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we're following these reports today about what appears to been escalation of the use of force in oregon. and donald trump's crackdown on protesters. oregon public broadcasting is reporting that federal officers of some sort have been driving around portland wearing tactical camouflage gear but otherwise unmarked, no obvious badges, markings, pulling up in unmarked

vans and detaining protesters. nbc news has not matched this particular bit of reporting, videos posted on social media however appear to show those unmarked vehicles entering a federal building in portland with officers in full riot gear in the foreground. protests have occurred just about every night in portland. just yesterday the department of homeland security secretary chad wo wolfcondemned the protesters. and a spokesperson for cbb said, quote, u.s. border patrol agents have been deployed to portland in direct support of the presidential executive order and the newly established dhs protecting american communities task force as a law enforcement component under dhs, cbp will be

providing support, as needed at the request of the federal protective service, to protect federal facilities and property. >> we welcome to our broadcast jonathan levensen. he's reported extensively on this story. a spokesperson for the u.s. marshalls tells nbc news that the law enforcement officers in the video you shared are not deputy u.s. marshals. can you tell us who they are and what answers you've been able to ferret out? >> there are three different law enforcement agencies participating here. as just mentioned, a fps they wear blue uniforms. u.s. m marshals and there's custom and border protections, they also all wear camouflage.

all the videos we've seen and the people i interviewed, either experienced this or saw this happen, everybody they've seen are wearing camouflage when it happens. it's either u.s. marshals or cbp or both. >> and what sort of stories of detentions are you learning about, are they extended -- it strikes me that that would be a real legal question about their authority there? >> so one person i spoke to who this happened to, was walking back to his car a mini van pulled up, four, five people in camouflage, pulled down his beanie to blindfold him. he was taken to the federal courthouse. and he was there for a couple of hours total. they read him his rights.

they didn't give him documentation, he's still not sure if he's been charged with anything. >> jonathan, i have a couple of questions, why border patrol of all branches of our government and law enforcement, i know we can't go to canada these days but are we worried about those dangerous canadians coming south into oregon? that's question one. questions two and three, where are the governor and the mayor? >> your first question, why border patrol? dhs hasn't answered any of our questions. what we've told that federal law enforcement is here to protect federal buildings and the people inside of them. the goff more has said essentially their presence is not helpful and a provocation, the mayor has said that they

should stay in their buildings and if they can't do that they should leave. >> an unbelievable story. jonathan of oregon public broadcasting, congratulations of having so much of this ahead of just about everybody else, we'll call on you early and often, thank you for that report. brian, this is of everything we talked about today the one where there are so many more questions than even remote explanations, i mean -- i take the warnings that i see all over social media that this can be a sign of things to time, a real strain, i don't know what these authorities are patrolling the streets. it boggles my mind that this is happening in a american city today.

>> it's useful in this case, how many foreign countries going back to grainy black and white film over the past decades we have seen facial coverings used to be a thing that we didn't do here, of course now covering all sins is the fact that we're in a pandemic, but the lack of insignia, any kind of markings, badges, identifications, unmarked rental car, minivans, the swiping of people off american streets by, i guess, fellow american citizens, people in some branch of law enforcement, among the salad bowl of agencies that now compromises the department of homeland security, everyone should be paying attention to this. we'll keep going tonight on our 11:00 p.m. broadcast and i'll slip away and become a viewer of the next hour and change. thank you for having me.

>> we'll be watching you at 11 on that story and everything else. thanks for spending the first half with us. up next for us -- mary trump, donald trump's niece is hardly alone when she fears for the future of the country under her uncle's lack of country. when we come back. come back. no uh uh, no way come on, no no n-n-n-no-no only discover has no annual fee on any card.

sprinting past every leak in our softest, smoothest fabric. she's confident, protected, her strength respected. depend. the only thing stronger than us, is you. as joe biden's lead in the polls widens and cases of coronavirus pile up with no federal plan to stop the pandemic, donald trump's ability to lead is under fire now like never before. in his latest column for the washington post, our good friend, eugene robinson writes this, quote, it's absurd to imagine that trump cares about anyone or anything but himself, he will not go voluntarily. so on election day, he must be made to suffer a hue militating

defeat and on inauguration he must fully escort td out of the white house. this election is not about politics, ideology or even red versus blue, at this point, it's about our collective survival. that column comes as the president's niece mary trump is breaking sales record for her new tell-all, here she was with our colleague rachel maddow last night on long-term effects of her uncle's re-election. >> this is beyond party. we need to be thinking about this as americans. we need to be thinking about who we want to be as the people going forward. so continuing along this path, which is exactly what would happen if donald trump were to be elected in 2020 would i absolutely believe be the end of the american experiment. i don't believe there's any coming back from this. >> joining our conversation, michael steele who served as the

chair of the republican national committee in a universe far, far away from 2009 to 2011 and former time managing editor rick stengel. both lucky for us political analy analysts here at msnbc. michael steele, saying the same thing for a very long time. a sense people closer and closer to trump are saying it for the very first time that's the significance of mary trump, what do you think of her comments there with our colleague rachel? >> well, i think it's incredibly important to appreciate not just the words that she said but the perspective that she brings to those words, she has the background story that she's now begun to share with the rest of the country, she's seen her

uncle up close and personal. she's grown up with him. she's watched him at family events, public events and most importantly at private events. she's peeling back a little bit of the cover the blinds that we typically would not see, a lot of trump spotters they love the guy they saw on the apprentice, take charge, you're fired kind of a guy. but we now begin to see some of the unraveling that has also attended this this presidency and where it comes from, so i think it's important what she's saying right now and can't be easily dismissed. this is someone who's at home already who saw him come through the door at family events, you know, to hang out or whatever, and now she shares with us what that looked like.

>> you know, i agree with all that and rick, i think there's other lens through which people take information when it's delivered by people with nothing to gain and everything to lose, i mean this is a -- the family dynamics as they're described by mary trump herself are vicious, so putting herself out there really there's not much in it for her, i wonder if these stories simply affirm what we think when we look at donald trump, i mean, eugene wrote an an incredibly insightful column and i have heard from one former military official that there's certainly to be expected an active conversation about how to deal with what eugene described. where do you put her warnings? >> a reminder of things that we

already knew, but i have to go back to this, nicolle, i mean -- the justice department sued donald trump and his father in 1973 for racial bias and racial discrimination in their buildings all throughout new york and queens. they personally put up no vacancy signs when black renters were coming trying to get apartment there is. we know all of this. we know it chapter and verse, that's what's so frustrating about this situation that people have to learn it over again. i mean, does it surprise me apal me that donald trump uses racial language and she heard him use racist speech? it's appalling. we've known that for decades. this whole business is based on racial discrimination, that's not anything new and he has seemed to embody that every day

of his presidency. >> michael and rick spitting truth today, as punishment, we'll ask them to stick around through the commercial break. when we come back -- the widening ough, crohn's. ough, crohn's. for adults with moderate e crohn's or ulcerative colitis, stelara® can provide relief, and is the only approved medication to reduce inflammation on and below the surface of the intestine in uc. you, getting on that flight? back off, uc. stelara® may increase your risk of infections, some serious, and cancer. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, sores, new skin growths, have had cancer, or if you need a vaccine. rpls, a rare, potentially fatal brain condition, may be possible. some serious allergic reactions and lung inflammation can occur. lasting remission can start with stelara®. if you've been financially impacted by covid-19, janssen may be able to help.

just days after donald trump defended the flying of the confederate flag, his secretary of defense effectively banned the flag from flying on military bases. we are back with michael steele and rick stengel. michael steele, there's now a growing body of flash points and incidents where the military is, in realtime, trying to distance itself from the current commander in chief. that's in and of itself unprecedented. >> it is. and i think it's appropriate at this point. i think there's a lot of chatter, from what i am sure you have as well, nicolle and richard as well picked up the chatter around town around that period between november and january and what that may look like and what it hopefully doesn't look like. and i think, you know, given the way the president seems to treat

the military and think about the military, they want to create that heisman moment where they create a separation between him as commander in chief and some of the things that he's out here supporting and promoting through his tweets, for example, where he's out there tweeting white nationalist, you know, videos. they on the other hand are saying confederate flags and this type of behavior is not going to be accepted or promoted inside the military. so i think that's important right now for it to start to take place, and we'll see just how deep it goes as this thing -- as we get closer to november and more questions are raised about the president's behavior, his tweets or anything else. >> you know, rick, the pentagon is one of the more opaque -- i mean, all national security agencies are opaque to a degree, but none more so than the

pentagon. and it's been -- i've been admonished to look at the things that are public facing as a minuscule representation of tremendous churn underneath. what's your sense of how they're doing? >> well, i think they're struggling. i'm going to put together a whole bunch of things here. the military has been one of the great engines of anti-racial discrimination and racial equality in american society since world war ii. and i have to say, having worked with the military when i was in the state department, i've never, ever come away with anything but being impressed by their competence and their leadership ability and their meritocracy. so they have to be dismayed about having a commander in chief that refers to them as my generals and a commander in chief that tries to separate the military from civilian society. they're very, very concerned about that. and one final point, our

military, unlike every other -- almost every other military in the world, take an oath not to a president or to a prime minister or a king. they take an oath to protect the constitution of the united states. and every soldier i've ever met, every general i've ever met takes that seriously. and when their commander in chief is undermining the constitution that they swore to protect, they are concerned. >> rick stengel, michael steele, thank you both so much for spending some time with us on a friday. "deadline:white house" is next. "deadline:white house" is next - [narrator] this is steve. he used to have gum problems. now, he uses therabreath healthy gums oral rinse with clinically-proven ingredients and his gum problems have vanished. (crowd applauding) therabreath, it's a better mouthwash. at walmart, target and other fine stores.

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hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in the east. with the united states breaking another record yesterday for new infections, adding more than 73,000 new cases, donald trump's approval ratings on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic today are plunging to new lows. but instead of marshalling the resources of the richest nation in the world to defeat the pandemic, the president is instead turning to a strategy of covering up vital health information and lying about the crisis all while bullying local schools to send students back regardless of the trajectory of infections. dr. peter hotez, vaccine expert and world respected medical doctor called it a disinformation effort on the part of the administration on this program earlier this week. and today's reporting provides further evidence of just that. "the washington post" today writes this.

quote, a 359-page unpublished report by the white house coronavirus task force dated tuesday suggests that at least 18 states enact stricter public health measures, including mandating masks, limiting gatherings to less than 10 people and ramping up testing in areas where coronavirus cases have spiked. the report specifically recommends that georgia, indiana and minnesota mandate masks statewide with the governors of those states have not ordered those measures as of thursday. the white house threat to withhold federal funds from schools that don't reopen is still on the table and npr is reporting the schools will have to navigate the president's threat with a current spike in cases without the promised guidance from the cdc on how to navigate school openings. that guidance expected this week, as many school systems are finalizing their plans for the fall, has been delayed. add to the list of disappearing pandemic data, the abrupt disappearance of patient

information and hospitalizations. "the washington post" writes this. quote, on the eve of a new coronavirus reporting system this week, data disappeared from a cdc and prevention website as hospitals began filing information to a private contractor or their states instead. a day later an outcry, including from other federal health officials prompted the trump administration to reinstate that dashboard and another daily cdc report on the pandemic. and on thursday, the nation's governors joined the chorus of objections over the abruptness of the change to the reporting protocols for hospitals, asking the administration to delay the shift for 30 days. in a statement, the national governors association said hospitals need the time to learn a new system as they continue to deal with the pandemic. the apparent attempts at a cover-up comes as the u.s. record of new cases yesterday marked the ninth time we've set

a record this month. the effort to withhold cdc guidelines and tax force recommendations comes as we triple our cases from just one month ago. the abrupt shift to cut the cdc out of the patient reporting system comes as the u.s. has surpassed all the countries in the eu combined. as texas and florida report record deaths. the state of emergency in the u.s. as the white house moves to kour cover up health data is where we start today. "new york times" white house correspondent peter baker is here along with practicing physician and former obama health policy director who worked on the h1n1 response, dr. kadita patel and deputy national security adviser to president obama, ben rhodes is back. all, lucky for us, msnbc contributors. let me start with you, ben. we haven't spoken to you since the country has taken this cataclysmic return to breaking the worst kinds of records we could break as a country. the rates for new infections day

after day after day. i am, i suppose, maybe slightly open to the possibility that it is a confluence of incompetence that leads to all of this data being restricted from the coronavirus task force, shielded from the cdc and those school openings being delayed. but it's one heck of a coincidence that as cases spike, as the white house stages events, all this data disappears. >> yeah, it's a bit of a tell that president trump himself seems to equate the incidents of coronavirus with testing itself. from the beginning of this crisis, he has seen real data as a threat to him because the real data would reveal his incompetence in responding to this. what's so tragic is that the federal government should be the source of clear, transparent information. now i remember during the ebola crisis it was federal guidelines that were ultimately posted on hospitals around the country

about how to spot someone who has symptoms of ebola. federal guidelines and clear, transparent information from the government about what the travel risk is at certain airports and what steps need to be taken. the reason we see some such chaos is that they are just not getting any clear and transparent information from the government. and now, we see on the chart that you showed, frankly, the dramatic uptick in cases is coincident to when president trump was essentially hectoring states to reopen the economy and not surprisingly, you put people back into places, the cases spike. this seems to be about just wanting to make it go away. but you can't make something go away if people know people who are getting sick. if people know people who are losing their lives. if people are concerned about sending their children to school. this is not trump lying about something that's distant from people's lives. it's trump lying about something that everybody can tell in their own lives and communities is not the case. >> peter baker, it raises such a

good point in my mind or a question. there is a way to change the data and to make it go away. and that's to try to defeat it. that's to tackle it. that's to get the one-day task the president and his staff uses, the abbott test, into the hands of every business and school you want to open. it's to really throw all of the resources in the medical and business and academic community at contact tracing. let's do this. let's shut it down so we can come back in the fall with schools. why isn't the strategy to defeat the virus actually involved epidemiology. why does it involve the cover-up and the bypassing of information? >> yeah, it's a great question. we have a son that would like to go to school in the fall and think, what would make that possible. and you hear the president talk a lot. we've got the most testing in the world. no question their numbers on tests have gone up substantially, but if we don't have tests that come back on a

timely basis, how are the schools supposed to use that to make decisions that would help them, you know, operate in a safe way. you have to wait eight days to get a result back for a test. that's not very useful unless you're already sick and looking for confirmation you have something you already have. if you want to have kids be able to go to school, teachers feel safe in teaching them, they have to have confidence that the virus is not lurking in their classrooms. and one of the ways to do that is to have an insta test. a quick result as you say. at the white house, when we go in as reporters and we'll be on the president on air force one or an event, they give us that instant test. they get the results back on our behalf pretty much within minutes. that should be the standard, you would think, in businesses and schools across the country. so far it's not. and you don't hear the white house talk about trying to make it so with any kind of urgency. >> peter, you wrote a piece that i think will end up in the history books when the chapter

of the trump presidency is written about the press conference and thinking of those two paragraphs that describe what he talked about. it strikes me still, two days later, that in addition to being so incoherent and so bizarre and ram rambling, so little of it was focused on what we're talking about. he has a child also. and i imagine that he wants -- if his child wants to be back in school, he wants that to be an option for him. is there no window into what the country is experiencing that you've been able to detect from any of the public statements the president has made lately? >> he doesn't seem to suggest that, does he? he doesn't talk about his own personal experience or the personal experience of the people around him or friends or family or anybody else in the country. we have yet, 136,000 deaths, to have any kind of memorial service or, you know, some sort of grieving led by the president of the united states. your president, obviously, did that, president bush did that

after 9/11. very, very evocatively. president obama did that after school shootings or other horrific events. that's something we expect our presidents to do to connect with the feelings the public is going through, and we haven't seen that. he doesn't want to focus on that. he wants to focus on full speed ahead and to dwell on the challenges and the setbacks is an athemma to his view of how the next 100 days should go. >> it's such a good point and i think of president obama breaking into "amazing grace." obviously, i lived through george w. bush very much making the families who lost loved ones on the four planes part of everything we thought about and did. is there anyone urging him to ever pick up the phone and call anyone who has lost a loved one to coronavirus? >> well, there may be, but i think the advisers have come to learn that you can't convince him to do something he's not

inclined to do. and so the strategy for people who advise him is to try to nudge him or steer him in directions he may be willing to do because of his own nature but not to fight the forces of nature. the forces of nature in this white house are a president who is not -- that's not where he's going to go. empathy is not his strong suit. you talked about mary trump. she makes clear why she thinks that is. where his strong suit is, is selling a message. he's a master marketer. and the marketing is to convince the country that we're better. that we're going on the upswing again. and it's flying in the face of the numbers and the charts you just showed. someone as talented as president trump as defining a narrative, he is having a hard time countering what people are seeing in their daily lives. >> dr. patel, i want to pick up on what peter is talking about. only 34% of americans trust trump on coronavirus. that is less than public opinion polls suggest is the size of his base at this moment.

64% don't trust him. has it become clear to you that he is an unreliable source of any information. anyone that's still listening to him after he suggested injecting disinfectants, i worry about their health. i hope they have a diversity of inputs in terms of their family's public health opinions, but is it your senses he's irrelevant or doing harm? >> i think he's doing incredible harm and despite the low polling, this is somebody who has been a master at marketing disinformation and misinformation. so all along the way, every little kind of what seems like a little side comment, hydroxychloroquine, you should look into it. i took it. we still have an incredible amount of prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine, despite there being zero evidence for it. the issue of masks. you know, mocking people, including vice president biden,

who wore a mask and then reluctantly wearing one has already put into motion this idea that a mask is political. and then even third, the most dangerous comment that, you know, young people, it's not so bad. they don't get sick. kids, it's okay. let's just reopen schools. we're now seeing from record numbers of positive cases of children that we can't be so arrogant to assume that we know everything about what the implications of this virus are. and that we as doctors are learning about this. day by day. and we're hoping -- we want the science to guide people. we're just hoping the american public continues to listen to scientists and to public health officials. but i do think this president still continues to do damage, yes, on a daily basis. >> and on the three news items we started with, that the cdc guidelines on opening schools which vice president pence and other white house officials have already disparaged and have said they don't want them to get in

the way of school reopenings, the patient data that's being bypassed away from the cdc to other agencies and these states that are now, according to the own white house coronavirus task force, 18 states blinking red. all that data that was an effort to suppress all of it. what does that say to you? >> oh, it's honestly the tip of the iceberg. i fear how much has not only been suppressed to internal experts, to the american public, but think about the chain of consequences. hospitals are basically being held hostage. if you want relief from the federal government in the form of remdesivir, an anti-viral drug if you want your state to get vaccines or testing, which we are allocating, then you have to abide by our rules. it's the opposite of any republican or democrat's principles of leadership that i've seen. i hope we can implore upon

congress, oversight investigations. we absolutely need to hold people accountable, and it's just the tip. it's very disturbing. >> ben rhodes, i want to ask you about something i heard this week from a former senior intelligence official. he said if the cdc is diminished and damaged and deprived of patient data from hospitalizations and there is no accurate count on the united states, the repercussions could be grave and felt for years. he suggested look at someone -- the most talented diplomat in the country being asked to take a posting at the u.n. in new york or washington, d.c., at the nation's capitol. they might think twice before they bring their family to live in america if they aren't even sure they can trust the health data. it may become a posting in this country, it could become like a hazard posting. what do you think the harm is if even our data is corrupted? >> well, i think we've already suffered incalculable harm just

in our terrible response to covid. the u.s. used to lead global responses. now if you look at the numbers, we're woefully behind everyone else. there's also the fact the cdc, you know, manipulation or misinformation and disinformation effort on the trump white house's part, that's part of a general trend of him maligning facts. including from the intelligence community itself. and what you already see is in mexico and canada, clearly happy to extend border protections. they don't want americans coming in. we see europe with a travel ban on the united states. these countries are indicating what they think already. the scenario that your intelligence official was relaying is already happening. other countries are not comfortable, including our closest allies having americans travel there in part because not only do we have a huge outbreak, but they can't trust the information from us. when you think about the monumental task, nicolle, of resuming global travel, the global supply chains that our economy depends upon, the

dissemination of a vaccine. if the cdc, which used to be the gold standard just a few years ago in terms of public health information around the world, is no longer trusted because the data is being cooked or suppressed, that is going to have long-lasting ramifications for our credibility and also immediate consequences on our ability to climb out of this public health disaster and climb out of this economic crisis because we can only do that in concert with other countries. and frankly, right now, we're just not even part of the conversation these countries are having. >> peter baker, donald trump does like to wave the big stick of threatening a travel ban. the truth right now today, for any american that had a family member or an emergency and needed to fly to europe or lots of other countries, they could not do so. how do they see the ban on us because of our handling of coronavirus fitting into their maga slogan? >> that's a great question. we don't like to be on the receiving end.

we like to be on the cutting off end of things. but this is the administration that is more or less happy to try to cut off from the world in so many ways, whether it be through immigration, trade, alliances, military involvement. in many ways, this is america first policy the president has articulated. one that he's applied across the board. i think the fact there's less travel and even commerce going back and forth doesn't seem to bother him that much. but there's a long-term consequence to that. we do actually rely heavily on our friends in europe for economic and other interactions. obviously, the more cooperation you have with them on things like science and research at this moment when we are looking for vaccine and therapeutics, that's obviously important. i think at this moment, walling ourselves off and being wald off by others at a moment when the world is sharing a crisis that

it could use like american leadership. >> thank you so much for spending some time with us today. we're keeping ben rhodes around for one more. growing panic for republicans close to the president. new reporting from "the washington post" indicates that there are worries trump might be freefalling into a political abyss. and he might not go down alone. the pentagon today side-stepping trump with a significant new rule. plus, the president's peculiar new line of attack against joe biden. it's another smear based on a lie as donald trump struggles to find his footing in his own re-election fight. all those stories coming up. to lock away deb ris and absorb wet messes, all in one disposable pad. just vacuum, spray mop, and toss. the shark vacmop, a complete clean all in one pad.

so we have many exciting things that we'll be announcing over the next eight weeks, i would say. things that nobody has even contemplated, thought about, thought possible. and things that we're going to get done. and we have gotten done. we've started in most cases. >> running as a mystery basket. thought exercise here on a friday. why is it so hard for donald trump to articulate anything for his second term agenda? he's never had a reputation for succinct focused answers. but this may be more than that. we first heard whispers that maybe, just maybe, donald trump wasn't as into his own re-election campaign as he let on. but now after another rose

garden event last night mutated into a de facto trump rally, an increasing number of republicans are worried that trump may be tor pede torpedoing his own campaign. there is growing unease and panic over trump's conduct as allies fret that the president is free-falling into a political abyss. they're worried by what they view as his self-sabotaging actions worried he may not only lose in november but drag the rest of the party down with him. joining our conversation, the rev al sharpton, host of "politics nation" and president of the national action network. ben rhodes is still with us as well. so rev, you're here in the role of armchair psychologist. is self-sabotage something that donald trump seems to be engaged

in? >> absolutely appears that way. you would have to say that there's no way his behavior could be the result of him calculating or anyone else calculating how he gains politically by it. politics is about addition, not subtra subtraction. so for him to say, oh, in eight weeks or so, we'll roll out a re-election plan when he knows he's behind in every poll, including the fox poll. for him to grab onto issues like the confederate statues in this time that we're dealing with the whole question of the racial divide and for him to force people or threaten to force them, if he can, to go to school before it's clear about the safety. this is not someone that has a strategy of how am i going to close the margin in this state or close the gap in this poll? this seems like self-sabotage, and if it is not self-sabotage

intentionally, then we ought to really worry about his state of mind. >> ben rhodes, i read the stories about how he may or may not bring the republican party down with him, as though there is some suspense. of course he will. if he goes down, you are all going down with him because you supported him after the "access hollywood" tape came out. nobody walked away after donald trump saw good people on both sides of a kkk rally. you've been with him as he literally has left the country blowing in the wind without adequate testing supplies, without even an attempt at a contact tracing program for the country. i mean, do you see any suspense as to whether or not the gop goes down if he goes down? >> no. no suspense, nicolle. they've made themselves an extension of the trump political project for the last three years. they're not even trying. they still engage in these

trumtrum trump obamagate conspiracies. one, after the 2016 election, president obama said something to me privately which is he didn't think that trump ever could have possibly gotten elected if there was an actual crisis. an economic crisis, if we were at the beginning of a war because, frankly, people understood trump was not necessarily fit for that office, but enough people could take a chance on him with the economy going well, kind of vote their cultural projection and support trump. and i think that bears out. right now you see people who voted for trump probably last time reconsidering, is this really the guy we want to guide us through a pandemic and depression? the other thing is in 2008, i was on the obama campaign. it was a hard-fought campaign. i think we were in good position to win. but when the bottom fell out of the global economy in that fall, the race was over. and that only did president obama win a landslide and win states like indiana and north carolina, but the democrats picked up 60 seats in the

senate. sometimes the reality in the country dictates what happens in the country. the reality in the country right now is very, very bad. donald trump has a lot of responsibility for the reality in the country and the republican party has gone along with him look, line and sinker every step of the way so, of course, they'd go down with him if the current trend continued. >> rev, i was on the other side of that '08 campaign and that is it precisely, how the country experienced the two examples. they responded far more favorably to then-senator obama's response to the economic collapse than then-senator john mccain's. obviously, the rest is history. i want to ask you about the campaign shake-up. you know donald trump. and other people who know him have said the idea that he's ever run anything is part of the fiction of donald trump. he's a guy who sat in an office in a family office without a computer on his desk and with a pen and circled articles and mailed them out to people he liked or admired or wanted to

know. so the idea that a shake-up is going to fundamentally redirect an ailing campaign seems foolish, at best. >> no, you clearly hit it right on the head. he's never run anything. and he is not clearly running a campaign and god knows he's not running the country very well. the problem you have here is someone that is always just dealt on his instincts. the chase is always more exciting to him than the catch. he wanted to run for president and win the presidency. he didn't really want to be president. i don't even think he really thought about what that would encompass and what that would require of him. and that is the problem you have. he loves the idea of campaigning and the crowds and him feeling like he's like elvis. but he really doesn't want a campaign strategy that would discipline him, that would make him really deal with what he ought to be saying, not saying, projecting/not project. he is not manageable.

and he's not, therefore, directing any real goals because he has no real goals other than himself. it's all about him, end of story. >> all right, rev. i'm not done with your donald trump whispering just yet. ben rhodes, thank you for spending the first half of the show with us. after the break, it's not just part of donald trump's re-election strategy. sometimes it seems like it is donald trump's re-election strategy. division. particular lly along racial lin. brand-new accusations coming from his niece. that's next. the minerals from the enamel. i like to recommend pronamel to my patients. pronamel will help push the minerals back into the enamel, to keep the enamel strong. i know it works. and i hear nothing but great things from my patients that have switched to it. about everything. from how much protein we're getting, to how many dates it takes

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i have to press you on it a little bit. if you ever heard him express -- either use anti-semitic slurs or the "n" word or anything else like that? >> oh, yeah, of course i did. and i don't think that should surprise anybody given how racist he is today. >> have you heard the president use the "n" word? >> yeah. >> and anti-semitic slurs specifically? >> yes. >> virulently racist. that was president trump's niece mary trump. she's now the third person we know of to accuse trump of using racial slurs and racist language behind the scenes. trump's attitudes on race are not new but in the country he's

running, a sea change. protests are ongoing like the ones in portland where demonstrations have been under way for 49 days straight sparked by the killing of george floyd and the swell of support for black lives matter. and now the rejection of trumpian race-baiting extends to his own administration as trump continues to defend people's rights to display the confederate flag. today the defense department banned the practice on military property. secretary esper putting out a statement that reads in part, the flags we fly must accord with the military imperatives of good order and discipline, treating all our people with dignity and respect and rejecting divisive symbols. democratic strategist basel joins us. the rev sharpton is still here. i hear it over and over again in my conversations about coronavirus that there's not a debate in the scientific

community about the things we can do. everyone knows what whey can't do. we don't have a vaccine or therapies. what we can do is stay in our homes, wear a mask, social distance. and trump is just on the outside of the mainstream in that conversation. the same is turning out to be true where anywhere from 67 to 74% of americans self-describe as being aligned with or in support of the mission of the black lives matter movement and see racial injustice as a serious problem in this country. he's now, not just on the other side of the 67% to 74% of americans. he's now on the other side of his own pentagon. his own military. >> that's exactly right. and i want to just add to that by giving a story about what's happening here in new york. you know, we just had a primary some weeks ago. and when the next congress takes effect next year, when you go from harlem to the suburbs and beyond, fully an hour and a half

to two hours from new york city, six of the seven seats will be represented by people of color. particularly young people of color. that says a lot about the democratic party, yes. but also a lot about the fact that this president is fueling the energy against him. he's not mitigating it. he's not dampening it. he's fueling it. and despite the fact that he's now engaged, i guess, a different campaign manager in an attempt to shake up that campaign, there is little doubt that donald trump will remain who he is and that there's no one that's going to be able to change him or mold him in any particular way. so this has to be concerning for republicans. it has to be concerning for voters that wanted to take a chance on him because they realize that, perhaps, that they've made a horrible, horrible mistake because, as was said before, if this crisis had occurred during the actual election or just before it, i don't see any way that he could have gotten elected.

>> you know, i don't know if this is a perfect analogy, but investigative reporter bob woodward says this about the truth in government. that the truth emerges. i think you can draw that line through to donald trump's racism and his racism and his true self is emerging at a point in his political lifespan where it is -- you can't put it back in the bottle. you can't unknow what we know after watching trump. he said he saw good people on both sides. when he was talking about impoverished nations he called them bleep hole countries. i mean, is there anything -- and now he's doubling down on it. he isn't even trying to distance himself on things that alienate the voters he needs in his coalition. is it too late for him to do anything to reverse any of those trends in your view, basil?

>> it's not too late for him to make a narrative change. but, you know, as has been attributed to maya angelou many times, i may not remember what you said, but i remember how you made me feel. and voters will have that memory of how they felt when they wanted leadership from him around the coronavirus, what to do, where to go, how do we comport ourselves and he did not provide it. we wanted some racial healing, if not from him, at least from people around him. we did not get that. so that sinking feeling of a leader that's not there for you and will not be there for you, just doesn't go away. no matter what he says and no matter how he may decide to alter his language. we'll still remember how he made us feel. >> it's such a smart point, rev, that he may still try to shift the narrative because he's never attached to anything he said. speaking of how people are made

to feel. i don't think anyone will remember how you made people feel in your multiple eulogies for george floyd. sadly, tragically, you delivered another eulogy yesterday for brandon hendricks allison. tell us about him. >> he was a 17-year-old young man on his way to college. had gotten several offers. he was an excellent athlete, and he was hit with a stray bullet in the streets in the bronx and was killed. and his family asked me to do a eulogy. and i went to do it. eric garner's mother went with me because we wanted to say that as we fight around policing, that black lives matter. we want our kids to understand they matter enough that we cannot, despite the fact we understand the poverty and the disrepair our communities are in, we have got to think more of each other to not engage in violence against each other but to change the environment. and that was my message that we really want to show we matter to

each other as we make the world understand we matter to the criminal justice system. and there's been the violence in chicago, and i had gone out there several years ago and even got an apartment talking to those youngsters. they're not responsible. i said this in the eulogy. there are no gun factories in the west side of chicago. there's no gun factories in the bronx. they are not responsible for the guns there. we've got to tell them that you cannot be tempted to use them against each other because we believe in you and we believe you're worthy of more than that in life. >> we'd like to see those issues around gun control get more attention, rev, in the final 100 days of the presidential election? >> must get more attention. we must take on the fact that we don't even have the identification. we don't even have background checks as law. and this is after multiple mass shootings. that must be an issue. we must take on the nra.

what i'm doing in terms of the eulogy i did in the bronx and other places around the country, in chicago and others, is taking on the nra. who is benefiting from this, and who is suffering is innocent kids in our community because they're taking people in desperate situations and arming them to say take it out on each other rather than our limiting them legally from being able to do this and being able to inundate our communities with weapons. >> the rev al and basil. let me ask that this conversation be continued again and again between now and election day. thank you both for spending some time with us. after the break, donald trump isn't letting facts get in the way. he's stepping up his scattershot attack on joe biden. the sleep number 360 smart bed is on sale now.

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it was always bad, but now it's gotten totally out of control and it's really because they want to defund the police. and biden wants to defund the police. >> sir, he does not. >> look, he signed a charter with bernie sanders. >> it says nothing about defunding the police. >> it says abolish. let's go. give me the charter, please. >> i can watch that on a loop. donald trump fact-checked there by chris wallace of fox news. in his latest attempt to attack joe biden. and just to close the lid there, chris wallace said they checked the charter that trump was

talking about. it, in fact, proves trump wrong. just the president's most recent bungled attempt to undermine his opponent. it's what "the new york times" outlines as a parent. sc scattershot attacks at biden, many of them false. kareem jean pierre. what do you do with that? >> you know, you said this recently on your show and what you said was if donald trump was on "the apprentice" right now, he woubld fired. you are 110% right. he would be fired because of his lack of leadership, lack of management. he would be fired because he can't put a plan together. and you add to that a president who cannot complete a sentence without lying. "the washington post" said this week that in the four years of the -- of donald trump's presidency, he has lied more than 20,000 times. more than 20,000 times, nicolle. and a lot of that was during

this pandemic that we're currently in where 137,000 people have lost their lives. so this is what donald trump is going to do. he's going to lie about joe biden and his record. he's going to lie about joe biden's leadership. he's going to lie about joe biden, what he's going to do as president. and the reason why he lies in particular about joe biden is because he is desperate. voters do not believe him, nicolle. and as you showed the desperation as you showed earlier in your program, you talked about the rose garden. his rant. it was a rant. it was a campaign rally, and what it showed is donald trump's weakness as well. >> you know, i guess just to play the devil's advocate for a nanosecond. he's always lied. he's always lied about his opponents. and it was enough to defeat 16 republicans in the primary and at least in the electoral contest, hillary clinton in the general.

what is the strategy for picking and choosing from which lies to defend your candidate? >> so here's the thing. in the last couple of weeks, donald trump and his campaign have had ads up talking about how unsafe the -- america is going to be under joe biden. lies, clearly. and they've had that ad up trying to define joe biden in that ilk for weeks, and it hasn't worked. it hasn't worked at all. and so i think that's one part of it, too. and that if you think about the contrast, right, last week joe biden put out his build back better, his -- his jobs recover plan. and the thing about this plarn, it's aggressive and meets the moment. it creates jobs that it's going to be -- that brings jobs back in america and it's the complete contrast to what president trump

said. his broken promise in 2016. and also we put out a plan this week on clean energy. and the beauty about that, the clean energy, it's gotten support from labor unions and also climate activists. so the activists. the uniqueness of joe biden really plays a role here. you see how he brings people together. the thing about this is the coalition. this is what we're talking about. the coalition that's just not going to win in november but is also going to help him govern. that's the difference that you see and what people see especially in this pandemic when donald trump has a mismanaged it so poorly. voters see that. they see the lies. they see how he's failed in leadership, historically failed in leadership. that's what's happening now. that's what voters are reacting to. >> you reference something i'm dying to have you back to talk

about. running as the guy with this diversity of support what has never donald trump's thing. it appears to be former biden's but it's tricky. i want to ask you about it next time you're on this show. we appreciate you spending some time with us today. have a good weekend. after the break, going into the weekend with a celebration of lives well lived. a celebratn of lives well lived. i like liberty mutual. they get that no two people are alike and customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need.

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she called them her incredibles. three daughters. they were everything to her. they were the only thing to her especially when times got tough like last year when she struggled with medical issues, diabetes. in november she wrote on facebook about how hard the year had been. she said thank goodness for my molly, my zoe, my kate. those medical issues would serve as preexisting conditions when the pandemic hit. she died of complications from the coronavirus a few weeks ago after a long fight. the triplets now nine years old with start the fourth grade without their mom by their side. her brother told the nbc affiliate in dallas/ft. worth, she'll always live on through them. her incredibles. finally, this is anna carter. a 13-year-old from oklahoma. a pure soul. an unstoppable force.

she had been living with an auto immune disease for about three years. last week she was tired and sore, not uncommon for someone with her condition. on friday she woke up from nap and didn't look like she was feeling well. her dad carried her to the car. her mom with them. less than an hour after there, she was gone. she was unfailingly good hearted with a wild sense of humor. he parents said it's hard to clean the house, to get up in the morning. her mom says she'll doze off, wake up and have to deal with the realization all over again. from tragedy, purpose. anna wanted to help find a cure for scleraderma. now her family is carrying on the fight. if you're able to this weekend, maybe read up on the disease, read up on her family and see how you can help. thank you for watching and for

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