♪ if it's tuesday, vote like your life depends on it. democrats use the opening night of their convention to slam president trump as an urgent danger to the country. what do they have planned for night two? plus a new bipartisan senate report on 2016 russian interference shows the lengths president trump will go to win an election as he hits an increasingly desperate phase in his current campaign against joe

biden. welcome to tuesday. it's "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd. we're following a number of stories. the postmaster general is going to testify before congress in just three days. negotiators are back at it trying to figure out a deal for virus relief and post office funding. democrats ready to come down from their $3 trillion plan. it's night two of the democratic convention. and, oh, don't forget, the coronavirus continues to upend everything. the schools across the country reversing plans to reopen. you have to wonder if we'll look back at this moment and this week as yet another instance where we vastly underestimated this virus. essentially a memorial day 2.0 for us. we'll have a lot more on that as well coming up. it's a jammed hour. we're going to begin with the president's reaction to the opening night of the democratic convention which tells you just about everything of where this campaign is going. if you think he's running a negative scorched earth campaign

now? you ain't seen nothing yet. last night democrats drove home one message. that everyone from anti-trump republicans to socialist democrats must put their differences aside and agree that president trump is a danger to this country. the trump campaign has responded by releasing an ad that represents its harshest attack yet on joe biden trying to paint him as mentally incapacitated. >> i hope some of you become millionaires and billionaires. i mean that. but engage. >> um, you know, there's a very world war ii, you know, where roosevelt came up with a thing that, you know, was totally different than a -- than the -- he called it the -- >> on top of that, president trump has been ratcheting up his attempts to sow doubt about the election results.

>> just make sure your vote gets counted. make sure because the only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged. remember that. >> absentee is great, but universal is going to be a disaster, the likes of which our country has never seen. it will end up being a rigged election or they'll never come out with an outcome. they'll have to do it again. and nobody wants that. and i don't want that. >> and republicans today essentially gave president trump the green light to win at all costs because they signed on to a senate intelligence report concluding president trump and his campaign tried to maximize the impact of russia's attack on our democracy in 2016. the president impeded the senate's investigation with claims that had no basis in law and that he misled the mueller investigation, possibly lied to robert mueller and embraced conspiracy theories pushed by russia. and that his campaign chief in 2016 was a grave counterintelligence threat. that's just to name a few of the

conclusions in this nearly 1,000-page report. more than twice the size of the mueller report. yet the republican leaders so far have had nothing but public praise for president trump of late. shows you the lengths president trump and by extension republicans may have to go in order to win the cycle. joining me from wilmington, delaware, the center of the political universe this week is my nbc news correspondent ali vitali. also robert costa, national political reporter for "the washington post" and cornell belcher and mike murphy, who is host of hacks on tap podcast. all three of these gentlemen are msnbc political analysts. ali, let me start with you and this in some ways not surprised perhaps if you are the biden campaign, that it's going to be a next level of negative attacks coming from team trump and i assume team biden is ready to dish it back. but their reaction to this next level attack coming from the

trump campaign on joe biden's mental fitness? >> look, i think they are ready to dish it back. at the same time, the biggest takeaway from me from last night's democratic national convention, it was a lot of lessons from 2016 on display. whether them highlighting a lot of unity, combating that factionalism that felled the party in 2016. that was clearly on display. when you have bernie sanders to john kasich making the pitch for joe biden against donald trump. then also the fact there's been a lot of messaging discipline from this biden/harris ticket. they have ignored a lot of the attacks he's lobbed at them whether birtherism, which was one remark back from kamala harris talking about it, or everything that he said about joe biden's mental fitness. they are staying on their own message which does take away one of the key things trump has always had going for him, which is his ability to turn the news cycle wherever he wants it to

go. he's not had a lot of success with that, even though he's counterprogramming the democratic national convention. and the key here when you look at conventions, yes, it's about message but also messengers. if you look at the way the democratic national convention is putting out messengers, most of their keynote speakers are women. whether it's michelle obama last night or jill biden tonight. kamala harris coming on wednesday. they are countering trump with their own models of leadership and leadership styles showing it's not just combating trump on the issues but also on the types of leadership and that's the key focal point of tonight as we head into speeches from alexandria ocasio-cortez to biden's wife, dr. jill biden. >> robert costa, i guess the thing that on one hand we shouldn't be surprised that the trump campaign, it's been a couple of weeks. their first round of new ads after the campaign manager change featured, again, barely

even featured donald trump. it seems as if they've come to the conclusion they can't sell him so their only route to re-election is tearing down biden. >> i was talking to some trump advisers and republicans earlier today about all of this. and part of the strategy here they told me is that they want to stir up democrats during the convention week by raising these issues about vice president biden's fitness for office. but i pushed him. okay, i get it. you want to send a flair during their convention week. is this going to be the theme? the thing they're worried about is not whether these attacks land, about vice president biden and various television appearances he's had. what they're worried about is whether the attacks on vice president biden regarding china land in the coming 75, 80 days because that, to them, is the way the president can reclaim some of his populist,

nationalist message that he used in 2016. so far it's a bit of a tbd on whether that china attack from the gop will puncture the biden ascent. he's ahead in the pools and included in the industrial midwest where that issue and trade really matter. >> cornell, it's interesting on that i assume if you try to change -- if you want to go after biden on mental fitness or china, in a normal political environment, maybe you can have that conversation. but i wonder how it hands in the middle of a pandemic and middle of an economic crisis and people are wondering, what are you focused on? >> it's not just that. we're approaching 170,000 americans, you know, dying to covid. and you have an economic downturn. but let's also not forget this. the george floyd voter. we also have months of protests

about racial injustice. so to try to switch up all this domestic chaos. when people are really concerned about the division and it's happening in this country and if you are that suburban housewife that trump keeps tweeting to, you're worried about what this means for the future of your kids. i don't know if changing the subject and trying to talk about china is going to pull those suburban women back towards the republican party. i think it's problematic. just from an over campaign standpoint, i've got to tell you, and i'd love to hear mike on this. i don't understand what the trump campaign is doing. they don't have a central message. >> i don't either. >> they're all over the place. >> and it's bizarre how you break through with no message. look, all -- bush, we're stronger today than we were, you know. president clinton, we're more prosperous today than four years ago. only message from trump is that the election is rigged and the

black and brown hoards are going to invade suburbs. that's no way to win re-election to presidency of the united states. >> mike murphy, you and i talked about this last week but it actually reminds me of the '92 campaign when there was this point you could tell the bush campaign was just throwing anything at the wall. let's try the passport stuff with him. it was -- there was this point, and perot was taking a bite out of them, and they were all over the map. and then, hey, we're going to bring this money over here and money over there. you were involved in that. that's what i'm seeing with team trump right now that they seem to be just grasping for anything. >> well, yeah, look. first of all, because trump has a presidential campaign, it doesn't mean he has a strategy. we kind of are trained to expect very sophisticated campaigns. there's a guy at the top doing angry tweets. there's a staff mostly of second

tier, third tier people who you know they can't control him so they're trying to turn on the machinery. so that's why it's all tactics. the tactic this week is let's throw out wild video ads to get in the news cycle while the democrats hammer us at the convention. trump is no giant in the mental acuity department himself. i don't know where the strategic advantage is. and it sets up biden if he gives, not even a great speech, a decent, confident speech on national tv, he wipes it all away. so because they're behind and desperate and because it's lord of the flies on the inside, and they're all circling for trump's approval, they're going to try something new every week. and it will be increasingly desperate. it will be negative because the only strategy they have is to try to disqualify biden. if it's a referendum on trump, which it is now, trump loses. >> let's talk about what the democrats tried to accomplish last night. i want to get all your takes.

mike, i want to start with you. did they stretch the big tent well or are they -- could they rip a hole in the middle? mike, do you think that was a good argument to moderate republican and independent voters to have kasich and whitman and molinari and you're familiar with a couple of those folks. >> yeah, i ran a couple of campaigns. great to see christine todd whitman there. i don't think any of them have some huge grip on the party but i know from my work at republican voters against trump, 1 out of 4 habitual republicans, people who vote almost always republican in presidential elections, 1 out of 4 have private doubts about trump. if we can give them permission structure that it's okay to kind of rent, not buy, biden for a day, and peel 10 or 15% off so trump's republican number goes down in the 80s, we got them. and kasich did a good job. the whitmans did a good job.

susan molinari of showing it's okay to be a republican who is not on board trump. and so, yeah, i thought it was incrementally better. but the big weapon was michelle obama. a pop culture figure. >> no doubt. >> she has a real grip, and she cashed it in. she really did well. >> cornell, did they stretch the tent without ripping the middle? >> mike stole all my talking points. the kasich thing was a permission structure. clearly from a strategic standpoint, they were trying to get republicans who are uncomfortable with donald trump permission to land on the democratic party. and i think when you look at the midwestern battleground states. also look at where we're trying to stretch the map. arizona, you know, in 2012, we weren't spending money in arizona in 2008 either. and look at georgia. they are actually talking about spending money in georgia. on the biden campaign.

so when you start talking about stretching the map and being able to bring in more of these uncomfortable republicans, give them permission to land softly on joe biden, i think from a strategic standpoint, it was brilliant. >> robert costa, i am curious if the trump folks are prepared for what kind of convention they're going to roll out. as i was talking with david plouffe yesterday, he made a good point. trump is the one that needs a good convention. biden doesn't. it trump that needs one. right now it doesn't look like they're designing a convention to talk to the voters they need but designing a convention to make sean hannity happy. >> it's a convention to make president trump happy. the tensions i'm finding in my reporting are between those in the trump camp and the trump circle who want to highlight policy, highlight the trump agenda, make a pitch to certain voters and those who just want to really praise president trump. and that's the key tension right

now. and he could be a participant o potentially every night of the convention in some capacity, making a brief appearance. and he wants to be ever present. but just real quick, chuck. you talk about expanding the tent but not ripping the center. that happened for the democrats last night, not just in terms of trying to move the tent to the right but move the tent to the left. it's probably not getting enough notice because there's so much news. senator sanders could have had to steal your 1992 moment, could have had a 1992 pat buchanan moment against george h.w. bush. he could have went against vice president biden but he gave remarks all about unity at a time when the democrats, as we know from four years ago, still have battle scars. >> last night was a reminder of maybe the convention planners were happy they didn't have to deal with delegates because they really could script the speeches

and messaging in a way you don't normally have that much control. ali vitali, if there's one thing about last night that i think there was still a deficit on for team biden is, last night was not about joe biden. last night was about donald trump. i assume tonight we'll start hearing more about joe biden? >> you have to, yeah. because that's when you start talking about leadership. his wife is going to be the person to make that point. just to what everyone else is saying about stretching the tent. you're right it's probably good we're not in milwaukee in person because i've heard from people on the more progressive side of this party who were a little bit annoyed at the fact that republicans got such prime speaking time. of course, people like cedric richmond were defending that yesterday when we were talking with the campaign saying that everyone is involved in this election. but the most striking difference now and the thing i'm really keeping in mind is donald trump has really limited the size of his own tent. any republican that doesn't fit the donald trump mold of what it is to be a republican today, they actually talked last night

at the democratic national convention. >> it's an excellent point. one thing i'd say, and i think the democrats are smart about this, people will dip in twice during a convention if they're not a member of that party. on night one and on the acceptance speech night. so night one was the night to have the conversation with some maybe casual independents or casual viewers that may not come in for tonight and tomorrow which will probably be a little more devoted to the democratic base. ali vitali, robert coster, cornell belcher and mike murphy. thank you all. up ahead -- college campuses and covid. is this memorial day 2.0? universities that started to reopen are forced to change those plans and fast. are we heading for another post memorial day-style spike in cases? are we bracing for a horrible september? plus, more on the new bipartisan senate report revealing new details and never

before seen evidence about the trump campaign's embrace of russia's election interference in 2016. we'll talk to a member of the senate intel committee next. of course, all this hour we'll continue to share some of our most memorable moments. this is from the second night of past democratic conventions. we'll start in 2004. there was this little known state senator from illinois who had just won the democratic nomination for u.s. senate in illinois. a guy named barack obama elect riified the crowd in boston. >> even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us. the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. well, i say to them, tonight there is not a liberal america and a conservative america. there is the united states of america.

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welcome back. as a growing number of schools and universities are opening their doors for students, we've got the potential brewing for another major case spike. the university of notre dame reported 89 new cases in one day. and take a look at the university of north carolina chapel hill. after just one week of in-person classes, unc chapel hill had to cancel all in-person classes for undergraduate students. they have at least 135 new cases of coronavirus, and yesterday the chancellor announced the campus positivity rate had jumped by more than 10 percentage points. let's check in with morgan radford down in chapel hill right now. morgan, obviously we saw the student newspaper made a little news with their headline having to do with what they thought of the administration's decisions here. but this feels like it's not a surprise to any health -- public health expert you talk to and yet, here we are. >> i have to say, what's

interesting, chuck, while it's not a surprise to the health experts, it's actually not a surprise to the students. to a person, every single student i've spoken to said it wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when. many of them said they felt like it was almost irresponsible for the university to bring them here in the first place. you reference the head of the opinion page, page three of the "daily tar heel," the student newspaper here on campus. and they said the university has a cluster -- you know what -- on its hands and that's the sentiment we're hearing from students on campus. 135 new cases in just the first week of classes. that's a pretty big deal. the question is what message does that send to schools all around the country because unc is the very first school in the country since reopening this fall to now reverse and tell students to go back home. so they just got here a few days ago and they're already packing up.

chuck? >> morgan in chapel hill, thank you. if notre dame and unc can't figure this out, you know, we're not -- this has got to send a message to a lot of universities going this may not be doable. let's get a medical perspective here. dr. richard besser, the former acting director of the cdc. dr. besser, you know, we were having this discussion, my colleagues and i yesterday, and one of my colleagues noted the incentive structure for universities is to figure out any way possible to open. they have a financial incentive and need to do that. they need kids on campus. they need the tuition. you hate to say the football decisions might be tied into that. they need some of these bigger schools have to get some revenue in the door to service debt payments. are you concerned that financial reasoning is basically trumping public health recommendations at a lot of universities? >> i'm concerned about school

that's trying to reopen in a place where community control hasn't been achieved is not going to be successful. you're right. for some schools, it's really life or death. if they're not able to open and get students there financially, they're in big trouble. but if you have significant disease transmission in your community and students coming in from around the country, around the world, it's going to be very difficult to not have clusters. so you have to have the capacity to be able to deal with that, to isolate and quarantine. what i am worried about, chuck, and what's not been enough of the conversation is that most students will do well with this. and a lot of faculty have the option of teaching remotely. but what about staff? there are thousands and thousands of staff who work at universities and colleges. large proportions are people of color. and cdc had a report out yesterday looking at workplace outbreaks in utah.

and again, it's the same thing we've been seeing throughout this outbreak. black and latino workers being hit much harder. i think that's the same thing wool see on colleges and universities. if they are open. those are employees. the staff who don't have that option of working remotely. >> so help us out here. would you recommend any university attempting to reopen for in-person classes if the positivity rate in that community is over 5%? >> i think they're going to have a real hard time accomplishing it, yeah. and the other things you'll have to look at is what is the capacity for the health care system? if you look at places in florida, in texas, where the health care system is near capacity, you don't want to be bringing in thousands and thousands of students whose behavior has been questionable in the outbreak, in this pandemic, as of late. you don't want them to be coming and putting additional pressure on the health care system because, you know, they may do well in general but some will

need hospitalized services. and they're also going to be putting at risk staff and faculty. so it's a big pressure situation. there are some colleges and universities that are very isolated that are bringing in part of their student body that are trying to decompress. and that's something that's worth trying. this pandemic could go on for a long time. if they're able to come up with hybrid models that work and they can get students on board with doing the right thing, it may be possible in some places. >> dr. besser, i don't think we realize the bullet we dodged as a country in march. and i say this in that when the virus hit and we started to get -- realize lockdowns had to happen, a lot of college campuses were on spring break. and so we've -- we really don't know how this virus will travel with college -- on college campuses because the timing in this case we kind of lucked out. so then universities could say

we're going to extend spring break or it allowed them all to buy time. but we haven't seen how this is going to work, and i guess we're finding out in realtime now how bad it could have been had colleges been on campus when this virus hit. >> young adults, you know, adolescents are really tough crowd when it comes to looking at changing behavior, doing things that might reduce transmission. kid comes to college, it's for the education. it's also for the socialization. so even with a school like unc that's going to remote learning, there are going to be thousands of kids who are still living there in town, living off campus, living in fraternities and sorority houses. those are places where you'll continue to see disease transmission. so once you brought the students to a town, to a community, it's going to be very, very difficult to keep that under control if you don't have the ability to mandate behavior change in off-campus residential living.

>> bottom line, how i started this story. do you fear these school reopenings, are we going to see in six weeks what happened in july following memorial day? we basically, once july hit, we realized how bad memorial day turned out to be. are we going to be in that same boat come mid-september? >> well, you know, you have -- not just the college reopening but you have k through 12 schools reopening at the same time. >> yeah. >> so the same communities. i really worry about k through 12 reopening when you don't have community transmission down to very low rates. new york is down below 1%. and they're still cautiously thinking about what they're going to do in the city because of the concerns as to what may happen. even in very low levels, you are going to see some cases and clusters. so it's about managing those clusters, not preventing them entirely. and it's going to be challenging. >> dr. richard besser, former acting director of the cdc,

always appreciate your expertise. thank you, sir. >> pleasure, chuck. up ahead, we'll dig deeper into the bipartisan senate intel committee report including the new evidence about russia's influence on the 2016 election and that the campaign chief in 2016 was a grave counterintelligence threat. but first, this democratic national convention flashback goes to 1980 when senator ted kennedy ended his bid for the presidency with words still etched in political history. >> for me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. for all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on. the cause endures. the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die. great for your teeth. are'y the acid can actually wear away at the enamel which over time can cause sensitivity and a lot of people start to see their teeth turn yellow.

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time for a wrap up. a medicare supplement plan helps pay some of what medicare doesn't. you know, the pizza slice. it allows you to choose any doctor, who accepts medicare patients... and these are the only plans of their kind endorsed by aarp. whew! call unitedhealthcare today and ask for this free decision guide. welcome back. we have more now on that breaking news from capitol hill where the senate intelligence committee finally just released the most thorough report yet on the 2016 trump campaign's willingness to accept help from a foreign power. this bipartisan nearly 1,000-page report detailed ties between the kremlin and various senior campaign officials including campaign chairman paul manafort. manafort's high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely

affiliate affiliated -- represented a grave counterintelligence threat. that was written as fact in there by the way by this bipartisan team. and according to the report, the campaign welcomed help from russia including those hacked emails stolen by russian intelligence and released by wikileaks. quote, while the gru and wikileaks were releasing hacked documents, the trump campaign sought to maximize the impact of those materials to aid trump's electoral prospects. just a moment, i'm going to speak with a member of the senate intelligence committee. first i want to speak to intelligence and national security reporter ken dilanian. ken, we want to try to walk through a few more of these things. and i know one of your biggest takeaways was the extent of they ties between manafort and kilimnik. if you're not a sort of expert on the russia probe if you aren't like you and i who have been reading all these reports,

we know who kilimnik is. we know manafort. we know this was a pretty tight relationship. but it's even more damning what's painted in this report. >> that's right, chuck, because this report, for the first time, states flatly that kilimnik was a russian intelligence officer. and it really doesn't matter who he was. this is what our viewers need to know. donald trump's campaign chairman was in regular contact with a russian intelligence officer. and was providing him secret information including polling information, according to this report. i would venture to say if you and i knew that, if the public knew that back in 2016, there's a good chance donald trump would not have been elected president. that's a breathtaking revelation. and it's why this report says that paul manafort was a counterintelligence threat. and, really, makes clear that they never got to the bottom of robert mueller, never got to the bottom of what extent paul manafort was tied in to the russian government.

what information he did provide. there's a tantalizing line that says he may have been connected to that hack and dump operation, but the evidence isn't provided, chuck. >> speaking of what i would say is circumstantial conclusions but which you now -- we now have a better understanding why the justice department, while some in the justice department tried to prosecute roger stone. he then spoke with roger stone extensively in wikileaks. this is the most damning part of the roger stone part of this inve investigation. "the washington post" released the "access hollywood" tape. witnesses involved in the debate preparation recall the team first heard the tape about an hour prior to its public release. according to jerome corsi, news of the release made its way to roger stone. corsi and stone spoke twice. once at 1:42 for 18 minutes and once at 2:18 p.m. for 21

minutes. corsi recalled learning from stone the "access hollywood" tape would be coming out and stone wanted the poddesta stuff to balance the news cycle either right then or at least coincident. according to corsi, stone told him to have wikileaks drop the podesta emails immediately and, ken, they did drop them. stone and wikileaks is also a mystery that we've yet to fully solve. >> you're absolutely right, chuck. you and i talked about this during the stone trial. we knew some of these facts from the stone trial. what we have is a bipartisan report signed off on by some of trump's closest allies in the senate. john cornyn, tom cotton which says we assess that donald trump did, in fact, talk to roger stone about his outreach to wikileaks and the gatherings of these emails and what he was up to, even though donald trump told robert mueller that he didn't recall speaking about that at all. and now he said he didn't recall, right? so the report cannot accuse him

of lying. they don't know his state of mind. it paints a picture of so many contacts that beggar's belief that the candidate trump didn't recall talking to roger stone about his outreach to wikileaks. this was a central part of the operation. the trump campaign was eagerly accepting these hacked and dumped emails that embarrass the democrats. they call it their october surprise and roger stone was their outreach. and we don't know the extent to which roger stone cooperating with russian intelligence officers and what exactly he did. >> i'll go to my grave believing someone helped wikileaks collate and organize those emails. they were very precise. an american operative of some sort had to help. ken dilanian getting us started there. with me is the independent senator from maine, angus king. he does caucus with the democrats. he's a member of the senate intelligence committees. senator king, good to see you. i want to put up a statement from the current acting chair of

the intelligence committee. it's marco rubio. here's what he said. we can say without any hesitation that the committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate donald trump or his campaign cluded with the russian government to meddle in the 2016 election, unquote. senator king, do you agree with senator rubio's assessment, and if you do, then what part of paul manafort is not part of the trump campaign? >> i don't agree with that statement. i don't know whether marco rubio read the same report i did, but for an example, you touched on this. at the time that paul manafort was the campaign chair, there's a documented meeting with constantine kilimnik. now we know a russian intelligence agent, where he handed over detailed polling data, internal polling data. here's one of the problems, chuck. those of us in the political business understand when you hear the word polling data, it

means more than who is up, who is down and whether hillary is ahead by two points or donald trump by five points. detailed internal polling data is a road map of the campaign. it's a blueprint. where are you strong? where are you weak? what are the issues? what demographics? what geographic areas? what battleground states? that's about as clear a coordination, if you will. it was an invitation to the russians. here's how you can help us. again, i disagree with marco rubio's statement. i just think the facts speak for themselves. and you were talking about roger stone's role. there's a telling moment in the report where rick gates, who was manafort's assistant, was in the car, in the car with donald trump on the way to laguardia. he remembers it in detail. trump is on the phone wicth rogr stone. and he turns at the end of the conversation to gates and says there will be more coming from wikileaks. well, that's a pretty clear

indication that candidate trump via roger stone knew what was going on. so i don't agree with marco rubio's characterization to say there was no -- is it cooperation, is it a conspiracy, is it coordination or collusion? i don't care what you call it, but the reality is that there were these multiple contacts that are detailed in this 1,000-page report that make it clear that the government -- that the trump campaign was involved in coordinating in some way, shape or form with the russians. >> senator king, you know the phrase justice delayed is justice denied. the timing of the release of this report arguably couldn't be better for donald trump, if you will, right? can come across as old news. oh, we're way past that. where are all these other things? what took so long? why did this take so long to get out?

>> one of the reasons it took so long, chuck, was that it's comprehensive. we went through literally a million pages of documents, hundreds of interviews. and there were places along the line where we were stonewalled by the white house, where they were exerting executive privilege for things that happened before the president was the executive, before he was elected. and that certainly slowed things down. so it was -- we wanted to do it fairly and straightforwardly and really go into sufficient detail. but this isn't only an historical document. this is a -- there are a set of recommendations around page 930, i think, about what we should do in the future. and one of the most important to me is, if you are in a campaign and you are offered help or assistance or intervention by a foreign government, you report it to the fbi right then. you don't assess whether it's good or bad or whether it will help you. you report it right then. and we tried to get that into

law. haven't been able to. >> senator king, please stay with me a minute. i want to come back to you on this. we have important breaking news on the post office. please don't turn off our connection. i want to come back. we've just learned the postmaster general, louis dejoy, is now backing off of these controversial changes to the agency's operation until after the election. in a statement just released moments ago he said, i came to the postal service to make changes to secure the success of this organization and its long-term sustainability. i believe significant reforms are essential to that objective and work toward those reforms will commence after the election. in the meantime, there are some longstanding operational initiatives, efforts that predate my arrival at the postal service that have been raised as areas of concern as the nation prepares to hold an election in the midst of a devastating pandemic. to avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, i am suspending these initiatives

until after the election is concluded. geoff bennett joins me now. geoff, wow, i guess a little bit of political pressure goes a long ways these days. >> political pressure and pressure from the american people. remember, the concerns about the delays at the u.s. postal service extended beyond those ballots. it was retirees who had been waiting for their checks. small business owners who had already been slammed by the pandemic. who were doubly slammed by these shipment delays and u.s. veterans who normally had to wait three or four days typically for medication to come through the mail from the va who were waiting three to four weeks. so now postmaster general -- a senate hearing on friday and a house hearing on monday is doing the thing that i've heard from postal workers that had been calling on him to do. reverse those policy changes. reverse those budget cuts and crackdowns that led to those dela delays. he's putting on pause those

changes until after the election, chuck. >> that's certainly called letting some steam out of the valve and making both of the -- both of those hearings now probably a little less politically fraught with peril at a time we saw the president was upset this was going to happen on day one of his convention. i have to say, you can see how all of this may have suddenly happened. geoff bennett, thanks. since i still have you, senator king, i got to get your reaction on this development. i know that you coming from a rural state of maine in particular, the postal service is pretty popular with your constituents. >> well, my first reaction is, you know, amen. thank goodness he has seen the light because maine is a rural state. we've had elderly people -- the post office delivers 4 million prescriptions a day around the country. talk about a place you don't want to slow things down.

elderly people, social security checks, va. thank goodness he's made this change and it's too bad it took a public ouproar and beating frm congress, but at least he's seen the light. and let's hope that we can now proceed on a more orderly basis after the election. >> right. and this is actually going to come to a larger philosophical argument. i'm curious where you stand on this which is, it's the united states postal service, as some like to argue. it's not a business. and so what would you define as solvency for a service that people rely on as a government service, not as a business? >> well, there are two things to say about that, chuck. one thing is that the post office on an operational basis, at least before covid, was on close to a break-even basis. the problem with the finances of the post office is an arbitrary requirement that congress imposed in 2006 that they

prefund 75 years of pension and medical benefits. nobody else in our society has to do that. that's costing them something like $5 billion a year, and that's what's put them in the hole. that's what put them in the red. so that's number one. if we can fix that, which we should have before now, then the financial situation is entirely different. secondly, just as you said, this isn't a business. you know, we're delivering individual letters to individual houses in rural places all over america. there's no way that's going to make economic sense, but it makes good infrastructure sense. it's one of the bases of the country. ben franklin realized that. that's why it's in the constitution. and so, you know, to say it's got to make a profit, the army doesn't make a profit. the department of agriculture doesn't make a profit. give me a break. this is a public service. and it's crucial to the continuity of people being able to function in this society.

>> right. i'm sure you've never heard a constituent complain. you don't charge enough for the mail. you shouldn be charging a lot more. senator, i want to go back to the intel report and the reason i ask about timing is, when we look at what the russians are doing now, and we look at what even this report indicates was part of the operation after the election, which was to try to, you know, one of manafort's jobs was to try to erase the russian fingerprints on the interference and try to create a ukraine angle to this story which, of course, we ended up in an impeachment trial over. my point is this, senator king. wouldn't this report have been helpful to the 100 united states senators that served as jurors, say, five months ago? >> yes, i think it would have, chuck, although, let's be realistic. the outlines of what we reported today were available then. people knew about it.

the manafort delivery of the polling data that i mentioned was in the mueller report. the conversation about the wikileaks was in the mueller report, although the part about roger stone was redacted. but, okay, let's be realistic. i'm not sure anything that came out would have changed the result of that trial. i of that trial. the republican senators had made their decision, and that's what they were going to do. i was one of those who said, let's get john bolton, some more evidence, but ultimately i thought it was pretty clear, you know, that nothing other theron dais exmachina would have changed that. >> this is 1,000-page report. a lot of americans will not read all 1,000 pages. what do you want americans to read of this report. if you told them take ten minutes, do your citizen's homework today, what's the ten minutes of reading you would

tell them to do? >> i think, i would go to page 930 and start reading the recommendations about what we should do to prevent this from happening in the future. then i think there will be a lot of news accounts, a lot of summaries out there that i think will be helpful. i think people all to diplomat into it and sigh it. the clues i think is pretty clear, and the mortgage important thing is that we know when it's happening, that we can shrug it off, say it's the russians again. one of my passions right now is per sueding the intelligence community to tell the american people what they know between now and november. if they tell us in february, it doesn't matter, that's history. their clients -- this is what i said at a hearing the other day. the customers of the intelligence community are the

president, the national security adviser, the secretary of defense. the cuttss right now are the people of the united states. they're the decisionmakers on november 3rd. they all to have the information. >> i'll put it another way. you are or fda. tell us where there is risk in getting information. where is there risk? absolutely. senator angus king, we have to protect in democracy. independent senator who caucuses with the democrats, from maine, thank you for your perspective, sir. >> thank you, chuck. we'll be right back. , chuck. we'll be right back. ♪ sometimes you want to go

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at walmart, target and other fine stores. finally this hour, a truly historic moment for american democracy. it was 100 years ago today, august 18th, 1920, when the state of tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th amendment, officially securing women the right to vote. it was a hard-fought battle that started 72 years prior in seneca falls, new york. the bill would fail in congress over and over again. it took protests, it took placards, it took decades of perseverance for the movement to ultimately succeed. though equal fright african-american, asian-american wick and native american women wouldn't come to years. they're part of our warriors.

today susan b. anthony was pardoned officially by the president today. she was arrested for voling in 1872. it took this country 148 years to officially clear her name, those her place in history was firmly secured before. we have the dollar coins to prove it. thank you for being with us this hour. i'll see you tonight. we start at 8:00 p.m. msnbc's coverage begins right now with my friend katy tur, after the break.

good afternoon. i'm katy tur. it's it can p.m. in the east, 11:00 out west. new information has come to light. a new report from the republican-led senate intelligence committee outlines just how willing the trump campaign was to accept help from russia back