competence, romantic instances. there was an nba photographer who shared one on social media, and he lost his job on that. they're concerned how these will impact glow information voters. folks who spend their time online. particularly his panic and latino women under 40, they're concerned about turnout. this is a key group to get out to the polls. they're worried these attacks might suppress that vote. so they're trying to reach out to these voters and make sure they turn up at the polls in november. >> thank you as well. we will be reading axios a.m. in a little bit. you can sign up for the news letter at signup.axios.com. that does it for me on this thursday morning, i'm yasmin

vossoughian. "morning joe" starts right now. now we knew. we know donald trump knew the virus was deadly and airborne. and we know he knew millions would get sick and die. he knew it wasn't just older people who would be killed by the virus. he knew early on this would be the greatest crisis america had faced in decades. members of donald trump's staff knew in january a plague was coming to infect america. that half a million americans could die. that millions more would likely lose their job. that the economy would be ravaged and that those staff members, those staff members had responsibility to warn him and they did. but donald trump chose instead to lie to you. and to lie to your family.

and to lie to over 300 million americans about the storm that was coming to lay upon this planned. land. and even as he lied month after month, his staff remained sil t silent. you see, staying in good standing with donald trump ended up being more important to them than saving your life. now, six months into this lie, nearly 200,000 american souls are dead. countless, countless remain ravaged by the aftermath of this horrific disease. millions still out of work. and too many working class americans have had their lives destroyed. while wall street traders and donald trump and his family get

richer by the day. but donald trump says he didn't want americans to panic. no, he just wanted to sit by and watch them die. hoping the dow jones industrial and the s&p would stay healthy enough to get him re-elected. but americans got sicker by the day. you watched your parents die. some of you that watched this show had to bury your moms. i know, you told me about it. how horrible it was to be there in the hospital but not being able to be with your mom holding her hand while she passed on. your fathers died. i've heard those sad, heartbreaking stories, too. your husbands, your wives, and yes, your children. they died as well. and while that was happening, we

listened to a man who swore an oath to protect you, to protect your family, to protect all of us. and we watched him lie through his teeth every afternoon around 5:00, when all we really needed from him, and all we asked from him, from the beginning, was the truth. that's what we needed. and that truth would have long ago set us free from what is now an ongoing and seemingly endless nightmare. >> and that's where we are. good morning, and welcome to "morning joe." joe, willie and i have been looking through these tapes and these reports through the night. let's get right into them. excerpts of the president's interview with legendary bob woodward which the president leads the public on the true

threat of the virus. contained within the 18 interviews, reportedly totaling nine hours was this. so give me a moment of talking to somebody, going through this with fauci or somebody who kind of, it caused a pivot in your mind because it's clear, just from what's on the public record, that you went through a pivot on this to, oh my god, the gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable? >> i think bob to be honest with you. >> sure, i want you to. >> i wanted to always play it down. i still like playing it down because i don't want to create a panic. >> that was march 19th. now to some of the ways the president carried out his plan to play it down. one concerns the comparisons he made to the flu.

that he knew were false. here's what he said to woodward on february 7th about how deadly the coronavirus can be on february 7th. president trump to woodward. it goes through the air, bob, that's always tougher than the touch. you know the touch, you don't have to touch things. but the air, you breathe the air and that's how it's passed. so that's a very tricky one, that's a delicate one. it's almost more deadly than, you know, even your strenuous flus. then weeks later trump said this at a campaign rally in south carolina. >> so a number that nobody heard of that i heard of recently and i was shocked to hear it, 35,000 people on average die each year from the flu. 35,000. that's a lot of people. i can go to 100,000, it can be 27,000. they say usually a minimum of

27,000. goes up to 100,000 a year people die. so far we have lost nobody to coronavirus in the united states. >> the death toll is now more than 190,000 people. the president also intentionally misled the public on the effects of the virus on young people. here's what he told woodward in march followed by his remarks on fox news last month. president trump says this, now it's turning out, it's not just old people bob. today and yesterday some startling facts came out. it's not just older people, as if they don't matter -- it's not just older, older people. it's plenty of young people. but early last month trump said, if you look at children, children are almost -- and i would also say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease. they just don't have a problem.

according to excerpts from woodward's new book, national security adviser robert o'brien warned the president on january 28th, quote, this will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency. this is going to be the roughest thing you face. >> by the way, just for perspective, that was january the 28th. willie, about at the same time it may have been, in fact, the exact day that joe biden wrote his op-ed in in the "usa today" where joe biden said, we are not ready for the coming pandemic. mr. president, please listen to your scientists, please listen to your doctors. and, of course, donald trump didn't do that. he just chose to lie. >> yeah. i mean, the reason joe biden was

able to write that op-ed and say those things is because anyone near public health knew that was the way it had to be handled. knew how serious it was. i'm glad you went to the people affected by this, that's what i was thinking yesterday when the president said on march 19th, i wanted to play it down, i still want to play it down. i thought about those families who lost somebody, the people who lost a job. the doctors and nurses who were in overrun icus and emergency rooms. all the parents home schooling their kids, still doing it today. parents who maybe had to make a decision to quit their jobs to be home and teach their kids. this stuff had real impact. now there's nowhere for the president to hide. he cannot say it was an anonymous source, the fake news, the deep state. it's on tape, his voice. he can't say he was misquoted. it's there for the world to see his dereliction that definitely,

definitely cost lives. >> and that dereliction, there are tens of thousands of people who are dead today and that -- and you ask the scientists and you ask the doctors, that could have been prevented. other countries have far different numbers than us because they mitigated, put social distancing guidelines in place, wore masks. they didn't have a leader who laughed at, who flouted the simple things that could have been done to save lives and the president did not mobilize the defense production act to get testing going. there are places in this country you still can't get tests unless you're showing big symptoms. states like montana where people are dying. so despite that warning, the president continued to mislead -- >> by the way, the warning from

his national security adviser that has to worry about threats from terrorists, he told the president, told the president, this will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency. this is going to be the roughest thing you face. and yet, mika, this is what donald trump said a month after receiving that horrifying warning. >> one of my people came up to me and said, mr. president, they tried to beat you on russia, russia, russia, that didn't work out too well. they tried the impeachment hoax. and this is their new hoax. >> this is -- this is their -- >> let's bring in -- >> hold on. willie, he said this was a hoax.

a political hoax. a month after his national security adviser told him, this was the gravest national security threat he would face in his presidency after peter navarro, a month after peter navarro wrote a memo to him saying 500,000 americans could die from this. before -- that was a month after where he's telling everybody. he has the information of just how grim this is going to be. of course, he's lied about it all summer, saying he didn't know, he was kept out of the loop. but even after that, he continued a month later saying it was a hoax. even after that -- you talked about schools, willie, think about this fact. yes, donald trump has been pushing people to go back to school this fall.

for -- >> pushing the economy to reopen. >> -- college football players to go back and play college football. but think about the fact as he was telling woodward in the spring that this is a deadly virus, that it's airborne. that it also impacts younger people and not older people. at the same time he was pressing, pressuring schools to send children back to schools in the spring, at the height of this virus. and he still was saying a month ago, this doesn't affect children, because he sees schools as basically nothing more than a place for workers to put their children before they go work at corporations like the

trump organization. it's all very transparent and the consequences have been extraordinarily deadly for americans. >> we learned from the american academy of pediatrics this week that half a million children in this country have or have had coronavirus. it's harder for children to transmit it but they get it and can bring it home with them. remember, as you look at the time line on all these quotes, he wanted to be fully back open on easter, on april 12th he said, let's open our churches, let's get back to work, life will resume. knowing everything he told bob woodward, he told us let's open the doors and go back. we'll get into this. there's the military, kim jong-un, what general mattis said, what dr. fauci has said. this book is full of indictments of this president. but no greater indictment as you guys are saying than the job of the president to protect the

american people, for their security, health, safety. he didn't do it. when people go to vote they have to consider that. but we have on the record, in his words, not a former source, a former adviser he can trash after the fact, his voice on tape saying all these things. >> you listen to that voice and that is a man who betrayed the greatest generation. who betrayed korean vets, vietnam vets. people that fought and risked their lives for americans. now in their 70s, 80s, some in their 90s. now they are being lied to by the commander in chief, saying that this was all a hoax. and, mika, the impact on his followers, who believe everything that he says, it's been devastating. it's also been devastating for

our health care workers on the front line. i think of the picture of that arizona nurse wearing a mask while a man is holding an american flag screaming at her in her face, telling her it's a hoax. i think of the stories of over health care workers besieged. the story of the health care workers and the doctors as they're carting bodies out in montgomery, alabama of dead coronavirus patients, people asking in the parking lot if it's a hoax. we see the president still mocking reporters, even this week, for wearing masks. >> almost like cult members you have members of the white house press office and republican senators saying that the president never downplayed the virus, even though his words say that's what he wanted to do. >> it's his words. >> you can see that he did this.

or a republican senator that calls this a gotcha book. no. these are his words. if you're going to hold onto that at this point, you're a national disgrace. this is not where you want to be. you have to listen to the president's words. you have to look at his actions. and you have to decide why we have 190,000 americans dead and more are dying when other countries were able to do this in simple mitigation ways. >> the united states i said it before, we are a country that have the best doctors, we have the best research, universities, the best research hospitals, we've won over 50% of nobel prizes in science since 1950. i believe in american exceptionalism, i always have believed in american

exceptionalism, and yet one man in the white house, who knows the truth but will not let you know the truth, is responsible and if not, i would love to hear the counter argument, responsible for a country that has 4.5% of the world's population having a death toll that's approximately 25% of the world's death toll. that is a direct consequence of the lying that was laid bare yesterday in donald trump's own words. let's bring in -- >> there's more. let's bring in white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lemire. correspondent carol lee live at the white house this morning. >> jonathan lemire describe the day, if you could, at the white house yesterday, and i suspect a

state of shock has settled in over white house staff members who actually, as we saw, have been warning the president about this since january, the president chose instead to ignore them and continue lying to the american people. >> that's right, joe. those in the white house describe the mood as certainly a state of shock, very somber because they know, and they heard what the president himself said in his own words. there is no real attempt here to suggest this was fake news or anonymous sources who can't be believed. the president last night in an interview described it as a police hit job. these are the president's own words and his staff knows that. >> wait this is a political hit job. it's on tape. how are his words on tape a political hit job. >> and like a journalist would accept that as an answer. >> even cult members of donald

trump's cult now hear his voice. how is that a political hit job? >> the journalist who heard that answer was sean hannity on fox news last night. that perhaps is an answer to your question. there's flailing from the white house, no good defense. we heard the play from kayleigh mcenany and the president himself, this was an attempt to provide calm, didn't want to stoke panic. but there is a difference between trying to calm people and being dishonest with the american public. woodward himself says what did he know and when did he know it? we know in the president's own words he knew in january, february, march, he knew how bad the virus was, how bad it could get, the ramifications it could have on the american public. the audio from february 7th, discussing how dangerous this virus was. he went on to hold several indoor political rallies in the days and weeks ahead, exposing

his own supporters potentially to the virus himself. why did he talk to bob woodward is what people are asking. this is woodward's second book about this white house, he wrote another in 2018 at the time the white house was reeling after a couple tell-all books. they decided it was best if the president did not cooperate with bob woodward for that book. kellyanne conway is on record saying she advised against it. when the book came out and painted an unflattering picture of donald trump, he was ensensed. and vowed at that moment if woodward were to write another book he wanted to be part of it because he believed he could shape a far more positive portrayal. he believed that the solution to any problem is more trump. he wanted to insert himself in the process. so he gave woodward extraordinary access, over a dozen interviews, hours of

interviews, many without white house aides knowing about it. this is what was revealed, pulled back the curtain and what he knew back then. we're in a moment now where every time there's a crisis or political scandal involving president trump there is a sense, the meme, nothing matters. this should matter. the president of the united states knew the dangers of the coronavirus in january, february, and march, and he was not honest with the american people. >> the president tweeted last night, this was a hit job by the, quote, rapidly fading bob woodward. bob woodward got the president of the united states to pick up the phone 18 times and to speak on the record on tape over the course of about nine hours. there is the theory and always has been the theory that donald trump put forth himself in the campaign that he could shoot somebody on fifth avenue and get away with it. do they still subscribe to that theory this morning given the fact his voice is on tape?

do you believe they can push past this, survive it the way they did the "access hollywood" tape even though the gravity is greater. >> there's a core group of the president's supporters who are never going to leave the president. however, that's not enough for the president. that's not enough for him to win a second term. there's real panic around people around the president. there was mpanic three weeks ag when the press release for bob woodward's book came out. there was already finger pointing and who thought it was a good idea for the president to sit down and spend that time with bob woodward. it wasn't just the president. many of the people who spoke with him did. i spoke with the security adviser last night who confirmed the quote in the book, saying he spoke with bob woodward as well. this is not just the president saying i'll cooperate with this, but this is a number of --

really opening up his administration to allow a bunch of people to cooperate and talk to bob woodward for this book. the problem they had is people made decisions about their lives based on what the president is saying. he has ha problem at the time in february, january, and march and he has a future problem. we're still in the middle of a pandemic. he was in north carolina on tuesday night pushing for the governor to open the state. get schools back open, send kids to school. he was asked why should people trust you by a reporter and he had no good answer. now we're headed into flu season. it's going to get cold and experts say it's going to get worse. and we have a president in his own words has shown can't be trusted with the advice he's giving to the american public. and that's a practical problem and a political problem for the president.

>> what would every american do if they went to a doctor who lied to them, a pediatrician who lied to them about their child's health condition and said, mrs. smith, it's okay for you to send your child to school. everything's fine. no problem. and the doctor, at that same time knew that, actually, young and old could be affected horribly by this. why would we do if we took our aging parents to a doctor and asked that doctor if it was okay for our parents to go out, to lead an active life, to not shelter in place, and the doctor said, you're fine. don't worry. this is a hoax. people are overplaying it. and then you find out later,

after your parents go out and get the coronavirus, suffer and die, you find out later that doctor knew before he gave that advice to your mom, your dad, your child, that this virus was deadly and airborne and could kill them. what you would do is, you'd probably sue the doctor, you certainly would report that doctor to state authorities, and the doctor would lose his or her medical license. so i sit here and i wonder this morning what people who have blindly followed donald trump for four years think about a president who has lied to them about a virus that he says is deadly, that's airborne. that he said privately, but publicly told everybody this was

a, quote, hoax. that this was the democrats' new hoax. >> joe, it's beyond lying, though. he did lie to them, it's very clear he lied to the american people. >> right. >> but he also purposefully put them in danger of dying and people did die. >> right. >> here's one case in point. tulsa, june 20th. th these warnings were given to the president in january and february and march. in june he holds an event. he wants 22,000 people there, filling a stadium inside. his campaign makes people click on a link that would force them to sign a waiver they can't sue if they die. they rip off the social distancing stickers off the chairs. they don't have enough people because not enough people came to that event.

some were perhaps afraid of the coronavirus or maybe done with him. but 6,000 people did show up, including herman cane, who is dead. we don't know if he got it there. but a lot of other people left that stadium with the coronavirus and the numbers from tulsa show three weeks later they had a spike. and this president knew, he put them in danger for his lives for his political picture of people applauding him, and chanting and screaming and waving their arms and literally infecting everybody in the room. the president purposefully put people in danger of their lives by having these events, super spreaders. >> we don't know how herman cane died -- >> we don't. >> but his supporters saying nobody knowing how he got it, rushed out and said he didn't get it there.

we're supposed to guess he got it at the knoxville world fair in the 1980s. you know what's worse unanimous just the tulsa -- the press is going to focus on the tulsa event because we knew how bad things were by the time he held that event -- >> he did it anyway. >> but it's worse than that because donald trump knew how bad things were when he was holding rally after rally after rally in february and march in michigan, mocking, mocking the prospect that the coronavirus is going to be deadly, saying that there are only -- i think it was february 28th when he knew how deadly this was. he packed people together in michigan, inside of an arena, and used that time when he said a month before to bob woodward

that this was deadly and airborne. he jammed people in to this michigan event. and then he held five rallies, from february 10th to march the 2nd. five rallies knowing that it was airborne and dangerous and even at the end of february, a month -- almost a month after he told woodward he knew how dangerous this airborne virus was, he was saying it's 15 people and pretty soon it'll be down to none. >> he really knew how deadly it was. if you look at the quote and listen to the tape on february 7th, he goes into particulars how it's transmitted. he says, quote, this is deadly stuff. worse than what he called the

stre strenuous flu. he really understood because people were telling him how bad it was. yet he was gathering people in arenas calling for the country to reopen on april 12th, easter, despite everything he knew, despite knowing it had not gotten better and wouldn't get better for weeks to months to come. there's no more clear thing you can say than he just completely fell down on the job. it's a dereliction of duty. knew what was coming, did nothing to stop it. whatever your politics as a president, your job is to protect the people of this country. 3 330 million of us. and he didn't do it, and knowingly didn't do it. he knew what was coming and didn't stop it. >> and members of the cdc, there were people who tried to speak out and talk about how deadly this would be, and trump reportedly threatened to fire these people. he pushed away people who wanted to tell the truth about this virus. bob woodward will join us on

"morning joe" next wednesday for his first cable morning show interview for his new book. >> hold on one second. >> yeah. >> jonathan lemire and carol lee, panic is setting into the white house and let's talk about the timing of this, briefly. and jonathan, i'll start with you. this comes at a time when early voting has begun in north carolina about to start in a lot of other places. donald trump, despite the spin from his apologists is trailing badly in almost every poll. his fund-raising is way off. joe biden trounced him in fund-raising by what, 100 million, 120 million last month, and again, people are reading this going out to the polls. this seems like an october surprise about three weeks early.

>> the political ramifications here are obviously devastating for the president, joe. as we've been discussing. the election is not two months away. the election is now in some states. north carolina in particular, the president was just there the other day, headed to michigan now. he and the republicans raised $210 million in august, but well behind what joe biden and the democrats did, $360 million. there's anxiety among republicans about the fund-raising gaps, they've had to go dark on the airwaves at times perhaps they're short in cash on hand. he's trailing in every battleground state, a few within the margin of errors, others the margins are wider. he's making plays for states that a few months ago were seemingly out of reach. case in point, this weekend he's

headed out west to nevada, which is a state his team a few months ago felt they didn't have a shot at. now polling suggests they're in fighting range of joe biden but more than that it's a need to expand the map. another stop on that trip arizona is one that seems to be slipping away. the timing of this is devastating, as we've discussed. the campaign believes any day during this campaign which the pandemic is not the dominant story line is a good day for them. they feel they can fight that. that's why we see them seize on any possible cultural issue, the violence in the american cities. what this book does is bring the pandemic front and center again. will the president be able to draw a crowd tonight in michigan? we'll see. the state of nevada is trying to block him from holding those rallies this weekend because they would violate social distancing guidelines. no matter what the president

does he can't shake the virus. as much as he tries to make it a choice election, he can't. this is a referendum on how he has handled covid-19 we're seeing just how poorly he did because of these revelations. >> carol lee, i mean, i had heard some events are being cancelled, i'm not sure what the reasons behind. but what is the white house looking at, in terms of today, anything on the schedule? are they still pushing back, and what would be the push back to this? to his own words? >> the push back, they have been pushing back, they'll continue to push back. the president's argument is he didn't want people to panic. that's what we'll hear more of. we'll also hear more of what joe biden was saying at the same time, and they'll try to muddy the waters saying he wasn't necessarily out in front on this early on either. we'll hear more of dr. fauci, they put dr. fauci out yesterday on fox news where he sort of

defended the president on this. but they're well aware that you don't need to look anywhere other than the way that the white house and the president's campaign pushed for more debates early on. they are very includclued in on important early voting is. so this is the opposite of what they wanted to talk about. the president has wanted to talk about anything but the coronavirus. i was with him in north carolina last week, he never mensed it. that state is seeing an up tick in cases. they don't have a real coherent, clear answer and the problem they face is there are tapes not only of the president in real time saying things in contrast with what he was saying privately but the president's own words. you heard kayleigh mcenany yesterday say the president never down played the virus. the president is on tape saying he wanted to downplay the virus and admitting that. this is a different territory for them and they have not really figured out how to

navigate that yet. >> carol lee, thank you very much for being on this morning and all of your reporting. we have much more to talk about from bob woodward's new book, including the president's seemingly spilling the beans on the top secret weapons system. plus vice president mike pence dismissed qanon last week as a conspiracy theory but he's expected to attend an event hosted by qanon supporters. >> it goes through air bob, that's tougher than the touch. the touch you don't have to touch things. the air, you breathe the air, that's how it's passed. so that's a very tricky one, that's a delicate one. it's also more deadly than your -- you know, even your

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you know, mika and willie, there are a lot of people waking up this morning listening to the excerpts, may have heard some of them yesterday and they're wondering, why in the world would donald trump ever talk to bob woodward? and just admit all the things that he admitted, that are politically devastating. we have known trump for a decade. well over a decade. if you go into donald trump's office, it is sort of -- at least it was before he went to the white house, it seemed to be a time capsule from 1987.

>> yep. >> and he looked upon bob woodward, "60 minutes" with great reverence. and if he was going on "60 minutes," then he had made it. that's the first part of this. the second part, of course, may surprise people, his supporters, who hear donald trump talk about fake news all the time, but he's talking to one of -- i think the most successful and best known reporters in washington d.c. who said yesterday that this whole incident has shown that donald trump, far from hating the media, he's obsessed with the media. he loves the media. he reveres the media. he would love to be loved by

"the new york times" by bob woodward. and you look at the book and donald trump keeps fretting to bob woodward, you're not going to do a hit job, are you? you're not going to do a hit job on me, are you? it's his own supporters that he has contempt for. he has contempt for most people, in fact, even family members. but the media he reveres. >> he can't get enough. >> right. right. and so, that's another part of this, mika. that he wanted so badly to get a positive book out of bob woodward on his presidency, and finally, if you listen to those tapes, you'll notice there is a different tone and a different level of knowledge that donald trump exhibits, not just on this

issue but on other issues, donald trump has his own private personality and then he has this personality that he plays when he puts on the suit and pretends to be reality tv president. it's two completely different people. we've seen it time and time again. and all of those -- all of those quirks in donald trump's personality actually came together, mika, yesterday. his obsession with woodward, his obsession with cbs news, his obsession with "60 minutes". his obsession with all the institutions that were dominant in the 1980s. and it came back to cause him military chaos, when everybody in the white house, and every one of his financial supporters

would likely say or most would say talk to bob woodward on tape, are you out of your mind? but he did. >> we often wondered what the obsession was with us. but you hear in these tapes donald trump in his office in new york, surrounded by all that crap that people had given him, that he would show off saying i know this person, that person. it's almost a run-on train of thought showing off how much he knows. talking to woodward about how much he really knows, but not getting that woodward is going to completely turn this around on him and reveal to the american people that the reason their lives have been devastated, the reason the economy is not serving them and they had to shutdown their dry cleaning business and they had to close up their stores and they're broke and they're moving and their house is on sale and no one will buy it, the reason their life has completely

collapsed, is because this president didn't actually take the information that he was using to show off to bob woodward and create a plan that would have very simply -- it would have been tough. it would have been tough to social distance more, it would have been tough to lockdown more, it would have been tough to mobilize the defense production act and get mask mobilization and creation of masks across the country and ppe across the country and testing across the country. it would have been tough but it was totally doable and he didn't do it. >> you know, willie, it's really something that his attempt to impress bob woodward is what really has undone him here. people always say that stooges for donald trump are always playing to an audience of one. well, donald trump, over these 18-taped sessions.

woodward saying sometimes he would call him at night and start talking to him. that was donald trump speaking to an audience of one. and that audience was bob woodward and he didn't realize the more he tried to impress bob woodward with his knowledge of the virus, the more damning it would be for him politically because it would show just how much he was lying to 320 million americans. >> it's so funny. this conversation about the psychology of donald trump because so many people yesterday said why on earth would he pick up the phone 18 times and talk to bob woodward. i didn't wonder for a second for all the reasons you say, because donald trump is obsessed with status. in his mind and rightfully so, he believes bob woodward is the top of the journalistic field. he's the top officer, obsessed with rankings, who's the top, number one. well bob woodward is the guy, wanted to write a book about

him. he didn't get to talk in the first book so he's going to have the say in the next book. there were reports he was ecstatic that bob woodward wanted to talk to him so he picked up the phone and because it was bob woodward and the status, it didn't matter what came out in the book he got a bob woodward book. that goes so deeply to who he is and where it comes from. it came to a head on those 18 phone calls over the course of nine hours where donald trump wanted to talk to bob woodward. he did. and this morning he's paying for it. i tell you one other thing, too, when you talk about the office in trump tower, in 1984 my dad was a writer for "new york times." wrote a cover story about donald trump and it's framed on the wall in that office and it was the fact that "the new york

times" wrote a piece about him. if he had gone in and read the article he might have had a different impression, but it didn't matter he got the new york times magazine cover and now he has his bob woodward book. excerpts also reveal about what the president thinks about senior u.s. military officials in a 2017 conversation with peter navarro, the president called senior u.s. military officials weak, overly concerned with allies and here's that word again, quote, suckers for shouldering high costs to protect south caroli protect south korea. he added they care more about their alliances than trade deals. the president said this about south korea, quote, we're defending you, we're allowing you to exist. general james mattis is quoted in the books as telling dan coats, president trump is

dangerous and unfit for the office. according to a copy of the book obtained by cnn, director coates reportedly believed russia had something on the president. the two struggled with how to convey the threat they believed the president posed to the country, that's coates and mattis. when speaking with woodward over the withdrawal of troops fighting isis. general mattis said when i was supposed to do something that went from stupid to felony stupid, that's when i quit, end, quote. that comes on the heels of the atlantic reporting that president called service men suckers and losers for dying in battle. >> let's bring in shawna thomas and editor at the financial

times ed luce. ed, i'll start with you. the list is long of damning evidence against this president under mining the american people and destroying the economy while allowing this pandemic to spread instead of taking steps to mitigate it. what stands out to you as the most damning, if possible? >> that's -- it's such a rich choice. i'd be reluctant to pick out one aspect of this. overall, i see president trump as a bit like king canoot, he sits next to the waves, they won't touch me because i'm king. and his aides are too scared to tell him he's going to get flooded. and he's beginning to get flooded. on your show i said a few months ago, i know a dying administration when i see one.

i have no reason in spite of what the obama people would call bed-wetting, fears about the biden campaign. no reason to change that assessment now. trump's self-belief is his own greatest weakness. and there's a rich choice of weaknesses to select from there as well. the fact that he would disclose potentially acute national security details about what was possibly the deployment of low yield nuclear weapons in the korean theatre to a journalist on the record, on tape, knowing he was going to print this and that it could affect the situation, it could endanger u.s. troops, is breathtaking. but as i say, i could -- it's like plucking fruits from a very ripe tree. you could pick any number of shocking weaknesses here.

>> you know, willie, there are several things that i think we as a country are going to have to address after donald trump leaves office. one is giving a president immunity. the justice department saying that a president has immunity and can't be charged while he's president of the united states is one of them. but certainly this idea that we can trust the valor of -- and the virtue, the public vir which you of all presidents to protect national security secrets is now an antiquated concept. because donald trump, as he did when the russians were in the white house, the russian foreign minister and the run ambassador. as they did while they were in the white house, revealing classified information to them by spouting his mouth off. we now find out that one of america's most secret weapons systems, based on these reports,

quite possibly was blurted out by the commander in chief to a reporter writing a book. and if that is the case, then, yes, the consequences of that are extraordinarily dangerous. >> used to be an article of faith this would never happen. remember president trump talking on the back patio at mar-a-lago about north korea. according to the book donald trump told bob woodward i have built a nuclear weapons system nobody has had in this country before. we have stuff you haven't seen or heard about. we have stuff that putin or xi haven't heard about before. >> they have now. >> what we have is incredible he says to bob woodward. unnamed sources later confirmed a weapons system but would not provide any further details, and were surprised that donald trump had disclosed it. >> just absolutely shocking.

shawna, so much here to talk about. this would be like harry truman over drinks with friends talking about the manhattan project a couple of months before atomic bombs were dropped on japan to end world war ii. here donald trump is blurting out to a reporter that we have a top secret classified nuclear system that nobody knows about, except, of course, he was saying it on tape, on the record, so now everybody knows about it. >> yeah. i mean, i think russia and china know what their next sort of target is when it comes to cyber disruption and trying to find out new information, so that's not great. i also think that's an example how the president was trying to clean this up. he said, and i read this in "the

washington post" this morning, part of the excuse of what he was saying to bob woodward is we wanted to show strength and confidence. that's all fine and dandy for if you are in a world war ii situation with other people, other countries, that kind of thing. but i keep coming back to everything about covid and this idea he wanted to show strength and confidence towards a virus. the virus doesn't care if we were strong or confident. i understand the idea of a president not wanting to alarm the country. but part of that not alarming the country is being very real with the country about the risk we were under. we also learned -- we spoke for weeks because we were all won r wondering did he actually watch or listen to his briefings? did he read the briefing books? the stuff was in the books, how did he not know more? so now we know he understood. he understood the risks of it. it appears he sees so much in

terms of winning and losing the election and not necessarily winning and losing and human beings and americans, that that is the guiding force to everything. we have to remember that, as people decide who to vote for, they have to remember he seems to care more about this idea of will he become president again at all costs instead of can we save some lives in the country? this all factors into the election. i want to say one thing. i did an experiment, i reached out to a family member in texas, who is a veteran and considers himself conservative. i was curious last night, have you seen any of the news about woodward's book, "the washington post" reporting about woodward's book, any of the things we've talked about. he's undecided about voting in general because he doesn't like president trump and vice president biden that much.

he had seen nothing about it. what that tells me, that's a clue to the vice president biden campaign to get on the air with the excerpts from this book, to try to get it out there to more people. how are they going to target their ads on facebook, online, and what do those ads look like? they have t his words, the comparison of his words to woodward and everything he said in public, there were multiple pieces on the nightly news last night, but the small test said to me is that the biden campaign has to figure out how to get out there with this information and the things that y'all are talking about this morning. >> excerpts from bob woodward's new book "rage" provides an inside look at the relationship between president trump and north korean leader kim jong-un. woodward was able to access

never before seen letters between trump and kim that give a clearer understanding of how trump went from taunting kim as little rocket man and threatening the country to becoming the first sitting u.s. president to meet with a north korean leader. >> hold on. before you read this. let me say if you are eating, you may want to stop eating. if you're drinking hot liquids, coffee, whatever, you may want to stop while we read you the letters that donald trump exchanged with the world's most dangerous tyrant. >> kim wrote in one letter that their relationship was like a fantasy film. in another kim wrote about their historic meeting when he and trump shook hands into the dmz and stepped into north korean territory. writing about, quote, that moment of history when i firmly

held your excellency's hand at that beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched with interest. he added he hoped to relive the honor of that day. the two leaders reportedly exchanged at least 27 letters. "the new york times" writes describing their sechemistry, m trump said in you meet a woman in one second you know whether or not it's going to happen. it doesn't take ten minutes, six weeks. it's like, whoa, okay, you know. it takes somewhat less than a second. let that seep in. and according to cnn, woodward reports that the u.s. may have come close to nuclear war with north korea back in 2017. mike pompeo is quoted as saying, we never knew whether it was real or whether it was a bluff,

but it was so serious that according to a copy of the book obtained by cnn. james mattis slept in his clothes to be ready in case there was a north korean launch and repeatedly went to the catho pray. >> we're going to bring in more voices, we have john heileman and claire mccaskill. also political reporter for "the washington post" and political analyst robert costa. he is the moderator of washington week on pbs. it was, of course, his story posted just before noon eastern yesterday that broke the news of bob woodward's bombshell new book and damning revelations that have rocked the landscape. ed luce, there have been those in the united states foreign

policy community that have been fearful of donald trump's impact on u.s. foreign policy and fearful that his ignorance and his recklessness would lead to the sort of things that we have seen in north korea. i heard a very moving story about the send off the same day that donald trump was sworn in and it was a tearful occasion. and brent scokroft said in effect do whatever you can to help this man he needs it. i don't have the words exactly but that was a paraphrase of concerns of others like robert gates and foreign policy heads who feared that what we are reading about between donald

trump and north korea would, in fact, happen because he was so ignorant of history, of foreign policy, and so ignorant of how to negotiate on the global stage. and here we are four years later and all of their fears realized. >> thankfully, i hadn't eaten my breakfast and still haven't even mika was reading those excerpts from the kim jong-un/trump letters because they were quite nauseating. it's this impulse that trump shows towards kim jong-un is the same one he showed towards bob woodward. he believes if he can talk to anybody he can cob ver them to his world view. that, of course, is belied again and again by what happens. bob woodward we're now seeing is a major blow back for trump at a key stage in the election.

but kim jong-un, let's remember that trump's theory of talking to kim jong-un, against the advice of everybody around him in and out of office, was that he could personally, through chemistry, through, you know, things like calling each other your excellency and talking about beautiful moments and this sort of cringe worthy teen romance language, convert him to the idea of nuclear disarmament. what has happened since trump met kim jong-un in singapore two years ago is that singapore has dramatically accelerated its testing, dramatically accelerated its -- the yield of its nuclear weapons and its program is that much more advanced. so it's achieved the opposite -- much like the bob woodward interview, it achieved the opposite of what trump believed it would achieve.

>> and, mika, whether north korea or saudi arabia or bob woodward, donald trump thinks that he can win people over by just getting there and talking to them and schmoozing with them. >> it's like he's giving the goods and hoping bob woodward would do a favor back. >> and kim jong-un. it doesn't work. >> let's get back to the parts from bob woodward's interviews in which the president -- with the president in which trump admits to intentionally misleading the public on the true threat of the concern. within the 18 interviews, reportedly totaling nine hours, was this. >> so give me a moment of talking to somebody, going through this with fauci or somebody who kind of -- it caused a pivot in your mind?

because it's clear just from what's on the public record, that you went through a pivot on this to, oh my god, the gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainab unexplainable. >> bob, i think to be honest with you -- >> sure i want you to. >> -- i wanted to -- i wanted to always play it down. i still like playing it down. >> yes. >> because i don't want to create a panic. >> by the way, mika, even in that question from woodward, he's so sly in the way he plays donald trump, knowing that donald trump will never say, yes, it was anthony fauci that told me this, or yes, i listened to peter navarro when he said half a million americans could die. he knew donald trump could not give credit to anyone else so he would direct the blame back onto

himself and that's what happened. >> here are some of the ways the president carried out his plan to play it down. one concerns the comparisons he made to the flu, that he knew were false. here's what he said to woodward on february 7th about how deadly the coronavirus can be. followed by his remarks at a campaign rally to the people in south carolina three weeks later. >> it goes through air, bob. that's always tougher than the touch. the touch you don't have to touch things. but the air you breathe the air and that's how it's passed. and so that's a very tricky one. that's a very delicate one. it's also more deadly than your -- you know, even your strenuous flus. this is more deadly. this is five per -- you know, this is 5% versus 1% and less than 1%. you know, so this is deadly stuff. >> so a number that nobody heard

of that i heard of recently and i was shocked to hear it, 35,000 people on average die each year from the flu, did anyone know that? 35,000. that's a lot of people. it can go to 100,000 it can be 27,000 they say usually a minimum of 27, goes up to 100,000 people a year die. and so far we have lost nobody to coronavirus in the united states. >> seven months later, the u.s. is now at more than 190,000 deaths. the president also intentionally misled the public on the effects of the virus on young people. here is what he told woodward in march, followed by his remarks to fox news late last month. >> now it's turning out it's not just old people, bob. but just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. it's not just old, older -- >> yeah, exactly.

>> -- people, it's plenty of young people. >> if you look at children, children are almost -- and i would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease. they just don't have a problem. >> so bob costa, as we said you broke the story yesterday that this book had all these tapes associated with it from bob woodward. as your colleague of bob, was he surprised in any way the president of the united states picked up the phone 18 different times over the course of nine hours and spoke on the record and basically just opened himself up and told us exactly what we all suspected, which is that he knowingly turned his back on the virus and the people he's sworn to protect. >> willie, bob woodward has pursued president as an interview subject for years. he and i interviewed the president together in 2016, the title of the book comes from a quote in that interview, i bring the rage out, always bring the

rage out. but president trump, as you know, going back decades, has tried to be his own public relations coordinator and he wanted to be involved in this project. senator graham, according to my own reporting was encouraging to the project. and you see others in in the president's white house who are encouraging of the idea, but it was president trump, to be clear, based on my reporting, who was driving this and his interest in talking with bob woodward. because it comes through in the book that the president was seeking what he called, quote, a good book with his other books that he finds unfavorable he wanted a good book and he was pursuing bob woodward as someone he could have a mark on history. >> he thought a good book was going to come out of saying on the record that he intentionally downplayed a virus that has now killed almost 200,000 people and made 6 million american people

sick. what about the white house communication staff? they're pointing fingers this mo morning, they were already doing it yesterday about who allowed this. how do you have an infrastructure that let president trump pick up the phone 18 times and talk to bob woodward. >> you have this infrastructure, the president has shattered every norm in the u.s. presidency, including the idea there's a chain of command when it comes to communications. kayleigh mcenany the press secretary, other aides, they communicate with the president daily but the president himself, a man who operated for years on the phone from the 26th floor of trump tower, who wants to make his own decisions and shape his own narrative. >> john heileman, what's the impact of these tapes? >> well, good morning, joe, mika, willie, and everyone else.

i think, you know, it is -- it's too soon -- it's too soon to say exactly joe what the impact will be. i'll say a few things. one is that, you know, the context for this, and you guys alluded to this in the 6:00 hour. is where we are on the calendar and where we are many in terms of the clock. 54 days before election day, voters in north carolina are already voting. next monday voters in pennsylvania start voting. shortly after that, voters in michigan start voting. and then early voting rolls out across the country. so the fantasy that the white house would like to try to cling to is while we still have a lot of time, they don't have a lot of time. election day is now. so the impact of a -- these revelations, let's be clear without in any way taking away anything from bob, in fact, bob

getting the president to commit to 18 hours of interviews and saying these words, it's not all bob. this is trump cannot do what he does with the book. he cannot talk about fake news, bitter sources, weak people, people who are his enemieenemie people who are leakers and liars, about reporters making up quotes. that's what he's done about bad publicity throughout. this is trump doing this to trump, not woodward doing this to trump. so the story comes out, election day is already happening and what does this do to the political narrative to where we are right now? coming out of the conventions, there was a question, had trump successfully changed the subject away from coronavirus and to law and order. and was that shift of the terrain favorable to him, bad

for joe biden? we saw joe biden have a good week last week. but the biden campaign wants to fight this election over the coronavirus, mismanagement and failure of the leadership. this book focuses that subject back center stage as jonathan lemire said last hour. now with 54 days left on the clock and voting happening, we are taking about exactly what the biden campaign wants to talk about, what the trump campaign does not want to talk about. and we know, because of how a woodward book rolls out, something donald trump had no understanding of, another washington institution that donald trump was clueless about, was bob woodward. what now happens. what now happens is, days of coverage of what we have from the book, then woodward goes on "60 minutes" the most watched show in america on sunday night and brings out more audio tapes, more of donald trump's words, stoking another series of news cycles. you have another week of this

book dominating coverage across television. 7 days at least of the remaining 54 days, more than 10% of the remaining time on the clock is going to be bad news cycles for donald trump at a time when he is behind everywhere. in every battleground state and nationally. what's the ultimate impact? impossible to measure right now, but greater than i think most people, even people who think it's bad for donald trump, i don't think fully understand how bad and i think the impact is, this is one of the rare media events because the president is involved in it, we never had tapes from a woodward book before. we've had dozens of woodward book, never before with tape. the impact is incal cuable. but we'll see how bad for donald trump and it's quite good for the biden campaign. >> i remember in 1974 my father reading the newspaper accounts of the nixon tapes after they

were released. and my father, and our family, i was young then, and i heard my father and our family and many friends in suburban neighborhood of doorville, georgia, defending nixon, saying nixon had always been hated by the media. that walter cron kite, my father said was a communist despite the fact he watched him every night and when walter said that's the way it is, he believed him. still my father defended richard nixon until the very end and then he heard the tapes after the supreme court ruled unanimously that the tapes had to be released. and i remember watching my father read the paper that morning and we were actually by

that point in upstate new york. but i remember my father reading the newspaper and just saying, shaking his head, if this man has done half of what the paper says he has done, and if these tapes are, in fact, nixon saying these on tapes, then he is not fit to be president of the united states. by the way, i told that story in a documentary about watergate about a decade ago. so it has nothing do with donald trump, it has everything to do with my father and how long he defended richard nixon and how long our family defends richard nixon on the watergate charges and that it took nixon's own voice and hearing nixon's own voice to understand this wasn't bob woodward and carl bern seen

t the bernstein going out against a president, this was richard nixon who died by his own sword. carl bernstein, the other half of that famous team that brought down the nixon presidency with their reporting, and in so doing changed journalism forever. carl bernstein said these trump tapes, the woodward tapes were were far more explosive and would be far more impactful historically than the nixon tapes ever were because so many people died as a result of what donald trump admitted to on these tapes. i'm curious as somebody who lived through watergate and now is living through this, do you agree with carl bernstein? >> i do. i think what the tapes do in a bold and dramatic fashion, they prove that we have a president who is a liar and is willing to

kill americans. and you can't say it more plainly than that. he's killing americans with his lies. thousands and thousands of people died because donald trump wanted to lie about the dangers of this disease and how it was spread. now, he's going to spin this, which is unbelievable to me, with a straight face, saying to america, i didn't want anybody to panic. he's running a campaign based on fear and panic. his entire campaign is about making americans afraid. people in the suburbs afraid that black people are going to move in. it is ridiculous how he's based his presidency on hate, fear and panic, and now he's trying to sell this b.s. this was just about keeping america calm. it wasn't. it was about protecting him

politically and trying to protect his economy that he saw as his that was his ticket to re-election. the other thing these tapes show is this man is way too dumb to be president of the united states. i mean, he's just stupid. who does this. who does 18 interviews with bob woodward within two months of the election? who does that knowing they're going to come out right before the election? only the most stupid man in america would do that. he is do dumb to lead the greatest nation on the planet. >> another word some would use for what has happened is evil. people have died because of these lies from the president of the united states. and in those interviews, bob woodward repeatedly questioned the president. repeatedly, about the national reckoning on racial injustice. on june 3rd, two days after federal agents forcibly removed peaceful protesters from

lafayette square to make way for trump's staged photo op outside st. john's church. trump called woodward to boast about his, quote, law and order stance. according to "the washington post" he reportedly said, quote, we're going to get ready to send in the military/national guard, to some of these poor bastards that don't know what they're doing. the poor radical left. and woodward asked the president about white privilege in another interview. >> let me ask you this, we share one thing in common, we're white, privileged, who -- my father was a lawyer and a judge in illinois, and we know what your dad did. and do you have any sense that that privilege has isolated and

put you in a cave, to a certain extent, as it put me and i think lots of white privileged people in a cave, and that we have to work our way out of it to understand the anger and the pain, particularly black people feel in this country? >> no. you really drank the kool-aid, didn't you? listen to you. wow. no, i don't feel that at all. >> during another conversation about race on july 8th, trump complained about his lack of support among black voters. he said, quote, i've done a tremendous amount for the black community and honestly i'm not feeling any love. the two spoke again on june 22nd, more in depth on racism in america. here is a portion of that discussion. >> do you think there is systemic or institutional racism in this country? >> well, i think there is

everywhere. i think probably less here than most places or less here than many places. >> okay, but is it here in a way that it has an impact on people's lives? >> i think it is. it's unfortunate, but i think it is. >> let's bring in the host of the joe mattison show. joe mattison. >> i'm sucurious about what you thoughts are on the woodward tapes, especially regarding race. >> the first thing that came to my mind is you have bob woodward, who expressed empathy, not sympathy, but empathy, and what you had donald trump do in one paragraph, he actually was dismissive of bob woodward, and he turned out to be dismissive of -- and i'll use bob's

title -- the rage that african-americans are feeling and have expressed across this country. this is also what's interesting is he contradicted his attorney general who just, what, a week ago, i believe, said that systemic racism doesn't exist in the united states. so these guys are -- you know, are trying to fool us and then they wonder why we are so suspicious of things like, let me give you an example, we are last to get covid-19 testing in our community. and then they now tell us we should be in front of the line to be guinea pigs for a trial.

it'll be a personal decision. but one thing, black folks aren't stupid. they can hear this clearly from what donald trump has said. but he clearly was dismissive and if i were dismissive of you, you would tell me, joe, show me some love. the reality is -- >> right. >> -- how do you get love if you're dismissing people's rage? >> and, joe, we could talk specifically where the president dismissed bob woodward's suggestion about his privileged background as a white man who inherited the equivalent of $400 million, but as it pertains to black americans, my god all you have to do is talk about covid and the lies about covid, but it is black americans, if you look at the numbers, who have suffered disproportionate

gn gnat -- disproportionately because of this plague. it is black americans in so many jobs that we depend on. it's black americans on the front lines who got sick, who got to the hospital, who died and now who are out of work because of all of those lies about covid. i'm not exactly sure where the love should come from. >> well, it ought to come from, first of all, being honest. that's the first thing. look, we're twisting in the wind. this tape says it. the reality is, and by the way, you mentioned what your father said in reference to richard nixon. and as you were talking, joe, there was one thing that was different. and that was the united states

senate. we do not have the same senators in office that we had back then when richard nixon was president and the tapes revealed. this senate, i heard senators yesterday -- i can't think of his name from louisiana, who just simply this is -- it's another book and they kept trying to say, but wait a minute, here's the audio tape. i don't know, i haven't heard it. let me play it again. it's a different senate. these senators are part of donald trump's cult. there is no ifs, ands, buts, about it. and if anybody has drank the kool-aid, it's the republicans in the united states senate. >> joe mattisson that is such a

great point. because republicans went to richard nixon after the tapes came out and told him he had to go. >> didn't have the votes, remember? >> and have the votes. >> he told him, you did not have the votes. it's either, you resign or you're going to be impeached. i'm sorry you're going to be impeached and found guilty. we forget, trump has been impeached. >> joe, as always it's great to talk to you. thank you for coming on. i know there's always a conflict with your show so we're really appreciative that you were able to make it this morning. it's great to see you again, buddy. >> two "morning joe"s. >> exactly. you're the real "morning joe," joe. >> joe was talking about senator john kennedy yesterday of louisiana who in an interview on cnn four times i think when

asked about the tapes said i'm not interested in gotcha books. he went on, the gotcha, of course, is tape of the president on the record. shawna thomas i think we can say about everything yesterday yes, it is shock and each tape is an indictment against the president? are we surprised that's how he felt. what he said about race to bob woodward, where he said you drank the kool-aid, it's reflected in the way he's talk about the protests in the streets of this country and focused on the violence and the looting side of it, rather than the larger movement. >> i don't think we were expecting to hear anything in these tapes that was different than what we hear him talk about in public over the last 20, 30 years. but i think in the two clips you played, there's a question that

it left me with. and that bob woodward asked him about white privilege and then also in a separate clip asked about systemic racism. he did say he thought systemic racism was in the country, but that on the other clip that white privilege has nothing to do with it. so my question is, does he even understand what systemic racism is. and i'm curious for someone to just really ask that question point blank kind of like how attorney general barr was asked that question point blank and try to get into that with him. because if he can't connect the inherent privilege white people have in this country with how everything in this country is stacked, then he's never really going to be able to find that empathy that joe mattisson was talking about. bringing it back to the

election, is he going to win a huge majority of the black vote? he's not going to win a huge majority of the black vote, he didn't in 2016, he's not going to this time. but it is his job. even though -- it is his job to try to represent or understand everything going on in this country. like that is the job of the presidency, maybe it's not president trump's job but it is the job of the presidency. we haven't seen that before, haven't seen it, we aren't seeing it on these tapes. but i would be curious to have someone engage further maybe we'll have more on the tapes get to read the books, see how he thinks about that, but i'm not sure how he connects to those two things. >> shawna to hahomas thank you being with us. and bob costa you've spent a lot of time interviewing donald trump, you spent a good bit of time covering him, following

him, off the record with him, like maggie haberman, mika and me and many others. i'm curious, hearing these tapes and reading bob woodward's book as you have, i'm curious what personal personal obevaluatiservations a insights you would have? when i was thinking about it, i was like this is a guy that desperately wants to be liked by the media. i'm katy tur talking about how he was constantly katy tur during the 2016 courses. and she was at one of his golf courses and he drove up and introduced katy like she was his best friend. it was like there were two donald trumps. do you hear part of that other donald trump on these tapes? >> the president trump that

comes through in the woodward tapes is the same trump we've been covering if for a long time. he's someone who's alone and always selling. you don't see him talking about people or telling stories. he's someone who's trying to will his presidency forward and convince bob woodward like he's trying tried to convince so many reporters and others around the world bring them to his view of the world. you see him isolated in so many ways, as i was talking to willie about his staff, isolated from world leaders. when you see him reach out to dictators you see him searching for relationships outside the establishment. in reaching out to woodward, you can tell, he is in a sense trying to reach out to the establishment. one of the most establishment

names in terms of success in journalism in bob woodward. in expressing his dissatisfaction to forge bonds with people in those ranks and it comes through on every page this is a president trying and not really able to figure it out in terms of that connection with those in power and those with influence. >> bob costa, thank you so much for your reporting and coming on the show today. john heileman, obviously you hear donald trump's insecurity coming out on these tapes. and i said it on the air every day it seems for the past three and a half years one of the great mysteries for me is a man who wanted to be loved by the new york times so much he knew what he needed to do to do that, he actually sat down with "the new york times" during the transition and said nice things about the times and played to

the times and you look at the people he selected. he selected some establishment figures. and yet, he chose instead to be the president of what i used to say, president to 33%. and now he's the president of the 42%. it remains one of the great mysteries why a man that craves the affection of "the new york times" and bob woodward and "60 minutes" so much did the very things that they and most people who respect free press and constitutional norms and an independent judiciary found so repellant. >> yeah. and joe, i'll give you another one. the other thing in the transition he went to visit west, in "the new york times"

that category of grasping for not just main stream but elite establishment press approval. that's always been at the heart of trump. i was talking the other night you think about trump in new york, the constant outsider, the face pressed against the glass of the new york establishment, both the moneyed elite that never accepted him and the establishment in media and other places, comfortable with page 6, the tabloids but aspired to be accepted by "the new york times" but with the grifters and the downstate real estate. but never accepted by wall street and the money class of new york. that's what he wanted, acceptance and power, what he got when he became president he got power for the first time, he got the taste for power but never got the acceptance. that's the insecurity that's still there for him and you see

it plays out here. to your question, it's a truly fundamental question about trump and his personality is why having finally gotten the kind of power that should have allowed him to convert that into establishment acceptance, if he had just done some things to moderate himself and reached out in certain ways he could have. but i think it -- just the answer has to be somewhere it goes -- this is a thing i think mika will agree with me about, it speaks to the reason he can't it's about the dark heart of donald trump. that's what comes through in so much. a person who did the thing that is he did here at the time that this pandemic came out, the evilness of it, the darkness, the soullessness to let americans die for the sake of his own interest, the sucking up to kim jong-un, the murderous

dictator think of the book you have him retelling to woodward a story that kim jong-un talked to him about killing his own uncle and telling the story with relish. at heart the guy has a dark, dark soul. that i think is the thing joe that kept him from doing the things he could have done if he wanted acceptance in main stream society. i think he's not capable at heart, at soul, who he actually is. >> one day we'll talk about what could have been. >> mika, it had nothing to do with even him moderating his political views. ronald reagan was as firmly entrenched in the washington establishment as anybody, he and kathy graham and nancy reagan and everybody were good friends and reagan was the washington establishment while he was in washington d.c. >> john heileman thank you very much. we'll be watching "the circus"

on show time. and bob woodward joins us here on "morning joe" next wednesday for his first cable morning show interview for his new blockbuster book. willie as you get to the next story it's sort of -- i guess it's best said like this, but wait, there's more. >> this is a huge story on any other morning we would have started with. this is the whistle-blower accusing those at the department of homeland security of downplaying domestic terrorists to fit the president's agenda. yesterday he submitted complaints on actions taken by kirstjen nielsen among others. on the subject of domestic terrorism the complaint alleges mr. murphy was instructed by

mr. wolf and/or mr. cuccinelli to modify intelligence assessments to ensure they matched up with the public comments by president trump on the subject of antifa and anarchists groups. he added they needed to specifically modify the section on white supremacy that made the threat appear less severe. mr. murphy made disclosures regarding a repeated pattern of abuse of authority, attempted censorship of intelligence analysis and improper administration of an intelligence program related to russian efforts to influence and urnds mine u.s. interests. mr. wolf instructed mr. murphy to cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of russian interference by the united states. for his part mr. murphy informed

mr. wolf he would not comply as doing so would put the country in substantial and specific danger. let's bring in democratic congressman jim himes of connecticut and former chief of staff with the cia now an nbc news national security analyst jeremy bash. and kurt bar della, senior adviser to the lincoln project. congressman himes you sit on the committee here. these are breathtaking claims in the whistle-blower report. the impeachment of donald trump started last year with a simple whistle-blower complaint. so what are we looking at here specifically? you read through these documents. is it as bad as it appears from the outside? >> willie, you framed this right. in any ordinary presidency on any given day this would be moving the needle to an

impeachable offense. obviously we're going to have mr. murphy in front of the committee on the 21st to get the details here. but you have to put this in context. the country spends some $80 billi $80 billion a year on intelligence. that's taxpayer money. it's designed to keep us safe not designed to make the president feel good. if our viewers think this is another example of the president trying to wake up in the morning to information he likes, remember, here's what's at stake. remember almost 20 years ago, george tenant, then director of cia when asked by the administration whether there were weapons of destruction in iraq, he said it's a slam dunk because that intelligence had been badly corrupted. what's the wages of that sin? 4,420 dead american soldiers hundreds of thousands of people dead in iraq because the intelligence was warped to fit

the nar tiff of the administration. we're not just playing with fire when intelligence becomes politicized, the country becomes less safe and tragedy can ensue. >> in the complaint from mr. murphy he was alleges he was asked to stand down on assessing russian interference in the election because that's seen as helping donald trump instead focussing on iran and china who they believed was not helping donald trump. is there something criminal in here. if this is proven to be true and you look into it and investigate it, that's ignoring security threats to america. >> that's right. and for reasons that people can understand, it's a deeply, deeply dangerous thing. particularly in the context of an election in which we know the russians are running the same playbook of 2016 over again, it's deeply dangerous. is it illegal? if the allegations are true, and today they remain allegations

and the national security adviser of the united states, in fact, instructed dhs to -- the department of homeland security, to alter an intelligence report for the political benefit of the president that's a clear abuse of power and anybody who knowingly participated in that would quite likely be guilty of a crime but the possibility of individual prosecution is not nearly so serious as the fact that we've seen this movie before. with vice president dick cheney determined to find a reason to attack iraq. faulty intelligence led us to a war in iraq which has colored our breadth of activity in the middle east. and that's what happens when they can't provide the most

accurate reports as they can. >> as you read through these complaints, allegations by mr. murphy, how do they hit you? >> first of all, it's another example of the white house downplaying threats. you heard the president on the woodward tape saying i downplayed the coronavirus threat. it's the same story here, the white house has directed that the department of homeland security and other components to downplay, to cook the books on intelligence and not show case the threat coming at our democracy, the threat from russian interference. i ask people to think about what if the threat had been a terrorist attack and somehow an intelligence official was directed by the white house to downplay it, to lie about it, to whitewash it, make it go away and americans died. that's the same situation. here we tetter the woodward back to the story. with the respect to the criminal question you asked, bill barr has empanelled a prosecutor to

criminally prosecute and investigate those who were telling the truth about russian interference. so i think that if you do knowingly lie to congress, which is what the national security act requires that you tell the truth about. if you knowingly violate that, that's a violation of 18 usc 1001, and i think that's a criminal offense. >> there's so much in this whistle-blower complaint. but brian murphy said he was asked to down play the threat of white supremacist violence and focus on antifa because it fit president trump's narrative. >> in normal times this would call for a hearing of the homeland security committee in the senate, but that is run by putin's boy ron johnson so that's not going to happen. jeremy, let me ask you, this would be a big bleeping deal, do quote joe biden, if this was in

isolation with what they're doing of corrupting the intelligence around both the terror threat of white supremacists in this country and the threat of russia. i want to ask you a question about dan coats. in the woodward book, it is said that dan coates told bob woodward -- keep in mind who dan coates is, a highly respected member of the united states senate, i think venerated by his colleagues in the senate, was picked by trump to be the top spy in the country. and he is in this book saying that he believes that putin has something on donald trump. that is extraordinary. i mean, it is unbelievable those words came out of dan coates' mouth. can you speak to that? and the incredible cowardice of his colleagues in the senate to not speak up and show their respect for his evaluation.

>> that's right because as you point out, senator coates is no deep state professional, no democrat. he's no intelligence person that donald trump would ordinarily throw under the bus. no, he was a republican senator. he was someone who was hand picked by the president and he carried out his duties as dni responsibly in a nonpolitical fashion as that office requires and calls for. now he's coming forward and saying i think actually our president is compromised by the russian federation acting as potentially an unwitting asset of russian intelligence. to say it's alarming is a massive understatement. we need to peel that back and understand that in great detail and we should hear more from dan coates about this. >> all right. thank you so much jeremy, great to have with you us. congressman himes thank you as well. kurt, by the way, i have to say, we're talking about the director of national intelligence saying

that putin compromised donald trump. by the way, that's the director of national intelligence. you also have the republican leader in the house of representatives who told the entire republican caucus that te believed that there were two people that were on vladimir t putin's payroll. one was dana rorherbacker and two was donald trump. and when there were protests, he said, swear to god, swear to god, he thought donald trump was being paid by vladimir putin. so, kurt, you've been in this position before. when you were working with republicans on the oversight committee. but never a crisis quite like this where you have the intelligence community actively down playing threats from russia which so many people in the intelligence community over the past four years have said pose a direct threat to american

democracy. what do you recommend the democrats do with their oversight hearings? >> joe, i tell you, this is -- this is unimaginable, the things that we investigated during the presidency of barack obama do not pale. they pale in comparison to what we're seeing right now. and i'm always struck by the committee silence from republicans now. the republicans who warned us every day during the obama years that this was a president who was lawless, he was unconstitutional, but he was an emperor and yet, they're nowhere to be seen right now. i always wonder why aren't republicans wanting hearings about what is going on? we have a president in his own words down maying threats, we have directives coming from the administration to withhold and change and alter intelligence information. it's not just criminal. i think it's treasonous, particularly when you talk about trying to withhold information about interference in our own elections. nothing is more sacred than our

right to vote in a free and fair and american election and that's something that's being actively tampered with and the administration's posture is to try to withhold as much information from american people, from policymakers, intelligence reports as possible so that the only reason why you do that is to let bad behavior continue. i think they've had this dilemma ever since -- >> you also have a numbness, kurt. you also have a numbness that so many people are numbed by all the scandals coming their way from the trump administration. >> that is true. it is almost exhausting. we sit up here and talk about the extraordinary things donald trump does of his own volition voluntarily that are borderline illegal, unconstitutional, unthinkable. and i think this is the dilemma that the democrats have had its effective majority. where do they focus? what can they do? and i think ultimately congress

can do what it's supposed to do, act as a check and balance. congress should do what they were mandated to do and that is to look for answers, to ask questions, to get people under oath on the record because even if right now those people may not be held accountable for the lies they tell before congress, next year we could have a very different attorney general, very different justice department, a very different look at inspectors general and attorneys general. you try to get everybody on the record right now, a realtime stenography on the record of what is happening now so they can be held accountable later. president trump admitting on tape to bob woodward that he intentionally down played the threat of coronavirus in order to avoid panicking the public. but a turn now to some important developments out of belarus where opposition leader maria

colisnikova say authorities tried to kill her when they attempted to forcibly expel her from the country earlier this week. on monday, masked men kidnapped her and put her in a car heading to the ukrainian border. but she reportedly tore up her passport and refused to leave belarus. she is now detained in the capital minx. she's part of a trio of women forming the opposition to belarus' president, alexander lukashenko, often referred to as europe's last dictator. the other two opposition heeders have fled to neighboring lithuania and poland to avoid arrest. joining us now, poland's former minister of foreign affairs and defense minister, raddic sikorski, now a member of the european parliament. >> raddic, thank you so much for taking time out. we certainly would love -- we're going to talk about what's going

on in belarus, but first, i have to get your view as somebody that knows the united states as well as you do, i have to get your view on what has come out over the past day regarding bob woodward and tapes. again, i ask that because in your own country, like in the united states, there are leaders who thrive in alternative facts, pushing conspiracy theories, all the sort of things that we've been enduring here. what is your take on the -- this woodward scandal that's just erupted? >> we in europe are past being shocked about what president trump says. for us in central europe, what rocked us was his famous tv appearance with vladimir putin in helsinki a couple of years ago when he said that he trusts vladimir putin more than he trusts the fbi. and remember, we rely on the united states, which is to say

on the personal decision of the president, to protect us, deter russian nuclear attack. and so this was what confused us. and we had to ask ourselves, can we trust donald trump in an emergency to protect us from vladimir putin? and it's been downhill ever since. >> right. we've obviously heard the news of vladimir putin putting bounties on the heads of u.s. troops, donald trump has said nothing. of course, the poisoning of yet another political opponent, donald trump has said nothing and he has not been as forceful on belarus. but poland has been. .you have been, obviously. what should the united states -- what should our alliance, our nato alliance do reporting bell ra reduce now? >> well, i'm actually glad that president trump has not spoken on belarus because, given his

liking for the dictators around the world, he might -- we would worry that he might support lukashenko, which would be terrible. it is an abdomen ry investigatin of u.s. leadership, but perhaps in this case, it would be good. >> let's get to belarus and this opposition leader who was kidnapped and is being held. what is the status of her situation personally? what is being done to try and help her, but also tell us about the opposition that is taking place in belarus right now and in many ways being led by women and what parallels can you draw in what has happened in other countries? >> lukashenko used to murder his political opponents and then he

locked them up, for example, in the 2010 presidential election. until quite recently, there were no political prisoners in belarus. and a u.s. embassy, that the ambassador went back after many years, but now it looks like he blatantly falsified this election. estimates are that instead of winning 80/20, he lost 20/80. and the belarusan people have shocked everyone around the world with their determination. and you're right right, whenever the protests have sagd, it's the women of belarus who have intervened. but they are in a very difficult situation because russia is not going to let belarus go. it sees it as a corridor to the russian exglade, the defense

systems are linked up and president putin has already sent his operatives into belarus to try to save the dictatorship there. so it's very difficult. here the european parliament, we are considering as to who to grant the sakarov prize, sakarov, the famous soviet citizen and the belarusan activists are high on the list. >> member of the european parliament raddic sikorski, thank you very much for being on with us this morning and sharing your insights. and just ahead, we'll bring in the top democrat in the senate, chuck schumer. we'll ask for his reaction to the trump tapes, admitting to do down playing the coronavirus when he knew quite well just how dangerous it was. >> i wanted to always play it down. i still like playing it down. >> yes. >> because i don't want to create a panic. >> donald trump knew the

coronavirus was deadly. that it was airborne. he knew also that millions of americans would get sick and many would die. he knew it wasn't just older people. who would be killed by the skrie russ. he knew early on that this would be the greatest crisis america had faced in decades. members of donald trump's staff knew in january that a plague was coming to infect america. that half a million americans could die, that millions more would likely lose their job, that the economy would be ravaged and that those staff members, those staff members had a responsibility to warn him. and they did. but donald trump chose instead to lie to you and to lie to your family and to lie to over 300

million americans about the storm that was coming to lay upon this land. and even as he lied, month after month, his staff remained silent. you see, staying in good standing with donald trump ended up being more important to them than saving your life. now, six months into this lie, nearly 200,000 american souls are dead, countless, countless remain ravaged by the aftermath of this horrific disease. millions still out of work. and too many working class americans have had their lives destroyed. well, wall street traders and donald trump and his family get richer by the day. but donald trump says he didn't

want americans to panic. no. he just wanted to sit by and watch them die. hoping the dow jones industrial and the s&p would stay healthy enough to get him re-elected. but americans got sicker by the day. you watched your parents die. some of you that watch this show had to bury your moms. i know. you've told me about it, how horrible it was to be there in the hospital but not being able to be with your mom holding her hand. your fathers died. your husbands, your wives, and, yes, your children. they died, as well. and while that was happening, we listened to a man who swore an

oath to protect you, to protect your family, to protect all of us. and we watched him lie through his teeth every afternoon around 5:00. when all we really needed from him and all we asked from him from the beginning was the truth. that is what we needed. and that truth would have long ago set us free from what is now an ongoing and seamingly endless nightmare. >> and that's where we are. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." i have been looking through these tapes and through these reports for the night. donald trump intentionally misled the public on the true let of the virus. contained within the 18

interviews reportedly totalling nine hours was this. >> so give me a moment of talking to somebody going through this with fauci or somebody who kind of caused a pivot in your mind. because it's clear just from what is on the public record that you went through a missed on this to oh, my god, the gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable. >> well, i think, bob, really, to be honest with you -- >> sure, i want you to be. >> -- i wanted to always play it down. i still like maying it down because i don't want to create a panic. >> that was march 19th. now to some of the ways the president carried out his plan to play it down. one concerns the comparisons he made to the flu that he knew were false.

here is what he said to woodward on february 7th about how deadly the coronavirus can be on february 7th. >> it goes through air, bob. that's always tougher than the touch. the touch, you don't have to touch things, right, but the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. and so that is a very tricky one. that is a very delicate one. it is almost more deadly than even your strenuous flus. this is more deadly. this is 5% versus 1% and less than 1%. so this is deadly stuff. >> weeks later, trump said this at a campaign rally in south carolina. >> so a number that nobody herds of and i heard of recently and i was shocked to hear it, 35,000 people on average die each year from the flu. did anyone know that? 35,000. that's a lot of people. it can go to 100,000, it can be

27,000. they say usually a minimum of 27. goes up to 100,000 people a year die and so far we have lost nobody to coronavirus in the united states. >> the death toll is now more than 190,000 people. the president also, intentionally, misled the public on the effects of the virus on young people. here is what he told woodward in march, followed by his remark owes fox news early last month. >> now it's turning out it's not just old people, bob, just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. it's not just old people. it's young people. if you look at children, children are almost -- and i would almost say definitely, by almost immune from this disease. they just don't have a problem. >> according to excerpts from woodward's new book, national security adviser robert o'brien

warned the president on january 28th, quote, january 28th, this will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency. this is going to be the roughest thing you face. >> that was -- by the way, just for perspective, that was january 28th. willie, about the same time, it may have been, in fact, the exact day that joe biden wrote his op-ed in the usa today, the 28th or the 29th where joe biden said we are not ready for the coming pandemic. mr. president, please listen to your scientists. please listen to your doctors. and, of course, donald trump didn't do that. he just chose to lie. >> yeah. i mean, the reason joe biden was able to write that op-ed and say those things is because anyone near public health knew that was the way it had to be handled,

knew how serious it was. and i'm glad you went to the people affected by this because that is what i was thinking of yesterday when the president said on march 19th, i wanted to always play it down, i still like playing it down, i thought about those families who lost somebody. i thought about the people who lost a job, i thought about the doctors and nurses who were in overrun icus, emergency rooms. i thought about all the parents homeschooling their kids, still doing that today, parents who have had to make a decision maybe to quit their job so they can be home and teach their kids. the stuff had real, real, real impact and now there's nowhere for the president to hide. he cannot say that this was an anonymous source. he cannot say it was the fake news or it was the deep skate. it's on tape. it's his voice. he can't even say it was misquoted. it's right there for the world to see his dereliction that definitely, definitely cost lives. up next, we'll go to the white house for reaction this morning to the president's own

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jonathan lamere, carol lee at the white house are both joining us. >> jonathan lamere, describe the day if you could at the white house yesterday and i suspect a state of shock has settled in over white house staff members who actually, as we saw, had been warning the president about this since january. the president chose, instead, to ignore them and continue lying to the american people. >> that's right we e, joe. those in the white house described the mood as a state of shock, very somber because they know and they heard what the president himself said in his own words. there is no real attempt here to

suggest that this was fake news or anonymous sources who can't be believed. the president last night in an interview described this as a political hit job. these are the president's own words and his staff knows that. >> a political hit job? i don't understand that. it's on tape. >> how is that possible? >> how are his words, on tape, a political hit job? >> and what journalists would accept that as an answer? >> even cult members of donald trump's personality now hear his voice. how is that a political hit job? >> well, the journalists who heard that answer was sean hannity on fox news last night so that perhaps is the answer to your question. this is what the president said and there is flailing from the white house. there is no good defense here. we hear the play from kayleigh mcenany and the president on the briefing himself, that the president wanted to provide calm and there is a different between trying to calm people and being

dishonest with the american public. woodward himself always says the issue is what did he know and when did he know it? and we now know that he knew in january, in february, in march, he knew how bad the virus was, how bad it would get, the ramifications it could have on the american public. the audio you mayed earlier from february 7th discussing how dangerous this virus was, he went on to hold several indoor political rallies in the days and weeks ahead exposing his own supporters potentially to the virus itself. why did he talk to bob woodward is a question many people are asking. he kelly ann conway is on record saying she advised against cooperate, bob woodward for that

book. trump was incensed. he raged with his aides as to why he wasn't allowed to participate and vowed at that moment that if woodward were to write another book, he wanted to be part of it because he believed he could shape a far more positive portrayal. he believed the solution to any problem is more trump. he wanted to insert himself into the process. so he gave woodward extraordinary access, over a dozen interviews, many without white house aides knowing about it and this is what was revealed. and i think we're at a moment now where every time there is a crisis involving political scandal, there is presiden pres trump. the president of the united states knew full well the dangers of the coronavirus back in jarnl, february and march and he was not honest with the american people about it.

>> the president tweeted last night that this was a hit job by the, quote, rapidly fading bob woodward. >> the president said he could shoot somebody on fifth avenue and get away with it. do they still subscribe to that theory, do they believe they can survive this as they did the access hollywood tape even though the gravity of this is so much greater? >> certainly, willie, they think there is a core group of the president's supporters who are never going to leave the president. however, that is not enough for the president to win a second term and there's real panic among people around the president. there was panic thee weeks ago

when bob woodward's book came out. the finger pointing had already begun about who thought it was a good idea for the president to sit down and spend all that time with bob woodward. and by the way, it wasn't just the president who did that. many of the people who work with him did. i spoke with robert o'brien last night who confirmed his quote in bob woodward's book. he said he spoke with bob woodward, as well. so there's -- you know, this is not just the president saying i'll cooperate with this, but this is a number -- a really opening up his administration to allow a bunch of people to cooperate and talk to bob woodward for this book. the problem they is people made decisions based on their lives based on what the president was saying. so he has a past problem during the i'm in february and january and march and he has a future problem. we're still in the middle of a pandemic. he's pushing. he was in north carolina tuesday night pushing for that governor to open the state, get schools back open, send kids to school.

and he was asked yesterday, you know, why should people now trust you? a reporting asked him and he said he has no good answer and they don't have a good answer. now we're heading into flu season. it's going to start getting cold. all the experts say it's going to get worse and we have a president who, in his own words, he has shown can't be trusted with the advice that he's giving to the american public and that's a practical problem and that's a political problem for the president. >> coming up, the top democrat in the u.s. senate, minority leader chuck schumer is standing by. we'll get his you reaction to the trump tapes and whether congress is any closer to finding a compromise on economic relief for so many americans who are battered by this pandemic. "morning joe" is back in a moment. "morning joe" is back in a moment introducing stocks by the slice from fidelity.

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joining us now, senate minority leader democrat chuck schumer of new york. thank you for joining us. >> good morning. >> your response, sir, to the trump tapes. >> they're just awful. look, when the house is on fire and there's a five alarm fire, you have an obligation to let people know. if not, they're going to burn

and they're going to die. and this awful, awful incident, tragedy, can be summed up in four words. trump lied, people died. when we look at the rest of the world and we see why are they doing better than we are in fighting this awful covid rage, the reason is very simple. they have had some leadership. we have none. we've had dishonest, lying leadership that cares. the president seems to care only about his own ego and not about himself. and this idea, now they come up -- he's always good at coming up with excuses for his proif i haddus lies, his mistakes. this time he said he didn't want to panic people. really? is this the same president who is busy panicking america right now telling women in the suburbs that your safety is at risk when the suburbs are not in any risk at all that way? he doesn't mind panicking people when his interests are at risk. but what is worse is he will not

tell the truth when it serves his interest and people are badly hurt. it's despicable incident and i hope it wakes up some of those trump supporters to realize what this man is, that they cannot have him be president again because it will get worse. he will tell worse and worse lies. >> if you look at it this way, and he didn't want to panic people and he didn't give them honest information about how deadly this virus is, and he knew that in realtime in january, february, march, he was told by national security advisers, by scientific experts, by doctors, he knew children were getting it and passing it along. he knew all these things and then told bob woodward he was going to down play it. other options to down playing it would have been mobilizing the defense production act and getting a national effort on testing. we don't even have testing in some areas that comes back right away. some people can't even get tests without symptoms. we would be in such a different

place if the president took what he knew seriously. >> there are thousands of my fellow new yorkers who are dead right now and it can be direct attributed to the president's lack of action, lying about this crisis. now question about it. that's why we don't have testing. that is why we are not on top of this because he swecht it under the rug. on january 26th, i called for the president to make it a national emergency. january 26th. he did nothing for a month. >> obviously, we have cataloged the president's responses and the governors across the country knew a lot of this information. now with the benefit of hindsight, do you look back and say maybe governor cuomo and governors of other states should have acted quicker, as well? >> no. the bottom line is, it was the federal authorities. the governors don't have people

in china, in foreign counties, they don't have access to the intelligence the president does. i think the governors did their best. you couldn't put together -- they tried with testing, which mika mentioned, but you couldn't do it without the dpa and the national regime. i think the governors will come off quite well, but under very difficult circumstances with a president and national government who did nothing. where were the people around trump? they should have blown the whistle. the people in the administration have far more blame than governors or anybody like that. they should have said something. this was a national crisis. the house was on fire. it was burning. but people didn't know that because trump was covering it up. he licves -- and you know this, mr. geist, mr. willie geist. he lives in his own bubble. he thinks by saying something, he can make it true. and this crisis was so big, was so enormous, that the usual

trump tactics of belittling it, ignoring it, lying about it, diverting attention to something else just didn't work. and that's why he is sweating it out right now. >> so let's talk about all the suffering that has come from that. people losing their jobs, people losing their loved ones. you right now are working and will vote today on a package that would offer some economic relief that would help put in place now what six, seven months later some of the things that obviously should have happened much earlier. where are you with mitch mcconnell and getting relief to people whose checks ran out many months ago and who need it badly? >> we're trying to get a bill that deals with the issues here. mcconnell has become more .more cynical. his bill is a cynical bill. it is cynical in what it left out. no money for state and local governments, not even the ability, which trump said he might have been for -- to allow people to use the money for lost revenues, no money for kids who

are not sick, no money for people being kicked out of their houses, no money for broadband. rural areas are desperate for broadband. no money for restaurants. no money for public performance spaces. no money for all these things. why? because 20 people in his caucus -- first, let's look at what mcconnell did. first he said he wanted to assess the situation. that's not lying, but it's a little like trump. the house is on fire, he's ignoring it. then he said pause. then, because there was such public pressure, particularly on the 12 senators up through the election, they tried to put together a trillion dollar bill. 20 republican senators, by mcconnell's own admission said they're not for any bill. so now as the crisis gets bigger and bigger, republicans think smaller and smaller. this isn't a skinny bill. it's emaciated. if you have any questions about the intentions, the dev is s

education proposal takes mout of ow public schools and puts its into private and religious schools and his viability bills that make it so hard to even file medical malpractice suits. he knows democrats won't go for it. it's a cynical exercise to try and check a box without getting anything done. but we know it won't work. the american people want action. we democrats have said, as you know, we'll meet them in the middle. we'll come down a trillion, you go up a trillion. they're going backwards. they're even lower than what president trump said he would do. >> yeah. senator, i want to go back to the trump tapes with the conversations with bob woodward. because a lot of people would call on a president to resign for a lot less. so i ask you to to speak directly to your republican counterparts. we had senator john kennedy on the air. some were calling this a gotcha book and he's not reading it. >> you know what i said to my republican colleagues, mika? i'm sorry. i'm so aggravated.

where the hell are you? this is a national crisis. had man lies about everything. we found out he's lying about russian interference and they are mum. where are they at this time of national crisis? i saw joe madison on your show earlier. difference between nixon and trump, he had a republican senate who had some senators who had some degree of courage. we have seen none of that and mcconnell as a leader sets an awful example. he is totally cynical now, totally political. people need help. they're losing their jobs, they're losing money, they're losing their homes, they can't feed their kids. no more school lunches are going to the kids who are stuck home and he play these political game. meet us in the middle. we'll come mize. come on. >> but even on speaking out about lying to the american people, your republican counterparts are literally mute. those that do speak out on tv say they won't look at it or call it -- say it's the media

when it was trump's words. >> of course. >> and some trump supporters in the media, and there are many, especially on fox, they have examples like, well, he didn't want people to panic or it's lindsey graham's fault because he set up the interviews. >> yeah. >> to your republican counterparts, what should they be doing right now? >> they should be condemning trump. they should be telling him to speak the truth. and they should be telling people in that administration to stop going along with this liar because his lies have having awful consequences for america. they are showing no courage, no strength. history is going to record this as a dark moment for the republican senate where you had a president who did this and they just bowed down. they're scared to death of him because they know he's vindictive and frankly he has a base in each of their states. and if the base goes away -- the base isn't enough to get him

elected. that's why they're in such a pickle. they need to move to the middle and they can't. but that base, whenever there's any deviation say we're going to get you if you have one bit of deviation from trump. >> but might you, senator, explain to them that he's killing his base. he's actually killing his base by inviting them to tulsa to sit squished together in a huge building where they're all breathing all over each other and they're squished together. they're not allowed to socially distance. and covid numbers shot up. there was rally after rally after rally where the base shows up and this president is killing the base by not giving them the information they need on this virus, by calling it a hoax, by making fun of wearing masks. i mean, at this point, the campaign we all saw made people click on a legal waiver, if you

die, you can't sue us. at what point are your republican counterparts going to explain to the base that it is not worth this? >> i would have hoped a long time ago, but they are shown no, zero, courage. they are cover up artists for president trump. and i say two things about what you said about trump and his base. first, he doesn't care about anyone but himself. you could have been the loyalist trump supporter for years. and if he thinks it serves his moment air egotistical interest to though them turned bus, to trash you, to hurt you, harm you with illness, he'll do it. but second -- >> herman cain. >> right. but trump is in his own bubble. he doesn't even know what is good to for him because he lies to himself. that's the problem here. so even though it hurts his base, he'll say, well, it didn't hurt him. even though a big, robust bill that we're trying to get would actually benefit him. he doesn't get that and understand it because he follows

what the stock market does. he's only concerned about himself and his lack of truth has put him in a bubble. he's gotten away with it, as you point out, for far too long. but this covid crisis is too big, even for his deception. he tried to divert attention yesterday. they called that emergency press conference on the supreme court. he thought that would take the woodward book off the front pages and off the news. well, it was buried on page 20 something. didn't work. this is too big. >> senator, before we let you go, as we talk about this national trauma tomorrow, september 11th marks the 19th anniversary. hard to believe it's been 19 years. we've been so consumed by coronavirus and everything else in the country it sneaks up on you. firefighters and first responders dieing every day it seems from 9/11 related illnesses. the number who die from that will surpass the number on who die odd that terrible day. what are your thoughts here as we approach the 19th anniversary of the day that shook your

state? >> well, i think of the firefighters i knew and who lost hr lives both on that day and later. the police officers and other citizens. i think about that every day. i look out my window in brooklyn. we live in an apartment -- we're not on the water, but we're close enough you can see the harbor. and every day i look out that window and i see freedom tower, but no twin towers and i think of the people who were lost. a guy i played basketball with in high school, a businessman who helped me on the way up, a firefighter i used to go around the city with him asking people to donate blood. he was such a good man. i think of them all the time and i'll be thinking of them tomorrow and i'll be there tomorrow. >> senator chuck schumer, thank you very much for being on the show this morning. >> thank you. and up next, thick smoke from wildfires turns the sky around san francisco bay bright orange. the latest on hundreds of acres of land on fire along the west

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devastating doesn't begin to describe the wildfires across the pacific northwest right now. at least 30 fires in oregon have burned more than 300,000 acres, destroying several communities. in washington, wildfires have reached more than 500,000 acres, devastating entire neighborhoods. as you can see here. residents of california's bay area witnessed orange skies yesterday during the day. a smoke mixed with fog hanging over the city so far the state's fires have burned more than 2.5 million acres this year. apocalyptic scenes. and this morning, we have a

new look at new state polling by aarp. joe biden leads president trump in five states, up 14 points in maine, 10 in colorado. by 7 in michigan. by 5 in wisconsin and by 3 in pennsylvania. that's also a statistical tie in florida. arizona and georgia, the two are tied. and north carolina at 48%, trump is up by 2 in iowa. another statistical tie. and in montana, the president holds a 7-point lead. when looking at those numbers among senior citizens, biden is up by 30 in maine, by 18 in michigan, by 17 in wisconsin. by 11 in pennsylvania. by 7 in north carolina. and colorado by -- north carolina and colorado. by 2 in arizona, a statistical tie, by one in florida, another

statistical tie. and in georgia, president trump holds a 12-point lead for voters over the age of 65. a fascinating poll by aarp. we have new polling taking a closer look at the latino vote. joining us now, monica gill. and in partnership with buzzfeed news telemundo is out with an in-depth study titled young latinos, a generation of change which looks at one of the country's fastest growing and most influential voting blocks. also was, arturo v a irgas. this organization has national weekly tracking poll that gives insight into the latino electorate's views on the 2020 presidential election. so monica, i'll start with you.

tell us what in the latino community is growing the fastest, where do they have the most influence? >> thank you, mika. so we're really excited about this poll today because one of the things we realize is young voters are really the voters we have to be looking at. if you think about latinos as a whole, there's 32 million new voters that have -- 32 potential votes to vote in this year's election. young latinos make up a large portion of it. they've grown 100% of the voter registration since 2008. so it's clearly a population we want to continue to watch because every year for the next ten years they're going to be growing by another million every single year. so this is a population that is motivated to vote. they care about the issues going on in the country right now and they want to make sure that they have a leader that supports them. >> and arturo, as you're looking and tracking weekly sort of where they're leaning in terms of issues and candidates, tell

us what you're finding. >> we are surveying 400 latino registered voters every week for the next eight weeks up until the election. and yesterday, we released the first findings and we found a couple of fascinating things about what is happening with the latino electorate. number one, there is a very strong interest in voting. 78% said they are almost certain to vote. joe biden had about 6/6% likelihood of being supported by latino voters compared to 24% for president trump. but the number one issue that is of importance to latino voters is covid-19. and that really reflects how this pandemic has disproportionately affected latino house holds across the country in terms of infection rates, mortality rates, hospitalization rates and the

devastating impact it's had under the economic situation. >> yeah. obviously, monica, covid has hit the latino community, the black communities especially hard. so that will be at the center of their vote. but where do you see, if anywhere, movement, the possibility where donald trump could pick up some ground? some people look at the state of florida, there was a poll out this week that showed it pretty tight down there led by cuban americans backing president trump. do you see a space pore movement there? that is an awfully big spread arturo just showed us in favor of joe biden. >> our poll is similar in the sense that it's saying if you were to take the election today, 60% of latino young voters would say they would vote for biden. but i think the real area you should focus on is we've realized there's an unclaimed amount of voters. a third of them still said they were undecided and do not have any affiliation to a political party. so if you think about this growth, where you really need to concentrate is the six key states, right? you look at california, nevada,

nr, texas, new mexico and arizona. and because they are a potential new voter, if they actually go out to the polls, we're getting that 60% of them are saying they are definitely going to go to the polls and vote this year. so if they actually go to the polls, these six states make up half of the -- number of votes that is decisive for a presidential candidate. and if they go to the polls, that will cascade to local elections. so i would focus on those six key states for young latino voters and latino as a whole population. >> arturo, same question to you. the opinions of donald trump are pretty much solidified. if you haven't watched him for the last five yearsing on so and figure out how you feel about him, you have a little work to do. but especially on a question like on immigration, where donald trump from the beginning of his his campaign came down lead, that and made very public his views about immigration. do you see chances for him to

pick up ground? is there anywhere for him to improve his standing among latino voters? absolutely. no one should take the latino vote for granted. 40% of latinos in our survey said that they had been contacted by someone in this election cycle, which means 60% have been ignored. of those 40%, 47% said that they were contacted by somebody from the gop. so the republican party, it appears, is actually doing some significant outreach in this election cycle. so no one should take the latino vote for granted monica, are there divisions within the latino community as they express their influence? what are the divisions that you are seeing, different points of

view. >> i mean, i think what i would support what arturo is saying, the reality is you can't take the vote for granted. whether it be cuban, latino, mexican, puerto rican, the reality is this is a group that is seeking leadership. so where you see the divisions right now is you see 70% that are actually saying that they would vote for trump today. but the issues that really they still stand to have some conservative areas of interest would be in the areas of abortion, in the areas of gun ownership and those that are flagship to the republican party. so you still see a set of a latinos here in miami, florida, na specifically are voting for republican candidates, as a whole, but the reality is that the dems still have the issues of inequality that stands to be one of the forefront flagship issues for latinos today and covid. this next generation is looking for issues of covid and

realities for their daily lives. >> it is always good to see you. monica, arturo, thank you both very much for coming on the show this morning. up next, playing through the pandemic. new remarks from nfl commissioner roger goodell as the nfl kicks off its new season tonight. keep it right here on "morning joe." [ squawks ] 'cause you're not like everybody else. that's why liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. what? oh, i said... uh, this is my floor. nooo! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ ...to soccer practices... ...and new adventures. you hope the more you give the less they'll miss.

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when i see the president of the united states try to eliminate this health care in the middle of a public health crisis, that's personal to me too. we've got to build on what we did because every american deserves affordable health care. i'm joe biden and i approve this message. you should be mad they gave this guy a promotion. deserves affordable health care. you should be mad at forced camaraderie. and you should be mad at tech that makes things worse. but you're not mad, because you have e*trade, who's tech makes life easier by automatically adding technical patterns on charts and helping you understand what they mean. don't get mad. get e*trade's simplified technical analysis. how are you going to handle that hypothetical situation in the national football league if

on a saturday this team ends up with an outbreak of covid-19 positive tests? >> that's why we're testing so frequently. that's why the testing program and tracing program are the core elements of our approach. >> that's mike tirico of nbc sports speaking with nfl commissioner roger goodell ahead of tonight's kickoff to the 2020 season amid the pandemic and amidst racial injustice in this country. joining us, mike, what is this nfl season going to look like. tonight the chiefs play the texans at arrowhead stadium. they'll be at 22% capacity to fans. something like 17,000 people. we know because it's kansas city they'll be loud anyway. what does this season look like to you as we move along? >> first of all, willie, they're going to hope that they have the general good fortune that

baseball and pro basketball and the nhl have had so far. they've gotten this far. so far, so good with positive tests, okay? these stadiums are going to look vastly different than they ever have before. 20% of an nfl stadium is not that much. but having said that, i believe just talking to sports fans i know, there is more anticipation on -- about this season than there ever has been because of the summer we've just had and just because the nfl is as big as it is in this country. and it's going to be very interesting to see, willie, how the social justice stuff is handled. it is only four years since colin kaepernick took a knee and got treated by some like he was an enemy of the state in this country. look how far the country has come since then, especially in professional sports. >> he was run out of the league

and roger goodell effectively said, yeah, we should have listened ed ted to colin kaepe. didn't go much farther than that, but now says that four years later. we've seen it in the nba and major league baseball and just broadly, the american public, forget the world of sports. the american public is much more receptive to that today, obviously, than it was four years ago. >> yeah, you look at the jerseys in the nba. black lives matter right there for everybody to see, bigger than the names of the team. here's what i hope. i hope that we don't go every sunday to every game and say, oh, he knelt, he didn't kneel. this isn't a referendum on anybody's commitment to social justice or to the flag or to the military. all those false narratives about colin kaepernick four years ago. i am hopeful that as the season goes on, whatever happens -- by the way, nobody ever passed a law that we have to have the

national anthem before sports anyway. people will just become used to it the way they have no with the scenes they've seen out of bubble ball in the nba. >> the nba, mike, let's talk about what a job they've done. in that bubble to keep people healthy to pull off an exciting playoffs that they're in the middle of right now. that's got to be the model for sports, doesn't it? >> will ie, you know because you're a big sports fan. it seems something great has happened every night in the nba playoffs, including one of the greatest playoff games i've ever seen last night between the celtics and raptors. but somehow they have captured that vibe even with, willie, even with those zoom fans which you see during the game. i don't know who came up with that idea, but it was brilliant. >> and they have stayed healthy and you might be set up for a clippers/lakers west coast final. mike lupica, great to see you. mike's new book is "robert b. parker's fool's paradise."

thanks so much. mika, as we've been talking, president trump has been tweeting, as he often does. in the context of everything we've been talking about this morning, his comments about kim jong-un, he has tweeted about him this morning and saying, never underestimate him. he is in good health. he sort of is leaning into, embracing, trolling, whatever you want to call all we've just heard on those tapes from bob woodward now, again, offering praise for the north korean dictator kim jong-un this morning. >> well, in response to that tweet, i think one could say, no, we haven't underestimated him. you got completely played by him, as you have been played by pretty much everybody. putin, bob woodward now. nine hours of tape, really? you sit there and show off because you're so cool because you know so much you think you're talking to woodward on the phone and he's going to give you a good book? he's going to do you right and

you got duped. but what's worse and what's tragic is that the american people have been duped by this president, especially and most importantly trump's followers. the people who believe in him. these deaths are on president trump. we're at 180,000, moving to 200,000. and many -- 190,000. and many of these deaths are on him that he could have prevented. this is trump's carnage. that's on him, and now everybody knows that he knew all along, and he could have prevented this, and he did not. that's what this country has to live with as our economy struggles along and people's lives collapse. that's the carnage that trump has put on this country. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it is thursday, september 10th. let's get smarter.

we've got to start this morning with president trump who has already been on defense denying accusations that he disparaged america's war dead. now he's facing potentially an even worse political crisis. excerpts of on-tape conversations in which the president himself admits that he voluntarily misled the american people about the coronavirus threat just as the pandemic was gaining steam. listen to this. >> well, i think bob really, to be honest with you -- >> sure, i want you to be. >> i wanted to always play it down. i still like playing it down because i don't want to create a panic. >> that is part of a series of 18 separate conversations with "the washington post's" bob woodward for his new book "rage." last night president trump tried to explain why exactly he said what he