good day. brian williams here with you on this monday as we start a new week, 3:00 p.m. here in the east. 12:00 noon out west. the headlines and facts as we know them at this hour, the coronavirus has now killed over 136,000 in the united states, due to an uptick in states that are now being hit hardest by this pandemic. over 3.3 million americans have been sickened by it. a short time ago during a discussion with stanford university, dr. anthony fauci talked about why we are seeing this particular resurgence in cases. >> we did not shut down entirely and that's the reason why we went up, we started to come down and we plateaued at a level that was quite high, then as we started to reopen, we're seeing

the surges that we're seeing today as we speak, in california, your own state, in arizona, in texas, in florida and several other states. >> in a moment, we'll look at how much that candor has cost them, this comes one day after florida announced over 15,000 new cases on sunday, shattering the record for the most of one day number reported by any state. that's over 3,000 cases above the record set by new york during the bad old days the height of the pandemic. the announcement came on the same day new york city reported no deaths for the first time since the beginning of the month of march. despite the positive development from new york, the federal government's testing czar brett giroir said we can expect to see the death toll rise. >> we do expect deaths to go up.

we expect to see that over the next two, three weeks, before this turns around. >> breaking news in just in the last hour the two largest school districts in the state of california say they will be online only come fall. school districts in los angeles and san diego made the announcement citing the surging number of cases in their cities, we'll have more on the debate over schools with former education secretary arne duncan. we mentioned this, all of this comes as the white house has mounted a serious effort to discredit dr. fauci, the nation's top infectious disease specialist during a pandemic. in what looks like an opposition research dump on a political rival, a white house official provided news outlets including nbc news with a list of comments made by dr. fauci earlier this year, some as we were just beginning to understand the

virus, others taken out of context as part of this smear. for his part the president today re-tweeted a conspiracy theory from chuck woolery, former host of the dating game "the love can connection chl" the pitchman for blue emu arthritis cream. accord fact-checkers at the washington post, the misleading statements that the president has now made has topped 20,000. i'm joined by my friend and colleague nicolle wallace, host of "deadline: white house." ordination monday, nothing to see here. >> you caught me with the emu arthritis cream. i learn things, too, from you brian. i try to stay on where the extraordinary coverage by the men and women on the white house beat takes us.

as do you. the people on the beat of this white house, i think it's fair to say are our guiding light. i almost the thread that men and women on the white house beat were racing to confirm an article in the washington post, opposition dump on dr. fauci. i quickly googled fauci, opposition research, having been in the business of campaigns, not proud to say i've been involved in opposition research. but he's a jewel. this is a sad and dark and depressing day. i think moments ago while i was listening to you talk about mr. e mu cream. the white house press secretary

denied t denied the smears against the -- >> it's blue emu anti-arthritis cream. we have these case study charts in state after state after state, i think we last left last week we were at 38 states on the upswing out of 50. we're going to concentrate right here and now on arizona. they continue to see one of the worst outbreaks in our country. right now the growing number of cases is putting a huge strain on testing capability and available icu beds. our correspondent and arizona native vaughn hillyard is with us from one of the largest hospitals in phoenix. hey, vaughn. >> reporter: hey, brian and nicolle. you talked about research, for anybody who wants to do any research of what's happening with the spread of covid-19,

just come outside of one of these hospitals in phoenix, one nurse works inside, she said, quote, they're not staffed well today nor any day, it's not safe in there. the icus are supposed to 2 to 1 for patients. putting nurses 3 to 1. now they're running out of staff because staff is also getting sick. there's not enough staff for this moment. whether people are afraid or not of the virus, think of the sacrifices for the staff providing care inside. today, broke the number of icu beds in use. it doesn't take long to hear a siren coming down the road. this is the reality that's still in play. while you hear at folks from the national level or at the state level suggests that there's a

plateauing of number, or the percent positive number is coming down gradually but it's still over 20%, double that of florida. still a hundred more deaths report td just over this weekend alone. the crisis is still real. the understanding of just how broad this covid virus has spread through this state is far from being understood and the ability for staff at these hospitals to take care of their patients is far from being adequate. nicolle. >> unbelievably sad picture there. vaughn, thank you so much for staying on top of that for us. joining our conversation now, phil rucker, pulitzer prize winning washington borra bureaus of the washington post. also joining us a professor of

epidemiology. phil rucker to you first, take me inside this really disgraceful effort to smear dr. fauci. writing that trump was furious about tony fauci's 67% credibility and approval rating on questions on coronavirus. where he stands down at about 25%. >> nicolle, throughout this pandemic it seems almost everything has been politicized and seemed through a partisan lens and one of the few figures who's not seen a political actor has been dr. anthony fauci, his approval rating has been higher than that of virtually any politician and certainly higher than president trump throughout this crisis. members of both parties are turning to him for information. what you had in the last few days is an effort by the white house led by the president to discredit dr. fauci, sow doubt

what he's been saying publicly. we saw that begin by the president last week in an interview where he said that dr. fauci has gotten a lot of things wrong and said things that are not right. and that was followed up in the reporting by my colleagues over the weekend in the washington post by a white house official anonymously, providing a dosseer of examples of where dr. fauci screwed something up. a lot of those instances were taken out of context or based on the scientific data or facts as the world knew it at the time. in retro -- retrospect, it was wrong but he wasn't trying to mislead the nation.

>> anne, it strikes me we covered the chinese government when this was peaking and surging in wuhan, when we thought they were suppressing scientists and now we're the country doing just that. when the leader of the free world is lying and smearing america's version of a truth teller. >> well, honestly, it just is unbelievable, i'm for once hardly -- i'm basically without words here. what i can say is, i've been working in the democratic republican of congo. they say now you know what it's like. we have fallen far from our seat of being the country that stands as a bastion of science and

truth and understanding. i mean the fact of the matter is is that dr. fauci is a scientist, he's letting science dictate recommendations. and that is where we should be. and this idea that we can be, you know, taking -- that our president is taking advice from somebody like chuck woolery or promoting these kind of words from a guy whose biggest claim to fame is being host of "the love connection." is utterly insanity. we need to be focusing on facts and science and staying away from politics. it's literally insane. >> anne, nicolle and i have just notified governor newsom tweeted this, as covid-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to rise, 30 counties will be required to close indoor

operati operations. personal care services, hair salons and barbershops and malls. i'm tempted to say, here we go. but really, a whole lot of people warned about this, here we go again. >> brian, you're absolutely right. what california is doing is they are moving in the right direction, to be able to shut things down but the fact of the matter is, is we need to be moving faster, you know, we are literally in the grips of a pandemic. and any half measures here are not going to do the trick. we all want to get our kids back to school and moving forward. but the only way to do that is to crush this curve, this curve, this epidemic curve is now escalating at a very rapid pace, and the only way to do that is to get people back to the houses

and stop the circulating. you got outside, people aren't wearing masks, people are not social distancing so we'll continue to see these rises cases here. this is a great first step but we really need to be coming back to phase one, closing things down and doing everything we can so in future we can be opening up schools, we can't consider doing anything until we get the current positivity rate way down. >> phil rucker, this was a alluded by noted infectious disease specialist chuck woolery, but in conservative media they have left a mark on dr. fauci.

77% of the american people trust the cdc. you see there, 67% trust fauci. but then, look at the company we're in. it drops off a cliff, 30% national news media. 26% donald trump. but phil rucker, as with many of the president's actions at least his white house staff acting in what they perceive to be his interest, an attack on fauci may not go over well with what we can see there is most of the american people. >> that's right. but perhaps there's a calculation that the president can convince his supporters that, you know, that 30%, 35-odd percent of americans strongly back this president to see fauci in aing in tif way. it's also worth pointing out you mentioned the cdc among that group of very high approval ratings, that's another institution that the president

has been trying to bludgeon in recent days and the message from the re-tweet that the president put out this morning was not to trust the cdc, not to trust their facts and the recommendations that they're putting out and the president repeatedly for several weeks now has had negative things to say about the centers for disease control, that's of course the institution in the united states government that normally would take the lead during a pandemic and where a lot of our best scientists are working right now to try and help guide our way out of this coronavirus crisis. >> our thanks to phil rucker, to anne, for starting off our live conversation. as the president pushes to reopen schools, and threatens federal funding for those who don't comply, the cdc document details the risks of reopening and it's only because that document was leaked to "the new york times" that we are seeing

it at all. former secretary of education arne duncan standing by to join us after the break. plus, robert mueller defends the prosecution of longtime trump friend and ally, roger stone, after the president's friday night move to keep his friend of many decades from going to the big house. ig house

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there's new reporting today to add to the anecdotal evidence that federal health experts are using a quote vastly different road map for reopening our schools than what president trump is pushing. according to a document obtained by "the new york times" the experts warn to fully reopening schools and universities remains the highest risk for the spread of the coronavirus. the same week trump was pressuring schools to reopen and demanded weaker cdc guidelines calling them very tough and

expensive. and then just yesterday, there was this, secretary of education betsy devos on cnn down playing the risk to our students, teachers and their family and can you assure students, teachers, parents, they won't get coronavirus because they're going back to school? >> well, the key is that kids have to get back to school. there's nothing in data that would suggest that kids being back in school is -- is dangerous to them, it sounds like you're saying as you as secretary of education you're compelling schools to reopen regardless of what's happening? >> no, what we're saying is that kids need to be back in school. >> with us now former u.s. secretary of education, under barack obama, arne duncan, he's managing partner at an or

organization that works for social change. mr. secretary, throw another log on the fire of things we have never seen before and never thought we would see before, a president pressuring schools to open, medical everyday to the contrary in many places, aided and abetted by a completely sub ver yent education secretary. when the president threatens funding what levers can he use, how he can harm school districts that are locally controlled? >> it's breathtaking and heartbreaking. to answer districtly, basically the president has no authority to compel schools to open, the president does not fund schools, congress funds 10% of k to 12 education, not the president. this is an absolute bluff.

honestly, this is important. the real travesty here there's no body count high enough for the president to pay attention to science. nothing would compel him to listen to dr. fauci and others who are actually trying to fight to save lives. and schools aren't going to put their students and their students' family at risks that's too far high. >> mr. secretary, no body count high enough for donald trump has dawned on me before, it's haunting. think most parents are beyond the false choice, too, of school or no school. open or closed. i wonder what your advice would be to schools, i read your eight points to prepare for cases if they have a case, what does the school do? i think a lot of parents

especially in new york think, well if they're open i'll send them. it's inevitable with all of our circumstances suddenly expanding exponentially being home for four months, there will be infections, what does a school do then? >> if someone has a case, what we have to have good testing, fast testing, reliable testing, we didn we need to quarantine, contact tracing, to see who they came in contact with. if you can contain it's one thing. if you don't have testing or contact tracing that one case becomes 10, becomes 30, becomes 50. urge parents, i want to speak directly to them, we have to listen to our local officials. i'm talking to local superintendents on a daily basis, they're thinking so carefully about what they need to do, yes, to keep education

going, whether that's physically or virtually or a hybrid. keep them safe and keep children safe and keep their parents and grandparents safe. don't pay attention to trump. he doesn't care whether you live or die. pay attention to the people if your local community. >> mr. secretary, i'm afraid our local people won't have any of the things that you just said. i have two friends test td for covid and they don't have their results. they' we don't have testing in america. unless something magical happens by the first day of school, that's not an option. what's plan b? >> that's really fair, what's so heartbreaking to me we shouldn't be in this situation, this right now is a manmade castro fee.

had we done what we needed to do in february, march, april, may, june, july, we would have been going back to school in august. schools are not bubbles. they're not islands. . the best thing we can do to give our children a chance to return to physical school is to reduce the number of cases in our community and we have to make the small sacrifices necessary to give our children a chance to go back to school. if we open, we need to do it slowly, gradually where we can. the goal is to try to keep schools open and increase the number of children who can attend physical school over time. >> mr. secretary, the mental

health aspect of this is critical, the parents needing to get back and earn a living is critical, have i been paraphrasing you correctly over the past several days that you've been saying, has this been our focus all along, has this our national focus, kids back to school as their parents returned to work, perhaps we would be further down this conversation by now. >> we would have. brian, my goal in april was to open our schools back in july to make up for the learning loss in march and april and june. to have a massive learning. because we as the country didn't have the discipline, didn't have the will to do what it took to enable our children to go back to school in july, now here we

are wondering whether they can go back or not in august. seeing cases spike it makes it next to impossible for that to become a reality. this is a pandemic made infinitely worse. m because we didn't act on science. >> one more question using time, we'll borrow from my colleagues, talk about my dynamic from summer slide, how it affects particularly low-income kids, how bad it is during a normal summer and now add to spring and foeshlly fall? >> we had a covid slide, which is devastating. brian, you add that on top of and in addition to a summer slide, unfortunately the children who are most vulnerable, most at risk, will come back to school, whatever that looks like, physical or

virtual or hybrid, if the federal government cared about kids and schools they would invest $200 billion now to make schools physically safer for kids but to invest in a massive tutoring program to help kids catch up who have fallen behind due to covid and due to the summer slide. absent that kind of investment, again, we just continue to hurt kids. >> mr. secretary, it's great to have you. our thanks to former secretary of education, arne duncan. however impactful and painful this topic has become. greatly appreciate your time. another break for us. when we come back -- the president's commutation of roger stone's prison sentence. late on friday night. it's the latest example of the president bending the rule of law in this country to help some longtime friends. time friends