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four more years of trump. that's the gop's pitch to voters starting on monday. their plans to address a nation on edge because of coronavirus, a recession, and widespread social unrest. the eighth trump adviser was criminally charged this week. steve bannon, arrested for defrauding donors of millions of dollars. >> i'm not going to back down. this is a political hit job. everybody knows it. i love a fight. >> and a 966-page intel report details even stronger connections between paul manafort and the russian government. what the intel groups think russia is doing now. good morning, it's saturday, august 22nd. we're 73 days from the election. i'm ali velshi.

we can officially say joe biden is challenging donald trump for the presidency of the united states. >> the current president has cloaked america in darkness for too long. too much anger. too much fear. too much division. here and now i give you my word, if you entrust me with the presidency, i will draw on the best of us, not the worst. i'll be an ally of the light, not the darkness. while i'll be a democratic candidate, i'll be an american president. i'll work hard for those who didn't support me, as hard as for those who did support me. that's the job of a president. to represent all of us, not just our base or our party, this is not a partisan moment. this must be an american moment. biden's speech received a ton of praise unincludiclu incl

some unlikely sources like fox news. president obama's speech received accolades. >> i did hope for the sake of our country that donald trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously. but he never did. 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 traeating the presidency for anything other than one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves. donald trump has not grown into the job. because he can't. the consequences of that failure are severe. so i'm also asking you to believe in your own ability to

embrace your own responsibility as citizens to make sure that the basic tenants of our democracy endure. because that's what is at stake right now. our democracy. do not let them take away your power. as much as president obama always seems to have a way of encapsulating the thoughts of the american people, his successor always seems to have an attack line based on a line at the ready. right on cue responding to obama's remarks, trump tweeted again about obama spying on his 2016 campaign which didn't happen. as for the race to november, a wide range of polling shows biden ahead in the high single digits. while it's unfortunate it's predictable that trump started scraping the bottom of the barrel for votes. >> the qanon movement appears to be getting a lot of followers.

can you tell me what you have to say about people following that movement? >> i don't know much about the movement other than i understand they like me very much. which i appreciate. i don't know much about the movement. >> part of the theory is the belief that you are secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and c canoballs. >> i don't know about that. if i can help save the world from problems, i'm willing to do it. >> all right. in a call back to the president saying there were very fine people among the white supremacists in charlottesville, trump now says there are patriots among the radical conspiracy group qanon. this stuff may seem ridiculous and it is, but it's part of trump's need to undermine the

legitimacy of anyone or anything that people view as against him. it's to earn the trust that americans generally have had in their institutions, their officials, their experts and even their values. in many ways trump is succeeding. how are you supposed to truss what our leader is telling us when he publicly equates problems in the world which include a deadly pandemic killing over 1,000 americans every day to saving the world from a make believe satanic cult of pedophiles and canobals. when he constantly criticizes agencies who don't back his every tweet, when he continues to lie about an obama-led espionage ring that only exists in his imagination. the president screams voting by mail is filled with fraud and

then votes by mail himself. how will we trust that the election will follow the rules of the country when one of the trump associates is a convicted felon and now another has been arrested for taking money from the border wall. trump is suggesting that america has become so lawless under his own leadership, might i add, that sheriffs are needed to watch over voting places, like it's 1870, and wyatt earp should guard the salon. let's not get started on how putting law enforcement officers is a form of voter intimidation. donald trump admitted to voter suppression, explaining he is not going to allocate much needed money for the united states postal service because it would mean more people would be able to vote. could you ever in your wildest

dreams have imagined this to be true? the united states of america would be led by a developer and failed reality tv host who during a deadly pandemic responded by attacking the postal service and whose re-election campaign would include correct outreach to a group of members who think he's saving the group from a group of devil worships people eaters. since there's no logical transition to our next guest, i won't try to make one. joining me now is democratic congresswoman ayanna pressley of massachusetts, a member of the congressional black caucus and the house oversight committee. on monday postmaster general louis dejoy is scheduled to testify in front of the oversight committee on capitol hill. the post office is an organization with a remarkable approval rating. very few things have an approval rating of above 90%. i don't think 90% of the people could agree on the weather. so the post office will be front and center in your conversations

with louis dejoy in a different way than in the senate yesterday? absolutely. the united states postal service is a public institution and a public good. i cannot believe that in the midst of a global pandemic and an economic crisis we have to exert energy to preserve the united states postal service which our colleagues across the aisle and the trump administration seek to defund. that's really the only explanation that can be offered here. they are defunding the united states postal service, they are undermining, attempting to undermine confidence in the dedicated letter carriers and postal workers. they are assaulting working families, they're assaulting veterans as the united states postal service are the highest employer of veterans, and we know many veterans rely upon the united states postal service as to whether meamericans receive

life-saving medications. i'm not surprised that the postmaster general obstructed, evaded, offered no remorse or responsibility. it's more of the same. however when they come before the house, these will not be softball questions. we need another opportunity to get postmaster general dejoy on the record. i do believe he should resign because he has offered no clear data points or explanation as to why he would stand by while the united states postal service is defunded and is dismantled, in particular in the midst of a global pandemic, when we know that so many americans will be voting by mail. it's voter suppression pure and simple. >> to be clear, he said he will not continue with some of the cost-cutting measures he has taken. when asked specifically whether he will undo the things that have been done, he said no. you and other members of congress have signed a letter asking that the postal service return to service levels that

were in place on january 1st of this year until the pandemic is over. he has made no such commitment. >> we sehave seen a decrease in overtime for these workers. this is a hell of a way to pay 600,000 postal workers who put themselves in harms way to ensure people could receive stimulus checks, benefits, medications, and now play such a critical role as they always have in our democracy when it comes to mail-in voting, particularly against the backdrop of a pandemic. i don't take the bait. donald trump tweeting save the usps, that's rich and disingenuous. we could have done that if mitch mcconnell had brought the heres a heroes act to the floor which

brought 25 billion to the postal service. so here we are today to vote on delivering for america which will provide that emergency infusion of funds and reverse the harms that have been caused. so true restoration and redress for those operational changes which have resulted in slower servic service. >> you and i in addition to sharing a hairstyle share a love language. we always talk about policy as a love language. amazing that 76 days outside of the election we're not talking about policy, we're talking about nonsense instead of the policy we need to be talking about. i hope we can get back there once we settle this post office matter. thank you for talking to me today. >> as do i. thank you. joining me now is the chair of the african-american studies department at princeton university, eddie glaude jr. he's the author of "begin

again." i got a chance to recommend this to readers for a lot of people who don't understand it, reading about james baldwin today is uniquely relevant given the situations that we are facing right now. eddie, thank you for joining us this morning. i want to continue the conversation that i was having with congresswoman pressley. when we talk about the erosion of trust in institutions, part of changing policy requires that people have a basic level of trust in the institutions including the institutions of congress and the senate and the house and the justice department and the police, that's where the difficulty is leehere. donald trump has undermined our confidence in most of these groups over the last 3 1/2 years. >> absolutely. let me thank you for recommending the book. i appreciate it. but i think you're absolutely right when it comes to what donald trump is up to in terms of delegitde-legit ma tizing ou

of government and we have to be careful not to exceptionalize donald trump. he's a character. we've heard, you and i for much of our lifetime that big government is bad. that big government seeks to intrude on one's liberty, we need to curtail big government because they're in the business of transferring wealth from hard working people to undeserving black and brown people. so this is an extension of a long ideological game that's been played. the pew foundation in 2019 issued a study suggesting that distrust was deep in the american public of the federal government, of the hyper partisanship. so this is an outgrowth of a political praxis that defined the political body for two

generations. >> we have something else sneaking back on us, it's the reason why we don't have a new relief bill. it's stuck in the senate because 20 plus members of the republican caucus say it's too much, it's blowing a hole in the debt, and the implication is we're paying people to stay home. it's that age-old thing that americans who get unemployment or government aid are lazy and leaching off the government. we have to such discussions by the way about corporate america getting free money that's printed by the federal reserve and given to them through banks. >> that's right. this is what we need to do. this stuff about the debt, old. this stuff about the post office, old. i'm a child of a letter carrier. i've been hearing threats against the post office since i can remember remembering. that's old. voter fraud, old. we can -- law and order, old. we can begin to tell a story about all the elements of donald trump's rhetoric, all the elements of his policies that are not unique to him.

their caricature versions of something we've been awash in for at least 40 years. it's really important for us to understand that as we reach across the aisle to the john kasiches and the like, as we try to talk to republicans who are never-trumpers who don't disagree with the policies. we need to understand this stuff as having some connection to a very specific set of policies of governance that in some ways, it has bankrupt the country. at least in my view. >> eddie, thank you for joining me. eddie glaude is the chair of the african-american studies department at princeton university. he's the author of "begin again." it is true, the stock market is at an all-time high, but tens of millions of americans are still out of work and without pay. i will break down why the stock market is not indicative of the larger american economy. you're watching "velshi" on msnbc.

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[ bell rings ] >> this week, we saw major new

records set in the stock market including the s&p 500. vice president mike pence quickly tweeted about it writing on tuesday the s&p 500 closed at a record high today. fully wiping out its losses from the coronavirus. this is the great american comeback. for facts sake, he's wrong. this is not the great american comeback. when the stock market hits american highs in the midst of a recision, it's not a comeback, it's actually the great american imbalance. repeat after me, the stock market is not the economy. while the stock market set records, 28 million americans remain unemployed including those who stopped looking for work altogether and a relief bill for struggling americans is stalled in the senate. while the stock market set records, 29 millions live in fear they stand to be evicted from their homes by the end of the year. while the stock market set records, more than 90,000 small businesses have shut their doors for good. while the stock market set records, 30 million americans are food insecure, meaning they

do not know with certainty how they will afford or where they will get their next meal. the markets are in great shape. the economy isn't. the markets are not the economy. there is a reason that markets are up. the fed was there to save them. lowering interest rates to make it attractive to those with credit to borrow and spend and guaranteeing banks an unlimited supply of money to keep loeping out to companies so credit doesn't freeze the way it did in 2008, sending the economy into a tailspin. we have a good temperature that's not b system that's not bogged down, but 87% of all stocks with owned by the wealthiest 10% of americans, that's a bit of an imbalance. the system to help ordinary americans is a political system. it is stuck in the senate where some republicans say more relief will make the debt too big. yes, the national debt. i don't remember that conversation when my partner stephanie ruhle and i were interviewing republican member after member while touting the

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okay. now that we know we aren't in the middle of the great american comeback economically, one would hope the president would use his power to help usher in such a rebound. but our president is donald trump. in his latest for rray this wee he tweeted about goodyear. don't buy goodyear fires, they announced a ban on maga hats, get better tires for far less. an employee posted a leaked document regarding employees dress code. it said employees could not wear maga hats. goodyear clarified its policy and issued a statement saying the document was not even

created or distributed by goodyear corporate as part of diversity training. not that the truth of the matter changed much for trump. the trump doesn't like goodyear but he really likes goya beans. he doesn't like amazon, but he loves the my pillow guy who now is on the board of a company that makes a nutritional supplement that he claims fixes coronavirus symptoms. as former republican speechwriter david frum said, you work for me, you don't criticize me. the president was reported to have told that to one major federal contractor after knocking billions off his company's stock market valuation with an angry tweet. wise business leaders take care to credit trump for good news and avoid saying anything that might displease the president or his family. that's the kind of thing we expect in russia, china or turkey, but it's happening here in america.

my partner and friend, stephanie ruhle, senior business correspondent for nbc joins me now. stephanie, what a thing that the president is just picking and choosing who he likes, who he doesn't like and sending that information out to his millions of followers. >> ali, let's start with that, goodyear tire. there are all sorts of companies, companies that the president likes, i'm thinking home depot, fedex, have you ever walked into a home depot there and you see people over their smock wearing a maga t-shirt or hat? no. companies endorse dress codes that have no political voices or views. so the company said you can't do this. think about what the president did to goodyear tire. this is a company that employs over 60,000 people, located in akron, ohio where it was founded 121 years ago. the president of the united states sent a tweet out to his 85 million followers that said

do not buy or use goodyear tires. two can play at that game. i'll say it one more time. they employ 65,000 people at a time where you said it in the last segment we have 30 million americans without jobs. he's all about make america great again, buy american, produce american, and he's going after a company that employs hard working americans. how does this happen? when republicans were asked about it, you know what they said? i apparently didn't see that tweet. come on, yeah, you did. every member of congress who is a republican or a democrat follows the president on twitter. >> under the category of how does this even happen, the stock market, the s&p 500 at an all-time high. i'm not critical of the fact that the federal reserve's actions resulted in that. if only we had that sort of a system for regular people, where without being stuck in the senate someone can tell regular people who through no fault of their own are out of their jobs that you, too, can get loans and that we'll guarantee the banks

have unlimited money to give you loans. there's no such deal for regular people. their stuff is stuck in the senate because there's fears about the debt being too high. companies can get all the money they need. >> yes. but here's the thing. despite all of this, the president still polls better than joe biden does on economic issues. and there's something that i think is important to remember. you had mentioned it in the last segment, only a small portion of americans actually are invested in the stock market. but it's more than you think. it's not just these big fancy wall street investors, you have people all across this country, teachers, firefighters, everyone -- not everyone, majority of americans who care about their 401(k)s, their retirement accounts. when the president says to them you vote me out of office, you can say good-bye to your stock market gains. that's not the case. in fact, investors feel very good about things like predictability, which the president is not. there's a lot of people behind closed doors who could say i do like what my 401(k) may be absu

could be true. >> remember when we were talking about the tax cuts a couple years ago. we kept asking republican after republican why that's not worrying them about the debt? nobody was concerned about it. nobody brought that up to us. they said magically if you cut taxes, deficit and debt will go down. now they're worried about debt. i'm not saying you shouldn't be worried about debt, just be consistent. >> yes. remember, you have people like gary cohn who helped design that tax cut who said in retrospect it didn't need to be down to 21%. it could be 28% or 29%. you know who is putting forward that? joe biden. >> yeah. buddy, good to see you. thank you for joining me. stephanie ruhle, nbc news senior business correspondent and host on msnbc. catch stephanie at 9:00 a.m. eastern on msnbc. enjoy the rest of your weekend.

this week facebook proved how effective it can be at stopping misinformation in its tracks by blocking a covid-19 conspiracy video from going viral. why one research group named facebook a public health threat. that's next on velshi. something great from mr. clean.

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propagates conspiracy theorys that are dangerous, but it's unproven. one of the unproven claims is that people like dr. anthony fauci and bill gates knewore th outbreak occurred and are somehow profiting from it. unlike last time, facebook effectively blocked the pl plandemic sequel and stopped it from going viral. that's great, right? no, a damming report reliesed by avaz released a study saying facebook was a threat to the pandemic. in april when the coronavirus was spiking around the world, misleading health information was viewed 460 million times that we know of. the joining me now, my colleague, brandy zadrozny, an expert on all things internet and misinformation. you told me this, you and ben told me there's more health,

medical and science misinformation on the internet than anything else. in terms of the mainstreaming of lies and falsehoods ands did information, health and medicine and science trump everything else. >> yeah. i used to report more on political extremism, around winter of last year i decided that i needed to switch my focus just basically to health misinformation on the platforms, because people were dying. real lives are at risk. so you're right. it's been a problem even before we had the coronavirus pandemic, and now what's happened is everybody is in their home, lots of people are afraid, we have not been getting necessarily timely, relevant information. sometimes the information we've gotten has been sort of inconclusive. we're trying to figure this thing out together. that's where conspiracy theories sweep in. and that's where facebook is really great, because it makes it easy to share and to like and to interact with the scariest

worse misinformation that could cost people their lives. >> you tweeted on august 19th a change that facebook made that i didn't know needed changing. you said the biggest move in my opinion, facebook will no longer feature qanon groups and pages in its recommendation sidebar. so facebook was, in fact, using its algorithms to promote absolute lies and conspiracy theories? >> they were using their platform to promote lies and conspiracy theories and to grow platforms. since 2017 mark zuckerberg said the future of facebook is community. a large portion of the community thriving on facebook is medical information, qanon groups, during the pandemic both groups sort of fused into a super conspiracy, i call it the boss level. it's indistinguishable from one another. that's where you s or videos like that plandemic video take off because you have the

anti-vaccination group that is thriving on facebook, the qanon group, your general conspiracies of all kinds coming together and sharing this content. finally facebook has proven they do know how to do this, they know how to stop something when they see it coming. the truth is it's not just the plandemic they have seen companying, activists like avaaz, reporters and researchers have been telling them this has been happening for years and they haven't done anything until now. too little too late? maybe not. >> i saw yesterday that facebook is getting ready to deal with the idea that president trump, because he said it so many times, may not accept the outcome of the election, particularly if he loses. they're activating a potential kill switch for political advertising. do you know much about that? >> well, yeah. i think it's akin to the plandemic. they see one thing coming. trump may contest the election

or this plandemic movie is coming. they put together a huge team and say we're going to stop this thing. but just like the avaaz report showed, there's so much going on that's basically the same thing. same thing with the election results. fine, trump may come out and say actually i won, this thing is rigged, i'm not leaving. but the fact is he's been using this platform to claim that the election was rigged for months and months and months, for years. so he's been placing ads that say this very thing. again, horses left the barn, now they're trying to close one of the windows. >> brandy, good to see you. brandy zadrozny, please follow here on twitter, you will get the best information about the most dangerous things you need to keep yourselves safe from. i bet many of you didn't realize the senate was still investigating russian interference in the 2016 election. what they found are two doting pen pals in donald trump and vladimir putin who have been essentially sending love letters to each other since way before trump was president.

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(vo) because we know you want to get back to going your speed... ...steering life at 10 and 2. you're prepared for this. and so are we. soon you'll get back to skipping the counter without missing a beat. back to choosing any car in the aisle. back to being the boss of you. go national. go like a pro. putin, he said donald trump is a genius, and he's the real leader over in that country. and these people that i'm negotiating with all the time, these people in the states with me, they said you should disavow what putin of russia said. i said i'm not disavowing that he called me a genius.

are you crazy? don't worry, i can't be seduced. but wouldn't it be nice if you think about it, wouldn't it be nice if we got along with russia? >> former reality tv star showing admiration for a dictator and former kgb operative, an unlikely pair who have risen to the highest political offices in their perspective countries. it's real life. this international bromance has been a constant theme over the last several years. a modder d eern day version of and robin. here is trump on fox days after being sworn in as president in 2017. >> do you respect putin. >> i do respect him. >> do you? why? >> i respect a lot of people, but that doesn't mean i'm going to get along with them. he's the leader of his country. i say it's better to get along with russia than not. >> he's a killer, though.

putin is a killer? >> there's a lot of killers. got a lot of killers. you think our country is so innocent? >> now, that clip is particularly relevant this morning. here's why. alexei navalny, a top putin critic remains in a coma this morning, the victim of a suspected poisoning. he was flown to germany overnight for further treatment. this is not the first time putin has been convicted of poisoning or taken aim at his operation or his critics. it comes as the same week as the senate intelligence committiee released a bipartisan report detailing russia's interference in the 2016 election. the senate's finding on russian interference are not explosive -- are explosive, they shouldn't be ignored. the report details the political courtship between the two leaders that pre-dates the 2016

election. it features a gushy letter written by the president. as you probably have heard, i'm a big fan of yours, which he underlined in marker. in another letter trump reached out to putin inviting him to be his guest of honor at the miss universe pageant. trump added at the bottom, the world's most beautiful women. the report determines that trump almost certainly talked to roger stone about wikileaks, and paul manafort regularly met with an individual identified as a russian intelligence officer calling manafort a grave threat to counterintelligence. the it lays bear russia's role in the 2016 election. this report leaves no doubt that on instructions of mr. putin russian intelligence sought to aid the election.

that the president, mr. manafort, mr. stone and several other key campaign officials lied about the affair. he goes on to say mr. putin undeterred is once again seeking to aid mr. trump in this fall's election. the senate report and the president's reaction to it leave little doubt that mr. trump will welcome any aid that moscow provides. while it seems like russia is again trying to force a trump win, the president is simply a vehicle for putin's ultimate goal of undermining american democracy. joining me to discuss that is joyce vance, an msnbc contributor. thank you for being with us. you pointed out to my producer that senate republicans have had this information for some time. they had this same information when they voted to acquit the president in january. how troubling is all of this to you? >> i think that's one of the most troubling parts of this, ali. it's important to note that this report comes from the hands of a republican-led committee.

there's eight republican senators, seven democrats. the acting chair of the committee is florida senator marco rubio. though after the report was released, the republicans tried to distance themselves a little bit, they did it by saying, well, this report this report d establish collusion. and we've all been down that path before. we know the word collusion is not precise, so it's better to focus on the content of this report, which is highly damaging showing that on the one hand the president had paul manafort, a campaign manager that they didn't fully vet before hiring him so that they could get him for free, and manafort was in bed with russian intelligence interests. by the same token, the republicans would have known when they voted on impeachment, it was highly likely that the president lied in his written responses to mueller's questions when he denied that he and roger stone had had conversations about the wikileaks dumps. on multiple fronts this is a

very troubling development. >> what do you think gets done about it? we continue to see slow wheels of justice turn with respect to a number of trump-related things like his taxes and things going on in the southern district of new york and the manhattan district attorney and the new york attorney general. but what actually happens about this? the senate had real evidence when they were voting on impeachment that would have been relevant to the impeachment and now it's new to us. in fact, there are some revelations. there are several new things in here that the public didn't know. but there doesn't seem to be any recourse. >> you know, i suppose the answer to your question turns on the outcome of the election. and who's in control of the justice department after this is over. but what we know isn't happening, which this report makes so patently clear, is essential to the health of our democracy is that there is no sustained effort to punish russia for what it did in 2016 and to deter russia from doing

it again in 2020. instead, it's abundantly clear that the president welcomes this kind of foreign interference in elections as long as its goal is to help him win those elections. that should be very troubling to all of us. and, ali, the report is very different from the mueller report. mueller, his investigation was limited to criminal -- to actual criminal acts. so he was looking for evidence that he could have admissible in court that would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that crimes had taken place. the senate report is very different. it's a counterintelligence report. it looks at risk assessment for our country's national security. so the hope is that in answer to your question, there are intelligence community assets who are working to minimize the threat that russia presents to us based upon the results of this investigation. but we don't know for certain that that's the case. >> you know, one of the things we've been discussing through this show is the lack of trust

that americans have developed in the last few years in their institutions many of them because of donald trump and his undermining of those institutions. but in this particular case, we've been talking about russian interference in our elections since 2016 and in some cases before that and, yet, it appears that the office of director of national intelligence says it's happening again. and yet again you have this administration sort of undercutting that saying iran and china are also doing similar things. when, in fact, the intelligence community does not believe that iran and china are doing certain things. they believe they have certain preferences, but russia is doing the type of things they did in 2016. so we haven't even changed out of that. >> that's right and that should be distressing to all of us. job number one at the start of the trump administration should have been restoring our elections. and i think that this is a difficult conversation to have this close to november, because what we don't need is for the president to use this narrative to deter people from voting. and that's a lot, quite frankly,

of what we see him doing. anything that casts doubt on the security and the fairness of our elections is an argument the president can use to tell people, well you should just stay home and not vote. so it's very important that as americans we do go out and vote. the point here is that if we vote in sufficient numbers so that the election is not close, then it's much more difficult for anyone, foreign or domestic, to influence the outcome of the election. so the important takeaway here is that everybody should go ahead and vote. in fact, it's even more important than it has ever been before if we're going to have confidence in the outcome of the election. >> joyce, stand by for a second. i want to bring in by phone a former u.s. ambassador to russia under barack obama and an msnbc international affairs analysts. he's also the author from cold war to hot peace, the inside story of russia and america. ambassador, thanks for joining us so early in the morning on the west coast. you wrote an op-ed for the

"washington post" with the 12 words in the title say it all, a russian dissident is fighting for his life. where is the united states? your thoughts on alexi and the fact he's been flown to germany after a delay and the russians deny any involvement in it. >> hey, ali, good morning. sorry skype is failing us right now. i could see you but i couldn't hear you. but i wrote that piece because i'm just so tired of president trump never standing up to putin, never standing on the side of democracy and human rights. the only thing he could mutter was, well, we're going to look into that, you know. mike pompeo's going to report to me. at a time when arguably one of the most important fighters for democracy in the world was on his deathbed, poisoned. we don't know the circumstances yet. we don't know the details. and yet he can never say anything about these issues. and maybe because he -- i guess

because he wants to support vladimir putin. and it's related to the decision that we're just having, right? so putin intervenes in our elections in 2016. he's never criticized that. and on the contrary, when the vice president biden has said he will not take support from russia or anybody in this election, president trump to this day has never made a similar pledge. >> i want to ask you about, this is one of the reasons people are suspecting russian administration involvement in this is because there are a number of critics, opposition leaders and critics of the russian government who have actually fallen victim to -- to poison. it's very dangerous job being a critic of vladimir putin or an opposition leader in russia, and typically in the old world that is something the united states would have supported those actions. >> exactly. we would have criticized that. democrats and republicans. you know there are was a time when we stood up for good and we

were against evil. just it's really that simple. there's good and evil in the world. we should be on the side of good. and you're absolutely right, there is a track record here, many people have died, including a friend of mine, boris was who was assassinated in 2015. we don't know, i want to be clear, i want tounder scor clear, i want to undersquhoor happened. we don't know the details. we don't know if putin ordered this poisoning. the video of him is horrific if you hear him on the airplane. it sounds like he was poisoned. but even if we don't know exactly that, we do know that vladimir putin has created the permissive conditions for this. maybe it's a rogue intelligence officer. maybe it's some vigilante who supports putin. but what we do know is that putin calls people like him enemy of the people. he creates the conditions for this to happen. and we need to stand against that. and it's really, really

disappointing to me that for years now, we're now in year four, how hard would it be for mr. trump to say, we are very, very concerned about what has happened to this brave fighter for democracy. that's all he has to say. it's really simple. and yet for some reason he can't bring himself to say that simple sentence. >> yeah. that bar is low. thanks to both of you. joyce vance is the former united states attorney and msnbc contributor. michael is a former u.s. ambassador to russia and an msnbc international affairs analyst. thanks to both of you. more to come at the top of the hour, president trump is rafrmpg up his efforts of voter suppression. the former chair of the postal committee joins me next. velshi continues after a quick break. next. velshi continues after a quick break. ask about xeljanz a pill for adults with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis when methotrexate has not helped enough. xeljanz can reduce pain, swelling,

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