white house this hour. it comes amid heightened concern over the president's war on mail-in voting, the reason he is blocking funds to the postal service. he himself admits it. and in an act of total contradiction nbc news confirms that the president and the first lady melania trump requested, that's right, mail-in ballots for themselves on wednesday. and now we're exclusively learning that the postal service issued formal warnings to north carolina, minnesota, and maine that their mail-in ballots may be delivered too late to be counted in the election. postal service general council and executive president thomas marshal wrote this to the state of north carolina. quote, under our reading of your state's election laws, there is a significant risk that ballots may be requested in a manner that is consistent with your election rules and returned promptly and yet not be returned in time to be counted. other states that have received similar letters include pennsylvania, michigan, and washington.

importantly, election officials in wisconsin tell us they have not received a letter like this. we have reached out to multiple states and are waiting to hear back, and we are seeking to understand what motivated the post offices general counsel to issue these warnings. was it out of real concern? is it to sow more doubt. joij me to talk about how the united states postal service battle is impacting their state, the executive director of the north carolina state board of elections, secretary of state of maine, matt dunlap and the secretary of state of minnesota rk , steve simon. all of their offices have received letters from the u.s. postal service. so i quoted north carolina first, so karen brinson bell, let me start with you how did you interpret this letter? >> chuck, we had already been making preparations so really this letter comes as no surprise. it's information that we know because we've been executing

absentee by mail voting for years, decades actually. so many of these deadlines we were familiar with and we had already started educating our voters about many of the deadlines that were highlighted. >> matt dunlap, you've been through a couple of election cycles. is this something you've received in the past, or is this a new warning? >> this is brand new. we've never seen anything like this before, and i have run about 28 statewide elections including several presidential cycles, so this was a bit of a surprise. we had heard about -- of course, everybody's heard about the dispute around the president and his concerns about mail-in voting. we do absentee balloting, and -- but to see this telling people that they should be mailing their ballots first class, they should allow 15 days for delivery time, that is an area of concern for us because we had about 80% turnout by absentee

ballot this last primary cycle. >> and walk me through, matt, your process, how many ballots made it in time? has the postal service been fairly reliable in the past with this? >> the postal service has been highly reliable in the past. in fact, we've had a very large percentage of our ballots returned on time. you know, the ones that don't get back on time usually are sent sometimes postmarked after the election, so we had about 205,000 ballots that were issued and about 185,000 of them were returned on time. of those -- of the balance, some of them were never returned at all for different reasons, but in one town they had 500 outstanding ballots on election night, 25 of them were turned in, so you know, it's a pretty high success rate, which again, raises questions about why they'd be sending out this letter now so far in advance of the general election. >> steve simon.

how did you interpret this letter, and did you view it as helpful or concerning? >> concerning. i view it as saber rattling, totally unnecessary and totally inappropriate in a democracy in the year 2020. the post office ought to know better, and they do know at least based on minnesota's procedures there are other things the letter doesn't account for. we have a court ruling that will give our citizens more time, not less from the time they mail it and the time it arrives. that seems not to be accounted for in the letter. this is a problem, i think this applies everywhere, whoever it is who may be trying to slow down postal service, they are not going to slow down democracy, period. americans will find a wary. minnesotans will find a way, we always do and this stuff is not going to work. we'll make sure it won't. >> let me ask all of you, and karen brinson bell i'll start with you, do you plan on trying to change some deadlines, do you plan on just creating a public service announcement to try to get people to be more aware of

this potential problem with the mail? >> really this letter has come actually late in the course of election preparation. we're 21 days from sending out our first absentee by mail ballot. september 4th, north carolina is the first in the nation to send out by mail ballots, and so we've already been sending out the public service announcements. our instructions indicate to voters that they should be returning their ballot envelope by october 27th if they use the mail, so really, our whole objective and has been since we learned about the pandemic is to not let there be hysterics but to focus on ensuring that the voters are able to cast their ballot without fear of disease and now without fear of it not getting back to the board of elections. we're standing by that and will continue to do so. >> matt dunlap, are you seeing voters take matters into their own hands here a little bit? i mean, do you sense that they're going to want to return their ballots earlier?

do you feel like you have to have dropoff locations? are you going to make any changes base od on this letter? >> we're under a state of civil emergency and we're in close communications with the governor's office who can make some changes by executive order as needed and did so in the run up to the primary, but you're absolutely correct, chuck, our voters have stepped up. when we encouraged people to vote by absentee, typically we see about a 15% turnout of eligible voters in a primary and probably about 20% of them vote by absentee. this cycle we saw almost 30% turnout and over 80% of them voted by absentee. we expect to see similar numbers in november and i don't think the voters are going to be dissuaded from participating with confidence and without fear in order to participate in this upcoming election. >> steve simon in minnesota, are you going to have to change any deadlines, or are you going to create a psa campaign? >> we are doing a psa campaign, and frankly this is consistent

with our messaging as matt just said. it's about applying for your vote from home ballot early, it's about sending it back as early as you feel comfortable and reminding people just because you got it by mail, doesn't mean you have to return it by mail. if you have unease, you can always drop it off and even under most circumstances have someone you trust and know drop it off for you. we're going fob gto be getting message out. this doesn't change our course one bit. >> i'm just curious, in the past, karen brinson bell, have you ever asked the postal service for a hand in this, and have they be helpful in the past? i get the sense that in the past the postal services wanted to work with election boards. do you get that same sense this time? >> we do have coordinators at the state level, and i think that those are the relationships that are so important here. i was just on a call with other state election directors, and that's what they were talking about is that we'll just continue to keep that strong relationship that we have with our state postal service

representatives because that's what's critical about getting these ballots to and from the voters. >> yeah, matt, i've heard this before. i think i saw you nodding there when i asked karen bell that question. >> yes, we have a very strong relationship with our state postal services and historically, in those states that use all mail elections, the postal service is a critical partner and really steps up to make sure that every ballot is counted. this is something of a tempest that's been created by the president with some of his statements. it's a little bit of a head scratcher as to why he would say the things he has said about mail-in ballots and the conduct of elections that happen at the state level. i know that there's a lot of discussion about what happens going forward that may include the third branch of government, which is the judicial system, which could intervene in this if it looks like the election is going to be put at risk. i think voters can be confident right now that election officials around the country, including people like steve simon and karen brinson bell are

standing ready along with us in maine to make sure that people can participate in their democratic form of self-governance and do so with confidence. >> steve simon, are you here -- tell me what the -- what you're hearing from the local county election boards? you know, what are they hearing from voters? what concerns have they brought up to you about all of this mess? >> there is concern. there's no question about that, but there's also this sense that they can overcome it. they too are warning and telling voters, look, whether it's the postal service, whether it's the pandemic, this is very on brand for 2020, right? this is like no other year, and so please just plan in advance. have a plan for voting, there's concern, there's no question about it, but i think we can overcome it, and i think they think that, too. >> plan your vote. let me just tell you, that is a phrase that i think a lot more people are going to hear a lot more about over the next few weeks and few months. really appreciate the three of you spending some time educating our viewers about this issue. top election officials three key states, karen brinson bell,

north carolina, matt dunlap of maine, steve simon in minnesota. really appreciate you doing this and doing it together. i think it was very helpful to viewers, so thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. well, the fallout over how the american people plan to safely vote in november comes as the nation has been averaging more than a thousand coronavirus deaths a day over the last three weeks. right now there are about 5.3 million confirmed cases of the virus in the united states with more than 168,000 deaths. meanwhile, new data suggests the u.s. is conducting fewer tests nationally. "axios" is now reporting the number of tests performed each day is about 17% lower than it was at the end of july, and testing is also declining in the hardest hit states, so we may not have a picture of where this virus is right now. never mind slow reporting issues all across the country right now in some of these key testing metrics. joe biden and kamala harris are calling on governs to implement a nationwide mask

wearing mandate in public spaces. experts say it could save 40,000 lives in the next three months. president trump mischaracterized biden's position and accused him of some sort of national. >> he wants the president of the united states with the mere stroke of a pen to order over 300 million american citizens to wear a mask for a minimum of three straight months. if the president has the unilateral power to order every single citizen to cover their face in nearly all instances, what other powers does he have? >> of course it was his own cdc director, robert redfield that has basically been urging and begging americans to wear a mask, a reminder that for months the president has refused to urged americans to wear a mask or rarely does he wear one himself. joining me now our own carol lee from the white house. and so you know, carol, this is something yesterday i was thinking about this, there was one message from the

biden/harris campaign, wear a mask. help me out. there wasn't one message from the trump world, they were all over the map on various things. but if you're the biden campaign, you've got to be ecstatic that the president immediately responded on this virus in a way that made it seem as he's not thinking health fist? >> reporter: and also, chuck, just the division, it highlighted divisions within the administration. you mentioned the cdc director and also dr. fauci did an interview yesterday last night with matthew mcconaughey where he said that he's always been for universal mask wearing, so the president are pushing back on this idea of universal mask mandate underscores how he's at odds with a number of officials within his own administration. he also said that former vice president biden was playing politics, that he thought this was politically beneficial for him, and as you know, president trump's resistance to wearing a

mask really fueled the -- this -- making this become a political issue to begin with. and then he also questioned what sort of authority a president would have to have a mask mandate, demand a mask mandate like this. and as you know, this president has tested the limits of executive power, but that's not stopping him, and what you've heard from the trump administration including people around the president is really to mock vice president biden for this idea of a mask mandate, and they feel that mandates generally, the idea of them and being against them, plays well for their base. >> so i get that they think that, but when you start to look at -- you look at all this polling, the base is not the problem, and with this middle -- you know, he talks about his suburban -- he himself is aware that he has a suburban voting problem. it doesn't seem as if he realizes it's because of his

handling of the virus. >> reporter: right, and you hear when you talk to people around the president here at the white house, his allies outside of the white house, they really would like him to sort of take a different approach to how he's talking about the virus and what precautions people should take because of the concerns really across the country including in areas that the president really needs to win, and a number of -- they feel there are a number of ways in which the president keeps stepping on his own message including, as you mentioned, suburban women is a constituency the president really needs to win and one of the things he did this week was tweet again about suburban housewiv housewives, and that's something that his aides are also not really happy with because they feel like -- frankly, chuck, the briefing we're about to have is what was supposed to correct this problem. he was supposed to come soout a be more succinct and be on message. we haven't seen that in the past few weeks. >> no, we haven't. and it is notable that he read a

statement pushing back on mask mandates. i mean, that's what was so stunning there, his own task force begging the country to wear a mask, and he went out of his way to read a statement to say that that is a bad idea. carol lee at the white house for us, carol, thank you. we're also watching for congressional reaction to some important developments at the department of homeland security. today the government accountability office concluded that the department's top two officials, the acting secretary chad wolf and a senior dhs official ken cuccinelli are not legally qualified to hold the positions that they have under the federal vacancies reform act. congress had asked the gao to look into this issue. the agency is referring the conclusions to the dhs inspector general. now dhs is dismissing this report as baseless, but let's be realistic, this was always a questionable decision. they knew that ken cuccinelli's appointment was going to come under scrutiny and probably didn't follow the vacancy's act

law here, and there's been a series of acting dhs officials all over the map here, and at some point, it did seem as if that they were sort of misinterpreting the vacancies act law. the question, though, is what will congress do about it if anything. up next, a stern warning from dr. anthony fauci about the risk of aiming for herd immunity to the coronavirus. former white house health policy adviser dr. zeke emmanuel joins me to discuss that. you're watching msnbc. and with new deals every day you can explore endless options at every price point. get your outdoor oasis delivered fast so you can get the good times going. ♪ wayfair. you've got just what i need. ♪

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the cdc released results from a recent survey that found nearly 41% of respondents have struggled with at least some form of mental health issue because of the pandemic. the defending champion of the u.s. tennis open announced that she will not play in this year's tournament in new york.

she joins rafael nadal who will also not be competing. however, the number one ranked men's player, novak djokovic who tested positive in june after some would argue some irresponsible behavior that ended up making him more vulnerable to the virus says he will be competing. and new zealand's prime minister has extended a lockdown on the country's biggest city auckland after the discovery of a new outbreak. this comes after the country had reported zero locally transmitted cases for 102 straight days. dr. anthony fauci joined actor matthew mcconaughey for a discussion on instagram live. mcconaughey asked about herd immunity. the idea of just letting the virus spread unchecked. fauci said the american public is simply not equipped for that. take a listen. >> if you look at the united states of america with our epidemic of obesity as it were and the number of people with hypertension, with the number of people with diabetes, if

everyone got infected, the death toll would be enormous, and totally unacceptable. >> joining me now is msnbc senior medical contributor and a former obama white house health policy adviser dr. sizeke emanu. he's the vice provost at the university of pennsylvania, author of the book "which country has the best health care." zeke, can you add more to what dr. fauci said? is that herd immunity, if you looked at it in a spreadsheet, you might think is a good idea. explain further why that would be a scary proposition for this country. >> so the official numbers, we have about 5.3 million cases, about 170,000 deaths, but the real deaths are probably higher. we now have reports that estimate over 200,000. herd immunity will require 225 million americans to be

infected, and if you just multiply the numbers, you're going to have millions of deaths, and that's just going to be unacceptable to people, millions of deaths. you know, each year we have 2.8 million people who die, 75% of them over 65, but in this case you would have millions more people dying. it's just totally unacceptable, and we have a very high risk population as dr. fauci said. the obese, the people with lung disease, people with heart disease, diabetes, just way too many people at very high risk for this infection. so not a good idea. >> all right, i want to talk about -- i want to move to some other metrics here. it seems like there's two things that they may be interconnected, and i'm curious what you are seeing from your perspective. number one is this issue with it seems like data is slowing again, reporting data that you can't -- you're seeing a lot more hiccups in some of the state data.

we've been transitioning from reporting directly to the cdc to the hhs, perhaps there is a bit of a choke point there, and at the same time we've seen the number of raw tests that we are doing go down. is this related -- what do you see out there, and how concerned are you about this testing metric? >> i am really concerned that we're dropping tests. we need to be getting up to 5 million tests a day, and we're stuck below 800,000 tests a day. that is unacceptable. i'm here in western massachusetts, and i called up to find out what the testing is. you have to get a doctor to fax a requirement. who's faxing in the 21st century? and it's a 72-hour turn around. that's just unacceptable. it's not a very useful test at that point. i think rather than the chokehold that hhs, a big problem are the fact that we don't have testing capacity and the supply chains for all the chemical and things needed for

the test are -- have not been beefed up. have had seven months to get ready for this. since february, and this administration still can't get testing under control. and you know, that just portends very badly for the idea that once we have a vaccine we're actually going to get it to 300 million americans shots in arms. it's just not -- you know, they're not ready, and they don't have the capacity to manage complex problems. >> the cdc director yesterday, again -- and it's light the ump teen time he has warned that the fall -- basically, he thinks it's going to be the worst public health crisis we faced as a country in a generation. he said that multiple times. do you see any evidence that we've done enough mitigation that is somehow not going to prevent essentially another surge that we saw in july perhaps coming late september, early october? i mean, i feel like we're just -- we're doing this, i don't know if you can see this.

it's just sort of like we're riding a wave and it crests up and it crests down, it crests up and it crests down. is that what the next three months are going to look like, just like it did from april to july? >> chuck, in march i wrote an op-ed for the "new york times" talking about a roller coaster, and that's what we should expect. yes, you're 100% right. we are going to have a roller coaster. our big challenge is can we get the number of cases, new cases down below 10 per 100,000, preferably below 3 per 100,000 across the country. given the current policies, the answer is clearly no, and that's a problem because once you have a low level like new zealand, you can actually target your interventions when you have 17 cases. i mean, they have 17 cases. they don't have 20, 30,000 cases a day, which is what we're facing. now, grant it, they're only 5 million people, but even if you multiply up we are order of

magnitude higher than them in terms of new cases. you have to get the number of cases down so that you can safely open up. and by the way, open up, we make it sound like it's a dichotomy. it's either open or close, but it's stages of open, and the last thing we need to be doing is the thing that states seem to be rushing to, open up indoors, indoor restaurants, bars, gyms, that is the mistake, and i'm worried about the fall for precisely that reason, that we're going to open up indoors and increase the spread. >> and we may have too many schools open up that will not allow us to do the mitigation in the places that we need. anyway, really appreciate you coming on and sharing your expertise and perspective with us, thank you, sir. republican senator ron johnson says the findings of his investigation into intelligence agencies under the obama administration will uncover evidence disqualifying joe biden for the presidency.

we'll have the details after the break. you're watching msnbc. ♪ america runs on dunkin'

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we are awaiting a news briefing from president trump, he earlied it up today so he can get to his golf club in bedminster. meanwhile, an official in the justice department's investigation of russian interference in the 2016 election will plead guilty to falsifying a claim to sustained government surveillance on carter page. the former fbi lawyer kevin clinesmith said he will admit to altering an email while seeking a renewal of surveillance according to his lawyer. it is the first legal development to come from a review of the mueller team's work. it's an effort led by john durham. last night attorney general william barr suggested there would be a development in durham's investigation, but he dpit h admitted it would not be earth shattering. he did promise significant

developments after the president strongly suggested that barr might be too politically correct to go after former president obama and former vice president biden. >> if i was worried about being politically correct, i wouldn't have joined this administration. we need to get through the stoye of what happened in 2016 and '17 now out that. will be done. if people cross the line, if people involved in that activity violated the criminal law, they will be charged. there are going to be developments, significant developments before the election, but we're not doing this on the election schedule. we're aware of the election. we're not going to do anything inappropriate before the election, but we're not being dictated to by this schedule. >> what's unclear is whether this is a serious investigation into what else like the issue of wikileaks and how many american citizens' privacy and rights were violated by these russian hackers who did this, if there's any interest in investigating that at all which -- or if

there's just interest in creating confusion about investigating the investigators here, but we will wait for this investigation and see if there is any concern about how many american citizens were targeted by wikileaks, something that seems to have gotten lost with this justice department. meanwhile, over on capitol hill, democrats are raising alarms about blatant politics in a similar investigation by the senate homeland and government affairs committee. the committee chairman ron johnson said his probe will uncover evidence against biden and tied it to the election. >> the more that we expose of the corruption of the transition process between obama and trump, the more we expose of the corruption within those agencies, i would think would certainly help donald trump win re-election and certainly be, you know, pretty good i would say evidence about not voting for vice president biden. >> joining me now from capitol hill is nbc news correspondent leanne kal

leanne caldwell. so there's two questions i would have for senator johnson here, either he has the evidence and mideast not yet telling us what it is or he doesn't have it, and he's speculating and, you know, either way it seems to be an uncomfortable thing to do. he's implying guilt, providing no evidence of it, or he's withholding it and he has it and he's withholding the evidence. either he doesn't have the evidence or he's withholding the evidence. which is it? >> reporter: these are the questions we've been asking senator johnson for quite some time that he hasn't answered very clearly yet. also, chuck, it seems like president trump's say the quiet part out loud has become contagious, the fact that ron johnson said that this is -- would hurt vice president joe biden's chances at winning the election is exactly what democrats have been saying all along, that that is the reason for his probe into several

investigations into joe biden including his role in surveillance or the looking into the trump transition and their relationship to russia as well as the role of joe biden's son hunter in ukraine. so he has these multiple investigations going on that are directly related to the president's re-election race and his opponent joe biden, and this sparked the joe biden campaign to issue a response. here's what his campaign told me, that this damning acknowledgment totally exposes that ron johnson's disgraceful conduct is the definition of malfeasance. it's beyond time for him to end this embarrassing and deeply unethical charade and once and for all as a number of the senate republican colleagues have long wanted, and that is, in fact, true, chuck, because there are a couple of senate republicans on ron johnson's homeland security committee who

have been very uneasy about this investigation. they've wanted him to slow down, stop moving forward with some of these subpoenas, but johnson says that he's going to keep going. >> leanne, i got to -- all right, i got to stop you there. the president just took the podium. let's take a listen. >> very interesting news, kevin clinesmi clinesmith, a corrupt fbi attorney who falsified fisa warrants in james comey's very corrupt fbi is expected to plead guilty. you probably heard that. it just came out. so that's just the beginning, i would imagine. what happened should never happen again, so he is pleading guilty, terrible thing. terrible thing. the fact is they spied on my campaign and they got caught, and you'll be hearing more.

today the office of trade and manufacturing policy released a new report on how my administration has harnessed the full power of the defense production act to achieve the greatest industrial mobilization since world war ii in our fight against the china virus, new factorie factories, businesses, and laboratories being built all over america to match our nation's demand for personal protective equipment. pharmaceuticals, drugs, testing supplies, therapeutics and vaccines. it's been incredible what we've been able to do in a very short period of time helping other countries also because we've been really -- we've been doing it at a level that nobody's ever seen before. it was just announced a little while ago industrial production rose for the third straight month. it's a big thing. factory output was up 3.4% this month after a 5.7 increase last

month. those are getting to be record numbers, and manufacturing capacity utilization is now up to almost 70%. so we're coming back very strong. we should have a very good third quarter. we should have an unbelievably good next year. next year we don't mess it up with somebody that has no idea what they're doing could be a fantastic year. my administration has exercised the authority under the defense production act to a number and a related authorities out of dibi $3.5 billion to accelerate the manufacturing of essential materials, so put it a little bit differently, the administration exercised the authority under the defense production act and related

authorities 78 times. that's a lot, peter, right? that's a big number. 78 times. came in very handy. a lot of times we just mentioned it, and they did what we asked them to do. disbursing over $3.5 billion to speed the development and manufacturing of essential materials. i've used the dpa more comprehensively than any president in history. there was a time when the media would say why aren't you using it, why aren't you using it? well, we have used it a lot. we're necessary, only we're necessary. for the most part we've had tremendous cooperation. by invoking the dpa, we mobilized the extraordinary productive might of general motors to manufacture ventilators, gm repurposed the kokomo, indiana, plant in just 17 days, an all-time record, and has now produced over 21,000 ventilators. we're also working with ford motor company and general

electric to produce over 30,000 v ventilators a month in michigan. they've done a great job. our nation is now the king of ventilators. i say that, the king of ventilators. we're sending them all over the world and helping a will tlot o countries that could never have ventilators. and it's really -- i guess we're looking to produce over 200,000 ventilators by the end of the year. those are some numbers. so we're helping a lot of countries. in april i directed 3m to increase its manufacturing of n95 masks. by may they had increased production by over a million masks a day. think of that, they increased production of masks by over 1 million a day, 3m is now manufacturing an additional 39 million masks a month. we also worked with honeywell to open factories in arizona and rhode island. they're now producing over 20

million masks a month. by the end of the year, domestic u.s. manufacturing will have produced over 1 billion n95 respirators, and all of them are made right here in the usa. that's a big difference from the past. overall, we've increased n95 mask production by 400 million masks a year. now, the media might say why not 500? why not 600? nobody's seen numbers like this ever. we delivered more than $75 million in support to puritan medical in maine. i was up there, as you remember we had a tremendous visit and tremendous throngs of people along the roads on the way to puritan medical. puritan's doubled their production of testing swabs from 20 million to 40 million per month. they're doing a fantastic job. and so is maine. i've also used the dpa to fight

price gouging and hoarding. my administration located and seized over half a million pieces of hoarded personal protective equipment including 299,000 pairs of medical grade gloves, 192,000 n95 respirators, and 130,000 surgical masks. that's hoarding. my administration's decisive actions have yielded truly incredible results. people have done an incredible job. we've replenished the strategic national stockpile that was very badly depleted when we took office and totally neglected in the last administration. since the start of the pandemic, we have tripled the number of n95 masks on hand to over 40 million, tripled the number of gowns over 50 million, and quadrupled the number of ventilators to 69,000. by september, this strategic

national stockpile inventory is on track to contain over 300,000 -- excuse me, 300 million n95 respirators and surgical masks. over 4.5 billion gloves and over 190,000 ventilators. that's far more than we've ever done before it's not even close. as we talk about the economy, we continue to restore america's industrial might. we're bringing more jobs to the usa. we understand that the economic health is critical, very critical to public health. we'll be discussing next week some of the outstanding numbers we have compared to any other country. there is no country even close when you look at what we've done compared to them on the -- from the standpoint of the economy.

in the last three months we've added an average of 100,000 jobs every single day. we've also added over 620,000 manufacturing jobs in the past three months. that's despite people saying you can't do manufacturing jobs anymore. you'd need a magic wand they said, but they were wrong. weekly jobless claims just fell below 1 million for the first time in a long time. i'm pleased to announce that as part of operation warp speed, the federal government will be partnering with mckisson corporation, great company, which is a major medical supplier to rapidly distribute a china virus vaccine as soon as one is approved, fully approved. they're in stage three trials. we have many of them going along different passes. also, many different companies doing them. very, very incredible companies. we currently have three candidates in phase three clinical trials and are on pace

to have more than 100 million doses of a vaccine ready before the end of the year and 500 million doses very shortly thereafter, and we're ready logistically to distribute them. our military is ready. we have a great general who's in charge. that's what he does is he deliberates things, usually it's people and weapons, tanks, but in this case it's a vaccine or therapeutic as it may be. we continue to actively monitor the virus, executing our strategy to protect the vulnerable and prevent hospital overcrowding. as of today, hospitalizations continue to be very stable, and we will be watching always very carefully. we remain vigilant. we ask every citizen to practice good hygiene, socially distancing, wear a mask when distancing is not possible, and to protect the elderly. always protect the elderly. so now we'll take a few questions if you'd like.

>> mr. president, on the issue of more money for the u.s. postal service and mail-in ballots, if the democrats were to give you some of what you want, which you articulated in a series of tweets in the last hour, would you be willing to accept the $25 billion for the postal service including the $3.5 billion -- >> it's not what i want. it's what the american people want. so in addition to -- and i think just, john, as part of your answer i can read this, but in addition to the executive orders that we signed, which are going to be doing terrific things in terms of payroll tax cut, which is a lot of money coming to a lot of people very quickly, i've directed the secretary of the treasury to get ready and send direct payments, 3,400 for a family of four to all americans. democrats are holding this up.

i am ready to have the ust and sba send additional ppp payments to small businesses that have been hurt by the china virus. democrats are holding this up, so we're talking about those are two things directly involved and really victim of the china virus, we're ready to send democrats are holding up. i'm ready to send rental assistance payments to hardworking americans that have been hurt by the china virus. all of these things are on the list. democrats are holding this up. i'm ready to send 105 billion to the states to help open schools safely with additional pppe and democrats are holding this up, so that's 105 billion to the states to help open schools safely with additional ppe. democrats are holding that up,

right? and i'm ready to send more money to states and local governments to save jobs of our great police, our firefighters. our first responders and teachers. it's all ready to go. democrats are holding it up. so they're holding, john, all of that up. >> so if they were to give you that, would you sign off on the money to the postal service? >> they're not giving it to me. they're giving it to the american people. >> but you would agree to that? >> i would certainly do that, sure. >> a follow up on that, a quick question, when you said you directed secretary mnuchin to direct payments, are you speaking about something you're going to do independently -- >> i'm waiting for the democrats to approve it. >> do you congratulate marjorie taylor green in a tweet, you called her a future republican star. she has been -- do you agree with her on that? >> she did very well in the election. she won by a lot. she was very popular. she comes from a great state,

and she had a tremendous victory, so absolutely i did congratulate her. >> qanon, embrace that theory, do you agree with her on that? that was the question. >> i just wanted to ask you what ails your brother robert and how is he doing? >> i have a wonderful brother robert, and we have a great relationship for a long time, and he's in the hospital right now and hopefully he'll be all right, but he's pretty -- he's having a hard time. >> i wanted to ask you also really quickly about putin's invitation to join a video summit with iran and other world powers. would you accept that invitat n invitation? >> i haven't been told of it yet. i heard there's something, but i haven't been told of it yet. >> mr. president, two questions on vaccines. first, once a vaccine is ready, who should get it first? >> i will rely on the doctors to tell me that. i would say probably the elderly. i would say nursing homes, a lot

of people said would you take it? i said i'll take it if they want. i'll go first or last, i'll do whatever they want me to do. i would think that the elderly, the people that are most vulnerable to the disease, and we're actually making those lists right now. mostly nursing homes and retirement centers, yeah. >> russia has approved a vaccine. what do you know about the vaccine? have you spoken to russia? >> we don't know much about it. we hope it works. we do. we hope it works. they've cut off certain trials, and we just feel it's important to go through the process. we have numerous different vaccines that we think are going to work, but we want to go through a system of trials. we're very advanced. we're very -- we'll be announcing something in the not too distant future. also, with therapeutics, which i think are very, very important. yes, please. >> mr. president, i have two one on china and one on oil. the first on china, there's a

lot of alarm in american companies about your order on wechat, apple, ford, disney, they're worried because it's such a big communications platform and payment platform in china that if you ban u.s. businesses from working with them that they won't be able to sell, iphones into china or similar markets. so you don't mind -- >> in terms of the security of our country. we have been very badly let down by china. what's your next question? >> on oil, the u.s. this week seized four iranian oil tankers going towards venezuela. >> yeah, weren't supposed to do that. >> yeah, they're going to go to houston. i wonder what you're going to dowith that oil. >> we'll be announcing. we have four tankers. they're going to houston. they're there. they're not supposed to be doing that. iran is not supposed to be doing that, so we did. we seized the tankers. and we're moving them, and moved to houston. >> mr. president, thank you so

much. two questions if you don't mind. first of all, kamala harris, you have been blunt about how you feel about her being nasty, mad woman. biden now saying -- >> i haven't been blunt. i said she treated joe biden worse than anybody else. i watches those debates, they were very boring, but they were debates, nevertheless, and i watched pretty good parts of them, and she treated biden worse than anybody else by far. there was nobody, including pocahontas, nobody treated biden so badly as kamala. >> let me ask you this, then. do you have an issue with a strong woman of color being in this presidential race? >> none whatsoever. >> you don't see her as a threat? >> no, none whatsoever. not at all. >> thank you, mr. president. the stimulus question, if you don't mind. you have told me even before you were president you always talked about being the ultimate deal maker. why not just sit down with democrats personally and cut a deal? >> because they want $1 trillion to go to their friends, doing a

bad job running certain cities and states doing very badly. most of our country is doing very well, even in terms of crime, most of our country is setting records in terms of low. when you look at chicago, what's going on in illinois and new york and other places, both economically and in other ways, it's horrible. it's horrible. look at oregon, what's going on in oregon. i don't think they have a clue. we could solve that, if they would request it, we would stop that problem in one hour like we did in minneapolis. we would stop it in one hour. it would be over. it's so easy to do. please, go ahead. >> yesterday, you announced an historic peace deal between israel and the united arab emirates, and later in the day, joe biden tried to take credit for it. >> i heard that. >> what's your response? >> he announced it -- i appreciate it, even "the new york times" gave it great coverage and editorials.

"wall street journal," "washington post," everybody was saying great. and this is something we have been working very hard on. and i saw where sleepy joe tried to claim credit for it, and i'm trying to figure out how that one works. what he did is they made a terrible deal with iran. and the deal was a horror show, and i ended it. they gave them $150 billion for nothing. they gave them $1.8 billion in cash for nothing. they got nothing from that deal except trouble. they did nothing. just like they have been weak on china, they have been weak on russia. they have been weak on everyone, and they were the weakest of all on iran. no, that was a great deal made by very talented people that work with me. and it's been praised all over the world. and what you'll see now is other countries will come into that deal, and you'll have peace in the middle east. biden doesn't even know, he doesn't even know the name of the countries i'm talking about. thank you very much, everybody. >> there you go.

we just heard from president trump. he had a few things there. it looks like the designed message was about trying to make the case that they have used the defense production act authority act in a way that has helped this virus. of course, a lot of people who believe this hasn't been invoked nearly enough in order to catch us up on testing. he's bringing up ventilators. that hasn't been part of the conversation since march. let me bring in carol lee at the white house and also msnbc medical contributor dr. libby roy, as well as nbc news capitol hill correspondent leigh ann caldwell. carol, let me start with you. the news that will come out of this is going to be the president implying that he's got a new offer to the democrats. i'm going to ask leigh ann in a middle whether democrats will say that's a new offer. do you expect any movement here? >> you know, it remains to be seen what the president was saying was essentially that he is willing to do, and he went

through the laundry list. directed the treasury to get ready to sent direct payments to a family of four, $3400. maybe small businesses, money for schools. he also said he would be willing to include funding for the post office which has been an issue, but it's not exactly clear what the plan is for him, so it seems like an overture to try to get some sort of talks restarted. or is it just something that the president is saying because he wants to look like he's making an effort and sort of put the ball in democrats' court to say, no, or to not sit down and negotiate with him. but he's clearly -- there is concern, obviously, mounting among the people around him with the fact that he's risked looking like he's not getting any sort of deal to give relief to the millions of americans who need it. so here he is potentially trying again. but i don't know if it's going to emount to anything. >> look, i think it's a tell that he feels like he's got to look like he's trying.

as you said, we don't know how serious this offer is. leigh ann caldwell, i imagine democrats aren't going to take it serious when he talked about he doesn't believe in any state and city aid, which just not a single economist in america left or right thinks that's a good idea. >> yeah, chuck. that's exactly what i was going to say. he talks about all the things he's willing to give to democrats. but he's not willing to give this money for state and locals, where democrat s and the administration are almost a trillion dollars apart on that issue alone. democrats want about $900 billion for state and local money. and the administration, their opening offer was zero. last we're heard, it was at about $100, $150 billion maybe, but that would include school money as well. so you know, he is trying to make it look like he's offering concessions when that is in fact not the case. they can't even agree to come to the table to talk. and so that is a huge sign that they are still so far apart on

this issue and wrapped up into it is this postal service money. it is unemployment insurance. and speaking pelosi makes the point with this state and local money that if these states and locals don't get it, then they're going to have to do more layoffs of perhaps essential workers, state employees, local employees. which will put people on the unemployment rolls. so while a trillion dollars in state and local and zero dollars for state and local are so far apart, but what it seems like is the administration is not willing to give on that issue. because the president doesn't want this to go to blue states heading into an election, chuck. >> which again, it's self-defeating because of how harmful it is to the overall economy. dr. roy, there was a pr aspect when it came to the virus handling. they were trying to sort of declare victory on how well they used the dpa, the defense

production act, which frankly is something that most folks outside of the administration are wondering why haven't they invoked it a lot more. where are all our test kits and the reagents that should be a lot easier to access with the invoking of the dpa, but we haven't had it. >> well, chuck, you're absolutely right. where is this? here now in the middle of august, we're still talking about the same issues that we were discussing back in march. the testing is still -- you know, it's still pretty catastrophic. i know he talked about how many tests we have done, but it's still at an insufficient number in terms of the amount needed and the turnaround time, and still issues with accuracy. i just want to remind the viewers this virus does not discrimina discriminate. if you're a senior, a soldier, or a 7-year-old. we see people from all ages, including children and teenagers, getting sick and unfortunately dying.

this is going to be relevant when we're talking about schools reopening and flu season coming, and about the mail, i want to bring that up as well. remember, the mail, uspa delivers medications to millions of people, so there's direct correlation between the mail service and medications and health. >> it's also worth noting, dr. roy, that the house republican leader totally actually went the other way on the mail issue and said he expected mail funding to be there. carol lee, before i go, very quickly, the president asked about qanon, and he did it again. he praised the qanon believer, but then pretended he didn't hear the other part of the question about whether he at all believes in this crackpot conspiracy. >> that's right. he was asked multiple times, and he just decided to move on from the questioner, from the ap, who asked him the question. instead, praised the house candidate in georgia who won and

said she ran a great campaign. so once again, he's decided he's not going to knock down that conspiracy theory, chuck. >> many people believe qanon is a virus inside the republican party, and the president clearly not wanting to do anything to mitigate that virus. carol lee, dr. roy, and leigh ann caldwell, thank you for helping us explain and break down what the president may have meant with his remarks. and that wraps up the hour for me. i'll see you back here tonight at 5:00 p.m. eastern for "meet the press daily." my colleague, chris jansing picks up the coverage right now. >> thank you so much, chuck. you know, is there a day that's not breaking news anymore? it's 11:00 a.m. out west, 2:00 p.m. in the east, for the first time since she was chosen as joe biden's running mate, senator kamala harris is giving an interview. and it's with msnbc contributor errin haines. we're going to bring that to you as soon as it's done. we expect it within this hour. harris has only been on the job, of course