. >> 80 days until election day. a deadly virus is raging through the country and donald trump is taking drastic measures to make it harder for americans to safely vote by mail. 189,000 dead. that's the new cdc projection for the coronavirus death toll by labor day. and the 14th congressional district in georgia just chose a gop candidate who believes in a cabal of pet file sate nick sabans aiming to take down

president trump. we'll dive into the conspiracy group. velshi starts now. >> good morning. it is saturday august the 15th. we are 80 days from election day. i'm ali velshi. nearly 170,000 americans are dead from covid-19. more than 5.3 million americans have been diagnosed with the disease. and for the first time in 21 weeks, weekly initial jobless claims fell below one million but only barely. more than 16 million americans remain out of work. both the house and the senate have left for recess and not scheduled to return until the second week of september and there is no deal still for the next round of coronavirus relief funds. polling shows joe biden with a significant advantage and despite what he says, it certainly does not look like president trump believes that he's going to win the reelection in november. not if you watch what he's doing. if you watch what the president is doing you are going to see

the measures of a desperate man. take, for example, what he admitted to actively engaging in voter expression when he openly admitted the reason he doesn't want to fund the postal service is because he doesn't want too many people to be able to vote by mail. >> they want 3 1/2 billion dollars for mail-in votes. they want $25 billion, billion, for the post office. now, they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballot. if they don't get those two items, that means you can't have universal mail-in voting because they are not equipped to have it. >> reporter: there you have it, folks. the president just raid out his plan to prevent americans from voting safely during a deadly pandemic. that is not the plan of a person who thinks a lot of people are going to vote for him. another portrait of a win in an

election. >> now they want to take it countrywide mail-in voting. it is going to be the greatest fraud in the history of elections. when you always talk about russia, russia, russia, and china iran. on voting. your biggest problem is going to be with the democrats, not with china and russia and iran. your biggest problem is going to be with the democrats. >> yeah, that's the president of the united states saying outloud that his political oppositions desire to find ways of allowing the american people to vote safely during the a deadly pandemic is not only bad, it is worse than overt election interference by america's foreign adversaries. and then donald trump's payroll tax holiday as he calls it. what it really is, is a carney trick. the money saved now comes due next year but only if joe biden wins. if trump wins he says he'll make a directive permanent so you don't have to repay it.

like a carnival barker. vote for me and the money is free. vote for biden and you have to pay up and i'll say i told you so far situation i create. the saddest part is he thinks the american people will fall for it. speaking of the american people will fall for it. there is kanye west's campaign for president. but he won't be on the ballot kanye west is also an outspoken trump sporter and just so happened to meet with jared kushner. according to kushner they both happened to be in the colorado in the same time. and the pump of his campaign is flat foot to siphon votes from joe biden. maybe it is also just a crazy coincide but people who are winning elections don't need celebrity straw candidates to pull votes from their opponents but if you really want to know what politically desperation looks like, it is this. it's trump pulling out the

saddest most tired, racist trope in the whole racist tool kitty. kamala harris, the first black woman and first south asian woman to run for a major party ticket. and donald trump started tossing around the same kind of racist birther conspiracy theory he used to harass barack obama for years. he told reporters he was going to the look into whether harris is eligible to serve as vice president given that her parents are immigrants. yeah he's doing that again. and yes, that is a lie. and that is racist. and you can tell how racist a lie is because even south carolina senator lindsey graham who's not winning any awards for courage in the trump era, e even lindsey graham felt compel to set the record straight tweeting senator harris is unequivocally an american citizen. and here he is with the dog

whilst trying with zero subtlety to cast senator harris has an angry black woman. >> and now you have sort of a mad woman, i call her. because she was so angry. such hatred with justice kavanagh. i've never seen anything like it. she was the angriest of the group and they were all angry. all radical left angry people. >> once again the president calling someone who could be the future vice president a mad woman. let's move on and not waste anymore more time on anyway particular bit of racist nonsense, except to underscore that it is all racist nonsense. democratic congresswoman sharice davids of kansas. one of the regional whips for the democrats in house. and out with this new logo "save the postal service." thank you for joining us. this is becoming something that is urgent. we should be fixing these things with 80 days to go, but in fact what we're seeing coming out of

the executive and new post master is the opposite. removing of machines and removal of post box. how do you plan to deal with the this? >> good to be here and talking about the health crisis and economic crisis that we're in and apparently the president is trying to create democracy crisis as well. i think that one of the things we have to do is make sure that all of us are standing up and talking about the importance of the post office, particularly for our senior who is get so many of their medications, our veterans, like 80% of vernlts get their medications delivered by the post office. and at the end of the day we have to make sure we're protecting this constitutionally mandated and important institution in our country. >> what do you want done about it? there are a number of you, i think 175 of you signed a letter

to the most postmaster general saying the level of service has to be the same as it was on january 1st of this year into next year. congress has the power of the postal service but it's got on a board of directors. they tend to be trump supporters. what can actually be done. doesn't look like they are all that interested in the letters that you are sending. >> well i think the american people know that dejoy is doing a job that is unacceptable. and just after signing on to that letter, i actually decided that really he should be immediately removed. and the board of governors can do that. the president can certainly do that. but at the end of the day we have to make sure that we've got a non partisan professional who cares about the mission of the postal service, who cares about making sure that folks are getting the medications they

need, that the small businesses have the support they need. and as we can see now we need somebody who is not going participate in the political gamesmanship of trying to hijack an election. we need to make sure we have somebody in there who is not going to try to do trump's bidding. and right now we don't have that and that is why i think he needs to immediately be removed and replaced with new leadership. >> so i get it. but that board at the postal service isn't going to do that at all. under any circumstances. donald trump is not going do it. at all, under any circumstances. as you look at this, whereas the best way to do get rid of him. i like what you are doing and i like the idea there is a campaign and people need to wear some kind of sticker to say i voted by mail to remind everybody around them but the legal avenues don't seem to be there for you. >> and the other thing we need to do is make sure that folks call their senators, and their members of congress, particularly my republican colleagues who i know have

expressed there are plenty of republican colleagues of mine and folks in the senate who have expressed support and who have taken steps previously to support the post office and the postal service and we need them to step up and convince this president to stop playing games with the postal service. and to spend more time trying to save lives because we're in the middle of a globally pandemic the if the president was spending as much time trying to save lives as he is trying to stop people from being able to exercise their right to vote, we would be in a much better place right now in our country with the number of folks we've lost already to the coronavirus. i need a president and the american people need a president that is going to actually be working on the crisis at hand. >> congresswoman, good to see you. thank you for joique me this morning. democratic congresswoman sharice davids of kansas. >> my pleasure. >> no amount of relief in sight for millions of the struggling americans. congress left town without

agreeing on a coronavirus relief package. how the next wave of unemployment could hit with the force of a tsunami. you are watching velshi on msnbc. msnbc. mething was missing... ...me. you ok, sis? my symptoms kept me- -from being there for my sisters. "...flight boarding for flight 2007 to chicago..." so i talked to my doctor and learned- ...humira is for people who still have symptoms of crohn's disease after trying other medications. and the majority of people on humira saw significant symptom relief... -and many achieved remission in as little as 4 weeks. humira can lower your ability to fight infections. serious and sometimes fatal infections, including tuberculosis, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened,- -, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. tell your doctor... ...if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections... ...or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. be there for you, and them. ask your doctor about humira. with humira, remission is possible.

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tens of mayoral millions of americans are struggling figuring how to put food on table and take care of other basic needs. congress could have eased that uncertainty by passing a relief bill. but lawmakers left for the august recess without doing so and both sides are blaming each other for failing to act. now, this comes as the labor department reported another 963,000 americans filed for first-time unemployment claims last week. in all more than 28 million americans are now receiving some form of unemployment benefits. economists say the longer the pandemic drag on the more likely the job losses will welcome permanent. sara nelson, president of the

association of flight attendants, communication workers of america and co-claire of the biden university task force on the economy is calling on congress to act now. as she wrote in fortune magazine, as we stabbed an the precipice of a second great depression we can't afford to go small. when the virus surges again more people, more jobs will disappear. without real relief there will be nothing to slow our descent this time. sara nelson joins us. while everyone else is look at the world saying wow the first time in 21 weeks wee had fewer than a million people sign up for unemployment benefits. you are worried that there is nothing coming here. for those who continue to file and be on unemployment. they have lost the federal bolleser and a number of other things too. you see the situation getting much worse, not better. >> ali, the situation is dire. and we cannot entertain for a second that congress has left and is not going to do anything until september. mitch mcconnell said they can

come back in 24 hours. nancy pelosi says they will pull people back. their staffs and those leaders are still in washington and able to negotiate a deal right now. we have to demand it. we have to demand it. just pick, for example, the airline industry. we're going to have people who 19 years ago after september 11th are going to be on furlough again. they are going to be out a job. but this time one in five americans looking for a job cannot get one. because for every one job there are five people looking for it. so everyone on unemployment can't find a job to replace that. after 9/11, flight attendants did other things. worked in restaurants, retail. got our degrees in computer programming. we did other things. that is not available this time. and i think about my beloved california pizza kitchen that i worked at that has now filed for bankruptcy. there is nowhere to go. the $600 unemployment check, that was supporting another 5

million jobs. so we're going to see those jobs gone. the state and local funding that will keep rural hospitals open and keep our transportation systems moving and keep our teachers employed. if we don't have that, that is going to be another 5.3 million people out of work. and there is nowhere to go. there is nowhere to go unless this congress acts right now. and it has to be congress. >> so for some reason congress sees this as an abstraction. at least relationships in congress see this as an abstraction, a continuation of spending that is going add to the debt. you write millions of workers can't make ends meet even with the $600 added federal benefit. one in three americans is behind on housing payments. and 30-40 million people face eviction in the coming months. without a deal in congress, those numbers will skyrocket. play that out. people lose home, property values go down. there are fewer jobs because

less demand for people who don't have any money. and the cycle gets worse. while you are seeing fewer people filing for unemployment benefits right now there is nothing on the horizon that suggests it is going to goose the economy in some fashion and we're going to get back to something that looks like normalcy in a few months. >> ali what we're talk about is all these people losing their homes, having tremendous hurt, in the middle of a pandemic. also let's recognize they are losing their health insurance as well. and this is going to have a trickle up effect on the hurt. and before we know it, we're going to be talking about having to bail out the banks again. that is what we're talking about. a total collapse of the entire system. talk about the post office for a second. these are 600,000 good union jobs of people who have been essential workers, continuing to be the last mile of our shipping infrastructure in this country. rural communities are going to be completely cutoff if we don't have our postal service. veterans who work there are going to go without a job. we are -- the veterans who count

on their medicine being delivered and the 4 million people every single day who get their prescription drugs. we are talking about massive hurt across the board and not being able to recover. if i think about my airline industry alone we're at 25% recovery right now. my u.s. passport is no good. i can't even fly anywhere else in the world. americans have lost access to the rest of the world. we've lost our freedom and that is because we are not containing this virus. we're not doing what's necessary to prop up our economy. we're not going to be able to travel. also we're not going to be able to buy airplane ticket. that's just one example and that is the backbone of our economy, the airline industry. so if we don't act right now. if congress doesn't come back right now. let me just say the house acted over 90 days ago. and there are negotiations that happen. people like to say oh that package was too big. it was too much, whatever. nancy pelosi and chuck schumer have been at the table saying we'll remove a trillion dollars from the package if you just

work with us and negotiate on a deal everyone can agree on. and i can tell you ali from talking to members of the congress there is broad support for our post office. there is broad support for supporting the jobs in the airline industry. there is broad support for spending right now because even fiscal conservatives know that every day that we wait t price of recovery becomes greater and we may not be able to recover. >> sara nelson, good to see you, thank you for joining us. >> -- >> -- there you go. as the president of the association of -- and make sure sure to join me tomorrow miranda warning on "velshi." bernie sanders will be here. i'm going to ask how he plans to fulfill a pledge he made on the show. did not only get joe biden elect but to make him the most progressive president in u.s. history. tomorrow morning 8:00 a.m. eastern on "velshi." 8:00 a.m. eastern on "velshi."

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joining me now, staff writer for the new yorker, also msnbc political analyst. so much is going on right now that i needed to sort of just get you in to help make sense of it. you are very worried, as am i, about what's going on with the united states postal service. because it appears to be a civil rights violation as it relates to people's voting rights happening as we speak. it is not just stuff the president talks about. for a few weeks he talks about how fraudulent voting would be. that was untrue. but then he did something else. he got his guy to start dismantling the post office. literally dismantling equipment that sorts mail. cutting down on overtime. slowing down on delivery. all of this seems perfectly planned to disenfranchise people. >> that's absolutely what this is. and one of the things that we should keep in mind is that, you know, it was kind of a dry run

for this that we saw on april 7th in wisconsin. as you know that was in the real thick of the pandemic in the spring. just finding out what we're dealing with and there were all these pushes to have mail-in voting there. and the wisconsin gop was able to force people to vote in person, so you saw the long lines and people standing outside and then people in polling places indoors in the midst of a pandemic having to vote. and even at that time it seemed like that was the kind of warning of what might come. and i think that the president trump is just priming people right now. like this is what we are likely to see again in november if they have their way. >>. >> jelani, i want to, there was a series of tweets you posted the other day i want to read. "for what it matters, one beneficial side effect of having survived jim crowe is that it

allowed black people to see through the mythology. i view trump also got the longest anti-democratic tradition of any western constitutional democracy. we have no reason to believe american democracy is impregnable but lots of reasons to think the opposite. the great transgender of those who impatiently tell black people to get over it. what we're actually trying to do in telling is insisting the entire history be told is the contribute to american democracy by pointing out the fairly large cracks in the dam." your perspective on this is remarkable. what do you make of the fact that we're hearing as we say donald trump saying the quiet parts ow outloud. he's tweeting to suburban housewives about low income people coming into their neighborhoods and how corey booker is going to be in check mark of that, just throwing in cory booker as a name of a black

man to i guess scare whoever these suburban housewives are. >> which is very weird. because cory booker grow up in the suburbs new jersey. he's a suburbanite himself. i don't know what that was supposed to achieve, think that people are supposed to be afraid of a u.s. senator now. but the strange thing about it -- i should say the not strange thing is that this is the logical progression of where we've been all along. one of the things that has defined trumpism is the ability to say outrageous things beyond the pale of american politics and suffer no consequence of it. what it appears to be is this is actually working albeit not with the target population he's talking about. they are non college educated whites and find a good deal to admire apparently in the racial appeals that trump is making. but college-educated whites are really put off by it. at least that is what the

initial polling seems to be showing. so it doesn't seem to be a winning strategy or reasonable approach to these matters. but nothing that we're doing right now national on many fronts seems to be reasonable. >> jelani, good to see you as always. thank you for joining me. jelani cobb a staff writer for the new yorker and msnbc contributor. did you know the president has a science advisor? it's hard to believe seeing how this administration denies science every chance it gets. also ahead, i'll talk to the director of the national institutes of health who not only lives and breathes science but sings about it too. watch this. ed. >> ♪ poof coronavirus ♪ came from overseas ♪ infecting folks across the land ♪ ♪ seattle to nyc ♪ love those human cells ♪ next thing you know the cases grow ♪ ♪ and the world has gone to --

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do you ever get remind of a thing you think could be true but doesn't really seem true? that happened to me recently when hi colleague told me that the white house actually has a science advisor. the president has a science advisor. every recent white house has had one. starting with fdr in 1941. think about it. the president has a sincientistn hand. so the ptd can take advice on important measures like the climate crisis or how to observe an eclipse or how to follow basic protocols to handle a pandemic. as the world grapples with the biggest health crisis in a hundred years science should be the ball game. and as cases rise and more americans die donald trump

continuing to shun science. this isn't new by the way. for decades many republican politicians have turned their backs on expertise and academia to the point that today in parts of america coronavirus is spreading can killing people because personal opinion is seen to be a viable alternative to fact. 2020 seems to be the year which america is achieve thing peak ignorance. the same impulses that feed climate denial and the anti-vaccination movement are today resulting in the preventable deaths of 10s of thousands of people. 120 americans will die during the course of my two hour show today. how does a white house with a science advisor also has a president who stares directly at an eclipse without any eye protection or was suggested drinking household disinfects.

this week donald trump introduced the new white house coronavirus advisor. not the same thing as a science advisor. this guy, dr. scott atlas. on paper dr. atlas has a strong resume as a science policy expert, except he's not an expert on infectious diseases. he found him -- we're still debating the efficacy of wearing masks and social distancing, a matter that is closed and settled for most of the rest of the world that has flattened the curve. respecting real medicine, discovery, and academic study as opposed to ignorance are the only things that can prevent that. we spent decades underfunding public education in america. some political leaders are capitalized on that nor

political game. pushing people to value personal opinion over fact. morality over science. subjecty over objecty. it is more critical now to uphold scholarship and truexs the but i'm not confident we'll get there under the current administration. even with the help of dr. atlas. joining me now is francis collins, director of the national institutes of health. dr. collins, thank you for the work you do and for the music you play. we enjoyed hearing it. just before the commercial. let's put a few things to rest here. why are we having a dispute in this country about masses and social distancing? i see a lot of things usually in that cesspool that is social media in which people who claim to be health professionals, nurses, say that masks make you sick and that you shouldn't wear them and it is somehow a civil right. personal right, a first amendment thing not to wear masks. >> well it really is unfortunate

that we've gotten to that place and what is supposed to be the most technologically advanced country in the world. this is a settled fact. this is not a place where people can hold opinions that same v the same weight ads other opinions. it is a settled fact that wearing a facial covering when you are outside of your home is the way that we can help stop this terrible pandemic. not because you are so much protecting yourself but because you might be that person who is infected without any symptoms and you are spreading it. you could be a super spreader. we all could be. and if you care about your neighbor, you care about elderly people who are at higher risk, it is up to you to act upon that. that is not a political statement. that is a scientific fact. >> let's talk about vaccines, there are some people who say they won't get a vaccine even when one comes out. we of course know that sentiment, that strain exists in american culture. but the bottom line is i think most people will get this vaccine and it will be the most indemand vaccine in the world or

a combination of vaccines. we've heard from the russians that one is available although we haven't seen any lab testing or stage 3 testing that would suggest that it is safe. and the president continues to say that we'll have one by november. again, we really have to test these things on los and lots of people and i understand there are some vaccines in stage 3 testing rights now with lots of subjects to determine safety. >> that's right. each one of these, there are six now coming along, and all of them looking quite promising in the early phase 1 trials. but you have got to find out whether they really work and each one needs to be tested against 30,000 people. half of whom got the vaccine, half get a placebo, and then see whether it actually protects you against infection and whether there are any safety problems and only after going through that will it be appropriate to say we have a vaccine safe for broader distribution. the russians sort of skipped off

you will of that. you might call that russian roulette. i would not want to take that without knowing it works and is safe. they have skipped over that part. for us the vaccines we're currently looking at are looking quite promising. they all work, if i can just show you our usual model here by producing antibodies, attack this virus and basically neutral zone it -- neutralize it. and by the way if people are interested in taking part in the trials because we knee volunteers to do this, go to coronavirus prevention network.org. this is a lot of letters. "coronavirus prevention network.org." and you can register your interest in being a volunteer. and particularly we need people at higher risk. elderly, people with chronic illnesses. african americans, hispanics, all of these groups who have been hit particularly hard we want to know do these vaccines

work for you? so help us out. >> coronaviruspreventionnetwork.org is where you can two for information on the clinical trials and the clinical trials tend to be very tightly governed so that is a good idea. dr. collins good to see you. dr. francis collins is the director of the national institutes of health. q nonan all right network of basically and dangerous conspiracy theories out of the shadows of the dark web but it is moving quickly into our publication spheres and now quite possibly into our government. up next the q anon adherent that will likely be walking the halls of congress as a member in november. king the halls of congress as a member in november how about no no uh uh, no way come on, no

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we're used to counting backwards to election day. still in primary season for people running for congress and other things. on tuesday, marjorie taylor green won a runoff election to become the republican nominee in georgia's 14th congressional district. that district has been reliably red and greene will likely win the house seat in november. here is the thing. marjorie taylor greene is a racist conspiracy theorist. all for people to see on social media. in her words. racist islamophobic, anti-semitic views and other conspiracies. qanon followers believe world governments are being controlled by a shadowy cabal of ped files who will eventually be brought to justice by president trump.

and trump tweeted his support for greene after her win. and yesterday a reporter asked him about it and he didn't like that too much. >> you congratulated marjorie taylor greene anyway tweet. called her a future republican star. she's been a proponent of the qanon conspiracy theory, as she said it would be something worth listening to. do you agree with her on that. >> well she did very well in the election. she won by a lot. she was very popular. she comes from a great state. she had a tremendous victory so absolutely, i did congratulate her, please. go ahead. go ahead, please. >> reporter: -- that conspiracy theory. do you agree with her on that? >> she wrote dozens of articles about qanon and even served as a correspondent for a conspiracy news website. in 10i6 wro

in. not only does she deny elements of history commonly held as fact, also about one of the most disastrous events of the 21st century. >> we had witnessed 9/11, right? the terrorist attack in new york and the plane that crashed in pennsylvania and the so called plane that crashed into the pentagon. it is odd there is never any evidence shown for a plane in the pentagon. >> the so called plane that crashed at the pentagon. all right we've clearly got a problem here but marjorie taylor greene is just the tip of the iceberg. a internal investigation exposed thousands of qanon pages and groups that have millions of members and followers, while this paradigm is and at least once entirely fringe does seem

to be picking up mainstream and could prevent itself elsewhere on capitol hill. how many have passed by small margins. the farm bill two vote. in 2017 the republican led house i believe to dismantle obama care by four votes. visualize what can happen if some of that power is seated to conspiracy theorist who is pedal outlandish fiction or just plain old racism. she probably be not be the last to make their way to congress. joining me now, two reporters who have written extensively on the topic. ben, on friday i believe you published a brand new piece about this. so let's start with you ben. bring us up to speed for people who are watching and don't really know what qanon is. what is it? i think a lot of people assume conspiracy theory. could be be that bad, right? maybe you watch "unsolved

mysteries" or something like that. it is not like that. it is very dangerous stuff. a guy posts on his website and claims three years that hillary clinton was about to be arrested and that the d state was activated -- sorry. the national guard was state. and they were going to be protests all throughout the country because she was about to be arrested for running a satanic child-eating cabal. that's the kind of thing we're dealing with here. it's not standard conspiracy stuff, it's really out there things. and this people are waiting for judgment day to come. what we've realized is that people who are sort of diving down radicals during the pandemic because they're nervous about job security, or they lost their job or a loved one's sick and they want to find answers for this. q anon supporters have taken advantage of these people and spread the work out during that time. >> brandy, you and i have talked a lot on this show about

nonsense that freds spreaspread internet. feels like this falls into his own category, it's not just people retweet organize ing or . it sounds like this borders on a belief system. >> it's a cult, ali. it's a religion. it's, you know, these people that are like marjorie greene taylor was, they have utilized social media not just to read and maybe share with their friends' group, but to congregate together in facebook groups, you know, in subreddits, but in these groups to share and radicalize with people all day long. the pandemic has made things worse and so these people are there all day. we've seen like i reported this week, facebook groups have grown exponentially with qanon.

the people are becoming more radicalized with the we c radicalized. >> i want to talk about how they fueled ant try viral antimask phenomenal. how do people get involved on this? you have wrote while they bubbled on the fringes for years, researchers and experts say it's emerged as a centralized hub for conspiracy and alternative health communities. you're saying that people started off in things that seemed a lot more benign, like wellness communities and somehow worked their way into these full-on conspiracy theories that involve eating babies and things like that. >> yeah. you might think this is a strictly far right phenomenon. after all, in this they're rit only rule is that donald trump is the only good guy. he is here to go save the world from the satanic cannibals. you would think that say strickly far right phenomenon.

recently it isn't. we saw a lot of groups who were wellness communities, people who,ed from who were interested in alternative health. they would sort these people with alternative health, maybe they're antivax, if they're antivax, maybe they're into donald trump. and within one or two clicks, people would go down these very bad paths. i'm sure you've seen these videos are, there's a new one every week of people trashing a target or yelling at people in the supermarket about masks and saying they're forefor slaves. in these wellness communities and qanon communities, they are using these videos as recruiting tools saying you're not alone. that lady freaking out at target, she is, in fact, she's speaking the truth here. so we may view this rationally, we may view this as, you know, somebody flipping out in a store on a person making minimum wage. and that is correct.

but on facebook, there's an entirely different audience. there are two people in this store that i saw who a month before they within the and they trar trashed a target like you're seeing or they went to the palm beach county commissioner's meeting and told everyone that they're all pedophiles, a month before and they weren't even donald trump fans. but facebook sorted them into this group so quickly and radicalized them so fast, that they determined that this was the best course of the action. >> so, brandy, again, we're not seeing active disavowing from donald trump as we saw he congratulated marjorie green. what are we seeing from the republican party from folks who don't want this stuff interfering in their own brand? >> very little, apparently, you know, ms. green is going to be placed on a committee. there have been one or two republicans who have come out and said this is a dangerous ideology and we want no part of it, and those people have been quickly harassed on social media

by qanon followers who are very, very good at swarming together and harassing. and, you know, like we said before, ali, this is not a fringe movement anymore. thousands of facebook groups, millions of members. that is what we call a political base at this point. and you can see that republicans are fine with using that to their advantage. >> thanks to both of you for your great reporting on this, and i do recommend to my viewers to follow both of you about important reporting on qanon and conspiracy theories that are out there that could spread to relatives or people you know and you could end up hearing them at the dinner table. brandy, nbc news reporter and ben collins, nbc news technology report, he are thanks to both of you. coming up at the top of the hour, the postal service is warning every state that it might not be able to deliver mail ballots on time. i'll speak to gary peters about it. velshi continues after a break. it. velshi continues after a break.

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good morning. it is saturday, august the 15th. we are 80 days from election day. i'm ali velshi. 170,000 americans are dead from covid-19 and 1.3 million americans have been diagnosed with the disease. considering how contagious covid-19 is and the failure of the trump administration to contain it, it's no surprise

that a record number of americans are expected to vote by mail this year. however, that has coincided with two other things. president trump's near universal focus on his remember election and his crusade against one of america's great institutions. the united states postal service. the story has been moving at light speed, so here's what's going on. trump recently installed a new post master jen lewis dejoy who also happens to be a major trump donor and who has no experience in running the post office. dejoy specially went about restructuring the post office, including organizing the leadership structure, instituting a hiring freeze, banning overtime and trips by postal carriers that were designed to ensure that mail is delivered on time. all of this, as you can imagine, and you may have experienced, has significantly slowed mail delivery nationwide. dejoy says this has to do with the postal services finances, but it comes back to the need of most americans to vote by mail this year because of the pandemic. and trump's desire to suppress that.

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