our hospital capacity is at about 89%. our icu capacity is beyond 100%.

we've converted the auditorium, as you can see, into patient spaces. while the numbers continue to climb exponentially, we are making every effort to never, ever be able to turn a patient away. >> our numbers of patients are continuing to increase. they come in faster than we're able to discharge. they can go from using no oxygen to a high demand of oxygen within a matter of an hour. so it's very unpredictable. >> the patients are sick. and this isn't a way that i want to die. i don't want to die like i can't breathe, even though i'm on a ventilator. it's frustrating to go out in public and see so many people not taking it seriously. >> this is not going to go away. this is not going to go away next month. it's not going to go away this fall. it won't go away until we have a vaccine. >> we begin the show once again with the sound from medical workers on the front lines of this pandemic. welcome to thursday. it's "meet the press daily."

i'm chuck todd. as we surpass 3.5 million confirmed cases, the stark reality facing this country might be setting in with republican leaders. and it makes you wonder how much longer the president can continue to downplay and dismiss the dire situation facing this country. cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continue to rise and now rise rapidly in the south. hospitalizations are now approaching levels that the northeast experienced back in april and may. and we know what that did to the death toll. cases are steadily going up in the midwest. and options are starting to rise. which is the same story in basically every region of the country that isn't the northeast right now. more cities and states are requiring or pleading with their residents to wear masks. the governors of ohio and texas, for instance, are warning of statewide shutdowns if these trends continue. another financial rescue package of at least $1 trillion is taking shape on capitol hill. and senate republicans are warming to the idea of another round of cash payments. a recognition that they fear

sustained economic fallout as the u.s. fails to contain this disease. it wasn't that long ago that senate republicans were going, hey, recovery -- we might be on the mend. not so now. even the president's most ardent allies at the rnc have notified delegates they are going to limit attendance at this summer's convention in florida where cases are surging. essentially, they're doing everything that the mayor of charlotte said they would have to do, but now they're doing it in jacksonville. and for the first time in weeks, dr. anthony fauci met with the president after fauci's dire warnings spurred white house officials and the president to spend the week questioning his expertise and attempting to undermine his credibility. as the country reels from a second surge and a patchwork of responses, it is worth noting that the results from our new nbc news/"wall street journal" poll shows that the country at large is mostly on the same page when it comes to the threat of this pandemic. but the problem is, the president and his base are not on that page. in fact, it has divided the republican party, which could be what is hindering our entire

response. the divide in this country is not red and blue, it is red versus dark red. here's one example. voters overall do not approve of the president's handling of the virus. you've seen that number. 37%. but look at this divide inside the republican party. republicans, who consider themselves more of a trump republican than a party republican in our survey, give the president glowing reviews. 92% approves. but that approval rating drops by nearly 40 points among republicans who call themselves party republicans before they would call themselves a trump supporter. and by the way, this is all over our poll. the only place where you see agreement among these two groups of republicans essentially is control of congress and on the economy. but on race relations, on the virus, on a number of parts of this virus, whopping, big gaps. 30 to 40-point gaps in these two major republican groups. joining me now, nbc news white house correspondent, jeff bennett, and nbc capitol hill correspondent, kasie hunt.

i want to start with you, jeff. because a lot of the issue that some, i think, republicans on kasie hunt has with the president, is his lack of focus on the virus. in fact, there's an event happening now that has nothing to do with the virus. and in fact, i want to read this description that the white house press office put out about this event on regulation. here's what they write. prior to the impact of the covid-19 global pandemic, these reforms contributed to more than 2 million americans rising out of poverty, 7 million americans liberated from food stamps. the highest median income in our nation's histories, highest poverty rates, rising unemployment rates. president trump's historic deregulation is lifting up forgotten american families, improving our nation's infrastructure, and lowering the cost of essential everyday goods and services. that last sentence is written in the present tense, but no part of it is true anymore. about the only way they acknowledge the virus is by saying, hey, remember when we didn't have the virus? >> yeah. and that's really the bottom

line here, chuck. and i'm told by sources and frankly this is evident from the president's own public statements, is that his entire decision matrix focused on this pandemic is really focused on what is good for the economy. that is why the president, from april until this past weekend, chose not to wear a face covering in public. because his idea was how can he project a return to normalcy if he's seen wearing a face mask, if everyone is socially distanced. on april 3rd, when the president rolled out, unveiled the administration's guidance for face masks, he said that, you know, he wouldn't choose to do it. it's also why the administration has spent the last several days, some white house officials, attacking dr. fauci. dr. fauci with his stark assessment, says dire warnings about the coronavirus response and the risks of reopening the country too quickly. that was one of the reasons why last thursday, president trump said that he likes dr. fauci personally, but in his view, dr. fauci makes mistakes. that was the quote. and within days, we saw white

house officials distribute to the press that document aimed at discrediting dr. fauci. president trump's aide posted that cartoon mocking him. and then we saw that top-to-bottom takedown from peter navarro. so that is really what is at the bottom of this. the president does not accept this notion that being a good steward of the country's economic health is really one and the same with being a good steward of the country's public health. he sees them as two very disparate things, chuck. >> let me ask it this way. his meeting with fauci today, is that the president's acknowledgement that they bungled this? is this -- or is this an example that the white house is fighting amongst itself about how to deal with this virus, if the president doesn't want to acknowledge the current state of affairs? i mean, what is happening? is there a divide inside that west wing or is this just all driven by the president? >> it seemed to be a way of turning the page. we have reported, and this is

true, that until today, dr. fauci and president trump had not spoken in weeks. and the president, at least three or four times in the last week, has said repeatedly that he has a good personal relationship with dr. fauci. what matters more, though, is his professional relationship with dr. fauci. is the president taking the advice of the nation's top infectious disease expert in the throes of a pandemic? and he hasn't been. at least not directly. so, yes, they spoke today. that's what a senior administration official tells our friend and colleague, kelly o'donnell. but it's also true that the administration has not invited dr. fauci to brief president trump personally in the oval office since the first week of june, chuck. >> jeff bennett at the white house. kasie, let me move to you on capitol hill. because something else seems to have happened at least in the last 24 to 48 hours, where you get the sense -- and maybe it actually could have started over the weekend when you saw mitch mcconnell tout mask wearing, but senate republicans are coming around to the idea that number

one, this virus isn't going away, number two, there needs to be more relief. and number three, it's almost as if they're trying to send the signal to the president, hey, it doesn't matter what you think, we're going to throw money at the schools and we're going to throw money at the electorate, who's suffering from this economy. that said, where are we on the senate side of things? >> chuck, we are in a much different position than we were probably two weeks ago, i would say. that's the time frame where this has started to shift. and it's -- it's aligned with the virus cases, as everyone ha. as many of these states that are represented by republicans in congress are really struggling under the weight of these new cases. what the republicans had wanted to do, what they've been saying is, we'll wait and see if we need to put more into the economy. and the unfortunate reality for all of us is that we are in a position that is arguably just as bad, if not getting worse than the position we were in back in april, when congress

shoveled $2.2 trillion out the door. so, now mitch mcconnell is saying behind closed doors that he thinks they need about another $1 trillion, but there seem to be indications that they could go higher than that. speaker pelosi seemed to suggest today that the mirpadministratis talking about a $1.3 trillion plan. she says that's not enough. but if that's the plan this administration -- and make no mistake. this president doesn't want to focus on the virus, as you and jeff just talked about, at length. but the administration, secretary mnuchin, others know very well that if the economy collapses ahead of the election, that there is no way this president wins re-election. and the only way it seems to get the economy anywhere near where they want it to be is to put this money back into the economy. i mean, the choices that they have are just incredibly bad right now. and if the president is going to run on the economy, he's got to make a case to voters, i'm the one to turn us around and get us

out of this. he's president right now. he actually can do that. and so far, they haven't. there's a lot of pressure on republicans to get this done, chuck. >> and i'm curious -- look, speaker pelosi has been trying -- has been campaigning for the heroes act, if you will, you know, on just about any tv interview she can book, except for a handful of people that they actively avoid. and i am curious, are they -- do they view this as -- this is the democratic bill and we'll reconcile with the republicans? or -- or are they thinking that they may have to come up with another bill? i'm sure publicly they want to stay in one place, but how much are they willing to move, as far as your reporting is concerned? >> i think they are willing to move, chuck. i see this round of negotiations tracking similarly to the others, where each side kind of had a messaging set of positions or a set of priorities that they

took to the table and they both had to move off of those. because, as you know, the reality of this is that it has to pass the house. so speaker pelosi is going to have to get some of what she wants. mitch mcconnell doesn't get to run the show. he does -- if you listen carefully to him, he really wants credit for it. the last time i asked him a question before he left town about the coronavirus, he said, well -- about the president. he said, well, my senate, i wrote in my office the c.a.r.e.s. act. i'm the one that put this money into the economy. which i thought was pretty telling, because there was a lot of back and forth where pelosi got all the credit and that clearly irritated mcconnell. but mcconnell's got everything on the line. if they don't do something big here, the senate is farther gone than it already is. so i think that reality puts him kind of not as far ahead as where pelosi is. she really has a lot of leverage here. >> jeff bennett and kasie hunt, thank you both for getting us started on that front.

let's move to the states and the cities. the governors of colorado and arkansas today joined a growing number of governors, both democrat and republican, requiring their states' residents to wear masks. but there is an exception. it's georgia, where the governor there, brian kemp, signed an executive order that prohibits cities and counties from making mask requirements. well, today, the mayor of atlanta, keisha lance bottoms, who tested positive for the virus herself, by the way, said her city's mask requirement still stands, despite the governor's order. >> it's my belief that the city of atlanta still has the appropriate standing to mandate masks. whatever the motivation is, i think that at the end of the day, we all have to do the right thing, because it's the right thing to do. it's a simple thing to do. it's an easy thing to do. we will just continue to push and ask people to do it, despite the agreements that we may have. >> well, joining me now is

another mayor in georgia, van johnson, the mayor of savannah, georgia, and that's more than a dozen places in georgia where a mandatory mask order was put into place before the mayor's executive order. so the mayor joins me now. mr. mayor, do you concur with the mayor of atlanta that you believe your order still stands, is still in effect, despite what the governor -- despite what the governor did? >> well, thank you, first of all, for the opportunity. and yes, savannah's mask ordinance, our local declaration still stands. >> can you -- how will you enforce this? or do you feel as if the governor has tied your hands and your ability to enforce it? >> well, i think that's the most interesting thing. here at a time when really we should all be really united against one common enemy, which is covid-19, unfortunately, we're fighting against our own state, just to keep our citizens

safe. we're going to continue to do what we have done here. we know that the science is very clear, as it relates to what will help us to get past covid-19. and we know that's social distancing. we know that's the wearing of masks, and we know that's washing and cleaning of hands. and so as far as we're concerned, we still have a mandatory mask order. >> it's been weird, the governor went out of his way to say his captured doesn't allow you guys to do this. and at the same time, he's advocating for people to wear a mask. do you feel as if this mixed messaging has led to more people in savannah not wearing masks? >> it's confused everybody. i mean, here we are. by your own records, you know, georgia had almost 11,000 cases in the last 72 hours. right to the west of us, alabama has a mandatory mask ordinance.

florida, which is about 120 miles to our south, they're now in a situation where they're considered the hot spot of the country. and in south carolina, to the north of us, they have mask, if the municipalities want to do it. yet, our governor specifically said that we cannot make any ords or make any emergency declarations to mandate masks. of course, everybody is confused. we're getting mixed messages from everywhere, and this is a time that we should be talking with one very clear, very consistent voice. >> i'm curious, have you been able to make your case directly to the governor, personally? >> well, interesting you say that. on the end of june 30th, i enacted the first emergency declaration for masks in the state of georgia. on july the 2nd, the governor said himself during a fly-around during the state that he was not going to challenge our order. and then, here we are, two weeks

later, and he tries to overturn it. we believe that our emergency declaration still stands. we believe that the governor has overreached. and we're going to do what we can to protect savannahians. that's what this is all about. we just want to get past this. we just want our state's help and we want our state's backing to make sure that we all get through this. and we have to do it together. >> where are you on your ability, do you feel, as if, to know where this virus is in savannah? do you have enough contact tracers? do you feel like testing -- do you get your tests back in time, in a reasonable period? i mean, that's always the biggest thing. testing is one thing, but if you don't get trult the results in you can't contact trace. where are you on those metrics? >> and i think we have been experiencing some of the same challenges that people have been all over the country. it has been taking in many cases tests too long to come back. there are limited resources. yet our numbers continue to

climb. in the first two weeks of july, we have had more positive cases than we have had in march, april, may, and june combined. and that's some of that time under a stay-at-home. so we're actually worse off now than we were then. and that is why this is so concerning to us. i mean, we want our state to help us, to help our citizens. help us to help our visitors. help us to try to keep people safe. that is all we want. it should not be a political issue. it should not be an issue of emotion or perception or belief or opinion. we're just going to follow the science. if we follow the science, if we're consistent, i think we can give our residents something to hold on to, give our businesses to something to hold on to and get to the other side of covid-19. >> van johnson, mayor of savannah, i appreciate you spending a few minutes with us and sharing the perspective from the ground there in your beautiful coastal city. it's always a treat. >> thank you. come see us soon. >> i look forward to it, again.

all right, thanks very much. up ahead, we are heading to the hot spot of florida, where the virus surge now has the gop planning to scale back its con skren vengeance, exactly what north carolina's governor told them they would have to do. and later, a shake up at the top of the trump campaign as half of this country says there is no chance at all they will vote for president trump. it's a problem that -- it's a problem that makes a change of campaign manager seem to be small potatoes to fix. ♪ ♪all strength ♪we ain't stoppin' believe me♪ ♪go straight till the morning look like we♪ ♪won't wait♪ ♪we're taking everything we wanted♪ ♪we can do it ♪all strength, no sweat my age-related macular degenso today i made a plan with my doctor, which includes preservision... because he said a multi- vitamin alone may not be enough. and it's my vision, my morning walk,

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welcome back. as we mentioned at the top of the show, the republican national convention announced the inevitable, that it has to scale back its plans for next month convention. announcing a limit on the number of people who can attend the convention. the rnc chairman notified delegates just as florida was

reporting nearly 14,000 new cases and 156 new deaths, a new one-day record. florida has now reported more 315,000 cases and more than 4,700 deaths since the pandemic began. ellison barber is in jacksonville. she was in jacksonville yesterday at a testing site and joins us now from miami. by the way, a very long drive, as i'm sure you had to experience there, from jacksonville to miami. and you don't even get to go across a state line. paint us the picture of the situation right now in florida. i mean, we say miami is the hottest of the hot spots, but it's not like jacksonville is out of the woods. >> yeah, i mean, across the state, we're seeing numbers that any doctor, whether i've spoken to doctors here in miami or doctors more north of florida that will say, they're not good. i mean, if you just look at the numbers, in some places you can say, well, oh, well, is that really that much? 156 deaths in one day. it's not a good number, but i've heard some people argue in terms of what we see happening across the state, it's not that bad. other people die from more

things in higher numbers. but you have to look at the context, the rate of speed this is happening in. and every doctor we have spoken to, they say, also, look at the percentages that we're seeing here. there are 14,000 new confirmed cases of covid-19 across the state. that's just today in 24 hours. here in miami-dade, their average percent positive over the last two weeks is hovering around 20% or 27%, excuse me. 27% of the tests that people in miami-dade county are taking to see if they have covid-19 in the last two weeks, 27% of those tests are coming back as positive. in this county, they also say that they only have about 30% of their hospital beds. that's icu and general beds available right now. here at miami's jackson memorial hospital where we are, doctors say they are pushed to the limit in terms of beds, in terms of the medication that they have available to treat patients with

covid-19, and even the amount of staff they have. the governor had to approve sending a hundred nurses to this hospital, because many of their front line caretakers. they, themselves have contracted covid-19. here's some of the conversation that i had this morning with a trauma surgeon and a critical care physician at this hospital, dr. reesha rattan. how far, kind of, are you away from that breaking point right now? >> yeah, it's hard to say, because we have a lot of space. we're building tents. we have space for tents. but the reality is that our original icus have been full for weeks and weeks. and we've overflowed into other areas. we've just converted other new areas to spaces that can take icu patients. >> this afternoon, chuck, the mayor of miami said that he's going to have a discussion tomorrow with local business leaders about the potential of another lockdown. chuck? >> yeah, that 27% positive rate,

that is way, way too high to have, perhaps to be as open as they are. ellison barber in miami today. getting a full, full geographic tour of the state. thank you. next, we'll check on the case count in another hot spot, texas. plus, we'll speak with a leading vaccine doctor. stick around. ding vaccine doctor stick around about medicare and 65, ysupplemental insurance. medicare is great, but it doesn't cover everything - only about 80% of your part b medicare costs, which means you may have to pay for the rest. that's where medicare supplement insurance comes in: to help pay for some of what medicare doesn't. learn how an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by united healthcare insurance company might be the right choice for you.

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through mass testing. a new report released today done by a bipartisan group of scientists and experts says that 30 million people per week -- per week -- need to be tested in the united states to reopen safely. right now, that would be more than six times our current testing rate. in several of the nation's hot spots, a lack of testing is compounded by delays in test results. texas is one of those states facing testing issues. if the virus threatens to overwhelm hospitals and a key federal testing site prepares to close. just moments ago, we learned that texas is reporting more than 10,000 new cases for the third day in a row. 129 deaths. that's a record for the second straight day. dr. peter hotez is the dean of the national school of tropical medicine at the baylor college of medicine. dr. hotez, i feel like you and i have had multiple conversations about the current state of -- and it was the moment we're in now is what you feared three weeks ago, four weeks ago, five

weeks ago, when we went through this. i want to say it was two weeks ago you said texas was in danger of becoming brazil. anyway, here we are. now what? >> yeah. and this virus is still spiraling out of control. actually, now, it's not only just texas, it's across the southern half of the united states and just about all the major metro areas, all the way from miami to phoenix and los angeles. and we've got to figure out a way to get this under control. chuck, the new numbers now suggest that of the 200,000 new cases that occurs globally, globally, one quarter occurs in the southern united states. so the southern united states is the major epicenter of the covid-19 pandemic. and we've got to get this under control. and we need to have a national plan to halt this. it's simply not going to happen with incremental measures. and we need to look at all of

the states and look at what we need to do to bring it back down close to containment mode. and this is where we need the full power of the federal government. and business as usual, leaving it to the states to figure it out, without having all the backing, all the epidemiological modeling is untenable. it's just not going to work. >> is there any metric where texas has enough? is there enough testing sites? it doesn't seem like it. are test results coming back fast enough? is there enough testing? is there enough -- i mean, you tell me, other than, i do think hospital beds seem to be one metric that's okay, but it seems like contact tracers -- is there any metric where you feel as if texas has enough resources? >> well, there are hospital beds, and we have icu beds, especially in our texas medical center. the issue is this. as the house staff -- not the house staff, the hospital staff is getting exhausted donning and

doffing ppe multiple times a day. and now hospital staff across the south are getting sick. and that's why the federal government has had to fly in replacements, because of the illness. so we have the staff shortages. so the point is, when there's this level of virus transmission going on in the southern states, it even makes contact tracing untenable. remember, the numbers that you just quoted to me, 10,000 cases a day in texas and 1,000 cases a day in houston, you have to multiply that by at least a factor of three to estimate the true number of cases and maybe as much as ten. that's the level of transmission. so the idea that you're going to do contact tracing with that level of transmission. so we have to bring it down. and i'm not convinced that the current measures are going to be adequate across the southern states. and we're going to have to, with i think, go into more aggressive measures, potentially including strict stay-at-home, like we did back in the spring. bring this down to a low level and let's do it across the

country and start over again. we can actually do it by october 1st. if we now do the hard work throughout the country, look t every state, what you have to do so bring it down to what i call one new case per day, maine and vermont are already there, we can open up the country again. and schools, and colleges, maybe even sporting events. >> but if we don't do anything or sort of stay on this map of where we sort of -- it's a state-by-state or county-by-county thing, i've seen different estimates. dr. fauci thinks we're going to get to 100,000 new cases a day that he -- does that seem inevitable now, by the way? 100,000 new cases a day. you know, i didn't think we would get to this number, but without any sort of national response, it is inevitable? >> yeah, the problem is it's inevitable that we'll greatly exceed 100,000 new cases a day. that's the problem. so we were at 40,000 new cases a

day a couple of weeks ago when we talked. then it went to 50,000, now it's 65,000. it will be 70,000 by the end of this week or early next week. it will be 80,000. then it will be at 100,000 maybe by the end of july/early august. and it keeps on going up from there. and practically speaking, what that means is in a few weeks, every single american is going to know someone who's seriously ill from covid-19. because this is being paralleled by a rise in hospital admissions, icu admissions, and now the deaths are starting to rise. so we were -- we are in the middle of a dire public health crisis, and we've got to now have that federal level of intervention. >> well, you clearly did your best to sound -- you've done your best to continue to sound the alarm and you're sounding the alarm right here, right now. dr. peter hotez, i really appreciate you coming on and sharing your expertise with us. >> thanks so much. the frustration is we can do something about this.

>> yeah. right! right. it just takes hard work, you know. it's not easy. that's the -- everybody is looking for an easy solution. there is no one easy solution or we would have done it already. anyway. dr. hotez. >> -- federal government. thanks. >> yep, yep. going forward, is the republican party a lost cause? well, one of the country's most prominent republicans says it might be. bill kristol joins me next. and as we go to break, we're getting our first look at rachel maddow's sit-down with president trump's niece, mary trump. the interview will be airing tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern. here's a response to rachel's question about why she wrote her scathing book about her uncle now and not in 2016. >> so it wasn't just the speed with which he started upending norms, which he had started doing during the campaign, it was the number of people who lined up to help him in that

endeavor. which has only grown longer and more egregious as time's gone on. i can't say that there was a last straw, because there have been so many straws. but certainly the horrors at the border, you know, the separating of children from their parents, the torture, the kidnapping and the incarceration of them in cages was unthinkable, unbearable. and when i had an -- when an opportunity presented itself to me to do something, i needed to take a leap. take a leap. the sleep number 360 smart bed is on sale now.

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welcome back. as the pandemic rages and the president's support falls in the polls, the republican party finds itself struggling to come to grips with the reality facing

them. as president trump demands the party ignore that reality, the result, the republican party is simply not on the same page as the country at large. frankly, it's not even on the same page as itself, as i showed you earlier in this show. voters across the country want their leaders to focus on controlling the virus over reopening businesses. you saw that, it's a 32-point margin. but republicans who support president trump more than the party overwhelmingly want to focus more on reopening. check this out, 69%. but of those republicans who call themselves party republicans before trump republicans, they are caught in the middle. and as you can see, there's your divide and that's what's dividing america, this divide of the republican party. joining me now, bill kristol, he's the editor at large of the bulwark. his recent column is "is the republican party a lost cause," grapples with the future of gop. bill, the way i wanted to start the way i started there is, i'm curious, if our poll called you up and asked you, coydo you

consider yourself a republican party person still, would you still put yourself in the republican column? or have you left the party? >> i don't know, we don't have party registration here in virginia, as you know, chuck. so i got to -- >> got to love it. >> i think i said at some point, i'm a democrat for 2020. i think it's very important that trump loses. i think it's important that biden wins. and i think it's important that the trump enablers at the federal level also lose. i'm onboard with the democratic victory in 2020. i can imagine voting republican in 2022, if it's a non-trumpy republican party, but that's a huge qu huge, obviously. >> you know, what was interesting about your piece is this -- you sort of admit that you may not be -- let's say you succeed, right? you've been part of this campaign of republicans who essentially left the fold to figure out how to defeat trump, get party out of the party.

treat trump as a cancer, see if you can cut him out. if you succeed, you don't expect to be invited to the, okay, how do we rebuild the gop meeting. is that a healthy thing for the party or not? >> will i expect to be invited? in a funny way, i don't want to be invited. a bunch of these senator who is got along with trump and all of these assaults on democratic norms and the policies you've described so well in the first half of this show, who are killing americans, and governors who have been intimidated by trump and incredibly foolish policies in reopening their states and bars and everything and overturning local ordinances, banning masks. i don't really want to go to a meeting with those people. so part of me thinks that it may well be a lost cause and i mate deserve to be a lost cause, the republican party. not because its views are necessarily off from that. the majority of americans could be wrong. it's good to have a party with minority views, but because

they've been complicit in this actual administration and the kind of governance we've had from the trump white house, which has been such a disgrace, i think. on the other hand. on the other hand, it would be unhealthy for this party, for this country to have two major parties, one of which, i think, continues in this nationalist, populist sort of authoritarian d demagoguic way. so you hate to say, i'm walking away because i don't like it. i think it's a bit of a disgraceful performance, but it would be healthy if we could have a healthier republican party. but wishing doesn't make it so. so that's where i go back and forth. maybe there'll be a new center. maybe we can work with centers from both parties. i really don't know. i do think for the short-term, ie this year, trump and the republican party that has enabled him and the conservative movement that has rationalized what he has done need to be held accountable. >> you know, it's interesting what we've been -- we've been trying to figure this out inside the republican party and show

that -- it is interesting. there really is a divide, right? you've got a little more than half the party calls themselves trump republicans yoush, sort of trump folks, which means, even if the party is routed, those that want to see the party routed appear to be in the minority. who picks -- you know, you don't get rid of trumpism. so do you figure out how to live with it? do you hope it gets reshaped into something that is coalitionable, if you will, to make up a word there? or do you try to get rid of it as a cancer and treat it like a cancer, if you will? >> it depends whether it's a cancer or the flu or something that you can get over, right? and if it's just a little bit more protectionism than i like, a little bit more a bunch of other policies i don't like so much, that's one thing. if it's racism, if it's nativism, if it's authoritarianism. if it's a kind of feeling that

you feel like you're a victim which allows you to demonize other people and other groups, then i at least have no interest in trying to figure out how to work with all of that and tame it a little bit and make it a little more respectable. it's still fundamentally wrong, i think, and bad for the country. so a lot depends on sort of what happens to trumpism after trump. how much of it is trump specific and how much of it isn't. what happens to him. he's not going to go away. i'm a little pessimistic. you've been around and gone through this chuck many times. what are the odd in 2022 if you have a trump-boosting republican -- a republican boosted by trump and sounding like trump and embracing trump, maybe a couple of minor errors, but trump was done dirty by the media and people like the never-trumpers and he's running against a moderate conservative that's not trump, not even larry hogan, just someone who's staid out out of it, what do you think the odd are?

i think the odds are unfortunately still on trump's side. >> i've talked to a lot of republican consultants who secretly, i think, hope trump goes away and who thinks, trump's going to keep running and it's going to be a problem that the party doesn't know how to deal with. they think it will magically go away. kind of like trump thought of the virus, and the bottom line is, it probably won't. anyway, bill kristol, it was a provocative op-ed. it's always worth reading. "the bulbulwark" is always a gr read every day, whether jonathan last, charlie sykes or yourself, so fascinating stuff. thanks for coming on and sharing your views with us. >> thanks, chuck. up next, new warnings that russia is trying to steal covid-19 vaccine research. plus, the massive twitter hack that could reveal a massive vulnerability ahead of the 2020 election. assive vulnerability ahead of the 2020 election usaa is made for what's next we're helping members catch up by spreading any missed usaa insurance payments over the next twelve months so they can keep more cash in your pockets

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welcome back. this morning the national security agency nsa, along with security agencies from canada and the united kingdom issued a joint advisory stating that a hacking group affiliate with russian intelligence targeted organizations coronavirus vaccines. the group is the same one known for attacking multiple high level government targets including the white house and state department leading up to the 2016 election. it's obviously not the first time that security agencies have issued a warning about foreign attacks on covid research. the fbi announced china had targeted virus research

organizations in may. this is the second cyber security wake-up call the united states has received in just less than 24 hours. the fbi is now investigating the hack of high profile twitter users including joe biden, barack obama, bill gates, last night in an attempt to conduct a bitcoin scam. joining me now is tony rom, technology reporter for "the washington post." he's also an msnbc contributor. let's first deal with the russian hack first. sometimes it's made because they caught them and they're like we're going to catch you again. where does this one fall? >> right, we don't know exactly where this one falls. we certainly know that this organization called apt 29 by the security folks with ties to russia had certainly been taking a look at a lot of the research that's being put together on vaccines in the u.s. and in canada and the united kingdom. but what is not entirely clear is what exactly they did here. if they actually managed to get

ahold of some of this information. now, all of that said, this probably did not come as much of a shock to folks given the fact that vaccine research is obviously so highly prized, but you know, it certainly left a lot of folks in the u.s. very concerned about what this means not only for coronavirus, but everything else whether we're talking about the election or the twitter hack we were just discussing. >> i'm just curious, are the pharmaceutical companies right now in this company considered critical infrastructure? >> well, that's a very, very lengthy question, i suppose. but in a short amount of time, a lot of these things are considered critical infrastructure. despite the legal definitions that we might use to describe what is or isn't critical infrastructure, everybody's got to practice good cyber security, right? a lot of these government agencies that are housing the information, they do a lot of things to ensure that that data doesn't ultimately get out there. but i think this raises the stakes. it shows the fact that there's, you know, great economic gain to be had. there are great geopolitical

advantages to be had. that's why this information has become a high value target right now. >> let's talk about twitter because this feels like potentially business altering for twitter if they can't get to the bottom of this or this isn't as easy to fix as it might be. the fbi is now involved. are they the lead investigator or is twitter investigating itself first? >> it's a little bit of both. the fbi is taking a look. twitter is taking a look. the state of new york said it's going to take a look, and you better believe that half of congress is going to have something to say about this, just given everything we've seen about the tech industry over the better part of the past few years. now we don't exactly know everything that happened here, but twitter did drop a bit of an important hit over the past 24 hours. it said that there was social engineering involved here, which would lead us to believe that something like a phishing scam or some other tactic like that targeting a specific employee or

groups of employees may have allowed some of these hackers to access this account. now, all that being said, i think for a lot of people this really affirmed the risks here with a site like twitter. i mean, this was only a bitcoin scam, but everybody was quick to point out what might have happened if this was a national political moment or information about an election that had been spread or even worse yet, an attack on a foreign country. the stakes were pretty high here. >> i'm curious, the direct messages could be sort of the email treasure-trove that john podesta's emails were back in 2016, and sort of abused and used. these are high profile people, elon musk, who knows what's in that direct messages list, things like that. does twitter, can they -- are the direct messages security or not or is this an unsafe way to communicate? >> yeah, well, in this case the most that we know is that it was a financial scam. this was a long-documented

attempt to use twitter to push out these bitcoin scams. this was certainly nothing new in that respect. it was just the scale and the sweep and the high profile nature of the targets that made this such a brazen attempt to kind of do this in broad daylight. i can't speak to the direct messages here, but it doesn't even need to get into one's dre direct messages to have an impact. whether we're talking about elections or we're talking about foreign policy. we have world leaders using twitter. if their accounts had been compromised to share something that wasn't a financial scam, but was false information about an impending attack, for instance, you can begin to see why everybody was so concerned here. it's certainly a major urgent moment for twitter. and one other thing i should point out is this is not twitter's first run around with this. this is a company that got in trouble a decade ago. there have been other incidents in which twitter has found itself victim to security threats. including an incident where jack dorsey, the ceo was hacked.

this is something the company's got to grapple with over the long-term. >> well, and the fact that they have successfully protected the president's twitter account but nobody else is probably going to have a lot of lawmakers going, well, why don't you do that for everybody on this front. that's going to be among the many questions i'm guessing they're going to have to deal with. i'm out of time or i would be wanting to go further down this rabbit hole with you. always a pleasure to have you and your expertise on this show. thank you, and i'll be right back. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ ♪ ♪ now is the time to support the places you love.

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that's all we have for tonight. "the beat" starts right now. aym >> welcome to the. i am ayman mohyeldin in for ari. we have a very big show tonight. mary trump just sat down with rachel maddow. we have the first look into this interview and you definitely will want to see it. also, trump demotes his campaign manager, but there is more to the