with no jobs receiving $600 a week no longer have that. eviction protection. and for many of them, health care. why does this seem to be a lack of urgency coming out of washington? and where do negotiations between democrats and republicans stand right now. federal officers or not, street protests continue in portland and other cities across the country demanding change. what the oregon governor promises in the absence of those officers. and the clear pemessage from president trump to those taking to the streets. the chosen one. the downdown is on jobe to pick a running mate. what is the name at the top of the list right now? the woman he appeared with last night. as the country deals with all that a dangerous hurricane is threatening lives and property up and down the eastern seaboard after battering preek. that's where we begin. hurricane eye say yas now barrelling toward florida's east

coast and getting stronger. the category 1 storm's maximum sustained winds increased to 85 miles an hour this morning. the latest projections show it arriving at florida's treasure coast by this evening. within the last few hours president trump has approved an emergency declaration ahead of the storm. joining me thousand with the details, january he issa webb. what states are on the watch list right now? >> all of the east coast sections really need to be watching out for isaias. it continues to be an unhealthy storm. it is disorganized. right now. but we are watching for it to increase in the next 24 hours. it continues the threaten the florida coastline. our latest update, just showing you it has shifted to the east. mostly eastern florida going to see the storm surge, hurricane-force winds, up to at least 80 miles per hour. it will race across that area

going into tonight, all the way into sunday morning. then you can start to see across the carolinas. we could have land fall for wilmington to cape hatteras. then it just will not die. it will expand all the way into sections of the northeast. what we are seeing right now is isaias is really starting to slow down. it is not an organized system. but as it sits in a warm body of water, it will continue to gain steam. so right now the florida coastline. we have people that are out on the beaches trying to enjoy the great weather they are currently seeing right now. but hurricane warnings are in place across east florida. the storm surge. we are talking potentially up to two to four feet. >> hopefully people are heeding warnings out on the beaches there. january he issa webb, thank you. wohl continue to track that storm. after millions of americans lost their enhanced unemployment benefits overnight there is really no relief in sight. lawmakers are stuck in gridlock.

republicans originally said they opposed the $600 amount. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell questioned paying people more money to stay home than go to work on the belief it will cause people to choose to be unemployed. congress is now in recess. talks between democratic leaders in congress and leaders in the trump administration continued today. the democratic senator chuck schumer gave an update a short time ago. >> there are many issues that are still very much outstanding where we are apart. but we had a series discussion and we went down piece by piece. we are not close yet, but it was a productive discussion. now each side knows where they are at and we are going to work very hard to come to an agreement that meets the needs of the moment. >> josh joins us from the white house. schumer meeting with pelosi and

meadows and mnuchin today. schumer said close but not yet. how close are they to a compromise. >> leaders emerging from a several hours long meeting on this expressing an urgeansy to get this done. also expressing a more optimistic tone than we have heard in the last several days. both side saying progress was made. chuck schumer said this was the best day of negotiations they have had so far. but also making clear they have quite a long way to go. congressional democrats know they have a lot of the leverage right now both because senate republicans have been unable to get behind really one position and also because the white house has been all over the map on what they want to see out of this deal. from everything that we heard this morning from both sides, it seems that democrats have really been sticking firm on two points that are very important to them that are still causing an impasse. one of the idea that the unemployment benefits need to be kept where they have been, at

that $600 federal plus-up, whereas the white house negotiators have been trying to get it at somewhere less than $600. the other sticking point, democrats insisting it not be a one week short-term fix, a band-aid. democrats want to see one deal now that is going to take care of this for several months. listen to what steve mooun mnuchin, the treasury secretary, had to say about that part of the negotiation just a few minutes ago. >> it is a priority for the president to make sure that we deal with the issue that unemployment has run out and the rental eviction. so we understand that the speaker and senator schumer want to have an overall deal. so we'll be back here working full-time until we can accomplish something for the benefit of the american people. >> the staff for those negotiators, they are going to go ahead and meet again tomorrow ahead of another meeting of the

congressional leaders and the white house negotiators on monday. at that point, that's essentially where we are at. still an impasse. meanwhile, those unemployment benefits, they are now expired sponsor americans who were depending on them across the country. >> another story that's causing an uproar on social media today. last night while on air force one the president said he would ban tiktok. that's a popular social media app owned by a chinese media company. he said that could happen as early as today? >> that's right. the president came back on air force one as we were flying back last night from his trip to tampa. at first, he was more coy. he said they were taking a serious look at tiktok. there were concerns about data collected from americans that could be turned over to the chinese government because its parent company is chinese owned. then we pushed him a little bit. the president went out and said it.

he said he is going to ban tiktok here in the united states. we don't know exactly what that's going the mean and what kind of authority the president is going to use although he insisted he does have the authority to do that himself. the president also was very pessimistic about what's been reported in the last few days about a potential deal for microsoft to actually buy part or all of tiktok, which would bring some of that company under american control. the president said he was not interested in seeing that. we will have to wait and see what the president does on the tiktok issue. >> the chinese company saying they are willing to divest the u.s. portion of it so millions of american users can stay on the app. thank you for the update. jobe is expected to name his pick for a running mate soon. of course speculation is flying around. the "new york times" reports democratic leaders are furiously trying to lobby for their choice from a field of 12 emwith. i'm joined by nbc's ally vitale. what are you hearing about who the front-runner could be.

i keep hearing names. kamala harris has been the front-runner. ploito has been saying that, but not necessarily a lock to get the job. >> i don't think anyone is a look right now lindsay. as you were saying, speculation is flying. 'tis the season. i heard one operative say we are getting into the silly part of veep stakes. they are pretty much right especially because anyone who is closely involved in this process right now isn't talking. instead, what is spilling out publicly is the lobbying campaign that's happening from allies on behalf of these women who are still in contention. that's why you are hearing ulf these different names, because joe biden said he is going to have a pick in the first week of august. maybe that time line is a little bit malleable but we know the pick is going to come sometime in before the democratic national convention, in the next two weeks. the time ticking down. consider how long the veep

stakes process has been and all the different parts that go into it. of course you have the candidates going through a vetting process. joe biden exploring the personal appeal, who he thinks he can work well with. politics doesn't happen in a vacuum. consider all of the thing that we have seen from time to time joe biden became the presumptive nominee in april. we have had months to think about what joe biden could do in the vpg pick area. he has to choose someone who can deal with the pandemic, the recession, the civil unrest across the country that we have seen since the killing of george floyd several months ago. all of these things feed into this decision. speculation is flying. hopefully we will have a decision soon. >> we know he held a fund-raiser last night with elizabeth warren. any speculation increasing as to what kinds of role, if any, warren will play in a bidened a straying? >> of course. the fact that he would choose to

spend a friday night fund-raising with elizabeth warren, it makes sense especially because that the campaign that i covered for most of 2020. she is a proven fund-raiser, especially in the grassroots area. she brought many donors to that fund-raiser last night, i think to the tune of $1.7 million. it makes sense that they would be using her in that capacity. of course that's where the speculation comes from. and how joe biden is spending his time and with whom is certainly the way we are going to be looking the next few days as we try to figure out who this pick is. those are the tea leaves. he also did a fund raiser with karen bass. we are also look at the fact that he has a long standing personal relationship with suan rice when both of them were in the white house. all of these thing will feed into this decision which is of course political, of course strategic and also personal. >> we willy it there for today, but we will continue to rely on you for your coverage. thank. we told you we would be keeping an eye on hurricane eye

say yas. let's go to wtvj reporter ari oddser. you are at deerfield beach. i understand you grew up there. tell bus the conditions right now. >> well, the conditions right now in deerfield beach are it is a beautiful day here at beach. look behind me. you can see the pier on one side of me. over behind me on the other shoulder the red flags are up, which means no swimming because of the high winds. but this is a banner day for the surfers. this is a day that they live for, the days when the storms are offshore kick up the swells, bringing in waves of the quality we don't usually get here in southeast florida. that said, the rest of the beach is completely normal. you would have a hard time figuring out or even deducing there is a hurricane offshore because there is no level of anxiety here in south florida. south floridians are very savvy consumers of hurricane forecasting. as soon as a storm pops off the

coast of africa, people here start watching it, paying attention to the news coverage, paying attention to our local meteorologists. and they also pay attention to the hurricane models themselves. everybody has seen the track of this storm. everybody by now knows that broward and miami-dade counties are not in the cone of concern. since we are not in the cone of concern people here are really not concerned about this. it is only a category 1 at this point. they need to be more concern up the coast of florida on the treasure coast than we are down here in broward and miami-dade counties. >> hoping everybody stays safe. we will turn back to you if and when those conditions change. thank so much. still ahead, a new jersey city is now the focus of president trump's campaign against mail-in ballots. what really happened there and what local election issues tell us about voter fraud. masks and misinformation. as coronavirus cases surge in the u.s., the president promotes a controversial doctor who

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i want to have the result of the election. i don't want to be waiting around for weeks and months and literally potentially if you really did it right, years, because you will never know. these ballots are missing. you saw patterson, new jersey. you saw many other instances. there is tremendous litigation on that right now. >> patterson, new jersey. now a popular talking point for the president, who has been an a months long campaign to discredit mail-in ballots despite members of his own administration voting via mail this the past going toe far as to tweet whether the election should be postponed. it can't by the way. back to patterson. in may, they handled elections

entirely by mail. four men, including the winners of that election were charged with election fraud. and nearly a fifth of the ballots cast were rejected. while the situation in patterson may fit into the president's narrative they may actually prove something to the contrary. joining me richard hsen author of election meltdown. patterson has a history of election issues over the past years. what does this example tell us about mail-in ballots? does it give screedens to this narrative? >> we have known on a small scale absentee voter fraud can happen. not only did it happen in this patterson case. it also happened to try to get a republican in north carolina get collected in the ninth congressional district in 2018.

they tend to be small scale events and ten to be found out because there are procedures in place to make sure people are not cheating. this was scuffed when someone tried to submit a few money ballots through the mail, which is not the way it is supposed to happen in new jersey. it was found out and there is going to be an investigation. to try to do something like this on a large scale involving the presidential election would be impossible. >> does this show the system works because those ballots were flagged and thrown out essentially? >> yes, it does show that. also, i think this 20% figure of the ballots that have been thrown out, those prospect ballots that were mostly thrown out because of fraud. they were thrown out because people didn't follow elections. i think a bigger problem with this upcoming election is that lots of people who haven't done it before are going to do it wrong. you have a more likely chance of having your ballot tossed if you vote my mail than in person because there are rules in place to prevent fraud and make sure the right people are actually

voting. but those, if you don't follow the direction correctly you run the risk of having your ballot not count. >> president trump has made a difference between mail-in ballots and absentee ballots. is there a difference? >> i think what he is trying to draw a distinction is ballots isn't out to all voters versus people requesting a ballot. in any case, in terms of preventing fraud, signatures are verified when ballots are sent back. often states use ballot tracking to be sure the ballots that come back are the ones that were sent out. sometimes there is a witness requirement. all things that election officials do so we don't have a fraud problem. if you look at the five states that have all mail elections including the republican state of utah, they have very, very low rates of fraud. it is not a problem in places where the systems have been put in place and people have been using it.

>> are these systems ready to handle huge numbers come november? what needs to be done to make sure that people can vote securely and safely. the first thing you have to realize is we don't conduct a single election for president. we are going to conduct over 10,000 elections because we have highly decentralized system. in some places they are in really good shape, ready to go. in other places as we saw, they are not in good shape. one of the first and foremost things we need is more money. congress has only allocated about a tenth of the money we think is necessary in order to have fair and safe elections both by mail and in approximate earn in november. we really need the money more than anything else right now. >> if that money doesn't come, what do we expect come november? would we potentially be waiting weeks to know the results of the election? >> i think if the election is very close, whether that money comes or not, we aring go to be waiting at least a little while. that's because if you look at a state like pennsylvania or michigan, never before this year

did they allow anyone who wants to to vote my mail. it takes longer to process the mail ballots simply because they have to be checked to be sure they are valid and there is no fraud. yes, it might take some time. like a fine wine, a good election count takes time. we want to make sure we get it right. that's important for the people to understand receipt now. >> making an analogy with fine wine. rick hasen thank you for your time. >> ellen weintraub publicly condemned the president's call to postpone the election. what she says the republicans should be doing by november. dozens of lifeguards test positive for coronavirus as crowds flock to the beaches. how the governor is handling an' larming cluster. peaceful protests in the absence of federal troops. we are on the ground with the latest. s.

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break, just in the haas lower, representative raoul great hall have a of arizona tested positive for coronavirus just days after representative louie gohmert of texas. he stunt doesn't have any symptoms and is quarantining in d.c. he participated in harg alongside gohmert days before his diagnosis. we will keep an eye on his condition over the coming days. california meanwhile is reporting alarming new numbers in its fight against coronavirus. the state is now the first to report more than half a million cases of covid-19, capping off a month of skyrocketing case numbers that state officials have struggled to contain. in mid july the governor imposed new restrictions on bars, movies, restaurants and other indoor spaces.

his efforts have done little to halt the charge. 33 counts are flagged for increased hospitalization and limited hospital capacity it is a frightening reversal from the state's early successes fighting covid-19. meanwhile on the east coast officials in new jersey are sounding the alarm. the state is cracking down on house parties and bracing for another possible yub tick in cases after nearly three dozen lifeguards tested positive for covid-19. the infections are linked to one house party and are prompting airbnb to impose rental restrictions on young people. corey cotton is in ship bottom. i remember new jersey was at one point the third hardest hit said. there was a stay-at-home order that helped flatten the curve.

is this a case of being too comfortable. ? >> reporter: it seems that way. it seems like a combination of people needing to let off summer steam. and those who never took the pandemic seriously in the first place. one such incident that you alluded to. the governor had to address in his most recent press conference. it was egregious and the numbers astounding. listen. >> there was a massive house party in jackson that had an estimated 700 people which took nearly the entire jackson town hipp police force plus help from state police and police from other jurisdictions to break up. we don't know how many coronavirus cases may ultimately be the outcome of that out of control party. but you think many, i believe, right? yes it's hot. yes, it's summer. yes, we all want, in many cases need to blow off some steam.

but this is no time for anyone to be vying for induction into the knuckle head hall of fame. unfortunately, all the above instances qualify. >> reporter: specifically when it comes to airbnb rental properties we know that 35 different ones have been suspended at this point now. in addition, let's give you an update on the lifeguard situation. the 35 who tested positive we are learning from the local health depth here, 34 so far have been recovered, have been released and one is bog monitored for symptoms at this point. also it is important note that those case force the lifeguards were link fahd that indoor party and other indoor parties. beach-goers out here should feel confident if they social distancing with their masks they should be good. no outbreaks have been associated with the beach. at new jersey's lowest point they were reporting 7 0 cases a day. yesterday they reported 700.

and 2500 new cases in the last few days. >> you hate things reversing. i am trying to wrap my mind around 700 people at one house party. wow. corey coffin at ship bottom new jersey, thank you. as cases balloon across the united states the president continues to deliver mixed messages in the fight against covid-19 that includes spreading mess information. and attacking leading members of his own coronavirus task force. it started on tuesday during a press briefing when president donald trump doubled down on claims that hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for the virus despite near universal scientific consensus that demonstrates otherwise. the president cited a video which he also retweeted of dr. stella emmanuel, a houston-based physician whose outlandish statements about the pandemic have now been removed from twitter for -- you guessed it -- violating its misinformation policies.

that the president would propagate such information to millions wasn't enough, louie gohmert who was diagnosed said this about masks earlier this week. >> i can't help but wonder if by keeping a mask on and keeping it in place that -- if i might have put some germs, some of the virus onto the mask and breathed it in. i don't know. but i got it. we'll see what happens from here. >> joining us now to discuss is dr. adalja of the john hopkins center for health security. i would like to get your reaction of that clip. >> i think this is just part the misinformation campaign that we have seen from the very beginning of this pandemic. while there is a theoretical risk that you can contaminate yourself by touching your mask, it is not likely that that's major role of infection. and i think this is just more of

the politics behind masks that continues to dominate the conversation and it is really not productive and confuses the general public and makes the job of public health authorities harder. >> we know another representative tested positive and that representative gohmert told his staff in person he had contracted covid-19. representative gohmert is not the only one propagating some of this. jim jordan had an exchange with dr. fauci this week on the hill. let's listen. >> do you see the insistsy dr. fauci? >> there is no inconsistent. >> so you are allowed to protest, millions of people, on one day, in crowds, yelling, screaming, but you try to run your business, you get arrested and if you stood outside of the same business and protested, you don't see a inconsistency there? >> i don't understand why you

are asking me as a public health officials to opine who should get arrested or not. >> you advocated for certain businesses to be shut down. >> you see there he was trying to back dr. fauci against the wall and get him to make an opinion on all the protests that we have been seeing. what's your response to that line of questioning and whether it really helped. >> i don't think it is productive in any way. i think this is just people trying to score political points. and i think it really -- it really denotes kinds of a disdain for expertise that we have seen among so many igs messrs. to see dr. fauci -- so many politicians. the see dr. fauci, who is a hero in the field have to put up with that badgering from someone like that is disgusting the mto me. we are talking about the science. when you take that and translate that into policy that's a different role. i don't think it is fair to put dr. fauci this that position.

it actually is a waste of his time to answer questions from people like that. >> on thursday, "vanity fair" published a shocking article, doctor, which revealed the president's son-in-law put together federal plans for a cohesive response but was not put into practice because it would clash with the president's political ambitions. >> there was a belief in april taking hold in the white house that the virus was on its way out. so at that point it was pretty much just in the blue states. there was little thinking around this, according to my sources, that, you know, if they needed a political response to this, they could just blame those governors, and that would be an effective political response. >> we saw also in the hearing this week with the coronavirus task force representative steve scalise holding up a bunch of papers saying this is the plan,

everybody is saying there is no plan. this is the plan. right now does it appear there is a national cohesive strategy? or does it appear that what that article author was saying is correct, to put it on the shoulders of the governors. >> it clearly has been driven by the states. there has been abdication by the f federal government. from the very start we have been behind on testing. this is what i say is the original sin of the pandemic. we can never catch up and never do enough testing to be able to actually live with this virus. it is something other countries have been able to achieve. for whatever reason we continue the make the same mistakes and now in august we are actually having the same discussions we were having in march about needing to increase testing capacity. you can have tests taking eight days to come back and except to have any modicum of control in this pandemic. we admit this has been an abject failure. the see there was a plan and it wasn't used because of political

reasons, just shows you how horrible the administration has been been at managing this infectious disease emergency. this is not how you do it. there were plans, principles you could have followed but those were never put into place. when people want to blame people, it is not governors of states who had to do certain things, you need to blame the federal government. >> i hate seeing politics mixing with this pandemic. still ahead, before and after, a dramatic shift in portland as federal troops begin to leave the area. the president's vow to keep officers on the ground after a night of peaceful protests. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance,

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i'm just really glad to see that the troops are gone and that peace is -- we are able to keep the peace each without the troops here. >> if the peaceful side has a problem, it seems like it always erupts. you know, for the peaceful people that's here just for peace, if for some reason they get overwhelmed by this situation, it always erupts. >> there is no movement. nothing happened. the government and if mayor hasn't done anything. all they have got to do is do somethi something. >> i'm scared. the police scare me. change the system. it is tearing my family apart. >> black lives matter protests in portland last night went on without major incident or police intervention. this comes days after kate brown

announced federal officers would gradually withdraw from the city. it is a stark contrast to the escalating violence that rocked the area for weeks. despite the clear absence of federal officers on the streets president trump late last night tweeted agents would remain in portland until the demonstrations led by quote anarchists and agitators are brought under whole. maura barrett is on the ground in portland with more. would you characterize the people who were there as anarchists anda agitators? >> reporter: not for the most part. what we have seen happen the last two nights is protesters largely self policed themself. while there were some self agitators present looking to throw things at the federal courthouse and rile people up, people around them in the crowd saying, no, we are mott going to do that, this is a peaceful

protest. and the tactics that we have seen from the federal police to the local police has been night and day. you can see troops behind me at the courthouse. they have been waving at people going by answering questions of anybody that asks them anything going by. this is not what we have seen over the past two weeks. we haven't seen any police presence come out during the nights. when protesters are out here. there have been no dispersal announcements which tends to rile protesters up. no shift into violent energy. when you see the president tweeting like that overnight it is focusing on this 2020 campaign issue of keeping the quote law and order in the democrat-run cities. my team here after being here two weeks and seeing the impacts of that wanted to dig into this further. we are looking forward to playing the piece for you on how

the president made this a political issue leading into the campaign in the next hour. >> maura barrett, thanks so much. still ahead, military moves. what is behind the president's decision to shift thousands of troops between bases abroad. and what it means for the future of u.s. military operations. (food grunting menacingly) when the food you love doesn't love you back, stay smooth and fight heartburn fast with tums smoothies. ♪ tum tum-tum tum tums

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a op ed is making waves penned by alexander vinman. his testimony last november was central to president trump's impeachment. eight months later and after an delay in an expected promotion he retired from the mill last month. this morning saying why. quote, i made the difficult decision to retire because a campaign of bullying intimidation and retaliation by president trump and his allies forever limited the progression of my military career. the purple heart recipient and iraq war veteran served in the military more than 20 years. there is another military

controversy brewing right now in washington that will have a major impact for american military interests abroad after the announce men of a plan critics call a gift to russia. the trump administration announced 12,000 u.s. troops will be pulled out of germany. officials say the move to shift troops and bulk up bases in europe will take billions of dollars and years to complete. why do it now? tessa ar celia is following the story from brussels. tessa arcilla. >> reporter: this move certainly is coming here with a lot of reaction already from germany especially where the troops are going to come from. the 12,000 troops, more than half go back to the united states and the rest distributed here in europe including belgium. mark esper says it is part of a

broad stream that could strengthen nato but critics say it is donald trump wanting to target germany for treating america unfairly when it comes to trade. terrorists in the region. we spoke to lieutenant general ben hodges, commander of u.s. troops in europe. he says there is what he thinks it could mean for america -- take a listen. >> the germans are the one country not being punished by this. we are hurting ourselves. we lose capability that we need to operate in africa, europe, eurasia, and middle east. but also our allies on the east flank, estonia, latvia, lithuania in particular, they know that their security depends on rapid reinforcement. if that is reduced, then the ability to bring in reinforcements to prevent a crisis or respond to a crisis is degraded significantly. so that lessens deterrents and

does not strengthen the cohesion of the alliance. >> reporter: earlier you called it a controversy brewing in washington. it certainly is because the move has already received bipartisan criticism from u.s. lawmakers, certainly the fear here is that this could embolden russia, and it could be a weakness, a chink in the armor that could be taken advantage of by russia and others. >> thank you for starting that conversation for us. i want to bring in "washington post" foreign columnist and associate editor david ignatius. he's also an nbc news political analyst. and president trump says the decision to relocate these troops stems from germany's refusal to pay its fair share to nato. so he's moving headquarters to belgium. he's moving f-16th to italy. these are two countries that spend an even smaller percentage on defense than germany. does this sound more like a personal attack here? we know he's got issues with angela merkel. >> you worry that this is very

much a personal reprisal. it comes before a u.s. election in which president trump wants to tell americans, tell his voters that he's trying to bring u.s. troops home, he campaigned on that in 2016. the sad fact is that nato, our most important military alliance, is weaker now than it's been since it was created. and that's because of pretty systemic efforts by trump to question germany, question our other nato allies. this alliance depends in the end on trust and confidence. confidence that the united states stands behind the security above all of germany, the most important thing country in nato, and that confidence has been eroded. almost as if trump has deliberately tried to undermine it. you could defend the redeployment of nato troops over time. they don't all have to be in germany forever. but to do it now and to further

weaken this relationship with germany and the alliance just doesn't make sense. >> i want our viewers to keep in mind in alienation of nato allies because in june we heard word of -- rather, we heard reports that russia was paying for bounties on american troops. axios interviewed the president this week about that. let's take a listen to a clip. >> no, that was a phone call to discuss other things. and frankly, that's an issue that many people said was fake news. who said it was -- i think a lot of people -- we discussed numerous things. we did not discuss that, no. >> reporter: you never discussed it with him? >> i've never discussed it with him, no. >> the president gets vladimir putin on the phone and doesn't discuss that but is alienating some of our european allies. what do you make of that juxtaposition? >> it's disturbing. donald trump's relationship with russia and with putin from the beginning has been something

that has been mysterious and i think has been damaging. on this question of russian bounties, the intelligence isn't settled but we know that in february it was taken seriously enough that it was included in the president's daily brief. the basic intelligence document the president gets every morning. apparently he wasn't briefed directly. these intelligence briefings are often somewhat scatter shot. the secretary of defense, mark esper, said he was aware of the intelligence in february. the chairman of the joint chiefs, general milley, said in recent congressional testimony that the investigation is ongoing. he's still concerned. it's a very big deal, he says. i mean, you have to think about -- suppose you were the parent of an american service man or woman stationed in afghanistan and there was this issue of the possibility that russia might be paying the taliban to kill americans. again, not settled. but even the possibility would be deeply upsetting, and the idea that the president calls it a hoax, that's his latest after

the axios interview -- it's a hoax. it's just very disturbing. as general milley said, this is the most serious thing imaginable for our military. the president should treat it similarly. >> and finally before we let you go, i want to get your reaction to that op-ed that we mentioned from colonel vinman. let's quote it, he said, "at no point in my career or life have i felt our nation's values undergrade or threat are in more peril than this moment." do you share that sentiment when it seems like loyalty to the president seems to be more of a priority than loyalty to the constitution? according to vinman? >> i found the op-ed by lieutenant colonel vinpl dsvinm painful reading. he bled for his country, got a purple heart in iraq. his case is another example of something we've seen repeatedly which is interference by this president in the professional areas of our military, uniformed

military, of our top law enforcement agency, the fbi, our intelligence agencies. the president again and again has reached down to try to impose the outcomes he'd like to see. and i think that's undermined the professionalism, the independence of the military. lieutenant colonel vinman finally said that's it, he quit, and i think we can understand why. >> david ignatius, thanks for your time. we appreciate it. coming up in our next hour, an emergency declaration in florida as hurricane isaias moves toward the state. the latest on its track and preparations on the ground. plus, ftc commissioner ellen weintraub talks about the president's play to postpone the election. tomorrow at 10:00, join in to "a.m. joy." (upbeat music)

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