♪ welcome to thursday. it is "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd. we're in the middle of one of those days that will likely be remembered for a long time. steve bannon, the president's former campaign chief was taken into federal custody this morning after a grand jury charged him with defrauding donors as part of a fundraising scheme involving president trump's push for a border wall

making bannon the latest member of president trump's team to face criminal charges. that's just the tip of the iceberg today. it's happening amid the fallout from president obama's dire warning to the country last night that president trump has pushed our democracy to the bri brink. >> this administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that's what it takes for them to win. that's how a democracy withers until it's no democracy at all. and we cannot let that happen. do not let them take away your power. do not let them take away your democracy. >> it was an extraordinary distress call from a former president unlike anything we've seen in generations. and that extraordinary moment is happening the same time as another -- i call this an outrageous moment. the current president has

legitimized an unhinged and dangerous collective of trump supporting conspiracy theorists called qanon. >> i understand they like me very much. which i appreciate. i have heard that it is gaining in popularity. these are people that don't like seeing what's going on in places like portland and places like chicago and new york and other cities and states. i've heard these are people that love our country. i don't know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me. >> the theory is this belief that you are secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals. does that sound like something you are behind or -- >> well, i haven't heard that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing? i mean, you know, if i can help

save the world from problems, i'm willing to do it. i'm willing to put myself out there. and we are actually. >> so that group has now lit up on social media due to the president's praise, i guess fueling concerns this radical group is getting more mainstream, and all of this is happening as joe biden is poised to officially accept the democratic party's nomination tonight for president of the united states in a virtual address. for joe biden it's a remarkable journey to this moment for him. but folks, whatever your politics, you are in the middle of one of the most consequential moments in the history of this democracy so far. full stop. so without saying more, let's get right to the latest. joining me to break down the breaking news on steve bannon, we have yesterday correspondent pete williams and shannon pettypiece who confronted the president on this qanon business yesterday. pete, let me start with what

steve bannon is facing. where did the charges come from? and where is this headed? >> okay. so steve bannon was arrested this morning by officers of the u.s. postal inspection service on a yacht 150-foot yacht owned by a chinese billionaire off the coast of connecticut where he's been spending the last several days. he'll be appearing shortly before a u.s. magistrate judge to face what are essentially fraud and money laundering charges. the government says that a iraq war veteran, a triple amputee named brian kolfage decided to set up a website called we the people build the wall and the idea was to raise money privately to either give to the federal government or perhaps have a private entity build sections of the wall. the crowdforce funding website said you don't have a charity here. so he contacted steve bannon, according to the government, who helped kolfage set up a charity

and raise money. the problem is, according to the government is that they consistently -- those two and two other men who work with him, consistently said in public appearances, on their website, that every penny raised by this website would go to fund sections of the border wall. now in fact, the government says, the four secretly agreed that kolfage would be paid a salary of $100,000 a month plus 20% of whatever it took in. the government says he eventually got $350,000 out of this. and that the other four also got money that bannon got about a million dollars that went to a charity that was apparently used in part to pay kolfage, but also to pay private expenses that bannon had. so that's the nature of the fraud. they must have realized that there was something -- that they could potentially be in trouble because they've heard from a bank last december that they might be under investigation. and at that point, the

government says they stopped saying that nobody was being paid and they took all references from the website off about not taking any money from the contributions. now the website was hugely popular. it brought in $25 million, and at least two private sections of the border wall were constructed with money from that website. about half a mile in new mexico and about a mile and -- rather, about three miles that the website contributed to another project. that's a section of the wall that the president has criticized. it's been widely criticized for having been built too close to the river and is in danger of collapse. that's about $10 million. what happened to the other 15 we don't know. doesn't appear any of it went to the federal government's efforts, chuck. >> who brought this -- brought these charges? which u.s. attorney? >> it's the southern district of new york, the manhattan u.s. attorney. not entirely clear why. it may be that kolfage was based

there in new york or the website based there in new york. under federal law there has to be some connection for that u.s. attorney's office to bring the charges. we're told that the attorney general william barr was given a heads-up these charges were going to be filed and we don't know exactly why they decided to move now, whether there was something else that they decided the case was ready to go or something else was going to happen. in any event, the four were charged today. >> and what's the -- what does steve bannon face as far as penalty? fines? could this be jail time? >> well, yes to both. if he's convicted, of course, the maximum penalty under the statute is 20 years. there's no way anybody with -- on a first offense like this will get 20 years. the government is also seeking restitution. it wants all the money back, and it says if some of it was spent, it wants an equivalent amount to what was spent so that the government can get all the money

back and presumably help get this -- some of this money back to the people who paid for it. chuck, fundamentally, there was nothing wrong with this idea of raising money to build a wall privately and to even pay the people who helped do it. the problem is they say they lied about saying nobody was take anything from it. >> pete williams giving us explanation here of just exactly what steve bannon is facing and what this is all about. pete, thanks very much. let me go over to shannon p pettypiece. the president a few moments ago was asked about the steve bannon charges. let me play that. >> i feel very badly. i haven't been dealing with him for a long period of time, as most of the people in this room know. i know nothing about the project other than i didn't like when i read about it, i didn't like it. >> respectfully, it's not just steve bannon. it's roger stone, rick gates, paul manafort, robert cohen.

what does that say -- a culture of lawlessness -- >> there was great lawlessness in the obama administration. they spied on our campaign illegally. if you look at all of the things and all of the scandals they had. they had tremendous lawlessness. but i know nothing about -- i was not involved in the project. >> that was our pool reporter there, our colleague geoff bennett in that back and forth with the president there with the president -- he didn't answer his question and went straight to some what aboutism that he thinks matches that. shannon, steve bannon had been working his way back into the good graces of the president and of the west wing that had improved. jason miller, he's very close to him. is this a big shoe that fell on trump world? >> so, i mean, my reporting over the years indicated that steve bannon wasn't someone the president was talking to regularly at all. i don't know when the last time they talked was, but, yeah, he had sort of become persona

nongrata in trump's universe. he was certainly still in trump's universe. and bannon has been having a podcast. it's really been focused on the pandemic, but it also has this big anti-china undercurrent. and he has a lot jason miller was a regular co-host of this podcast. steve cortez. he's an adviser to the trump campaign. it's interesting this detail, pete mentioned that this yacht bannon was on was owned by this chinese billionaire. bannon's podcast has been very anti-china and it's translated in mandarin and they talk about how it's broken through the chinese government's firewall and they're trying to get this message that they have against china into china itself. so there's this -- there's also this odd china thread to all this story. overall the white house is trying to distance themselves from this. the president had commented recently that he didn't like this project back in january.

but a year ago, kris kobach, the secretary of state and close trump ally was saying the president supported this project and told him that it had his blessing essentially. >> shannon, i want to pivot to the qanon that -- the qanon question you asked yesterday. the president deciding to mainstream the cult, if you will. behind the scenes, is there any panic that he did this? we know there's been a few republicans that have spoken out. jeb bush and ben sasse the most prominent. is there any regret behind the scenes being expressed by the way the president handled your question yesterday? >> the best i can tell you is this is not what the campaign and trump advisers wanted to be talking about 11 weeks out from the election. we've talked about a war with the post office between the post office and the white house this week. qanon. now deceisteve bannon's arrest.

there's still ten news cycles left for another controversy to come into play. not where the campaign wanted the focus to be especially going into their big convention next week when they're at a deficit to biden and they want the focus to be on biden and their attacks there. will this qanon story persist? this is one day they lose in the messaging war they wanted to be waging. >> shannon pettypiece, and before that, pete williams, getting us started with the news this morning. thank you. joining us now for a deeper dive into qanon is nbc's ben collins, our resident expert on the conspiracy theory. almost having to dive too deep into some of these weird worlds. and clint watts is a former fbi special agent and nbc news national security analyst. also an expert on social media influence and disinformation. and ben, just to get things started, i want folks to know what the fbi said about qanon so everybody can understand what we're dealing with here. this is may of 2019.

the fbi assesses anti-government identity based and fringe political conspiracy theories very likely motivate domestic extremists to commit criminal or violent activity. these conspiracy theories likely encourage the targeting of specific people, places and organizations thereby increasing the likelihood of violence against these targets. the president's own fbi said this over a year ago. the president did what he did yesterday. ben, you monitor this group. how big is what the president did for these believers? >> this is a huge deal to them. this is about as explicit as they thought he was going to get. they thought for years that anything even remotely resembling an endorsement here would have been really, really helpful. and that's exactly what took place here. i want to bring up the fact, how this started. i don't think people really

understand the guts of this. so three years ago, a guy on an extremist message board called 4chan posted a prediction that the next day hillary clinton was about to be arrested for her role in this satanic child-eating, cannibal group. said this is going to happen the next day. her passport was going to be frozen and national guard activated. none of this happened. but it doesn't matter because over time, because of the machinations of how disinformation moved in this space, you know, this confirmed a lot of priors for people. this made people feel really good about supporting the president because they view him to be a messiah. if the president is saying, maybe i am the messiah, man, does it help their movement. >> ben, i'm glad you used that messiah reference. clint watts, read a description

of qanon from the dive in the atlantic on what's going on with conspiracy theories. and here's what she wrote. it's a movement united in mass rejection of reason, objectivity, and other enlightenment scrawenlighten ment values. they harness paranoia. the way it breathes life into an ancient preoccupation with end times is also radically new. to look at qanon is to see not just a conspiracy theory but the birth of a new religion which is why the word cult keeps coming to mind, clint. and how much more dangerous are things today than they were yesterday? >> chuck, it's amazing. i think we talked about this years ago now. if you told me it would even hit this level, i probably wouldn't have believed it when we were having these discussions. there are some key parts to this. any one of these conspiracy movements, as they grow and as there's a belief system that

grows around it, more adherence come to pass and then more people mobilize to do physical action and mobilize towards violence. that's what you've seen. you've seen the fbi writing these reports. we've got six, seven, eight, nine, ten instances where individuals believing in this belief system or believing these conspiracies start to show up and they want to execute violence. add to this the environment that we're in right now. we have a pandemic. we have lockdowns. we have protests. and it's an election year. the incentives collide to make these conspiracies run wild. and so i think why you're seeing such attention put to this and why it's important for elected leaders and leadership to refute this is it is against the government. it is anti-establishment. and if their belief is not confirmed, what you can see it acts of mobilization and acts of violence. and if you look at what we're talking about in terms of the election, polling places, mail-in ballot troubles showing up to polling places. is there going to be a recount? will the electors confirm?

imagine how this conspiracy blows itself out. the last thing i want to add for foreign manipulators, this is an avenue to come in and institute all sorts of propaganda and disinformation to put people at each other's throats. it's really to pull and take every crack and turn it into a chasm in our society. and that's where my fear is today. you'll see in some of the russian overt state-sponsored news they'll reference a lot of these conspiracies. and those conspiracies are an opportunity to really divide americans and pit us against each other. >> you know, ben, you've spent a lot of time reporting on sort of what at first was a lackadaisical response by social media companies when it came to this. now it appears there is some more aggressive action. but there's always been this hesitancy when the president is involved. i got to think now, if facebook and twitter are trying to be more aggressive with those promoting qanon, the -- at some

point, do you keep the president's feeds live? >> that's -- man, that's the million-dollar question, chuck. but at the end of the day -- >> i know. i know. >> at the end of the day, there is a notable difference between what the president is saying and what this is. the president is towing these people along because he can't say out loud what they're saying on social media. this is a death cult. this is devoted solely to the concept that hillary clinton is eating babies and we must do something about it. that's what this is about. that's a whole different thing than what the president is saying. the president endorsing that is saying, hey, everybody go check out what they're saying and see what you believe yourself. but that by itself is -- that is a step way beyond where the president is currently on social media. that's why, by the way, facebook took down 900 qanon pages and groups yesterday. 1500 ads and limited 10,000 instagram attacks tied to qanon.

they realize this is tied to real world violence. there's been a murder tied to this. a bunch of violent attacks. they are trying to crack down on this before it gets really dark. >> clint, there's risk in us having this -- spending as much time talking about q -- there's always this balance like, how much -- how much oxygen do you give the cult in order to warn people about the cult? and, you know, i feel like now by covering what the president has done, we're going to inadvertently supercharge interest in this, which is -- feels more deadly. >> you're exactly right, chuck. if elected leaders endorse it or if members of this movement become elected leaders, we're seeing that happen. it's taking place right now. they actually are anti-establishment, anti-government in many ways. they believe in conspiracies about the government or a deep state which is going to really

take off today and for the rest of the week based on the president, steve bannon, who has also talked about a deep state and add to this, if you're trying to enforce law. if you are the fbi or state and local law enforcement, you're trying to stop violence, even by reacting. it's not just us and the media talking about it. even if you're reacting to a threat of violence, you're affirming their belief system and narratives. it becomes a snowball effect. ultimately it's going to take someone part of qanon who has realized it is not an actual thing. there is not an actual q and there are these sources. you'll have to use a former to talk to those in the belief system and say this is not what you think it is. >> and i think that means you have to use the old skills of like when you try to rescue somebody who has been taken in by a cult or -- we hear this about white supremacy. it becomes a kulcult-like in hoo you break people from it? i guess that's what we're dealing with here.

ben collins and clint watts, thank you both. i think. >> thank you. >> appreciate it. up ahead -- much more on this day of dramatic developments in american politics. bannon's indictment, obama's dire warning and president trump's legitimizing of a death cult. george will joins me to talk about all of it. later -- does it all come down to tonight? joe biden is hours away from accepting the democratic nomination for president. a first look at what we expect to hear from him. but first, as we've been doing this week, all this hour, we're going to share memorable moments from past democratic conventions. we'll begin in the wee hours of 1972. something joe biden doesn't have to worry about when presidential nominee george mcgovern didn't get to accept his nomination until 3:00 in the morning. >> to anyone in this hall or beyond who doubts the ability of democrats to join together in common cause, i say, never

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welcome back. we saw something rare in the arc of american history laugh night. a former president directly excoriating his immediate predecessor. take a listen. >> for close to four years now, he has shown no interest in putting in the work. no interest in finding common ground. no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends. no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves. donald trump hasn't grown into the job. because he can't. and the consequences of that failure are severe. >> joining me now is a longtime

observer of american government. george will. he's a columnist for "the washington post." an msnbc political analyst. george, put into perspective what president obama -- what he did -- what he said last night and what it means going forward. >> well, just as we saw recently, just a moment ago, george mcgovern saying richard nixon will bring us democrats together in '72. if donald trump doesn't unify the democratic party, what will? so it seems to me that what obama did was truthful but superfluous. the democrats are united here. what we're seeing now in a variety of ways, chuck, is a kind of comprehensive lock on what used to be the conservative movement. the national rifle association is an open sewer of self-dealing. the fraudulent charity, what do we call this, the build a wall that bannon had?

look and see who the president has surrounded himself with. you cannot throw a brick at manhattan without hitting a competent, talented lawyer. so he picked michael cohen. washington is full of talented, decent public spirited political consultants. so he picked manafort. he likes being surrounded by people like bannon, manafort and cohen. what more is there to say? other than that, we need a kind of -- william buckley, john birch society moment. the john birch society was given to this kind of lunatic idea that one of their principle ideas was that eisenhower was a paid agent of the communeity of agency. buckley read them out of the movement, and it stuck. excommunication from the catholic mr. buckley who was the pope of the conservative movement at the time. when the president traffics in

enthusiasm for qanon, remember, kim jong-un won his affection by saying a nice thing about him. putin said something nice about donald trump, got his affection. president xi of china, same thing. shortly before -- shortly after the inauguration, when prime minister abe of japan was heading to washington, i had lunch with two diplomats. and they said should prime minister abe praise the president? and i burst out laughing. of course, that's all he needs to do. case closed. discussion over. this is a fairly simple organism we're dealing with in mr. trump and this is just another example. they like him, so he likes them. >> i want to focus on this rot issue that i thought you described so well. bannon. and here's the thing. that bannon thing. i'm obsessed with all of these -- there are a whole bunch of phony groups that prey on

sort of -- on media, on email trying to raise money, patriots for trump that has no tie and it's just scams. there are these scams. i'm glad to see somebody is trying to look out because there's a lot of this predatory campaign, and it's mostly almost all on the right. it's a lot of this rot. let me ask you, we've had jeb bush and ben sasse and adam kinzinger. those are the brave souls of the republican party who said qanon should be kicked out of the party. and someone just added in my ear, liz cheney is now the latest. none of those names surprise me, george. probably don't surprise you. but i wonder if a strongly worded statement is enough anymore. >> no, it's not, obviously. this is -- you're trafficking with dangerous people. bannon is particularly interesting because he has a good brain and a terrible character, which is a really bad combination in politics. but do not expect this late in

the season to have death bed conversions on the part of the republican party. they have been his enablers right along, almost all of them, and they're going to continue and the explanation is really simple. it's fear. they know that anything they said, however reasonable, will elicit a tweet, and a tweet is all that will be heard by their base. but the republican party today lives in terror of its voters. and that's again a very dangerous political condition. >> yeah, turns into mob rule and that's always dangerous. george will, with some sobering perspective from the conservative point of view. george, as always, sir, appreciate it. appreciate you coming on. >> glad to be with you. coming up -- joe biden takes center stage. whether it's over the phone, online, or in your office, we're here to listen and provide solutions that help you run your business better. because the decisions you make have far reaching implications.

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call now for free information and a free rate quote. (upbeat music) ♪ welcome back. vice president joe biden will be giving one of the biggest speeches of his political life tonight when he accepted the democratic party's nomination for president and he'll deliver it to an empty room. we asked voters in our latest nbc news/"wall street journal" poll the issue they'd like him to talk about. here's what biden voters who told us even though they're voting for biden and are not yet sold, here's what that said of voters told us. the thing they want to hear from him, handling covid-19. the economic response to the pandemic, health care issues. those were the most common responses. and as peter hart, one of our

pollsters, who is always involved in the construction of our surveys said, joe biden is well known but not known well. which i thought was a really elegant way to put that. let's bring in our biden whisperer on our political reporting team. mike memoli. he joins me from wilmington, delaware, where joe biden will deliver his acceptance speech tonight. mike, do they -- does the biden campaign accept the peter hart analysis that biden is a well-known figure who is not known very well? >> yeah, i think that's right, chuck. there are really two challenges that joe biden's facing with this speech tonight. one is substantive and one is more stylistic. the substantive question deals with what you're talking about. we've seen joe biden give convention speeches before. he's proven to be an excellent wingman. even in this campaign when other democratic candidates were dropping out, he was incredibly gracious. he knows how to talk somebody else up. the biden campaign says he'll

lay out his own positive vision for the country in his remarks tonight. it's all about that contrast with president trump. another source close to this process is telling me, you know what this speech is tonight. it's about the battle for the soul of the nation. he's been making that argument since the first day of his candidacy and implicit in that is the contrast with trump. his sister told me in an interview this week that he would not be running for president if somebody else was president. it's donald trump is the reason he's in this race. so we do expect to hear a lot about that as well. and then to the stylistic challenge tonight, chuck, we've talked about this in the past. he feeds off of crowd reaction more than anybody else i've ever covered. and as somebody put it to me tonight, it's like giving a state of the union and only seeing the supreme court. he's not going to be getting the reaction from this crowd tonight. that's one reason i'm told in something that's very unusual for joe biden, this speech has been more or less locked for a few weeks. he's been rehearsing it for the last two weeks specifically. and they've been really spending a lot of time and care on

preparing for this most unusual format tonight. it's going to be difficult. somebody else compared it to the state of the union response more than the state of the union address without that crowd. so it will be interesting to see him in that room tonight, chuck. >> but in some way this entire convention, mike, has been designed to be sober and serious and, frankly, to galvanize the country to say, hey, this is a national emergency. maybe having no applause actually helps reinforce that. has this turned out to be in some ways helpful to them since it's almost more awkward to come up with applause lines? >> i think that's a good point. it's interesting. we'll probably see not quite the balloons and everything you usually see but there will be an attempt for a little celebration once this is all over tonight. the president is going to be in biden's hometown of scranton today doing a prebuttal, but a

little bit of a rally. the biden campaign welcomed that. the country right now wants a plan for the coronavirus response and getting us back on track economically and they joked, obviously, they're not expecting that today. that's giving them a gift and that's what biden is going to be talking about tonight. >> mike memoli in wilmington, delaware, thank you. with me now is maria teresa kumar of votto latino. before i get into specifics on sort of the larger issues of the convention, because i want to talk to you about that and the issue of specifically exciting latino voters. let's talk big picture here. what is a good night for joe biden in your head tonight? >> delivering the vision of america, the moment that he gets into office. as mike mentioned, we are all living in such devastating times. and unless he's able to make a contrast of what will happen the moment that he gets into office, that he will turn down the

temperature on political rhetoric, that he'll roll up his sleeves and get to work, he has to be able to deliver that contrast. not just to the democrats. the democrats are there. we're going to go out and vote. it is, how do you expand it to young people so he can bring people over and how does he tip the scales so that we can get the independents and republicans who know that under donald trump they cannot make sure to keep their families safe. and they've been doing that with -- it's been -- they've been building that momentum in such a beautiful way that for the very first time, fox news is also airing it. their post election analysis is quite different from ours but they've been airing it so the american people have been seeing specifically that contrast. and he needs to be able to bring that home. >> i want to talk specifically about what you do in your day job. you're trying to engage latino voters. trying to excite them about this election in a way, you know, getting them fired up.

and i know you're digitally connected constantly, meaning i'm guessing you have some realtime evidence of whether this convention has had an impact. so tell me. has this convention had an impact on the voters you're trying to get to get a little more fired up about this election? >> i think the most seminal moment that we've seen was not just the commemoration of the people that we lost under covid but that real heart-felt example of a young latina saying i lost my father because he trusted donald trump. and i lost him to covid. that was a seminal moment for the latino community. we know the majority of people dying under covid, sadly, are latinos. and it's because we're getting mixed messages from our leadership. and it's because we're getting exposed because we're essential workers. so that was one. but then we had stella last night. what a brave little girl, chuck, who was able to confront perhaps some -- a child's worst

nightmares and plead to the american people she wants her mom back because her mom was married to an american veteran who thought donald trump would protect them because he served our country. that was also so poignant because we have 16 million americans living in mixed status families, and that family anxiety around separation is so real among children. and then we have the story of kamala harris last night who was grounded in the immigrant child experience that i think mobilizes so many of us. and i say this because what folks don't realize is that so many immigrants, our parents fled so that their opportunities may not be realized but so that their children, too, could become a harris or a version thereafter. they've been able to place the right moments and we are seeing it in the connection and the selection of kamala harris. we've seen a real uptick in the latino community paying attention, raising their hand saying, what can we do to make

sure we get it through the finish line. our organization -- >> i wondered -- >> historically at our organization we've registered 267,000. we have raised $16 million. we have -- the wind is on our back because the american people want the latino community to be at that table. >> maria teresa kumar, voto latino. i wondered about that, the daughter of immigrants. while she's not hispanic or latino, that the shared experience could have an impact, and you're indicating early on that it indeed has. maria teresa, i'll see you later tonight for our shows coming up. up next, an update on the wildfires raging out of control in california. plus, president trump weighs in after one of the loudest critics of the kremlin who has survived past attempts on his life has now fallen into a coma in an alleged poisoning. first, we're going to look back at the new deal for a country suffering from economic

collapse in july of 1932. the throws of the great depression. then governor franklin delano roosevelt had his vision for america. at the time presidential nominees did not attend conventions. fdr changed that tradition. becoming the first to accept his nomination in person at the chicago convention. >> i pledge myself to a new deal for the american people.

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welcome back. the state with the most coronavirus cases right now, california, has faced several other crises this summer including power outages and a punishing heat wave. and their fear was that was going to lead to this because now the state is battling its worst wildfire season in years. i feel like we say that every year. more than 300 miwildfires are burning, three considered major and two people have died.

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welcome back. russian opposition leader alexi novalny is in a coma after a spokesperson said he was poisoned. the 44-year-old is a key adversary to russian president vladimir putin and if it's found he was intentionally poisoned, this would not be the first attempt on his life. he was on a flight to moscow when he became unwell, forcing the plane to make agemergency landing. bill neely joins us. timing wise, this broke it felt like seconds after president obama issued this dire warning about the future of our democra democracy. >> yes, and of course, navalny is and has been for a decade the biggest thorn in the side of the

kremlin, russia's most popular opposition leader. his spokes woman is in no doubt. she tweeted a short time ago, this is putin. she says that at an airport cafe in siberia, his tea was spiked with some kind of toxic substance. he then got on a blaen. she said he didn't have anything to eat or drink on the plane and was taken ill. emergency landing, and he's now in a coma on a ventilator. the latest from the doctors are that his condition has stabilized, but he's still very seriously ill. dimitri peskov, vladimir putin's press secretary, says he wishes him a speedy recovery, and if there's anything they can do to help him get some hospital treatment abroad, they will, of course, do that. i think his aides will want to have nothing to do with any help from the kremlin. but navalny's cardiologist, his chief doctor, has said he desperately needs navalny to get to a hospital in either germany

or france for two reasons, number one, to save his life, and secondly, because that's a toxicology specialist center, and they need to know was this really poison or something else? because they simply can't trust russian doctors, and with good reason, of course, chuck. >> bill, can he get out of the country to do that or not? >> well, dimitri peskov is offering the state's help and the cardiologist who is his personal doctor says that they have already got the permission of a clinic abroad to go there, so the question is, at what point will he be well enough to leave that hospital to go abroad, and that's an open question we still don't know. >> all right. bill neely on top of this story for us out of our london bureau. bill, thank you. here to put a little bit of this in more context for us is msnbc analyst and former u.s.

ambassador to russia, michael mcfaul, and like i said, i'll be honest, the timing of this felt like a stomach punch to me. i can only imagine to you. president obama, minutes after he does this dire warning on the future of our democracy, suddenly democratic hope in russia is poisoned. it was a double punch. where does this go next? and is this just a systematic purge that putin is continuing? >> chuck, i don't know the answer to that, right, and we'll probably never know the answer to this. putin is very good at deniability. but it looks like navalny was poisoned again. he wouldn't be the first opposition leader to have done that. it's very scary to me that he is on a ventilator, unconscious in a siberian hospital. and you know, this debate that we're going to have, did putin give the order? i think that misses a larger

point. putin has created the permissive conditions for this kind of behavior to take place against people that he has labeled enemy of the people. right? so maybe it was a rogue intelligence officer, maybe it was a vigilante, maybe it was putin himself, but all of those arrows point back to putin. this is the regime he has created, and it's a lesson for americans. when you start to call people enemy of the people, when you label them that, sometimes other people go out of their way to quote/unquote do what the leader wants. it's very dangerous when you start using that language. >> you know, it feels as if it's just a really bad -- i mean, it's as if the future of democracy could get any worse, we have the situation in belarus. we have, and in fact, there was some speculation this was tied to that because navalny had been very much, you know, backing the protesters in minsk. what's your observation on that?

>> again, i can't connect the dots. i don't know. we'll probably never know. but i do know this -- there is good, and there is evil in the world. for years, for decades, americans, democrats and republicans, have stood on the side of good against evil. and evil people, autocrats, had to think about that. what troubles me right now is our voice is missing, chuck. we're not there. secretary pompeo goes to prague to give a speech about freedom in europe and doesn't once mention the word belarus. when president trump is not only indifferent to democracy, he embraces putin, the ought cr autocrat, and he makes excuses for him. he shows equivalency between the united states and putin's russia. whenio do that, you're enabling this kind of behavior. i hope we can get on the right side of history again. there's right and wrong. we should be standing up for

right. >> that's from mike mcfaul, i'm glad you closed with that because that's the thing. putin feels like he has a permission slip from what used to be the leader of the free world. thank you. and thank you all for being with us this hour. i know it's been a tough 24 hours. but hang in there. i'll see you later on the fourth and final night of the democratic national convention. our leave streaming coverage starts at 8:00 p.m. eastern on nbc news now. msnbc coverage continues with katy tur right after the break. k ♪

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pennsylvania. in just a few hours, scranton's native son, joe biden, will give the most important speech of his political career. he will accept his party's nomination for president. never one to cede the spotlight, president trump will be breaking with tradition again in an effort to troll his rival on his big night. he'll be here in the