four days until joe biden accepted the nomination for president. >> the immediate task is to come together to defeat trump. then as progressives, we are going to do everything we can to maked biden administration the most progressive that it can become. >> i'll ask bernie sanders how he plans to make good on that promise. 100 years after white women earned the right to vote, a black woman will be on the ballot. plus founded in 1775, the real story behind the u.s. postal service. why it's hurting and its crucial role in america's prosperity. "velshi" starts right now. we are 79 days from the election. i'm ali velshi. more than 170,000 americans have now died from covid-19.

more than 5.3 million total americans have been diagnosed with the virus. according to our president, who held a news conference yesterday for the sixth straight day, everything is fantastic. >> i think we have done well, our economy is doing good, but i want money for the people, they want money to bail out democrat governors. they want a trillion dollars to bail out badly run states. will something happen? possibly, but i want to tell you the country is doing well. we can live happily with it, without it. >> of course president trump thinking we are doing well right now, and doesn't see the need for relief to million of those out of work. how could he? he made those statements on his own golf tournament and all the

while the president is not paying for it. the taxpayers are. the united states postal service. trump has long had disdain for the postal service, but he's turned that disdain into a vehicle for his reelection, not over policy disagreements, but as a way for him to suppress the vote, which he has admitted to on camera. he installed one of hess megadonors, with no experience with the service, on a -- and for the first time if its history, the postal service is adding new peak surcharge fees for domestic parcels starting in october, essential turning an american icon into, you know, uber. nearly every state has reportedly received letters from the general counsel saying the postal service will not be able to fulfill what is expected to be a record number of mail-in ballots, which could mean

millions of votes would be discarded because they arrive too late. trump is, of course, against addition at funding. it would mean those votes could actually be counted. we'll have more on why he cares solve so much about that later. nbc news has learned that the postal service inspector general is reviewing the new post master's policies to try to figure out whether he's violating any federal ethics rules in keeism keeping a stake in a company that's a postal service contractor and recently has been buying stock options in amazon. congresswoman elisa slot kin is calling on congress to come back to washington to hold public hearing, and speaker pelosi is reportedly contemplating doing just that. this has been an extremely fast-moving story. the reaction has been swift. in a movement with monumental reach and influence, taylor swift tweeted about the postal service, and in no uncertain terms let her pin be known for

her roughly 87 million followers. trump's calculated dismannerling proves one thing clearly. he's well aware we do not want him as our president. he's chosen to blatantly cheat and put millions of americans' lives at risk in an effort to hold on to power. joe biden has received the influential endorsement of the national letter carriers, the union that represents retired and active postal workers. the trust of the matter is that voting by mail is not rampant with fraud, as trump continuing to insist without any evidence. there's virtually no fraud at all. and no difference between absentee voting, which trump and the first lady are ironically doing this year and mail-in voting. the verification process is exactly the same. they both have equal safety and security. many states don't even call them

different things. the military has been voting by mail in the civil war as floated in a new piece in "new york times" written by a pair of military spouses. if it's safe and secure for our military, it's safe and secure for the rest of our sit zones as well. joining me is philip rucker, an msnbc political analyst, also the coought -- a new piece dives into the long and strain hit torrie of trump's hate that was and the founder of campaign zero and love and power of words, an msnbc contributor as well, a former fellow at the harvard institute of politics, and she's going to grace the cover of british "vogue's" september issue. so britney, please, sunday morning, bring us your hope

right now. >> first of all, trump would not being accomplish this if he was doing it by himself. the heroes bill has been languishing on his desk. but we actually need to make sure secondly, though, that while we are sharing this critically important news about the postal service that we aren't participating in what i feel like is trump's strategy to depress the vote, which is one of the most insidious forms of voter suppression. that with all of these threats and with all of this language and rhetoric and potential actions to push back the you usps services, to delay mail delivery, we have to recognize that pew research just shared

nearly half of all voters believe there will be difficulty voting, up from just 18% two years ago. what is scarier is 6 on% of democrats are afraid of that difficulty, compared to just 35% of republicans. that's because they have to know that their guy is rigging the election in their favor. what can the fear of suppression do to become a self-fulfilling prophecy and actually depress the vote and have people just choose to stay home? people are going to have to put hope in themselves and their communities and call for the senate for pass the heroes act and volunteer to become poll workers to keep polls open to people can vote early and in strong numbers. >> you have set me up for our next segment in which i'm going to make that suggestion, that companies get involved in this on behalf of their workers. phil rucker, trump has combined two things. he's had a long-standing,

somewhat misinformed, misguided disdain for the united states post office and now he's figured out a way to use the post office essential by defunding it, about you to use the post office to help him win an election that he's otherwise knotts he a he's otherwise not on track to win. >> that's exactly right. our reporting shows almost immediately after coming into office, he started labeling the postal service as a loser. in private meetings with his advisers, he would rail about the finances. he actually came to believe, because allies told him there even though there's no evidence to support it, one of the reason he lost the popular vote was because of the problems with the postal side of and mail-in balloting. of course, there's no evidence to support that. and his grievances with the postal service increase over the years, especially as he fixated on jeff bezos, the billionaire founder of amazon, and he had in

his head that amazon had some sort of sweetheart deal. some of the his aides tried to correct the president and he wouldn't have anything on that and fixated on the postal service, to where we are now, where he seals it as a tool in his reelection. he believes by deproo i was what the service needs and these quote/unquote operational infishes, he can restrict mail-in balloting, which he has argued, again without evidence, is fraught with fraud. >> britney i want to talk about whether this is motivating or demote investigating. in my household it's been remarkably -- it caused my son to make sure he understood how

to get my ballot and i saw the completed envelope he's ready to sign in. is there in world in which warning people that your vote may not be counted if you don't be as adult and take this into your own hands is going to cause you to say, yeah, i am in danger and i'm going to make damn sure i'm counted in this most important election in our lifetime. >> i believe that's the world that donald trump and gop want us to live in, where their threats translate into voter oppression and depression and a lack of enthusiasm to turn out the vote. what we have to do is, as we're being transparent, as we are telling the american people what they absolutely deserve to know. they deserve to know these things, we also have to make sure we're sharing thundershower solutions, so we look at places on the leadership conference, when we all vote, the naacp and other voting rights groups that

are making sure as we report transparently we're giving people tangible, material things to do. and we have to make sure as the media, when we're warning people we're sharing with them what's possible. let's be clear. this administration told me they don't like defunding things. when we talked about defunding the police and reimagining public safety so black people don't die at the hands of the people whose salaries we pay, we were called terrorists. i think it's a form of do metzing terrorism to intentionally and willfully dismantle democracy in our very eyes. i thought they didn't like defunding things. >> when i said it earlier, i had the same thought in my mind. phil, what is the absolute? is it political or legal? i've had many people talking about things they want insertsed in the cares act, which is also going nowhere at the moment, to have the post office not lower

the level from january 1st of this year until after the pandemic, but some people are suing, some people want legislation. what is the solution to this? >> well, there are certainly steps that congress can take, as you just outlined. perhaps the most important one that we are hearing lawmakers are looking at doing soon is to conduct their oversight responsibility, to have the postmaster general come before congress and answer questions about what's happening here and become accountable for the management steps he's taken to the public. this is an extraordinary public news story that has reached communities all around the country. it's not like some of these other trump scandals that are huge break news in washington. this is something that every -- affects every american and that americans are tuning in on. they're literally not getting their mail as quickly as they're used to. they're seeing some of their

mailboxes and their communities uproaded. that's a problem, and that's something that i think congress will be rather responsive too in terms of oversight and trying to get some questions answers. in terms of longer-term fixes, that will require legislation and that takes time to work through the capital, but i would expect we'll see the heat on postmaster general over the next few days. thank you to both of you. britney and i were together on the historic night in which kamala harris was appointed as the vice president candidate. phil rucker, i have to appreciate the fact you're wearing the cousin or sibling to my jacket, but regardless you nor i will end up on the cover of british "vogue." thank you, my friends. joining me live now from the

united states postal service where the postal service was founded, by the way. maura barrett, a fellow pennsylvanians. we hold this closely, because benjamin franklin is the guy who discussed this is really, really important, as the situation at any times to intensify, she hayes a follow-up to a piece she did in a simp way for states to process ballots more quickly. what do you have in terms of solutions? >> as you remember back in june, we saw major delays in the state reporting. and this was before the usps drama. the same thing hand in new york and several other states sort of serving a a practices run. an election official told me

wonderful big holdups was just literally opening the ballots and getting them ready to put in the scanser. so experts tell me one way to make this process faster and ultimately prevent any delays is to early up a ballot processing timeline. pennsylvania is one of a dozen states across the country. other swing states they don't allow their election officials to touch their ballots at all until election day. i want to point out if processing a ballot is earlier than counting a balterier. if states are allowed to process them early, they can tame them out of the envelopes, flatten them, verify any signatures to make sure the ballots already counted and then officially tabulated on election day. officials say just early up that timeline could be huge. this is a relytively easy fix

that can be done in state legislatures, but there is that caveat. we all know how long things can state in the statehouses sometimes, so election officials say if the bills don't go through, they can't process the ballots earlier. so voters need to send their ballots in as early as possible. ali? >> maura, thank you, as always for your reporting, and thanks for bringing more philadelphia into the show this morning. >> reporter: anytime. president trump's younger brother robert has passed away. the white house announced that he died yet at new york presbyterian hospital. he have i ev the white house has not released any details, but in a statement president trump said robert was, quote, not just my brother, but he was my best friend. his memory will live on forever.

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south texas, along the mexico border, is one of the most coronavirus-infected areas in the united states. he shares this look inside a dying patient's room, one of the many on his service. >> i'm sitting here with this whom who has changed her mind multiple times. she's actively died. what i wanted to video was for the to hear the sound of these poor patients as they progress. this is all you hear is them gasping for breath. that is her. that's her gasping. it's horrible.

>> that's dr. ivan melendez in southern texas, along the mexico border. "new york times" reporting that the five metropolitan areas with the highest rate of new coronavirus cases, relative to their population, are in fact from border towns in the lone star at a time. texas schools are on track to reopen, but the state's department of education has chosen not to keep track of positive cases that elearn in schools. strangely they're leaving that management to local counties and school districts, which is kind of what the problem has been in this country. if you're a parent, you won't notice if the school has a high infection rate of the virus. sounds crazy, right? here's what else is crazy. the number of tests taken in texas is actually decreases. this while nearly 24% of all tests taken in the state were

positive for covid-19. let's get this straight. test sergeant down, but the number of positive cases in those being tests is up. here to discuss is dr. gandhi, the chief medical officer at the people's community clinic in austin. he's also a faculty member at u.t. austin's dell medical school. he ran for congress this year, lost the primary against his opponent. dr. gandhi, good to see you good. >> good morning. >> donald trump keeps cease we have more cases because of more testing, but texas actually indicates the opposite. less testing and more cases. >> yeah, i think we're in a tough situation here, especially in south texas. if you look at the central part of the state, austin, even in southeast texas, it seems that things are improving. south texas is an entirely different world, right? it seems we have a safety net which has decimated by federal

and state leadership. we've got a majority/minority population, and historically limited access to not just health care, but for pharmacies, medication so you're seeing this infrastructure crumble in real time. that video it particularly different to watch. we've had patients come in who are quite literally gasping to catch their breath, and it's important for people to see that and to hear that. frontline healthcare professionals are talking about the challenges of taking care of covid patients, this is what we are seeing. >> i want to ask you, because you're a doctor, and because you work in an underserved area, we keep talking generally speaking about these post office cuts, and people depending on the mail for things like medications. i have in firsthand experience with that. >> absolutely.

look, we send medication and other importance issues via mail regularly. the reality is one in five americans use the postal service to get medications for their chronic diseases. that number increases, 80% of veterans use the united states postal service to get their medication. when i have a patient, for example, whose phone was cut off, because we all know that paying bills is hard in this time we're in now, and i need to send a critical lab value to their home, the only way for me to do that is by mail. often communication happens in these underserved areas via mail. it is our most reliable source. now we're not able to do it. it's not just medication. it's medication, lab values, social security checks. we are talking about critical pieces of a person's life that happens via mail, andi really

tough to see. the reality is americans will die if the united states postal service is unfunded, underfunded and doesn't get the support that it nears. >> i this i -- i think it's an important point, but it's also a matter of life and death. i want to read you a quote from jessica light, a professor at texas a&m, about football and schools resuming in texas. the article reads texas testing drops as schools reopen and prepare for football. the doctor says at this point everybody is a guinea pig. the teachers, staff, students, parents, because we're not exactly sure how this is going to work. i was talking to a doctor the other day who said in places where testing is proving that the instance of infection is very low, that might be the place to start experimenting and

pulling back or adding in. in some places in texas, that would be a dangerous place to be a guinea pig. >> we don't have enough testing to have a sense of what's going on in texas. testing has more or less decreased over major counties, a significant decrease. the positivity rate had been going up. it's roughly around 14%, to 15%. if we're talking about reopens schools. if we're talking about reschools safely for our children, we want cases to be less than 25 per 100,000. it's impossible to get a good handle on the data if we're not doing reg hear routine testing. the reality is we do have the resources, right? we are quickly scaling the ability to be able to do rapid testing. so we have the technology. the question is, do we deploy it statewide? the answer right now is it's not

happening. you heard last week the testing czar nationally saying that testing really isn't a big part of this process. i don't know anyone who works in meyer field that would agree with them. it's concerning. i know i want --ivity thr i hav young daughters. it's heartbreaking to see them working on zoom. the state and federal government has failed is deploying testing at scale. it's unacceptable. >> dr. gandhi, it's good to see you again. thank you. >> thank you. voting is supposed to be the most democratic things we can do. there was a time when not everybody had that right. it is something to be celebrated. why do we make it so hard for americans to vote? coming up, we'll discuss why

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why isn't election day a national holiday? according to the pew research centers, a majority of americans support the idea, 71% of democrats, 59% of republicans are -- but i am looking for ways to make votes easier. voting is literally the most democratic thing we do. yet it can be uniquely difficult. a pew research study also shows that america ranks closer to the bottom of industrialized country when it comes to voter turnout. a national holiday would help. as you would expect, hourly wage

earners have the lowers turnout. you wonder why things are as lopsided as they are? making it a national holiday would allow working voters greater opportunity do cast their ballots. it means they can vote whenever it's convenient and more pottsing places can be readily available. and you don't have to make a choice. democrats tried to do this, by the way in 2019, but mitch mcdonnell dismissed it, calling it a a power grab. really? qualified voters being given a chance to vote? clearly this won't happen this year, but maybe a new administration and new congress should think about t there's no federal law governing how much time you can -- most states forbid you from punishing your employer, but it shouldn't come to that. employers should consider leading on this one, treating

elick days, if you're too small though be able to do that, give half of them the morning off, half the afternoon off. make it a priority to make sure you know how voting works in your state during the pandemic. encourage them to register. vote by mail if they can, offer to help them plan on the when they will vote. i know it's been a tough few months for businesses. if you can't spare the ours, work with your staff to move some of the hours around to give them the time they need to vote. it's not a holiday yet, but in year america's businesses can make election day something to celebrate. make election day somo celebrate. than rheumatoid arthritis. when considering another treatment, ask about xeljanz a pill for adults with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis when methotrexate has not helped enough. xeljanz can reduce pain, swelling, and further joint damage, even without methotrexate. xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections. before and during treatment,

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funding for postal. they need money, but they're not willing to approve the money that they need. if they can't get the money that they need for universal mail-in voting, i don't see how they can have it. president trump there railing against his latest political target the united states postal service, trump now admits he's holding up funding to prevent universal voting by mail. as congressional democrats fight for emergency funding for the usps in the next round the relief legislation, trump actually bragged that the agency will not have the resources to handle the incoming surge of ballots in the upcoming election. on thursday he said, if we don't make a deal, that means they don't have the money. they can't have universal mail-in voting. while the trump administration exhausts all measures to prevent -- he and the first lady have requested their own absentee ballots, allowing them

to vote remotely. the perfect person joining mess to discuss this, the reverend al sharpton, host of "politics nation" here on msnbc. rev, i want to take a a different angle. you have fought your entire life for civil rights. at what point is this a civil rights issue? we have a right to vote. we're in the middle of a pandemic and the president seems to be actively works against people in their -- >> this begins as a civil rights issue. i think it's a mistake, ali, to reduce this just to the 2020 contest, though clearly that is the motive apparently of the president, but this is a civil rights/voting rights issue of denying people the right to exercise that are right to vote. and this has a battle since the beginning of this country where blacks could not vote, because we were property.

then when we were given the right to vote there were impediments put in the way. women couldn't vote until 1920, so there has been a historic pattern to deny people the right to vote other than white males with property. the president is now using a long historic pattern of manipulating voting denial for his own personal gain. he's been real clear about it, but we must look bigger than the president. we can't let anyone undermine the voting rights and ability of everyone in a pandemic where people will have to choose their health, particularly if there's a second wave. the only way to assure that everyone would have the right to exercise their constitutional right to vote is to have a

mail-in process in place. that's how it should be argued. we should not let trump reduce it to his ego. >> so what does not letting it happen mean? politico wrote an article, the headline of pelosi is considering calling the house back to the up capitol, and elizabeth slotkin has talked about calling the postal -- to -- walked be done? >> all of the above. i semispeaker pelosi is right to call congress back. they ought to confront the federal government in terms of the fund, but the inspector general needs to be call in before congress immediately to explain why he is closing down certain processes, why they're actually closing down certain

postboxes on the west coast that we have seen, literally interfering. why did they send a her to many states saying we do not know if we can get the mail-in votes to you in time for people to meet the deadlines. all of that should be dealt with in an immediate situation. this is not a cavalier situation that we can wait on everyone to take their summer break. they're breaking the rights of people to vote, which is the foundation, the bedrocks of a democracy. >> on the other hand, there are people who have been motivated to vote in this election and in 2018 that, you know, were otherwise not voting because they were feeling disenfranchised or disinterested. do you think that offsets it. britney cunningham was on the short earlier, say we don't want to depress the vote by talking about the difficulties in voting, but how do people motivate to make sure their ballot is cast?

most people can do that if they are determined to. >> i can, and i think they should, and i think many of us will be trying to motivate them to do it. it does not mean in any way mean we should not at the same time challenge government to do what this should and would be doing. because i've been in civil rights, as you said, all my life, i've always told people when there are embedments in the way, go through it and show you're stronger that is the impediment, but don't pardon the impediments. we should tell people to vote anyway, even if it's hard, even if it's difficult, but at the same time we ought to make the government do what the government is supposed to do, and that is secure people's rights. i don't think it there's one it -- good to see you, my friend. reverend al sharpton is the president and founder of the national action network. don't forget to catch him at 5:00 p.m. here right here.

the trump administration is trying to destroy one of the oldest institutions in america, but it's not the first time that the u.s. postal service has been under siege. i'm going to tell you how the republican party is has tried to stamp out the agency in the past, when "velshi" continues. it's time for the biggest sale of the year on the new sleep number 360 smart bed

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♪ [ chanting ] that was a scene yesterday outside the washington, d.c. home of donald trump's newly appointed post master general, just part of the national outcry over what seems to be deliberate efforts to slow down the mail. donald trump has often said the post office has been run poorly for many, many decades, but for facts' sake, there is a lot more to the story than meets the eye. the united states postal service is exactly that. it's a service, like the mill tar, like public schools, designed to meet a societal need. in fact it's such an important service that it's specifically ename rated in the united states constitution, written in by the founders who understood a strong postal service was critical to

the nation's infrastructure. the postman's oath is, quote, neither -- right now it's not dark of night that's keeping them from the appointed rounds, not even coronavirus, which has turned postal workers into frontline workers. they can't work from home, and that is what -- that's not even preventing mail from getting to your home. president trump and the unqualified megadonor is. this is not the first time that republicans have tried to destroy the post office. they've been after the postal service since long before donald trump took office. in the period after the med term elections of 2006 and the swearing in of the new congress in 2007, republicans passed and president george w. bush signed a law that made the postal service prefund 75 years of its pension within a ten-year window, something that virtually

no private company does and something that its competitors didn't need to do. republicans did this when they did it, because come january 2007, nancy pelosi would be the new speaker of the house for the first time. they knew they couldn't get it past her and the democratic majority. that singular move crippled the post offices financially. so don't fall for the republican lines about mismanagement or inefficiency. this was done deliberately to the postal service, which was never designed to make money. we've heard lots of reasons why we shouldn't hobble the post office, how it delivers medication, it deep small businesses afloat, it allows people to get their social security checks. but there's another side of this. the usps is one of moss professions that's provided opportunities and prosperity to tens of thousands of americans, in particular, for black workers who have long faced overt racial discrimination in the private

sector. the postal service has been a source of good middle-class jobs, ladder jobs as we call them, where you can move higher socioeconomically. in fact research found 23% of postal workers are black. joining me is andre perry, a fellow at the brookings institution, author of "know your price." doctor perry, good to see you again. i just want to underscore the degree too much the post office is one of several institutions for people who have post-reconstruction understand to have been really important. it was a really big deal to get a job in the postal service, hand in many african-american families we're looking at two or three generations of people employed by the postal service. >> yeah, in many ways, the united states postal service is an example of what the federal

government can do to advance racial equality and advance an inclusive economy. going back to reconstruction when the federal government started appointing black mostmasters and clerkings, it's been a route to the black middle class in which you mentioned the private sector has not moved quickly on. so, this move by the trump administration is nothing new. it invokes the racial hostility of the past in which whites -- racist whites have always sought to curb black progress in government and in work in general 23% of the postal service where they're 13% of the population. so in fact if you are looking to hurt black pros speaker, they're one of the institutions where

you're going to impose greater hardship proportionately on african-americans than the rest of the population. >> yes, up and down that 23% of the number in the aggregate, that number goes up. if you're looking at washington d.c. or detroit and birmingham, places like this, government workers, particularly federal and municipal government workers make up a significant portion of the black middle class. what you do when you erode the integrity of the postal service, not only are you eroding the services that black people need in those communities, you're eroding the very structure of the economy in those places. so this is absolutely a devastating move and is taking voters suppression to new economic levels.

and, by the way, for a president to say he's done more for african-americans than any other president, this provides the kind of evidence that showed that he's not for black people and not for the blood middle class. he is actually throttling growth by this move. >> an draw, you're also an expert on business. if you're a big business like amazon, you can negotiate remarkable rates, to am seo also uses the postal service. if you're a small business, you are disproportionately dependent on the postal service in your deliveries, but in the coronavirus, you are extra dependent on it, because people can't comes into your places to get product. >> yeah. as you mentioned, the post after service provides an essential service for americans who cannot

la enon a private market, that is biased in many ways, though that you don't have means to leverage different pricing with companies. the government service provides that opportunity to stay in business. so this move, again, is another just attempt to erode the quality of life of african americans and it should not just be seen as a political move to get someone -- to get trump elected. this is also an attack on black workers, essential workers in black communities. >> andre, good to see you again, as always. dr. perry, author of "know your value." we've got brand-new polling coming out in just a few minutes. i'm going to speak toe two candidates on the battlelines in the fight for control of the senate. i'm going to speak to senator

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call or go online today. good morning. it is sunday, august 16th. we are 79 days from election day 2020. i'm ali ali velshi. more than 170,000 americans have died from covid-19. months after