welcome to friday. it is "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd. today of course is september 11th. 19 years after the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the world trade center, the pentagon, and in shanksville, pennsylvania. president trump, vice president pence, joe biden and kamala harris have all spent the morning paying their respects at various sites of the attacks. in fact, joe biden will be arriving at the shanksville, pennsylvania memorial at any moment. in the president's remarks in shanksville he said, "we mourn deeply for the nearly 3,000

precious and beautiful souls who were taken from us." he also took time to offer condolences to the family members of those killed and impacted by the attacks. and as we remember that terrible moment in american history 19 years ago, it's important to remember that we are in the midst of another terrible moment in american history. the coronavirus pandemic has taken the lives of nearly 200,000 americans this year. in fact, our nation has not seen a week where the coronavirus death toll was fewer than 3,000, i.e. 9/11, since the end of march. to put it glumly, we are losing more americans every few days to this virus than we lost in 9/11 entirely. and it just isn't that the president is not appropriately acknowledging the gravity of the growing death toll and the virus. he's also still downplaying the severity of the virus. according to excerpts of recordings published by the "washington post" the president told bob woodward in march that he knowingly downplayed the coronavirus risk to avoid creating a panic he said.

like i said the president who thrives on creating panic is still downplaying the risk. last night he held a rally in michigan. very little social distancing and masking. flouting michigan's coronavirus rules. and here's what he had to say about the pandemic. >> by the way, i think the vaccine's going to come very soon. going to come very soon. and with it or without it we're rounding the turn. you see what's happening. you see the numbers are plunging. we had to take a pause to get rid of the china virus. and we got rid of it. we're getting rid -- we're coming around. we're coming around that turn. i'm telling you, you watch, next year, better than last year. >> well, obviously we're not coming around. but we want to pause here for a second. joe biden is stepping up to make some remarks in shanksville. let's go there.

>> good to see you again. >> hey, chuck, do you hear me? it's peter alexander. >> give us a little narration here of what we're seeing. what you're seeing on the ground. >> yeah. the former vice president arriving there alongside jill biden, greeting some of the families of those who lost loved ones here at this, what they describe as sacred ground, arriving just moments ago, a couple hours after the president was here for a formal ceremony. the former vice president, democratic nominee, not expected to make any formal remarks here, really just wanted to pay his respects after going to the 9/11 memorial in new york earlier today. it has now reopened to the public, and there's about 100 people who have gathered here at this site. it's a place that represents unity and courage and heroism in the face of just remarkable adversity on that day 19 years

ago. i had the privilege of meeting some of the families that were here for this anniversary. one of those lost on that day, a 42-year-old by the name of joey knacky. his cousin is here today, just 11 1/2 years old. his name is joe. in honor of his loved one who died on that day. the former vice president came here because he said it was crucial that he have an opportunity to help honor the sacrifice made by so many others. you can see him elbow bumping with some of the families as he did with the vice president mike pence earlier in the day at the 9/11 memorial, chuck. >> you know, peter, you've been there all day. you've been there when the president was there, you've been there when joe biden was will. i'm curious what kind of scene do you see as people come in and out? i know this is such an important day for so many people to take time to get to pennsylvania and to get to shanksville. >> reporter: yeah, well, what was striking earlier today is while they would normally have

about 1,000 people here on this anniversary as they remember the lives lost today, maybe 100 or 200 people who gathered for the president's remarks earlier today. all of that a function of the crisis we're still dealing with right now, the coronavirus pandemic. there was social distancing. many people in the audience were wearing masks at the time the president spoke in terms you don't normally hear during a campaign season. the president speaking about this idea of unity, honoring the sacrifice by those who died 19 years ago. the former vice president joe biden now in really what is more of a spontaneous moment as there are families who are here, members of the public and others who heard he would be coming who gathered here. they have surrounded him. most of them are quiet, just sort of appreciating this moment and appreciating his visit to this site here. i had never been before, and i've got to tell you, it is expansive and it is solemn. but it is certainly powerful. i mean, it covers miles, what was a barren field in western

pennsylvania, now this just stunning memorial to honor those lives lost. it was 33 passengers, 7 crew members. a gorgeous wall that honors their memory. notes that were left by loved ones who came on this day. and they've really sort of, chuck, formed this community of those who lost their lives. but they lost their lives preventing 9/11 from being an even greater tragedy. it's said that the plane, the united flight 93 they were on, it was just 18 minutes away by air from reaching what they believed was the terrorists' intended target that day, the capitol. but not just the capitol. the capitol building itself in washington, d.c. before it came down in this field. and on this day each year they open what's called a ceremonial gate, chuck, where only family is invited to go to what they describe as the sacred ground where a giant boulder marks the spot where the plane ultimately did go down. >> you know, peter, you were saying that this is a bit more informal than what we saw

earlier with the president. are these -- can you tell, are these just people that knew joe biden was going to be there, they came? do you get a sense there were some people that have been there waiting to see him? what can you tell us about the folks he is meeting with? >> reporter: yeah, some of the folks he's meeting with, obviously they were aware the vice president would be coming. they stuck around. this family in fact that he's visiting with was here earlier when the president dlifrds remarks during today's ceremony. you know, what is striking to me in this part of western pennsylvania where the ride out here even before dawn was lined with trump-pence signs and in this crowd that's watching and taking photographs of joe biden, there are a lot of trump-pence t-shirts. even a "make america great again" hat that one man is wearing in the distance. but everybody is sitting here silent, appreciating this moment, appreciating the sacrifice of those individuals so many years ago. you're struck by the conversation politically right now is so divisive and so often

so ugly. and this, if there is one event, this is the one event that really does have the potential to try to reunite us. >> even if it's for a brief moment. it is sort of -- it's a brief reminder of what was. and in fact i want to bring in my next guest here. the former nato supreme allied commander, it's admiral james stavrides. 9/11 changed everything. that was the saying. we've said it a lot. 9/11 changed everything. and yet 19 years later, boy, the initial change has changed, to basically not use a thesaurus here. and we've changed again. >> we have. and not for the better. let's be honest. as you look back at that moment, coming out of 9/11, you remember the intensity of it and you remember the spirit of the country coming together in

recognition of heroes who had walked among us like todd beamer, who died in that field and led the effort on that airplane. you know, his immortal words, "let's roll." i would go to afghanistan as the nato commander and i would see soldiers there with patches, "let's roll." it was a real moment of unity, civilian, military, police, firefighters, our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen. everybody behind us. today, unfortunately, we are divided over things as simple as whether we should wear a mask or not. and obviously, we should. in the face of this pandemic. so chuck, we've drifted apart here. but i for one believe we can come back together over time. there's something powerful about the american spirit. and as you said a moment ago, an event like this hopefully can

remind us that we can transcend the differences of the moment and come together again. >> it also, though, frankly, is a stark reminder of how poorly we've handled collectively as a country and our leadership in particular has handled this pandemic. you know, we've had to think that we do so much to pay so much respect to this moment, to those that have lost loved ones, and to think what we haven't done for the hundreds of thousands of family members who have victims of this pandemic. we have not had the same spirit to go after this pandemic as we did to go after those terrorists. >> that is entirely true. and here's another thought to kind of park -- or six months from now, twelve months from now. at some point we are going to have to have an accounting for this. after 9/11 we had a national

bipartisan commission that looked at our failures in the intelligence community. after pearl harbor we had a national investigation which looked at how the military failed the nation in that moment. i think at some point, chuck, we are going to demand as a people an accounting. and that in itself will be divisive. but it's important that we do that, that we learn from these mistakes and learn from the failures that have occurred in this extremely divisive moment. >> let's think about -- let's take a few minutes here and talk about the state of the world. after 9/11 we were determined that we were going to do our best to root out terrorism wherever it was, particularly international terrorism. i guess the best way to look at it is okay, there haven't been terrorist attacks in this country. what would you say is -- where are we today as far as global

security is concerned and terrorism is concerned versus where we were on september 12th, 2001? >> i'd say in summary that we have made great progress but we still have work to do. we've certainly made progress in circumscribing al qaeda, the terrorist group that led this effort. we have made progress in containing and taking territory away from the islamic state, which you'll recall vividly three, four years ago was sending tank columns headed toward baghdad. we've made progress against al shabab in africa. we've made progress against boko haram in nigeria. there has been progress, chuck. and it is worth pointing out that that progress, much of it has occurred by a combination of hard power and soft power, by our military but also the work

of our diplomats, our development teams, u.s.a.i.d. and others. it shows that we can work together as a government and have real effect internationally. and finally, we ought to remember on this 9/11 day, our allies, our partners, our friends. after 9/11 the nato treaty was invoked. for the only time in history, an attack on one is an attack on all clause was invoked. you saw british warships off our shores. you saw german aircraft flying overhead. and then our allies followed us into afghanistan. and in fact, when i was nato commander i signed hundreds and hundreds of letters of condolence not only to american soldiers but to european and pacific soldiers, people from australia, new zealand, and others. so as i look at global security, we still have that alliance structure. we still have the ability to

work with allies, partners, and friends and we've made great progress but there is still work to do. >> admiral stavridis, it's always good to get your perspective on this, and this is an important day to get this larger perspective of where we are as a country. and of course where we are as far as the global security is concerned. thank you, sir. appreciate your expertise and perspective. >> thank you, chuck. and before we went to joe biden in pennsylvania, you had just heard president trump erroneously claim that we have turned the corner on the coronavirus. well, at the same time the nation's top infectious disease expert, dr. anthony fauci, is saying just the opposite. he's warning americans not to underestimate the potential of this pandemic, especially this fall and winter. last hour my colleague andrea mitchell asked dr. fauci to square that statement with the president's words last night in michigan. >> you said it was time to hunker down because the fall and the winter is "not going to be easy." the president says we've rounded the final turn. how do you square those two

messages? >> well, you know, i'm sorry that i have to disagree with that because if you look at the thing that you just mentioned, the statistics, andrea, they are disturbing. we're plateauing at around 40,000 cases a day. and the deaths are around 1,000. what we don't want to see is going into the fall season when people will be spending more time indoors and that's not good fire respiratory-borne virus. you don't want to start off already with a baseline that's so high. >> well, joining me now is nbc's carol lee and jonathan lemire, the white house reporter for the associated press and also an msnbc political analyst. you know, carol, on one hand we should not be surprised that the president did and said and acted the way he did in michigan last night, flouting the rules, awful those things. however, it did seem to be oddly timed. here he is dealing with the fallout from these woodward

tapes that seems to imply that he intentionally has been downplaying the threat of the virus. in essence it seems like he's decided he's going o'continto c to be that person and he will continue into tensionally play down the impact of this virus as he did last night. are they comfortable with this message or is it just who the president is? >> well, i think it's a lot of the latter and there are people who would like the president to take a little bit of a different strategy and they've tried. we've seen that throughout the pandemic. and it just hasn't stuck. this is who the president is. this is how he's been talking the pandemic since it began. and despite all of the other urgent -- all of the urging for him to shift, whether it's from his medical experts or privately from advisers who think he should take a more moderated tone, this is what he's stuck with. and i think that what you're seeing here is this is what it's going to be. if there were any questions about whether or not the president might moderate or calibrate or talk about this

differently as we go into the final weeks of the campaign, the question seems to be answered this week. he's under a lot of pressure, obviously because of the things he said to bob woodward that are on tape. and here you see him just going back to the same well with the same sort of posture that we've seen from him before. and there's a sense that he's dug in here and that this is where he's decided he wants to be and this is the message that he's going to drive all the way to november 3rd, chuck. >> you know, jonathan, francis collins did an interview on another network, on cnn. and he was asked about the same michigan rally. and he put it in these terms. he said, how did we get here? imagine you were an alien who landed on planet earth and you saw our planet was afflicted by an infectious disease and mass wrkz an effective way to prevent the spread and yet when you went around and saw some people not wearing them and some people wearing them and you tried to figure out why and it turned out it was their political party.

he goes, you would scratch your head and think this is not a planet that has much promise for the future. it was just an interesting way for those of you that don't though dr. collins, he can use metaphors like that. but i thought it was an interesting remark by the president's own director of nih. >> yeah. it's a stark image, chuck, to be sure. but it's one that's reinforced on a daily basis. we've been seeing the footage just now of joe biden, again, walking, making sure he has a mask. when he's -- this is obviously a somber memorial. but there's campaign events, too he's always masked, he keeps distance from the people he's talking to. usually it's a very small crowd. sometimes you can count on the fingers of one hand. that's the image they want to portray. they want to say he's being responsible. they want to say joe biden is listening to the health guidelines. donald trum trump, president juppe 2ru7 is the exact opposite. he wants to project a sense of normalcy, that we're rounding the corner on covid-19. and it's obviously -- he is doing so contradicting what we're seeing every day in terms

of statistics. have deaths and cases leveled off? since the surge earlier in the summer? sure. but it's still a virus that's claiming hundreds of lives of americans each and every day. and this is a political image and a message they're trying to impart. last night in michigan, also this coming weekend, the president is heading to nevada. and it is one where the state officials there have tried to, they've canceled his two rallies in reno and las vegas. but the trump campaign, they just announced they're going to be forging forward. he will be holding an event in reno tomorrow night. details still to be released. but they want this fight. they want to portray the president and his party as the party of progress, the party of we're moving ahead on the virus, we're going to get around this, and they're trying to suggest that democrats are just getting in the way. >> hey, carol, is part of this issue with the trump campaign, though, is they may have no choice? if they really have money problems, then the only way to replace a money problem on state television is to send the candidate. how much of this is being driven

by their resource issues? >> well, they certainly were having some resource issues. this is a lot of president trump. he really wants to be out there and it's part of this image that jonathan was talking about, that having the president out and traveling and visiting multiple states in a week and having these rallies is part of the message because of the images that it creates. while there's criticism about lack of social distancing and people not wearing masks, it underscores what the president is trying to do, which is create this sense of we're moving forward. the economy's going to move forward. the virus is -- he said we've turned around the final corner. i mean, he's really -- and that a vaccine is coming sooner than you think. all of those messages are meant to be reinforced by the images that are coming out when you see the president in various states with hundreds of people, some masked, some not, and the fact that he's not hunkered down in the white house.

and it's part of the broader picture and the broader message that they're trying send here. >> carol lee, jonathan lemire. carol at the white house. jonathan as always, sir, thank you. thank you both. up next we're going to get the public health perspective. still ahead, a devastating mix of wildfires, record-breaking high temperatures, toxic smoke plumes. all of it is ravaging the west coast. climate change is changing the way we live right now. this is not a problem in the future. it's a problem we're facing now. we'll be right back. alright, everyone, we made it. my job is to help new homeowners who have turned into their parents. i'm having a big lunch and then just a snack for dinner. so we're using a speakerphone in the store. is that a good idea? one of the ways i do that is to get them out of the home. you're looking for a grout brush, this is -- garth, did he ask for your help? -no, no. -no. we all see it. we all see it. he has blue hair. -okay. -blue. progressive can't protect you from becoming your parents, but we can protect your home and auto when you bundle with us. -keep it coming. -you don't know him.

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welcome back. as we mentioned earlier, the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic is closing in on 200,000. as the president continues to downplay the threat of the pandemic. here with their medical perspectives, vaccine expert dr. peter hotz. and dean of the national school of tropical medicine at the baylor college of medicine. and dr. nahid bedelia, an infectious disease physician and msnbc medical contributor 37 let me start with what the president said last night. dr. fauci contradicted it. but this idea we're turning a corner. what corner is it and what's around it? >> chuck, i think the concern that most public health officials right now have is we're actually going to see an increase given that we're going into the fall and winter months. but i think the bigger concern is we're at 9/11. and we're talking about 9/11 right now. and right after that big event,

one of the big things this country did was invest in global health security. and the idea that the threats to this country could be multifold. the emerging pathogens are one of those threats. when you talk to anybody in my field of pandemic preparedness and all the simulations that we've had and all the prepared activities that we've had, i think none of us actually considered the fact that the achilles heel to the american pandemic response might actually be our own white house. none of us had in our bing ore cards that it would be the president of the united states who's having large maskless rallies that potentially propagate this emerging respiratory virus. and certainly none of us planned on the fact that it would actually be the leader of this country that would downplay the virus so much to the point where there might be a portion of the population that doesn't believe that the pan dem sic a threat. the concern is pandemic response doesn't just happen in government agencies and federal agencies. it happens in our houses. it happens in schools and restaurants. it requires the cooperation of

the public. and by driving a wedge in our population we're basically prolonging and worsening the response to the pandemic. >> dr. hotez, is it possible -- i mean, would you be comfortable calculating the lives lost by the president's decision to downplay this virus? >> yes, absolutely, chuck. that's certainly possible. but just to reinforce the comments that the doctor just made, she's absolutely right. i was in washington, d.c. on 9/11, just to put this into context. i was very moved by the last segment. at that time i was chair of microbiology at george washington medical school and saw the smoke rising out of the pentagon, put on a stethoscope, went over to the emergency room to see if we could help. but it was such an awful, awful day. and one of the things that happened in addition to launching the war on terror is the bush administration and then

the obama administration expanded it was the launch of massive infrastructure to respond to pandemic threats. and what this president has done is piece by piece tried to dismantle it. by interfering with the work of the major agencies, the cdc and fda and really never launching a national response to covid-19. we never had a federally led response. unlike what was done in europe and asia. and so now we're at the point where we're looking at 200,000 americans who have perished in this awful epidemic and the majority of lives could have been saved with that national response. we failed to detect entry of the virus into new york with that massive epidemic. we failed to mount a response to prevent that massive surge across the southern united states. and we're doing it again. dr. fauci is absolutely right. we are now going to see a rebound because of forced school openings, college openings,

because of the weather and people indoors, and there's still no federal response. and so we'll be at 300,000 deaths by december 1. >> i want to talk about the next three months. dr. bhadelia, obviously there have been a lot of concerns about as temperatures get cooler you have the flu season. first of all, the flu. are we seeing it? there were some reports that it could be -- we might have a milder season because we've been -- the globe has been socially distanced, that if people take their flu shot it might be more effective because it didn't mutate as much as it normally does. is there any evidence you're seeing that maybe somehow flu season won't be as difficult as perhaps we may have feared six months ago? or is that just happy talk? >> well, chuck, i do hope that's a silver lining. the data we're seeing from the southern hemisphere and australia is that their flu season has actually been pretty

light, and the thought is that it is actually the public health measure that's we're using to protect ourselves from covid-19, you know, also a respiratory virus that might also serve to protect us from influenza. but it's not guaranteed. and particularly if we don't have segments of our population potentially following those necessary measures. and so what remains important is for us to follow those measures but also to ensure that we get our flu shot in a timely manner. the concern would be that we don't all rush together. so we should try to stagger it out and all get our flu shots in september and october as the cdc recommends. the other thing to note is that part of the reason we want this is because we want to drive the flu activity down so that there's not a lot of people with the flu competing for the same beds that people with covid-19 might need. people who get the flu, by the way, studies show that they may end up, if they have underlying conditions, they may end up with heart attacks and other reasons why they need to be hospitalized, so reducing the

flu helps us take all those things out of the equation. >> and dr. hotez, i've been wanting to talk with you for about ten days now ever since we've been hearing various vaccine proclamations first from the president promising one perhaps before election day, but then what we learned from astrazeneca this week where it looks like a second instance of a neurological issue with somebody in the trial. give us your sense of the state of the vaccine development that you understand, that you're aware of going forward. >> so there are several moving parts to this. the big picture is i'm quite confident we will have several covid-19 vaccines, as we talked before, the technical hurdle to develop covid-19 vaccines is not that high. it's an old school problem in virology. it's a matter of making sure we do all the quality control, quality assurance, and safety and efficacy testing to give it the time to release a vaccine that's safe and effective for

the american people. that will happen. it will not happen prior to the november election. it's going to take more time than that. maybe in the early part of next year we can start release iing vaccines to the public 37 that's the aspirational goal. one of the problems has been there has been no communication strategy around operation warp speed. it's been left to the companies. and the companies in some cases are just not up to communicating issues. so for instance, astrazeneca, which is really not a vaccine company, neither moderna, what they've been doing is sending out press releases that don't make any sense and then you have this kind of leak around those two individuals that probably had complications that are unrelated to the vaccination but there was no communication. it all came out of a ceo phone call that was leaked or reported to stat news. and that's not the way the american people need to hear the information about covid-19 vaccines. we need the federal government,

operation warp speed, to step up, launch a proper communication plan, strategy, engage the public on a regular and frequent basis so they can understand what's going on. there's a lot of complicated issues around these vaccines. some will be only partially protective, some better than others. all of that has to be rolled out. >> if you had one spokesperson, trusted, updating us all the time, coming from nih, i could see that that could be very helpful to the american public. perhaps somebody is listening. dr. hotez, dr. bhadelia, thank you both for your expertise. coming up, we take you live out west as firefighters continue to race against the rapidly moving fire lines in california, washington, and oregon. we'll be right back. need better sleep? try nature's bounty sleep3, a unique tri-layer supplement that calms you, helps you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer great sleep comes naturally with sleep3. only from nature's bounty.

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here. "atlantic" writer ed yong says america's trapped in a pandemic spiral. yong compares our country's lackluster pandemic response to the way ants will keep marching in a circle until they die. not changing their behavior. even if it will save their lives. diagnosing how we got here, yong writes, "americans grabbed on to whatever solution was most prominent in the moment, and bounced from one often false hope to the next. they manifested again and again, distorting the debate around whether to stay at home, wear masks or open colleges. they prevented citizens from grasping the scope of the crisis and pushed leaders toward bad policies. and instead of overriding misleading intuitions with calm and considered communication those leaders intensified them. the country is now trapped in an intuition nightmare. like the spiraling ants the americans are walled in by their own unhelpful instincts, which lead them round and round in self-destructive circles." well, "the atlantic's" ed yong joins me now. ed, i have to say it was -- you painted quite the picture.

it was pretty depressing. so kudos there. but i think that was part of the intent, try to sort of get some attention. but i have to tell you, even in reading it, even in seeing all this i've come to the conclusion we're six or seven months away at best from any new plan to deal with this virus and we've all just sort of got to do what we've got to do on our own. is that the message we've been sent? >> my -- >> yeah. hey, ed, we're having a little bit of audio issues here. here's what i'm going to do. let's -- we're going to sneak in a quick break. let's see if we can fix this audio and try this again on the other side. we'll be right back with more "meet the press" daily. e "meet the press" daily

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and i think we have our technical issue fixed up here. so ed yong is back with "the atlantic." the ant death spiral is how i excerpted your piece because i thought it really just painted a grim picture. and as i said when i was winding up for the first question there, at this point i've come to the conclusion that we're not -- this is sort of we're going to

muddle through this this way probably until a vaccine because it doesn't seem as if the public or the leadership is ready to change course. >> i think my concern is that these areas of intuition that have plagued us throughout the response so far will also cause us problems when a vaccine arrives. like this idea that we pin all our hopes on a single measure, specifically a biomedical countermeasure, rather than fixing all the broken systems that have led to america's pandemic crisis is going to continue. when we have the vaccine it doesn't magically flip a switch where the country can go back to normal as many people still want to do. we'll still need things like testing, contact tracing for the period when the vaccine is rolling out and especially if as many people as currently say they will resist a vaccine actually do so. so it's not just going to be like the vaccine arrives and then bang, we're back to the way things were in 2019.

we will continue to need to resist these same areas of thought and conception that we have made all this time. >> yeah, i thought it was interesting. you write your piece from the perspective that essentially it was a collective intuition mistake, you that almost -- that the leaders are more reacting to the american public's dealing with this rather than -- how much of this is sort of the state of america 2020 that we ended up here and how much of this do you pin on the political leadership? >> well, it's a bit of both. the areas that i talked about are things that all of us do. you and i did. our viewers probably do it. and the sort of natural parts of human psyche worsened by the fact this pandemic is such a massive crisis. but you know, we would expect

leaders -- we need leaders to lead the way, lead us out of this. the ants go round in an endless spiral because they have no coordinating force. we technically do that. but our leaders have utterly failed us in creating any sort of coordinated strategy to take us out of this endless spiral. and so it's a bit of both. it's these problems that all of us face in terms of understanding a crisis of this magnitude but it's also the utter lack of coordination and leadership that you know, as i said, i think that's going to continue past a vaccine maybe into the new year depending on what happens in november. >> the next place you're going here is in some ways it's because we have collectively or we have such a large chunk of the population that has sort of inherent distrust in institutions or its leadership, do you think that is what explains why we have such a worse set of outcomes from our

response to the pandemic as the european union does collectively? >> i think that's certainly a factor there. when you elect people on the basis of distrust in government, what happens when those people then need to marshal the trust of the people? obviously, you're going to have problems. and that's what we see now. but again, as i say in the piece, i don't think it's right to blame the failures of the american pandemic response on any one factor. we're seeing pictures of trump here and he's central to the problem but he's not solely responsible. there's also all the problems of america's broken systems. it's stretched health care system. its underfunding of public health. its legacy of racism and discriminatory policies that have led to people of color being disproportionately hit by

this virus. there's a lot of things to fix. trusting government is one. the government itself is another. but there are a lot of things that we need to get right for the next time round. and i guarantee you there will be a next pandemic. will we be ready for it? i hope we can do better than this time. >> well, i certainly don't want to be an army ant. that's for sure. ed yong from "the atlantic." again, a very provocative piece. i encourage you to read the whole thing. ed yong, thanks very much for coming on. i appreciate it. turning now to the wildfires that are raging across the entire pacific coast of this country, they're breaking records and it's burning with unprecedented intensity. nearly 100 fires are burning in 13 states, torching an area about the size of new jersey. in california 3 million acres, more than 3 million acres have burned and killed at least 20 people. the august complex fire, which is north of sacramento, is the largest wildfire in state history. and ready for this? six of california's 20 largest fires in history have burned

this calendar year. in oregon fires have scorched about 900,000 acres. it's nearly twice the state's annual average. more than half a million people have been ordered to evacuate, which by the way happens to be about 10% of the state's entire population. oregon's governor warns that this year will not sadly be an anomaly. >> while our state reels from this horrific fire storm of dry weather, hot wind and drought conditions, this will not be a one-time event. unfortunately, it is the bellwether of the future. we are feeling the acute impacts of climate change. >> i want to check in with our own jacob ward. he's live for us in ashland, oregon. and jacob, you know, i do worry sometimes our viewers on the east coast, they just see oh, there's wildfires, that happens all the time out there. what we're seeing in oregon right now, i mean, entire towns have disappeared. walk us through where you are

now and what you've seen. >> reporter: well, chuck, i think you're making an incredibly important point there. i think the brain gets used to these images of fires sweeping through towns. but you have to remember oregon, while it has seen its share of wildfires, has never seen them like this and they've never hit places like this. right now we're looking at more than 35 active wildfires, four of which are considered megafires, two of them just about 20 miles south of portland, predicted to combine into one enormous fire. this is unprecedented fire behavior in this region. and just to get with the people here and hear their stories has been the most heartbreaking thing for me. we've spent this morning with robin and tony akpan, who own shasta view wheatgrass. they're organic farmers here in ashland. and in this place they built their home. 14 years ago they put this home together, raised four children here and built a successful

business, and now all of that is gone. tony had to bail water out of his hot tub, trying to throw it at the flames, to try to save this place. it did not work out. let me play you a little bit of what robin had to say about what the fight was like as she watched her husband from the base of the driveway with their kids waiting in the van. >> it was really scary. it was so scary. tony was here, trying to fight the fire. he was determined to make sure that our home wasn't taken and our house that we built and we put everything into wasn't taken. and we were so scared because he wasn't with us. and then when we saw the wave coming, we were right there, and we saw the wave just move, the wind changed and it just moved this direction. and i was calling him and trying to get him out, and he just -- and it was so scary.

>> chuck, tony, who moved here from nigeria, describes this as his american dream. he says they will rebuild here with his family, but that seeing this incredible new reality definitely has shaken everybody in a way that's hard to articulate, chuck. >> and jacob, i'm glad you emphasized, oregon, we're so, and again, it's not to even lessen what california is going through, but that's what makes this what we're seeing this year seem so unprecedented. jacob ward on the ground for us in ashland, oregon, thanks very much. i want to stick with this topic because the wildfires burning out west is one example that extreme weather, everyone on this planet is facing right now. this idea of are we preventing climate change? the climate has changed. tropical storms paulette and rene are churning in the atlantic. we're up to "r" in the atlantic and we're not even halfway through september. we're probably going to run out of names. in the pacific, two typhoons made land in just a week.

five typhoons have struck south korea this season alone. that's a new record. and all of this comes as a new report out this week predicts that more than a billion people could be displaced by 2050 because of climate change. but again, we say the words 2050. right now, there are people displaced in oregon right now, and it's 2020. al roker is cohost of the "today" show. he joins me now. and al, you know, we talk about preventing climate change. worrying about 2050. i think this is the year, if we didn't realize it, it's happened. all of the, what are we facing, we're facing. fires out west that we have never seen before. we have to change our thinking on this, don't we? >> we absolutely do, chuck. because like you said, 6 of the top 20 fires occurring right now. three of the top four largest burning fires are going on. there's no end in sight right now, and climate change is

leading to these larger, more frequent and intense fires. and interestingly enough, there's talk, oh, california is not managing its forests well. the august complex, a good part is in the mendocino national forest. so that's federal land. right now, 3 million acres are burning in california. almost a million acres burning in oregon. and the wildfire season, because of climate change, chuck, 105 days longer than since 1970. three times as many large fires. six times as many acres burned. and it's not just fire. it's air quality. sploek smoky conditions for the entire west coast. hazardous air quality for parts of the northwest. we have air quality alerts for unhealthy air, central california and all of oregon and washington. and there's major drought going on. that's another part of climate change. 68% of the western states are in some sort of drought. a number of them in extreme and exceptional drought. and this just out, this report

from the u.n. and the world meteorological organization, united in science, the earth continues to warm, 2020 probably going to be the hottest year on record. and chuck, from 2016 to 2020, it's set to be the warmest five year period on record. our pollpolar ice caps melting record pace in july. sea level rise accelerating which leads to sea level rise along our coast. greenhouse gases, since 1990, co2 emissions up 62%. those trap excessive heat. that causes the polar ice caps to start melting, and climate change with more ice melt, with more sea level rise, that puts more moisture into the air. that provides more energy for rapidly intensifying hurricanes and severe impacts from droughts and floods. and we're now in the la nina, so that means sea surface temperatures are below average across the equatorial pacific.

what does that mean for us? generally, the jetstream will bring an active storm track into the pacific northwest, the great lakes, but it stays dry down south, there's no el nino, which tears apart hurricanes. so more active tropics in the atlantic, and as you mentioned, we're going to be looking at paulette. this may hit bermuda as a category 2 storm. as you look at our investigation areas all across the atlantic from africa into the gulf, look at this. so there you have it. i mean, it's an active season, as you said. we just passed the peak middle part of the hurricane season. >> and just this warming water, it means that new jersey's the new north carolina, right? new jersey, you're going to have to worry about hurricane possibly hitting more often than you used to before. that's the reality. right? is this the adaptation americans have to start preparing for? >> that's right, chuck.

and look, you're seeing -- i was was just in cape cod this past week. and a number of beaches, they have giant signs out with sharks. why are they seeing more sharks? well, seals are moving further north. lobster moving further north. seals, so the sharks are chasing the food. it just continues to feed upon itself. it is a chain reaction that we're not seeing stopping anytime soon. >> and what it sounds like, it also can accelerate as all this stuff happens. anyway, al roker, really appreciate it. thank you, sir. as always. and thank you all for being with us and trusting us this hour. we'll be back monday, of course, with more "meet the press daily" and if it's sunday, it's "meet the press" on nbc. msnbc's coverage continues after this break. tinues after this break or face to face, we're here to help- utilizing our resources as one of the nation's largest banks and a local approach with a focus on customized insights.

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good afternoon. i'm katy tur. it is 11:00 a.m. out west and 2:00 p.m. in the east, and today is the 19th anniversary of 9/11. the worst terror attack in american history. no one has forgotten. president trump spoke at the flight 93 memorial in shanksville, pennsylvania, earlier today. and joe biden paid his respects at the memorial earlier this afternoon. biden says he's putting aside politics today, taking his ads off the air, and not campaigning out of respect for the lives lost. and the president's speech was largely