good day, i'm andrea mitchell in washington as the 2020 general election campaign officially kicks off, after a reality tv spectacle thursday night. the president ignoring law and tradition to turn the people's house into a political theme park, staging the republican convention's final night at the south lawn with the president's name emblazoned on billboards, more suited for a resort property than a historic national landmark. >> the fact is i'm here.

what's the name of that building? [ applause ] but i'll say it differently. the fact is we're here. and they're not. [ cheers and applause ] >> using the white house as his campaign playground. even extending the branding all the way to the national mall with a fireworks display spelling out the trump name for a packed crowd of cabinet officials and friends. the crowd was the subject of a fierce debate today. few face coverings, no social distancing, raising alarms this could turn into a super spreader event like the president's tulsa rally in june. mr. trump's speech laid the groundwork for the next two months. a blistering attack against joe biden full of misstatements and fearmongering to fire up the base and get undecided republicans back in line. >> if the left gains power they will demolish the suburbs,

confiscate your guns, and appoint justices who will wipe away your second amendment and other constitutional freedoms. biden is a trojan horse for socialism. joe biden is weak. he takes his marching orders from liberal hypocrites who drive their cities into the ground while fleeing far from the scene of the wreckage. >> joining me now, nbc white house correspondent and "weekend today" co-host peter alexander. "washington post" bureau chief phil rucker. former congressman david jolly. and jen palmieri, contributor to showtime's "the circus." peter, the packed crowd today is getting just as many headlines, about the lack of social distancing, the very random spotting of a mask if at all.

what is the calculation behind that, that the pandemic is over and we can move on? >> yeah, andrea, you're exactly right, it was the most striking scene there, not just the fact that it happened on the south lawn but what the scene looked like, the 1,500 supporters or so gathered together, no social distancing, very few masks being present there. we're told that only a limited number of people were tested, those who would have been in close proximity to the president. but what does that say about all the others there? they were certainly trying to create this illusion that the pandemic is in the past. it's no surprise the president has sort of provided us with this revisionist history in terms of his own handling of the virus here. what was striking to me, even as you looked at the crowd, the president talked about how he was following, in his words, science, facts, and data, it's certainly not what the scientists ask medical experts are saying. consider what dr. deborah birx had said just a matter of 11 days ago, ten days before this event took place. she said tens of thousands of

lives can be saved if we wear masks and don't have parties in our own backyards. only a matter of minutes ago we had a sort contentious exchange with peter navarro, one of the president's top advisers who has been focusing on this issue. he was speaking to us about efforts to combat the virus. and we asked him specifically if that was a good example and if that was a way that other americans should view as ways to combat the virus. he was not going to address the substance of it, instead accused us basically of, i don't know, using dnc talking points, i guess, to put his language bluntly. the bottom line is he did not address the issue and nor has anyone else at the white house today. >> and what about the fact that in charlotte, north carolina, they reported, peter, that there were several cases at the convention, now notably, that was an indoor convention, the first day of the rnc, when they were doing the roll call vote. >> that's right, we're now hearing from mecklenburg county, in north carolina, charlotte specifically, where earlier this week the president even traveled

to sort of surprise those delegates for the event that took place there, a total of two attendees and two individuals supporting the event now report they tested positive for covid-19. they were immediately issued isolation instructions. there were a total of 792 tests, they report, that were conducted then. but it doesn't explain everything, like when specifically the tests were done, when the results came back, and whether or not those individuals who did end up testing positive had in fact interacted with others in that room after the fact. so there was a likelihood that others could get this, that remains to be seen. it will be a matter of days before we have better specifics about what happened here, but again, andrea, it was a scene very striking certainly to those medical experts. >> phil, one of the things that was also really striking was that all the speakers were trying to redefine the president as warm, empathetic, kind, and specifically saying this is not the guy you see but we know him better. obviously his daughter and

others throughout the week. which is really striking, that you have an incumbent president, a candidate for reelection, who is known for his personality on twitter and in person, and yet everyone is trying to tell us there's a different person. that's the same also about the pandemic, trying to say that he's handled this brilliantly and it's -- you know, and you're not feeling the unemployment and the other ravages of the pandemic and the way the economy has been crippled. so it's believe the speeches and not your lying eyes. >> yeah, andrea, it was really striking. this of course is a president who prides himself in presenting his raw, unvarnished id to the american people day in and day out. we see him, he answers questions from reporters a lot, he vents his personal thoughts on twitter. yet to believe white house officials in some of the speeches they were giving last

night, the president we've all been seeing with our own eyes the last four years is not the real donald trump. the real donald trump is compassionate and empathetic and not at all racist, when, you know, his performance and his rhetoric and the way he's conducted himself in office would tell you otherwise. it was clearly an effort to try to soften his edges. and we saw this over the last four days in an appeal in particular to suburban white women who were critical to his success in 2016, but fled trump and voted for democrats in the 2018 midterms. trump is trying to win at least some of them back to give himself a fighting chance in states like pennsylvania and florida. and part of the way to do that is to soften the president but also to present biden as some sort of radical who can't be trusted and would destroy america's suburbs and democracy and what have you. you played the clip earlier. >> you know, it's a difficult --

it's difficult, a double-sided game to be playing to try to soften the edges at the same time as fearmongering. david jolly, i want to play some of his more divisive rhetoric. >> your vote will decide whether we protect law abiding americans or whether we give free rein to violent anarchists and agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens. just imagine if the so-called peaceful demonstrators in the streets were in charge of every lever of power in the u.s. government. just think of that. >> so, david jolly, you know, does that work? >> no. andrea, in many ways donald trump's speech last night was the least effective part of the entire convention. he is a candidate, an incumbent candidate who suffers from

overexposure of his own doing, right? there was little new last night. it was not a special speech. we get that every time he comes out and he likes to go out several times a week and talk like that. it also wasn't effective because of your point, the divisiveness of it all. one of the reasons that nearly 70% of america says we're going in the wrong direction is the division. that is not what works. and so what was least effective this week was any time donald trump or somebody with the last name trump spoke. what was effective was some of the real human stories and private citizen stories as to why they were supporting the president despite the divisiveness of the last three years, and what was also effective was the constituency that they were going for. the rest belt states, wisconsin,

pennsylvania, that determined the election 3 1/2 years ago, republicans leaned far into that. when you heard from the logger and the rancher and the farmers and the rust belt mechanics and industrial constituencies, it was very effective. trump trampled over all of that last night with his speech of divisiveness. >> it really felt like, first of all, there was very little beauty or rhetoric in it, poe y poetry, shall we say, it needed a lot of editing. it seemed patched together. jen palmieri, what about the negativity? they were trying to rebrand joe biden. people know joe biden, but they're trying to brand him as a radical. we saw the way it worked in 2016 with, you know, hillary clinton, lock her up and all of that, and the branding of her. crooked hillary. you were in the middle of all of that. can it work? should the democrats be alarmed and does biden need to get out more?

>> i think that the biden campaign is probably pretty relieved this morning because the big opportunity for trump in the convention was to try to brand biden and it's clear that they don't have an idea of how to do that. you saw that in the speech last night. i spent an hour with kellyanne conway and it was clear they didn't have a strategy for how to define biden and how to win back women voters, as much as she tried to convince me that she did. you can't say that joe biden has around for 47 years and he's been a part of the radical left. the people on the bernie sanders left and on the trump right would say that kamala harris is

too far left. the democrats should remind people how badly trump has screwed up covid but be optimistic about our ability to am co-together and f come toget solve problems. biden will go to the battleground states, which i think is great for them to do, but even as much as people know about biden, they have room to tell them a more positive story about what we'll do. i totally agree with david, that 60% of people who think the country is going in the wrong direction, a lot that have is about division and biden is the one with the best message by far on how you can -- on how he can bring the country together. >> and in fact, joe biden tried

to prebut that when he suddenly came on our program yesterday, we of course had been asking for him for well over a year, but the fact that he came on yesterday to prebut the president, here is what he said about all those allegations about supporting violence. >> you know, he's rooting for more violence, not less. and he's clear about that. what's he doing? he's pouring gasoline on the fire. this is donald trump's america. donald trump's america. >> so peter, he really tried to push back with that whole, he supports violence, which is simply wrong, the vice president said it, that he had condemned the violence, but it's so many facts, it's hard to go through them all. joe biden does not support late term abortions up until the last day, he, you know, he's been misconstrued over and over again on plasma, it's not approved as

a therapeutic that can actually cure, they were talking about it as an approved lifesaving technique. testing, they don't have the best testing in the world. the fatality rate was misspoken. the nypd endorsement, no, it's the union and the police endorsement in new york. v.a. choice was an obama-signed law. we still have troops engaged with the russians in syria just the other day, earlier this week. bides son is not planning to bulldoze the suburbs. if republican attorneys general are in a fight before the supreme court to eliminate preexist conditions from obama, the gasoline war, that was misspoken. and they're talking about the greatest job creation of 9 million jobs. that's from april onwards. but from february to april, that

three-month period, they lost 20 million jobs. so the net, the net -- >> deficit. >> -- loss is 13 million people unemployed, it's a deficit. >> you're absolutely right, andrea. there's a fundamental incoherence for these attacks on joe biden for his support of the crime bill while at the same time saying that he is soft on crime. i mean, the strategy is not entirely clear in moments like this. but at the end of the day, this is sort of the president's strategy, which is throw everything at the wall. one thing that was notably absent from the president's remarks and really from any of the remarks over the course of this week is the attack on joe biden's mental acuity, that had been the line for a while, sleepy joe or slow joe. clearly after joe biden's performance last week where he appeared to be pretty vigorous and in control of his facts, that's not not a strategy they're continuing with and are pursuing other ones.

>> peter, jen, david, thanks to all of you. this morning, a quick court hearing for the 17-year-old charged with killing two people in wisconsin while outrage grows because of his treatment by police as opposed to the treatment given to jacob blake. you're watching andrea mitchell. you'll have a direct report live, next. itchell. you'll have a direct report live, next pnc bank believes that if you can get a pair of goggles that helps you master your backhand... ...then you should be able to get a bank account that helps you master your budget.

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the 17-year-old charged with felony murder for killing two protesters following the police shooting of jacob blake waived his first court appearance today. kyle rittenhouse was scheduled to appear for an extradition hearing in illinois to have him return to indiana but his legal team won a postponement for at least 30 days. overnight in kenosha, protests remained peaceful. this as more national guard troops from arizona, michigan, alabama, all headed to the area. today jacob blake's father said when he visited the hospital his son was shackled to his hospital

bed. >> he's paralyzed from the waist down. why they had cold steel on my son's ankle, he can't get up, he couldn't get up if he wanted to. so what was -- that's a little overkill, to have him shackled to the bed. that makes no sense to me. >> nbc's shaquille brewster is in kenosha. it absolutely makes no sense. the young man is paralyzed, he's facing surgery, repeated surgeries. no one can explain why he would be shackled. >> reporter: yes, andrea, and it's definitely a question that we have been asking. i'll tell you that in just the past couple of minutes, mr. blake's father repeated that in an emotional interview as he was in washington, d.c. he's speaking at the march on washington. and he repeated that feeling that he had, the distress he faced when he saw his son still

shackled. we reached out to the family attorney, benjamin crump, to see if he had any more information to provide about why that might be and why that is the case. he hasn't responded to us. but in that interview where you heard mr. blake's father explain that sight, mr. crump was asked about that a little bit later and he said it was an outrage. he went on to say that it follows a pattern of deliberate indifference and excessive force. we also have been in contact and we heard more from the attorney general who is leading the state investigation of the actual shooting of mr. blake. and while he has given more details including the names of the officers and a little bit more about what exactly happened right before the shooting, he is not answering the question of why mr. blake was being subject to arrest when officers arrived. he says the officers arrived, they tried arresting him, they tried tasing him, two different officers tried tasing him unsuccessfully. but in terms of the question of why this arrest was happening,

that's still unclear. so a lot of questions we have especially with that new detail from mr. blake's dad, andrea. >> and we'll have a lot more on this when welded go to the mall. the reporting there on the families, including mr. blake. one more thing is, why no action still on the police officers. i know their names have been released now, but how long is this investigation going to continue? >> reporter: yes, their names have been released. we now know the names of all three officers. and what we do know right now is that this is a state investigation. so the state attorney general is handling this. this is because when there is a local police involved shooting, and excuse me, i'm competing with that street sweeper right behind the camera, but when there is a police shooting, there's another body that then investigates it. and this is now under the department of justice in wisconsin. there's about a 30-day time line from the shooting for which we'll have more information. until then we just have these statements from the attorney

general, andrea. >> thank you very much, shaq brewster in kenosha. meanwhile, on the gulf coast, recovering today after being hit by the strongest hurricane in more than a century, at least six people are dead and entire towns are in ruins as winds flattened homes, destroyed businesses, downed power lines. hundreds of thousands of people are still without power. search and rescue efforts are continuing as the storm now moves east across the country, now downgraded to a tropical depression. a grim projection also from the cdc about the likely rise in the pandemic's death toll a month from now. that coming up next. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports." stay with us. this is msnbc. rts. stay with us this is msnbc. i'm a verizon engineer, and i'm part of the team building the most

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182,000. total cases are at 5.9 million. joining me now is dr. ashish j jha, director for the harvard global health institute. always good to see you. i want to start by talking about the convention last night. i'm not going to ask you about politics and the setting, but the fact of having 1,500 or more people, no social distancing, very few masks, and some of them were there for as long as three hours before the actual event because they had to go through clearance. it was just a giant crowd. the likes of which we haven't seen really anywhere, anywhere, not even at mt. rushmore or some of the other big rallies, tulsa. what do you make of it? >> yeah, so andrea, thank you for having me on. i saw the photos of that last night and i was pretty concerned. and i was concerned largely because of several factors you brought up. folks who are not only doing social distancing but almost nobody was wearing a mask. and people were stationary for

long periods of time. this is always risky. now, people sometimes like to compare this to protests. mostly with protests we've seen people wearing masks, people moving around. those things lower the risk. and of course this is the president doing this at the white house. i just expect and want better from our leaders in terms of preventing outbreaks. >> admittedly it's outdoors, but we have seen there were some cases at the first convention in charlotte indoors. even though they were outdoors, they were really close to each other, inches way, really. and this could become a super spreader event just as sturgess was, which was outdoors, in south dakota. >> yeah, absolutely. so first of all, i think as you're pointing out, outdoors really is safer, so that's good news. but outdoors is not magic. and what we still need is for people to be wearing masks and people to be trying to do as much social distancing as possible. and i do think people being

stationary for extended periods of time is quite dangerous because the virus has a chance to accumulate and build up. so one infected person could end up spreading it to really quite a few folks. this could have been done so much more safely. and i'm just disappointed that it wasn't. >> i want to ask you about the cdc, because they issued new testing guidance, quietly just posting it, no announcement, on the web. then cdc director robert redfield issued a so-called clarifying statement yesterday. the first statement that had been posted was that asymptomatic people did not need to be tested even if they were exposed to the virus by someone with a confirmed case, which caused concern. there was a statement just the other night from dr. fauci's office saying that he did have some concerns that this could lead to asymptomatic spread and that he was in surgery, under general anesthesia, the day that this was all approved by the cdc the week before. now the credibility of this

agency is being questioned, because dr. redfield's clarification, so-called, is that testing may be considered for all close contacts of confirmed or probable covid patients. that's hardly a directive. what is your conclusion from all this? >> yeah, this has been a hard week for the public health community, it's been a hard week for the cdc, because the recommendations, the changes they made, were not based on science or any new evidence or data, and really in fact flew against the scientific consensus. and they had no explanation. and it appears it was driven much more by the white house than it was by cdc scientists. there was strong pushback from the entire medical community, the american medical association, the infectious disease society, all of the public health experts i know pushed back pretty hard, because asymptomatic spread is a huge problem. about half of all infections come from people who don't have symptoms. and to do anything that says those people don't need to be

tested puts us further behind. i don't know if the clarifying statement by dr. redfield is that helpful. i think he should just come out and tell us what the science is. we all know. it would be helpful if the cdc just got on the same page. >> and finally, the convalescent plasma flip-flop by the fda. just the week before, after really being battered verbally by the president, they then came out and said it was going to have this emergency authorization. a lot of argument from scientists that it has not been proved effective in a randomized test and therefore should not be made available because now more people will get it and it will be harder to conduct the proper testing. >> yeah, here's the bottom line. you know, i am a clinician and i think about, when would i use convalescent plasma. we don't have evidence on whether it's effective, in whole it's effective, and to whom we should be giving it.

it's not some academic debate about the quality of the evidence. fundamental questions are not yet known. we've got to sort those things out. and, you know, i do wish that dr. hahn and the fda had really pushed all of us to kind of get that data so the doctors and nurses can make smart clinical decisions. this really felt like it was more driven by political pressure than, again, being driven by the science. >> dr. jha, always a pleasure, thanks very much for being with us today. and at this hour, on the 57th anniversary of dr. martin luther king jr.'s "i have a dream" speech, marchers are calling for a renewed commitment to his goals of racial equality at the lincoln memorial. before they march to dr. king's memorial this afternoon. we'll have live reports coming up. stay with us. ive reports coming up stay with us tired of clean clothes that just don't smell clean?

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masks, trying to social distance. it's an extraordinary gather. >> reporter: it is extraordinary, andrea. you can see tens of thousands of people just standing here, because today they're here calling for change. they're chanting "black lives matter," saying "no justice, no peace." they're also saying, why are we having to have this conversation now, 57 years since martin luther king gave his "i have a dream" speech, because the dream, the protesters here argue, has still not been realized. while they're asking for policy changes that will lead to more equality for black and brown people, they're also talking about their pain, a collective pain that is also affecting the younger generations of black and brown people in this country. i wanted you to take a listen to this group of moorehouse men, current students at moorehouse. they came all the way here for this march because they said they fear for their lives every single day. take a listen.

>> you're preparing yourself to die each and every day. you have to make sure you have your license ready, insurance ready. >> no sudden movements. >> no sudden movements, and make sure they're lined up on the dashboard, just to make sure. you're preparing yourself for your own death every day, it seems like. it's scary, it's daunting. >> reporter: while this is about policy, andrea, this is also about feeling for these marchers. they say all of this is now happening in this backdrop where black people are being disproportionately being impacted by negative factors in this country. their besides disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, their businesses are being shuttered. they're saying this is their time to make their voices heard and ultimately they want to go to the polls and see change happen, andrea. >> morgan, thank you so much. important voices from

moorehouse, the iconic historically black college in atlanta. garrett haake, you just spoke with jacob blake sr. what does he have to say? of course the father of the young man who is paralyzed, undergoing surgeries, and may never walk again. >> reporter: yeah, andrea, obviously an emotional moment for him, made more so for the moment that blake's father said in fact his own father was at the original march on washington 57 years ago. he very much sees a through line from that moment, through the shooting of his son, to this. when asked why he felt like it was important to be here, he talked about not just his son's shooting in kenosha but everything that's happened there since. take a listen. >> until the system is just, there is no justice. there was a caucasian young boy, 17 years old, killed two, shot one, blew his arm off, and walked home to illinois. they gave him a bottle of water and a high five. they gave my son seven in his

back. >> reporter: and andrea, blake senior told me his son is heavily sedated, he told me that his son, he got a phone call from a number of players from the milwaukee bucks, that was a highlight to him, but he remains shackled to his hospital bed despite being paralyzed from the waist down. >> just extraordinary. thank you very much. thanks, garrett. and joining me now, "washington post" political reporter eugene scott and pulitzer prize winning historian jon meacham, whose new book is "his truth is marching on: john lewis and the power of hope," out now. eugene, president trump said he's done repeatedly more for the black community than any president since abraham lincoln.

>> he does make that statement often. he rarely follows it up with facts and stats that would prove his point. that's why among other reasons, most black americans do not support this president. and according to polling, they believe he is racist. the reality, though, is that much of donald trump's black voter outreach isn't really focused on connecting with black voters. it's focused on connecting with many of the white americans who are, quite frankly, uncomfortable with so many of his statements and actions that are interpreted as racist, such as his frequent taxis on tattac black lives matter movement. the people who are listening to trump's statement and want to be able to reference it aren't demanding more. >> and jon meacham, at this pivotal moment, how do we handle this very difficult conversation about race, when there is

violence, and in some places we've seen it much more peaceful in kenosha the last couple of nights, but the president, according to critics and certainly joe biden in my interview with him, is inflaming that and emphasizing it over and over and trying to have that define the protest movement. >> it requires candor. it requires the facing of facts. the statistics tell the story. the fact that folks have to go back to the lincoln memorial 57 years to the day after dr. king and john lewis and bayard ruston and a. phillip randolph organized that march, which by the way things weren't easy then. it was supposed to be a march on the capitol and president kennedy thought congress would react poorly if the folks showed up and faced them, so he encouraged them to go to the lincoln memorial. when john lewis spoke, they were

so concerned he was going to be do radical and too revolutionary that the kennedy administration had two people inside the lincoln memorial ready to cut the microphone and play mahalia jackson singing "he's got the whole world in his hand" over the loudspeakers. the lesson of the first march on washington in 1963 is that dr. king set out the ideal and john lewis told the story about how the students of america, as they are again now, were trying to bring the ideal into reality. and so having a president who refuses to acknowledge the plain facts of the matter about structural racism and the prevalence of injustice, is a central stumbling block. we need a president who sees the world as it is and can lead us to a place where we want it to be.

>> you know, john lewis once told me that they wanted a meeting, dr. king and the others wanted a meeting with president kennedy and robert kennedy before the march but that the kennedys wouldn't agree to that, they were so fearful that it would be violent and so it was only afterwards that they got into the oval office and you've observed how john lewis hung back and was not in the front row, knowing that he was controversial in not wanting to undermine dr. king's messaging. >> white washington 57 years ago today was expecting a riot. russell baker, the "new york times'" then correspondent, told me "the new york times" hired a helicopter to hover over the violence to report on it, and when he got in the helicopter and flew over the mall, it was so boring that he actually had them fly over his house to check the room and he landed and came and covered it in the way it's

being covered today. so white expectations and white fears take up too much of our mind space. it takes up too much of our public space. and i think it's more than a conversation, i hate that phrase, a national conversation. we're beyond conversation. there has to be recognition of reality. and then the work of reconciliation. and we're being led to that by these very brave voices of protesters who are reminding us that america is not supposed to be for just one group but for everybody. >> we want to take a pause because right now, martin luther king iii is speaking. and let's listen to him addressing the crowd. >> but conscious of our health, we are socially distant but spiritually united. we're masking our faces but not our faith in freedom.

and we're taking our struggle to the streets and to social media. the nation has never seen such a movement, a modern day incarnation of what my father called the coalition of conscience. and if we move forward with purpose and passion, we will complete the work so boldly begun in the 1960s. we're marching to overcome what my father called the triple evils of poverty, racism and violence. today those evils have exacerbated four major challenges that currently face our country. first, covid-19, tragically, has killed more than 175,000 americans. disproportionately african-americ african-american, latino, and low-income people of every background. second, more than 30 million americans are unemployed again, disproportionately people of color. covid-19 has laid bare the

structural and racial inequalities in our economy that kept too many people trapped in the death and poverty. third, police brutality and gun violence are killing so many unarmed african-americans. today we march today we march with their families and we say their names. george floyd, boham jean, breonna taylor, eric garner, michael brown, tamir rice, yousef richardson, terrence crusher, trayvon martin, ahmad aubrey, elijah mcclain, and so many others. and fourth, our voting rights are under attack. we must vigorously defend our right to vote, because those rights were paid for with the blood of those lynched for seeking to exercise their constitutional rights. they were paid for with the blood of civil rights workers

such as sammy young jr., janet lee jackson, viola, james reed, those rights were paid for through the sacrifices made by heroes such as c.t. vivian, fanny lieu hiemer, jose williams and john lewis. but since the united states senate has failed to renew the voting rights act, we've had to overcome a whole new trick bag of tactics to suppress our votes. discriminatory voter i.d. requirements, cutbacks in early voting and voting by mail, and disenfranchising those who have served their time and paid their debt to the society. and now covid-19 is making its dangerous, even deadly, to stand in line at polling places. we shouldn't have to risk our

lives to cast our votes. we need to be able to do what president trump does, vote safely by mail. but now we're struggling to overcome the dismantling of the u.s. postal service for the express purpose of suppressing our vote. with all of these threats to our lives and liberties, our challenge is to use this moment to expand this movement, a movement that not only raises its voice but casts its votes, pursues its vision and makes lasting change. the scripture says, where there's no vision, the people perish. our vision is best expressed by a phrase we must never forget -- that is the bee loved community, with those words my father john lewis elevate vated rosa parks and so many other historic men and women of vision in america

whose dramatic practice is as good as its pronl mise, and amea with the triple evils of poverty, race ichbl and violence will be replaced by peace, justice and shared abundance. and where hate and fear finally give way to help and love. to achieve that america, we need to raise our voices and cast our votes over the weeks ahead, culminating on election day. we need to vote as if our lives and our livelihoods, our liberties depended on it, because they do. no person, no people, are more keenly aware of the risks of disenfranchisement and those who suffer from it. there's a knee upon the neck of democracy and our nation can only live so long without the oxygen of freedom. the strength must be exercised by more than rhetoric and more than marching. the simple challenge before us is that everyone can cast a ballot and everyone who can must

cast a ballot, and that ballot that is cast must be counted and the result must be transparent and known to the whole world. and so today i can call on everyone with the means to drive people to the polls, to make a plan for yourself, for your family and your neighbor, for those organizations and companies that care about democracy. i call on you today to offer your resources and your capacity to make sure every ballot is counted. if our forefathers are willing to die for the right to vote, we can work for the right to vote, and i will continue to call on you to act in the coming days. you know my father was assassinated in memphis, tennessee, while standing in solidarity with poor working people, sanitation workers whose slogans i am a man was a statement. today we're human beings with rights that should be respected

and acknowledged. they were asking for safe working conditions, for a living wage, for recognition of their union and for human dignity. they summed up their struggle with those four words, "i am a man." that simple but powerful slogan impairs movements today from black lives matter, for the me too struggle against sexual harassment and abuse, movements of marginalized americans trying to claim the dignity they have been denied. martin luther king jr. fought for the dignity of work. and that is never-ending. in 1968 the memphis sanitation strike workers and demanded and poor people's campaign insisted that, woulding peoprking people live in labor and poverty. those foreshadowed our day today to make the minimum wage a

living wage, not a poverty wage. and we're fighting along frontline workers, sanitation workers, health care workers, grocery workers, transport workers and so many more. they're praised for being essential but they're treated as if they're expendable. while standing with sanitation workers in memphis, they had said, so often we overlooked the work of significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called did jobs, but let me say to you tonight, whenever you're engaged in work that deserves humanity and for the building of humanity, it has dignity and worth. the now we have a president who confesses greatness with grandiosity. but my father knew better. everyone, he said, can be great because everyone can serve. he understood the human yearning for recognition and in his famous speech he explains that

everyone wants to be a drum major, leader of the marching band and he challenged us to channel our drum major instinct in to becoming drum majors for justice. while we honor our history, we must be a living movement, not a monument. if dad were here today, i'm sure he would implore us not to vehicle theively quote him from convenient. he would want us to be drama majors for justice, for championing the ideals he promoted, racial justice, social equality and peace, and he would gently but intently challenge us not to dwell upon the past but to live in labor of what he called the fierce urgency of now. so if you're looking for a savior, get up and find a mirror! we must become the heroes of the history we are making. and us means all of us!

in 1963 after my father spoke, the architecture of the march asked to join and demand congress pass strong civil rights and voting rights laws. more than half a century later, we must demand that the united states senate stop blocking passage of the george floyd justice in policing act. and the john lewis voting rights restoration act. and so when we conclude today, less remember that this is the commitment march in the spirit of 1963. i ask you to join me in pledging to act in three ways. first, because our simple human rights are at stake in this election, i ask you not only to register to vote, but make sure at least one other person registers and votes. second, i ask you to commit to service and struggle in your community, for voter registration to raising the minimum wage. to demilitarizing the police.

get involved with one or more of many worthwhile struggles in your community. third, i ask you to pledge as my father and john lewis did to get into good trouble and do it nonviolently. remember, that in the fight against injustice, nonviolence doesn't mean passive acceptance. it means peaceful resistance. we must come together and join with the black lives movement to raise our voices and say enough is enough! we must come with the poor people's campaign, the climates change and environmental justice movement, the women's march and me too movement, the parkland shooters and march for our lives and say enough is enough. >> and with that stirring speech, martin luther king iii at the march today. chuck todd picks up our coverage

with "meet the press daily" right now. if it's friday, how low will this presidential campaign go, as president trump unloads at his political rivals in a very unconventional convention address at the white house. both parties making the case that if the other side wins, so does chaos. plus thousands are marching on washington on the anniversary of dr. king's "i have a dream" speech, demanding equality and racial justice. and repairing the damage after the most intense hurricane to hit louisiana in more than a century. at least six dead, thousands without power and untold number of buildings and homes in ruins. welcome to friday. it is