barnes and the rest. fractured intellectuals, broken souls who lost their humanity on a descent into evil. ♪ ♪ this sunday, surges, shortages and schools. >> we don't have a national plan. we don't have a national strategy. >> covid-19 cases exploding with shortages of beds. >> frankly, we're running out of room. >> equipment and tests. >> i got told i would get my results back in seven to 14 days. >> a surge driven largely by states reopening too early. and by foolish behavior. >> president trump is still denying the crisis. >> put out the fires as they come out. you call them embers and fires and whatever you want to call them. >> despite the reality on the ground.

>> this virus, to our dismay, is spectacularly efficient in transmitting from person to person. plus, back to school. the administration pushing for schools to reopen quickly. >> we're very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools. >> we don't want the guidance from cdc to be the reason why schools don't open. >> as educators say safety, not speed, is what matters. >> teachers get sick. what's the policy if someone in their family gets sick? what's the policy if -- >> brett gerard and miami-dade school superintendent. >> trump versus mueller. >> roger stone was treated horribly. >> a rare, public rebuke. robert mueller denounces president trump's roger stone's sentence. and preparing for a possible post-trump gop. i'll talk to republican larry hogan of maryland who is

considering a 2024 presidential run. joining me for insight and analysis are nbc news white house correspondent kristen welker, syndicated columnist george will and anna palmer, correspondent for "politico." welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." >> from nbc news in washington, the longest-running show in television history, this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning. for a country that celebrates american exceptionalism, the united states finds itself in an exceptionally bad place today. the calendar says july 12th, but it feels more like april 12th when it comes to battling this virus, even if president trump did finally wear a mask in public late yesterday. once again, cases are surging, the ten worst days for new cases nationwide have occurred over the past 11 days. we are facing shortages of protective tests and icu beds for covid-19 patients and once again, we are left to wonder how did we get here again? is it because of a president who remains in denial about the

disaster unfolding on his watch? is it because states chose not to listen to health experts and reopened too soon, or is it because of scenes like this, too many americans being foolish deciding they were immune or the experts were wrong or that they had a right not to wear a mask or is it all of the above? now president trump is urging schools to reopen with weakened safety protocols and pointing to germany, denmark, norway, and sweden as examples of countries that reopened schools safely. now, he did that on a day this week when those countries had about a thousand new cases combined. on that same day the united states had roughly 60,000 new cases. president trump is insisting we're winning a war we're clearly losing and his risking his own katrina moment when voters lose faith in a president's ability to lead. >> i've never been against masks, but i do believe they have a time and a place.

>> the president wearing a mask in public for the first time at walter reed on saturday faces a leadership crisis of his own making with new u.s. cases spiking to more than 71,000 on friday, and daily death tolls in north carolina, arizona, and texas up in the past month. >> the worst is testing positive. >> mr. trump is at odds with his top infection disease expert. on the trajectory of the virus -- >> the current state is really not good. we are still knee-deep in the first wave of this. >> dr. fauci is a nice man, but he's made a lot of mistakes. >> on the federal response -- >> as i country, when you compare us to other countries, i can't say we're doing great. >> is the united states losing the war against covid? >> no, we have areas that flamed and over a period of time.

>> or on the mortality rate? >> it's a level that people don't talk about, but it's down tenfold. tenfold. >> president trump is threatening to make the already difficult debate over cool reopenings, his latest front in the culture wars after the cdc had new guidelines. mr. trump called them tough and expensive. >> the president said we don't want the guidance to be too tough and that's the reason why next week the cdc will be issuing a new set of tools. >> the president warned may cut off funding if not open, pointing to democratic governors. >> they don't want to open because they think it will help them on november 3rd. i think it's going to hurt them on november 3rd. open your schools. >> i don't see how we do anything but remote education if the federal government doesn't step in. >> now with less than four months until the presidential election, mr. trump finds

himself under siege. the two conservative justices he appointed joined the supreme court majority to dismiss his claim from investigators seeking his tax returns. >> this is a political witch hunt, the likes of which nobody has ever seen before. >> a tell-all book by his niece hits bookstores this week. >> any reaction to your niece's book, sir? >> and it will hurt the ballot in november. >> perhaps looking to his post-presidency, mr. trump commuted the sentence of roger stone who was convicted of lying to congress, witness tampering and obstruction all to protect the president. >> the president has saved my life, and he's given me the opportunity to fight for vindication. >> with me now is the assistant secretary of health and a member of the president's coronavirus task force admiral brett giroir. admiral, welcome back to "meet the press." the president says we're winning, but honestly, admiral it does look like we're right

back to where we were in april, which to a lot of laypeople, it looks like we are losing this battle with the virus. what do you say? >> so, thank you for having me on. we are definitely not losing the battle, but we are in the midst of it. the numbers of cases have gone up recently, particularly over the last month. the positivity rate is leveling off. we have about 63,000 people in the hospital, and that's a lot more than 40,000, a lot less than 85,000. and we do have a lot more tools in our toolbox right now to combat this, but i don't want to underestimate the seriousness of this right now. it's all hands on deck, and we have people in the field assisting essentially every county, every hot spot so we are in the midst of this and we're taking it very seriously. >> here's what i don't understand. in march and april it was understandable we didn't have ppe and we didn't ramp up testing. in march and april it was

understandable that it might take days to get results. the whole point of the april shutdown was to get ppe and in inventory so that we wouldn't run out, have testing so that it was reliable and fast.n inventory so that we wouldn't run out, have testing so that it was reliable and fasan inventory so that we wouldn't run out, have testing so that it was reliable and fasn inventory so that we wouldn't run out, have testing so that it was reliable and fasan inventory so that we wouldn't run out, have testing so that it was reliable and fast. we are running into the same problems that we were talking about in april now in arizona, in texas and florida. why? >> well, that's really not true. if you look at the data, and we follow the data every single day, over 75% of the hospitals have at least 15 days of ppe and supply and less than 2% have under three days in supply. the ppe situation is in a much, much, much better place and, in fact, we are really ready to attack this. i'm not saying there is not a shortage at one hospital, but overall we have lots of ppe. in terms of testing we did over 800,000 tests on friday. we've tripled, quadrupled the number of tests that we have. we have over 2,000 retail sites,

1,300 qualified health care centers, and we're testing in virtually every county that's having a problem. so it is not true that we're the same where we were in march and april. we are much better prepared and we are attacking it aggressively. >> admiral, the testing situation, yes, we're getting more test, but we're not getting the results fast enough. it takes five, six, seven days in the hot spots so you can't do contact tracing under that circumstance. >> again, you've really got to look at the data, okay? you're looking at the data on half the testing, which is the large commercial labs. the other is point of care testing or within hospital systems. point of care system will get you a result in 15 minutes and the hospitals are usually providing it in 24 to 36 hours. on the big commercial labs if you're hospitalized you get it in 24 to 36 hour, but you are right. we need to decrease the time to turn around those results, and

we have a number of efforts, number one, we're starting to work with them on pooling. we expect to see that very soon and number two, the big surge is because we're testing everyone in nursing homes. that's a really, really good thing, but that's millions of tests per month to protect our elderly and we're going to fix that problem and you'll hear more this week about point of care testing in nursing homes so we are aggressively testing this every night. i get a report by state, what is the turnaround time and what is the delay? in arizona, florida and texas, the turnaround time has improved over the last 30 days and we follow this data and i look at that first thing i do and last thing when i go to bed. >> i want to get you to respond something dr. michael osterholm said to me on friday. take a listen, sir. >> the way we're going to end up, i think, maximizing on our overall safety, our health, and our economy is getting it shut down once and for all, coming back slowly and gradually, much like new york is doing and the

rest of the world, and then living with it until we get a vaccine. >> is there any -- he's basically advocating in order to get control of this, we've got to shut down right. we didn't shut down correctly the first time. do you concur with that that we didn't get this right the first time? >> i think mike's a really smart guy, and i listen to a lot of things he says, and i read his newsletter, and we'll have him very involved. i don't think we need to shut down, at least in most places around the country. our models really show that if you close down bars, where there's a lot of transmission, if you decrease restaurant capacity to about 50%, that you really, strictly physically distance and really, everybody, if you're out in public, we have to have about 95% mask wearing or face coverings. if we do just those simple things we can bring that r value, the transmissibility

value down to below one which means it goes away. so i think we need to be very selective. sure, if we shut down once again, but we don't need to. there is a tremendous cost, mental, emotional, substance use, but also no cancer screenings, no vaccines. let's do what we know really works. like i said, avoid bars because they really do spread. restaurant capacity down 50%, hand hygiene and please wear a mask in public. that is really, really, really important. we've got to have 90 or 95% adherence to that, and we can achieve the same results. >> you know, i want to follow up on the mask thing. a mask ordinance was not something that anybody the in federal level was talking about in march and april, and the president himself has been at times acting like almost an opponent to mask wearing. how much did that set us back on this political debate about mask wearing over that three-month period? >> well, i think the public health people have been very, very clear that mask wearing is essential.

it's very important that we can really decrease the transmission. you may not protect yourself, but you really protect everyone else. and the surgeon general says it well. covid stops with me. if you want it to stop with you, wear a mask. and you want to emphasize that and particularly with new data that there might be a small amount of aerosol transmission, particularly in closed spaces with poor ventilation. and we've been very, very clear about that. combined with the testing that we have right now, to tell us where a hot spot is starting and the commercial labs have done a great job, doing that and doing half our testing and combined with that we have a good signal radar to know where to surge in. combined with the techniques that we have, again, we're sending out covid response assistance teams, and we're sending it out to ten different locations and we'll do another

nine and that's 19 major metroplexes. we know what to do with this, but we've got to have people onboard doing it, and the good news is we know how to treat you better and we have the remdesivir. the mortality rate is going down. look. i'm not trying to paint a rosy picture, but we are in a better spot than we were in march and april, but we have to take this incredibly seriously and i think everyone in the country is doing that. >> admiral, i understand that you believe that, and i'm sure with logistics, that we are in a better place, that we've streamlined this process, but results, sir. look at europe and look at us. why do we have such a different and poor outcome than europe? >> well, first of all, if you look at much of europe right now, you're seeing some resurgence in cases. so i think the book is still out on that. this virus is not done with humanity yet. probably 10% at most with people who have had it so there are a lot of susceptible people and we have to be disciplined about that and we have to do the kinds of mitigation techniques that we've been talking about.

on the testing side, we have good early signals now. we know that an increase in positivity heralds the rest down the line. and an increase in positivity will mean an increase in infections and emergency room and hospitalizations and unfortunately deaths. when we see that, you have to be absolutely rigorous and disciplined about those measures and if we do that we can do that around and early signs in almost every county right now, we've had an up surge in cases and early signs that are starting to level off, but we have to keep the foot on the gas because we have a long way before this is over. >> and the final question i have for you is whether on this task force, whether public health guidance is being sort of massaged a little bit. this was from "the washington post" about anthony fauci. it says dr. fauci has argued that parts of the country experiencing surges should shut down, but there's no buy-in on that, said someone who spoke on

a condition of anonymity. are there some ideas that you can't propose because the president will never accept them? >> i want to just put this to rest. there is complete open, honest discussion within the task force. the task force meets three or four times a week. the vice president calls me regularly. dr. birx is not one to hold her tongue. believe me, if there's a public health opinion that needs to be said, that needs to be it, and i respect dr. fauci a lot, but dr. fauci is not 100% right, and he also doesn't necessarily -- and he admits that -- have the whole national interest in mind. he looks at it from a very narrow public health point of view, but let me just say there is absolutely open discourse and i feel absolutely saying anything to the vice president and the vice president briefs the president on a daily basis. so nobody feels like anything

held back. we take this as a serious crisis and it's got to be science driving the policy, and that's the way it is. >> admiral giroir, i have to leave it there. i appreciate you coming on and sharing the administration's perspective, sir. thank you. >> thank you. there are few issues amid this pandemic that are of greater concern to parents than getting their children back to school and also doing it safely. president trump is threatening to cut off federal funding for states that don't move as fast as he'd like. but many educators worry the administration is putting speed ahead of safety. joining me is the superintendent of the public schools district in florida and it's the largest school system in the country. it was the school i grew up in. mr. carvalho, welcome to "meet the press." let me ask a straightforward question the president implied. do you find the cdc guidelines for opening schools too expensive? >> number one, thank you for the invitation. we've gone through the cdc

guidelines, and they have informed the opening from the local and state health departments. there are some provisions in the recommendations from the cdc that, yes, it may be costly, but obviously we take them very seriously. you know, the issue of social distancing in any one school, in miami-dade, broward, or palm beach districts may be difficult to achieve, but there are mitigation strategies that you can take in lieu of the six feet of distancing like the wearing of masks which will be a mandatory element when we do reopen like the use of non-traditional spaces like cafeterias or media centers or gymnasiums. so we are looking carefully at the cdc guidelines. we are consulting with the health department. and i think we can come up with a reopening plan that, quite frankly, lifts the best possible

practices with implementation with aggressive limitation strategies when those are possible to implement in miami-dade. >> i'm curious, where are you getting the money for this? >> well, the federal government during its first stimulus package under the c.a.r.e.s. act has appropriated $900 million for the state of florida. the governor controls about 1$17 million, and the rest of the allocation comes from school districts, and we received a significant early investment, but that's not going to be sufficient. obviously, it is clear on the basis of economic conditions they think will trail the current health crisis that much more will need to be earmarked just as a measure of comparison. during the last great recession of 2008-9 in excess of $13 billion had already been, in excess of $113 billion had been invested to protect k-12 institutions.

at this point, only $16 billion. i think for the purchase of ppes and additional disinfection and the disinfection of schools and we may need more bus routes to achieve greater social distancing between the riders. more than likely we will need additional sources earmarked specifically for local governments and systems. >> you have a hybrid approach. you want to give parents a choice. quite a few school districts are offering this. you can go full online or a partial in-person until you're able to get to miami and is able to get to phase 3 in the reopening process. i'm curious, have you thought about bringing elementary students back five days a week, but middle school and high school holding off? some of the scientific data are your health advisers saying that that might be a compromise in order to get younger kids who don't appear to spread the virus

as much in their everyday, but older kids, maybe not? >> sure, todd. number one, our reopening plan has been from the very beginning informed by health experts and individuals who have distinguished themselves in the area of medicine and public health and our plan, as we modify we'll continue to be informed by those same individuals. this tuesday we're bringing them back to re-examine our plan in collaboration with the county mayor to make sure that we not only have a unified voice and unified set of data and dating criteria that we shall monitor for the appropriate evolution in terms of reopening our school system, but what you just said is absolutely right. our plan relies on a five-day-a-week schooling experience across all miami-dade in addition based on parents' option a, my school online,

which is a synchronous, remote teaching and learning opportunity for parents. and then there's the possibility of hybrid models that rely on the alternate cohort of students spending part of the time in school. and part of the time at home on the basis of utilization or capacity limitations in schools. one of the things that i keep looking at this is exactly that. younger children and perhaps students with disabilities to a certain extent and english language learners. you know, some of those that by virtue of age, but also by virtue of the greatest possibility for learning loss since last fall need to re-engage quickly for the best possible way of taste coming is face to face with a teacher. >> very quickly, mr. superintendent. extracurricular activities, i'm thinking football, marching band and things like that, is that likely out for the early part of the fall for sure? >> we are now in conversations with the state's athletic commission to make decisions

about everyone's sport. certainly, it's easier to envision tennis being practiced in a safe way than it is wrestling or football, but we are probably progressively be opening some time in later july. some training camps with extreme social distance and an opportunity for kids to re-engage. look, the last thing i'd like to say is this. we're going to obviously do our very best in our community, considering where the health data currently is, a positivity rate of 29.1%. a month ago it was at 6%. our start of the school year is six weeks from now. it is quite possible if the social behavior and the restrictions in place if people wear masks, if people exercise social distancing, that conditions may be appropriate and healthy for students to return to the very best model of teaching and learning, which is in person, but we need the community's collaboration. we need the science to drive the practice rather than politics influencing what is legitimately a community concern.

>> alberto carvalho, the superintendent, thanks for coming on and sharing your perspective about my old haunts as well. >> and still the best. >> when we come back. one of the few republicans who has been willing to criticize president trump's handling of the coronavirus. we'll talk to maryland governor larry hogan next. larry hogan next hike!

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i just want to know, am i gonna be okay? i know people who specialize in "am i going to be okay." i like that. you may need glasses though. yeah. guidance to help you stay on track, no matter what comes next. ♪ welcome back. it's always risky to predict november elections in july, but right now president trump is in trouble, and were he to lose, he'd likely take down the republican senate down with him, giving democrats full control of washington. lawmakers who have kept some distance from mr. trump are starting to look ahead to a post-trump gop if one exists and among them is maryland's governor larry hogan who has been sharply critical of the president's handling of the coronavirus and thinking of running in 2024 and written a book "still standing, surviving

riots, a global pandemic, and the toxic politics that divide america." governor hogan, it's a reminder, you've had a very, very busy tenure as governor of maryland. but let me start with the crisis at hand right now, and that's the virus, but specifically, let's talk about schools. you have a lot more say than most governors do over schools. where are we headed? could you open schools up five days a week in person if you wanted to? >> well, we could if we wanted to, but look, i think everybody would like to get our kids back to school as quickly as we can, but we also want to do it and make sure our kids are safe as possible, so we're not going to be rushed into this. from the beginning we've been working with our doctors, our scientists, and epidemiologists to make sure we're doing the things that make the most sense,

and our state superintendent of schools will be sitting down to get a report from her and she's been meeting with the local jurisdictions and with the top health professionals and getting the stakeholders in and we'll come up with a plan that will probably be a hybrid that talks about how we'll provide the best education we can for our kids and do it in a safe way. >> let's talk about the bigger picture here at 30,000 feet. you're on these weekly phone calls with the task force because they supposedly have these open lines with the governors. we hear about this from the vice president a lot. but results are just that. why are we in a worse position than europe from your perspective? >> well, it's a great question. first of all, yes, we are now doing weekly calls. it started out doing it a couple of times a week. but i'll give the administration credit for this. they've done an excellent job of communicating from the beginning of the crisis and almost all of the nation's governors are on

these video conference calls with what sometimes the president and typically the vice president runs these calls with the coronavirus task force, and many of the cabinet members, they try to keep us up to date. i think they've made progress in a number of areas with respect to now getting ppe out to some of the states and working together with us, but there's no question that mistakes were made, that we should have had a national testing strategy and we should have been on top of this and we should have had a much more clear, national strategy and been communicating much earlier on in the process and i think the governor his to step up and be on the front lines, but we had 50 different states with 50 different strategies and some did better than others. >> is this ultimately, you're talking about the lines of communication. does this come from the president? is it the president's leadership that has led us down this path? >> i don't want to spend a lot of time just criticizing in the middle of the crisis because i don't like to monday morning quarterback, but i haven't been

afraid to speak up when i thought something was wrong or when i thought they were off in the wrong direction, and i'll continue do so. i lead the nation's governors, and on every single week's call, i usually raise issues of concerned on behalf of my colleagues and on behalf of my state and on behalf of my colleagues across the country on both sides of the aisle. there's no question that things could have been done better from the beginning of the crisis and right now it doesn't do any good and we have to deal with the situation at hand and we have to do the best job we can because this thing is out of control. it's by no means behind us and we're all in it together and we've got to work together at the federal, state and local level. >> i want to talk politics with you. what do you make of the future of the republican party after this election if the president wins a second term? is there room for the republican party if the president wins a second term? >> well, look. i think regardless of what

happens in november -- and there are an awful lot of people in america that are completely frustrated with politics today and the divisiveness and dysfunction in washington, and i think the republican party, and, quite frankly, both parties will be re-examining what the future looks like. i'm a lifelong republican who has not been afraid up to disagree with the president on any number of issues. i don't know what the future holds in november, but i know that the republican party is going to be looking at what happens after president trump and whether that's in four months or in four years, and i think they'll be looking to how do we go about becoming a bigger tent party? how do we -- you know, in maryland, i'm in the bluest state in america. i was just re-elected overwhelmingly by reaching out and trying to find the middle ground where people can stay together and avoiding divisive rhetoric, winning suburban women, winning over independents

and winning with minority votes, and that's something the republican party will have to look to. we're going to have to find a way to appeal to more people and have a bigger tent. >> do you think this roger stone commutation is one of those things that just sets the party back a little bit on things like believing in the rule of law and having some sort of where it looks like there is a double standard, if you're close to the president, you get a break, if you're not, you go to jail? >> there's no question that's the appearance and it's a problem. and, look. roger stone has been convicted of seven felonies. and, look. the president does have the right by law to take the action he took. that doesn't mean he should have, and we've got a guy who is convicted of serve felonies a couple of months before the election. for the president to take this action it will certainly hurt politically. >> you said you wrote in your

father four years ago for president. you didn't vote for president trump, and you didn't vote for hillary clinton either. can you imagine pulling the lever for joe biden? >> you know, i feel like i'm in the same kind of position i was four years ago. right now, luckily as chairman of the national governor's association, get to avoid politics for a little while because i represent democratic and republican governors together, and i don't get too actively involved in the political games, but i'll make that decision between now and november. i'm in the same position, and a lot of people in america are, i think, and frustrated that this is the best we can come up with on both sides of the aisle. it's a difficult choice. i think most people would like to see something different and maybe we'll figure that out in 2024. >> larry hogan, the republican governor of maryland, and your new book is out. i appreciate you coming on and sharing your views this morning. stay safe. >> thank you, chuck. >> when we come back. robert mueller denounces the commuting of roger stone's sentence, and he's not alone. the panel is next. and he's not e

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the panel joins us from their remote locations, syndicated columnist george will. nbc news white house correspondent kristen welker. and anna palmer, seen your washington correspondent for politico. a great trio this morning. welcome to all. kristen welker, i want to start with robert mueller's op ed pushing back on the president's decision to commute roger stone's sentence. under the headline, roger stone remains a convicted felon.

he lied about his intermediary. he denied about meeting with the trump campaign about the timing of wikileaks diseases, and he tampered with the witness imploring him to stonewall congress. in your report, kristen welker, the president is basically alone apparently in that west wing in being in favor of this decision. did he really push back on every single adviser on this? >> it seems that he pushed back on post advisers, chuck, according to conversations with multiple officials. he was counseled against this move by some of his top aides, including by the attorney general and yet, president trump moved forward with this decision and, look, his aides, chuck, were saying to them this could be politically risky. this could ultimately cost you. your base supports you because

they wanted you to build the wall and drain the swamp and this winds up looking like a very swampy move, as one aide said to me. president trump right now trailing in the polls to joe biden, and a lot of aides are concerned that he's not going to be able to afford these types of missteps, chuck. >> anna palmer, your ear to the ground on capitol hill is second to none. mitt romney speaking out, not a surprise. pat toomey, while i'm not surprised, he's somebody that is very careful when he comes out and criticizes this president, but he also seems to speak for never-trumper world and the devotees. he seems it speak for them on this one. how big is that caucus in the senate of pat toomey and mitt romney? >> i think it's a pretty lonely circle in terms of the number of republican senators who are willing to actually step forward and speak out. >> think what pat toomey channeled was a little bit of what you hear behind the scenes with senate republicans. what they won't say publicly, but they do say privately is this is not helpful for november.

their own re-elections, they're gravely concerned with what the president is doing on this and several other issues, but they just don't seem to have the ability or the wherewithal to publicly condemn this president. you saw lindsay graham, one of his big boosters come out and defend the president here. i don't expect you're going to see a number of other republicans want to take questions about this when they come back in a week or so or be willing to publicly state that they feel like the president was wrong. >> george will, there's a lot of "even richard nixon didn't do this" writing this morning. >> well, nixon didn't because in this case mr. trump is pardoning someone who is involved in an episode involving the president and who was involved to protect the president, and that's not speculation because mr. stone bragged that i will not listen to the language, i will not roll over on the president.

that's gangster talk. >> yeah. >> that's mob talk. now, there comes a point, chuck, in the downward spiral of our country at this point where worse is better, that if you have sort of a gangster regime, that ought to be made really clear, and i think this does make it really clear with the kind of language they're using. mr. trump will not be hurt by this among those who are the only people he cares about which are his base. mr. trump ran for president promising to overturn and smash and pulverize the norms that govern american politics. so chalk up the stone commutation to keeping another promise. >> kristen welker, to me what's even more stunning and potent l potentially tone-deaf about this decision was the timing of it.

doing it on friday, never mind the president's entire day on friday seemed tone-deaf. he goes to the hottest spots of hot spots of the virus, miami-dade county and then he has a fund-raiser in tampa, and then he commutes roger stone, and we have a virus. that to me is what makes this potentially so lethal with the president. and a year ago, he might have gotten away with this more. what are you focused on here? >> and remember, chuck, when you think about the timing, it also came in the wake of the supreme court decision on his financial forms, which was broadly seen as a defeat. so you have a number of his close allies saying it looks like he was trying to turn the page on that supreme court decision by putting the focus on this decision to commute the sentence of roger stone, and you're right, chuck, it did come on friday when the president was in florida, one of the hot spots not talking about the virus. instead, focusing on a key voting group. and it underscores what a lot of his officials are concerned is

his inability to focus on what so many americans are focused on right now, which is the virus and deep concerns that it could ultimately wind up costing him not with his base necessarily, chuck, but with moderate republicans and with independents, with undecided voters. >> anna palmer, do senate republicans on capitol hill understand what the president is doing politically right now? >> no. i really think that there is frustration among a lot of republicans. and you really started to see for the first time, you know, if you look back over the past four years, senate republicans have largely been in lockstep. this is the party of trump, but they are more and more worried as november gets closer and with their own elections. you start to see people like senator roy blount, and what the president is doing is not helpful when it comes to their re-election, which is what they're always most concerned about.

>> george, i want to close with this because here's what max boot wrote and i would love for you to respond. max boot, no one would mistake for a liberal. he's someone like yourself, a conservative who can't stomach president trump. he writes, three months ago i proclaimed donald trump was the worst president ever. oh, how innocent i was. back then i thought he was edging james buchanon in the ineptitude and now with roger stone's well-deserved prison term, he's disgraced that no occupant has come close to doing. is james buchanan getting a reprieve because he was only inept and not inept and corrupt? >> i think buchanan's third on the list of worst presidents. above him is the fierce competition between donald trump and andrew johnson. andrew johnson who became president when lincoln was shot tried to reverse or minimize the consequences of the civil war. >> he was a klan-supporting man

who supported only preserving the union and not getting rid of what made the south distinctive at that time, which was slavery. mr. trump's damage is aesthetic. i say aesthetics matter. it's to the tone of the country and it's to what is considered acceptable and it's to whether we have norms anymore and that is where the stone commutation comes in because it looks like a redundant demonstration on the part of the president that he slim doesn't care. he likes to smash up the crockery, and we're running out of crockery right now. >> i know what we'd all think if we saw an erdogan do this or a putin or bolsonaro, that's for sure. when we come back, president trump's style of communicating in 280 characters or less. wait till you see this latest trend. stay with us. atest trend. stay with us

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♪ ♪ welcome back. "data download" time. president trump is the second president of the twitter era, but he's really the first to use it as his main messaging tool, and since mr. trump took office the monthly number of his posts have simply skyrocketed. we looked at the first six months of each year. in 2017 he tweeted and re-tweeted an average of 164 times a month. we thought that was a lot. from january to june in 2018, the figure grew to 243 times a month. and ready for this? from january to june of this year a whopping 986 tweets and re-tweets a month.

that is a 500% increase in average monthly tweets in the first part of each year. but there's a downside to all of this tweeting, too, and the president knows it. the most recent poll on president trump's use of twitter found 63% of those surveyed believes he tweets too frequently, and only 20% believe the president tweeted the right amount. think of the core social media base. president trump is using it to keep his base energized and it's what they don't like about his style. when we come back, has president trump hit a katrina moment? stay with us.

welcome back. the other thing we have been watching is an amazing amount of polling coming out showing president trump in a rough place, and in a place that seems as if he can't climb out of and george will, in 1980 the iran hostage crisis, i feel like we're watching a similar thing with the virus. at first there was a rally around carter and then obviously, the failed attempt at rescue and just over time he'd lose faith and the public sort of lost faith in his ability to lead. i'm wondering, is this -- are we going to look back in december and say, yeah, that's the moment we hit that, and we hit that in july with this virus? >> this is like katrina only

worse. in the katrina moment, people looked at mr. bush's response and said the bush administration isn't behaving as well as we think it could. the katrina moment, it was national. this is international. the pandemic has struck the entire planet and so we have international metrics of how other nations are doing with this and it doesn't look that good. the man who came in and said i'm going to make america great again is presiding over an america that is largely around the world pitting today. in april 1970 richard nixon went on national television and said we must invade cambodia to clean up the sanctuaries of the north vietnamese otherwise we will look like a pitiful, helpless giant and i'm afraid that the united states floundering in its attempt to deal with this virus looks like a pitiful, helpless giant. >> anna palmer, we're seeing senate polls that are just --

you know, we're seeing democrats competitive in places that they didn't think they'd be competitive at this point in time. i'm thinking kansas and maybe even south carolina and maybe even kentucky although that may be a money play than an electoral play. how dire do senate republicans see at holding the senate right now? >> i think they still think there is a chance. they'll fight tooth and nail to keep it strong in a lot of those areas in states that six months ago we would never be talking about kansas, for example, i don't think, in a real way. i think the real way is can democrats capitalize on this? there is a lot of fear to count their chickens before they're hatched and trump is this unicorn that won last time four years ago when no one thought he was going to. so for me the big thing for senate republicans is blocking, tackling, and you're going to see more distancing by some of these more traditional republicans trying to say, i'm

the leader, whether or not the president is leading in the pandemic, and we're going to see this in the coronavirus package at the end of the month for sure. >> kristen welker, the president, we can't tell, does he believe he's as behind as the public polls show or are people feeding him a false notion of security here? >> oh, i think that a number of his campaign aides for sure are trying to bolster his confidence in this moment, but when you talk to those who are close to him, they will say, look, it's still "way too early" to tell what's going to happen. think back to 2016 when he weathered a number of storms between now and election day. at if the same time, there's broad concern that the president is failing when it comes to his messaging and strategy, that he's failing to land a punch on joe biden and he's calling him sleepy joe.

he's trying to cast him as a criminal when he just commuted a real criminal and the public's just not buying it at this point. they want the president to make this more of a contrast between his record and joe biden's record, and listen, chuck, democrats say joe biden seems to be hitting his stride. he just gave that speech on the economy this week, talked about how he's going to bring back manufacturing jobs. and even steve bannon said, hey, it seems like he's taking a page out of our playbook from 2016. and what you will see is a lot of pressure president trump to change his messaging and to try to put the focus on biden and his record, chuck. >> think the remarkable thing just now then kristen welker is you made the reference to joe biden. we're four months away. the general election. it just shows you have the biggest problem the president has is it looks like a referendum on his leadership unless he can figure out something else and the virus may be figuring it out for him. thank you. what a terrific panel. that's all we have for today. thank you for watching and tuning in and trusting us. we'll be back next week because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press."

another setback in the fight to contain the coronavirus. over the weekend, florida hit the highest single-day total of cases in the pandemic. also states are hobbling to contain this disease. and amid an increase in the number of coronavirus cases, the white house is seeking to discredit dr. anthony fauci. good morning, everybody. it is monday, july 13th, and i'm yasmin vossoughian. we've got a lot to c