good day. brian williams here with you. 3:00 p.m. here in the east. 12 noon on the west coast. our friend nicolle wallace will join us in a moments' time. the facts as we know them at this hour, over 3.4 million americans have been diagnosed with the coronavirus. the death toll up 46% in the course of a week by rate, approaching 137,000 now, despite those numbers the trump administration's testing czar, admiral brett giroir made this optimistic assessment today on

nbc. >> the early indicators we see, for example the percent of test that are positive have leveled off, going down in most of the jurisdictions that we have a problem with and we're seeing e.r. visits go down. these are the early indicators that are turning the corner. this doesn't mean we've turned the corner. >> we'll be hearing from the president when he holds what's being billed as a news conference at 5:00 p.m. eastern time. two hours from now. no word yet on what the president he'll address but the optimism we're hearing from that man in the administration runs counter to what we're seeing on the ground in the states with the biggest outbreaks. in california for starters, indoor dining has been stopped. places like bars, zoos have been closed. the governor has ordered gyms, houses of worships and other businesses in most counties to

shut their doors. in the hard-hit state of texas, houston's mayor is calling for at least a two-week shutdown so officials can re-assess the situation, one caveat however, without the governor agreeing, texas mayors have very little power to act on their own. in florida, donna shshgs alala who represents parts of miami wants governor desantis to issue a mandatory mask, stay-at-home order. all of this comes as the city of atlanta joins l.a., san diego, nashville in announces students will be learning online at least for the first few weeks of the upcoming school year, despite calls, demands by the trump administration for students to return to school this fall. meanwhile nbc news learning the republican party is scouting out outdoor venues in jacksonville,

florida, for places to hold its convention at the end of august as an increasing number of republicans have said they will not be attending. all of this, while presumptive democratic presidential nominee joe biden slammed president trump's push to fully reopen the country as he unveiled part two of his build back better plan to revive the u.s. economy today. >> mr. president, open everything now isn't a strategy for success. it's barely a slogan. quit pushing the false choice between protecting our health and protecting our economy. all it does is damage our recovery on both fronts. >> we'll have much more on the former vice president's comments later on in this hour and at this point, i'm happy to be joined by friend and colleague nicolle wallace, host of "deadline: white house," nicolle it was true back in the month of march and april, we're in the

middle of a pandemic. >> you know, and i think we've had this conversation on and off television, we covered with a lot of interest speculation or projections about a potential second spike and the cdc director predicted that there would be one, i think the president forced him to walk it back before he re-upped it. what we missed was the first spike, the first wave would be so devastating for so many of our fellow americans. for people with who live in new york, thought maybe this was our burden, this would be the epicenter and the rest of the country would be spared and it's sering to see these trump allies, republican governors like abbott and desantis take the lives for granted in their states. you just hope they look at their

own failures and don't do the same thing again. you know, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result you're hoping that they're not insane enough to continue to do defy science. it's just a remarkable, remarkable tragedy unfolding before our eyes day after day. >> sadly, other names on that list including kemp who happens to be in charge of states where we had spikes. you mentioned florida, it's the new epicenter of this pandemic in our country. there's now more coronavirus in florida than the combined nations of the european union. that's a benchmark we've passed. after he was heckled on camera ardent trump supporter he is, met with mayors in miami-dade county, he wore a mask in

public. as people seek to get tested only to counter a shortage in supplies. nbc's kerry sanders joins us from a testing site in miami gardens. >> brian, folks began gathering here at just after midnight to get these tests, they wait all night and then in their cars, brought in one by one to get the test, but as you noted, getting the results can take up to seven, eight, in some cases 15 days, which belys the whole point to get a test, to get a response to determine what you should do, where you should go and more importantly how you should act. if you're positive, you should restrict yourself to home. if you're ill go, get to a doctor. when you have a 15-day window, people go about their lives. that creates a problem. but there's fair amount in this

state of disbelief in the way the government is reporting this and whether they even believe whether coronavirus is real, i know that's hard to believe, there are some people who are not sure whether coronavirus is real and so adding fuel to their fire is what appears to be a clerical error but in the reports that come out every day from the florida department of health it shows what the labs are getting in terms of results. and in multiple cases on the most recent report it shows lab after lack after lab saying every person tested was positive with coronavirus. 100%. 90%. 80%. but a lot of 100% in there. the florida department of health told me that this appears to be the result of a clerical error, one they're working with the reporting laboratories to correct. i spoke to one who said they had 405 positive tests, they say

that's an error, we didn't report it that way. but for those people who are questioning whether they can trust government this is just adding a little bit more to their argument and to underscore all of this, while i'm wearing a mask, mandatory mask wearing in certain parts of florida like here in dade county, just to the north, within the last hour the commissioners had a meeting and they decided mandatory masks are not needed. so score one for those who believe that government doesn't have a role here but for all the health officials who are crying, brian that the only way this is going to be solved is for everyone to work together it was not -- it was not a good day. brian. nicolle. >> unbelievable. thank you for staying on that for us. nbc's kerry sanders in miami gardens, florida. joining our conversation are two good friends. dr. irwin redleter and eugene

robinson. lucky for us, both msnbc contributors. eugene, if this then that. if donald trump was going to stand in front of spotters, don't believe your ears, the media is fake, only believe me. when we're in the throes of the most virulent and dangerous phase of a global pandemic here in our country, people didn't believe the science. >> that's absolutely right and so there are people who don't believe what's actually happening and that's a huge problem. but the other huge problem is just the lack of federal leadership. this is -- this is difficult but not that complicated. we have the data, right, we saw what happened in the new york area, where you guys actually

did a shut down and stayed at home, clamped everything down, this horrific situation was brought under control, and to the point where there are actually very few new cases per day, zero deaths over the weekend if new york city. it's an astounding success story after an initial failure certainly, the shutdown could have came early. that's the way you control this virus. that's the way they've done it in europe, now getting up and running again and we are floundering. we have no -- the virus is out of control. we don't know how out of control it is because testing is still not anywhere near where it needs to be and the idea that you do a test and you don't get the results back for a week or two weeks, it makes the test completely useless. you can't even talk about contact tracing and the things

that you have to do to have a normal functioning country, a functioning economy. there's no national leadership. i'm just very pessimistic today, if there's going to be this national leadership. this is a real disaster that just continues to unfold and does not seem to have a happy ending, at least before january 2021. >> doctor, what happens in the absence of federal leadership we continue down this path without testing capacity that leads to the opportunity to trace and contain, the other two legs of that three-legged stool, as eugene said, we don't do cocontact tracing in this country, we don't do containment, what happens to us? >> well, first of all, i

completely share eugene's frustration here, this is an extraordina extraordinary coale sshsnse of this -- coronavirus is a difficult virus to deal with and much uncertainty about its behavior, that's coupled with a level of incompetence to develop the basic testing we needed started back in march, it's really, you know, we overuse this wore, unprecedented amount of incompetence, still taking so long for people to get the test and the test results is astounding and the third thing which is just added to the mix here is a level of dishonesty and misrepresentation of the facts and a fantasy land that's been developed by the trump administration that it's projecting things that everything's all right, it's under control, you don't need to wear a mask and just do what i

do and do what i say. it's a astounding. i agree with eugene. i don't see any way out of this dilemma before the election day and hopefully we'll have an election that will allow us to genuine leadership. we need it. this is biggest crises we've had in our lifetime. >> doctor, that's saying a lot, because this has been your life's work on top of everything else. and here we are in a public health crisis needing to watch very closely and listen to our public health officials to see if we believe them or if they're playing for the boss. we have fauci under attack. we just saw and heard from giroir in his admiral's outfit giving a rosier scenario than we have been led to believe, i want to play something for you by the

cdc director. because i need to fact check. >> if all of us would put on face covering now for the next four weeks, six weeks, we could drive this epidemic to the ground. >> four to six weeks, every american wearing a face covering, would it be a cure? an assist? >> it will be an assist, we need more than that, we need to continue the physical and social distancing that we've been doing and we need to have people following the rules about not being in proximity to other people and wearing the face masks. there's a lot of complications still that we're going to need to deal with. i won't be surprised if we ended up with reinstating sheltering in place. i think it's going to happen.

it's happening in places in europe and asia. it's going to happen in the united states and we don't have the contact tracing and even if we did it have in places like houston, there's too many cases to do contact tracing. we don't have a vaccine, we don't have medications. we have physical separation and we have the face coverings and hopefully, we won't have to go to reinstating sheltering in place. but i don't see how we're going to avoid it, brian. >> eugene robinson, that's a gut punch on the medical front. let's talk pure naked politics, since everything else in life is upside-down, the most effective anti-trump ads are being made by republicans in 2020. at this rate, i expect them to full-on work for joe biden and write his speeches and this does

afford joe biden an opportunity to dust off the ronald reagan line of "are you better off now than you were four years ago? >> yes, or four months ago, he can definitely dust off that line and he will, he gave a speech today, that outlined some, i think, ambitious and sweeping policies that he would like to enact if he becomes president. but, you know, we talk about the political situation, the election is coming up on top of us in a little more than a hundred days, but before we get there the rubber is going to hit the road on this virus because schools are going to reopen or not. and this is a -- this is another huge inflection point for this whole country and people are being asked to make the

individual decision, do i feel it's safe to send my children to school? and, it's going to be fascinating to see how people grapple with that decision, including people who might be inclined to say, oh, this is overblown, this is that. are you going to send your kid back into that environment? do you have elderly parents who live with you? who have contact with those children after they go to school? do you know what children are like when they are in school? do you know how difficult it is to socially distance a bunch of 6-year-olds? so that's going to be fascinating. i think politically important point, because when it becomes personal people sometimes make different choices and so i think we can have some hope that people may approach this more

rationally when they have to make the concrete decision, do i or don't i send my kids back to school? >> your humble hosts are most obliged. thank you for starti ing our conversation off. a quick break in our coverage. when nicolle and i return, the staggering number of coronavirus cases in the state of florida. just in the past few days. florida has seen as you may know the highest number of cases of any state, it has more total cases than most nations on earth. our coverage is ahead. our coverage is ahead. among my patients i often see them have teeth sensitivity as well as gum issues. does it worry me? absolutely. new sensodyne sensitivity & gum gives us the dual action effect that really takes care of both our teeth sensitivity as well as our gum issues. there's no question it's something that i would recommend.

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we often say in our commercials this is who we are, well, this is where we are as a country. we mentioned this earlier, we do want to take a closer look now at the state that in the course of four months has displaced new

york as the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. and that would be florida. today, florida reported a record-breaking 132 deaths in just one day, highest single-day total in the state since the beginning of this pandemic. and with miami emerging as the next epicenter, republican governor desantis has come under increasing pressure after months of down playing the severity. >> we welcome to the broadcast five-term u.s. democratic congressman tom deutche of florida. congressman, first, how are you and how is your district? >> well, i'm doing again. we're doing fine. we can't really complain because we're able to try to stay out of

the midst of this, even as we try to fight it. but for the people who have no choice but to go to work in this environment, for the people who are mourning 132 families, mourning the loss of their loved ones to this terrible virus the 80 people per day on average who are dying over the past week it's terrible. and we need leadership. we need positive direction and the governor keeps giving us excuses and excuses. he refuses to do what's necessary to help save lives here in florida. >> i want to read you something in the wall street journal about lockdowns. the wall street journal writes this, strict lockdowns slam the brakes on exponentially virus outbreaks. countries that locked down quickly suffered fewer deaths compared to countries that reopened before.

above all, some countries used the weeks of lockdown better to develop less drastic, more sophisticated ways to fight the virus. brian made the point, if florida were a country it would have among the highest rates of infections right now, should florida as a state return to strict lockdowns? >> well, there's -- we may have to, nicolle, we may have to, but there are lots of things that the governor ought to be doing right now if we're going to have any chance of perhaps avoiding that. the doctors will tell you, the epidemiologists will tell you that this disease, this virus operates in two-week increments, all these cases, 15,000 a day it's going to take two weeks before we really feel the pain from these. now, we didn't have to be here. the governor hasn't taken any action to require masks.

he hasn't taken the kind of actions that would make tracing effective, he refuses to talk about the increasing number of deaths and if he's not going to do anything, then he's going to wind up forcing -- forcing a shutdown at least in the hot spots in this state in order to give us a chance to get this under control, but it's up to me. the ball's in his court, he can't simply go out and have press conferences and not bring the public health officials, not bring the surgeon general, refuse to listen to them, as the president refuses to listen to dr. fauci, we need to listen to the public health experts, we need to crack down hard on anyone not wearing a mask. we need all of this impose statewide, that's the only way to prevent it. but at this rate, the governor has shown no inclination to provide the leadership necessary to avoid that.

ultimately and ironically he's likely to be the one who causes the state to shut down again, anyway. >> congressman, i'm tempted to say, how did this happen? i'll answer my own question, we kind of knew it was going to happen, in the jet age, florida is down state new york, it's where gatherings happen, it's home to theme parks, it has a ton of migrant workers, it has a ton of at-risk residents, i's florida. and we knew at the peak of the pandemic in the north and east, this this wouldn't be limited to the north and east, here we are. >> we do know, brian, and the saddest part of the moment we face now is we didn't have to, we knew what was going to happen. we know the numbers that come from new york, we know the numbers that come from all around the world, we understand

how this works and we had the lockdown so that we could get control of it. the governor didn't want to lockdown, but lt matly he had no choice but we didn't use that time to prepare for this moment. we didn't use that moment to put a plan in place to trace new cases or to give businesses the kind of guidance they needed to openly safely, the failure to shut down sooner, followed by the failure to use that time to help prevent where we are now is what led us here and you're right, it was absolutely clear that this was going to be where we were wound up if there wasn't leadership and sadly, the governor has failed to provide that leadership and the effort to tie himself to president trump, the refusal to tell anyone what he thinks should be done, to leave it up to mayors to make decisions, with one city right next to another city, dozens of cities all with different rules makes it so much

harder for us to have one focused way to try to stay safe, that's why we need leadership, that's what a governor is supposed to provide and he just hasn't done it. >> congressman ted deutch of florida, thank you very much for spend i spending some of your day with us. another break in our coverage, when we come back, a bit on breaking news on president trump's push to force colleges and universities to remain open during this pandemic. a federal judge in boston announcing moments ago that the trump administration is backing down off of that campaign. we'll have that story next.

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