tv Deadline White House MSNBC August 31, 2020 1:00pm-3:00pm PDT
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president george w. bush decided that it just wasn't his job to be the president of new york city because its residents weren't his people. or if bill clinton had decided not to head to oklahoma city after timothy mcveigh blew up a federal building there because it wasn't a state in which he'd prevailed. or if president obama said newtown wasn't his part of the state of connecticut and he'd stayed away after the shooting at sandy hook elementary school. it hurts to even say those words out loud because it never would have happened. of course, it didn't happen. all of those men understood that it was their job to lead american, all americans, through her most painful days, and their most fundamental duty was to protect all citizens of this country from threats foreign and domestic. sometimes it's important to remind ourselves how utterly freakish it is that the current american president doesn't see the presidency that way. case in point, this weekend, donald trump praised his supporters and failed to condemn
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acts of violence and provocation in the tinderbox that is donald trump's america. joe biden today sounding all of the presidential notes that donald trump can't or won't on the raging pandemic and the unrest on american streets. >> rioting is not protesting. looting is not protesting. setting fires is not protesting. none of this is protesting. it's lawlessness. plain and simple. and those who do it should be prosecuted. violence will not bring change. does anyone believe there will be less violence in america if donald trump is re-elected? we need justice in america. we need safety in america. we're facing multiple crises. crises that under donald trump have kept multiplying. the common thread, the incumbent president who makes things worse, not better. an incumbent president who sows
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chaos rather than providing order. an incumbent president who fails in the basic duty of the job. >> joe biden's condemnation of the violence stands in direct contrast to donald trump, who spent all day yesterday tweeting praise for his supporters, who wrote in open trucks, waving flags, but seems reminiscent of faraway wars. from "the washington post," scenes of trump faithful firing plant and pellet guns during a trump cruise rally caravan through downtown portland, a liberal bastion that has been the site of weeks of street demonstrations, raises the specter that the summer of unrest reaches a new phase, in which the president's ral ee's have fighting back. the portland mayor accusing trump of inciting the violence after a man was shot and killed there among his clashes between those pro-trump caravan and
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black lives matter protesters on saturday. >> he encouraged them to come into our community. and previously, he has actually encouraged or at least tacitly approved of violence. the tweets that he's been putting out in the last 48 hours, attacking democratic mayors, attacking those who are trying to bring resolution to the violence in their local communities. he has an opportunity to uplift us and bring us together and help us move through this difficult situation in our nation's history. and instead, he chooses to play petty politics and divide us. >> that donald trump approves of and incites and encourages violence is beyond dispute. it was he who said that he could shoot people on fifth avenue and not lose a single vote. it was donald trump who encouraged states to, quote, liberate themselves from his own government's recommended stay-at-home orders. he is the one who's called for roughing up protesters at his own events, and he has said that
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he would pay the legal bills for anyone who got in trouble for doing so. it is that record of inciting violence and division that drove the wisconsin governor and kenosha mayor to say trump is not welcome in their city at this time, stating his presence would not be helpful to a city in the process of healing. trump, however, doubled down on his plans to visit after their calls and will go to kenosha tomorrow to survey damage from last week's protests and meet with law enforcement. as of now, there are no meetings scheduled for the president to speak with jacob blake's family. with the country on its knees, suffering from a deadly pandemic that trump failed to stop and weakened economically from trump's failures to protect it, trump sees his path to victory paved by scaring people into blaming someone other than him for the chaos he unleashed. reality versus trump's amplification of division is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. former u.s. senator from missouri and current msnbc
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political analyst, claire mccaskill is here. also joining us, democratic strategist, basil smikle and white house reporter for "the new york times," eli stokols. eli, i want to start with you. and i wonder if you can just take anyone who's doing a little mental decluttering last week through the weekend of events, as things grew more tense on the streets of portland, donald trump torqued up his divisive distribution of tweets to his millions of supporters. and through today, after local leaders called for him to stay away, insisted that he's coming. >> well, if we go back all the way to thursday, the day the president accepted the republican nomination, joe biden was out there saying, this seems to be a president who is rooting for violence. and he pointed to the comments by kellyanne conway during a television interview, in which he said, this stuff helps us. that's pretty much what she said. and democrats have been seizing on it ever since. now, trump went out that night on the white house south lawn
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and gave a pretty buttoned up speech for him after, you know, capping off a four-day rnc that every night in prime-time featured a lot of efforts by women, by black voices, to soften the president's edges and to paint a picture of a president that we all know is far rosier and kinder than this president actually is day-to-day. and friday, the president goes up to new hampshire and holds a rally and is right back to being his more incendiary self, talking about the protesters, basically dismissing all of them as a mop, and really going back to the fearmongering that is at the heart of his campaign pitch, that was maybe toned down a little bit during the rnc. and on sunday, after playing some golf, the president just really having an active day on twitter, and tweeting and retweeting a lot of messages aimed at stirring up fears about these protests, by continuing to
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pointing to the most divisive elements out there, the black lives matter, the calls to redress systemic racism. he is painting over all of that and saying, look at these protesters. they want to defund the police. that's the campaign strategy. and it's remarkable to watch. because today at the white house, press secretary kayleigh mcenany was asked about the president and his responsibility for enflaming some of this violence by encouraging his own supporters to take to the streets. and she said that he hasn't seen the trump supporters in the back of the pickup trucks going through the streets of portland and firing paintballs and ore ammunitions at the black lives matter protesters. trump himself retweeted video of just that on sunday. she was asked, what does he make of the 17-year-old in kenosha. the apparent trump supporter, kyle rittenhouse, whose social media was littered with pro-trump posts, video of himself at a january trump rally. this is the person accused of shooting and killing two people
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who were protesting jacob blake's shooting in kenosha. and the press secretary just sa said, we don't have any comment on that. there's a real selectivity here in picking out the elements of this, that the white house, the campaign believe benefit the president politically and ignoring pretty much everything else. and that is what former vice president joe biden was trying thil to highlight, some of these inconsistencies. that's what he was trying to highlight when he spoke today in pittsburgh. >> let me show you more of that speech that eli is talking about. vice president joe biden today in pittsburgh. >> you know me. you know my heart. you know my story. my family's story. ask yourself, do i look like a radical socialist with a soft spot more rioters? really? i want a safe america. safe from covid and looting.
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safe from racially motivated violence. safe from bad cops. let me be crystal clear. safe from four more years of donald trump. now, just a little over 60 days, we have a decision to make. will we rid ourselves of this toxin? or will we make it a permanent part of our nation's character? >> that's some strong stuff from joe biden, claire mccaskill. >> yeah, i think what happened, we have entered the phase of the campaign where there's a lot of hand wringing by supporters. and there's a lot of pressure. and in this instance, i think that pressure was felt by the campaign. and i think joe biden realized he had to get out there and he had to go on offense. i mean -- and by the way, he's going to have to do this every day. they can't just give one
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speech -- >> totally agree with you, yeah. >> because donald trump is going to be on his little machine with his thumbs, retweeting white nationalists, retweeting falsehoods every single day, incessantly. so they're going to have to do it. they're going to have to say over and over again that joe biden is no for rioters or people who set fires or burn buildings or break windows. but here's the thing, nicole, that i think is really interesting about this. the visuals here matter. america knows that trump is ginning up this chaos. they know that. they can tell it, they can smell it. that he wants this conflict. and the suburban women that are supposedly at play here and that trump is trying to say, you should be afraid, you know what they see? they see all of his supporters with ar-15s. they see a 17-year-old going into a volatile situation with a long gun and killing people. you know, and i was reminded
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over the weekend by -- about one of my favorite johnny cash songs. don't take your gun to town. trump is saying to these people, take your gun to town. let's see if we can have a rumble. and, you know, the american suburban women, they see that. and they don't like everybody having an ar-15. that's part of the problem in america right now. >> claire, let me follow up with you. having worked on republican campaigns, the three things you try not to talk about in the last 70 days, even if you're a republican, abortion, gun rights, and these polarizing issues. you almost want the swing voters to forget about sort of that dark underbelly of the right-wing coalition, especially after tragedies like newtown and like parkland. those are the things that really cross pressure independent women. and when we talk about independent women, i spent two months out interviewing independent women for the "today" show in 2016. and today they're registered as democrats, sometimes they're
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registered as republicans. but they follow events. and i think you're right, though, about joe biden. he needs to get on the air, on camera, every single day to counter the disinformation coming from donald trump about all of this. and i think he's landed on the right message, that this is donald trump's america and kellyanne conway gave away the farm when she told us that he does this because it benefits him politically. but what do you make of the fact that polls suggest that that convention of his, so far, didn't move anybody in terms of their favorable ratings of donald trump? i think the first poll that came out was abc, and donald trump has a 31% approval rating, down 4 points since the middle of august. >> yeah, here's the thing. they tried to soften him, but he doesn't want to -- you know, they did try to soften his edges. but you know, he doesn't want his edges to be softened. he wants them to be razor sharp.
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he wants to be the bad guy, the tough guy, he wants to be that guy. he doesn't want to be the soft guy. so his true self is what's going to come out in the next 60 days. and that convention is already in the rearview mirror and people took it for what it was. it was a staged effort trying to make him into something he is not. now, very quickly after it was over, he has shown what he is. he will somebody who won't condemn somebody who has been charged with murder and he will not do anything but encourage his supporters to strap up with their ar-15s and go out there and do what you've got to do to defend america, which means, let's go have somebody else shot. and the guns is a huge part of this. and women in america are sick of all of these guns and not having any gun regulations whatsoever. >> basel, let me read you something that greg sergeant writes in today's "washington
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post," which is a pretty inciteful analysis. what trump really represents is the promise of law and order without the rule of law. he stands for this in combination, as part of the same package, often quite deliberately so, but law and order without the rule of law is the wielding of power and violence, both state violence and private vigilante violence, unshackled from laws and rules-bound processes. when i read that, i remember that donald trump isn't for the law at all. he's an unindicted co-conspirator in the southern district of new york. he's been pardoning campaign aides and allies. he's undermined the rule of law inside the military by reaching deep inside their sacred process and pardoning people accused of war crimes. i mean, he's not for law. and he is creating disorder. and it's really an effort to bam boozel his supporters. he's the opposite of law and order. i googled some of the ways that
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that phrase has been used in the past. and it's never been used by such a -- by someone so associated with lawlessness. and part of what his base liked about him was that the rules didn't apply to him. i don't know that they're -- i mean, they bought that he'd built a wall, because i guess they thought he'd built casinos and didn't know that many of them went bankrupt. but i don't think that they're going to buy he's done anything in the categories of law and order, basel. >> i don't think they're going to buy that, but the other side of the equation in my opinion is intimidation. he may have been bamboozeled his supporters, but he's also in favor of anticipation and that's why some of the attacks on mail-in voting are so problematic for so many of us, because it does amount to voter intimidation. let me say this. and it's important they need to raise this. over the weekend, we lost chadwick bozeman, the actor from
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"black panther" movie and today we learn that we lost georjohn thompson from georgetown, two amazing african-american leaders in their own right who used their vehicles to rewrite a narrative about black life in this country, other than what we have been seeing in the media. and to me, what donald trump is doing and has done is continuing to chip away at this very reductive view of black and brown people in this country. and let's make no mistake about it. he needs america to buy into that view, because that is, was you alluded to earlier, the only way that he gets re-elected, were people to be afraid of this so-called -- this dystopian future that he painted in that convention. and then on top of that, suggesting that he's the only one who can solve it. so what's important about what senator mccaskill has said is that what joe biden and quite
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frankly, kamala harris need to do is continue to fill that gap in sort of our thinking about what's happening in america right now. because if there is no voice in there giving sort of the ability for americans to see the world through their eyes, through joe biden's eyes and kamala harris' eyes, all they're left with is donald trump. and that is not only scary for the suburban voters that claire mccaskill is talking about, but it's also very dangerous to the lives and livelihoods of people that look like me. and so there is a lot of b bamboozeling, but also intimidation and real fear you'll have these trump supporters on the streets intimidating many of us in many more ways than just a protest in a city somewhere. lit impact many aspects of our lives and that's the slippery slope that donald trump wants to be on, but we have to do what we can to keep it from going down
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that path. >> let me just press you a little bit. i mean, that's the path he wants to be on. and the poll numbers i put up suggest they're not working. and i am -- i was in the white house on 9/11. i lived that history. i'm a student of other presidents in this country's hour of crisis. i could also recite president obama's and vice president biden's remarks about newtown. i remember in college, watching bill clinton in oklahoma city. and all of those men were driven by this sort of singular function of the job, which is to hold the country in their arms and hug it and try to make it stop hurting. additionally, at each of those three moments in their presidencies, they were the most popular of their prosecuteses. uniting the country in her hour of pain also polls tremendously well and dividing the country in
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her hour of crisis polls terribly. and the country is undeniably in an hour of extreme crisis. we lose a thousand people a day to covid still, every single day, and that's on the low end of the spectrum. we have more than 6 million people in this country infected by covid. we are the worst in the world at controlling the spread of covid. and the economic impact of those failures of donald trump's, not to prevent it from coming here, but to contain it, to fight it, to be a wartime president that he infafantasized about one daym the podium, that failure has cost him. so my only pushback to what you said, basel, it's not clear that even if we wants to be there, that it's going to help him in the end. >> what i'm reacting to and responding out of is just fear and perhaps an overabundance of caution. because i just feel like anything can happen right now.
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and i know a lot of voters are not sitting on their haunches and thinking that democrats have it in the bag. i think it's important to believe and to act in a way that says that he could still win this thing. that this race can still get tight, if we don't -- if we're not careful, if we're not vigilant. that's the fear that i think we should all be walking away with. because i know everything you've said is absolutely true, absolutely true. but i also remember that this -- that his election was won largely on a cultural war also. not just facts, not just history, not just good data, but also cultural issues that we are going to consistently have to battle along with all of the factual information that you laid out. >> basel, sadly, i think you're more right than i am, but i'm glad we can continue to have this conversation. claire and basel, thank you so much for starting us off and making me think. when we come back, new reporting on the extent that the justice department went to block
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an investigation into donald trump's decades-long personal and financial ties to russia. and despite what we know is happening today with regard to russia and interference in our election, trump's director of national intelligence is ending in-person briefings to congress. we'll ask a member of the intelligence committee about how dangerous that is nine weeks ahead of election day. plus, a trump is a trump. another new book from inside this white house. this time calling out melania trump for being a whole lot more like her husband than we've been led to believe. all of those stories, coming up. led to believe all of those stories, coming up. to severe psoriasis, little things can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression.
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there was perhaps no bigger question in the lead up to and in the aftermath of the 2016 election. did donald trump have secret ties to russia? even after a special counsel investigation and several congressional probes, some of them more serious than others, here we are nine weeks before the 2020 election and it seems we're still not sure what the answer is. at least part of that lays at the feet of the justice department. as part of michael schmidt's upcoming book, "donald trump versus the united states," schmidt learned that the doj secretly took steps to narrow the mueller investigation, from the write-up in the book, privately, mr. rosenstein instructed mr. mueller to conduct only a criminal investigation into whether anyone broke the law in connection with russia's 2016 election interference. the special counsel built a staff, some he inherited from the justice department and the fbi, some he hired to investigate crimes, not threats to national security, which is the purview of
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counterintelligence investigations. rosenstein never told the fbi's acting director at the time, andrew mccabe, so mccabe responded to this reporting this mornin morning. >> in may of 2017, we had information to indicate that a threat to national security exist. that threat being specifically the president's potentially damaging relationships, financial ties, what have you, with the government of russia. that's essentially the counterintelligence doomsday scenario, to have a president of the united states, who may be beholden to the russians on some level. so with that information, we opened a case. i handed that entire case over to the special counsel's office. i expected all issues with that to be investigated. if they have not been investigated, they certainly should be. we don't have fewer reasons to suspect the president's
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relationship with russia. we now have many, many more. >> joining our conversation is msnbc analyst and frank figliuzzi. eli still here as well. frank figliuzzi, i will remember until the day i die, your face after andy mccabe announced on this show that he had opened a full-field investigation into donald trump. and you came on afterward to try to put in context how significant that was. how high the degree of alarm had to be about the threat that donald trump represented. and you kept the faith during the whole 23 months of the mueller probe that that counterintelligence beads pees was being worked just as aggressively as all of the indictments for criminal conduct that trump's cronies were. it sounds like that wasn't the case. >> i kept the faith that somebody, somewhere was working the counterintelligence concerns against the president of the united states. and we've got a doj inspector
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general ruling that says that that case, that russia inquiry was properly predicated. here's the problem, nicole. fbi case just don't vanish into thin air. and what the mike schmidt piece is telling us is we've got a major question here. it's a shell game of hiding a counterintelligence investigation and while nobody expects counterintelligence cases to be on the front page of the newspaper, they're very sensitive and very classified, when it comes to putting the president of the united states' name in the title of that case, to determine the seminole question of our time, is a president of the united states co-opted by a foreign intelligence service, we now are faced again with the question of where is the counterintelligence investigation? and this notion that the special counsel thought the bureau had it and the bureau thought the special counsel had it, we need answers to that. something's not right here. there are gaps and holes. that's the value in the mike schmidt piece, pointing out to us, hey, everybody, we don't
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have answers yes. and we better get answers and congress can demand those, of the current fbi director, because if he had proper predication before he even got there to work a case, he's got even more now, and he needs to tell us what happened to the case. >> you know, frank, let me just follow up. one of the things that andy mccabe described as leading to that extraordinary decision to open on the president was all of the conduct. and it didn't -- they didn't open an investigation into the president after he said, "russia, are you listening?" they started looking more closely at the campaign, as we know. but it was after the firing of jim comey and after he said things to other media outlets that it had to do with russia, and you take that point and go forward, you go the other direction, as you're saying. because if it was that point where he had enough information to open an investigation into him, since then, the conduct got
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worse, right? greg miller reported, i think, in 2018, there were five unstaffed calls with russia. john bolton writes in his book in helsinki, ehe wasn't in the room. he got a better readout on what happened. and not going to putin about bounties being placed on the heads of american soldiers, begrudgingly signing russian sanctions after he passed the u.s. senate. the behavior got worse after that counterintelligence investigation was shut down. >> yeah, i would easily argue that there's further corroboration, more than ever before. and i would also argue that as many experts in the counterintelligence field feel, is that finances are closely attached to any coopting of this president. and so the question, and even the schmidt piece raises the issue of finances and tax returns. and who looked at that, if any. and if the answer is that no one actually pulled tax returns or
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finances to see if there were foreign entanglement with the trump businesses, then we have a serious problem on our hands. and that sounds a lot like a cover-up by the current attorney general and not just former acting attorney general, rosenstein. >> you know, i want to ask you something else, eli, that is in mike's time story previewing the book. so one of the obstructive acts that was investigated was the firing of jim comey. and it was reported out extensively in the mueller report volume ii about whether there was this nexus for obstruction and whether the request for loyalty suggested he wanted something from his fbi. mike schmidt reports that donald trump also asked john kelly to serve as fbi director and asked him for a loyalty pledge, as well. this is from schmidt's reporting. throughout kelly's time working
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directly with trump, kelly was repeatedly struck by how trump failed to understand that how they had issues being loyal to him but to the institution of american democracy. my question is, eli, it's another brick in the wall of some knowledge of criminal intent or criminal conduct that he needed covered up by his own law enforcement agency, if everyone candidate was asked if they would be loyal to him, not democracy. >> yeah, i think intent, you know, the criminal intent, that does seem to be, you know, you showing up in different actions by the president to try to impede all oversight, to dismiss it all, to cast all of it as a witch hunt, so when things come up, that enough people in the country are predisposed to just say, oh, their trying to get the president again, and to not actually look at the substance of this. consciousness of guilt is something that prosecutors and investigators are very astudented to and you see a lot of it here.
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but this is just a president who puts immense pressure on the system, because he is the president and he totally disregards, has no time for our system of checks and balances. and so whether it's congressional oversight, whether it's rod rosenstein in the position he's in, trying to do his job effectively, but also trying to please the president so he doesn't get fired, that's a difficult tightrope that he makes a lot of people walk, and that's important context as we start to learn more about the decisions that were made by a lot of these people throughout the turump years. >> eli stokols, frank figliuzzi, thank you both so much for adding some context to this new reporting. i'm grateful to talk to both of you. after the break, a major government office charged with the country's national security, making the decision to be less transparent with nine weeks to go until the election, about the election. we'll talk to a senator, next. election we'll talk to a senator, next. want restaurants to open?
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a shocking move away from transparency from president trump's director of national intelligence, just nine weeks ahead of an election. john ratcliffe, he's the dni, his office saying it won't provide anymore in-person briefings to congress on the topic of foreign election meddling, even though that office has already confirmed that russia is once again interfering to try to help donald trump win. joining our conversation is senator angus king from maine. he's a member of the senate intelligence committee, someone we turn to on the most entire national security topics.
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i spoke to a former senior intelligence official today who said, i don't know what to say anymore, we don't do this. and i asked specifically about whether gina haspel, cia director could buck ratcliffe and continue briefings, and he said, i just don't know anymore. what is the state of play between the intelligence community and their rightful oversight committees like yours? >> well, this is a stark slap in the face to the american people, nicole. i hope this isn't characterized as a spat between congress and the president. congress is really a stand-in for the american people in this situation, who deserve to have this information, who deserve to know what their government knows about foreign interference in our election. that's really what's at stake here. and the people paid for this collection of intelligence and they ought to get it, subject to sources and methods and reasonable classification.
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but this is an insult to the american people to say, we're not going to brief congress anymore or we're not going to brief in-person. and by the way, that's saying, we're going to submit written statements. that's hollow. i've been in 400 or 500 congressional hearings in the last eight years. in every case, the live questioning brings out important, deeper, and more significant information than the dry, edited, written pre-filed testimony. so this is bad news for the american people. they deserve to know what the russians or other countries are trying to do in our elections. they're the decision makers on november 3rd. and the intelligence community works for the american people. they don't work for the president, for any particular president. and this is a case where they owe the people this information. >> we're also learning and some new reporting in "the new york times," that a counterintelligence investigation that included a
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thorough examination of donald trump's two, three, four decades-long business ties and business efforts to have a presence in russia was never undertaken by special counsel mueller's team. frank figliuzzi was on in the last block and said the conduct that transpired since that opened is more troubling than before it was opened. what is your current state of concern about donald trump as an unchecked potential threat to national security? >> well, i will say that the senate intelligence committee, which i'm a member, has done a four-year investigation, which is a counterintelligence investigation. we weren't limited in the way mueller was by having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt criminal conspiracy or anything else. we tried to get at the facts. and we just filed a couple of weeks ago the thousand-page
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volume five of our report. which talks about the relationships between the trump campaign and the russians. and also, the relationships between donald trump and russia. now, if he alleges that there's nothing to see here, he could clear a lot of this up overnight by just releasing the financial documents, the income tax returns, and other financial documents that would demonstrate that there weren't connections with russia. but now we know, for example, from this report that in 2016, during the campaign, there was a deal afoot to build a trump tower in moscow. and he was telling the american people that it was all over, it wasn't anything going on, but it went on through the fall of 2015 into 2016. and a deal like that would require putin's approval. you're not going to build a $100 million or a $1 billion project in moscow that vladimir putin didn't sign off on. so that's just a small example
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of what we know from the public records and from records that have come out subsequently. so as i say, the president could clear a lot of this up immediately, just by releasing the necessary documents to demonstrate no financial connections to russia, the oligarchs in russia, and, you know, that would clear this up. but so far, they've stoutly resisted doing that. >> joe biden has recently, i think, today or late yesterday, issued a statement basically describing donald trump's subservience to vladimir putin, which, as you said, is now in the public record. he goes to helsinki, sides with vladimir putin over the american intelligence community. he seemingly randomly pops up and defends russia's afghan war effort, after spending most of three years trashing america's efforts there. his alignment with vladimir putin's foreign policy goals,
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including taunting nato, removing troops from germany, is now a three-year record of accomplishments for russia, not america. what do you think the role is for national security questions in the final 60 days of a presidential election? >> well, i think we immediate to ask those questions. we need to ask the president, what is his intention. vladimir putin's most fervent dream would be the breakup of nato. that's been a goal of his since he took power. and when the president removes those troops from germany and constantly is sort of slyly criticizing nato, asking, is it really that important, all of this business about their not pay their fair share, is, you know, that's what -- that's putin's strategy, is to drive a wedge into nato. it's a thorn in his side. so, again, i think the president needs to speak frankly with the american people about what his intentions are with regard to
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na nato? is he going to respond to the allegation of american soldiers in -- i almost said vietnam. in afghanistan. is he going to take those firm, straightforward positions? because thus far, it hasn't happened. as far as i know, he's taken no position on the bounty issue, even though it's been repeatedly brought to his attention. >> it's unbelievable. never gets more disturbing or troubling. and i'm glad that we get to spend some time talking about these things as regular intervals. and to your point about nato. we know why putin wants us out of nato. it's still, as you said, a mystery why donald trump doesn't like nato. senator angus king, thank you for spending time with us on all of this. it's important. after the break, a look behind the curtain at melania trump from someone who knows us better than the rest of us. new details on the family dysfunction and what she's like behind closed doors, next. she' behind closed doors, next.
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a new book all about melania trump by her ex-adviser and likely ex-besty, stephanie winston walkof shows that the first lady might be a lot more like donald trump than we thought. the book takes us beyond just an "i don't really care, do you?" jacket that the first lady wore on a visit to the border.
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she says, the kids i met at the border were brought in by coyotes, the bad people who are trafficking. and continues, they're not with their parents and it's sad, but the patrols tell me the kids say, wow, i get a bed. they are taken care of nicely there. wow. first lady's chief of staff, stephanie grisham says, quote, the book is not only full of mistruths and paranoia, it's based on some imaged need for revenge. we also note, that she hasn't provided proof of her accounts in the book. joining our conversation is emily jane fox, a national correspondent for "vanity fair" and lucky for us, an msnbc contributor. wherever you are, it's stunningly beautiful. take me through the real melania, though. a lot of people say, oh, why does she stay? a lot of people wanted to give her credit for sounding a less bombastic tone than a lot of the president's children did last week, but she's an original birther and she has certainly stood by the side of donald trump through the most heinous
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chapters of the trump presidency. this book seems to bare some of that out. >> one of the most fascinating parts of this whole era covering the trump family has been that melania trump has been so silent and so mostly absent from all of the white house goings on that a first lady would normally be involved in, that a lot of people have been able to project things on to her. the hashtag free melania has been tweeted so many times since president trump took office. and i think that there was this understanding or this feeling that you saw videos of her frowning when her husband would speak or her swatting away his hand, when he would try to grab it, and there was this assumption that she was just stuck there, that she was up in this tower, unable to get out. and i think what this book really allowed us to see is that she has made choices in her life and she's not just stuck up in a tower. she willingly climbed up there and decided to stay. and the chunks of text that i wrote about from this book where are just so revealing in that
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she holds the exact same ideologies that her husband does. and she -- not only does she believe them in public, but she is privately saying them to some of her closest friends, and i think it's incredibly revealing. and the thing that struck me the most of this entire era and as many trump books as there have been throughout this period of time, is that this summer alone, we have three of the closest people to the first family. we have michael cohen, mary trump, and now stephanie winston walkof who have felt the need to keep receipts of their conversations, of their text messages, with their email exchanges, with their bosses, their closest friends, and their uncle uncles. i think that's the most revealing detail, that the closest people around them that they would need to save these bits of information because one day they would need to protect themselves from the family trump. it's such a stunning, important revelation from all of these books. >> that is such an important
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point. i want you to talk to me about what sounds like an incredibly dysfunctional dynamic between ivanka trump, who actually mary trump described in the night after ivanka and president trump's speeches at the convention as sounding like and acting like a co-president. stephanie writes about melania and ivanka's relationship, as well, i think. >> what is so striking is that we really haven't seen so much about this dynamic, but this book really sheds a light on just how much friction there has been behind the scenes. i think last week in the convention, you saw this image and this video that went viral of melania trump sort of frowning at ivanka trump. and what it looked like to me after reading this book is that ivanka had bypassed her. and it didn't sown like this was the first time this had happened. it seemed like this was a relationship that has been strained for years and years and
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years, where flanya trump, according to this book, has felt like ivanka trump has been this princess who wanted to take center stage, who wanted to co-host meetings and luncheons that were traditionally reserved for the first lady. and she wanted to be a part of them. and what that has left is an extremely bitter taste in her stepmother's mouth, and a first lady who has felt like the princess of the united states of america, as she has hoisted herself up to be, has sort of taken a position that is inappropriate in melania trump's eyes and behind the scenes, the first lady was not shy about expressing that to her friends. >> tell us more about the author. what was she a part of? what did she see? and her relationship with melania certainly predates the presidency, right? >> sure, they had been friends, close friends, for more than a decade. they had met, stephanie winston walkof who had wrote this book was a former pr woman at
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"vogue," who ran the met ball and a number of high-profile fashion events and she and melania became friends through that. melania's circle is incredibly small. there are just a very few people that she lets in, because she is so incredibly private. mostly, it is her parents and her sister, but there are a couple of close friends, including stephanie winston walkof. so when the president won, she asked stephanie to plan this inauguration for her. and she said, look, you have experience planning these kind of high-profile, very glamorous events, and that's what we want the trump inauguration to look like. and so she had her friend in there, not only planning the inauguration and witness to what stephanie winston walkof writes in the book just a shocking amount of disorganization and dysfunctional spending and an organizational process, but she wanted her there as an eye and an ear, as a way to keep track of what the other trump family members were doing during the inauguration. stephanie winston walkof writes
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in the book that a number of the trump kids wanted to hold their own events at the presidential inauguration, that they would put on with their names on the invitation and that is something that incoming first lady melania trump wanted to keep an eye on. >> emily, talk about melania trump and race. i mean, it would be difficult to imagine anything more polarizing than the birther movement, but as president, she's, as you said, she stood by her man through really flagrant efforts to divide this country along racial lines. >> you quoted a passage from the book that really stuck out to me, as i was going through it and writing about it. we know that she was involved in propagating the birther movement for many years. we know that she has done virtually nothing to stand up for children who have been held in cages at the border. she has done nothing really to talk substantively about the social movement and the protests that have been happening over the last few months this summer.
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this is not a woman who is quiet because her husband had asked her to be quiet. this is a woman who believes exactly what her husband believes. so she's not speaking out against her husband, because she doesn't feel the need to speak out against him. she would speak out for the policies that he has come out and trumpeted time and time aga again. so their views are far more similar than people have wanted to believe. and i think a large part of that, and i think that we saw this at the beginning of the administration with ivanka trump and people have wised up to it, is that we wanted these women to sort of be a savior from trump, but actually, they're just right along there with him. >> and to underscore your point, stephanie winston walkof said this morning on "gma," i gave melania the benefit of the doubt, but a trump is a trump is a trump. emily jane fox, thank you so much. you remind me, the michael cohen book will be out soon. we'll be spending some time with you as soon as that starts to drip out. >> just one week. >> thank you so much. nice to see you, my friend.
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donald trump looks at this violence and he sees a political lifeline. this is a sitting president of the united states of america. he's supposed to be protecting this country, but instead, he's rooting for chaos and violence. the simple truth is, donald trump failed to protect america. so now, he's trying to scare america. he keeps telling us that he was president, you would feel safe. well, he is president! whether he knows it or not.
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and it is happening. it's getting worse. and you know why. because donald trump adds fuel to every fight. >> hi, everyone. it's 5:00 in the east. joe biden today urging americans to get rid of the toxin in the oval office. the former vice president forcefully responding to false claims by donald trump and his allies that he would preside over a country overrun by lawlessness and mayhem. joe biden condemning the recent violence in portland and kenosha, wisconsin, and blaming the president for fomenting it, saying that donald trump is the one who has made america unsafe. the president responded on twitter, just watch what biden had to say to me. he's blaming the police. viewers note he didn't do that. far more than he's blaming the rioters, anarchists, agitators, and looters which he could never blame or he would lose the radical left bernie supporters. viewers note again that joe biden is wrong and he did
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condemn the violence. donald trump and his cronies have always tried to project on to others for everything and anything that happens on their watch. just watch chief of staff mark med does do just that during an appearance on "meet the press" with chuck todd yesterday when he was asked how much accountability you should give the president on his responsibility to keep voters safe. >> you can try to reframe it that way, chuck, but it's just not accurate. these are not peaceful protesters. these are people that every single night conduct violent acts. and it is in democrat cities. you know, you want to talk about donald trump's america, most of donald trump's america is peaceful. >> oh, i see. it's not all his. only parts. donald trump trying to take advantage of the racial unrest that has gripped the country for the past few months to scare voters into giving him another four years. we know this, because one of his top aides let the cat out of the
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bag. >> the more chaos and an worky and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice as to who's best on public safety and law and order. >> starting us off this hour is phil rucker, white house bureau chief for "the washington post." also with us, donna edwards, former democratic congresswoman and contributing columnist for "the washington post." and elise jordan, former aide to the george w. bush white house and state department. lucky for all of us, all of them are msnbc contributors. phil rucker, take me through the reliance that this white house has on what kellyanne conway, who's getting a lot of play here at the top of the hour, described the very first week of the trump presidency as alternate facts. that's all they've got, pld appeit would appear based on those public interviews and the president's tweets today. >> and you know, nicole, you can arrive at that conclusion based on, you know, more than 3 1/2 years of this presidency. but just look at the. convention last night, where
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speaker after speaker in prime-time and on television all around the country spewed falsehoods. said things that simply were not true and in some cases were outright lies in an effort to recast how voters would view this presidency and hail things that critics would call failures, as unrivaled successes. and we're seeing that again today with the way he's trying to characterize what biden said in that speech. biden was pretty clear in his speech that he condemned this violence. he said there was no place for it anywhere. and he condemned it strongly. and then to see the president come out here and again, say again that his democratic opponent refuses to condemn the violence, it's just not true. >> you know, donie, he also smeared joe biden and said he blamed cops. i have a different theory about this. i think trump is tweeting lies to the base to make sure that the truth doesn't seep in. but here's the truth about what joe biden sate about cops.
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let's watch. >> i believe we can bring these folks fighting for racial justice to the table. i've worked with police in this country for many years. i know most cops are good, decent people. i know how they risk their lives every time they put that shield on and go out the door. i'm confident i can bring the police to the table as well. i would make sure every mayor and governor had the support they needed from the federal governme government, but i wouldn't be looking to use the united states military against our own people. if i were president, our language would be less divisive. i would be looking to lower the temperature in this country, not raise it. >> so donna edwards, contrary to donald trump's, you know, fantasy fiction there, he said, i know most cops are good, decent people. i know how they risk their lives every time they put that shield on and go out the door.
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he said the opposite of what donald trump said. and i guess i have the same question for you. the reliance on lies really reveals the political desperation to create, to quote kellyanne conway a third time, an alternate reality in which donald trump isn't the country's leader in this time of unrest on city streets. >> i think this is exactly the reason that joe biden really needs to be out there, even if it's every single day, refuting the lies of donald trump. because i think that trump does depend on his supporters only seeing what -- or hearing what he says. and joe biden has to be out there, you know, saying the truth every day. and i think that it really -- i mean, you could see the contrast both in joe biden's style, in his demeanor, in his clarity that is a perfect contrast to
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donald trump. the ranting and the raving and the tweeting. and i think it's important for the public to see that, because it tells us what kind of president joe biden will be in contrast to the chaos that is being sewn by donald trump. i thought it was actually really good for biden to be out on the trail. but unfortunately, because this president lies all the time and the people around him lie to reinforce that, he's going to have to do it every day. >> donna edwards, let me follow up with you. you are the second person, claire mccaskill said at the beginning of the last hour, the very same thing. that because of all of the ways that donald trump -- what's that second, the lie goes around the world in a nanosecond and the truth takes -- whatever, much longer. i'm not good at those. but the same point was made by claire mccaskill, which is that, what joe biden did will only carry through to the next news
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cycle when donald trump trots out more lies and more incendiary language and more overt and, i guess, thin lly veiled is the nicest things you can say about the efforts to gin up and stoke violence on the streets. what does that look like? does it look like an address every night, like an interview every night? does it look like pushing back? what does that look like in terms of the kind of campaign that biden is running? >> well, obviously, it can't just be joe biden, it has to be his surrogates, as well. it has to be his vice presidential pick, kamala harris. but i do think that it means that unlike other campaigns where you wouldn't necessarily, like, go head-to-head on every single thing that your opponent says, donald trump is different. and he's proven that he will win by continuing to lie. and so, i think it's going to be a mix of things. it also has to contain appearances in social media, but it's also going to mean, getting out, even if it's in small
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groups, as can be safe, to continue to reinforce the message of his campaign. and again, i think because every time joe biden delivers, he does it in a way that is actually calming and reinforcing. and that is the perfect contrast to the flailing, failing donald trump. >> elise jordan, there is something beyond the unpresidential aspect of the way donald trump's chief of staff there was saying, well, in donald trump's america, it's perfectly peaceful. i mentioned at the top of the last hour, imagine if george w. bush after 9/11 said, you know, new york city's on its own. they didn't vote for me, or president obama, after newtown said, you know, that's not really part of the state where i'm popular or bill clinton, after oklahoma city, said, you know, that building was blown up in a state i didn't win. it's unfathomable that any normal president in recent history would ignore any crisis
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in this country because of the politics of that region or of those people. what do you think the sort of closing message is to underscore just how ghoulish it is to say th that, you know, my people driving in the back of pickup trucks, which is reminiscent of things you see in war-torn countries, to cheer them on? i mean, how do you articulate how abnormal that is? and how dangerous that is for the country's most senior official, to talk like that and tweet like that? >> nicole, that was the pool quote from chief of staff mark meado meadows' interview that really stuck with me, that most of donald trump's america is peaceful. that there are sections of america, to hear this top aide of the white house say that it doesn't matter if they, you know, employee the staple
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freedom and [ inaudible ] time and again. whether it's tax policies that penalize blue states, whether it's donald trump talking about not being as quick to respond to covid, if it's a democratic official or state. it absolutely is unprecedented and it is par for the course with donald trump's strategy of shoring up his base and not attempting to persuade any other americans [ inaudible ] who aren't right there with him. and at this stage, he has made it painfully obvious clear that is how he pursues, just getting the people he has out and not focus on persuasion at all with the general electorate. >> phil rucker, i want to dig a little deeper on what elise is talking about, this base
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strategy. john oliver had some pretty insightful things about just the cravenness of featuring vigilantes and the connection between featuring the mccloskeys at the convention and what happened on the streets of kenosha last week. let's watch. >> so make no mistake, no matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical democrat's america. >> think about how insecendiary that message is. violence and criminals are coming to your community in the quality of low-quality apartments, and take it from us. and rhetoric like that and the world view it encompasses has consequences. i don't know if you saw the mccloskeys speak the night before he chose to drive to a city he didn't live in to defend property he didn't own. what i do know is that he was an avid trump supporter, even sitting front row at a rally back in january and trump and his media skoem have been delivering essentially the same message as the mccloskeys for
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years now. >> phil rucker, my question, we know that the fbi views white nationalism and white supremacy and domestic terror carried out in that ideology as the greatest terror threat of this country. is there anybody in the president's orbit agitated by the president fomenting and encouraging and by his media allies celebrating vigilantes? >> sure, nicole. but there's nothing they can do about that. the people who work for this president learned long ago that they can't control his twitter, that they can't control his impulses, his grievances, and his strategies to stoke his base, which is what we see playing out in many ways, i think this is the natural sort of evolution of what we saw in the 2016 campaign, when, you know, a protester would raise a sign at one of his rallies and trump would mock that person, would call for authorities to remove that person. and yes, would encourage
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violence against those protesters. he did it as his rallies and this has just been a natural evolution for the president to the point where over the weekend, he's tweeting support for what we saw happen in portland with those trump supporters, vigilantes if you want to call them that, on their trucks, driving into town to wreak havoc. and it's concerning for people in the government, concerning privately, has been for years for some of trump's advisers, but there's really nothing they can do about that, because this president is completely empowered to act as he wishes and say what he wishes. >> donna, i want to show you the latest polling in wisconsin. in june, marquette university law school found that 61% of wisconsin residents support black lives matter, while 38% were opposed. in august, the polls show they were a lot more split. 48% to 48%.
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>> my question is, why do you think that is? do you think that when the stories are out of the news, they don't feel as urgent, do you think that maybe after the nba and mlb boycotts last week it will go in the other direction? why do you think that number appears volatile, at least in wisconsin? >> i think it's hard to speculate about the why, but what i will suggest is that the president didn't start this aggressive law and order routine by accident. he did it because he knows stoking fear to some parse parts of america really works for him. and he has seen a political advantage in conflating black lives matter with some of the things that are taking place on the streets. and they are completely
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separate. we know that millions and millions of people have been march i marching who have been peaceful and we also know that there are people who come in and try to get in the middle of all of this and so i think that contributes to the reason that we see some of those numbers coming down, but i have to tell you, whether it's watching george floyd losing his life with a policeman pounding his neck into the ground or jacob blake being shot seven times in the black while the policeman held his t-shirt, as america sees those images, they don't question the need to begin to value black lives. and so i think that we'll see that fluctuation. but it doesn't help to have a president of the united states who believes that his path to victory is to stoke violence and chaos and to continue that and
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conflate this movement. >> elise, i don't know that we can underscore what donna just said enough, but these numbers are from -- well before -- they're from june. so before jacob blake was shot in the back seven times. they're from before doc rivers spoke. before -- i'm sorry, the august numbers are in this time frame, but what do you think about the effort that joe biden made today to disaggregate the very things that donna described donald trump mushing together? what joe biden said very clearly is that crimes are not activism. that looting and violence should be prosecuted. and they will be on my watch. i don't look like some radical lefty who's going to greenlight that. coming out and defending cops. that seems like, in terms of essential messaging for a campaign to make sure voters get, disaggregating the two
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things that donna just described as being sort of recklessly and shamelessly lumped together. it seems like a real imperative and joe biden went a long distance in trying to do that toda today. >> [ inaudible ] one thing that he needed to do to push back against the fact-free narrative that the trump administration and the rnc various speakers pushed last week. to donna's point that she made that i agree with, that joe biden can't let these lies go unanswered in terms of his strategy and how he is going to push forward. and also, to what phil was saying about how, you know, you listen to so many of the comments at the rnc, that were just not true. and there were so many, it was just a fact-free zone. and so to hear the contrast [ inaudible ], that he had --
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sorry, my headset seems to have had a snafu. that he, you know, more cops have died from covid than have died from actually going out on patrols and the record of the obama/biden administration on crime and those stats seem superior to the trump administration. it's important that he get that narrative out. >> phil rucker, elise jordan, thank you so much for starting us off. television in the time of a pandemic is always an adventure. thank you for rolling with us through the technical challenges and all. donna is going to come back and spend more time with us later in the hour. when we return, as donald trump fans the flames of unrest in this country, his new pandemic adviser is reportedly pushing a controversial plan to allow the virus to rage through the population in a misguided attempt to achieve herd
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immunity. pulitzer-prize winning science writer lori garrett will be back with us in just a moment. plus, a big legal setback for michael flynn. and it comes as the trump administration is moving ahead with its own efforts to keep congress in the dark about russian election interference. and later, so much for a convention bounce. with the new polling tells us about the state of the 2020 race. "deadline: white house," back after a quick break. "deadline: white house," back after a quick break. this week on "the upper hands"... special guest flo challenges the hand models to show off the ease of comparing rates
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with progressive's home quote explorer. international hand model jon-jon gets personal. your wayward pinky is grotesque. then a high stakes patty-cake battle royale ends in triumph. you have the upper hands! it's a race to the lowest rate, and so much more. only on "the upper hands." it's a race to the lowest rate, and so much more. (vo) verizon knows how to build unlimited right. start with america's most awarded network. then, for the first time ever, give families more entertainment with disney+, hulu, and espn+ now all included, with plans starting at just $35. the network more people rely on gives you more.
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yesterday, the total number of coronavirus cases here in america officially surpassed 6 million. as of this afternoon, we've now lost more than 184,000 souls to the coronavirus. meanwhile, reports of what's happening inside the white house include a push from donald trump's new pandemic adviser,atr a controversial herd immunity strategy, that would purposefully infect most of this country's population. according to the "washington post," five people familiar with the discussions say atlas is urging the white house to embrace the strategy. its purpose would be to build our resistance, but experts warn it could lead to the deaths of thousands more of our most vulnerable citizens. "the post" also reports current and former officials say the trump administration, quote, has already begun to implement some policies along these lines, particularly with regard to testing. atlas told "the post" the story is false and the white house communications director said trump is focused on ending the
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virus through medicine, though his push to quickly reopen the economy and send all of america's schoolchildren back to the classroom suggests otherwise. we are happy to welcome back to the broadcast pulitzer prize-winning science reporter, lori garrett. she's a columnist for foreign policy magazine and the author of several books, including "the coming plague." she's also, lucky for us, an msnbc science contributor. so this -- i have a million questions about this. but what does herd immunity look like when there is no treatment and there is no vaccine? it seems like a lot of people could get death ill. >> well, we don't really have a precedent. we've never really said, let's just hold out for herd immunity, for any disease, much less a disease that has a lethality rate have in the 1 to 2% level. so herd immunity implies -- i mean, this is about the herd. you know, a bunch of cows, a
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bunch of sheep. what have you. and it implies that you're willing to tolerate a certain level of loss and death and suffering in hopes that a significant percentage, 80 percent, 70%, whatever it turns out is the magic number of the herd develops effective antibiotic antibodies against the virus and the virus simply can't spread anymore. the only country that has blatantly tried this policy is sweden. the uk toyed with it, attempted it, saw it backfire, saw a high mortality rate among its senior citizen and backed off. >> i want to ask you, i mean, if we're sending kids back into the classroom, before we have a vaccine, that's donald trump's policy, a lot of school districts and teachers have objected. and i think four of the five largest school districts in the country are starting remote.
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and we're sending -- he wants all businesses open. i mean, the president ran a convention last week in which the pandemic isn't ravaging the country. he had 1,900 people sitting maskless and very close to each other at his event. i mean, are there surreptitious ways for donald trump to push the country toward doing this, even though it's not what tony fauci or deborah birx or anyone has recommended? >> nicole, at this point, we have a long list of things that have happened in the administration, just in the last three or four weeks, that indicate there's a pellmell rush to come up with some magic formula that the president can declare before november 23rd of this year that the situation is under control and the virus is in the rearview mirror. so he's pushing -- i mean, he's rumored to be in conversations with astrazeneca to buy in advance massive quantities of
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the british-made potential vaccine, not yet proven, only still in its developmental stage. they're pushing hard on the other american-based vaccine manufacturers, particularly moderna and pfizer, to get their clinical trials -- get through them fast, fast, fast. don't waste time with all of this safety stuff. don't slow it down. let's go, go, go, go, go. and similarly, we've had one treatment shoved out the door after of the, even over the objections of the scientific community, even the fda's own internal scientific advisory boards. and now we have a whole new set of testing being rolled out, none of which have been subjected to sort of standardized formulas for determining how they compare to other tests, what their reliability, their sensitivity is, and so on. so, i think if you put it all together into a package, what you see is a mad rush for
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september and october. he's got six, maybe eight weeks, to come up with some way that he can really say to the american people, convince all of those on the fence, hey, it's okay to go back to the bar. it's okay to hang out in the shopping mall. it's okay to go back to work. and most of all, it's okay to go to school, even though every single university that has opened so far with students on campus is getting explosive spread of covid. and every school district is terrified that the same will happen with the younger children. and it's just -- it defies all credibility. he's undermined the reliability of the cdc, the fda, the nih, every single agency that in normal times, remember normal times? in normal times -- >> barely! >> would be how we, as the public, knew, which is true,
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this is not true. this is safe, this is not safe. >> let me follow up on your point about kids. i mean, and i've got a school-aged son who couldn't go back to school until his health form was filled out, which simply said that his vaccines are up to date. kids are now going back to school or being asked to without a vaccine in existence for covid. let me put up the numbers on kids. data compiled by the american academy of pediatrics from this summer, may 21st to august 20th, shows covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have increased at a faster rate in children and teenagers than in the general public. why would that be? let me put some of this up. may to august, in children, cases were up 720%, the general public, up 270%. hospitalizations for children are up 356% for the general population, they're only up 122%. and deaths up 229% for children
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and 114% for adults. >> well, nicole, it's hard to really know exactly how to interpret this, because we're seeing similar trends in europe. it reflects, i think, two things going on at once. one is to ask, is this a reflection of increased risk for the kids, or is it a proportional difference, because the older adults are taking social distancing precautions? so, for example, in europe, many of the outbreaks that have now been recorded in the last three, four weeks in places like germany and france, have all stemmed from under 30-year-olds heading south to italy or spain for holidays, partying hard, you know, whoo-hoo, then coming home, spreading virus to their peers. and starting outbreaks among 20-somethings and 30-somethings. we certainly see the same here. now, the question is, how does this compare with children.
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so we do know that kids have a hard time wearing masks all the time. when mom isn't looking, they take the mask off. the younger they are, the more they find it annoying and try to knock it off their faces. kids have a harder time not get schmutz with other kids, because that's what they do. they touch everything and everybody. and it may be this increase in percentage of cases being in kids is as much a reflection of the adults taking their rates down as it is of the kids' rates going up. but both are going on at the same time. and as far as now, you know, it's been relatively easy to keep the kids indoors when we're in the early stages of summer and it's quote/unquote family time. it's when, you know, the whole household goes on a vacation or takes a drive to see grandma. but as you're getting closer and
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closer to school opening time, ge kids get agitated. they're ready to see their friends and go back in the class. they want to go shopping and get the hip clothes to wear so they can look cool to their compatri compatriots. and the last thing they want to hear is, guess what, you're only going to see what they're wearing and thaey're only going to see what you're wearing from here up on the zoom camera. it's tough. and i understand why the kids are having a hard time. but i have to say, everybody needs to be cautious about this, because the science is not definitive. we have many things going on at once. and when we look at what's called epidemiology, the study of how humans interact and how the microbes spread between humans. when we look at the epidemiology in schoolchildren and young adults, it is a very confusing picture. you know, six months ago, people were saying, kids didn't get it. even three months ago, people
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were saying, teenagers were perhaps likely to get it, but not the younger ones. and now we understand, everybody can get infected and everyone can potentially spread it. there may be a difference in the severity of the disease and the likelihood of needing hospitalization and certainly of fatality, but everybody can get the virus in their bodies and everybody can spread the virus from their bodies. >> laurie garrett, always full of information and knowledge. thank you so much for sharing some of it with us. i'm always grateful to get to talk to you. thank you. when we return, a big legal rebuke for donald trump and bill barr, as their attempt to get the case against mike flynn dismissed just delivered a setback. that's next. smissed just delivea setback. that's next.
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today was a day admitted liar and convicted felon, michael flynn, was hoping his extended legal saga would be over, but in a significant setback for him and for the trump administration this afternoon, a federal appeals court rejected the former national security adviser's request to have his criminal case thrown out immediately by a vote of 8-2. that decision means judge emmett sullivan is, indeed, allowed to question the justice department's unusual attempt to dismiss the case and the appointment of a retired federal judge to argue against the
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dismissal can proceed. joining our conversation is jeremy bash, chief of staff at the cia and at the defense department. and lucky for us, he's now an msnbc and nbc national security analyst. jeremy, the mike flynn case interesting to me on many levels. one, he admitted in this court in front of this judge that he did, indeed, stand by his confession of lying to the fbi, not once, but twice, entered bill barr to try to brush it all under the rug and it's going slowly and it's messy. but the judicial branch seems to be pushing this back and farther away from what barr is trying to do. is that the right read? >> i think so, nicole. mike flynn was convicted of a felony. he lied to the fbi when he was national security adviser. a very grave offense, particularly for somebody who is responsible for protecting national security and overseeing the laws of the united states, making sure that our security is
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protected. so he confesses, he is convicted, he is getting ready to be sentenced and along comes the bill barr justice department, with obvious marching orders from the trump white house, and they basically do a backdoor pardon. they basically say, we're going to drop this case. and what this judge is doing, because i think he knows at the end of the day, the judge knows that mike flynn is not going to go to prid son if the justice department is not going to pursue this case. but they're saying, we have to put the department of justice on trial. we have to have a hearing to understand exactly why in a seemingly corrupt fashion, bill barr and donald trump are trying to do a backdoor pardon for this convicted felon. >> jeremy bash, i want to ask you about another story. angus king was on, talking about how this really goes against the american people's right to know what the intelligence community knows about the election, that which can be shared without violating sources and methods. and that's donald trump's
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hand-picked director of national intelligence saying he will not brief congress on 2020 election interference. >> well, yeah, i think what senator king is reflecting is the fact that the senate intelligence committee and the house intelligence committee under statute, under a law, are the committees that receive classified briefings from the intelligence community about foreign threats to our democracy, to our elections, to our security. and so for the office of the director of national intelligence now with a former republican congressman in that job, as trump's hand-picked intelligence lead, saying we're not going to brief the congress, these committees which largely operate on a bipartisan basis, you see, for example, the recent bipartisan senate intelligence committee, we're not going to brief congress means we're not going to tell congress and the american people about threats to our election and why, nicole, it's so clear that they're going to do that, because they don't want attention paid to the fact that russia is coming again in
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favor of donald trump in the 2020 election. this is an effort to sweep it all under the rug and the voters of the country have to wake up and realize what's going on. >> and finally, something you and i have talked about for three and a half years and i'm sure we'll be talking about more in the days to come. "new york times" reporting late yesterday some excerpts from mike schmidt's new book that the counterintelligence that was opened by andrew mccabe really was never carried through upon by special counsel robert mueller. does that leave the questions unanswered, or is that in and of itself a new additional troubling fact? or both? >> well, it's troubling, because the questions are unanswered. for folks to understand we've got two lanes here, we've got the criminal lane and the counterintelligence lane. the fbi is responsible for both of them, but they apparently only pursue the criminal lane when the mueller investigation was carried forward. and the counterintelligence question, the question of, what was russia up to, what agents were they running inside the united states, what intelligence were they collecting, and how
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were they engaging in covert measures to try to subvert our democracy? those questions have not been fully answered by the executive branch, by the department of justice and the fbi, because donald trump doesn't want those answers. he doesn't want anyone to see what russia was doing on his behalf. >> and you put it together with the cia putting the russian bounty program in his pbd and donald trump saying, i didn't see it, off president who has his eyes covered for some reason. not really a mystery anymore. jeremy pabash, we'll be callingn you again on all of these topics. thank you for spending some time with us today. when we come back, donald trump and the republican party are having a tough time broadening their appeal. and after a weekend of outrageous moves and statements, it's no wonder. ageous moves and, it's no wonder
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it's the first monday after back-to-back conventions and there's new polling on the 2020 race to dive into. according to a new abc news ipsos poll, joe biden's favorability climbed six points while donald trump's already shaky favorability sunk four points in the same time frame, perhaps signalling that that trump and his validators were really only appealing to his most loyal followers. what's more, his attempt to convince the country that the pandemic is under control also appears to have not worked. only 35% of those polled say
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they approve of how donald trump is handling the pandemic. joining our conversation is david jolly, a congressman from florida who is no longer a republican and is a current msnbc political contributor. former democratic congressman, donna edwards, is back with us. david jolly, i was, myself, surprised by these numbers. and it's always possible that different polls will show different things, but it does affirm that even somewhere at a cellar level, the propaganda is being produced for and by the trump base. and anyone with an ability to puncture through with any reality is either resistant to it or principrepelled by it or t buying it. >> yeah, i agree with that. i think that's also something else running parallel, which is the american people are tired of division, they're tired of the anger. and though they said going into the republican convention, donald trump was going to be speaking about optimism, he clearly didn't. the powerful moments of the
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republican convention were when real americans told their american story and tied it to why they were supporting republicans zprdonald trump. but the moment the president or anyone with his last name spoke or the moment that a gubernatorial emissary of his spoke, you got the heated rhetoric of division. that has been the secret sauce of joe biden. he knows that. so the temptation that you're seeing biden and harris continue to avoid every time, is don't take the bait. speak to the heart and soul of america, but don't let donald trump make this about the two sides of america. because at that point, then biden is playing the trump game and it's exactly what trump wants. >> yeah, i mean, donna, david has set up my question for you perfectly. it's not just that donald trump, who i think did succeed maybe in juicing his side a little bit, with that week of showmanship, i
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guess is the best word for it. but i think outside of his base, there's less of an appetite for the corruption of the beautiful white house grounds for his political gain. there's less tolerance for seeing the things that are squarely, you know, in the public interests exploited for political gain. so some of that abc poll suggests that not only is donald trump failing to widen his coalition, but joe biden is succeeding in widening his. >> and i think it demonstrates biden himself saying, we want as big a tent as possible, because
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it's going to take all of us to heal the country and move forward. on the other hand,nd contrast tt again with the president of the united states. it's not a surpriseat to me tha his poll numbers continue to dip lower because b lower because b and on the one hand, you see a picture being painted of him in his convention that hardly anybody watched. and on the other, you see him live and on the campaign trail. and those two things can't square. and the reverse is true of joe biden, where what you see is what you get, whether it's at a convention or it's speaking in pittsburgh with people talking about what's going on across the country. and i think that the president of the united states, donald trump is going to have a tough
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time going through if he continues just to play to his base. >> david jolly and donna edwards, we will surely pick this up in the coming days. thank you both for yujumping on and spending some time with us in the next few days. when we come back, remembering lives well lived. when we come bg lives well lived who took ozempic® reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. here's your a1c. oh! my a1c is under 7! (announcer) and you may lose weight. adults who took ozempic® lost on average up to 12 pounds. i lost almost 12 pounds! oh! (announcer) for those also with known heart disease, ozempic® lowers the risk of major cardiovascular events such as heart attack, stroke, or death. it lowers the risk. oh! and i only have to take it once a week. oh! ♪ oh, oh, oh, ozempic®! ♪ (announcer) ozempic® is not for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. do not share needles or pens. don't reuse needles. do not take ozempic® if you have a personal or family history
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porch and just talk. sometimes their conversations were funny. sometimes they were glum. but lee told the st. charles herald guide that no matter what, she would always walk abuy from those talks simply in a better place. she could count on troy for anything. big, small, and anywhere in between. he was dependable, caring, and easy to talk to. it's no wonder that also made him a very good and popular bar tender. he felt a kinship with the city of new orleans, so that's where he moved in 2013. and he was happy doing what he loved in the city he adored. then troy got the coronavirus. his father was allowed to be there before he died, but no one else. not even his stepsister got to say a proper goodbye. we're thinking of troy's family today, and on this, the last day of august, if you find yourself on a porch this evening, looking at the stars, remember troy
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champion, because the world is a lesser place without him in it. thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these truly extraordinary times. we're grateful. "the beat" begins after a short break, so don't go anywhere. break, so don't go anywhere. think about how you'll get there. ♪ and now that you can lease or buy a new lincoln remotely or in person... ♪ discovering that feeling has never been more effortless. ♪ it's the final days of the lincoln summer invitation sales event. right now, get zero percent apr on all 2020 lincoln vehicles.
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welcome to "the beat," everybody. i'm in for ari melber. we'll begin with joe biden on the attack against the president. biden delivering a scathing speech in pittsburgh, saying in trump's failing leadership is making things worse, not better. >> this president, long ago, forfeited any moral leadership in this country. he can't stop the violence, because for years, he's tome me foe -- fomented it.
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