. the decision has prompted some republican pushback. senator mitt romney slamming it as historic corruption. and former special counsel robert mueller insisting stone remains a convicted felon and a public rebuke of the president. the white house yesterday, the president hit back. >> roger stone was treated horribly. roger stone was treated very unfairly. roger stone was brought into this witch hunt, this whole political witch hunt, and the mueller scam. it's a scam. roger stone was not treated properly. so i'm very happy with what i did. >> joining me now, staff writer for "slate" mark joseph stern. republicans mostly staying silent on the commutation, but what do you make of this pushback from bill barr? >> well, remember first and foremost that bill barr is a political animal. and he surely knows that it is just bad politics for trump to

grant clemency to someone as comically villainous as roger stone. more importantly, remember that bill barr already intervened in the roger stone case. in an extraordinary breach of protocol, barr directed federal prosecutors to recommend a lower sentence for stone than they had initially. and so when barr heard that trump was considering clemency for stone, he must have wondered, why did i stick my neck out like that? why did i damage my own reputation and the independence of the justice department to get stone less time in prison if at the end of the day trump was always going to grant him clemency and insure that he didn't spend a day in prison? it renders barr's actions not only corrupt but at the end of the day, incredibly pointless. >> trump isn't the first president to pardon or commute a close ally, but a former george w. bush official points that in

lawfare, that trump is unprecedented in the modern era for the number and high percentage of self-serving pardons and his stinginess in issuing pardons thus far. can you put a bit more context on that for us? >> sure. of course, past presidents have granted clemency to friends and associates, and that was a dirty business. but those presidents generally adhered to the executive branch's broader clemency process. the justice department has a very meticulous and thorough system for screening clemency applications from federal prisoners all around the country, not just those who are wealthy or well connected. and forwarding along applications with merit to the oval office for the president's consideration. trump has almost entirely circumvented that long-standing tradition. instead, he's decided to throw out pardons at his best friends the way an agor aphobe might throw candy out her window at children on halloween, and this

reveals that trump has no interest in addressing the broader systemic injustices of our criminal system. he isn't even pretending to use the pardon power as a safety valve the way the framers intended. he's only using it for its most possibly corrupt purposes, which is to get his own friends off the hook, and potentially save his own skin. and so i think it's right that even though past presidents have used the pardon power in dubious and pretty terrible ways, this goes so far above and beyond what we have seen before. this is a blatant exercise in corruption. this is an effort to manipulate executive tools that were designed to help the nation out of pure presidential self interest. >> mark, you just described a halloween that one with agoraphobia might have but also in the middle of a pandemic. thank you so much. >> in 2017, roger stone was the subject of a fascinating netflix documentary, "get me roger stone" looking at stone's

political roots and deep love of richard nixon and his campaign to get donald trump elected at all costs. >> in the world of political consulting, there are a number of rogues, but there's really nobody quite like roger stone. >> roger is the sinister forrest gump of american politics. he's not just this simple minded guy but this machiavellian almost crazy guy who shows up at every key moment in recent american history. >> yeah, i live a pretty machiavellian life. i tend to believe the worst of people because i understand human nature. human nature has never changed. that's why one of stone's rules is hate is a stronger motivator than love. that's because it is. >> joining me now is codirectors and writers of "get me roger stone" dylan bank and morgan peckme. you have an op-ed in "the new york times" making the case trump needs stone now more than ever. make that case to me, morgan. why now?

>> yes, well, roger has been trump's closest political guru since the mid-1980s. and nobody has earned trump's trust like roger stone when it comes to how to navigate politics. roger is literally the very first person to suggest to trump to run for the presidency back in 1987. he laid the groundwork for the 2016 campaign, and now that trump is on the ropes in terms of public polling, he needs roger stone in his corner if he's going to make a comeback in this 2020 election. >> give me a sense of the tricks that that -- the shape that those tricks might take and whether or not they can work this year in light of what we know from 2016. >> well, a good example of roger's tricks are to attack someone at their greatest strength. he famously went after hillary clinton with his book, clinton's war on women as someone who

covered up bill clinton's sexual dalliances, his rapes, and took it a step further and got crowds whipped up into a frenzy chanting "lock her up, lock her up." not just for that, but saying bill and hillary clinton were serial killers. the question remains whether he's going to be able to pull all those same tricks now that the world has changed so much, and what exactly is he going to come up with joe biden because they haven't been able to get their talons in him with the same way with hillary clinton. >> morgan, pick up on the last point. he's now up against a different opponent. how does that change the equation? >> well, you know, a lot of roger's past tricks have been taken off the table for him, so he is really a master of manipulating people via social media and yet now he has been taken off virtually every single major social media platform. he knows how to create massive

public spectacle to gin up p publici publicity, but that doesn't really work during a pandemic. roger is going to have to find new tricks to be effective for trump. it's not just dirty tricks. roger is a veteran of six winning presidential campaigns dating back to richard nixon's re-election. he's not just a dirty trickster, he's an expert in running presidential campaigns and way more experienced than anyone else in trump's inner circle when it comes to winning the presidency. >> dylan, did you ever figure out whether stone quit or was fired by trump? >> we always imagined it was a disagreement that had been building for a while. roger seems like he wanted to have trump play it a little more his way, and right after the first republican debate, that falling out really came to a heel because roger felt like trump had lost, and trump insisted and ended up being correct that he had won. we don't actually know exactly for certain, but we always imagined that the phone call

went something like, hey, roger, you're -- i quit, click. >> morgan, do you have the sense that any of what has transpires has changed roger stone, that he even has the appetite to do all of the things you laid out in the run-up to november? >> i think roger is raring to get back into the fray. it's been very frustrating to him to have been muzzled by the gag order during the trial, and roger, like his hero richard nixon, keeps a long enemies list. and i'm sure that he is sharpening his blade to gain retribution against everyone who he feels has wronged him throughout the process. >> dylan, what should it say to the american electorate if roger stone is in fact back in the mix? >> that trump is willing to go even more no holds barred than anyone predicted.

and that really whenever trump's had his back up against the wall, like in the 2016 campaign, when the access hollywood tape came out and it really seemed like maybe he was in freefall, that was actually when he really called on roger stone, and stone helped organize the bill clinton accusers to be in the front row of the second debate with hillary clinton. which really rattled her. and muddied the whole issue. and this is a very similar circumstance. in a general sense, that he really needs somebody to come in and rattle the cages and just shake up the narrative and get the attention off of the things that are making trump look bad, and just change the story into his voice. >> all right. dylan and morgan, thank you both. up next, a lot of people want joe biden to go big. they're calling on him to compete in places like georgia and even texas. we'll talk about what a biden campaign for deep red states would look like.

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we're now just 114 days away from november's election. and president trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic may be transforming gop strongholds into swing states. new polling in texas, a traditionally red state, reveals former vice president joe biden is in the lead with voters there. he's ahead of president trump by five percentage points, according to the dallas morning news and university of texas of tyler. president trump's sinking poll

numbers are sparking calls for the biden campaign to go big in a number of other battleground states like florida and arizona. with me now is chuck, a former senior adviser for senator bernie sanders' presidential campaign and founder and president of solidarity strategies. all right, my friend. we talk a lot about the possibility of texas turning blue. when you see those numbers and you see the numbers coming out of arizona, coming out of florida, former vice president biden doing very well with voters whose primary concern is the handling of the pandemic, are those numbers numbers that can show up in november? >> so polls are just a bullet in time. what you're seeing is a pattern. that's what you should really pay attention to. i would remind everybody that four years ago, texas was a solid red state. and i just spent millions on advertising because we can win arizona. we jump forward four years, the

opportunity is there to do the same thing in texas and florida and georgia. what you're seeing is an electorate coming of age that is more diverse. more black, more multiculture, more latino. one out of every four school kids in texas is latino. as they come of age, they're more progressive. they tend to be more democratic. the problem for the president, he's got an electorate coming of age that really don't like him. >> chuck, at the same time, there is the other side of this ledger, which i have been watching with great interest, that you have the president hosting a hispanic prosperity initiative at the white house. you have him giving speeches where he's referencing venezuela. you have him doing interviews with jose diaz balart for telemundo where he's speaking rather ilogically about daca and immigration and a pathway to citizenship, but nonetheless, choosing to go on the record on those topics. i wonder what you make, what your analysis is of what the trump campaign is trying to do

with those statements and with those gestures. >> you hear we have been doing focus groups all over the country and you hear the hate for donald trump is at a level i have never seen for any politician in my life. so much so that when you put his picture on a mail piece, people will just throw it away. they won't even look at it. you have to find images that refer to him like trump tower or other things that don't have his face on. that's how high the hate level is. he can't let that number of support for him get up there to numbers that are like the bush numbers. he is worried about cut nothing to that. that's what he's trying to do. >> the nuestro pac you launched and america's new promise released a new ad targeting trump. >> trump's racist policies even prevented our community from an equal share of covid relief funds. we don't have to tolerate this. joe biden, he will unite our country and lead us out of this

crisis. >> chuck, tell me what the thinking is behind an ad like this. >> so the first rule in politics is you never let your opposition identify who you are. we're going to get out there and talk to latinos early and plain to them what donald trump has done to them and what joe biden can do if their elect him president. it's the same formula with bernie sanders. you go into the community in language, show respect, and start having a conversation. it is july. and now we're putting $3 million worth of nuestro pac and promise pac in these states to have this conversation because it's not just enough to have hate for donald trump. we need to explain to latinos what joe biden is doing to do for them at the same time. this is real live consequences for latinos all across the country. we're trying to get inmotivation back. >> chuck, i am told that you have a piece of news, personal news you're bringing to us. so i would love to know what it is. >> tomorrow is going to be a big

day. i spent the last three months at the house sequestered and i wrote a book. everybody knows what we did with the latino vote for bernie. we wrote that down in a book so everybody can see no more after reading the book will people say latinos don't vote. i have made this open source where people will be able to read it and see what we did. they can duplicate it. i see you, democrats, and do exactly that. >> chuck, you are clearly at the beginning of your book tour because you have not yet learned that you have to say the title of your book as many times as possible. >> i am new to this, as an old mexican redneck from east texas. the name is "tio bernie." it's about more than the latino vote, it's about a man who had a baby at 19, who ran a presidential race. you can mess up, you're going to mess up, but there's a road to

redemption. >> all right, chuck, thank you. we'll have you back when the book is out. the nfl says it's changing and promoting racial equality, but a chorus of former players say it is not enough. up next, donte stallworth tells me why the league needs to go beyond symbolic gestures. did you know that feeling sluggish or weighed down

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sparking major changes. in a piece for the new york times, former nfl wide receive questions the authenticity. asking is this a sign the nfl is serious now or just a symbolic gesture. one meant to placate players without any meaningful change? joining me now dante stallworth.

why the you feel this move is more symbolic than meaningful? >> i think in the last three or four years what we have seen from the nfl especially in 2016 and 2017 when colin kaepernick decided to take a knee to protest police brutality and these inequities in the criminal justice system. when he first did that, the nfl didn't have his back. the following year when donald trump was elected, then he came in and completely just turned the whole conversation on its head and he talked about nfl players, called them sobs and talked about cte, which is the brain traumatic injuries that the nfl players have been experiencing now that there's been more veresearch. the nfl threw out these blands statements and weren't fully supportive of the players which

we saw last month the nfl players, the young stars, including patrick mahomes who got a blockbuster deal, the richest deal in sports history where they condemned the nfl's lack of support and condemned the nfl silence and demanded that the nfl come and speak towards black lives mattering, towards the criminal justice reforms that players have been trying to get out. the nfl, give them a little credit, they have done some things in support of the players but it hasn't been enough. that's why i was questioning how genuine is this. i know there are people in the nfl offices that are head coach, executives who really do care and who get it. if they didn't get it before george floyd, then i know a lot of them have gotten it now. the main concern is that we move forward from this moment because the players have demanded they do so and said they were going

to honor that demand of their players. >> what would feel meaningful? what type of change would feel imfactful and real in the day-to-day life of players and the overall structure of the league? >> i think they took the first steps, the correct first steps by supporting the players coalition, which is an initiative made up, founded by players that is to help with inequities in the education system, to empower young black children towards education and they decided to pledge donate $250 million over 10 years. that's a good start. $250 million is a lot of money. to go from there, the nfl, i think, one of the big problems they have is that there's been more than 9 nfl owners who have supported donald trump. you can support who you want but you can't walk in two directions

at the same time. you can't say you fully support the players yet you're holding fund raisers for donald trump. that would be a good sign. also that the nfl take serious and really building a pipeline for younger assistant coaches to get on that pipeline to become head coaches in the last three years there's been 20 head coach vacancies and only two have been filled by black nfl head coaches and there are currently three black nfl coaches now. that pipeline is to go from offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator which is what gets you the job as head coach and there's not that pipeline that's happening right now in the nfl. >> why does it matter that there is diversity not only among the players but among management, among coaches and why has this been a challenge for as long as we have experienced it?

>> i think every group wants to be represented by who they identify with. we have seen in congress where the congress is now just now starting to, at least, in some respects, look like it's constituency with more diverse jendsers, more diverse races and religions in the congress. that needs to happen not just in the nfl, it's a societal problem. the nfl is a microcosm of that. there needs to be a significant push to help these young black coaches become head coaches or give them the opportunity. i'm not saying and no one has argued that you should hire black head coaches just because they are black. there should be some type of pipeline to enable them to get the opportunity to get the head coaching job. >> all right. thank you for giving us some time today. that wraps it up for this hour. my colleague joshua johnson takes over at the top of the

hour. he'll talk to the superintendent of schools in broward county florida where they are a few weeks away from a new school year. i'll be back at 4:00 p.m. that's coming up in about an hour right here on msnbc. t an hour right here on msnbc it's pretty inspiring the way families

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to low income families through our internet essentials program. and this summer, xfinity is creating a virtual summer camp for kids at home- all on xfinity x1. we're committed to helping all families stay connected. learn more at xfinity.com/education. let's begin this hour with breaking news from san diego. firews