josh, we'll begin with you. in the last hour we confirmed he will sign an executive order. anything else we know? >> yeah, that's right. we knew as of a couple hours ago president trump for the second time in two days had hastily called a press conference that was not previously on his schedule. we did not know exactly what was going to take place at that news conference. now in the last few minutes a white house official confirm pg the presidepg -- confirming the president will sign an executive order on coronavirus economic relief. we don't know exactly what will be in what the president signs today but a pretty good sense of what he is looking at based on some comments the president made last night when he threatened to take executive action and outlined steps including the eviction moratorium that so many democrats and republicans want to be extended right now. the president also looking at a payroll tax deferment. something that is very controversial even among republicans who say it is not the best way to juice the

economy right now. but the president seeming to indicate he will take steps to defer payroll taxes. the president also expected when he gets behind the podium in a couple hours, a couple minutes i should say, to sign something that would extend the unemployment benefits that were federal benefits that had been added when the coronavirus pandemic hit of $600 per week. the president looking to extend that since it is now expired although we are still waiting to see exactly what amount he will extend it with. the president also expected to take some action as it pertains to student loans and making it easier for people who are repaying those student loans to have some relief right now. the president again will be speaking in just a few moments at his golf club in bedminster where reporters were told with just a few minutes' notice he would be going today as the president tries to take action amid this real impasse in congress on relief negotiations >> i want to pinpoint something you said. the payroll tax cut.

one reason that is so controversial correct me if i'm wrong is because you have to be on the payroll to do it. we think of all the people that have become unemployed or furloughed in this crisis. >> that is absolutely right. it is not going to help people who have been laid off from their jobs due to coronavirus the way extending the unemployment benefits will. the other problem with the payroll tax, it is a little unclear whether businesses would be likely to pass that along to their employees knowing that at some point they may have to pay it back to the irs. it is a little unclear how this is going to work in the future. a lot of questions and not only from democrats who have been firmly opposed to the payroll tax but even republican senators who don't think that is the way to go. >> a little murky on how that would work. melissa, you are a former law clerk to associate justice sotomayor. is this constitutional, this executive order? we heard several scenarios from josh, one of them being that the

unemployment payments that will require an expenditure, is something like this legal? >> it will certainly be challenged in the courts and of course for any executive order it has to proceed either from a grant of power from article two which spes fies the president's power or alternatively from a del a gatien of power from -- a delegation of power from the congress to himself and there hasn't been the latter so it will be a question of whether there is some express or implied power from article 2 that justifies all of this. in the text of any executive order a president likely would specify where the grant of power is coming from so a lot of this will depend on what the executive order actually says and what it does. >> josh, there's been some talk, i know house speaker nancy pelosi was on yesterday and asked this pointed question did democrats over play their hand? democrats passed the heroes act, $3 trillion aid package. white house officials were willing to do $1 trillion. they never really met in the

middle. is there any talk right now of whether, really, who is to blame for the failed negotiations? >> at this stage as you said democrats are insisting they still have the upper hand here. really if you look at the politics of this, the people that are the most in a bind over the fact that there is no deal on this are really endangered senate republicans already facing a really difficult political climate in this election. the democrats have suggested they've made some steps in the direction of what the white house wants such as reducing the overall total sum for this bill, but they say that what the white house has been offering, for example, the white house wanted this one-week extension of the unemployment benefits, has not been anywhere near what they would need to see to actually be able to come to some type of middle ground. >> right. democrats saying that wasn't enough because then they'd just have to come back to the table in another week. that wasn't good enough for them.

melissa, one thing we've learned for sure is the legal challenges take time. so let's say the president does sign an executive order that gets challenged. how long could that draw things out? would that mean that americans would not get their aid? >> well, again, that's a great point. it sort of speaks to the broader political theater of all of this. it will likely be challenged. it is unlikely that if it is challenged those executive orders would be able to go into effect until it was actually resolved. and that resolution may go all the way to the supreme court. this looks like it could simply be a kind of political theater for the pr see to show support for unemployed americans and those who are struggling but it is unclear whether this will actually ever get into the pockets of americans before the election. so this may again just be a ploy to get votes for a president really out of favor with a cohort of the american public that is really struggling right now. >> you're both going to stay with us leading up to the

president's news conference. as we await some kind of action from the white house and congress on unemployment benefits tens of millions of americans continue to struggle to make ends meet after being laid off or furloughed as a result of the pandemic. msnbc correspondent david gura is in brooklyn, new york and joins me with more. good to see you. we are hearing from treasury secretary steven mnuchin and senate majority leader mitch mcconnell and they say they don't want this aid because it is an incentive for people to stay home. some are making more than they did when they were working. what are you actually hearing from real people on the ground about how crucial these benefits are? >> reporter: quite the opposite. i've been in employment lines and people said they want to work. they desperately want to be working again and are unable to find those jobs. experts i have spoken with, economic experts, policy experts have said in a normal economy that might be the case. if the government was offering you a flat amount of money that might be enough not to seek out a job but right now there simply aren't enough jobs available. i talked to george wentworth

about this with the national employment law project, a real expert on unemployment insurance. we talked about how critical these benefits have been so far. how critical they would be at this point. not just to individuals who have lost their jobs but to the economy as a whole. let's listen to what he had to say. >> the thing about unemployment insurance is these workers are not putting that money in the bank but right back into their local economies to pay for food, housing, utilities, transportation -- all of the basic needs. so this money is keeping the economy rolling and it's essential for workers and it is essential for the overall economic health of the country. >> things are so tenuous right now, george was getting at that as we spoke. this has sort of kept the u.s. economy afloat. there have been people who made mortgage payments or rent payments now will be unable to do that because they don't have this cash on hand. this lapse is really important. you were talking to melissa

murray a moment ago about the lag times we could face. it is going to cause a lot of problems with people not having what was a rather substantial increase in the kind of benefits they were getting. you know, $600 coupled with state employment made that a much larger sum. there are now people trying to get by on $250 or $300 a week on average. >> we know how high the rents are in new york let alone several big cities. when we are thinking about the eviction moratorium lapsing, these added benefits lapsing, people that you spoke with, how close are they to being evicted? >> reporter: recently i was in tulsa, oklahoma a city with a long history of trouble with evictions, and people were quite worried about what is going to happen. a lot of that stems from the confusion surrounding the policy at this point. they don't know if the moratorium is going to be put back in place, if it were put back in place would it be retroactive? they had a lot of questions about the process, itself. you were talking with melissa murray a moment ago. i go back to that conversation

about what is causing the lag here. what could cause the lag. a story throughout this crisis has been how ill equipped state employment agencies have been throughout all of this. when the job market was doing well a lot of those agencies thinned out their work force to be frank. they didn't have as many people working in the jobless agencies and have outdated technology and all of a sudden hundreds of thousands of people filing for these benefits. that placed an enormous strain on the state agencies and made it very difficult for people to get their benefits. we are now 20 weeks into this crisis and there are people who lost their jobs in the early days and still didn't get their benefits. as all of this plays out and the politics are interesting and they are important, it is really going to make this even more complicated for folks. if the president signs this executive order, if it stands, if there is a deal that is brokered between the democrats and the republicans in congress, there is going to be a lag time between when that is approved and implemented and when people get that money and it can last weeks if not months if the republicans get what they want, which is benefits tied to somebody's income before he or

she lost his job, it's going to take a long time and a lot of technical know how on the part of the states to get the money to those people who lost their jobs. this again is a crisis where people are really struggling to pay bills in the near term. they need to pay rent, pay for their car payments, and it is going to place a real strain on them. >> an important point to remember these ill equipped offices. no wonder we are seeing these long lines just one thing after another. nbc's david gura in brooklyn, thank you. we are moments from president trump's news conference scheduled to begin at 3:30 eastern. my colleague andrea mitchell picks up our coverage after the break. we will bring you the news conference live when it begins. stay with us. you're watching msnbc. growing odors. that's why we graduated to tide pods sport. finally something more powerful than the funk. tide sport removes even week-old sweat odor. it's got to be tide. hold on one second... sure. okay... okay!

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good afternoon. i am andrea mitchell with our special coverage of president trump's expected news conference expected to be an unprecedented power grab by the president within minutes a white house official says the president will try to circumvent congress by

signing zek executive orders on the stimulus plan. last night president trump telegraphd this move blaming democrats for failed talks on the coronavirus relief package and saying he would take matters into his own hands. >> if democrats continue to hold this critical relief hostage i will act under my authority as president to get americans the relief they need. and what we're talking about is deferring the payroll tax for a period of months until the end of the year and i can extend it at a certain period. >> these are the issues nbc news is reporting where there are key sticking points. the president could sign an order on any of these from extending unemployment insurance to distribution of state and local government funding. there is also a chance with this president that what he is signing has nothing to do with any of this. i have a great panel who will be joining me in a moment.

i want to start with the maryland senator who is on the appropriations committee as well. thank you very much, senator. let's talk about what we know or think he is going to be doing. a number of things i understand according to members of congress that he could do is he could delay the evictions. he could extend the waiver on mortgage and rental evictions. he could delay student loan payments potentially as well. what about the payroll tax? if he delays that there would be a potential tax liability at the end of the year. but what about appropriating -- well, taking appropriated money from the cares act that has not been spent and trying to apply that to continuing the extension of the unemployment insurance? would that work legally? >> i don't think so. he will require the cooperation of the states to do that and, of

course, he doesn't want to give another dime to state and local government as far as this relief package. let's remember that going into these negotiations the president's priority was to get a tax break for three martini lunches for business executives. he wanted $1.8 billion to rebuild the fbi building at its current location so no one could compete with the trump hotel. he wasn't getting those things so he sort of picked up his marbles and went home and i'm very worried, andrea, that this package is going to be more show than real relief for americans who need it desperately right now especially the extension of the $600 on the unemployment insurance. >> let's just play this out for a moment. that is the main thing that is affecting so many millions of americans. it's already expired a week ago. now we're going into the second week. we know the house passed back in

may the cares act, or rather the previous act, and it has been sitting on mitch mcconnell's desk. he hasn't brought it to the floor. so the president claiming that the democrats are holding all of this up, they can say, well we offered to take in the last negotiations take a trillion dollars out of it. where are the republicans and the white house coming up? there's been no compromise on that, the big dollar figure. but what if he goes and does what he is saying by executive order? would then the house democrats or congress have to go to court and try to stop him with a temporary injunction? then you would have politically the theater of him saying that the democrats are trying to take away the money he is trying to give people. wouldn't you? >> yeah. i don't think we want to do that. if the president can put in place an extension of the eviction moratorium that's a good thing. but remember what that does. it doesn't mean that the people who have to make their rent

payments have that extra income to make the payments so it will defer eviction which is better than it happening right now but th easier way to get that done, andrea, was to have a vote on the heroes act in the senate which includes not only an eviction moratorium but also a rental assistance fund so that those tenants can pay their landlords. the landlords, also, have financial obligations to the people they owe money to. that is why both the rental assistance fund that was in the heroes act as well as the extension of the $600 a week is so important. i mean, the president is talking about a payroll tax deferral. that doesn't help any of the 30 million americans who are out of work. they're not getting a paycheck to begin with so, you know, giving them a loan doesn't help. they're not getting any payroll taxes deferred. by the way, the payroll tax

deferral puts more money in the pockets of higher salary and higher wage earners than the people who need it most. at the end of the day everybody has to repay it anyway. so that is not the smart way to go if you want to help people most in need. >> what about the $600? can he take money that has not yet been spent on what was passed before in the cares act and try to apply it to continue paying people the $600, or resume paying people the $600? can he do that? doesn't congress have the power of the purse? >> congress does have the power of the purse. i don't think he'd be able to come up with enough money to do that. states would be very anxious about advancing funds without knowing whether they get it back. when it comes to the $600 the fastest way to get that done would be to vote on it. the president has been opposed. let's be really clear.

the president has been opposed to extending the $600 a week. in fact, the only proposal mitch mcconnell has put on the table before he walked away from the negotiations was cutting that to $200 a week. he wanted to cut that by two-thirds. so if the president was serious about trying to make sure we keep the $600 a week going, well, let's just vote on it and get it passed. that is what the heroes act does along with making sure schools and child care centers and others that are really in need have some of the support they need. most of all we need the 30 million americans out of work to have at least some income to pay their bills, rent, mortgages, utilities. and that is what we could do if we had a vote on the heroes act. >> what about the optics of him doing this at his luxurious

bedminster golf resort with the news conference yesterday and club members who pay more than $300,000 for membership in their casual clothes, carrying drinks not wearing masks when they first walked into the room and then jeering at the reporters. they played hail to the chief. this is supposed to be a news conference. why is he on a golf course if this is so urgent? one would wonder why he isn't back in washington. >> a couple points here. now we kind of know why his top priority was getting the ax break for executives for three martini lunches. those are all the folks cheering him on. those are the folks who are going to benefit from taking deductions for their business lunches. here we have a really strange situation. mitch mcconnell is the republican leader in the senate. half of his caucus members, republicans have told us, don't want to vote for one penny. so what did mitch mcconnell do? he walked away from the talks.

he's been awol. so he contracts out his negotiating authority to president trump. where is president trump? at his golf resort in new jersey and then he sends mnuchin and mark meadows in. clearly with instructions to blow up these negotiations. they were not willing to compromise. i guess because the president wants to have a big press event today at his club. this is really going to do great damage to the country. all those millions of americans who are hurting are not going to really benefit from what the president is announcing because for the most part he is not able to implement it. maybe the extension on the eviction moratorium will stick. many of the other provisions will be very difficult to implement in an effective way. so the better course of action would have been let's negotiate seriously and have a vote.

the reason they couldn't do it is because they don't have the votes of at least half the senate republicans and mitch mcconnell says he needs them to bring something to the floor. so that is why you're seeing this spectacle of, you know, the president's negotiators walking away from the table. they can't even deliver their own caucus and they don't want to ask democratic senators who are willing to do the right thing to provide the necessary votes to pass this important relief. they are playing politics at a time when the country desperately needs real help, not showmanship at trump's new jersey golf club. >> senator chris van holland of maryland thank you very much and thank you for being with us and our special coverage continues ahead as we continue to wait for the president's remarks. my panel is next. we'll take a quick break. of 4 p. ...90% clearer skin at 4 months... ...after just 2 doses.

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i'm andrea mitchell. welcome back to our special coverage.

just moments from now president trump is expected to hold a news conference and sign an executive order on covid relief. now to my panel. the former u.s. attorney and host of "the talking feds" podcast harry litman. nyu professor of law melissa murray and former representative donna edwards from maryland. and on the phone from the president's event itself, in bedminster, new jersey, associated press white house correspondent and msnbc contributor. of course jonathan let's start with you since you are on the ground there in bedminster. you experienced the members of the club jeering the reporters coming in initially without masks last night at the news conference that was called unexpectedly. what are you seeing today? are they also or other people there as well? >> andrea, here we go again. we are now in the ball room a few minutes from the president's news conference. you can see the podium set up on a desk where he will sign the

executive orders and yes members of the country club have gathered. so far not as many as last night. probably a couple dozen but more coming in as we peespeak. at this point most are wearing masks. last night when we were here most were not wearing masks. it was only after reporters' tweets noting that, that a staffer came in and started handing out masks to those who wanted them. it should be noted not everyone did put a mask on. it as small crowd right now. the president pushed back at the idea that he was violating new jersey's coronavirus safe regulations because he said it was a political event which would allow about a hundred people in the room. but even if that is the case there were more than a hundred people once you factored in the club members, reporters, white house staff, and secret service. to this point we haven't been booed but the day is young. >> indeed. of course this is unprecedented

on any level but also most importantly to the millions of americans who have not had any kind of relief is the fact that the president is going to we believe sign an executive order, perhaps on -- extending or renewing the mortgage waiver and rental waiver which i understand from democratic sources on the hill he legally can do. but as we watch the crowd live you see that they do have masks. these are members of the club. they spend about 300 plus -- $350,000 a year for membership dues. this is a very ritzy part of new jersey where the bedminster club is. obviously beautiful acres and lots of events there. they rent the space out, at least they did before the president, before donald trump was elected president there were weddings and other events there. tell me about the group that is

now in the back of the hall and the unusual playing of "hail to the chief" that also took place which is not something we would ever hear in the white house briefing room. >> no, you're right. we would not. we would not. i anticipate we may very well hear it again today. i'm looking at the crowd now. just a few dozen. smaller so far than yesterday. at this point just not all of them are wearing masks which again is a change -- just about all of them are wearing masks which is again a change. it shows another norm this white house has shattered, this president, to have an official white house event paid by the taxpayers at his golf club. last night's speech, news conference really didn't deliver any news. yes, he said he warned that he would sign, he could sign executive orders which we believe he'll do today but otherwise acted as almost sort of a mini rally or week in review as he tried to tout through what his administration had done this week to battle the coronavirus which has now killed more than 160,000 americans and has endangered his re-election

chances. i should also note, andrea, that it's been a procedure for people to come close to the president and that includes those of us in the white house press pool to receive a rapid covid-19 test. here in bedminster the last two nights that has not happened. they are doing temperature checks which is a modest help but of course wouldn't pick up someone who has positive for the virus but is asymptomatic. those of us here not tested. there is a little distance between us and the president and between the crowd and us but certainly those in the back of the ball room, the club members, are not 6 feet apart. >> and of course it is an indoor event, which immediately goes against guidance, public health guidance to say nothing of new jersey rules. let me bring in harry litman on the leelt of this. if there is an executive order and they are trying to reestablish the $600 supplemental unemployment compensation, that would mean interfering with the power of the purse, the appropriating

power of congress. it has been suggested by a number of legal authorities talking to the president that he now under the recent d.a.c.a. supreme court ruling has unusual powers to be able to do this kind of thing. can you help us sort that out? >> sure. d.a.c.a. won't do it. the very most and it's already an aggressive reading of d.a.c.a. would go to the other three, andrea, where he is not allocating, no checks are going to taxpayers, rather he is saying i'll hold off on making you pay us. it's possible you could use d.a.c.a. or specific authority in different statutes to try to get at that but this is the important item and that involves checks going out. what he is going to try to say is, well, the money is already there. i'm just going to take it from peter to pay paul. but that is exactly the sort of thing that congress does. they make those decisions. so it is at best dicey. he made the same kind of argument with the wall. they won't give me my money i'm going to take it from another

pot and put it there. there's been raging litigation about that. as a practical matter, what is going to happen here is he'll sign it, get sued the next day, it'll go to court, and the big question is, will the court put a stay on? will it say, hold everything while i decide if it's legal, because probably you're going to lose? if that happens, none of this will occur before the election. if on the other hand that court or the supreme court says, go ahead while we figure it out, then some amount and i don't think it is going to be $600 may go forward from this other pot. >> and, donna edwards, that brings up the question of the political theater involved in all of this. because that would put the democrats on the defensive even though they had legislated a far more comprehensive package back in may that is sitting on mitch mcconnell's desk. but they would then be going to court to stop the president from giving people an extension of

that $600 or other benefits. >> well, but let's be clear, andrea, that first of all the president of the united states has no trouble stomping all over the article 1 branch and the appropriation powers granted in the constitution to the congress. but what democrats really want is for legislation to be considered in the senate that is then on the table, comprehensive legislation that's been there for three months and the senate hasn't acted on it. that would do the very thing that the president is trying to do in a very piece meal way through these executive orders. and let me just say it is a reminder, this piece meal approach to coronavirus relief is a reminder of the piece meal approach that the president has taken to testing and to attacking the coronavirus that has been completely ineffective. and so i think if the president really were acting in his executive authority he'd be

pressuring republicans in the senate to bring the heroes legislation to the senate and make sure that there are guaranteed benefits of $600 a week for people who are unemployed so that they can pay their mortgages and not just have a moratorium so they can pay their rent, so they can buy their groceries and other kinds of services that they need. and this administration continues to fail in providing the leadership to do that so the american people don't have to worry about a patchwork quilt of response to coronavirus but something that is more capr comprehensive. >> at the same time, the democrats have said they don't want to do a package that doesn't include state and local. the states are suffering. we know what's going on in states across the country, republican as well as democratic states. but is that a deal breaker for

democrats and -- because the white house is absolutely refusing on that. >> well, i think what we have right now, i mean, we'll see the pressure that's coming to bear on states, but it isn't just to bear on states. it is on the american people. with states and local governments facing the fact that they may have to layoff, furlough first responders, that they aren't going to be able to meet local needs, that the school districts that are out there aren't going to be able to meet their needs to educate students in a safe way through this coronavirus, and so the impact is not just about what the president doesn't want to do or what republicans don't want to do but what the impact is on every day citizens living in communities who are going to see a lack of services because their state and local governments have been brought to the brink. >> and of course the snap money, the food money for school children and others around the country is not included in anything that has been agreed to

by the republicans. we'll take a quick break. jonathan, just give me a read on the room right now. do you see the secret service agents? is there a sign the president is about to come in? >> i think we still have a few minutes. we haven't gotten the two-minute warning. yesterday it was a five-minute warning. the agents have not appeared near the podium. certainly they are elsewhere in the room. the crowd is still filing in. it remains smaller than yesterday. we have a few dozen people, maybe 50 or 60 and people are still arriving though everyone today is wearing a mask which is a notable change. we are still at holding pattern for the president, though. >> let's just explain to people, that you are part of the group of reporters that travels with the president. in the case of bedminster he stays there. you stay in the closest town you can. you were brought over for this news conference so you come over when he is doing an event there. >> that is exactly right. i am part of the 13 member presidential press pool that always travel with the president

no matter where he goes. this group was with him thursday in ohio for a couple stops and that concluded and he arrived here in new jersey late thursday night. we've been here in new jersey and he is staying about a town or so away but we are then summoned when the president is to make news or have a public appearance. that does not happen when he is just on his course golfing but it does if he is having a news conference which he did with very short notice last night and now again this afternoon. i should note that after this official event here at the white house the press pool and the president himself will travel by helicopter to the hamptons where he has a pair of big money fundraisers. >> some of the wealthiest communities in the country on the long island shore of course. big fundraisers tonight as well as then coming back to bedminster. we'll get back to you in a moment. of course we are waiting for the president to come in to sign executive orders on at least some of the benefits. we're not sure whether it is the financial benefits or extending

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we are waiting for president trump's announcement of what executive orders he is going to be signing today. he is at bedminster, new jersey his golf resort. you see the american flags and the podium with the presidential seal. this is an unusual, two day event thus far, last night saying he was going to do this

and now carrying it out today saying he is going around congress to try to restore some of the elements of the benefits package for covid relief, not saying specifically yet which elements. if he does try to restore the $600 in unemployment compensation it would be controversial if not illegal and would certainly be challenged because congress appropriates money not the president of the united states. josh ledderman national political reporter for nbc news is watching this with us from washington. josh, let's talk about what might he be doing including trying to restore the waivers on evictions for mortgage holders or renters who are so pressed. this wouldn't guff them the money they need to eventually pay that rent or mortgage. so he would not -- they would not be getting money as far as we can tell legally from any executive order he would be

signing today. >> that is exactly right. a whole lot of questions, andrea, about how this would work. whether people would have to pay back this money later. whether businesses would even be likely to pass along those savings to their workers knowing that there might be this possibility that it was going to catch up with them later when they file their taxes down the line. also, similar problems with this plan, andrea, to what we saw with the federal uninsurance benefits that a lot of the state systems are so antiquated for dealing with all of this that if you start to try to get everybody to make these big changes to what they're doing real quickly it becomes very complicated. we saw that with the unemployment insurance where the federal government essentially went with the $600 number not because it was the best number but because it was a flat rate as opposed to trying to do percentages that would be far too complicated for the systems to catch up with at this all at

once but really the key thing for the white house here, andrea, according to people we're speaking with who are close to the president is that they want him to be out front and center on this. they want people to see the president engaged, trying to take steps ahead of the election to help them economically, particularly as this narrative has been bulding over the last week or so that the president was maa on this, the self-proclaimed deal maker was unable to reach a deal himself. and so here we are on a saturday afternoon at a hastily arranged news conference two days in a row. the white house intent on putting the president out there to show he is taking concrete action to try to bring relief to people even if some of those steps he announces today are ultimately challenged in court. >> and of course after this he is going to be going as we just discussed with jonathan to the

h hamptons one of the wealthiest communities in the country to raise money for his campaign. the contras between that and the people without their $600 which expired last week of unemployment compensation and one of the republican arguments here has been certainly from some of the people in the white house as well that there is, and from people on capitol hill, that there is no incentive for people to get jobs if they get too much money from unemployment compensation which ignores the fact that most of those jobs have disappeared during the pandemic and that jobs as we saw from the numbers yesterday are hard to come by and extremely rare for people with the 1.8 million more people who were unemployed last month. let me also talk about what has been going on while we are here and watching what is going none bedminster, of course, joe biden is in delaware and we don't know

exactly what stage the vice presidential election is at but, jonathan, one of the new developments that happened overnight was -- nbc and just before that the ap reporting michigan's governor whitmer was actually having a two-hour meeting with the former vice president a week ago sunday unknown to anyone, secreted in on a private plane from michigan and that she as we first reported on thursday is very much still in this mix along with a lot of other members including a lot of other people including two house members. what is the state of play? >> i think, andrea, the vice president has indicated this week is when he would make the selection but he is not quite there yet. we do anticipate it will be before his convention or lack thereof in milwaukee the date he

is going to accept the nomination and i think the formulation is there are two persons at the top of the list. that is senator kamala harris and the former national security adviser susan rice. they have sort of been in the pole position but they are not alone. and governor whitmer the news here she had been in for the in-person interview, lengthy, reinforces that. the vice president is still keeping his options open. congresswoman bass is another on the list. senator warren from massachusetts according to our reporting was a real front-runner at the beginning stages of this. during the height of the pandemic in march and april but after the death of george floyd the vice president's teams calculations shifted and there seems to be more energy around a candidate of color but of course that would not be governor whitmer in this case. certainly the president and his team are eying this with great interest as they prepare to certainly be some sort of verbal

onslaught for whoever vice president's pick ends up being. >> and my reporting on this, donna edwards, is that gretchen whitmer is very aware that there would be considerable blowback from many people in the black community, black women in particular, if the highly qualified black women on that list including kamala harris and susan rice, karen bass, who has had other controversies surrounding her possible selection, but those people are on that list, were finalists from all of our reporting, and if he were to choose a white running mate, the governor of michigan, one of the things they might be saying is that would elevate the first black governor because her lieutenant governor is african-american and he would then become acting governor and poised to take over if he -- in a special election. what do you think the reaction from black women would be, donna, and members of the house caucus who have two of their own

on this list if they are passed over? >> first of all, i think we still have an incredibly talented group of women who seem to be on the list and frankly i think many of us don't really know what the list is because we are not in the room. i don't put a lot of stock into the idea that if it is not a black woman or woman of color that joe biden has blown it. i don't believe that at all. i think these are very credible choices that the vice president has from which to choose and my view is the importance of having a ticket that is a ticket that can win, the most important thing to all of us as americans and democrats. i don't put a lot of stock in that. that would be fantastic if it

were a black woman. not an absolute requirement. in order for joe biden to get strong support among the communities we need in order for joe biden to win the election. >> and when you look at kamala harris and susan rice believed to be among those still in this group from all of our reporting, donna, they are believed to be the most likely choices if he does choose an african-american woman. susan rice experienced, the comfort level, he knows her best. as well we know she has never run for elected office. at the same time kamala harris has run a presidential campaign. she is attorney general in california. someone he is not as close to and there have been questions in the past about how loyal she would be because of her being an

ambitious presidential dacandide herself. where do you think that would come down? do you think either would be the most influential with joe biden? >> i think it is hard to know and with each one of these women you can draw up a list of pluses and minuses and at the end of the day i think that if joe biden chooses kamala harris or susan rice, we'll be able to draw up a strong list of pluses for both of their canndidacies and in either case it will be because joe biden has confidence in her, believes she is loyal, and let me just say at the outset that this idea she shouldn't have ambition is ridiculous. so i don't think joe biden is paying attention to that. we want an ambitious vice president and we want an ambitious president for the american people. that is not going to stand in the way.

i look at all of these candidates and i see ticks on the plus side and some ticks on the minus and i think it is going to balance out and we'll have a really strong ticket on the democratic side in order to take on the trump/pence ticket. >> donna edwards, thank you. we have our other guests as well. we'll be right back after a quick break. ack after a quick break. i wish i could shake your hand. granted. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ arecord low mortgage rates have now fallen even lower. by refinancing, you can save $3000 a year with one call to newday usa.

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i am andrea mitchell at msnbc in washington. we are watching bedminster, new jersey. that podium with the presidential seal, the flags, expecting at any minute the president of the united states, donald trump, coming in to sign executive orders. we think there is more than one. and he is trying to show that he can take action without congress to extend benefits, covid relief, to millions of americans whose unemployment insurance supplemental, the $600 a week ran out a week ago to extend or

reimpose rather a waiver on evictions for home owners facing mortgage deadlines, mortgage payments, and renters around the country as well as other key benefits that have been stalled in the gridlock of congress. the house democrats had passed a bill back in may. it has not been acted on by the senate. the talks broke down on friday. they were trillions apart. the democrats demanding $2 trillion and came down $1 trillion and the white house offering far less than that at least a trillion dollars less than that. joining me now is our panel. let's go to melissa murray nyu professor. can the president by executive order take these actions or does it matter whether he is taking actions that require expenditures, appropriated expenditures that is the province of congress? >> again, that is the whole question. it really depends on how this is structured. under the constitution the president under his article 2 powers can i